THE EXPERIENCE OF SAINTS
The extraordinary beauty of leading a truly spiritual life, lies in getting the same spiritual experiences that saints and sages have had. The lives of sages and saints within the past two thousand years are replete with repetitions of almost the same experiences, though they happened many centuries apart.
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Take for example, the lives of saints Vipranarayana and Tulsidas. Each one was, to begin with, an ordinary man revelling in the sensual pleasures of married life. On one occasion, their wives spurned them with almost identical words, “If only you had turned the same burning attention to God for the happiness you repeatedly long for from my body, you would have attained him long back!” On hearing these words of wisdom, their desire got directed towards divine devotion. Instantaneously, Vipranarayana was transformed as saint Vipranarayana and Tulsidas blossomed into saint Tulsidas. These are but two examples out of the innumerable. And how remarkable they are! If we contemplate deeply on this, a true spiritual experience will dawn, and instantly too.
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The only essential for such a spiritual experience to occur in our life, is to grasp the essence and deep truth underlying the following three symbolic delineations:
(1) Hot ice cream: Ice cream is a product of concentrated chilling and freezing. Can heat have any place there at all?
(2) You cannot have the cake and eat it too: If one eats the cake, the palm which held it will obviously become empty!
(3) The boat to Yaazhpaanam: When we cross the sea from southern tip of India to northern tip of Sri Lanka, at a particular place, we can see the Indian shore but not the shore of Sri Lanka. When the boat moves a little further, the coast of Sri Lanka can be seen but not the Indian coast. From this we have the ideogram, the boat to Yaazhpaanam.
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These analogies are especially true when it comes to spiritual life. One can either have the variety of the world or the solitary silence of the Self! Never ever, the two together! The freedom of choice is always ours. Thus, an extraordinary and beautiful spiritual experience, as experienced by saints through centuries, awaits us at our inner threshold even now.
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