So long as you stand near the open oven in the kitchen, you must necessarily feel the heat of the fire and the smoke in the atmosphere. To walk out of the kitchen is to escape both these inconveniences because heat and smoke are the properties of fire in the oven and not the qualities of the atmosphere. In burning summer, out in your courtyard, there is both heat and glare, to escape which, you have only to walk into the shelter of your room. So too, identifying ourselves with the gunas and thus playing in the mental and intellectual zones, we suffer the imperfections and sorrows of an ordinary life. But when these are transcended we shall no more be under the tyranny of these sorrows. Finitude and agitations, mortality and pangs, change and sorrow are not in the Perfect, Immortal, Changeless Self.
HAVING CROSSED THE THREE ‘GUNAS’ OUT OF WHICH THE BODY IS EVOLVED — The three gunas are the expressions of ‘ignorance’or NESCIENCE, which constitutes the very causal-body. We are experiencing the pure causal-body in our deep-sleep, and this is nothing other than the gunas. They emerge from the causal-body to express themselves first as the subtle-body, expressing as qualities of our thoughts and feeling, and again as the gross-body to express themselves into good, bad, or indifferent actions.
If the art in me is to be expressed in colours, I need the canvas and the brushes. If I am a musician, I need musical instruments and accompaniments to express my art. Each artist employs appropriate instruments to express himself. A violin in the hands of a painter, and a brush with colour and canvas in the hands of a musician are both useless because they are not the media of expression for them. If my thoughts are dull and animalistic, it would be sorrow for me to bear the physical body of man. Thus, each body-plant, animal or man — is the exact instrument given for the full expression of its subtle-body. And the nature and quality of the subtle-body are determined by the texture of the causal-body, consisting of the gunas.
It is, therefore, evident that, those who have gone beyond the gunas, are no more under the tragedies of the subtle and the causal-bodies.
THE EMBODIED ONE IS FREED FROM BIRTH, DEATH, DECAY AND PAIN — As we said earlier, the heat and smoke are the qualities of the fire in the oven and as long as we are near the oven, we suffer from these hardships. Matter changes forever and these changes have been systematised into definite stages. They are common to all bodies everywhere. These stages are birth, growth, decay, disease and death. These five stages are common to all. Each one is a packet of pain; birth is painful, growth is agonizing, decay is disturbing, disease is tyrannical and death is terrible indeed!
But all these sorrows are only the sorrows of Matter and not of the Consciousness that illumines them. One, who has realised himself to be the Awareness, transcends all these sorrows. The Sun may illumine floods, famine, war, pestilence, funerals, marriages and a million varieties of happenings, and yet, none of them is IN the Sun. Similarly, the Consciousness in us illumines the various changes in our matter-envelopments, but they do not appertain to the Spirit. Therefore, he who has realised himself to be the Spirit, goes beyond all these struggles.
AND ATTAINS TO IMMORTALITY — Not only does the man of realisation experience the absence of sorrow but he also lives the positive joy of perfection. This is indicated by this phrase. In deep-sleep, a man in his sick bed forgets his pain; the disappointed one escapes his disappointment; the hungry no more feels his hunger; and the sad is no longer sorrowful. But, thereby, the illness is not cured, the disappointment is not removed, the hunger is not satisfied, the sorrow is not mitigated. Sleep is a temporary truce with the existing world of sorrows within. On waking, the sorrows too return; but the State of Bliss experienced at the moment of realisation of the Self is not a mere temporary cessation of sorrows of life, but it is a vivid experience of the Changeless, Infinite Nature. Hence it is said here that one experiences the State of Immortality even while living in this very same embodiment.
It is, indeed, a rare experience to be a God-man upon the earth. What then are the marks of such a liberated soul, so that we may understand him and also recognise this State in ourselves? How will he conduct himself in society and what exactly will be the relationship of such a Master living the God-experience, with the world outside? ARJUNA GETS AN OCCASION FOR ASKING THESE QUESTIONS REGARDING THE NATURE AND BEHAVIOUR OF SUCH A GOD-MAN:
