Blind to the Mortal and Transient Nature of Life - Satsang

After devotees listened to several bhajans presented so beautifully by Rajbhai, Baiji said:

“We all have been absorbed for some time listening to bhajans. Rajbhai sang bhajans with such deep devotion, feelings, and with a soothing voice that we forgot our daily lives and duties for the time being. This is a God-given opportunity to experience such closeness to our inner beings that in spite of the tensions of daily life and worldly things that are still out there, we freed ourselves from all of it by listening to captivating bhajans.

When the listener and the bhajan singer are in harmony, like when the tabla (drum) and harmonium (piano) are in rhythm, there is true joy. If the harmonium and tabla are not in sync, then it doesn’t sound pleasant. When the bhajan singer sings from the heart with devotion and when the listeners attach their minds to the singer’s devotion, then the listeners are connected to God (Parmatma). As long as we stay joined to Parmatma, even though we may have tension and stress with us, we are not affected by it. This is why our saints have said that the more we stay connected to satsang, the more we will be free from tension and stress. “Satsang” is the thing that connects you to God.

When we meet people in society, they ask us things such as, “How you are, how is your work, and how your children are?” but they don’t ask you how much you love God. 

In our worldly lives, we don’t have many opportunities to hear about Parmatma. It’s missing from our daily lives. If you bring up a conversation about spirituality and “bhakti” (prayers, devotion), people ask, “Why should we bother about all that before we are elderly?” They say when we get old, we will be sitting on the couch, and that’s the time we will be doing prayers and bhajans. People say what’s the need for doing it now in our youth because this is the time for us to have fun. The reason people say that is because they don’t know the true meaning and nature of life (that it is transient and temporary).

Every person is alive. Every person is self-involved, especially in this country. There is no time. We don’t even have time to sit and have a meal in peace. We all know that. Sometimes we are late for work, sometimes there are so many phone calls that you have to attend to them while you’re eating, and you’re often working from dusk to dawn. We don’t even take the time to form deep relationships. By fulfilling our worldly affairs and worldly relationships, we forget the one true relationship that is with us through eternity – that is our relationship with Parmatma. You all know how long worldly relationships last.

As long as your arms and legs are working, you’re able to function, earn money, and take care of your family, your family loves you for it. But once your body gets weak with age and you’re not able to provide for the family anymore, observe what happens. While your kids are getting ready for work, they’ll tell you that you’re getting in their way, why don’t you go sit down quietly. In our own home, we start to feel that we have become an inconvenience. Your kids ask you to wait until they leave, reminding you that you have the whole day free from duties. Those people for whom you have done everything, they are now telling you to sit quietly somewhere. We still do not get it that there is no one truly here for us. (We must note that we are not talking about disregarding the value and joy of worldly relationships, but that it should be done with full awareness of the temporary nature of it, and realizing the eternity of our relationship is with Parmatam.)

The amazing thing is that even though our eyes are open and see what is going on, we are not “awake”. We stay absorbed with our worldly affairs and do not understand the essence of life. When a king once asked the Swami, “What is the most incredible thing in life?” the Swami replied, “Your Majesty, it seems to me the most incredible thing in life is that we see people going by in this world with their eyes wide open. We see that upon the passing of one’s father, the children start thinking about what was left for them. They start looking for wealth and bank accounts, sometimes even before the final rituals of death are over, in fear that someone else will grab the wealth. There is still no awakening to the true nature of life. We still stay involved with worldly matters.”

Saint Kabirgee once asked, “Who is truly blind? Not the one who has lost his sight and cannot see, but the one who can see with his eyes but is still ‘blind’ to the mortal and transient nature of life and things in this world. In spite of knowing, they still have not understood it.

With all of our Karma – doing in life – where is that taking us? In which direction are we going? Why are we so busy doing things? What is the value of what we are doing? What are we trying to accomplish, and what have we achieved?”

A man rowed his boat the whole night to get to his destination by morning. He worked hard and rowed his boat diligently to get there in time; however, in the morning he found himself in the same exact place where he started. Why? He forgot to untie the rope that tied his boat to the shore.

Likewise, in life we may find ourselves in a similar situation. We work hard day and night. We try to achieve peace and happiness. But our ropes are tied to Maya like the man’s boat was tied to the shore. (Maya literally means "illusion,” or “that which exists but is constantly changing and is thus spiritually unreal,” or "the power or the principle that conceals the true character of spiritual reality"). We are searching for happiness and peace, but we are tied to things that are constantly changing and have the illusion that material things and worldly relationships will bring us peace and happiness. We may try to achieve it by practicing meditation, praying in a temple in front of statues, attending Satsang, but we find our minds are not there but somewhere else, wandering around and reminding us of our work, home, and worries.

Our saints and philosophers talk about experiences that are in three stages that we cycle through daily. In the first stage we are fully awake and see and feel everything around us. We are conscious of our bodies and see real physical objects, and our five senses are fully experiencing our awake stage. In the second stage, we are sleeping and have dreams that may include us, people we know, and places we know; and sometimes totally unknown things come in our dreams. But the next day when we wake up, we may remember most of our experiences of our dreams. On days when we are very tired, we experience the third stage where we get deep sleep. We wake up and feel well-rested and cannot recall what happened the whole night. We do not know our bodies, our friends, work, or the presence of our minds, and do not know if we are male or female. The only thing we know when we wake up is the feeling that we are well rested. In this stage we do not know that we are in deep sleep. This stage is like Samadhi. (A state of intense concentration achieved through meditation.) Samadhi is actually the fourth stage, where we achieve a state like deep sleep but while fully awake and during meditation. In this stage you are aware of your awareness, you have this feeling, and become conscious of your awareness. Basically, you are conscious of your own consciousness. When you reach the Samadhi stage it’s like having a master key that will open all doors. It's to know yourself. We think about a lot of things, but we do not think about ourselves. Who am I, what is my purpose? We worry about everything but do not spend time knowing ourselves.

If you have nice shoes you can easily walk on pebbles. But if there is weakness in the shoes and a small pebble enters your shoe, you will not be able to walk without pain. We can face challenges of life, but if we do not have inner strength we cannot face the challenges easily and will suffer. Our Saints have said that we need to be connected to our higher power to stay strong. We can face lot of things in life if we are fully charged. We can do that by connecting ourselves with the higher power. Cell phones may have many features, but they are useless if the phone is not charged.

We are advised to take flu shots to protect us from the flu virus, as our immune systems cannot fight it. But people with strong immune systems, like people from India who have developed good immunity from their lifestyles and rugged living, do not need the flu shot. We need to develop solid inner strength so that we can face outside challenges. We have to learn the right technique to use meditation as a path to develop strong inner strength.