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alt.meditation.shabda
SERMON BY THE RIVER
- by Michael Turner
(c) 1996, 1999, 2008
(Based upon a satsang I gave on July 21, 1996, after reading the
chapter, "Sermon by the River" in Paul Twitchell's "Stranger By The
River")
This is a great book. I just love Stranger by the River. Reading
this chapter, "Sermon by the River" takes me back to the story of Baba
Jaimal Singh when he lived on the bank of the Beas River. Jaimal,
when he began serving as a Living Master, basically set up shop on the
riverbank. At the time, it was a very inhospitable place. There were
scorpions and snakes. The river kept undercutting the bank, etc.
People didn't know why he wanted to be there.
But he liked the river because there was a freshness, a sense of flow
which happens when you're by a river, just like with any body of
water, especially when it's moving. There's a continuity of life
that's really beautiful. In addition, because it was deserted, he
could meditate in peace, which also had a great attraction for him.
He would give satsang every day out by the banks of the river. In
fact, for a while his home was just basically a cave he dug into the
wall in this river bank. He would just sit in this cave meditating,
and people would sit around him right there and it became quite a
tradition.
Eventually Babaji met Sawan Singh and initiated him. Sawan was a
military engineer and would come to visit Babaji whenever he was
stationed in the area or on furlough. Being in the military
engineering service, he kept looking for ways of improving things in
his master's meditation area, there was Babaji living in this dugout
in the banks and people were sitting on straw mats on the ground
around him.
So Sawan asked Babaji if he could build a little house for him.
Babaji said, "That's okay. I may want to move tomorrow. You never
know. I don't want to be tied down." But Sawan insisted, so Babaji
said, "Okay."
Then Sawan wanted to dig Babaji a well, to save the master's
assistant, Bibi Rukko, the trouble of fetching water for Babaji and
the satsangis. Every day, she would carry this big jug of water on
her head and go into town for water. Sawan was a very good devotee,
and one day he offered to do the work for Bibi. He said, "Please, let
me carry your water jug. Why should you do this hard work? You're
getting on in years, and frail. Why are you carrying this big jug of
water on your head? Let me go get it for you." She said, "Okay.
Fine."
So Sawan went to town, which was about a mile away, to the well to
get the water, and he'd never carried one of those big water jugs on
his head before. Now this is a man who was in good shape. But about
halfway back he kept having to stop and put the jug of water down
because it was incredibly heavy. So by the time he came huffing and
puffing back to the little hut that Babaji was staying in, people were
probably waiting for him to get back with the water so they could
start satsang. And here was this upwardly mobile, well-dressed,
devotee coming back four hours later, probably dragging it by the lip
of the jug.
So when Sawan got back, he went to Babaji and asked, "May I dig you a
well, Master? Really, it's no problem. I'd be glad to. I've got the
backhoe right over here. We can do it really fast." Babaji replied,
"No, no, no. that's alright. Bibi doesn't mind getting the water, do
you Bibi?" And she said, "Nope. I love it. I insist. I like being
the water person." But eventually, after Sawan pleaded several times,
Babaji told him, "I don't want the well to own me. But if you want
it, it's yours. But you will also belong to it."
Later on, there were more people coming to satsang by the river, and
they were sitting out in the hot sun in the Punjab. So Sawan asked if
he could build a satsang hall. Again, Baba Jaimal Singh demurred
before finally acquiescing. But in doing so he reinforced the message
to Sawan that the budding ashram was going to be his responsibility.
This of course has grown into the largest Radhasoami colony in the
world, Dera Baba Jaimal Singh at Radhasoami Satsang Beas, which
apparently has nearly two million initiates worldwide.
I don't know if Paulji was inspired by stories of Baba Jaimal Singh
and Sawan Singh and the Beas river, or stories that maybe Kirpal Singh
told about rivers around India (Kirpal was fond of visiting rivers,
which is how he happened upon Sawan Singh by the Beas river - but
that's another story), or whether these stories in "Stranger by the
River" were based upon Paul's inner experiences with an inner river.
From everything we know, Paul never actually visited India, but he had
a very active imagination. He was a good writer, and he had an
excellent sense of the rhythm of spirituality and the written word.
In some ways this is my favorite book by Paul Twitchell. I come back
to it time after time because of this very powerful metaphor of the
river. In every chapter you find Rebazar Tarzs meeting Peddar Zasq
down by the Jhelum river, and the conversations between the two of
them evoke a wonderful sense of the Master coming and sitting down by
you, while you watch the river flowing in the distance. Everything
becomes a wave of love passing through you - just like the river of
God.
Remember the old hymn, "Shall We Gather at the River?" It's a song
we've all probably heard. As I sat listening to it one night, I
realized how powerful that metaphor was: "Shall we gather at the
river, that flows from the throne of God." It's so true. The throne
of God is the Ocean of Love and Mercy, Anami Lok. It is an
unbelievably powerful vortex of Light and Sound. Out of It flows a
River of Life, a river of pure, loving, spiritual music that just
keeps flowing out of the heart of Anami Purush, never ceasing,
continually flowing out and returning home, on and on. It is always
welcoming souls back into ItSelf. It is continually manifesting. It
is phenomenally powerful. There is nothing above It. There is
nothing beyond It.
