K.S Ahluwalia
Today, while listening to the divine wisdom embodied in Shabad at the Gurdwara, something strange happened, unfolding the unexpected, in a celebrative mode.
One Word simply stopped me-Naam a word which I must have heard and listened to countless times in the past. I simply closed my eyes and tried hard to concentrate, sometimes analyzing what it stated, it implied, yet in hearts of hearts I waited for it to finish the smapthi, so that I could continue my mundane activities and lead my transactional existence, all over again, once more.
But today was altogether different, a new Sun had suddenly risen, a new dawn was breaking out, a new experience was unfolding, and the beauty was that it was on an auto pilot mode, I was simply in it, but not controlling it, or being controlled by it!
Naam: what does it signify to a lay person like me, what is the wisdom being unfolded, what is the new painting being painted, which new sky is being opened up.
I wanted to analyze, decipher, understand, hence I used my faculties, my intelligence, my knowledge. I was trying to decode, trying to make sense. Thus was making an effort, trying harder, yet more harder. Amusingly, the more I was in it; the lesser was I in it.
Is Naam to be understood, analyzed, deciphered or is if something beyond. Something that I have yet to experience, something I was unaware of. And in this unawareness, awareness dawns.
Truth is to be experienced, by dissolving ego, by being entranced. No thinking, no analysis, no argument, no effort is required. It’s an effortless path. It simply is as it is. It’s stark. It’s complete. Its total and in totality. Truth is beyond knowledge, beyond debate beyond comprehension, beyond understanding. It simply is beyond the obvious.
Truth is to be beyond all that I am, beyond what I was, beyond what I shall be. It’s real knowing.
Truth is knowing-which is a qualitative change in my being, it’s a complete transformation of my being, it’s a metonia. It makes me move higher, where the altitude changes. It’s different than knowledge. Knowledge simply is being better informed. Nothing more, nothing less. Naam is the quest for discovering, experiencing, and being the new Me in me. Interestingly, man is born in ignorance where the darkness is tremendous, consequently to dispel this darkness, he seeks to acquire, and the whole life one simply is running wild, furious- to know more, to hoard more, to be more informed, such that one can rattle his acquisitions in a manner that makes him special in eyes of other. And in doing so he gets a kick because all adulations are simply a process of adding more bricks to the wall known as ego.
Interestingly, we know many things, yet are ignorant. The harder we try, the lesser we learn Why?
Because the fundamental is missing. the foundation is not there. It is a pseudo knowing I appear to know and in my knowing lies my ignorance. As knower I am myself in deep darkness. It simply is quantitative. More information is not more knowing and more knowing does not necessarily mean more information.
Naam is a celebration, an immersion-of self, dissolving in the Now. It’s here. It is not to be sought. It’s to be discovered. It’s not to be chasing for, it simply is to be in stillness.
One with Naam is not information thoarder; his knowledge is an explosion, the e inner explosion of light. Its enlightenment. He simply is more aware and this is his knowing.
He no longer walks un -alert and un-attentive. He responds not reacts. For him the exsistence is tranquility. It’s serene. It’s perfect. Its total and in totality. It’s a movement in timelessness. Stillness.
Oral Recitation?-Yet for most, Naam is reciting, remembering, even ‘analyzing’ what was written. And when I do so, I become the centre-l drive. I control. And here I lose the plot. And the vicious circle starts.
Knowledge is Wealth – I may go on hoarding it, but it doesn’t change me. My bank balance keeps growing, becoming fat, yet I remain static. Reflect I haven’t grown. On the contrary I have diminished, become small. Fearful. Suspicious. Inward coiled.
Money has multiplied, and so has the pride, the beggary, so has the misery- of a constant fear of losing it now is my companion. Amusingly rich people become poorer and their poverty is tremendous. They cannot share. Always afraid. Their inner poverty doesn’t change at all, I remain the same.
