For two years he would not talk about it. Then his mother died. He was returning home one day, so he asked his older brother, "Now my mother is dead, so allow me to renounce the world."
The brother became angry. He said, "What nonsense are you talking? We are suffering a great loss. Mother has died and you are talking about renouncing now? Do not talk about it at all!" So Mahavir remained silent again for two years.
The whole family was again shocked. What type of renunciation was this? But then they began to feel that he was in the house, but he was not. He was absolutely absent. No one felt him as being present. He became just a shadow. Months would pass, and then suddenly someone would say, "Where is Mahavir?" He was in the house. He became so absent that the whole family gathered one day and they said, "If you are doing this, then it now becomes our duty to allow you to renounce. You can go, because, really, you have already gone."
Mahavir left the house that very day. Someone asked him, "Why didn't you escape? Why didn't you run away?"
He said, "There was no need. I took the inner jump. The day I decided, I became a sannyasin. Only my shadow was there because my mother would have become disturbed. There was no need to leave. The shadow was there; 'I' was not there. The very day I decided, the thing had happened. These four years were just nothing for me. I was a shadow. I could have remained in that house forever."
The day one really decides to take the jump, the jump has already taken place, because the decision is the jump. Even to become aware that "I am in a deep imprisonment", to be aware of this, is to have moved out of it. Now, sooner or later, this imprisonment cannot be a prison for you.
The Ultimate Alchemy Vol-2
