In Adi Shankaracharya’s Vivekachudamani, the student approaches the Teacher and asks, “What is bondage.” Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda used to narrate a humorous and appropriate story to illustrate the nature of bondage and how the Guru releases us from it.

In earlier times, transport in the Himalayan region was generally through mules. Since the weather is prone to quick changes, the muleteer must reach an ashram in time to avoid being stranded in the freezing rain or cold.

The muleteer of our story was travelling with three mules when he saw dark, ominous clouds. He found a little ashram where some monks were living and requested permission to stay in their verandah. The mules had to be tied and made to sit down, otherwise, they could wander away and fall prey to mountain leopards. The muleteer took out the peg from the back of the mule, untied the rope from it, hammered the peg, tied the rope to the peg and placed its noose around the neck of the mule. Thereafter, he used a special clucking sound to make the mule sit down. The same drill was followed with the second mule and they both sat down quietly. By the time the muleteer came to the third mule, he discovered that his peg and rope were missing. He could not tie two mules to the same peg as they would hit each other. He went inside and asked, “Mahatmaji, sorry to disturb you, but do you have any rope?”

“Our job is to untie! We don’t have anything that ties!”

The muleteer returned to the third mule and tried various methods to make him sit down. When all his attempts failed, he implored the Mahatma, “Please help me. My mule will wander away!”

“How did the other mules sit down?’

The muleteer explained the complete process. The Mahatma instructed, “Go hammer the peg, tie the rope, tie the noose and make the specific clucking signal – cl, cl, cl...!”

The muleteer thought to himself, ‘These sadhus don’t understand anything. He is asking me to go and hammer the peg, which is not there, tie the rope, which is not there, make a noose of the rope which is not there, and tie it on the neck of the mule, which is there!’ However, with faith in the Mahatma, he enacted all the actions of the drill, right up to saying, “Cl, cl, cl, cl!” Immediately, the mule sat down!

Relieved, the muleteer went to sleep in the verandah. The next morning, he got up early and decided to leave quietly without disturbing the monks in their meditation. He went to the first mule, removed the peg, untied the rope, and, this time, uttered a distinct, deep-throated different sound, “Ga, ga, ga, ga….” The mule got up. He repeated this process with the second mule.

Since the third mule was not tied, he just went up to the mule and said, “Ga, ga, ga ....” But, despite repeated attempts, the mule refused to budge. After a while, he explained his plight to the Mahatma and recounted the process. The Mahatma instructed, “Go, remove the peg, which is not there, untie the rope which is not there and say, ‘Ga, ga, ga…!’”

In the same way, the Guru removes the peg, which is not there, unties the rope which is not there and says, “Tat tvam asi. Tat tvam asi – That thou art, That thou art ….”

If bondage was our real nature, there is no way we could free ourselves. The greatest knowledge the Guru gives is that our bondage is born of ignorance. He wakes us from the dream in which we see ourselves as bound. The moment we wake up, we recognize the unreality of the dream. We who thought ourselves to be miserable, limited and bound come to know that we were free, are free – and are ever joyful.

The author is the Global Head of Chinmaya Mission.