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The Best way of Living is Spiritual Living
LORD RESIDES INSIDE US
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Sunday, January 30, 2011
A Minute with GOD - Busy Life .......
Always remember that your body is mortal whereas your soul is immortal.
So always try to make happy your soul not your body.” “ Always remember that we are living in this Illusionary world where all things world are immortal and one day all these things will extinct except god, soul and saint. So, don’t run towards worldly thing, as you don’t get anything. Do MEDITATION because this will help you to reach GOD (the maker of this whole universe).”
Monday, January 24, 2011
One Spiritual Family
Sant Mat means ‘teachings of the saints.’ By ‘saint’ is meant a spiritual adept, one who has experienced union with the divine. These saints or masters teach a path of Godrealization which has existed from the beginning of time and has been described through the ages in many different ways.
As modern technology and international mobility make our planet increasingly small, we frequently encounter religions and cultures foreign to our own. Now more than ever, we are able to appreciate the relativity of our own traditions and historical perspectives, even as the leaders of the great world religions reach out through ecumenical movements to identify and acknowledge their common ground.
Sant Mat concerns itself with this common ground which is the spiritual heart, or heritage, of every great religion. Spiritual masters come for this one purpose only: to reveal to the world this common heritage which links all humanity within God’s love.
By experiencing the oneness of God within us, we can experience for ourselves that we are all part of one spiritual family.
The root of the word “religion” is “re-ligare,” which means “to bind back.” The true purpose of all religions is to bind back, or reunite, each individual soul with God.
Problems come when saints, the great teachers of reality, die. Their followers formalize their teachings in an effort to conserve them, or to gain personal power and prestige.
This is how separate religions are born, as the simple common foundations are developed into complex edifices, shaped and coloured by the historical and geographical conditions of the time. Issues of power and wealth gain precedence, and the original teachings become obscured. Spiritual practice is relegated to second place while maintaining the organizational status quo becomes paramount. Soon we find one religion setting itself against another, and man killing his fellow man in the name of God.
Yet if God is one and he is our Father, then we are all his children, a fellowship of humanity. This is what the great saints of all religions teach: There is one God for all humanity, although he is known by a multitude of names. Whether we refer to him as God, Khuda, Wahiguru, Ram, Lord, or by any other name, we are speaking of the same, supreme, omniscient, and omnipotent Being.
Saints teach that God, undifferentiated and one, through his own power, projects himself and creates and sustains the creation. This dynamic power of God is also known by many different names. In Christianity it is the Word, the Holy Ghost; in Judaism, the Word, the Name, the Holy Spirit; in Chinese philosophy, the Tao; in Islam, it is the Kalma; in Indian philosophy, the Shabd, the Word, the Unspoken Language. Each religion, differing in time and place, has described the same power with different words.
Saints tell us that each and every living being is imbued with this power. When we refer to the soul within any being, it is to this power that we are referring.
Since every living creature is enlivened by a power which is the projection of God himself, so everything that lives is in essence a part of him. Conversely, the supreme Being is immanent and present within every living creature. The soul is nothing other than pure spirit; but to function in the worlds of mind and matter, it is endowed with various coverings which conceal its true nature, and it becomes subject to the fundamental dynamics of the creation, the law of cause and effect. This is a law of perfect justice by which all action in the creation must be compensated – thus we live in an invisible prison of debts and credits. The soul, knotted to its covering of mind, is born again and again in different forms to settle this account.
Of all the creatures in the universe, only human beings are self-conscious. But as we live out our daily lives in the physical creation, our essential nature remains hidden, concealed by mind and matter, like a bright and shining light wrapped in many layers of black cloth. Thus, in spite of having the attribute of self-consciousness, most of us remain blind to our true selves.
It is only when we finally meet a saint or master that a soul can rise above this level of duality, of action and reaction, reward and punishment, and discover its true spiritual nature. It is this divine essence within us that is permanent and not subject to the law of justice. Masters have the power to awaken us to the divine spirit within, by acting as a mirror to our soul and reflecting our pure essence to ourselves in spite of the dense coverings that obscure it. They re-connect the soul to the holy Word, and explain the technique of discovering God within the body. They teach a practical method of internal prayer, or meditation, which enables the practitioner to still the mind by withdrawing the soul currents from the outside world and concentrating them instead at the eyecentre, the spiritual heart. Once the mind is absolutely focused at this point, he or she becomes conscious of God.