I came across a comment by Sawan Singh that there was nothing higher
than Naam. This is very much akin to Paul, through the voice of
Rebazar, saying, "There is nothing higher than the Eck." The key here
is to understand that they're not talking about a particular religion,
or method of meditation, or some sort of schismatic thing where "My
God is bigger than your God." When you really grasp the basic concept
of Naam, of the Holy Word, you will realize it's not some sort of
esoteric metaphysical thought construct, learning the "secret holy
names of God" that can give you extra powers or wisdom, like so many
people who study arcane philosophy get into.
Of course metaphysics is a step a lot of us - if not most of us - go
through in our spiritual unfoldment. You can learn a lot from it
before you outgrow it A while back we were discussing earlier the
various bells and whistles of metaphysics. As you approach the path
of Naam, you will come across groups offering some of the higher
mental teachings (similar to Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry or
Theosophy), in which they're seeking the "lost Word" or some
affirmation or incantation they can recite to impart this thing called
"wisdom." Nobody quite knows what this thing is, but you see people
who appear to have it, or you've read about them. What you're seeing
are the accouterments of wisdom. You see the aspects of it, the
reflections of it, such as power, grace, and implied lifestyle of the
wise. There are all these images. A great literary case in point was
"Lord of the Rings" which prominently featured the wizards, the
Istari, wearing robes, long grey beards and hair, sitting around
discussing great matters of the universe. Or you think of God as this
fellow with a beard, or these sages. You want this thing that they
have. You're not quite sure what it is that you want; but there's
something about it that's appealing.
One of the great myths is that there is some secret incantation that
will give you this thing called "wisdom." It is true that there are
charged names of God that can be chanted, which will tap you into the
inner spheres, that will take you to the inner realities, which will
unlock the door, so to speak. There are highly vibrational names of
God for the upper realms, like "Hu." "Radhasoami," "Anami" or "Sugmad"
which have a particular resonance. But none of these are "The
Word."
The Word is so incredibly vast and powerful, it is difficult to
conceive, much less describe. The closest description I have seen of
it that reflected my experience is in Paul Twitchell's book,
"Dialogues with the Master." Kirpal Singh takes him within to the
higher worlds and perches Paul on the edge of the Ocean of Love and
Mercy. His description was absolutely right on. Anami Lok is
unbelievably huge. It's a giant humming, golden vortex that is so
incredibly vast, our entire universe would be a marble in it, at best
- a vortex with eyes that's revolving and flowing and humming, and the
Spiritual Current of Naam is flowing out from this beingness in all
directions, like a golden mist rolling out in a mammoth wave.
Everything is vibrating frequency of IT, riding ITs eternal wave, the
River of Life manifesting on and on, universes upon universes upon
universes just drops in Its River of Light and Sound, just single
drops.
This is the Word - the primordial beingness, the primordial wave of
all creation that comes out of the Supreme One. If you look at It
from that perspective, it is incredibly self-evident that It is the
highest way to God. There is nothing that can be higher, because It
is the initial expression of God ItSelf. When you harmonize your
attention with IT on Its return flow, IT will - by ITs very nature -
take you back to ITs Source, Anami Lok.
What Paul has done with Stranger by the River is take a basic poetic
mode of expression, like Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet," using a
dialogue format, and short chapters, to get people comfortable and
easy with some of these concepts. He makes it almost colloquial.
So there's really a sense of just sitting back and listening to the
Master speak by the banks of the river. It makes you easy and
relaxed. When you relax, you are less guarded, you are less
defensive, you are gradually ceasing to see others as "other."
They're not aliens; they're friends. We are all gathered together by
this river listening, and here's the Master telling a story, just like
Jesus did once upon a time, just like Rumi used to, like Kabir sitting
at his loom, in his little workshop in India in the Fifteenth
Century. Kabir worked his loom until the day he died. He didn't hit
the lecture circuit and do weekend seminars. He just sat at his loom,
spun cloth and sold it in the marketplace. People would come by and
he would talk to them about God. While he was weaving material cloth,
he was also weaving the tapestry of conversation and Spirit, and
teaching people the way of God. It was just like sitting in his
living room. People would just relax and listen, and as they relaxed,
their inner hearing would open up. Their minds would quiet down. It
usually happens very gradually and very subtly.
It's like that old episode of the Twilight Zone where a young Robert
Redford is playing the Angel of Death (quite a bit different than the
one in "Monty Python's Meaning of Life."). There was an elderly lady
who didn't want to die and wouldn't open her door to anybody out of
fear that Death would come in and take her away. But she allowed Rob
to come into her house because it was snowing outside, and he appeared
to be freezing to death, and he seemed like a nice young man. So they
were sitting having tea and talking, and then he acknowledges that he,
in fact, was Death. At first she got a little freaked out, until he
motioned over to her couch where she saw her body lying there. The
point is, her death happened totally effortlessly. Her attention just
shifted. She was busy talking to him, and she was so immersed in the
spiritual conversation that the body just fell off, like an old suit
of clothes slipping into less awareness.
This is an example of soul travel. This is an example of above-
body consciousness. In this path, we call this the process of "dying
daily." What is "dying daily?" What is the process of dying? It is
detaching your attention from your physical body, focusing it within,
and consciously shedding the body. The only difference between this
and actual death is that this meditation maintains your body. The
physical home is spiritually protected during the soul's forays into
the inner regions, so you always have someplace here to return to.
