Shrimad Rajchandra And Mahatma Gandhi

Author(s): Kumarpal Desai
Publisher: Raj Saubhag Satsang Mandal

Page 42

Shrimad Rajchandra's Message
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anything new or novel in it. At the most, he may feel a momentary detachment with the worldly affairs when he attends a funeral ceremony. On the other hand, Shrimad expressed unique feelings when he visited a crematorium. This is where he began to see the distinction between the worldly and other-worldly perspective.
Once, Shrimad was passing a cremetorium in Mumbai whilst walking with another person. Shrimad asked what the place was. His companion simply answered, “Oh, it is a cremation ground." In response, Shrimad made a cryptic comment saying, “To me, the whole city of Mumbai seems like a cremation ground.”
This demonstrates that the detached Shrimad had not even an ounce of attraction towards the materialistic world around him. Ordinary people generally find Mumbai to be a city of pleasure and merriment, but not so for Shrimad, for him it held no attraction.
Shrimad viewed satsang as being a critical aspect to attain self-realisation. According to him, there was no liberation without satsang. Satsang could be with a spiritual scripture or with a selfrealised person. Shrimad, by making self-realisation as the focal point of satsang, had given an altogether unusual and different emphasis to the concept of satsang. Shrimad says just as a dirty cloth is cleansed of its dirt by the use of soap and water, so the mind and the soul are cleansed of their impurities by the practise of satsang
A common Gujarati saying with a profoundly deep meaning says: “it is the company a person keeps that defines his personality'. Certain company can be very enchanting to one's mind. Some company can lead a person to engage in fraudulent thoughts and acts, making one believe that he may benefit by such means. Invariably, such actions result in the sufferring by none other than the wrongdoer himself. The greater the attraction