Enter at the strait Gate

II

How can anyone at the sense-level, who has become the very image of the senses, rise above them? The True Masters want to show us the True Path, but man starts analysing and opposing Their words with his limited knowledge and understanding. Can the soul leave the body at will? It is an imposing question. But the Masters tell us that it can; and if you do not believe this, then close your eyes and see.

Tulsi Sahib says,

Just look beyond the curtain of darkness.

But people go on sitting in samadhi for years without breaking through this darkness, when following other methods.

Tulsi Sahib then says,

To penetrate through this darkness, meet a Master of the Science.

With the Master’s attention, the darkness will be torn apart and the Light revealed. The company of such a Master is called Satsang. But in the profusion of public talks given by various speakers, these facts are not mentioned. Why? Because a certain seeker may demand, ‘Give me that of which you speak!’ For this reason silence is kept about this Great Science.

The full force of attention from the beyond only a certain Master possesses; oh Tulsi, the world knows nothing of this, for the Beloved’s Path is highly elevated.

It is a long and narrow way, which only the pure can travel.

A Gurumukh sees with His eye, for His eye is open.

Do not believe until your eye is opened, and you can see for yourself.

I cannot believe even the Guru’s words, unless I see with my own eye.

Up to the present day, this is the teaching which has been given by all Masters, for the science of the Inner Way is one.

Mira Bai said,

I heard about the soul leaving the body and traversing the heavens; but since I came to the feet of Ravi Das, I now know it is true.

It is the True Path – a dealing in diamonds and jewels, and whoever practises it becomes a Spiritual Millionaire. Namdev Ji said once that His value was not more than four sea shells, but that He had become a millionaire. Masters are known as the True Emperors.

Within you is a mine of Amrit.

Understand the science, and then practise it. If you continue with outer practices, your coming and going in creation will continue. Remember, since many aeons past, when we first left the Lord’s lap, we have not up to now returned to that sublime state. Due to ignorance of the Truth, we have spent all our time indulging in cunning, vanity, pride of knowledge, etc.

In this respect, Christ said,

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.

Why so difficult for the rich man? Because his attention is more scattered, more dispersed into the worldly things.

The body comes with us into this worldly life, but does not accompany us when we leave, and neither does the accumulation of goods and chattels that we call our possessions. It is a very sad fact that man spends all his thoughts throughout his life in dwelling on his own name and fame.

There is an incident which happened one day during the time of Guru Nanak, Who gave one day a needle to a certain rich businessman by the name of Dhuni Chand, telling him, Keep this needle for me, and give it to me in the next life. Naturally, Dhuni Chand was amazed, and replied, But how can I take this needle into the next world? With a smile Guru Nanak retorted, True, and likewise then, how can you take your business and all possessions?

If one gave really serious thought to these facts, all one’s concern for personal name and fame would leave at once.

For what purpose did you come, and what are you doing?

It is a direct question – to bring you to the point.

Within you is a mine of Amrit.

The Nectar which gives you Everlasting Life is within your own being, and It is limitless.

In this cave (body) is a limitless treasure.

And what is that unending abundance?

In that resides God, the Imperceptible Infinite Lord.

The Koran says,

I, that invisible treasure, am hidden within you – seek Me out.

How do we seek Him? If you remember Him, He will remember you. God is ever aware of His children; but we, enraptured with the world, have long forgotten Him. What wisdom is there in this? We should bear in mind always that the only chance of realising Him is during our life in the human form. Man is great; there are great possibilities in him. Even when one wishes to protect some article of worldly value, one hides it somewhere in the house, or even deep in the earth. So turn not your face outwards, but sit down and search within yourself, to find your True Self.

Swami Ram Tirath’s grandson came to see me recently. His grandfather and the poet Iqbal were good friends. Iqbal taught the Persian language to Ram Tirath, while Ram Tirath taught Iqbal Sanskrit. When Ram Tirath’s son passed his engineer’s course for mining, Iqbal told him,

Your father died digging and digging the heavens – now you have started digging the earth!

