The Genius of Dnyaneshwar
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Note here the animal that Dnyaneshwar chooses. It is a huge animal. So is the mass of sensations that occupies our little mind. The metaphor of the mirage is self-explanatory. The shimmering5 water of the mirage best exemplifies our world of sensations. From here on, the subject of the ultimate principle begins to be broached in the Geeta. If birth and life are so full of sensations, then without them, both are unimaginable. Yet says the Geeta, Of these sensual6 clutches When a man is shorn To ‘that’ he is rendered Never to be born …159 The word ‘clutches’ is not used here in a derogatory or a pessimistic sense. That sensations clutch at us or that our existence is a clutch of sensations, there is no denying. That the primal* lives without being born is only indicative of the fact that it does not have qualities of matter and therefore has no formal sensations and is also therefore not chronologically born, and therefore does not die. The theme is then expanded further The wise know And also sense Not the senses But the essence …160 Or as an Upanishad4 says Not what you hear and see But ‘that’ which allows you To hear and see …161 That primal* is then described further That from which The world expands Neither name nor colour Without an expanse Neither does it die Nor is it born …162