TRAVELLING on a city road on a hot summer’s day I saw that as a child – a river in front of my eyes, over all the other steaming hot vehicles waited in a traffic jam before mine.
“Well, is that a river I see?” I rub my eyes and look deeper. As the vehicle moves, this river too keeps moving in front of me and never can I touch its waters as it is always moving before me. It is some years later that I read in my physics lessons about the mirage, which can be seen, but it is actually not there.
Years later a photo of a mirage was published in a newspaper and there was a letter to the editor from a science professor stating that the photo is fake as it is impossible to photograph a mirage as it is basically a non-existent thing and is just an illusion! However, Vedanta tells us that the whole world is an illusion. Brahmam Satya Jagat Mithya. What is that absolute truth that is always spoken about? This body is made of five elements – earth is all the solid matter that either turns to ashes on burning the body or becomes one with the soil when buried.
Water evaporates into its source. The fire element escapes, along with the heat. Air merges into the common air and space remains where it is, because it is always in a merged state and has nowhere to go and nothing to do. Besides the five elements, human beings express something called mind in a predominant manner, over other creations. This mind is composed of thoughts and made up of space. It is just the illusory thought of a separate existence that empowers the mind to continue with holding on to rigid thought forms even after the death of the body.
They continue to exist in the realm of the mind in the form of thoughts, long after the physical death.
But just like the images of the good and bad people, the enjoying and suffering people flashed on a film screen, these images of the world with its people and their struggle for daily existence is flashed on the screen of the absolute consciousness which is the subtlest part of ourself.