Those who have some awakening give small hints – the words uttered to that young man held some meaning – after all, what else is mankind doing but digging the earth? But the Real Treasure is within us. If you spent a night alone in a house, beneath which you knew a large amount of treasure was buried, would you sleep that night? I think you would not be able to sleep, but must dig it out. There is no one watching you now, so why not dig out the Real Treasure of life?

You call back those whom You sent, to return Home joyfully, with ease.

Go Home, children – why remain unhappy? But who heeds the advice of Masters? That worldly breeze has touched the whole of mankind, which is in a state of ‘madness.’ Guru Nanak said similarly,

The Water for which you came here, that Amrit, can be gotten from the Guru.

He also said,

Leave off assumed appearance, deceit, doubt, for these will not bear fruit.

Remain in your religion by all means; that is a blessing, for without such bodies there would be corruption – but to die in the chains of hypocrisy and doubt means to die without realising the True wealth. That wealth can only be had by the Guru’s Grace. Remain in your religion, but seek a Master Who transcends – Who traverses Creation – from within. He will push you within; and when you see, even a little, a True Belief will be secured in you. Upon seeing a little of the Truth, one does get some intoxication; but eventhen one has no desire to leave this world – so seek even deeper: tap inside.

Ignorant man knows not the secret; only the Master has the knowledge.

The secret of that deep mine of Amrit is known only by the Master, while the ignorant people who sit at the sense-level are lost on their erring path. But, as the refreshing water of the river flows in a bed of mud, so the Holy Water of Amrit flows within this physical form of clay. Bathe in that Holy Water of life – do so by the Grace of the Guru, which will make that Light radiate within you – the Light of God’s Word, the Naam. The outer dust of the Master’s feet is also holy, and wherever He sits that place becomes pure. But the goal does not end there. The seeker’s aim is to contact that which flows in his own body of clay – and that Light is the Guru. When you reach Him within, your head will automatically bow itself in humility and respect.

I again remember that famous philosopher who had triumphed everywhere with his philosophical arguments, and yet felt like a small child in front of Hazur.

Oh ignorant man, why search outside – meditate within.

Why drift around in this labyrinth? For how long will you wander? Go within – invert – tap inside. Maulana Rumi referred to the world as a prison, and we are the prisoners occupying it. It is an inducement to take action, to get out – but how can we escape? Metaphorically, we must escape through the roof. The way up is above – above the senses. Rise above. In the labyrinth of the outer world, there is nothing but wave upon wave of diffusion, dispersion of the attention – where will you go? The Master comes to expose this life of illusion, and to guide us out of it.

Why criticise others? You should try to know who you are.

We keep up vigilant scrutiny of others and criticise them; but we should study our own lives, our own selves – who we are, and what we are.

Maulana Rumi prayed:

Oh God, send a merciful person, to take us out of this bodily cage.

Swami Ji Maharaj advised:

Again and again pray to your Guru, to take you out of this cage.

You will be able to see the way out only when the Guru opens your eye.

He Who disperses the darkness is the Guru, for it is a work requiring competency, not force. He Who has the Light can give It to others.

By His Life-Impulse, He gives devotion.

What is His Life-Impulse? That is the Shabd, the Word – He is the Word made flesh.

Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Christ told His disciples to eat Him and drink Him, and how is that possible? The Master is the Word within you – that is the Bread and Water of Life which you must eat and drink for Spiritual Sustenance.

Guru Nanak once indicated a dead body to a group of His disciples, saying: 

This is a dead body – eat it.

It was enough to shock them all – all but Lehna, who calmly asked,

From which end should we start, Maharaj?

Masters give strange tests, which are usually beyond the world’s understanding.

God is sitting within you, awaiting your arrival.

Everything is in the house, nothing is outside; those who seek outwardly go into illusionary forgetfulness.

If you put your attention more and more into anything outside yourself, you will travel further and further from the Truth. In Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel Prize winning book ‘Gitanjali’ there is a prayer which soliloquises,

Oh Lord, we are going further away from You.

One Master says:

Oh seekers of the Lord, you have lost Him in the folds of the mind.

