The Quest for Health

Dream or Reality? - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Dream or Reality?

Many of us seem to be sick in one or two or all three levels of our existence: the spiritual, mental/emotional, and the physical. Any imbalance in our life filters down through the mental and emotional level to the physical body. But the healing process starts at the top, and true spiritual healing ends suffering at all levels.

Whether we are aware of it or not, we inhabit two worlds at the same time – the outer and the inner, the visible and the invisible, the dream and the reality. How did we get into this situation? We have been ‘out’ in the dream since the beginning of creation. Maharaj Sawan Singh said:

Ever since the world was created we have been here. Millions of ages, of dissolutions and grand dissolutions, have rolled by, but we have not been able to find the way back to our Home. If we had found the way, we would not have been here now.¹

We have been experiencing life at all levels in the creation on the wheel of birth and rebirth, in any number of the 8.4 million species of life.

A Sanskrit saying goes, “God sleeps in minerals, awakens in plants, walks in animals and thinks in man.”² We are concerned here with God who thinks in man – with the human being who can think. The philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.”³ The Lord is within each one of us. But is anyone in this world really happy as this divinity in disguise?

With all our advancements and all the objects created to make life easier, do we have more happiness? With all our advances in the medical field is sickness gone? We may live a little longer but our quality of life has diminished. As some sicknesses end, new ailments pop up. All the toys that we work so hard for – do they really bring us happiness? Maybe some short-term pleasure, but nothing lasting. We work two jobs, or both parents work to make ends meet, to have more cars, a bigger house, more opportunities for our children. With this constant activity, children hardly know their parents and parents know little of their children. With all this so-called progress, where have our family values gone?

Values give us a foundation for living, something to hold us up – ideals and goals, love and affection. But how can young people develop values living in conditions of immorality, crime, drugs, and alcohol? One large city in the United States has an illegitimacy rate of eighty-five percent. What do we learn and absorb from TV, videos, and movies? What do our children learn? Do they learn values, traditions, good conduct, love and devotion from their parents, or other so-called values from information sources such as TV, movies, computers and I-phones?

The saints tell us that this place is not our true home and happiness here is an illusion. Short-term happiness seems real, but how long does it last? The pleasure and smell of a new car is usually gone in thirty days. All the things that we work so hard for bring us short-term happiness. Visit our hospitals and nursing homes – is there more pleasure or pain? Is anyone not subject to sickness and old age? How about our prisons and slums? Are there more people living in the streets now than fifty years ago? Is our level of safety lower? And what of greed and politicians?

We need help here, we need a guide. In our short lives we have many guides or teachers, starting with our parents and schoolteachers, then physical, mental, emotional and spiritual teachers. We leave these teachers at some point and take on new ones at all levels. Some questions have been answered and some have not. Growth has depended on our capacity to understand. What if we found – or were found by – a teacher who could answer all of our spiritual and mental questions, which in turn could bring us balance and happiness on all levels?

He has found us. The living perfect Master has found us, and from him we receive Nam, the gift of liberation, the end of our suffering and the ‘wheel of 84.’ The mystic Inayat Khan said, “When the cry of the disciple has reached a certain pitch, the teacher comes to answer it.”⁴ According to his secretary, Rai Sahib Munshi Ram, Maharaj Sawan Singh stated:

To get initiation is not easy. The gift of initiation is the reward of good deeds accumulated over a number of lives and is, in fact, the benefit reaped by one for keeping the company of saints and devotees in previous lives. He remarked that Dharam Das’s relation with Kabir Sahib had existed during eight previous lives.⁵

Is this human spiritual teacher more than a normal man? Guru Nanak Ji said, “The saints can give salvation to billions with an iota of the power they have attained through meditation; that is, they can take everyone with the power they have acquired through the practice of Nam, but such are not the orders of the Lord.”⁶ There are teachers at some levels of achievement who utilize their powers to give their disciples inner spiritual experiences, but the disciples do not have the power to sustain these. Soami Ji Maharaj said that anything done in a hurry is an act of Kal, the negative power of mind. The inner path taught by the living, perfect teacher is a slow path, but the Master is in complete charge of our lives, always aware of everything we think and do. Ours is a slowly developing relationship of love and devotion.

Do you remember the story from the earthquake in Haiti a few years ago? A mother and son were working in their shop when the earthquake hit. She was rescued and taken for help. Afterwards she went to different rescue centres looking for her son. She finally went back to their own building to search for him, and she thought she heard her son calling to her. Rescue workers arrived shortly, she showed them where she thought he was, and they started digging. Day after day they removed stone and steel. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine days, and finally on the tenth day they saw an arm moving. They dug more and there was her son – dehydrated, weak and hungry, but alive. They asked him what sustained him over those many days and he said, “I knew my mother would never give up on me.” And why this story? Our friend, the Master, our inner guide, never, never gives up on us. He helps us and guides us all the way to our true home.

Above the eyes or below the eyes: which is our goal, which do we want to have as our home? Above and below the eyes – these are the two worlds we live in simultaneously, but not always consciously or harmoniously. The outer and the inner, the visible and the invisible, the dream and the reality. Where do we place our time and energy, our thoughts and attention?

Simran, the gift of repetition from the Master, helps us live in and purify our inner world. Living in the physical world, we create negative habits – we continuously see and do unpleasant things, and as these habits deepen our lives can slip into chaos. Just as we become better in the company of positive people and thoughts, conversely we are affected by the company of people with negative thoughts. Negative thoughts are the world’s most communicable disease. But simran is the means to help us cure this negativity. Then, as our inner world becomes more clean and orderly we will start to see our outer world becoming more clean and orderly as well.

So how about considering our goals – the outer or the inner, the visible or the invisible, the dream or the reality? We could focus on one long-term goal like submitting to the process of going to our true home, going inside, and meeting our inner Master. Short-term goals could be to do our two and a half hours of meditation every day, to do more simran during the day, to attend weekly satsang and read Sant Mat books, and to be with friends who have the same objective. And maybe to talk less, sleep less, and eat less.

Focusing on goals is important, because even though life can be pretty much the same for all of us, it’s how we each react to it that can create peace or problems. Our job is to try to stay centred. That is where the Lord resides – in the centre. No more room for why this or why that; everything just is. It is all his will. All we have to do is follow the discipline of both the long- and short-term goals. He will do the rest.

If the law of attraction, that what we think we attract, is relevant to everything in our existence, wouldn’t the logical direction for us be to dwell not on our weaknesses but rather on those things that take us toward the Master? Rumi said:

God has planted in your heart the desire to search for him. Do not look at your weaknesses but focus on the search. Every seeker is worthy of the search. Strive to redouble your efforts so that your soul may escape from the material prison.⁷

We have to try to be more aware and not react to the situations life brings to us. We can learn to be proactive by watching the mind, becoming the observer. Our thoughts are not us; we are that which observes the thoughts. Saint Francis of Assisi said, “What we are looking for is what is looking.”⁸ Complaining as well as fault-finding and reacting strengthens our ego’s sense of boundary and separateness, on which its survival depends. We are constantly redefining who we are with thoughts, but it just doesn’t work. Thinking and analyzing will not get us to the Master.

Less thinking and analyzing opens the door for us to open and unfold. To re-learn what we have forgotten. Non-reaction is not weakness, but strength. The inner Master hears our every thought and word. He sees our every action. We are the puppets and he is pulling the strings. No matter what we have done in the past – expanding our ego, judging, being angry, not forgiving – and no matter what we haven’t done – our meditation – today is a new day. Rumi said, “Come, come, come again to the one who loves to forgive.”⁹ That is our Master.

Instead of collecting more knowledge, opinions, ‘I’m right’ pictures of ourselves, and useless comparisons with others, it’s time to focus on the most powerful tool the Master has given us, simran.

The present Master has spoken of the importance of focus. We may talk of focusing on the vows, on being good people, on watching the mind or our faults, but the most important focus is the focus in and on our meditation. We are still incomplete – complete means that we have fully realized our true self, who we really are. We are incomplete because of our distractions – and they are ours – forms of energy from the mind. Our desires, our distractions are what have kept us here, trapped in the lower three worlds. And what do these distractions keep us from? Our way home, the tenth door, the only way out of this land of duality, distraction and incompletion.

When we judge ourselves and others, when we can’t forgive ourselves and others, it means that we are still stuck in the dream. And all this creates resistance to his love, his flow, his grace. Allowing it all to happen without reacting – just accepting – is reality. His will.

As we experience negative emotions and react to them, we stay stuck in the dream. When we allow and feel the positive emotions, we are in his love, in his grace, in his hands. We start to feel his presence. The dream has become real because the mind has made it so. Still, even this is all his will. And finally it is his will to have us leave the dream, to allow it to happen, to embrace reality. To accept his will in the good and the bad, within this dream of duality.

As we continue to utilize the gift of the Master’s grace, we slowly, slowly bring ourselves, with his help, into the present moment. By doing so we start to overcome the imbalance of identifying with our self or ego, of loving and believing in ‘I, me, my and mine.’ By the practice of simran (repetition) and meditation we eventually come to understand that we are not this body or this mind with its sense of past and future. We are the soul, part and parcel of the lord.

We will someday come to the realization that every person we meet is also part of the Lord. With that realization, that awareness, how can we view others as different, as bad, as our enemies? That realization is born out of the love and the compassion shown to us by all perfect Masters. It is an awareness of a deep bond between ourselves and every other creature. It is an allowing of the continual flow of his grace, his love, his will. This final step on the path is just a process of letting go – of judgments, opinions, desires, of holding on to everything. Letting go of the last part of the dream. Rumi sums it up by saying that our task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within ourselves that we have built against it.

Finally, because of our misery the Lord sends to us a perfect living Master who shows us the formula or the way back to our original home. He tells us that the most important action we can take and desire we can have is to do our meditation. As Hazur Maharaj Ji often would say: The answer to all your questions is to attend to your meditation. But yet, many of us struggle to do what we promised him. We fail. Mark Twain said, “There are a thousand excuses for failure, but never a good reason.”¹⁰

Of all of the goals we may have our meditation is the most important. Without meditation it is very difficult to go inside. And we should understand that this inner path we follow is a slow path. But ‘slow’ is a relative term; in the big picture, our going home with our inner Master is very quick compared to the amount of time we have been away from the Lord. It is but a tiny dot on the long calendar of our existence. We see only a small part of the picture, and so it seems that we remain stuck and that progress is very slow.

It is all about our doing the daily two and a half hours of meditation we promised our Master we would do. We all have good intentions, especially when we are as fortunate as we are to come to Dera and sit at the feet of the Master. But we also know that hell is paved with good intentions. We need self-discipline. The writer Elbert Hubbard said, “Self-discipline is the ability to do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.”¹¹

Do we think that people who sit for meditation every day always feel like sitting? All our plans, hopes and dreams will not work without self-discipline. The big goal is to go inside. The small goals are to do those things that help create the environment for us to sit and go in. The present Master has said that the Master wouldn’t have given us Nam if he didn’t think we could do it. We just have to ask him for help.

As we put in more effort he will reward us with more love and grace. We may fall but there is no room for quitting. He is always helping us. The poet Longfellow wrote:

Those heights by great men, won and kept,
Were not achieved by sudden flight.
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.¹²

The time for excuses is past. Tomorrow morning is a new opportunity to sit for our Master. An opportunity to please him.

A letter from Maharaj Sawan Singh states:

The father is always with you. You live, move and have your being in him. He is always helping you in every kind of task that you perform. The nearer you come to him, the more fully you will feel his presence and realize his help. As love for him increases in you, you will get a deeper and deeper realization of his radiant form within yourself.¹³

In closing, every day we must:

Ask our Master for help.
Thank him for everything he gives us.
Do our very best to do our daily two and a half hours of meditation.

He allowed us this human body. He allowed us Nam. He allowed us to be his puppets.

He allows us to sit with him each morning. He allows us to be aware of his presence.

And finally… he allows us to follow him to our true home, Sach Khand.

Rai Sahib Munshi Ram, With the Three Masters, Vol. I, 4^th ed., p.20
Andy Zubko, Treasury of Spiritual Wisdom – A Collection of 10,000 Inspirational Quotations, p.193
Treasury of Spiritual Wisdom, p.193
Greg Bogart, In the Company of Sages: The Journey of the Spiritual Seeker, p.i
Rai Sahib Munshi Ram, With the Three Masters, Vol. I, 4^th ed., p.19
Rai Sahib Munshi Ram, With the Three Masters, Vol. III, 3^rd ed., p.48
Rumi, Masnavi V: 1733–5
Tania Kotsos, The Adventure of I: A Journey to the Center of Your Reality, p.33
Path of Love (internal magazine publ. RSSB Hong Kong), July – September 1999
Brian Tracey, No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline, p.1
www.goodreads.com
No excuses!, p.10
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Dawn of Light, letter 2

Our Heart with His - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Our Heart with His

In one of his poems, the thirteenth-century Persian mystic Rumi writes:

If you could get rid of yourself just once,
The secret of secrets would open to you.
The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe,
Would appear on the mirror of your heart.¹

Rumi says here the same thing that all true saints and mystics have said throughout the ages. He says that if we can just get beyond ourselves, if we can just forget about ourselves completely, then the secret of secrets will open up to us. Then the face of the unknown, the face of God, will appear to us and then we’ll experience the reality of his presence in our lives.

Hazur Maharaj Ji often used to tell us that the spiritual path involves losing oneself and becoming another being. In The Master Answers he says:

You will get the feeling that you are nothing, when you merge in the love of the Master. … You will just forget what you are. When you absolutely blend yourself into the love of another person, then you forget what you are. Then you know that you are nothing … Similarly, we have to forget by meditation that we are anything and know that everything is the Master.²

And basically this is the goal of following the spiritual path. We’re trying to lose ourselves, and we’re trying to realize and know that everything is the Father.

So the question is: how do we do this? All of the saints and mystics tell us that we can only do it through the practice of meditation, and we can only do it under the guidance and with the grace and support of a perfect living master, a God-realized soul. This is not something we can do by our own efforts alone. Hazur used to say that if we could do it on our own, we would have already done it by now.

The mystics explain that every particle of this creation is saturated with God’s creative energy. That energy is what gives life to this creation. Every soul is a drop of the ocean of his divine love. We’re all a part of something much greater than ourselves. We’re all a part of God, but most of us don’t realize this truth and, for the most part, we feel as if we’re alone in this creation. We feel as if we’re separate from God and separate from each other.

Hazur once said that in our present condition, our soul has lost touch with the one that it loves. Most of us have forgotten our divine heritage and we’re just wandering around in this creation, lost in confusion and delusion. Baba Ji once said that we’re like ships lost at sea here.

But the saints and masters come here to give us an anchor to hold on to. They remind us of our true source and our divine heritage. They tell us that being in the human form we have the potential and the opportunity to think about God, to search for God, and to find God. And they give us the guidance and the support that we need to do this. They tell us that this is the real purpose and value of the human form.

Guru Ram Das describes the value of the human form when he writes:

The human body is a great ocean,
which is fully filled with diamonds,
emeralds, rubies and gems.
He who has supreme good luck
recorded on his brow,
excavates and mines them out
under the Guru’s instruction.³

When he compares the human body to a great ocean fully filled with diamonds, emeralds, rubies and gems, he’s referring to the fact that God’s creative energy, the Word or the Shabd, is within the human body. And he’s telling us that when we have the great good fortune, the supreme good luck, to meet a Master and follow his instructions, then we have the potential to discover this treasure within ourselves.

The saints explain that the reason we don’t experience the inner light and sound of God’s divine energy in our present condition is that our mind is always distracted, our attention is always divided. We’re constantly thinking about the outside world and reacting to the events of the world and trying to make the world into what we think it should be.

And this constant activity of the mind keeps our attention preoccupied. In Dawn of Light, Maharaj Sawan Singh explains that everything in this physical creation is “illusory and transitory, changing and changeable, dispersing and distressing.”⁴ And yet this illusory and transitory physical creation is all we ever think about. It takes up all our attention, time and energy.

The saints tell us that our constant thoughts about the outside world act as a veil or a blinding screen between the soul and God. Albert Einstein once said, “Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas; he must burst it open.”⁵ And the saints and mystics tell us the same thing. They explain that we can only reason with our intellect; reason is limited and differs from one person to the next. And we can only understand according to our own personal experiences, which are subjective, and again, different for different people. So each one of us sees the world through a very narrow and subjective lens. And yet we take our very limited view to be reality.

The American author Joan Didion published a book called We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live. And this is what we do. We create stories about the world, according to our limited and subjective understanding, and then we take those stories to be real. Those stories become our identity. They give us a certain level of comfort in this world. They give us the illusion that we know more than we actually do. And they give us the illusion that we have more control than we really have. And we find it very difficult to accept or to understand and even to listen to anything that doesn’t fit into our story – our limited version of reality. Basically, we close our hearts and we close our minds to anyone or anything that doesn’t meet our expectations.

Baba Ji has said a number of times that part of his job as the Master is to confuse us and to get us to go beyond our comfort zones. And all the saints tell us that we have to get to a point on the spiritual path where we start to question what we think we know. We have to get to a point where we start to question our own limited concepts and ideas and opinions. Hazur used to say that we need someone to shake us by the roots. We need someone to shake us out of our habitual ways of thinking about life.

Rumi writes about this challenge in one of his poems:

Some actions which seem cruel
Are from a deep friendship.
Some demolitions
Are actually renovations.⁶

He also seems to be saying that sometimes our illusions – the stories we tell ourselves – have to be demolished before we can really hear and benefit from what the masters are trying to teach us. We have to get to a point where we realize how little we actually know and how limited our perspective is, before we can be truly receptive to the grace and the guidance of the master.

The saints assure us that God is always with us. He never leaves us. He’s closer to us than we can possibly imagine. We’re all actually a part of him and he’s a part of us. But the noise and confusion of our limited concepts and judgments and opinions block God from our view. As Einstein said, we have to break free from the prison of our own ideas. And the mystics come here to help us do this. They help us demolish the prison walls brick by brick and they give us something much more real and everlasting and true to hold on to. They help us to open our hearts and they help us to see what exists beyond the prison walls.

Baba Ji has often said that we need to learn to make the mind completely still. We need to learn to sit in the silence and be attentive. We need to learn to listen. If we can do this, then we will become aware of the secret of secrets, as Rumi said. Then we’ll become aware of the light and sound of God’s divine energy within ourselves. And then we’ll understand who we really are and who God is. This is what meditation is all about and this is the challenge that each one of us faces individually on this path. This is what the mystics refer to as our real work in life.

In one of his poems, the seventeenth-century saint Niloba writes about this process:

When the heart lives for meditation,
a peace sets in – a tranquility.
Being with mystics leads to
devotion to God, to knowing God.
Happiness in this world and liberation from it,
both are found in their company.⁷

He says being with mystics leads to devotion to God, to knowing God. And when we practise their teachings and dedicate ourselves to meditation – when our heart lives for meditation – a peace sets in, a tranquility sets in.

Baba Ji has said many times that meditation is our life-support system on this path, and all of the mystics talk about the importance of learning to still the mind and open our hearts and turn our attention toward God.

About the practice of meditation, Meister Eckhart writes:

Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude. Wherever we go or with whomsoever we may be, we must learn to find God there.⁸

He tells us that we don’t have to run away from the world in order to find God.

Hazur used to say that even if we try to run away, there’s nowhere to run. We have no choice but to go through our karmas in this world and we have no choice but to face the ups and downs of life, which we have created ourselves. But we can do all this while keeping our mind still and our attention constantly turned toward God. We can learn to find God and realize his presence wherever we are and with whomsoever we may be.

The sixteenth-century mystic Eknath talks about stillness:

Whether the body be
motionless in meditation
or moving in the thick of life,
let the mind stay in the middle,
forever still, pure and free –
this is a yogi, says Eknath.⁹

He says learning to keep our mind “in the middle, forever still, pure and free,” whether we are sitting in meditation or moving in the thick of life, is what makes a yogi, or a true practitioner of meditation.

Learning to keep the mind still helps to free us from the prison of our own thoughts and ideas and interpretations. It helps us to go through life without always reacting to what’s happening around us and without always trying to make the world into what we think it should be, according to our limited concepts. It helps us to eliminate our ego and open our hearts, and it frees us to turn our attention towards God.

Most of us who have been following this path for a while know that this isn’t an easy thing to do. Hazur used to tell us that the mind deceives us so convincingly that we don’t even realize we are being deceived. And he used to tell us that it can take a lifetime or more to control the mind. It only happens by following the Master’s instructions. It only happens by attending to our meditation every day and it only happens by his grace.

All the saints tell us that we should just do our best on this path every day, and then we need to let go. Great Master explained that we should always do our best, according to our limited lights, and then we should let go – then we should trust in the Lord. We need to realize that he knows much more than we do.

Hazur often used to tell us that we shouldn’t be in a hurry on this path, we shouldn’t go to extremes, and we shouldn’t try to force the results according to our will and our idea of what progress should look like. He often reminded us that the effort is in our hands, but the results are not in our hands. In The Master Answers he says, “We always have to do our best under all circumstances, and then naturally only that will happen as he wants it to happen.”¹⁰

In Spiritual Perspectives, he says:

We have to surrender ourselves to the Master. It means that we have to take our ego out of us and blend our whole heart with his heart…¹¹

And he explains:

Getting release from the clutches of the mind is real surrender, and we can do that only by meditation. We cannot do that by the intellect, by austerities, by running away from situations or by strong willpower. It happens only by meditation. … By devoting time to meditation … we are just training ourselves to surrender. All effort is being made to surrender. 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.¹²

So he explains that through the practice of meditation we’re trying to let go and surrender, we are trying to break free from the prison of our limited concepts. We’re trying to lose ourselves and blend our whole heart with his heart.

But again, this isn’t an easy thing to do. The mystics often remind us that everything of value that we do in life requires time and effort. And learning to let go and trust the master is no different. Many of us have spent lifetimes and lifetimes following the dictates of the mind, and it isn’t necessarily easy for us to change this habit. Hazur used to say, “It isn’t like going to a tea party at your Auntie’s house.”

It does take time and effort to achieve our goal on this path. But there’s really no better way for us to spend our lives. Most of us spend many years working hard to get an education, working hard to earn a living, or working hard to develop a talent we might have. So why not spend many years working hard to realize God’s presence in our lives? Why not spend many years learning to blend our whole heart with his heart?

It may not be easy, but it’s worth the effort. The effort itself brings happiness. As we follow the path, we find that there’s joy in the effort. Even when we fail, we’re happy to be trying to do what the master asks us to do and we’re happy to be on the path. Most of us in this room can’t imagine what our lives would be like without the path and without the master. And most of us wouldn’t even want to try to imagine it.

In summary, the spiritual path involves letting go and losing ourselves and blending our whole heart with his heart. It involves forgetting that we are anything, and knowing that everything is the Father.

The Maharashtrian saint Samarth Ramdas wrote: “The Lord is absolutely close to you … search and find this truth. The association between you and the Lord is unbreakable.”¹³ This is our real work in life and this is what makes living in this creation worthwhile.

In Spiritual Perspectives, Volume III, Hazur says:

Any moment when we think about the Father, when we think about the Master, when we think about the Lord, that is a blessed moment. That makes it worth living in this creation. All other moments are useless.¹⁴

Rumi writes about the enormity of our blessing:

See that caravan of camels loaded up with sugar?
His eyes contain that much sweetness.
But don’t look into his eyes
Unless you are ready to lose all sight of your own.¹⁵

Crazy as We Are: Selected Rubais from Divan-i-kebir of Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi, tr. Nevit Oguz Ergin, p.4
Maharaj Charan Singh, The Master Answers, #498
Guru Ram Das in Sardar Bahadur Jagat Singh, Discourses on Sant Mat, Volume II, p.145
Maharaj Sawan Singh, The Dawn of Light, #64
Albert Einstein quoted in Cosmic Religion: With Other Opinions and Aphorisms, http://www.notable-quotes.com/e/einstein_albert_ii.html
The Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p.68
Many Voices, One Song, p.273
Treasury of spiritual wisdom: A collection of 10,000 inspirational quotations, p.441.
Many Voices, One Song, p.9
The Master Answers, #404
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, #277
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, #279
Samarth Ramdas in Isaac Ezekiel, Sarmad: Martyr to Love Divine, p.151
Spiritual Perspectives,Vol. III, p.84
Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved, tr. Jonathan Star, p.39

Nothing Else Matters - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Nothing Else Matters

This discourse is about the idea that nothing else matters. It’s a theme that we see throughout the writings, satsangs and questions and answers of the Masters. They are giving us a spiritual perspective from the highest level of consciousness, and this opens our eyes to a whole new world of spirituality – a world that we could never know on our own. And for those who want to live in that spiritual reality, the Masters are very clear about what matters and what doesn’t matter.

Compared to the Masters, our vision is very limited, but there are a few things that we can know from simple observation. For example, we know that we are human beings, we know that we were born and we know that we will die, and that right now we are somewhere in between – for many of us here, probably closer to the end. What we don’t know is what happened before we were born, if anything, and what will happen after we die, if anything. Many people believe that there was nothing before we were born and there will be nothing after our death. This is because we identify with the body.

But the saints tell us something very different. They tell us that we are not this body; we are the consciousness that resides in the body, and we can experience this difference through our meditation. They say we have lived countless lifetimes in the bodies of many different species. But this period of time in the human form is very special because only humans have the opportunity to attain union with the Lord, which means that after millions of lifetimes of suffering we can finally achieve liberation. In fact this is the sole purpose of human life.

All saints stress that this highest state of attainment, God-realization, is obtained only through a true Master. And it's only through the Lord's grace that we are fortunate enough to come across a true Master and receive initiation from him in this life.

The soul has never been interested in anything in this world. It has only one desire, and through initiation by a true Master its only desire – to return to its true home – is about to be become a reality. So from the point of view of the soul nothing else matters.

The responsibility for returning the soul to its home has been given to the Master, and he will see that it gets done. But in this process we also have a responsibility, a part to play, so it is essential that we understand what is required from us. This is why Baba Ji asks us to think carefully about what our objective is in this life, so that our decision to follow this path – or to keep following it – is a conscious decision.

Yogi Berra, a great American baseball player, coach and manager, said, “If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else.”¹ The clearer we are about our objective, the more committed we will be to seek the ways and means to achieve it. This type of reflection is rare, but without it how can we make decisions about what really matters, and what doesn’t matter? How can we make the very deep commitment that is required to travel on the path? This is no small commitment – the spiritual journey within the human body extends all the way from this material plane to the highest plane of pure spirit.

The journey begins at the toes of the feet and ends at the top of head. The first part of the journey, to the eye center, is what we must cover in this life. It consists of concentrating the mind and making the attention stay at the eye center. This is a process in which the attention currents are withdrawn from the entire lower portion of the body and focused completely in the eye center. It is here that the inner path begins, and when we arrive at this point a great transformation takes place: the light that we will see is so blissful and the melody that we will hear is so enchanting that the balance of our attention that weighed heavily toward the world now shifts from the outside to the inside.

Think of a balancing scale. The weight on one side represents how much of our attention we put into the world through all of our desires and attachments. And on the other side, the weight represents the amount of interest we have for our spiritual practice. In the beginning the scale weighs heavily to the worldly side. Our thoughts and our loves are in the world. But through our meditation, by coming to satsang, by doing seva and by living the Sant Mat way of life, little by little, as we get some concentration our interest begins to shift. We experience some peace and bliss and happiness in our meditation even before we have any progress, and that gives us a detached outlook on everything in the world.

At some point in our lives the inner eye will open and we will enter within, whether it’s during our lifetime or as we near the end – and we will meet our Master there. It is here that our perspective will take a gigantic shift. When Hafiz went inside and saw his Master this is what he had to say:

I have little interest in that holy stone or in the arch thereof. For me, my Master's forehead is the Ka'aba shrine, and his eyebrows are the sacred arch. Within the length and breadth of these is my world confined. For the rest I have no care. Whether the world survives or perishes, whether the ship of the world sails on or flounders, whether the fortunes of the world wax or wane, I remain wedded to Thee, I prize Thee alone. I am enamored of thy alluring face. I am intoxicated by thy resplendent beauty.²

When devotees meet their Master within they lose interest in everything else. For them the Master becomes everything – nothing else matters. To reach this state we must go through the same process in our meditation that one goes through at the time of death, when all the soul currents are withdrawn from the lower part of body and brought to the eye center. This is referred to as dying while living. This is the object of our meditation and it is this state that is exalted by all saints and mystics. Hazur Maharaj Ji said:

By withdrawing our consciousness to the third eye and listening to the Music of the Sound Current, the Audible Life Stream, our mind and soul together rise out of the tomb of this body and become free from it. By the grace of the Master, we cut asunder our attachments with the world and forget its troubles and miseries. Daily, through the practice of meditation, we die. We die to live, to enjoy the eternal bliss and peace of our True Home, and live forever.³

So this act of dying before our death, or reaching the eye center before the clock runs out, becomes our objective. And the only means to achieve this objective is through our meditation. Since we don't know when this life will come to an end, we need to approach this goal with a sense of urgency, and the understanding that nothing else matters makes us more focused on this goal.

Think about a person who is deep under water and is trying to get to the surface. He only has a limited amount of oxygen in his lungs and if he doesn't get to the surface before the air runs out he drowns. The air in his lungs is the time we have left in this life, and his effort to get to the surface is our meditation – working to bring our attention to the eye center. If he gets to the surface he will finally be able to breathe. He will find life. He will live.

He understands that nothing else matters except getting to surface. If he uses his precious oxygen for anything else he may be jeopardizing his chances of getting to the surface. As the German philosopher Goethe points out:

Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.⁴

So this understanding that nothing else matters makes us question all the things in this world that take our attention. It is the mind's love of the world that is keeping us back. Our attachments, our desires, our thoughts and our loves are all firmly in the world, and they keep us from rising up.

We should ask ourselves if anything in this world has ever brought us happiness. There is a very insightful line in Ecclesiastes, which was attributed to King Solomon about 1,000 years before Christ. He says:

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.⁵

Another word for “vanity” is meaningless, and “under the sun” means in this world. So he is saying that everything we do in this world is meaningless. We have been running after all these things for so long, and we have never found what we are looking for. It is just like grasping for the wind. And when we open our hand, there's nothing there.

So Soami Ji Maharaj advises:

Now you have this human body,
do something for yourself.
Don't toil vainly in this world –
it is only a passing dream.
Both body and home are unreal;
why exhaust yourself over an illusion?⁶

If we want to be successful, if we want to achieve our objective before the clock runs out – and we are in a race against time – we cannot treat this path as a hobby. It cannot be only a part of our life. It has to become our whole life. It has to be the focus of everything we do. Everything we do has to be done in relation to the path and our practice.

We have heard that meditation is a twenty-four-hour affair. What does that mean? It means that every moment we are living with the remembrance of our Master, our only friend. It means that he is our constant companion, that we are thinking about him. We are doing simran or hearing the sound. That we are obeying him and living according to his principles. That we are always doing what he wants us to do – what is pleasing to him. That every decision we make and every choice we make is done from the point of view as to whether it will help us in our meditation. Will it bring me closer to my Master? Will it please him? Will it serve him?

We have to go through each day and earn a living and do our duty to those to whom we are responsible. We have to take care of our bodies, our homes and so many other things. But while we are doing all these things we are remembering him. We should remember that all these things have been given to us by him. He has written the story of our lives and it is for us to play our part well. To do our dharma. To do everything the best we can, especially our meditation, which requires our full concentration.

Concentration is defined as the act of giving one’s attention to a single object or activity, to the exclusion of all else. When we have deep concentration on something, everything else seems to disappear from our awareness. The mind is constantly thinking in words, and all these thoughts keep us from concentrating at the eye center, so the Master has given us simran. The purpose of simran is to replace all other thoughts that may come into the mind, so that it can retreat to its place of origin behind the eyes. This will only happen if the simran is constant and uninterrupted.

Simran is the means of remembering the Master, and of communing with him. Simran is acknowledging his presence with us. It is speaking to him in the language he wants to hear. It is our prayer to him. It is asking for his help and relying on it. And simran will bring us closer and closer to him.

So to keep our mind in simran without allowing other thoughts to intrude is our real work. But it is difficult. It’s a struggle – many think it’s impossible. And some may find it so hard that they just give up, which is unfortunate.

You’ve heard the expression that we need to pick our battles. Of all the battles one can choose to engage in, this is the one that’s most worthy of our effort. This is the one that the Master wants us to fight, and when we really try he is very pleased with us. If we really want to please the Master this is the place to start. It will require confidence, resolve and strength of will in order to succeed. But he is always right behind us, encouraging us and telling us in so many ways that we can do it.

He also helps us in so many ways. For example, our lives are filled with problems, responsibilities and worries that burden our minds, but the Master tells us that if we are attending to our spiritual work he will take care of all those things. We can let go and unload all of our burdens and worries, and they become his problems. If we have faith in him we can empty our minds and engage ourselves in the repetition of the five precious names. Tulsi Sahib said:

From your attention discard all that is other
so He may be seated there.⁷

The object of simran is to bring us within the magnetic orbit of the Shabd, so that we can hear the sound and it can begin to pull us upwards. And it is the Shabd that will eventually lift us above mind and maya and take us back to our source.

As it says in the Adi Granth: shabad guroo surat dhun chelaa.⁸ The Word is the guru, and the soul attuned to the Word is the disciple. The true form of the Master is the Shabd and the true form of the disciple is the soul. This path is Surat Shabd Yoga, which means uniting the soul with the Shabd. And what is it that truly binds us together? It is only love in its highest and purest form, because God is love and the soul is a particle of him.

It is the Master who shows us how to love. He teaches us how to love. He fills us with his love and – miracle of miracles, the greatest of all miracles – we become lovers of the Lord. This is all his grace and this is why we are here. It's the only reason we are here.

Mirdad makes this same point:

Love is the Law of God.
You live that you may learn to love. You love that you may learn to live.
No other lesson is required of Man.
And what is it to love but for the lover to absorb forever the beloved
so that the twain be one?⁹

In conclusion, when we finally enter within and meet the radiant form of the Master there, we are so filled with love and we become so engrossed in his beauty that the mind loses interest in everything else. For the lover nothing else exists. There is a desire to lose our identity so that we are not separate from him – we want to remove anything and everything that stands between us and him. We realize that only the Satguru is deserving of our love and nothing else matters.

Ken McFarland, I Don't See it that Way: It Looks a Little Different from Up Here, p.81
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Discourses on Sant Mat, 2^nd ed., p.287
Maharaj Charan Singh, Die to Live, 7^th ed., pp.110–111
Living Meditation, p.43
The Bible (New King James Version), Ecclesiastes 1:14
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Discourses, Vol. II, p.193
Ibid., p.140
Adi Granth, M1, p.943
Mikhail Naimy, The Book of Mirdad, p.62

Remembering - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Remembering

Helen Keller was left completely deaf and blind by an illness that struck when she was nineteen months old, yet she became a world famous author, activist and lecturer. In 1924 she ‘listened’ to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with her hand, placing it on the speaker of a radio that was broadcasting the music. She later wrote a letter of thanks to the New York Symphony Orchestra:

What was my amazement to discover that I could feel … all the instruments and voices together burst forth, an ocean of heavenly vibration … As I listened, with darkness and melody, shadow and sound filling all the room, I could not help remembering that the great composer who poured forth such a flood of sweetness into the world was deaf like myself. I marvelled at the power of his quenchless spirit by which out of his pain he wrought such joy for others – and there I sat, feeling with my hand the magnificent symphony which broke like a sea upon the silent shores of his soul and mine. … Let me thank you warmly for all the delight which your beautiful music has brought to my household and to me.¹

What Helen acheived is astounding – a seemingly impossible quest to experience life fully. And who can imagine the depth and range of our capacity to experience life? Only the true teachers know our true potential, and they alone come to help us realize it.

Helen’s access to a world of music and light began with her teacher Annie Sullivan, who saw the potential hidden within this untamed child who was struggling and scratching just to survive in her prison of darkness and silence and isolation. Annie saw Helen’s potential to leave the prison, to explore and experience the world outside herself, to love and be loved – to become a true human being.

Annie Sullivan was able to do the seemingly impossible, yet the first step was simply to make a connection with this wild, furious little person who lived in a world alone. It was touch that turned the key. Annie initiated the journey with the touch of her hand on Helen’s. With this first simple touch, Helen’s awakening began.

The journey these two took together is a mystery: a teacher, a student and the alchemy of love. This life is all mystery – we really know nothing, we understand nothing. And yet, Helen Keller remembered something. And we too remember something. The poet William Wordsworth writes:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere it’s setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.²

What is this home – this God – that we’ve all but forgotten? Soami Ji Maharaj tells the tale:

In the beginning there was only One, then there were two, and then three, then many, then thousands and lakhs, and finally there were countless beings. Now he who finds a perfect Sat Guru, who is one with the One and is the form of that One, will succeed through his grace in extricating himself from the illusion of the many and reach his Real Home.³

Soami Ji’s words somehow ring true: somewhere within our being we remember Oneness, we remember wholeness. But how do we get there from here? How do we remember, how do we rediscover the Real? It begins and ends with grace, and grace takes form in the living Master, whose very being makes us remember that something. The Creator steps down from the formless into form, as the Master, who gives us his hand, walks with us, teaches us, and leads us within to his sound and light form – and then even onwards, to the formless, boundless One.

