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I am the Soul
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understanding by the being. The interest in the senses has to be dried up. If the interest within us is subdued, if it dries up. then where is the need to dry up this body. But one who is bogged down in rituals becomes similar to inanimate things, one who removes the thought from the ritualistic actions turns them into inanimate too, such a being does not understand this process of controlling the senses. Why, he does not even believe such an understanding is necessary and hence Srimadji has called such beings as bogged down in rituals, the inanimate ritualistic beings.
A being to whom mindless rituals mean everything will find talk of knowledge meaningless. Hence he rejects the path of knowledge saying it does not lead to liberation. But liberation cannot be achieved merely with outwardly rituals unless there is a knowledge of the inner self. For a being even to perform rituals it is necessary to acquire knowledge first. It is said in the scriptures -
पढमं ज्ञानं तओ दया
Knowledge first and then religious practices in the form of compassion. Which ritual for what purpose and what procedure for which ritual is extremely important to know. But most of the beings perform rituals simply as a tradition without truly understanding them. Like a flock of sheep following blindly, just because everybody else does it, so I have it to do, is how he understands it. He never gets to understand the essence of the rituals. The scriptures specify only action with knowledge. But the concept of knowledge has escaped the lives of the seemingly inanimate, bogged down in rituals, and only the bare frame of the rituals remains.
Such beings who believe that the path of liberation lies in their own inanimate beliefs are truly deserving of pity. Srimadji looks upon them with compassion. Now in the next couplet he tells us where the self-taught impractical beings go wrong and how they trudge around on a lost path.
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