The Fleeting Nature of Things lifeTime is the rat that cuts off the thread of lire in this universe. There is nothing in this world which the all-devouring time will spare. Time spares not even the greatest person for a moment. Time pervades and controls all things. Time dances about with a long chain of the bones of the dead hanging from its neck to its feet. It assumes the formidable form of a burning fire during the dissolution and reduces the whole world to ashes. Nothing can stop its course. Man grieves for his folly at the time of death. The same body which is clothed today in silk and decorated with garlands is to be burnt to ashes tomorrow. Just as the frog that is hanging in a serpent’s throat, is yet desirous of eating flies, even so men of the world are desirous of enjoying the worldly objects although they are being swallowed by the serpent of time. You see others dying and growing old, yet you never wake up from your own dream of the vanity of worldly life. If God has not covered this filthy body with the skin, will it not be eaten away by crows and eagles? The filth that comes out of our nose, mouth, ears, and anus causes extreme disgust in us. Would it be possible for us to take food if we were to see the filth that is inside our body? Will not germs begin to manifest if the filth of the body is not washed for three days? Can this obnoxious smell which has permeated the body from toenail to the top of the head be removed by application of saffron, sandal-paste, refined camphor, scents, etc.? Is he not a fool who takes too much care of the body? Do they not who delighted to look at the body sitting on the throne of kings, shudder to lock at it when life is snatched away by Death? The three entrances to the city of perdition are lust, wealth and tongue. He who has conquered these three need not be afraid of death. He has no enemies, who ride on the horse of discrimination with the sword of dispassion and the shield of en durance. Application of soap to the body, oil to the hair, powder to the face, looking into the mirror a thou sand and one times a day, wearing rings on the fingers these and many like these will intensify your attachment to the body. Therefore give up all these things ruthlessly. A big boil is washed with lotion. Then boric ointment is applied. Then bandage is put on. Even so, this nasty body is a very big boil. It is washed every day. Food is thrust into it. This is the ointment. Cloth is worn. This is the bandage. Sannyasins treat this body as a very big boil or wound with an oozing discharge. But the body is worshipped by worldly-minded persons on account of delusion and infatuation.

How Rotten Physical Beauty is The body has a tendency to rot. Egoism lives in this body as the master with avarice as the mistress. The body is in reality a pot of filth. It will breath at any moment. The shining skin is subject to wrinkles in old age. Fie and shame on them who have mistaken this body for the Immortal Pure Soul and rely on it for their happiness and peace! He who has faith in the stability of the lightning of the city of the clouds will cling to this body as true. The infant child is in a helpless condition. He cannot convey his ideas. He is mute. He eats dust and offal. He cries for nothing. He is ignorant. This period is ever attended with danger from fire,. water, etc. He is easily irritated. How can sense less childhood be said to be happy state of life? In youth man is a slave of lust. His mind is filled with evil thoughts. He commits various sorts of vices in delusion. His face is disfigured by passion. Even at the best the charm of youth fades away like lightning, very rapidly. The foolish man who ignorantly rejoices at his transient youth, is considered as a human beast. He comes to repent of his folly in a short time. It is very rare to find a young man who is humble, who spends his time in the company and service of sages, who is sympathetic and merciful and who is endowed with virtuous qualities. He who has overcome all obstacles of youth and has attained knowledge of the Self while young is fit to be adored by all. Sit down and think calmly and honestly what beauty is there in a woman whose body is composed of flesh, bones, nerves, fat, marrow and blood? Where is the beauty in the same woman when she becomes old? Look at the condition of the eyes, the body, of a woman after an attack of fever for seven days! What is the state of her beauty? Where is the beauty if she does not take bath for a week? The stink is abominable. Look at the senile woman aged 85 who is sitting at the corner, with rotten eyes, shrunken cheeks and skin! Analyse the parts of a woman, realise their true nature. Woman is the greatest cause of delusion. Women are the flames of vice. They are burning fire which destroys man like a dry straw. They burn from a long distance, so they are more dangerous than fire. The lovely damsel is like a poisonous drug that destroys life by causing lustful intoxication and clouding the power of discrimination. This mysterious world began with woman and has woman for its sustenance. How, without renunciation of woman is it possible to attain the eternal Bliss of Brahman? The bodies of those handsome damsels who are so much fond led by foolish men are taken to cemetery after their Pranas depart. Beasts and worms feed upon their flesh. Jackals and kites tear off their skin. Without renunciation of woman, it is impossible to have Self-realisation. Old age withers the body and drives away its beauty. The old man is treated with contempt by the members of his own family. He is in a helpless condition. His senses become powerless. He cannot gratify his desires. His memory is gone. He suffers from various incurable diseases. But the desire for enjoyments he has no capacity to enjoy, is insatiable. Desires burn his heart but he is powerless to gratify them. Old age is inescapable in this world in spite of all gland-graftings. What is the good of this miserable mundane life which is subject to such changes and decay?