Again, all mystery. In Legacy of Love we read:

The true living Master is such a great mystery, the mind can scarcely comprehend it. If, for one’s entire life, one were to contemplate this key to God’s plan of redemption, one would be fortunate to penetrate even the surface of this mystery. How can God take an unsuspecting human being and transform him into a saint? How can a mortal being be infused with the power to connect other human beings to the Shabd, that power which sustains the creation? How can a person be empowered to take others back to the Father’s home from which they came aeons and aeons ago?⁴

We first meet that Mystery, the Master, right out here in the dark, dense, frightening world of matter. In this shadow world, the mind and senses direct our every action and tell us the Great Lie, that we are separate from everyone else, that we are alone, and it’s ‘every man for himself’ – that love is impossible.

But then we see that being. We don’t know who he is, we don’t know what he is, but there is something about him. We’ve never met anyone like him, yet he is more vast, more radiant, more present, more sweet than anyone or anything we’ve ever seen.

We want to be with him, with that beauty. That’s all we know. The Master has awakened our memory of that something we’ve forgotten. And then he says, just as Tulsi Sahib says to his beloved disciple Taqi:

Listen, O Taqi, keep your gaze fixed on your Master
who has offered you his hand.
Leave it not through negligence, if you long to see
the splendour of your Beloved.
His grace will lead you to his very presence,
without any fear or danger on the way.⁵

The Master tells each one of us: Take my hand, don’t let me out of your sight, follow me within yourself to the core of your being, where you will meet your Beloved face to face.

We say: I don’t know if what you say is true, but you are the highest authority I’ve ever come across, so I will try to do what you tell me to do.

And he says: Good enough, just begin, and begin again, and never stop beginnning. So we begin the journey. And Maharaj Sawan Singh tells us it is an inner quest:

Man is a wonderful creation. He not only carries his past history with him; but the whole creation, visible and invisible, and the Creator of all are within him, and he has been gifted with the capacity to see all that lies in him and to be one with his Creator.

The search is to be made within one’s self and it costs nothing. The whole thing lies behind the veil of the mind. When the mind has been made motionless, that which lies behind the veil becomes visible.⁶

Elsewhere the Great Master says, “You live, move and have your being in him.”⁷ It is as if we are swimming in God, yet all the time we’re feeling lost and wondering where he is. But Great Master has just said he is in us and we are in him. We are like countless bubbles in the ocean of the One. What’s inside the bubble is the same as what’s outside the bubble – it’s just a thin membrane of mind that makes us think we are not the ocean. It’s just this thin membrane of mind that makes us feel alone and cut off from love. The bubble is all we know.

When the mind becomes motionless, the bubble dissolves, the veil disappears. And the Master gives his initiates a part to play in making the mind motionless. He gives the gift of a practice – a practice for remembering the one we’ve forgotten. Tulsi says, “Keep your gaze fixed on your Master if you long to see the Beloved.” Keeping our gaze fixed on the Master is the practice of remembering, the practice of simran. We repeat the five unique names he has given us to remember him and remember him and remember him. Sheikh Abu Said said:

The true saint lives in the midst of other people.
He rises in the morning, eats and sleeps when needed.
He buys and sells in the marketplace just like everyone else.
He marries, has children, and meets with his friends.
Yet never for an instant does he forget God.⁸

Someone once asked Hazur Maharaj Ji, “What do you remember about your Master?” He said, “I am only remembering my Master.”

Our sacred part to play is this remembering. Simran – the Sanskrit root means both to repeat and to remember. What we repeat, we remember, and what we remember we repeat… and love grows. Hazur says:

The path of God-realization is both easy and simple. By repetition we have to withdraw our body consciousness from the nine portals to the eye focus; by contemplation on the form of the Master we have to make it motionless there; and by listening to the Divine Music that constantly resounds there, we have to reach the place whence it emanates. Simran is the first and the most essential step. Unless its course, which is both long and tedious, is completed, we can hardly gain the other two states. Therefore, we have to practise simran so assiduously that even while talking, it should continue to roll on its course. The five Holy Names must spin ceaselessly around their axis. Sitting, standing, walking, eating, awake or asleep, the repetition must go on.⁹

Ceaselessly. Ceaselessly. How does ceaseless ever happen? We repeat and remember him, repeat and remember. Then we forget. Then we begin again to repeat and remember with the five names. But these names we’ve been given to repeat are not just any names, any words. They are infused with his love, his power, his magnetism to pull our attention to him at the eye focus. Great Master tells the real nature of simran:

What is this Repetition? This repetition is the Lord himself. He is also the reciter. This recitation is nectar personified.

He himself makes us repeat,
And he does the repetition himself.
He himself is the nectar, he is the dear one,
And he himself is the taste of the nectar.¹⁰

He says that the Lord himself is the simran. So this must mean that every time we step our mind into simran we are stepping into his stream of love, on the way to the river of Shabd, and fianlly to the Ocean of love. So we just keep stepping our attention back into him, until one day there is no thought – just the stillness in which we can receive him.

Rumi talks about the heart of this process:

The gold you carry
is in a thousand pieces. …
Your mind
is sleeping a hundred dreams
each colored by a separate desire.

Should you desire to be as bright
as Damascus and Samarqand
let Love
collect your scattered selves
and turn you into a place of delights

When you have collected
your gold
and from every falsehood
separated every ounce
then only it may become worthy
of receiving the seal of the Emperor. ¹¹

Our attention is our gold; it is our treasure to spend on him. Our attention is the only thing we can give him, and it is the only thing he asks us to give.

But all these precious bits of attention are stuck to the earth. Maharaj Ji gave a graphic picture of the situation:

We human beings are like maggots. We are born in dirt, we live in dirt, we love dirt, we eat dirt, we die in dirt and then again we are reborn in dirt. Everything we see in this physical creation is dirt – it is transient and will perish – and yet we are attached to it.¹²

At this point much of our attention is covered in dirt, but when we collect it in simran and place it at his feet within, it will shine. Hazur told a disciple how to do this:

Q: Could you explain to me about doing simran with love and devotion? To me these are just words, and I don’t understand what they mean.

A: Put your whole mind in these words; you will automatically feel the love and devotion. Let no other thought come in your mind. Let the whole of yourself, the whole of your mind, be in the simran. Love comes automatically.¹³

So simple. So not easy. That’s why Tulsi tells Taqi, “Arduous is the way to the destination of love.” It is arduous, because our attention is the one thing we don’t want to give him. It’s just the nature of the mind. It doesn’t want to go still and die.

But Maharaj Ji has told us, “Let the whole of yourself, the whole of your mind, be in the simran. Love comes automatically.” So we simply have to practise and practise and practise bringing our attention to him, in the simran, through the simran. Love will come, he says.

Practise makes perfect. The more we practise anything, with attention, the more our experience of it expands. How this transformation happens is yet again a mystery, but it happens. The world-renowned pianist Van Cliburn practised the scales endlessly, until one day he was free to fly effortlessly on the notes of the great composers. Children practise riding a bike endlessly, riding and falling off, until one day they suddenly can ride the bike.

Hazur Maharaj Ji said, “Meditation creates love, it generates love, it strengthens love.” We might say that he performs this alchemy: we practise and he makes perfect. We circle and circle around the axis of simran, we get on that bike again and again and again, and fall off again and again and again, but he turns our repetition into mastery and one day we ride the bike with no hands. One day we won’t even need the bike to fly. With our tiny bit of discipline, he brings us freedom.

It may seem slow, this collecting tiny increments of attention and laying them at his feet. And it is arduous. But so what? What is our objective? Arduous is a tiny sacrifice to make for the gift of perfect love.

And so we practise singing the one song he likes to hear, until our song is perfected – until the simran dies out in stillness. And in the silence we begin to listen to his song of love, the Shabd. Maharaj Jagat Singh, said:

Contact the living Master and attune yourself to the Voice of the Lord within, which calls you day and night. This is the message of the Saints.¹⁴

Silence and stillness is the pivot to the world within, to the Shabd. Baba Ji has said that we have to be still in order to experience the depth and intensity of love. And he often quotes the Bible: “Be still and know that I am God.”¹⁵

Now this practice of stilling the mind and awakening to love is a long and winding road; the heart sometimes feels chilly, the longing feels faint. We fail and fail to collect the gold of our attention and offer it at his feet:

One moment you are all I know, Friend.
Next moment eat, drink and be merry …
O Friend, how will this scatteredness that is me
Find its way to you?¹⁶

But it appears the game is rigged. There seems to be a method to the madness. Rumi encourages us:

Remember,
it is by failures that lovers
stay aware of how they’re loved.
Failure is the key to the kingdom within.¹⁷

It is through all our failed efforts to do simran, dhyan and bhajan that we begin to discover who is doing it all. Who has put us here, whose plan it is that we experience the pain of living as strangers in a strange land, and who it is who wakes us from the dream and makes us remember him and want to go home with him.

No matter how forgetful or rebellious we are, no matter how ignorant or arrogant we are, the Friend within shows us only mercy and compassion, grace and forgiveness. Our only job is to persist, to keep on keeping on with the practice of remembering him. And slowly, slowly we experience his love, his radiance, his song a little more and a little more. He is opening the door to our home in him. Sarmad says:

The ocean of his generosity has no shore.
The tongue is powerless to thank,
the heart too bewildered to understand.
Though my sins are many
his compassion is greater still –
I swim in the seas of disobedience
but I do not drown.¹⁸

Perhaps our meditation is nothing, finally, but thank you, thank you, thank you.

Letters of Note: Vol. 2: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience, compiled by Shaun Usher, p.36
William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality, Ode 536
Soami Ji Maharaj, Sar Bachan Prose, #171
Legacy of Love, p.44
Tulsi Sahib, Tulsi Sahib, Saint of Hathras, 3^rd ed., p.80
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, #68
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Dawn of Light, #2
Legacy of Love, p.393
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Discourses Vol. I, 5^th ed., p.106
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. III, p.5
Masnavi Book IV: 3288–3290, tr. Vraje Abramian
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Discourses Vol. II, 1^st ed., p.280
Spiritual Perspectives,Vol. II, #223
Maharaj Jagat Singh, Science of the Soul, 8^th ed., p.11
Bible, Psalm 46:10
Sheikh Abu Said, Nobody, Son of Nobody, tr. Vraje Abramian, p.7
Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion, tr. Coleman Barks, p.62
Isaac Ezekiel, Sarmad – Martyr to Love Divine, bait 251

Diamonds - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Diamonds

Diamonds. We all know that diamonds are considered the most precious of all jewels. They have a brilliance, and the expensive ones have a most desired clarity. In many countries a diamond ring has become almost a mandatory part of becoming engaged to be married – all due to what is considered one of the most successful advertising campaigns in modern history: “Diamonds are forever.” That’s the line – Diamonds are forever. It struck a chord with women, who started equating the diamond with a man’s perpetual love. It struck a chord with men, who started seeing the diamond’s value as indestructible, without an end. A diamond is forever. The love lasts. The investment lasts. Diamonds last – or so they say.

Interestingly, the diamond industry has a word for this phenomenon of great value. They call it ‘illusion.’ They define it as “a projection of value onto an object (usually a diamond) based solely on subjective psychological criteria, not any objective standard of measurement.”¹ The diamond trade runs on illusion, on perceived value.

Now you might think that diamond dealers are immune to this phenomenon, but quite the contrary. Research shows that:

When a dealer owns a diamond, it’s not just another emotionless asset that he’s invested in … When he buys a diamond, he loves that diamond. He believes his diamond is the nicest diamond he’s ever seen in that particular color and class of clarity. He has built up a lot of illusion in the stone.²

So while dealers understand the concept of a diamond’s illusion, they still “exist within the bubble and depend upon it for their livelihood.” They may recognize that a diamond has no intrinsic value and that its value depends upon the perception of the owner, the buyer, or the populace at large. They understand the concept. Yet even the dealers are caught up in the beauty, the allure, the perceived value of diamonds. They love their diamonds and will not give them up.

And so it is with us. What is a diamond? A bit of carbon, a bit of earth, a piece of this world. Saints tell us it is the perceived value we give to this creation, our attachment – in addition to our karmas – that keeps us bound to this world, this plane of consciousness. In many ways we love this world and look for love from it in return. We certainly invest in this world – not just monetarily, but with the time and attention we spend physically, emotionally, and intellectually. And we expect a return on that investment. While we may recognize the concept that everything here is illusion (maya) and has no intrinsic value, we can hardly imagine it otherwise. We’ve been caught in this bubble for so long that we are part of the consciousness that keeps this system going. Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh was asked: “We are told that all things in our life are an illusion or a dream. Is that right?” He replied:

What it means is that what we see has no reality – reality in the sense that nothing will exist, nothing will remain, everything is perishable, it’s not everlasting.

That means it is not ‘forever.’ Diamonds are not forever. Hazur Maharaj Ji goes on:

Flesh is no more, so flesh is not reality. … Where are those old civilizations now? New civilizations are coming up; old ones are vanishing. What is real here? Everything is perishable, nothing is everlasting. In that sense, it is illusion.

Only he is real, whom we do not see, whom we do not know. What we see, what we are supposed to know, what we think we know has no reality at all.³

So while we are in this world, there is some reality, a perceived reality, but it doesn’t last. Nothing here lasts forever. And the saints tell us that we must rise to a higher level of consciousness if we want to perceive the One who is real, who does last forever.

Because this world is such a charade, an illusion, how foolish we are to base our lives and our reasons for acting the way we do on such an unsteady foundation. By its very nature, anything that exists in the outer world has to change. Whatever at one moment brings us great pleasure must at another time bring us equal pain – if only because of the fact that we cannot hold on to that pleasure; we cannot stop or catch any single ‘happening’ and keep on experiencing that happening, for it has already become something else, like a movie going on playing. To the extent that we try to hold on to those experiences and feelings, to the same extent we feel pain because of our inability to do so, and to the same extent we are attached to them. The Persian poet, Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil-Kheir, wrote:

The deeper your involvement here,
The harsher your pain and suffering.
Donkeys with colorful ornaments and loud bells
Are groomed for heavier loads!⁴

So, who can afford to be a donkey carrying such loads? We need to lighten our load, let our baggage slip away. Hazur wrote: “All unhappiness in life is the result of our attachment … Where there is no attachment, there is no misery.”⁵

The saints tell us it is in our interest to seek the One, the reality, because we are not happy here, caught in this ever-changing dream world. Hazur explains:

It’s a dream that has no reality. You want to be one with the reality. We are miserable here, being separated from the Father. So we want to escape. If we had been happy here, we wouldn’t have thought about the Father at all. We would not want to go to him if we were happy here.⁶

He hits the nail on the head. We’re not happy here. Think of that. But it’s a boon even if we think about the Father, a greater boon if we want to reach Him, a still greater boon if we try to reach Him. Hazur continues:

Those who are happy in this dream will remain part and parcel of this dream. And those who are the blessed ones will realize the travesty of this world and will want to go to their everlasting home, their permanent abode. They will feel his separation. They will miss him. They will try to get to him.⁷

But what about the things we love about this world? What about the investment of time and attention we give people, places, and activities of this world? If we invest positive energy, shouldn’t we get a positive return? Well, we will reap a positive return from a karmic perspective, and that’s certainly better than reaping a negative return. But why expect a return at all? We do so many things to try to find our self-worth – our value – from outside forces, as if something outside and ever changing could define our intrinsic value. We are children of God, not children of this world! Yet we do so many things to try to get some satisfaction from external events and activities. And even if we get some satisfaction, it doesn’t last. So we try again, perhaps harder, and invest even more in an ever-moving target. It’s a game we cannot win, but we are in love with our diamonds – whatever they may be. This world is a very inconstant lover. It’s time to break off this relationship.

Hazur Maharaj Ji was asked, “Can we experience joy in this life?” He replied:

Where is the joy?… Where is that peace which you are trying to find in this creation? There is no peace. … The more you … try to find joy outside, the more miserable you become, the more unhappy you become. We are becoming more frustrated every day. Where is that peace which we are searching for outside? We just live in illusion and self-deception. The more we try to find peace outside, the more miserable we are becoming every day. … If there is any joy, it is within us. It cannot be outside at all.⁸

And to find that joy within, we need a teacher, a guide, a constant companion. We need a living Master who is one with the Father and knows all the intricacies of the journey, both inside and outside. Hazur said:

We always need a teacher. We are so much under the sway of the mind, of the senses, that unless there is somebody to shake us from the roots, to take us back to him, we can never reach him. We are in a deep, deep sleep. We are all dead. We need somebody to put life in us.⁹

And what is life? Shabd is the life force that is the essence of everything that is. It permeates everything and can be experienced in a transcendent state as sound and light.

Every particle in this creation is permeated with the essence of the Lord, which we call the soul, and that gives it life.¹⁰

So the saints attach us to that sound and light within, that Shabd, Nam, or Word of the Bible. They give us our meditation so that we too may experience and follow that Shabd back to the Father. Hazur again said:

And that love of Shabd and Nam within is so much higher and purer that we automatically forget worldly love, worldly faces, worldly objects. That is the nature of the mind. If you find something much more beautiful, you automatically run away from the other things to which you are attached. … So mystics, with the help of Shabd and Nam, detach us from the whole creation and permanently attach us to the Shabd, to the divine Father within.¹¹

Our meditation not only focuses and elevates our consciousness so we may reach the Father, but our meditation also detaches us from the bubble of this world with all its beauty, allurement, and burrs. Meditation could not be a greater gift – except perhaps the gift of the Master himself. As Hazur said:

Saints just come for that purpose, to set us free from the world. They do not come to solve our problems. They come to help us to rise above these problems…. Saints give us the faith to live in this world and yet not be affected by this world.¹²

But the saints are even more than teachers and guides. Because they have realized the Father, they have become one with the Father and one with the Shabd, they become a medium for us to become one with Shabd. Hazur Maharaj Ji explained:

The Master is nothing but the sound, and sound is nothing but the Master. Our real Master is Sound, the Word, the Bani, the Shabd, the Nam – give it any name.¹³

And again:

Master is the medium between the soul and the Lord, and he is concerned with the soul – to help it to develop, to reach to the level of the Father. … That Word which has created the whole creation is our own Master and that is within every one of us. … In the flesh, Master has realized that Word within, and we are connected through him to that Word.¹⁴

We are indeed blessed to have been found by a Master. We are even more blessed if we follow his instructions and do our meditation to the best of our ability, regularly and punctually every day. Meditation is our gateway. Meditation will prick the bubble of world consciousness and take us to a higher, lasting, divine consciousness. Meditation will take us to the real Master within. Hazur said:

Meditation changes our attitude on life. Meditation makes us receptive to his grace and his grace clears all the karmas. Meditation makes you a lover. It helps you to lose your identity, individuality … It helps you to merge to become another being. It makes you a real lover, to lose your own identity. If you go to the karma side, I think if by meditation we have to clear them, God knows how many ages we may need to clear our karmas by meditation. It [meditation] only makes us a lover of God and detaches us from the creation.¹⁵

Meditation makes us a lover of God and detaches us from the creation. Meditation will also make us receptive to his grace, which will eventually clear our vast residue of karmas. But the other thing that keeps us here in this creation is our attachments, and our meditation helps to detach us from those attachments, from our fascination with the allure, the illusion, of this world. We need our meditation to break the hold that the world has on us. Our meditation slowly and slowly breaks those chains. Then we will be free. Master Charan Singh wrote:

The most important thing for a satsangi to achieve is detachment from the world and attachment to Shabd … by regular attention to simran and bhajan.¹⁶

Hazur was asked: “I suppose, Maharaj Ji, that any satsangi who does his meditation daily, diligently and devotedly, for two and a half hours or more in the morning hours can reasonably expect to reach his spiritual destination?” The Master replied:

Definitely. You see, you not only make spiritual progress within, but with regularity in meditation and living the Sant Mat way of life, your whole attitude and approach to the world and worldly problems changes. The time comes when you feel you’re not attached to anybody at all. And that is the main factor in our not coming back to this creation at all, no matter how little progress we have made within. Our whole attitude and approach to life change by meditation, by living this way of life, and automatically we get detached from everything. And that detachment pulls us out of this creation.¹⁷

“Lose Your Illusion,” Pennsylvania Gazette, Sept/Oct 2014, p.16
“Lose Your Illusion,” Pennsylvania Gazette, Sept/Oct 2014, p.16
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I, p.24
Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil-Kheir, Nobody, Son of Nobody, tr. Vraje Abramian, p.10
Maharaj Charan Singh, Quest for Light, letter 231
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I, p.25
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I, p.25
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I, p.374
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I, p.468
Quest for Light, letter 268
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I, pp.462–3
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I, p.375
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I, p.483
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I, pp.483–4
Maharaj Charan Singh, Dera, 6 April 1981
Maharaj Charan Singh, Light on Sant Mat, letter 56
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, p.377

I Love You - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

I Love You

Let’s visit the topics of love and transformation, beginning with the Bird and Turtles story.

Two birds were sitting at the top a tree observing a baby turtle. The turtle struggled to climb up to a branch and then jumped off, flapping its four little feet madly and crashing to the ground. Once again, the poor turtle struggled to climb up the tree, then jumped off and crashed to the ground.

The birds watched the turtle do this a third time and a fourth time. Finally the one bird turned to the other and said, “I think we need to tell him he’s not a bird.”

What can we learn from this story? The first point is that we do not know our true nature. We try to find happiness in this world, we try to fit in, we leap into the mire of lust, anger, greed, attachment and pride. We make the same mistakes over and over.

The second point is that saints are sent by the Lord to adopt us as their own. To make us aware of our true divine nature. They tell us we are spiritual beings and take us into their spiritual family. The Great Master, Maharaj Sawan Singh, said:

At the time of initiation by the Master the soul becomes fit for being connected with the Shabd. This moment is considered as the moment of birth in the Master’s family.¹

And the final point is that the Master transforms us from the slow earthbound tortoise into a bird like himself that can soar to the highest heavens. The Master tells us, ‘Come out of this heavy turtle shell and fly. Quit crawling in the mud and filth and lift yourself to the heavens.’

The masters tell us that this turtle shell is the made of lifetimes of karmas. And this shell is fortified with ego and attachment. But if a worm can become a butterfly, why can’t a turtle become a bird? The masters adopt us and transform us within the cocoon of love and meditation. They transform us from sinners wrapped in the hard shell of ego and ignorance into soldier saints.

Initiation by a saint is the ultimate transformative moment. In a letter to a disciple, Maharaj Charan Singh said:

This initiation is not just some ceremony. The Lord has made you his own. He has chosen you for eternal liberation and wishes you to come back to him…. now it is time to show your gratitude to him by doing your bhajan and simran every day with love and devotion.

At the time of initiation the Lord has made us his own! Adopted us. How can we even comprehend what this means? We have been given the greatest gift that one can receive in this existence. We would not trade this gift for billions, for stardom or for power. The saints tell us that all these things perish. Only that which is given by the Master is permanent and stays with us after death.

So Hazur asks us to show our gratitude. “Doing your simran and bhajan” – that is gratitude. And doing it with love and devotion is gratitude.

Sant Charandas, an eighteenth-century saint, describes the Master and tells us of his power of transformation:

Call only on that Master perfect
who has attained the wondrous abode …
because He is merged in the Lord –
just as the drop that merges in the ocean
becomes the ocean itself.
The very darshan of such a one
transforms the atheist into a mystic.²

Sant Charandas tells us that the Master, just with his darshan, can transform the atheist into a mystic. In each of our lives, we come to know the Master is transforming us, that no matter how much progress we think we may or may not have made inside, we see the transformation in our everyday lives. What was our lifestyle before we met him? What was our focus before we met him? He is transforming our lives, but more importantly he is transforming our spirit.

Charandas tells us to “call only on that Master perfect”. Who else can transform us? Only one who has attained the “wondrous abode”. We need a guide who has walked the trail before us. From a giver we can receive only that which he has attained. No one can give us what they do not have.

And what is the best way to “call on” that Master? It is to attend to our meditation. The repetition of each name is a call to the Master. Shams Tabriz, a Sufi mystic writes:

The Master felt my pulse when I was already exhausted…. He told me, “The aim of the lover of God is neither to gain learning nor gather treasures of the intellect, nor to have any connection with gains and losses of this world.”³

Are we not the weak and exhausted? The Master knows we are in dire need of help so he instructs us. He tells us that we will find no success by building our treasure in this world. Not intellectual treasures or worldly treasures. He tells us to cease chasing after the false promises of new things, new fashions, new philosophies. Hazur once wrote that we should not chase after the mirage with constantly receding waters.

“I feel so miserable without you it’s almost like having you here,” as the saying goes. We are miserable without all the people and things of this world, but when we have them, those very things make us miserable. Likewise, our intellectual concepts of which we are so proud become burdens that hold us back.

Now Charandas says to seek a perfect master. We recently heard that Baba Ji was asked about the concept of the perfect master. Baba Ji responded – and this is a parphrase – that perhaps the term should be ‘complete’ or ‘complete master’. How odd that in the dictionary one of the synonyms for complete is ‘perfect’.

What might he mean when he says a master is complete? Completed the course of simran and bhajan? Completed the journey of God-realization? Complete in his devotion to his master? Complete in his devotion to his disciples?

Sant Charandas tells us about the characteristics of the complete master:

A true saint is one who does not want to be worshipped.
He has effaced the vices of mind:
he is ever engaged in the repetition of the Lord’s Nam.
He is not separated from the Lord even for a moment;
he sees him always near.
He speaks only of the Lord and does not engage in idle gossip.
He has rid himself of falsehood, cunning, deceit and fraud.
In his heart dwell continence, truth, contentment
and forgiveness.
He has rid himself of lust, anger and greed,
as well as attachment and pride.
He has no enmity with anyone,
and lives in a state of detachment.⁴

These lines are a wonderful description of the masters and what it means to be complete. But there is something else here. A complete roadmap for the disciple, a to-do list:

Efface the vices of the mind. Turn away from its constant mis-direction.
Engage in repetition, engage in meditation.
Keep him near us in our thoughts and actions.
Get rid of falsehood, deceit and fraud.
Be continent.
Be truthful.
Be content.
Be forgiving.
Rid ourselves of lust, anger, greed, attachment and pride.
Have not enmity for anyone. Not in seva, not in family and not in life.
Be detached.

The complete master and the complete journey have been described by Sant Charandas.

Baba Ji once made the comment, in paraphrase: I am the only one who gets up in the morning and who does not get to decide whether or not to do seva. We see the Master travelling to every far off place whether there are hundreds of thousands or just hundreds. The corners of Africa, Asia, South America, the Caribbean. It seems like he does not have the ability to stay away. That love for every disciple and the duty to every disciple does not allow him to stay away.

Can a parent get up in the morning and say: “I am not going to feed my children today. I am not going to encourage them today. I am not going to love them today.”? Remember, we are his adopted children.

Yet on our end we say: “I have no time do my seva today. It is too difficult to be a good person today – or too costly. There is no time to do my meditation today.”

Let us ask ourselves: If we had just ten percent of the desire to be with him that he has to be with us, where would we be? What would we be doing each day? In his daily life he shows us the qualities we have to adopt. And he shows us the level of devotion to one’s master that is required. Great Master said:

Whenever we have a desire to express our love for someone, we should try to discover what kind of love the beloved would prefer. We should then inculcate in ourselves those qualities or actions by which the beloved is pleased … When you are able to develop those qualities that are liked by the beloved and he is satisfied that we have actually developed them, he will automatically bestow his love on you.⁵

What qualities does he prefer? Sant Charandas has given us the answer already: Kindness. Sweetness. Surrender. Forgiveness, detachment, humility, contentment. Strict adherence to the four vows. Seva and attending satsang. Meditation, meditation, meditation.

There is a bit of special advice in the Great Master’s quote. He is telling us to stop thinking about what we think a disciple should be and what we think demonstrates our love, and instead make the effort to discover the Master’s qualities and to develop those qualities. And now Hazur describes this process:

Love has the characteristic of becoming another human being. To lose your own identity, lose your own individuality, that is the characteristic of love. Love never wants the other one to become like you. Love makes us want to become like another one.⁶

Every day we see the world wanting to bring God down to our level, to bring the teachings of the saints down to our level. We see the world using spiritual teachings to justify the worst possible behavior. We want to remodel the teachings to fit the mood of modern society. We want teachings to be ‘politically correct’. The teachings of the true masters come from no culture, no race, no religion and no country. They come directly from the Lord.

So we should not try to mould the teachings to our way of life, but rather mould our way of life to the teachings. God help us if we made the Master behave like us! We have to be like him. As Hazur said, “Love makes us want to become like another one.”

The Master looks after each and every disciple as a mother looks after a sick child. Hazur said:

We are all diseased by becoming victims of the senses, so we are washed; we are cured of all these diseases and again the soul shines. That is the miracle which the mystics perform.⁷

The love the Master has for the disciple is the only imperishable love that we will find in this world. The saints tend to each disciple according to his or her needs and they provide each one with the individual miracle cure.

In everything he says, in everything he does, what is he saying, what is he telling us? It is three very simple words – I love you. Every quote in this talk and everything we have covered boils down to this simple idea. He can’t stay away, he adopts us into his spiritual family, he tends to us, he brings us here.

Saints are waterfalls of love; they are a vessel through which God’s love flows forth into this world. We jump into that pool formed by the waterfall and it becomes a stream, then a river, and then it flows into the ocean.

Now we say: I love you too, Master.
Hazur said, “If you say you love the Master without meditation, you are just deceiving yourself.”⁸
Repeat: “If you say you love the Master without meditation, you are deceiving yourself.”
A third time: “If you say you love the Master without meditation, you are deceiving yourself.”

This is a satsang in a sentence. We say we love the Master and his reply is that if we say this, but we are not attending to our meditation, we are deceiving ourselves. Now let us see how Hazur expands on this idea.

The Master is not the body, he is the Shabd within. How would you merge in that without meditation?… we have to merge in that, to become that being. How can we do it without attending to meditation? Love helps you to meditate – love forces you to meditate. If you love somebody, you always want to be with the person concerned.⁹

If we love the Master and he’s within us, we will put all our efforts toward being with the Master. He shows his ‘I love you’ by saving us, initiating us, taking care of us, guiding us. Our ‘I love you’ is our meditation – with our regularity, our full time, our concentration.

Charandas spoke about meditation:

Do the repetition with a still mind …
He who repeats Nam with focused attention
detaches himself from the body;
he merges in the Lord of truth, consciousness and bliss –
and becomes silent….¹⁰
Do not permit the mind to run out;
block its way, encircle and surround it.
Occupy it in contemplation of the Lord.
Listen carefully, there is one more way
to discipline the mind,
of which I now speak:
Repeat the Lord’s Nam, and it will tire
of its restlessness.

We have all heard the story of the tortoise and the hare. But we do not want to win this worldly race. The rabbit can have it. Few have heard the story of the tortoise and the bird, where the tortoise sits in the tree of love under the watchful eye of the bird. It sits and does its meditation. It ignores the temptations on the ground below. Its shell falls away and its wings grow. And finally it flies away.

And another poem from Sant Charandas:

I have given my all to my devotee;
behold the love that I have for him.
From being formless, I have taken on form –
A coarse body of the five elements….
A hundred times more than a father
does the mother love the son.
Inwardly she takes care of him,
while outwardly admonishing and rebuking him.
The Lord’s love
is a hundred times that of the mother.
The Master’s love
is a hundred times that of the Lord.
O Charandas, this is how Sukdev loves you
and removes your faults.¹¹

In other words – I love you.

Maharaj Sawan Singh, Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. V, 6^th ed., p.132
T.R. Shangari, Sant Charandas, p.92
Quoted in Maharaj Sawan Singh, Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. II, pp.243–44.
Sant Charandas, p.94
Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. II, 5^th ed., p.148
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I, #265
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, #1
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, #35
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, #36
Sant Charandas, pp.409,133
Sant Charandas, p.124

Thankful Beyond Words - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Thankful Beyond Words

Saint Paltu writes:

There was another Paltu.
I was mistaken for him and given devotion.
Devotion was given to me by mistaking me for
another of my name.
I took the wealth meant for another and secreted it.
It was fated for another but was given to me.
I alone know it, nobody else does.
I offered to return it but it was not accepted.
This was a mistake by the great One;
what he said I did.
What he said I did O Paltu! You are a great sinner
and the Lord committed a mistake.
There was another Paltu. I was mistaken for him
and given devotion.¹

We all know that the Lord doesn’t make mistakes. Yet we also know that when we look into our hearts, as Paltu did, we feel that we are not worthy or deserving of this great good fortune that the Lord has given us. So it must not be our worthiness the Lord looks for when he selects us to be one of his own. He must be using different criteria.

For reasons we are not able to comprehend, he has chosen us as his marked souls, and our ultimate spiritual development is in his hands. It is of no use to try to figure out “why me?” It is only for us to accept his grace with gratitude and humility, and to try our best to live by his instructions and guidance.

We all have vastly different stories of how we came to the path; we all have come into this life with different circumstances. Regardless of our life story, however, we are all miraculously following this wondrous path, thankful beyond words to be under the shelter of our Master. As unlikely as it may seem, he has pulled us here. We may think that this is our doing, that we have found the Master, but the truth is the Master has found us. He planted a seed deep in our soul. He tended and nurtured it until just the right moment. Then he entered our lives. Rumi reflects on this:

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
How blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.²

It may have taken a long time for the conditions to be right – for the meeting to come about – but our connection to the Master had always been there. That first love story, that longing for love, that first awareness that we are separated from our true home, awakened something lying dormant within us.

We didn’t know it but we had been searching for the Master our entire lives. We were born with an unfulfilled yearning, with an empty place deep in our heart. The only way to fulfill that yearning is to replace it with love.

Under a beguiling picture of Hazur Maharaj Ji in the book Legacy of Love is this quote:

You don't fall in love with the Master; Master has fallen in love with us. And then, we become restless – we feel we have fallen in love with him. The pull is from within.³

One of the favorite topics of the saints is love. Hafiz tells us:

The subject tonight is Love
And for tomorrow night as well.
As a matter of fact,
I know of no better topic
For us to discuss
Until we all die!⁴

In a letter to a disciple in Spiritual Gems, Maharaj Sawan Singh describes the four signs of the Master’s mercy:

The number one sign of his being merciful to anyone is that he creates in him dissatisfaction with the worldly routine and a longing to seek the truth.⁵

Does that sound like you? When you look around at the world does everything seem right to you? Can you even make sense of the world we live in? When we take that first look at the world around us with open and clear eyes, we become aware of a profound dissatisfaction and a longing to seek something higher.

It is precisely at this point, when we are dissatisfied with the world and longing for the truth, that the second sign appears. Great Master continues: “The second sign is that he brings him in touch with a Master.” First he gives us the longing and then he gives us the comforter. Great Master then concludes:

The third sign is that the Master imparts to him the secret of the sound current. The fourth sign is that the initiate works diligently and faithfully on the sound current and starts on his spiritual journey.⁶

The key part of that last sentence is: “the initiate works diligently and faithfully on the sound current.” To work diligently and faithfully becomes our life’s work once we have been given the gift of Nam, the sound current. This work is our reason for being. There is nothing else about this life that will give us the same joy and satisfaction, the same peace and contentment, as working diligently towards this goal. And working diligently is really all we have to do. He takes that effort and turns it into something miraculous. Like the alchemist who turns lead into gold. We give him the tiniest gram of sincere effort and he turns it into something of immeasurable worth.

The Masters have told us that they will give us their love, their encouragement and their support. But we must do our share. We have a part to play. We must put in the effort.

But look at the extraordinary partnership we have entered into with him. We put in our best effort, do our meditation, live by the four vows – and in return he gives us unimaginable spiritual wealth. We don’t have to achieve any results; we shouldn’t even be concerned with results. We just sit at the same time each day, put in our best effort for the required time, and then we go about our day, guided and directed by the Sant Mat way of life he talks about.

And this partnership gets even better. We have often heard the Masters say that if we will do our meditation they will take care of everything else. Hazur writes:

Please continue with your spiritual practice with increased faith and love, and the Master will take of everything else.⁷

Does this mean that if we do our meditation Master will make sure we have perfect health, a loving family, lots of money, and no trials and tribulations in our life? It doesn’t work like that. We all have our karmas to go through. But he will give us the strength, the understanding, the equanimity and the balance to go through these worldly problems. And he will hold our hand all the while, so we can bear the ups and downs of life.

All he asks from us is our effort. Our begging, our trying, our knocking at the door is the only offering he asks from us. This is our share of the partnership. He is going to do everything for us. He is going to give us everything. But we must be receptive to his giving. We have to give him something to work with. A disciple wrote:

In the early hours as I sit in your presence
my heart sings to you.
Please accept this little offering,
and forgive all my failings.
I only have you to turn to.
Enfold my heart with your constant presence,
and fill it with the sweetness of your love.⁸

In the end this is all we hope for, this is all we long for – for him to fill our hearts with the sweetness of his love. His love is the end-all and the be-all for us. Hazur Maharaj Ji says:

There is no bhajan (spiritual practice) greater than love. There is no law higher than love and there is no goal beyond love.⁹

Love is the most powerful force there is, and love is the means by which Master draws us back to him. Saints come to create within us love and devotion for the Father and a yearning to go back to him. Love is the key that opens the door to the inner regions.

When asked to explain love, Hazur said:

Love is to be experienced. Great Master used to give a very beautiful example: if a dumb person eats candy, how will he describe it if you ask him, “What is the taste of the candy?” He will just smile. He won’t be able to say anything at all. Words can’t describe love. Love is to be experienced, love is to be gone through, and language is a very poor expression of love.¹⁰

Therein lies the objective of our practice: to make ourselves receptive to the love of the Master, so that we may experience the sweetness of the love of which he speaks.

