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 ...
A man dreamt, and in his dreams all sorts of things appeared. Those things in the dreams were mere ideas, mere thought, mere imagination. He saw a lion, tiger, or serpent in the dream. No sooner he saw the lion, the tiger, or the serpent, he was startled at once and was awakened.
The tiger was a kind of nightmare and woke him up; but this tiger or lion in the dream although a creation of his own thought, this object of his dream was a wonderful thought, a wonderful imagination. It took away all other ideas in the dream, it took away all other objects. The fairy scenes, the beautiful landscapes, the flowing rivers, the majestic mountains, of which he was dreaming, were all gone after the tiger or the lion was seen in the dream. Now the tiger or lion never eats grass or stones, but the tiger of his dream was a wonderful creation, for the tiger ate up all the landscapes, the woods, the forest; all were gone, it had disturbed the dreaming self, and at the same time had eaten itself up, it was seen no more when he woke up.
Similarly, the kind of ideas or imagination, inculcated in Vedanta, is like the tiger in the dream. The whole world is a dream. This tiger will rid you of all false imagination and ignorance, and will at the same time rid you of its own self. It will take you where all imagination stops, where all language stops, it lands you into that indescribable Reality.
The ladder, from which you feel, so to speak, is the ladder which will lead you up. You will have to retrace your steps by the same road down by which you fell to anxiety and misery. The kind of imagination which Vedanta recommends to you for liberation is just opposite to the form of imagination which brought you low. Thus you are sure to be cured by the process contrara contraribus curanta; the contrary cures the contrary. Vedanta proves that all this world is nothing else but your own ideas, nothing else but your own imagination and your own thought. Now, purify this thought, elevate this thought, direct it-aright, and you become the Light of lights, the All throughout the universe.
MORAL: The imagination, which leads one to bondage, also leads to liberation if applied contrariwise.