Bliss is Boundless

 

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Bliss is Boundless

Bliss is an unboundedness, just like an ocean. It is so vast that one is completely in it. Just as a dewdrop slips from a lotus leaf into the lake and becomes one with the lake, in the same way man has to slip out of the ego and become one with existence, only then bliss can be enjoyed. Ego is misery, the source of misery, the only cause of misery; and egolessness is the source of bliss. Ego gives you boundaries, identities, it makes you a certain person.

The word ‘person’ is significant. It comes from the Greek ‘persona’; persona means a mask. In Greek theatre actors used to wear masks. The word ‘person’ and the word ‘personality’ both come from persona. The ego is a persona; it is a mask; it is not one’s reality. It has to be dropped; only then does one know what is real. And the real is always blissful. The unreal is against our nature, hence it creates misery. Unreal means unnatural, real means natural. And our nature is infinitely blissful, it is a constant celebration. Except for man we will not find any animal, tree, star, rock miserable, because only man creates the idea of the ego.

Only man can create the idea of the ego, he is the most highly evolved form of life. But as we climb higher the risk of falling becomes bigger. Animals cannot fall and become an Adolf Hitler or a Genghis Khan - no animal can do that. A cat is a cat, a dog is a dog, a lion is a lion, a serpent is a serpent. They are simple people; whatsoever they are they are, neither more nor less.

But man moves on high peaks and hence the danger - he can fall. If he falls, he can fall below the animals, if he rises, he can rise above the Gods. With that possibility of rising above the gods also comes the risk of falling below the animals. The whole thing depends on this simple word ‘ego’. If ego becomes too much we start falling, the weight of the ego starts pulling us downwards. If we become egoless, we become weightless, and with that very weightlessness we start moving upwards.

Science knows only one law, the law of gravitation. But the mystics have known another law, the law of levitation. Just as things fall downwards things also rise upwards - but for that one has to become absolutely weightless; one has to remove the rock of the ego. 

And that’s the whole work of ascetics: removing the rock of the ego. Then we have wings and we can have what philosophers call the flight of the alone to the alone, the ultimate flight, the flight of man to god, the flight from the finite to the infinite.