Sant Ajaib Signh Ji Question Answer Session Simran Cuts the Simran

Sant Ajaib Singh Ji Maharaj Kirpal Singh Ji Maharaj Sawan Singh Ji

Simran Cuts the Simran

Q - If Kal takes the form of the Master in dreams and the initiate cannot repeat the Simran in the dream, how can he protect himself? How can he know whether that dream was a spiritual dream and if that was Kal, or truly the Master who appeared and how can we have the confidence in the words that He said? Second, some Catholic people (non-initiates) say that they sometimes have deep feelings of infinite peace and love and in such moments they feel God is very near to them. What are such experiences really?

Ans - I have often said about this that when our soul comes down from the eye centre, only then do we have dreams. And regarding dreams of the Master I have often said that Master never comes down from the eye centre. We do not know about the inner planes because we do not go there in the state of consciousness, in the awakened state. But sometimes when our thoughts are pure and concentrated, then Master graciously pulls our soul up. That is very loving and beautiful experience and it should not be counted as a dream because it is not a dream, it is the Grace of the Master. If you have developed the habit of doing the Simran during the daytime then you will find no difficulty doing the Simran during such kinds of experiences where the Master has pulled your soul up.

In the nine openings there is filth and dirt, it is a very dirty place; but the Master who is very pure and holy will not come down into the nine openings; He always remains at the eye centre. And whenever He graciously pulls our soul up, and if we have such kinds of experience, we should take advantage of it as I have said earlier. We should try to utilize that vision of the Master in doing our meditation because the intoxication and happiness which we have experienced at the time of that vision, remains for many days and we can take good advantage of it by utilizing it in the meditation.

Regarding the other question, it does not matter if one is Catholic, or Hindu, Moslem, Christian, or Sikh –all the people who believe in the religion say that they feel near God and they feel the love and peace of God. But their condition is like that of a person who does not collect material to cook halva, but in his thoughts he makes the halva , and only in his thoughts he eats that halva; and he tells people that he has eaten and tasted it. But in reality he has not eaten the halva and he is not satisfied. In the same way, people who say they "feel the love of God, or they feel nearer to God" - are not feeling any love of God, and they are not any nearer to God because they don't even know where God resides.

In the beginning, before I got the Initiation into the first two words, since I was born into a Sikh family I used to do all the Sikh rites and rituals. I was devoted to the Sikh religion and I had this firm belief that he does the devotion of Lord, all his desires are fulfilled and God always takes care of him. Once when I was living in Shimla, I became sick and the army sent me to Patiala for treatment. One of our companies was also stationed in Patiala and since I was very devoted, everyone knew about my devotion, and they all respected me. So those people came to see me in the hospital. Some people would bring food, some people would bring money and they would leave the money under my pillow. I didn't know that because I was having a very high fever. After a few days I had recovered from my sickness and was about to leave the hospital; as I was packing I saw there was a lot of money there and I was very surprised. I did not realize that it was from all the people who had come to see me, I thought maybe that was a miracle of God. I thought, "Since I do the devotion of God and I am a very good devotee, maybe God wanted to give me something because I am sick and cannot earn money." I became very happy and that intoxication remained with me many days because then I started thinking, "I am a very good devotee, I am very close to God." I felt a lot of love and peace coming from God at that time. When I went back to Shimla, after a few days I started thinking about that again and then I came to the conclusion that it was not anything God had done, because why would God want to give me any money? It was good that God had given me my health back, why should He give me any money? Then I came to the conclusion that it was my friends who had left the money. When that company came back to Shimla, I told them that all those who had given me money should come and take it back. I was very grateful that they left the money for me, because I thought that it was from God and that gave me intoxication which helped me to continue with my devotion for some days. So just imagine, it was a very small thing, but for many days I felt that I was very close to God, that I was the perfect devotee of God, and in a way I felt a lot of love and peace coming from God.

This was an interesting question and I would like to tell you a very interesting story in response to this question. Once there was a person whose name was Sheikh Tilli and he was a very humorous man. He used to make many plans but would do nothing about those plans. Once a policeman wanted someone to carry a container of oil to the nearby; he saw Sheikh Tilli there and told him he would him half a rupee to carry the container for him. Sheikh Tilli became very happy, because that was a lot of money at that time. He carried that container on his head and while he was going to the city he went on making plans.

