The Potter and the Clay
The promise of a spiritual path is transformation: anyone who is initiated by a true, living master can be lifted to a level of fulfilment. Transformation can be viewed from various perspectives, but this article concentrates on divine will. In Sikhism, divine will is called hukam, although other traditions refer to it with different names. Regardless of the term used, the common thread is that the cosmos functions according to divine will, and one’s spiritual journey involves recognizing, accepting, and ultimately surrendering to it.
What is hukam?
The Lord’s hukam, as explored in Jap Ji: A Perspective, has many dimensions. The first is conveyed in the first stanza of the Jap Ji, where Guru Nanak uses the phrase “the command of the Lord with a will,” indicating that the Lord is not an unconscious power but a supreme consciousness with will. The significance of this becomes clearer when we contrast the Lord’s will with an unconscious force, such as electricity. Electricity is powerful, but it has no consciousness; it cannot choose where to flow or why. The Lord, by contrast, has supreme knowledge and is the commander of choice. He chooses according to his will and applies knowledge to fulfil his will. As the medieval saint Namdev puts it, “All rests on the Lord’s will, and he is himself the operator of his will.” In other words, every person, creature, and even every blade of grass moves within the current of hukam. Nothing falls outside it.
Alongside the Lord’s conscious intention, Guru Nanak explains that hukam also refers to the laws through which that intention expresses itself in creation. In the third stanza of the Jap Ji, Guru Nanak states: “By his command, the Commander sets the universe on its course.” Here, hukam refers to the physical, moral, and spiritual laws governing creation, which are not random but deliberately established. In the moral realm, it is the Lord’s will that our actions are governed by the karmic law of cause and effect: as we sow, so shall we reap.
Accordingly, hukam sets our karmic destiny into motion, and we have no choice but to experience it. This can seem cold, impersonal, even unforgiving, and it may create a sense of helplessness. Yet mystics teach that the Lord’s will is saturated with his compassion. Whatever he does is for the well-being of the individual soul. This means that to live in hukam is to accept both joy and grief as equally flowing from the Lord’s hand. Mystics say that we are only half obedient if we happily attribute our blessings to God’s grace but refuse to accept our sorrows as equally his will. To acknowledge both in the same spirit is to accept hukam fully. This is what Christians mean when they pray, ‘Thy will be done’.
However, learning that the cosmos operates according to hukam does not, by itself, lead to spiritual transformation. Simply understanding that our lives unfold under the Lord’s karmic law does not make it easier to accept what that law brings us. In fact, the very act of categorising events as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ indicates that we have yet to truly live in hukam. To enable us to go beyond understanding and to live in hukam, a true, living master is essential.
How to live in hukam
When a disciple is initiated, the Master places his Radiant Form within the disciple and guides their transformation at every stage. The Master is like a potter at the wheel, supporting the clay with one hand inside the vessel while shaping it with the other from the outside. Everything happens for a reason; each experience becomes a tool the Master uses to diminish the ego – that gives rise to the illusion of separation between the soul (the true disciple) and the Radiant Form of the Master.
The disciple’s role is to cooperate with this shaping by surrendering to the Master. In Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, Maharaj Charan Singh explains what this means: “Surrender is when we take our ego and I-ness out of us. As long as the mind dominates the soul, there can be no surrender.” Elaborating on this, Maharaj Charan Singh clarifies that our soul, which is the essence of the Lord, is currently dominated by the mind, which in turn is controlled by the senses. This means: “The senses are the master of the mind, and the mind is the master of the soul. Unless the whole process is reversed, what can we surrender?”
This is the heart of the matter. True surrender, which the masters call sharan, depends on the soul gradually reclaiming authority over the mind and, in time, beholding the Radiant Form of the Master within. Maharaj Charan Singh explains how we may evolve to this state:
To attain that real surrender, which we call sharan, we have to remain within the dictates and principles that were told to us at the time of initiation. We have to put forth our honest efforts to remain on the path, to give time to meditation. That, in a way, is surrender to the master, and this surrender will lead to the internal surrender, the real or unconditional surrender.
So, gradually the soul begins to reclaim authority over the mind and, in time, through the method of contemplation, as instructed at initiation, comes to behold the Radiant Form of the Master within. In the Dawn of Light, Maharaj Sawan Singh tells us:
When we succeed in this method of contemplation, the radiant form of the Master appears within and becomes our guide in the upper regions of the spiritual journey. Thereafter he takes full responsibility to lead us to our goal and gives us constant guidance at every step. That form subsequently merges in Shabd, its real form.
True surrender does not begin with a grand declaration of renunciation, but with faithful adherence to Sant Mat’s four principles: eating a lacto-vegetarian diet, abstaining from all intoxicants, striving to become a good human being, and meditating for two-and-a-half hours each day. Of these four, meditation is the engine that drives all the rest, for it alone has the power to turn the mind away from sensual pleasures and cultivate an attitude of genuine acceptance. Yet to truly live in hukam, the outward discipline of following Sant Mat’s four principles must be supported by a sincere willingness to cultivate an inner attitude of acceptance. This involves a willingness to see whatever our destiny holds as coming from the Shabd Master, whether it tastes sweet or bitter.
When we resist our destiny, we are going against the Lord’s will. When we accept it with gratitude, we are moving in accordance with it. On the nature of this acceptance, Maharaj Charan Singh uses the analogy of human love, observing, “We always try to do what pleases the other person, and never try to assert ourselves or to adjust the other person to us. We always adjust ourselves to the other person’s will.… Spiritual love is the same.” Nonetheless, this attitude of acceptance cannot be manufactured through effort alone. It stems from deep love for the Master, and that love can only be cultivated through meditation.
The more sincerely we dedicate ourselves to meditation, the closer we move toward true inner surrender. In fact, mystics see meditation not just as a preparation for surrender but as an act of surrender itself. Maharaj Charan Singh states, “Whatever time we are giving to meditation, we are putting in effort to surrender. We are trying to surrender to the Father, and that is the only real surrender.”
Over time, something begins to change. Our daily practice makes us more receptive to the Lord’s grace. Greater receptivity helps us begin to let go of our ego, and we find ourselves more accepting of the events in our lives. We do not judge them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ nor do we react to them.
Upon reaching this stage of acceptance, we come to the deepest realization of all: there is no other doer but the Lord. Once we awaken to this truth, recognizing that we are not the doers but instruments of Shabd, then there is no ego to claim the fruit of any action. When we attain this state, our actions become nishkam – selfless and desireless – and therefore free from new karma. Yet, this very realization contains a final paradox: from the absolute perspective, we can neither walk this path by our own free will nor accept the Lord’s will through our own effort. Even our surrender is possible only through his grace.
Maharaj Charan Singh describes unconditional surrender as “when we see the master inside, forget our self and merge in his will, in his love. We will feel that we are the master there – ‘we’ do not exist”
We are the clay on the divine potter’s wheel. We are being kneaded and softened in the hands of the master potter, who is transforming us from a lump of clay into a beautifully shaped vessel. That vessel is empty, hollowed of the false self. Yet an empty vessel is not truly empty; it holds space. Comparing the soul to space enclosed within a pot, the Mandakya Upanishad observes that the space only seems to be contained; in reality, it is one with the infinity of space around it. So when the master potter hollows out the vessel, what is uncovered was never truly confined in the first place.
The soul is not transformed. Unconfined, it is one with the Shabd.