In Science of the Soul Maharaj Jagat Singh Ji writes:

Thank you for the appreciation of the Master’s help. … The best and most appropriate way of appreciating his kindness and expressing our gratitude is to give more and more time to bhajan and simran, so that we may go in and contact Nam, and thus have a first-hand experience of everything.¹¹

This sweetness is given to us in proportion to the intensity of our love for him. It may be subtle at first. We start to seek out quiet and peaceful moments and places. We enjoy our own company and periods of solitude. Being with this sweetness of his love that we have tasted becomes the motivating force in our lives. All else becomes stale and tepid.

But Hazur Maharaj Ji now brings up the challenge:

Meditation is a great thing, but even to close ourselves in a room, to sit in one place for meditation, is to our great credit. The mind runs out; the mind doesn’t want to sit at all.¹²

He has identified the problem. The mind is a powerful force, but it runs wild. If we keep allowing that to happen, we are at the mercy of the mind, and the love and sweetness we so dearly want becomes impossible to attain. We are in an epic battle with our mind. Without the constant support and guidance of the Master we would be utterly crushed. But he has given us the weapon to win this battle. He has given us the sword of simran.

Rumi describes the intensity of this battle for our very souls:

Strive, struggle, grapple and wrestle,
None won the battle by weak-kneed submission.
Go on scratching, scraping, and cutting
The stone wall that bars your way.
Cut, hew, gash, break, shatter, demolish, smash,
Rest not for a second, till your very last breath arrives.
Even a worthless effort is better than sleeping,
For the Lord loves our effort, anxiety and struggle.
First put in full effort, then accept what He sends.
Have faith in Him and trust His will.
Not putting in effort is like sleeping among robbers.
A bird found napping is sure to be killed.
Giving up is like sleeping; sleep not on your way.
March on until you reach His gate.
When the Master has put a sword in your hands,
He has clearly expressed his wish.¹³

His wish is that we engage in this battle valiantly and wholeheartedly, using all our strength and resources. Yet he is fully aware of the magnitude of our struggle. He is supporting us and encouraging us, but he does not leave it to us to achieve results. As Rumi said: “First put in full effort, then accept what he [the Lord] sends. Have faith in him and trust his will.”

We are not always satisfied with what we perceive as the results of our meditation. Some of us have been practising meditation for a long time. We expected – hoped – to be further along by now. Sometimes we become disappointed with ourselves. We think, maybe this is just too hard for me. I wasn’t cut out for this path. I don’t have the discipline or the love. Others can do it but I cannot.

But the Masters see it differently. They know our struggle and appreciate every ounce of effort, every round of simran, and every minute of meditation we put in. The path of Sant Mat is a life-long commitment. We need not be impatient or in a hurry. The Master is the trustee of our spiritual wealth and he guards it carefully. We just need to work diligently and faithfully on the sound current. Everything else, everything else is up to him.

If you want to pass a lovely afternoon, make a nice cup of tea, find a pleasant sunny spot and slowly go through the book Legacy of Love. Some people believe it is the most beautiful book ever published. The book is a pictorial celebration of the life and spiritual mission of Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh.

As guru, father, son – and in all the other parts he played – he was the complete and perfect example and role model. He showed us everything: how to meditate, how to live the spiritual life of Sant Mat, how to love, how to laugh, how to make the most of our lives here. He showed us how to take care of our parents, our children and other human beings. The list goes on forever.

And he made it simple for us. For forty years he gave the same basic message: Do your meditation diligently and faithfully, be steadfast on the four vows, and put in your best effort to live the Sant Mat way of life. That is it in a nutshell. When we do that, everything else rests in his loving hands.

And yet, as much as we loved spending time with Hazur Maharaj Ji and as much as we dearly love these times with Baba Ji, we must remember that falling in love with the Master is a means to an end. Everything we see on the outside, and our own bodies as well, will one day return to dust. What will endure? In Legacy of Love a few handwritten notes from Hazur Maharaj Ji reflect on this:

Man’s life does not commence in the womb and never ends in the grave.

Love is a precious treasure; it is God’s gift to sensitive and great spirits.

Congratulations! May you grow and grow to enjoy the Everlasting Life.¹⁴

The mission of the Master is to deliver us to this everlasting life – to the inner, astral regions that he speaks about, teaches us about and entices us with. He is there, waiting patiently for us, in that place which is timeless, eternal and beyond our comprehension. We are his marked souls and he has come to take us back.

Maharaj Jagat Singh Ji speaks of this mission:

With great difficulty he prevails upon his child to accompany him to his palace and see for himself, with his own eyes, what great heritage by right belongs to him.¹⁵

There is a beautiful quote from Hazur Maharaj Ji in Light on Saint John:

Christ says to his disciples …When you come to me inside, I will show you things that you have never dreamed of and that are beyond the comprehension of your mind. … your happiness will know no bounds when you meet me within yourself.¹⁶

Maharaj Sawan Singh, Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. III, 5^th ed., p.176
The Essential Rumi, rendered by Coleman Barks, p.106
Legacy of Love, p.79
The Subject Tonight is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz, rendered by Daniel Ladinsky, p.47
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, #28
Ibid.
Maharaj Charan Singh, Light on Sant Mat, p.141
Anonymous
Maharaj Charan Singh, Divine Light, 1^st ed., #436
Maharaj Charan Singh, Die to Live, #296
Maharaj Jagat Singh, Science of the Soul, #48
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, p.94
Based on lines from Jalaluddin Rumi, Masnavi, Book I: 932–1823.
Legacy of Love, p.519
Isaac Ezekiel, Saint Paltu, p.204
Maharaj Charan Singh, Light on Saint John, 6^th ed., pp.144, 146

Intellect and Rationality in Spiritual Practice - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Intellect and Rationality in Spiritual Practice

The subject of this satsang is the role of intellect on the spiritual path, and the rationality behind practising meditation. Probably there is nobody amongst us here who does not know that meditation according to the instruction of the masters is the core of Sant Mat – “the teachings of the saints.” As Maharaj Charan Singh says in Die to Live:

The approach of the mystics has been different in different times according to the people to whom they were explaining the teachings. But the main theme of every saint is that we should attend to our meditation.¹

Explaining the teachings is what the saints and mystics have done throughout the centuries, always appealing to different aspects of the human mind, which – especially in these times – is primarily intellectual. In Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, Hazur Maharaj Ji says:

As long as the intellect is there, it has to be satisfied. ‘Why’ and ‘how’ are kings of this age. We call it the scientific age. ‘Why’ is the first thing: Why should I do? How should I do? Because the intellect is there, we must try to satisfy the intellect, at least to some extent; otherwise, it will not let us try to meditate. Intellect is a great barrier in our way and we have to pierce this barrier with the intellect itself.²

The intellect can be an obstacle on the spiritual path, and many times it is. On the other hand, if we lack faith and devotion – if at certain times we are not able to just surrender to what Hazur Maharaj Ji and Baba Ji (Baba Gurinder Singh) told us to do – our intellect can help us to understand or remember why meditation should be a priority in our life. And with the help of our intellect we might see why we must listen to and continue to listen to, and act upon, the instructions we got during the initiation we so much longed for. As Hazur says in Die to Live, “If you satisfy your intellect with reasoning, then faith will come and practice will come, which will take you to your destination.”³

The importance of joining practice with understanding is illustrated in Chinese Buddhism by the following story:

A blind man and a cripple lived together in a family compound. There were several other people living with them and helping them out. One day, however, everyone else went out – fishing, shopping, doing the sorts of things people like to do. The blind man and the cripple were the only ones left at home. On that particular day a fire broke out in the house. The blind man couldn’t see and had no way to get out. The cripple could see, but he didn’t have any legs. What a predicament they were in! Both of them were certainly going to burn to death.

At that time a Good and Wise Advisor gave them some advice. “You two can avoid dying. You can get out of this burning house. How? Cripple, let the blind man use your eyes. Blind man, let the cripple use your legs.” They followed his advice. … The cripple climbed onto the blind man’s back and told the blind man where to walk. “Go left, go right, go straight ahead.” The blind man had legs and, although he couldn’t see, he could hear the cripple’s instructions. Thanks to the timely advice, the two managed to save themselves.⁴

And they also experienced the wisdom of the advice only when they followed it. This story illustrates how understanding supports practice, and how practice supports understanding. Even more, they are mutually beneficial to each other. And as the fifteenth-century Korean Zen Master Kihwa (1376–1433) points out:

An understanding that does not have practice is empty. And a practice that does not have understanding will be obstructed.⁵

So there are good reasons for ensuring that there is rational thinking behind our practice.

Further investigating the rationality behind meditation, however, we read a seemingly different perspective from Great Master (Maharaj Sawan Singh) in Philosophy of the Masters:

The teachings of the saints relate to the knowledge of reality, which is acquired without reading and writing.⁶

This is just a short sentence, but important for us to consider. If the teachings of the saints relate to the knowledge of reality, which is acquired without reading and writing, then where is the place for rationality in relation to meditation?

We could argue that living – in the sense of feeling, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, considering, etc. – is also a process of acquiring knowledge without reading and writing. A process of experience, in other words. And for a moment we might conclude that Sant Mat is like life. If so, we would have a point. We familiarize ourselves with what we experience via the senses all day, and in this way we acquire knowledge without reading and writing, indeed. However, according to the saints and mystics we do not acquire knowledge of reality through this type of experience.

Baba Jaimal Singh speaks about experiencing our life as different from reality in one of his letters to his student Babu Sawan Singh Ji, later to become the Great Master:

So regard the world as false; believe firmly that the world and its relationships are like a dream. Carry on with your worldly business knowing within your heart that it is unreal.⁷

And in the Sikh scriptures we can read:

O Nanak, nothing is lasting in this world of dream. Know this world to be a dream.⁸

For those who doubt this, Hazur Maharaj Ji simply asks the rhetorical question: “How can we say anything is real when it is not permanent – here today and gone tomorrow?”⁹ Nothing we experience in this world is lasting.

In addition, the brother explained last Friday in satsang that the life we live is a dream, even though the suffering we experience is real to us. And the cause of the suffering we experience is simply that we do not see life as the dream it is.

And to what purpose this suffering? The sixth-century Master Bodhidharma (440–528), who is traditionally considered to have brought Buddhism to China, said:

Life and death are important. Don’t suffer them in vain. There’s no advantage in deceiving yourself. Even if you have mountains of jewels and as many servants as the sand along the Ganges, you see them when your eyes are open. But what about when your eyes are shut? You should realize then that everything you see is like a dream, an illusion.¹⁰

So when we ask ourselves what is the rational foundation for meditation, the teachings of the saints and mystics answer that a good starting point is to realize that our life as we normally experience it is not real. What we experience is an illusion we suffer from – and an illusion to no purpose.

Now this might be true, but it is difficult to grasp. Especially since all that we experience seems so real.

Also saying that life is a dream raises questions. For instance, if we are dreaming this life, does this mean we do not exist? To understand the rationality behind meditation, at least we should be able to understand our situation, the context in which we are meditating. So how should we understand the situation? What is meant by living in a dream, living an illusion?

We can illustrate our situation in different ways, for instance by the Zen teaching of the full moon in the water, and by the Tibetan teaching of the elephant in a dream.

In Zen Buddhism (in Chinese ‘Chan’; in Korean ‘Son’) the reality that Great Master refers to is symbolized by the full moon. There is the possibility for us to perceive the full moon directly. But in our present state we cannot directly experience reality. It is possible to see the reflection of the full moon in the water of a pond in which the water is calm like a mirror. In this image, the pond is our mind and we can only perceive the reflection of reality.

But this does not completely describe our situation.

We perceive reality via our senses, and with a restless mind. In Zen this is symbolized by the reflection of the moon in the pond, which is then projected onto a wall next to it. Zen teaches that the actual experience we have is caused by reality; but because we experience this reality via our senses with a restless mind, we only see a mere reflection of a reflection of that reality. And because of this, we also perceive only a mere reflection of a reflection of our own true nature.

Tibetan Buddhist oral teachings help us to look to our situation from a slightly different angle:

Let’s say that a Tibetan Lama is asked to elaborate on the fact that, according to the teachings, all is a dream. Yet we feel that what we experience is real, that we are real, that we exist as individuals. He might answer: We all agree that dreams exist. There is no question about the fact that this phenomenon exists. We can talk about our dreams. We all know dreams. So in that sense, dreams are part of our reality. Me saying to you that dreams do not exist would not make sense to you. But, at the same time we all agree that the elephant in the dream is not real.

Saying that the elephant in a dream is real would be crazy. Yet, without the elephant there would be no dream. The reality of the existence of a dream is only possible through the illusion of the elephant. Now, who is experiencing the elephant? It is our mind. And how does the elephant appear? By the same mind. So how do you appear? How do I appear? I am just an elephant talking in your dream. End of teaching.

In addition we also might consider that our life, as we live it, takes time. Precious time. In this context there is a nice story about a young monk named Samiddhi. The story is almost 2,500 years old and can be found in written form in the Pali sutras, the early Buddhist texts:

Thus I have heard. On one occasion Buddha was dwelling at a park with hot springs when one of his students, the Venerable Samiddhi, woke up at the first flush of dawn and went to the springs to bathe. Having bathed in the hot springs and come back out, he stood in his robe drying his limbs when a female spiritual being, a devata of stunning beauty illuminating the entire hot springs, approached him. Floating in the air she said to Samiddhi: “Why waste your time on a spiritual life? First enjoy yourself. Don’t let the time pass you by!”

Hearing what she said, Samiddhi answered, referring to the time of his death: “I do not know what the time might be. The time is hidden and cannot be seen. Hence, I live a spiritual life without first enjoying a worldly life. Don't let the time pass me by, indeed!”

But the devata did not buy that answer.

She alighted on the earth and said: “You became a monk while young, bhikkhu, a lad with black hair, endowed with the blessing of youth, in the prime of life, without having dallied with sensual pleasures. Enjoy human sensual pleasures, bhikkhu; do not abandon what is directly visible in order to pursue what takes time.”

And Samiddhi replied: "I have not abandoned what is directly visible, friend, in order to pursue what takes time. I have abandoned what takes time in order to pursue what is directly visible.”¹¹

The words of this young monk can be inspiring when we have difficulties turning from the world and focusing on our practice. Like Samiddhi, as we focus on our meditation we begin to ‘abandon what takes time’ – to abandon the world of the senses, the world in which time exists. And we do this in order to ‘pursue what is directly visible’ – in order to have the direct experience of reality. This is the highest objective of human life.

Conclusion: Awakening to reality
The approach of the mystics has been different in different times according to the people to whom they were explaining the teachings. But the main theme of every saint is that we should attend to our meditation. The rationality behind this is that we do not see reality as it is, and therefore do not see who we really are – what the true nature of our mind is. We are caught up in a dream created by our own mind which, as we all know, is not a nice dream.

Great Master explains in Spiritual Gems that even when we are not sleeping and consider ourselves to be awake, like at this very moment, that there is a state beyond this physical to which we can awaken:

Dream is real when one is dreaming. Only when he awakens or comes into the other (conscious) state and compares the two states, he calls the conscious the real, and the dream the unreal or an illusion. When the attention leaves the physical plane, enters the astral, and compares the two, only then the physical world becomes unreal, and the astral the real.¹²

So what is the way out of here? It is impossible to find this out for ourselves.

The thirteenth-century Japanese Master Dōgen Zenji (1200–1253) says in his text Points to Watch in Practicing the Way:

Practioners! You must understand that the Way lies beyond thinking, discrimination, viewing, contemplation, perception and intellectualization. If the Way were contained within these mental functions, why haven’t you yet awakened, since you have always been living and playing within that domain?…

If you look at yourself, who is always influenced by such things as thinking, this will be as clear as looking into a bright mirror. The gate through which you can enter the Way can be pointed out only by a master who has attained the Dharma.¹³

Fortunately we have such a master. Without him we would be helpless. To acquire knowledge about reality without reading and writing we have to put ourselves under his influence and following his instructions.

And if the intellect doesn’t help us while we are actually doing our practice, let us remember the story of the cripple and the blind man. Understanding and practice go hand in hand. But if our understanding is too limited, we discover that just continuing the practice helps us gradually come to understand why we are doing it. Or as Baba Ji says: Just do it. Don’t analyze.

I would like to end this satang with a poem by the seventeenth-century Indian mystic Mankoji Bodhla, because this poem – to be honest – says it all, regardless of any other teaching.

Listen, O innocent devotees,
repeat your simran without a break
and all your bad deeds will be burnt.
If you can serve the guru
this age of darkness won’t harm you
and you’ll come to know liberation.
The guru –
treasure-house of knowledge,
mountain of courage –
he will ferry your boat to freedom
if you practise his simran.
He is the force of life at the core of creation.
Where he is, there is liberation.
If you practise his simran
all the gods and goddesses will be yours.
Glory to my guru – my father and mother –
who helps me quit this coming and going,
this living and dying in countless forms.
Concentrating in the innermost heart,
Bodhla has come to see his own Being.¹⁴

Maharaj Charan Singh, Die to Live, #10
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, #55
Die to Live, #27
The Surangama Sutra, Volume One; with Commentary by the Ven. Master Hsuan Hua, tr. Buddhist Text Translation Society, p.18
The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment: Korean Buddhism’s Guide to Meditation; with commentary by the Sŏn Monk Kihwa, tr. A. Charles Muller, p.86
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. IV, 4^th ed., p.lix
Baba Jaimal Singh, Spiritual Letters, letter 111
Adi Granth, p.1429, couplet 15
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I, #288
Bodhidarma, The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma, tr. Red Pine, pp.13–14
The Connected Discourses of the Buddha, tr. Bikkhu Bodhi, pp.97–98
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, #106
Dōgen Zen, tr. Shohaku Okumura, p.25
Mankoji Bodhla in Many Voices, One Song: The Poet Mystics of Maharashtra, p.136

Forget Your Perfect Offering - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Forget Your Perfect Offering

Don't we sometimes feel that it's all gone a bit quiet on this path? Hasn't it become a bit banal, a bit ordinary, a bit over-familiar? A bit like a long marriage where everything's a bit routine? If that's the case, we need to take steps to restore the thrill and rediscover the excitement of our relationship with the Master. Not by means of verbal outpourings but by positive, sincere actions that will bring back that loving feeling. We should never forget, even for a minute, that this is the most wondrous, mysterious and, as yet, incomprehensible journey we will ever undertake.

We must keep asking ourselves why we came to this path and equally we must keep reminding ourselves of the answer. Otherwise it may become stale like a marriage from which the love has drained away, becoming a relationship of platitudes, where ‘Radha Soami’ just means ‘hello’, ‘Sant Mat’ is reduced to a password and ‘satsangi’ is nothing more than an internet identity.

Are we just saying the right things, the words we are expected to say to sound pious? If our relationship with the path has degenerated to this extent we need to take drastic action. We need to press the button to restore the factory settings, to remove all the clutter and debris which has built up and is obscuring our goal and sapping our intensity and zeal on the path.

Remember those early days when nothing mattered except Master and meditation? When the main focus of our attention was on them? When we didn't care what was going on in the worlds of politics and business and entertainment, etc., etc. When the distractions of the world – however subtle – showed their true colours and were seen as distractions, not attractions. When we could say in all honesty, “Master, all I want is you!” Even if we still say those words are they not belied by our actions?

Are we not like some of Christ's disciples, about whom he said: “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?”¹ In other words, “You keep calling me God but you clearly don’t mean it as you don’t follow my advice. This is the very definition of paying lip service.

Christ goes on in Luke 6:47–48:

Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them … is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.

So Christ says that by following the spiritual teachings of our Master we are building firm foundations which will not collapse when we come under pressure. He continues in the next verse:

But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.

In other words, we must practise what he preaches if we are to have a solid foundation on the path of spirituality.

Are we in fact disobedient, indifferent to the urgings of the Master to do at least two and a half hours of concentrated meditation every single day? We really need to ‘get back to the garden’ of freshness and innocence, and to blossom in his love. But fine words alone will not help: we need effort, determination and a genuine desire to re-order, re-prioritize our lives before it is dark or, as Christ said, “while it is still day.” Before we are too frail or incapacitated to fight the good fight with the mind. If we deny him – by not following his teachings to the letter – then how can we expect him to take care of us? Yes, the Lord is all-merciful but he does love our efforts, as Masters regularly tell us. Just as the mother's milk flows when her baby cries – the milk that was always there but which needed the stimulus of crying in order to flow – the mercy and grace of the Lord, which are always there, are felt to flow when we cry out in our utter helplessness and our awareness that by ourselves we can do nothing. It is all his grace.

With regard to Masters saying that the Lord loves our efforts – and our own readiness to repeat this statement – sceptics might say, “How do you know this?” Well, we have heard it from souls of such beauty and radiance, such experts in the field of spirituality, that we are inclined to believe them. Many things they have told us about meditation, about sound and light, have turned out to be true, so it is natural to believe other statements, the truth of which we may not yet have experienced. If we think about it, this is what everyone does in any scientific field of endeavour. We listen to what the experts have to say and naturally give more credence to their utterances than to those of some internet blogger who thinks his opinions are as valid as those of Albert Einstein. Who would you believe?

So we start with belief, put the theory to the test, and if our experience confirms it then we have reached the stage of knowledge. We put beliefs into practice by means of meditation; this is our laboratory in which theories are tested. If we refuse to enter the lab how will we ever attain knowledge? This is what is known as the Science of the Soul. This lab requires dedicated scientists who persevere against all odds. Time and time again people would complain to Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh that they were unable to meditate, to which he invariably replied, “Don't worry. Just do your meditation.” It may sound contradictory but what were we expecting him to say? “Don't worry. Don't bother to meditate until you feel the urge again.” I don't think so!

Would a top-class athlete say to his coach, “I want to be the champion of the world but I don't feel like training right now so can I have a few weeks off?” Through this comparison we can clearly see the absurdity of our implied request for some time off. We also want to conquer the world, but in the sense of rising above it and not being unduly affected by it. It is a long process and requires dedication and effort and love for the Lord.

This is a path for lovers not – changing just one letter – losers. It is a path for warriors not – changing just two letters – worriers. Worrying only shows our lack of faith. Everything will happen exactly as it’s meant to happen so worrying is in fact pointless. A waste of energy. If we can't meditate with love in our hearts and if we can't sit with a focused mind, then at the very least we should sit physically still. We should show up and leave the rest to Him. At those times when meditation was smooth did we actually think we were doing it? The Lord does the meditation through us.

Rather than becoming despondent if nothing seems to be happening, let's remember that the quality of meditation is not in our hands. Masters often say, “Bring me your failures.” We should not expect to submit the ‘perfect’ meditation. Sant Mat is the practice which makes perfect. Perfection is the culmination of a lifetime of effort and devotion, not the starting point. As Leonard Cohen puts it very beautifully in the song “Anthem”:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Let us at the very least make the effort to spend the recommended time of two and a half hours every day sitting in meditation. If we don't show up how can we expect the Lord to shower us with his gifts? As the National Lottery advertisement tells us, “You gotta be in it to win it!” Or as Baba Gurinder Singh said recently, “You need to buy a ticket.” The Lord requires us to be there – or rather here – in order for him to make contact with us. And yet even this is not always one hundred percent true, for “God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.”² We can sit in silence for hours and hear nothing, and then in the most unlikely situations during the day the Shabd can suddenly manifest loud and clear.

In The Hunger of the Soul, Nancy Pope Mayorga writes in a similar vein:

Then this strange phenomenon: sometimes you get up from the most frustrating session of silence to find joy welling up in you as soon as you start some activity. You sit down for meditation – nothing. You get up to work and there it is again, like someone playing a joke on you.³

Her book is truly inspiring. It consists of diary entries between 1948 and 1980 and it captures the thrill of following a spiritual path. Listen to this, written in December 1953:

An inner life at this stage, after six years of intense and honest struggle, is something like this – there will be three or four days, or a week, when God and rapture are immediately available. All you have to do is hold thought steady for an instant and relax any physical or mental tensions that might serve as obstructions, and the current of bliss surges through you and spreads out like a delicious fire to the very smallest capillary. Your mind, your spirit, stands spellbound with awe and gratitude.⁴

You are probably wondering about: “after only six years” or that's “all you have to do,” but as Hazur Maharaj Ji often pointed out, there is no seniority on the spiritual path. Quoting Christ, he would say that the last may be first and the first may be last as nobody knows where each of us is starting from. Some of us may have made great spiritual progress in previous lives, while others may have come to the path for the first time in the present life. This accounts for the fact that while some of us plod on for decades, others appear to be progressing rapidly and enjoying very vivid inner experiences.

It is, of course, irrelevant what others are experiencing, as the Master administers the karmas of each individual so that they become liberated at precisely the moment appointed by destiny, not a second sooner and not a second later. So that takes care of the ‘when’ it will happen, and the ‘whether’ it will happen has been dealt with by the oft-repeated reassurance of the Masters that they only accept their marked sheep for initiation and that, once accepted, the disciple is certain to succeed. The bottom line is that it is as inevitable as day following night that one day each of us will go inside and meet the radiant form of the Master and embark on the spiritual journey described by Soami Ji Maharaj in Sar Bachan Poetry, to which I will return later.

Meanwhile, we left Nancy a while ago standing spellbound with awe and gratitude! She continues:

And these moments are not always calculated. They sometimes sweep upon you unexpectedly in the midst of some activity, in the oddest places, between the aisles at the market, setting the table for dinner, even at the wheel of the car.⁵

It does feel like the Lord is playing a little Zen trick on us by making us question the link between cause and effect. The Word or Logos or Shabd calls to us whenever it pleases; it does not necessarily come running when we call it. We should not ignore it when it does call us; rather we should acknowledge it just as Samuel did in the Old Testament (1 Samuel 3:4–10). Before the temple lamp went out the child Samuel lay down to sleep. Then “the Lord called Samuel: and he answered, ‘Here am I.’” The chapter continues:

And [Samuel] ran unto Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou calledst me. And he said, I called not; lie down again. And he went and lay down.
And the Lord called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call me. And he answered, I called not, my son; lie down again.
Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed unto him.
And the Lord called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call me. And Eli perceived that the Lord had called the child.
Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down: and it shall be, if he call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth. So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
And the Lord came … and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak; for thy servant heareth.

Sometimes when we visit a church or monastery where for centuries worshippers have turned their attention towards God we may feel– or rather hear – the sanctity of the place. The Sound manifests loud and clear and we can just sit down and enjoy being enveloped in it. We can mentally say, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.” The reason these moments are few and far between is that even during meditation, let alone during the rest of the day, the mind, which abhors silence, chatters away randomly and incessantly. We all know people like that; they do not know how to savour the silence. Well, our mind is one of those people! So we have to consciously still the mind by means of very focused, very conscious simran, repetition of the holy names given to us at the time of initiation. They are holy – and wholly remarkable – because they open up our inner vision and make the seemingly impossible possible.

I said I would return to Soami Ji's description of the inner journey, so let's see how he describes it in Sar Bachan Poetry. As I said earlier, the path – as we are following it – can become a little bit of a routine and we can forget what lies ahead. We get up and go through the motions of meditation, we attend satsang and listen to a competent talk, and we undertake seva, thinking we are doing ‘our’ seva when the only real seva is his. If we find ourselves in any of these ruts we can turn to Sar Bachan Poetry and read Soami Ji's enthusiastic description of the inner path. Here is a short description from Bachan 20, Shabd 28:

Hold the Master's key in your hand –
turn the rosary of your mind with simran.
Tune in to the unstruck music of Shabd
and pierce through the cloud in the sky of
Trikuti.
Shoot your arrows of yearning,
listen to the thundering resonance
and go on to Lake Mansarovar.
Establish yourself at the peak of Sunn,
then listen to the melody of Shabd
and reach Sach Khand.
Swim through Alakh and Agam
to the eternal home of Radha Soami.

Go on singing the song of praise every day –
the Master's grace will be with you!

In Spiritual Gems Maharaj Sawan Singh writes simply:

Your wildest dreams or imaginings cannot picture the grandeur of what lies within. But the treasure is yours and is there for you. You can have it whenever you go there. Take it from me, and once and for all, that everything, including the Creator, is within you, and whosoever has attained it, has attained it by going inside the eye focus.⁶

Could it be any clearer than that?

In The Way of a Pilgrim, a Russian pilgrim describes the treasure obtained from constant repetition:

When about three weeks had passed I felt a pain in my heart and then a most delightful warmth, as well as consolation and peace. This … spurred me on more and more to give great care to the saying of the prayer so that all my thoughts were taken up with it and I felt a very great joy. … Sometimes my heart would feel as though it were bubbling with joy, such lightness, freedom and consolation were in it. Sometimes my eyes brimmed over with tears of thankfulness to God … Sometimes that sense of a warm gladness in my heart spread throughout my whole being and I was deeply moved as the fact of the presence of God everywhere was brought home to me. Sometimes … I was overwhelmed with bliss and now I knew the meaning of the words “The kingdom of God is within you.”⁷

Someone asked Hazur: “Maharaj Ji, can the Master sometimes grant the disciple a 'going within' … for a moment of encouragement, before the disciple has reached the stage of seeing him inside?” He replied:

Yes, sister, it happens. We have some visions just to give us faith, or to keep us straight on the path. And even sometimes after initiation, before we have reached the stage of going in at will, we have visions, we have glimpses here and there, just to keep us on the path. But through spiritual practice we have to work our way up and then realize all those things.⁸

Perhaps we wonder why, if we are genuine about our stated desire to merge back with the Lord, we are not already there with him. Hazur Maharaj Ji says:

We have to do both things. We have to live in the world but we have to meditate also. We have to keep the balance because a certain load of karma can be cleared only by facing life, not just by attending to meditation. When we become too absorbed in meditation, sometimes the Master withdraws the grace so that we work in the world also. You are not to leave your worldly work. Rather you may even be pushed to the world, to face the world.⁹

This answer really does explain a lot. I'd like to amplify this idea in a homely way with reference to a song, namely, “How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm, now that they've seen Paris?” The song was penned after the First World War, amid doubts whether the American farm boys would ever be able to return to their rural way of life after experiencing the dazzling City of Light, as Paris was known a century ago. After all those thrills how would they ever be able to settle back down to a mundane existence in the American countryside? How could they live their lives doing the same old routine things as if nothing had happened, as if their eyes had not been opened to another, more alluring world?

Perhaps this is an appropriate analogy to explain why the Master withholds inner experience, for once we have gone inside to the glittering worlds of light and bliss, how could we possibly return to our old way of life as if nothing had happened to us in the City of Light? How could we continue to engage with the world and, most importantly, how could we complete our pralabdh karmas (the fate or destiny of our present life) – possibly the only thing standing between us and liberation, the liberation of our soul? As Hazur said, “a certain load of karma can be cleared only by facing life.” We are not to become recluses but to remain householders, in the world but not of it.

Do we want to keep on fooling around in this world with its crippling limitations or do we want to dwell in the light of the Shabd? Do we really want to be one with the Lord or do we just want the comfort of reading about oneness? Do we want to practise Sant Mat or do we want it to be our ‘insurance policy,’ to be used in case of some future emergency? It's make-up-our-mind time because time is short and nothing lasts forever. Don't let today be another day when we betray our principles.

That's it really! But let's finish with two quotations from Maharaj Ji to encourage us to keep hanging in there when we are struggling with the mind. The first is: “And all the time you spend struggling with the mind during the course of your meditation is itself a meditation.”¹⁰

Finally, in Quest for Light he writes: “No doubt in the beginning great and constant effort is needed, but it is nothing compared with the toil and trouble we go through to gain worldly trash. Sit most regularly in meditation as your paramount duty to the Lord, not caring whether your mind cooperates or not, but keep on trying.¹¹

King James Bible, Luke 6:46
William Cowper, nineteenth-century Christian hymn
Nancy Pope Mayorga, The Hunger of the Soul, p.26
The Hunger of the Soul, p.25
The Hunger of the Soul, p.25
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, letter 147
Anonymous, The Way of a Pilgrim; And, The Pilgrim Continues His Way, ed. Reginald Michael French, Faith Annette Sand, pp.38–9
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, #298
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, #212
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, #164
Maharaj Charan Singh, Quest for Light, letter 173

Stay Close - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Stay Close

There is a photograph of Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh, fifth in the present line of Beas, India, spiritual Masters, standing in the desert. Around him there is nothing but white sand as far as the eye can see – rolling hills of sand with ripple patterns made by wind stretching all the way to the horizon. Hazur stands in the foreground, his hands on his hips. The sun is bright, and the wind must be blowing because his kurta is flying out to the side, and so is his beard. In all that expanse of sand, there is only one footprint that you can see, and it is right next to Hazur’s foot.

This photograph could have been the perfect illustration to accompany one of the treatises written by medieval Sufis about the Master-disciple relationship. The Sufis had a metaphor to describe the spiritual path. They said that the spiritual path was like an unmarked route through the desert, where the sands are constantly shifting. The winds blow, and the sands move. So there’s no visible track, no path. It is a route across the desert which is discernible only to those who have travelled it many times.

The shape of the landscape in the desert is constantly changing, shifting. A hill of sand that was in one place today might be in another place tomorrow. But someone who has travelled across to the destination many times can guide a traveler across. That someone is the Master.

The Sufis used to say that from the time of the beginning of the world, 124,000 prophets had come before the Prophet Muhammad. Sharafuddin Maneri, a thirteenth-century Sufi Master from Bihar, wrote in a letter to a disciple:

Imagine what it must be like on that Road along which 124,000 prophets have travelled, and yet no trace of their journey remains! Without a guide who knows the way, it is impossible to travel along this Road.¹

No trace. No tracks. No footsteps. At least no footsteps that are visible at our level of consciousness.

So, in this analogy, what are those shifting hills and ripple patterns in sand in the desert landscape?

These are our concepts, our ideas about the spiritual path. With our ideas about spirituality we construct a landscape for the path to go through. But concepts are not reality. They are not fixed. They are not permanent.

Just to take one example, we generally say that we must rise up, we must go to higher levels of consciousness, so that we can meet and merge into the Lord who was before the beginning, who brought everything into existence, who sustains the creation moment by moment, who is the mover behind all motion, who is One beyond all duality, who is Oneness itself.

The Taoist mystics generally say that we must go down, we must go to deeper levels of consciousness, deeper and deeper until we attain and merge into the Tao which was before the beginning, which brought everything into existence, which sustains the creation moment by moment, which is the mover behind all motion, which is One beyond all duality, which is Oneness itself.

The words may be different, but the destination must be the same. So, which is it: up or down? Do we go to higher levels of consciousness or deeper levels of consciousness? If something as basic as up and down are mental constructs – just ways of thinking about the spiritual path – then I think it is safe to say that everything we think we know about the spiritual path is just a conceptual framework, a way of thinking about the path.

Everything, that is, except what we have experienced for ourselves. We may have experienced feeling happy in meditation. That’s an experience. We may have come to satsang and felt an atmosphere of peace, of stillness. That’s an experience. We may have heard Hazur’s laugh, that deep belly laugh that was so relaxed and free – and even though we might not be able to assign it any meaning, it was an experience. But all our ideas about the spiritual path that are beyond our own experience are like those sand dunes and ripple patterns in the desert blown around by the wind.

No wonder Baba Ji says he is here to confuse us. If the path is like being in a desert with a guide, the worst thing would be if we were to wander off, thinking we know the way. For example, suppose we had read a book and it said to turn right at the big sand dune, and we wanted to insist on going that way!

So he has to confuse us. Because, he says, once we are really truly confused, and we really know that we don’t understand anything, then we just give up and say, so tell me what to do – and then we do the practice that will bring realization. Then he can guide us across.

Just suppose, if you were in a desert with a guide who knew the route – a route you couldn’t see any sign of – and in that whole expanse of sand there was only one footprint that you could see, and it was right next to your guide’s foot – what would you do? I think you’d stay real close to the guide. I think you’d keep him in sight. You’d be really careful not to let him out of your sight. Maybe you’d even catch hold of a corner of his shawl and clutch it tight in your fist. Just in case a big sand storm blew up, or night was falling, you’d want to keep clutching that little fringe of the shawl to make sure you didn’t get lost.

In one way or another, you’d make sure to stay close to the guide. For us, this is our simran. Repeating simran and remembering the Master keeps us close.

Narhari Sonar has several poems that keep coming back to this theme of staying close to the mystic. Narhari was a mystic saint from Maharashtra whose poems appear in Many Voices, One Song. In one poem he writes:

A painter strokes his brush on a wall –
this is the world, nothing real here …
If you really want to achieve something real,
just repeat the name, says Narhari,
and stay close to the mystics.²

Narhari says that everything in this world is temporary. It is evanescent. All the things we work so hard for in this world are fleeting; they don’t last; in that sense they are not real, not permanent. If you want to achieve something that is real and lasting, he says, there are two things you have to do:

First: Repeat the Name. ‘Repeat’ means it is a practice, something to do over and over. Do the meditation. Do the simran and bhajan. Do it every day.
And second: Stay close to the mystics. Just stay close. And if the mystic confuses you… just hang in there and stay close.

What is this all about, this staying close to the mystic?

If we look back to the medieval Sufis, in all those books they wrote about the Master-disciple relationship, there’s one single line that I think says it all. Al-Qushayri, an eleventh- century Sufi from Nishapur, wrote: “Each wayfarer needs a Master from whom he can learn his path, one breath at a time.”³

So it’s not like: you read a book and then you understand – once and for all. And it’s not like: you get the gist of the path, ask for initiation, and you know the path. You learn your path, from the living Master, one breath at a time. He doesn’t even say that the wayfarer learns the path from the Master – no, the wayfarer learns his path from the Master. Each disciple learns his or her path from the Master, one breath at a time.