Sant Mat cannot be termed a religion in the historical sense of the word, as it is not related to any race, nation, community, cult, or sect of any kind. Despite the relatively large numbers of people practicing this way of life, it remains a personal, private bond between each individual and God. The teachings have no bearing on the external aspects of life, other than the requirements that a practitioner be at least twenty-four years old, lead a moral life, abstain from all alcohol and mind-altering drugs, maintain a lactovegetarian diet, and give time daily to spiritual practice. Masters do not require anyone to change his or her religion, they never charge fees, and they unfailingly support themselves from their own earnings. They teach us how to nurture the spiritual dimension of life while fulfilling our family and social responsibilities. In doing so, we expand our spiritual horizons and experience for ourselves that divine spirit which enlivens the entire universe. We receive internal proof that we are indeed all children of the same God.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Mysticism and the Search for Truth
A mystic is often thought to be someone lost to reality, head in the clouds, full of frothy, misty notions. Yet if we examine the writings left by great mystics throughout history, we find that real mysticism is practical, objective and scientific. Mystics instead turn out to be among the humans who have most dedicated themselves to the search for truth and reality and are among today’s great scientists, except that the questions they ask are different. Mystics only concern themselves with humanity’s ultimate questions, ones that fester in everyone: Who am I? What is the meaning of my life? Where has this consciousness of mine come from, and what happens to it at death? What is true? What is real? Mystics are like scientists in another way: they are not satisfied with words or promises, but insist on verifying every theory by their own experience, seeing and hearing the truth with their own eyes and ears, so to speak.
If this is true, then the question naturally arises: what have these mystics – who include among their number many of humanity’s most renowned religious leaders, philosophers, and thinkers–discovered over the millennia of their endeavors? If we turn to their writings, we find an extraordinary unanimity on many points – extraordinary given the diversity of cultures, times and places from which their voices come down to us. Indeed, the unity of their account is strong testimony to the validity of their discoveries.
One point on which all mystics agree is that no one, not even the accomplished mystics themselves, can simply tell us the answers we seek. This is, they say, partly because the answers cannot be captured in our ordinary words and concepts and partly because they must be experienced. Just as no parent can learn for his child, similarly each of us has to grow to see these truths for ourselves. While others can offer us guidance on where to look, and even suggest
what we will learn, still the looking and learning must be our own.
A second point mystics insist on is that the answers we seek, indeed all true knowledge, can be found nowhere outside us but must be uncovered deep within our own consciousness. Socrates declared, “Know thyself.” Mystics tell us that this self-knowledge is the first step in discovering the Lord. They make a most astounding claim: they say that God, the Ultimate Reality and Truth, himself dwells within us. As Christ said, “The Kingdom of God is within you,” and the Qur’an reads, “We are nearer to [man] than his jugular vein.” Guru Arjan, the fifth in the line of Sikh gurus, wrote: “He who believes in God as Truth in his heart knows the essence of the Creator, the Cause of causes.” Kabir Sahib, the great Indian poet and saint, wrote:
Complete, entire, and ever present
Is the one true Lord
Within the body of each man—
The Lord who is beyond all bonds.
This wondrous statement, of course, meets instant doubt in us: if God is within us, how then can we be unaware of him? This leads to another point on which mystics speak as one: we are under the spell of a deluded mind. It is our disordered thoughts that drown out reality and muffle God’s inner voice. The Theosophist Madame Blavatsky wrote, “the Mind is the great Slayer of the Real.” Mystics tell us that the purpose of human life is to overcome this delusion here and now, and they show us how. They teach various forms of prayer or meditation by which ordinary human beings can still their thoughts, develop inner calm and concentration, and gradually become aware of God’s presence. In the Psalms God says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
Another point of unanimity among mystics, handed down over the long reach of human experience, is that a life of purity and mental discipline is necessary for seeking truth. Immoral acts hold us back in several ways. One is because we have to account for our actions. Our actions require recompense. Indian scriptures call this the law of karma, or cause and effect;
Christ explains it as “As you sow, so shall you reap.” Immorality is also an obstacle because only a pure mind sees God within. Therefore mystics urge us to adhere to the highest precepts of morality, among them vegetarianism, avoiding all intoxicants, and earning our own living.
Finally, mystics always insist that we seek guidance on our journey from another human being who has already traveled it. Though we must make the journey ourselves, still, as in other difficult areas of endeavor, a living guide is essential. The true spiritual seeker will look for a guide who knows the way, who can teach spirituality, no matter his race, sect, or country of origin. As the Muslim mystic Rumi wrote: “ If you wish to go on a pilgrimage, go with one who has already made it, whether he be a Hindu, a Turk or an Arab.”
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