Money is a Source of Misery Money is a source of pain and misery. You want wealth and are guilty of all sorts of vices in order to amass wealth. You lose all peace of mind and have no sleep due to the thought of how to earn money. You get some menial service and get hundred kicks from the employer day and night. You take bribes and keep the money safe. You do not get sleep even now and spend the time in watching over your property with constant anxiety. One day you find a robber has snatched away your wealth and what little peace you had is shattered. You pine away with grief and lose health, wealth and everything, Still you do not become wiser! You pray for a child. You get a female child and you pray again for a male one. You get a male child after so much of fasts and observances, Vratas and Niyamas, and do not know how to marry the girl and educate the boy. You do not know what the boy will become, whether a rowdy, a thief, a warrior or short-lived. You grieve for your son and for your miserable plight! Poor man! You do not know that things are ephemeral and try to deceive you constantly. This world is unreal. All are born to die only. All are illusory in this world. One should carefully note the deceptive nature of the mind. It is the mind alone that pictures the existence of the world as a reality, whereas the Atman alone is real. Wealth cannot give happiness. It is Jada Maya. It makes one forget God completely. It drags one to the regions of hell. Life is transitory. Death is incessantly staring you like a venomous serpent ever ready to strike. Various dire diseases cause much havoc to this body. Youth abandons the body quickly and old age grips it. He alone is saved who makes haste to utilise this precious life in striving to attain the Summum Bonum of life. Egoism deludes people. Though the world is nothing, it deceives the worldly man into thinking that it is everything. It is associated with ‘mine ness’. This egoism is born of Avidya (ignorance). It springs from conceit. Vanity fosters it. It is the grea test enemy ever known. The secret of renunciation is the renunciation of egoism. Ahamkara or ego is the direst of diseases. He who is free from egoism is ever happy and peaceful. Desires multiply and expand on account of egoism. This inveterate enemy has spread about man the enchantments of wives, friends, children, relatives, whose spells are hard to break. The mischievous mind wanders from one object to another like a strolling street-dog. It is not calm at any time. It is possible to drink the contents of the ocean, uproot the Sumeru mountain or swallow burning fire; but it is impossible to control this terrible mind. This world is a manifestation of this mind only. All pains are generated through the mind only. If this mind is annihilated through discrimination and Atmic enquiry, all pains, along with this world will vanish. Desire is like an owl that flies about in the region of the mind under the darkness of affection and in the night of avarice. It destroys all divine qualities. Just as a bird is caught in a net, you are caught up in the trap of desires. Desire is the cause of rebirths and all sorts of pains, miseries and sorrows of this earth. It is like a sharp-pointed sword. It penetrates the hearts of persons and gives them sufferings for nothing.

