Story 116 - The Price of Realization

There was man in India, famous, full of truth, mad with Divinity. He walked through the streets crying at the top of his voice, "O customers of Divinity, come." He used to go about selling Divinity. "O, customers of Divinity, O all desirous of God-consciousness, come; O ye that are heavy laden, come." He cried in the language of his country, and in that language Nam is the name given for God. He cried in his own language, “Nam le lo” which literally means, "I have an article to sell. Purchase it, O people, and that article is God", and he used the word Mam. Now Mam has two meaning; one meaning is God, and the other meaning of Mam is beautiful, bedecked, jeweled necklace; but that saint used the word Mam to mean god and not jewellery. One day while passing the streets selling Mam, God, a gentleman, who wanted to purchase a fine necklace, heard him crying through the streets, and he thought that this fellow must be an agent for some banker and wants to sell that necklace. When people in India are going to be married, very often they want very precious jewels for adorning themselves or their brides. The man asked where this hawker or sage lived and he went to his house and was amazed. The house of the hawker was very poor and he wondered how the house of a Nam-seller could be so poor. He entered the house and did' not find the hawker, he knocked at the door and there came out a dear little child and he asked for master of the house, and the child replied, "My father is away, he will be here in the evening; but sir, would you mind telling me what business you have with him?" He was very much impressed with the talk of the child and wanted to talk with her, so in order to exchange some words with her, he said that he wanted to purchase Mam. The child smiled and said, "I can give you Mam, it is so easy." He said, "All right, I will wait." He waited at the door and she went in. He waited and waited but the child did not make her appearance and he was about to lose his patience, as he had waited twenty minutes and he thought that time was long enough to dig out the treasure from under the ground. Losing patience he peeped into the house and there he found the child was whetting her large knife, and he said, "What does that mean?" and he spoke to the child and said, "Child, why are you playing childish pranks? This is no time to trifle with a gentleman of my rank; do not fool with me, please; this is no time to try your idle experiments; come out and say that you do know where your parents have buried the jewellery: but the child exclaimed, "Please excuse me; have patience and wait a minute. I am coming" and he said, "Come right away, why sharpen that knife?" She said, "Do you not want to receive Nam?" He said, "I want Nam; but please show it to me that I may take it to some banker or to those who can set the right value on the article," and then she said, "Our Nam is not an article which requires a valuation to be set upon it by the banker or jeweller of the streets. Our precious Nam has already got its value fixed; there is no going up or coming down. The value is already fixed and the price already determined." He said "Is it so? Then please come, show it to me, throw aside your knife." She said. "O, but you must pay the price first and then you get Nam afterwards." He said, "Do you intend to stab me, why do you sharpen your knife?" She said in the most trustful, pure way, "If you did not know the price of Nam why did you come here? Do you not know in order to get Nam, you must lose your life? Life is the price you must pay for Nam. He who will save his life must lose Nam”. The girl said, "Sir, did you not know that the price is already fixed? In order to get Nam (Nam meant God to the girl, and it meant the necklace to the man) this head of yours must be cut off with knife; then and then alone you can get Nam" Boldly, cheerfully, and unflinchingly the girl made this statement. The poor customer was stricken aghast; he cried aloud and made such a noise that all the neighbours collected. He began to complain. "Look here" he said, "this poor hut contains butchers and homicides. I presume that the parents of this girl are the worst homicides. The matter ought to be placed before the court; let us call the police." But the people said, "Don't talk that way, the parents of the girl are noted for their great piety, etc.", and he said, "I come to see that all those very pious people are usually very bad; they are not religious; under the cloak of religion they perpetrate religious crimes." There was a great noise and confusion in their talk and all of a sudden the father of the girl appeared on the scene and this man was about to strangle the father of the girl. The pious father was tranquil and serene when the queer customer addressed him in very harsh language and said, "Why do you teach even your child to perpetrate such heinous crimes, why do you do such deeds every day as to make your children homicides in their very infancy?" The sage replied, "How is it, sir, what do you mean?" The whole matter was explained and when the sage heard the story, his heart was filled with emotion; his whole being was saturated with Divinity; tears like great beads appeared on his cheeks and he said, “O prophets and saints, O angels, God! Have matters come to this! Have matters come to such a low pass; is the name of God to be brought down to the power of a child like that; was this to be changed to a small thing like that? Pointing to his daughter he said that it is because the Divinity, God, has been taken up by an innocent, ignorant, child, that the name of God, the Divinity has become so ridiculously cheap that the name of God, Heaven, and Immortality is sold at such an awfully low price as the head or heart. O Divinity, O sweet Immortality! Is it dear if it were sold for one life? Let millions upon millions of lives be created and destroyed for the sake of one glimpse of that Reality. Let infinite lives and heads' be chopped off and cut to pieces for a moment of that Holy God-consciousness.

When these words were uttered by the saint, the heart of the queer customer melted and all the by-standers stood aghast. It was then that they came to know that the same word Nam meant something exquisitely sweet for the little girl and for the parents of the girl, and that their own minds were so grovelling in materiality as not to grasp the true meaning.

This story tells you the price you must pay in order to taste the sweet nectar of Heaven. It tells you the inevitable value set on Realization.

You cannot enjoy the world, you cannot enter into sordid, petty, low, worldly, carnal, sensuous desires and at the same time lay claim to Divine Realization.

MORAL: If one wants Realization, he must be prepared to pay its price, which is the total effacement of the ego or little self.

Vol. 2 (150-154)