1. The true mark of self-realisation
By
Pavan Choudary
Tere andar saanch jo, bahar naahi janaav,
Jaanan hara jaani hai, antar gati ka bhav
(Kabir condemns bragging even about the truth in your heart. Your truth is
yours alone. The knowledgeable have the ability to sense the machinations of
the human mind on their own and your true heart will be seen by them
anyways.)
Why do we brag about our spiritual realisations?
Why do we want to tell others about our spiritual growth?
There are two reasons for this.
Either it is for one-up-man-ship: somewhere we want the other to know that not
only you but I am also spiritual and maybe, more spiritual. Such competition is
very prevalent in India. We cannot tolerate the fact that God is bestowing his
mercies and revealing his essence to our neighbour and not to us. Which is why,
whenever the conversation drifts towards such issues every Indian comes up
with his own realisations. And now, the West is also catching this virus.
The other reason, why we talk about our spiritual realisations is more subtle. We
use the talk of our spiritual realisations to ensnare other people, to attract them to
us. These are label talks. They label us. They are meant to tell the other person that
you must really be very virtuous and that is why God is so close to you and
which is why you are having all these realisations. So we set up our candidature
through such talks.
But Kabir knows that the gains from either of this (through one-up-man-ship or
attracting people through your spiritual realisations) are far lower than the cost
of doing so. Because post verbalizing there are two realities that present
themselves - one is, what you realised and the other is, what you have spoken.
Now because you cannot exactly translate what you have realised, into words,
the words lose their essence. This is because the realisation is very fluid or
gossamer fine and words are very concrete. When translated into words much is
lost in the translation. The authenticity of the spiritual realisation now is under
attack by its description. Now it will be difficult for you to feel that spiritual
2. reality with the same intensity again, because inaccurate words will come in the
way. These words have not disappeared as sound waves. They have become
sound karma. As sticky sound waves they are hovering around in your mind. This
is the main reason why Kabir says that you should not speak about the truth in your
heart.
He also consoles you by saying that the knowledgeable have an X-ray vision.
They will know if you are a realised soul. They will peer through the fog of
machinations and pretensions and see your heart. If it is true, they will connect
enduringly with you.
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