It has to be so. Changing clothes doesn’t dilute the aggressiveness in me. The change is on the periphery its cosmetic, it’s in the memory. Has nothing to do with quality of conciousness. And unless my quality changes, nothing is attained.
I may recite the couplets, thousand times over, I may do the prayers a million times, I may be extremely sincere by being a Sunday church goer, yet the fractured me, the disjoint me, the confused me-remains there. And the cracks appear starker, more real and more intense.
I may read and memorize the verses, I may connect cross references while giving explanations, I may coin my own interpretations, I may sound logical, articulate, yet I am still not there. I am talking, I am explaining, yet I am the same person- and here is where I miss.
Reflect: ਹਉ ਆਪਹੁ ਬੋਲਿ ਨ ਜਾਣਦਾ ਮੈ ਕਹਿਆ ਸਭੁ ਹੁਕਮਾਉ ਜੀਉ॥ [SGGS: 763]
I am simply a flute hollow, where no 1-ness exist, I simply is a passage-to let the celestial song flow through where the immensity embraces me, envelopes me and dissolves me. And nothing of me remains. It’s extinguished from the very core, from the very existence. I am not. In fact the I isn’t itself evaporates.
Before moving forward let’s understand the distinctions between knowledge and knowing
* Knowledge is information, while knowing is celebrating the mystery where understanding isn’t connected to the past, it’s now and here. No past baggage.
Knowledge is gathered from outside, while knowing is growth inside – it’s internalizing.
* Knowledge is borrowed, knowing is personal. Its authentically mine
* Knowledge is gained, knowing is dissolving. From somebody to nobody for all time to come. Naam isn’t a word, a phrase, a process, a technique, something whispered in ones ears, something that is private, never to be shared. Only horded and kept secret. It isn’t regulated by property rights, or trade marks!
Naam is celebration, an ecstasy, in all innocence. It’s childlike. Its creativity personified. It’s everywhere. Its omni present. Naam is where I cease to be, where I simply is evaporated. I lose my self totally and in totality. I word isn’t there.
It’s only’ Tuhi, or ‘you and you only in you, I am reborn, I take a rebirth. I am created in a new womb. Where I am in total stillness, where I am experiencing the sound of silence, where the clap is done with one hand or no hands, where there isn’t a path, it’s a path less path, where the cyclone is the centre.
Naam is truth which cannot be uttered. Because if it could be said, then I should have known it-totally, perfectly. Truth is never known totally. One needs to feel it, live it, and have a great experince of it. Where great visions open, great mysteries unfold, yet each mystery brings to me to another one, and as each door opens, I see that a thousand and one doors are still there to be opened. Where each door brings me to a new door. And if this is, the how can I express it.
The only thing that I know then is that I don’t know. I simply know little of immense. And that is enough, that’s more than enough. This is the highest one can aspire to.
The man of knowledge in me goes on claiming that he knows everything – thus proving his ignorance. Only an ignorant person says he knows, the knower always says that he knows not. This is the sign, the real Indication, of real knowing.
The mystery is infinite, even as we are a part of it, so how can the part know the whole totally. It simply is impossible. The part cannot know the whole total, the part can only know so far.
Naam is celestial, it’s an experiential experience, its fullness in nothingness, its completeness in incompleteness, its celebration, its intoxication, it’s joining with the divinity residing in me, and it’s connecting me with immensity, its being with the non being. Where I am gone forever, gone beyond from where there is no coming back. Gone to the point of no return.
Where everything disappears, the path, the garden, the foot prints, the knowledge. There simply is laughter – that arises from the very belly of the universe, and there is where the Master leads me, slowly, slowly, makes me by and by ready. And when I am ready he leaves me to experience the experience as my very own. No spoon feeding is given by him. He makes me responsible to my-self, own what am I and also be open to what I can be.
No duality. No confusion, only Light and contentment in the “fullness” of Waheguru’s Naam.
