Aranya Kanda
Analysis
The main point in today’s section is this: Ravana comes to Sita in the disguise of a sannyasi. Ravana puts on the dress of a renunciate and goes to abduct Sita. If he had gone as Ravana openly, he would not have been able to carry her off. But in the form of a holy man, he not only approaches her, he succeeds in abducting her. So we first need to understand: what is the inner meaning of “Ravana took the form of a sannyasi”?
Inside us, our body-identity, our ego tied to the body, is Ravana. What is deha-abhimaan (body-ego)? We’ve discussed this many times: when we forget our real Self and take ourselves to be only this body, and then further, we take the roles lived through this body—our duties, positions, status, or fixed beliefs about “who I am”—to be the real ‘me’, and get attached to them, that is deha-abhimaan. So it is not just “thinking I am the body”; deha-abhimaan means: “I am the body, I am my roles, I am my position,” and I cling to these. That is what Ravana stands for.
Earlier, in the Maricha episode, we had said: when Ram-tattva starts arising within us—when we begin to understand, at least a little, “I am the conscious Self, not the body”—then the same old body-ego that lives within us doesn’t come at us directly anymore. It comes with some deceit and disguise. Before we had done any study or reflection, we used to live all the time in body-ego. Now, we no longer stay in deha-abhimaan 24 hours a day. In between, there are moments when we remember, “Wait, I am not the body; I am the conscious Self that runs this body. All these roles I play are not my real identity; they’re just roles.” We’ve started recalling this off and on. So yes, Ram has “incarnated” within us, but still in an initial, tender stage. The moment this remembrance slips, Ravana—body-ego—immediately stands up inside us again.
All of us have this experience: the moment we remember our real nature, our thinking is very clear and pure. As soon as that remembrance drops, ego comes up and stands in front of us. In the story, something similar is happening: Ram has gone away; he is not physically with Sita. Sita is our pure thinking, our whole inner pattern of thought. The question here is: how does the body-ego within us steal this purity? The text is showing that now this body-ego no longer appears openly; it can’t grab purity directly. Ravana does not come in his own form; he comes in the guise of a sannyasi.
So what does it mean to take on the dress of a sannyasi? It means: hiding what you really are and presenting what you are not. Someone who is not a renunciate puts on the clothes of a renunciate and comes before me; naturally, I will think, “This is a real holy man.” But how is his behavior? Full of deceit and trickery—that becomes clear. So, wearing the clothes of a sannyasi while not being one means: behavior becomes false and deceitful.
Thus, when it is said Ravana put on a sannyasi’s disguise, the inner meaning is: because of body-ego, a person’s behavior becomes deceitful. What kind of deceitful behavior? When we are in body-ego, we do not see our inner vices as vices; we stick a label of “right and justified” on top of them. That is deceitful conduct.
When I am in deha-abhimaan, all the vikaras—desire, anger, greed, attachment, pride, jealousy—walk with me. I am in desire, in anger, in greed. But deceitful behavior means: even though these vikaras are there, I present them as something good and necessary. I don’t admit they are vices. Instead, I justify them. That is like Ravana in a sannyasi’s robe.
For example, suppose I’m in the role of a mother. As a mother, I feel a sense of ownership over my child. From that, expectations and demands arise: “He is my son, she is my daughter; I will naturally have expectations from them.” That expectation, in truth, is a vikara. But I don’t call it a vikara. I say, “Obviously I’ll have expectations; how can I not?” I have put a “this is right” tag on top of a vikara. That is deceitful conduct toward myself.
Similarly, anger is a vikara. It harms relationships. Yet when a person is in body-ego, they get angry and then say, “My anger was necessary. The situation was such; the other person said such things; I had to get angry. My anger wasn’t wrong.” So they do not accept anger as wrong; they stamp it as right. Again, this is cheating oneself—not calling a vikara a vikara.
Take another example: lying or dishonesty. We know these are vices, that they pollute our thinking. But what do people say? “In today’s world, you can’t survive without some lies. You can’t manage with total honesty.” So even falsehood we label as “necessary,” and we fool ourselves.
When, under body-ego, we start considering our vikaras as right and behave accordingly, that behavior steals our purity. It abducts our pure thinking. So, Ravana stealing Sita does not mean some outer man stole some outer woman. Sita is our pure thinking, and Ravana is our own body-ego. It is our own ego, by declaring our vices to be right and justified, that abducts our pure thinking.
So in this episode—Ravana coming dressed as a sannyasi—the teaching is this: Sita is our pure thought; the abduction of Sita shows how our pure thinking is stolen. And when does that happen? When, living in body-ego, we begin to call our vikaras “right.” If we accept a vikara as a vikara, then sooner or later we will try to remove it. When we see clearly, “This is anger; this is moha; this is greed,” then at some point we make an effort to weaken or destroy it. But if we say, “This desire is fine; this anger was justified; this lie was necessary,” then our purity is certainly going to be stolen.
So today’s passage is mainly telling us two things:
Ravana came in the form of a sannyasi to abduct Sita.
He did succeed in abducting Sita.
Meaning: our own body-ego abducts our thinking, not some outside person. Therefore, we must pay attention to our own behavior, watch our body-ego and our vikaras, and refuse to call them “right” just because they are ours. If we say, “These desires will obviously remain; I will obviously have expectations from my children; if not from them, then from whom?”—this is precisely the false sannyasi dress: pretending to be right while actually hiding our vices.
To “put on the sannyasi guise” here means: to put a false covering over ourselves. As long as body-ego lives in us, we will keep wrapping ourselves in such false coverings, and as long as we do that, our inner purity cannot remain safe; one day or another, it will definitely be looted. And we all do one thing all the time: we react. Reaction itself is a vikara, not a healthy thing. But we justify even our reactions: “I had to react; he said such a thing.”
So, take any vikara in your life—desire, anger, greed, moha, pride, jealousy, competition, rivalry. Today, we live in these vikaras and still call them okay: “I have to compete, otherwise how will I move ahead?” Effort, hard work, striving to grow—these are fine. But pulling someone else down so that we can go up—that is a vikara. We should not drag others down; we should move forward by our own effort.
In this way, every day, we are deceiving ourselves. That is Ravana wearing the sannyasi’s robe.