First he thought, "When I get this half rupee from the policeman I will go and buy some eggs and those eggs will hatch some hens and later on I will sell them and I'll get some more money. And then I will buy some buffaloes, cows, and other animals and then I will do the business of buying and selling cattle and then I will get some more money." It went on and on like that and then finally he came to a point where he had collected a lot of money and he got married. Because in India it is a very affair to get married. So after he had collected all that money –in his thoughts–he got married. Then he thought, "When I get married I will have a couple of children, and then my children will come to call me for dinner. They will come and say, 'Father came and eat' and I will shake my head and say, "No, I don't want to come.'"

So in that way he nodded his head and the container of oil fell onto the ground. Then that policeman became very angry at him and he said, "You have lost so much oil and you will have to pay for this." But Sheikh Tilli was worried for his own self, and he said, "Well you are talking about your oil, but what about my children, my buffalo?"

So I mean to say that all those so called religious people, in reality they have nothing like Sheikh Tilli who did not have any wife, who did not have any children, but still he was worried for them. In the same way those religious people don't know where God resides. God resides in our within but they have never thought of going in the within, so how can they realize God?

I myself have done a lot of rites and rituals and I have not found any peace, any love coming from God outside. Whenever the love and peace will come, whenever anyone feels close to God, it is only when he goes within.

Look deeply into the religions which prevail in this world and you will find that the Master in whose name that religion was started emphasized the necessity of a living Master, and you will find in His writings, in His teachings, that He also realized God only by going in the company of the living Master.

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Q - Master I have a question about worldly work. I was wondering if it creates bad karma or if it has a negative effect on spiritual progress to clear tables in a restaurant where they serve meat?

Ans - First of all you should try to find some vegetarian place to work, but if you cannot do that, if you are compelled to work in such a place where they serve meat, while you are doing your work you should try to do Simran as much as possible and you should not pay any attention to what is being served or what is lying there. As Kabir Sahib has said, "O Kabir, you live next door to the people who cut the throats of others, but why are you worried? Those who will commit the sin will repent, you should not become sad." So in the same way while you are doing your work you should not let the smell of the meat go within you [your consciousness]. You should not take in the impressions of those non-vegetarian things, and you should never allow your mind to think that it is very delicious food, or that it is better food than you eat. If you can prevent all these impressions from going within you while you are working, then it is all right to work there and the best way to do that is to do Simran constantly.

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Q - Master when I sit to meditate I cannot keep my mind still, even when I am saying Simran my mind is going. I cannot get to the eye centre either, what can I do about this?

Ans - When you are sitting for meditation you should not allow your mind to work too much. Even when you are not meditating you should try to keep your attention at the eye centre and you should try to do Simran, because when we allow our attention to drop down from the eye centre we lose a lot of our spiritual energy.

Those people whose mind works too much during the daytime, even when they are not sitting for meditation, those who always go on thinking useless things and who always get involved in useless pursuits, only those people have difficulty concentrating at the eye centre. They should make the habit of keeping their attention at the eye centre even while they are doing their worldly work and they should always try to do the Simran.

Now you people have left your worldly homes behind, very far away from this place. Even if nobody tells you to go back, still your attention will go there by itself. And even if you try to stop your attention from going there, it will not be stopped; it will go there by itself, because that is your home and you are attached to it. In the same way, when we make our eye centre as our real abode, then even if the other impressions and the other forces try to keep us away from the eye centre, our attention will not be stopped, it will go straight back to the eye centre if we have made it our real home.

The birds don't have much intellect, but even they have the knowledge of their home. If they have spent a couple of nights at some place, or if they have got food from some place, they understand that place as their real home and they come back to that place in the evening. In the same way, if you will make the eye centre as a place for your mind to live, as the place for your mind to stay– because at the eye centre there is peace and love–so if you will make the eye centre as the seat of your mind, then your mind will always feel the necessity of going back to the eye centre and you will have no difficulty concentrating there.

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Q - Sant Ji are there different gradations of parshad? Is it all right to take a bag of parshad in to be blessed for the sangat and does that have the same value as parshad that the Master gives you of His own Will?

