By Kirpa Sagar : With the benign blessings of His Holiness Baba Hardev Singh Ji Maharaj, I revealed God on his behalf to a 12 year old girl. She understood every point I explained, every example I produced. At the end, however, she said that she was not able to perceive God – Nirankar. I quoted more evidence closer to her life, but she said: “Uncle, Nirankar Dikhayee Nahin Diya”. I made another attempt but in vain.
The next day I asked a distinguished Gyan Pracharak as to what could be the reason for this. He said, “It was not destined as yet; you and the girl’s parents were trying to give her what Nirankar did not wish to grant at the moment.” This was a statement of truth.
How does the destiny operate? A scholar says: “Don’t run ahead of God. Let Him decide your steps. God has His plans and He has His time. God’s clock is never fast nor late and He strikes on time.” I was born in Punjab, the state where the Sant Nirankari Mission flourished first, and lived there for 23 years. Then, I was in Delhi, the Headquarters of the Mission, for 12 years followed by another stint of two years in Punjab. I never came into contact with any follower of the Mission. In 1973, however, it was in a small congregation in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, that I received Brahm Gyan. I was 38. Today when I look back, I realize that this was all destined by Nirankar and in my favour, of course.
Destiny seems to have different plans for different individuals. A child may take birth in the family who are already enlightened spiritually. He or she may, therefore, start attending the congregation along with his or her parents from childhood and be blessed with spiritual knowledge on an appropriate day. There is nothing like a search or quest for spiritual awakening in such cases. It is an opportunity, a God-gifted situation, that made it possible to achieve something which was never cherished.
The desire to know God should, therefore, come from within. In the words of Swami Vivekananda, one’s desire to know God should be like the desire of a drowning person to come out of the water. It means that one should give top priority to spiritual enlightenment and waste no time in other affairs. God-knowledge must be attained as early as possible. This is so because one does not know the loss one has to bear in the absence of this divine gift. God-knowledge makes one submit to the will of God and thus feel relieved of the negative influence of dualities of the world:
In majority of cases, traditions count a lot, even though this factor cuts both ways. They may motivate one for spiritual awakening and even drift him or her away from it. A religious scholar says, “Ordinarily a religious believer goes by the conventions of his country. His religion is made for him by others. It is determined by fixed forms, followed by imitation and retained by habit. We may gain little by studying such a second hand religion.” This is, however, the form of religion man follows across the globe. This is the form of religion which is being preached and communicated to masses down the line. The more conscious and sincere among devotees may at one stage or the other feel the urge to understand the genesis and significance of the ceremonies, rites and rituals performed in the name of religion. The word ‘God’ is used everywhere and quite often. Naturally, like any other object in this age of science, many may like to know and understand this supreme existence also. And once this desire takes birth, the quest begins which achieves its goal one day as per the divine plan for the individual.
Even ordinarily, something unusual may happen in one’s life that may lead him or her towards a search for spiritual awakening. Prince Siddhartha saw the Old, the Diseased, the Dead and the Saintly Person and this was sufficient to create a deep quest for spiritual awakening in his mind, and he became Lord Buddha, a great spiritual master of the world. The child Dhruva was removed from the lap of his father, Emperor Utampad, by his step mother and this turned him to the holy search of the Supreme Father – God. Sant Tulsidas, the immortal author of Ramcharitmanas became mad in love for his wife Ratna and took snake as a rope and climbed to her room. And Ratna turned him towards God saying that if he had shown the same love for God, he would have become a great soul. There are numerous tales like this to show that something unusual may happen in the life of an individual and turn him or her towards spiritual awakening, and the person may receive that divine gift one day.
True Master
Satguru or the True Master plays a very big role in bestowing this divine gift of spiritual awakening. Truly speaking he appears in the world under a well-determined divine plan. It is believed that the Formless One – Nirankar, appears in the physical form (body) of the True Master in order to reveal Himself unto the world in delusion. Satguru rises above religion, caste, community, region, language and culture – the factors that seek to divide humanity, and calls upon every individual to know the God they worship. He, however, confines himself to persuasion or motivation by way of explaining the need of God-knowledge and its advantages, and leaves the final decision unto the listener. His followers i.e., preachers also repeat his message and remove the doubts, if any, and convince others that Satguru seeks to unite them with the Ultimate Truth i.e., God. They tell one and all that spiritual enlightenment or God-knowledge is the most important objective of human life. This is the only way to liberate oneself from the cycle of birth and death. However, here again comes destiny and only the fortunate ones are able to take the advantage.
The main consideration that makes one reluctant to receive Brahm Gyan even while Satguru is there to bestow it, is that while God is formless and invisible, one wonders how would it be possible to perceive Him. They fail to realise that it is also acknowledged universally that God is omnipresent. He pervades every object of the universe – animate as well as inanimate. What is more manifest than God? Look at any visible object, He is present there. A young girl said in an article in a leading newspaper: “You can see God wherever you want to see Him, most of all, in the least expected places. You can see Him in the smile of an urchin, in the carefree spirit of a slum-dweller, in the pride of a rickshaw-puller.” It means it is your own desire or quest for knowing God that is required. God has already showered His grace on mankind and is revealing Himself through the True Master. It is not your worry as to how you can perceive God, it is the subject of the True Master or the saint who is to reveal God unto you.
* The author is a devout
follower of Sant Nirankari Mission