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Book Name: Yoga - The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 3Previous     Next
 

exist, toe and all the leg has been completely removed, how pain can exist in a toe which doesn't exist? The nurse laughed and she said, "You are imagining, or you are in a hallucination." She uncovered the blanket and showed to the soldier that "Your whole leg is removed, so in the toe no pain can exist now, because the toe doesn't exist." But the soldier persisted. He said, "I can see that the leg is not there and I can understand your viewpoint, and I am ridiculous -- but I still say the pain is severe and unbearable."

Doctors were called; surgeons consulted amongst themselves. This was absolutely absurd! -- the mind is playing some trick -- but they tried to understand what is happening. Then the whole body was X-rayed, and this was the thing they came upon: the nerve that was carrying the message of the pain in the toe was still carrying it. It was trembling in the same way as it should tremble if there was a toe and there was pain in it.

And when the nerve is bringing the message, of course the brain has to decode it. The brain has no way to check whether the nerve is carrying a right message, a wrong message, real, unreal. The brain cannot come out and check the nerve. The brain has to depend on the nerve, and the brain decodes it to the mind. Now the mind has no way to check the brain -- one has simply to believe it -- and the mind delivers the knowledge to the consciousness. Now the consciousness suffers for a toe which doesn't exist.

This is what Hindus call MAYA. "The world doesn't exist," Hindus say, "and you are suffering terribly, suffering for something which doesn't exist." This is how the mechanism functions of knowledge. It is very difficult in this process to check anywhere unless you can come out of yourself. Mind cannot do that because the mind cannot exist outside the body. It has to depend on the brain, it is rooted in the brain. The brain cannot do it because the brain is rooted in the whole nervous system; it cannot come out. Only at one point the possibility exists to check, and that is at consciousness.

Consciousness is not rooted in the body; the body is just an abode. As you come out of your house and go in,

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