The servant of God is one with God || On Advait Vedanta (2019)
ਜੋ ਪ੍ਰਾਨੀ ਨਿਸਿ ਦਿਨੁ ਭਜੈ ਰੂਪ ਰਾਮ ਤਿਹ ਜਾਨੁ ॥ ਹਰਿ ਜਨ ਹਰਿ ਅੰਤਰੁ ਨਹੀ ਨਾਨਕ ਸਾਚੀ ਮਾਨੁ ॥੨੯॥
jo paraanee nis din bhajai roop raam tih jaan har jan har antar nahee naanak saachee maan
That mortal who meditates and vibrates upon the Lord night and day—know him to be the embodiment of the Lord. There is no difference between the Lord and the humble servant of the Lord; O Nanak, know this as true.
~ Guru Granth Sahib 1427-19, 1428-1, Salok Mahala 9-29
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ਜਿਹ ਘਟਿ ਸਿਮਰਨੁ ਰਾਮ ਕੋ ਸੋ ਨਰੁ ਮੁਕਤਾ ਜਾਨੁ ॥ ਤਿਹਿ ਨਰ ਹਰਿ ਅੰਤਰੁ ਨਹੀ ਨਾਨਕ ਸਾਚੀ ਮਾਨੁ ॥੪੩॥
jih ghat simran raam ko so nar muktaa jaan tihi nar har antar nahee naanak saachee maan
That person, who meditates in remembrance on the Lord in his heart, is liberated—know this well. There is no difference between that person and the Lord: O Nanak, accept this as the Truth.
~ Guru Granth Sahib 1428-14/15, Salok Mahala 9-43
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Questioner (Q): What does it mean to say that there is no difference between the Lord and the humble servant of the Lord? Does the Guru represent total consciousness, as he is totally surrendered to the Absolute?
Acharya Prashant (AP): Please see to whom are these lines being spoken, who is being addressed in these verses. The injunction is with respect to you . The effect that the servant of God has upon you is godly, and therefore it is being said that there is no difference between God and the true worshiper of God, when it comes to you . In the context of their effect upon you, God and the man of God are one.
God cannot even be a word, let alone an object, because fundamentally there is nothing in our language, there is nothing in our world that corresponds to God. There is only the manifestation of Godliness that you can see in somebody like Guru Nanak Dev Ji, that makes you wonder that there must be God.
In fact, to a human being, there is no proof of God except the man of God. There is nothing in the material world as such that will suggest to you that Beyondness exists. There is nothing in the world that is beyond the world, or is there?
I repeat, is there anything in the world that is beyond the world? And that is why the humble servant of the Lord, the dedicated devotee or the Guru, is being so lavishly praised: because he does something that nothing else in the universe does. He stands as living proof of something beyond the world.
Now, this is incredible, this is paradoxical. Living, eating, breathing as a product of evolution, as a creature in Prakriti (physical nature), as one of the things, living things in the world, he is yet symbolizing, proving something that is absolutely not of this world. And except for him, there is no proof of Godliness for you.
So, the gurus say that God comes to earth as the devotee of God, or God comes to earth as the messenger of God. How else can he be useful to you? Formlessly, limitlessly, facelessly, wordlessly, God will just remain an abstract principle to you. You will not be able to be helped by Him.
God might be omnipotent, but it is only the face of God that is useful. Otherwise, with all His potency, God remains helpless in terms of helping you. Because we are faced creatures, we are creatures with forms and names, we require and we insist that we need somebody with a form, face, and name.
There’s so much moisture in the air, is there not? And air is freely available to you, and air contains moisture. It’s the moisture in the air that ultimately rains upon you. There is so much moisture in the air, there is so much water in the air, and it’s all available to you, right? Wave your hand; you are actually waving your hand against water molecules. But would that quench your thirst? For your thirst to be quenched, you require just a little, limited, finite tumbler of water. You do not require the infinite moisture contained in the air; that infinity is of no use to you.
God is like that infinity—very abundant, very available, and very useless. With all the moisture in the air, people still die of thirst, don’t they? Even in very humid regions. There is so much humidity. And because there is so much humidity, you are sweating a lot and that is further dehydrating you, and you died because of lack of water—precisely because there was so much water available around you that it made the air humid.
The man of God is a cup of water. What would you rather have, the infinite moisture in the airs or a little cup of water?
