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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
The Vaişpava Saints of ....
735
are only an illusion.” Further Tukārāma finds himself unable to describe the actual final experience. It is something which eludes all concepts and description; everything then becomes illusory. “God indeed is an illusion. The devotee is an illusion. Everything is an illusion. Only those who have got this experience, says Tukā, will come to know the truth of my remark.”'\ Thus, it is not a matter of intellectual understanding but one can have such an experience only in a mystical vision of Him. He holds that God can be known only by those who actually see Him face to face in their intuitive experience, and feel Him actually inside and outside. The realisation of God is possible only in such a spiritual communion with Him. He says --"What is the use of those dry words ? I want experience, and nothing else. You talk of knowledge but I know that you have had no mystical experience."2
Ranade looks upon him as a saint of a very high order because he was not a born saint like Jūānes'vara, but "he supplies us with a typical illustration of what we have called 'Personalistic Mysticism'. Tukārāma exhibits all the doubts and the disbeliefs, the weaknesses and sufferings, the anxieties and the uncertainties, through which every aspiring soul must pass before he can come into the life of light, spirit and harmony..... In Tukārāma,....we find these traces from the beginning to the end of his spiritual career. Jiānadeva
1 Paņashikar (Editor): Tukārāmachi Gathā, 3707, p. 751. 2 Ranade R. D.: Mysticism in Mahāsüshtra, pp. 344, 345.
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