THE Doctrine of Maya - HolyBooks.com

""""""54 THE DOCTRINE OF MAYAnot hear the hearer of hearing, thou couldst not think thethinker ofthought, thou couldst not know the knower ofknowing. This thy Atman is within every being, all elseis full of sorrow (artta).Here it is shown how the Atman is so near withinone s self that one does not need to go a long way tosearch for it. If the idea of distance is to be usedat all (which is really inadmissible) it maybe saidto be the nearest. Those who go out to seek itanywhere else by external means never find it.The attempts at a rigid definition of Brahman areall futile. This thought is like that of the populartale so well known in India.A man had his littlechild on his shoulder and was strolling about in thestreet. All of a sudden, forgetting that he hadthe child with him, he began to proclaim in a loudvoice throughout the city have lost my child : "I ;who has seen it, kindly let me know." At last apasser-by, observing his gross error, gave him asmart slap in the face and turned his eyes upward,when to his utter surprise he found that the lostchild was still on him. 1 So exactlyis the Atmanalways in us. In fact we are never justified insaying us as "intruly speakingit is ourself,"not "it is in us;the latter would imply that weare different from the Atman. The sage heredeclares, therefore, that this Atman is the subject of1The proverb is technically known in Punjabi askucchadkudi sahara dhandora."