Saints And The Future

[humkire]

Recently, I have come across various essays and articles being written about prophesies made by various saints and scholars about the impending end of this world, a third world war etc. It is a topic that tickles our curiousity beyond limits!

We love to speculate as to what will happen tomorrow, because we fear losing what we have, and we want security and assurance that life will get better for us. Knowing tomorrow is going to be great fun, gives us peace of mind, and knowing tomorrow is going to be a disaster causes us worry, depression and total upset. Also this human mind is always looking for something new to believe in, and loves to travel in thought.

From a strictly Gurmat point of view, life carries with it carries with it an element of surprise. Guru Nanak Dev Maharaj could see right into the future but he never wrote out a timeline future history of this planet for us ! and there is hardly any mention of it in Gurbani, because it is the will of God that we should always work on improving our present, making our present a gurmukh jeewan and tirelessly focus on Guru sewa. This is what should really concern us than worry about the future.

The future is not just about what will happen next year or the next decade but what will happen in the next few minutes and the next few seconds! This is why the future is exciting and mysterious and an important element of our curiousity. Yet a 'purda; is placed on our minds preventing us from seeing into this future so that life will not end up as a long 'deja vu' where you step into a time space you saw before and this keeps happening. This is not how God intends us to see life and run our lifes, and is inconsistent with gurmat and the teachings of Gurbani/Sikhism. A purdah on our minds helps us experience a special dimension within this mayic universe called 'Newness'' . Even God should not, in our daily lives become deja vu and boring but ever new (sahib mera neet nva). In fact the ability to see newness in everything, and see the signifance and beauty of birth and death is part of a high spiritual and mystical state you attain as you become a high powered gurmukh. Every moment becomes new, exciting, promising and filled with amrit, ras and joy. This is emphasised in Anand Sahib, if read with Guru's kirpa very reflectively.

So this mindset about the future has to bother us rather than the churnings of our mind that invoke our curiousity about everything we read or comes to mind, and it is a reflection that our minds are beginning to be restive in the state of sehaj, rather than chanchal and over thinking. God is gracious, and yes as one becomes a more higher powered Gurmukh, the mind becomes less hindered by maya and starts travelling more easily back and forth in time and in and out of space! Such abilities are kept on the back burner, and do not become the obsession of true saints who focus on connecting people to God, and especially Sikh saints who always preach the message of spiritual and religious equality among all Sikhs/Khalsas.

Hence the message of Sikhism is a message of focussing on a day to day basis on rehat and simran, leaving the rest in God’s secure hands. Sikhs do not obsess about past sins or about a future messiah. Rather Gurbani focusses on helping us make our minds ‘sundar’ in the eyes of God as we learn to live daily according to the hukum of Akal Purukh and the kirpa of Guru Maharaj.

What any blessed soul or saint has to say about the future is a matter best kept very private. Such things are never meant for a general audience as that would be out of sync with gurmat where the focus of preaching has to be on Gurbani, Nam, Khande Batte ka Amrit, Gurbani as Guru, and rehat. The ability to know beyond the present, is given by God as a specific tool to help a blessed person work better with those that come to him for help. As I said before, during Guru Nanak Jee’s time, so much would have been happening all around the world but what Gurujee focussed on, was to travel place to place writing and singing Gurbani to bring Light to the world and drive out the forces of darkness.

A Sikh is a humble person, using the mind to do good, to pray and to surrender to God. We have only one brain and it is supposed to be surrendered to God so we become spirit led people living by the order and grace of God. This brain must not become a ground for speculative, erratic, confused, worried, hateful , envious, or spiteful thinking which keeps worrying about the past and future. Rather this brain has to be calm, relaxed, surrendered, joyful, beautiful, loving, kind, forgiving, generous, and never opinionated or desire-churning.

Also, you have to remember birth and death are happening less than every second within you as cells die and are born. A gurmukh sees birth and death inside and outside happening continously nonstop. Only God is 'thirh'/stable. Universes are being made and destroyed every second when you have the eyes to see. That death we worry about of our planet is happening I don’t know how many times every minute out there in the vast reaches of space filled with billions and trillions of planets and suns! And that same death is happening at a micro level within you if you could see, faster than I can type this. By the time I have typed this or you have read this, many planets would have been wiped out, trillions and trillions of insects would have died and countless births would have taken place from the birth of worms to humans , fishes , birds and all!. That is why we say God is great!

