Self Realisation

Author(s): Shrimad Rajchandra, Govardhandas
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram

Page 94

The Self Realization
The non-sentient objects or substances have no capacity to know anything. On the contrary the sentient substances are ever knowing. Therefore, one should not be mistaken for the other. They would never merge into each other. A sentient substance can never be a non-sentient one and a non-sentient substance can by no magic or logic be made into a sentient one. Both are utterly different and are experienced as such in all times.
आत्मानी शंका करे, आत्मा पोते आप ।
शंकानो करनार ते, अचरज एह अमाप ॥५८|| Atmani Shanka kare, atma pote apa, Shankano karanara te, acharaja eha amapa. 58 O! one that doubts the soul's existence, He himself the soul must be, 'Without the doubter's obvious presence, Can there be doubt ?' surprises me. 58
How strange that the Soul doubts its own existence! One cannot even say that there is no soul in the absence of a Soul. Doubt implies the existence of the doubter, and the doubter is the Soul. There cannot be a doubt without a doubter. To believe in the experiences of an embodied soul such as seeing pots and clothes and not to believe at the same time in the Soul whose experiences they are, is to commit a folly such as believing a shadow without a substance or believing in a reflecting of a body in the mirror without believing in the body, whose reflection it is. The Soul by nature is self-luminous and it is illuminating all other objects. We spend more time in seeing other objects by the help of the Soul and we feel we have no time in perceiving our own self-luminous Soul. Therefore, we come to a strange pass i.e. we doubt our Soul's existence.
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