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Summary of Question:	Meditation In Sikhism-Article
Category:	Meditation
Date Posted:	Wednesday, 6/01/2005 2:29 PM MDT

Spirituality and Meditation in Sikhism

Make the world a better place to live in.

Free your mind and find inner peace

The Mind

Where is the mind? What is the mind? Why do we have a mind?

The root mind lies very close to your heart. As human beings we have been given the opportunity to realize the biggest power of the universe the mind. The mind lies in all beings, in the body from cat, dog, mouse, whale, human etc 844 million walks of life, but the human has been gifted the power to realise and purify this so called filthy and dirty mind (thoughts).

A human has been gifted this life to become one to one with God after suffering hell on earth, with the same one root mind through 844 million lives (body). This mind has millions and millions of disgusting thoughts, as it lived through all these lifetimes for example some times when we dream we never know what we have dreamt, or we can not recognise what we have dreamt, the reason for this is because the mind has been through many many bodies and lives, before coming into the human body. We have been there before, but we only recognise the events from this life. All ill health both mental and physical stressed can be tracked back into the inner poison that dwells within our mind known as delusion. How do we purify this filthy mind which has over 30,000 thoughts per day most of these being negative.

All the treasures of the universe lie in the mind. Once we start to get involved in spirituality, mediation, on purifying the mind we can very easily come to the stages of occult powers for example most spiritual people use these powers for the wrong reasons for example earning money through these powers. Some of these powers are as follows, reading palms, they are really reading your mind and working out your past future and present. They try to get famous by feeling no pain for example pulling buses with their hair, breaking bricks with their heads, putting sharp swords into their bodies, pain healers. These are all small powers you receive easily through the mind. There are many more powers the human body and soul have. One of them is building your clairvoyance (antra jamta) to the very highest levels. Even as far as knowing what is going to happen in all 3 worlds: past, present and future.

The body has 10 gates, in it 9 of which are open these are; the 2 eyes; the 2 nostrils; the 2 ears, mouth and the 2 below the waist. The 10th which is our spiritual gate in the crown of the head (a babies soft point) . This always stays closed this will only open through meditation and blessings by the true guru. When this opens completely, your meditation on the naam (name of God) recites its self with every single breath, 24 hours a day, you’ll get caught up in all the spiritual powers, see all the spirits around you, see only bright light when you close your eyes and have the potential to live in all 3 worlds. These are all powers of God, which are called ridia sidia. The Sikh faith believes through meditation, purifying the mind and most of all, the guru’s blessings (gur prasad), these powers are very easily earned. The only time that they should be used, are for the good of humanity, mankind or helping the helpless. If you use these otherwise, we go against our guru’s teachings and definitely do not progress further in our spirituality, we only drop, because we get too involved in the world. The reason for this is we start to live our life in the past, present and future, which completely destroys our mind. There is only one reason a Sikh meditates, to purify his mind. This is to be one to one with God, and being one to one with his/her creation. As far as developing your spirituality to be content with his/her creation, as in realising God even in the carpet. (The story of Bhai Khanaya) When he gave water to the enemy as well as his own on the battlefield.

Our mind the inner voice, our mind always tells us to be selfish always negative, hardly ever tells us to put other people before ourselves, always just me. A Sikh believes to meditate on God, to purify the mind only comes when we serve God. How do we serve God, the big question.

MEDITATION

We serve God by meditating on his name. How do we meditate on the name? It is not just to repeat the name (very boring) but to contemplate the name which controls the two sides our mind has. When these two sides are controlled we are in total bliss and focus. We can only concentrate on any 2 things at once, when the third thought comes in, we loose concentration of any one of the three. This causes us to be happy and find inner peace from within. This inner peace has a very outwardly presence which we do not even recognise ourselves. Who recognises this? This is recognised by other people, who then begin to question you, why are you so calm? why are you in peace? you are always very patient and we never see you angry. Then they ask what is the reason for this?

The reason for this is the beautiful teachings of the living Guru Granth Sahib. The central embodiment of our 10 guru’s. This presence and auara is the biggest preaching to faith and the beautiful Sikh faith of life. Those people who live for the happiness of the world and want to live by being the dust of other beings feet. To serve the guru, to meditate on the name of God you have to serve the universe.

