Seek the Lord – Do It Right Now

Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh wrote the following letter to a disciple:

Live a joyous life, fully relaxed and thanking the Lord for the great gift he has conferred upon you. Keep your thoughts in simran and bhajan and see what happiness you will find within yourself. Do not worry about anything in this life, which is all an unpleasant dream. The real life lies beyond, where your master awaits you.¹

Until we met the living master, most of us felt like something was missing in life. We had a hunger, a thirst that couldn’t be filled by anything in the world. When we met the master, we learned that this feeling of emptiness and loneliness is the soul’s longing for the Lord, who is hidden deep within us, just behind the dense forest of our thoughts and the thick wall of our ego. The master taught us that if we want lasting peace and happiness, we must search within ourselves and find the Lord.

We were taught how to meditate; how to unplug the phones of our five senses and turn our attention within. The master attached our consciousness to the audible life stream, the Shabd, the Holy Spirit residing inside us. He taught us that through meditation on the magnetic, ringing radiance of Shabd, our soul merges into it, and is carried on its current back into oneness with the ocean of consciousness, the Lord.

Then we realize that our soul is a drop of that ocean and that we have never been separate from the Lord at all. Mystics call this life a game of hide and seek, an illusion, a play, a dream. But oh how real it seems until we waken from this dream of daily life!

The master makes us take a hard look behind the sunny days of this world, to awaken us to the plight of our soul. He teaches that there are many realms in the hierarchy of creation, and that this physical plane is at the bottom. We live in a transient, restless world that has never known peace. Nations, races, and religions have always been at war with one another. Conflict, strife, and struggles have always been rampant here. Nothing here is permanent. The only thing we can count on is constant change. In time, everything disintegrates and turns to dust in our hands. The people we love can be ripped from our arms at any moment without warning. Nothing and no one here can ever really be ours.

The master teaches us that this world is the home of the body, not the soul. In this world, one being must eat the body of another being to stay alive. Though the entire creation is pulsating with the luminous presence of God, hardly anyone can perceive it. The lower planes are governed by a negative power and we live under the hard law of justice – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth – in a world where settling karmic accounts is the only business.

The mind of man is on fire with the five passions of lust, anger, greed, attachment, and vanity, and soul is its helpless prisoner. Mind races through the world, craving pleasure through people, places, and things, but it never satiates its ravenous appetite, never finds lasting peace and happiness. And the cost for its escapades is high. Mind does the crime and soul does the time, as the saying goes. Thrown into debtor’s prison, in prison cell after prison cell of different bodies, soul has no voice, no peace, no hope for freedom.

But in our endless rainy night of exile, the Lord hears the soul’s cry. He sends a living master to rescue his lost souls. This is the greatest turning point in the entire history of our soul. The master initiates us into Shabd, and for the first time, we hear the Voice of the Lord calling us to return to the shores of home. His Voice forms a path of sound and light within us that leads back to him. We actually get to listen to the Voice of God. Can we comprehend what an astonishing thing we are doing? Shabd is God. Each day, we get this rarest of privileges; to enter into a relationship of love with the Shabd Master within.

Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh said:

When you are in meditation, you are with the Master.²

Giving ourselves in meditation pleases the Lord more than anything else we can do in life. All He wants from us is our attention, our love, and for us to come home to him as soon as possible.

He has showered us with grace. He has given us the grace of the human form, the only body through which a soul can return home. He has graced us with longing for him. He has graced us with initiation from the living master, who has placed four sacred circles of protection, our vows, around our souls. The Lord has graced us with the promise of passage home and given us the keys to his kingdom.

There are no greater gifts of grace the Lord can bestow on a soul. Without this grace, the mind would never choose to think of him for even one moment. Without this grace, the soul would have no hope whatsoever to return to him.

The master gives us a new way of life so we can escape the law of karma, the domination of the mind and senses, escape the creation, and grow to become one with the Lord. He gives us everything we need, and free of charge. All he asks of us is to meditate; to get up every morning and make the effort to withdraw our consciousness up to the eye center, the gateway to the inner realms, so we can merge into Shabd and reach back to our destination. Meditation is the journey in consciousness that each one of us must make to free our soul.

