HPB-SB-14-123: Difference between revisions

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{{Style P-Title|{{Style S-Lost|…}}OW TO KNOW THE REAL SELF.}}<ref name="editor-123-title">The beginning of the title in the Indian Mirror clipping is partly covered. A version of the article appears in The Theosophist, Vol. IV, No. 4, January 1883, p. 97; differences in wording and the dates printed in the two publications are retained.</ref>

{{Style S-Small capitals|Three}} thousand five hundred years ago, all men believed in one common religion—the Vedokta ''dharma,'' or the religion enjoined by the Vedas. The highest duty or ''dharma'' of every sensible man is to acquire wisdom, and not to amass matter. Even a knowledge of and control over the laws of nature is but nothing compared to the actual experience or ''anubhavio dnyan'' of the essence of the animal soul—the Paramatma. It alone can solve the mystery of the incomprehensible universal delusion or ''maya,'' who attains this experience and ever lives in the conviction that all the rest is false (unstable) The materialistic science of the West, which is progressing gradually only to pull down to-day the edifice they constructed yesterday, will never be able to arrive at a satisfactory solution. A ''yogi'' can acquire omniscience, while the modern worldly scientist could effect no such thing—not even after ages of diligent researches. The one traces the material and spiritual delusion of the universe to its true central point; the other in his hopeless researches fails and falls off baffled at every step for the very method adopted by him is not commensurate with the magnitude of the object sought for. How can he hope to analyse the external nature without trying to gain a mastery over his own self, especially as he himself admits that man is but a part of nature? The ''yogi'' gradually disentangles himself from the snares of ''maya,'' as he progresses onward; the physiologist is lost in the mazes of his own experiments, and he advances only to find the web which he has himself woven, more and more intricate. This may appear absurd to many; but a true initiate in the mysteries of nature knows it well enough. Men understand and accept ''ideas'' just according to their receptivity. The Western intellect which has begun to sprout (shoot forth) is not yet ripe enough to come face to face with nature, much less so without the help of those who have for ages been learning to lift up her veil. The teachings of the Vedas only can ensure success, and before the attempt is made, the eternal quietude of the real self must be realized, in contradistinction to the ever-active and disconsolate soul.

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{{Style P-Title|A MIS-APPREHENSION, POINTED OUT.}}