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alt.meditation.shabda
FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN:
GURU NA**** - THE TORCHBEARER OF NAAM
- by Michael Turner
=A9 April 1996, 2008
"Almost ablaze,
Still you don't feel the heat."
- Robert Hunter
The next Light and Sound Master I want to discuss is
Guru Na****. A contem****ary of Kabir (1440 - 1519), Na****
(1469 - 1539) is best known as the first guru of the Sikh faith.
After his passing, nine more gurus followed. They
were: Angad, Amardas, Ramdas, Arjan, Har Gobind, Hari
Rai, Hari Krishan, Teg Bahadur and Gobind Singh.
Gobind Singh departed in 1708, at which time the
official line of living Sikh Gurus ended. After this time,
orthodox Sikhs put their faith in the Adi Granth Sahib, a
compilation of devotional poetry by Na**** and his first
four successors, as well as other awakened souls such as Kabir,
Namdev and Ravidas. Devotees of Sant Mat, on the other
hand, believe that the chain of spiritual Masters of Naam (in
which they include the nine successors, as well as Kabir,
Ravidas, Namdev, and other mystic poets of the same era,
such as Mira Bai and Dadu Sahib) to be unbroken.
My first conscious exposure to Guru Na**** came in
the summer of 1975, when I was taking a kundalini yoga class
at a Sikh Ashram here in Tucson. On the wall of the yoga room
was a large drawing of Him, above which were the words,
"Ekankar Sat Nam Sri Wah Guru." At the ripe old age of 16,
I didn't know much about Guru Na****, or the Sikhs for that
matter. But the ashram felt nice, and the mantra on the wall
had a powerful resonance.
This resonance stayed with me when I went back to
Thousand Oaks, California, to finish high school that fall.
The mantra replaced all others I had tried and became my
daily companion. Within weeks of my return, I was introduced
to the Sound Current Teachings through an American path
called, coincidentally, "Eckankar."
I was immediately enraptured with these teachings, so
much so that I soon forgot the ashram, and the Sikh Satguru
who helped light the way for me to find them. It wasn't until
I took the David Lane challenge a few years ago, and began
researching the historical roots of the Light and Sound
teachings, that I fully began to appreciate the profound impact
of this great soul.
A couple of things which I initially found interesting
were the fact that Guru Na**** was known in his time as the
"torchbearer" of the Way of Naam (in the same way that
Eckists refer to Rebazar Tarzs as the "Torchbearer of Eck"),
that many of the holy sites were called "Golden Temples"
and that the guardians of these temples were called "Mahantas"
(two significant words in the Eckankar theology) Given my
nearly two decades of tutelage within the structure of Eckankar,
I found the similarities most fascinating, and had to know more.
Guru Na**** was born in the village of Talwandi (know
called "Nankana Sahib") on April 15, 1469. Unlike Kabir,
who was raised in a poor, low caste, Moslem weaver household,
Na**** was born to a relatively prosperous Hindu family. His
father, Kalyan Chand, was of the Kshatriya caste (second only
to Brahmin in rank and prestige), and served as the village
accountant, keeping rent records for the local Moslem landlord.
This socio-economic and cultural background is im****tant to
note, as it gives valuable insight into Na****'s way of presenting
the path of Naam.
Both Kabir and Na**** taught that Naam superceded
all creeds and social structures. Both spoke at length about
the fallacies of punditry and the dangers of spiritual pride.
However, whereas Kabir was more strident and didactic in
slicing through the veils of illusion, Na**** was more gentle
in expressing the same paradigm. I attribute this largely to
Kabir's dire financial and cultural straits, in which He was
constantly under attack from both Hindu Brahmins and
Islamic Pirs, whereas Na**** was more prosperous, seemed
to get along better with His neighbors and was thus able to
dispatch illusion more gently and gracefully. In other words,
He spoke the language of both His Islamic and Hindu peers,
and was thus able to communicate the teachings in a less
threatening manner, in a way they could better understand
and accept.
Na**** was, from most accounts, fairly well schooled
in several dialects, including Persian and Panjabi. He was also
comfortable with Hindu and Islamic theology (owing largely
to the Moslem political dominance of India), and appeared to
be well acquainted with such mystical Sufi poets as Jelaluddin
Rumi. Whether Sufis who had been initiated in Rumi=C6s lineage
came to India and made contact with Na**** (and Kabir) remains
to be seen - but I strongly suspect such was the case.
=46rom the time Na**** was a child, He appeared to have
been a natural mystic. At the age of seven, He astonished his
teacher by composing an acrostic poem in which each line began
sequentially with one of the 35 letters of the Persian alphabet.
