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For one thing, it is absolutely unfamiliar; and then the man is absolutely helpless before it. Fear is natural from the unknown and the unfamiliar. Life, even if it be intolerable, is at least familiar. Death carries into the unknown. This unknown gives fear; and then we have no control over it. We cannot do anything with it. This helplessness destroys our ego from its very roots. The ego, whose development we had taken for life, appears to be breaking and destroyed. That alone was our being; that alone were we; and therefore death appears to be the end of our life. What are we? Body and mind and the ego resulting from the union of both; but the flames of death appear to turn them into ashes. On the other side, and beyond them, nothing appears to remain. Why then should man not feel afraid? How should he console himself? In such state, fear is natural; and to save himself from this fear, man becomes ready to do anything from this fear alone, several forms of violence take birth. Therefore, I say that fear itself is violence, and fearlessness is non-violence. To be free from violence, one has to be free from fear; to be free from fear, one has to be free from death; to be free from death, one has to know oneself.
I know others; but I do not know myself. How surprising it is? Can there be anything more surprising than that?
How mysterious it is that I am familiar with the outside and unfamiliar with the inner self!
this ignorance of the self alone is the cause of all pain, bad conduct and non-salvation.
The power of knowledge is in me; otherwise how could I know others or the exterior? That is intact in me. If I am awake, it is there; if I sleep, it is there; if I dream, it is there; if I sleep without dreams, it is there I know the states of being awake, being in sleep, being in dream and being in sound sleep. I can see them. I know them. I know them, because what is intact in me is my own form. There is nothing intact in me except knowledge. In fact, I am not separate from knowledge. I am knowledge itself. This knowledge is my existence, my soul.
Because I am knowledge I know others; because I am knowledge I can know myself.
The
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