THE FALSE EGO AND ITS HERETICAL CLAIMS

Even in destitution man clings to his false ego, such is the hold of Maya on the human soul. The beggar then beggars description as lines fail to define his vanity. It is so strange that man suffers such ignominy at the hands of his fellow men who he considers his own, yet, he desperately clings to these very offenders of his chastity, of his culture, of his very essence in human refinement that battered is rendered coarse even unto the roughening of the senses sans the slightest trace of the sublimer aspects of life and living. Such are the human compulsions, courtesy Mr. Body, that man loses his manhood in marriage, so to say, as Swami Brahmananda so succinctly put it, and yet trudges on carrying the load of familial nonsense through a life, harassed and harried, till death makes for his exit from this worrisome world that is run by the riotous desire which had ruined his health and happiness and shattered his boyhood dreams.

Such then is the predicament of life that, bound in the senses, man suffers a silent death each day as he inches his way to his eventual oblivion. Philosophies abound about him but they offer scant solace to the suffering soul torn between desire and its destruction at the hands of brother man.

Destitution of the body is one but destitution of the soul is a proposition quite of a different order and this he has to bear as rent he leads a tormented life of broken form and shattered dreams, frustrated hopes and a futile future where shore there is none in sight and the ceaseless current of oceanic swell sweeps him off into a deeper death, alone, forlorn, forsaken, forgotten. But strange it is that through it all he yet clings to his unreal ego and builds his fantasies about life that never quite seem to fulfil and ever seem to conjure up the mirage of the midsummer day along the desert terrain with not an oasis even in sight. This  ceaseless tossing between the heaven of hope and the hell of despair keeps his life oscillating from one pole to another as the realisation of futility seems to be the only reward of this terrestrial traversing before reflection of its deeper consequences settles his soul into the repose of Self-remembrance. Then the unripe ego dissolves, even if for a moment, and the Real Self shines through the myriad veils of Maya revealing the base of existence, the foundation of this vast phenomena which like the shadow at noon vanishes from vision under the effulgence of the emerging Atman.

But this is a far off cry for the ordinary soul whose karma is not yet complete, whose famished form has not yet had its desires fulfilled and whose soul still hungers for the ephemeral pleasures of life even if it suffers so in consequence. This latter lot forms the bulk of humanity and what solace may one offer them as they toil in ignorance through the torment of their storm-tossed life? There is none that one may save to serve and love and honour them all who, caught in the mire of material existence, have forgotten their divine inheritance and suffer in consequence so. For us there is the grand charge then to remind them incessantly of their divinity, their blessedness and their being the source of all that is good and beautiful, all that is strong and healthful, all that is knowledgeable and peaceful in this dark dungeon of the world where a slight misstep leads to terrible torment as each such experience tends to speak eloquently the one message of the soul, ''Not here, not here, elsewhere lies thy abode of the Self."

To such a thought then I send these lines tonight. May they waft through the starry skies to welcome you with the light!