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cine. But Atma Vidya is fulfilled only when it has brought about a complete cultural rejuvenation in the individual who is the student of that science. It is a subjective achievement and not an objective acquisition. Therefore, no teacher, however great he may be, can impart the Knowledge as such to a student. All that the teacher can supply the student with is the clear vision of the goal and all the logical arguments to prove the blessedness and perfection of both the goal and the path.
The examples given in the three stanzas are very telling. A father may be suffering agony and mental agitations due to his debts, in which case, his children, dutiful and sympathetic, can certainly relieve him from his debts by their kindly co-operation and help. But the sorrows and agitations created in him due to his own mental constitution can be relieved only by himself; none else can share it.
If a traveller is suffering from fatigue and exhaustion because of the extreme heaviness of the load he is carrying on his head he can be helped and relieved by the fellowtravellers-nay, even a stony load-rest on the wayside can relieve the man. But the pain that he is suffering because of his hunger, which is a subjective inner disturbance, cannot be removed by somebody taking a sumptuous dinner for him!! He himself must eat his dinner and fill his belly!
The teacher, not satisfied with the two very striking examples, invests yet another stanza to drive home to the student the unavoidable necessity for his conscious personal effort. The teacher says that, in life, he has found that only those patients get cured of their ailments who follow themselves faithfully the prescribed diet and take in the right medicines. A patient suffers because of some mal-adjustments in his physical system, and the medicine must get assimilated and absorbed by his body, so that it may remove the causes of his illness. One cannot cure one's illness by
the medicines another has taken !!
In fact, health is the natural condition of man; but some cause or causes have entered the system which are obstructing the experience of the body's true vitality; and the patient
