HOW WILL WE AWAKEN?
by
Sant Ajaib Singh Ji
This talk, the ninth in a series of
commentaries on the "Asa Ji Di Vars"
of Guru Nanak, was given in Jan. 1987
at Sant Bani Ashram, Village 16PS, in
Rajasthan, India.
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FIVE HUNDRED years ago, when Guru Nanak and Kabir Sahib were living,
there were no educational institutions in India except in the city of Kashi
(or Benares). This was because in those days the people were divided into
four categories or castes: the Brahmins, or pundits; the shudras; the
vaishnavas; and the kshatriyas. Only the pundits were considered to be the
highest kind of people, and only they were allowed to get a good education;
and they did not allow anyone else to join them. In those days if other
people wanted to get a good education, they had to disguise themselves as
pundits and go to Kashi; that was the only way they could get it. Even
Guru Gobind Singh sent some of his disciples to Kashi in the disguise of
pundits, and they got an education. In this way education or learning was
spread around, and the people of other castes also came to know about it.
Once a learned, well-educated pundit came to Guru Nanak and debated
with him, arguing that only by reading the holy scriptures can one get
liberation; but Guru Nanak Sahib lovingly explained to him that that was
not the case, because the real liberation lies in the meditation of Naam.
This pundit, whenever he came to know that a sadhu or mahatma was at a
given place, would go there and debate with him. He was so learned and
competent in the holy scriptures that he always won those debates; and once
he had defeated any sadhu, he would take away his holy scriptures. So he
had collected a huge pile of holy books. Finally, when he came to Guru
Nanak, he wanted to argue with Him also, and he was talking about the holy
scriptures he had read; but when Guru Nanak Sahib told him about His
experience - that the devotion of Naam is the only means of liberation,
and if he wanted to get liberation he should receive the Naam initiation -
he was convinced, and he requested Guru Nanak Sahib to give him the
initiation; but Guru Nanak Ji replied, "First go and contact that power
whom you consider to be your guru." Just as a doctor first purifies the
body and then gives the remedy, so Guru Nanak wanted him to get rid of all
the things in which he was involved before giving him initiation. And Guru
Nanak wanted him to find out who his real guru was.
So the pundit set out and at one place he met three sadhus, who in fact
were Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh (Shiva), sitting there in the form of
mahatmas, and he requested them to give him some knowledge, and tell him
who his guru was. But they said, "We are not your gurus, and we do not have
anything to give to you. Go a little bit farther, and you will see
somebody sitting in a temple; and that person is your guru." When he got
there, he did not find any mahatma; but there was a very attractive and
charming woman sitting there, and as soon as he arrived, she got up and
began beating him with her shoes. He did not stop to ask why she was
beating him; he just ran away. When he came back to those three mahatmas,
they asked him, "Dear one, why did you come back so soon? Why didn't you
take some knowledge from your guru?" He said, "Well, what can I say? I
did not find any mahatma or guru there; there was only a woman who gave
me a beating." Then those mahatmas told him, "You did not recognize her.
In fact, she is your guru. She is Maya whom you have been worshiping. With
all your learning and knowledge, you have become such an egotist that you
started worshiping Maya. When you were arguing with the great mahatmas,
you were under the influence of Maya, and she was your real guru. Now if
you want to get the real liberation, you should go back to that mahatma
who sent you to find your real guru: because only by getting the Naam
initiation, and doing the devotion of Naam, can you get the real
liberation." So when that pundit came back to Guru Nanak Sahib, he had
already realized His importance and greatness; so he bowed down his head
at the feet of Guru Nanak, and took initiation from Him.
Guru Nanak says, "If a learned one has anger, greed, and attachment
within him, we should call him a foolish one."
Further He says, "To read and get the knowledge of this world are all
worldly things. If the desire of getting more and more is still within you,
all your learning and reading is useless." Saints and mahatmas do not
condemn or criticize the reading and writing of this world. They say, "It
is all right; we should do the reading and writing of the world in order
to obtain the worldly knowledge; but if we want our soul to be liberated,
then we need the practice of Surat Shabd Yoga; we need the initiation into
Naam so that we can meditate on it."
