You Are Looking For What You Have Never Lost

You Are Looking For What You Have Never Lost : 

Ten foolish men forded a stream and on reaching the other shore, one of them began to count in order to make sure that none was missing. However, while counting the others he overlooked counting himself. He thus came to the conclusion that one among them was missing. Another man, thinking that the first one had not done the counting correctly, did the counting again. He too missed himself and counted only nine. They were all unanimous in their opinion that they were only nine and that one of them had been lost.

A pall of gloom descended on them and they began to weep loudly. Seeing their predicament, a wayfarer volunteered to help them. He began to count each one of them, loudly uttering “one, two, and three” and so on. And the moment he uttered ‘ten’, the ten men heaved a sigh of relief and profusely thanked the wayfarer for having ‘found’ the missing man.

The question is: Was the tenth man ever lost? By knowing that he had been there all the while, did they acquire any new knowledge? The cause of their grief thus was their ignorance — their supposition that one of them had gone missing -- and not the actual loss of one of them.

True sadhana or meditation therefore lies in eradicating the wrong understanding that one is not realised. Dawn of jnana or true knowledge does not create a new being for you; it only removes the state of your ignorance. Bliss is not added to your nature; it is merely revealed to you as your natural state which is eternal and imperishable.

“You are looking for what you have never lost. How can you attain what you already have? The Self is already working inside you; through what action are you going to find it? We meditate only in order to make the intellect pure enough to reflect the effulgence of the Self”.

Om Namah Shivay.