| IF ALL SOULS
are united jointly and severally with the Supreme Being, why should an ethic be necessary
to realize this? The reason is that, as already explained, attaining freedom from error in
this matter is not a. process of study or a gathering of information, but something like
waking from sleep, a change of state. A man has a dream. He is distressed by what he goes
through in the dream. How can he escape from that
distress? Relief can come only through waking from sleep and realizing that he was
dreaming. Similarly, we must wake up from the separation that deludes the soul and
liberate ourselves from our sorrow. Therefore do the, Upanishads proclaim Arise, Awake!
Jnaana, the realization that the Supreme Soul is within us, is a waking from sleep.
It is not like learning from another that has seen it that
some one is in the next room or village. It is not a mere bit of knowledge obtained by
enquiry; it is a change of mind, of feelings and of everything inside one, a change not
less but more than the change from sleep to waking, very like to a change from night to
day or death to life. |