So in this hymn, Guru Nanak Sahib Ji is making that pundit understand.
This is a hymn which needs your attention and is worth understanding, so
listen to it carefully.
We fill up the carts with books we have read;
We carry them along with us after reading;
No matter if you fill up trains with books you have read - or even if you
fill up camel carts - it does not make a bit of difference.
We fill up boats with books we have read;
We bury them in the earth after reading;
Now he says, "It doesn't matter how much one reads: even if we take all our
books across the ocean, even if we fill up boats and ships with our books,
and if when the books get old, we bury them and buy new ones, we will still
not get liberation that way."
We read year after year;
We read month after month;
No matter if we read books all our life long, all the years which we have
in our life; even if we go on reading all the months and days we have in
those years, still it cannot do anything for us.
We read all our life long;
We read with every breath;
No matter if you read with all the breaths which come into your body, still
you cannot get liberation that way.
Nanak says, Only one thing is counted;
All the rest is the vain prattle of the ego.
Guru Nanak Sahib tells that pundit, "O dear one, the only thing which will
be written in your account and will do you any good is, getting the Master
in your lifetime and getting the Naam from Him. Only that will be counted;
only that will become the cause of your liberation." Kabir Sahib also says,
"The moment spent in the company of the Master is the only moment counted
as your devotion. All other moments are useless."
Lovingly He says, "By reading books and scriptures, we argue and debate
with others, and it is all useless. It is putting fuel in a fire which is
not doing us any good."
The more one writes and reads, the more
one is burned;
The more one wanders in the places of pilgrimage,
the more one's talk is useless.
This thing I have seen myself, and it was true in those days also, that in
India there are so many different kinds of sects and groups: people change
their outer appearance, or wear certain kinds of clothes, and form
themselves in groups; and those people will either get involved in reading
books or they will go to the places of pilgrimage, where they find other
people, and then they debate and argue with each other. So Guru Nanak
Sahib here says, "The more you read, the more you argue with others, and
the more fire you have within; the person who has read a lot of holy
scriptures gets the habit of arguing, and then there remains unrest
within him."
In India there are many places of pilgrimage; many people spend ten days
at one place of pilgrimage, and ten days at another, and in that way they
go on touring from place to place. And while they are there they beg from
other people who visit those places. They ask for shoes from one person,
for books from another, for clothes from someone else, and then they sell
those things; and in this way they earn their living. Outwardly they have
taken up the form of a siddha purush: they call themselves "a good person,"
and they put a tilak or sign on their forehead so that people may know that
they are holy; but inwardly they are involved in this business of going
from place to place.
The householders who visit these places of pilgrimage are innocent, and
out of their devotion they give to those people whatever they can from their
hard-earned income; and those so-called "holy men" use that money for
buying drugs and other things, which they consume. Guru Nanak Sahib does
not criticize anyone, and it is not my intention to be critical of anyone
either. The Masters have written only what They have seen with Their own
eyes and what has come into Their experience. Guru Nanak went to all the
places of pilgrimage, met the people, and found out what they do and how
they make their living. He talked with them and came to this conclusion,
and that is why he has written, "No matter how many outer rites and rituals
you do, you cannot get liberation that way. If there is any liberation, it
comes only with the meditation of Naam."
The more one takes to costumes,
the more pain he gives to his body;
The jiva suffers his own doings.
And as one does not eat food,
he loses the taste of his tongue;
He suffers by loving the other one
(other than God).
