Passage 10

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In plain words

Because I went through so many hardships, today I dance on everyone's head. If I had not borne these very hardships, how would I have come to be on everyone's head? So you too can stand at a high level only when you have gone through many troubles, losses, sorrows and griefs.” So we must never sink into despair, crying, “Troubles! Troubles!” We must face our troubles and strive to win through. So when we meet such troubles, we must develop, to some extent, the strength of God and the principle of Prema.

In every human being there is a strange, distorted quality. It is a disease. No medicine of any kind can cure it. No doctor can diagnose it. Then what disease is it? Ahaṅkāra. This Ahaṅkāra gets into a man's head and keeps making him dance in many ways. It is not in man alone. Beasts, birds and animals have it too. When a dog sees some man, it barks, “Bow-wow!” When someone comes near a pig, it grunts, “Grr, grr!” All these are signs of Ahaṅkāra. A man was walking along the street. There was a dog in front of a rich man's house. The man did not go anywhere near it. But it keeps barking “Bow-wow” at everyone passing along the street. What does that mean? “This is my house; I am its master; you cannot go in without getting past me”: that Ahaṅkāra is the root cause of this display. It thinks, “My house,” “I,” but it does not understand what this “I” is. It does not know that “I”. In the same way, when today's man too does not know what “I” is, he is the same as a dog. Every moment it is “my body, my mind, my citta, my antaḥkaraṇa”; but does anyone put the question to himself, who is this “I”? So only one who has recognised the principle of “I” is a jñānī. One who keeps saying “I” but does not recognise its inner meaning is ignorant.

Vedānta. What is this Vedānta? Go to a great scholar and ask what Vedānta means, and they say it is Jñāna, the end of the Veda.