Monday, July 4, 2011

What is Enlightenment and how to reach it ?

Beloved Guruji, I have been carrying this question within me for a long time that I would like to raise today. What is Enlightenment and how to reach it?
Guruji Sri Vast:
“Do you want to be enlightened or do you want to become a Guru? I can teach you both. One must know what exactly they are looking for. Enlightenment is not something you wait for. Enlightenment is not something that you prepare for. When you prepare, you are postponing something to happen in the future. If you say you are going to be enlightened, you never get enlightened because it is not something you are going to be. It is something you are right now in this moment. If you prepare to be enlightened, you will experience only your intellectual ideas about what enlightenment is, or how the enlightened person is, and you want to become that idea. When you want to become something, you are denying what you are now, in this moment.
When you are denying your existence now, you are denying the God, because God will not happen in the future. God is happening now. It is not something you prepare and wait for. It is what you are communicating now, within you.
Enlightenment is not something exotic. It is the way of your nature. Enlightenment is not given by anyone to you. Enlightenment is not happening due to the grace of the Guru. If the enlightenment is given by someone to you, it is not your enlightenment. It becomes a borrowed idea. By doing that you stop your realization, because your ego is fed, and the ego claims; “Now I am enlightened by my master, by my Guru.” Now you do not have to go further, deep within you, because you are afraid of knowing the truth. You are afraid of liberation. You are afraid of you. Now your ego has won the game with the help of your Guru.
Can you say the enlightened teacher can come and enlighten you? To do that, the teacher must see you as unenlightened. If a teacher can see you as unenlightened, it shows that in the teacher’s world something is not enlightened, and that is you. And you are reducing yourself. You are degrading yourself from being God to being an unenlightened person, if your enlightenment depends on your Guru.
If the Guru is expecting you to worship the Guru, and expecting you to worship the picture of the Guru, that itself proves the ignorance of the Guru. The enlightened person will not recognize himself through the body. The enlightened person is formless. The enlightened person is beyond all forms, ideas, scriptures, theories, the past and the future. The enlightened person experiences the totality of his existence in every moment on the ground where he stands in that moment. He has no dogmas. He has nothing to hide. He doesn’t have any myths. He is there totally. He is not there to become something. He is not there waiting for something. He is not giving promises to your future. He is not there to experience something. He has no intention. No purpose. He is just there. He is busy in blooming. He is busy in being God. He has no time to prove himself because you are not there as a separate entity.
The life is happening on this planet, in this moment, through this body, to the Total. In this life you are here to experience this life form. By sitting here dreaming, another life forms in your mind. You may experience hallucinations as if you are flying. As if something is happening to you. This is happening in your mind, not to the Total. First of all, if you want to experience another life from another time, from another planet, why are you unnecessarily putting an effort to stick onto this life? Is that what you want?
When you go to a football ground, you are going to play football, not tennis. If you want to play tennis, you go to the tennis court. There is no confusion. The enlightened person is not the one who confuses. He is clear what he is there for. Did you ever see the great realized ones talk about other lives? No, because for them other lives do not exist. For them the past does not exist. Did you ever see any great master talk about the future? For them the future does not exist either. They are liberated from the past and the future. They are not here to tell stories.
You can prepare for something which is known to you. You can prepare for Christmas, because you know how Christmas is supposed to be and is going to be. This idea about Christmas is already in-built within you. And when Christmas comes you will experience that inbuilt idea which has nothing to do with the birth of Christ. It is just an idea, which you decided to experience on that day, on that occasion, with those songs.
Enlightenment cannot be prepared, because it is all about meeting the unknown within you. How can the known prepare for the unknown? The known prepares only for the known. You know about yourself and you know how you want to be. You know your past and you know how your future wants to be. You prepare your future. You can prepare your future, but you cannot prepare Enlightenment. Enlightenment is not happening in the future. Enlightenment is happening right now, in this moment. Whether you want it or not, it is happening. Can you not see the flower is flowering? Can you not see the wind is blowing? Can you not see waves are waving to the celebration of life which has no future? It has no past. It has no intention.
Look within yourself, and ask: “What is happening?” Are you free, or are you changing the colors of the Ego? Can you say I am an artist, I am a doctor, I am a politician and I am enlightened? Is it one of your degrees, given by the Guru University?
Liberate, totally liberate… until the question of liberation disappears within you. Flow, just flow with the life, in that flow you and me will disappear. The comparison of your inner and outer world will disappear. Without knowing you will realize you are already there.
Enlightenment
Satsang Excerpt


“ Liberate, totally liberate…
Until the question of liberation disappears within you. Flow, just flow with the life. In that flow you and me will disappear. The comparison of your inner and outer world will disappear. Without knowing you will realize you are already there.”


Sri Vast International Foundation, Sweden, 2011

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