Upon the same tree there are two birds, one on the top, the other below. The one on the top is calm, and majestic, immersed in his own glory ,the on the lower branches eating sweet and bitter fruits by turns ,hoping from branch to branch is becoming happy and miserable by turns After a time the lower bird eats an exceptionally bitter fruit and gets disgusted and looks up and sees the other bird ,that wondrous one of golden plumage ,who eats neither sweet nor biter fruit, who is neither happy nor miserable ,but calm ,self-centered, and sees nothing beyond his self. The lower bird longs for this condition but soon forgets it and again begins to eat the fruits. In a little while, he eats another exceptionally bitter fruit which makes him feel miserable and he again looks up and tries tries to get near the upper bird .Once more he forgets and after a
time looks up ,and so on he goes again and again until he come very near to the beautiful bird and sees the reflection of light from his plumage playing around his own body ,and he feels a change and seems to melt away : still nearer he comes ,and everything about him melts away, and at last he understands this wonderful change. The lower bird was, as it were, only the shadow, the reflection of the higher; he himself was in essence the upper bird all the time. This eating of fruits, sweet and bitter, this lower little bird, weeping and happy by time was a vain chimera, a dream all along; the real bird was there above, calm, and silent, glorious and majestic, beyond grief, beyond sorrow. The upper bird is God, the lord of this universe: and the lower bird is the human soul, eating the sweet and bitter fruits of this world. Now and then comes a heavy blow to the soul. for a time he stops the eating and goes towards the unknown god, and a flood of light comes .He thinks that this world is a vain show .Yet again the senses drags him down and he begins as before to eat the sweet and bitter fruits of the world .again an exceptionally hard blow comes, his heart becomes again to divine light, thus gradually he approaches God, and he gets nearer and nearer, he finds,his old self melting away. When he has come nearer enough, he seems that he is no other than God and he exclaims “He whom I have described to you as the life of this Universe, as present in the atom and in the suns and moons ---He is the basis of our own life, the soul of our life ,the soul of our souls Nay ‘THOU ART THAT’. Swami Vivekananda
“TAT TWAM ASI.”
