Normal souls and higher souls

Few days back I had been to one of the big bookshops in the city along with my friend. The bookshop is popular because they have a facility to flip through various books, see their content and if you like purchase. We entered the shop and as per the rule were putting our baggage into the secure racks. Just then a fellow customer asked my friend where to keep his bag. By mistake he thought that my friend is the bookshop’s person taking care of customer baggage. As soon as he finished his query my friend got very angry. He found it insulting that some stranger thought of him as a “baggage keeper”. He rudely said few words with aggressive body language. The stranger felt very guilty and apologized to him. Though he apologized I could make out the reluctance on his face. He apologized probably to avoid further fighting and waste of time.

As I was observing the incidence as a third person I remembered a story of Ramakrishna Paramahansa.

Once upon a time Ramakrishna Paramahansa was sitting in a garden. He used to come there daily for meditation. One day a man came to the garden for a casual walk. It was an afternoon and there was no much crowd there. The stranger thought of Ramakrishna as a gardener. He asked Ramakrishna to pluck some flowers so that he can carry them with him. The same thing continued for few days. One day the man came to know that the person who he thought of as a gardener is Ramakrishna Paramahansa. He was shocked and realized his mistake. He immediately went to Ramakrishna and apologized for his behavior. Ramakrishna simply smiled and said “You asked me for flowers and I gave you what you wanted. In fact I should thank you for allowing me to serve you”.

That's the difference between “normal souls” and “higher souls”. Giving up ego altogether is almost impossible for most of us but we can at least try to go as near as possible.

P.S.: Ego has much deeper meaning in Yoga than any English dictionary can reveal. Will write about it sometime later.