Scriptures Are True Friends

Sage Vasishtha

After thus considering the illusory nature of the world-appearance and after mutually worshipping each other, Suraghu and Parigha continued to engage themselves in their respective duties. Be firmly established in this wisdom and discard the impure notion of ego-sense from your heart. When the pure heart contemplated the infinite space (dimension) of consciousness which is the source of all bliss and which is within easy reach of all, it rests in the Supreme Self. The mind that is thus devoted to the infinite consciousness, which is introverted and which is filled with Self-knowledge, is not affected by sorrow. Even if you engage yourself in the activities relating to your daily life and even if likes and dislikes arise in you, your inner being will never become impure. Even as light alone can remove darkness, the knowledge that this world is the creation of ignorance is the only remedy for its ills. Once this knowledge has arisen, the ignorant perception of the world as something real ceases once and for all. Thereafter, even if you engage yourself in activity, you are unattached to it and therefore not tainted by it, even as the eyes of fish are not affected by sea-water. You will never again experience delusion.

Only on those days on which the light of self-knowledge shines brightly in one's heart does one live truly. All one's actions are full of bliss on those days. They alone are friends - scriptures and days that generate in one's heart true dispassion and also self-knowledge. O Rama, rescue your jiva from this dreadful mire of world-appearance. Once you have realized the truth concerning it, you will never again return to this mire.