Kirpal Singh

The Master speaks: The Real Reality

I

The Awakened Souls see the world in its true colours. They see from the level of the spirit, immanent in the world. But what do we do? We see it topsy-turvy. Why? We are not yet awakened to the Reality. The Reality in us is yet confined and cribbed in the body. We have not been able to separate the soul in us from the body. Hence, we look at the world from the physical level only. This is the great hiatus between the two ways of looking at the world. We have taken the physical mould as something real and, as such, the physical world around, too, seems to be real. The scriptures, however, tell us that the world is unreal. By Reality they mean what is eternal, unchangeable, and permanent – Sat. 

The worldly-wise say: 

If there is any paradise on the face of the earth, it is here. Oh, it is here and nowhere else.

They generally tell us: 

Sweet are the pleasures of this world; who knows what lies in the beyond.

Babar, the first Mughal Emperor of India, would open his drinking bouts with his favourite expression: 

Oh Babar! drink life to the lees. Who knows when we may not be.

This is an Epicurean way of looking at life – eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow ye may die. This, then, is one way of looking at life. The other is that of the Sages and Seers. They do not speak from the level of intellect. They do not give philosophical dissertations. They are, however, very good observers. They speak from the level of common-sense. They see the world drifting into changing colours. They look at our pitiable condition, and from the anguish of Their heart give a clarion call to stop where we are. 

Man, like a coin, has two sides. He is an embodied soul. The soul is his Real Self, but the body is not though he possesses it. The body is the valuable possession of the human soul that dwells in it. It is the temple of God. It has a Divine Purpose to fulfil. And what is that purpose? It is to solve the riddle of life – the Life-Principle, responsible for the creation of the universe. One can certainly know this Life-Impulse if he were to search for it within himself. How can one do it? One Who has Himself solved this riddle can help us to do likewise. 

It is a matter of common observation that human life does not run smoothly. We are the play-thing of what we call chance. Everyday we pass through various vicissitudes of life. We are ever revolving in the wheel of life. There is not a single soul who is happy with his lot. 

Kabir tells us: 

Being in the flesh, no one is happy; I have not seen one who may be really happy.

As we have identified our Self with the body, the ever-changing body, we cannot be truly happy. 

Nanak also says likewise: 

Oh Nanak! the whole world is in the throes of sorrows and sufferings.

The Real Happiness then comes from right understanding of the True Values of life. Everyone is in affliction of one kind or another. Some are suffering from physical ailments: some from indigence and poverty, penury and want; some from mental obsession, memories of past regrets and fears for the future. 

When questioned if anyone was happy, the Great Teacher replied: 

Yes, one who is devoted wholly and solely to the service of a Saint.

We must then know what distinguishes a Saint from others. One who has resolved the enigma of life is a Saint, for He looks on the world from the level of soul. He is gifted with correct perception and, as such, is always happy and so also those who remain in His company. 

We know a lot about our physical Self. We are sentient beings. We are the living temples of God. We are nothing but microgods. We are endowed with the same attributes as of God, though these may be on a smaller scale. We are the children of God, but unfortunately we are beset with mind and the senses. We do not know that the Self in us is enlivening the body, and it is in the light of that Self that we live, move about, and have our very being. The body, mind, and intellect all depend for their very working on the Light of the Atman. This is what we have to realise, and the sooner we do it the better it would be for us. If we do not do this, we would ever be in difficulties. Unfortunately, we have reversed the order of things. The sense-enjoyments have taken hold of the senses; and the senses, in their turn, have captivated the mind. Again, the mind has the intellect in its control. Behind them all is the Self, the rider in the body which is being swiftly whirled by the powerful steeds of the senses, out of control of the mind and the intellect. We have, therefore, to apply a reverse gear. For this art, we require the help of a Gurumukh – a really worshipful disciple of the Master. Those who realise the need for reversion or recession always pray: 

Oh Lord! grant us the company of a Gurumukh, a close contact with a Sadh (Disciplined Soul) and dye us in the fast colour of Naam. Oh my Beloved, take me to such Souls in Whose company we may think of nothing else but Thee.

