Michael Turner

It's like what Maharaj Charan Singh once said: You can say the word "chocolate" all day long, but it's not the same thing as actually tasting it. The way you really learn about God and spirituality, he states, is from a living God-man who gives you the direct experience of It, and instructs you in the spiritual exercises of the inner Sound and Light, as well as the art of avoiding the difficulties and traps which you meet on the inner path.

This is core Sant Mat right here. Find someone who has traversed this path, someone who knows where all the land mines are, who knows what and where all the perils of mind are, because there are a lot of them. Although Paul expresses it slightly differently, it really goes back to the point of sitting in the presence of the Master, simply being there. Absorb yourself in the surroundings of the Satsang, as well as the inner surroundings and spiritual energy. Just be in the Holy present and put your attention wholly and solely on one point.

The Master is the Zikar/Simran in human form. What is one of the main points of doing the Zikar, doing the repetition? Focusing the attention, observing the object of your focus, until you and the point upon which you are focusing become one.

Words are used because they are somewhat tangible. They give you something for the mind to focus upon. They are charged with the resonance of each of the inner planes and they gradually impart that resonance to you. They bring a little of it into your body, into your emotions, into your mind, into your nervous system, into your entire being every time you chant them. And coming into Satsang, being in the presence of the Living Master, gives you a tangible human being upon which to focus. This is something every Master has said. This isn't just Sri Mikey saying, "Look at me." You know? "Hang out with me because I'm cool." It's simply, kind of like John Lovitz used to say on Saturday Night Live, "Get to know me." Not in the egoistic sense, but from the perspective of just hanging out, opening up to the spiritual energy flow and paying attention to what happens.

But the thing is, the physical body, is really just a glorified marionette. It's just this sack of clothes, bag of bones, sitting here. But it's something real according to the physical senses. It's not something that might be imaginary. It's not something that is intangible, like such concepts as the Inner Master, God, Spirit Guides, etc., things that might be confused with your own imagination, things that might be the product of your imagination. The human form is something that is empirically verifiable, it exists physically and tangibly, here and now.

And so it becomes an exercise, an experiment to see how long you can hold your attention in one place. Can you really focus and let everything else fall by the wayside when you come to the Satsang? Can you come into Satsang, and from the moment you walk in the door until the moment you leave, forget entirely about the outside world and be focused wholly and solely on the essence of the Satsang and the makeup of the Satsang, which is the Master? When you have achieved this for an hour or more sitting in a room like this, it will work wonders with your meditation, because you will learn to shut out the outside world and simply be in the now.

It's like I've said before, there is nothing wrong with outside interests, per se. There is nothing wrong with all of the little things that our minds do because that's just how minds are; they are easily distracted by new stimuli. But there's a law in physics which states that you can't put two things in the same place at the same time; two objects cannot occupy the same place in the space-time continuum. If I take this glass of water I'm holding and place it here on this table, I cannot place another glass where this glass is. It is already here, occupying this particular space-time continuum. If I move it, then something else can take it's place, but currently it is occupying this point in time and space.

When the mind is focused upon the world, then it is dwelling upon what ever is attracting its attention outside. As a result, by its very nature it is not focusing on God. Now I'm not trying to come off being judgmental here, like a judge or pastor saying, "Bad, bad, bad!" It is simply a statement of fact. When a person approaches a spiritual path with the goal of knowing God directly (and that is the goal of Sant Mat, of Eckankar, of Radhasoami, of being a true Sikh, of being a true Christian) the goal then is to directly experience the Self individually through direct knowingness and beingness and also through doing this process, to know God, directly of ItSelf - not indirectly, not by inference, not secondhand, not by somebody else's information or experience.

Each one of you can directly go within and know God, experience God. That's why we are on this path. If this is our goal, then we want to learn how to put the attention more and more there. Because this helps us absorb ourselves into it, to the point when we start tuning out the outside world in our meditations. We're no longer distracted by the physical and we begin to explore the inner regions, initially through the astral plane. That's the first inner door.

What you'll find on the Astral Plane is that it has a bunch of distractions too. You will find more distractions there than here. So we use the focus of the inner Master at that point, because we've taken the outer Master and solidified our attention there. Then we've opened the inner door and allowed ourselves the comfort zone to see the Master within. And so when we go into the Astral Plane, instead of just looking at the skyrockets and incredible vistas and sunsets and marketplaces and all of the other amazing astral things which are occurring, our attention focuses in once again on the form of the Master. Because there is the Nuri Sarup, the astral body of the living adept before you upon which you can focus.

