This is part two of the adventures in Advaita Vedanta... will you travel with me a while?


Saturday Satsang

Hari OM

To perceive the insignificance of our self-asserting egoistic arrogance, we have to step away from the ego for a moment and, in our detachment, learn to observe it through the microscope of pure discrimination. ⠀

Our permanent proximity to the ego has given our own ego-myth far greater importance than it deserves. Let us examine this more closely. We all feel that we are irrevocably real and unquestionably substantial as individuals in our own homes. ⠀

But let us analyse this further. My home is denoted by a number on the door among many such doors on the street; my street is a road or byroad off the main road; the main road is one of the many roads in the city, and the city is a mere spot on the map of the district. The district, again, is a jot in the state; the state is a fraction of the country; the country is part of a continent; and many continents make up this globe, the world.

We know that the world is one of the innumerable heavenly bodies that constitute our galaxy, each one separated from the others by billions and trillions of miles. We are told that there are millions of such galaxies in the universe. This total space, with all its many galaxies, is but an insignificant portion of the total Reality. ⠀

Therefore, in the context of this universe, what importance, significance, substantiality, or relevance can I claim for my numbered house? In this house, what space do I occupy? There may be five rooms in the house, but all that I occupy at any given time is a fraction of a chair in one corner of one room!⠀

Yet, how stupidly arrogant and self-assertive I can be, as though besides myself there were nothing more superior, nothing more important. In Reality, how microscopic is my structure and personality compared with the Lord of lords, the supreme Reality, the all-pervading! ⠀

The rediscovery of myself to be nothing other than the limitless, homogeneous mass of Consciousness, absolute and eternal, is the only remedy for curing the sorrows caused by the ignorance of my own real nature.

Swami Chinmayananda



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