He was his own soldier, trying to be courageous amidst a terrible inner battle. One by one the inner enemies of desire were defeated, and his heart was feverish with the victory cry: "Beloved! Beloved! Beloved!"
At last, one night when Tajuddin was on guard duty, he heard someone's voice call out to him. Startled, he looked around and then walked in the direction from which the voice had come. He went beyond the barracks and entered a thick forest. Making his own path through the woods, he found an old man seated under a tree. It was the Muslim Qutub renowned in the district, Hazrat Daood Chisti, the Beloved who had filled Tajuddin's heart with restlessness.1
Without looking at Tajuddin, the old Master ordered the youth to bring him a cup of tea. Walking out of the dark forest, Tajuddin went back to the barracks' kitchen where he boiled a fresh cup of tea. Finding his own pathway again through the forest, Tajuddin brought the cup of tea unspilled. After sipping a little, Daood Chisti gave the remaining portion to Tajuddin and told him to drink it. As soon as Tajuddin drank the tea, his inner restlessness merged into an ocean of bliss! Tajuddin at that moment attained God-realization. In his Godhood, the world no longer existed — it turned into zero! Everything vanished; Tajuddin lost all consciousness of his own body and the outside world. He was experiencing Anal Haq — the "I-Am-God" state. He had only the consciousness of the divine I and had become God. In Sagar, at the young age of 23, Tajuddin was transfigured into Sagar — an infinite ocean.
The young Tajuddin became a majzoob — one drowned in God. The young man automatically ignored the army routine, and because he was behaving unusually, his fellow soldiers were convinced he had gone mad. But, in truth, he had merged with infinite bliss, infinite power and infinite knowledge. Every night Tajuddin would wander through the woods to find Hazrat Chisti and sit with him for hours.
Tajuddin's grandmother still cared about him and had arranged his marriage to a Muslim girl, but because of the young man's peculiar state of mind, the family of the girl broke the engagement. Shortly after his night of Realization, the officials found him no longer suitable for military duty, so his grandmother traveled to Sagar and brought him back to Kamptee.
Footnotes
- 1.Daood Chisti is different from Mu'inuddin Chishti, the 12 th -century Perfect Master of Ajmer.