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krishnananda-essence The whole process of the realisation of Truth is a sacrifice of the ego, and is a great pain.

Suffering in the process of the experiencing of Infinitude cannot be abolished for the individual so long as the individual itself is inconsistent with the Infinite. Hence, the attempt towards the attainment of the perfectly Real is generally looked upon with a sense of fear, disgust and even hatred. The human being is always attached to the immediate concerns of life. He has no eye to look to the beyond. He is grieved about the past, doubtful about the future and worried about the present. He is ever diseased in his spirit due to his violation of the eternal law. He is caught in the whirl of ignorance, passion and sin, and is constantly dashed by the huge waves of uncontrollable sorrow. Every moment he finds himself in a fix. He ceaselessly dies to himself in time, and seems to recover new sense just then and there. His whole life is a flux of statesnow destroyed, now renewed. He has no idea of anything besides himself, anything that is vaster and truer. He is imprisoned within his fragile body, within his whimsical mind, within his childish intellect, within his conceited individuality. A shower of superphysical knowledge upon him seems to be music played before the deaf. He thinks too highly about himself and, with canine avidity, licks the pricking bone even with his torn tongue.

The Upanishads are not unaware of the futile attempts of man to grasp the Limitless Being, and they warn him that it is not to be comprehended through logic, but to be heard from the wise one (Katha Up., II. 8, 9). Reason is meant to strengthen belief in what is heard from reliable sources, and not to walk unaided. It is an empty pride to think that one can depend totally on oneself and reach the Eternal. Reason and faith should go hand in hand if the desired fruit is to be reaped. That which is agreeable at present does not remain so the next moment, nor does the disagreeable appear so forever. The immutable Reality is unperceived and unfelt, and the apparition seems to give us life, light and joy. The sole purpose of the Upanishad teaching is to disentangle man from the chain of samsara, to show him the way to the Glorious Light that shines within himself. Man is not a sinful mortal creature in truth; the Upanishad calls him son of the Immortal amritasya putra (Svet. Up., II. 5). But he can know himself only through sacrificing himself. The highest sacrifice is the offering of the self to the Absolute. The greatest yoga is the sinking of the self into unity with the Absolute, by denying the separate, and asserting the One. Such an act which refuses to feed the individual self-sense with its diverse requirements, compels the relative selfinterest to dissolve itself in the Absolute-Interest, which soars high above the limitations of Space and Time, and engages itself in its establishment in the perfect satisfaction and uncontradicted experience of completeness and utter

Reality. The awareness of the state of the Pure Self unimpeded by phenomenal laws or separative restrictions, and the infinite rejoicing in the free flow of the law of the Spirit, is the life of the exalted Self-realised one. He exists as the Divine Being, which is the supreme condition of the fullest freedom of Eternity. Without such a knowledge of the fundamental nature of existence, life becomes intense with conflict and war between the opposing forces. It is impossible for the individual to blossom into Infinity in the midst of such a heated strife among disturbant powers of Nature, without reconciling and pacifying them in a more expansive consciousness and a higher order of reality where they disclose their inner truths and melt into the bosom of Being with a fraternal embrace. The difficulties in coming to any settled opinion of things as they are the miseries of everyday experience, the quandaries in determining the essential truth and falsehood of life, the concomitant selfish desires, the failures, the kicks, the blows, the burning anxieties, the vain beliefs, the mocking expectations and hopes that confront the human being in his struggle for existence, give him opportunities to discriminate the Eternal, and direct him on the way that leads to the realisation of the Absolute.

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