By Guru’s Grace

In the Upanishads we read,

In the infinite wheel of Brahman in which everything lives and rests, the pilgrim-soul, or the reincarnating self is whirled about when it thinks that it and the supreme Ruler are different or separate. It attains immortality when it is blessed or favoured by Him.¹

This ancient text explains that our soul, bound by her entanglement with the mind, which runs after sensual pleasures, undergoes a continual shift of states, migrating from one body to the other, much like a prisoner forced to move between cells in confinement. As our attention is not set on the immovable Lord and is spread outward in the creation, this alternation of states continues and is unending. Be it from flesh to flesh, or from one emotion to the next, or from one thought to the next, we do not seem to get rest or happiness.

Our thoughts follow one another like carriages on a train spiraling up and down, left and right, as if on a rollercoaster ride in an amusement park with no particular goal other than for the ego to experience pleasure and to avoid pain, and with no particular purpose other than for the ego to keep re-asserting itself as the focal point of creation. Moreover, most of our thoughts are of the past and the future, sidestepping in the process the eternal now, the state in which both mind and soul are able to stand still in silence, catch ahold of the Shabd and taste its sweetness.

In turn, as our thoughts keep weaving the webs of significance which entangle us within this creation, our feelings also follow suit; rising and falling like waves in a turbulent ocean. One moment we drive our car feeling happy and the next moment we are frustrated because we are stuck in traffic. Being idle, and kill time, as people say, we may resort to scrolling on our phone to inject ourselves with a momentary dose of disorienting information, or we may remember our outstanding social obligations which trigger anxiety or self-criticism. In the evening, when we watch the news we get sick to our stomach with what is happening in the world. And at night we may relax by watching a feel-good movie. Eventually as night falls, we wind down, close our eyes and sleep, so that we re-charge ourselves to repeat this karmic merry-go-round the following day.

Yet Rumi writes to us so lovingly in a poem,

The breeze of dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you want. Don’t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the door where two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.²

As humans we often reflect back at our lives and say with regret "Oh, if I could go back in time and had taken slightly different decisions; a small change then and a small change there, Oh how different my life would be today”. But we don't stop to think how now, in the present, “if we make a small change here and a small change there!” how different our life would be in the present and the future; A change as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wing. We do not pause to reflect that “now!” is the time to enter the inner laboratory of the human form to discover who we really are and where we are really from. Not later. Now is the time to wake up to the Truth. Not later. Now is the time to nurture the seed of Nam our Master planted in us at the time of initiation. Now that we have this human body, this is the time to come in direct communion with the Lord who dwells inside this body, not later. As Guru Amar Das says,

Oh my ears, the true Lord sent you into the world to listen to Nam. Having been sent to listen to the truth, you were attached to the body to listen to the true Word.³

Not seeking refuge in the true Lord, we go back to sleep. And we do so without thinking that the following night when we go to sleep again we will be a bit older, and the following night a bit older still, until inevitably we will one day close our eyes and sleep, this time for good, only to forget everything we lived for, and to be reborn in another body with a new face and a new name, to live a new drama in a completely different theatre, which will be determined from the store of our karmas and the nature of our thoughts, feelings, and attachments in this life.

So as the wheel of samsara spins, our mind spins along, making us disoriented and confused. Like a drunk person who is unable to walk straight, talk straight, and think straight, we have lost our self-awareness and discernment and have forgotten both our home and our direction home. So the logical question we should ask ourselves is: how to sober up and wake up from this dreamlike spell of Maya which captivates and fragments our attention? How do we turn our head away and disengage from this “movable image of eternity,” as Socrates once described Time.

