Man has to compete with the machines where a machine does the work of dozen men, it makes them redundant. Man has to earn his livelihood with the sweat of his brow. He goes to distant lands to take up new ventures and faces all sorts of struggles and hardships. We burn mid-night oil to attain degrees and high academic qualifications. Some of us may not have the resources and may not be able to achieve our ends due to financial restraints. Such a situation was deeply felt and expressed by a poet.

These are the true visions that their validity can never be doubted by a man surviving under the clutches of ‘survival of the fittest’, severe competition and modern stress and strain. Every religion starts from stomach. It is degradation to teach metaphysics-spirituality to a starving stomach.

We have got our own blood-relations, relatives and friends. We are so much attached to them that the thought of separation sends a wave of shock throughout the body. We take them for granted as our own. We consider them ‘TRUE VISIONS’ but the stern reality is that no relationship in this world is permanent. It is sad to perpetuate any worldly relations.

Nothing in this world is eternal, nothing is permanent. The only thing permanent is Divinity within us. The body cannot last for ever. Even if one lives for billions of years, one yet dies. The body is undergoing change every second. After seven years it becomes a new body altogether. Similarly our relations go on changing. They cannot be made eternal.

Swami Ram Tirath Ji expresses these feelings in his poem.

This law of impermanence in worldly relations or worldly connections cannot change, yet we are deeply attached to them considering them as true visions. We are heart-broken when this dream of permanency of relations is shattered as a dream.

In fact this world is a dream which we see with open eyes whereas we see the dreams at night with closed eyes. If we look back at the events of our life in the past, we really wonder whether they were realities or the happenings in a dream or a film going on a blank white screen. Those events have no more existence than the happenings of a dream.

The only son of an emperor was dying. There was no hope for him to recover. The queen was crying and all the relatives were bewailing. Night was falling and the emperor fell asleep. He dreamt that he was an emperor of a great empire and a great mass of wealth including jewels and diamonds was in his possession. He had twelve sons who were very healthy and handsome. In his dream he forgot that he had only son who was dying outside. Suddenly his dream shattered with the cries from outside as his only son had breathed last.

When awake, he did not cry but laughed. The queen was amazed and asked him if he had gone mad. The emperor explained about his dream that he had twelve sons and in that dream forgot about this only son. Now those twelve sons have disappeared. I wonder whether I should bewail for those twelve sons or this one. Both are dreams – one we watch with closed eyes and one with open.

Once we realise that this life is a dream and the happenings are just like a film which is the play of electric waves on a blank white screen, we can have a clear vision of true and false visions. It can be explained with the example of a rope in snake. We can see only one thing at a time – true vision or false vision. True vision is hidden under false vision. Rope is hidden under snake. As long as snake is there rope is hidden. With the appearance of rope, snake is disappeared.

This world is neither non-existent nor existent, it is non-existent in the sense that it is not eternal, it is ephemeral, it is in a continuous flux. It exists in relation with our five senses and if we have another sense, this world might appear a different one. To a born baby, there is no such thing as misery or worry. He is a born optimist. In youth he becomes a more optimist. It is hard for a young man to believe that there is such a thing as death or defeat or devastation.

Old age comes and life is in ruins. Dreams are shattered into the air and the man becomes pessimist. Thus we go from one extreme to another buffeted by nature without knowing, where we are going. Death is stalking us day and night but at the same time we think we shall live forever. This is our false vision.

The true vision is that the Self in us is everlasting, free and pure. That is the only Reality which is behind all this natural false phenomena of pleasure and pain; joy and sorrow; life and death. That true vision is hidden under the layers of false ego, false vision of ‘me and mine’. Live in the world but not be of it. Boat stays in water but water must not enter into it.

The royal road for True Vision is Vishvas Meditation which attaches us to our own true Self. We get our True Vision shining in the darkness of the layers of false visions, delving deep within ourselves.