Tyaga is True Heroism Here, you see Nachiketas the hero of heroes, a boy of 10 or 12 years, who had inexhaustible spiritual strength born of wisdom of the Self. The world is in dire need of such heroes and leaders who can help and lead people in the right path and show them the way to eternal bliss and Immortality! Then, again, when the sage Yajnavalkya offered all his temporal property and estate to his Maitreyi, what did she say? My venerable Lord! Even if I have the wealth of the whole world, can I attain Immortality ? Give me that inexhaustible spiritual wealth which can ever make me rich and full at heart, that wealth of wisdom and immortality of the Soul. I am longing for that wealth and that wealth alone. Here is the heroin of heroins which India produced, who still lives in our hearts. The world is in great need of such heroins. Those leaders who are afraid of renunciation, who have not understood the glory of Sannyasa, renunciation and Nivritti Marga, who cannot lead the life of Nivritti Marga, who spend their lives in the world till the end of their life, who are afraid of wearing the orange-coloured robe, who say, We are mental Sannyasins; we have given colouring to our hearts, are all timid men only, however much worldly work of deluding glory they might have done in this world. They can never reach the level of persons like Sri Sankara, Yajnavalkya or Dattatreya, the great spiritual lions. One need never despair. People will ask: How can the world go on, if all the people of the world retire to forests and lead the life of renunciation? Even if all leaders are taken out of the world now, the world will run on smoothly, probably more smoothly. Even if all the people retire into the forest, the world will go on. The omnipotent Lord will create leaders to lead the world and continue its normal existence. Poor worldlings! One would think that they have taken a contract with Brahma that they will procreate children in this world and take care of it! Man wants happiness. He shuns pain. He makes various sorts of efforts (Pravritti) to get happiness from objects and get himself entangled in the meshes or snares of Maya. As these objects are perishable, finite and conditioned in time, space and causation, he fails to get the desired happiness from the objects. This world is Apurna (imperfect) and there is uncertainty of life. A barrister talks at the telephone, ascends the staircase upstairs to take his meals and dies on the staircase. There is not an iota of happiness in objects as they are Jada (insentient). Even the sensual plea sure is a reflection of Atmic Bliss only. Just as a dog, which sucks a dry bone in the streets, imagines foolishly that the blood comes from the dry bone, whereas in reality it oozes from its own lacerated palate, so also worldly-minded persons foolishly imagine that the happiness they enjoy comes from the objects. There is a mental uneasiness, dissatisfaction, discontentment and restlessness even in multimillionaires and kings. Some kind of sorrow, misery, or pain is always present even when you are in the height of enjoyment of worldly pleasures. When the marriage of your second son is celebrated, the remembrance of your first son who passed away torments your mind. The mind is so constituted that the rhythm of pleasure and pain is kept up like the rhythm of the systole and diastole (contraction and dilation) of the heart. You entertain the ideas that the happiness will pass away soon. This apprehension adds a dust of pain even when you are in the maximum enjoyment of sensual pleasures.

Real Svarajya is Atma Svarajya From the Transcendental viewpoint, what is this Svarajya in this earth-plane after all? What is this political gamble? It is all a play of children. In one sense from the highest viewpoint, all the leaders of the world are wasting their time, life and energy. Had they directed their energy and mind towards Yoga and transcendental Atma Svarajya, they would have become great divinities on this earth and done more spiritual good to the world. These great men would have taken to Nivritti already, had they really understood the glory and necessity of Nivritti Marga, had they come in contact with great sages, had they a real grasp of the purpose of life, goal and the nature of the Svarupa of the Atman, mind and the world. A little comfort able living, a little bread with butter and jam cannot relieve the sufferings of the people, cannot give salvation or Absolute Independence and Freedom to them, cannot remove ignorance, the root cause of all human miseries and of births and deaths. Wise men, with great talents, should attempt to give spiritual food to the people and make their lives lofty, worthy, sublime and grand and make them Immortal. Nachiketas was tempted by Lord Yama in a variety of ways. Yama offered him limitless dominion, countless celestial damsels, numberless chariots, long life and abundant gold. What did the boy Nachiketas say? My Lord! These things last till tomorrow. They wear out the vigour of all the senses. Even the longest life is verily short. Keep thou thy chariots, the dance and the music. No man can be made happy by wealth. Only that boon which I have chosen is fit to be longed for by me; grant me that boon, the Knowledge of the Self which can make me Immortal.

