I was once travelling in the desert in India. I travelled for over a month and always found the most beautiful landscapes before me, beautiful lakes and all that. One day I was very thirsty and I wanted to have a drink at one of these lakes, but when I approached that lake it vanished. Immediately with a blow came into my brain the idea that this was a mirage about which I had read all my life, and then I remembered and smiled at my folly, that for the last month all the beautiful landscapes and lakes I had been seeing were this mirage, but I could not distinguish them then. The next morning I again began my march; there was the lake and the landscape, but with it immediately came the idea, “This is a mirage.” Once known it had lost its powers of illusion. So this illusion of the universe will break one day. The whole of this will vanish, melt away. This is realization. Philosophy is no joke or talk. It will be realized; this body will vanish, this earth and everything will vanish, this idea that I am the body, or the mind, will for some time vanish, or if the _Karma_ is ended it will disappear never to come back; but if one part of the _Karma_ remains,--as a potter’s wheel after the potter has finished the pot, will sometimes go on from the past momentum--so this body, when this delusion has vanished altogether, will go on for some time. Again this world will come, men and women and animals will come, just as the mirage came the next day, but not with the same force, along with it will come the idea that I know its nature now, and it will cause no bondage, no more pain, nor grief, nor misery. Whenever anything miserable will come, the mind will be able to say, “I know you as hallucination.” When a man has reached that state he is called _jivan mukta_, “living free,” free even while living. The aim and end in this life for the _Jnâna Yogi_ is to become this _jivan mukta_, living freedom. He is _jivan mukta_ who can live in this world without being attached. He is like the lotus leaves in water, which are never wet by the water. He is the highest of human beings, nay, the highest of all beings, for he has realized his identity with the Absolute, he has realized that he is one with God. So long as you think you have the least difference from God, fear will seize you, but when you have known that you are He, that there is no difference, entirely no difference, that you are He, all of Him, and the whole of Him, all fear ceases. “There who sees whom? Who worships whom? Who talks to whom? Who hears whom? Where one sees another, where one talks to another, where one hears another, it is in law. Where none sees none, where none speaks to none that is the highest, that is the great, that is the _Brahman_.” Being That, you are always That. What will become of the world then? What good shall we do to the world? Such questions do not arise. “What becomes of my gingerbread if I become old?” says the baby. “What