... GAIN FREEDOM FROM THE GOD OF DEATH.

THE NAME OF THE FLAWLESS ONE IS SUCH

THAT ONLY CONTEMPLATING CAN KNOW IT.

THROUGH CONTEMPLATION THE PATH IS CLEARED OF ALL OBSTACLES;

AND A MAN DEPARTS WITH DIGNITY AND HONOR;

ONE IS SAVED FROM WANDERING ASTRAY,

AND CONNECTION TO RELIGION IS ESTABLISHED.

THE NAME OF THE FLAWLESS ONE IS SUCH

THAT ONLY CONTEMPLATING CAN KNOW.

All obstructions are within you and not outside of you. Obstacles are there because of your insensibility and they cannot simply be removed. The only way is to awaken within; then all obstacles vanish.

Now suppose your house is in darkness. As you enter, every corner of the house seems filled with danger; maybe there are ghosts or goblins, or burglars, or even a murderer. Everything seems so ominous; the house holds a thousand perils; there might even be snakes and scorpions around. How will you possibly overcome all these hazards if you set out to deal with them one by one? Who knows how many thieves, how many criminals, lurk within this darkness? You cannot deal with them individually. The only way is to light a lamp. One single lamp illuminates the whole interior and all fears flee. Once the house is lighted and you can see whatever danger there is, you can always find ways to deal with it.

The fact is as Buddha has said, "The dark house attracts the burglar.". A thief avoids the house that is well lit. If the lamp is burning within and if the awareness stands guard, no obstacle or hindrance dare enter within you.

One day, early in the morning, Mulla Nasruddin came running to me. He held a paper in his hand and seemed terribly disturbed. He handed me the paper and flopped into a chair. The anonymous writer was warning Mulla that if he did not refrain from following his wife within the next three days, he would shoot him.

"What should I do?" asked Mulla.

"Why, that's simple," I said. "Just leave his wife alone!"

"But which wife shall I stop following?" he asked. "If it were only one woman I'd been following I'd know which one to stop!"

If there were only one hindrance you could get rid of it, but they are infinite. You are stalking an infinite number of women; your desires are inexhaustible. Destroy one, ten more take its place. If you keep grappling with each, hoping to eradicate them one by one, you never will succeed. A method is needed to finish it once and for all. And he who shows you this method, the gur, is the guru.

So Nanak says: Through contemplation all hindrances on the path are eradicated. Continue the repetition of Omkar and let it reach the non-repeating state, then you find your eyes have opened. Then there are no obstructions, for these are but your creations. There is no outside enemy to be vanquished. You are your own enemy. Your insensitivity is your enemy and because of it you are enmeshed in endless entanglements. No matter how cautious you are, you keep adding fresh hindrances at every step.

There are people in this world who regulate their lives with control and restraint. They must take each step carefully so as not to go astray. But restraint is not the end; awareness is the ultimate goal. The invitation to wander is always beckoning inside. However much you impose restraints, the raging passions will bring you down at the slightest opportunity. A person who practices self-denial and controls his every action must always be afraid, for within him the imprisoned passions continue boiling.

THROUGH CONTEMPLATION THE PATH IS CLEARED OF ALL OBSTACLES,

AND A MAN DEPARTS WITH DIGNITY AND HONOR.

There is a different kind of honor that does not depend on others; it is the respect that arises out of internal dignity. He dies with majesty who feels death to be the union with God. He departs with joy and celebration in his heart, being grateful to existence for the life granted him. His air of thanksgiving for everything around is stamped on his face and in his every hair. Then it is not significant how many followed his coffin or where he died. None of this matters to his real dignity, his glory, his nobility, which are intrinsic qualities.

When death is no longer fearsome to you, you die with dignity; otherwise you cannot. For how can you be dignified when you weep and wail, entreat and beg? Then what does it matter how many people follow your funeral? All the pomp and ceremony cannot erase your anguish. All the flowers showered on you cannot smother the stink within you; the booming salute cannot overcome the uproar of sorrow and woe within you. Your death will be empty of honor all the same.

When Nanak says that through contemplation a person departs with honor, he talks of that internal honor, an internal reverence, a feeling of thanksgiving.

ONE IS SAVED FROM WANDERING ASTRAY,

AND CONNECTION TO RELIGION IS ESTABLISHED.

No matter how many scriptures you read, you cannot establish contact thereby with religion. No temple or mosque or church can connect you with religion. Slumbering, insensitive you go to worship; the same you who runs the shop, also goes to the house of worship. Your attitude should change, and once it is altered, everything else is transformed accordingly; otherwise you will keep on trying everything and yet remain your same old self.

Nanak went to Hardwar during the month of offerings to the dead. People were filling vessels with water, and then, facing East, were throwing them into the sky in order to reach their forefathers in heaven. Nanak picked up a bucket also, but he turned towards the West, and each bucket of water he poured, he cried out, "Reach my fields!"

After emptying a number of buckets, the people round him remonstrated with him. "What are you doing? You are turned in the wrong direction. You should face towards the rising sun! And why do you say, 'Reach my fields'? Where are your fields?"

Nanak replied, "About two hundred miles from here." The people began to laugh. "And you expect the water you throw here to reach your fields two hundred miles away? You are really out of your mind."

"How far away are your forefathers?" Nanak asked.

"They are infinitely far away," they replied.

"If your water can reach your ancestors an infinite distance away, why can't my water cover a mere two hundred miles?" asked Nanak.

What is Nanak trying to say? He is asking them to think a little, ponder: "What is this foolishness you indulge in? Become a little aware; what do you gain by such actions?"

Unfortunately all religion is filled with such stupidities. Some send water to ancestors, some bathe in the Ganges to wash away sins, yet others sit before idols without any feeling of worship or adoration, merely to ask for worldly things. A thousand foolishnesses prevail in the name of religion.

Therefore Nanak insists that religion is not attained through scriptures, nor through tradition and customs, nor through blind following. Contact with religion is established only when a person attains contemplation.

When a person awakens, awareness appears within him. When the resonance of Omkar first sounds, our relationship with religion begins. The day you are capable of hearing the resonance of 0m within yourself, without any longer saying it, you are filled with joy, you are the witness, the observer. That very day you establish your connection with religion, not with some creed or sect. It is religion that Buddha calls dharma. It is religion that Mahavir and Nanak talk about.

Religion -- dharma -- means nature, the natural order of things. What Lao Tzu means by Tao, so Nanak means by religion. To be removed from one's nature is to be lost. To return to one's own nature is to return homewards. To be established in one's own nature is to be established in God.

The name, Niranjan -- God, the spotless, the flawless one -- is such that only he who contemplates his heart knows.