Your silver cord is not pulled. The body is kept alive.
In this path, we learn to slip in and out of the body very naturally,
very comfortably, in a relaxed fashion. It's not phenomenal. It's
not chanting things and astrally projecting to New York to go see
"Cats" without a ticket, or something like that. It's a simple shift
of attention - easiest thing in the world, once you get the hang of
it.
This is why all of the masters talk so extensively about the
importance of satsang. Because satsang is gathering together and
relaxing in the proximity of the flow of the River of God. You're
sitting by the River, and a cool breeze wafts off the River and blows
through the room, and everybody's touched by it. As we're sitting
back and relaxing, being with each other, we get less defensive, we
start thinking less, and the mind starts quieting down on its own.
You notice it? You start thinking less.
It's really funny, because you can sit and meditate for years with
all sorts of koans and aphorisms, trying to quiet the mind. You can
think of a pool with ripples in it, and then focus on getting rid of
the ripples. You can use various mental constructs to achieve this
somewhat.
But it happens so much quicker when you're in Satsang with the
Master. You start listening to the voice on the outer, and that
becomes its own simran. The Master can read out of the phone book; it
doesn't matter. One of Sri Harold Klemp's great tricks when he's
speaking is really quite good. He'll talk about bunny rabbits and
things in his back yard, or little chipmunks climbing up trees. The
real purpose of this telling of parables (besides the actual spiritual
or moral lesson involved) is that people relax and start listening to
the story, and in the process their thoughts quiet down. They're no
longer thinking about (if they're at a seminar) what they left in
their hotel room or what time dinner is. They just listen.
With the mind quieting of its own volition, Spirit starts flowing
in. We're less guarded. We're less tight. We're less stressed. The
River of Naam starts filling us by ITs proximity, and taking us into
ItSelf. This is one of the reasons Sawan Singh Ji called Satsang a
"protective hedge" around meditation, because it accomplishes a great
deal. It's not charisma on the part of the guru. It's not somebody
coming in and zap people so that they get off and walk out feeling
high. Of course a feeling of elevation will occur, but that's not the
goal.
The point, as Kirpal would say, is to be in the presence of the
Master Power, to let the radiation of God flow through you and be with
IT. It's amazing.
I like this opening part where Rebazar Tarzs talks about how people
are always seeking. They hunger after perfection and seek God. God
is always there waiting for us to ask, and the door will be opened.
But first you have to acknowledge that there is, in fact, a door, and
find it. Rebazar says that, even without the Godman's help, you can
do anything you want to do in this world, and the Lord will bless you
with as many births as it takes, and as many deaths as it takes. It's
really a great blessing of God. If you need to keep fine-tuning, you
are granted as many births as it takes. If you don't want to burn off
all of your karma right now so you can enjoy a few things, you are
free to do so. If the payment plan of our karma is too intense to
deal with, if you are worried about it, it's no problem. You'll be
given another birth to work it out. In the process, you'll come into
contact with the Master much sooner next time. You'll start off
quickly and get on the path and be set right at a younger age.
Speaking as the Eternal Master, Rebazar discusses the man who says,
"I asked God, 'Where is the sun?' and now I find me." Rebazar follows
this up by saying, "We've all met before, under the Banyan tree, in
many lands." The Master Power is always the same wine in new
vessels. Souls come into communion with IT through the agency of the
human form of the Master Power. It just keeps flowing and refreshing
ITSelf, finding a new wineskin to fill, so you can find something
tangible to work with.
Rebazar goes on to talk about the flow of life, and the balancing of
accounts. It's basically an explanation of karma, and he just relates
it in such a relaxed manner. "Life is but a perpetual balancing of
accounts. Man dies, leaving behind many unsettled accounts. Some are
debits. Some are credits. A man's debit is taken into perspective
with the good he does. Therefore, he must return again to this world
to pay and collect."
Right there, that is the essence of karma theory. That's the whole
thing in just a couple of sentences. What he's saying is that doesn't
matter if you're earning good karma or bad karma. You have to come
back to pay it and collect it, if it's earned in this sphere. It goes
on and on and on. So we may think we're doing well by earning good
karma at points - and this is true; it's better than bad karma - and
yet it still has us spinning the big wheel of 84 and coming back here.
What you find is that soul eventually gets so homesick for God that
it doesn't care about earning all the good karma the world can offer -
whether it's wealth, or fame, or any number of things. It just wants
to go home. It's kind of like in the movie, "Big," where Tom Hanks is
13 years old, going on 25. He's an executive in this toy company, and
he's doing really well. He's about to land a huge account, and
everybody's into it, and then he realizes that he misses family. It
was a fun game to play, being an adult, but he wanted to go home. He
had a great penthouse apartment in Manhattan, was making an upper five
digit income, and he didn't care about it.
Here's another beautiful sentence. "Man shall come and go until the
Master appears, and gathers him up for God." It's like being in the
playground, finally getting tired after playing all afternoon, and
having mom and dad come to get you. "Are you ready to go home now?"
So you act sleepy and your parents pick you up and hold you, and
comfort you and take you back home.
