The Voice of God

When we look up at the night sky and see the shimmering stars, it is difficult to imagine that they are many light years away. Yet, the Shabd, or audible life stream, which resonates throughout the entire universe and permeates every pore of the human body, seems so distant and inaccessible.

There is not a cubic millimetre of space in existence which is not filled with this music. Sweeter and sweeter its heavenly strains vibrate through every living being, great or small, from world to world, and from universe to universe.
_{The Path of the Masters}

Seldom do we pay attention to the space in between the stars. This vast expanse that we think of as empty sky has also been created by the Shabd. It holds the creation and is permeated with Shabd. Our minds focus on the stars and completely miss the wonder of how they are suspended in seeming nothingness. This empty space does not demand our attention or ask for recognition for the 13.8 billion years it has been sustaining the physical universe – it simply is. Our minds are so attached to the physical that we miss the most perfect example of selfless service right before us.

Astronomers have yet to find an end to the universe, and so we’ll never know the exact number of stars. With the help of modern telescopes, scientists estimate there are a trillion galaxies and approximately 100 billion trillion stars, a number so enormous that it is said to surpass every grain of sand on earth.

There is not only one world like this but, as you may suspect, numberless such worlds revolving about their respective suns, and each one has its own spiritual ruler. The number of planets thus inhabited is so great that no mathematician could count them in a thousand lifetimes, even if he could see them.
_{The Path of the Masters}

Each of these stars is like our sun, deriving its heat, energy and light from the Shabd. In The Path of the Masters it is written, “Every ray of light in the universe is a phenomenon of this infinite stream of light. Upon its power hangs every star in its orbit.”

The sheer size of the universe is beyond our intellect, and yet everything, down to the tiniest fairyfly, is a manifestation of the very same Shabd. However magnificent it may be, the physical universe is only the starting point when it comes to understanding the magnitude of the sound current, or Word as it is called in the Bible. Above and beyond our universe are numerous other planes which become brighter and finer as one ascends towards the higher regions.

The Word has created all the grand divisions of the great universe. Guru Amar Das says:

Through the Word is the creation and the dissolution.
Through the Word is the evolution of creation again.
_{Adi Granth, as quoted in Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. IV}

When we grasp the fact that the Shabd, which is available to us twenty-four hours of the day, is not only sustaining this boundless physical universe and all forms of life but has also created and is sustaining limitless spiritual planes beyond the furthest stars, it is mind-boggling.

The audible life stream is the supreme Creator himself vibrating through space. It is the wave of spiritual life going forth from the Creator to every living thing in the universe. By that current he has created all things, and by it he sustains them.
_{The Path of the Masters}

This omnipresence of the Shabd helps to explain the omnipresence of God. The sound current cannot be given any worldly labels; however, three attributes can be assigned to this self-luminous reality: love, wisdom and power, and the greatest of these is love. But what is love? Maharaj Charan Singh tells us:

Love is God and God is love. And it is through the magic of love that God can be realized.
_{Spiritual Discourses, Vol. I}

By great good fortune, this infinite power of love, which has created and sustains a universe of over 100 billion trillion stars and endless heavenly realms, is available to us in a very personal way from the time of initiation by a true master.

The Shabd, which pervades our inner world as well as the outer world, is closer to us than our own skin and is the only means of our salvation.

All saints teach us the same truth: that the only way to find salvation from this world of suffering is through the celestial Sound. Hazur Maharaj Ji tells us in Spiritual Discourses, Vol. I: “The union of the soul with the music of the audible life stream which resounds at the third eye in all human beings, is the only way to return to our home.”

True living masters constantly encourage us to meditate and make contact with the real Guru, which is not the physical form that we see, but the divine Word that reverberates in every one of us. In Sar Bachan, Soami Ji tells us, “It is via the Dhun (Sound) of each region that the soul can, by degrees, ascend from one region to another, up to the highest stage.” What a wonderful paradox that the quietest, most perfectly hidden Sound in our world happens to be the most powerful, the wisest and the most loving Sound of all – the Voice of God.