Well, to begin with, we can relax and slow down. Moving around and about in this creation of mind and maya is like being on a treadmill; sprinting or walking makes no difference. We really don’t go anywhere. We are all imprisoned in the same line of treadmills for eons, staring at the screen in front of us, going through whatever karma we deserve to go through. So we can calm our mind and walk with dignity on the path of life, through the good days and the bad days, in sheer gratitude to be alive in a human body while holding the gift of Nam in our hands. Master Eckart writes, “If a man had no more to do with God than to be thankful, that would suffice.”⁴

Now, how do we thank the Lord? A person opens the door for us and we say, “Thank you” once. Our car breaks down and a by-passer stops to help and we say “thank you” two or three times. We are indebted to our parents our whole life and we can’t thank them enough. How do we thank the Lord who has given us life; who has given us everything? How do we express our gratitude? The only way to thank him is to take time to devote ourselves to him – to physically sit still with our attention behind the eyes with love and devotion. In the Philokalia, St. Thalassios the Libyan writes, “Stillness, prayer, love and self-control are a four-horsed chariot bearing the intellect to heaven,”⁵ while in the text “The Power of the Name” Kallistos Ware, a contemporary eastern Orthodox Bishop, elaborates,

To pray is to pass from the state where grace is present in our hearts secretly and unconsciously, to the point of full inner perception and conscious awareness when we experience and feel the activity of the Spirit directly and immediately.⁶

Simran, remembrance of the Lord, carried out not mechanically but with gratitude, humbleness, love and devotion, throughout the day and during meditation, will bring us to the shores of the Holy Spirit, but so long as we are immersed up to our neck with our words, and as long as we are drowning with our ideas, no matter how poetic these words and how noble these ideas may be, we will never reach this shore. Only by recollecting our scattered attention from the creation through simran can we reach this shore. From there on, we must jump in its living waters and flow along with its currents. And the only power that can push us in is the hand of grace, nothing else. The most we can do is invite his grace via our sincere effort. Great Master writes in a letter to a disciple “The efforts of the disciple and the grace of the Master go hand in hand. Effort is rewarded with grace, and grace brings more effort.”⁷

Therefore our responsibility is to put in the effort. When everything around us is in perpetual commotion, to stop and devote ourselves to him who is immovable, infinite and formless, is our job. A beggar’s job is to hit the streets, extend his hand and stretch his fist open to receive whatever people give, our job is to withdraw ourselves and be alone, retain our undivided attention at the eye centre and silence our mind to receive. At the time of meditation we must completely suspend our critical thinking. We are in no position to make demands from the Lord, nor can we bargain our way to him. Our love for him must be pure, beyond dualities. Rabia, the female Sufi saint, expresses exactly this when she says,

O Lord, if I worship you out of fear of hell, burn me in hell. If I worship you in the hope of paradise, forbid it to me. If I worship you for your own sake, do not deprive me of your everlasting beauty.⁸

So our job, our task, is to meet Him at our rendezvous place behind the eyes with an empty cup. Once we are there, He knows when to give, what to give, and how to give. Eventually, as we relax and slow down, and through our daily meditation establish a sense of order and purpose in our life, we are effectively reclaiming our wandering attention. And we are in a better position to appreciate its immense value and potential, because where we devote our attention, that is where we are. The very same attention that keeps us imprisoned in matter can connect us to Nam which is beyond matter. Submitting completely our attention to Nam is the most sincere act of devotion to the Lord, as it requires that we wholeheartedly set ourselves aside for Him. It is like a king who decided to visit a peasant’s home at the outskirts of his kingdom, and the peasant family does everything it can to satisfy their special guest, even offering the entire home to him out of respect. As Mikhail Naimy writes in the Book of Mirdad, “Ask not of things to shed their veils. Unveil yourselves, and things will be unveiled.”⁹

Throughout the creation we can observe the three gunas at their perpetual rhythmic play of impermanence. One guna creates, the other sustains, and the other destroys; accordingly a thunderstorm, a tree, or a great mountain are created slowly or rapidly, appear to exist either for a few seconds, a few years, or a million years, and then, gradually or suddenly disappear. Amidst this flow of impermanence the Word of God resounds continuously, without a single break. Since it is unstruck there is not even one speck of space where it does not resound, and since it is the living voice of God there is never a moment in time when it stops ringing. As the saints explain, the entire creation will one day undergo dissolution and cease to exist, but the Shabd, like the Truth, is permanent.

