Enchantment
Where is your Self to be found?
Always in the deepest enchantment you have experienced.—von Hofmannsthal
The idea of enchantment is mystical and…enchanting… Not enchantment as distraction or possession: enchantment as loving attention, as being claimed by wonder, as allowing the world to matter. And although Hofmannsthal probably meant our truest individual humanity, Advaita has a way of opening a statement until it glows.
Self in Vedanta signifies Atman, Brahman, Truth — and holding both self and Self together is Advaita.
If the Self is Brahman, and Brahman appears as all that is, then enchantment is not merely evidence of our interests. Perhaps it is a sign — a sign that Reality is drawing our attention toward itself through forms we can presently love. None are separate from Truth; all are among Truth's appearances.
The enchantment that leads to Self is in our personal loves and passions. For me: my son, husband, cats, teaching, running, writing, and my spiritual quest itself. And when we find deep enchantment in what is, in our mornings and nightfalls and afternoons and nows, we awareness the sacred Mystery, recognize the One in its many unrepeatable and irreplaceable forms, and know we are it.
We find the One in its many forms not by rejecting nor grasping them, but by seeing within them — the morning, the run, the student, the cat, the beloved, the lake, the page.
Enchantment must be ethical, however: Ahimsa. Enchantment without ethics can become hunger, acquisition, ego — and greed, obsession, cruelty, and indifference harm other beings, world, self. But enchantment with ahimsa becomes reverence, a way of saying, This is precious, sacred, and deserving of care, freedom from suffering, Love.
The Love — not sentimental nor possessive — that appears as enchantment is, in Sanskrit, Prema. This Love pauses at the sight of morning light on water. This Love notices a student's awakening. This Love keeps asking questions long after answers prove insufficient. This Love returns again and again.
Enchantment breaches the boundaries that prevent us from noticing what is already here. Identifying what is fascinating in our daily life increases participation, perception, responsiveness, and appreciation. Never withdrawal from life — always deeper participation in it; never less responsiveness — always more. This connects me. It connects us.
Enchantment is what happens when Being encounters itself in a form and pauses in awe. For a moment, the world ceases to be ordinary, and we realize it never was.
Surrender me to this enchantment.
How?
Surrender me to this enchantment.
The prayer is whole. Because what follows enchantment? Not analysis. Not possession. Not certainty. Only gratitude. Only reverence. Only Love.
Vismaya Prema. And perhaps, smiling from the mountain which enchanted him, Ramanaji himself might add only the gentlest reminder: Surrender me to this enchantment...until the enchanter, the enchanted, and Enchantment itself are realized as One.