Swami Shivananda was the famous direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. One day in the year 1923, a devotee came to Belur Math where Swami Shivananda was residing, and posed the following questions:
DISCIPLE: Maharaj how old are you?
SWAMI SHIVANANDA: You ask the age of my body? I don’t know exactly. Most probably it would be about seventy or seventy-two years.
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DISCIPLE: In that case, you would be three times older than we.
SWAMI SHIVANANDA: Possibly. Three times! Why three times? I have existed through eternity. The Self, unaffected by disease and old age, is beginning-less, endless, eternal and immortal.
Pure, illumined and free, it dwells in every being as Consciousness itself. This counting of age by years – ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred and so on – is a figment of ignorance. The immutable being whose nature is truth, exists eternally without undergoing any change at any time.
This world fashioned by ignorance is illusory and our whole trouble comes from mistaking the illusory for the real. Deer often mistake a mirage for water and jump into it. From a distance the sand appears a vast expanse of water with a play of waves. Duped by this appearance, the deer run and run for the water and finally lose their lives in the sand.
In a similar way a man who considers this ephemeral world real, cause himself endless sorrow. He is scorched here, as it were. Not for a moment does he think he will some day have to leave this world.
He wants, foolishly, to arrange his affairs on a permanent basis. Perhaps he buys a brick house, a large estate, and does other things of that sort. Yet however he tries to make things permanent, how long will they last?
Source: Excerpt from the book, For Seekers of God – Spiritual Talks of Swami Shivananda
