Nothing in this world lasts forever, and our body does not last forever. So when our body finishes, then whatever we are holding on to with this body,that relationship, also finishes. So, with the grace of a rasik Saint (one who tastes Divine love), we get the correct knowledge.
“Oh, I’m not the body. I’m the soul.” It is my soul that is demanding happiness and demanding Divine happiness, Radha Krishna, only then will I be happy. Then, gradually, that fog of delusion lifts.
There is a great analogy that explains to us how we chase the wrong type of happiness. We are all seeking happiness, but we are seeking the dream happiness instead of the real happiness. This is mithyā swapna sansār (illusory dream-world), right now, we are sleeping in the dream of worldly happiness.
Just imagine: I make you go hiking all day and do not give you any water. You are out in 100-degree heat, hiking up and down Barsana Hill twenty times, without any water, and then you go to bed without drinking anything. You are extremely thirsty. So what is going to happen in your dream? You might start drinking water in your dream. That happens. You feel so thirsty that in your dream you go to the sink, fill up a nice glass of water, and start drinking.
“Oh, it’s so satisfying.”
But then you have to drink more water. You keep drinking water all night long, and whenever you wake up in between your dreams, your throat is still parched. You still feel thirsty, even though you have been drinking water all night in your dream. You go back to sleep and drink some more water in your dream. Still, it does not quench your thirst. So instead of drinking the water in the dream, what you need to do is wake up and drink the real water. What we do is keep trying to satisfy our thirst for Divine happiness with the dream-water of this world, with the temporary pleasures of this world. So we have to wake up from that dream and realize,
“I am a lion. I should be roaring, not bleating like a lamb. I should be chasing Divine happiness, not just trying to satisfy myself with these fleeting material pleasures! I have to aim for the real thing!”
So this is what Shree Maharaj Ji is referring to here when he says,
“I have been sleeping since eternity. For uncountable lifetimes, I have been turned away from God, and I have had this belief that I am this body. So I have been chasing all the things, all the māyic (illusory) things, of this world related to the body. But now, with the grace of a rasik Saint, I have gained the correct knowledge, so I have awakened from this dream. I am no longer under the spell of all these material pleasures, thinking that this is the real thing. Although they still have a pull on my mind, I know they are not the real thing. The real thing is the love of Radha Krishna.”