So you place your attention upon the Nuri Sarup of the Living Master and it guides you to the next point of the journey where you leave the astral body, you shed that body, and you go on to the Causal Plane, which has different distractions. This chapter explains this core principle when it says, "It can be learned only from the Living Godman who will give you the art of avoiding the difficulties which you will meet on the inner path." You see? The difficulties of spiritual growth aren't just encountered on the outer path, in the physical universe. Even though it's a huge task getting from the outer path to the inner path, once you're on the inner trek, there are tremendous difficulties there as well. There are tons of land mines and all sorts of temptations, and million upon millions of things trying to distract you and tugging at you to lose your focus and get you off the path.

It's kind of like this weird thing that happens in basketball. I was noticing it during the playoffs. When somebody's going for a free-throw, there's this thing the fans do behind the basket. They have these big foam wiggly things that they wave back and forth when the player is trying to make a basket. It took awhile to realize what they were doing, which is trying to distract the guy from making the basket. The fans are screaming and they've got all these really weird visual distractions so that the player's attention and concentration will be broken and they will miss the basket.

The same sort of thing happens on the inner planes. There are all of these little distractions that are happening designed to keep our attention off the One. So you have to focus the attention even more and keep chanting the Holy Names more, and let the each of the spiritually charged Names on inner planes manifest itself as the Inner Master. This is the power of the Zikar.

Just as the physical Master is the living Word, it is also the living simran, in this physical universe and every other plane. It exists on every plane - always has, always will. It changes names and faces as Its human instruments complete their physical lives. It can be called Guru Nanak, it can be called Jesus, it can be called Kirpal Singh, or Paul Twitchell, or Michael Turner, or Darwin Gross, or Milarepa, living in and adapting to different countries, cultures, and times where It manifests ItSelf. But the living Word remains the eternal point of focus. By charging these words, these names, they are empowered with the living Word on each level. The names for the Astral, Causal, Mental, Etheric and Soul Planes and spiritually charged by the Living Master and become the points of resonant focus that mold themselves into the Living Word on each of those levels.

Paul Twitchell describes this inner journey at some length during his "Tiger's Fang" experience with Kirpal Singh (whom he call's "Rebazar Tarzs in the book). Together they traverse each of the inner dimensions, meet the ruling deities, see all sorts of sights and have all sorts of experiences. It's like a giant carnival. And every time Paul wants to go off on a little detour, Kirpal tugs him on his shirt sleeve and says, "We'll get back to this later. This is fun. Yeah, this is a great sideshow. You can get a kewpie doll for your girlfriend when you come back through, on the way back to earth, maybe a big stuffed panda bear or something, but we need to move on."

At one point, they meet the Brahman, the primordial Brahman and this deity spouts all this stuff, this mental gobbledygook, which sounds very erudite, intelligent and well-explained on the surface, but it's really just a mental maze, a house of mirrors which can easily be confusing. There's a great bit at the end of that chapter when Brahman finishes up his spiel and Rebazar Tarzs looks at Paul and says, "He's always like that." Then Rebazar just kinda chuckles and takes Paul on to the next level.

This is the power of the Zikar. It keeps us focused on the goal. It takes us to each of the inner planes but with the attention always on the Naam, on the One.

This experience has to be developed by daily practice, by the fixing of hours, which means it is important that we do our spiritual exercises every day at the same time. On top of doing simran constantly, doing the Zikar constantly, we need to develop a regularity in it for the simple reason that it adds a rhythm to our lives.

Everybody's life can be chaotic, and in 20th century America (which is all I personally know in this body), this is a very chaotic environment we live in, and it gets more so. More distractions all the time, more things getting in the way of our meditation. So we need to get up and meditate every day at the same time, just to add rhythm and balance, which in turn strengthens and deepens the meditation experience.

Again, it focuses our attention. It's another way of focusing our attention on the One. Just as a musician has to listen to the One in laying down a rhythm track, we need the One in our daily lives and on a subconscious level even, it acclimates us to being rhythmic. At the same time every day we sit down and do our meditation; bingo, like clockwork, regardless of what time we went to bed. It also helps us in learning to solidify the attention on Naam.

So at that time of the day, say 5:00 or 5:30 a.m., we turn our attention to God, automatically, just like doing our self-introspection diaries. Maintaining the self- introspection diary will not, by itself, to take you home to God. But it makes you think about God and the Master for a second. And anything that puts God in your attention (as opposed to the world), is a good thing.

