Satsanga : Question Answered by Sri Ramana Maharshi

• published: 18 Sep 2015
• views: 4

Question and Answer by Ramana, taken from "The teachings of Ramana Maharshi in His own Words" by Arthur Osborne. Facebook Group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/SatsangaAISW/ Website: http://www.blissofnewsun.net ====================================================  Q) But, we see pain in the world. A man is hungry. It is aphysical reality. It is very real to him. Are we to call it a dream and remain unmoved by suffering? A) From the point of view of Jnana or Reality, the suffering you speak of is certainly a dream,as is the world of which that suffering is an infinitesimal part.In a dream you have when you are asleep you yourself feel hunger and see others also suffering from hunger. You feed yourself and, moved by pity, feed the others who are hungry. So long as the dream lasted, all this suffering was quite as real as the suffering you see in the world is to you now. It was only when you woke up that you discovered it to be unreal, You might have eaten heartily before going to sleep, but you still dreamed that you had been working hard in the hot sun all day and were tired and hungry. Then you woke up and found that your stomach was full and that you had not stirred from your bed. But all this is not to day that while you are in a dream you can act as if the suffering you feel in it is not real. The hunger in the deam has to be appeased by dream food. The fellow beings you find hungry in the dream have to be provided with dream food. You can never mix the two states, the dream and the waking state. Similarly, till you attain the state of realisation and thus wake out of this illusory, phenomenal world, you must do social service by relieving suffering wherever you see it. But even so you must do it without ahankara(ego) that is without the sense of 'It is I who am doing it'.Instead you should feel: 'I am the Lord's instrument.' Similarly you must not be conceited and think: 'I am helping a man who is below me. He needs help and I am in a position to give it. I am superior and he is inferior.' You must help him as a means of worshiping God in him. All such service goes to the Self, not anyone else. You are not helping anybody else, but only yourself. Facebook Group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/SatsangaAISW/ Website: http://www.blissofnewsun.net