The Snake and the Rope

Suppose you are going in the evening on the road to your village and you see a snake on the road. Seeing the snake, you stop. You don’t take another step because you have a fear of snakes. Immediately, you will look for some stick or stone to kill it.

A man comes from the other side of the road and asks, ‘What are you looking for?’ You tell him there is a snake. He says, ‘No. It’s a rope. It is a rope. I come everyday and see it’s a rope.’ So you are now relieved. Your fear goes and the snake vanishes. This disappearance of snake has not made any difference in a physical sense. Only the fear is gone. The snake has disappeared.

What has happened is this. The knowledge came that it was not a snake. The confusion is gone. The concept of bondage is like the snake. This concept of bondage has left like the snake and you return to your own self nature, as you are. You will not change. The fear is gone because snake was never a snake. It was a rope. You were a rope. Now you return back to your original nature that I am not the body. This body was a snake. I am what I have been. I am what I am. I am myself. Then that confusion that I am the body, I am the ego, this belongs to me, all these things simply vanished without any change of your body. That fear is now gone. 

Are you clear? OK. That confusion will go and you will be happy within yourself — I have been the Self, I am the Self, I’m not the body. This was a dress I am wearing like my other tunics. Nothing has changed. You return to your original Self nature which is the enlightenment —which is always there. You have not to get it at some distant future but to know it as very few have known it. All the others are lost in the fear of snake, that ‘I am the body’ and ‘I am the body’ concept is samsara, endless misery. So if you decide to get rid of it, you can do it yourself.