The Night is a Jungle

VI

“Make the jatta of chastity and purity, and take a bath of yog; grow the nails of regularity.”¹

One should make one’s jatta out of the purity of life – guard carefully one’s brahmacharya, chastity. Chastity is life and sexuality is death. Our whole house has to stand on this foundation; do not make it out of sand. You will then be able to live properly; your mind and intellect will be wholesome. This in itself is a most valuable thing, for even if you have only dry bread to eat, yet you will have full strength. You won’t need any tonics.

In regard to the householder’s life: marriage is not a bar to Spirituality, if one lives according to the scriptures. There may be one duty of begetting children, but that is not the be-all and end-all of married life; there is grossly wrong understanding on this subject. Do not make the human form a mere machine for vice. Instead, make your life pure and controlled.

If you wish to have one or two children, well and good; but look after them properly and help them to become something good. Set a worthy example for them, and remain aware of the responsibilities of parenthood. Furthermore, the whole family should sit together and sing the praises of the Lord.

The Guru Sahib tells us to take a bath in the Yog. If you want to become One with God you must throw away all worldly thoughts. To take bath in Yog means a daily bath in His contact – become One with Him. If you cannot wash your hands of worldly affairs, you should not sit in God’s remembrance. The Muslims do vazu – washing of the hands, face and feet – before they sit for the namaz, for they believe that unless this is done, the prayer will not be accepted. So we should wash the worldly environments out of our thoughts before we sit in meditation. The Hindus say that puja should not be done unless one first takes a bath. The most effective bath is to withdraw your attention from outer things.

Grow the nails of regularity. An army without a commander will end up in chaos, so we must command our lives with regularity. If you are employed somewhere, you go there daily at the proper time, without any trouble, and for meditation we should adopt the same attitude and sit daily at the regular time. Sadly, we are adrift; sometimes we sit, sometimes we don’t. If we were truly regular, we would find that if we should happen to have a day without meditation, we would feel ill at ease, as though we had missed something. If possible, there should be a room in the home set aside for God’s remembrance alone – you would find that the very atmosphere of that room would remind you of Him.

In the last stanza of the Jap Ji, you will find, 

Make chastity your furnace and patience your smithy […]

To fashion gold into something beautiful, a goldsmith must first melt the metal by the aid of a furnace. Take these two things, patience and chastity, and go on working towards your Goal. With patience one will continue to persevere, even when the progress seems slow. 

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 

St Matthew 5:8

It is a promise Christ gave. So take these things into your lives: patience, perseverance, chaste and pure living, and regularity. Then? Make the nights your jungle, and see what a beautiful program will result.

In the past, a True Brahmcharya would spend his first twenty-five years in a jungle ashram, learning the Vedic and Shastric scriptures. Then he would enter the grehastha ashram – take up the duties of a householder. After conscientiously bringing up his one or two children to the stage of adulthood, he would then return to the forests in the vanprasth ashram wherein he would study for self-realisation. Having realised the Truth, he would leave that stage and journey around in the world, helping the people to awaken. Today’s preaching is done for the stomach only. Some people earn their livelihood by their own hard labour in one way or another, and some take their living from religion or religious books.

So make your home a jungle. He who lives in his own home, remaining aloof from worldly taints, yearning within for the Lord, will receive far more benefit than from taking a bath in the limpid waters of the holy river Ganges. Become so closely connected with the Lord that either He or you remains – not two.

Get connected to the pure Naam, through the Guru’s knowledge of the soul.

This Guru’s knowledge is a practical experience; there is nothing academic about it.

This knowledge is of attention (Surat) and Sound (Shabd); it cannot be brought into words. 

The word Knowledge here refers to the Music of the Spheres which is vibrating within our very being. It can only be experienced.

The one who makes audible the Sound coming from the gaggan (astral heaven) is my Guru Dev.

Who gives that experience?

Through the Guru’s knowledge I got the True Eye, through which the evil of ignorance was pierced and the Light revealed within.

So what is the value of Gurubhakti – devotion to the Guru?

All living souls should do Gurubhakti, and become One with the Light within.

Become connected to that Light and develop your devotion – which should increase so much so that each pore vibrates with the Guru’s Naam. When a little Love awakens in a person, does it not bubble up and overflow? It should be developed steadily up to full realisation, through which all peace and serenity will reign in your being.

“Eat less, sleep less; have mercy, forgiveness and love.”

_______________

Explanation: 1) Renuntiates let their hair grow, cover it with ashes and wind it on their heads. This is called Jatta. They also cease cutting their nails.