No Other Way

Who else but a true saint can explain the whole teaching of Sant Mat in just twenty-seven lines? In Sar Bachan Poetry Soami Ji achieves this quite effortlessly:

The Master explains fully:
Attach yourself to the unstruck music of Shabd.
There is no way, other than through Shabd,
to break free from the vessel of the body.
The Master reveals to you the path of five melodies
and shows you your real home within the body.

Attach your consciousness to the melody now
and go from this home to that home -
the one that is unfathomable and boundless,
the one you will see after you cross the tenth gate.
Rise within and open that gate,
penetrate the inner sky and experience Sat Shabd.
Without the Master’s grace no one can find Shabd
and without Shabd nothing is attained.
The essence of the path is to first withdraw,
then raise the consciousness through the inner sky,
then listen to the melody of Shabd within.
But the mercurial mind never stays still,
so how can it be cleansed and purified?

Apply yourself to the practice of Surat Shabd,
discarding all other methods.
Put complete faith in this practice,
never give it up out of sloth or apathy.
I have explained the truth of all truths,
I have explained the path of the Saints.
I have unveiled the secret of Radha Soami.
Listen. Accept. I have revealed the essence.
_{Sar Bachan Poetry}

Seldom does such complete and pure truth come in such a compact package. This poem is a comprehensive synopsis of what is required to realize the salvation of the human soul.

At the start, Soami Ji states that the task assigned to mystics appointed by the Supreme Being is to explain Sant Mat fully to the seeker. However, the purpose of our existence is the one thing, the Saints say, that cannot be explained to us at our present level of understanding. In Discourses on Sant Mat, Volume II, Maharaj Jagat Singh offers a story-like explanation of the purpose of the creation. He calls it a game of love, a game of hide-and-seek, set in motion by the Lord. God himself created the whole creation, Sardar Bahadur says, and then he hid a spark of himself inside each one of us. That is our soul. We were placed in this creation in a state of ignorance, and then he, as our soul, starts searching for himself through a method that he himself has devised and in which we have an ennobling role to play: he allows us to participate in his search for himself.

So he, the Lord, comes to our level to give us an understanding of himself. Yet, as the Lord, he remains hidden. He takes on the role of the Master, and then gives instruction to himself, in the person of the devotee - that is, as us - although we have as yet no distinct consciousness of who or what we really are.

Soami Ji explains in this poem that as long as we do not find the Lord in this world in the form of a Master, we cannot return home - that is, we cannot go back to him. So he comes to this world as a Satguru, proficient in the mysteries of Shabd. And until that spark of the Lord within us contacts the manifestation of himself outside of us, we shall remain separated from God. So it is a game of hide-and-seek.

In Sar Bachan Prose Soami Ji tells us: “It is through the Shabd that the soul has descended into bondage.” It is therefore through the Shabd we must return to our origin. As Soami Ji says in the poem, “There is no way, other than through Shabd, to break free from the vessel of the body.”

And the compensation to us for participating in this game of worship is incomparable. Our reward is the manifestation of the Lord within our very being. Soami Ji tells us that this is the game that the Lord has made: He himself - i.e., as the Master - gives us the rope of Nam or Shabd, which is the Master’s real form - just as spirit is our real form - and we must use this rope to pull ourselves out of this world.

Then he says:

The Master reveals to you the path of five melodies
and shows you your real home within the body.

So he, the Lord, is present internally in the heart and mind of each person, and externally as the Master. He himself gives us instruction and guidance, and ultimately, with a little - but essential - effort from us, he takes us within.

In Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. V, Great Master explains:

Only man can make another man understand. This is the law of nature…. The Lord works in this world of matter through living persons. … If the Lord wishes to make people understand, He must take human form. He has to take the form of a Saint.

We human beings respond to others of our own species. We learn most quickly through our association with living teachers - in every sphere of life. We need a Master to teach us and we need a Master to love.

In Light on Saint John Maharaj Charan Singh makes the point that without falling in love with the One whom we do not see - the Lord - we can never escape from this creation. He says that this is the human problem, and this is why we need a living Master. Maharaj Ji has also said that we love and become attached to the Lord by loving his Sons - in other words, the Masters - and this is actually love for and attachment to the Lord. Because we go where our attachments are, this attachment to the Lord will take us back to him.

In the fourth verse of the poem Soami Ji says:

Attach your consciousness to the melody now
and go from this home to that home.

This simple statement is the essence of the truth that Soami Ji reveals in this poem, namely that it is the Shabd that takes us up from this outer physical home to our inner home in Sach Khand.

Great Master also tells us:

God is one, His instructions are one, and they are the Sound Current. The Path lies within you. The Sound Current is the direct road.
_{Spiritual Gems}

Further on in the shabd Soami Ji makes his crucial point as to how to kick-start ourselves on the spiritual path - how to get things moving. And this is the bottom line. He says:

Apply yourself to the practice of Surat Shabd,
discarding all other methods.
Put complete faith in this practice.

As said earlier, the Master’s job is to persuade us to get down to business. In Spiritual Gems Maharaj Sawan Singh Ji brings home this fact by saying the saint’s teaching is expressly to make the soul attend to the Holy Sound. Then the Great Master gets to the ultimate “knockout’ punch line of the spiritual teachings - that there are two things alone of substantial importance: having love for the Satguru and listening to the holy Sound.”This is the only way," he says, “to go out of this world and leave the sphere of Kal.”

We attach ourselves to the unstruck music by attaching ourselves to its embodiment, our Satguru. Love for the Master is first; it is our beginning. And our love for the Master, or our soul’s love for its Source, is brought to light through sitting in meditation every day, as we agreed to do at initiation. This humble obedience will be repaid with the gift of love, and there is no greater joy than to love a saint.

In Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. V, Great Master says:

Complete and imperishable spiritual success can be had from a living Guru only. There is a dynamic power of higher consciousness in Him. His touch charges us and connects us with the current of the Shabd.

In Discourses on Sant Mat, Volume II, Maharaj Jagat Singh summarizes the unfolding of this revelation of the path, or initiation by a Satguru, when he quotes Soami Ji as saying: “When the Lord bestows his grace, he turns the key inside you and love for the Lord awakens within you.” Or as Soami Ji commands us here: “Apply yourself to the practice of Surat Shabd.”And then, as we discover for ourselves, automatically the path is travelled. Our awareness and discrimination develop and we do gradually travel “from this home to that home.”

One of the many astonishing discoveries we come upon as we develop under the care of a Satguru is the pivotal role his grace plays. As Soami Ji puts it here: “Without the Master’s grace no one can find Shabd.”Slowly we are brought to the realization that the creation is so constructed that without the grace and guidance of a Master we will not be able to travel the path. We need to obey him and submit ourselves to him, in absolute humility.

In Sar Bachan Prose Soami Ji goes so far as to say:

The truth is that so long as the mind is not truly humble before the Satguru, the Jiva (soul) cannot be liberated even if the Lord Himself were anxious to save him.

The key, as Soami Ji said, is courageous and determined daily application: “Apply yourself to the practice of Surat Shabd, discarding all other methods.”

In the last couplet Soami Ji says: “I have unveiled the secret of Radha Soami.”And he ends the poem with a bold assertion. He commands: "Listen. Accept. I have revealed the essence.