The Whole Self

In the metaphor below, a young Brahman (the archetypical student) for years sought peace... he sought release from costant suffering he experienced. Unlike other youths of his age who knew what they wanted, he sought only one thing:release fro his constant torment. On his path he met many people who sympathized with his suffering and who offered him either advice or comfort. But neither helped him for any lenght of time. At the point of despair he learned of a wise man who had become whole, who had achieved peace.
He was told that the wise man lived deep in the forest. After an arduous journey, he found the sage sitting by a small stream under an old banyan tree. The old man invited him to sit down. After a while the seeker found the courage to ask: "How shall I become whole and thereby achieve peace?"
The teacher gazed at him and after a few moments spoke. "Go to the village and there you will find what you seek."
The young man thanked the sage and then quickly left for the village, full of hope and expectation. But when he arrived at the village he found only some huts and three old women sitting in the marketplace with baskets in front of them. One was selling pieces of wood, another pieces of metal and the last, wire. With his last coins the Brahman bought a piece of metal, a piece of wood, a piece of metal and a lenght of wire thinking that perhaps they had some magical properties. They wer quite ordinary. Disapointed, he returned to the sage and demanded explanation for being deceived. All the sage would say was, "You will soon understand."
Dejected, the young Brahman departed and with nowhere to go he wandered throught the forest. After a time when his anger and disappointment began to fade, he heard the sound of music coming through the wood. Since it was growing dark, he hurried in the direction of the music. As he drew closer he could hear that it came from a sitar. Deeply moved, he allowed himself to be drawn to the music.
To his surprise he discovered that the music was being played by the sage who earlier had made a fool of him. Moreover, to his amazement, realized that in his wanderings he had gone in circles and had returned to the very spot where he left the old man. It was then that he became aware of the sage's fingers which played with amazing dexterity. He became so transfixed that for a moment he forgot himself, and in that very instant a flash of insight burst upon him. He saw the sitar was made out of wood, metal, and wire.
In that instant, the old man's message became clear to him. He realized for the first time that as long as he considered the wood, metal and wire separately they held no significance for him. but when he put them together and saw them as a whole, they became a sitar. He now saw the wisdom of the sage's teaching. He had been given everything he needed.
From the moment he was born, he was complete; whole in every way. He had not realized that the different facets of his being were never meant to be picked apart. Instead they were part of a complex ecology of spirit, soul and body which together formed a whole being. For the first time he grasped that each separate piece could be understood only when viewed as part of the whole. In the past he had been obsessed with the separate pieces of himself and identifying with one and rejecting the others he had become lost. Until this moment of recognition he had never realized that to identify with any one aspect of his being was to lose the significance of the others and to lose sight of who he really was. He saw at last that life is a process of remembrance, recollection and finally reunion.





From the book Chakra Therapy (Keith Sherwood)