Maybe it means learning it moment by moment, from the Master’s living example – an example that might turn out to be quite different from your pre-conceived ideas. Maybe it means learning the path from some atmosphere we imbibe in his presence. In the atmosphere of the Master’s presence we breathe in a kind of stillness; from our jumbled thinking a certain clarity emerges and we remember what our real priorities are. Maybe learning our path one breath at a time from the Master simply means taking to heart what he says, following his instructions, putting them into practice moment by moment. As Soami Ji says in Sar Bachan (Prose):

Leaving everything else aside, one must implicitly obey the Satguru of his own time, and faithfully follow his instructions. This will lead him to success. This is the long and short of everything.⁴

The key phrase here is “the Satguru of his own time.” It is a living relationship with our own Master, not with the words written by some Master of the past.

As Hafiz is often quoted: “If the Master tells you to soak your prayer mat in wine, hurry up and do it for he is not unmindful of the Way.”⁵

We all seem to love this quote. We love to quote it, but – actually – if the Master tells us to do something that isn’t according to our own way of thinking, in fact we have a pretty hard time following it. So, to learn our path one breath at a time from the Master, we have to enter into what Narhari calls “The Holy Contract.” He writes:

How could one so low as I
describe one so great as you?
O treasure of mercy and grace,
one Wonder exists – it is You –
no other is so full of mercy.
Enter into the holy contract, friends,
embrace the Name within you
and know that you’ll escape
endless returns to the womb.
The method for human beings is
to see all as equal, to love, to yearn,
to meditate and to serve the Master.
When my mind concentrates in my Master,
says Narhari, my vision of God holds firm.⁶

Why do we need the holy contract with a Master? Narhari explains that it is because the Master is so far beyond our comprehension. As he says:

How could one so low as I
describe one so great as you?
O treasure of mercy and grace,
one Wonder exists – it is You –
no other is so full of mercy

We say Sant Mat is a path of God-realization. We like to say we are on a path of God- realization. But if in all honesty we don’t have a clue what or who God is, then what does it mean? We say we will meet God face to face… or we will merge into God, or realize God – but these are just words, concepts. We ourselves do not actually know what we mean. Even when we say the Master is God-realized, is one with God – this is all philosophical talk, metaphysical talk. The Sufi poet, Mahmud Shabistari said it poetically:

Holding the hem of the robes of the Master of the tavern
the Sufi is liberated from all metaphysical gibberish
and dry asceticism.⁷

It doesn’t mean literally grabbing onto the hem of his robe! But poetically, what a vivid metaphor for staying in the presence of the Master. It’s a great image – you’re hanging onto his coattails and whichever way he’s going, you’re just flying along behind him, maybe not really understanding anything, just hanging in there with him. And Shabistari says you get liberated from all metaphysical gibberish!

Instead of spending your life in empty philosophical talk, and instead of wasting away in dry asceticism, just hang on tight and follow the living Master. It think this is what Narhari calls staying close to the mystic, And, put another way, it’s also what Soami Ji calls implicitly obeying the Master of your own time.

The Sufi Master, Shafaruddin Maneri actually goes so far as to say that it is the presence of the living guide that breathes life into the spiritual path. He wrote in a letter to a disciple that all the spiritual practices of a seeker “who lacks a guide are devoid of originality and become routinized. They do not help him mature or progress.” He went further, saying that if a seeker wanted to learn about the path from books, “he becomes exactly like someone who associates with the dead – and he too becomes dead at heart.”⁸

If we want to become more conscious, more awake, more alive, we have to imbibe these qualities from one who has them. Soami Ji says everything in the universe can be classified as either chaitanya – alive, alert, awake, conscious – or jar – lifeless, inert, unconscious. He says only the Satguru is chaitanya, everyone and everything else is jar, inert. That’s all of us!

Service of the chaitanya (living or conscious) will lead to life, and service of the jar (lifeless or inert) will lead to inertness. All except the Satguru come under the classification of jar (inert). Therefore, all those who seek their own good and wish to be one with the chaitanya should devote themselves to the service of the Satguru.⁹

So Narhari says we need to enter into a contract with that one who is conscious, awake and alive:

Enter into the holy contract, friends,
embrace the Name within you
and know that you’ll escape
endless returns to the womb.

A contract has two sides. You shake hands on it, you make a pact, and each side has committed to doing something. What is our side of the contract? Narhari says, Embrace the Name within you. Embrace Nam, cherish the Shabd, give it your attention, fall in love with Nam.

Then he sums up the basic principles of spiritual life:

The method for human beings is
to see all as equal, to love, to yearn,
to meditate and to serve the Master.

What a simple way to say it, and how much is encompassed in this! He concludes the poem, saying:

When my mind concentrates in my Master,
Says Narhari, my vision of God holds firm.

We don’t know what God is. Actually, frankly, we don’t know what the Master is either. But we can see him, and we do have some experience of him. We can think of him. We can remember him. We can do the simran he has given us. We can follow his instructions. This is what Narhari calls staying close to the Master. And he says, “When my mind concentrates in my Master, my vision of God holds firm.”

In another poem, entitled, “Come Closer,” Narhari writes:

Repeating the Name and listening to the Sound –
this is the foundation of all religions.
Live in mercy, forgiveness and contentment,
and have the darshan of a Master.
Find him quickly and stay close –
this is how you come closer to God.
This human body may not come again,
so devote yourself to your Master.
Don’t immerse yourself in the world,
just keep repeating the Name of God.
Everything else will pass –
the Name alone is true.
Vithoba, Giver of Light to the Ignorant,
will lead you to freedom one day.
Understanding this, Narhari bows
with love at his Master’s feet.¹⁰

He begins by telling us that the simple practice the Master teaches us – repeating the Name and listening to the sound – is the starting point, the seed from which all the religions have grown. Just this simple teaching: repeat the Nam, listen to the sound. As Hazur used to say, we arrest the teachings, give them the shape of a religion, rites, rituals, dogma, rigid beliefs. The living Master draws us back to reality. He is, after all, the one who is chaitanya – alive, awake, conscious – and we are so ready to worship that which is dead and inert!

So then Narhari expresses the most basic, simple, essential principles of spirituality – spirituality when it’s not yet mired in ritual and dogma, before rigor mortis has set in.

Live in mercy, forgiveness and contentment,
and have the darshan of a Master.
Find him quickly and stay close –
this is how you come closer to God.

He says: find a Master, and once you have found him, stay close. And how can we go through life without losing our clarity, our purpose, our direction? He says:

Don’t immerse yourself in the world,
just keep repeating the Name of God.
Everything else will pass –
the Name alone is true.

We so easily immerse ourselves in the daily details of our lives. We plunge in, and then we find we are drowning, gasping for air as we lose track of our priorities and the purpose of our life. So Narhari says, yes, do your duty, live your life in all its complexity and challenge, but don’t immerse yourself. Don’t go under. How? Just keep repeating the Name of God, and you’ll keep your balance through the ups and downs.

Then Narhari makes an extraordinary promise. He says:

Vithoba, Giver of Light to the Ignorant,
will lead you to freedom one day.

The Giver of Light to the Ignorant. There’s the tricky part: Can we recognize ourselves as the ignorant? If we are ignorant – truly ignorant, knowing that we know nothing – then the giver of light can fill us with his light.

There’s a story that when Socrates was a young man, he thought he know a lot. When he was a little older, he thought he knew a little. By the time he was an old man, he was finally able to say, “I know nothing.”

How long will it take for us to reach that point, to be able to say in all honesty, “I know nothing?” If we really know nothing, we can cross that desert of shifting sands just by staying close to our guide. If we are really ignorant the Giver of Light can fill us with his light and lead us to freedom. Narhari, concludes the poem with:

Understanding this, Narhari bows
with love at his Master’s feet.

Maneri, The Hundred Letters, tr. P. Jackson, p.26
Narhari in Many Voices, One Song, p.166
al-Qushayri, “The Testament to Disciples,” in The Teachings of Sufism, tr. Carl Ernst, p.152
Soami Ji Maharaj, Sar Bachan (Prose), Bachan 116, 5^th ed., p.100
Hafiz, Deewan-e-Hafiz, p.29
Narhari in Many Voices, One Song, p.202
Nurbakhsh, Sufi Symbolism, 1:165; citing Gulshan-i Raz, 54
The Hundred Letters, p.36
Sar Bachan (Prose), Bachan 48, 5^th ed., p.82
Narhari in Many Voices, One Song, p.263

Meditation is Medicine - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Meditation is Medicine

The answer is meditation – so what’s the question?

Well, it’s just about every question we could ask the Master! What it all boils down to is this one thing: meditation. We can cut it any which way we want, we can angle our questions from this way or that. But the answer is always meditation.

When we get back from Dera and we are asked, So what did Master say, what was the big message, what were the headlines of the visit? – we will say, He said we should do our meditation! And they will say, Oh yes, of course meditation – we all know that – but what else was said, was there anything different, anything really interesting?

We seem to not want to hear this single message that the Masters have always given. We like things to be complex – to be ‘interesting,’ to stimulate our mind – when what we really need to do is subdue the mind, take control of our senses, get control of our lives and fulfil our potential – to become one with Him. So the answer to all our problems is plain and simple: we should do our meditation.

As Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh said, “Meditation (bhajan) is the panacea for all ills.”¹ The word ‘panacea’ means a universal remedy that cures all illnesses. Put plainly: meditation is the universal cure for the universal illness we all suffer from. No matter who we are, whatever colour or creed, whether male or female, rich or poor, we all are suffering in this physical creation.

The Maharashtrian mystic Eknath says:

The Name of God – the one pure medicine
for every disease of the mind, heart and body.
First it ends our suffering,
then sweetness and freedom
come to bow before the patient.
Nothing else is needed, says Eknath –
just keep the name of
Ram rolling on your tongue,
enjoy a diet of pure deeds
and give yourself to the master doctor.²

So let’s try to understand what we are suffering from. Our illness, the biggest problem we have, is that we are all mental cases! We’re ‘mental’– we’re under the sway of mind, which is in turn a victim of the senses. We need to be spiritual, not mental! The soul, a princess of royal blood, has taken the company of a lowly sweeper, the mind, and become his slave. She now lives in this hovel of the world eating swill, when in truth she should be living in a palace and dining on nectar.

Nothing here will ever make us happy for long, worldly pleasure is short-lived and ends in misery, and then the karmic chains just bind us more tightly to this creation. Sahjo Bai says:

The rich, without exception,
are distressed and distraught.
And the poor, what to say of their lot?
Their misery and sorrow know no bound.
Blessed are sadhus
who the great secret have found.³

The ‘great secret’ that the sadhus, the true holy men, have found is the path back to the creator, the means by which the soul can connect to the divine Word that lies within, and by means of that divine Word travel back to its true home.

So the ills that the Master is talking about curing are not physical; he’s specifically talking about what sits at the heart of the suffering, the mental and spiritual anguish we all feel as a result of the soul being ‘infected’ by the mind. This is the root cause of suffering; all else is a symptom of this malignant disease of being dominated by the mind. Hazur Maharaj Ji says:

The soul suffers along with the mind – the soul doesn’t suffer without the mind. When the soul has no association with the mind, the soul doesn’t suffer at all. But then it takes the association of the mind, and of course it is suffering.

You see, the soul has an inclination towards its own origin. It’s always yearning to go back to the Father. So that suffering of separation is always there. But it forgets the Father because it has taken association of the mind, and mind has become a slave of senses. The soul starts suffering, being a slave of the senses.⁴

The source of all suffering and our chronic condition comes from the separation of the soul from its source, the Father. This separation is caused by the mind, and the ego. The belief we have of ourselves as separate entities existing apart from the Father – this is the grand illusion.

And meditation is the medicine that the master doctor administers to cure us of this condition. The Master has perfectly diagnosed our condition, its cause and the effects it has had on us; he is therefore able to prescribe the perfect medicine to cure us – and cure us forever. Hazur says:

Meditation is the solution to all our problems. Instead of putting up your list of demands, put up your meditation. Then you will rise above those problems and they won’t affect your mind at all. You will never be able to solve the problems of the world. But we always rise above those problems so that they don’t affect us, they don’t bother us, they become meaningless to us. Meditation helps; that is the real solution to those problems.⁵

The problem is that most of us don’t know that we are critically ill – that mankind’s general condition is so very far away from what it should be. The potential of being truly human is to be God-realized, at one with the Father. When the Master tells us that we should aim to be good human beings, this is an invitation to fulfil our potential, to experience an exalted state. Our soul is unlimited and immortal, but because of the association with the mind we remain limited and mortal.

Being mortal, we all have in common one thing: one day we’re all going to die. We are born to die. Who knows what will happen to us next? But the one sure thing we know about being human is that we will one day die. No one gets out of here alive!

If a doctor were to diagnose us with an incurable illness tomorrow, he might tell us that we only have so many months left to live. Think. How would we react – honestly – how would we feel to get that news? To hear those words said about us, well, most of us would be terribly shaken. The impact surely would be that we would reflect on our lives, reassess our priorities and make sure we focused on what was truly important to us. And that would be? Meditation.

If you search the internet you will find many versions of the ‘bucket list,’ or it may be titled “100 Things to Do Before You Die.” People post their own versions of what they would like to do before they leave this life behind. It’s an interesting list, almost all items relating to worldly pursuits, travel, action sports, etc. Basically it's a list of those people’s unfulfilled desires and their pursuit of sensual indulgence.

But for us satsangis it should be very different. The only item we need in that bucket is not a list at all, it’s one item and one item only. The one thing we need to do before we die is to die. To die daily, as Saint Paul said, to practise separating ourselves from the limitations and constraints of the body and mind and go within and commune with the divine.

We need to wake up and smell the coffin! And die to live, not just live to die.

So it’s not about a list of things we need to get done; neither are we here to change the world or make a dent in the universe, to make a big impression on the world. We’re here to change ourselves. No one else – just ourselves! The only dent we need to make is in the cushion that we sit on when we meditate. If we really want to make a good impression, well that’s it!

The Master asks us to sit in meditation daily. Sitting. We can all sit; look, we’re doing it right now. It’s really easy. Most of us have travelled here from the four corners of the world. We sat in a taxi to the airport, we sat on a plane for five, ten, maybe fifteen hours, then we sat on a train, and we’re sitting now. We can do it. None of us can say we can’t sit. As the saying goes: Don’t just do something, sit there!

And once we're sitting, we can just close our eyes and do our simran, simply repeat those five holy names that the Master has given us. We can surely put in that much effort. It's a journey to the inner heavens – it’s not rocket science, it’s spiritual science!

So why do we struggle so hard to do this simple thing that will end all our suffering, that is truly for our benefit? We make it difficult for ourselves by putting impossible demands on ourselves. We say to ourselves, What is the point of sitting – our meditation is so bad and only good meditation counts! But we should remember that we’re all works in progress, not the finished article!

Where does it say that we have to sit and do ‘good meditation?’ We are simply asked to sit and do our simran – to put in the effort for two hours, then for half an hour try to listen to the sound, the Shabd. Master himself has said there is no good or bad meditation – it is only meditation. No one is in a position to challenge the efficacy of the medicine that the divine doctor has prescribed until they have taken it fully, as prescribed.

We can make up all kind excuses why we have not done what we promised to do, reasons why we can’t meditate; but to my knowledge no one has yet found fault with it when they have actually diligently followed the Master’s instructions. No one has ever got up to the microphone and said to the Master, I sit every day in meditation for two and a half hours, I completely still my body and mind to such an extent that they appear dead to me, I repeat the five holy names continuously with one-pointed attention, and yet I have heard nothing, nor have I seen the light.

That won’t happen. Sant Mat is the science of the soul, it’s absolute and empirical. What the Master has prescribed for us will get certain results so long as we put in the effort and perform the spiritual exercises precisely as he has told us. Maharaj Jagat Singh Ji advised us to enter the laboratory of the body and perform the experiment for ourselves.

It is possible. The medicine of meditation will cure us all. Our part is to take the medicine, and it will cure us. Just sit every day and put in the effort – that is our part of the deal.

The perfect Masters always and exclusively prescribe meditation. This is the path of Surat Shabd Yoga, the most effective treatment in eradicating the soul’s entanglement with the mind. But what is sweet to the mind and senses is poison to the soul, and what is sweet to the soul is poison to the mind and senses. At first, because of the gross nature of our minds, the medicine seems bitter and hard to swallow, but it is for our own good. Hazur gives an analogy:

Our concept of love and kindness is that whatever we want, we should get. But sometimes the mother has to put bitter quinine in the mouth of the child. And the child has to swallow it, in his interest. But there can be no better love than the mother for the child.⁶

The Maharashtrian mystic Bahinabai says:

Saints are wondrous physicians
who cure the disease of the world.
Listen, I’ll tell you their method –
with the smallest bit of medicine
they cure all the soul’s sickness.
The diet they prescribe is free of sense pleasures,
but full of love and devotion for the Lord.
Knowing the patient’s inner condition, says Bahina,
the doctors vouch for this one method.⁷

When friends and family who aren’t familiar with Sant Mat ask us about where we are going when we come here, some of us may find it difficult to really explain what our visit is all about. Well, why not tell them the truth, but in a way that they will understand? We can tell them we're going in to rehab! Like those celebrities we read about in our newspapers and see on the news programmes. When they can no longer function in a normal manner, when their fast lifestyles catch up with them, they need rehabilitation. They need to be reset, re-calibrated to start to behave normally again – or relatively normally in many of their cases.

Just as with a computer or piece of technology that gets overloaded or has too many conflicting applications or programmes running, you have to return them to their original factory settings – how the manufacturer originally intended them to behave. We’re just the same. For us to be what we were designed to be, we need to get rid of all these coverings, the senses, the bad habits, the attachments and so forth and be as we should naturally be – True Human Beings, version 1.0. We need the manufacturer, our Creator, to reset us. We need to access the Inspiration Super Highway and download Shabd. We need to meditate.

That’s why we’ve come to Dera – we’re here for rehab. We need to be rehabilitated, recalibrated, to be reminded how to regain our spiritual health. We’ve got to clean up our act, come out from the shadows and into the light. When we get home we can attend the Support Group meetings with our fellow sufferers – or satsang as we know it. This is essential if we are to maintain our recovery.

Both Maharashtrian poets quoted earlier talked about the importance of diet. This means not just what we eat, but what we take in to ourselves, the impressions we make on our minds. The Masters say that we take on the colour of the company we keep. We should therefore keep good company. Adopt a way of life that moves us towards healing, that creates an environment that helps us build our resistance to the effects of the mind and its diseased behaviour.

Simply put: if we wish to cure ourselves of our illness, the same illness we have been suffering from for countless lives, then we must start doing things differently. Otherwise our behaviour is just madness or insanity. The definition of insanity is: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The panacea for all ills, the medicine that will finally relieve us from our suffering, like all medicines has to be prescribed by a qualified person, an expert in the field. Such a one is the perfect living Master. He knows precisely what our condition is and how to administer the cure.

And for that we need a living physician, a living Master. Just as in the case of a physical ailment, a doctor from the past (and long dead) cannot help the living beings of today. It seems, on the surface at least, that the challenges of contemporary society are not covered by medical texts of old. And the same goes for spirituality. The human condition is the same as it has always been, but the specifics of modern day society have their impact on how we navigate the challenges of this time – and so we need a living doctor.

When we go to a regular doctor to treat our physical illness we go because we have faith in him and the treatment he recommends. He gives us a prescription; firstly we acquire the medicine and secondly, and most importantly, we take the medicine and follow the treatment as he has prescribed it.

Just imagine this. You go to visit an old friend, who on your last visit a year earlier had been suffering from a terrible cough. At the time he told you that he was going to the doctor the next day to have it looked at and to get some medicine. When you visit him now a year later he greets you at the door and still has the same hacking cough – actually it’s even worse than before.

I thought you were going to get that seen to, weren’t you? you say.
Well yes. I did.
And what did the doctor say?
He then points to a bottle on the sideboard and says, He prescribed that medicine.
Well, it clearly hasn’t worked, you say. How long have you been taking it?
Oh, I’ve never actually taken it, he replies. You see, I took the prescription to a pharmacist, who gave me the medicine with the instructions that it should be taken once a day until my condition approved.
So I waited and waited, day after day, but the doctor never came to put the medicine in the spoon and lift it to my mouth. And so I’m still suffering! In fact I’m beginning to wonder whether the medicine is right for me at all!

Foolish, yes, but do we behave any better? We have a part to play in all this; we need to put in the effort. Hazur says:

When Master initiates us, puts us on the path, he tells us to devote time to meditation. If we really love him, we will obey him. We cannot say we love him and, and at the same time, not obey his instructions, not live the life he instructs us to live. That is not love for the Master. If we really have faith in him, if we really love him, we will want to do what he wants us to do. And he wants us to meditate; therefore we should also try to meditate.⁸

Without taking the medicine, without devoting ourselves to the meditation, we cannot expect to be cured. We must take it as prescribed. The dosage is clearly indicated by the Master: to meditate in the manner prescribed at initiation for a minimum of two and a half hours a day. That’s a minimum dosage. As our capacities increase, the Master says meditation can be carried out throughout the twenty fours of the day. And such is our chronic condition that the minimum dosage must be taken for the rest of our lives. The moment we were prescribed the meditation at initiation was pre-ordained, and therefore the length of treatment until death is exactly the course of treatment we should follow.

Let us consider another point. As we know with many prescription drugs, there can be considerable side effects, and so it is with meditation. There are actually two effects to deal with – side effects and inside effects. With meditation, in both cases the effects are all positive. Positive in the true sense – that they help us towards our goal. Hazur tells us:

Meditation changes the very attitude of our life. That’s different from what we achieve within and how far we still have to go, but meditation definitely changes our attitude towards to life. You see, even if we don’t experience anything within, but we attend to meditation, we at least can enjoy the fragrance of meditation, if not the experience of meditation. A blind man goes to a garden full of scented flowers. If he can’t enjoy the beauty of the flowers, at least he can enjoy the fragrance. So meditation changes our outlook on life.

And here’s the most wonderful list of side effects you could wish for:

It makes us humble. It makes us more loving, more kind, more god-fearing. We don’t try to deceive anybody, cheat anybody, hurt anybody. In so many molds of our life. If we do anything wrong, it weighs on our conscience and we try to get rid of our guilt. These are the effects of our meditation, and if one is lucky enough to enjoy the experience, there is nothing like it.⁹

Meditation goes to the heart of our problem – our separation from the creator. It re-connects us to him via the Shabd. Rather than mask our pain as an aspirin or Paracetamol would and hide the pain from us, it removes the cause of our pain. It returns us to our natural state – our real state, one where the soul is in charge of the mind and the mind is in charge of the senses.

Through meditation we will gain that true experience that will change us forever, we will have gone from mere concepts to reality. As the present Master has often said: Knowledge applied leads to experience, and experience leads to understanding. Hazur says:

If a disciple regularly does his duty towards his lord, with love and devotion, he will realize that the Master guides and protects him at every step, that the Master is always with him – not only in this life but also helps him at death and throughout eternity. So take a pledge from today that whether your mind likes it or not, you will give a full two and a half hours to simran and bhajan every day, preferably in the early morning hours. Regularity is most essential for spiritual progress. You must do your duty without asking anything in return.

Do not mind whether you see any light within or not, or whether the sound is audible. You simply do your duty and leave the results to the Master. When a man pays wages to one who works for him, do you think that the Lord would not do so? He alone knows what is good for us and when it is to be given. He will pay in abundance. Have faith in him.¹⁰

So, let’s all keep taking the medicine.

Maharaj Charan Singh, Divine Light, letter 312
Eknath in Many Voices, One Song, p.175
Maharaj Jagat Singh, Science of the Soul, p.37
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I, p.131
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, p.212
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, p.18
Bahinabai in Many Voices, One Song, p.272
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, p.290
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, p.376
Divine Light, letter 107

I Know the Way You Can Get - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

I Know the Way You Can Get

Looking at the world of today, we might say it is in turmoil, for we live in times in which intolerance, animosity and strife prevail. We live in times in which people distrust each other, have a fight, wage war against each other and kill each other. Almost daily the media confront us with news of people using mental or physical violence against fellow human beings in a struggle for existence, for power, for money, for freedom. Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh repeatedly said that this turmoil is not specific to today’s world; unfortunately, conflicts are of all times, and Great Master (Maharaj Sawan Singh) gave the following explanation:

The world of today is characterized by tension, worry and anxiety. Apart from realized souls, no one is free from their impact, no matter what our walk of life. The notable absence of harmony in modern life comes from the spiritual bankruptcy of a society thrown into chaos by people whose souls are in distress. In recent history, humanity has made great strides in all spheres of material activity. People have explored the earth, water, air and outer space, but they have failed to explore their inner being and improve their spiritual lot.… People acquire knowledge of all kinds but remain ignorant of their soul, which is not only the basis of all knowledge, but the life that activates the body, mind and intellect.…

Not knowing our own soul and being separated from our source cause the constant strife that goes on within individuals. This then results in social unrest as people forget the ideal of the oneness of God and kinship among all their fellow beings. Discord among individuals, families, communities and nations then follows, throwing the whole world into turmoil.¹

So the unrest in today’s world is just a reflection of our own inner restlessness, which exists because our mind is not under control. Conflicts in the world are the consequence of a constant inner strife within each one of us – a strife that goes on as long as we are not conscious of our soul, and do not feel united with the divine source from which everything has emanated.

Mystics and saints – realized souls – live among us to show us the reality of the world and ourselves. At the same time they point out to us that we have the possibility to liberate ourselves from all conflicts and suffering by realizing God. So they encourage us to search for God, for permanent happiness, peace and rest, within our own body – the peace and rest which we all long for and which are so hard to find in the world around us. They assure us that if we live in accordance with their teachings, our inner restlessness will be dispelled and we will be able to live in a loving and compassionate way, in harmony with everything in our environment, and respectful towards all living beings, because of the bliss and unconditional, divine love we will find in our hearts.

Mystics assure us that once we are conscious of that divine spark of love in us, our soul, we can become one with the divine source from which we have emanated. Becoming one with God leads to a different experience of this world and our life, they say. Instead of discord, chaos and conflict, we will experience unity, coherence and harmony. We will realize that everything has a function and purpose, that nothing is meaningless; that everything is permeated with divine love; that every creature, every form of life is an expression of that love. The simple fact that we are not conscious now of the presence of this all-pervading love is exactly our problem and the cause of all conflicts and suffering.

What does living in accordance with the teachings of the mystics and saints imply? It means that we should keep a lacto-vegetarian diet; we should abstain from alcohol, tobacco, and mind-altering drugs; we should lead a clean and moral life; and we should practise meditation daily under the guidance of a perfect spiritual Master. Only by following all these instructions can our mind become still and under control. Only then can we reach deep concentration during meditation. Only then can we become conscious of the divine love within us, which will reveal itself as light and sound. A Buddhist text expresses this idea beautifully:

There is a supreme concentration called peace and bliss
Which can universally save and liberate
all sentient beings,
Radiating a great light, inconceivable,
Causing those who see it to all be pacified.
This light emanated is called ‘good manifestation’ –
If any sentient beings encounter this light,
It will cause them to benefit, without fail:
by this way they can attain unsurpassed knowledge.…

It also emanates a light called ‘tranquility’:
This light can awaken the scatter-minded,
Causing them to detach from greed, anger, and folly,
With their minds unstirring and properly stabilized.
Abandoning all bad associates,
Meaningless talk and impure action,
Praising meditation and solitude:
Thus is this Light produced.

It also radiates a light called ‘wondrous sound’:
This light can awaken enlightened beings
And cause all voices heard in the world
To be to the hearer the voice of Buddha.²

So it is the practice of the spiritual teachings, the practice of meditation, that will dispel our inner restlessness, that will bring us peace, tranquility and bliss and will make us conscious of the presence of divine love within us and around us. Not instantly, but gradually, because the inner unrest and dominance of our mind is enormous. That becomes obvious when we start to practise. Only through practising will we realize that just sitting motionless is very difficult for us, that our thoughts disturb the simran, the repetition of the five holy names, very easily. Only by walking this spiritual path will we discover that we sometimes have problems with getting our priorities right, with molding our lives in accordance with the instructions of the Master. And only through practising will we become conscious of the fact that we are more strongly attached to things than we had ever imagined.

Becoming aware of our limitations and all kinds of weaknesses might be painful, for our imperfection and powerlessness become obvious. As a result, some of us start to lose confidence and faith in the path. At these moments it is important to realize that this awakening has a purpose and is of great value. For it helps us to become humble. It helps us to let go – to let go of all the things which gave us confidence before. This is the way for us to learn to let go and surrender ourselves to God, to surrender ourselves to the Master, so he can be our helper. Saint Tukaram has put this aptly in one of his poems:

I want to devote myself to you, but I lack love –
All my attempts to sit at your feet have come to naught.
For some reason my mind is out of control.
When I wish to do good deeds, I lack willpower;
When I wish to give in charity, I lack the means;
I do not know how to honour priests and guests.
I have no mercy for my fellow humans in my heart,
Nor can I do anything for them.
I do not know how to surrender to my Master,
Nor how to serve the saints.
I cannot perform rites and rituals,
Nor can I renounce the world.
I cannot go to dwell in forests,
Nor can I control my senses.
When I wish to make pilgrimages, my heart is not in it;
When I wish to make vows, I do not know how.
Even though I say that God resides within me,
The feelings of ‘me’ and ‘you’ still remain.
All these weaknesses have led me to surrender to you.
I have no more worries now, says Tuka …
And I have become your marked servant.³

So our seeming failure has a purpose. It helps us to grow on the path. It is a phase we have to go through. That’s why the Masters encourage us not to lose heart and to continue the practice. As Great Master says in a letter to one of his disciples:

Stilling the wild mind and withdrawing the attention from the body and concentrating it in the eye focus is a slow affair. A Sufi says: ‘A life-period is required to win and hold the beloved in arms.’…

Human nature is frail. It is full of weaknesses and one begins to realize the weaknesses of human nature when one follows Surat Shabd Yoga. Frailties present themselves in almost every conceivable manner and interfere in concentration. But with the help of the Master and the sound current they are overcome, one by one, with every inch of the withdrawal of the current from the body towards the focus. The frailty of human nature is giving place to strength, and when the attention has detached itself from the centres of sense organs, the senses cease to function in this material world haphazardly and are under control.…

Do not lose heart but fight courageously. The battle has just begun. Mind is not stronger than the sound current. The Master is with you. He is watching your every movement. He is prepared to fight your battles with you. Take him as your helper. Have faith in him. Fight the mind and you will succeed.⁴

Keep on practising the teachings of the Masters, says Great Master, and you will succeed. All the Masters, whether Hazur Maharaj Ji or Baba Ji, give us this guarantee. We don’t have to walk this path alone. Our Master is prepared to fight our battles with us; he is prepared to guide us, to help us and to support us. That’s why Hazur wrote to one of his disciples:

Do not worry but go on doing your duty in the world; and as far as meditation is concerned, it is not for us to judge what progress we are making. This only he knows. With our limited intellect, being unable to see ourselves as we are, we cannot have any idea of what the Lord is doing for us all the time and how and in what way he is making us fit to enter his palace. Our duty is to do our meditation every day with love and faith. The rest he will do himself.⁵

Like Hazur, Baba Ji emphasizes not to worry, but also that despite the enormous help of the Master we have to do our part in the process of stilling the mind and realizing God. For there is a channel of giving and a channel of receiving. The Master’s teachings, his guidance, and the continuous showering of his grace and blessings constitute the channel of giving. Listening intently to his teachings, practising his instructions faithfully, remembering him constantly with devotion, remaining in complete obedience to him, and rendering service with utmost dedication in thought, word and deed – these constitute the channel of receiving, of becoming receptive to his grace and bounty, of putting our cup right-side-up so it can be filled with his love and grace. As Baba Ji has told us, the channel of giving is always open. We have to take care that the channel of receiving is not blocked.

That’s why Baba Ji keeps hammering on the basics, encouraging and urging us to keep remembering God, to practise meditation, and to take shelter at the feet of our Master. For in this world in turmoil, becoming conscious of the presence of God and drinking his divine love is our greatest, our vital need.

Hafiz, a Sufi Master, summarizes our situation – our vital need and the one way we can satisfy it:

I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:

Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes …

That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep Remembering God …

That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me,
For I am a Sweet Old Vagabond
with an Infinite Leaking Barrel
of Light and Laughter and Truth
that the Beloved has tied to my back.

Dear one,
Indeed, please bring your heart near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!

All a sane man can ever care about
is giving Love!⁶

Maharaj Sawan Singh, My Submission, 5^th ed., pp.31–32
Avataṁsaka Sūtra (The Flower Ornament Scripture) as quoted in Buddhism, Path to Nirvana, p.258–259
Tukaram: The Ceaseless Song of Devotion, p.88
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, letter 210
Maharaj Charan Singh, Quest for Light, letter 274
I Heard God Laughing, Renderings of Hafiz, Daniel Ladinsky, tr., pp.81–83

Attachments - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Attachments

We will go where our attachments lie… if we love this creation and we have deep attachments here, then we will have to come back here. If we love the Master and our attachment is to him, then we will go where he is and we won’t have to come back.

So far–as clearly we are all still here–we can assume that the attachments from our past lives have been too strong in the world.

And so we keep coming back, life after life. Our addiction to the world, our worldly relationships and the material objects of the world, have kept us incarcerated here. The royal road back home is very narrow, and the door by which we exit–very small. Because of this, when we die we can take nothing with us, everything will be left here. And if our attachments to what is left behind are many, then we cannot expect to go inward and upwards; we will be drawn back into the world.

Those of us who use email will know the frustrating experience when sometimes we try to send someone a message with an attachment. If the attachment is too large for their mailbox it will get ‘bounced back’ to us. Maybe their policy is that they can’t receive attachments, so unless you remove the attachment, the message won’t go.

The policy for attachments in Sach Khand is zero. Simply, we cannot be received there if we have any attachments. So long as our attachments remain here, so shall we. We will remain here in the creation, in this prison house of the world. Stuck in the Outbox–waiting to go, but unable to do so.

This is not our true home, we are all denizens of Sach Khand, we are pure spirit, held prisoner by the mind and manacled to this physical body. Through our long association with this plane of existence we have become institutionalized and believe this dank, dark and dirty prison cell to be our home. All our lives we have constantly dwelt on the things of the world; every waking hour we have been obsessed and infatuated by the illusory aspects of this material plane, so when we die, we come back to what we are attached to.

As it says in the Bible, “For where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.”¹ And the soul being a slave of the mind will have no choice but to remain here.

When we sit in meditation at home, in those familiar, cosy and quiet surroundings, we all know how we struggle with our mind and find it hard to focus and concentrate–all the things of the world dance across the screen of our mind, even the most trivial of events can be replayed again and again. If this is challenging now, then how can we think that at death–which is without doubt the most stressful and challenging time of life–how can we think that somehow then we will be able to focus on the Master and let go of our attachments? Aren’t we kidding ourselves? Certainly he will be there to help us–of that we have no doubt! But if we still hold deep attachments to the world then we may have to come back.

How deeply are we attached? Let’s just reflect for a moment. We have all seen those traumatic scenes on the TV news where a community under the imminent threat of some marauding army, or a natural disaster, have to leave their homes with very little notice–they may have a few days’ warning, or maybe only a few hours, or possibly only minutes. And with only that much time they have to gather up what is most important to them, and just leave the rest behind. They may have a handcart or a car, maybe a truck or a mule–or only what they can carry, think of that! The rest–most of the stuff they own–they have to leave behind. Just look at the terror and fear on their faces, the desperation; they have no idea of where they are going, what awaits them, and they have left so much behind! Awful… it moves one to tears.

So what if we were in that unfortunate situation–what would we take, what is most important to us? Family and loved ones, for sure. Then what? Money? Food? Clothing? The more time we had the longer the list would get. And if we were to do a quick audit of that list it would reveal to all of us where our greatest attachments lie.

Now here’s the kicker: you can throw away that list! A day is coming to all of us when this will be precisely our situation. We may–or may not–get notice that we are about to leave. Death is always at our shoulder. And when death calls, nothing will go with us–not a single item on that list. Even the hand that wrote the list will not go with us! These bodies to which we are so attached will also remain here. If when we die we are not looking forward and are not happy to move on, but are looking backwards with longing, then back we may come!

Deep down we are all so lonely. We feel that deep longing for something–something we can’t express, something, someplace or some One we have forgotten. That craving leads us to seek to fill that void, and trapped in the world, we look for it here. Maharaj Charan Singh says:

This constant feeling of loneliness and missing something is in reality the hidden unquenched thirst and craving of the soul for its Lord. It will always persist as long as the soul does not return to its ancient original home and meet its Lord. Only then will it get true contentment and eternal peace. This feeling has been purposefully put in the heart of man.²

Sadly, the sweetness we find in the world is very sticky. We stick to it. We let it permeate every part and pore of our body, we become saturated with it and it weighs us down. Being so weighed down, we find it hard to move forward and so we remain here–life after life the pattern repeats itself and we can’t move. We need help. Deep within us our soul is so unhappy, and she cries for her Lord. He then hears the call and he comes to her rescue.

Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh used to tell a beautiful story about the child who visits the fairground with his father. The child is holding the father’s hand and sees all the bright lights and the whirly rides, hears the riotous music, the hurly burly and the clamour of the people. And the child enjoys everything around him. But sadly, in the midst of all this the child becomes distracted and loses hold of his father’s hand. Head down, he gets lost in the crowd. He looks around himself, full of fear. All the things that before he thought were so novel and enchanting now appear frightening and scary. Terrified and alone he tries to find some safe corner or someone who will comfort him and give him back that feeling he had in the company of his father. But there is no one and nothing–nothing can replace the father! The strength of the father’s hand made the child feel safe, and in his care he was just an onlooker passing through. Once that hand was gone, everything changed.

But the moment the child realizes he has lost the hand of the father and nothing else will replace that, then he cries out and the father comes immediately to his aid. Meditation is the way we call to the Father.

The child in the story, our soul, is actually never lost. Although to us it may seem so, just because we can’t see him doesn’t mean that he can’t see us. He was always watching us, keeping a close eye on us, walking with us. Then that indescribable feeling of loss or loneliness came upon us and we cried out to him. Suddenly there he was at our side. We came to the Path. He had been there all the time, watching and waiting. We were simply looking in the wrong direction–looking the wrong way out into the world, into the crowds of unfamiliar faces and the cheap illuminations of this shabby Theme Park we call home. We just needed to turn around–to look within–and there he was.

This world can be likened to a Theme Park (Universal Mind Studios), where the theme is sensory overload. It’s full of myriad attractions. The proprietor (the mind) wants to keep us all safely locked in; to him we are valuable paying customers, spending our precious wealth (our time and attention) in what are ultimately useless pursuits. Imitations of reality. So he employs his Weapons of Mass Distraction–love for body, family, wealth, position, sensuality. All the tricks of the trade keep us engaged and distracted from who we really are, from our true identity. We have become addicted and obsessed with the ‘rides’ of all our lives and the cheap baubles put before us.

The duties and responsibilities we have performed in all those past lives–in any of the 8.4 million species (or roles)–have more or less been the same. The CV or résumé of each life reads pretty much the same: in some form or other we had a mother and father, brothers and sisters. We will have taken food, we will have struggled to survive and we will have reproduced. The Circle of Life spinning us in a merry dance. Different rhythms, different tunes, different forms, always moving, around and around, never a chance to stop, look or reflect, constantly distracted. Busy fools digging our own graves.

But here’s the good news. The tide has turned. Our endless wandering has now come to an end. Unbeknown to us and without any clear sense of direction on our own behalf, we find ourselves at the top of the ladder of creation. We have received the highest promotion, the top job, we are Human Beings. The highest office for any soul in this creation.

So how is this life any different from all the others we have had? Soami Ji says:

Get busy with your own real work,
do not get caught up in other people’s affairs.³

We have spent all our past lives working for others, looking after the needs of everyone other than our real self. Our real self is not defined by those around us, nor by those things with which we have surrounded ourselves. Neither is it this body or our mind. Not even this narrow sense of individualism we call ego. This is not us. Our real self is our soul. As human beings we need to understand the work–the real task–for which we have incarnated into this body. Let’s look at our Job Description:

Position: Top of the Creation.
Job Title: Human Being.
Reporting to: God, the Father.
Job Purpose: To seek the Truth. To realize the divinity that lies within. To become one with the Father and return to our True Home.
Duties & responsibilities:

To meditate for a minimum of two and a half hours each day.
To be a lacto-vegetarian.
To abstain from alcohol, tobacco and mind-affecting drugs.
To live a clean and upright moral life.
To be a good human being.
To clear all our karmic debts and credits.

Qualifications: None–you are chosen by the Lord.
Working Conditions: You will be placed in the best environment for you to make spiritual progress.
Physical Requirements: You have a human body–nothing more is required.

That’s it!

As a quick note: certainly as part of our duty to be a good Human Being we should diligently carry out all our responsibilities in regard to taking care of our families, professional commitments and so on. But remember, these things–or some version of them–we have had in all our previous lives; having these is not our purpose.

To reiterate, our purpose is: To seek the Truth. To realize the divinity that lies within each one of us and to become one with the Father and return to our True Home. This is our priority. It’s why we are all here. If we prioritize this, then the Master in turn promises that he will take care of all the rest–both our spiritual and worldly needs. As the Bible says:

But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.⁴

Seek ye first… not second or third, or after my children are grown up, or when I have a steady income, or when I retire. No, seek ye first the kingdom of god and all things shall be added unto you.

The daily choices we make will reflect our priorities. When we make our daily list of things to be done, at the top of the list should be our meditation–remember it is in our Job Description. Everything else should follow from that. If we were to have a review meeting with the Master of the past year, what would we show him? Have we taken our job seriously? If we only place before him a list for fulfilling the basic activities of life, such as meeting family commitments, keeping our homes, attaining professional status, etc., then how are we making the best use of this opportunity he has given us? He knows what we are capable of and that is why we have been given this top promotion–Being Human.

If we meditate every day, then we have turned up for our real work–our real task. We have not burned our days in the needless and pointless toil of others. Not wasted the time weighing ourselves down with the accumulation of more useless baggage which will only hold us back and stop us from going home.

That’s what we need to get into our heads. When we die we’re not leaving home like those tragic refugees we talked about earlier. We’re going home. We should not be looking back at what is lost–nothing is lost. Remember, we’re homesick–we’re tired of this world and we want to go home.

It is our misplaced love that keeps us here. If that little love that we have has the power to keep us here, then if we can re-attach it to what lies within us–the Shabd, the divine melody that resounds within all of us–then all is accomplished.

The Master knows how we are, he understands that only attachment can create detachment. A beggar may hold on tight to those few pennies that he has in his hand; no lever could prise open that hand. It's all he has. But offer him diamonds and rubies instead and he will gladly open the hand and drop the coins in order that the hand can be filled with the treasure you have put before him. The Masters offer a far more priceless treasure. They offer us access to the Shabd, that divine treasure that has lain hidden within each of us since the beginning of the creation. The Masters say that the Shabd once tasted bestows such joy and bliss that by comparison everything the world has to offer becomes insipid.

Saint Bhika said:

None is poor, O Bhikha:
Everyone hath rubies in his bundle,
But how to open the knot he doth not know
And therefore he is a pauper.⁵

Our daily toil is like that; it is the result of a misplaced search for joy and happiness outside in the world, when inside, in our own bundle, there is an inexhaustible treasure of love and bliss.

It is by attaching our souls to Shabd–the only real and lasting joy–that we can free ourselves from the gross pleasures of the world. When we go inside, when we enter the reality within, we will have detached ourselves from the world and the senses and attached ourselves to him within. We will have crossed that threshold of the tenth door and entered into the heavenly spheres. Below the eye centre is only pain and suffering; above and beyond the eye centre these things vanish. And the more time we spend in meditation the less we will be attached to the world. We will start to refine our senses, seeking the purer and more subtle things in life. The gross attractions of the senses will slowly slip away and we will find greater pleasure in pursuing the spiritual life and whatever supports that way of living. Our love will only be for the Master.

We will be attached to our meditation; it will be our number one priority, which is as it should be. Maharaj Jagat Singh Ji says:

Your own work is that of doing simran and bhajan (the spiritual exercises) which will, in due course, liberate you from the vast prison in which you have been confined for countless ages. Life is short. Time is fleeting. Take full advantage of it, and if you have not done ‘your own work’ already, start doing it now. Seek a true Master and under his guidance attach your soul to the Shabd, the Word and reach your True Home.⁶

King James Bible, Matthew 6:21
Maharaj Charan Singh, Quest for Light; letter 10
Soami Ji Maharaj, Sar Bachan Poetry (Selections), 1^st ed., p.110
King James Bible, Matthew 6:33
Maharaj Charan Singh, Divine Light, 7^th ed., p.17
Maharaj Jagat Singh, Science of the Soul, 11^th ed., p.85

The Spiritual Journey: Balance, Discipline and Responsibility - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

The Spiritual Journey: Balance, Discipline and Responsibility

This life is a journey – a journey not from place to place, but from one level of consciousness to another. We are travelling from the finite to the infinite.

And, as with any other journey, we will pass through different stages as we move towards our destination. Take the metaphor of an automobile journey, for example. We may encounter heavy rain in one place, so we’ll have to pull over till it stops. We may have a flat tire, so we have to stop and change it. Or we may have really clear weather, and even find someone to help us drive – that phase of the journey will get easier. The point is that on the spiritual journey, like any other journey, we will encounter obstacles and maybe even detours. But the main thing is that we shouldn’t give up.

We need to keep moving towards our destination. As Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh once said: “We have only one future: to return to the Father.”¹ So let us not miss this opportunity. We may not get the human form so easily again.

Hazur often said that every step we take towards the Lord is a positive step. If we take just one step towards him, he will take one hundred steps towards us. And we need to make a commitment, a mental resolve, to do whatever is necessary to reach our destination. We have to understand what will take us in the direction we wish to go, and we have to set priorities for the way we live. We have to use our sense of discrimination with every action.

Our first step is to find someone to guide us – a teacher, a spiritual Master. Someone we can trust, whom we can respect and emulate, who has our best interest at heart. Someone who teaches a practical method that starts from our human level and takes us to the experience of the divine. And that person is the Master, who guides us and accompanies us on this ultimate life journey. He takes our hand when we lose confidence, and reassures us that we are on the right track. In that sense he is our best friend.

All mystics have emphasized the need for a Master. Some have called him a jewel, a priceless treasure. The seventeenth-century woman saint, Bahinabai, wrote:

Being with a master leads
the mind to detachment
and the heart to tranquillity.
A master is the noblest jewel of all.
The company of your master
will imprint in your being
both worldly and divine knowledge,
and bliss will be yours right here.
Those who know the value
of being with the mystics, says Bahina,
are the true lovers.²

So the true mystic wants to raise his disciples to his level. He doesn’t want them to worship him; rather he teaches them to explore their own spiritual potential, how to enrich their lives and live as true human beings. He teaches the true method of worshipping the Lord, which will transform us spiritually.

Christ said: “Ye are gods.”³ This means that the Master is not the only one who can experience God within himself – we can all rise to that level of holiness. We just need to raise our level of consciousness. The Master often says that he is no different from any of us; it’s only the level of realization that differs.

The mystics say that within us, there is a divine power that is the essence of all life. In the Bible this power is called the creative Word of God; Indian mystics call it the Shabd, meaning the Word or unspoken Sound – it is the flow of the divine will, the power of love. This eternal divine reality manifests within us as spiritual sound and light. Guru Amar Das, the third Sikh guru, said:

Pure is the Word, pure is the holy Sound,
and pure is the Light that permeates all hearts.⁴

In the Gospel of John it says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”⁵ This entire creation was projected by God through this divine power. This power gives life to everything. It pre-existed the creation and will continue to exist eternally, even if the creation should end. It is the life in the smallest molecule of a one-celled bacteria. and it is the power that holds the vast cosmos together. It is the power of love, the primal expression of God.

So the spiritual Master teaches us a method of meditation that will allow us to control our minds. Once the mind is brought under control through our repetition practice, we can catch hold of the divine reality of Shabd, the Word of God. Our level of consciousness rises and we become aware of the divine reality within.

We might ask why we don’t feel God’s presence all the time. Why don’t we see the inner light and hear the beautiful spiritual melody, if they are so intrinsic to our nature? The reason is that we are focused on ourselves, and not on God. We ruminate over our jobs, our families, our problems, desires, and so forth. We feel separate from God because we are wrapped up in everything else. We are out of touch with our true spiritual nature. And everything we do or think during the day that immerses us in the world around us reinforces that sense of separation, although in reality we are not separate. It is our ego, our mind, that creates this illusion of separateness, and we are under its spell.

And that is why we need to find the spiritual Master – to learn the method of meditation and the disciplined way of living that will liberate us from this illusion of separation and that will create the foundation for our spiritual journey. This way of life is embodied in four vows which we commit ourselves to following:

First is the vegetarian diet – we agree not to kill animals or have them killed for us. We don’t eat meat, fish or eggs or anything containing them. We want to cultivate a compassionate nature and minimize the great debt that accrues from killing animals.

The second vow is to avoid alcoholic drinks and recreational drugs. We know the effect of indulgence in these substances. The goal of our life is spiritual realization, for which we need clarity of mind. These substances scatter our mind and retard our spiritual progress. They warp our sense of values, to the point where we can’t discriminate between right and wrong. They hinder our ability to focus our minds in meditation.

The third vow is all-encompassing – it is to live an ethical and moral life. We must be objective. We have to weigh our actions to see if they will lead us in the direction we want to go. We have to be honest and straightforward in every respect; earn our own living and not be a burden on others. We need to be kind, loving, and forgiving. And we need to be chaste in both mind and body – keeping our actions and thoughts pure and uplifting. In short, we have to reflect the values that a spiritual way of life embodies.

A philosopher once said that self-respect comes from the ability to say no to ourselves – in other words, to maintain a discipline and strengthen our inner core. And that is what these vows do for us. They are actually a gift, not a burden – they are the doorway to eternal freedom.

The fourth vow is that we will meditate for two and a half hours a day. We need to cleanse our mind of all negativity and put it on a positive track. Our meditation will do this. It will give us strength to change our approach to life.

Tulsi Sahib, an Indian saint of the nineteenth century, advises us:

Cleanse the chamber of your heart
for the coming of your Beloved.⁶

Cleansing the sanctuary of our heart means attending to our meditation – our simran, the inner repetition practice taught at initiation, and bhajan, listening to the inner spiritual Sound that is always reverberating within us. In this way we will cleanse ourselves of our negative tendencies, of our ego, and our impure thoughts. We will make our heart and mind a suitable residence for the holy spirit, the Lord, who is our Beloved.

Our task is to plunge into our meditation with a clear sense of purpose – with total commitment and dedication. We know that if we want to succeed in anything, we have to give it our wholehearted attention. We have to make an honest effort. As with anything else, practice makes perfect – we have to continue to make effort – and then make more effort. The Master says we shouldn’t be concerned with results, we should just keep focusing on our efforts.

Concentration is the key to our practice. In order to concentrate on our repetition practice during our meditation, we need to keep a spiritual perspective while living in the world. We can’t expect to let ourselves get over-involved in every activity, and then be able to bring our attention within, in the morning, when we sit for meditation. We need to protect our energy and nurture the still place within us. So although we have duties to attend to during our daily lives, we need to keep focused on our spiritual priority all the while. ‘Hand in task, mind in God,’ is the old saying. We have to maintain our focus and balance during the day. A Chinese mystic once wrote:

Outwardly go with the flow, while inwardly keeping your true nature. Then your eyes and ears will not be dazzled, and your thoughts will not be confused, while the spirit within you will expand greatly to roam in the realms of absolute purity.⁷

We should live in the world like a duck in water – it sits on top of the water, but never gets wet. We need to sit on the edge of life and not fall in, to go through life and not become immersed. Eknath, a Maharashtrian mystic of the sixteenth century, sang:

Whether the body be
motionless in meditation
or moving in the thick of life,
let the mind stay in the middle,
forever still, pure and free ⁸

Here is an interesting story that illustrates this point:

There once was a king who was very devoted to God. A spiritual seeker was advised to get enlightenment from him. But when the man saw the luxurious palace where the king lived, he lost faith. He thought: How can someone surrounded by all this luxury and enjoying so much status be spiritually advanced? How can he give me enlightenment? So the king, reading the man’s thoughts, gave him a task. He told his courtiers to take the man on a walk through town, where a big festival was going on. But there was one condition. The man had to keep a pitcher of milk on his head. If just one drop would spill, the attendants were instructed to cut off his head.

Needless to say, when the man walked through town, his mind was always on the pitcher of milk sitting on his head, and he saw nothing of the celebrations or the festival. When he returned to the palace, the king asked him how he had enjoyed himself. The man said, I was so frightened of spilling a drop of milk that I saw nothing around me. I now understand how it’s possible for you to be surrounded by wealth and status, yet keep yourself humble before God – how it’s possible to have all these people bowing before you, yet still remain unaffected.

So, whether we are undergoing suffering and hardship, or living a life of luxury and ease, we have to keep our minds on God and detached from our outer circumstances. Our regular meditation itself will keep us from getting too involved and dragged down by the world. While keeping our minds positive during the day, and doing our simran whenever possible, we need to attend to our meditation regularly in order to create the structure and envrionment for our daily life. Hazur Maharaj Ji once said:

If you are tied to a strong chain, you can move only within a limited area. So if we are tied to our meditation every day, no matter how much we’re involved in other things, we will always remain within the circle. … If the chain is broken, then of course you are absolutely gone, you’re involved. So the chain of meditation should not be broken. Meditation must be attended to every day, and then no matter how much you try to involve yourself in other activities, you’ll never be allowed to go astray at all. You’ll never be allowed to get involved so much that you forget your real path, because your chain is very strong.⁹

It is true that sometimes we get lulled into a kind of complacency. We’ve been on the path for a while – we used to make effort – but now we’re coasting along. Maybe we’ve stopped reading the Sant Mat books at home, maybe we don’t go to satsang that often. We get up later and later in the morning. We lose the sense of urgency, the awareness that this life will end one day – we don’t know when – it could be in ten years or ten minutes. We don’t really believe the end could be near.

The Master often tells us we need to develop spiritual maturity. What does this mean? Spiritual maturity means that we are realistic, that we begin our journey from where we are and don’t get stuck in fantasies or illusions. That we understand our weaknesses and strengths, and take steps to overcome our weaknesses and build on our strengths. That we understand our priorities and take practical steps to live accordingly.

Inevitably we will face numerous obstacles – outright rebelliousness, laziness, discouragement, or simply bad habits. We can’t blame any outside power – not Kal, not the negative power, not the devil. Sometimes we say the mind made me do that, as if the mind were an independent entity that had this power over us. But the mind is us! We are doing it; we have the bad habits; we are lazy. It’s high time we recognized this.

Flip Wilson was a famous American comedian. He created a character named Geraldine. Geraldine would always blame the devil for her weaknesses. “I didn’t want to buy that dress – I have so many dresses in my closet. I didn’t want that red dress, but the devil made me buy it.” ‘The devil made me do it’ has become a familiar refrain. As someone once remarked: I don’t need the devil to make me sin; I do a good enough job myself! Wilson really captured our tendency to avoid responsibility for our actions and thoughts. So we need not blame Kal for our missteps and misfortunes. We have to take responsibility ourselves.

Our duty to do our meditation is something we have to take seriously. We have to do it whether we feel inspired and motivated, or not; whether we are sick or healthy. As we get older we have to expect aches and pains, even serious illnesses, and possibly lessening mental concentration. This goes with the territory, so to speak, the territory of being in a human body. So we should expect to go through various moods and levels of enthusiasm. The point is not to get discouraged, but to keep on keeping on. We should keep our goal foremost in mind and continue moving forward.

And let us not indulge in self-pity. Everyone has weaknesses – that is why we’re here in this world – but the Master sees our potential. He always says that we should try to strengthen our positive qualities rather than dwell on our weaknesses. He often uses the image of diluting red dye in water. You can’t take the dye out of the water, but by adding more and more water, the colour of the water gets lighter and lighter, until it gets absolutely clear. This example shows that the best way to get rid of the negative is to dilute it with the good, with the positive.

And we shouldn’t get discouraged even if we go astray. We can always return to the Master’s teachings. The Lord is all forgiveness. The Shabd is love. We just need to take one positive step and the Master will take those one hundred steps towards us. Hazur Maharaj Ji used to emphasize that if we stick with, or return to, our meditation, we will get the strength to overcome our weaknesses.

And it doesn’t matter if our mind behaves in meditation. We just need to keep doing it. “All the time you spend struggling with the mind during the course of your meditation is itself a meditation,”¹⁰ said Hazur Maharaj Ji.

This path is about developing our full potential as human beings. Right now we’re probably only using five or ten per cent of our potential. But by following these few simple vows and practicing our meditation, we can make ourselves receptive to the grace that is flowing all the time. Discipline and a sense of purpose have to form the basis of our daily life.

Let us end with some advice from Hazur Maharaj Ji:

Whatever you do, keep your destination and purpose in view. Keep your home in view and try to achieve it. Do not forget your destination. Do not forget the purpose of human birth. We should always keep that in view. Work in this world, live in this world and enjoy yourself in this world, but never forget that destination nor leave the path we have to tread in order to get there.

Where we want to go – that goal should always be there in front of us. Keeping that goal in view, going towards that goal, do not become a slave of worldly achievements and forget your real home. That is the only thing I can say.¹¹

Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, p.200
Bahinabai in Many Voices, One Song, p.85
King James Bible, Psalms 82:6
Guru Amardas quoted in Jap Ji, A Perspective, p.197
King James Bible, John 1:1
Tulsi Sahib, Santon ki Bani, Gazal, p. 275, in Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Discourses, Vol. II, p.140
Huainanzu, tr. Thomas Cleary, in Taoism Reader, p. 29
Eknath in Many Voices, One Song, p.9
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, p.165
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, p.112
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, p.441

A Spiritual Perspective - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

A Spiritual Perspective

Study shows that the message of mystics of all times and places is in essence the same, irrespective of language, culture or religion. A mystic is someone who finds answers to the big questions of life by research within his or her consciousness. Through their research mystics have discovered that that there is a ‘spiritual’ world that lies behind and animates the ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ worlds. While for most of us things spiritual are no more than concepts, for the mystic they are facts of life, constantly experienced.

It is as if mystics are telling us that the human being is highly sophisticated hardware that comes with three software programs, the senses, mind and spirit. Most of us know of and use only two programs, the senses and the mind. The mystic shows us how to activate the spiritual program and make human life complete. To follow mysticism is therefore not like adopting a new religion or philosophy, which is a re-programming of our mental and physical software. Mysticism activates our spiritual software, our innate spiritual capacity, which benefits us regardless of what teaching we follow. Every human being has equal potential in this respect.

When we try to answer ultimate questions about our existence using only two of our natural software programs, we become confused and, due to our differing cultures and backgrounds, come into conflict. If anyone, whether a mystic or a priest, tells us profound truths about who or what we are, those words alone do not make us understand or feel those truths. We need, by developing the third software program through spiritual practice, to experience these truths for ourselves, to make them a lived reality. When we see the spiritual reality, our conflicts over religious dogmas evaporate. On the platform of spiritual life human beings can come together as one.

The Mystic Cosmology
In recent centuries we have developed many complex material sciences generating impressive bodies of knowledge about the world and human beings. But this research has been confined to the mental and physical realms. How far along is our research and knowledge about spirituality? For example, particle physics now recognizes the intricate interconnectedness of the entire universe. Mystics share this understanding, teaching that there is one divine wellspring of life, a vibrant and positive energy, a single source of all being, namely spirit. Scientists, in their search for the theory of everything, may have already reached the limits of the power of the mind to capture and describe reality using words, concepts, symbols and images. Mystics explain that for us to know about spirit we must go beyond mind and physical senses. One must use the method, the software, that is compatible with discovering spiritual truth, which is by developing our spiritual capacity within.

The Spiritual Journey
Mystics describe the quest for spiritual truth as a journey we make within our own bodies, within our consciousness. To understand this journey we need first to understand where we start from, our present spiritual condition. The life of each of us, mystics teach, is projected in its perfect whole from a single source beyond time. But on planes of mind and matter, we live our lives under the illusion of time and the law of cause and effect or action and reaction. Everything we do we have to pay for. The soul, coupled to mind and body, must reap the harvests of these sowings, and moves from life to life, form to form, living and dying over and over again. We are now caught in this cycle, called the wheel of life, the cycle of reincarnation, or the law of karma, which many of the world’s peoples have long understood as a basic fact of life.

Given this situation, how should we choose to act? Mystics urge us to wake up, ask ourselves what it is that makes us suffer and where our real happiness lies, and then make the appropriate choices. They advise us to turn our consciousness away from the pain-filled material life of ceaseless change, the spinning rim of the wheel of life, and toward the stability of life’s unmoving centre.

They explain that at the centre of life is spirit, one and indivisible. Spirit is perfection, imperturbable, the origin of all. From the one emerges all diversity, all forms from the most subtle to the most gross, all activity and complexity, the entire creation. Spirit is love. Spirit is energy. Spirit is life. Mind, matter and senses have no life of their own—they are the means by which spirit expresses and manages itself in material dimensions. Spirit comes from a source beyond mind and matter, and beyond the law of cause and effect. Soul, a drop of spirit that allows a being to be defined apart from the ocean of spirit, is the energy or power that sustains individualized life. When soul, the life force, leaves a body or living being, that body dies, disintegrates, and reverts to its original matter, dust to dust. If spirit leaves the creation, the creation disintegrates and reverts to an earlier, less-formed reality. The mystic journey of enlightenment, then, is the expansion and deepening of consciousness from life's most transient material manifestations to the permanence of its spirit-filled heart.

Making the Journey
For the practice of mysticism to be successful, a person works both on the inside and on the outside to create conditions favorable to the expansion of consciousness. On the outside, he or she minimizes the binding force of cause and effect through compassionate and mindful living: a vegetarian diet, no intoxicating or mind-altering substances, and a code of conduct that shapes positive and spiritually supportive relations with others. On the inside, time is given daily to the practice of meditation to re-orient the mind inwards. Meditation techniques engage the dominant faculties of speech, sight and hearing to focus the attention and shift it away from the senses and towards the spirit—and from this arises a state of concentration, heightened awareness and perfect stillness. When concentration becomes perfect, dedication absolute, and yearning so intense it can no longer be supported, consciousness passes naturally into another dimension. Wisdom literature from all traditions describes this experience as blissful beyond imagination, filled with the experience of spirit as captivating sound and radiant light. Look to the writings of any mystic to learn about this ecstatic state of being!

Meditation is thus the path leading to the depths, breadths and heights of spiritual experience. Meditation enables contact with spirit, the one continuum that holds creation together, the thread of life on which creation's pearls are strung. Spirit has been referred to in the writings of religions by many names—Logos, Word, Nam, Shabd, Holy Spirit, Tao, Kalima, Akash Bani, and many other names. Once contacted consciously within, this spirit draws our consciousness, our soul, upward through ever more subtle realms to the luminous tranquility of ultimate reality. Meditation is the journey of attuning oneself with the spiritual ocean of pure being.

Only as human beings can we make this journey. Only a human being has the ability to direct consciousness to its advantage. To meditate is to install the complete human software, to awaken the spiritual capacity. Through this practice we embark on the path, the ‘middle way’ of balanced living, that takes us to our ultimate destination.

Mystics down through the ages have left teachings that make us aware, inform us, about this path. But living mystics, if we can find them, perform a still more fundamental role. Because they have walked the path themselves, they can guide us personally along the way, just as they were themselves guided by their own teacher. And, because they have realized the spiritual dimension, living mystics manifest its reality even on our plane of existence, giving us immense inspiration and a powerful example to follow. Mystics explain to us that it is part of the natural order that true masters are always living on earth to guide spiritual seekers. In the Sufi tradition of Islam these teachers are called murshid or pir, in the bhakti traditions of India guru or satguru, in the hasidic tradition of Judaism, the zaddik.

To travel the path back to our divine source is the true purpose of life in the human form. Whether this divine source is referred to as spirit, God, Lord, Allah, Wahiguru, Adonai, Buddha, the One, any other name, or no name at all, is a matter of individual preference. How to describe one’s spiritual life, what outward practices to follow in support of one’s inner life, whether to belong to any religion and which one, are all equally individual choices. What is of importance is to cultivate the experience of spirit.

Claiming Our Inheritance
Mystics say that each one of us is the rightful heir to a treasure of inestimable value. We are all of one lineage and one family. But, because we have lost sight of who we are, we feel that something is missing in our lives and we suffer from confusion and conflict. The infinite wealth of spirituality is our birthright, and will be ours when we develop our spiritual capacity as human beings, awaken to our true identity and return to our spiritual source. To achieve this we need only right conduct and right spiritual practice under the guidance of a living mystic teacher.

The Red Carpet - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

The Red Carpet

On the evening news, we sometimes see kings and queens or prime ministers and presidents arrive in a country, step off a plane, and find a red carpet unfolding in front of them – a sign of respect, achievement and special consideration.

What about our own red carpet unfolding in front of us every minute? We stepped out of our room one day, and there in front of us, immaculate, lay our own red carpet, the beginning of a radically new life and the discovery of our true inner self. Through initiation, we too became dignitaries – dignitaries of Sant Mat.

Initiation is the greatest gift that can be given to mankind; it comes from the divine, the highest power, and is given to us each, individually. Why? We can’t possibly deserve it. We have been criminals, we have cheated, we have lied, we have killed, we have raped, we have been cruel; but we have also been angels, we have been philanthropists, we have been kind, we have cared, we have stood for justice and what is right. In other words, we have been everything we see around us. We are everybody we see or we encounter. For we are humanity. God resides in all of us.

So why me? Why am I being given the opportunity to walk the red carpet now? We do not know. When asked, Masters usually reply that everything comes in its proper time. “Everybody,” said Hazur, “has a time when he is to worship the father in spirit.”¹ Elsewhere he elaborated: “It is said to be taking a new birth because you start a new life completely – you become entitled to go back to your father from the day of your initiation.”²

We often ask the Master for grace and we expect it to be given upon the asking. Yet his grace and his love were given to each of us in the form of initiation. But we don’t recognize it as such because it does not come in the colour and form that we expected. Some of us who have received his gift of initiation don’t take the time to unwrap the gift to see what is inside; we don’t read, carefully, the card of instructions that comes along with the gift. And yet, year after year we sit in front of him, begging for his grace. Baba Ji has said that we have already received all the grace we need at initiation. It is there for the taking, provided that we do the necessary work – follow the instructions and practise.

Sant Mat is not an insurance policy that guarantees us salvation simply because we have received initiation. Although initiation marks the culmination of a journey of thousands of lifetimes, it is not the end of the journey. Baba Ji tells us that the event of our initiation is to be taken as the projection of our desire to grow spiritually. Unless we take action, we will not become true spiritual followers. The red carpet has been laid out in front of us, but we have to walk forward on it and keep the goal in front of us at all times: to contact Nam.

In the words of Guru Ravidas:

Nam is the root of knowledge,
Nam is the door to salvation.
The one whose heart is occupied by the Lord
Falls not into the entanglements of the world.³

Right in front of us is the red carpet, waiting for us to walk on it. Are we intimidated? Take the first step, says the Master. And he continues: I am not asking you to renounce the world or to renounce your loved ones. I am just asking you to take the first step. Come with me and walk along this red carpet which extends to infinity. It will bring you to realms you have never imagined, to discoveries beyond your present level of consciousness. Heed my advice: Do not worry – detachment will come slowly, by steps, incrementally. Nothing is forced.

We may have come to the path through negative experiences. Suffering, death of loved ones, failures, horrors of wars, famine and poverty might have led us to search for something more. But once on the path, something gradually changes in our perception of the world. God is in this creation! Love surrounds it, love controls it, and God is love. Love is in this madness.

So we just have to start, to make an effort. Anything one desires in life comes at a cost and with some effort. Long years of study are needed to acquire an education; hard work is required to succeed in business. No athlete receives medals and recognition without having first put in strenuous daily training. And so it is with us. Hard work is required to succeed in the science of spirituality.

We have a choice, even after becoming a satsangi. We can continue to dabble in the world, to be attracted to it at the expense of our meditation, or we can immerse ourselves – dive into – the opportunity given to us by our Master. We have this choice at every moment.

So let us think: Do we really want to continue giving more than is necessary to this worldly illusion? In the words of Matthew Arnold, an English poet:

What is the course of the life
Of mortal men on the earth?
Most men eddy about
Here and there, eat and drink,
Chatter and love and hate,
Gather and squander, are raised
Aloft, and hurled in the dust,
Striving blindly, achieving nothing,
And then they die.⁴

And then they die! Is this the fate we want?

Masters come for us, in their infinite mercy, full of love and compassion; they roll out the red carpet in front of us, and beg us: Heed my advice! Meditate! They use gentle persuasion, never force, pleading with us to save ourselves. What are we waiting for? We have a program to follow, as outlined in Sar Bachan Poetry:

Without the Master
no one will ever cross the ocean,
without his Nam no one will ever find salvation.
Without attending satsang
no one will ever learn the essence,
without love no one will ever meet the friend.
Without the proper technique
no one can penetrate the inner sky,
without grace the mighty gates will not open.
Without surat no one can ever catch the Shabd,
without nirat the soul cannot sustain itself
at the level of the Shabd.
First and foremost, develop love for the Master,
then conquer the mind
and drink the nectar of Nam.⁵

We are seekers after truth, isn’t that so? So let us ask ourselves this key question: What is it that we truly desire? What would our reply be if we were to ask ourselves, If I were to die within the next week, what would my regrets be, what would I have done differently? And if I were given one year, what would I try to change immediately? Do we want to be coming close to death and regret not having meditated, or not having meditated enough?

The compassionate one has rolled the carpet out in front of us and he has promised that he is waiting for us. We should have no fear, and just move forward on the red carpet buoyed by faith, like the little dog in the following story:

A sick man turns to his doctor at the end of a visit and says to him, “Doctor, I am afraid of death. Do you know anything about what lies on the other side?” Quietly the doctor responds, “I don’t really know.” The patient challenges him: “You don’t know, you a man of science and a seeker of God?”

On the other side of the door there is scratching and whining. The doctor opens the door and a cute dog jumps in all excited at seeing the doctor. “You see,” said the doctor, turning to his patient, “this dog did not know the room; he only knew that his master was in there. When the door opened he rushed in, without hesitation, without fear and jumped in his master’s lap.”

He continued: “I don’t know what is on the other side of death but I know one thing: My master is on the other side and that is enough. And when the door opens, I shall pass through with no fear, but with gladness.”

The Master is unrolling the red carpet day after day, asking us to walk the path. He provides direction, he provides protection, he provides a watchful eye, he provides faith, and he provides love.

One little thing he asks of us: meditation. We may feel that our meditation is poor, even horrible. But our Master looks at our potential. That is what he is focusing on and that is what he is working with. He sees light in us and tells us that we are already connected to the sound and to the light. He asks that we do not miss the opportunity of realizing this reality in this very lifetime.

Slowly we unroll our red carpet, and as we do that, the carpet behind us rolls back up. It’s done. Looking back does not help. There is nothing we have done that can be changed. With dignity and humility we can learn from the past and move forward. To a disciple suffering from depression, Hazur asked:

Why curse the darkness? Why not light the candle? We are worrying about our past, what we have done. … if we have done anything bad, we should try to improve ourselves for the future. That is the main thing … One must look ahead and make best use of the present so that we don’t repeat such mistakes again.⁶

“One must look ahead.” So, chin up!

One of our goals is to be prepared for death. When death comes knocking and says, “Here I am,” we can only hope that our attachment will be to the Master, and that we will have done enough meditation so that, in the words of Rumi, we “fall forward”.⁷

We are imperfect, and we remain under the terrible sway of the mind to a great extent; but we should not worry about this because we chose to make the effort – and this effort is all he asks. And our effort is vital if we are to be brought to him at the end of that red carpet. We need to play our part in unrolling the carpet.

There are distractions on the left and on the right side of the carpet as it unrolls. People want to shake our hands, others want to give us something, others ask for favors, and others distract us enough that we willingly step off our red carpet. There are temptations, there is forgetfulness, there is procrastination, and there is negative attitude. The mind will use every kind of trick to distract us from the straight and narrow.

Yet our guide is there. He may allow us to wander off, but sooner or later he will bring us back. As we continue walking on our carpet, it helps to keep in view the One who is waiting for us at the end of it, ready to shake our hand. That distance between where we currently stand on our carpet and where he stands waiting for us in his Shabd form – we are to travel that distance within with patience and determination and faith.

An invisible hand is guiding us on that straight and narrow red carpet. Master says, Hook on to it and hold on to it! The simran is his helping hand. If we can latch on to simran and keep remembering those words, the distractions along the way become less strong and less attractive. In the words of Guru Ravidas, “The one whose heart is occupied by the Lord falls not into the entanglements of the world.” This remembrance we practise in a focused way during meditation, but if simran can be practised during the day, as often as we can do it, it becomes a laser beam illuminating our lives and pointing at all times towards the Master. Brother Lawrence wrote beautifully:

I worshipped him as often as I could, keeping my mind in his holy presence. … I made this my business as much all the day long as I did when I came to my appointed times of prayer. For at all times, every hour, every minute, even in the height of my business, I drove away from my mind everything that was capable of interrupting my thought of God.⁸

There was once a peasant girl who walked through a field where a group of monks were offering their prayers. The law in those days was that no one was allowed to cross the area where prayers were being offered. After a little while, the young lady returned, crossing the field the same way. One of the monks called out to her, “Young lady, you have committed a grave sin by walking this route. We were praying and thinking of God.”

The young girl apologized profusely and turned to leave. But she thought about it, then suddenly turned around to the monk and exclaimed, “Sir, I was going to meet my young man, and I was thinking of him so I didn’t see you! I was just lost in my thoughts. If you were thinking of God, how did you see me?”

We have to immerse ourselves in his remembrance. Anything short of that pulls us out into the world. The life span we have is relatively short. We can’t waste too much time, as the saints remind us.

