Age Passed in Search of…..

Once a man boarded a deluxe bus at Jaipur. It was an express bus. After two-three hours of journey, the bus stopped at a place for refreshments. When the bus started again, the driver switched the radio on. The man heard, ‘This is All India Radio Delhi’. He immediately requested the driver to stop the bus. The driver stopped the bus and he alighted from it with his suitcase in hand. It was a small village and the time was 7 or 8 in the morning. He wanted to go to the Lal Quila (Red Fort). He searched throughout the day but the Lal Quila was nowhere to be seen. In the evening, he met a friend and asked, “Brother! Can you guide me to the Lal Quila?”

The other man slapped him and said, “You stupid! I have been searching since morning for the Qutub Minar. Why don’t you help me find Qutub Minar first?”

Both the men had alighted from the bus before they reached their destination. Qutub Minar and Lal Quila do exist but they did not reach the right place. They alighted on the way and assumed it to be their destination. Even if they search their whole lives neither they can find Qutub Minar nor for that matter Lal Quila in that area. Similarly, the unenlightened ones, who are slaves of their minds, stop before reaching their goal. Such people may go on telling beads or do kirtana for the whole life, they cannot find the Lal Quila of supreme Brahman or the Qutub Minar of undisturbed calm. It is not the folly of those travelers alone; we are also doing the same. We behave in exactly the same way as they did. They might have been realized their mistake in a day or two, but we have been repeating the mistake ad-infinitum life after life for thousands of lives.

Vasishtha says, “O Rama! One can count the sand particles accumulated on the banks of the river Ganga flowing from top to the foot of the Sumeru Mountain, it is not possible to count the number of species that one, enamored of worldly pleasures, takes birth in.”

Nobody can count the number of wombs the same jiva has changed. The jiva can find absolute peace and attain self-realization if it finds a satguru and develops unanswering love for supreme self.

Satguru’s satsanga makes one established in truth consciousness, God. It makes him experience the supreme peace of self. It gives inner repose and inner bliss and kindles the flame (light) if inner knowledge. The flame of the lamp is hot; it incinerates the objects; but the flame of knowledge the satguru kindles within doesn’t incinerate the objects. It rather illuminates one’s life and brings peace and joy to life. The abiding peace in the heart of self-realized men is radiated through their blissful glance, in their ability to bring soothing peace to distressed hearts and in their unique style of imparting self-knowledge to ignorant men. Such great men divinize lakhs of hearts. You too can attain that ability, if only you make effort with the help of satsanga, to enter the temple of your heart and attain knowledge of your real self, the supreme soul.

The travelers would have been spared all the wandering around had they known Delhi. Similarly, if we realize our beloved, our ‘Soham’ Nature, we save ourselves the labor of wandering in innumerable mothers’ wombs.
Sant Kabirji says:
‘The jiva has been wandering in search of his home for ages. He can’t find it without the help of a guide (the Guru). And once such help is available, he finds himself instantly in his home.’

We have spent ages searching for joy, for peace…. When you set out on a journey very eagerly; you plan to go to many places. Very soon you get tired and become homesick; you feel you have had enough. One leaves home eagerly but comes back tired. Wherever one may go, one has to come back to one’s home. Similarly, the jiva may be born in any number if species having different bodies but cannot get peace until and unless he comes back to his home, his real self, the supreme self. One may stay in the best of hotels or a free dharamsala, but finally has to come back to his own home. Similarly, one may acquire the most beautiful bodies to live it but they are temporary places like hotels and inns. One gets real peace and rest only when one comes back to one’s home, his Real Self, the supreme self. And one surely has to come back to one’s home whether in this birth, after 10 births, after hundreds, lakhs or crores of births. Realize the divine self right now, love it, repose in it, and attain beatitude.