Dec 15, 2022
"Santji used to often say, 'Leave a hundred things that you have to do and sit for satsang. And leave a thousand things that you have to do but sit for meditation.' He used to say this because that is the true work that we have to do. That is the true work for which we have been given this precious human life. Sant Ji used to say, 'Just like it is very important for us to eat food and drink water to live -- for this body -- it is equally important for us to provide satsang and meditation for the soul. Satsang is the water for the soul and food is the meditation.'' (Baba Ram Singh)
Today's Sant Mat Satsang Podcast edition of Spiritual Awakening Radio includes readings from Santji and Baba Ram Singh on how Satsang serves as an oasis for the soul. There is a mystic poem of Sant Tulsi Sahib on present-tense access to the heavens -- the way of Mystics -- where the Mystics and conventional religions part company. See my comments below on not placing earthly limits on the Limitless. There is the theme of simran, the invocation of names of God ("Simran is the first step of the spiritual ladder" -- Kirpal Singh), with readings from The Lord's Prayer, a John the Baptist quote from the Mandaean Gnostic Ginza Rabba (Great Treasure), Sant Dadu Dayal, Sant Tulsi Sahib, Kirpal Singh, Baba Somanath, Baba Ram Singh, and we conclude with a mystic poem of Namdev.
Not Placing Earthly Limits on the Limitless
"Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language." (Meister Eckhart)
"To seek God without knowing ‘El-Hdoud’ (Sacred Limits) means falling into the net of he who refused to bow down before the Wisdom of God's Appearance in the Adamic Limits, and hence, proposed to set his own limits of what God is. This is what otherwise is known as the most original form of evil that is deeply embedded in the Soul’s method of seeing Reality." (Druze Wisdom)
Commentary
I believe what this is saying is: do not have a limited approach to God and perceiving Reality. Do not limit God by bringing God down to our level of existence. God, by definition, is Limitless, Formless, Infinite, and Timeless. Therefore, to approach the Supreme Being, not with open-mindedness, awe, wonder, curiosity, and flexibility about experiencing Reality in whole new ways quite differently from the familiar earthly existence with the five senses, we just end up filtering these Divine Unknowns through our limited temporal bias and do not benefit.
Conventional religions have it backwards for the most part. Rather than building minuscule temples of wood and stone for the Supreme Being to squeeze into in an attempt to bring heaven to earth, it is we that need to go There. The soul must ascend and go to the Divine Level, to transcend temporal existence via another kind of consciousness.
As Meister Eckhart once said, "If the soul is to see God, then it must see no temporal thing, for as long as the soul is conscious of time or space, or of an idea, it cannot know God."
So yes, stillness: rising above body-consciousness, rising above thoughts and ideas, beliefs, theologies, earthly understandings, temporal bias, in other words, silent contemplative meditation.
"It is in the darkness that one finds the Light." (Eckhart)
"The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; My eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love." (Eckhart)
In Divine Love, Light, and Sound, At the Feet of the Masters,
James Bean
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