Who am I ?

[Giri]

On Mon, 8 Jul 1996, Gummuluru Murthy wrote:

> forms do not have the discriminating power.  If the humans have that
> discriminating sense, I have not seen many humans that use it for
> Self-realization.  It seems to me that only very rare humans use this
> discriminating sense to realize "tat thvam asi" or "aham brahmasmi".  More
> than 99% of the humans have never used this sense and they simply follow the
> samsara and as mentioned in Bhaja-Govindam "punarapi maranam, punarapi
> jananam ..... " and while away their life.

        That's true. Lord Krishna in Bhagvad Gita says 'One in thousand
strive for self-realization, and among them, one in thousand understands
me' or something to that effect in 7.03 (?).
        However, without evil, where is good  and vice-versa ? Further, I
would contend that this seeming duality is Her lila, and instead of
trying to understand why this Lila is enacted, we should instead try to
find out who we really are.

> means that short life is a desirable one.   We read in the puranas that people
> that were blessed do have short lives, whereas people that were cursed do have
> long lives to complete their sins".

        I differ. Shankara, Jesus etc lived short lives (30-40) but then
"modern" swamijis like Yogananda, Ramana, Nisargadatta etc lived longer
lives [in their physical bodies]. I think this is consistent with the
average life-expectancy of that era.  Hence, it is my contention (need not
be right) that the life-expectancy depends on karma etc and not
necessarily on punya etc.


> I would like to be enlightened

        Wouldn't we all ? :-)

> Regards
> Gummuluru Murthy

Namaste.

Giri