Gyaneshwari -Sant Gyaneshwar
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Chapter-9
The Esoteric Knowledge
9. With vain hopes, with vain works and with vain knowledge and without sense, they take to delusive natures of fiends and demons. Because of this misconception which they have about Me, their birth is in vain like clouds outside of the rainy season, or like the waves of the mirage, fit to be seen only from a distance, or like a horseman made of clay, like magical ornaments or like the empty space in an imaginary city in the sky or like the silk-cotton tree, which is fruitless and hollow though full-grown, or like the neck-nipple of a she-goat. Vain is the life and work of such a fool, like the fruit of the silk-cotton tree, which no one gives or takes (171-175). Then whatever knowledge they acquire is like the coconuts cut by monkeys or like a pearl in the hand of a blind man. Their scriptures are as useless as weapons in the hands of maidens, or like the mystical letters of a mantra told to an impure person. Hence whatever they know or whatever they do, O Arjuna, becomes worthless as they lack true knowledge. They have come under the sway of the demoness in the form of tamas, which destroys their good intelligence and discriminating knowledge. As they have fallen in the mouth of the tamas demons, their minds split into smithereens (176-180). The murderous tongue of this demoness, licking the lips and extending upto the ears, wallows in the saliva of hope and it chewes constantly the meatballs of discontent. This demoness roams intoxicated in the valley of heedlessness. Her teeth in the form of hatred, crushes knowledge and she envelops the intelligence as the water-jar-covered sage Agastya. Those who fall a prey to this demoniacal disposition sink in the pool in the form of mental delusion. In this way those who fall in the pit of tamas do not get the helping hand of knowledge and they go one knows not where (181-185). But why this useless talk about these fools? It will only tire out speech and lead us nowhere. When the Lord said this, Arjuna readily assented. The Lord said “now listen to the story of the devotees, in which speech finds rest.” |
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