Charan Singh compared the Master to a gardener walking through the
Lord's garden. Every day, on the tree of life, some of the fruit -
some of the apples, shall we say - are ripe. Some have a couple days
to go. Some are just flowers blossoming. But every day, there are a
certain number of apples on the tree of life that are exactly,
perfectly ripe for picking - so ripe that they are ready to fall off
the branch and onto the ground. Souls are the same say, each ready at
its own time to be harvested by the Master. Each day, in this garden,
is an entire incarnation. It's a generation. For every wave of
people who are born, there is at least one living master who comes
around and is ready for them. Some days the sun's bright and there's
a lot of apples that are ready to be harvested. Other days there are
just a few. It doesn't matter. God is always there. It may have a
different suit of clothes on, but It is the same presence, the same
gardener, bringing home the apples that are ready.
Are there any comments ore questions on this before we go any
furthur?
Q. Can you consciously mend bad karma you've created?
M. Well, yes, in word. If there are things based on your actions that
are not harmonious, you can do what you can as a human being to
correct them, pay off the debt, make peace with somebody. In twelve-
step theory, they speak of this extensively, of making amends, making
up with people you've hurt, and heal those wounds if at all possible.
Sometimes you can't. Sometimes, if it's an interpersonal relationship
where somebody feels wounded and there's lingering anger and
resentment, you can go over and say, "I'm really sorry. I need to get
this off my chest." and they don't want to hear about it. So you
need to be aware of whether or not they are receptive to your attempts
at making amends. It comes back to discernment, listening to Spirit
and paying attention to what you're seeing and hearing from other
human beings, when it's an interpersonal relationship.
I get asked a lot, "How should I respond to certain situations?" I
am in no way an advocate of situational ethics; but I can't give a
blanket response to any given point of stimuli, because things
change. The key to this path, in terms of your human life, is doing
what you can to pay attention to Spirit as much as possible. If you
really listen, you will receive a nudge in the right direction. The
more you are open to It, the more you will find yourself an expression
of It, and you will speak - or not speak - as the situation demands.
There will be times when things will pour through you, and there will
be times when you want to say something and for some reason you'll
forget to, or your tongue just stops. That's a nudge from Spirit. Of
course, this nudge can be overridden by will and ego. But as you
progress on the path, you will find that it's not worth overriding
Spirit's advice.
Q. You were talking about where the master would have a line of people
requesting initiation, and he would shake his head no or yes. Could
some of those have been marked for a different master?
M. It could be anything. He just sees and knows. That's all. The
Master doesn't have time to analyze each applicant causal profile. He
or she just looks at them and knows whether it's happening or not.
Another possibility is that the master could be wrong too. No soul,
no matter how evolved, while in human form is infallible. Master
might have eaten too many chapatis for breakfast and they weren't
agreeing with Him, so He actually had some indigestion, winced and his
head shook the wrong way. I mean, you know, I don't want to take it
too seriously. It's very serious in and of itself. It's the heaviest
thing going. But you can't get all weird about it.
Q. So each one of us has a mark for a particular master, like if I
came here and had the mark of another master, you wouldn't have
initiated me, would you? What happens if you do initiate somebody and
they have the mark of another master? Does it matter? Do you get
changed?
M. You see, here's the thing. Words like "mark" are just terms that
are used. This is language. This is how human beings communicate. I
tend to not be very visual. For me, my inner experiences have more
frequently been auditory. Occasionally I've seen dramatic visual
things, like when I experienced the Ocean of Love and Mercy for the
first time, which left me just muttering to myself - there's not a
whole lot you can say. But it's usually more intuitive, it's more
pure beingness.
So I don't look at people and see a "mark." It's not like that.
It's more like, a variety of people come to class and satsang, and
they bring with them a variety of interest levels, vibration levels,
harmonic things. I've learned through experience that people who are
really focused on new age consciousness can be fun and interesting,
but nine times out of ten they aren't ready for this path.
You also perceive, you can look at somebody and just know. If you're
doing the big trip, when you have big receiving lines and are giving
initiation to 2,000 people in one day you can know with a simple
glance. It doesn't matter whom they're marked for. You can see it in
their eyes. Are they ready for this path? Are they a wick that's
ready to be lit? Can they use some work? Or are they just trying to
be on an initiation bandwagon? Are they just trying to make their
physical life better, or do they really want to directly experience
soul and God, and work off their karma in this lifetime?
Most people aren't marked for any living master. Most folks have
grown up in karmic families of religions. They come around again and
again as Christians or Moslems or Jews, or Baptists, or Lutherans or
Catholics. These families stay together from lifetime to lifetime.
You can go through so many incarnations in just one sector, in just
one class, in one department of the University of Life. Single
lessons can take many incarnations, and you usually do them with the
same people over and over again. Role reversals with parents and
siblings happen a lot. You get different angles of perspective in
trying to really balance it out and learn from the experience. It's a
spiritual version of "roleplaying."
One recent example of cosmic roleplaying was when Hillary Clinton was
"talking" to Eleanor Roosevelt. The first spin on it I read in the
paper was that she was trying to channel Eleanor Roosevelt. But it
really was just a guided visualization. She would first be talking to
Eleanor; then she would reverse roles and be Eleanor talking back to
herself. This is an example of how we learn. It's a human aspect of
what happens in Spirit.
Most people in any given incarnational cycle are born into a
particular culture and its particular dominant religion, and they
generally work in conjunction with that religion to learn certain
lessons. Most are perfectly comfortable with their religion. They
are perfectly well-situated there.