Your Wretched State Desire, anger, jealousy, worry, anxieties, cares and excitements torment you every second. Deaths of persons whom you loved most give you severe shock. Yet you will never renounce these momentary pleasures of the senses of this unreal, mundane existence. Such is the depth of sensual enjoyment! You will say with pride: Oh, I am a powerful man. I am very clever and intelligent. I can do anything. There is no Isvara. But when a mere scorpion stings you sharp, you will call out bitterly: O Narayana, help me! If the hair becomes grey you will invent various dyes to blacken it. You will invent ‘monkey-gland grafting’ for rejuvenation. If the teeth fall, you will put on a new false dental set. You will never leave the ‘will to live and enjoy.’ Hopeless specimens! There are scorpion-stings on one side; flies, bugs, mosquitoes, thorns trouble you from another corner. The sun scorches you in summer and the biting winter sucks your blood. Influenza, plague, leprosy, fashionable appendicitis, pyorrhea, small-pox are ready to devour you. Fear, delusion, grief, sorrow and misery kill you every moment. Renunciation comes only to those who were once kings in their previous births, who developed discrimination between the real and the unreal in their previous births, who have done meritorious actions in their previous births, who led the life of a Sannyasin in several births. Only those who have tremendous will-power, spiritual strength, dispassion, discrimination, and who thirst for salvation can renounce the world. Renunciation demands superhuman strength. Renunciation or Sannyasa is stern stuff. After all, what is this world? It is like the foot print of a calf when compared to the Infinite Brahman or the Absolute. It is a small bubble in the ocean of Existence. It is less than an atom. The worthless nature of the joys of this world is already known to a Viveki or a man of discrimination or an aspirant or an ordinary worldly man even in whom there is not even an iota of spiritual awakening or a little opening of the eye of wisdom. But this world is a very great thing or solid reality for a passionate, worldly-minded man. As his mind is soaked in worldly thoughts, worldly Vasanas, and worldly Samskaras, as he is surrounded by Asuric environment, as he is breathing the atmosphere emanating from sensual filth, he is not able to comprehend subtle things which are transcendental. He has forgotten all about the glory of divinity and super living. Just reflect for a while on your state. As a baby in the womb you are covered with urine and pus and scorched by the fire of hunger. At the age of adolescence you are puffed up with the enjoyment of the sense-objects, etc. As a senile old man you become extremely weak in body and mind. A life of delusion amidst money and sensual objects is your pitiable lot. The Jiva undergoes unbearable suffering in the womb of the mother for ten months, being placed in the midst of faecal matter, urine, blood, flesh, phlegm and marrow and being burnt by the Jatharagni. At the time of birth, the child’s head should come first. If the child gets obstructed by change of position, either the child or the mother must die. To save the mother, the child has to be cut to pieces. Even if the delivery becomes normal, the pain caused to the mother and the baby is immense. A big officer, a big landlord is only a big fool if he nourishes this body only and forgets all about his Soul, if he indulges in sensual objects only and does not attempt for Self-realisation. Knowledge of the Self or Brahma Jnana is more precious and important than the kingdom of all the worlds. King Janaka said to Yajnavalkya, I will give thee, O venerable Guru, my kingdom and also my own self to become thy slave. Such is the glory of a Sage or a Brahma Jnani. If you do not possess Viveka, if you do not try your extreme level best for the attainment of Salvation, if you spend your whole lifetime in eating, drinking, sleeping, marrying, divorcing and propagating the race, how are you better than an animal? As a matter of fact, they are better than you! You will have to sit at the feet of the animals and learn several lessons from them. Even animals possess self-restraint to an astounding degree. O man! where has your self-restraint gone? O man! Never say: My body, my son, my wife, my house, my property, my garden, etc. Attachment is the root cause of the innumerable miseries and troubles of this world. Discipline your mind well, realise the illusory nature of all that appears here in this world. The Bhagavadgita says: The delights that are contact-born are verily the wombs of pain, for they have a beginning and an end, O Kaunteya! the wise do not rejoice in them (Ch. V-22). Indifference to the objects of the senses, and also absence of egoism, insight into the pain and evil of birth, old age and sickness (Ch. XIII-8). That which arises from the union of the senses with their objects is at first as nectar, but in the end is like venom (Ch. VIII-38). Having obtained this transient, joyless world, worship Me (Ch. IX-33). O man! Are you not ashamed to call this filthy body as I and to say this is mine, he is my son, when everything is perishable? This identification with the body is the seat of the great Raurava hell. What is the difference between the worms and men that rejoice in this ill-smelling body? Maya, the great juggler, prepares a skeleton, covers it with flesh, and hides the various impurities with a shining skin. O deluded man! How long are you going to call this body as yours? How long are you going to cling to this perishable body? Give up this deluded

