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Main Index
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to him. As yet, his likes and dislikes are all that matter to him. The all-deciding ego is yet unformed.
Similarly, a child sees no difference between truth and untruth, for he cannot differentiate between dream and reality. We often see a child waking up from sleep crying because of a doll that was broken in his dreams. The ego is essential to differentiate between the dreams of the night and the reality of the day.
When a person like Lao Tzu sheds his ego and views the world, he too finds no difference between dream and reality. This is the reason that Shankara can say, "The world is an illusion." It only means this; that in a manner of speaking, the world is also, a dream. Once the dream was as real as the world -- before the advent of the ego. Then came the ego and separated dream from reality. This discrimination was created by the ego. Then for Lao Tzu this ego, this 'I' dissolved and the world again began to look like a dream.
At the moment of death, this self-created 'I' crumbles and breaks. In every aspect its hold gives way. This is the agony, the pain, of death. Would that we remembered at that hour that when the ego is not, then too I am. Then we would enter death as joyfully as we entered birth. Then we would enter the realm of the great sleep of death as willingly and as happily as we enter the realm of sleep each night.
This happening however, cannot take place by chance at the time of death. He who has accumulated success all his life and shunned failures; who has never missed a single opportunity, even if it be false, to nurture his ego, has only crystallised his ego. That is why flattery sounds so sweet. The flatterer knows that what he says is not true and the one flattered also knows it is not true, yet when praise is showered, we do not have the strength to repudiate it. If someone says to you that you are the best looking person he has ever seen -- and you know that such a thought has never crossed your mind when you stand before the mirror each day, you still feel like believing him when he praises you. You accept the praise offered you without a question.
And you never refuse the scandal about others no
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