Rising Into Higher Spheres: Studies in the Sar Bachan Radhasoami Poetry of Soami Ji Maharaj, Agra
[NOTE: It is said that the time between Midnight and 3 AM is extremely critical...... The Saints keep wide awake during these hours and they also keep their ardent disciples engaged in positively spiritual pursuits like satsang, service (seva), recitation of the Great Name, contemplation and meditation. Thus Soamiji Maharaj and other True Adepts of the Radhasoami Faith keep their devotees occupied and engaged.]
Says Soami Ji (Sant Radhaswami Sahib):
The result of keeping awake in the company of the guru during the night is extremely rich and useful. If the surat, fully roused, stirring her stumps, concentrates at the Third Eye, the exercise will be immensely beneficial. (What happens now is that long before the surat ascends to the Third Eye, the mind becomes somnolent and drowsy and becomes fast asleep, unconscious and forgetful.) It is only after long spell of attendance at satsang and practice of meditation, contemplation and recitation of the Great Name that the surat acquires the ability to get into the Third Eye with full consciousness and awareness so that she can catch the glimpses of the inner form of the Satguru and may touch His feet and render real service to him and hear his discourses which will make her bloom ad blossom like a rosebud.
Unless and until the structure made out by the manas or mind becomes topsy-turvy it will not release the surat [attention-faculty of the soul] who is keen to ascend to the Third Eye. As at present, the surat is chained in the dungeon of mind and maya [illusion], bound as it were in a tomb. All the forces operating in the mind are flowing outside and downward.
This vital energy of the surat has become absorbed in maya, i.e. swallowed up. Unless the whole citadel becomes topsy-turvy, the surat will not run inward and upward [during meditation]. Till then the surat will not come into her own and will not be cheerful and delighted. Once the surat becomes inward, she will become ecstatic and every fibre and pore of its being will be exhilarated in the temple that has been built inside ["within" the human body], and then rosebuds will bloom and blossom within........
Here, in the world, the mind enjoys sensory pleasure from every object and becomes so wrapped up in it that it refuses to move forward. For spiritual progress, therefore, the surat has to be put in the company of birat and nirat which will detach her from the objects of pleasure (birat) and will goad her forward (nirat) to greater pleasures. The birat and nirat will become active only by the contemplation on the form of the guru [dhyan]. That is why it is said that spiritual movement and progress without the guru is just not possible, for the contemplation on the beauteous form of the guru will not allow it to get absorbed in the pleasure of any spiritual sphere, till she reaches the final goal The sphere where the surat, birat and nirat become rolled into one --- there alone the surat will become fully absorbed. Before that, through the medium of the contemplation on the form of the Satguru. nirat will ever be roused and both mind and matter will have to accept defeat and will not be able to hinder the march of the surat. But the necessary condition is than the seeker much have ardent love for the form of the Satguru.
The Drop (surat) merges into the Ocean (the Supreme Lord) and then gets to know His sweep and extent, and she being the darling of the Lord, rises into the Timeless and Spaceless Spheres.
That supreme sphere is the Satt Desh which is soft and tender, without any contradiction or friction or opposition, entirely free from any confrontation or conflict or heat, while in the region of Kaal, opposition is built in, and in every action which the jiva [soul] performs there is reaction. As it is, the domain of Kaal [realm of mind, duality, and time] is not soft and smooth. But in Satt Desh which is completely pure there is Primordial Energy and nothing else, and it is so radiant, so refulgent and bright and lustrous, that it seems as if suns are galore as lotuses: so to say, that land is soft and smoother and is the plane of sun. That is the Sphere, admittance into which will release the seeker from all the burden and load of sins which inevitably multiply in this realm of Mind and matter. So to say, by attaining to that sphere, the jiva-surat will get out of the burden and load of sins and transgressions, lapses and errors.
The jiva-surat which is situated on this earth and shares its burden, ascends to the bluish zone of the Third Eye, and mounts and gets across the mount of Neptune (the top of that bluish zone and then proceeds higher to the Inaccessible Spheres where the guru sits majestically). Those Spheres of the guru as well as the Great Name revealed by the guru are Unapproachable and Inaccessible, and as it is, who can speak of them?
The surat then ascends towards the Spaceless and Time-less Spheres through the medium of the merudand (coseygis or al ajab [core of the spirit, whose central seat is the sixth ganglion]) and breaks into the Und (the lower fringes of Brahmand: Shiva lok, Brahma lok and Vishnu lok) and perceived what is beyond it. Of course. I was a fool, a stupid fellow devoid of all understanding of the core of Reality; but for the grace and compassion of Radhasoami, I would have never got to know anything about it.
(Quintessential Discourse Radhasoami, Volume II, M.G. Gupta translation, M.G. Publishers, Agra, India)
