An extract from Stories that Illumine the Way

As spiritual students, we are blessed with an abundance of stories and parables handed down by the masters of all the spiritual traditions. These stories have one purpose only. It is to deepen our spiritual understanding and encourage us to hasten our steps towards the great goal of life, spiritual illumination. Here, for example, is an anecdote told by the Islamic mystic, Sheikh Saadi:

One night in the desert of Mecca, from great want of sleep, I was deprived of all power to stir. I reclined my head on the earth, and desired the camel-driver not to disturb me. 'How far shall the feet of the poor man proceed when the camel is weary of his load? Whilst the body of the fat man is becoming lean, the lean man may die of fatigue.' He replied: 'O brother, Mecca is in front and robbers are in the rear. By proceeding you escape; and if you sleep you die.'

On the face of it, this is simply a call to live prudently and take precautions for one's personal security. It echoes the biblical proverb that it is folly for a sailor to allow himself to fall asleep while reclining on the top of the ship's mast. But consider the saying: 'O brother, Mecca is in front and robbers are in the rear. By proceeding you escape; and if you sleep you die.' This is reminding man that life has a sublime goal which is within reach, and that we can never allow ourselves to stop on our quest until the goal of inner enlightenment is reached. If we live sleepily, unmindful of the goal, the robbers of day and night will steal away what is left of our life, and we shall miss our chance. But if we sustain the high aim, our life will be lit by ever-deepening insight.

Another story about Sheikh Saadi makes the point that the mind can be trained and transformed on spiritual lines, even if the task seems daunting to start with. One day he was drawing water from an old iron well. As he was hauling up the bucket, he noticed that the rope was made up of grasses bound together. He also noticed deep ruts in the iron wall of the well, so that the ropes naturally slipped into these ruts when being tugged upwards. And he reflected: 'Such soft grasses, yet they have cut such deep ruts in iron. I am a man of some forty years, and my character is hardened by life's experiences. Yet if I can adopt some simple form of spiritual practice, then, little by little, my mind will be reformed.' He was encouraged, and turned to the spiritual life.

To realize our higher spiritual nature, we have sometimes to defy worldly conventions. In the life aimed at material success and social acceptability, outer appearances have always been of immense importance. We are likely to be judged, not simply at face value, but at clothes value! But we are far more than our clothes.

This point is made in a tale about the Italian 'wise fool', Guifa. Guifa did not mind how he looked: that was the problem, so no one invited him to parties. But one day, his mother dressed him smartly and he was sent to a celebration at a neighbouring farmhouse. Everyone looked at their surprise guest. They were even more surprised to see that he ate all he could with one of his hands, and with the other he was stuffing the food through the button-holes and into the pockets of his fine robes, saying: 'Eat, my clothes! For you received the invitation to come here, not I!'

It seems a silly story that makes an all-too-obvious point: that man is more than his clothing. But this insight is an important step to visualizing and realizing that the body, as well as its clothes, is what the yogis call 'not-the-Self'; it is an instrument used by the Self to achieve certain ends in life. This idea is vividly presented in the Bhagavad Gita, where the body itself is compared to a set of clothes that will eventually wear out. What really matters is the spiritual life we have awakened in ourselves...