Therefore we cannot trust our senses, our mind, or our ideas, since they come and go. We can only trust the Shabd, which is constant, which can be heard within our very own body, and which gives us life. From the smallest organism to the highest levels of creation, the audible life stream gives life to all beings. By listening to it, the true purpose of the human form is articulated, and the true purpose for being born is accomplished. And we carry out the seva we promised to our Guru with the entirety of our being; with our body, our mind, and our soul. Kabir says in a poem, “The flute of the Infinite is played without ceasing, and its sound is love.”¹⁰

As humans we have the tendency to think that we know something if we give it a name. But the Shabd is the very infinite sound of love and impossible to know with words. We can only know it by devoting ourselves to it through attentive listening. We can consider how an experienced doctor puts the stethoscope in his ears and places it on the chest of his patients and carefully listens to their heartbeat and their breath. How immensely attentive and concentrated he is. Or how lovers listen to each other for hours, as if time for them has melted away. Surat Shabd Yoga, the union of the Surat with the Shabd, is the Greatest love story in the entire creation and beyond. It is the love story within all love stories and the entire creation tells this one tale of love in numberless acts and numberless ways. Meister Eckhart writes, “Every creature is a word of God and a book about God.”¹¹ while in another text he says, “I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to myself; my existence depends on the nearness and the presence of God.”¹²

At its heart, the spiritual path is establishing a relationship with the Lord; a relationship through which right from the beginning we learn priceless yet intangible lessons on the basic principles of being human. We learn how to speak politely, how to listen attentively, and when to remain silent. We learn to be humble, patient, compassionate, gentle, diligent, grateful, sincere and joyous. Concurrently the pleasures of the world become either tasteless or bitter. Slowly and steadily as we continue growing within this divine relationship with the Lord, we grow within the one reality of the Lord. Like a nursery flower inside a pot which is transplanted directly into the soil of a vast and beautiful garden; God’s reality becomes our reality, so that everywhere we go and in everything we do, we know that he is with us as well as in every living being. In a poem, Kabir speaks of this relationship between the soul and the Lord as the relationship between a mother and her child:

If a child in anger, runs and hits his mother
She bears no grudge, nor takes offense.
I am your child, I am your son, Lord, will you not pardon my sins?

My mind sinks into a gloom of anxiety
How will I reach the opposite shore without the power of Nam.
I am your child, I am your son, Lord, will you not pardon my sins?¹³

While Rumi writes,

When you are here we stay up all night,
When you are not here I can’t sleep.
Praise the Lord for these two insomnias and the difference between them.¹⁴

Once the mind is aligned with the soul our whole life becomes an act of devotion and prayer, where every word of our simran is placed as offering to the Master. “For prayer,” writes Saint Teresa of Avila “is nothing more than being in terms of friendship with God.”¹⁵ In Quest for Light, Hazur Maharaj Ji writes to a disciple, “Try to perfect the simran to such an extent that the holy names remain with you all the time, even when you are not conscious of them. This repetition should become as much a part of your life as breathing.”¹⁶

So, in effect, our aim should be for the five holy Names to constantly rotate around the axis like a rosary, by our devotional mind. The spiritual path is falling in love with the Lord. But to fully fall in love with the Lord we must first of all fall in love with our very own soul, which by extension means to fully identify and resonate with her longing to return home. With the entire world running after every imaginable desire, the lovers of the Lord only contemplate how to come into communion with their Beloved. Arriving into stillness with the intent to hear his Voice is to come into a communion with Him. There is no doubt He is there at the eye centre regardless of what the mind thinks, since this relationship is beyond the scope of the mind to comprehend. The mind is an instrument of duality, while the soul only longs to jump and get lost in the ocean of consciousness where she belongs. The love of the soul is one-pointed, pure, and infinite. It will never ever die. It's pure love that only knows how to give. “Love neither lends nor borrows; Love neither buys nor sells,” says Mirdad in the Book of Mirdad and adds, “but when it gives, it gives its all; and when it takes, it takes its all. Its very taking is a giving. Its very giving is a taking.”¹⁷

Or as Saint Paltu tells us, "In the game of love, whether heads or tails, it’s God both ways: if I lose, I’m his – if I win, he’s mine.¹⁸

To conclude, we must first of all hear His calling and start playing the Lord’s game of love today. If we win or lose, it is one and the same. It’s God’s way.