All the learning connected with the mind is outer knowledge. To see Him is the Inner Knowledge, achieved by rising above the mind and intellect.

He merges into the Guru, and distributes the Shabd.

The Guru’s very body becomes the Shabd, and this is the meaning of giving His Life-Impulse.

Why wander aimlessly in forgetfulness, oh naive man!

But man, if acquainted with the correct information, protests that he has no time, and then wastes his whole life trying to preserve time! Brothers, this work can be done only while in the human form – do it now! Remember, wherever your attention is, there you are. I always advise that one should leave one hundred different jobs to attend Satsang, and leave one thousand other kinds of work to do your meditation. Where there is more than one person gathered in Satsang, in His remembrance, the radiation is present there through which one’s yearning increases. Even a tiny ray of radiation can give a great deal of help, so work hard for whatever you are given.

Roaming on pilgrimage increases the doubt, and the entire truth is lost.

All holy places have become holy places because at some time or other some Holy Person stayed there. That which is in the Holy Man is also in you, so why not go within where He is waiting? When Archimedes discovered that there existed a cenre of gravity, he was really in search of the centre of the world and declared that he would shake the whole world if he found it. The centre of gravity or centre of the world is within man himself – become strong within and you will be able to shake the world!

When Masters come, a flood of Spirituality comes with Them. While others die simply shouting and lecturing, a single word from a True Master has a wealth of potent impact. 

Kabir asks:

Oh Rani, settle one argument; is the holy place greater or the devotee of God?

You have got the power of differentiation, so judge the Truth from the untruth. Hazrat Mohammed meditated upon the Light and Sound in Mecca, and it is said that one must make the pilgrimage to that city if one wishes to enter the Kingdom of God. Survey the question with a little awareness, and you will realise that the enlightenment you seek is within you – why not invert?

I read once, in the Puranas, that two men agreed to journey all around the world. One man got his ticket and went; the other drew a circle – the shape of the world – and ran around it. If we board an airplane it would take several days to travel around the world, whereas within our own form we have the means of doing it in less than a second. The speed of the soul is much faster than the speed of the mind, and the speed of the mind is faster than electricity – so just consider it.

Within the human form there is no past or future, but only God Himself.

He is there, awaiting you within; and here you are busily playing instruments and singing, outside. Why not be able to talk to Him within, while you continue your outer life? Of what use is it to sing and play and start some enthusiasm to meet Him if it remains at that?

To sing His praise after seeing Him and talking to Him is a different matter. Guru Amar Das put a price on His seventy long years of searching when He said, 

To sing praise without seeing is a blind man’s song; to see and then sing, bears forth fruit.

Blind faith crumbles before adversity, for True Faith comes only when one can see and hear for oneself. When the trials and tribulations of making the new country of Pakistan were suffered, many well-known devotees started cursing God – ‘Where is He? Has He gone to sleep?’ etc. It was blind faith speaking, through a lack of seeing the Lord. Those who have seen Him say,

I praise Thee now, and whatever the future brings, even then will I praise Thee.

If you desire to realise Him, then discard attachment and pride.

Attachment and pride keep us chained to the outer environments. Pride and the Love of praise – ‘I am learned, I am great, I am powerful, there is no one like me!’ And attachment stops you from going ahead. Real Progress starts when you break all attachment and ego. Sit for a while at the feet of a realised Soul, where the influence of His radiation will withdraw your thoughts.

Until the shadow of the Pir (Saint) falls upon you, the attention cannot be controlled. Also, in the company of a Saint the attention is stilled; the mind finds wisdom in that stillness.

And the soul comes forth in that stillness. This is a strong indication that you are in the presence of a True Master – it is a sign of His Mastership. There is a pin-drop silence, and the attention is controlled – the mind can then do nothing, for it takes its strength from the attention.

All the Holy Scriptures are within you, so why are you ignorant?

