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Chapter 17: Statement of the Pupil's Enlightenment
I gained unprecedented sense by the teaching of your honor; I realized the true Self within myself and got rid of ignorance.
- 119
Explanation & Discussion:
The pupil acknowledges his debt to the Guru, by whose teaching he attained enlightenment. As a matter of fact, enlightenment abides within and is not to be gained from outside. One has to create the background in which it can be manifested. In other words, one has to be worthy of such manifestation. Such worthiness is termed as Upädän. Since the pupil's Upädän was ready, the teaching of the Guru became instrumental in bringing it out. The pupil is, however, aware that but for the Guru, he could not have manifested it. As such, he acknowledges allegiance to the Guru for gaining enlightenment.
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He starts with the first Fundamental relating to the existence of the soul. But humble as he is, he does not state that he is enlightened. He uses the term "Bhän", meaning the sense of Self. Until how, he was groping in the dark and was moving about without knowing the right path. He was trying to comprehend the Self by external modes. That was his ignorance. That ignorance has been removed by the instructions of the Guru and now he has been able to realize that the soul abides within the body. It has come to his experiential level that the relation of the soul to the body is comparable to that of a sword to its sheath or that of a coconut kernel to its outside shell. He had never gained this sense before, so he calls it the unprecedented sense.
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