20. Total Awareness Leads To Enlightenment

Listen to this truth: the moment we imbibe a single dimension of the truth in any way, if we catch a single idea and imbibe it honestly, truthfully, we have caught the right thread. Just one aspect of the truth is enough. It can do wonders. There are so many paths that lead us to the ultimate truth.

Periapuranam, meaning the Great Epic, is a book in Tamil, which describes the life of 63 enlightened masters. If we study the life of these masters, we will be surprised. We will find that some of them have not done anything that seems worthwhile. In our opinion, they would have done nothing at all. They would have faced no challenges in their lives. Nothing remarkable would have happened in their lives. In fact most of them would have simply plucked flowers, offered it to God and achieved enlightenment! Understand: they all lived with complete devotion and awareness towards God. So that was enough. We may claim the same thing of ourselves but it is not true. Our minds are too complex to be able to do this. In those days it was possible.

What we do is not important; what matters is how honest we are with our actions. When the masters offered flowers, they were true and honest in their action. We also offer flowers everyday and do all possible things to please God but we are not enlightened as yet.

It is because we are not honest. When these masters pluck flowers to offer to God, they are thinking of Him to whom they are offering the flowers. They are totally devoted to the thought of the deity with nothing else distracting them.

When we pluck flowers, even if it is to offer to our favorite deity, we are thinking of something else, somebody else. I have seen people who do rituals regularly. During the ritual, they will be thinking of something else. Their thoughts will be either with their office work or some thing else in their life.

Enlightenment leads to thoughtlessness. I was traversing the Omkara hills on Buddha Purnima night when I had my ultimate spiritual experienceenlightenment. It was a full moon night and I was sitting on the banks of the river Narmada, totally relaxed. I had given up all my meditation techniques, mantras and penance, just a week earlier. I decided to relax totally and let go of everything. I simply sat and enjoyed nature's beauty. Around midnight, the relaxation became deeper and deeper and the thoughts became less and less. The inner chattering totally stopped and an unimaginable ecstasy took over me. There was no body, no boundary. I became one with the cosmic energy, the Divine. I became forever blissful.

Our being knows the truth. We only need to open our hearts and minds to it. Once we begin to live in the truth, we will expand and cover the entire universe.