The Scholar Who Slept: Knowledge, Egoism and the False Awakening
In the morning satsanga of November 4, 2026, Swami Jyotirmayananda taught that awakening comes by listening to the divine teaching and assimilating it, and read Kumbhakarna as a great Vedic scholar who remained asleep in ignorance.
The satsanga opened with prayers to Lord Ganesha, Goddess Lakshmi, Goddess Durga and the Guru, and an invocation to Lord Rama of the Raghu dynasty, whose complexion is like a blue lotus, tender and delightful in appearance. After the Hare Rama mantra came a short poem of meditation. Like the rustling of the breeze through the trees of the forest, how soft. Like the flowing of life over a silvery stream, how gracious. Like a melting mist in the vastness of the sky. These, the poem says, are the sweet whispers of the soul in the silence of meditation.
Then Swamiji returned to the Ramayana and to its theme for these mornings: the awakening of Kumbhakarna.
A Great Scholar, Still Asleep
Kumbhakarna, Swamiji taught, was a great Vedic scholar. But in spite of all that learning, he sleeps. He stays in the state of ignorance.
The divine teaching says to every soul: wake up, arise. Spiritual aspirants come to satsanga and they are told the same thing, wake up, arise. We truly wake, Swamiji explained, by listening to the divine teaching and assimilating it. That is waking up.
But one may study the scriptures and sing kirtan, Swamiji explained, and still continue to follow a path dominated by ignorance. It is that subtle awakening that this episode of the Ramayana brings out.
The Story Is Within
The episode, Swamiji said, is allegorical. Every figure in it is a play of one's own thought waves, and those thought waves are constantly dominated by egoism. The ego gathers all attainments to itself and thinks, how victorious am I. So long as one is under the control of ignorance and egoism, there is no awakening, however much one knows. In spite of all one's knowledge, Swamiji said, one is as if sleeping.
Sattva and the Closed Ears
The mind, Swamiji explained, is under the influence of the three gunas. It is the role of sattva to draw the mind toward bhakti, devotion to God. "That should wake you up." When that does not happen, the mind becomes deaf, as it were. All the teachings call out, wake up, wake up, and they do not enter. "Your ears are closed." Closed to the scriptural teaching, Swamiji said, the mind stays open to demoniac strength.
A Deluded Idea of Dharma
Here Swamiji turned to the subtlest point of the morning. The deluded mind does not simply stay asleep; it forms its own concept of awakening. "It's a delusional concept." Kumbhakarna defines his awakening as serving Ravana, and he asserts that this is dharma. My brother may be sinful, he reasons, but an obedient brother follows him.
"Being obedient to a good brother is easy." The greater challenge, as Kumbhakarna sees it, is to stay obedient while Ravana walks a path that is unrighteous. A deluded understanding of scripture asserts that obedience to the brother is the greatest dharma. To be obedient to a brother who is a thief, a robber, and to help him in his sinful deeds, is interpreted as real obedience: that is my dharma. This, Swamiji said, is what Kumbhakarna is.
The Sensitivity Learning Leaves Behind
Yet his scriptural knowledge was not wasted. At the same time, Swamiji explained, all that learning had developed a sensitivity in Kumbhakarna. Even though he ignores the advice he is given, he ultimately says that the time has come for his being sublimated. He speaks of one who alone will rule over Lanka, and of that same Lanka, a world of demons, being transformed. That, Swamiji said, is what brings devotion.
Swamiji noted that the story becomes more and more suspenseful, and more and more interesting, as it unfolds.
The satsanga concluded with a prayer that divine grace shower all with shakti and bhakti, the Maha Mrityunjaya mantra, and the universal prayer sarve santu niramayah, sarve bhadrani pashyantu: may all be free from disease, may all see what is auspicious. Om shanti.
Terms in This Satsanga
- satsanga - the company of truth; where the aspirant is told, wake up, arise.
- sattva - the guna of purity and light; what draws the mind to devotion and should wake it up.
- gunas - the three qualities of nature under whose influence the mind moves.
- bhakti - devotion to God.
- dharma - righteous duty; what Kumbhakarna's deluded understanding mistook for obedience to a sinful brother.
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