You Will Reach My Country, My Home
You probably know the following words of Hazur Maharaj Ji: “This world is not our true home. Everything we see here is transitory and impermanent.” Those words were from the book Die to Live. Nothing is permanent. Nothing of this world has ever followed anyone after he or she died.
And yet, even though we’ve heard these words so many times, we are continuously busy with living our busy lives. It absorbs all our attention. And if we don’t change this trend, at some stage we will be faced with disappointment and disillusion.
This is why the Masters tell us: Wake up. Wake up, this life is only temporary. Be wise, and direct your attention towards something that’s of lasting value.
Again Hazur says: Only meditation and the Master are eternal, and they alone are deserving of our attention.
Why do the Masters tell us this? They do so out of love and compassion for our situation. Because they see how we got lost and entangled in the illusion of this confusing life. Especially in these times with overload of information, multitasking and AI, uncertainty, and worries.
However, despite this confusion and uncertainty, there is good news. The good news is that the Creator wants nothing else but to bring us home. And not only does he want to, but he will bring us home. And not only us, but everyone and everything – every being, every creature, man, animal, plant or stone.
At some stage everything will return to its source, because the Creator wants to reunite everything to its origin, its state of unity. He’s brought it all to life, and he uses the magnetic attraction of the divine essence, the Shabd, to bring it all back home, because it’s so near and dear to him. You were always part and parcel of me
“You were always part and parcel of me”, says Soami Ji in one of his poems. Always part and parcel, always a near and dear part of me, he is saying.
Actually, the Lord misses us even more than we miss him. And this is why there is his continuous call to remind us of our true home. A continuous call, throughout the creation. A call which sounds like a bell that is informing us that it’s time to come home.
The following story, which was told by a teacher in spirituality, illustrates this continuous call. It’s about a man who had gone on a long walk. At a certain moment the man had lost his bearings. He didn’t know where he was or which direction he had to take. About half a mile away he saw a house, so he went there to ask for directions. Having arrived there, he saw a woman sitting on the veranda in front of the house. However, he noticed that she was blind, and in the conversation that arose, it became clear that she had lost her eyesight not long before. At the same time he could hear something from the field behind the house, beautiful tones of someone whistling.
“Who is that?” the man asked, and the woman answered: “that is my husband, just walk over to him.” Having arrived at the part of the field where the man was working, he asked: “Why are you whistling all the time?” And the man answered: “so that my dear blind wife always knows that I’m nearby and that she is safe.”
A sound that’s always calling us In a similar manner, why is there always this call, this sound in the creation? It’s because the Creator wants to let his dear, lost and blind children know that he is nearby and that they are safe.
That call from the Creator, that’s the sound that reverberates throughout this entire creation, in order to constantly remind us where our true home is.
However, most of the time, we don’t hear it. We don’t hear it because we’re too busy with living our lives and listening to the noise of our thoughts, our mind, as well as the noise of the world around us.
But the fact is, that sound is there. It’s the sound that the Masters talk about.
In fact, all mystics, whether from the East or the West, they all talk about it. And not only mystics, but so many philosophers, artists and musicians.
Some examples:
Pythagoras talked about the Music of the spheres.
Mozart, whose opera “The Magic Flute” is about the illusory nature of creation, makes the main character of the opera say “Listen to the sound of the flute within.”
Think of Händel’s beautiful “Messiah,” with words such as “Make straight through the desert, a highway for the Lord.”
Lately, even the Rolling Stones sang about Sweet Sounds of Heaven and Praise the Father. Is that a sign that their song “Sympathy for the Devil” has been transformed into respect for the Lord?
Didn’t we just say: At some stage everything will return to its source?
The entire creation is filled with that sound, even the wave of energy between the plant and the bee that was shown in a documentary by Davod Attenborough and that BJ mentioned last night. The entire creation is buzzing with it.
But, alas, as we just said, we don’t hear it because we’re too busy listening to the noise of our thoughts.
However, that sound becomes audible to us when we still those busy thoughts for a moment, when we turn our attention inward.
How do we turn our attention inward?
We, who are lucky to have met a teacher who made us aware of this entrapment in the world, and who, out of grace, has given us a method to still our thoughts, and turn our attention inward, we know how: Simran.
Simran that is given to us as the most precious gift at the time of initiation.
Simran that stills our thoughts, that takes our attention away from the world and all its worries, and that directs our attention towards that sound, towards that music of the spheres.
Simran, that’s available to us, every moment of our lives.
So what stops us from listening to that call, that sound, and following its path within, the path to our true home?
As we said in the first part of this satsang, what stops us is the way in which we get caught up in the web of this world, in all its relationships and activities.
It’s those relationships and activities that keep us so busy that we don’t hear the call of that celestial Sound, that sound that’s calling us to come to our true home.
What it comes down to is that while the most precious diamond is presented to us, we keep playing with shells.
You know Hazur’s brilliant description of the clever way in which this creation works: perfectly imperfect.
