40. Only the Self is Real


The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is, and yet is not. It is there as long as I want to see it and take part in it. When I cease caring, it dissolves. It has no cause and serves no purpose. It just happens when we are absent minded. It appears exactly as it looks, but there is no depth in it, nor meaning.

Only the onlooker is real. Call him Self. To the Self the world is but a colourful show, which he enjoys as long as it lasts and forgets when it is over. Whatever happens on the stage makes him shudder in terror or roll with laughter, yet all the time he is aware that it is but a show. Without desire or fear he enjoys it, as it happens.

Dependence on anything for happiness is utter misery.

Like a play on the stage. The play was written, planned and rehearsed. The world running circles round you. Obsessed with the idea of means and end, of work and purpose, you see apparently functioning. In reality you only look. Whatever is done, is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow life and death, they all are real to the man in bondage; but they are all in the show, as unreal as the show itself.

As long as you are merely aware there are no problems. But when the discriminative mind comes into being and creates distinctions, pleasure and pain arise. During sleep the mind is in abeyance and so are pain and pleasure. The process of, creation continues, but no notice is taken.

What difference does it make since everyone travel in dream lands, each wrapped up in his own dream. Only the waking up is important. It is enough to know the 'I am' as reality and also love.