Parables of Rama
by Swami Rama Tirtha | 102,836 words
Stories in English used by Swami Rama to illustrate the highest teaching of Vedanta. The most difficult and intricate problems of philosophy and abstract truths, which may very well tax the brains of the most intellectual, are thus made not only simple and easy to understand but also brought home to us in a concrete form in such an interesting and ...
Once there was a man so clever as to reproduce himself to such perfection that you could not tell the reproduction from the original. He knew that the angel of death was coming for him, and as he did not know just what to do to avoid the angel, finally settled upon what might be termed an able device. He reproduced himself a dozen times. Now when the angel of death came, he could not know which was the real person and therefore did not take any. The angel returned to God and asked Him what to do, and after a consultation, returned to the earth to try again to take this man and remarked, "My! But you are wonderfully clever, why, that is just the way you have made these figures, but there is one thing wherein you have erred, there is just one fault." The original man immediately jumped up and asked suddenly, "In what, in what, have I erred?" And the angel said, "In just this," singling out the clever man from the mute statues.
The only wrong is to ask, "Am I right?" Dear one, what else could you be? The little imp of doer-self is claimed by death.
MORAL: The assertion of egoism in punished by death.