It takes effort. But what other option do we have? To endlessly postpone our journey and subject our soul to more suffering? What are we waiting for? If nothing in our millions of past lifetimes has ever brought us permanent peace and happiness in this world, why do we think something will in the future? All masters implore us: Seek the Lord – Do it right now. These golden days of our precious human birth are slipping away. This is not the time to procrastinate. This is the time for action. This is the time for meditation. Someone is calling. It is time to go.

Guru Arjan Dev said:

The One who has sent you to this creation, He is calling you. He is calling, “Come with me. Let’s go back to the Father.” ³

With the immense grace bestowed upon us, there could be no greater tragedy for our soul than for us to live as if we had never received it. To turn our back on Shabd, to love our sleep more than our own soul, to love our pleasures and comfort more than our Creator.

A caterpillar crawls this earth, voraciously eating. But at a specific moment in time, it stops and makes a cocoon around itself. The caterpillar has to be still and wait in the dark. It has to die to what it once was.

In that dark stillness, a miracle takes place as the caterpillar’s cells transform into a totally different being. Soon, he emerges as a beautiful butterfly that only drinks nectar of fragrant flowers and flies above the earth with sunlight on its wings.

We humans also have a special body, divinely designed for our transformation. In the cocoon of meditation, in that dark stillness, a miracle takes place. When we still our body, still our mind, and merge into Shabd, our false ego self dissolves into love and we become another being.

In time, this mind, that has been so miserable running down and out into the world after sense pleasures and objects, falls in love with Shabd, the sweetest of all pleasures. Mind begins to reach inward and upward for more and more nectar of Shabd. It is completely transformed from a garbage-eating crow, from the worst enemy of the soul, to its best friend.

Our soul, an immortal being of pure light, that has been enslaved and imprisoned, forced to crawl the earth in the cage of body after body, is finally set free to return to its real home in the resplendence of pure spirit, the ocean of consciousness.

This is not a path of information. It is a path of transformation. Through meditation on Shabd, through this simple act of love, we grow and we grow to lose our separate identity and become another being. Become the Lord himself.

Think of Shabd like a radio wave. This divine music that flows from the Lord is constantly broadcasting to us, within. He never stops transmitting to us through the audible life stream of Shabd. But we don’t attune our attention to his frequency. We attune our attention to a thousand frequencies of the world. We attune our consciousness to the channel of our own mental chatter. Then we wonder why we feel no love, why we have no peace.

Unless and until this mind is repurposed, turned within and trained in the art of meditation, it will continue to overstuff our consciousness with endless desires, ambitions and activities, projects, plans and pleasures. Its latest addiction is to technology, the virtual world. The internet awaits! Over 1.7 billion websites and counting. Around 547,200 new ones each day. All just a click away. WhatsApp. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. YouTube.

Convenient. Informative. Entertaining. But how many of us squander countless golden hours from our treasure of human birth, hypnotically staring at digital impulses on cell phone, computer, and TV screens. These once-merely convenient devices have become an addiction, something we can’t live without. They have become the negative power’s weapons of mass distraction, ferociously devouring our precious attention, day and night, while we ignore the cries of our soul within, longing for Shabd. For Freedom. For the Lord.

The master has begun awakening us from the dream of daily life. He has told us who we are, where we are, and where we have to go. He has fanned the flames of longing and awakened us to the divine nostalgia. Mind tries to run away, to escape the pain of our awakening awareness of our separation from the Lord, but it can’t outrun the grace of the master. Our time has come.

Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh often spoke about the effects of our growing love for Shabd – that this emptiness we feel is the Lord preparing us from within for something real to hold on to, preparing us to be one with him. The master used to talk about how we begin to feel the bliss that we belong to someone and someone belongs to us. The vacuum of emptiness and loneliness finally begins to vanish. We begin to feel moments filled with happiness and peace within, for no rhyme or reason.

