He Who Knows – Knows
An old Persian proverb gives the following advice:
He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool –
shun him.
He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is ignorant –
teach him.
He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep –
wake him.
He who knows, and knows that he knows, is a wise man –
follow him.
The only man who knows, and knows that he knows, is a perfect Master. When the grace of God reveals such a man to a seeker of truth, something in the seeker will resonate with this revelation. When this happens, the seeker should discard everything and follow the Master, having full trust and faith in him. This will be the start of a process of change: of spiritual healing and total transformation. Our attitude and perceptions will change.
In Discourses on Sant Mat, Vol. II Sardar Bahadur Jagat Singh explains how our karmas may define our attitude towards faith:
Three men went to a faqeer and he asked them. “What’s troubling you?” One said, “Everybody is without faith.” The second said, “Here and there you find a glimmer of faith.” The third said, “Absolutely everybody is filled with faith. God and God alone is all one sees!”
Yet to each of the three the faqeer said, “That’s right.”
A disciple asked, “What was that about?”
The faqeer replied, “The way they see things depends on the kind of glasses they’ve put on. The first one was completely worldly; the second, slightly God-fearing; the third was a man of God.”
Our appearance and intellect reflect precisely the type of karmas we have done in the past, and we look on the world accordingly. If you want to escape from all this, keep the company of a true Master.
Saints tell us that most of the people in the world live in darkness or ignorance. So many questions are constantly asked about why we live in a world where nobody is truly happy, where everything is subject to decay, and where birth and death follow each other like day and night. Apart from people’s personal struggles to survive, the media relentlessly harass us with news and images of accelerating world devastation, making us aware of the misery prevailing all over the globe.
Even more painful is that which takes place right on our own doorstep. At times we become overwhelmed by a sense of utter desolation, despair, hopelessness and a feeling of dejection. In mystic terms this is described as the dark night of the soul. These are the grief-stricken times when we feel as though we have been plunged into a well of loneliness and we feel disconnected from everything. When this happens, it is the Master who comes to our rescue. He is the only one who can throw a life-saving rope down our well of loneliness and pull us out of the darkness into his light.
Initiates on this path of Sant Mat know that even after initiation and many years of steadfast meditation, a sudden load of dreadfully heavy karma can – without any warning – bring on a dark night of the soul. Saints and mystics confirm that these dark nights are a part of the long journey towards self-realization and ultimate God-realization. Hazur Maharaj Ji explains that it sometimes feels as if we have been forsaken and his grace has been withdrawn. But these are the times when vital karmas have to be paid. These are the times when the Master carries us – although we may not be aware of it.
At the time of initiation the Master sows the seed of Nam in the disciple and nothing can destroy it. Nam is the perfect seed; it will sprout, grow and eventually bear perfect fruit. Nothing can prevent this. No matter how devastating our karma may be, we should always remember that the Master himself controls our destiny, and that Nam is the very essence of the teachings of Sant Mat, linking the initiate to God himself.
It is said that God is love and that love is neutral. His love is the same for all and everything that he created. However, we will only be able to understand and accept this concept when we merge into him. This ability to merge into him is what the Master – slowly but steadily – builds in us. Through our simran and bhajan, he pulls our consciousness up, from the soles of the feet to the eye centre, where birth into the spiritual world occurs. Consciousness is the component that animates all living beings and which we refer to as the soul. It is part of the omnipresence of the Creator – the Shabd particle in us.
Only in absolute stillness can God manifest and reveal himself to us within. We have to shut down the sense perceptions that lead to illusory outer manifestations. For some it is necessary to become totally disillusioned with the outer world before being able to move into the inner world and merge into the Shabd. Whatever our karma, we should bear it with equanimity, keeping in mind that our meditation is the instrument that carries us from outer disillusionment to inner peace.
Our transformation is painstaking and slow and it cannot be forced. We need patience for the evolutionary process to manifest within us as we move towards liberation – freedom from the bondage of birth and death, reincarnation and transmigration. Through meditation we learn to still the mind and the intellect, and only then will the tenth door – the gate to heaven – swing open.
Eventually every initiate realizes that it is not merely a matter of reading, listening and waiting for a miracle to happen. Rather, we have to put it all into practice. We have to follow the principles and do the meditation which is necessary for our salvation. In Die to Live Hazur Maharaj Ji tells us quite simply:
Just change your way of life according to the teachings and attend to meditation. That is all that is required. From meditation, love will come, submission will come, humility will come. Everything will come.
Progress is very slow, and because we are impatient for spiritual experiences we often feel that we are not making any progress at all – especially if we do not experience the results which we read about in the Sant Mat literature. However, there is no alternative but to continue on our path to salvation. In the same book Hazur Maharaj Ji assures us that progress is always there. In response to a question he says:
By attending to meditation, even if we don’t feel any progress within, we will definitely feel the effect of meditation in our life. Progress we may not see within, but we will feel the effect of meditation in our nature, in our dealings with people, in the way our whole attitude towards life changes. We should not feel much concerned about progress, because progress is always there. The effect of meditation can never be removed, and nobody can escape that effect.
The Masters repeatedly emphasize that meditation should be a satsangi’s top priority. Yes, we do have to work to pay the baker and the candlestick maker, but nothing is more important than fulfilling our part of the spiritual bargain by doing our meditation.
The mind is influenced by the company it keeps. We must keep the company of the one who has manifested the truth within – the Master. Many of the people who come in contact with him are naturally drawn towards spirituality. If we are receptive to the Master we shall experience his grace and love. His satsang is hugely beneficial for the successful practice of spiritual discipline and, ultimately, release from this world. However, if we prefer to keep the company of the world, we will stay in it – time after time being swallowed back into Kal’s recycling soap opera, where sowing and reaping are the prevailing law.
But if the grace of God brings us into the fold of the Master, and we receive his gift of initiation, we will begin our association with the truth. Through the practice of our meditation we will begin to turn our attention away from the world. As the Master slowly transforms our lives he detaches us from worldly illusion and directs us to everlasting spiritual freedom.
Meditation is his gift – there is nothing else to be done as nothing else is of any value. Do not refuse it, do not neglect it. Just do it.
The Beloved is with us day and night, O Hafiz!
He is the very life that flows in our veins.
As quoted in Sultan Bahu