Attachment

A certain spiritual master Swami Vividhananda lived on the banks of the Ganga a few years ago. He had a number of disciples hailing from different faiths like Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam,Christianity etc. Although he himself had  attained perfection and maturity spiritually, he was engaged in hard ascetical practices because he was always eager to uplift the poor and the downtrodden. After a disciple reached the highest level of spiritual excellence, he would send him out into the world with the responsibility to help the worldly wise to attain inner peace and true joy.  

There were four disciples living in the ashram for an unusually long time. They prayed to God day and night. The Hindu disciple Shyama Charan never touched food without reciting some chapter from the holy Geeta. The Buddhist disciple Sudipta was vastly learned and was a man of profound erudition and had all the Buddhist texts stored in his prodigious memory. The Muslim disciple Reheman had thoroughly memorised the Quran and recited its verses day and night. The Christian scholar Bob had got the Bible by heart. In reality, the four of them had set up a big library in the ashram. The common people who came to the ashram happily read those religious texts and gained knowledge and admired the master and his disciples.  

But it was a matter of surprise that the great master was never seen reading any religious texts.

All the four disciples were best friends and always spent a good deal of time together. They were the most studious of the disciples but they were ashamed to think that many illiterate disciples had come to the ashram and had gone back with the master's approval and certifications. They thought their master who was neither well-read nor highly educated was perhaps jealous of their vast and profound learning and erudition and that was why he deliberately ignored them. He was an arrogant autocratic master. They made fun of their master's lack of education. They thought being himself almost illiterate, he never asked his disciples to study holy texts. He only told them to do various types of work for him and to meditate the rest of the time only in the night which they found painful and had to sleep in the daytime.  

One day the master called them to his presence and said:"Go out and beg from house to house for a living. Come back to the ashram only after the completion of 18 months!"

They were all bewildered!

"But promise us our due after we have carried out your order. . O Master. . !" they entreated.  

The master said instantly: "Yes, all of you will be rewarded. . . "

The four disciples wandered from place to place. The people in the surrounding countryside mistreated them. They suffered a good deal. When they returned, they were in rags. Their nails had grown long. With unkempt hair and long beards, they looked like vagabonds. They dropped at the feet of the master and cried bitterly. But their tears were tears of joy. They had all achieved their cherished goal, that's self-realisation.

The master embraced each of them lovingly and said: "My child if you had not been roughly treated by those people, your ego couldn't have been destroyed. All the four of you were wasting your most precious time on the study of your holy texts. Wherever you went, you experienced disappointment and humiliation. You slept on hard surfaces under trees and sometimes in the verandas of people who scared you away considering you bad characters. It was I who took every care to ensure that you suffered as much as I wanted. "

It seemed the disciples had acquired the wisdom to understand the master's pious and honest objective. They bowed to him in deep gratitude with tears welling from their sunken eyes.  

The master resumed: "Do you think God is sitting in heaven with the copies of the Geeta, Quran, Bible and other religious texts in hand? I have read the Geeta only once. I did so to match my findings with the contents of the Geeta. Your holy book is already there deep within you but without trying to read it, you were after the wisdom outside yourselves. True wisdom comes from inside you.

People read books for pleasure and also to show off how learned and educated they are!

True religion has nothing to do with outward appearances and holy books. It's strictly hundred percent internal. You know all humans have the same insides and hence they are bound to experience the same truth deep within themselves. The mischief starts when religion assumes external colours and characteristics. People build temples, churches, mosques, monasteries etc and indulge in cruel acts of separatism. All human beings have the same physical attributes and emotions. So as all of us have the same red blood, it would be  truly nice to have only one religion. If the reigning faiths of today disappeared, the Earth would be the true and real heaven where all human beings won't fight with each other but rejoice in their agreement. . . !"

After that, the four disciples never took any interest in the holy texts. They devoted all their time to meditation to acquire spiritual power and took all kinds of precaution to avoid all sorts of attachment to knowledge, wisdom, holy books, their families and lastly to their bodies by denying themselves bodily comforts. They experienced true inner peace.

Their master said to them, "I bless you all. Each of you will experience the extinction of the senses in you. You can't know the taste of your food without your will; you can't feel the presence of your solid body except when you try to do so; you can't be distracted seeing beautiful women; you can meditate intensely in the noisiest marketplace most placidly. You will have full control over your sense of smell. You can't smell anything good or bad without your own permission. No physical act can happen in your body without your will. I will be vastly pleased if you go to the worldly people and tell them that they belong to the same source, that it is everyone's primary duty to explore their own book of wisdom within themselves. Use your own wisdom, not knowledge from the books, to explain to the masses not to indulge in mutual hatred and communal violence. Din into them that there is only one religion because there is only one Almighty. Now it is time to come together and become united. The world has become a global village. You have to transform this village into a compact family with God as its head. "