Q. So they probably wouldn't even want initiation. They haven't
reached the point of homesickness where they want to go home yet.
M. Exactly. They're buds. They're flowers. They're not fruit yet.
You know what an apple tree looks like when it's blossoming. Before
they're flowers, they're buds; they are just starting to emerge. Then
they turn into a flower and do the whole flower thing. Then the
flower falls away and a piece of fruit comes out of it. And even when
they become fruit, there's still a long ripening process. Initiation
is at the very end. Before that, when you're in the middle fruit
stage, that's where you start getting into esoteric disciplines and
things like that. There's no rushing initiation.
Because people are so interested in all kinds of phenomenal
metaphysical things these days a lot of masters are requiring a longer
waiting period before granting initiation. Gurinder Singh (the living
master of Radhasoami Satsang Beas) mandates two years of study before
giving Naam. This is because they want people to get past the
intellectual curiosity, the infatuation, all these phases, and see if
they have the sticktuitiveness for the path.
It's a big deal, and yet it's not a big deal, in the sense that God
is infinitely patient and kind. We can take our time. There's no
rush to find the master. We just want to be as much in touch with God
as we possibly can, no matter where we are. When the time comes, we
know it, because there's a stronger level of interest. Some of you
have been in class for years, some a few months, or a couple of
weeks. But those of you who have been here a while have seen folks
who have come and gone, who have visited Monday night class, who have
an intellectual interest and are curious. They get off on it. They
might even think it's great. They want to join something that's
really cool. Yet what you find is that as the new seekers continue
coming to class, some find their interest growing, and others their
interest fading. The novelty wears off. They will all find me saying
pretty much the same things over and over again, maybe with some
slight variations, but remaining on the same theme - it's all part of
just one long jam that's going on.
Eventually the curiosity dies out, the infatuation dies out, and it
comes down to whether or not someone wants to hang out in this
environment with this group of people, with this teacher and this
teaching. Most important, do they want to hang out with this
teaching? Is this something that gets them off, that appeals to them
on a core interest level? As I've said before, people who simply come
to a satsang and never come back again, they're still helped
immeasurably. They are immersed in the radiation of God for just a
couple of hours in their lives, and even that one immersion is a
baptism. It will lift the visitors up and speed up their progress.
There's a saying in India that, if a master rides on a horse, the cow
whose body supplied the leather for the saddle on that horse will be
blessed with human form in it's next life. I suppose the same analogy
could be drawn that if you are immersed in Spirit and step on a
cockroach, it will come back as something greater.
These are all good questions. There's no problem in asking.
Q. It seems that, although on the surface there are phenomenal
aspects to this path (for instance, leaving your body to explore
different dimensions), what this path really does is move you toward
unphenomena.
M. That's a very good point. In some ways, this path is Zenlike.
It's like the line in that Donovan song, "First, there is a mountain.
Then there is no mountain. Then there is." You go from seeing things
as they appear, to seeing all the implications and permutations of
what they might be, going through the phase of how it's all illusion,
it's all a dream, nothing is real (and then you drop out). When
you're done going through that whole social detachment phase, you're
back to the realization that the mountain is real. It is as real as
your dreams, which are as real as everything else. They are all
wavicles. (It's a physics term, because light behaves as both a
particle and as a wave - it is an individual, and it's also part of
the whole - just like soul). These are all wavicles in the LightSong
of God.
Any other comments on the book, or any questions?
Q. Well the thing is, this really is the most logical answer. The
whole thing is logical.
M. Really? Why is it logical?
Q. Because it makes sense. If you say that God is all loving and has
nothing but love and mercy, then He just keeps giving you another
chance to come back and try it again. It makes more sense that way
than to say, "Well He loves you. But if you screw up, He's going to
burn you." What is this? This path offers a more logical answer to
religion in any respect than I have ever run across. I went to a lot
to churches, and I just stopped going to churches because I've never
had that one question answered, which is "What is it that I want?"
You answered that, and that was the most logical answer I've ever
gotten. It makes sense because I haven't had that feeling since.
M. What answer was that?
Q. You told me I wanted to go home. Nobody could answer that
question, until I met you.
M. Gee, thanks.
I'll say one thing in defense of religion. One thing I've found on
this path is that you can take an opinion in your life and find that
you will be showed the exact mirror image of it at some point, until
you learn the lesson that "no opinion" is the way to be. Just being
is the way to be. Paul Twitchell makes this point over and over in
"Stranger by the River" and his other books.
The real truth behind the hellfire damnation thing, is that the past
doesn't matter. Reincarnation is an illusion. All this stuff is an
illusion. The real question is: Where are you right now? Are you
right with God? Do you fear the Lord?
Now this is a concept I never got into until recently: fearing the
Lord. Then I saw the term used in Sant Mat literature, and thought to
myself, "Wait a second. This is really weird. What are they talking
about, because I don't believe in fear." But it struck me one time
that this whole "fear of God" thing is directed at people who worship
mind, will and self, which is a whole American idiom of
consciousness. There's the "great individual" mode in society,
somewhat atheistic, sort of a spiritual Horatio Algerism, of exalting
man over God, exalting mind over God - thinking "I can do it myself.
I don't need anybody's help." And of course there was that headline
in Time Magazine back in the Sixties: "God is dead." That was a huge
deal at one point.
