XVI

 

THE PATH OF THE MASTER:

 

The three Practices of Methods Prescribed

 

There are distinct entities in the composition of a person (i) Physical body. As made mostly of solid matter; (ii)mental body, as made of subtle matter, and (iii) causal, or the seed body, that holds the first two.

 

The spirit or soul works through all the three bodies. The various bodies, sooner or later, are bounded to disintegrate and dissolve, while the soul is indestructible, an ever-living entity Beyond the sway of Kaal (time) or death. It is the spark from the Divine Forge, at which the Life Current is forged to shape the world and to bring it into being. The human body is the veritable temple of God, and this microcosm simply works on the lines of the macrocosm.

 

“Macrocosm is in the microcosm, and he who seeks the macrocosm must find it in the microcosm.” _- Dhanasari Peepa

 

Truth, or Naam, alone is imperceptibly working both in man and in the universe. God and his spirit are but one in essence. To know God, one must first know the self within. Without self-knowledge, through self-analysis, the realization of oneness within and without does not dawn. The Mohammedan Saint also impart that Alam – I –saghir (The greater world).

 

Thrice blessed indeed is man. He is the roof and crown of things! To be a complete man is the culmination of human existence. “Be ye perfect as thy Father in heaven is perfect,” is one of the cardinal principles in Christianity. Kabir says that the devotee should be like God himself. This perfection must, therefore, be three-fold: Physical mental and spiritual. To a certain extent, one has to depend on his own individual  effort, but much depends on outer aid In Nature fruit trees fructify in a much shorter time if they are scientifically fed than if left to themselves. The same principle works with still greater force in the case of sentient and conscious human beings. A person with the help of a Master-soul can more readily, more easily and more quickly gain spiritual attainment than otherwise. But the association and aid must be sought from a perfect Master, well versed not only in the theory but also in the practice of the science of spirituality.

 

Again, an aspirant has to be very particular in the matter of his food, his conduct, his environment, all of which exerts a powerful influence on his body and mind. A simple Satvik diet (barring meat, fish, fown and eggs). Abstinence from all intoxicants, idle talk and idle pursuits, a spirit of detachment from the glamour of the world, are therefore enjoined as discipline on the spiritual path. With this background, the Sadhak is the initiated into practices that are conducive to his spiritual welfare: (1) Simran, (ii) Dhyan, and  (iii) Dhuni Abhyas (Charged repetition, spiritual contemplation, and sound current absorption.

 

Our mind at present is engaged in the Simran of the world and worldly object, so much so that we are completely identified with them, we know  not if we have a separate existence apart from these things. Howsoever hard we may try to introvert the mind, we cannot do it. The thoughts of friends and relations, of offices files and records, of law courts and law books, or medicines and disease, of profits and loses, or wages and strikes, etc., come up on the mental screen as in a motion-picture house. In order to wean the mind from these, one has to do Simran of God’s names, and to meditate on something else. The Saints, therefore. Enjoin for a Sadhak, or aspirant, Simran with the tongue of thought and Dhyan with the eye of thought. With these two mental processes, the mind gradually learns to get realization and there comes a lull in it's ever-vacillating tendencies lastly, one has to listen voice of the silence with the ears of thought.

 

Shabd or Naam or word is continuously  vibrating within each one of us, for we live by it. The soul and Sound-current are one in essence. There is such wonderful music in it that the Hydra headed serpent of the mind, on hearing it, gets altogether docile. The attention (the focus of the spirit), hitherto a slave to the mind, is attracted, attuned and absorbed in the inner strains of music. It is no longer capable of serving under the mind, and the result is that the latter is rendered helpless and falls off as a carcass. The spirit, thus drawn by the sound-current from the ocean of physical existence, loses it's separate entity and becomes one with the current. Though one may hereafter continue to be in this world, to spin out his allotted span of life, he is Jiwan Mukta (a liberated being or a depersonalized spirit). He is no longer a bonded slave of the mind and the senses, but is now firmly established in Godhood, basking perpetually in the Divine inner light, listening to the divine Music in his soul. The detailed instructions in the three-fold Atma Sidhi, or spiritual practice, are given by the Master to every Sadhak (aspirant) at the time of initiation.

 

By Simran and dhyan the sensory current in the body gradually get collected and concentrated at the center of the spirit between the two eyebrows. From here, the spirit is led on by the sound-current and, after traversing the various planes, reaches it's Native Home, Sach Khand or Muqam-I-Haq, which is the source and the Fountainhead of the sound-current itself. This is Moksha Nijat, Nirvana or salvation, in the true senses of the word.