True Master and His Mission

V

Christ when questioned as to where He was going, replied:

I have yet many sheep to look after.

One day in the month of June, I happened to be with my Master at Beas. As the weather was sultry and the heat oppressive, I suggested to Hazur to spend some time at Dalhousie – a hill resort in Punjab.

He replied smiling: 

Look, Kirpal Singh, people perhaps think that I go to the hill station for my personal comforts. But this is not so. I do so in the hope that some lost souls may yet be ready enough to listen to the message of God and be prepared to retrace their steps Godwards. To me personally, heat or cold makes no difference in the least.

Such Master-Souls scour the world in search of us and not we for Them. They come here with a Divine Mission to pick up those destined for the Holy Path, or such as may be world-weary and piteously crying for a way out.

This earth plane is a vast prison house. It is not the True Abode of the virgin soul. It is here temporarily till it gets reconciled to the Divine Consort and is called back from the forced exile here. Whenever a soul in an alien land feels the pangs of separation, God plans a way out through a God-realised Saint, a Saint Who is filled with the unseen Power of God, a Living Embodiment of the Divine Word:

Satguru is the Immaculate One Himself, though in human form.

Again it is said:

The servant of God is God-like in spite of his physical raiment. 

Gurbani

We all are in the making. We are gradually striving towards perfection. This world is a training centre towards that end. Suffering is the best teacher. It awakens in us a yearning for crossing the limitation of the flesh so that we may attain a state where there is perfect serenity. Whenever we feel helpless in our struggle, and we do feel helpless in diverse ways, we call for the unseen hand of God to our aid. When we do so, the Power of God is stirred. Some Man of God, endowed with His power, comes our way, consoles us in our misery, offers His helping hand to us, and lifts us up from the mire of despondency, puts us upon our feet, and offers to lead us Godwards.

A Godman, then, is not a man of this world as we are, nor is His spirit bound down in the prison house of the physical body as ours is. At one with the supreme Power of God, His spirit knows how to vacate the body at will and soar into the Spiritual Realms beyond mind and matter. Wonderful indeed is the house we live in. It is given to man to transcend the limitations of the flesh and to work wheresoever we may like in the material world, the materio-spiritual, the spirituo-material, or the purely spiritual, unlike all other creatures who are tied to the body only. The microcosm is fashioned on the pattern of the macrocosm.

But we have altogether forgotten our capabilities in the mighty swirl of the world and have come to identify our great self with the physical raiment, not knowing how to rise above body consciousness into the cosmic and super-cosmic consciousness. A divinely gifted person not only reminds us of our vast potentialities, but also gives us an experience thereof, no matter at what level and encourages us to develop the same to whatsoever extent one may like to do. 

He, in brief, tells us: 

Learn to die so that you may begin to live.

We are certainly a drop from the Ocean of Consciousness. In the limitations of the senses, busily engaged in the enjoyment of sense-objects and environed by the mind, we are lost to our Real Self, just like a proverbial lion cub of a shepherd who brought him up in the company of his sheep and goats, as Hazur used to illustrate so lucidly.

A lion passing that way was greatly distressed to see the cub grazing on grass and herbs. Taking pity on the cub, the lion took him aside to a pond of water, showed him his image in the water which resembled his own, and advised him to roar along with him. The moment the two roared together, the shepherd and the flock all ran helter skelter, leaving their erstwhile companion in the company of the lion.

A Master-Saint likewise reminds us of our intrinsic greatness, helps us to get out of our make-believe complacency, and puts us on the road to self-knowledge and God-Knowledge.