7. How to get enlightened? I want to…real bad and urgently🔗

Question is a word. Quest is a feeling. Man is born as a quest. The rest of Existence cannot reflect the Divine like man can. Man is like a mirror. He has the choice to face and reflect the Divine or to turn away. Man can make a conscious choice, which is why he can grow. Man can choose to realize the Divine through his human form. No other being in Existence has this choice.

If these words, ‘How do I get enlightened? I want to… real bad and u r g e n t l y, ’ have come out, if this question has come out as a deep quest, then you don’t need anything. Just boil, let the whole being burn with this quest. That is enough. Nothing else needs to be done. Let this boiling be intense.

Allow this boiling. Allow this burning. Allow this intensity. Allow this urgency. Let the urge become urgent. Let the question become your quest. Let it just eat your ego, eat your inner space.

People ask me, ‘Have you been enlightened by the divine grace or by your effort or by your quest?’ I tell them, your having the quest is the first sign that you are having the divine grace. Unless you have the divine grace, you will not have the quest.

Understand, this quest or seeking is like a seed. It is like a seed feeling suffocated inside the shell. See, unless the life that is inside the seed feels suffocated inside the shell, it won’t open up and become a tree.

The moment the seed starts feeling that it should open up, the moment it starts feeling the seeking, the urgency and the quest to open up to become a tree, it means that already the tree inside the seed has started expressing itself.

If you have the feeling that you should get enlightened, the Buddha in you has opened his eyes. The Buddha in you has started waking up. All you need to do is open your eyes!

Allow this seeking. From morning till night let it boil, let it create a deep dissatisfaction in you. Let every pore in your skin, every nerve in your body, every cell in you vibrate with that intensity. Let it swallow all your depressions you may have in life. In life you may have so many other depressions and sufferings of not having so many things. Let all those sufferings be swallowed by this one suffering.

A beautiful Zen story:

A Zen student was intensely studying under her master but she was not able to experience true meditation for a very long time. One full moon night, she was carrying a bucket of water suspended on a bamboo stick. She saw the reflection of the moon in the bucket. Suddenly, the bamboo broke. The water fell out of the bucket. The reflection of the moon disappeared and so did her ego.

When the seeking is intense, it will remove the juice from your ego. The green grass becomes like a haystack. Just a match is enough to burn the whole haystack down. The Ultimate can happen in a split second through a simple happening.

So understand: let this seeking, let this quest, your saying, ‘How to get enlightened? I want to…real bad and urgently’, let this seeking burn all your other sufferings, all your other depressions, all your other desires, all your other concerns about life.

Let it happen and suddenly you will see that the seeking suddenly disappears, it is not there. When the seeking disappears, you are enlightened. You have achieved what you are seeking.

If you really want to experience life, if you really want to know the ultimate mystery of Existence, if you want to dive into the ocean of bliss, then the way into it is intensity. Be intense in whatever you do.

Let you dissolve in it. Do not be partial. Be integrated in yourself. If you dance, dance so totally that you become the dance. There will be no dancer remaining then, only the dance remains. If you paint, paint so intensely that the painter disappears in the painting and see how that piece of art becomes so exquisite. When the ego dissolves, the false sense of identity disappears and you can see the flow of the intelligent and total energy of Existence through you.

There is a beautiful story on Bodhidharma⁹, the enlightened master who took Zen Buddhism to China, Japan and other parts of Asia.

It is said that Bodhidharma sat for nine years facing the wall of his cave. He just sat silently, not doing anything for nine years. His legs withered away as there was no movement at all. He would not accept any disciple unless he showed a burning intensity. After nine years his first disciple, Hui Kujo, came. It is said that he cut off his hand and offered it to Bodhidharma, saying,

‘Master, please accept this. If you don’t look at me now, I will cut off my head as well.’ Bodhidharma turned to face the disciple. He said, ‘The man has come to who I can deliver my message.’

Kabir says beautifully, ‘If thou art a true seeker, thou shall at once see Me.’ How can you identify whether you are a true seeker? If the fire is there, if the intensity is there, if the urgency is there, and if the quest is there, then you are a seeker.

As Kabir says, what is important is the genuine desire. What matters is the intensity, passion, sincerity and integrated seeking. If you have this, you will ‘see’ the Divine surely.

If you are not able to, be very clear, your intensity is not yet complete. You are calling Him half heartedly.

Many of us claim, ‘I have been praying so intensely. What is the way to see god?’ Just look closely at yourself. Is god your very first priority? For most of us, more often than not, god is somewhere down in the list. Actually, you feel, ‘If I have good food to eat, if I have a house to live in, after I provide for my family, and if there is time, I will add god to the list of what I seek.’ God is the last in the big list of desires. Of course, the list never ends.

It is a vicious circle. God can never make it to the top of the list because your desires are endless. You do some action to fulfill a desire. The seeds of many further actions are sown in that action because you are not total in that action. Then, god gets pushed further down the list.

A small story: Once somebody asked a master, ‘How old are you?’ He replied, ‘Three hundred years’. The man could not believe it. He said in surprise, ‘What! You hardly look sixty.’ The master replied, ‘Physically, by the calendar time, I am indeed sixty. But when it comes to living, I have lived life at least five times more intensely than the average person.’

What matters is not the quantity of life, but the quality, the intensity of living.