Now this is an interesting point here, "If you consciously strive to become the Godman then you will lose God. By intention to bring yourself in harmony with the Light, you will be taken from it." That's one of those statements that's kind of like, "Huh?" But it's really right on target. The first line addresses vanity. It addresses people saying, "I'm spiritual." They define themselves as "spiritual" (as opposed to "non-spiritual," I suppose). I've seen it in essays and letters and, back when I was single, even in personals' ads sometimes ("Spiritual person seeking other spiritual person"). Or some people buy into the illusion that you're hanging out with spiritual people if you go to the right restaurant (obviously firehouse spaghetti and meatball dinners, or pancake and sausage church breakfasts aren't "spiritual," right?).

It's like we were discussing earlier about the Dalai Lama and his disciples coming to America, and how all the satsangis at this one conference prepared the food assuming that because the Dalai Lama is "spiritual," he must also, "obviously," be a vegetarian; and not even a lacto-ovo vegetarian, but practically a vegan. And so they prepare him these vegan meals without knowing that the Dalai Lama's doctor has put him on a meat diet and what the Dalai Lama really needs a T-bone. He doesn't need a watercress and tofu and bean sprout sandwich with a wheat grass juice chaser. He needs a T-bone steak, a baked potato and probably a glass of milk to ground and focus him and to give him the calcium and the combination of amino acids and proteins his body needs.

Now it is true that reducing our red meat intake is overall better (in terms of cholesterol and the effect of growth hormones, etc. on our bodies) for us. But we are animals. We are Omnivores, which means our teeth and digestive tract are designed for both animal flesh and plants. There is an amino acid balance in animal flesh that harmonizes with our bodies' nutritional needs. Animal flesh has the best amino acid balance and assimilation factor of it around. The next closest one is not soybeans (as is commonly thought), but actually hemp seeds. Hemp seed has the most complete amino acid base in the vegetable kingdom.

But when people have preconceptions of what spirituality and spiritual living is, they frequently think, "Oh, this must be spiritual. You must wear spiritual clothes, and eat spiritual food and live a spiritual lifestyle in order to be truly spiritual and know God. In reality, these are things that actually get you away from God.

In the same token, there are people who stress consciously striving to be in harmony with the Light, and invoking the Light, without ever mentioning the Sound. Look at everybody who says they are "Light workers" and want to work for the Light or invoke the Light. Ninety- nine times out of a hundred, what they are really doing is bringing in an astral light current (which is usually subdivided into a variety of colors or "rays" which are "invoked") which is really a lower frequency of the light which comes from the universal mind, known as Kal. It illuminates, but it doesn't lift you and take you home. This is something which, by its very nature it cannot do because it comes from the Universal Mind Power, which is still part of duality and the creation.

As we know in Sant Mat, it is the Sound Current that lifts you. You don't strive for the Sound. You don't need to break down the inner doors to hear the Sound, because if you're busy doing that you mind is simply racing around and you can't hear it. You're too busy trying to hear it to actually hear it. I mean, you can concentrate a lot and make visual images, and get these light things but that's when you people start having illusory (even delusional) experiences, mock ups of the mind that are these mythical or non-physical beings that sometimes come to them.

This is why true Masters always tell us to not accept any inner guidance from somebody who is not the Master or who is not with the Master. I don't care who they are or who they say they are, if you're on this path (even if you're not), if you want to have an inner experience and travel the inner dimensions, find a living adept who is in a physical body who can do inner traveling in soul. Ask them to teach you how to do it, because if they can do it they can meet you within and introduce you to good people, safe people who are legitimate (credentialed you might say) spiritual guides and teachers.

This is very, very important, because there are a lot of well-meaning people on the astral plane who are kind of nuts, but who are able to access and speak through people on the physical (a process we call "channeling"). And that's a bad thing, a very bad thing. You have a bunch of nut- cases on the astral plane talking to people here making earth people nut-cases. We don't need to foster mental illness, on this planet and in this country. Mental illness is a great tragedy, and happens all too often due to human, environmental and biochemical factors. We don't need to seek it out. We need to heal it, not enhance it. If we want to truly spiritualize this country and planet, we need solid, responsible, focused human beings who are integrated; who are responsible citizens active in their communities; who are full of love and compassion; who are grounded, and yet spiritual in the best sense of the word, at the same time.

So don't go on a frenzied search for the Light. Don't pound around for the Sound. All you need to do is simply quiet down, do your simran, do your Zikar. . . . and listen . . . and look . . . and pay attention. And if you're patient . . . and focused . . . and relaxed, open and receptive . . . it will come to you.

