He is Simply Waiting

“He is simply waiting for the cleanliness of your mind.” That quote is from a letter that Maharaj Sawan Singh wrote to a disciple in America. Here’s the paragraph it appears in:

You will get everything you wish – things more wonderful and remarkable than you ever dreamed of. He who has to give you all, is sitting inside, in the third eye. He is simply waiting for the cleanliness of your mind and is watching your every action.¹

We all have mental concepts about the spiritual journey and what is it like to go within and to experience higher states of consciousness. We wonder: What is it like to feel completely at peace? To be filled with the ecstasy of hearing the Shabd? To meet our Master within and then to merge into our divine Creator?

These are the experiences that we aspire to, and whatever ideas we may have about them, the Great Master tells us that what awaits us is so much more wonderful and remarkable than anything we could possibly imagine.

And he says we will get all of it. In fact, those experiences are our birthright. The one who has to give it to us – the Master, the Shabd – is sitting right within us at the third eye. We may ask: What’s he waiting for? Simply the cleanliness of our mind.

We’ve all heard that cleanliness is next to godliness. It feels good to be clean, and it’s beneficial to clean our body, our home, our clothing and even our car. But none of those things cleanse our mind.

The saints tell us that there is only one thing that will clean the mind: the practice of listening to the Word or the Shabd.

Our religions have brought the concept of cleansing ourselves down to the physical level. For example, the ritual of bathing in holy waters is supposed to wash off our sins. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were that easy? We would not have to battle the mind to make it still. We would not have to confront the self or annihilate the ego. We wouldn’t have to die while living. Just jump in the water!

Kabir Sahib wrote:

If bathing and dipping in water
Could lead one to salvation,
What about the frogs
That bathe day after day?
Like frogs men bathe,
Like them they’ll be cast
Into the womb again and again.²

The real holy water is that spirit that flows within us, and it is there that we can bathe in the Shabd and truly wash off our karmas. Only through the practice of meditation can we contact the Shabd, and it is only that which has the power to cleanse us and take us back to the Lord.

The Master is sitting at the eye center, and, as Great Master wrote, watching our every action. He knows our desires. He knows our thoughts before we even think them, and he knows our actions before we even do them. He is waiting for us to remember him, to give our attention to him, to become conscious of him. But we are slumbering in a state of ignorance. Our attention is running down and away from the eye center. We are clinging to our age-old illusions, thinking that we can find real happiness or satisfaction in the external world. That is all a delusion. We think we can own things, but the moment we die, all our stuff belongs to someone else. We think we have a real connection with our loved ones, while our only real friend is waiting for us at the eye center. Only there can we begin to find the lasting happiness that we seek.

The Shabd and the Master are pure, and if we want to commune with him, we have to achieve a certain level of purity ourselves.

Tulsi Sahib makes the same statement as the Great Master in his iconic shabd “Cleanse the chamber of your heart for the coming of your Beloved.”³ If we want to see the Master within, our mind must be purified, and that can happen only as a result of our meditation.

Two obstacles block our way. First, we have accumulated a mountain of karmas over many lifetimes, and those thick layers of karma act as a veil that keeps us from knowing who we really are and from knowing the Lord. That’s why saints refer to those karmas as dirt or filth which must be washed from the mind.

Second, the mind has been in the habit of running down and out, spreading itself into the world and seeking pleasure there through our senses. We yearn day and night for earthly forms and material possessions. Generally, the mind is scattered through the body’s nine outlets and never concentrated in the tenth door, the eye center. In this state we keep creating karmas that bind us here.

Our meditation not only cleans the vessel of our body and mind but also draws our attention up out of the senses so that our actions don’t keep adding more dirt to our karmic pile.

How we live in the world is essential in our purification process. That’s why living a wholesome, honest life must be the foundation for our spiritual practice. This means adopting a vegetarian diet (not causing the killing of animals for our food); avoiding alcohol and drugs, including marijuana and tobacco; and leading a moral, ethical life. We should always try to be kind, loving and supportive to others. Without following these first three principles, it would be difficult if not impossible for our meditation to bring our mind under control.

Maharaj Charan Singh used to tell us that if the mind is under our control, we cannot have a better friend. And if the mind is not under our control, we cannot have a worse enemy. Currently the mind is not under our control because it has been soiled by our actions in countless incarnations. Now we have the opportunity, through our meditation practice, to purify it and restore it to its original pure state.