In Spiritual Letters Baba Jaimal Singh wrote:

Do not waste time uselessly. Be concerned about time spent in vain, and regret why so many breaths were wasted, since they were utilized neither in worldly affairs nor in spiritual pursuit.⁹

Master Jagat Singh used to say: “Think more and talk less.”¹⁰

The Master helps the disciples throughout their life and destiny. They are given the opportunity, the facility and atmosphere in which they can clear their karmic accounts, and at the same time go beyond the realm of mind and maya. Life, our destiny – every piece of it – is a miracle to be accepted full-heartedly, with the understanding that everything that happens is for our own good. In the words of Rumi:

Be grateful for your life, every detail of it, and your face will come to shine like a sun, and everyone who sees it will be made glad and peaceful. Persist in gratitude, and you will slowly become one with the Sun of Love, and Love will shine through you its all-healing joy.¹¹

Our lives reflect our priorities. Our actions speak louder than our words, for everything we do is done in accordance with our priorities. The time we get up, what we eat, what we think, what we do and what we abstain from doing – all stem from our priorities. We determine our top priority, and this becomes the most important thing in life. We might imagine ourselves inverting the present direction of our mind. We need to keep reminding our mind of the need to turn in the opposite direction, convincing it that it has to invert its natural downward tendencies – that it has to look upwards and act on what our Master says. If we choose to allow a pleasure-seeking society to brainwash us, our lives can easily become superficial and artificial. Becoming real, identifying not with the illusion surrounding us, but with the inner reality of who we are, becomes the goal as we travel on our red carpet.

It has often been said that Sant Mat is a path for the brave. Staying on the red carpet without stumbling off requires faith and courage, and along the way there are doubts. Writer and researcher Stephen Batchelor elaborates on this:

The Zen tradition speaks of three factors that need to be cultivated along the path: great doubt, great faith, and great courage. Thus, faith and doubt are brought together. …

Clearly doubt in this context does not refer to the kind of wavering indecision in which we get stuck, preventing any positive movement. It means to keep alive the perplexity at the heart of our life, to acknowledge that fundamentally we do not know what is going on …

Faith is the condition of ultimate confidence that we have the capacity to follow the path of doubt to its end.

And courage: courage is the strength needed to be true to ourselves under all conditions, to cast aside the obstacles that are constantly thrown in our way.¹²

We are seekers, and the compassionate one has rolled out the red carpet for each one of us. We are on the great way of discovering our true self. It is for us to keep on keeping on, not fully knowing, yet practising trust and letting go.

Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, #34
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, #33
Guru Ravidas, Guru Ravidas – Life and Teachings, 2^nd ed., p.135
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach and Other Poems, p.89
Soami Ji Maharaj, Sar Bachan Poetry (Selections), p.195
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, #579
Rumi, as cited in Maharaj Sawan Singh, The Dawn of Light, p.189
Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God, ed. Harold J. Chadwick, p.110
Baba Jaimal Singh, Spiritual Letters, #111
Maharaj Jagat Singh, Spiritual Bouquet, #30, p.194
Andrew Harvey, Light Upon Light: Inspirations from Rumi, p.149
Stephen Batchelor, The Faith to Doubt: Glimpses of Buddhist Uncertainty, p.15

Longing for Love - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Longing for Love

The Gravity of Matter
When we are away from the Master and we look around us we might say that every step we take on the face of the planet Earth is a step in a mighty field of power. Every step we take is influenced by the power of gravity. This field limits our ability to move – every step we take is a struggle against the gravitational force of our home planet Earth.

When we set out on a trip from point A to point B on the face of this planet we have to overcome its gravity. We must strive against this power of matter when we raise our legs; we must overcome this power just to raise our hands. And we have to overcome this power when we want to rise from the ‘dead.’

In our current state, our consciousness is scattered, drawn to the objects of the physical universe and to events that all involve the physical universe in one form or another. We are constantly focusing on matter shaped into thousands of forms, and on fears and pleasures and wishes relating to this matter. Actually, we are totally absorbed by matter in our deeds and thoughts.

But there is one action we take in which Earth’s gravity shall not stand in our way. On the contrary, this action of ours shall be greatly helped by gravitational force – namely our fall. And be it a physical fall or moral fall it results in pain and suffering. Masters tell us there are five passions raging in our hearts that block our free passage to God. They all hold us down in the field of matter, and therefore stand in the way of God-realization:

Lust is very much connected to matter. It is but another form of material gravity when the pure spiritual longing for attaining unity with the Lord is distorted and replaced by the physical longing to be one body – to unify two bodies, to multiply.

Anger: We become angry when what is happening is not in line with what we want or what we think is right. My will is connected with how this material world functions and how I would like it to function. We become angry when our attitude of ‘My will shall be done’ is frustrated, instead of feeling at peace with the attitude of ‘Thy will shall be done.’

Julian Johnson says in The Path of the Masters that while lust draws us down to the animal level, greed draws us even deeper, down to the mineral level of creation.¹ We long for things. We long for sand and stones and mortar in the form of our houses; we long for the steel and plastic of our cars; we long for precious gold and precious stones. We long for fancy food. Underlying all of these longings, however, is our simple longing to find happiness, a feeling of security, a feeling of being special. And yet all our material desires, when we become obsessed by them, pull us down from the level of human beings to the level of dead corpses and stones.

Masters tell us that the fourth passion is attachment. We are attached to concepts about all the things and people around us. These things have no reality from the higher point of view, from a higher level of consciousness. Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh used to say, “The pity is that what we see, what we feel, what we touch is not real. What we don’t see, that is real.”² In other words, we only think we know what reality looks like, and we are very much attached to our concepts about reality.

Last but not least, our egotism stands in the way of our experiencing God. It blocks our way by telling us that we are the physical body, that we are this position and that possession, that we are this house and that car, that we are this child and that spouse. But Masters tell us that we are not physical beings striving for spiritual experience – they tell us that we are spiritual beings going through the physical experience.

Gravity of Spirit
So far we have been speaking about physical gravity. But if we take Master back home with us in our hearts from Dera, then we can say that there are – thank God – other forces in play as well. Let us think about spiritual gravity now.

Now we can also say that every step we take on the face of the planet Earth is also a step in a mighty field of power. By our good luck, the gravitational force of matter is only one part of a much greater power. Mystics reveal to us that the pull of this power is far greater than the gravity of matter and of the Earth itself. This is the power of spiritual attraction.

Gravitational force pulls our body and mind in a material direction – as human beings we are bound by the laws of physics and forced to focus on living in the world of physical limitations. Yet the power of spiritual attraction is greater; it influences not only our bodies and thoughts, but it also influences our spirit – our inner being – which the Master teaches us to realize. The Master welcomes us to a totally new level of power. He welcomes us to the supremely powerful field of the Lord’s gravity. This ultimate power that created everything and sustains everything is nothing but pure love. Once we are drawn by the Lord’s grace towards his field of power – into his field of gravity – we begin to long for Love.

By the Lord’s mercy we are put in connection with a perfect living Master, whose intention is to unify us with our source, with the Lord, with love. And how does he do this? Through love. This is our great benefit, this is our consolation and this is our hope. Because love is the only force that can undo the shackles of the laws of karma. Love is so powerful that it is the only force that can overcome the gravity of matter.

How can we realize that love? Masters tell us that the main name of the game is meditation. We all know very well that there is one thing that lies heavily on any satsangi’s consciousness: breaking one of the four vows that we have taken at the time of our initiation. And at the same time, we know very well that there is only one thing in this creation that can bring us happiness and peace of mind. We all know that it is meditation practised according to the instructions given to us by our Master.

Our Father is thoughtful and very compassionate. He loves our souls even more than we love our egos. We are not yet able to perceive the intensity of love he has in his heart. It is such a great power that it is beyond our wildest dreams.

Sometimes we might feel down. Sometimes we might feel we are inadequate when we see all our shortcomings, all our weaknesses, all our sins. We see that we are not as good as we would like to be. And yet, Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh said that everything that is to happen has already happened. And we know that once the soul has been initiated by a perfect living Master there is absolutely no chance of anything going wrong. There is absolutely no chance of us ultimately, in due time, not reaching our final destination. Not because we want to be perfect, but because he wants us to become perfect. Because he wants us to go to him, dwell in him and become him.

We are living in the midst of a beautiful power, an enchanting power that flows all around us, that encompasses us, that engulfs us, that supports us. This power is our friend; it is the source of our strength. This power is at the same time both wisdom and love. So we are floating in the waves of wisdom, we are floating in the tide of love. The only thing we have to do is to realize it. How can we realize it? By letting go of the concepts and pretexts and contexts that our own mind has woven around us. We ourselves, through our minds, have designed the most effective prison there is – the prison of maya, of illusion. This prison is constructed from our thoughts, our concepts, our fears, our hopes and attachments. We are our own worst enemy until the moment we understand that we cannot gain satisfaction on this level of consciousness. We are our own worst enemy until we realize that what we consider to be ‘me’ is in fact an empty shell.

We know that what the sensual pleasures have to offer is of a very transitory nature. We know there is no sensual pleasure that can grant us what we truly seek – pleasure everlasting. Human beings are programmed to seek everlasting pleasure and everlasting security. And Masters come to our level of consciousness to show us the path leading to this very state. Masters are not interested much in the current toys that we so much long to play with – our houses, cars, fancy clothing, physical attractions and the mental games by which we try to dominate others. They have not descended to our level of consciousness just to leave us on the hook of the world. For them, we are children of the Father, and the Father is calling us to enter his court. His court is noble and illustrious beyond our imagination. Our soul is of royal blood and the Master is there to explain this to us. And not only to explain – he is here to guide our soul, he is here to help her pay her debts and go home.

And so mystics and Masters tell us how to return to the court of the Lord:

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.³

We are not aware of the great treasures that lie dormant within us, so Masters have to come to explain to us how to reach those higher pleasures that lead us to the lap of the Father.

A questioner asked Master Charan Singh, “Can we experience joy in this life?” Hazur clarified the path to joy:

You see the wars, people cutting each others’ throats. Read the newspaper. Listen to the radio. What is happening? Is it joy? All the bombs, tanks and bullets are being made day and night – is it for joy? We are deceiving ourselves that we are enjoying ourselves. Constant fear of death is there. It can come from anyone at any time, at any place. Then where is that joy? It is a self-deception….

The attempt to meditate is trying to escape the misery of the world. The more you open your eyes and try to find joy outside, the more miserable you become, the more unhappy you become. We are becoming more frustrated every day…. Where is that peace which we are searching for outside? We just live in illusion and self-deception. The more we try to find peace outside, the more miserable we are becoming every day. If there is any joy, it is within us. It cannot be outside at all.⁴

To conclude, there are two fields of human life. The first field is of matter and of material being – the gravity of matter. The second field is of spirit and of spiritual being – the gravity of spirit. We are caught in the middle of two great forces: the gravity of matter and the gravity of love. Which one will become the dominant force of our life?

We know what the final outcome shall be. Not because we want it to be so, but because he wants it to be that way. He wants us to come back home. He is pulling us, he is helping us. He is there for us twenty-four hours a day. We are sentenced to success despite our worries, despite our little faith and despite our shortcomings. It is only a matter of time until we shall become part of him, when we shall unite with him in our eternal home, the palace of love. It is all question of his grace. And we should always hold in our mind that only the gravity of love can overcome the gravity of matter. And we should always hold in our mind that it shall be overcome by the gravity of the Master and his love.

Of course, we have to do our part and meditate. The more we meditate the less our Master has to suffer. We have meditate, so that for every small step or stumble we make in the right direction towards him, he can take a thousand giant leaps towards us. And therefore let us end with a last beautiful quote of Christ that goes hand in hand with what our Master tells us:

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.⁵

In almost every satsang Baba Ji conveys to us the following simple principle: We should apply ourselves and meditate. And then let the Master help us with the rest.

Paraphrase of Julian Johnson, The Path of the Masters, 17^th ed., p.285.
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives Vol. I, question 16.
Bible, Matthew 6:19–20.
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives Vol. I, question 425.
Bible, Matthew 6:33.

Why Be Vegetarian? - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Why Be Vegetarian?

Being vegetarian is fashionable now, and that’s good. It seems as if every time you turn around, some celebrity, corporate CEO, health guru, IT genius, or your neighbor is extolling the benefits and virtues of a vegan or vegetarian diet—now often called a plant-based diet. People want to be healthy, to make dietary choices that are environmentally responsible, and to be moral human beings who honor the lives of not only other humans but animals too. In most countries without a tradition of vegetarianism, being vegetarian (or vegan) is no longer considered weird, as it once was. It is simply one lifestyle choice among many that people of all ages, races, and cultural backgrounds are more often than not free to make without dividing their families, being thought strange by business colleagues, or annoying restaurant servers – all common reactions not so long ago.

One of many benefits of this trend is that it’s much easier to be vegetarian than it used to be. Restaurants that cater to vegetarians, or that can at least accommodate them, are much more plentiful, especially in major urban centers. And many markets and grocery stores carry products like tofu and vegan pizza – to name just two examples – which were unheard of, or at least hard to find, as recently as the last century.

So there has never been a better time to be a vegan or vegetarian, in terms of convenience and cultural acceptance.

Which is why it’s important to be clear about exactly why we, as followers of Surat Shabd Yoga, are vegetarian, specifically lacto-vegetarian (a diet that includes dairy products, though many of us choose to avoid dairy as well as meat, fish, fowl, and eggs). It is not that followers of Sant Mat are better than other vegetarians – far from it! But there are important, specific reasons for the dietary requirement of vegetarianism in Sant Mat, and the better we understand those reasons, the less likely we will be to take our diet for granted. The danger is that if we take our diet for granted – for example if we were brought up in a satsangi family, and being vegetarian was just how we grew up – it will be easier for us to become slack in our commitment. If we don’t consciously choose to be vegetarian, the next time we’re super-hungry, and the only food available is a packet of biscuits, we might not be so diligent about reading the packet’s ingredients before digging in. This may seem like a silly example, but even people who have been initiated for decades can become lazy about checking ingredients, which may change over time. We cannot afford to take our diet for granted.

The truth is, it takes effort, attention, and conscious choice to embark on a vegetarian (or vegan) diet and most important, to stick with it over the course of our entire lives. That’s why we need to examine our commitment to this way of life and be sure that we understand our choice. Because if being vegetarian is not woven into our values in a very practical way, if we follow the diet blindly and don’t base our actions on our deepest beliefs and assumptions about the purpose of human life, then we won’t have the stamina and courage to live our beliefs day in and day out, even when that may be inconvenient or boring.

In Divine Light, Maharaj Charan Singh wrote a succinct explanation of why followers of Sant Mat are vegetarians: Eating “eggs and flesh meat, including that of fish and fowl, does retard one’s spiritual progress,” he wrote. “Taking of life hardens the heart and creates a heavy debt of karmas. The birds, cattle, fish, and so forth that we kill do not want to die. How piteously they cry and scream when we catch them to be butchered. Since they are capable of feeling pain and pleasure, the Merciful Lord, who is as much their Father as he is ours, will certainly call us to account for butchering them mercilessly. There is no injustice in God’s law.”

The term “God’s law” refers to the law of karma, which is the universal law of cause and effect. This law has been expressed in many different ways: As you sow, so shall you reap; every action has an equal and opposite reaction; what goes around comes around. Everything we do incurs a karmic debt. The karmic law plays out through the transmigration of our souls, which are reincarnated over and over again to live out the consequences of previous actions.

Our true essence is soul, which is born, dies, and then reborn into countless bodies until we can manage to break free by merging our souls back with the Lord. We’re trapped in this cycle by our karmas, or actions: In each body, we perform actions, which must by their nature result in reactions. Because we commit too many actions in one lifetime to live through their consequent reactions, we must be born again to reap their effects. And so the cycle continues until we can liberate ourselves once and for all from the karmic wheel.

The killing of any living thing incurs a karmic debt, which must be paid off. We want to incur as little debt as possible to lighten the burden that keeps our souls trapped in this world, so we are vegetarian because that diet entails taking the lowest form of life possible. But even then karmic law applies.

The fact is that we cannot remain in this world without killing. In the book Being Vegetarian, the author explains: “While every creature must eat to live – whether that means eating plants or other animals – humans can choose to do the least harm possible and consume a plant-based diet, perhaps including dairy products. Even a small child understands that, while picking a flower from the neighbour’s carefully tended garden may be naughty, harming the neighbour’s cat is a much worse offence. Harming the neighbour herself is worse yet. In the same manner, while consuming fruits, vegetables, and grains is taking a form of life, plants are less conscious than sea, air, or land creatures. We can keep our killing on the lowest possible level of consciousness, preventing immense suffering.”

What karmas we do incur from killing plant life can be neutralized through our meditation and leading an otherwise ethical life.

Aside from the ethical and karmic reasons for not extinguishing life merely to satisfy our appetites, there is a mental dimension. Saints tell us that extinguishing life to nourish ourselves affects the very structure of our mind. Our mind is scattered throughout the body and the entire world outside, which the mind perceives through the body’s senses. Mystics tell us that the path to self- and God- realization lies within ourselves and that we must collect our attention within, at the eye center, its natural focal point, rather than scatter it without.

Maharaj Charan Singh writes in Divine Light: “Food, like actions, affects the mind and therefore its capacity to concentrate at its natural focal point. Killing a man causes a more severe mental reaction than killing a goat. Similarly, killing a goat causes a more severe mental reaction than plucking an apple from a tree. Concentration of mind would therefore be … proportionately more difficult in the case of a man who has committed murder than in the case of a man who has killed a goat or one who has plucked an apple from a tree. The reason is that the manifest form of life in a man, in a goat and in an apple tree has different degrees of consciousness or awareness. Accordingly, the extinguishing of life in each of them causes varying degrees of mental reaction, and therefore obstruction to spiritual concentration of the mind.”

So the higher levels of life we kill to eat, the more scattered the mind becomes and thus the more difficult it is to withdraw our attention to the eye center in meditation.

Where does all this leave us in relation to the eating of eggs, and the harm of eating infertile eggs? Nature has made eggs for the hatching of chicks. The fact that infertile eggs contain no life is irrelevant; they were intended to be a vehicle of life, and so we should avoid them. In the words of Maharaj Sawan Singh, “Meat and eggs (fertile and infertile) … do not suit those who wish to subdue animal nature in them and who wish to still their mind and gain access to subtle planes.”

Saints and mystics advocate a vegetarian diet so that we can lighten our karmic load and thereby make spiritual progress in our meditation and everyday life. But being vegetarian makes sense even if we are not interested in the liberation of our souls from the wheel of birth and death. Sir Paul McCartney has said, “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.” A life of nonviolence – not killing for food or sport – promotes peace in the world and peace within ourselves. Also, it is by now well documented that being vegetarian can make us healthier physically and can make a vast difference in the health of the planet, because by eating meat we contribute to climate change, destruction of the earth’s forests and the poisoning of our air and water.

Among all the animals and plants of the earth, only humans have the power of discrimination. Unlike other animals, which must obey their instinctual natures, we can make conscious choices. We can decide not to make a graveyard of our bodies by filling our bellies with the flesh of animals, which have souls just like we do. We can consciously choose to be vegetarian, not because we were raised that way, or because it’s cool, but because it’s just the right thing to do.

Sources

Divine Light,letter 438 (“…eggs and flesh meat…”)
Being Vegetarian, by Rebecca Hammons, publ. Radha Soami Satsang Beas, 2017; pp. 5–6 (“While every creature…”)
Divine Light, letter 439 (“Food, like actions…”)
Spiritual Gems,letter 55 (“Meat and eggs…”)
Being Vegetarian,Endnote 2 (“If slaughterhouses…”)
Being Vegetarian, 72–81 (“Also, it is by now well documented…”)

Mysticism and The Search For Truth - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Mysticism and The Search For Truth

A mystic is often thought to be someone lost to reality, head in the clouds, full of frothy, misty notions. Yet if we examine the writings left by great mystics throughout history, we find that real mysticism is practical, objective and scientific. Mystics instead turn out to be among the humans who have most dedicated themselves to the search for truth and reality and are among today’s great scientists, except that the questions they ask are different. Mystics only concern themselves with humanity’s ultimate questions, ones that fester in everyone: Who am I? What is the meaning of my life? Where has this consciousness of mine come from, and what happens to it at death? What is true? What is real? Mystics are like scientists in another way: they are not satisfied with words or promises, but insist on verifying every theory by their own experience, seeing and hearing the truth with their own eyes and ears, so to speak.

If this is true, then the question naturally arises: what have these mystics – who include among their number many of humanity’s most renowned religious leaders, philosophers, and thinkers–discovered over the millennia of their endeavors? If we turn to their writings, we find an extraordinary unanimity on many points – extraordinary given the diversity of cultures, times and places from which their voices come down to us. Indeed, the unity of their account is strong testimony to the validity of their discoveries.

One point on which all mystics agree is that no one, not even the accomplished mystics themselves, can simply tell us the answers we seek. This is, they say, partly because the answers cannot be captured in our ordinary words and concepts and partly because they must be experienced. Just as no parent can learn for his child, similarly each of us has to grow to see these truths for ourselves. While others can offer us guidance on where to look, and even suggest what we will learn, still the looking and learning must be our own.

A second point mystics insist on is that the answers we seek, indeed all true knowledge, can be found nowhere outside us but must be uncovered deep within our own consciousness. Socrates declared, “Know thyself.” Mystics tell us that this self-knowledge is the first step in discovering the Lord. They make a most astounding claim: they say that God, the Ultimate Reality and Truth, himself dwells within us. As Christ said, “The Kingdom of God is within you,” and the Qur’an reads, “We are nearer to [man] than his jugular vein.” Guru Arjan, the fifth in the line of Sikh gurus, wrote: “He who believes in God as Truth in his heart knows the essence of the Creator, the Cause of causes.” Kabir Sahib, the great Indian poet and saint, wrote:

Complete, entire, and ever present
Is the one true Lord
Within the body of each man—
The Lord who is beyond all bonds.

This wondrous statement, of course, meets instant doubt in us: if God is within us, how then can we be unaware of him? This leads to another point on which mystics speak as one: we are under the spell of a deluded mind. It is our disordered thoughts that drown out reality and muffle God’s inner voice. The Theosophist Madame Blavatsky wrote, “the Mind is the great Slayer of the Real.” Mystics tell us that the purpose of human life is to overcome this delusion here and now, and they show us how. They teach various forms of prayer or meditation by which ordinary human beings can still their thoughts, develop inner calm and concentration, and gradually become aware of God’s presence. In the Psalms God says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

Another point of unanimity among mystics, handed down over the long reach of human experience, is that a life of purity and mental discipline is necessary for seeking truth. Immoral acts hold us back in several ways. One is because we have to account for our actions. Our actions require recompense. Indian scriptures call this the law of karma, or cause and effect; Christ explains it as “As you sow, so shall you reap.” Immorality is also an obstacle because only a pure mind sees God within. Therefore mystics urge us to adhere to the highest precepts of morality, among them vegetarianism, avoiding all intoxicants, and earning our own living.

Finally, mystics always insist that we seek guidance on our journey from another human being who has already traveled it. Though we must make the journey ourselves, still, as in other difficult areas of endeavor, a living guide is essential. The true spiritual seeker will look for a guide who knows the way, who can teach spirituality, no matter his race, sect, or country of origin. As the Muslim mystic Rumi wrote: “ If you wish to go on a pilgrimage, go with one who has already made it, whether he be a Hindu, a Turk or an Arab.”

Cults, Gurus, Religions, and Misconceptions - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Cults, Gurus, Religions, and Misconceptions

Are the followers of non-orthodox religious and philosophical teachers members of cults, or are they merely devotees participating in “new spiritual movements”?

The phenomenon of what we think of as cults is not new, nor are these groups only religious in nature. Certain corporations, political movements, self-improvement groups, exercise programs, product pyramid schemes, teen gangs, college fraternities, and even some families have cult-like qualities. Confusing matters even more, the word “cult” itself is controversial and has different meanings and interpretations in both popular culture and among scholars across different fields of study. According to Wikipedia the word “usually refers to a social group defined by its religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, or its common interest in a particular personality, object or goal.”

That is a fairly neutral definition. The bottom line is that in most cases cults are in the eyes of the beholder. As the renowned American psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton noted, “One person’s cult … is another’s religion”—or spiritual community, or positive lifestyle, or set of beliefs that offer meaning and solace in a chaotic world. Lifton argued that “we must make careful distinctions … and judge each group by its own behavior.” (Quoted in Cults in Our Midst, by Margaret Thaler Singer, Jossey-Bass, 2003, p. xiii)

However we technically define the term, the fact remains that joining a destructive cult-like group can have devastating consequences for the individuals involved and their families. We as a society have a responsibility to understand the phenomenon—its causes and effects—which is not a romantic relic of the flower-child 1960s but metastasizing today in ever more virulent and dangerous forms. If we want to protect ourselves, our families, and our fellow citizens, we need to be watchful and aware.

“Cults don’t come out of nowhere; they fill a vacuum, for individuals and for society at large,” wrote the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz. This is an old story: Some scholars believe that more than 2,000 years ago, for example, political hegemony and the decline of state religious observance in the Roman Empire contributed to the spread of early Christianity.

Today many believe that people flock to nontraditional religious groups—not just in India but all over the world—because mainstream institutions have failed them. Economies are unstable and inequitable; families have fractured, with younger generations moving to cities for work; politics often is polarized, corrupt, and even violent in some countries; religious institutions, too, are struggling with corruption and sexual abuse. It is no wonder that people feel let down by their families, their politicians, and their priests and turn to gurus and shamans for comfort, fellowship, meaning and even identity.

The impulse is not wrong; the problems come when vulnerable, idealistic or superstitious individuals place their faith in leaders and groups just as untrustworthy as the mainstream groups they have left behind.

Alexandra Stein, a British social psychologist who lectures and writes about cults and ideological extremism, has come up with a useful list of cult characteristics that tallies with the scholarship of Margaret Thaler Singer, an American clinical psychologist and researcher (now deceased) who published her well-known book on cults in 2002 (Cults in Our Midst). These characteristics include: a closed, hierarchical structure; the use of brainwashing, or “coercive persuasion”; and an environment in which cult members must put the interests of the group ahead of their own, even to the point of sacrificing their health, family relationships, and financial independence.

Most cults also actively recruit new members, are located in secluded areas (to better exert control and limit outside influences). Cults typically are run by individuals perceived as charismatic, who extract favors from followers, usually monetary or sexual (or both). These leaders try to manipulate followers’ attitudes toward life and society, often requiring or encouraging them to cut ties with their friends and families outside the group. Promising some sort of magical transcendence of life’s problems and using techniques such as sleep deprivation, long hours of tedious work, and inducement of hypnotic states by way of drugs, chanting, or dancing, for example, these leaders and their close associates attempt to squelch followers’ ability to think for themselves and make balanced life decisions.

The role of the leader and the power structure of the group, specifically the relationship between the leader (or leaders) and the followers, are key. Singer noted that “a cultic relationship is one in which a person intentionally induces others to become totally or nearly totally dependent on him or her for almost all major life decisions, and inculcates in these followers a belief that [the leader] has some special talent, gift or knowledge” (p. 7)

She further describes them as “self-appointed, persuasive persons who claim to have a special mission in life.” They “tend to be determined and domineering and … center veneration on themselves.” (p. 8)

So a major warning sign is a domineering, narcissistic leader who coerces his or her followers to obey him or her unquestioningly.

Cult-like groups also frequently deny members access to informational material, telephone, and mail and distort what information is available. Secrecy, isolation, and denigration of a follower’s individuality and self-worth tend to deepen followers’ dependence on the leader and the group as a whole. Frequently these groups use mind-control techniques such as forcing followers to spy on one another, forcing them to give their leader knowledge of their fears and mistakes, and then using this information to humiliate them. The resulting feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, and humiliation make it even harder for people to extricate themselves.

Longing for meaning, purpose, transcendence, and peace are natural human instincts, so perhaps the biggest tragedy is how these positive, natural yearnings are exploited and perverted by unsavory characters. Legitimate spiritual and philosophical paths do exist, and they share characteristics sincere seekers can use as milestones, whether they are pursuing social justice, self-improvement, mindfulness, or self- and God-realization. These characteristics stand in dramatic contrast to those that define cultic groups and leaders.

A legitimate leader of any genuinely altruistic group will keep the veneration of adherents focused on God, abstract principles, or the group’s purpose. These leaders never claim to be more than human and never demand obedience or veneration. In fact, they never demand anything. They encourage people to think critically and independently, to explore alternatives, to use their best judgment and discrimination to examine the goals and methods of that particular group to see if it is the right fit for that individual.
A legitimate leader not only encourages critical, independent thinking but also offers support and encouragement to help followers build self-reliance and self-confidence in their personal and professional lives.
Legitimate leaders never accept money for themselves—from anyone, whether group members, prospective adherents, or local politicians. They have pursued a career or profession and live on their own money (which might sometimes include family assets).
Legitimate groups may accept donations (of money, land, real estate, and/or services), but these are always used to pay for whatever humanitarian services the groups provide (for example, hospitals and schools)—never for the personal enrichment of the leader. And group members are never pressured to make donations; these are strictly voluntary.
Materials are provided to help members and prospective members study and learn—broadly about the group’s history, for example, and specifically about the group’s tenets, values, expectations, and behavior. There is transparency concerning the group’s legal and financial status. And such groups provide transparent, informed consent (through interviews and written materials): what the way of life involves, what is expected of members, and what are the group’s presumed benefits.
All activities, lectures, group meetings that members might participate in are strictly voluntary.
Legitimate leaders and their close associates always follow the laws of their countries and hold themselves to the highest ethical standards. In turn, they emphasize moral living for all group participants. These moral standards are not relative but adhere to the universal moral codes (such as the ten commandments of the Christian Bible) of all mainstream religions. Leaders never advocate breaking the law.
Legitimate leaders emphasize the necessity of being a good citizen, a productive member of society, a good family member (whether spouse, parent, or child) and friend. They emphasize the importance of maintaining family harmony, even if some sacrifice is required; of studying hard for young people; and, for adults, earning one’s own living and not being a burden on one’s family or society. These groups stress the importance of living a balanced, healthy life of moderation rather one of ascetic extremes (such as fasting or prolonged retreats).
Legitimate groups do not proselytize, but rather encourage interested parties to do a thorough research into the philosophy, resist pressure from friends and family, and make an independent decision to participate based on their own judgment, goals, and self-knowledge. Once an individual joins such a group, the leader never dictates personal decisions but respects the dignity and autonomy of group members. Members are free to marry whom they choose, work in whatever profession they choose, bring up their children however they choose, and generally live whatever lifestyle they choose. The leader may make recommendations concerning particular life choices based on philosophical principles (a vegetarian diet, for example), but group members are never “kicked out” or shunned for disregarding such guidelines.

Scholars agree that there is no consistent profile of someone who is attracted to cults or vulnerable to narcissistic, domineering guru-types. Often such “seekers” are vulnerable because of naivety, youth, superstition, excessive idealism, or all of those things. Another factor may be that they are floundering in life and have experienced a loss of some kind—the break-up of a significant relationship, the loss of a job, graduation from college, the death of a friend or close family member—and are looking for solace, structure, and community. They may want someone to take charge of their life to relieve them of making difficult life choices.

The best protection against dangerous cults and false prophets, for ourselves and for those we care about, is to focus on the actions and behavior of these groups and gurus. Compassion and close observation are not mutually exclusive. In these troubled, uncertain times—no matter where we live and what our background—we need both.

Commitment - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Commitment

There was once an old monk who set out on a pilgrimage to the top of a great mountain, for it was said that there the enlightened Being of Wisdom lived. When after many long months the majestic mountain finally appeared before him, he approached an old woman by the roadside and asked if she knew how much longer he would have to walk before attaining his goal.

The woman just looked up, said nothing, and returned to her work. He repeated the question a second and then a third time, but still she did not answer. Thinking she was unable to hear, he walked on. However, after just a few dozen steps he heard her suddenly call out to him: “Holy One, it’s going to take you two more days to reach the top of the mountain.”

Somewhat surprised, the old monk called back, “Why didn't you answer my question before?”
“Well,” she replied, “you asked the question while you were standing still. I had to first see how determined your walk and how fast your pace!”

And herein lies the secret of the inner spiritual journey. How determined and committed we are in walking the inner path and how fast our pace is dependent on our innermost desire to succeed in our quest to climb that greatest mountain of all, that of God realization. You see, commitment is the foundation on which our meditation and spiritual life is built; commitment drives us deeper into developing love and devotion for the Father and enhances our desire to merge in him.

But for those of us who struggle with commitment, how can we build on it and sustain it? How can we grasp that invisible quality and allow it to grow in our spiritual life? Well, the Masters say that the best way to build and sustain commitment is through our daily meditation – simran, dhyan and bhajan – because the benefit of our daily meditation is that it creates within us the motivation and drive that propel us towards a stronger, more all-encompassing commitment to our spiritual goal.

And it’s also through commitment and constancy in our daily meditation that we cultivate the three precious virtues of faith, hope and love, each of which drives us deeper into the essential nature of our soul. So the question now arises: What is so unique about these three virtues of faith, hope, and love, and why are they such an important part of our spiritual development?

Well, let’s examine them one by one, beginning with faith. In the Old Testament, faith is described as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”¹ What exactly does this mean? Perhaps this can be illustrated by the following short story.

When a traveller in the early days of the American West came to the great Mississippi River, he discovered there was no bridge. Fortunately it was winter and the river was covered over with ice. But the man was deeply afraid to trust himself to the ice, not knowing how thick it was and if it would hold his weight. Finally, with infinite caution he nervously crept across the ice on his hands and knees until he managed to get halfway across. But then, quite suddenly from out of the blue, he heard a loud crack behind him. Shocked and fearful, he swung around and there, to his absolute amazement, came a fellow traveller cracking his whip and confidently singing at the top of his voice while driving a team of four horses who were pulling a large load of coal over the ice!

Now, not every disciple has the faith and confidence of the man driving his team of horses across the ice. Most of us probably resemble the man crawling on his hands and knees, overly cautious and unable to establish a footing of faith and trust in our Master. And why is this? It’s because we are fearful of the unseen and the unknown.

Let’s take the African Impala, a type of deer, as an example of what this means. The African Impala is able jump to a height of over ten feet and also jump a distance of thirty feet if it wants to. Yet these magnificent animals allow themselves to be kept in a walled enclosure in any zoo, even if their enclosure is only three feet off the ground, which they can’t see. The reason for this is that these animals have an inherent fear of jumping if they cannot see where their feet will land, and therefore they remain trapped in their prison house in the zoo.

Similarly, as disciples, even with the support and reassurance of the living perfect Master, we still find it difficult to trust and have faith in what we cannot see or tangibly experience in our spiritual life. If we truly realized that escaping from the prison house of this creation was simply a matter of surrendering our body, mind and soul into the care of our Master – who is always there to guide us into the unseen and unknown – all fear and lack of trust would immediately disappear from our mind.

Jesus extolled the power of faith when he said to his disciples:

Truly I tell you, if you have faith even as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you.²

Julian Johnson in The Path of the Masters wrote about the process of developing faith:

Having now found the Master, what next? Follow him with unwavering faith and determination. In other words, after you have accepted a man as a Master, accept his formula also and work it out with absolute fidelity. If you run up against many problems which cause your boat to rock, hold a steady hand upon the oars of self-mastery and wait while you work. At first there will be puzzling questions. At times you may be inclined to say outright, “I cannot believe it.” But just hold such things in reserve and wait. Do not jump at conclusions. Let them come to you. Wait and work. By and by, your questions will answer themselves; you will be surprised how very easily. When the light becomes strong, the darkness vanishes.³

From faith we now turn to hope. And again a question arises: What is hope? Well, we could say that hope begins in the silence of the darkest moments in our lives. It’s just like a very small candle that, when lit, suddenly illuminates a dark room, allowing us to believe again when life has come to seem utterly hopeless.

An example of hope is that of a twenty-one-week-old fetus who was diagnosed in the mother’s womb with Spina Bifida. The mother was told that it would not survive the birth process. In desperation she approached a surgeon who, she was told, undertook remarkable surgical procedures on babies in the womb, and asked him to try and save her precious child. He agreed to try.

On the day of the operation, just after the surgeon had managed to perform the procedure successfully and was about to close the mother’s womb, a magical thing happened: in front of the entire surgical team, the baby suddenly stretched out its tiny but fully developed hand and firmly grasped the surgeon's finger, as if thanking him for the gift of life.

The surgeon found himself utterly spellbound and riveted to the spot, for he’d never experienced anything quite like this before. A photograph taken during the operation remarkably captured this amazing event with perfect clarity, and was duly handed to the editors of a local newspaper who printed the story and entitled the photograph, “The Hand of Hope.”

You see, where there is life there is always hope. The beauty that arises from hope allows us the courage and confidence as disciples to believe in our own salvation, even when we feel overwhelmed by the darkness of impossibility. It is hope that summons our light, hope that increases our light, and it’s hope that eventually allows us to become the light itself.

For satsangis, confidence in the final outcome of our life, our escape from the wheel of transmigration – from the coming and going of our soul for countless lifetimes in this lower creation – is what gives us immeasurable hope for the future of our soul. And, through the gift of Nam, of initiation into the great Shabd stream, finally, and by the grace of the Master, that wondrous experience of joy, freedom and hope is now available to all of us.

From faith and hope we now arrive at that third precious virtue of love. In the Bible we read:

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.⁴

Thomas à Kempis, a medieval Christian monk and author of The Imitation of Christ wrote:

Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing wider, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller nor better in heaven or earth; for love is born of God, and can rest only in God, above all created things.

Love feels no burden, takes no account of toil, attempts things beyond its strength; love sees nothing as impossible, for it feels able to achieve all things.⁵

Real love, which the Masters explain is divine love, is the most natural impulse within human beings and is reawakened through the Master’s gift of Nam. This gift empowers the disciple to soar within to those spiritual heights that enable us to surrender all – body, mind and soul – to love.

