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I am the Soul
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in a situation of unbearable pain. He must have been unmindful of any happening. Perhaps his meditation was disturbed by the embers that were searing his skin and bones. He may even have realised that it was a situation where a terrible agony was to be felt. Perhaps for a fleeting moment he may even have felt the pain..... and at the very next moment his alert and conscious soul would have reminded him of the true nature. Then as a result, he would have said, 'what is burning is not me. I can never burn, what burns is not mine. I am chaitanya - the animate. That is jada - the inanimate. Hence it is not mine’. Then he would have got engrossed again in meditating over the soul. This deep meditation resulted in all attachment being wiped out within the shortest time. That was also why he could attain omniscience.
Brothers! This great soul, who could maintain equanimity of thought in the face of such a grievous provocation for aversion, was indeed an enlightened one. His was a great soul well ahead on the path of Moksu. He would never have mentioned that he was beyond provocation, then where was the need to bear with all that torture. "My true nature is like that of the accomplished soul - the siddhu'. He would never have engaged anybody in the web of such words. Yet this great man, who with an endeavour, to learn the innermost depths of his self, that spanned several births, naturally lived in a state of independence of the soul, managed to rise above all provocation and demonstrated his true accomplished nature - the siddha svarupa. Indeed an enlightened one is the one who has no affinity left for the body, no dehadhyasa; one who has learnt the bheda-vijnana, (the science that delineates the limits of the body and the soul) of the soul. We might be unable to give up the dehadhyasa altogether but nevertheless we could achieve it partially. Gajasukumala Muni had scaled great heights. Today we would not be able to reach those heights, and neither would we be faced with the grievous torture of that kind. But if we make the effort, we could most certainly rise above trivial provocations. Thus the intensity of
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