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 ...
Rama once saw a young man at the point of death. He was suffering from a very bad disease. There was excruciating pain in his body. The pain began in the toes of the feet. At first it was not so great, but after a while it kept coming up, and then his body was undergoing a hysterical movement. Gradually the pain came up to the knees, and then rose higher, until that dreadful pain reached the stomach, and when the pain reached the heart the man died. The last words this young man uttered were these: "Oh, when shall this life leave me, when shall these pranas leave me?" These were the words of that youth.
Here is something higher even than life; something superior to prana, something which says, "My life," something which says "My prana" something which possesses the prana and is above the prana and life, and that something is sweeter by far than the individual, personal life or prana. Here we see something which is superior to the prana or life for which the life is sacrificed. That must be the home of Anand or pleasure; that must be the source, the origin of our joy. That is the Higher Self, the real home of happiness, for which even life is sacrificed.
MORAL: Self is the source of Joy.