THIS AWAKENING: A SHORT STORY

He had read all the books but at the end of the day had only his own experience of it, which as it happened was beyond description. 

The closest in words to what he had experienced, words here being an approximation, just pointers, was the Atman/Brahman description in Vedanta.  Indeed, for him it felt as if his Atman had awakened into Brahman, remembering that, ultimately, Atman and Brahman are one. 

Which was an important point in itself, since the destiny of an Atman is to awaken into Brahman, and certainly it felt that way to him when it happened, a sense of completion, and a long-in-coming completion at that.  It was like, "At last!"  And with it he felt "done," as it were.  He'd crossed the finish line.  And with this came the knowledge that he did not have to live any longer, as it startlingly felt to him, much less have to come back and do it all again, in another lifetime or more.

His question through all this, though, was how did it come about.  Was it something that he did or something that happened of itself.

At first blush, it seemed his own doing, given his life-long obsession with spirituality, especially with Eastern spirituality.  Yet, here, as he contemplated it, looking back over his life in its entirety, the sixty-six years of it, it seemed to him that he only appeared to be the cause of the awakening. 

So much so did he feel this, in fact, that he could only conclude that his life had been lived by something else rather than by he himself.  Or both he and something else had lived it possibly.

It seemed to him, furthermore, that every detail of his life, down to the most minute element, had been solely for the purpose of this awakening.

This was not to say that he, his egoic self, had nothing whatsoever to do with the awakening, only that it was going to happen no matter what he did or didn't do.  This was his Atman's time, to use the Vedantist model again, and it was going to happen no matter what.

And now that it was done, it was done.  The analogy of a chick hatching from its shell was a good way to describe the finality of it, how it felt to him.  Once the bird hatched, it was hatched.  There was no turning back.  It could not go back into its shell.

But then the next question was, now what?  Was there something that he was supposed to do at this point, or that the Atman was supposed to do?  Sri Ramakrishna said that once awakened, a person could do whatever he wanted, the same view Zen masters held, which was a relief on the one hand but a source of  frustration on the other.

He concluded that he needed a devotional practice of some kind.  At the very least, he needed a schedule of meditation.  Yet, after trying devotion and meditation, he found that they were inadequate, a  poor substitute for that extraordinary initial experience, the awakening, that left him so searching for words. 

Which was when he remembered something that Swami Prabhavananda had said.  The swami stated that if one wanted to feel spiritually involved, he need not engage in elaborate devotional ceremonies of every kind, or in hours of intense meditation, but, from time to time, should simply recall the awakened state.  It was sufficient.

What made this successful for him was the question, who was it that was recalling?  It brought him back to who, at the end of the day, was the real player in all this.  And it wasn't him.