What was even more remarkable than His literacy, however,
was the strong devotional bent of the verses, and the fact that
the point of the whole poem was about the uselessness of outer
language in trying to describe the indescribable. Even then,
His mind was turned towards God. To give you an idea of
this seven year-old's mindset, I've included four of the
lines below:
ALIF: Remember God and banish neglect of
Him from thy heart. Accursed the life of him
in this world who breathes without uttering
the Name.
BE: Renounce heresy and walk according
to the Shariat. Be humble before everyone,
and call no one bad.
GAF: Mans' mind is wanton; if you restrain
it, you shall put your feet firmly on the way
to haqiqat.
WAW: They become saints who
associate with the true. The more they
remember God, the more they love Him.
As a result of this innately contemplative nature, Guru
Na**** - while literate and well-read - was not exactly a Rhodes
scholar. He was somewhat of a daydreamer, preferring to
explore the inner regions, and discover the root sources behind
outer theories and philosophies. He intuitively sensed that true
knowledge and wisdom would not be found through the mere
reading of books, or engaging in the sophistry of intellectual
debates. It is said that, when He was asked about his acrostic,
He replied that He sought the meaning behind the letters.
This is in keeping with the Sant Mat perspective that
there are two types of language: Varnatmik (that which can
be written or spoken with the physical tongue) and Dhunatmik
(that which cannot be written or spoken - the Nameless Name,
the Voice of Silence).
As Na**** entered adolescence, His family tried to find
ways of keeping Him gainfully employed, grooming Him for life's
responsibilities befitting one of His caste. For a time, He tended
cattle. But His heart wasn't really in it, and He would often
be found lost in reverie under a tree. At one point, His father
tried to encourage Him to follow in his footsteps as an
accountant. This was short-lived, however, as Na**** had a
habit of taking money which had been entrusted to Him and
giving it to wandering Sadhus.
Finally, Na**** was sent to live with his sister, Na****i,
in Sultanpur, in hopes that someone closer to His own age
might be able to reason with Him. Instead, just the opposite
happened. One morning He did not return from bathing in
the river. People searched for Him, to no avail, and He was
almost given up for dead.
Three days later, He returned home. When asked
where He had been, Na**** replied that He had been taken to
the court of the Supreme Lord, Sat Naam. Then He said two
remarkable things.
The first was very similar to Kabir's revelation a few
decades earlier: "There is no Hindu. There is no Musalman
(Moslem)." These few words reflected a perspective which
was to have a revolutionary impact on Indian philosophy and
culture. He then elaborated on this precept by reciting for the
first time the Mul Mantra (Prelude) to the Jap Ji, which begins,
"Ekankar Sat Naam, Karta Purakh:"
"There is One Reality (Ek =3D 1,
Ankar =3D Reality or God), the Unmanifest
manifested. Ever existent, It is Naam. The
Creator, pervading all; without fear; without
enmity; the Timeless, the Unborn, the Self-
Existent - complete within ItSelf. Through
the favor of Its true servant, the Guru, It may
be realized. It was, when there was nothing.
It was, before all ages began. It existeth now,
O Na****, and shall exist forevermore."
The Jap Ji proceeds for 38 stanzas elaborating on this
point. Na**** Sahib states very clearly that caste, creed,
culture, economic status and schooling were (and are)
irrelevant when it came to knowing God. God knowledge,
He said, could not be acquired from any schooling or book
learning. It could only be had by direct communion with
God's Name (Naam, Shabda or Word). This theme he
reiterated constantly, and it comes up repeatedly as well in
another of his epic poems, the "Asa Di Vars." One ****tion
of this classic work states,
"We fill up the carts with books we
have read; we carry them along with us
after reading. We fill up boats with books
we have read; we bury them in the earth after
reading. We read year after year; we read
month after month. We read all our life long;
we read with every breath. Na**** says, Only
one thing is counted; all the rest is the vain
prattle of the ego.
The more one writes, the more one is
burned; the more one wanders in the places of
pilgrimage, the more one=C6s talk is useless.
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).
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?
One walks barefoot, he gets what he has
earned; he eats dirt and throws ashes on his head.
Such a blind and foolish one loses his honor;
Without Naam, he does not get anywhere.
One lives in the wilderness, among graves
and cremation places; such blind ones do not
know, and repent later. He who meets the
Satguru becomes happy; he makes the Naam
of the Lord dwell within his mind. Na**** says,
The one on whom He is gracious gets it;
becoming free of hope and fear, he burns his
egoism with the Shabda.
Your devotees are pleasing to You;
they look beautiful at Your door singing Your
glory. Na**** says, Unless it is written in our
karma, we cannot come to Your door; we
wander about.
One does not understand his root;
still he counts himself all in all. I am a low-
caste bard; the others call themselves high-
caste. I yearn for those who meditate on You."