This, then, is the only way. For right guidance we have to approach the God-Power in us; and this Power, in its turn, would direct the intellect in the right direction. Enlightened by the God-Power, intellect would control the sense-ridden mind. This is how the human machinery is to be set right. We are the living soul in the body. 

Kabir tells us: 

Oh Kabir! the soul is from God.

And again, 

The Self belongs to the house of God.

The soul then has quite a high birth and a proud lineage; but unluckily it has fallen in love with the material mind and has thus debased and disfigured itself beyond recognition, all forgetful of its Real Source. 

When we come across an Awakened Person, we surrender our intellect unto Him. Under His guidance, the intellect grows stronger from day to day and begins to judge things aright. Then we begin to hear the small little Voice in us – the Voice of Conscience. At every step It gives us a correct lead. If we attend to this little Voice of Conscience, all goes well with us. But when we bypass this imperial wall, its Voice gradually grows dimmer and dimmer until we cease to hear It altogether. This means going – back to the old way of life which irresistibly takes us into the fields of sense-enjoyments. And, once again, we find ourselves into difficulties. 

A True Devotee of a Saint sets his house in order. He does not put the cart before the horse. This then is the right understanding. All people in the world are dyed in the colour of the world. When the Awakened Souls come, They address not to others but to themselves – Their own body and mind. The body is our first companion when we come into the world. Then along with it there are the bodily senses; and they, too, are to be addressed and admonished: 

Oh my body, what hath thou earned since thy advent into the world?

We come into the world for self-realisation and God-Realisation. If we do not do this, we are no better than sheep and goats that nourish a blind life in the brain. The body and bodily adjuncts like mind, intellect, and the Pranas cannot help us in this respect. It is only the Atman, the sentient being in us, that can apprehend the Power of God working in the body and keeping the body and Soul together. 

My Master, Hazur Baba Sawan Singh, used to illustrate this point very beautifully by a parable of a monkey and a goat. 

The housewife would milk her cow and go out to attend to her household chores. In her absence, the clever monkey, though tied with a long rope, could yet manage to go near the pail, drink the milk, and then smear the goat’s mouth with milk. When the lady saw the pail empty, she would, mistaking the goat for a culprit, give him a beating. The monkey would sit quietly and enjoy the scene.

This is what happens with us in everyday life. The intellect is being led by the mind and the senses into the wrong direction; and the Jiva-Atman, as enveloped in the intellect, suffers the consequences of the acts committed by the mind. It is thus the embodied soul that bears the ill effects imputed to it through the courtesy of the cunning mind. The world is a play of the mind, and mind alone is responsible for our deeds. 

Let us for a moment think over the way we come into the world. Can we say how this body came into being? Every offspring takes after the fashion of his own species. What is there to give shape, substance, and form to the seed in the body? There is some Power that does this. We have to know this Power and to get into touch with It. This we can do only in the human form. Thus their appeal, the appeal of the Enlightened Ones, proceeds to their own bodily senses: 

Oh my eyes, God has placed the Light of Life behind you; it is now incumbent upon you not to see anything else but the Light of God. Oh my ears, God has placed the Divine Harmony (Sat Bani) behind you. It is, therefore, necessary for you to listen to nothing but the Voice of God.

The ancients speak of Sat Bani as the Music of the Spheres. This music is going on eternally. The Voice of God has been reverberating in all the ages and speaks of the True One. Though the Music of the Spheres is going on all the time, we are not conscious of It. How to get a conscious contact is the next question.

The scriptures tell us: 

The Word of the Master is immanent in the entire creation; it emanates from God, and God Himself (in the form of Godman) makes it manifest wheresoever He willeth.

Again it is said: 

Whosoever gets in touch with It safely ferries o’er and gains Life Eternal.