Now he says, "The more outer appearances you take up, the more outer
costumes you wear, the more problems you face: it keeps you unstable
within." Because those who take up different forms and outer appearances
have to pose like them; and that keeps them unsettled and unrested within
themselves. Further, Guru Nanak says, "You give up eating grain, and you
drink milk, and then you call yourself `the mahatma who lives only on
milk.'" Master Sawan Singh Ji also used to say, "People who give up eating
food and just drink milk won't spend one rupee on grain, but they make
another person spend ten rupees buying milk for them, and still they think
that they have done so much sacrifice." So that is why Guru Nanak Sahib Ji
here says, "You have taken so many outer appearances, and you have
confused yourself so much, and you have given up eating grains and only
drink milk, and you call yourself a mahatma; but all you have done is lost
the taste of your tongue."
Kabir Sahib says, "If just by drinking milk one can get liberation,
then all babies should have it."
Those who do not wear clothes
suffer day and night;
They are lost in keeping silence.
How will we wake up from this slumber
without the Master?
There are sadhus who do not wear any kind of clothes, but remain naked like
animals. Those poor people suffer in the winter because it gets very cold,
and they suffer in the summer because it gets very hot and they do not have
any protection. Day or night, they live outside; so they suffer a great
deal. But still they think that by remaining naked they are doing the
devotion of God, and that they will achieve liberation this way.
There is another kind of sadhu who keeps quiet: they do not use their
tongue to ask for anything, but whatever they need, whatever they want to
beg, they will write it down somewhere; in that way they ask. Those sadhus
never speak, and they think that just by keeping quiet they are doing the
devotion of God, and that God will become pleased with them and will give
them liberation. But Guru Nanak says, "What is the use of keeping quiet,
if the desire for worldly things is still burning within your heart?" We
do the devotion of God to make our mind quiet and peaceful - we need to
withdraw from the worldly materials, we need to still our mind - but if we
have not been able to do that, what is the use of keeping quiet? And what
is the use of doing other forms of devotion if we cannot bring our mind
into our control?
In Punjab there is a village named Daule: I once met a muni sadhu - a
sadhu who keeps quiet - there and I asked him if I could do any seva for
him. He lifted up the mat on which he was sitting, and while he did not
say anything to me, his disciple told me, "This mahatma always keeps quiet;
he is a renunciate sadhu, he has sacrificed everything; he does not touch
maya, but if you want to give any money, you can just leave it there." So
when you need to ask for something, what difference does it make whether
you do it by speaking, or by writing, or with the help of somebody else?
Because if desire is still within you - if the flames of lust, anger,
greed, attachment and egoism are still raging within you - what difference
does it make whether you keep quiet or whether you speak aloud? Baba
Bishan Das Ji used to say, "Those who keep quiet in fact have more desires,
and more attachment for worldly things. It is better to speak than to keep
quiet and still have all this desire."
One walks barefoot, he gets what he has earned;
He eats dirt and throws ashes on his head.
Now He is lovingly explaining that there are so many different kinds of
paths. There is a path in which the devotees do not wear any kind of shoes,
but instead walk barefoot; and they do not travel on a train or airplane,
but always walk. And there is another path also in which people do not
bathe, and do not see any difference between good and bad: they even eat
their own refuse, their own dirt, and do not see anything wrong in that.
But wise people do not like those who do not bathe or even eat their own
refuse, because they not only know that by doing these things they cannot
do the devotion of God, but that if we want to do the real devotion of
God, then we have to see and discriminate between what is good and what
is not.
Once a person came to Kabir Sahib who had given up clothes and shoes
for twelve years, and he told Kabir about the great sacrifice he had made.
Kabir Sahib lovingly told him, "If by remaining naked one can get
liberation, then all the deer in the forest should have it. What difference
does it make whether you are naked or wearing clothes? Unless you recognize
your beloved Lord Who is sitting within you, the naked and clothed are
alike."
Such a blind and foolish one loses his honor;
Without Naam he does not get anywhere.
Without Naam, we do not have any place to go. Without Naam we cannot get
liberation. We cannot make this human birth worthy of liberation unless we
do the meditation of Naam.
One lives in the wilderness,
among graves and cremation places;
Such blind ones do not know, and repent later.