To me, this concept of "fearing God" really means, "O man! Listen
for once. Just listen. You think you are so powerful. You think you
have power and authority and prestige, that you're in control. But
you're not. You are smaller than the tiniest dust speck in the
universes of God. The only reason you exist is because God allows it,
because God loves you. God can snap Its fingers and you would cease
to be. Not only would this universe cease to be, but even as souls we
would cease to be. We would be absorbed back into It, and have no
consciousness." There is something much, much, much bigger than man.
It is huge. It could squish you like a bug.
The thing is, our egos get so big, we think we're pretty cool. It is
true that we are souls and, as such, we are blessed children of the
Divine. But we should never, for a microsecond, think we're better
than God.
I would put it more that we should be in awe of God, and know that
It's uncontrollable. When I give initiation, I'm not trying to
control anything. There's no will involved. I'm just doing the best
I can to be listening to It when somebody asks for initiation or asks
questions. I'm not trying to impress anyone with my will. I just let
the winds of Divine Spirit fill my sails.
When is judgement day? Judgement day is every second of every day.
Of course there's more of it when you die because, when you do drop
this body you have to account for your stuff. I suppose that's part
of the emphasis of the "hellfire and brimstone" approach of "Are you
saved? Are you right with God?" If you were to die right now, where
would you be? Where would your attention be? That's the real thing,
more than somebody like Yama sitting in court evaluating your sins and
your blessings, your good and bad karma. If any of us were to die -
snap! - right now, where is our attention?
Yes?
Q. One of the books that I'm reading indicated that you could go
backwards, when you reincarnate, to being less than human. What would
you have to do to have this happen? Can you think of an example?
M. Anything's possible. Generally speaking, when you are on the
spiral of life and you come around to the point of having human form,
you are in the phase of learning human lessons and will most likely
remain there. Unless your incarnation immediately prior to this one
was in animal form, it is highly unlikely that you will regress - it's
very, very rare.
But what you're talking about is a certain eastern viewpoint that you
only getting once chance as human, then you go back to being a rock,
and a bug, and go through it again. That's how some people look at
the Wheel of 84 - that there are 8,400,000 species of life, and you've
got to hit every one, and then after you're human you're back to being
a tick. But that's not true. You don't have just one chance at being
human and meeting the Satguru before going back to animal form
again.
In terms of Sant Mat, this perspective can be traced to Kabir, who
dispensed with a lot of cultural biases and superstitions, and made
his students focus on this life they had right here and now. Kabir
was dealing with a lot of myths on both sides - Hindu and Moslem - in
the 15th Century India. He was dealing with Brahmins who had
attitudes, Pirs who had power and attitudes, and everybody was
superstitious and worshiping rocks and statues and stuff like that.
There's a great story about Kabir where his guru wanted him to get
some fresh milk to put in a little bowl in front of a statue he was
worshiping, for the statue to drink. So Kabir went out and found a
dead cow, and dragged it into his guru's courtyard. So here's this
dead cow lying in the courtyard, and the guru couldn't believe his
eyes. "What are you doing? I told you to get some milk!" Kabir
replied, "Well, you've got a dead idol on your altar. Why not get a
dead cow to offer it nonexistent milk for a nonexistent god?"
That was Kabir's style. You see, Kabir was living in a heavily
conflicted society. Moslems had invaded from the Middle East starting
around the 12th Century and were pretty much running things, and the
Hindu Brahmins were doing what they could to hang on to as much power
as possible. Basically, 15th, 16th and 17th Century India was similar
to a long-term version of Vichy France. All you all familiar with
Vichy France? Everybody here see "Casa Blanca," the movie? You guys,
those of you who don't know about Vichy France, you have been studying
your history in high school, because they talk about this. This is
important stuff.
In World War II the Germans overrode France and installed their own
government. Some of the French politicians and power brokers
cooperated with the Germans and participated in what became known as
the Vichy government, hence "Vichy France." They maintained their
levels of power by accommodating the invading superpower. At the same
time, there were people in the resistance who were fighting the
Nazis. A good example (cinematically, at least) is Paul Henreid's
character in "Casa Blanca" who was leading the resistance and trying
to get Humphrey Bogart's help in leaving French Morocco which, because
of the Vichy government in France, was also under Nazi control. It's
a tremendous movie on many levels, definitely one of the top ten best
ever made.
The point is, in Kabir's time India was in a similar situation. The
Moslems were running things. They overrode India. They were the
power structure. Anybody who got in their way, they killed, and
usually not in a pleasant fashion. One of the later Sikh gurus was
roasted alive on a hot plate. They had peculiar ways of teaching
people lessons back then. We think things are bad now with taxes and
"black helicopter" and stuff - hey, I'll take a black helicopter over
being roasted alive on a hot plate, thank you very much.
So Kabir was dealing with Brahmins in India who were like the Vichy
government. They were doing what they could to accommodate the
Moslems, and the Moslems were doing their thing. Kabir, being a poor
Moslem weaver in essentially a Brahmin neighborhood, was pretty much
an outcast from both groups. So he got right in their faces, saying,
"You both are nuts. None of this matters." He looked at His Indian
friends who believed in reincarnation and said, "When is your next
human life? This human birth is a rare opportunity. You might not
get it again." This was also partly the Islamic influence coming in,
because Moslems put particular stress on this life and your after-
death judgement. It was also Kabir just getting very serious, saying,
"It is here. It is now. You might not get this human birth again.