As Ching Hai noted in the article that we read earlier, it is already in you. It is here now. It's just that our minds are so immersed in a cacophony of activity, we can't hear It.

If you're having a conversation with a friend when a jet is flying low overhead, you can barely hear the other person, if you can hear them at all. The jets are the mind; the conversation is God. God doesn't raise his voice very often. He just speaks very quietly, but very deeply and profoundly. How do you hear God? Turn off the jets, turn off the TV, turn off the stereo, come to Satsang. Leave everything at the door when you walk in.

When you come to Satsang, say a silent prayer before you walk through the door asking God, "Please God, let me get 10 minutes of concentration in tonight, or maybe 15. I long for the day when I come to Satsang and am completely absorbed in the Satsang from the moment I walk through the door, and not have any of the outside world, any of my outside interests entering the meeting, entering the experience. I want to be wholly and solely there."

Do this and take it into your meditation with Zikar, with simran, and learn how to be wholly and solely devoted and receptive to Naam and God, and It will open up for you. You will see the inner Master, hear the Voice, and you will have inner experiences of the best sort. You will meet other guides; you will meet Masters who have come in the past; you will meet fellow satsangis; and you will know if they are legitimate and credible because your Master is with you making the introduction.

"Sit in silence chanting the sacred names of the Sugmad. This practice is the weapon against all dangers, is the password to all spiritual planes and gives strength and sustenance to the body and mind during trouble and affliction, bringing soul nearer to God and achieves happiness while on this plane."

That's a packed paragraph in one or two sentences. The Holy Names are incredibly powerful. They give you sustenance. They give you access to all the inner planes. They are your security blankets. They are your shields against anything that might attack you, that might distract you, that might get in your face. All you have to do is call on the name of the Master. In the case of this Sangat, call on me and chant the Holy Names. This will immediately dissolve any sort of distraction, any entity that is mocking up an image. If you're not sure if an inner presence is really valid or not, chant the Holy Names, invoke the Master. And right then you will know; their true colors will be shown.

I mean, if somebody says he is Jesus, start chanting the Holy Names. If it isn't Jesus, it's not going to stay there or the Jesus Halloween costume will fall away and you'll see who it really is. A lot of folks on the Astral and Causal Planes go to what you might call interdimensional Halloween costume shops and they put on costumes that impress people here on earth. And what's unfortunate is that most earthlings don't know the difference. It's like when you're three years old and you go to see Santa Claus at the mall. Just as there are a lot of guys wearing Santa Claus costumes around Christmas time, there are also a lot of channeled entities saying they're "Hunk-Ra.," or "Ramtha," or "Ashtar," etc. And most of us have no way of knowing whether they really are legitimate or not (and by far, the vast majority are not).

On the other hand, you do know who your Master is. I'm here. Darwin Gross is here. Gurinder Singh and Rajinder Singh are here (and we know that Sawan Singh, Charan Singh and Kirpal Singh were here). We can all shake your hand, smile and say, "Hey how's it going?" The Holy Names will validate that for you on the inner as well. This is what the Zikar does; it protects you. It is absolute protection against any distraction; it is absolute protection against any sort of psychic intrusion. It simply takes focus.

Generally speaking, first the Light appears, then the Sound, then the Master, at which point you merge your attention into Him, because the Master becomes the manifestation of the two poles - God and human - and everything in-between. You just absorb It, and allow yourself to become absorbed into It.

Ultimately it comes back, to you and God, because Godman is simply the matrix of (and gateway to) the Eternal. By focusing on the Sound and the Light and the Simran, the Zikar, It will take you to the matrix of the Inner Master, Who will take you to the Kingdom of Heaven ItSelf. It is incredibly powerful.

"So I tell thee, my son, that to approach God you must do so by the ECK and catch the Light and Sound and follow both back to the Source of the truth of all truths. And that highway to reach the spiritual home of God lies within the human body. We must go through the human body and soul to reach God, the Supreme Soul.

The true source of God is that self which is, and there thy soul will live in bliss through all eternity. This is what you must strive for in thy life throughout all the worlds of God."

This is the ancient core of the Path of the Masters. We are endowed by our Creator with all the tools we need, in any culture, in any time, in any lifestyle, in any condition of health or non-health. We always have the tools to go within. All we have to do is close our eyes, focus our attention, begin repeating the Holy Names, and make ourselves receptive. Open ourselves up and let ourselves be absorbed into the Holy Sound Current.

Everything takes it course. We find the Eternal, we find perfect equilibrium, and we find pure love. We come to truly know ourselves and know God. In the process, we become spiritually free in this lifetime.

Baraka Bashad!