I am not sure how a true Sikh saint would react to know that a prophecy he made is being broadcast to the wide world over the internet, when what he would really have liked is that, what he had to say about Gurbani to be our Guru, ought to have been the main legacy of his life and preaching that should be making rounds on the internet. I am also unsure if his reaction to any harsh words said about him, or his words, would equal to the angry revengeful hysteria it seems to immediately create! As a saint, his life would have been marked by a constant ability to love and forgive and that's what any disciple of his ought to demonstrate and display.

Sikhism is NOT and will NEVER be short of saints because Sikhism is from God. In fact ,every Sikh has to have the desire and work 24/7 to become a SANT-SIPAHI. Sikhism is not about the need to worship and look back at saints, while you become complacent about your own rehnee behnee kehnee sehnee!. Sikhism is about BECOMING a saint and if you do not understand this you have not understood the greatness of Amrit and the power of Amrit, the significance of rehat and the sheer volcanic ability of Gurbani to grab your life, twist, squeeze and wring out of you every drop of maya and haumai and fill you to the brim with anand and amrit! This is what any true Sikh saint preaches, and this is the message that needs to trickle into our hearts, minds, souls and lifes so we become walking talking living sant sipahis. In fact this is what makes Sikhism exciting because what is coming is incredibly magical.

Any Sikh saint is a heera but not the last heera of Sikhism. More are coming like new stars yet to appear in the night sky! More, more and more! Many many more! Sikhism is not dying! It has just being born! And what it is going to produce in terms of Sant Sipahis is something I cannot describe or explain either!

This is what sets apart Sikhism from all other religions. In other religions they have saints and hero worship saints even burying their bodies and creating tombs and remembrance days. But Sikhism is a saint producing factory!!!!!! Sikhism does not create ''followers'' and ''saints'' , two classes of men! No, that is an insult of the reason, the power and the force of the very first Baisakhi and to the Khande Pahul ceremony! Our failure to understand this absolutely and insanely vital point, has been the reccuring reason for our failures! We need to wake up and smell the air like an arctic bear does! Amrit produces Sant Sipahees. That is the inheritance we get from Guru Gobind Singh and it is an empowering and fanatically and insanely exciting reality! Guru jee does not play favourites! His blanket promises about Khalsa cover each and every Khalsa!!!! Your desire should never stop at 'O God help me be a person who respects the teachings and be a disciple of such and such a Sikh saint that I fanatically adore, defend and hero worship'!.No way! Your tearful prayer to God EVERY amritvela should be 'GURU GOBIND SINGH MAHARAJ, PLEASE UNLEASH THE POWER OF AMRIT IN MY LIFE SO I CAN STAND SHOULDER TO SHOULDER TO THE MOST BLESSED SIKHS OF ALL TIME AS A SAINT SOLDIER BROTHER BECAUSE ALL SIKHS WERE MEANT TO BE GUR-BHAIS''.

This is the true chardikela power of Sikhi and do not bargain for anything less because if not, all you will be doing, is faithfully attending the barsis of many saints in and out of your life in the name of loyalty and humility without ever becoming a fearless saint soldier khalsa in your own right! And I say this from my observation of what is beginning to happen in the Sikh jagat. Any true Sikh saint worthy of his title, would rather have you becoming a sant sipahee by absorbing the gist of his teaching than bothering with his barsis and birthdays. We need to get back to the days when we kept things simple by having gurpurabs and stopped at that. The rise of cults like the Bande Khalsa, namsharis, and narakdharees should have taught us a lesson as to what happens when we start hero worshipping great important Sikh personages and what happens a few generations down the line.

In life, our constant reason for failure is our ability to understand, realise and appreciate our potential while adoring the successes of others. That is why Guru Gobind Singh created a panth where every Sikh becomes a Khalsa, no less no more! And every Khalsa has to have one single focus in life, to become a sant sipahi, no less, no more! This is THE challenge facing the younger upcoming generation if we desire two absolutely vital and important things for the future of the Khalsa Panth from the bottom of our hearts i.e Ekta and Chardiikela. That is the future that needs to concern us.

[humkire]

correction of unclear words in my topic above

1) the third line of second paragraph is ''but HE never wrote out a timelined detailed future of this planet''

2)paragraph 7 ''As I said before, during Guru Nanak Jee's time, so much would have been happening all around the world, but what Gurujee focussed on was to travel place to place writing and singing Gurbani to bring LIGHT to the world and drive out the forces of darkness!

[puneetkaur]

(sahib mera neet nva)

the sheer volcanic ability of Gurbani to grab your life, twist, squeeze and wring out of you every drop of maya and haumai and fill you to the brim with anand and amrit!