That’s what the gurus are saying. Don’t live in abstractions. Be humble. Live in reality. The mūlamantra describes Godliness in all its glory, and then the last word says guru prasad . It says that Godliness is beautiful and bountiful, but it comes to you only as the grace of the Guru; otherwise, it remains a utopia, a distant dream, a fancy, a poetic abstraction.
Saints have gone on to say that if you forget God, it probably won’t harm you much. But if you forget the man of God, then who will save you? The air might be more humid or less humid; if you have your glass of water with you, you won’t die of thirst. And if you don’t have your glass of water with you, the air might be saturated with humidity, you’d still die of thirst.
Hari ruthe guru thaur hai, Guru ruthe nahi thaur . If God is away, not a big problem; the Guru is there, the servant of God is there. He is the one who really matters. But if the Guru is gone, then not even God will save you, because God does not really exist the way the universe does, things do, human beings do.
God exists only as a light in the Heart, light in the Heart of mortal human beings, sentient creatures. Lose the sentient human being, and from where will you get the light? That light does not exist independently. And even if it does exist independently, it does not exist independently for you . For you, it is existent and accessible only when it shines in the Heart of another human being like you. Otherwise, irrespective of its existence, it becomes inaccessible.
Sometimes one requires water not to drink but to splash on his face!
Q: Does serving the Guru with compassion and devotion lead to liberation?
AP: Liberation is not about serving the Guru. Listen very carefully. Liberation is about not serving what you serve so much. You don’t have to be liberated with respect to the Guru.
Liberation means getting rid of something, right? You say, “I am liberated from something”—liberated from something. What is it that holds you back? What is it that has arrested you? What is it that keeps you in chains? That which you serve.
Understand this. It is not that stuff on its own, consciously, with volition pounces upon you to arrest you and enslave you. Does that happen? Stuff does not pounce upon you, stuff does not weave circles around you; we serve stuff. It is a bit absurd. So, understand this.
We serve stuff and we plead with it, asking it to become our master. Stuff is not eager to capture us, and obviously it cannot be eager to liberate us, because stuff has no volition, no consciousness of its own. It is we who enjoin stuff. We entreaty stuff. We say, “Please, please come to my life, fill me up, and I’ll pay the price.” We serve stuff by paying the price for stuff.
So, what is it that we seek liberation from, we must seek liberation from? That which we…
Q: Serve.
AP: So, now, you tell me, what does it mean to serve the Guru? Do not serve what you have been hitherto serving. Do not serve what you have been serving so far, and that is liberation. The moment you stop serving that, it shrivels, it dies down; its hold over you is gone. Its hold over you was only as long as you kept feeding it, which is serving it. It arrests you only as long as you are supporting it. It’s almost like arresting one arm of yours using the other arm.
So, serving the Guru is nothing magical. It only means blocking the supply of service to random miscellaneous objects of the world. Serving the Guru is just a metaphor, just a way. It’s a trope. The Guru really does not require your service. If the Guru is really a Guru, what would he do with your service? Your service is in fact an unnecessary load on him. Almost like the things people frequently come and offer here in the foundation, and I have a small room, and all the stuff that people give then comes to my room and I do not know what to do with it. I still keep it because it was served in love, but nevertheless it is a hassle, is it not?
So, the Guru does not need your service. In fact, once you offer your service, he somehow tries to accommodate it. But you need to serve the Guru so that you stop serving what you ordinarily do.
Look at all the issues and problems and complications in your life. Are they there without your support, your engagement? Are they? How many people whose numbers are not there in your phone trouble you a lot? Please get the question. How many people whose numbers are not there in your phone trouble you a lot? Who are the ones who are a trouble to you? With whom you have been regularly corresponding; in other words, the ones you have been regularly serving, regularly feeding. You feed them your hours so that they can trouble you.
Trouble does not come uninvited, and it does not even easily accept invitations. Trouble comes to us because we forcibly kidnap it and bring it to ourselves. Even trouble is troubled. Trouble is asking, “Why did you bring me to yourself? And now you are giving me a bad name by calling me a trouble! Did I decide to come to you? First of all, you sneaked into my house, put a tape on my mouth, handcuffed me, pushed me inside your car in the dead of the night, and I became so fed up of your captivity that I decided to fast till death. But you kept feeding me, kept feeding me; you don’t even want me to die. And then you call me as a trouble!”