Always wishing to be reunited. While the Creator has placed us in this creation, in this life, in these circumstances, he’s left us with a force of attraction that’s pulling us towards him. It’s the magnetic force of the Shabd that works night and day, attracting us all the time, and it doesn’t get exhausted, its batteries never run out.
How does that magnetic force express itself within us?
What is it that instills the feeling that we want to go back home, back to the Creator?
Longing! Longing that never leaves us.
It never leaves us, because it’s the call from the Creator who wants to bring us home.
If it were up to us, we would have given up a long time ago and tried to find happiness in the world or started looking for another way to get out of this place.
But the fact is that He, the Creator, wants to reunite us with himself, and thus He’s attracting us.
And to make us come home, he creates a feeling of hunger in us, and at the same time he puts a plate of divine nectar in front of us – nectar that’s so sweet that we can’t do anything else but eat.
That feeling of hunger is similar to a feeling of loneliness. Loneliness that automatically motivates us to search for companionship, for a safe home.
That separation and loneliness is portrayed in such beautiful words in the opening lines of Rumi’s “Masnavi:”
“Listen to the flute reed how it tells a tale, complaining of separation, saying, ‘Ever since I was parted from the reed-bed, my lament has caused men and women to moan. Everyone who is left far from his source wishes back the time when he was united with it.’ ”
In its separation from its source, its true home, the reed is experiencing the pain of being cut off from its reed bed, and its loneliness makes it express its yearning to return to its source.
And what makes the reed utter its sound? It’s the wind that blows through the reed, making it work like a flute.
If there’s no wind, there’s no sound, no life. But with the wind, the flute comes to life, and thus it can express its pain.
And what is that wind? That wind is the expression of the divine essence, of the Shabd, of the force that brings this creation to life.
It brings it to life, and like the sun, it makes the creation sing with joy and happiness, but, at the same time, it makes the flute lament its loneliness and express its yearning to return to its source.
Isn’t that similar to the way the Creator loves himself through us? How the love that He emanates makes us love Him and thus reflect His love back to him?
And this is the way in which that divine essence expresses itself, which we often experience or express with the terms “sound and light.” However, sound and light are from the domain of our concepts, but this is all we know, and thus we have to make do with these concepts. But in actual fact, the divine essence goes way beyond our concepts. It’s indescribable.
So don’t limit yourself to those concepts. Don’t limit yourself by expecting particular sounds or lights. Go beyond what limits you. Go beyond concepts, beyond the mind, deeper and deeper within, to that divine essence.
A peculiar fact is that as one tends to have feelings of a spiritual nature, feelings of “going in”, some people tend to start feeling giddy or uncomfortable. These feelings can arise because one’s sense of familiarity, one’s sense of steady ground, seems to be gone, and as this happens, one tends to “grasp around” for something tangible, in this case sensations of sound or light; sensations that we are familiar with and that fit within our world of concepts, within our dimensions. But because the divine essence is indescribable, it goes beyond those dimensions.
It is this divine essence that is the force that brings this creation to life, the force that brings us to life and sends us out to play in the garden of this creation. It is the very same force that makes us feel lonely and lets us express our yearning to return to our source.
It’s the Creator’s compassion for us in our illusion; with the illusion that this creation, this playground in which we live our lives, is real, but which in the end would lead to a deep sense of delusion.
“Listen to the Shabd melody, and you will reach my country, my home,” Soami Ji said in the same poem from which we quoted earlier in this satsang:
You were always part and parcel of me.
And he continues:
Whenever I saw you in pain, compassion moved me to
come and help you.
Abandon now this creation of the drop, go back and
rejoice in the realm of the Ocean.
Dear surat, it is time you listened to my advice.
By listening constantly to the Shabd melody, you will
reach my country, my home.
Listen constantly to the melody of the Shabd; in other words, do your meditation.
Do your meditation with love and devotion, and with focus, discarding everything else.
It’s basically the only message the Masters have for us; a message for our best will.
Listen to that sound that reverberates within you and that wants to take you along, leading the way within. That sound is the melody of the Shabd, the power that brought this creation to life; the power that brought you to life. And it’s exactly the same power that attracts you back to your source, your real home.
That sound, that power is right within you. To hear it, all you need to do is look in the right direction, focus your attention on it, with full dedication, and then wait.
Wait until it appears, like the sun, which appears and shines, every day. It shines to give you light, not to look at the world around you, but to shine its light on your way within, to show you the way to your true home.
So wait until you see that sun shine its light. Wait until you hear that melody within.
By simply directing your attention inward and allowing yourself to be taken along by the music of that melody.
As Hazur used to say: Just lean within, and, as Baba Ji often says: Just relax.
Just lean within, relax, and allow yourself to be taken along by the flow of the Shabd that pulls you inwards, to your true home.
Or, to conclude with Soami Ji’s words:
By listening constantly to the Shabd melody, you will reach my country, you will reach my home.