Coming back to the appeal of the Enlightened Persons to Themselves, we have: 

Oh my palate, thou hath endlessly been enjoying the pleasures of the tongue and yet have never felt satiated.

The most delectable and the most palatable thing in the world is the ambrosia of Naam or the Holy Word. The Saints tell us that we should take delight in taking this Elixir of Life instead of running perpetually after sense-pleasures. We are overflowing with all kinds of impressions coming from earth-life and, as such, are leading merely a superficial life on the surface of our being, far removed from the centre of our being. Even when in the dreamland, we are haunted by worldly objects. Why is it so? Simply because we never had an opportunity to tap inside. And we have never known what we are and who we are. We love the world because of our love for the body and the bodily needs. We have never realised that the beauty of the body is due to the soul in it. The moment the life-currents are withdrawn, the body becomes a heap of dust and loses all its charm: 

So long as the soul dwells in the body, the body remains in fine trim; the moment the soul leaves the body, worldly possessions become of no consequence.

Thus we see that the world and worldly riches hold out their charm only when we are living in the body. The Enlightened Souls try to bring home Eternal Truths to us in so many different ways. They come neither to build nor to demolish any social order or religious formation. They only try to place before us the right perspective of life. They tell us to remain where we are, socially and religiously, but not all the time on the level of the senses. The senses lead us into a wrong direction, and we generally become the slaves of the senses. They tell us the correct values of life and wish us to take full advantage of the human birth, which occupies a place on the top rung of the ladder. With all our spectacular advancement in science and technology, we are yet far away from happiness. 

A Muslim Divine in this context says: 

There is but one aim and one purpose of all education, the aim and purpose being that one should know one’s Self. Thou evaluates the cost and worth of everything; what a pity! you know not your own value and worth.

We are very wise and know a lot about our physical being and how to keep it fit and fine. In the realm of intellect as well, we have taken tremendous strides. We are busy investigating the inter-planetary systems. The knowledge of the Reality is quite a different thing, and we have never tried to probe into it nor do we know the means to do so. The scriptures cannot help us in this matter. But an Awakened Individual, even if He is not learned, can give us an insight into it. And if the Awakened Soul is adorned with learning, the learning gives Him an added embellishment, for He can present to us the Truth in so many different ways as a spiritual academician would do. 

Bulleh Shah, a seeker after God, went to Shah Inayat, an Arian Faqir – a farmer by profession –, and inquired from Him as to how one could find God. At that time Shah Inayat was busy in transplanting some plants from one place to another. 

The Faqir replied: 

My friend, you have simply to change the direction of your attention from one side to the other – 

from world to God. 

If we are really in search of God, we will have to do this. God is the substratum of the world. The science of soul and God is not as difficult as we think or as our priests have made it. In all empirical knowledge, we have to work on certain hypotheses; but in God-Knowledge, we have to start with self-analysis. We have to separate the material body from the non-material soul. And this is done by concentrating the soul currents at the eye-focus. It is both simple and natural, and it is at once the most ancient and the most modern. In this scientific age, it is presented in a scientific fashion. The Saints move with the time and have to express Themselves in the language of the time. We are already living in the physical, astral, and causal worlds at one and the same time. But, unfortunately, we are aware of our physical existence only. There is, however, in us the possibility to traverse into the astral and causal worlds as well; and to transcend into the beyond if we will. 

In this life, we want to solve the riddle of the universe; but we are going the wrong way. The Evolved Souls come time and again to apply the reverse gear to our mad career in the world. We hardly pay any attention to Them and much less try to understand Them. 

The blessed Lord Krishna, after having explained to his warrior disciple and friend Arjuna, said: 

Have you heard what I have said? Has my talk gone deep in your heart? Do you feet at home with what I have said? How far have you escaped from the delusion of the world? See for yourself as to where you now stand.

In the present age – Kali Yuga – there has been no dearth of Sages and Seers.

We have before us the psalm of Guru Nanak: 

In this juggler’s play of the world, he alone is happy who drinks the Elixir of Naam; and the rest, being in the grip of desires, do deeds of darkness and carry a heavy load on their heads.