There are certain paths in which the people do not live in their homes but
in graveyards; people believe in them and appreciate them, and they say,
"This baba is not afraid of ghosts; that is why he lives in graveyards."
But those people are also very far away from the path of Naam initiation.
They also do not get liberation.
The place where Baba Bishan Das Ji used to live was not far from the
graveyard of the village, and once a sadhu came to live in that graveyard.
Baba Bishan Das asked him, "If you have any powers within you, if you are
capable of doing anything, why don't you go and live among the living? Why
are you living here among the dead? Are you afraid that if you will live
with the living, they will argue with you or ask you questions that you
cannot answer? Here you are sure that they will not get up from the graves
and bother you. Is that why you are living here?" So Baba Bishan Das
advised him to go and live among the living, so that they could get the
benefit of his company. So there are so many different paths. We, the
worldly people, the householders, are the innocent ones, and we do not
know what the real form of the devotion of God is. We go to people who
live in graveyards, and we think that they are great mahatmas, and we
worship them. We are blind, because we do not know whether we should do
that or not; and they are blind whom we worship. In the end, they cannot
do anything for us. They repent, and we also repent.
We people think that our relatives whom we have taken to the graveyards
and buried there, are living there; that is why we go to such places and
worship those who are living there.
He who meets the Satguru becomes happy;
He makes the Naam of the Lord dwell
within his mind.
If we meet the perfect Master, who can give us the Naam Initiation, who can
install the Naam within us, and who can manifest that Naam within us; and
if we give up those attachments and desires which are keeping us away from
Almighty God, and if we seek only the support of God Almighty, and if we
do the devotion of that Naam, then all the karmas which have been piling up
within ourselves from so many of our past births will leave us - we can
get rid of those karmas and we can get liberation just by doing the
meditation of that Naam, which in fact is Almighty God Himself.
Nanak says, The one on whom He is gracious
gets it;
Becoming free of hope and fear he burns
his egoism with the Shabda.
When the mahatmas tell us that Naam is the only giver of liberation, and
that only by doing the devotion of Naam we can remove all of our karma and
its suffering and consequences - when mahatmas talk so highly about the
importance of receiving Naam initiation, then this question comes to us:
"What is so difficult about getting the Naam initiation? The mahatmas are
gracious - they give us Naam, they do not refuse us - it is not a difficult
thing for us to get the Naam initiation." Such thoughts may come in our
mind, and we may think that it is very easy for us to get the Naam
initiation from the mahatmas, because, after all, They have come in this
world to give us the Naam initiation. But when such thoughts come, they
prevent us from understanding the importance and value of the Naam. The
mahatmas whose inner eyes are opened know that it is not in our hands to
get Naam or not to get Naam: they know that God Almighty decides who
should be given the Naam initiation and who should not. In fact, only
those selected souls who have been chosen by God Almighty, and whom God
Almighty has decided will not be sent into this suffering world again -
only they come to the Masters, and only they get the Naam initiation.
So that is why Guru Nanak Dev Ji here lovingly says, "It is not in our
hands to make the decision of getting the Naam initiation or not. We
cannot stay away from the path of Naam if it has been decided that we
will get it." When God Almighty showers grace on us, when He selects us
and chooses us for doing His devotion, He brings us into the company of
the perfect Master Who is capable of giving us Naam.
Guru Nanak says, "Everyone in this world seeks happiness; no one asks
for pain. But still people are suffering. God Almighty is making them
suffer the consequences of their bad deeds." We see that the sun gives
light according to fixed time. The moon also gives the light according
to fixed time. In the same way the stars also shine on fixed time. When
our birth takes place at a fixed time, when our death also comes at a
fixed time - when we see all these things happening on fixed time - then
we should also believe in the reality of this statement: "God Almighty
decides whether we get the Naam initiation." Only He knows the fixed
time when we have to come to the Master, when we have to spend time in
His company, and when we have to get the Naam from Him.
Your devotees are pleasing to You;
They look beautiful at Your door
singing Your glory.
