Are We Missing the Point?

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are on a camping trip. In the middle of the night Sherlock Holmes wakes up and gives Dr. Watson a nudge.
“Watson,” he says, “look up in the sky and tell me what you see.”
“I see millions of stars, Holmes,” says Watson.
“And what do you conclude from that, Watson?”
Watson thinks for a moment. “Well,” he says, “astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Theologically, I see that God is all-powerful, and we are small and insignificant. Uh, what does it tell you, Holmes?”
“Watson, you idiot! Someone has stolen our tent!”
_{Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar}

It is easy to miss the point when we are busy trying to find a deeper and more complicated meaning to things. It’s like the time a large American food company released the perfect cake mix. It required no additives, no butter, no sugar. Just add water to the powder and mix, pop it into the oven and ready!

There was a problem though; no one bought this mix. After conducting many surveys, the manufacturers concluded that it was just too simple, and simple was synonymous with ‘not good enough’. They decided to alter the recipe, which now required half a cup of butter. Within a week of the new launch, sales skyrocketed.

Sant Mat is very simple to understand. We are born as humans who are gifted with a sense of discrimination, which should be used to pursue something that gives us permanent happiness. Permanent happiness can only be achieved when our soul merges with its source, and for this we need the help of a God-realized soul who can teach and guide us through the process of meditation.

The problem is that this is too simple and ironically difficult for us to accept. We figure that there has to be more that needs to be learned. We need to understand the workings of the mind, the reason why the Lord sent us to this creation, and we need to be able to assess how much the Master does for us.

While knowledge is power, it becomes powerful only when we take action. We are often told to stop analyzing and experience things for ourselves. Instead of scrutinizing every single aspect of the path, we must practise the teachings, and wait for clarity to come through experience.

When it comes to understanding the workings of God and the Master, and when it comes to understanding the nature of the mind, we have only one tool to use, and that is our own limited mind – it is like a first grader trying to understand Shakespeare. If we attempt to gather more knowledge in order to get a better understanding, we are missing the point. What we need to do is gather more awareness through meditation so that we can assimilate our knowledge and turn it into wisdom or understanding.

Our job is to do our best at meditation and trust the Master to take care of the other details – details that we really can’t understand at this physical level.

Sant Mat is also very simple to follow (note that simple is not the same as easy). We often miss the point when it comes to the role we are to play, and this is evident from the kind of questions and requests that we pose to the Master: “I cannot sit for meditation”; “I do my meditation but why can’t I see anything?”; “I need more grace.”

Master tells us that we can sit for meditation, we do it all the time. Meditation requires us to sit still in one place for a certain length of time, which is something we constantly do at movie theatres, lectures and at the hairdressers. Meditation also requires us to engage the mind in the repetition of the five Names, which again is something that we constantly do when we are thinking of the chores we do during the day, when we are remembering our loved ones or when we are recalling the scenes of the movie that we spent two hours watching while sitting still in the cinema.

“I do my meditation but why can’t I see anything?” Was seeing something part of a contract we signed? Were we guaranteed shining bright lights and majestic symphonies at initiation? We conclude that if we can’t see or hear anything after spending a certain amount of time in meditation, then it means that we are doing something wrong, or that we don’t have it in us to succeed. Once again, the point is not success, the point is effort. Great Master made this very clear when he welcomed our failures with great love.

“I need more grace.” This is probably the most widely misused statement or request at every question and answer session with the Master. His grace is his gift to us, and if it is his gift, he has anticipated our needs. His grace is his love for us; can one put a tap on how much love needs to be dispensed at a time? Our Master has given this gift to us at initiation and it already carries with it an unending amount of power, courage, inspiration and love. We don’t need to ask for grace, what we need is to become receptive to it.

A medical professor wanted to prove that alcohol was injurious to health. He had two containers, one with distilled water and one with pure alcohol. He put an earthworm into the distilled water and it swam beautifully and came to the top. He put another earthworm into the alcohol and it disintegrated in front of everyone’s eyes. He wanted to prove that this is what alcohol does to the insides of our body. He asked the group what the moral of the story was and one person from behind said, “If you drink alcohol you won’t have worms in your stomach!”

Sant Mat is simple to understand and follow, and if we are missing the mark then maybe we should consider whether we are honest and sincere in our intention to please our Master and achieve our goal.

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Once a soul rests peacefully in God, it will never exchange this stillness for all the most satisfying things of earth.
_{François de Sales, as quoted in The Love of God}