16 September, Harisar Ashram, Kila Raipur: On the occasion of Sankranti, Sadhvi Ji addressed the loving disciples of Guru sharing the message of love brought by the month of asu. She elaborated on what is love and even more significantly, what confirms our true love and longing for the divine. Following to her talk, Swami Ji in yet another mind-boggling session delivered on ‘The question’ every soul most definitely asks at some point during one’s journey to divinity – ‘who am I’?
Dripping due to the incessant bath in the tub of our own ego, we claim to be truly devoted towards our Guru. We claim to have been walking down this path for long enough to know it all. Let us dare to test ourselves, ‘have I even started’?
Glimpse from Sadhvi Ji’s discourse:
In the barah maha path (a folk poetry, describing the pangs of separation from our one true love over the twelve months of the year), for the month of asu, it is said, ‘O mother, I long to meet the divine. My body and mind are thirsty for His vision. Can someone please tell me, what I can do so as to meet Him?’ When one has such profound desire for the divine, Gurbani further says, ‘the saints, sent by God help us unite with Him. For that, we must surrender under Guru’s command as no peace can be found anywhere except under his safe heaven.’ It is only our Guru who can connect our thread of love to the divine.
What is this love? Saint Kabir has said, ‘Jab mein tha tab hari nahi, ab hari hai mein naahi. Prem gali ati sankari, tamein dou na samai, i.e. ‘when I (ego) was there, Guru wasn’t around. The moment I was gone, Guru came to rescue. This street of love is so narrow that two cannot pass through it at the same time.’ Nothing else would come close to satisfying us until we have such intense but innocent love for Him. And whenever that happens, each soul will remind us of His essence, or place will let us experience his divine presence.
How does one can claim to be in love with the one dwelling within? We say that we love God, then why can’t we love the beings created by Him? Today, fights are witnessed in almost every other home. We cannot love our related ones, then how can we possibly have love for all? We say we visit temples then why can’t we stop back-biting at least being there. Know this; even if we surrender truly to the idol, like Meera, we can get liberated. The sole root of the delay is that we do not surrender. No matter how much we run whether after worldly affairs or on the name of service (sewa), we are nothing but living corpses.
Therefore, the message this month is here to offer is that let us drown ourselves in the ocean of His love. Let us plant the seed of love in our heart for the one and only – Him, because there is no other way out. Be it a king or a beggar, in the end, everyone will need to walk down the same lane. The choice is ours! The decision is ours!
Glimpse from Swami Ji’s discourse:
Taking out a seed from a tree has no affect whatsoever on the existence of a tree. The tree remains to be complete. The seed, no doubt, will take its due time but is complete as well because some day, it has the ability to become a grown-tree too. Similarly, a human is the seed of divine. Outside Him, we are also complete and so is He. The only difference is, He is a full-grown tree, and we are to be grown seeds.
A seed can have doubts, ‘I am so small. How can I have a tree inside me?’ But eventually, as time would have it arranged, one day it does fall in the lap of mother Earth. She invites the seed to decay itself within her so that she can get it to become the tree some day. Now if that seed gets scared saying that, ‘once decayed, how will I know?’, it will never rise to become a tree. But if he dares to go beyond his fear, with time, it gets to know its ability to become a tree, and so that becomes of it.
To make this divine seed (human) a grown, happy, powerful and a peaceful tree, the one loaded with divine qualities; Guru and his command is that lap of mother Earth. Upon surrendering, the fake and imaginary boundaries of limits and weaknesses strolling in the mind start to lose their identity. And once we are beyond these, the divine consciousness hidden deep inside, and the divine seed nourished by Guru begins to bloom. Then a day comes when becoming complete (full divine consciousness) this seed (now a grown-tree) is ready-enough to give birth to many new seeds.
This is neither a riddle, nor a story. It is the truth. As long as we do not accept this, we will neither find peace nor gain any happiness. Decision is ours! On asking verbally, everyone says ‘yes’. But on practical grounds, talking about decaying, we find it hard to commit. Our situation is like that dog who is constantly chewing a juice less, hard piece of bone. Eventually, blood produced from the swollen gums in his own mouth illusionizes him making him chew even harder with all his might until he runs out of it.
Let’s get this straight! No one has ever found eternal bliss from any of these five vikars named lust (kaam), rage (krodh), greed (lobh), attachment (moh) and conceit (ahankar). No matter how hard we try to get rid of them, we just cannot! Then, what to do? If the reason for these vikar’s is outside then why not go inside? He, the divine consciousness is sitting in there. And the moment we get the glimpse of that divine we get to know that He –the one divine— resides within all. Upon this revelation, with whom we’ll fight, or do backbiting about, or be jealous of?
Now, we can talk as much as we like but everything has to pass through some test. 1) We claim to be truly devoted towards our Guru. But what does being devoted means? We must be doing our daily practise (sadhana) and service (sewa), surrendering under Guru’s command. And if not, no matter how many namaskaras (salutations), charities, feasts we manage to do, it is merely a show-off. The journey to become a tree is impossible to get even started. 2) We claim to have been walking down this path for long enough to know it all. But how do we know that to be true? The people connected to you will also choose to walk along. And, by walking it means that He is the only priority.
So, word hard and honestly, raise one’s family with love but let’s take out time to take a sigh and ponder over these. Think, in which direction your life’s train is headed to. It’s high time. Let’s grab this opportunity to fine-tune these priceless breaths and save some real wealth of Guru-mantra before we depart for our ultimate abode.