What is the origin of all the scriptures? When the Masters traversed inside, They expressed Their experiences; and these were recorded into our Holy Scriptures. You can observe from all these Scriptures that the Masters have parallel thoughts. The language may be different, but the meaning is the same. I have just mentioned a reference from the Upanishads which states that this teaching was given to Lord Krishna, and that within is the sun of Maha Brahmand.

Guru Nanak says:

Within is the Light and Perpetual Sound, contact with which develops the Love for the True One.

Paltu Sahib says: 

There is an inverted well in the void behind the eyes, in which the lamp is aflame without wick or oil; from that flame a voice emits.

True Knowledge does not change, but outer knowledge can change by the minute. Matter, for instance, has been analysed and described differently all through history.

If you go within you will find the source of all that is written in the scriptures, and that which puzzles you now will become clarified. When I went to Rishikesh in 1948, I met a yogi who used to leave his body by Patanjali Yoga. He was about one hundred years old, and welcomed me with all respect and told me,

I have spent all my life in learning this yoga, and only after many, many years was I able to leave the body. How did You get it?

I told him I learned at the Guru’s feet, and explained how a demonstration is given, an Inner Experience which is increased daily.

Dadu Sahib says:

Dadu sees and speaks, but others speak from hearsay.

Another Saint says that for those whose eye is not open, the outer temples and mosques are real. In these buildings you will find symbols of the Light and Sound, which serve to remind us of what exists within man.

Those who are academically knowledgeable can be completely ignorant of the Inner Knowledge, however. When I was in Lahore, there was a Christian superintendent under me in my office, and I suggested that he ask the Bishop of Lahore why the bells are rung in the church. He did so, and the reply was, ‘They are only for the purpose of calling people together.’ That being so, what about the Hindu, who himself rings the bell as he enters the temple? This lacking in Real Knowledge comes from reading the subject only, and not seeing for one’s own self.

Outer knowledge can indeed be like a garland of flowers adorning a Spiritual Master, and He will use it to explain the subject in a variety of ways. If the Master is not educated in the worldly way, He will explain the same facts within His own vocabulary and education. For example, Bulleh Shah went to His Master, Shah Inayat, Who was a farmer; and on this certain occasion the Master was transplanting some plants. Bulleh Shah asked Him how one can realise the Lord, and Shah Inayat replied: What is there to realising the Beloved? Just uproot it from here, and plant it there. He was referring to the attention, for everything is a play of the attention. I am looking ahead at this moment, and so cannot see what is behind me; but if I turn and direct my attention behind, I will see quite easily.

They say that God helps those who help themselves, and it is true also that God helps those who do not help themselves. It is a new motto. It means to give your whole being over to Him in surrender – body, soul, mind and intellect. And in meditation, just look into the pitch darkness and leave everything else to Him – in surrender – without making any effort yourself. The Light will be there. Without making any effort, you will withdraw from the world, the outgoing faculties, body, mind, intellect; and He will be there.

Without Love no one has achieved realisation, so drench your mind in Love.

Which is the easiest of all the easy ways to realise God? The Lord Himself has designed that natural gift into our being. God is Love, and the soul is His entity. 

Kabir Sahib says: 

It is a part of God.

Soul is a drop of the Ocean of All-Consciousness and, therefore, has Love already innate in it. Love’s natural habit is to attach itself to something, and the soul should have loved God, but instead became attached to the world. That love became an attachment, and that was a misfit. The Master, however, will teach you how to withdraw from the worldly environments and invert, and will connect you to the Lord within.

If Love for the Lord is developed, everything, even the world, will be like a swelling Ocean of Love. Outer love will only trap you and bring you back again and again to the world. Contrary to this, Love for the Lord will free you from all shackles.

The Lord of Love is not recognised, but ghosts and spirits are respected.

True Love is not worshipped, but everyone runs around after ghosts and spirits. The greatest God is Love, and that Love will join you back to the Lord. Christ said that one should 

Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.

And, 

Love thy neighbour as thyself.

Kabir says: 

Love the Lord, oh mind, love the Lord.

And, 

Without Love, a man finds no place.