This world, says Guru Nanak, is a sleight of hand from the great magician. It is all a magic show with no reality in it. We are living in a grand delusion where things are not what they seem to be. This magic show begins from our body. We consider the body as the be-all and end-all of human existence. We never for a moment think that there is some Motor-Power behind us. When once this Power withdraws from the body, the whole play comes to an end. All of us are taken in by this empty show. 

Kabir tells us: 

When a juggler juggles about, people come around to see the play.

We, one and all, are running after the play of the world. We are flowing with the current of time – some laughing and some wailing. When a child is born, the people feel elated and celebrate his advent with gaiety, not knowing that some soul has been entrapped and enchained. 

Again, Kabir says: 

A soul enchained to the body can never be happy.

If one were to learn how to transcend body consciousness, one begins to know what is liberation. Here a question might arise as to why God became a trickster. This question may better be asked from One Who has played the trick. He wished it and so it happened. From One He wanted to become many. 

Nanak tells us: 

From One, myriads of currents flowed, creating the entire creation in so many forms and colours.

Our question is why the creation is on the level of the senses. When we are able to merge into the will of the Creator, then alone we can know why He willed it so. It may even be added that all such questions would end when that stage is reached. On the level of the intellect, we cannot say whether the seed or the tree first came into being. The intellect fails to answer this question. If, at all, you want to know it – the secret behind the creation – you will have to rise above body, mind, and intellect. 

The great Teacher is trying to bring home to us Truth. What we consider as eternal and permanent – body, mind, and intellect – is not so. 

Once a person came to a Divine and said: Oh Holy Man, a person is breaking away with his last life-breaths. The Divine inquired: What is his age? The gentleman replied: Seventy-two years. The Divine said: What are you saying my friend? The ailing person has been breaking away with his life-breaths for all these years. There is nothing strange if he is now finally doing away with what is yet left.

Just consider when a child grows in age. His parents feel delighted as he adds another year to his life. They do not know the fact that the child, instead of adding anything to his age, is losing it year by year. We are all in a state of continuous delusion. 

Kabir beautifully describes our wrong notions about the world and the worldly things: 

The still point in the swiftly revolving wheel, in spite of its extreme velocity, appears to be stationary; and when the water in the milk is fully evaporated by boiling, the residue is said to be Khoya (lit. lost though actually it is the real substance – milk-cake); an orange so beautiful in colour is called na-rangi (lit. colourless); seeing such delusive scenes, Kabir could not but shed tears of remorse.

As said before, the delusion begins with our wrong conception of the human body, which we consider to be permanent while it is not. How can we get the real conception of this? Only when we, by a practical process of self-analysis, get an actual out-of-body experience. It is then that we know that the body is not something permanent, and it has got to be vacated one day whether we will it or not. Until this experience comes through practical demonstration, we cannot know the impermanent nature of the body. Have we not carried these bodies on our shoulders to the cremation grounds or burial places? But with all that we never for a moment think that we, too, will have to leave the body one day. Isn’t it a great delusion? 

Nanak, therefore, says: 

Oh Nanak! without analysing the Self from the body, we cannot get out of the veil of delusion.

We have not the least control over our mind and our senses. We are merely their slaves and dance to their tunes. No doubt, eyes cannot but see and ears cannot but hear. But this seeing and hearing is just of a superficial nature. We have no control over them. We must know how to perceive and how to understand and when to do so at our will. But, unfortunately, we have not yet become the master of the house in which we are living. Our conscious attention is just slipping out and flowing into the world. We are adrift on the sea of life, rudderless and steerless. We have not developed any roots in us. It is, therefore, of paramount importance to direct and channel our attention in the right direction. We must know where the roots of life lie in us or, in other words, where the seat of the soul is. Man is like an inverted tree with its roots upwards at the eye-focus and branches, limbs, stretching downwards. So we have to invert our attention from downwards to upwards. All acts on the plane of senses, whether good or bad, will keep us down in bondage. But when we learn to live in the Light and Life of God, then the Reality and the real nature or things will dawn on us. 

