Book II / XVI

Devotion to Shabd: What it is

To attend and listen with a single mind to the Dhun Atmak Shabd within is devotion of the right type. Shabd is highly subtle, and until we rise to the same level of subtlety we cannot possibly grasp or take hold of It. Shabd or the Power of God is All-Pervading in All-Consciousness, and if our spirit, which is of the same essence as God, gets contact with Shabd, it is a contact with God; for God is not different from His Power (Shabd).

A contact with Shabd is contact with God, It is the crowning fruition of all endeavours. 

Guru Amar Das, Sri Rag M3

In order to establish a contact with Shabd, it is necessary that the soul must first free itself from the prison house of finite existence. It is only a perfect Master who can enable it to break through the bondage of mind and matter, raise it above body-consciousness and then link it with the Over-Soul – the life of life  – the Naam.