If you do, who knows when it will happen. This is your chance right
now to achieve self-realization, God-realization and spiritual
freedom. Who knows when your next human life will be? Who knows what
will happen ten minutes from now? What are you doing with your life
right now? Where is your attention right now? How many breaths do
you have left before the Lord takes you home? Only the Lord knows how
many breaths you have. Are you going to waste a bunch of them? Are
you going to party? Are you going to pursue all these mindless
things?"
Kirpal Singh said, "O man, look at yourself. O mind, listen for
once." Quit running around. What are you running after, or from?
Before you know it, your life's going to be over. Pink Floyd put it
this way, "And then one day you find ten years have gone behind you.
No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun." Blink
your eyes and a decade's passed. I can't believe I'm going to be 38
this year (1996), which according to the average lifespan means that
my life is nearly halfway over. Thirty-five, forty, forty-five years
isn't that long. Looking back I can remember most of it so far, and
if I just flip it forward I can figure that I have about as much time
left to live as I've already lived. I think this is part of the
source for people's midlife crises.
So the question is, are you going to sit around and waste your time,
or are you going to avail yourself to find a Satguru in this life and
get initiation into Naam? Put your attention on Naam. Do the
spiritual practices. If you take initiation in this lifetime, you may
not get all the way home before dropping the body. But you are
guaranteed that, when you do reincarnate, it will be in human form,
and you will come to the Master of the time.
That's the important thing. Everything that's in the past doesn't
matter. Throw it away. Forget about it. For all you know, every
memory we have of our past lives, if we believe in past lives, is an
illusion, it's a fantasy. It's a dream that our minds mocked up to
make sense out of this life. It's like somebody once said. Maybe
Atlantis never existed. It might have been another planet. It might
have been a story that came from another planet. It might have been
another dimension. It might have been the island of Tera (now called
Santorini) in the Mediterranean. We don't know. It doesn't matter.
Q. I like what Gary Olsen said at the talk we went to. He said,
"It's depressing to be hung up on past lives. Look where you are
today. You got here based on your past lives. They couldn't have
been better than this one; and they were probably really depressing."
And everybody in the audience laughed.
M. Exactly. That's why I sometimes joke about it. It's like
everybody waiting for the big "earth changes." In fact, this is
really funny. There was an Islamic holy man here in Tucson a week ago
speaking at a local hotel. He was teaching a mystical version of
Islam, progressive and focused on spiritual unity. So he was opening
up for questions, and somebody got up and starting asking, "What about
all of the earth changes? Do you have this mission because of the
earth changes going on?" As she was saying this, the interpreter - an
English barrister, with a Pakistani background - said,"Excuse me? I'm
not sure what you're talking about?" So she goes on saying, "Well,
like you know, the earth changes and everything. Are you part of the
aliens and UFO's and this whole thing?"
Now I was sitting there, trying to contain myself. I wanted to get
up and say to the interpreter, "Excuse me. I think I can explain what
she's talking about very simply. She's talking about this myth that
the earth's going to blow up on New Year's Eve 1999. It's going to be
a big party and UFO's are going to come down, and it's going to be the
second coming of Christ, and all this stuff. So what she wants to
know is, is your mission - your outreach to all religions, making
unity in all religions - part of this?" But I didn't want to be out of
line, so I didn't speak up. They finally kind of figured out what she
was saying, but it still left the teacher perplexed.
There are so many people right now who are bored. They have
frustrating lives. They work at 7-11's, or as secretaries, or
mechanics. They are roofers, or hot tar roofers (even worse in
Arizona). They are bored CPA's and lawyers and nurses and line cooks,
dishwashers. Hey, Brother Lawrence talked about practicing the
presence of God through washing dishes in the monastery, and how we
could find spiritual lessons and meaning in whatever we do, no matter
how apparently mundane. It's a good story, and lesson.
Q. I want to speak in defense of these people, because at one point I
was there in some ways. And I think it's that their own spiritual
life is coming, and that will be a dramatic and holistic change in
their lives. So they project it outward and think that it's going to
be in the physical.
M. This is very true. But that is the purpose of the Master. People
get so much misinformation and extrapolated information coming through
that people's imaginations take over and they think about all this
stuff. One of the points that I wanted to make regarding life being
boring is that most people lead pretty desperate, boring lives. So
they want something that's phenomenal, that's going to make them
special, because they don't feel good about themselves. They feel
they lead the life of drudgery.
Gurinder Singh says so well that this is not our home. We are a long
way from home. We are stranded on this outpost called "earth," and
we're trying to make the best out of it. We don't believe our own
wisdom, and so we mock up a channeling experience, or maybe we do
channel somebody. Or we think that we're going to just wait for the
earth changes to happen in a few years. Or we'll devise a new lunar
calendar that has a thirteen-month year, instead of a twelve-month
year, and it's based on the Mayans and the Mayans have to be holier
than us because they're not here anymore (some "channeled wisdom"
claims they vibrated to a higher frequency and left earth behind -
wow!) and they were really groovy. They weren't American (in the USA
sense) so they must have been much more spiritual than we are.
People live and they die. I don't care what era you live in.
