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Life in Fullness

At first, the sensory currents begin to gradually withdraw from the extremities of the body – tips of the hands and feet – and come upwards and gradually pass through the various bodily centres, each of which being the region of one of the five elements of which the body is composed, until taking off from the heart-centre they reach the throat-centre, the seat of Shakti, the Mother of the universe – the all-pervading energy; benumbing the entire bodily system below the eyes; and then proceed directly to the centre behind the eyes – Aggya Chakra. This is where the spirit-currents get collected and gain an entry into the fox-hole within – Brahmarendra or the Hole of Brahma – and have a peep into the Brahmand or the cosmic universe. This is the tenth aperture in the body, the only inlet, apart from the nine outlets.

This is the place where you have to knock and get admittance into the realms above – realms more vast, more glorious, self-luminous and self-resounding with rapturous strains of celestial Music, unheard of anywhere in the physical world which has been left below; now no more than a great slum area fraught with miseries and tribulations fading into a faint reflection of the world of ideas as Plato puts it.

At this stage man becomes truly blessed, blessed by having access to the aerial region, the world of spirits. He is now at the threshold of the astral world in company of the Radiant Form of the Master – Guru Dev – with his Gurubhakti complete in every respect. When a disciple reaches the Radiant Form of the Master, his job of self-effort is over. The Guru Dev now takes charge of the spirit and trains the spirit in Shabd-bhakti in the real sense, or devotion to the Sound Current, which is his own real form – Shabd Swaroop.

From here He takes the spirit along with Him on the Spiritual Journey that lies through countless regions of varying Spiritual Sublimity: the causal or instrumental plane, the seed-world, the ever pregnant Mother with vast and countless creations lying involved in its womb; and then into the Super-cosmic Beyond – Par Brahmand –, planes of Silence – Sunn – and Great Silence – Maha Sunn –, and finally Sach Khand where dwells the Formless One of ineffable radiance – the Ocean of Consciousness – called Sat Purush, the primal manifestation of the Supreme Being.

This Holy Process is simple, natural and does not involve any onerous austerities. It does not involve drastic control of pranas.

The Masters have evolved this rare technique and termed it the Science of Soul which can best be learnt under the able and competent guidance of some Master-Saint, well versed in the theory and practice of Life-Current that exists in all created things, the creative and sustaining principle upholding all.

All the scriptures of the world bear testimony to this fundamental truth:

In the beginning was Prajapati (the Supreme Being), with Him was Vak (the Holy Word), and the Vak (the Word) was verily the Supreme Brahma (Par Brahma).

Vedas

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that hath been made. In Him was life; and life was the Light of men.

St John 1:1-5

Kalam or Kalma is the All-creative Principle. God spake: Kun-fia-kun, (let there be) and from this fiat the whole creation sprang into being.

Al Qur’an

Shabd is the Creator of the earth, Shabd is the Creator of the firmament, Shabd is the Source of Light, and Shabd resides in the heart of all.

Guru Nanak

It is on this basic Principle in all existence – Light and Sound of God – that the Master gives a practical experience to all those who come to Him in search of Truth. The rare boon of Holy Initiation, explanation of the theory and demonstration thereof – shiksha and deeksha –, into the esoteric knowledge and experience of the Saving Life-Lines within, is not an end in itself but just a beginning, a preliminary step for starting on the long journey for the soul to the True Home of the Father.

Those who have chosen to undertake this course of life are indeed fortunate and experience this rare phenomena of death in life and thus become Jivan mukta or the liberated beings, while yet in flesh, leading life in fullness on whatever plane they like, but always remaining within the will of God. Such a lucky one, fully entrenched in God-head is in full control of his intellect, mind and senses. He is the master of the house and not a handmaid of his mind and intellect. Like a good charioteer, sitting in the chariot of the body, he directs his intellect aright which in turn gives a correct lead to his mind, and mind, when trained in the path of righteousness, refuses to be swayed by the senses which gradually lose their potency and cease to be attracted by the glamour of the sense-subjects.

Thus is reversed the primal process of expansion and one gets settled in himself with the result that the still waters of the mind begin to reflect the Light of God, fulfilling the ancient maxim: Unless the senses are subdued, the mind is stilled and the intellect too is in a state of equipoise, one cannot witness the Glory of God.

This rich experience of life in fullness is variously called the second birth, the birth of the spirit as distinct from the birth of the flesh. Led by the spirit, one now lives and walks in the Spirit, abandoning the lusts of the flesh and cuts right across the inexorable law of cause and effect or karma, which keeps all others in perpetual bondage.

With the day to day progress on this path, new vistas of indescribable joy and beatitude open up and new horizons loom into view, encompassing the totality of all that is, thus giving greater and greater awareness, first personal, then supra-mental, next cosmic and super-cosmic.