Sensual Life is Shameful Life You are but repeating the same actions as yesterday, yielding but momentary happiness or delusion, and enjoyed things do recur again. Things seen yesterday do again present themselves today. Ornaments worn with exaltation yesterday, are again donned by you today. And yet, even intelligent per sons do not become disgusted with them and are not ashamed to enjoy them again and again in their gross delirium of worldliness. Fie on their intellect! Like ignorant children that taste again and again sweetmeats which impart sweetness for the time being, you are also afflicted, ignorant of the true path. Days, fortnights, months, years, and Yugas do cycle again and again as formerly, and nothing new crops up. Wealth which only makes hosts of thoughts whirl in the brain will not confer bliss on you. This wealth which the mind covets and is very ephemeral in its true nature is utterly useless like a flower-bud in a creeper growing on a high wall and encircled by a serpent. The Prana, which is like 3 drop of rain-water dripping from the end of a leaf turned overhead, flits out of the body at any time. This life is ephemeral like autumnal clouds or a gheeless lamp or the waves of the ocean. Life and death are two acts in the scene of the Juggler, Maya. The lives of those who have freed themselves from rebirth are the true ones and the noblest; but others� lives are like those of old asses. There is nothing so baneful as this life which is utterly perishable in its nature and fleeting in the bestowal of sensual pleasures. The fire of desires has completely burnt you up. In the present state even a bath in Ambrosia will not cool you. You have spoiled yourself to such a pitiable extent. It is these over-vexing de sires that bring on the pain or rebirth, the heaviest and the most unbearable of all pains. This body which is composed of muscles, intestines, urine and faecal matter and is subject to changes, being at one time fat and at another time lean, shines in this mundane existence simply to undergo pains. What beauty, then, is there to be enjoyed in this body? The body of both rich and poor, tall and short, is made up of the same physical stuff. It is false air-bag, filled with rotten vegetable urine and faeces and various kinds of other impurities. These are worshipped by the worldly man. What a pity! If lust which is the source of all enjoyments in this world ceases, then all worldly bondage, which has its substratum in the mind, will cease. Even the most virulent of poisons is no poison; but sensual objects are truly a deadly poison. The former defiles one body only, whereas the latter adulterates many bodies in successive rebirths. You are a slave of passions and desires, emotions and attractions. When are you going to rise up from this miserable state? Those persons, who, in spite of the knowledge of the non-existence of happiness. both in the past and in the present, in the baneful objects of the world, do yet entangle themselves in them with their thoughts clinging to them, deserve the appellation of an ass, if not a worse one. If you do not possess Viveka, if you do not try your best for salvation, if you spend your lifetime in eating, drinking and sleeping, you are a horizontal being only having to learn some lessons from these animals which possess far more self-restraint.

Sense Life is a Terrible Bondage If you want God and God alone, kick off the world ruthlessly. Enough of tea and coffee, enough of soda, lemonade and crushes; enough of novels and cinemas, enough of races and aeroplanes, enough of father, mother, brothers, children, friends and relatives! You came alone and you will go alone. None will follow you save your own actions. Realise God. All miseries will come to an end. A worldly-minded fashionable wife (or husband) is a sharp knife to cut off the life of the hus band (or wife). Be wedded to Santi and have Vairagya as the son, and Viveka, the magnanimous daughter and eat the delicious divine fruit of Atma Jnana which can make you Immortal! Sensual pleasure is tantalising. There is enchantment so long as the person does not possess the object of desire. After obtaining possession of the object, he finds that he is entangled in it. The bachelor thinks of his marriage day in and day out, but enjoyment does not and cannot bring satisfaction to him. Far from it, it only aggravates and intensifies the desire and makes the mind more restless through passion and Trishna. He realises that he is in imprisonment. This is Mayaic jugglery. This world is full of temptations. You cannot get bliss in the objects of the world. It is only materialistic poison. Further, marriage is a lifelong imprisonment; it is the greatest bondage on the face of the earth. A bachelor who was once free is now tied to the yoke, and his hands and feet are chained. This is the experience of married people. They weep after marriage. Therefore, do not marry, if you can help it. Escape will be difficult after marriage. Realise the glory of life in the spiritual path and the great difficulties, anxieties, worries and troubles of married life. Develop intense Vairagya. Assert your birthright of God-consciousness. Art thou not Brahman Itself in Truth? A great man is not one who possesses enormous wealth. A man of renunciation alone is the greatest man in the world. He may be clad in rags. He may appear ugly to people of clouded intellect. Yet he is the happiest, the greatest and the richest man in the whole world! He has no cares and worries. He inherits the kingdom of Peace. O poor worldling! Much hemmed in on all sides and whirling in different conditions in this fluctuating world, you are ever being