The Most Powerful Transformation
Have we ever taken a hard look at ourselves and wondered how we – being so full of material desires and inertia and struggling with bad habits and temptations – will ever become pure enough to blend into the pure light and sound of the Creator’s Shabd? Thankfully, we can go to our Master to restore our confidence and reorient our desires so that we can strive to discover our divine self. Our faith and confidence in the possibility of transforming our inertia into light gains new momentum.
Our journey from materiality and inertia into the realms of light and sound resembles a modern scientific insight. Before Einstein came into the field of physics, everybody treated mass and energy as two separate entities. Einstein’s formula E = mc2 (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared) demonstrated the unity of mass and energy in the natural world. He completely transformed humanity’s understanding of the relationship between mass and energy. Essentially, he said that matter is equivalent to energy and that matter can be transformed into energy.
On the most basic level, the equation says that energy and mass (matter) are interchangeable; they are different forms of the same thing. Under the right conditions, energy can become mass and vice versa. We humans don’t see it that way – how can a beam of light and a piece of furniture like a table be different forms of the same thing? It is hard to fathom, but even a small paper pin converted into energy is equivalent to the atomic energy of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
In a similar way, we start our spiritual journey doubting that this lump of material desires and inertia (our body) can attain the lofty state saints talk about. However, just as Einstein showed that inert mass is not a fixed property but can be converted into energy and vice versa, the spiritual teacher, the master scientist, shows us that the weakness, inertia, and heaviness we detect in ourselves are not fixed properties but can be transformed. We can be transformed into the energy of Shabd because the divine energy of Shabd already resides within us, just as the tiniest mass of matter stores unimaginable amounts of energy in it. Saints tell us that souls in contact with the Shabd experience unimaginable beauty, joy, and light.
Before getting in touch with a spiritual scientist, a master, we thought that our little self-centered reality was separate from everything else – the universe, God, and the spiritual realms we kept hearing about. But the Master told us to go into the laboratory of our body and perform a two-step experimental protocol that would prove our original beliefs wrong and transform our entire outlook on life.
The instructions were simple: sit quietly, repeat your simran and then listen for the Shabd. Most of this meditation period, at least in the beginning, should be spent on simran. Because of the simplicity of the instructions, we get confused and are easily discouraged. We think that because the instructions are so simple, we should be able to accomplish our task quickly and easily. We fail to understand that although the procedure is simple, the process is slow, labor-intensive, and yet incredibly powerful, as in a laboratory experiment. Even though the protocol consists of only two steps, the results can lead to amazing discoveries. We are seeking direct contact with the immaculate Lord.
Although our meditation instructions are simple, going through spiritual transformation is not. We are creatures of habit and inertia because we are an inert mass of earthbound thoughts and desires. Just as it takes a lot of energy to release the energy hidden in matter, we should be prepared to give our utmost to the slow, gradual process of transformation and put maximum effort into it. Only then can we hope for a successful outcome from our experiment: the discovery of our true reality and our divine source.
The energy that powers this experiment and leads to our transformation is love and longing, as Mira Bai expresses in this poem:
I am smitten with a longing
For the lotus feet of my Master….
And for crossing this ocean deep.Nothing do I desire
Except to be at his feet.
The world with all its lures
Seems to me but a dream.The world’s dreadful ocean
Has become dry for me.
To swim across it
Now worries me no more.Mira’s almighty Lord!
Her Master’s shelter
Is all she longs for.
Mira, the Divine Lover
The process of bhajan and simran powered by longing and love is the most powerful transformative process on earth. It is more amazing and powerful than the transformation of physical matter into physical energy. It is the ultimate goal of human life. The human body is the site of this transformative experiment, in which human matter is converted into the purest form of energy, the unstruck melody, the Shabd. Maharaj Sawan Singh Ji reassures us of this in Spiritual Gems:
The light and sound are always present at the [eye] focus…. Your wildest dreams or imaginings cannot picture the grandeur of what lies within. But the treasure is yours and is there for you. You can have it whenever you go there. Take it from me, and once and for all, that everything, including the Creator, is within you, and whosoever has attained it, has attained it by going inside the focus.
The conversion factor is our Master. He shows us how to enter the laboratory (the eye centre) and what to do there. He initiates us and instructs us, and in the process infuses us with that necessary energy of love and longing that will release the energy stored in the inert mass of our material self into the energy of the Shabd.
We are not simply this human body; we are part and parcel of the Lord himself. This is our amazing potential, similar to the potential of matter that waits to be dissolved into energy.
Experiments work best in an airtight tube or in a controlled environment. Similarly, our experiment, our transformation, needs a controlled environment where all thoughts are eliminated. Julian Johnson elaborates on this in The Path of the Masters:
When the mind wanders away, the repetition of those keynotes [the holy names] will bring it back to the center. The outer world is to be completely forgotten. Any means which may be adopted to that end may be helpful. But the Masters give us the best means. No man can improve on the Masters’ method. It is a method that has been proved and tested for untold thousands of years. No man can enter those higher worlds so long as his mind lingers upon things of the outer world. Hence the Masters speak of closing the nine doors of the outer world.
We are told that the protocol of the scientific experiment of meditation is stilling our attention at the eye centre by means of simran.
As in the lab, where discoveries take years if not decades, the spiritual transformation happens little by little, ever so slowly and perhaps imperceptibly. However, the outcome is powerful and nothing short of a miracle. Our earthbound petty self, obsessed and preoccupied with material desires and pursuits, becomes converted into the energy source of the Shabd. The ingredients are simple: love, longing and persistent meditation in a thought-free lab where from inert matter we become the pure energy of the Shabd.
Every time we sit in meditation, we are doing that most important task only a human being is capable of doing. We are trying to control the most powerful and formidable enemy on this earth – the mind – and then achieve the highest human objective: God-realization. We are trying to practise dying to inert matter while living in the inspiring energy field of the Shabd.
The most powerful transformation of all is when we begin to experience oneness. Then we come to the spiritual realization mirrored in scientific realization: matter and energy are one. Our petty, heavy self and our light, divine self are the same – and the latter is within the former. Under the right conditions and under the right supervision by the right scientist, one can be transformed into the other.