The Grandest Of All Truths-Part VI

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Vedanta Kesary 1993 June p.202-207

What worries NP (New person) is not the death of the body but the survival of the mind! He knows that the real problem-generator is not the body but the mind. So long as the mind lives, it is going to latch on to some body or other. It cannot live on its own for long, because all its desires need a body for expression and satisfaction. So NP longs for the death of the mind itself. He is fed up with his mind-dress and the numberless body-dresses he has worn and discarded. NP just doesn't want a dress anymore.

In the Bible, man's fall is symbolized by his desire to cover himself. Man was born pure and naked. The first stain of impurity produced in him the desire to cover himself.

NP has long since changed the direction of his journey. He is now swimming upstream towards God, having purified himself of all worldly desires. So clothes, the body-dress and the mind-dress—become superfluous. He wants now to wander freely in God's Garden, pure and naked, like Adam. NP's expanding consciousness is no more able to remain confined within the body-dress and the mind-dress.

NP, however, does not go out of his way to seek the falling of the body-dress, he knows, sooner or later it's going to fall anyway once it's karma-texture withers away. What NP strives to throw away with all his might is the mind-dress. The power to fling it away or, more accurately, to burn it away comes through the grace of God, which is ceaselessly blowing like a breeze; we have only to unfurl the sails of the yacht of our life. Meditating on 'the grandest of all truths' is the first step in the process of unfurling of the sails to catch the breeze of divine grace.

The burning-away of the mind-dress is another kind of death. It separates NP not only from his body but also from his mind. This happens only once. NP is then free for ever. No more deaths for him, because there are no more births for him. He then has no body and no mind—and so no limitations and bondages of any kind. No more can NP be referred to as 'he' or 'she'. Gender belongs to the body, not to the Self. NP is now the unfettered Self, free, perfect, and immersed eternally in supreme bliss.

It is easy to understand now why Swamiji called the certainty of death as the grandest of all truths for it takes us swiftly, as no other truth can, to the absolute truth of our immortal, divine, and blissful nature. Om tat sat.

About The Author

Swami Tyagananda

Swami Tyagananda is a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and presently head of the Ramakrishna Vedanta Society in Boston.