Ans -The thing is that we do not get anything by trying to split hairs. We should not allow our mind to have so many thoughts going on within us. As far as parshad is concerned it all depends upon your faith. It does not make any difference whether you have brought something to be blessed or if the Master is giving you something of His own. Sometimes it happens that if people bring their own things one part of their mind says that it is all right because they paid for that food and it is all right because Master has just given the blessing to that food. Sometimes when they receive the parshad from the Master one part of the mind says that it does not belong to them because they have not paid for it, it is Master's food, Master has given that and then also they are bothered. But I would say that it all depends upon the faith. As far as the grace of the Master is concerned, it is all the same, whether you bring the food to be blessed or if He gives the things of His own.

Master wants to take you to such a place where illusions are removed; where you would not find any difference between you and others.

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Q - Master I have a question about praying for a soul that has left the body at the time of death and not having any real connection to the person but knowing their family. Say for instance, I know their son and out of my love for their son I pray for them when they die and I ask for their protection. Is it okay or is it better to leave?

Ans -First of all a Satsangi should stand on his own feet. And when we can stand on our own feet, we can become independent. Only when we rise above the level of the mind and organs of senses will we get absorbed in the Shabd Naam. And when you have become absorbed in the Shabd Naam then you will not need to pray for such things because you will have the direct connection with your Master and you can tell him right then and there to protect the souls.

Masters have written the prayers or benedictions only after going within and They have prayed to Their Master, face-to-face, internally. When we people pray for the protection for the other souls, the problem is that our mind is not completely present there so sometimes it doesn't work.

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Q - Master, please will you tell us how to die while living?

Ans -Well, everyday I try to make you people prepare for that. Everyday in the morning and evening. But still I will try to explain some things to you. You know that our soul, after coming down from the eye centre, has spread in all the cells of the body. And it has not only spread in the body, it has also spread outside the body. It has gone into religions, communities, societies, in the family, in friends; it has spread all over.

Saints ask us, "Why are we born again and again into this world?" Because we do the simran , or remembrance, of the world and because of the simran of the world we are born into this world again and again. Whatever thoughts we have at the time of death, according to that we get our birth in the next lifetime. Most of the time we come back into the same family, into the same homes, and if not there then we might go somewhere in the neighborhood.

It is a personal experience of the Saints that Simran cuts the simran and the Contemplation cuts the contemplation. The Simran given by the Master is the only thing which can cut down the simran or the remembrance of the worldly things and the Contemplation of the Form of the Master is the only thing which can make us forget the contemplation or the remembrance of the worldly things. Saints tell us that when we give up doing the simran of the world, when we do the Simran given by the Master, gradually the simrsn of the world goes away and then whom do we see? On whom do we contemplate? We contemplate on the Form of the Master who has given us the initiation and the forms of the world go away.

The simran of the world is also going on at the eye centre. You know whenever you try to remember anything, whenever you try to visualize the form of anybody or try to remember anyone's face, at once your attention goes to the eye centre. It is not like you are putting your attention at some other part lower than the eye centre and thinking about some person. Always your attention is at the eye centre whenever you are trying to remember something or some form. So at the eye centre the rosary of the simran of the world is going on twenty-four hours a day.

So when sitting at this place if you are doing the simran of the world, for instance, if you are remembering your father, your mother, your son, your daughter, your wife, your husband, what will happen? Since all those people are outside your body, your attention will go outside your body and you will become extroverted, and because we have been extroverted for many births , we have never thought of becoming introverted and that is why we find it difficult for our attention to go within.

When the Master gives us the Initiation what does He tell us? He tells us, "The Master is within you; God is within you." He gives us the Simran to do internally. He tells us that all the things are within us and we have to come to the eye centre. So when we do the Simran given by the Master, since the Master is within our soul, and God is also within us, when we start stilling our attention at the eye centre, when we start sitting there , then that beautiful Form of the Master is manifested over there and then not even for one moment will we take our attention away from that beautiful Form of the Master. The Master who has given us the Initiation is not different from Almighty God. The Formless Lord has taken up the Form of the Saint and He resides within us. So when the Master gives us the Simran and we do it honestly, in the beginning we find it difficult to bring our attention inward because we have become extroverted.. But when we do it, when we still our attention at the eye centre, Master is there, God is also there, and when we see His Inner Form even once, then we won't like to come outside.