For once the floodgates of love for the Master open, there is no stopping inner progress, because divine love has us then very tightly in its grip. And this is a love that deeply caresses our soul and allows the light of our soul to merge into the light of the Master. This love is that great power within all of us that illuminates our way forward on the inner path and eventually delivers us back into the hands of God.

Evelyn Underhill quotes Jan Van Ruysbroeck:

When love has carried us above and beyond all things … we receive in peace the Incomprehensible Light, enfolding us and penetrating us. What is this Light, if it be not a contemplation of the Infinite, and an intuition of Eternity?⁶

Perhaps at this level it may seem impossible for us to achieve the perfection of this kind of love in all its divinity. However, we can always chase excellence by finding positive actions that complement our spiritual life and enable us to grow towards the perfection of this divine quality.

And the finest action for any disciple is through the four sevas or services to God, these being of body, wealth, mind and soul, carried out selflessly in the name of the Master. Outer seva, the saints and mystics say, is the greatest equalizer and leveller for any disciple, because through seva we learn to work side by side with one another, bending to the opinions and ideas of others, thereby learning submission and humility.

The Great Master, Maharaj Sawan Singh, said:

The reward of selfless service is great indeed. The saying goes: “Render service and reap the fruit thereof.” Human beings can even become saints and swamis through service.

If we render service with an ulterior motive or with pride and arrogance, we are deprived of its real reward. But if we perform service without any desire for reward we can attain great heights.⁷

So, service to the Master integrates the essence of spirituality within the activities of our daily life. It enables us to give of ourselves selflessly, promoting the very highest and best interest of everyone involved. And it is achieved by cultivating discrimination – learning to act in ways that sustain and support our spiritual life. Living a life of seva is the natural extension of our love for our Master, and we can serve our Master really well by always bringing the four ways of service to all our endeavours and encounters.

Bahauddin, the father of the great mystic Rumi, said:

When I was sick, it came to me that there are two approaches to work. One is bold and quick, fearless in action. The other is worried and constricted with concern about things that could possibly go wrong. If action flows from anxiety, the outcome is murky and disturbed. But if action moves with a swift joy and courage, the world begins to resolve its difficulties and grow whole.⁸

It’s through this kind of seva, bold and fearless, that we can constantly strive to perfect ourselves, to grow whole. And if we undertake our inner and outer service with deepest humility and the sincere desire to grow spiritually, all life’s impossibilities begin to vanish. Through seva our soul becomes fired with love and devotion for the Master, and this fire fuels our determination and commitment to travel the mystic path one-pointedly – to soar to those wondrous heights that bring us closer to God.

The Sufi mystic Hafiz said:

No one can keep us from carrying God
Wherever we go.
No one can rob His Name
From our hearts as we try to relinquish our fears
And at last stand — Victorious.
We do not have to leave Him in the mosque
Or church alone at night …
Our yearning eyes, our warm-needing bodies,
Can all be drenched in contentment
And Light.
No one anywhere can keep us
From carrying the Beloved wherever we go.
No one can rob His precious Name
From the rhythm of my heart –
Steps and breath.⁹

So. How do we carry God, as Hafiz says? We carry him through our daily meditation of simran, dhyan and bhajan, the greatest seva of all, which attaches our mind and soul to the divine unstruck melody within at the eye centre. For it’s this process that guides us gradually towards the perfection of the self and our merging into divine love.

Thomas à Kempis, once again, says:

A life without a purpose is a languid, drifting thing; every day we ought to renew our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let me make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is naught!¹⁰

But, of course, as we all know, hand and hand with that sound beginning every day goes our commitment to and constancy in spiritual practice.

Walking the spiritual path does not mean a gloomy or pessimistic approach to life. It just takes a heart filled with love and devotion for the Master, empathy and tolerance for one another, and a quiet calm that enables us to press forward in all our daily endeavours with faith in our Master, hope that each new day brings us closer to Him, and a love that draws him ever closer to ourselves.

Perhaps for most of us still finding our way, the three divine virtues seem somewhat unattainable. But once we are able to settle into the commitment and discipline of daily meditation, faith, hope and love become a natural part of our life, and the slow transformation into the deepest essence of our nature takes hold. And that is when the quiet and silent joy of discipleship gradually encircles and finally enfolds us.

As we have all likely heard before, one of the most enduring metaphors for spiritual progression is the transformation of the lowly caterpillar into a butterfly, because quite remarkably and quite spectacularly the ground-hugging grub – from out of its very own substance – weaves its metamorphosis. The chrysalis within finally evolves into a beautiful creature with wings.

Similarly, the spiritual path transfigures the very nature of our being because we undergo an equally dramatic transformation, eventually emerging irradiated by the full light of our soul, after great struggle and unfailing love and devotion for the Lord.

But what makes this all possible, ultimately, is the grace, mercy and love of the living perfect Master, who on initiating us into the path of the most sacred and divine Shabd, remains with us throughout the entire spiritual journey, fuelling our desire to evolve and transform and finally transfigure into a God-realized soul.

Hebrews 11:1 (American King James Version),
Matthew 17:20 (English Standard Version)
Julian Johnson, The Path of the Masters, 17^th ed., p.192
1 Corinthians 13:13 (Gateway NIV)
Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, tr. Leo Sherley-Price, p.98
Jan Van Ruysbroeck in Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness, p.vi
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. I, 6^th ed., p.1
Coleman Barks, John Moyne, The Drowned Book: Ecstatic and Earthy Reflections of Bahauddin, the Father of Rumi, p.92
Daniel Ladinski, The Subject Tonight Is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz, p.53
Words of Wisdom: More Good Advice, edited by William Safir, Leonard Safir, p.309

Prescription For Life - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Prescription For Life

In 2013 Baba Ji reportedly gave what might be called a four-part prescription for life:

Do your meditation.
Don’t analyze too much.
Don’t worry too much.
Be happy.

It sounds like a doable way forward, so let’s explore each component.

First, each of us on this path understands that our most important responsibility in life is to do our meditation. That is the purpose of our being here, in this human form. The saints say this is the purpose of life because through meditation we can return to our original home, to God, the Father, the One, the Divine.

The depth and breadth of God is incomprehensible really. Our mind cannot take it in because the enigma of what or who God is, is beyond the level of universal mind, let alone our individual mind at this level. If we look at the nature of the mind, we are told that it is closely intermingled with our soul at this level. But the mind has limitations and is unable to comprehend what lies beyond its range; therefore it must rely on creating concepts – all within the limits of its own programming – in an attempt to understand. But the true Masters see things differently because they are one with the Father, who is beyond mind, and they perceive reality directly. Until we, too, have actual inner experience and know, concepts are the best we can do.

Maharaj Charan Singh, said:

Human life is a journey, not a home; a road, not a city of habitation. We will not stay here forever. We must therefore weigh carefully what we do. … We have to apply the body to its real task and this real task is God-realization … The truth is that the body is not an end but a means.¹

He’s saying that life, our body, this world are not permanent. All are just a conveyance, a means, an opportunity to be about our real mission – God-realization. The human body is a great boon, and we are fortunate to have it, for it is essential for returning to the Lord.

But developing all the fine attributes of a human being and performing right action are just the foundation for approaching God-realization. Right action is a means, a very good means, to purify us, but it is not itself the end. The end, the goal, of God-realization can only be obtained by practising the meditation that a true Master teaches. It is inner, not outer. The critical component of the meditation is contacting the Sound, the Word, the Logos, the Shabd and Nam within; merging with it and following it back to the Lord. It sounds simple, but it is not, because the mind keeps getting in the way with all its gyrations, fears, doubts and negative tendencies.

Maharaj Sawan Singh, the Great Master, wrote:

All saints are sons of God; their mission is to make others the sons of God; their method is the Word – sound current. There is no other method. … The Word is light. It resounds throughout the whole creation – material, mental, and spiritual – within us and outside us. It is light and sound both.²

But as we said, it’s not so easy to contact this light and sound because our mind refuses to concentrate and is held down by its outward and negative tendencies. We struggle and struggle, and then we realize that we need the Master for traveling this inner path. And as much as this path focuses on the importance of and need for our efforts to control the mind, it can also be said that everything is due to the grace of the Lord – and particularly the role of the Master as a conduit, a bridge, the personification of the Lord and Shabd. Great Master wrote:

The Word has been, is, and will be, the basic reality. It is imperishable and all-pervading and is present in all beings. If people could derive benefit from this all-pervading Word, or if this all-pervading Word could help people directly, there would have been no need at any time for the Masters or ‘Christs’ to appear in flesh amongst people. If there was need for their appearance at one time, the same need requires their presence now.³

So we need the Master, and we do our meditation, which is the pathway for contacting this Word or Shabd within, and the way back to God, the Divine. As the Great Master wrote, “there is no other method.” And we do that meditation, regularly and punctually every day. That is the task we’ve been given to do, and by doing it we express our love and gratitude.

Now we get to the second prescription for life: Don’t analyze too much. What do the Masters mean by analyzing too much? Clearly, an accountant has to analyze the numbers in his accounts to present his conclusions. And so do many, many jobs require analysis. But that type of analysis doesn’t seem to be what the Masters are talking about. Hazur was asked: “Would you please explain the difference between clear thinking, discrimination, and analyzing?” He replied:

Everybody has his own concept of clear thinking. Even a thief thinks that he’s absolutely clear in what he’s going to do. Everybody is always just analyzing themselves. No matter what we do or don’t do, we are always analyzing within ourselves. As for discrimination, we have to develop a sense of what’s right for us and what’s wrong for us. … We have to develop discrimination so that we can make the right decisions and reject the wrong ones.⁴

So discrimination, discerning what is right and what is wrong, is essential on the path and must be developed. Discrimination is not what the Masters mean by analyzing too much.

But Hazur did say that no matter what we do or don’t do, we are always analyzing in our mind. We start analyzing (and worrying) that we have not made sufficient progress. Have we detached sufficiently from this world? Do we have enough love? And so on. And our mind then can put us into a rut because we, as humans at this level, will never be perfect, will never meet the ideal; and the mind can feel hopeless and then start undermining our efforts on the path.

Hazur was asked: “When I was a seeker I felt that intense longing, and now that I have been on the path for a while, I feel like the meditation is part of a daily routine, and I am wondering if feeling content with that is a hindrance to the progress.” Hazur replied:

No, it doesn’t become any hindrance. You see, after initiation we start analyzing ourselves too much, whether we have been able to detach from this object, that face, or not. … how much progress we have made … This calculation doesn’t lead us anywhere. We should just continue with our meditation, and detachment is automatically the effect of meditation.⁵

Another disciple asked Hazur: “Master, I have trouble sometimes reconciling myself – one moment I feel a lot of love and devotion for the Master, and the next moment I am off doing something that is just totally lacking in love and devotion.” He answered:

Sister, our problem is that we analyze ourselves too much: ‘Now I am in love, now I have no love, now I am dry.’ … The Lord has sown the seed of love, he is nursing that seed of love within us, and it is always developing. The fruit definitely will grow on the tree, but sometimes there is a wind which takes away the fruit – even the flowers fall – but the tree bears fruit again.⁶

Think of that. He says the Lord has sown this seed of love within us, he’s nursing it, and it’s
developing all the time. It will bear fruit.

The Masters also discuss how this analysis can depress us, make us despair. The mind turns on itself and pulls us towards the negative side. We don’t get what we’re expecting when we expect it, which is a bit of a demand on our part. The Masters want us, tell us, to stay positive, stick with our meditation, and keep following the path that the Lord is opening up before us. Hazur again:

Every day we judge ourselves. We are the judge, and we are the accused before the judge. The mind is just always running in a circle like this.⁷

He’s saying that first we are the judge, then the critic, then we become our poor, lowly, miserable self. Our mind plays all these roles over and over again. This is all just the mind. Hazur continues:

This self-analysis doesn’t lead us anywhere. Self-pity – it depresses us sometimes. Let the Lord judge. Let him know what we need. Our work is to do our duty. Our duty is to knock; it’s for him to open the door. We can’t take on our shoulders his responsibility also. It is for him to open up the door.⁸

So, if we think we are getting back to the Lord solely on our own efforts, we are mistaken. We cannot make it unless the Lord wills it and unless the Master takes us, by way of the Shabd. We cannot make it unless the ego effaces itself, which happens through contact with Shabd and love. But we also need our meditation to develop that love – to focus, concentrate and intensify that love which dissolves ego and allows merging.

The third part of this prescription for life – Don’t worry too much – is similar to the previous – Don’t analyze too much – in that both advise against the mind running to the negative side. Both take us down a worrisome path, perhaps one of despair, so that we become restricted, tense and limited by our own sense of limitation. We forget that our soul, that drop of the divine, can fly high – can with the help of the Master become unbound from the mind and return to its original home. Hazur was asked why a satsangi had nothing to worry about, and he replied:

It is a very simple thing. If something is destined and we have to go through the destiny, will this worry solve any problem? If this worry is not solving any problem, then why punish ourselves?

Interesting: worry is a means of punishing ourselves, and he asks, why punish ourselves? He goes on:

Worry can be of many kinds and it depends upon the individual, what problems they have. But our general attitude should be that since things are destined and I have to go through it, good or bad, then why worry? Why not solve those problems, face those problems, live through those problems instead of unnecessarily worrying about them?⁹

He says to take a practical approach. On the outside, solve those problems, face those problems, live through those problem; and on the inside the practical approach is to redirect the mind upward toward the Shabd and Nam.

He also says that the practical approach includes learning to accept what comes in our lives, in our destiny, and to turn toward the Lord, to trust that he has our best interests at heart. Hazur again:

So you are training yourself. Meditation trains you to accept what is in your destiny, if not cheerfully then at least with a smile.¹⁰

So there is a two-fold aspect to the practical approach. We do our meditation, which redirects our focus upward; and we also try to accept what the Lord sends our way, accept our destiny and then deal with it. This is part of what they call seva of the mind. We try to train the mind to leave the results, inner and outer, to the Lord and Master.

This brings us to the fourth component of a prescription for life: Be happy. Again, this is two-fold: an attitude of the mind, a training of the mind; and then with inner experience comes true happiness. And again, this attitude of mind is related to the other three components. There is overlap here. But the message is similar. Again, Hazur said:

If you stop worrying, you automatically become happy … By nature, man is happy and contented. What makes us miserable is our wishes, our demands, our ambitions, our desires. When they are not fulfilled, we become miserable. But if we don’t have any desires, automatically we are happy.¹¹

Very interesting that he says, by nature we are happy and contented. Who would think so? It is our mind that stands in the way of that happiness and contentment, that believes that if it could only have this, or become that, or be young again, or healthy, or married, or even single again, it would be happy. All these things, these desires, overlay and interfere with our true nature – that of being happy. And all our desires – some of them conflicting – cannot be fulfilled in this lifetime. Not only would we have to be reborn to fulfil them, but they may not be in our higher interest. We cannot see the bigger picture of what is in our best interest, of what must happen to pay off our karmic debt, of where we are really headed. The saints can see, and they advise us to get rid of these desires, these ambitions, these wishes, so we can be happy. If something is in our destiny, it will happen anyway. If it is not, our efforts to obtain it will not be fruitful; and all those unfulfilled desires just add to the mountain of desires standing between us and the Lord. We are just expanding our ego.

On the inner track, meditation itself brings us inner happiness because concentration gives peace and happiness. And the Masters say we feel the effects of meditation before we actually see progress within. We may feel an atmosphere within us, a growing contentment, a bit more detachment from events in the world. This is all very positive and it makes us happy.

So let’s strive to be our happy, natural, divine self. In the inner and outer worlds let us make our efforts, but let us also learn to accept what happens, whether or not the intended results manifest. For we are in his hands. We’ve always been in his hands, but now we have the opportunity to become more conscious of it.

We’ll end with a final quote from Hazur:

If you can take what comes to you through Him, then, whatever it is, it becomes divine in itself … Everything takes its flavour from God and turns divine; everything that happens reveals God. When a man’s mind works that way, things all have this one taste … therefore … seek joys that are not conditioned, that are certain, and that do not fade.¹²

Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Discourses I, 8^th ed., pp. 6–7,
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, letter 104
Spiritual Gems, letter 105
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, #446
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, #446
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, #447
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, #448
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, #448
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, #256
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, #254
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, #253
Spiritual Discourses I, pp. 91-92

Remembering Our Objective - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Remembering Our Objective

When Guru Nanak was young he had a dialogue with a group of Sidh yogis, accomplished yogis who possessed miraculous powers. They initially looked down on him and challenged him:

Who are you and what is your name?
What path do you follow and with what objective?

The yogis asked about Nanak's objective because they knew that everyone is lost without a clear objective. This dialogue is so relevant to us today because many of us have to live among people who challenge our beliefs, directly or indirectly, and who present to us their own perspectives, often in a very forceful way. How to live in our diverse and globalized world without compromising on our own path and beliefs, without creating the confrontation and negativity of which this world is already so full? The dialogue in this whole section of the Adi Granth scripture shows us how to do that, and it perfectly captures our own experiences with the living Master and the teachings that he embodies and brings alive for us.

In the face of the arrogant attitude of the yogis, Nanak replies respectfully, while firmly stating his own experience:

May I humbly relate the truth and submit myself to
the Saints in veneration.…

Yogis:

We shun the clatter of the marketplace
and stay clear of worldly paths.…

Nanak:

While working in the marketplace of life
and treading worldly paths,
one should not lose sight of one's objective
nor be allured by another’s wealth and spouse.
Without Nam, O Nanak, the mind cannot be held still,
nor its cravings appeased.
The Guru shows a marketplace and a city within the body
where one deals in Truth with natural ease …
one contemplates the Essence.¹

Nanak talked about the objective of finding the inner marketplace of Truth, while at the same time living in the marketplace of the world. Almost five hundred years before Christ, Socrates hung out in the marketplace and also challenged his fellow citizens to get their priorities straight and to keep the interest of their souls as their true objective:

For I go about doing nothing other than trying to persuade you, young and old, to put your priorities straight and place the care of your souls first, so that it may become as perfect as possible, rather than placing the care for your bodies and your wealth above all else.²

Masters come to remind us of our highest objective, the larger perspective, the long view. They broaden our scope of vision. They help us avoid entanglement on the ‘horizontal’ level of life. They ask us to contemplate the essence, to direct our attention to the ‘vertical’ dimension. We are stuck on a horizontal plane of relationships with others, with our environment, and with our own selfish and scattered self – always vulnerable to temptations, always living and moving under the low ‘ceiling’ of the physical plane. We forget the vertical dimension, the rise within ourselves to a finer reality.

Masters teach us how to ‘carry the cross,’ as it were, of this intersection between the horizontal and vertical – how to live in the present, at the intersection of outer and inner life.

They come to remind us of our lofty, inspiring and divine objective of return to our true home. “Let's fly back to our dear country. Let us listen to the voices from on high,” says Plotinus.³ And “Come my friend, to your true home. Why live in an alien land?” says Soami Ji Maharaj.⁴ The mystics shake us from our deep sleep; they awaken us to the realization that we are pursuing contradictory and false objectives, trying to make ours that which can never truly be ours. They explain that whatever we achieve in this alien land can stay with us only for a limited time.

As initiates of a perfect Master we are headed for our true home, and our Master advises us never to lose sight of our objective. Hazur said, “We should try to face our day-to-day problems remembering our destination, remembering the path.”⁵

We often hear from the Master that we need to be objective, that without remembering the goal, the objective, our actions become empty ritual. By remembering our objective, we become inspired; without remembering our objective we become victims of routine. We forget the reason why we do what we do, so we become vulnerable to doubt or we become dogmatic and narrow minded. There has to be a reason for everything we do, Master keeps reminding us. Reason and spirituality as taught by the Sant Mat Masters stand on a common ground.

A writer in the field of economics, one of the most rational pursuits around, says: “Rationality involves pursuing ends that are coherent, and employing means that are appropriate to those ends.”⁶ In other words, rationality involves the pursuit of objectives that are not contradictory and that employ means appropriate to those objectives. This definition of rationality sounds a lot like the Master when he speaks of spiritual pursuit. Keeping the objective in mind is the essential ingredient both of rationality and of spirituality. Without a clear objective, without employing the means appropriate to attain the objective – practising meditation – we live in concepts and illusions. We may even become religious fanatics. Bowing before the slippers of past Masters is not the appropriate means to attain the desired objective of realizing the divine within ourselves: rationality and spirituality are both in agreement on that.

Spirituality is the highest form of rationality because it aims at the highest objective: obtaining and merging into the highest good of the soul – the divine.

But what about our daily routine? We know how numbing, how grinding it can be. The day-to-day problems tie our attention down and keep it from rising to the reality we crave. In our daily lives our energy is drained on petty trivia. The soul is tied to the physical plane not only with the five thick chains of the passions. In addition, our attention is attached to the material plane by so many little things, by so many trifles. Like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputs, one day we woke up unable to rise, since every hair of our body was tied to the ground with the tiny ropes of the tiny creatures that we encountered during our travels.

While trying to adjust the tiny ropes and chains so they hurt less, we forget about our higher purpose of freeing ourselves from all these chains and letting our attention soar. We just need to untie the ropes and let the soul rise, as the Master repeatedly tells us.

We are caught in the web of our own making, in the web of our own ‘story,’ our personal drama – tragedy, comedy or soap opera. Our brain is a powerful reality simulator, it keeps projecting mental movies in our head; we can't stop it, we can't get out of the theatre, we are chained to our seats, we can't stop the revolving film of our thoughts. This is the condition that Plato called the cave, because the passions and the animal self keep us chained to the cinema screen and we have no choice but to watch the dramas and melodramas revolving before us, keeping us always involved and enthralled by our self-generated dramas.

Since ancient times, lovers of wisdom have recognized that we ourselves are the keepers – the prison guards – of our own prison, because we all have a natural inborn love and affection for what we perceive as ‘me and mine,’ as that which belongs to us. It is this universal instinct that Masters have the job to re-orient, because we are confused about our identity and what can and cannot belong to us. They come to change the direction of our love. At this point in time, the instinct of love for what is me and mine is misdirected and deluded. The Master has said that we love our negativity – we ride the train and keep our suitcase of negativity and worries sitting on our head, rather than letting it rest on the seat beside us – simply because it is mine.

We love even our troubles and burdens because they have become part of our identity, of who we think we are. But our higher objective is to go through our lives – through the story of our lives – like a puppet that understands it is a puppet whose strings are being pulled by karmas; a puppet that keeps its attention fixed on the divine objective, the true home, the vertical dimension, even through the thick fog of karmas. Hazur noted that this is not easy:

Our karmas, they are the strings – they are making us dance. And we think, who makes us dance? Ego is the attitude we have in life. We think we are doing it. We forget the string behind us, our karma, actions which we have done in the past causing the reactions now. That we have forgotten. So we have become egoistic.⁷

Ego is something we cannot touch or see, but it wraps a thick veil around our eyes. It forces us to attach ourselves to our story, even to our miseries and negativity, to all the images our mind projects.

We meditate so that we can overcome the passions that deceive us about who we are and what truly belongs to us. We meditate so that we can realize our true self as something different from the deluded mind that always keeps us moving out and away from our home in the eye centre – the deluded mind that forever binds us to outward-oriented actions, which in turn causes our rebirth and death and eternal misfortunes. Maharaj Sawan Singh says:

When man’s attention is confined to the Pind part of the body, he is literally full of evil, as the attention is slave to the passions … If this were not the case, there should be no difficulty in attaining concentration and going in and up.⁸

The word ‘passion’ derives from the Greek word for suffering; it means passively suffering the control of forces over which we have no power. Passions make us passive towards our higher objective and active in the world because they tell us a deceptive story:

Lust deceives us into believing that we can make the external beauty of people ours, that we can possess others.
Anger deceives us into thinking that people and events have trespassed against us, or against something or someone we think belongs to us. In anger, we think that the evil we notice in ourselves is caused by other people or circumstances, not by our own lower nature which we do not recognize as the root cause of our problems.
Greed deceives us by making us believe that external objects can become ours.
Attachment prevents us from letting go of external things and people because it makes us believe that they belong to us.
Pride – ego – deceives us by making us believe that our lower self and our passions are our self, our ‘me.’ Because of ego we desperately try to control of our external environment, to act like a king in our little domain of influence.

When the mind is under control, it is our best friend; if it is out of control, it is our worst enemy. It is not the case that there are two minds – these are two different aspects of the mind. The mind is one, but it can function in two directions – higher or lower, positive or negative. It depends on towards which side we channelize it, which side predominates. If we are able to evoke its positive side, the mind will help us rise within. If the negative side predominates, it pulls us out and down, spreads our attention out into the creation and enhances duality. Maharaj Sawan Singh says:

Our only but deadly enemy is our mind. Lust, anger, greed, attachment, and pride are its agents. It is through these that the mind keeps us always out and on the move from our home in the eye centre, thereby binding us with this world; our actions becoming the cause of our rebirth and death and our eternal misfortune.

The positive qualities – continence (chastity), forgiveness, contentment, discrimination, and humility – remain suppressed and ineffective. Pious resolutions and so-called prayers afford us no protection against these agents.⁹

Defeating these deadly enemies is the main goal of all spiritual paths because they block our way to our eternal happiness and contentment. Why are they enemies? Because they succeed in deceiving us about what really belongs to us.

The soul has a natural love and affection for the Lord, but most souls living in the physical body as human beings do not appear to be lovers of the Lord. Why? Because the passions keep them confused about what is truly me and mine. The passions hijack and mislead our instinct of unity – of merging, belonging to the One.

Masters come to change our story, to tell us the sacred story of who we truly are and what truly belongs to us. They help us to claim our true identity and our true legacy of eternal divine Love. It is in the company of the Master that we learn to channel our affection and love in a different direction. In their company, we redirect our possessiveness and orient it to the Master, and to God. Now we start saying, ‘my God, my Master.’

And how about Nam, Shabd? The very notion of ‘mine and ours’ loses its meaning when it comes to Shabd, which is our true essence, our purest and deepest self. We cannot make our innermost self ours because it already is our most real and true possession. But we can reach a state of realization in which our sense of me and mine dissolves into the Shabd. Shabd is the power that links us to the Master, to God.

Today we are not conscious of Shabd’s working in us, of the fact that our essential deepest self is a drop of this infinite power vibrating through the universe. But Masters come to show us how to let go of our limiting selves and how to attune to Shabd in a conscious, vibrant and intense experience of transformation and bliss. Masters are living examples of this realization and they teach us that we can realize our true self – the real me – as a drop of this Shabd. At some point in the spiritual journey the self must dissolve into the Shabd, because the soul's tendency has always been towards merging, returning, abolishing the distinction between me and you.

We will realize that only God and Master is truly ours – we will realize God. At that stage, who possesses whom and who belongs to whom are all irrelevant, and we realize that there is only one Owner in the entire creation, the Lord. In the Indian language there is a beautiful word for the Lord: ‘malik,’ which means owner. Would we be owned by mind, maya and the passions or would we rather belong to the Master and the Lord?

How do we truly make God ‘mine,’ Master mine, the Shabd mine – reverting back to the dualistic language of our limited conceptual horizon? Just as we need to work hard in the world to make certain things mine, so we need to work hard to make God, Master and Shabd mine. But no, this is incorrect: we cannot make Master and the Lord ours, we have to make ourselves suitable to become the Lord's intimate possession. We have to blend into the Shabd and attain union with the divine, where duality of any kind vanishes like shadows in the sun.

Even though everything belongs to the Lord and he can do with it as he pleases, we are not conscious of that because our attention is mortgaged away to our karmas. We are under debt and we even owe more than we are worth – in real estate terminology, we are ‘under water.’ How can we give to the Lord a house that is under mortgage? So our objective now is to pay off our debts, our karmas, wrap ourselves in meditation and present back to him what has always belonged to him. The mother loves to unwrap the gift her child gives her, even though the child and the gift already belong to her.

Saints have completely reoriented their sense of belonging and their possessiveness. They view the external things as alien, distant, unreal, and the inner realms as close and real. They have directed their love, affection and sense of belonging towards the divine: Socrates cherished his wise ‘divine voice;’ Mirabai called the Lord ‘my father and my mother;’ Christ said, ‘Who is my father and mother; those who follow my teachings are my relatives.’ Plato said, ‘The physical is a shadow of the subtle and radiant inner realities.’

This is the level of intimacy that all Shabd Masters have with the inner voice of God; in fact, they are identical with it. The Shabd is their self. They have blended their self with it.

Socrates had an intimate relationship with the private divine voice which protected him from harm – he was seen to sit motionlessly in meditation for an entire night. This inner voice gave him his sense of closeness and merging into the divine realm. He had made the inner voice of God an intricate part of his life, always seeking guidance from it, never accepting disciples without the approval of his private divine voice or divine sign.

It was under the direction of this voice that Socrates resisted the temptation offered by his disciples to escape from prison. He calmly accepted his death in an Athenian prison, completely detached, in a happy and joyful mood. Thus he gave a personal example of how to keep one's divine objective, how to preserve the purity and eternal good of one's soul as a supreme priority even in the face of physical death.

Throughout his life, Socrates mercilessly confronted and exposed ignorance of the worst kind, which he called double ignorance, i.e. when people arrogantly believe they know what they, in fact, do not know and have not experienced first-hand.

Like Socrates, Guru Nanak, in his conversation with the Sidh yogis was also facing the double ignorance of those who lack realization while believing that they are wise:

What can I explain to someone
who knows the answer before he poses the question?
Truly, what can I explain to someone
who has already reached the far shore?

As the lotus growing in the water
and the duck swimming in the stream
remain untouched by water,
one crosses the ocean of existence, O Nanak,
by repeating God’s Nam …

_{Gurbani Selections, Vol. I, p.165}

Socrates's death started the so called Platonic tradition, the ideals of which overlap in most points with the tradition of Guru Nanak. In his dialogue with the Sidh yogis in the Sidh Gost, Nanak says:

…one crosses the ocean of existence, O Nanak,
by repeating God's Nam
and attuning one’s consciousness to Shabd.
Let us live detached,
with only the one Lord dwelling in our minds,
and remain desireless amid temptations.
Nanak is a slave of the one who not only sees,
but also shows others
the inaccessible, unfathomable Lord.¹⁰

Every line of this stanza corresponds to principles that Socrates also lived by and exemplified. Socrates said that he was in awe of anyone who could teach him about the power that wisely governs the universe; he also spoke of the repetition of magic words that can heal the soul and make it realize its immortal nature. Countless teachers in the Platonic tradition taught disciples how to cure the eye of the soul by turning one's attention inward and digging up the ‘buried eye’ through inner practice and contemplation.

They taught and were living examples of how to live in the middle of the noisy marketplace, the corrupt city, and remain unaffected, detached and free from hostility, antagonism and duality; how to attain the supreme Objective, the supreme Good of the soul. They showed how to accept firmly and graciously the harsh treatment that the world doles out to lovers of the Lord.

The objective remains the same with Socrates almost 500 years before Christ, Nanak 1,500 years after Christ, and the present Master 2,015 years after Christ. And the means for attaining it also remains the same: a pure moral life and vegetarianism as the foundation for the contemplative practice of meditation, which is humankind's pathway to its original source in the divine, whether one's starting point is East, West, South or North.

Gurbani Selections, Vol.1, pp.161–167
Plato, Apology of Socrates, 30a–b
Plotinus, Ι.6.8.16 ;V.1.12.12-21
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Discourses II, 1^st ed., p.262
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spirtual Pespectives II, #510
Maurice Godelier, Rationality and Irrationality in Economics, p.22.
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives I, #40
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, letter 202
Spiritual Gems, letter 202
Gurbani Selections, Vol. I, p.165

We All Have So Much in Common - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

We All Have So Much in Common

We all have so much in common. We are all in the same predicament: conscious beings shaped into human form; prisoners of time, space and ego – which are all illusory. We are spiritual beings going through a human experience.

We seem to start off OK. As children we didn’t have too much to worry about. Our needs were taken care of by our parents and others in the adult world around us. An English poet wrote:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
upon the growing Boy.¹

The saints can be painfully blunt about our critical situation. Sultan Bahu wrote:

I was bound and flung down:
banished from heaven, dumped on earth.
Bound by the dictates of my destiny,
I was exiled in an alien land.²

What an extreme situation he invokes. It’s as if he’s describing a war zone – a battle between mind, matter and soul – a tug-of-war. Well, if that is the case, something needs to change and we need a plan.

Now, if our body was unwell we would attend to it. We would visit the doctor, take the medicine. We might have to go to hospital, undergo an operation, recuperate, exercise, and change our diet and our lifestyle. We would do whatever it takes to get well.

If we had emotional or mental troubles, forgetting everything else, we would mull things over, discuss our problems with our friends and relatives and, perhaps, seek therapy of some kind. Mind and body would command us to attend to their selfish needs. There would be no getting away from it.

Now, doesn’t the same apply to our spiritual condition? Our soul feels its separation from the Lord, its source and natural element. We are in an alien environment and no matter what comforts we try to surround ourselves with, or whatever pleasures we turn to, there is no cure here at the material level. At this point Sultan Bahu gets very graphic:

I am a stranger, my home is very far away,
and my situation worsens
with every breath I draw here.³

Wow! One of the most heart-rending lines in the Sant Mat literature. This is the dark night of the soul. How can we live without feeling the presence of the divine? The world’s greatest poetry expresses the bitter-sweet anguish and longing for a love that has been lost.

However, it is with great good fortune that we have come to the human form, in which we have the discrimination and self-awareness to feel our situation and to seek a solution. We are full of potential. We may become aware, somewhere deep within, of our predicament, of not belonging, of feeling, as the title of the James Bond movie has it, that “the world is not enough.” How can we satisfy spiritual longing with material things?

We are like Alice in Wonderland, fascinated for a while by the strange characters around her. But, however curious and entertaining their behaviour, Alice eventually realizes that she misses her own home where she belongs and she starts to retrace her steps.

The Great Master wrote:

The number one sign of his being merciful to anyone is that he creates in him dissatisfaction with the worldly routine and a longing to seek the truth.⁴

This will turn us into seekers. And Hazur Maharaj Ji wrote:

This constant feeling of loneliness and missing something is in reality the unquenched yearning of the soul for its Lord. … This feeling has been purposefully put in the heart of man.⁵

It’s part of his long term plan to get us home.

The Lord automatically responds to the cry of the soul just as a mother responds to her crying child or a ship responds to another vessel in distress. Out of compassion the Master appears in our lives to uproot us – an even greater stroke of good fortune, which Kabir describes as the “propitious moment when the man of God came and graced my home.”⁶ As Hazur explains:

The saints take us out of this predicament by teaching us Nam Bhakti (devotion to Nam, Word or Shabd) – thus turning inward and Godward the tides which are now flowing outward. It is the nature of the mind to run after pleasure, but no pleasure in the world has the power to captivate it forever, so it flits from one object to another.⁷

The nature of the mind: one minute a creature of habit and the next craving novelty. Hazur continues:

When, however, it takes to Nam Bhakti and, ‘going in,’ tastes the bliss of Shabd, its fickleness is gone and it becomes steady. Guru bhakti and Nam bhakti are the means by which the mind is weaned from sensual pleasures and is attached to the Shabd, the Audible Life Stream, which ultimately takes us back to our origin – God.⁸

Shabd or the Audible Life Stream resounds in all of us. It sustains everything. Perhaps an echo of it can be caught at moments of concentration or elevation of the spirit. The poet Wordsworth described it:

A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of thought,
And rolls through all things.⁹

And in his play The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare interrupts the action with an interlude in which the character Lorenzo points out to his beloved Jessica how the heavenly orbs in the night sky sing like angels and says:

Such harmony is in immortal souls:
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.¹⁰

The Masters teach us how to hear the inner music and see the inner light so that we can immerse ourselves whenever we want. By ourselves we would never find the source – it’s under lock and key. Only the Masters know the combination. In the Bible St John says, “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”¹¹ Who will help us penetrate that darkness? Hazur said:

With whose grace do we gain admission to the Court of the Lord? Surely not by our own efforts. Alone we can do nothing. We can never, by ourselves, traverse the uncharted terrain of the inner Path. We owe everything to the immeasurable grace of the Master.¹²

How can we show our appreciation for these great blessings? It is said that when we are happy we are grateful, but more likely it’s the other way round. When we are grateful we are happy. Gratitude brings happiness. The best way of showing our gratitude is to make the most of our opportunities and privileges, and we know what that means:

Practise living the Sant Mat way of life without compromise – no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts.’
Practise concentrating at the eye centre – focusing the attention, our crown jewel.
Practise repeating the names and listening to the Sound.

Soami Ji advised:

Hold fast to the Shabd with the Master’s Grace and with Master’s help make Shabd the mainstay of your life.¹³

On old sailing ships the mainstay supported the mast and held it firmly upright. Without its mainstay the mast would collapse and the ship would drift helplessly. Likewise, without the support of Shabd as the mainstay of our life we would drift aimlessly in this life.

Sant Mat is a minute to minute affair, a constant effort. We need to throw ourselves wholeheartedly into this project, diving deep to find those precious jewels. We may have made bad choices in the past which have brought us to our present situation, but now we can make positive choices and, for that, we need determination.

