Burst Twelve (For Youth):
Stimulation and Illumination
- Boredom, sorrow, insecurity and other psychological discomforts make us look out for a change.
- A lot of us take the escape route in delicious food, drinks, cinema/TV etc.
- Certain substances stimulate and please our senses.
- Sometimes an ideology may stimulate us. A rosy picture of how things should be may energize us.
- Many a time, one does not know if one is creating new divisions when one embraces some ideals or belief systems.
- Illumination is pure light where there is no room for conceptual barriers or walls.
- Seeing directly – with the innocence of a child – is free from the traps of idealization.
- Knowledge, which is limited by one’s conditionings, is involved in stimulation.
- Illumination takes place when one is free from all knowledge. One sees an object, a person or a situation as it (he/she) is.
- Because man gets caught in stimulation, there is so much bloodshed even in the name of religion.
- The illumined would never justify killing and other forms of violence or exploitation.
- We arrive at illumination by emptying our bosom of all beliefs; it is not by accumulating some more information about another school of thought.
Swami Chidananda
Monday, June 09, 2003