Because we are not ready!
If it were so easy to get ‘Enlightenment’, every other Tom, Dick and Harry would have got ‘It’. This ‘Awakening’ or ‘Nirvana’ or God/Self-Realization, and all other prevalent similes or synonyms for it, are thrown our way every now and then. More now than ever, we are subjected to much cat-calling in God’s name.
Talk is cheap.
There was this fellow, an Indian, who asked a saint if the latter could give ‘It’ to him. The sage asked in turn, “Can you take it?” This was enough for the former to start foul-mouthing the seer; who this fellow felt had insulted him.
“Who’s better qualified than me to get it?” This guy fumed.
After all, he reasoned, he had spent many a year searching for What Is. Later on, this guy, who has passed away now, came to be known as some sort of a rebel guru while in Europe. A paranormal experience of body-less-ness was all that came his way during his life time. This was trigger enough to set him off against all spiritual teachers. Denouncing all and sundry, this gentleman died without getting anywhere near knowing The Truth.
Then there are these other chaps, who, in their own words, got it one fine day. Just like that; sitting on their behinds. One of them, a Jewish man, said while wondering about it, he suddenly got it that “All is me!” It can be thus read, so written in the ancient spiritual texts of India. The other god-man, an Indian, cited a similar experience. Both are now-days rather big names in this ‘Baba-hood’ of modern times.
“Who are you?” One madman asked another. “I am the king!” The latter replied. “But I never vacated the throne!” The former said indignantly.
Enlightenment does not come “just like that!”
One fine day somebody might “feel’, like these so-called ‘enlightened’ fellows that they are ‘It’. Another may get it into his-her head that he-she is the “hidden messiah”. Throughout history, we have enough of these “messengers of god” cropping up now and then in our midst. Others might, at some crazy ‘other-worldly’ moment, get the overwhelming urge “within” that they are the incarnation of God. We in India have enough of these kinds of ‘avatar’.
Seeking and finding ‘It’ is a humbling process.
Ego is the bane of Enlightenment. This is why the most intelligent of the people do not get it. Bigger their worldly achievements lesser are their ‘other worldly’ attainments. This is the rule than the exception in the Science of Spirituality.
Humility goes a long way in mysticism. The ancient Sufis rose above the limited potential and parochial propensity of their parental ism because of an abundance of this ‘humility’ quotient in their being. Their single-minded devotion and surrender to That Which Is got so inculcated in them that they ‘cut-off their heads’ and bowed to ‘It’. This single act of utter ‘garibi’, of being ‘poor’ in the heart, mind and soul got them the ‘riches’ of the ‘kingdom’: the abode of Alpha and Omega ‘within’.
Enlightenment is a ‘physical’ happening.
It does not descend as a theory upon the seeker. It is no ‘feeling’. A mental processing, an intellectualization of some academic too it is not. “God spoke to me!” This bull-o-shenanigan is not ‘It’. This-that avatar-angel, fancy-fairy, guru-god, mesmerism-messiah or gaudy god-man’s ‘blah-blah’ baloney does not smile or speak ‘There’.
The Eternal Code of Spirit gets ‘broken’ in this very-very personal, ‘material’ and ‘live’ phenomenon at ‘That’ practical moment of timelessness. “I am all”; this mystical, momentous moment of The Eternal Truth is no sudden fancy of a hallucinating mind. It is a metaphysical but ‘edible’ self-experience of the humble kind.
Self of All is ‘That’.
Whatsoever is Existence is ‘It’. The seen-unseen is but a cloud in its sky; here today gone tomorrow. Yet, ‘It’ stays forever. Call ‘it’ God. Say nothing. Telling or not, changes not The Reality. It is the DNA of Spirit. It is ‘this’. It is ‘that’. There is nothing without ‘It’. In the Beginning it is. In the End is it. It is the “I Am” of whatsoever is; here, there, anywhere.
Catch ‘It’ if you can!
A simple mind has more chances of getting ‘It’ than a sophisticated one because the latter is too full of its own self. It does not let go. A simple, humble man of God would, in all probability, reach a better mystical understanding of Which Is than a haughty one. This is why the so-called rationalists and raving-n-ranting egocentrics never get a single ‘other worldly’ experience in their entire life. They come crying; die decrying.
Majority of us never get What Is.
It is always going to be so. A Jesus shall most probably be nailed to the cross in most of the societies. A Sufi like Mansur Al Hallaj shall be skinned and cut to pieces by the dumb lot. Sorry figures without sophisticated spiritual sense and sensibility will always project themselves as avatars, god-men, messiahs and messengers of this-that ‘god’ of their ancestors. Those unable to get any verifiable personal mystical experience, of the higher kind, shall in all ages through think, drink and sink in their own mind-made theories of and about God.
Survival of the fittest is true in spirituality.
One who is not fit enough for humility, ‘hath’ not. This one gets not. The egotists, fundamentalists, bookish cysts, theorists and scientists who do not ‘kill’ their ego, shall not till The Code of What Is. This is the first rule of engagement for getting the ‘hand-maiden’ of God: Enlightenment.
Go on crying! Die crying!
For a glimpse of Truth.
This is the “Key of Knowledge.” Who knows, you may go smiling!
