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58 An Unprecedented Moment
Wt the age of 28, on the first day of Jeth sud VS 1952, Shrimad formally retired from the business partnership. He handed over the management of the Company and transferred all his wealth to his younger brother Mansukhbhai. After retirement he had much more time for contemplation in solitude, although he would occasionally have to visit Mumbai to satisfy his brother, as well as his old partner Revashankarbhai.
Shrimad had already achieved inner detachment. He now began the process of becoming more outwardly detached. His lifestyle, which had always been very simple, became much more austere. He slept with neither a mattress nor a blanket and thus quietly bore mosquito bites and those of other insects. He had reduced his diet to very basic and plain food. He consumed very little and on certain days would eat only once. These austerities were a prelude to total renunciation. His goal was to attain the state of nirgrantha, when the soul is free of all granthi (knots), from the passions and delusion that cause worldly bondage. He wished to realise this state in both its inner and outer senses.
In VS 1953 whilst tending to his sick mother, he was inspired, at the age of twentynine, to compose a poem Apurva Avsar," "Unprecendent Moment," an expression of his intense yearning to be totally detached.
When will that Unprecedented Moment come? When will all the inner and outer knots be gone? When will we, having broken all such strong bonds,
Be on the path which all Great Souls have walked upon? This poem is a true and moving reflection of Shrimad's inner life. Jain agamas list fourteen stages (gunasthanak) of spiritual development, ranging from delusion (mithyatva) to the final stage of the liberated Soul (Siddha). Shrimad has described the states of the Soul as it ascends this spiritual ladder from the fourth to the fourteenth rung. The fourth gunasthanak is Samyag Darshan, the first direct experience of the Soul, instilling faith in its existence, and marking the true beginning of spiritual growth, when the "knots” begin to be loosened.
Gandhiji was prompted to include this composition in his well-known anthology of devotional verses, Ashram bhajanāwali for the very reason that it is charged with rare spiritual insights into the path to Enlightenment and inspires a longing for that “Unprecedented Moment."
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