Sant Mat Made Simple
The mind has complicated our meditation, our simran, our way of life and everything else for us – when it is actually all so very simple. To see it as easy, all we need to do is shift to a positive attitude.
Take for instance ‘going inside’. When we close our eyes and look at the darkness inside, then we are inside at the eye centre, but the mind by habit slips out and down almost immediately. The effort needed now is to repeatedly and patiently pull it back, until it becomes natural for it to sit still in the centre looking at the darkness. This darkness is caused in fact by our looking inside at the black sky in which the light, the stars, the sun, moon and the Radiant Form of the Master will eventually appear. But first the attention must be fully collected and focused in this darkness.
When we look at something outside, we see it because the attention flows from the eye centre, through the physical organ of the eyes, to the object that we are looking at, and we see it effortlessly. When we close our eyes and see the blackness inside, we have reversed the flow of attention from outside to inside. Now hold it there inside. It is the attention that is seeing inside, just as effortlessly as it was seeing outside.
The physical eyes cannot see the darkness inside. They need light to see. The ears can’t perceive the darkness, nor can the tongue taste it, neither can it be felt by the sense of touch. We are now inside. Hold the attention there in that darkness and, being there, repeat the Master’s holy names slowly and with love, with the full attention of the mind.
This simran or repetition of his names impresses upon the mind the darshan of the Master. If we think of the name of anyone we know, his face is projected before the mind’s eye. When we call the Master by his real names, his face appears before us. We should not think of the names as just mere names, but as the Master’s real names in the five major regions inside, infused with his power, to which he will always respond without fail.
This approach to seeing meditation and going inside as being extremely easy is possible when we strictly embrace and treasure the Master’s four great gifts to us, which we normally call the four vows or principles of the path. And what a great gift each of these principles is!
Just imagine what grace it is to be saved from the cruel and barbaric habit of eating meat, with all its incumbent dulling and disease-forming effects. Not even to speak of the enormous load of bad karmas that we are spared from. Just think how blessed we are to be saved from the effects and consequences of consuming alcohol and perhaps becoming addicted to habit-forming drugs, which at best eventually leave us physical and mental wrecks. And then to be given the proper guidance on how to live clean, upright and morally sound lives, which purifies and ennobles us and brings us so much closer to him. And we are given the supreme gift – we are shown how to do at least two and a half hours of meditation every day, after being connected to the Shabd or Sound. These are four great gifts from the Master with a value beyond compare.
It really is all so straightforward and simple. If we adopt a positive attitude we will realize this, and we will find in practice that this is actually so. Don’t allow the mind to tell you otherwise.
Always keep things sweet and simple. Obey the Satguru implicitly. Sit down and just do your meditation. If the Master says that two and a half hours of meditation every day will please him, then try to give at least that, and if possible, a bit more. For when we can please him, what more is there for us to do?