Not From This World

There was once a pastor giving an impassioned sermon on death and final judgement. At one point, he forcefully said, “Each member of this church is going to die and face judgement.”

He glanced at the first row and among the attentive faces, he noticed a man with a big smile on his face. Pounding the table, he repeated his point even louder, “None of us in this church can escape death and final judgement!”

By now, almost everyone else in the congregation was looking sombre, but the man in front continued to smile. This really frustrated the preacher because he wasn’t getting the desired reaction from this gentleman. So he stepped off the platform, stood in front of the man and said, “I said each member of this church is going to die and here you are, grinning from ear to ear. Don’t you get it?”

The man, cool as a cucumber, replied with an even bigger smile, “It’s okay. You see, I’m not a member of this church.”

Whether or not we find the incident amusing, saints tell us that we are too engrossed in this world. We take our physical selves and what happens around us so seriously that invariably, we end up in a vicious cycle of compulsive worrying and over-thinking. They remind us that we are spiritual beings going through a human experience, not human beings aspiring to a spiritual experience.

It is true that constant stream of negative news doesn’t help our composure, as our computers and smart phones buzz with the latest updates of war thousands of miles away, or on the latest opinion poll on the political issue of the hour.

It is easy in this environment to forget that everything that happens around us and in our lives is the Lord’s will and that not a leaf stirs without his command.

The reality is that divine will is like a mighty river and we are like fish swimming in that river. The stubborn fish think they can control the flow of the river; that if they keep swimming in the direction they want to go, the river will change its course. But the river will flow the way it’s going 
to flow. So the fish that choose to swim against the current remains in a state of perpetual struggle.

One would think these fish eventually learn their lesson and give in. But modern disciples are a unique species. We pretend to give up and go downstream with the river while complaining and being miserable. In the process, we blame the river and ask: “Why is this happening to me?”

Saints tell us that this is the story of every human being. We have a tendency to resist the will of the Lord and as long as we resist, we suffer. The river, on the other hand, loses nothing. Maharaj Charan Singh used to say that winter has to come and summer also has to come. If we do not prepare ourselves for the change of seasons, we will be the ones to suffer.

Perhaps our goal as disciples should be to develop spiritual stamina for the marathon of life, through our meditation, so that when a problem occurs we don’t react out of emotion but respond with spiritual maturity.

At a practical level, all we can really do is to live in his will and to please him, which we can do only by practising surrender and gratitude by attending to our meditation.

A disciple once shared her feelings with her Master and he gave her the sweetest and simplest answer: “Sister, you think too much. Stop thinking so much. Just do your simran; meditate and take life as it comes.”

Meditation brings about positive change in our lives. Hazur Maharaj Ji used to say that by regularly attending to our simran and bhajan day after day, month after month, year after year, these positive human qualities appear in us automatically, like cream on milk.

Masaru Emoto, a Japanese author, once conducted an interesting experiment to see the effect of thoughts, words, vibrations and surroundings on the molecular structure of water. He exposed a glass of water to different words, pictures and music and then froze the water and examined the resulting crystals under a microscope. He saw that water exposed to a positive environment would result in visually pleasing crystals that looked like beautiful snowflakes. The water exposed to negative energy would yield ugly frozen crystal formations. With our body comprising 65% of water, we can see how thoughts, energy, reactions, and behaviour can affect our physical body and well-being. What would we like to be? A snowflake of gratitude, like the man in the front row of the church who didn’t react, or a messy blob trying to cope furiously with our web of karmas, unable to look past our own needs and desires?

“Fake it until you make it” is a popular saying that suggests that by emulating positive qualities, at some point, one genuinely imbibes the attributes required to achieve success. As seekers of spirituality, the next time we are caught in a river going downstream, we could say to ourselves: “Faith it until you make it.” Like the man in the front row, we can relax, smile from ear to ear and say: “It’s okay, because I’m not from this world.”

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It is your effort that will change your mind from the negative to the positive. With effort and determination we can achieve many things in life. Our meditation is nothing but an attempt to acquire the positive gifts and get rid of the negative evils. Meditation gives mental strength and spiritual bliss, and enables us to face life with great hope and courage. We then know that we have a goal before us which we have to achieve and which will give us that bliss which nothing in this world can give us.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh, Quest For Light}