Now he says, "No doubt the manmukhs are also created by God Almighty, and
the same God Almighty is residing within them also. But who are the ones
who get honor and glory at the door of our real home? Who are the ones
who gain His pleasure? Those who do His devotion, who bow down their feet
at the door of the Lord, those within whom God Almighty is manifested -
only they get the glory; and such souls - those who have reached the real
home by doing the devotion of God - they have mercy on everyone, and those
souls inspire other souls also to do the devotion of God, and they help
them to make their journey back to God."
Supreme Father Kirpal used to say, "The path of spirituality is like a
contagious disease." You know that if one person has that kind of disease,
he spreads it to many other people. In the same way, one devotee of God
comes into this world, he himself does the devotion of God, and he
spreads this disease to many other people; Like himself, he makes many
other people also do the devotion.
Nanak says, Unless it is written in our karma
We cannot come to Your door; we wander about.
Now he says that to receive the Naam initiation is like getting a reward
for the good karma which we have done in our many past lifetimes. But those
who have not received the Naam initiation yet, it means that for them God
Almighty has not yet written in their fate to get it. Such people do not
get the Naam, they cannot reach the door of our real home, and they cannot
do the devotion.
One does not understand his root;
Still he counts himself all in all.
There are people in the world who do not know why they have come into this
world, and where they were before coming into this lifetime, and where they
will go from this world. Such people think that they know everything: "What
do the mahatmas know?" They always have this kind of feeling. And even
though they know nothing, still they are under the impression that they
know everything, and that is why they neither accept the words of the
Masters nor live up to Their teachings.
I am a low-caste bard; the others call
themselves high-caste.
I yearn for those who meditate upon You.
Those who have not recognized themselves, who do not have any understanding
of their own self, they are egoists: because they do not know who they
really are. Guru Nanak Sahib says, "O Lord, I am of low caste, I am very
poor, I am a sinner." All these words he is saying to show his humility.
It is not true that he was of a low caste. He was from the Bedi caste, and
Bedis are considered to be one of the highest castes in India, and people
respect them a lot. But just to teach us humility, Guru Nanak Sahib is
using these humble words, and identifying Himself with the low caste, the
humble, the poor, and the sinners; and He wants us also to adopt that kind
of humility if we want to become successful.
Kabir Sahib says, "I went to find a bad person, but I did not find
anyone worse than me. When I looked within myself, I saw that I was the
worst of all."
Mahatmas are not bad people: Kabir Sahib was the Owner of the whole
creation. The Masters protected and took care of the souls then just as
They do now. But to teach us humility, they are using these humble words.
They tell us that God Almighty loves humility, and if we want to reach
Him, if we want to see Him, we should also develop humility like that.
Guru Nanak says, "I yearn for those who do Your devotion. I am seeking
the company of those who have connected themselves with You, who devote
themselves to You, and who have become one with You."
As Guru Nanak has lovingly explained to us, we should both understand
His teachings and live up to them. He neither criticizes anyone nor does
He condemn reading and writing: He says that it is all right to read and
write, but whatever we are reading, we should live up to that. Because
just by reading the holy books we cannot get liberation. We have to live
up to the words and the teachings of the holy scriptures which the
mahatmas have written for us. They do not say that the Vedas and Shastras
and the other holy scriptures are false; in fact they say, as Kabir Sahib
has said, that those who say that the Vedas are false are the false ones,
because they do not recognize what is written in them. So Guru Nanak
lovingly tells us, "No matter how much you read, you cannot get liberation.
Unless you live up to what you have read and do the devotion of Naam, you
cannot get liberation."
Reading the holy scriptures without living up to the teachings is just
like coming to the satsang with all your love. You know that you have come
here in the satsang with all your love and affection, but if you do not
live up to the words which you have heard here, if you do not mold your
life according to what is taught here, it is exactly the same as reading
the books and not living up to them. So what we have heard in the satsang,
and what we have come to know from the satsang, we should live up to that.
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