Tripura Rahasya

Sage Dattatreya

KING JANAKA said:

This alone can do it. God inherent as the Self is pleased by meritorious actions which are continued through several births, after which the desire for liberation dawns and not otherwise, even though millions of births may be experienced. Of all the things in creation, to be born as a sentient being requires good luck; even so, to acquire a human body requires considerable merit; while it is out of the ordinary for human beings to be endowed with both virtuous tendencies and sharp intellect.

Observe, O Brahmin, that the mobile creation is a very small fraction of the immobile and that human beings form but a small fraction of the mobile, while most human beings are little more than animals, being ignorant of good and bad, and of right and wrong. Of sensible people, the best part runs after the pleasures of life, seeking to fulfill their desires. A few learned people are stained with the longing for heaven after death. Of the remaining few, most of them have their intellects bedimmed by maya and cannot comprehend the oneness of all (the Creator and creation). How can these poor fold held in the grip of maya, extend their weak sight to the sublime Truth of Oneness? People blinded by maya cannot see this truth. Even when some people rise so high in the scale as to understand the theory, misfortune prevents their being convinced of it (for their desires sway them to and fro with a force greater than the acquired puny, theoretical knowledge. Knowledge, if strictly followed, should put an end to such desires, which flourish on the denial of oneness). They try to justify their practical actions by fallacious arguments which are simply a waste of time.

Inscrutable are the ways of maya, which veils the highest Realization. It is as if they threw away the real gem in their hands, thinking it to be a mere pebble.