In "The Palace of Love" (a book transcribed from His
series of satsangs on the "Asa Di Vars" - and from which the
above stanzas were taken), Sant Ajaib Singh Ji Maharaj (one
of Sant Kirpal Singh Ji's successors) points out:
"In the Golden Age, or Sat Yuga, Truth
was the means of liberation. In the Silver Age,
or Treta Yuga, performance of austerities was
the means of liberation. In the Copper Age, or
Dwapar Yuga, wor****p and outer rites and rituals
were means of liberation. But in this Iron age,
or Kali Yuga, the sup****t of Naam is the only
means of liberation."
In other words, making pilgrimages to temples, joining
the right church, studying sacred texts, being a philosophy or
theology major - or a renowned religious scholar - the practice
of yogic postures, pranayam, vegetarianism, celibacy, even
extended periods of meditation, are absolutely worthless for
realizing the Lord if we are not also in communion with the
Word. All rites, rituals and practices can lift us up to a certain
extend. But they all stop at the mind.
Remember, the Universal Mind Power is the domain
of Kal, the lord of illusion and duality. Indeed, the Mind Power
(Kal or Brahmanda) and all of it's tributary gods and goddesses
(e.g. Brahma, Vishnu, ****va, Lakshmi, Parvati, Kali, Krishna,
Rama, Ganesha, etc.) are all part of Its creation. They are all
reflections of Its True Light, the result of It refracting off of
the mirror of Mind (Kal). In stanza 9 of the Jap Ji, Guru
Na**** says very clearly:
"By communion with the Word, one
can attain the powers of ****va, Brahma and
Vishnu. By communion with the Word, one
can win esteem from all, irrespective of one's
past. By communion with the Word, one can
have yogic insight, with the mysteries of life
and self all revealed. By communion with the
Word, one can acquire the true im****t of the
Sastras, Smritis and Vedas. O Na****, His
devotees live in perpetual ecstasy; for the Word
washes away all sin and sorrow."
In other words, why study books, philosophy and
ideas to learn about their Source, when, by communing with
the Word, you can study the Source directly and, in doing so,
have total awareness about all philosophies and ideas. By
communing with the Word (which we call the practice of Surat
Shabd Yoga) you can gain in an instant knowledge which you
might be able to acquire through a lifetime of book learning.
Over and over again, Na**** stresses the im****tance of
Naam. And he states very clearly that Its wor****p - i.e., the
union (yoga) of one's attention (surat) with the Word (Shabda
or Naam) - is the only means of attaining lasting liberation from
the wheel of birth and death.
"By practice of the Word, one rises
into universal consciousness and develops right
understanding. By practice of the Word, one
develops clairvoyance and transvision of the
whole creation. By practice of the Word, one
is freed from sorrow and suffering. By practice
of the Word, one shall not go to Yama (the
judge of the dead) after his death. O, great is
the Power of the Word, but few there be that
know it."
It doesn't matter what religion we are brought up in.
The Word is the Source of all faiths, and all faiths are a
reflection of It. As Kirpal Singh stated so beautifully, "God
made man, and man made religions."
This is the essence of what Na**** meant when He
stated so succinctly, "There is no Hindu. There is no
Musalman." All creeds, rites, rituals, outer practices and
observances are meaningless from the perspective of God-
consciousness. There is only God, Soul and Naam - Father,
Son, Holy Ghost - Creator, Creation and the Creative Power
which links them together.
By communing - by harmonizing our attention - with
the return flow of Naam, It will lift us up above physical,
emotional and mental consciousness, taking us home to our
Source. Who could ask for more?
For a 40 year time period - from His late 20's to mid-60's
- Na**** Sahib traveled throughout India, eventually making
His way to Afghanistan, Persia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia,
carrying the torch lit by Kabir and using it to illuminate
countless souls wherever He went. Although he was not
always welcomed everywhere He went, He had the gift of
turning adversaries into friends.
During a visit to Mecca, He was accosted for daring
to sleep with His feet pointed toward the Quaba, instead of
His head. His reply was something to the effect of, "Show me
any direction where God is not, and there I will point my feet."
In another instance, he was approaching a town which
already had a preponderance of sadhus. As He neared the town
gates, an emissary was sent with a tea cup filled to the brim
(which essentially meant that the town already had plenty of
holy men, thank you very much, and it didn't need another).
Na****'s response was to take a lotus petal and place it on top
of the tea - without spilling a drop.
"Those who have communed with
the Word, their toils shall end, and their
faces shall flame with glory. Not only shall
they find salvation, O Na****, but many more
shall find freedom with them."
- Jap Ji (finale)
"The more that you give,
The more it will take.
Till that thin line beyond which
You really can't fake."
- Robert Hunter
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alt.meditation.shabda
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