driven by delusion and afflicted with pains, like dusts of sand floating in the midst of a large stone. Now, reflecting upon Time which is eternal in its true nature, you cannot but term your hundred years of life as a tiny moment. While this is so in fact, how is it that you estimate your life greatly and fall into all sorts of despondencies through the powerful deluding desires? Who is there so miserable in life as those who are spoiled through their gross mind? Fie on your un even life! Comparing this earth to the countless universes that exist but of which you are unconscious, you cannot but consider it as an atom. It is really surprising that you should rate so high this universe so full of pains. Even the greatest of persons will in course of time become the lowest of the low. All enjoyments, great men, and their kindred have appeared in former times. Where, then, is certitude of existence of all objects now? The innumerable earths with their rulers and their wealth have all perished like fine sand! The Devalokas with their Indras and celestial wealth have all disappeared like a flash in the sky above. No limit can be imposed upon the number and size of the universes, the Brahmas, Brahmandas, and Jivas that have come and gone. Where, then, are all the objects that have vanished out of sight? Where, then, is the permanency of this earthly life? It is only by bestowing your desires on the illusion of a long dream of physical delusion in the sable night of the unreal Maya that you have debased yourself to this ignorant state. Enough, enough with all the births and deaths you have undergone hithertofore. Not a single beneficent object exists in this world, either in the beginning, middle or end. Are not all created objects coated over with the varnish of destruction? You enact in your daily life sinful acts, painful deeds and illimitable vices which cannot be pardoned. In youth you are enveloped with Ajnana or illusion; in adult age you are entangled in the meshes of sense-pleasures; in old age you grownunder the burden of Samsara and deluded attachment for family and children even when in debility. You eventually die a miserable death. Being thus always half-sinking in the quagmire of delusion, when will you find time to devote yourself to virtuous actions? How came this Maya to play and dance in this world? This dreadful ghost of your mind dances in the theatre of this universe to the music of the organs. If in the opening and the closing of the eyelids, many Brahmas are created and destroyed, what are you, a mere puny creature reveling in the filth of earthliness?

Waste Not Precious Life You do not know even a single Sloka of the Gita or the Upanishads. You do not know how to sit on Padmasana. You do not know the efficacy of Mantra-Kirtana. You do not know anything about self-analysis, mind-control, self-restraint, concentration and introspection. You have lived in vain! You have wasted this precious life. Hotels, restaurants, cine ma houses, are your abodes of Immortality or Vaikuntha Dhama. Really you are leading a miserable life. If you can talk something on dry politics, you think you are a great hero! Time is fleeting. The night is wasted in sleep and pleasure. The day is wasted in idle talk, amassing money and maintenance of the family. Days, months and years are rolling away. Hairs have become grey. Teeth have fallen. You are attached to perishable objects through Moha. Tell me, friends, how long you will be a slave to the fleeting things of the world? How long are you going to repeat the same sensual enjoyments? How long do you wish to worship mammon and woman? When will you find time to meditate on the Lord and to do Virtuous deeds? Think and reflect. This world of names and forms is constantly changing. Seas dry up and vast sandy deserts come in to being in their places. Elevations become depressions and depressions become elevations. Sand becomes stone and stone becomes sand. Blocks of stones become lime and lime becomes dust. Forests become model towns and cities become deserted places. Grass becomes blood, blood becomes milk, milk again becomes blood. Blood becomes flesh. A young man becomes an old man and a beautiful girl becomes an ugly woman. The fatty man becomes thin and a lean girl a fatty woman. A Zamindar becomes a beggar and a beggar becomes a Zamindar. At the back of these ever changing objects there is the changeless, eternal, Immortal Brahman or the Supreme Self. The Ultimate Principle or Atman, fearless, timeless, endless and beginning less, shines eternally behind the names and forms. He who realises this Brahman attains Immortality, Freedom and Eternal Peace! Kings and lords will pass away. This world will pass away with all its occupants. The sun, moon and stars will pass away. All joys and sorrows will pass away. Wife, children, wealth, property will pass away. The five elements, the earth and heaven will pass away. Only Brahman, the Pure Satchidananda, will shine eternally. The leaves of life are falling off. Youth is fa ding. The days are rolling on. Time, the destroyer, lays his icy hands on the whole world. Existence in this world is as momentary as a bubble or lightning! O Man! Wealth, vehicles, sons, women, dominions, property, are worthless! They are all perishable. Seek the Lotus-feet of the Lord and attain Immortality, Eternal Bliss and Supreme Peace! If you do not meditate on the Lord, you will be thrown in lower births. If you do not know Him, the cycle of births and deaths will not come to an end. If you do not think of Him, you will take countless births as germs and insects. Exert and realise Him. Then all troubles will terminate.

