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1096
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
and tiresome. Let us, then, gird up our loins to tread the path of the Tirthamkaras, the path which takes us out of this dreadful valley of suffering and sorrow and death, we call our World.
Let us not be daunted or discouraged by its steep and thorny nature, but, providing ourselves with the three invincible weapons of Right Faith, Right Knowledge and Right Conduct, fearlessly march on to the conquest of Ignorance and Death. The 'fall' has to be reversed, and Death is a mighty warrior who overcomes all weapons except those tempered with vairágya, i.e., Renunciation. The Fountain-spring of Eternal life, from whose enlivening waters we all would like to quench our thirst for immortality and joy, lies in the Kingdom of Death, guarded over by the King of Terrors. And the sword of vairâgya is held by the Self in pledge for the knowledge of good and evil, which is but another name for body-consciousness.
Come up, then, to the Adytum of the great and glorious Divinity, your own blissful Self, to claim your birth-right, the ananda, by fulfilling the conditions of the pledge, so that by its addition to the Sat and the Chit which you already enjoy, you may yourself become the perfect Sat-Chit-Ânanda, which you, in very truth, already are in essence.
OM, PEACE! PEACE !! PEACE !!!
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