Do you see what it means to serve the Guru? It means: divert your energies, divert your attention. Do not let your time and energy and attention flow to the same places they usually do. Turn them towards the Guru. Why towards the Guru? Why not towards something else? If you have been investing your service so far in ‘A’, why must you now invest your services in ‘B’? Or, why must you now invest your services in the Guru? Why not in ‘B’?
You have been feeding ‘A’ till now, and ‘A’ is now a trouble. So, why are the gurus advising that you must serve the Lord or the devotee or the Guru? Why don’t they simply say that if ‘A’ has become a problem, then now start serving ‘B’? Why not ‘B’? Because the moment you start serving ‘B’, ‘B’ becomes ‘A’. Both of them feed on your service to grow upon you.
How is the Guru different, then? The Guru is different because he is in no need of any service. The Guru is different because, in a way, he never really accepts your service. The Guru is almost like the deity in the temple. You go and offer it so much—does the deity really consume anything? You have offered, but the deity has not taken anything. It’s beautiful. You have given and yet it has not been taken.
Similar is the case with Guru: you give but he does not take. Oh, sometimes from your side you make the mistake of thinking that just because you are giving, so the Guru must be taking as well. No, you have been giving but he has not been taking, and therefore things can be safe with him; therefore, the Guru will never turn into an ‘A’.
The day the Guru becomes desirous of your service or offering, that is the day you must know that the Guru is no longer a Guru.
Worldly ones, like ‘A’, like ‘B’, are all fundamentally incomplete at the core. They are anyway in need of completion. So, when you offer them something, they latch on to it. Why do they latch on to it? Because they needed it. Give them something, and you have invited trouble because now they know that you can give them something. So, they will arrest you, clutch you.
It’s almost like giving a carnivore a taste of your blood. As long as he has not had the taste of your blood, he would probably keep away. But once he has tasted your blood, he will not leave you because now you have displayed to him that you can offer him, serve him what he desires.
Therefore, be it ‘A’ or ‘B’ or ‘C’, the moment you start offering them something, they become carnivorously attached to you. They say, “Now I am getting from him what I anyway need. Why should I let him free now?” So, do you see what happens then? You are feeding your blood to someone so that he remains attached to you. And that’s how all attachments proceed. You feed your blood to the attached one so that he remains attached to you. The moment you stop serving your blood to the other one, he will leave you.
If you have gone trekking in tropical humid areas, you would have encountered the leech. Why does the leech stick to you? Because it loves you? Why does the leech stick to you with such great adhesiveness? Because you are serving your blood to it. The moment you stop serving your blood, the leech no more has the incentive to stick to you.
You are being advised that if you have surplus blood, don’t offer it to the leech, don’t serve it to the leech. Go and bathe the deity with it. If you have surplus blood, don’t feed it to the leech, because leech will not just take your blood and say thank you and walk away; the leech would stick to you. If at all you have so much that you want to offer it in service, then just go and offer it to the deity. The deity will have it but never become desirous of it, never become attached to your offering, never want more of it.
So, you are unburdened of the surplus that you have, and yet you have not been burdened with a new attachment. That is what is meant by serving the Guru. You unburden yourself by giving what you unnecessarily have, and yet this giving and taking does not turn into another parasitic relationship. It’s beautiful—and dangerous.
Because we are not in the habit of giving without expecting—expecting not merely stuff for ourselves, but also expecting that the other must be enjoying what we are giving, gifting, or serving—because we operate strongly from a personal center, so to us everybody is almost the same as us. Since we feel sensually ingratiated when we are offered something, so we expect that if we offer something to the other, he too must feel equally obliged.
But the Guru will not feel obliged irrespective of what you have offered to him, and that offends you, right? You say, “I offered so much, and yet he is not valuing my service!” The day he starts valuing your service you are gone, because that which is valued is also desired. The day he starts valuing your service, he will start demanding more of your service. Do you want that to happen? Do you want to become a perpetual servant to a desirous one? First of all, a perpetual servant, and that too to somebody who desires your service—do you want that to happen?
Therefore, it is a great relief that the Guru remains internally indifferent to whatever you have to give to him. And that saves the Guru, because if he does not remain indifferent to your service, he would also not be able to remain indifferent to your abuses. Because he remains untouched by all the lovely things that you offer him, he also remains untouched when you stab him.
And if you find a Guru falling because he has been stabbed in various ways by the world, you must immediately know that he would have been eager to be served by the world, by the tempting crowd of his followers.
