By: Mrs. Sita Shri
A story narrated by Sri Upasani Maharaj to Sri Narasimha Swamiji about a young woman who came to Shirdi to seek enlightenment from Sai Baba is about how she is so resolute and steadfast that she doesn’t engage with any mundane matter whatsoever. She stays by herself at Sathe Wada so that the milieu would be conducive and perhaps, even catalyze the process of enlightenment. Much to her chagrin, enlightenment eluded her even after a committed and sincere effort on the path. One full moon night, she was walking, holding a frail bamboo pail of water gingerly in her hands and looking at the reflection of the moon in the water. All of a sudden, the pail broke. The water poured down. There was no water and hence, no moon. This was the moment of her enlightenment
Above picture details: (1 ) Godavari Ma, (2) With Meher Baba at Sakori Ashram, (3) With Upasni Maharaj
When one walks towards enlightenment, seeking it from outside as a destination with space and time coordinates, it seems to go farther and farther. Enlightenment is not a salubrious hill station or railway station at the junction of a particular longitude and latitude that can be reached after a certain time. One ends up walking in circles even after a passionate and demanding journey.
All of us are in a paradoxical situation –where we hold on to the delicate sheaths of mind and body as if they are the vehicles to draw us to enlightenment. More often than not, they lead us astray, far away from truth and realization. While in reality, shedding attachments to body and mind is the first step to enlightenment.
Enlightenment is understood as the state of realization of the ultimate truth when the individual consciousness expands and is in complete synchrony with the Supreme Consciousness. It is an undistinguished state where the individual experiences the Supreme within. This is the realization of the formless existence within the illusory form or the limitless reality within the limited corporeal existence of the individual. The veil of ignorance is drawn aside, and the truth stands revealed in a magical moment.
As the story of the woman ascetic conveys, enlightenment has to come from within and it is not available outside waiting for us to reach it. The answer lies embedded within us and it is for us to realize it. We are but a manifestation of the single source or reality and that is hardcoded within each manifested form.
When existence revolves obsessively around the mundane and the matters of mind and body, lifetime fizzles out like grains of sand held in a fist, without truth being realized. The frail bamboo basket could figuratively be taken as our body and the water and the reflection of the moon, as our mind and thoughts. Once an individual break free from identification with body, mind, and thoughts, untruth vanishes, paving the way for truth; darkness vanishes, letting the light shine within and mortality dissolves in the boundless ocean of immortality.
Talking about enlightenment, one thinks of the metaphor of Krishna’s flute which is a message for us to be like a piece of hollow, empty bamboo; ready to receive the waves of the eternal, blissful breath of the Supreme Consciousness. The state of the bamboo flute alludes to an enlightened state.
Hence, enlightenment is not an inert piece of knowledge, but realization sprung from a deep experience within.
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