The tenth Guru, after exhorting everyone to open their ears and listen carefully, declared: 

Hear ye all, I tell ye the Truth; God is realised by one who loves.

Ravi Das Ji was a cobbler, and under the caste system existent in those days, a cobbler was considered very low. Some people rudely accosted Him one day, demanding,

How can you worship the Lord?

Ravi Das calmly replied:

That Father is not the reserved right of anyone, only with devotion can you win Him.

One with sincere devotion and respect will realise the Lord – He is not owned by anyone.

Aware of the fact or not, the whole world is gambling; and if they win they are happy; if they lose they are miserable. One Master declares that He is gambling with God, with His life at stake.

If I win, He becomes mine; if I lose, I become His.

Which is a better bargain? In the gamble with God, one wins either way. Increase your Love for Him – and, as He is in every form, love all others. Anyone who can love a father should have love for his children also; and so 

if a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God Whom he hath not seen?

The Nectar of Amrit is abandoned, and dog-like he constantly seeks the gore.

Man does not choose to seek the Water of Life – he would rather steep himself in the filth of immorality. The sweetest Nectar is within him, but he prefers the lowest tastes just like a dog licking every place he passes.

Forsakes the treasure-house, the Knowledge of Amrit, for an illusion.

He has exchanged the priceless jewel for a worthless sea shell, wandering aimlessly around the external world. Jesus Christ was sold for a few paltry coins – thirty pieces of silver. This sort of thing is thrashing empty husks to gain a non-existent grain. So Masters try to make us go within –  withdraw from all outer things. For this They give a starter – a little experience; and if after getting this one still ignores this work, it is indeed a sorrowful state.

Indubitably, at the last breath, there is only regret; but when the Emperor sits within, ignorance and doubt vanish.

The man who practises the daily habit of withdrawing and going into the Inner Realms will meet his last day on earth with joy. Others must leave struggling. And those who have wasted the precious gift will, at that time, remember the Guru and realise with regret what valuable wealth they have thrown away. 

Tulsi Sahib says: 

There is but four days’ play of this false world; he who gave no thought to the Beloved was swept away in the current.

What value can anyone place on the body which is constantly changing? The soul, however, is ever-existent, all-wisdom, and perfect-bliss, due to which the body is kept alive and functioning. Unfortunately, the ignorance of man prevents him from giving serious thought to the subject of the soul, which is a very deep subject. So Masters are necessary to bring the teaching of it to man, and to start him on the ABC of it; and that is when he rises above body consciousness. There he is re-born or twice born; and if he can do this for himself, I am very happy for him. If he cannot, then he requires a stronger attention than his own to drag him up; and this is God’s special Mercy and Grace working in the Master. What a Great Blessing! You may know a little of the difference between outer and Inner Knowledge, but what are you doing about it? The Truth exists in everyone, and it is each person’s hereditary right to experience It.

Come friend, having met the Satguru let us go across;

If you want to cross, meet the Boatman, why waste time in thinking? When you cross over, you are released from the world; otherwise you will drown midst this frightful torrent of perpetual sins.

Guru Nanak was once walking alongside a flowing river, which at one point forked into two streams. The Masters usually use outer examples to express some profound fact; and seeing this fork in the river He said, 

The river has separated here – when is it destined to rejoin itself?

It is a direct reference to man who is separated from God. We are going further and further from Him – when will we meet Him? His simple words convey the pathetic state we are in.

Whoever has not met the Boatman will drown in poison – what else can happen?

Come, those who want to cross, for the Satguru has made a ship.

The Satguru’s ship is within you. Today’s Satsang has described the Inner Way, the Inner Path, the Strait Gate; and that Inner Way is One – for all. Those who travel that Path will gain salvation –  emancipation from karmic cause and effect. Become pure, chaste, and full of good living.

To travel the Inner Path, sit at the feet of a Master. There is, no need to change your religion, nationality, customs, etc., for He will take you beyond all these – they will be left far behind. Those who have already received the wealth should respect and appreciate it and should benefit from it. Do your work before that last change called death comes, for those who gain knowledge while in the world will also be wise after death.