Baba Ji has given us the example of a glass of water filled with red dye. The dye is the filth covering the mind. How do you remove the red dye? You keep adding pure water until the dye gets so diluted that it disappears completely. Everytime we sit in meditation, we are diluting the filth on our mind by adding the purity of our simran and bhajan.

Tulsi Sahib also refers to our meditation in the second line of his shabd:

From your attention, discard all that is other
  so He may be seated there.⁴

Isn’t that the definition of concentration? We shut everything out except the object of our attention and put all our focus on one thing. We use concentration to some extent in our everyday lives to learn and accomplish things. It is a powerful force; the more we are capable of concentrating the more successful we can be. In our spiritual life, concentration is essential. If our objective is spiritual, meaning connecting with our Master within, then we need to remove everything else from our attention.

The Master gave us the technique to direct our attention and focus on the spiritual. And this is where our effort comes into play. We must block out all other thoughts and desires through the practice of simran and dhyan – concentration and contemplation. Our complete attention should be in the repetition of the words and in the visualization or constant awareness of the Master’s presence.

To have that awareness we must reverse the direction of the mind, which is running through the senses into the world, where every action is colored by one or more of the five perversions of lust, anger, greed, attachment and ego. In this state we continue to gather the dirt of the creation, which leads to more pain and suffering.

As long as we are operating below the eye center, nothing we do can be said to be pure. The Master wants us to be kind, loving and helpful to others, which will help us in our quest. But below the eye center, even good deeds will always have an element of attachment or ego, and our love will always be contaminated with self-interest. No lasting happiness can ever be found below the eyes.

But when our attention begins to operate above the eye center, the story begins to shift. Instead of getting dirtier, now the mind is becoming cleaner. Our bonds with the world are loosening because we have entered the gateway to the spiritual realms. All our worries, anxieties and fears are left behind. Here we will get everything we wish – things more wonderful and remarkable than we ever dreamed of. And here we meet our beloved Master.

It sounds incredible, but it is not so easy. Hazur used to tell us that we are all struggling souls, and once we start to meditate, we learn exactly what we are struggling with and that this will be the struggle of a lifetime. But the Master knows that we can do it. Our lives are filled with choices, both big and small, and every choice takes us either toward the Master or away from him. We are constantly being pulled in both directions, so we have to choose consciously. To make the right choices requires that we change our whole way of life and adapt our lifestyle and our perspective to Sant Mat. If we want to open the inner gate, we must close the outer gates by giving up outward tendencies and stilling the mind. Christ said: “No man can serve two masters; … Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”⁵ It’s a mutually exclusive situation. Our face is either turned toward the Lord or to the world. We can’t look in both directions. How can we rise to the spiritual realms while we are covered with the filth of ego and earthly attachments? Before the soul can return to its true home the mind must be cleansed down to the very last desire.

Our practice, with his grace, separates the pure from the impure and the soul from its age-old entanglement with the physical body and the mind.

Hazur explains:

The condition of every soul is like that of clean pure water when manifest as clouds in the sky. When it falls as rain on the earth, it gathers so much dirt and so many impurities that it not only stagnates and begins to smell, but it also begins to identify itself with the dirt. Only when it separates from the dirt, when it is exposed to the heat and warmth of the sun and is transformed into vapour, does it see that the water is one thing and the dirt something else. Out of ignorance, it had confused its identity with that of the dirt. Once it is in a position to know its own nature, once it realizes it is the same as the clouds in the sky, it immediately leaves the dirt and rises back to merge with the clouds. This is the condition of every soul.⁶

This is the effect that the Master’s love has on the soul. It’s his love that awakens us from our false sense of self to realize who we really are. It’s his love that separates us from the dirt of this world and raises us up out of the cycle of birth and death. The water would never be able to separate itself from the dirt without the sun shining its warmth on it. And neither could we ever get out of this world without the grace of the Master shining down on us.

In the last paragraph of Great Master’s letter to the American, he writes: There is no doubt we are weak and have neither faith nor love, but there is also one hope to sustain us – that he may take pity on us and forgive our sins. We have taken refuge at his holy feet and, deservedly or undeservedly, we are His children. Therefore, it behooves you to perform your devotions every day, without fail. Do not engage in discussions with others, but go on pursuing the path while attending to the daily business of life, with peace and precaution. The Master is ever ready to help his children.

We may never know why the Lord has chosen to shower his mercy on us. But whether we deserve it or not, here we are, sitting at the Master’s feet. We are his children, and he is always ready to help us.