It’s not easy. The body doesn’t want to cooperate and distracts us with its aches and itches. The mind finds excuses. How often have we heard in satsang that we have to raise a fight against this powerful enemy, the mind. Blows will be given and blows will be received, we are told; we can’t escape that. Hazur wrote, “You are perfectly right in saying this path is difficult, but there is no alternative.”¹⁴

So we may as well knuckle down and enjoy the ride. In due course the licking of the dry stone of meditation will be transformed into the Song of Life, something not to be missed for anything. Hazur used to tell us that by and by the mind will take pleasure in it. The Master urges us to waste no more time and to start taking him seriously. We have no idea how much time we have left. Soami Ji wrote:

Why don’t you listen, dear soul, to the melody of the name? ¹⁵

We know we want to but how much? In October 1987 in Delhi, a questioner asked Hazur whether it was true that he is urgently calling us right now. And he replied:

What else are these meetings for? All these meetings, all these satsangs, all these questions, answers, are meant for that purpose, that we should do our best to come to that level where we can be pulled upward … The Shabd is calling every one of us.¹⁶

So, why do we hold back? Could it be that we are too preoccupied with analyzing our sense of self? As the poet, George Herbert put it:

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guiltie of dust and sinne… ¹⁷

It is this sense of “dust and sinne” that the Master says will be cured by meditation. Therefore, we should all listen to what he says and follow the method he proposes, and, as Soami Ji advises:

Why not submit to the Master?
You have spent this human life in confusion. …
Why don’t you seriously consider the fact
that this world is just an illusion? …
Radha Soami says: win over this enemy your mind,
and transform it into a friend.¹⁸

We all have a common need to follow the Master’s advice and find our way back home, where we belong.

William Wordsworth, from Ode to Immortality
J.R. Puri and K.S.Khak, Sultan Bahu, Bait 27
Sultan Bahu, Bait 27
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, letter 28
Maharaj Charan Singh, Quest for Light, letter 10
V.K. Sethi, Kabir, The Weaver of God’s Name, p.195
Maharaj Charan Singh, Light on Sant Mat, 8^th ed., p.6
Light on Sant Mat, p.6
William Wordsworth, “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 5, Scene 1
King James Bible, The Gospel According to St John, 1:5
Maharaj Charan Singh, Die to Live, 2^nd ed., p.295
Soami Ji Maharaj, Sar Bachan Poetry, 1^st ed., p.87
Maharaj Charan Singh, Divine Light, letter 58
Sar Bachan Poetry, p.119
CD of Q&A session with Hazur Maharaj Ji in 1987
George Herbert, Love, published in The Metaphysical Poets (Penguin paperbacks, 1966)
Sar Bachan Poetry, pp.213–215

Rebuilding Our Platforms - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Rebuilding Our Platforms

There’s a story in Tales of the Mystic East about Guru Amardas, the third Sikh Guru, who was preparing to appoint his successor.¹ As there were several disciples who were hoping to be appointed, the Guru decided to test them. He requested that each one go out and collect some earth and build a small mud platform for him.

Each one did the task, but the Guru rejected every single one as not good enough. So he asked them to tear them down and build them again. When they had done it, he told them it was not quite the right place – could they build them on another piece of land? Again, the Guru was not satisfied and they had to build the platforms in another place.

This went on for some time, with the Guru always rejecting the disciples’ platforms for some reason or another. Before long, several disciples began to think that the Guru, who was already in his later years when he had been appointed successor to Guru Angad Dev, maybe was becoming senile and not in full possession of his faculties. So, many of them quit the work. For the few who remained, it continued to be the same story: no matter how or where the platforms were built, none met the Guru’s satisfaction. Finally, there was only one disciple left – Ramdas. He continued to build and tear down those mud platforms, even as his fellow disciples ridiculed him. He said to them, “Brothers, the whole world is blind. But if there is one man who can see, it is the Satguru. Then too, the whole world is mad. It is only the Satguru who is sane.”

Then they told him that both he and the Satguru must be out of their minds. Ramdas answered them saying, “Brothers, you may say whatever you like about this worthless servant of the Lord, but do not, I beg of you, utter a single disrespectful word about my Satguru. Even if I should have to make platforms for the rest of my life in obedience to the Satguru’s wishes, by his grace I would continue to do so.” And he continued patiently and cheerfully making and remaking his platform seventy times. Then Guru Amardas told him to stop building and said: “I am very pleased with you. For you alone have given me implicit obedience and complete surrender to my will and wishes.” None of the other disciples were able to give the Satguru their full love and devotion, to have utter faith in him, and obey his wishes with a grateful heart. Only Ramdas. And then Guru Amardas named Ramdas as his successor, saying, “It is a rare disciple who completely surrenders himself to the Satguru.”

Some of us may feel relieved that Baba Ji doesn’t put us to that kind of a test! Yet there is much we can apply to our own lives from this example. The platforms our Master asks us to build may not be made of mud – they might be our meditation or our seva or the way we live our lives. We might ask ourselves how well those platforms we build would meet his standard.

Daily life

Let’s first look at how we live our daily lives. At some point, before the path, most of us were probably looking for an alternative to the pain, uncertainty, and confusion of life in this material world. And when the Master accepted us, we could hardly believe our good fortune. At initiation, we promised him that we would live a way of life that would help clear our karmic debt, tame our wild and wandering mind, and allow our soul to become free and pure, unfettered by mind and senses. And we promised to devote a tenth of our day to our meditation practice every day, so that the soul could return to its source by means of the sound current, the Shabd.

Every day, we make a determined and sincere effort to maintain this way of life, and we probably succeed most of the time. But we are still dealing with the mind and the passions – anger, greed, lust, attachment, and pride or ego. Also, the karmic interplay between us and others may occasionally disrupt our good intentions. We fall, we fail, we mess up, we hurt someone – we do something we regret. Since we are constantly going against the current of this world, which glorifies and encourages so many behaviors and attitudes we avoid, it’s understandable that once in a while we may trip or be tripped up; we may hurt someone without even realizing it; we may make a bad choice, despite our best resolve. The platform we build at those times is not one we would want to present to the Master! So what do we do? We just have to build it again – and again and again.

This metaphor of rebuilding our platform simply means doing something again when we know we fall short, and never giving up. It means doing it for our beloved Master, because it pleases him.

The Master accepts our messes, our missteps; he doesn’t reject us. He does expect that we will recognize and clean up the mess, apologize if we have hurt someone, ask for forgiveness, learn from our mistakes, and forgive ourselves. Maharaj Charan Singh tells us:

In order to forgive ourselves, we must cease repeating that mistake. When we really repent and do not repeat that mistake again, then we can say that we have forgiven ourselves.²

So the Master forgives us, and he also wants us to forgive ourselves. Also, if someone needs our forgiveness, we must not hesitate to give it, or else, Hazur says, we are punishing ourselves.³ And he tells us that we get more happiness by forgiving than by seeking forgiveness.⁴ We must never seek revenge, but forgive from the heart, just as the Master does for us. And we always want to clear up misunderstandings, not decide who is at fault, not blame the other person. After all, we can never have the full perspective on what’s happening with the other person, what’s informing the other person. If they sow a bad seed, they will have the bad crop to harvest. But if we retaliate, then we become like that other person – we create our own bad seeds.⁵

Our master wants us to be forgiving. We should never be vengeful, but remember the basic teaching to love one another. If we have a spirit of revenge, then our heart cannot be pure. Unless our heart is pure, we will not be receptive to the Lord’s grace.⁶ So, in our daily conduct, we want o build our platform by giving Master our implicit obedience and obeying his wishes with a cheerful heart.

Seva

Seva is another area where we are constantly building and rebuilding the platforms we create out of our actions and our attitude. Great Master tells us that service is rendered in four different ways: with the body, with wealth, with mind, and with soul (surat).

Hazur tells us that the seva we do with our soul – listening to the Shabd within – is the real seva that will take us back to the Father and enable us to merge with that divine melody within. All the other sevas are a means to that end.

Regarding our approach to seva he says:

Seva comes from the heart. It is not a compulsion for anybody – it’s not that you have to do it, but you want to do it. It must come from within, and there must be love in doing seva. There should be no feeling of obligation that we have to do it.⁷

So, for example, no matter what physical seva we may be doing to serve the master or the sangat, we should do it with faith, love and devotion for him, and a cheerful heart. If we do seva out of a sense of obligation rather than love, if serving others doesn’t make them happy, or make us happy; if our ego is inflated by what we do as seva, then we probably need to rebuild our platform.

And what about mental seva? Do we make our meditation the priority in our life? Do we remember simran during the day when our mind is free? Are we able to sit still when we meditate? Keep our mind focused at the eye center? Put in our full time at one sitting? Our Master has given us this very important seva to do, but sometimes, no matter how hard we try, our efforts just don’t make the grade. Our platforms need to be rebuilt every day!

Meditation

If our attitude is like that of Ramdas, then we have a grateful heart when we sit for meditation, even if we see no lights and hear no sounds. It’s not like we need a discotheque in our mind. We are doing what Hazur told us is the one thing that we should never sacrifice to anything of this world. It doesn’t matter that our body doesn’t remain as still as Baba Ji’s when he’s sitting in satsang, we just keep making the effort. It doesn’t matter that our mind runs out when we try to concentrate – we just have to bring it back. Every day we get to build another platform with our meditation. We get to make another effort for him.

It is a long slow process to be transformed into pure and unsullied beings ready to return to the Creator. So we get up day after day and rebuild that platform, we do our seva of simran and bhajan without expectation. Hazur tells us:

We should attend to meditation with an absolutely relaxed mind and just do our duty. When it comes, it just comes. Our excitement or our anxiety does not bring anything. It is the concentration that brings it; concentration with love and longing and his grace bring it. So, when it has to come, it comes automatically.⁸

And despite what we may we read in the books about the inner splendors, sights and sounds, these are not the goal of our meditation. Hazur says:

You see, sometimes it is not in our interest to have those results, but progress is always there. Every time we attend to meditation, progress is there. ... He knows best when to give and how to give and how much to give. We have only to knock.⁹

We have only to knock on his door, and he will answer when the time is right. Whether or not any progress is visible to us, he is transforming us through our meditation, removing our karmic dirt so that we can end the long succession of lives we’ve had in this creation. Until then, we just have to go through our destiny, riding the roller coaster of our fate, taking the good along with the bad. Master will give us what we need to get through whatever comes our way, and our meditation acts as a buffer against the effects of our karma. Great Master tells us in Spiritual Gems:

The fate karma is undoubtedly strong. It has to be borne and there is no escape from it. But, through meditation, the will power becomes so strong that a person does not feel or mind either its favourable or adverse effects. ... Meditation is the antidote to karma.¹⁰

We can now face whatever our future might bring with the confidence that no matter what happens, he will get us through it without us losing our balance – provided we are keeping our promise to do our meditation. Although he won’t change our destiny, he will give us what we need to adjust to it.

If we are able to keep our perspective when storms of karma are raging around us, isn’t that a sign of progress? Even though we struggle to focus our mind and keep our body still when we sit for meditation, the Master knows the effort we are making. He is always with us and knows what we are going through every day. Meditation can give us peace within, no matter what is going on around us – when we do our practice. Hazur puts it this way:

You feel the effect of meditation before you actually see any progress within. ... And there is some sort of contentment. Your attitude towards the events of the world is also changing. You are developing a detached outlook on everything by meditation, though you may not have experienced any progress within at all.¹¹

Love and devotion

Another effect that comes with meditation is that our love for the Master grows. At its core, Sant Mat is a path of bhakti, or devotion. The path of devotion begins with the Master, a true mystic teacher who finds seekers, leads them away from the attractions of the world and connects them to that Shabd within, the life force that created and sustains the entire universe. If not for the Master’s intervention, we could never know God within us.

The Master has been described as a “splendid synthesis of the human and the divine qualities.”¹² He possesses a human body, like we do – he experiences hunger, thirst, fatigue and other human characteristics – yet he also has all the essential attributes of God. He is above all the negative passions, he has unselfish love for all beings, he is patient, humble, and always attuned to God. The living Master is our accessible link to the imperishable Nam. While he will eventually leave his human body, just as we will, the Nam, the Shabd he connects us to is eternal.

The Master teaches us the repetition of names that are imbued with the power and energy of God, the Father, the Supreme Creator. Their loving repetition generates remembrance of and love for God. This practice of simran or repetition “culminates in absolute absorption in the transcendent Name, the power that is God.”¹³

And this “absolute absorption in the transcendent name” is the real seva of the soul. This is what happens when we have finally built the “platform” that pleases our beloved Master. This is the culmination of our practice, when we reach the eye center through repetition of those Names that we are given at initiation, and our attention is concentrated and held there. For then we reach the Radiant Shabd Master who will pull our consciousness upward and inward on the journey back to the imperishable One.

We began with the story of disciples building mud platforms at the direction of their master Guru Amardas – many tried but gave up when they thought they couldn’t please their master with their efforts. But one disciple, Ramdas, was determined to do his duty cheerfully, building platform after platform in love, obedience and surrender to his Satguru, without question. If we, like Ramdas, give our Master our “full love and devotion, have utter faith in him, and obey his wishes with a cheerful heart,”¹⁴ why would he not give us the spiritual treasure that we long for? Ramdas rebuilt platforms for his master seventy times. Even if we have to rebuild them seventy times seventy times seventy times and more in our daily life, our seva and our meditation, our Master too will ultimately accept the “platforms” that we have built and rebuilt for him with our love and devotion. The time will come when we will be completely absorbed in him, in his Shabd form. Our love of the form will culminate in love of the formless, and that love is union, that love is eternal, that love is One.

“Guru Ramdas and the Mud Platforms,” in Tales of the Mystic East (2006), pp. 104-105.
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, #342
Ibid., #337
Ibid, #337
Ibid.,#334
Ibid., #335
Ibid., #190
Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, #357
Ibid., #359
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, #28
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II, #161
Many Voices, One Song, p.90
Ibid., p.95
“Guru Ramdas and the Mud Platforms,” in Tales of the Mystic East (1977), p. 129; reprinted in Swami Paramatmananda Puri, On the Road to Freedom, Vol. 2; Amritapuri, Kerala, 2000, p. 83.

As Innocent as a Child - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

As Innocent as a Child

The popular 19^th-century English poet William Wordsworth was inspired by his great love of the natural world and felt “a sense sublime” that “rolls through all things.”¹ In the poem “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” ² Wordsworth reflected deeply on his experience of the waning of “celestial light” in the passage of time from youth to old age:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream. ...
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there has passed away a glory from the earth. ...
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

The poet wonders what has become of the “celestial light” that he saw everywhere as a young child, when everything appeared fresh and bright to a young soul, newly born with a clean slate.

The poet reflects:

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

In childhood we have no responsibilities and nothing to worry about. All our needs are taken care of. There is nothing for the young soul to do but gaze in wonder at this bright, new, colourful world, full of curious and enchanting sensations. If only we could sustain that pure, innocent gaze and turn it inwards. But gradually, day by day, life begins to impose demands, and little by little the material world starts to lose its lustre and can no longer satisfy our inner hunger:

Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy, ...
At length the Man perceives it [the celestial light] die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

It can’t be helped; we are hardly aware of it happening. This process has been going on for lifetime after lifetime. We are caught up in an unreliable world which holds out so much promise and delivers so little.

Soami Ji asks us:

Why don’t you listen, dear soul,
to the melody of the Name?
You’ve let yourself become trapped
in the labyrinth of creation.
Is this the happiness you were after.³

We can no longer see that “celestial light” that we could still see in our pure infancy. We’re too caught up in what Wordsworth calls our “noisy years,” but what will those look like when we look back in old age? Our outer lives won’t amount to much. How many older people have we heard say that it all went by so quickly? As Wordsworth says, those years “seem moments in the being/Of the eternal Silence.”

We’re left only with a sense of longing and nostalgia. The Masters tell us that this longing is a sign of the Lord’s grace and that it will turn us towards the Lord. What have we lost? Where has that “celestial light” gone? How can we find it again? Where should we look for it? The soul is crying out.

There was a radio interview with a celebrated personality who had once served as a merchant seaman. The discussion touched on his spiritual beliefs and he said, “I can assure you that on board ship in a raging typhoon in the South China Sea there is no such thing as an atheist!” We are always crying out from the depths of our soul, and Maharaj Charan Singh once told us that when we cry out earnestly to the Lord he can’t help but respond.

The mystics tell us that the Light has not gone anywhere. It is still within us, where it always has been. What we need to do is to become receptive to it. Hazur used to say that everything we need is within us.

According to the Gospel of St. Matthew, the disciples asked Jesus,“Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” Jesus replied by asking a small child to come and sit with them and said, “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.⁴

In Light on St. Matthew Hazur commented on this passage:

Except you be converted means that our whole outlook on life should be changed. Now the tendency of our mind is outward but we have to withdraw our mind inward to the eye centre and turn it upward: that is conversion. We change from one way of living to another. And conversion comes by initiation and meditation.⁵

Just as an infant sees everything upside down and gradually learns how to focus its eyes to see properly, we must learn how to focus our inner eye. This inner eye unfortunately has not yet been opened, and we are unaware of its existence. Meanwhile our outer, physical eyes are focused on the material world and draw our attention away from that inner vision.

Hazur continues:

Unless you are converted – initiated and do your meditation and become as little children – you will not be able to eliminate ego from yourself and become as innocent as a child – and, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.⁶

This conversion involves receptivity, acceptance, giving up ego, becoming humble. The Great Master compared the disciple’s situation with that of a student learning a musical instrument. Reading a book about it will not be of much help. What the student needs are an instrument and a teacher – and then lots of practice. This will lead to becoming an expert – the more ardent the practice, the greater the development of understanding.

There is a saying among golfers that the more you practise the luckier you get.

It’s the same with spiritual practice. We have the perfect instrument to practice with. The human form is at the top of creation, the highest form it is possible to reach in all of nature. And we have a maestro teacher. How lucky can we get? Now the student is free to practise, attend satsang and absorb the teachings. Tulsi Sahib said, “Cleanse the sanctuary of your heart to welcome the Beloved.”⁷

It is not going to be a quick fix. Habits have become second nature. We need patience, determination and a positive attitude to overcome them. The Irish playwright, Samuel Beckett, notoriously bleak but humorous in his outlook, wrote, “Ever tried, ever failed. No matter. Try again, fail again, fail better.”⁸

Educational theorists say that FAIL stands for First Attempt In Learning – a way of recognizing that we don’t always succeed at the first attempt but we need to persevere and that will lead to eventual success. So we need to follow what street posters used to say during the Second World War, “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

What choice do we have? We are enjoying the best of possible circumstances—the human form and the association of a Master. Hazur once replied to a question concerning the succession of the golden, silver, copper and iron ages by asking, “Isn’t this a Golden Age?” ⁹ We have everything we need.

The trouble is that handing over to the Master does not come easily to our mind, the seat of the ego. We think we want to be in control. Like a wayward child the mind gets frustrated and angry when it doesn’t get its own way. It is lured by temptations and is then dissatisfied with the results. On the one hand it clings to old familiar habits while at the same time seeking novelty and new excitements.

Submission is the opposite of ego. Questions don’t arise. The mind fills with devotion and we submit to the Master’s guidance. According to the Buddhist sage, Padmasambhava, “Complete devotion brings complete blessing; absence of doubts brings complete success.”¹⁰

The mystics encourage us to use our intellect and discrimination in order to understand spiritual matters and the teachings of a Master, but after one has taken shelter with a Master one should surrender to him unconditionally.

Taking shelter means having full confidence in the Master and to be guided by him – not in the sense of worshipping him physically but of following his instructions and acting upon them. When the disciple surrenders to the Master for good, the Master looks after him in every way. Just as a mother brings up her child, so the Master looks after his disciple.

Soami Ji wrote:

“The mind dissolved when Radha Soami glanced at me
Now I’m like a child looked after in the lap of the Master.”¹¹

When we reach that stage we will become like a small child and once again enjoy that “celestial light” and hear that ringing radiance.

William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798, Stanza 5.
William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”.
Soami Ji Maharaj, Sar Bachan Poetry, Bachan 14, Shabd 5, p. 199.
Bible, Matthew 18:3–4.
Light on Saint Matthew, p. 211.
Light on Saint Matthew, p. 212.
Tulsi Sahib, Saint of Hathras, p. 230.
Samuel Becket, Worstword Ho!
Die to Live, p. 280.
Padmasambhava, quoted in Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
Sar Bachan Poetry (Hindi), Bachan 6, Shabd 5.

Wonder - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Wonder

On the second to last page of Legacy of Love there is a final image of Hazur Maharaj Ji. His back is to us in the photo. He is standing in a shadowed doorway of the satsang ghar built by his master – he’s facing outside the building where the air seems lit with a delicate golden radiance.

Opposite this photo on the final page of the book is one of Maharaj Ji’s last messages: “May your love of the form culminate in the love of the formless.”¹ He’s turned away, we can’t see that face. We might imagine that he is reminding us to keep going with our practice of love, to love that face, that being, but not to stop there – to go where he has gone, to see what he sees, to love beyond all limit. This he wishes for us.

Soami Ji Maharaj also speaks about going beyond all limit. He describes in rich detail the sights and sounds of the inner spiritual regions. But when he comes to the destination of the soul in the Nameless One, words and descriptions fail. He simply says:

What more can I say? No one was there …
What there was I tell you now:
Wondrous wonder it was all in himself –
Wonder, wonder, wonder!

But then something happens:

Wonder then took on a form.…
In the form of saints He comes into the world,
And He himself reveals his secret.²

And this is the key to the whole story. Wonder takes on a form. In the form of saints he comes to the world to return us to the formless.

Even now, right down here in our strange little lives where we’re running around like ants in a hurricane – even with all the noise and distractions, people have always experienced moments touched with the awareness of some vast presence, moments filled with awe and joy at a beauty we can’t fully see.

Infants and little children seem to be in touch with this state; they seem to live there for a little while before life in the body fills them up with the debris of desires and fears, of ego, and makes them forget that place. The Gospel according to Matthew tells us:

Some disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.³

Traveling the inner way means to change, to become like a child again – pure, empty, open to give and receive love. This, Jesus says, means a second birth, a birth into spirit, and this time around it’s for keeps: it means to escape being dragged back to the world again and again to meet and love and then leave an endless procession of fathers and mothers. It means to come to rest in the formless Father.

But the question for every seeker is, How will I ever experience this wonder, how will it ever be more than brief hints from the beyond? Maharaj Ji gave us the simple diagram of return:

Deeply engrossed in wife and children, in friends and relatives, in wealth and possessions, you become a part of the ever-moving wheel. By deep devotion to Nam, you step out of the perpetual motion of the wheel and regain the axis with its equilibrium, its stillness, its ineffable bliss. Nay, you become one with the Lord.

Here is is a striking image: it is either life at the outer periphery of the wheel, or life at the radiant centre. Every day of our lives we wake up and we get moving – we wake up and doggedly get moving out and out onto the path of our mind. This path of the mind leads away from the sacred axis. We live and move and have our very being not in the Divine, but deeply engrossed in this fragile bubble of the body that we mistake for our real self.

We know nothing of stepping away from perpetual motion on the periphery, nothing of the way to the centre. We’re just out here flailing on the vast ocean of illusion, constant waves, no landmarks, sometimes sunny and calm so we feel happy, sometimes thunder and lightning and huge waves – no direction known. It’s everyone for himself or herself, trying to stay above water and piece together a tiny, fragile life with bits of debris that float our way. We build flimsy little rafts for ourselves, and then we invite others to climb on for company and warmth. Life on the high seas of existence. It’s exhausting. It’s frightening. It’s lonely.

And then… out of nowhere over the high seas suddenly appears a being like none we’ve seen before. He is so vast, so radiant, so present, so sweet, we can hardly believe our eyes. With one glance he touches that core of our being – he awakens a love like none other. And it’s all over. We sigh a sigh of relief that was a million eons coming. Then he calls from his beautiful, strong, seaworthy boat, Come with me! We’re going home. You just catch hold of this rope I’m throwing out to you, this rope of five words, and hold on to it for dear life. I myself will pull you into the boat of the Word, and we’ll ride that celestial Sound to that other ocean – the ocean of truth, of consciousness, of bliss.

This merciful boatman would then explain that our aloneness is a fiction of the mind. Soami Ji Maharaj says:

In the beginning there was only One, then there were two, and then three, then many, then thousands and lakhs, and finally there were countless beings. Now he who finds a perfect Sat Guru, who is one with the One and is the form of that One, will succeed through his grace in extricating himself from the illusion of the many and reach his Real Home.⁴

It is our supreme privilege to escape the illusion of the many and come to experience Oneness. Now this is a beautiful idea, but it is just an idea. Where does experience begin?

We really know nothing – about ourselves or life or God – but we do know without question when we have experienced something from the guide, the messenger from the formless. In the life of every disciple there is the turning point, the moment we understand that we have one true Friend. It may be love at first sight for some; it may take years for others to reach that critical mass of recognition. We could never describe this experience or prove it to anyone else, but this experience gives us the kernel of faith that lays the foundation for all our efforts to discover and love the Formless.

Now come the instructions. Sheikh Taqi, a Muslim seeker, has been awakened by the touch of Tulsi Sahib’s love, and Tulsi now gives him his part to play:

Listen, O Taqi, keep your gaze fixed on your Master
who has offered you his hand.
Leave it not through negligence, if you long to see
the splendor of your Beloved.
His grace will lead you to his very presence,
without any fear or danger on the way.⁵

He tells Taqi, If you really long to escape the ocean of existence and experience the Beloved, just keep your inner gaze fixed on me. Always. He says, I will hold your hand the entire way, but you have to keep holding my hand. This is meditation. And the foundation is simran: repeat my names at the eye focus, and like a child just be open, curious and receptive to whatever I show you within. Darkness or light, silence or sound.

We just follow. He does everything. This is grace. All true spiritual teachers have told their disciples how much they want them to experience what they themselves have experienced. Great Master says:

Your friend or Master is within you, nearer than anything else, and watches you. Whenever your attention is directed towards the eye center, He hears you and responds, but his response is missed by you because your attention wavers and runs outwards. If you could hear inside, you would be in tune. I wish you may come up to him and see him inside, face to face, instead of merely sensing his presence.⁶

The Master is with us – at a depth we can’t yet know or imagine; and now our life work is to be with him.

So he says, Repeat my names, remembering me until you forget yourself. In an evening meeting someone asked Hazur Maharaj Ji, “What do you remember about your Master?” He answered, “I am only remembering my Master.”

Our work is to fix our attention in those five names – in that presence – until we forget everything else; slowly, slowly over the years to bring our attention to a pinpoint focus at the eye centre, the place Dadu Dayal calls the door of eternity. Our work is to bring every ray of attention to the focus, in stillness and silence. Great Master said:

Unless we have complete silence within ourselves,
our soul cannot experience that Silence
out of which arises the Voice of Silence or the Shabd,
by contacting which our soul becomes merged in Silence.
This is the reality of Silence.⁷

Silence of the mind is the destination of simran. The glossary of Spiritual Letters notes that simran “is designed to focus the mind at the eye centre.” Someone designed simran. Who designed simran with this power? We certainly didn’t. Simran is a great wonder. Maharaj Ji quoted an old Indian proverb: “The elephant’s footprint covers all.” Then he continued:

All the benefits of prayer, penances, austerities, ritual worship, reading or reciting the scriptures, or good deeds and giving in charity, [all] are included within what we receive through meditating on the Word.

What greater prayer can there be than to have the Name of the Lord on our lips day and night through constant simran?⁸

The elephant’s footprint. Everything we could ever pray or say to the Master is to be channeled into simran. These five holy names are the way we thank him for finding us and bringing us back to life, the way we try to please him, the way we beg his forgiveness for turning away from him so often, the way we beg to feel his presence, the way we cry for help, the way we cry for refuge from our own mind, the way we show our obedience. Of all the countless names we could ever think or speak, these five names are the only names that lead to the Nameless, to Nam.

And yes, Tulsi acknowledges the challenge. He says: “Arduous is the way to the destination of love.”⁹ It is arduous to bring the mind again and again and ever again back to simran and bhajan, because our mind is the one thing we don’t want to give him. It’s just the mind’s nature. It doesn’t want to go still – if it goes still, what becomes of our self, what happens to our identity? So of course the mind puts up a fight!

And we constantly lose our fight with the mind. And yet … somehow it is through all our failures that we come to discover his grace.

Tulsi reminds of us of the Master’s grace, the circle that encloses our entire life. He says:

The one who dissolves difficulties is with you
and has given you his hand.¹⁰

No matter how forgetful or rebellious we are, no matter how ignorant or arrogant we are, the Friend within never withdraws his hand – he holds us in mercy and compassion, grace and forgiveness. Our only job is to persist with the practice of becoming present to him. Sarmad says:

The ocean of his generosity has no shore.
The tongue is powerless to thank,
the heart too bewildered to understand.
Though my sins are many
his compassion is greater still –
I swim in the seas of disobedience
but I do not drown.¹¹

Legacy of Love, p.547
Soami Ji Maharaj, Sar Bachan 38:12, in Radha Soami Teachings, 7^th ed., p.168
Bible (NIV), Matthew 18:1–5
Soami Ji Maharaj, Sar Bachan Prose, #171
Tulsi Sahib: Saint of Hathras, 2^nd ed., p.92
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, #105
Maharaj Sawan Singh, Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. IV, 4^th ed., p.25
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Discourses, Vol. II, 3^rd ed, p.70
Tulsi Sahib: Saint of Hathras, 2^nd ed., p.92
Ibid.
Isaac Ezekiel, Sarmad: Martyr to Love Divine, 5^th ed., p.289

Devotion and Love - RSSB Satsangs & Essays Download | Print

Devotion and Love

What is our situation in life? Are we not like a water boatman, a little insect that can run across water without penetrating the surface – walking across a lake of reality without any chance of knowing the depth or extent of it? The water boatman can only know what is on the surface; what lies beneath will remain a mystery until the surface is penetrated.

Within all of our hearts sounds an echo from our real home. But we don’t comprehend the depth and intention of that call, so our response is just to dive into the next experience that comes along, hoping that the void can be filled.We truly are ‘strangers in a strange land’ and are essentially living life as ‘sensation seekers,’ hoping that the next sensation will bring us peace, reality or even bliss. Even in our meditation many of us hold on to a desire for some sort of sensation, some sort of result to prove that we have made progress.

We have no idea why we are who we are – why we are born into the family we are in, why we speak the language we speak, why we are the colour we are, and, possibly most important, why we believe what we believe.

In the film Little Big Man a Native American chief observes: “I believe what I was given to believe.” Fate has decided his outlook on and understanding of life, and he, like us, is just a being going through a predetermined drama he can do nothing to change. He can only go through it thinking and reacting according to his nature, beliefs and karmas.

We all know that there is an emptiness in our life that we seek to fill, but no resolution of our quest can be achieved by going to the world for answers. Before coming to the path, we all probably felt that we were dissatisfied with ourselves and life in general; but with no alternative we just carried on plugging away, trying to get peace and bliss from the world. This habit doesn’t suddenly stop when we come to the path; it leaks into our time, and we have to work to go in the other direction – within ourselves – to know true love and reality, the Shabd or Word.

Hazur Maharaj Ji once explained that at our level we cannot know our soul, and this reality will only become apparent once our attention collects at the eye centre. At our present level we live life almost as automatons. We know we exist but do not know what we truly are. So, until we realize the reality of soul, we are effectively living in an arid desert of understanding, endlessly seeking reality where there can be nothing to find.

Kabir Sahib discussed the challenge of knowing the inner reality:

The moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes
cannot see it:
The moon is within me, and so is the sun.
The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded
within me; but my deaf ears cannot hear it.¹

Kabir is saying that our external senses are useless in comprehending the inner reality. Our external eyes cannot see the moon and sun inside. Our external ears cannot hear the inner sound. We have to develop our inner eye and inner hearing, through meditation, in order to comprehend the inner reality. The Shabd cannot be accessed by our superficial faculties.

Kabir goes on to say:

So long as man clamours for the I and the Mine,
his works are as naught:
When all love of the I and the Mine is dead,
then the work of the Lord is done.²

If we chase after the things of the world and direct all of our efforts towards that end, then our life will be wasted. Only when the love of the world, of ‘I and mine’ is dead, will the work of the Lord, and our own spiritual work, be completed.

Count Leo Tolstoy observed that when there is a vacuum in life, something must come in to fill it. We can fill that vacuum with worldly knowledge and possessions, or with true inner knowledge and spiritual understanding. That choice is with us every moment.

Now, for some unknown reason, the Lord has decided to bring us into the company of a true living Master to fill the vacuum in our lives. He wants us to know the moon and the sun within and to hear the drumbeat of eternity.

In the Bible it is written that Jesus explained the pivotal role of the Master in taking the soul home:

All things are delivered unto me of my Father; and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.³

So, only the Master is the gateway to inner reality, and through him we have to become the “Son.” In John 3:35 it states:

The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hands.⁴

In the Bhagavad Gita it is written that Lord Krishna said:

Give me your whole heart,
devote yourself to me,
worship me and surrender to me.
Thus having made your heart steadfast in me,
with me as your supreme goal,
you shall come to me.⁵

This is the message of all Masters. However, it is our nature to worship the world instead and to love the beings and things in it, and so we have to be dragged to the path of devotion. When someone is lost it may often be the case that to reach his intended destination he will need a guide to take him through territory alien to him. In our case we do not know the way to our inner destination, or indeed how remote from it we are. Our own particular road to our true home may be strewn with obstacles and difficulties that are impossible to predict. But if our guide knows the way and also what is required for us to reach the final destination, then it is his duty to assess us before we embark on the trek to make sure that we are fit for the journey.

The Master tells us that we wouldn’t have been pulled to the path unless he knew that we could reach the final goal and become one with him. Often this statement will fly against our own assessment of our capabilities and experience. However, the Master will stick with us through thick and thin. The Master wants us to give our whole heart to him – to devote ourselves to him, because devotion to him is the only action that is needed. Hazur once wrote:

Slow internal progress is always best; therefore, one should not be impatient. Go on doing your bhajan and simran with love and faith. The inward progress is naturally slow. The work of withdrawing the consciousness from the lower centers on which it has been dwelling for millions of ages is not an easy job and requires time and constant effort. Of course, love and faith are wonderful accelerators, but the process is essentially a slow one.

One should not feel disheartened if one does not see any outward sign of progress, because progress is surely there. Such a person should give more time to meditation and keep the mind in simran at all times. One should not worry. The Master will see to the rest.⁶

In the recent Indian film Jodhaa Akbar, a Sufi tells the following tale to Emperor Akbar:

The Angels were asked:
What is heaven?
And they answered:
Every heart where love dwells is love itself.
They then were asked:
And what is Hell?
They answered:
A heart without love is hell itself.

So we are living in a kind of hell when our consciousness is focused on the world, but when love is in our heart we are in heaven. There can be no ifs or buts in this matter – we are in heaven or we are in hell; we have love in our heart or we do not; we are one with our Master or we are not.

We don’t just want to know what love is; we want to actually be in love. And all true teachings indicate the one way to achieve this love. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna said:

One who serves me with the unfailing
devotion of love
is fit to attain the supreme God.⁷

So, love means to follow the Master’s instructions faithfully, with unfailing devotion, and to attend to our meditation. Automatically love for the physical Master develops. If we live the Sant Mat way of life and attend to our meditation, we strengthen love and faith for the Master. Our love and faith grow with our meditation and ultimately lead us to become one with the Master, and ultimately the Lord.

I have heard over 2,000 satsangs since I came to the path, and yet the sea of words and concepts I have reflected on during all these years appears, at least to my conscious mind, to have changed little in me. However, Baba Ji recently made the point that not being aware that anything is happening as a result of our efforts at meditation does not mean that nothing is happening.

Our problem is that we are lost in a trackless desert; we are blind to the reality of our progress because we still focus primarily on the physical, so how on earth can we know anything about inner progress? And intellectual questions can never resolve our sense of being lost – the answers to these questions may merely put a flimsy patch over our lostness for a little while, enabling us to continue the struggle to experience inner reality.

Hazur once offered encouragement, however:

Once the disciple has been accepted, he must go back to the Father. The Master will not leave the disciple. He is responsible to take that soul back to the Father.⁸

In the Book of Mirdad, the mystic Mirdad says to his disciples:

Man shall be so weary of change that everything in him shall yearn, and yearn with unabating passion, for that which is mightier than change, and surely shall find it within himself.⁹

I would venture to suggest that we are all weary of change – we know that a new car, a new house, a new spouse does not alleviate our craving for bliss and contentment. We have to look inside. Mirdad goes on to say:

Happy are they that yearn, for they are already upon the threshold of Freedom. Them do I seek, and for them do I preach. Have I not chosen you because I heard your yearnings?¹⁰

So, the Master has heard our yearning – our cries of exasperation and desperation, our calls from the desert of our existence. And he is bringing us to him.

Arithmetic in the mystic tradition is different from that of the world: One and one equals one, and also, one and a million also equals one – when the one is a true living Master. Devotion to carrying out the instructions of our Master automatically gives us a heart that is filled with love, and so we will become the Son and thus will automatically come to know the Father.

Bhai Gurdas revealed a heart full of love for his own Master:

The Master is all merciful;
His praise is beyond understanding.
I bow again and again
To the one and incomprehensible Master.¹¹

One Hundred Poems of Kabir, tr. Rabindranth Tagore, p.5
Ibid.
Bible (King James Version), Matthew 11:27
Bible (New King James Version), John 3:35
Bhagavd Gita, 9.34, in Pathways to Liberation, p.238
Divine Light, #19
Bhagavad Gita, 14.26
Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, #2
Mikhail Naimy, The Book of Mirdad, p.95
Ibid.
Bhai Gurdas, Kabitt Svaiyye, quoted in Hector Esponda Dubin, Living Meditation, p.52

Making Sense of Being Human