This living in the Light of Life is what matters the most. It gives us right understanding and correct lead. It takes us from untruth to Truth, from darkness to Light, and from death to Immortality.

While living in the body and leading the life of the body, we cannot understand what is what. We come into the world simply to score our old accounts of give and take. All our relationships – father and son, husband and wife, mother and daughter, brother and sister, and vice versa – are the result of past karmic reactions. It is said that the pen of destiny moves in accordance with our deeds. What we sow we must reap. We come with fate writ in our forehead: Even the body itself is the result of our karmas, and it is rightly said to be Karmansharir. It is the destiny that casts our mould. Without body there can be no deeds, and without deeds there can be no body. It, therefore, behoves us happily to pass our days and ungrudgingly give what we have to and what we must, for there is no escape from it. We have, of course, to be careful not to create new relationships and sow fresh seeds. This is the only way to get out of the abysmal depths of the karmic ocean. 

This world is a pantomime show. It is a stage on which we come, play our part, and then depart. Why has this stage been set? Nobody can say. We can, however, go to the stage director to understand the purpose and plan of stage-setting. There is some Power that is upholding all this play, and we are mere actors or puppets on the stage of life. We cannot, however, escape from this stage until the part allotted to us is performed. He alone knows how long this play is to last and in what way each one of us is gathered up. The rich and the poor alike have to quit sooner or later, each in his own turn, and carry the load of his deeds – good or bad – with him. 

The purpose of human life is to know the secret of life. But, strange as it may seem, we remain indifferent to it. We bring with us quite a heavy load of karmas in the form of destiny or fate, leaving behind a large storehouse of deeds sown and garnered in the distant past to be utilised in the distant future in course of time. The destiny or fate has, of course, to be gone through with smiles or tears, as the case may be. While doing so, we unfortunately go on adding to our storehouse by sowing fresh seeds in the present span of life. Thus we are forging, from day to day, new chains with which to bind ourselves.

Is then there no way of escape from this intricate karmic web? The Saints tell us that there is a Way out. If we could but understand the law and the will of God, we cease to be the doer of deeds. Then we would see the invisible hand of God working in all directions. In this way from doer we become mere seers or onlookers. Acts alone do not amount to guilt unless they are accompanied by a guilty mind. Once we rise above the mind and transcend all the mental zones, we outstrip all the contagion of the deeds lying in store. In the Light and Life of God, all the unfructified karmic seeds become infructuous. On the contrary, we delight in enjoying the sense-pleasures, little knowing that they, in their turn, eat into the very vitals of our system.

The Hindi word Ann, food, means what is eaten and what eats away. Have we ever realised that in course of time we become so weak and incapacitated by constant use of our senses that the senses themselves refuse to take any delight in the sense-objects. We always try to pamper the body and bodily senses as if they are with us eternally. Herein lies the great delusion. 

Desires are the root cause of all our troubles. What the mind wishes is a kind of desire, Kaam. When we feel, rightly or wrongly, that there is some hurdle in getting our desire fulfilled, we often get angry, Krodh. The more there is delay in getting the thing desired, the more we long and pine for it. This is called greed, Lobh. When once, by fair or foul means, we get hold of the thing desired, we hug it and do not want to part with it. This is termed attachment or infatuation, Moh. When the thing desired is in our possession, we begin to gloat over it and ascribe the success to our own endeavours. This connotes egotism, for one claims the thing in his own right and refuses to be thankful to God – the Giver of all gifts. I-ness and my-ness coupled with extreme selfishness are the essence of egoism and egotism, both being born from ego. This is styled as Ahankar or victory of the little self in us. In this way we are, all the time, engaged in getting and spending, unconsciously doing shameless deeds of rapine and snobbery. 

