4. Letter

Mail from Poojya Guruji

Q: Poojya Guruji, When will I be free from the bondage of samsar - the endless cycles of birth & death?

Hari om.

Well, if you want the undiluted truth, then the truth is that ‘you’ will never be free, for the simple reason that even right now itself, you are basically free. You just dont know that. Dont be disappointed. It is just a case of delusory self-perception. A case of mistaken identity. Try to appreciate what I am driving at. Mukti is never of the ego, but from the very ego itself. Freedom is not something which the Jiva ever gets, but it is freedom from this very notion of being a Jiva. When you say ‘I’, then what comes to your mind? well, if it is just a striving individual, well then you better continue to study shastras still more deeply, till this individuality is realized as a mistaken identity, a misapprehension.

Remember the famous example of rope & snake. Not knowing the rope as a rope we just erroneously take it as a snake. This does not mean that just because some reliable and respectable person has now told you that this snake is not a snake but just a rope, that we start repeating and believeing this ad nauseam. Please see this fact that our respectable well-wisher is not saying that the snake is rope, but is saying that there is no snake whatsoever, except in our own mind. So negate the notion of snake and then again see, you need not repeat my words but just see what exactly it is.

Individuality is like a conditioned manifestation of consciousness

through a particular upadhi. Like electricity is apprearing as a blue light when it passes through a blue bulb. That manifestation shall continue to be there, but now the electricity knows that I am not the blue light alone. I am also the red-light, the yellow-light etc, and still basically I am not any light, but something which enlivens all bulbs yet it simultaneously transcends all manifested lights. So this knowledge brings to an end our earlier identity - from our point of view. An actor has played so many roles. He knows that he alone was in & through all roles, yet he by himself was none of that role. Have all your worldly identities ended like a bad dream, if not then you are still striving for mukti ‘for’ this jiva, not ‘from’ the jiva-bhava.

If your identity continues to be that of an individual then obviously you have no other option but to continue to be a limited and insecure seeker who has many many more lives to live again & again - with all the pangs of pain & insecurities. Hope you get my point?

Lots of Love & om.