Bhul Bhulaiya

In the ancient city of Lucknow, Northern India, there is a famous maze called Bhul Bhulaiya. It was built in the late 1700s by a generous Nawab who wanted to give employment to the hungry and the poor during an ill-fated famine. An architectural marvel, it has about 500 identical doors and staircases and about a thousand corridors connected to these doors – all indistinguishable from each other. It is an extremely challenging maze to explore on one’s own without a guide.

Fascinating facts and trivia have been recorded in numerous travel and adventure books about Bhul Bhulaiya. One such fact is the illusions created by this structure. For example, there are stairs which seem to go up but actually go down. Another illusion is the way sound travels through the maze. Speak softly or whisper, and at some distance away, your voice is heard as if it were close by. At almost every turn of the maze, there is some optical or aural deception.

Maharaj Charan Singh would often take the example of this famous maze in his satsangs to emphasize the plight of our soul trapped in the cycle of transmigration, reincarnating from one body to another in an endless cycle of birth and death, unable to exit and find liberation. We are lost in one big maze of illusion.

The Masters have said that there is nothing more painful than being trapped in this cycle.

To pass the entire round of 8,400,000 different forms of species would take the soul many yugas (aeons) to complete….

Actually, no words can describe the agony experienced by the unliberated souls as they travel, life after life, through the round of eighty-four. Thousands of them in animal bodies, are butchered every day. They keep crying out in anguish, but who pays any heed to their shrieks? What court is there to grant them justice?
_{Maharaj Sawan Singh, Discourses on Sant Mat, Vol. I}

In Tales of the Mystic East, there is a story about a blind, bald man who was given a life sentence for a crime he committed. He was put in a specially built prison designed like a maze.

This prison had many false doors and only one real door that opened to freedom. As per the king’s order, any criminal who found this real door could step through it and immediately gain liberation.

For days on end, the prisoner would carefully feel his way around the enclosed walls searching for the door to open up. But every time he would come in front of the exit door, he was distracted by an itch on his bald head. Every time he scratched his head, he missed the door to freedom.

We are all prisoners in the vast prison of this world because of our karmas. We can escape from it only when our soul realizes the Lord. The gift of human life has been granted to us to enable us to escape from the cycle of recurring births and deaths. It is only in the human form that one has the unique distinction and honour of meeting the Lord.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh, The Path}

Just as it is almost impossible to find the way out of Bhul Bhulaiya without a guide, it is impossible to escape the wheel of transmigration without a spiritual guide. A maze contains labyrinth-like passages, zigzag paths, blind alleys with dead-ends and plenty of traps. Similarly, saints and mystics have compared the inner path to an intricate and dangerous maze, and they teach us that the only way out is to go within the human body.

It would be amazing if we had a GPS app installed inside us like we have on our cell phones. The red icon would indicate our exact location in time and space. The system would lead us to a destination of our choice. The saints tell us we have something even better – a spiritual GPS – called the Guru Positioning System.

Just like an outer GPS that requires a strong signal to remain connected, we too need to connect with the Shabd so it can lead us to the realm of the spirit. After concentrated simran, when we turn to bhajan and start listening to the inner Sound, it gives us a sense of direction.

As we follow the Sound, we slowly disentangle ourselves from our body consciousness until we pierce the veil of darkness and are led to the inner Master. This marks the beginning of our escape from the maze of this never-ending existence of life and death. And this can only happen with the grace and guidance of our beloved spiritual guide.