To Merge in His Love

When we ask the Master what attribute he values most in a disciple, the answer is love. We can live without everything else, but not without love. On this path, our goal is not wealth or achievements or recognition, but only love – to be immersed in love, to be lost in love. The saints want us to dive so deeply into our meditation that we ultimately drown in that ocean of love.

That is our destiny, to merge into his love until there is nothing left of our mind, our ego, our weaknesses, our doubts. The real Master is the Shabd and the real disciple is the soul. The ultimate aim of the path of the Masters is to merge the soul into that Shabd. Maharaj Charan Singh used to define that kind of love as losing your own identity and becoming another being.

We want that kind of love, but when it comes to drowning in it, losing ourselves in it, we hesitate. The mind is attached to its individual identity; to the body, health, wealth, and relationships; to possessions, plans, desires and ambitions. It wants to experience that supreme love without drowning in it, while retaining its own identity. But saints say this is impossible. Hence, the spiritual path involves a struggle between the soul that longs to merge into something transcendent and pure and the mind that is addicted to sensual pleasures and worldly pursuits.

Because our own mind can be our worst enemy, saints and mystics emphasize the importance of keeping our spiritual ideal clearly in focus. The mind is constantly making us forget the true purpose of human life and is secreting a continuous stream of worldly thoughts that distract us from the Masters’ lofty teachings.

The Master often says that the saints present to us the ideal. We are inspired by that goal, we want to achieve it, but it is very difficult to reach in a short time. So we constantly need to remind ourselves of our ideal and at the same time seek practical advice on how to achieve it. Our ideal is to prepare ourselves for that day when the Master will drown us in his love till there is nothing left of us.

Kabir explains in Kabir, The Great Mystic:

He is a great devotee
Who is absorbed
In devotion for the Lord;
He alone will obtain
The Immaculate One.

This one-pointed absorption in the object of contemplation is the key to successful meditation. To achieve this state, all thoughts must cease except the repetition of the Beloved’s names. To succeed at this, our whole life has to be re-oriented so that the spiritual practice and discipline is our highest priority. Our action is crucial; however, one-pointed focus can never be achieved by effort alone, as the grace of the Master is supreme on the path of devotion.

Therefore, Kabir gives us this very practical advice on how to conquer the mind and remain in a state of spiritual balance and equipoise. He says:

With arms raised Kabir calls:
Repeat,
Repeat the Lord’s Name
Each day, with each breath,
For Nam alone will be your saviour
At the perilous hour of death.

All day long we should contemplate on the Satguru and live in the atmosphere of our meditation through repetition of our simran. It is through our simran that we rise above the world and are not affected by its affairs. We should be like the elephant that, even though dogs are nipping at his leg, continues to walk unperturbed. Constant simran develops such will power in us that we can remain on the edge of life. It creates an environment within the mind where love of the Master flourishes, the senses come under control, and meditation becomes much easier. However, because of the nature and power of the mind, the depths of our attachments, and our heavy burden of karmas, this may take a very long time. Patience and perseverance are required.

In the end, though, as Maharaj Charan Singh says in Light on Sant Mat:

When the inner contact is fully established with the Shabd form of the Satguru, the spirit floats in his grace as the fish in water and even momentary interruptions become unbearable. This is a very advanced stage, and represents an ideal for the average satsangi.

For us average satsangis, who are working slowly and steadily towards this ideal by doing our daily meditation and remembering our simran throughout the day as much as possible, there is nothing to be concerned about; the Lord will shower his grace upon us and fill us with the necessary love and devotion to reach our goal. He will drown us in that Ocean of Love as our soul merges into him.