So why keep running away from love? From the only place we really want to be? What if we could have the courage to turn off our cell phones, computers, TVs, or whatever it is that keeps us away from the Lord? We could then sit in the silence, create a sacred space where we can become conscious of our longing. We could go to bed earlier so we could rise in the early morning and give ourselves to our Beloved in meditation. Not to see Light. Not to make progress. Not to clear karmas, but just to please him, because we love him and miss him, and want to be one with him.

Meditation is love-in-action. Those who are sincere lovers of the Lord never miss their daily time with him in meditation. Day after day, year after year, their burning desire is to reach him. They live normal balanced lives in this world, but their love for him, manifesting as meditation, is the self-luminous diamond shining at the center of their existence. And when they get up from meditation, they stay attuned to that frequency. They light the torch of simran and carry it in their minds through their days and nights. The purifying flame of the holy names burns away all their dark desires and fears. It casts out all the shadows and sorrows of worldly life.

Wherever true lovers are, they fill the atmosphere with the sublime vibration of love. They radiate peace. They cheerfully accept whatever the Lord sends them. They are no longer dependent on the outer circumstances of life for their happiness. They become blissful and intoxicated with joy. They forget themselves and become aware of the Lord.

Through loving simran, we gain access to Shabd. It takes up residence in our consciousness. It floods our being with radiance and bliss. It transforms our mind into a temple of peace and purity. We begin to see the light of the Lord shining everywhere and in everyone. Then it is all love. Then we know we will soon win this game of hide and seek and return home to the Lord.

The Great Master said:

If you wish to be filled with the grace of God, then you should banish all else from your mind. Leave everything else aside and cherish the Name of the Lord alone in your heart. As soon as you empty your mind of all thoughts by means of simran, you will find the way back to the Lord's mansion.⁴

This is the path of love. It is so simple. Mystics tell us that God is love. Shabd is love. The essence of the living master is love. The soul is love. Through the Lord’s grace, through meditation, we give ourselves to Shabd, until we become the Shabd. Until we become the Lord.

These are the strangest of times. The world became sick so they closed it. Everyone is struggling to cope with lockdowns, financial and social restrictions being thrust upon us. The future is unclear. Fear is in the air. But let us try to be of good cheer and see the blessing of these days. Let us take relief in this break from our usual dead run into worldly activities. If these days help to turn us from the world and turn us toward the Lord, these are days of grace. Sacred days.

May we one day look back at this interlude as the days when we began to carry the torch of simran in our hearts. When we stopped thinking – I will meditate tomorrow, when I’m not so busy and tired – and started thinking – Everything in this life can wait, but my journey back to the Lord can’t wait.

May we look back on this time and think – Those were the days when I came in out of the storm and took shelter with my Master, took refuge in Shabd, the great comforter. Those were the days when I put my faith in the Lord and began to breathe breaths of happiness and sighs of relief.

During a talk Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh gave in Pasadena, California, in June 1970, he used the Bible and commented on what Jesus was saying to his disciples:

Do not think that you have selected me as your master; I have chosen you. I have called you and drawn you near me. This was in your destiny. It was so ordained by my Father. It was also destined by my Father that you should bear fruit – that is, that you should make spiritual progress.

I could tell you so much about the beauties of the inner regions and many other wonderful things but I cannot do so now because you are not sufficiently advanced on the path to understand them. So far, I have only given you the gist of my teachings. But I shall always be with you to guide you and I shall explain all these things to you when you reach my radiant form within yourself. When you come to me inside, I will show you things you have never dreamed of and that are beyond the comprehension of the mind….

Until you achieve that goal, your effort may be compared to the anguish of a woman in labor. But your happiness will know no bounds when you meet me within yourself. Then you will absolutely forget all your trials and sorrows. You will be so filled with love, joy and indescribable happiness that there will be no room for anything else. You will not even remember that you were ever sad.⁵