The World In The Self!

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When the divine manifested as prince Rama, some matured souls could identify Him as none other than God. However there was a crow called Bhushandi who lived in the forest, who was skeptical of the fact that Rama was God Himself!

Once while Rama was roaming in the forest in search of his abducted wife Sita, the crow insulted Him to check what would be the consequence and know if He is really a divine incarnation. Rama who was an excellent archer followed the bird with his bow. Bhushandi started flying away. As the crow started flying higher and higher, he could only see Rama everywhere he flew. The bird flew in unimaginable heights, but everywhere he flew, he could only see Rama. The exhausted bird then dropped itself on the earth, creeping its way through the underbrush to escape Rama. But Rama was there too!

Rama picked up Bushandi and simply swallowed it! What would have happened to Bhushandi? Where did he find himself? He found himself perched in his very nest on the forest tree with a changed attitude. His ego was subdued. He realised that though Rama seemed like an ordinary person he had within Himself, the entire universe! The whole cosmos was within Him; the sun, moon, the stars, the ocean, mountains, animals, birds and humans were all in Him!

The story symbolically presents the sublime truth. The self is the source of all and the manifest world cannot exist independently. In deep sleep the world is absent, but the self is simply present. The manifest world is thus contained in the indestructible and unchangeable self. Yet it is not apart from the self. It is in fact the manifestation of the very self.

The symbolic representation of Rama swallowing the bird is that when the Supreme self or the divine reveals itself the ego is overcome and one realises the truth. One becomes a Jivan Mukta or the one liberated during one's very lifetime. The result is a changed attitude. One sees oneself and the manifested world as the very non-dual self!