Hereafter the liberated souls, liberated from all the shackles of mind and matter, enjoy perpetual bliss in the life of the spirit with an outlook on life entirely changed; the vast creation now becoming the manifestation of the One Life-Principle pulsating everywhere in him and around him and in all things, animate and inanimate. The world that he now witnesses is totally different from the world known to him before. It now looks as the veritable abode of God and one sees God truly dwelling in it, nay in every constituent part of it; for all created things appear like so many bubbles in one vast ocean of life.

Hereafter he lives unto the Lord and dies unto the Lord. Like St Paul, he gets crucified in Christ – Fana-fi-sheikh – and Christ lives in him, and with repetitive experience of the death process he triumphantly swallows death in victory – the Father and the Son becoming One. Though the outward man of flesh and bones still persists and continues to exist to spin out what remains of the web of life, yet the inward man, the spirit in man, is renewed – growing stronger and more sublime with time.

Thomas a Kempis therefore says:

Forsake the flesh for the spirit. Learn to die so that you may begin to live.

In this context, we have from Kabir:

While the people are mortally afraid of death, I welcome death as a harbinger of bliss. Die and be thou dead to the world, such a death I experience many times a day.

In all the four Gospels, we come across so many references of like nature:

He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

St Matthew 10:39

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the Gospel’s the same shall have it.

St Mark 8:35

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.

St Luke 9:24 and 17:33

He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world, shall keep it unto Life Eternal.

St John 12:25

Dadu, a celebrated Saint says:

Oh Dadu! learn to die ere death overtakes thee, what will it profit thee, when die thou must?

Guru Nanak also says the same thing:

Oh Nanak! practise such a yoga as may teach thee to die in life.

Prophet Mohammed too exhorted His ummat, or the faithful, to practise the art of dying before death:

Mautoo-qibalantu-mautoo.

Before thy death, do thou die.

The mystic Muslim Divines like Khawaja Hafiz, Shamas-i-Tabrez and Maulana Rumi greatly emphasised the importance of such unique experience:

So long as you do not transcend the plane of the senses, you remain unaware of the Inner Life. Thou hast raiments besides the outer (physical) one without; why then dost thou fear to come out of the body?

One can go on multiplying any number of apothegms on this subject. We may close it with a passage from Earl R. Wassermann:

Many are only imperfect individualisations of the One; and death permits the unindividualised, and hence unbounded, Spiritual Life. The post-mortal life therefore is a Spiritual Existence for death destroying the many coloured dome, allows the soul to ‘out-soar the shadows of night’ instead of working inwards to destroy organic existence. What then appears to be physical destruction, proves to be Spiritual Immortality […] What we call ‘life’ is a decay; therefore earthly confinement, the mortal atmosphere stains the radiance of Eternity […] On the other hand, the resurrected soul, reincorporated in the One, not the shadow of death or physical matter, is discovered in the true sense, spreading itself throughout nature, for the final reality everywhere is spirit […] Were the atmosphere of mortality removed, man would perceive that the ‘One remains’ and that ‘Heaven’s Light forever shines’; and that day and night are one and so life and death, Lucifer and Vesper, […] and that the Ultimate Reality of both earthly life and the post-mortal Eternity is the Spiritual One; […] and this realisation of Spiritual Identity of mortal and post-mortal life finally ceases the pairings of opposites like life and death […] Since One glows ‘through time and change, unquenchably the same.’

He then goes on to say:

Learn to go unterrified into the gulf of death, for where mortal existence ends, the Spiritual Existence begins. With death the resurrected soul out-soars the shadows of night, and is reincarnated into the changeless One.

Prophet Mohammed also speaks of death in life in much the same strain:

A death like this will not take thee to the grave, but it shall lead thee from darkness to Light, learn then to die every day by transcending the body.

When a man learns to transcend the human in him, the Master in His Radiant Form comes in to help the soul onwards to its True Home, guiding it on the higher planes, both in one’s lifetime and even after when the mortal coil is finally cast off.

In this connection Nanak says:

Oh Nanak! snap all the ephemeral ties of the world and find thou a Real Friend in some Saint; the former shall leave thee while ye live but the latter shall stand by thee even in the hereafter. Following the instructions of a Satguru, take hold of Truth, be thou true to Him and He shall stand true to thee unto the last.

A Muslim darvesh likewise says:

Oh brave soul! take a firm hold of His hem, for He is truly above all the worlds, here and above.

So we find in the Gospels:

Lo! I shall be with thee till the end of the world, I shall not leave thee nor forsake thee.

In this way the Highest Mission of human life is achieved and the fullness of life experienced. This is the subject of contacting the Self by the self which disengages from the thorns and thistles of the worldly life, under the proper guidance and help of a Master-Soul Who vouchsafes this experience to all alike irrespective of sex, age, avocation, religious affinities and social orders based on blood, caste, colour and creed. The spirit has got to be divested of the false halo of the self-created and self-projected personality that one unwittingly weaves around himself. Unless one becomes a pure spirit divested of the Love of all created things, one cannot enjoy the life of the Creator which is a life of fullness in beatitude.