Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Our True State

Recently I underwent a surgery. The doctor was talking to me and I was narrating my experiences with our Gurudev Sri Babuji Maharaj. Slowly they passed chloroform thru my oxygen mask and I slipped into unconsciousness. When I regained consciousness, the first thing that came to my mind was what was "I" during the past few moments?

As long as we are awake we keep thinking and saying, "I did this, I did that" etc. And in our dreams also we have the concept of "I" and we identify ourselves with a body, even though the body in the dream may look different from the physical one. We think we lose our connection with the body during deep sleep, but that's not true. We still identify ourselves with the body and its name. That's why we wake up when our name is called. We even maintain relation with our close family and identify their voices while in sleep. We also recognize when the fan or AC is switched off. Thus, we still identify ourselves with the body even while in sleep.

But when chloroform is given, we completely lose the concept of "I". In fact that state is concept-less, experience-less, thoughtless, emotionless, formless and nameless. That's our true state. Our Gurudev Sri Babuji Maharaj used to say "The state you are in while on chloroform, you have to be in that state even when your body is awake and going about its daily duties. That's the true state of liberation."

I also remembered a verse from our Gurudev's charitra at that moment - "Moolaabhavam idam jnatam sareeram naasthi kevalam. Swapne prateeyamaanaani roopani yadha tadha" "In the root concept there is no experience or thought. There is no body itself. This body and all its belongings and relations are as true as the things in a dream."

When we wake up from a dream we easily write it off saying it was just a dream and not real. But as long as we were in that dream, we strongly believe whatever we see or experience to be true and real. Similarly when we are awake, we strongly believe our body and all the things we experience through it are real. And when someone says this is all just a dream, it's very hard for us to accept it. But just think, when we slip into the final sleep, leave this body and take another birth, if someone tells us the events of our past life, don't we realize that that was all not real? When we wake up from a dream and again go into sleep the next day, the same dream will not continue. That's why it's easy for us to believe that it was not true. But when we sleep and wake up the next day, our life continues to be same, and thus hard for us to believe that it is not real. But there is a final sleep for this body after which we wake up in a different body and the whole previous life of 80, 90 or 100 years turns out to be just a dream.

When we truly realize the non-existence of this body and everything related to it, we attain the state where there is no thought, experience, form, name, relation or any other worldly concept. That's our true state of liberation.

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