True Master and His Mission

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Oh Nanak, the eyes that see God are quite different from what we have.

The eyes of the flesh can only see things of the flesh, for mortal eyes perceive only what is mortal. It is the Inner Eye that can witness the Glory of the Lord. It is Divya Chakshu of the Hindu Saints, Single Eye as termed by Christ and the Nukta-i-Sweda of the Muslim divines. A Master-Saint like an ophthalmic surgeon helps in opening this Inner Eye which is now shuttered.

Shamas-i-Tabrez, a Great Saint, tells us that He provided eyes to thousands of congenitally blind. So far as the experience of God goes, we are all blind. We have all our life been reading of God in Sacred Books and hearing of God from others but never had a personal experience of God. This is how we are blind, leading a blind life in the brain.

Nanak so beautifully defines a blind man:

They are not blind who have no eyes on their faces; but such as are alienated from God are blind indeed.

All the founders of the various religions in the world are one on this point.

We have been gifted with Inner Perception and Audition, independent of the sense organs; for perfect knowledge is an action of the soul. The soul is, however, smothered under the deadweight of mind and matter for myriads of ages, and has never had an opportunity of attending to the Divine Light and the celestial strains of the Inner Music. A Master-Saint helps in lifting the karmic burden and thereby releases the soul, freeing it gradually from the various enveloping koshas or enshrouding veils and different limiting adjuncts until it comes to its own, disengaged of the love of all created things and becomes a disembodied soul, shining in its own luminosity and capable of thinking and acting independently on its own.

St John of the Cross puts it succinctly:

Hence the soul cannot be possessed of the Divine Union until it has divested itself of the love of created beings.

The means for effecting this union are the Light of God and the Voice of God. God is self luminous Light – Swayam Jyoti Swarup –, Father of all Lights as the Christians speak of, and Nurun-ala-Nur – the Light of Lights – of the Muslims. He is also spoken of as the Song of the Soul, the Voice of the Silence, the Music of the Spheres, the Shabd, the Vak, the Word, the Nad – all signifying the same thing. Both these saving life lines are within each individual. We live and move and have our very being in and through them, but like the proverbial fish in water do not know what water is:

God is in the soul and the soul is in God as the sea is in the fish and the fish is in the sea.

These then are the two means whereby the Master takes the soul Godward: the Way of Light – Jyoti Marg – and the Way of Sound – Sruti Marg. All the Great Teachers the world over led Their followers along these Paths that, of course, are not exclusive but complementary to each other, one leading to the other. They come from time to time to lead us back to the mansion of our Father, while we, like the prodigal children, are busy elsewhere, knocking about restlessly from pillar to post, ever a prey to chance winds and waters in the storming sea of life, while our rich heritage in heaven is lying neglected. 

Swami Ji says:

Your crown and sceptre are lying unattended in the Kingdom of God.

Guru Nanak also says:

Oh join ye in the glorious music of bliss, and live eternally absorbed in the Divine.

This Inner Music is the expression of the Power of God working in each one of us. We can by communion with the Word reach the place from where these Celestial Strains are coming.

This is the True Home of the soul now wandering in exile on the earth plane, while the Father-God is looking forward to our homecoming: 

Come ye home, oh friend! Return ye to thy native abode.

This Music is coming down to give us a call back so that we may live in peace and plenty hereafter.

Now that the call has come, answer the call and start on the way back:

With the God-head revealed within, what else remains? Thy labours ended, be ye still like a polestar.

When by the grace of the merciful Master, the Power of God is made manifest within, you come into your own, and see the Reality face to face. You have nothing more to do. That Power now does everything for you and you find yourself but a mere onlooker in a pantomime show of the world. You have to commune with the Holy Word. It will gradually lead you back to your Eternal Home. There will then be one more descent to the earth plane, not, at least, like a prisoner to serve a sentence of life imprisonment under the compulsive force of karmas, but under a Divine Command to fulfil the purpose of God:

With the joyous peals of the Inner Music the Lord Himself shall come to receive thee. 

Gurbani

Just as in the outer world, we play trumpets and drums to express our delight, so also in the Inner World all are greeted by sublime soul – enlivening strains of Celestial Music, when we proceed heavenward in the company of the Guru Dev – the Radiant form of the Guru. To where does all this lead? We are now being led to the Source of all Lights, the Father of Lights, where there is nothing but Eternal Light and Eternal Music, uncreated and fathomless and yet the material and efficient cause of all created things, and as such a veritable connecting link between the Creator and His creation, between heaven and earth. Naam then is the Name for the Power of God, the primal manifestation of the Nameless One, embodying as it does the Holy Light and Holy Choir. This is the only way leading Godward. We may talk as much of it as we may like, but mere philosophy will not help us in getting nearer the Truth. The more we may theorise the further we get away from the Reality. It is the mystic experience within the laboratory of the mind that counts, for it links us directly with the Divinity and this experience we can get with the help and Grace of some Man-of-God.