Ramayana_VOLUME V with index

Ramayana: A Divine Drama – Vol. V
Ramayana gives an example of the power of ‘Thought’. Ravana
was a great person who had mastered the Spiritual Texts and
who was earnest in Spiritual Observances. Every morning, he
used to go to the round of many temples of Siva. He had
mastered the Four Vedas and the Six Sastras and so he was
praised and depicted as having ‘Ten Heads’. His Queen,
Mandodari lamented over her husband’s defeat and death, at the
hands of a mere man leading a host of monkeys! She had learnt
from the Sastras that death caused by drowning or by the fall
from a tree or through monkeys converts the dead into ghosts
that wander in the realms of darkness. So, she wondered why
such a fate overtook the great Scholar, the pious devotee that
Ravana was. Then she remembered that spark of lust that he
harboured in his heart had burnt all the scholarship and all that
piety into ash! He was not able to control his senses or sublimate
the sensory urges. A bullock that does not yield to the yoke, a
horse that resists the reins, a car without brakes and a person
who knows no self-control, are all equally heading towards
disaster! (SSS Vol.7 p.336)
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