A Critique of Ascender's Comment and My Own Comments Regarding This Wonderful Book of Kabir Panth Prayers, by James Bean
Reviewer: ascender - August 15, 2024
Subject: Need for a Living Master
"Sant Kabir was the Guru of His time. Only those to whom he personally gave initiation while in His human form can return to Sat Lok in His Name. The vast expanse of darkness of Mahasunya or Maha Sunn is said to be 80 billion miles, it cannot be crossed without a living Satguru to take the soul across to the purely spiritual realms above the region of Sunn. The worship of dead saints cannot liberate the Jiva. Only a living Master can do so. The search for God in the human form; Shabd incarnate, "The word made flesh and dwelling amongst us" is the greatest imperative for the devotee wishing to reach back to the Absolute Lord. However, the sacred bani of the sants, of Kabir Sahib and others, is a guide and inspiration to assist us in our understanding, and increase our longing for our True Home."
Not as Ascender suggested, but as the contents of the book and the title of the book clearly state, this is NOT a collection of verses all attributed to Guru Kabir but actually represents a compilation of compositions made by many over the centuries in the Satsang Community of Kabir. These are used as prayers, psalms (hymns) and sayings of wisdom by those satsangi disciples part of the living sangat related to Kabir. Indeed, the modern-day lineage of Sant Satgurus of Sant Mat connects directly back to the Sant Dharam Das line of gurus of this Kabir community in fact. There are many such collections of writings from the Sant Dharam Das line of Masters, and some of those other texts such as the Anurag Sagar (The Ocean of Love), Kabir Sagar (Ocean of Kabir), and others have also been uploaded to the web as wonderful ebooks, done with the motivation of edification and education of those curious about the spiritual path. "You can not just brush the surface of a culture and pretend that you’ve found an answer. We must turn inward to the deepest of our own roots to find the very best of who we are." (Ravi Shankar)
So, yes Kabir taught the need for a living Master as have his many spiritual successors all the way up to the living present time. It would be a fallacy for anyone to suggest being curious about the earlier writings of the Sant tradition of India somehow would mean that one would not be interested in being initiated by a living Master. Rather, it's the opposite of that. It is not an "either or" proposition. The interests of the faithful devotee of Sant Mat encompassess both. Those who are initiated by contemporary Masters, those who are followers of the spiritual practices of Sant Mat, are precisely the ones who are most-of-all fans of the literary treasures, the spiritual classics, scriptures, the poetry and prose, the banis and bhajans of the earlier generations of these Saints and Mystics. Studying the teachings of the Masters is also a way to break free from being stuck in one's mind -- our habitual thinking patterns, and practice Remembrance of the spiritual path (satsang).
And if one actually takes the time and reads this, Kabir Panth Book Of Prayers, they will soon discover that it does advocate sitting at the feet of a Living Teacher of one's own time: "By devotion, all the sufferings of Dharam Dass vanished. It is by the good deeds of millions of births that he met Satguru Kabir." "Who is greater than Ram and Krishna? Even they accepted a guru. They were masters of the three worlds, but were humble before the guru." "As many saints, mahants and sadhus there were, they all served at the lotus feet of the guru." "Do not go through life without a guru. Keep this firm principle in mind!" "Without a guru, who else can remove doubts? In what way can the heart possess discriminative spiritual knowledge? Without a guru ignorance cannot be removed, and the soul does not realize it's true form." There are whole sections of this book extolling the need for a living master of the time!
The traditional format of a satsang is for someone to recite or sing from some earlier collection of Sant verses such as from the Bijak of Kabir, the Adi Granth, Anurag Sagar, Paltu Sahib, Namdev, Tukaram, Tulsi Sahib, Soamiji Maharaj, etc... and then a Master or whoever is giving the satsang discourse comments upon those verses. Traditional Sant Mat from India, as it has always been, focuses upon the teachings of the living Master, the earlier Masters of the lineage as well as the great collection of banis, bhajans, granths, all this vast Sant literature that has accumulated over the centuries out of the utmost respect for all of these great Masters, Saints and Sages that have blessed the world over the millennia, the various yugas, great epochs of time. One is counseled constantly about the need to have satsang every single day, to hear from one's teacher (Sant Satguru), to spend some time studying the instruction and wisdom of the Saints, to do simran and to meditate each and every day. "You should do your Bhajan and Simran every day." (Baba Jaimal Singh) "Do not live even a single day without inner meditation." (Baba Devi Sahib of Moradabad)
This Kabir Panth Book of Prayers is one such valuable collection, I dare say, is one of the more colorful assemblages of verses intended to inspire the satsangi to do the spiritual practices of the Sants: Simran: the Remembrance of names of God, Dhyan: inner visions of Divinity, radiant forms of Light, and Bhajan: the Unstruck Melody of the Sound Current or Audible Life Stream. And beyond these, one is encouraged to become a bhakta, a devotee approaching the Supreme Being with a spirit of love and devotion at every step. One is the "drop" of the soul merging into the Divine Ocean of Love. So the place we wish to ascend to is not to just any astral occult realm of esoterica but the Most High heavens of the Eternal Truth and Love, "the Far Country" that is the Goal of this Path of the Masters.
"The tenth gate is the gathering point of consciousness. Therein lies the path for our return. The tenth gate is also known as the sixth chakra, the third eye, Bindu, the center located between the two eyebrows. This is the gateway through which we leave the sense organs' gates, enter the divine realms, and finally become established in the soul. We travel back from the Realm of Darkness to the Realm of Light, the Light to the Divine Sound, and the Realm of Sound to the Soundless State. This is called turning back to the Source." (Swami Santsevi Ji Maharaj, Book of Sarvadharma Samanvy)
How could the love between Thee and me sever?
As the leaf of the lotus abides on the water,
so thou art my Lord, and I am Thy servant.
As the night-bird Chakor gazes all night at the moon,
so Thou art my Lord, and I am Thy servant.
From the beginning until the ending of time,
there is love between Thee and me;
And how shall such love be extinguished?
Kabir says: "As the river enters into the Ocean, so my heart touches Thee."
(Guru Kabir, Songs of Kabir)
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