Basically, in terms of lifestyle, in terms of things available, in
terms of medicine and everything else, this is the best it's ever been
- our technology, our understanding of nutrition. Sure we screw up a
little bit with artificial flavorings, medical mistakes and scientific
faux pas, but that's just science, that's just mind getting in the
way. We're figuring it out. Give us a few decades and we'll realize
that some things aren't a good idea. For instance, pre-sliced, pre-
packaged white bread was a wonderful, convenient product when it came
out a few decades ago - but then we found that it's a nutritional
vacuum and can lead to colon problems. So now there's a new trend of
psyllium husks and things, and trying to eat more whole grains. You
learn from the past. I don't know if we're more spiritual than any
other historical incarnation - or less. It's just an ongoing
continuity.
Q. You know, in relation to what you were just saying, that we really
are in a very evolved time. God promised in His Bible - I'm not
trying to be biblical or Christian or anything - that we would all
live like kings. And I realize that there's a lot of things that may
not be that great, but there are so many things that are really
positive. We have more comforts than a king did 200 years ago, or
even a hundred years ago. So God really is keeping his promise, with
the computer age and everything. I really believe that God is opening
up doors closer to His kingdom than we could have ever imagined.
M. There are a couple of things I'd like to say about that. I
basically agree with you, though at the same time we have so many
luxuries we tend to turn our minds away from God. We have more toys
with which to fill our time, more distractions, and more of a
consumeristic acquisitional mode. They are more ways of filling our
lives and avoiding ourselves.
Overall, what you're saying chimes in with what Kirpal would say, and
Sawan said this too. We are in an unprecedented time of the
information age. They didn't call it the information age back in the
Sixties when Kirpal was teaching, but that's basically what He meant
when He said that these days we have the benefit of so many religions
that have come from the past. Five hundred years ago, there were no
Sikhs. Fifteen hundred years ago, there were no Moslems. Two
thousand years ago, there were no Christians. Twenty-five hundred
years ago, there were no Buddhists.
We have the benefit of all the masters who have come in the past,
and, because of the globalization of consciousness, we have an
incredible blessing of being able to see the unifying principle in all
these faiths. They are not bounded by region anymore. It's just like
how trade opened up communication lines between different cultures
centuries ago (Marco Polo, for instance). Even the Moslems armies,
during their invasion of India in the 11th through 14th Centuries,
brought a tremendous amount of culture. They were able to moderate
some of the caste systems in India. They brought the unifying
principle of a single, monotheistic God, which contributed to the
birth to the Sikh religion, along with notable mystics such as Kabir,
Namdev, Ravidas, Mira Bai and other great souls. The influence of
Sufi mysticism uplifted Indian culture, and contained within itself
the seeds of Sant Mat. As I mentioned some time ago, before the
lineage of Light and Sound Masters arose in India, it's home was the
Middle East, expounded by such spiritual luminaries as Jelaluddin Rumi
and his Master, Shams I Tabriz.
Now what you have as a plus is the benefit in this century of two
incredibly great masters, Sawan Singh and Kirpal Singh, who were not
only spiritual giants among men, even giants among spiritual teachers,
but also comparative religious scholars. They made it their life's
work to know several languages and be able to be equally conversant in
Islamic theory, Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, a
whole variety of religions, so they could speak to the world,
anticipating where we are today. Sawan Singh was already talking
about the universality of these teachings, whose seeds were sown by
Soamiji in the 19th Century. He was anticipating the information
being spread out around the globe, with people coming to Dera Baba
Jaimal Singh and being able to speak to them within the context of
their religion, saying to them, "You're a Christian. That is good.
This is how Naam is reflected in Christianity." or "This is how Naam
is reflected in Islam, or Judaism." Some wonderful books on this
subject include "Naam or Word," by Kirpal Singh, "Philosophy of the
Masters," by Sawan Singh, and "Path of the Masters," by Julian
Johnson.
One of the neatest things when we saw the Islamic teacher last week
was when they had questions and answers at the end. I was trying to
find a good question to ask him, and the one I came up with was, "What
is the essence of the Moslem term 'Kalam I Ilahi.'" It's one of the
many Moslem terms for the Holy Word. Kirpal Singh referred to it
frequently.
First he talked about the theory of it, and then he got all excited.
He started talking really fast and the other guy was translating as
fast as he could. "It is not in the head. It is not in the books.
It is not the word you find in the books. It is the word in the chest
of the Masters. It is what comes out of them. It is Holy Word..."
He was just, he was bubbling.
This is the great blessing, that we can look at this and have the
incredible blessing and benefit of masters who come from all
cultures. We live in an age now where, not only do we have
information available for public consumption, but on the Internet we
are communicating around the world about these teachings. Moreover, I
can get holy books like "The Bible" and the "Adi Granth Sahib" (the
holy scriptures of the Sikh's) on CD-ROM. I can even download it off
the Internet. In that sense, we are living in an incredibly
remarkable age.
Just between you and me, changes are happening on the planet. But
here's the secret: they have always been happening, and they will
always be happening. We live in the plane of duality, of constant
changes, some slow, some abrupt. Nature's big storms and abrupt
changes can be awful, but they an also have us in awe of powers
greater than our little selves and our lives. Changes in the physical
world can bring us together, to help each other, and they can bring us
to remembering that which is much, much greater than ourselves.
But these are really miraculous times we are in. The word of the
Word is getting out.
Baraka Bashad....with love,
Michael
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SFS
alt.meditation.shabda
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