Nanak says even when they sing the Lord's praise they do not fail to ask, and the Lord keeps on giving. But these blind people see not, and still clamor for more. While His grace pours down on them, they wail endlessly that they are thirsty, as if they have fallen in love with their suffering!

THEN WHAT OFFERING CAN WE MAKE

TO GAIN A GLIMPSE OF HIS COURT?

This is very significant. Nanak says God has given so much, there is nothing left to be asked for. When complaints fall away and you are filled with gratitude, you wonder what you should take as a love-offering to His feet.

What shall we offer at His court? What shall we place before His feet when we express our thanksgiving? How shall we worship, how shall we adore Him? You take flowers, pluck them from bushes -- His bushes. They were better off on the plant, still living. You plucked them and killed them. You kill His flowers and offer them at His feet -- and you are not ashamed? What can you give Him -- everything is His!

When you spend your money to build a church or mosque, what are you doing? You are returning to Him His own things, and yet you are filled with pride. You say, "I built the temple. I fed so many poor. I distributed so many clothes." You give so little, yet you become arrogant.

What does this show but that you have not understood? Returning a little bit of the infinite gifts you receive from above is not a matter of pride. Yet you go to offer the gift and you are not even ashamed!

"What will you put before Him?" Nanak asks. How shall we approach -- with what -- so that we can see His courts, and can come near Him? What shall we put before Him -- rice dipped in saffron, flowers from the market, wealth, treasures -- what?

No! No gift will serve the purpose. To understand that everything is His, is enough. The gift is accepted! As long as you feel something belongs to you, you think of offering something. As long as you consider yourself the master you may give if you like, but you err. Anything you may offer -- your whole kingdom -- is nothing. For everything is His, even you are His! Whatever you have earned, whatever you have gathered is all His play.

Nanak says, What shall we do to stand in Your court, to stand in Your presence? To look into each other's eyes? When you come to understand that everything is already His, there is no need to take anything. The flowers on the tree are already an offering to Him; everything stands offered at His lotus feet -- even the sun and the moon and the stars. What will your miserable lamps do before the orb of the sun? Open your eyes and see that all of existence stands offered at His feet. This exactly is the meaning of the word master. He is the master of all, everything stands as an offering to Him.

So Nanak says, What are we to give? This is Nanak's question: What language shall we speak, hearing which, He may love us? What shall we say to Him? What words shall we use? How should we entertain Him? How shall we please Him? What shall we do so that His love pours on us?

Nanak does not seem to give any answer. He raises the question and leaves it unanswered. And that is the art, because he says that whatever we say, it is He who speaks through us. What is so exceptional in offering His own words to Him? Only in ignorance can it be done. Wisdom recognizes that: "Nothing is left to offer Him because I too am an offering at His feet." No words can become a prayer, because all words are His. It is He who speaks; it is He who throbs within the heart; it is He who is the breath of breaths. Then what is the wise one to do?

Nanak says: Remember satnam, the true name, and its glories in the ambrosial hour. There is nothing else to be done. What is the wise one, the sensible person to do?

REMEMBER THE TRUE NAME

AND MEDITATE ON ITS GLORY IN THE AMBROSIAL HOUR.

The Hindus call it sandhya which literally means evening; it is used to designate the hour of prayer at twilight and at dawn. Nanak calls it amrit vela which means nectar or ambrosia time. It is an even more appropriate name. The Hindus have been working on this path for thousands of years. In search of the reality of existence and exploring consciousness, they have found paths in almost all directions; almost nothing is left undiscovered. They have gradually determined that in the twenty-four hours of the day there are two short periods of sandhya.

In the night when you retire to bed, there is a short period when you are neither asleep nor awake. At this particular moment your consciousness, so to speak, changes gears. In changing the gears of the car, you have to move through the neutral gear before going to the second gear. So for a moment, the car is in no gear.

Sleep and wakefulness are two very different states. When awake you may be filled with misery; in sleep you become an emperor! You do not even wonder that the one who is a beggar in the day can be a king at night. You are in an altogether different gear. You are on a plane of consciousness that is entirely different from your ordinary daytime consciousness; and these two levels have nothing to do with each other. Otherwise you would have remembered for an instant, that you are a beggar and why have you become a king? But when you dream you are entirely identified with the dream. You experience the waking hours of the day as a different existence altogether from the world of sleep. You enter an entirely different world.

In the day you are a saint, at night you are a sinner -- and do you even wonder at it? Have you ever doubted your dreams while dreaming? Once you do the dream will break apart, for doubting is part of wakefulness; it is a part of waking consciousness. In dreams you are not conscious of the fact that you are dreaming.

There are many orders of seekers where the spiritual exercise is taught that when they prepare to sleep at night, they should keep one thought in mind: "This is a dream... this is a dream." It takes three years for this remembrance to become strong enough for the seeker to recognize the dream as a dream -- at which point it breaks. From then on, there are no dreams for him, because now the gears are not separate. The two planes of consciousness merge into one: now he is awake even when sleeping. This is what Krishna means when he says the yogi is awake when others sleep. The wall between the compartments has fallen and now it is one big room.

Both in the night when you are about to fall asleep and in the morning just as sleep departs and you are about to awake -- these are the two moments when consciousness, in its process of changing gears, drops for a moment into neutral, when you are drifting between sleeping and waking consciousness. This is the time that Hindus call sandhya and Nanak calls amrit vela. Sandhya kal is a scientific term. Kal means hour, and sandhya refers to middle, neither here nor there -- neither belonging to this world nor to that. At the moment of sandhya kal you are nearest to God; therefore the Hindus have made use of this time for prayer. Amrit vela, nectar time, is sweeter -- the moment you are nearest to ambrosia.

It all happens in this temporal body: with one mechanism of the body you sleep, with another you awake. All dreams pertain to the body. All waking and sleeping happens to the body. Behind this body is hidden a you, who never sleeps, never awakens. How can he who never sleeps, awaken? There is a you who never dreams, because that requires sleep, and that never sleeps. Behind the various states of this body hides the ambrosia, the nectar that is never born, never dies. If you succeed in locating the sandhya kal, you will come to know of the bodiless within the body; you will know the master hidden behind the slave. You are both. If you look at the body alone, you are the slave; if you look at the master within, you become the master.

So, says Nanak, there is only one thing worth doing and that is to meditate on the glory of satnam, the true name, in amrit vela. You will gain nothing by going to temples making various demands. Nothing will result from worship and sacrifices, by offering leaves and flowers, because what sense is there in offering Him what is already His? There is only one thing worth doing -- pray in the ambrosial hour.

Sandhya kal lasts but a moment, but your mind is never in the present, therefore you always miss it. Every day it comes -- once in every twelve hours you are nearest to God, but you miss Him, because your eyes are not alert enough to the present, to catch this subtle moment.

As you sit here now, are you here or have you gone to your office and started your daily work? Are you involved in what I say or are your thoughts engaged in thinking about what I say? If so, you will miss the present.

If you want to catch the ambrosial moment, you must become conscious of the present at every moment! When you eat, let only eating be -- no other thought should fill your mind. When you bathe -- bathe only; no other thought should be in the mind. When you are in your office, let your thoughts be only of the work, not thinking of home. When you go home, forget about the office. Be completely, wholly, within each moment and not here, there and everywhere. This way the subtle sight will develop gradually and you will be able to see the present moment.

It is only after this, that you can meditate in the nectar hour, because that is a very subtle moment. It passes by in a flash. You may be thinking of something else and the moment has come and gone!