Once there was an innocent person living in a village. one night he was walking outside the village and he saw a well there. He looked down the well to see if there is any water and to his utter shock he found the Moon there, drowned in the well. He thought, "how can the villagers live without the Moon?" and decided to rescue the Moon at any cost. So, he gathered a rope and a bucket and started drawing the water out of the well.
He continued this for hours and suddenly the rope broke and the man fell flat on his back. Lo! there he saw the Moon in the sky. He was overwhelmed with joy that he was finally able to rescue the Moon from the well and thus saved the lives of all the villagers.
This story may look silly at the outset, but if we think deeper it resembles our struggle for liberation. The Moon is the Omnipresent Brahman. The well is our gross-body and the water in it is the subtle-body. as long as the subtle-body is present, we see a reflection of the Brahman in it as Atman and believe that the Atman is bound by the body and needs to be liberated. The rope with a bucket at the end of it is the spiritual practice we do in order to liberate the Atman. as long as we strive to clear the mind out, we suffer from the grief of that bondage.
But, as soon as the rope breaks and we start looking up instead of looking down into the well, we realize that the Atman was just a reflection of the Brahman and was never bound by the body or any other worldly things. There is nothing in this creation that can bind the Brahman. So, we have always been in a state of liberation, but we don't realize that as we keep looking into the well(the body) and identify ourselves with the Moon's reflection there. As soon as we turn this worldly outlook towards the divine, we realize our state of liberty.
So, does that mean we need not do any spiritual practice, or Sadhana? No, it doesn't mean that. We should keep doing the Sadhana, but the purpose of it should be to change our outlook, rather than to liberate ourselves. The mere thought of bondage in itself is a bondage that obstructs our vision from realizing our true state of liberation. As the great Gurus say, the mind is the key. As you can see daily at your home, the same key when turned in one direction, locks the door and when turned the other way unlocks it. In the same sense, when the mind is turned towards the world, it leads to the illusion of bondage. But when the same mind is turned towards the almighty, it leads to the realization of our liberated state.