Worldly Man, Wake up! by Swami Sivananda Human Birth is for God-Realisation The Goal of life is the attainment of Self-realisation, or God-consciousness. There is One Supreme Undying Principle or Essence, the Brahman or the Absolute Self, which dwells in the chambers of your heart and everywhere. Brahman has existed in the past, exists in the present and will exist in the future. Brahman is Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute. An ignorant man vainly searches for happiness in perishable objects of the external world which is only a dream-appearance in reality, conditioned in time, space and causation. The worldly man has no peace of mind. He amasses wealth, begets children, gets titles, honours, fame, name and yet his mind is restless. He has no abiding joy and lasting happiness. He is still in want of something. Rich people possess immense wealth, have decent bungalows, servants, take dainties and palatable dishes and enjoy all sorts of comforts, but have no peace of mind. They are restless. They are searching for something; what, they do not know. They feel they are in want of something, the nature of which they do not exactly comprehend. In the whirlpool of fleeting sensual pleasures you have forgotten the purpose of life and its goal. In your pursuit after the phantom-shows of worldly vanities, you have annihilated the spiritual instincts and longings of the soul. What a sad state! Mysterious is Maya! Mysterious is Moha. You have entirely become a creature of servile imitation. You cannot remain even for a day with out self-shaving. The razor, the mirror and the sha ving stick are your objects of worship, as soon as you get up from bed. You cannot walk bare-footed even for a few yards. You want a servant to put on the socks and the shoes and tie the laces. You can not walk even half a mile. You want a ricksha or a tonga. How effeminate you have become! How much degenerated you are! O dear Ram! Remember that you are a lonely pilgrim here. This world is a public inn only. Your permanent abode is in the Atma or the Self which is this All. Finish your pilgrimage quickly by doing rigorous Tapas and meditation and reach your origi nal abode of Immortality, everlasting Bliss and Peace, in this very birth! To have a human birth is difficult. To follow the Vedic path is rare. To be well-versed in scriptural lore is still rarer. But the rarest of all is discrimination between the Self and the not-Self, Self-realisation and getting established in Brahman. Liberation is attained through the well-earned merits of a hundred crores of births. Human birth, longing for liberation and contact of a great saint or a sage are all obtained by the grace of the Lord. He verily commits suicide who, having obtained all these means, still does not exert for Liberation. Nobody knows what the next birth will be. How can one make enquiry into Vedanta, if one takes an animal birth? Bullocks, horses, elephants and buffa loes get emaciated through starvation and carrying heavy loads without any rest. They are not able to express their sufferings and pains. Should you not do righteous actions to prevent yourself from taking such miserable births? We cannot extend our lifetime even by a second though we spend crores of pounds for this purpose. What greater harm can we do ourselves than was ting such a precious life? Neither charity, nor sacrifice, nor fame, nor fast ing, nor begetting a good son, nor control of breath, nor victory over the enemy, nor the society of friends, nor Siddhis and Riddhis can stand in comparison to the Great Glory of the Realisation of the Self.