Our Knowledge is our ignorance

[sureshsarat]

Om Sri Sainathaya Namaha
Om Sri Sainathaya Namaha
Om Sri Sainathaya Namaha

Dearest Members Sairam
We are like a frog in a well. For us the well is the world. Similarly we believe what we know or the knowledge we possess is the penultimate and we behave with conceit, avarice and emotionally. At least this is what I am doing. This thought struck me today morning waking up. Also one incident came into my mind to prove it.
My son underwent an appendectomy. He was so scared of this. He had some preconcieved notions (arrived at from his friends, the internet and some imagination). He thought that he will feel some hollowness after the appendix removal. So even on the surgery table he kept sitting, thinking he should be awake. The doctors gave him a shot and he lost conciousness and operation done. Today he is a happy person.
How like him I behave. The limited knowledge my son had is similar to what I think I know. How I resist surrendering to Lord Sai as my son resisted surrendering to the doctors. How much I need a shot to surrender like the doctors who game him anesthesia. The troubles are the shots which shall make us place implicit faith in him. Then we learn to surrender our ego at his feet.

Lord Sai please ever bless me and enlighten me.
Suresh

[sureshsarat]

Om Sri Sainathaya Namaha
Om Sri Sainathaya Namaha
Om Sri Sainathaya Namaha

Following is an extract which teaches us to surrender by removing ignorance (the veil of knowledge)


Baba - How is Jnana Upadesh, i.e., imparting of realization to be effected? Destroying ignorance is Jnana. (cf. Verse-Ovi-1396 of Jnaneshwari commenting on Gita 18-66 says - "removal of ignorance is like this, Oh Arjuna, If dream and sleep disappear, you are yourself. It is like that." Also Ovi 83 on Gita V-16 says - "Is there anything different or independent in Jnana besides the destruction of ignornace?")* Expelling darkness means light. Destroying duality (dwaita) means non-duality (adwaita). Whenever we speak of destroying Dwaita, we speak of Adwaita. Whenever we talk of destroying darkness, we talk of light. If we have to realise the Adwaita state, the feeling of Dwaita in ourselves has to be removed. That is the realization of the Adwaita state. Who can speak of Adwaita while remaining in Dwaita? If one did, unless one gets into that state, how can one know it and realise it?
Again, the Shishya (disciple) like the Sad-guru is really embodiment of Jnana. The difference between the two lies in the attitude, high realization, marvellous super-human Sattva (beingness) and unrivalled capacity and Aishwarya Yoga (divine powers). The Sad-guru is Nirguna, Sat-Chit-Ananda. He has indeed taken human form to elevate mankind and raise the world. But his real Nirguna nature is not destroyed thereby, even a bit. His beingness (or reality), divine power and widsom remain undiminished. The disciple also is in fact of the same swarupa. But, it is overlaid by the effect of the samaskaras of innumerable births in the shape of ignorance, which hides from his view that he is Shuddha Chaitanya (see B.G. Ch. V-15). As stated therein, he gets the impressions - "Iam Jiva, a creature, humble and poor." The Guru has to root out these offshoots of ignorance and has to give upadesh or instruction. To the disciple, held spell-bound for endless generations by the ideas of his being a creature, humble and poor, the Guru imparts in hundreds of births the teaching - "You are God, you are mighty and opulent." Then, he realizes a bit that he is God really. The perpetual delusion under which the disciple is labouring, that he is the body, that he is a creature (jiva) or ego, that God (Paramatma) and the world are different from him, is an error inherited from innumerable past births. From actions based on it, he has derived his joy, sorrows and mixtures of both. To remove this delusion, this error, this root ignorance, he must start the inquiry. How did the ignorance arise? Where is it? And to show him this is called the Guru's upadesh. The following are the instances of Ajnana :-
1 - I am a Jiva (creature)
2 - Body is the soul (I am the body).
3 - God, world and Jiva are different.
4 - I am not God.
5 - Not knowing, that body is not the soul.
6 - Not knowing that God, world and Jiva are one.