In the Satsangs as well as at the time of Initiation we are told that by doing the Simran we can withdraw our attention from all the outer things and from our body and come to the eye centre. In that process when our soul starts to withdraw from our body, first it is withdrawn from the outer world and when it comes to withdraw from our body we feel as if ants are biting our feet. When the soul goes upward then the body below becomes numb and finally when the soul comes to the eye centre we feel as though the body below the eye centre is not there; it is all numb and we lose feeling of it, and then we feel that it is like a rented house, it does not belong to us.

In the process of death also the same thing happens. Those people who have made their Simran very strong, for them it is easy to withdraw from the body, it is very easy for them to bring their soul to the eye centre. For them it is like pulling a hair out of butter. But some people who have not perfected their Simran and who meditate occasionally, if their soul tries to leave the body they find it very difficult. They find it very painful, like the process of death, and sometimes people get so frightened that they don't like to sit for meditation again.

On the last tour, at Sant Bani Ashram, one person who was getting Initiated was sitting on a chair doing the meditation. At once his soul left the body and it was very painful for him because it was the first time he had meditated. He fainted and fell down off the chair. Earlier I had told Russell Perkins and Pappu about such happenings, because sometimes when the soul is pulled up like this the person feels a lot of pain and even faints. But if the that happens, we should not worry; if we give a massage to the back of the neck then the soul comes back into the body and the person does not feel any pain. And when that person fell down, they both gave him a massage and he came back into the body and he did not feel any pain.

All Saints have said, "Those who want to do the meditation of Naam should make their heart like iron." One day everybody has to die; why not do that thing – which we have to do one day – while we are living? Why not die while we are living? Guru Nanak Sahib also says, "The place where we have to go after death, why not go there while we are still in the body?"

Since the soul is spread throughout all the cells of the body, when it is withdrawn from all those cells and goes upward, it is natural for us to feel pain; because in the process of the soul's withdrawal the lower chakras are broken. When they are broken it is natural for a person to feel the pain. But if we have the Simran given by the perfect Master, if we have the grace of the Master, then we do not find it difficult.

In the beginning when I had the Initiation into the first two Words, many initiates of Baba Sawan Singh who had the full Initiation of the five words would come to meditate with me. We were about ten or twelve people and they were very loving, devoted souls and they would come to meditate with me. And we always had one person standing up, while the others were meditating, to check the other people. If anyone was falling asleep in meditation or if he was trying to move, the person who was in charge at that time was told to slap the person on both sides. So I mean to say that only the brave courageous people can do meditation and only those who have real love and faith can become the real meditators.

No one was allowed to make tea, no one was allowed to sit in meditation after drinking tea, and no one allowed to bring any kind of food to be distributed as parshad. Because it was a very strict period of meditation and we used to think, "He who brings parshad and he who distributes food to the other people wants to take away the meditation of others and that is not fair."

And that time I did not sit on any kind of cushion; I had only some sticks or hay underneath me, and I never even put a gunny sack under me; sometimes I sat on a flat wooden platform.

You would have read in the Book written by Mr.Oberoi [ Support for the Shaken Sangat ], the stories of Sunder Das, who was an Initiate of Master Sawan Singh. With him I used to have sittings of eight hours at a stretch. In that you would have read about how we can die while living. Once when we were meditating we had some fire going on and his leg had fallen into the fire and he did not know his leg was burning, because he was so much absorbed in the meditation.

When he got up from that meditation, he told me, "The intoxication that I have received today in meditation, I have not got that any time before." Imagine to what plane he must have gone in that meditation. If he was in the body – you know that even if we get a little bit of pain, we move – but he was not in the body that is why he did not even know that his leg was burning.

Mr.Oberoi did not write all those stories only from hearsay, he tried to find every possible person who had meditated with me and after meeting them and confirming all the things with them, he wrote down the stories.

Usually when the western dear ones have the yearning and longing to do the devotion, they also have a feeling of hurry. They want to get results right away and in that they do not become successful. Master Sawan Singh Ji also used to say, "Western dear ones have this habit that when they have the yearning to do the devotion, they sit for meditation, but they want the results right then, and it does not work like that." We should do our devotion, our meditation, with love and faith, and patiently we should wait for the results.

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