Chapter 10 - Life Is A Play
Day 53
Once you understand "nartaka atma", you will drop your expectations of time. This is called "going beyond time”. The essence of the Self or Shiva is called mahakala.
A thing that does not have expectations of time becomes part of time. It goes beyond time and becomes a part of time. Do not wait around, thinking that your hurts will fade with time.
Wake up and see them as a play, and everything will disappear instantly. Do not sit, deciding to engage yourself in spiritual practices for 20 years to eliminate negative impressions.
Where did these impressions come from? Look at yourself as a dancer. Some people say that there are so many impressions left from so many lifetimes and ask when they will leave.
Do not join them, quietly sitting and saying the same thing. It says to understand that your Self is dancing. Look at it as though you are playing a
role.
You are acting in a drama, and for the actor to perform in a play he requires a stage. The dancer is on the stage, but something has happened.
The stage is within the dancer, who is bigger than the stage. Without a dancer, there can be no stage. Wherever a dancer performs, that is a stage. So which is more significant, the stage or the dancer?
Although from the outside it appears that the stage is bigger and the dancer is smaller, standing in some corner of the stage, the dancer is more important than the stage.
Likewise, our body appears small and the world seems big, and the self so small that it cannot be seen. It seems as though the breath is inside.
But Shiva does not see it this way, but just the opposite. The inner self, the heart and mind are the stage. The stage is inside the dancer. This is an amazing way of thinking.
The dancer is bigger, the stage is inside him, and he has to harmonise the drama within himself. The drama that you will perform and the stage are both inside.
You do not have to go out and ask that the stage be made ready. It is inside you. Usually, so many arrangements are needed before you can stage a play - a screen has to be set up, lighting has to be prepared.
A stage is ready only when all these are set up. Yet the stage is inside you. The antaratma, the inner self, is the stage, and what you see outside is a mere reflection.
The emotions in the mind and situations are important. The dancer is not on stage, but the stage is within the dancer. Just look. You see some scenery, the hills in the distance, trees, stars, moon or sun-set.
All these are captured as a reflection on the retina, which is inside the eve. If the reflection is on the retina, then is the scenery or the organ that captures the reflection bigger?
Is the scenery more important or the eye? The eye is more important because all the sights enter the eye. Although the eye is bigger than the scenery, how do you see it?
The eye appears small and the scenery huge. This is called
maya. The body has a form, but the consciousness, which preserves this body as a body, is not visible.
In the stories in Chandamama, there is a ghost without legs. Really, no ghost exists like the one in those pictures. Can you imagine what it would mean to have a white head, hands and all other limbs except for legs?
The legs are not necessary if one exists everywhere. If the self is omnipresent, then it does not need to travel, and so it has no need for legs.
This has just been imagined and drawn by someone, and we call it a ghost. People see something like this and say, "I saw my soul" or they think that seeing one's self means sitting
down and waiting for a ghost to appear.
This idea has been so misused that the minute we say self people become afraid. We say the soul is that which belongs to a dead person and not to a living person.
We are under an illusion. Purity is perfected by understanding through the intellect. Through the intellect comes purity and balance. How do you understand all this?
I am talking, and you are listening. How do you listen? The sound enters the ears, but if the mind and intellect are elsewhere, can you hear?
You hear with the mind, which listens through the ears. The intellect analyses what you have heard, classifies it and stores it away.
If we put our hand in a fire and it gets burnt, then the mind knows not to put the hand in fire again because it burns. A person without intellect sticks his hand in fire again and again and his hand keeps getting burnt.
People who suffer from mental illness always repeat their mistakes. Even if something goes wrong, they do not understand why. Why? This is because they have a mind, but lack intellect.
We repeat mistakes over and over because we do not have the ability to analyse with the intellect. It is through purity that the light of knowledge can shine through us.
In order to have the light of knowledge, we need a certain level of purity. Shiva says understand through the intellect. Open your eyes and see what is happening.
Everything is in our eyes. Mind perceives through the eyes. It enjoys smell with the nose and taste with the tongue. Suppose you are eating some delicious food, and someone brings you bad news.
Then can you really enjoy the taste of the food? Does it still taste good? The same delicious treat that was on your tongue a few minutes ago tastes bitter. Who is experiencing this? What is experiencing this?
Why has the experience changed? The mind judges a person as bad and arrogant just by looking at him because of the intellect. After seeing him, we decide that he is bad, and we even look for something bad in him despite his good actions.
At that moment he may not be arrogant, but from having seen him again and again the mind says that he is egotistical.
