Realization
At a cemetery, the grave markers show not only the name of the deceased buried there, but two dates – birth and death – separated by a line. Just one small line signifies the extent of all the years between the cradle and the grave. How often do we think about what that line – an entire life – means?
We come to this world with nothing and leave with nothing, so what is the purpose of our lives? Why are we here? Saints say this life is an arena of learning, of awareness; it is meant for self-realization and God-realization. But what is realization, and what are we realizing?
In ordinary usage, realization means becoming aware of something that is a fact, already true, already present, only we are unaware of it. For example, if we are intensely absorbed in some work and a friend walks into the room, we may not notice our friend’s presence. Then, after a few moments, when we look up, we are surprised to see her there, so we say, “Oh! I didn’t realize you were here!”
Sant Mat is a path of realization in this same sense. It is a way of waking up to life’s most profound reality. Our real friend is standing right here by our side. And who is that friend? It’s the Shabd.
The masters explain that we are supported by the Shabd all the time – we just don’t realize it. Saints give us the wake-up call. They tell us that every moment we are cared for by Shabd, under the protection of Shabd. Without the Shabd, we wouldn’t exist.
So, our spiritual journey is simply a matter of waking up to this fact. We are not really taking a journey to a distant goal. We are only realizing what is already true – right here, right now, within us. Meditation is the technique by which we wake up to what is real.
The American children’s book writer Rebecca Stead asked herself a question in an acceptance speech for a major award: “When does the life of a storyteller begin?” Her reply:
Mine began when I was about six. Up until then, I had half believed that my mother could read my thoughts. But at some point during first grade, I realized that I was completely alone in my own consciousness. I used to regularly freak myself out by sitting still, closing my eyes, and asking myself the same question over and over until I was in a sort of a trance. The question was, How am I me?
What I meant was, How did my particular self get in here? Again and again, I would close my eyes and plunge myself into this existential angst. Why did I do it?… I think that, like someone alone in a dark room, I was feeling around for a door. Because I really, really did not want to be alone there.
Most of us have probably also asked ourselves at some point: “Who am I? Am I all alone?” Soami Ji Maharaj asks this very question in Sar Bachan Poetry: “Soul, who are you? Where have you come from?”
We are born knowing nothing. We start capturing and storing information in the form of images, sounds, and other sense impressions. We try to make sense of what happens to us, our reactions to events, and so on. But ultimately, we are faced with basic questions about the nature of reality and the purpose of our lives. At some point we realize, in seeking the answers to those questions, that discovering the divine reality within us – the Shabd –and merging with it, is the purpose of life.
The noted astrophysicist Stephen Hawking raises a serious question about our perception of reality. He hints at our feeling of living in an unreal world when he wrote in the October 2010 issue of Scientific American:
A few years ago the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved fishbowls. The sponsors of the measure explained that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl because the curved sides give the fish a distorted view of reality. Aside from the measure’s significance to the poor goldfish, the story raises an interesting philosophical question: How do we know that the reality we perceive is true? The goldfish is seeing a version of reality that is different from ours, but can we be sure it is any less real? For all we know, we, too, may spend our entire lives staring out at the world through a distorted lens.
In from self to Shabd, the author writes:
Some quantum physicists say that our human experience is taking place in energy fields arranged in such a way that they give the illusion that “things are here,” when in reality, at a quantum/subatomic level, there are only energy fields with no solidity in them. These scientists say everything that we see is nothing but a huge quantum mirage blinking in and out of existence all the time.
The author also writes, “Baba Ji says that we are born in illusion, live in illusion, and die in illusion.” Further, because our attention is “glued to the human experience,” the reality we perceive is delusional. Our task now is to realize who we really are.
Why is it hard to see reality? It’s because it is not apparent to us. It is distorted, similar to what Stephen Hawking described. Maharaj Charan Singh also gives an answer to this human predicament in Light on Saint John:
Our problem is that what we see does not exist – it is all perishable. What we do not see is real – it is eternal. What we see, we fall in love with; and what we do not see, we find difficult to fall in love with. Without falling in love with the One whom we do not see, we can never escape from this creation.
This is the human problem. We always get attached to someone at our own level. We find it very difficult to attach ourselves to someone we have never seen – and that is why we need the living Master.
In from self to Shabd, the author writes:
Our transformation begins when we become aware of where we keep our attention. For most of us, our attention is in the drama of our karma. We are more interested in manipulating our karmas than in accepting them. We are more interested in having and doing, rather than in being. Having and doing do not lead to peace of mind. Being does. … We keep all our attention in our human experience…. [T]o keep our cool in the face of terrible circumstances is a state achieved only by doing daily meditation and lots of simran during the day. Only with such daily discipline can our mind become anchored in the peaceful serenity of Shabd. With practice, this can be achieved even in the midst of the most adverse karmas or situations.
Why is this realization important? Because who wants to come back here for another lifetime? There is indeed nothing more important for us than to become familiar with who we really are, while we are alive. This opportunity is here now. If we don’t do our spiritual work, no one else will do it for us.
If we don’t unveil the illusion in this lifetime, then we have lost the golden opportunity of this human birth. There is no guarantee that we will reincarnate as a human. And even if we do, that new life will not be a continuation of this one. What is the guarantee that we would have the same inclination toward the Father, toward finding a master, toward putting in the necessary effort to obey him and pierce the illusion? Who knows how many more lifetimes we will cycle through before we get another opportunity to be born as a human. We must do it now.
How does one attain realization? We cannot get it through reading books or by listening to another’s experience or applying self-help methods. Realization is very much tied to experience.
When we first come to the path, we hear from saints that we are a soul, and that the soul is a particle of the Lord. This information helps us to answer questions like the ones the children’s book writer had when she closed her eyes and asked: “How am I me?” If we want to realize God, the One, we first need to realize that our soul is a particle of that One: self-realization comes before God-realization.
All Shabd mystics have told us that whatever has to be given by the Lord has already been given to us. Nothing has been held back from us; what is missing is our realization of these gifts.
Saints say that the Lord has blessed all of us equally with the ability to return to that divine One; no one is less blessed or has had fewer showers of mercy and grace. If we don’t work hard to fulfil our promise of daily meditation, then we are choosing to live in poverty, choosing to remain unaware that we have inherited a great fortune.
In the end, realization is not possible without effort. Although the Lord has already given us everything, our effort is essential to reach the awareness, the realization of that treasure. As Hazur Maharaj Ji tells us in Quest for Light:
You are quite right when you say that the Master rewards disciples according to the amount of effort they put in with the proper attitude. The more we strive on the path, the more help we receive from the Master. Those who do not make an effort of their own have no idea of the blessings that are being showered on us every day of our life. The rewards that are received by a disciple are far greater than one could ever expect or even dream of, and this realization comes only when we are doing our part of the duty.
Between the cradle and the grave, we must use our time wisely and take advantage of this precious opportunity to attain realization by meditating every day without fail. Let us not leave this life a beggar, ignorant of the treasure that is our birthright.