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urge to visit some Hindu holy men to see what sort of state they were
in. I encouraged him to join me on one of my visits to the Maharshi
since I could not imagine a better example of a Hindu saint. At
Tiruvannamalai we sat in the hall together for some time, looking at the
Maharshi. Then the pir got up, saluted him and walked out. When I
caught up with him and asked him why he had left so suddenly, he said,
‘I have smelled this one flower in the garden of Hinduism. I don’t
need to smell any of the others. Now I am satisfied and can go back to
Baghdad.’
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This man was a jnani and in those few minutes with the
Maharshi he was able to satisfy himself that the flowering of jnana
in Hindus was no different from the highest experience attained by
Islamic saints.
Such
enlightened people are very rare. In the last forty years or so I have
met thousands of sadhus, swamis, gurus, etc. I have been to
Kumbha Melas which millions of pilgrims attended; I have been to many of
the big ashrams in India; I have toured the Himalayas, meeting many
reclusive hermits there; I have met yogis with great siddhis,
men who could actually fly. But in all the years since my realisation I
have only met two men, apart from the Maharshi himself, who convinced me
that they had attained full and complete Self-realisation. This Muslim
pir was one. The other was a relatively unknown sadhu I
met by the side of a road in Karnataka.
I was waiting for a bus in an isolated location near Krishnagiri, a town
located midway between Tiruvannamalai and Bangalore. An extremely
disreputable-looking man approached me. He wore tattered, filthy clothes
and had open wounds on his legs which he had neglected so badly they
were infested with maggots. We talked for a while and I offered to
remove the maggots from his leg and give him some medicine which would
help his wounds to heal. He wasn’t interested in having any assistance
from me. ‘Leave the maggots where they are,’ he said. ‘They are
enjoying their lunch.’
Feeling that I couldn’t leave him in such a miserable condition, I
tore a strip off the shawl I was wearing and tied it round his leg so
that at least he could have a clean bandage. We said ‘good-bye’ and
he walked off into the nearby forest.
I had recognised this man to be a jnani and was idly speculating
on what strange karma had led him to neglect his body in such a way,
when a woman approached me. She had been selling iddlies
and dosas at a nearby roadside
stall.
‘You are a very lucky man,’ she said. ‘That was a great mahatma.
He lives in this forest but he almost never shows himself. People come
from Bangalore to have his darshan,
but he never allows anyone to find him unless he himself wants to meet
them. I myself sit here all day, but this is the first time I have seen
him in more than a year. This is the first time I have seen him approach
a complete stranger and start talking to him.’
I have digressed a little into the story of the bedraggled jnani
because he and the Muslim pir illustrate a couple of points that
I want to make. The first I have already alluded to. Though many people
have had a temporary direct experience of the Self, full and permanent
realisation is a very rare event. I say this from direct experience,
having seen, quite literally, millions of people who are on some form of
spiritual path.
The second point is also interesting, for it reflects great credit on
the Maharshi. Out of these people, the only three I have met since my
realisation who have satisfied me that they are jnanis,
it was the Maharshi alone who made himself available, twenty-four hours
a day, to anyone who wanted to see him. The Krishnagiri sadhu hid
in his forest; the Muslim pir, when he stayed at my house in
Madras, kept himself locked up and refused to see visitors who wanted to
see him. Of these three, the Maharshi alone was easy to find and easy to
approach.
My
own early visits demonstrate the point. He could have kept quiet on my
first two after-lunch visits and allowed his attendant to send me away.
Instead, sensing that I had an urgent problem, he allowed me to come in
and talk about the things that were bothering me. No one was ever denied
access to him because they were immature or unsuitable. Visitors and
devotees could sit in his presence for as long as they wanted, all of
them absorbing as much grace as they could assimilate. Through his jnana
alone, the Maharshi was a towering spiritual
giant. By making himself continuously available, the lustre of his
greatness shone even more.
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