The question before us is not of religion nor of society. It is one of right understanding and proper evaluation of things of the world. All our acts and deeds are but for one purpose – the purpose being to secure ease and comfort for our body. We judge everything on this touch-stone. A husband loves his wife not for her sake but for himself. Similarly, a wife loves her husband not for his sake but for herself. We love the children so that they may be of some help to us in our old age. There is nothing wrong in wealth and riches. It is only the use to which these are put – selfish or otherwise in selfless service and the way in which these are earned, which determine quality and value, and also their effect on the earner.

We generally spend our wealth for our personal comforts and to satisfy our needs. Truly speaking, one does not need much to live. We, unnecessarily, go on expanding our desires and create a kind of subtle web around us. And for what? Just for a brief span of time in which we have to live. Life is a great struggle. We have to struggle with our minds and senses. We have to struggle for right understanding of things instead of flowing down with the current of time with no foothold or handhold to steady ourselves.

An Awakened Soul cannot but pity our condition and out of compassion give us a piece of His mind. They speak in aphoristic terms full of deep meaning in them. They talk to us in parables and stories to bring home to us our faults and shortcomings. They tell us that this world is a puppet show and there is some Power behind us whereby we move. But with all Their teachings and preachings, we continue to tread the same old Path as before. We do not try to understand the will and purpose of the Power behind us. If we do so, we can easily escape the magnetic field of karmas. 

The problem of karmas is very complicated (see ‘The Wheel of Life’ for an exhaustive explanation of the subject); karmas continue to dog us from age to age. Time is a stern arbiter. All our deeds make an indelible impression on the tablet of time, and the mind working in the time cannot but draw upon those impressions. 

Of King Dhritrashtra, the congenitally blind progenitor of the Kaurvas, it is said that he could read back his past one hundred incarnations but could not say as to why he suffered blindness when he had a clean slate for all these lives. Lord Krishna then placed his hand on the head of the blind king to enable him, with the help of his own yogic powers, to penetrate further back to find out as to when and to what deed he could ascribe this calamity. It was then that the king was able to say that his blindness was the reaction of a particular action committed in one of the incarnations beyond the hundred of which he was originally not aware. 

We simply see the effect of our past karmas on the present screen of life and remain ignorant of the causes set going in the past, may be in this life or in some previous incarnation, and are thus taken aback. These effects come so suddenly and swiftly that we get flabbergasted. Our desires and longings are at the root of all our karmas. This is why Buddha, the Enlightened One, laid emphasis on desirelessness. In fact, all Saints say so, each in His own words. 

Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth in line of succession to Guru Nanak, said: Cut yourself away from desires.

In the time of Akbar the Great, there was, in his council of Ministers, one Wali Ram. It was customary with the ministers to stand in attention when the king came to preside over his council of ministers. It so happened that one day a scorpion got into the toga of Wali Ram. As he was standing in attention, the scorpion stung Wali Ram at different places as it moved. The minister silently bore the agony and kept standing erect so as to maintain the decorum of the royal court.

When the king sat on the throne, Wali Ram, with folded hands, came forward before the imperial majesty and said: Oh king, I have been thy slave for all these years. Little does your majesty know that I have been stung by the scorpion so many times but could not for all that raise my little finger to throw the scorpion down for fear of violating the court etiquette. Saying this, Wali Ram tore his mantle and ran out of the court to serve the King of kings, the Lord God. Akbar felt sorry to lose such a wise minister as Wali Ram. He sent his courtiers to recall Wali Ram. But now Wali Ram was not the Wali Ram of old. He refused to come back. Then the king himself went to persuade him but in vain. 

The king in all humility wanted to confer some rare boon upon his old minister who had served him so well for so many years. He inquired as to what he could do for him. Wali Ram replied, Oh mighty king, all I beg of you is to spare your shadow from over me. I am grateful to you for the royal patronage that you so kindly extended to me, but now I am a free man and I do not need any more royal favours.

It is such like incidents that bring about a sudden change in the way of one’s thinking. With an awakening like this, one feels like one liberated from the bondage of the world.