Ramana Maharshi Comparision Of Our body To A Radio

THOSE who have realized the Self remain uninvolved,even when they are engaged in everyday activities.They are always in a state of utter stillness. Bhagavan himself has described this in the thirtieth verse of the Supplement to Reality in Forty Verses.

“The mind that is devoid of attachments, though it may appear to be engaged in activity, is in reality inactive — just as the mind of a person listening to a story might wander off to a faraway place.”

Once, in the Jubilee Hall, we were all listening to the radio. At the end of the program the names of all the artists were announced. Bhagavan said, “See! The radio sings and gives speeches. It even announces the names of the performers. But there is nobody inside the radio. Our existence is also like that. The body might appear to walk and talk and perform a number of functions, but in fact there is no individual inside the body. Everything is God.He alone exists.” Bhagavan continued, “The concepts of time and space are also imaginary. When we listen to a concert on the radio are we bothered about the exact time and location at which the concert took place? What difference can it make to our enjoyment of the music? Whether the concert took place in Hyderabad or in Madras, we can listen to the music and derive the same degree of enjoyment sitting right here in this hall.

The wise one does not attach any importance to concepts of space and time. One has to go through certain situations in a given lifetime and for this a body is required.
That is the only reason for acquiring a body. One goes through various experiences, without getting involved in anything. To an ordinary person, worldly experiences
seem real.An ordinary man might think that a liberated person has all the experiences that others have. But the liberated person has no attachment to the body and therefore physical experiences hold no significance for him.

The jivanmukta has the same attitude towards his body that a railway porter has for the luggage he carries.Just as the porter carries the luggage up to the destination
and lays it down at that spot, the jivanmukta carries the body through the pre-ordained experiences of a lifetime and at the end of the course he lays down the burden with relief. The porter thinks of the load on his head only as a burden; he does not identify with it on a personal level. That is why he feels no regret when he puts it down. It is the same in the case of a jivanmukta. As he never thinks of the body as having any personal significance, he feels no sorrow when the time comes for him to leave the body.”

During the last days of Bhagavan’s earthly life, when his devotees besought him to retain the human form for a long time, Bhagavan used to say, “A jnani (a realised soul) knows that the sole purpose of acquiring a body is to enable the spirit to attain knowledge through experiences.Do we feel sad because we have to throw away the used leaf-plate after a meal? In the same way, a jnani discards the human body without any regret or sorrow.”

Sources:

1) Cherished Memories, by Kanakammal
2) http://arunachala.org.ashrama.org/newsletters/2010/mar-apr.pdf

Readers interested are requested to read below articles as well

http://prashantaboutindia.blogspot.com/2009/03/ramana-maharshi-says-our-body-is-like.html

http://prashantaboutindia.blogspot.com/2009/03/ramana-maharshi-about-body.html

http://prashantaboutindia.blogspot.com/2009/04/ramana-maharshi-tells-why-scriptures.html