Pinnacle Of Spirituality

Author(s): Kumarpal Desai
Publisher: Raj Saubhag Satsang Mandal

Page 30

7. Yearning for Detachment. Ohrimad came to his grandfather with the question: "What is death ?"
Panchanbhai was unsure how best to answer the question and did not want to frighten Shrimad. In an attempt to divert his attention, he told Shrimad that he would answer his questions after he had his lunch.
Shrimad however was not so easily diverted, and insisted that he should have his question answered first. His grandfather at last gave in, explaining: "Amichand's passing away means that he will neither speak nor walk, nor eat, nor drink. His soul has left the body. His body will be taken to the cremation grounds to be burnt."
In order to properly understand the nature of death, Shrimad quietly went to the crematorium and climbed up a tree from which he could see the cremation. The dead body was burning on a funeral pyre, while a few people stood or sat around it.
At this sight, his heart was filled with revulsion. How was it possible that a person who showed him so much love could be burnt like this? How cruel can these people be to burn such a fine and good man ? He began to wonder: if the body was still there, what was the nature of the substance that had left ? As he thought along these lines, it was as though a veil had been removed, and he began to see some of his past lives. Later in his life, he saw the fort of Junagadh, and he remembered even more past lives. He had experienced Jati Smaran Gnan, the knowledge of previous lives, and as a result, Shrimad experienced a great sense of detachment towards material and transient objects.
"Looking back with my inner knowledge, I cannot see even one moment in which this Soul has not been wandering in the cycle of birth and death, or in which the mind has been calm, and so the Soul has forgotten inner peace. This memory is constantly with me and it is thus a cause for great detachment. What more can I say? Recalling the past lives in which I wandered in folly, how should I live now ? That is what I think about. That I do not want to be born again at all is now firmly established in my heart. When a thoughtful Soul thinks of moments of anxiety, illness or of problems, when it thinks of worldly life, then the Soul's false identification with transient objects naturally declines. Possessiveness and delusion become weaker, and the inclination arises to seek out the ageless, immortal and eternal substance which is the Soul. Whosoever has recalled the many lives of stress, illness and the pain of death and rebirth, and has in the past life heard the causes of the Souls wandering directly from a Self-realised person, is keen to be free from all these traps and to follow only the right path which leads to Moksha." The young Shrimad thus possessed the sort of detachment which even monks find difficult to attain.