In this game there is no room for ignorance and selfishness. This game is about finding your inner self through meditation but also unselfishly serving and loving his/her creation. This brings you to the complete Sikh way of life which is contentment (sehj).

How does meditation purify your mind and find you such a big treasure? The (naam) the name of God is a replacer of thoughts. When you contemplate his name this causes your mind to be focused and eased, and completely reduces your thoughts, for example if you meditated for 30 minutes in one day, and you usually have 30,000 thoughts a day, this would reduce your thoughts to a smaller number (wild guess 27,000). Slowly your practice would increase, you would mediate for a lot longer and the number of thoughts would decrease. This is causing your mind to be purified and completely slowing down the way of our life. This causes us to completely stay away from stress and be completely calm, because there are no negative thoughts in our mind to think about, just the one beautiful name.

There are few Sikhs in the World who have reached the highest levels of spirituality, and meditate 24 hours a day, living a beautiful inner peace, no negative all positive thoughts, and a beautiful presence of God. A completely pure mind. This can only happen through the blessings of the true guru. We can not do this ourselves if we tried it would be our complete pride.

In spirituality we can only get to a certain small stage, after this stage we will only progress if we follow the true guru’s teachings and his command, the Sikh way of life. Then we shall be blessed by the pure spirits, souls we do not see in this world. (Shaheed Singhs), the unseen world, who have been with us from our first incarnation, and will only help us in this world if we take a step towards God. We take one step towards God – God shall take a million back towards us.

When our spirituality starts to progress we come to a stage where we need very little sleep. One or two hours is enough. Science says an average person needs 8 hours sleep a day, but Sikhism and spirituality says you can do with 1 or 2 or even without sleep. What is the reason for this?

The reason for this is the tiredness of the mind through mental stress, thinking too hard and a stressful job. Physical working can be less tiring than mental mind work. The main reason we need more sleep is because of our jobs, and thinking all the time. The most our mind runs around is in our sleep, this is the reason, when we sleep more we wake up very tired, and with headaches.

Most Sikhs arise between 12 midnight and 4 in the morning, these are the ambrosial hours, the most peaceful time to meditate. The earlier you get up to sacrifice your sleep the more our guru blesses us. It is like taking away gifts in the sale. There is also a very big connection with all the spiritual souls all around the world who are meditating at this time. This powerful time of meditation is the key to your meditation throughout the day. It should keep you going for at least 12 hours. When the Sikhs arise at this time, they bath and then they are ready for at least 2 hours of seated meditation.

A good focussed meditation is the best sleep we can ever get. It is appropriate to at least 8 hours sleep. The reason for this is because the mind is totally at ease , thought free and replaced by the beautiful name of the Lord. This is the reason a Gursikh (Guru's Sikh) needs very little sleep.

How does meditation affect illness? A person that meditates regularly very rarely gets ill. The reason for this is that meditation causes you to slow down to life, be mindful and keeps your energy levels balanced, which keeps you relaxed and less stressed. The 6 chakra (chakkar) in our body play a major part with our health. These are below the navel, stomach, heart, throat, middle of the forehead and the crown of the head. These are your power energy centres. They are shaped like lotus flowers in our body and all spin at different speeds, keeping your health intact. They also play a major part in the spiritual stages of your concentration and focus. The crown chakra in the head playing the last part (10th gate – dasam duar)


THE SOUL

Where is the soul? What is the soul? Why do we have a soul? When do we need a soul?

The soul is what Sikhs call the joth, every being has a joth in the body which we call the guru di joth (the joth of God). This is one of the main reasons why a Sikh has to love all beings. we are all part of the supreme and most powerful soul – God. We are all his/her soul brides so we are all related very closely without realisation,and we have all got an equal amount of potential for our souls to merge with the supreme soul.

The soul is always very pure but we can only realise this by searching for it in our inner self. All we do is label bodies, give them a name, attach ourselves to them and think that they are going to stay with us for the rest of our lives. But no! the soul inside the body is God, just like every other soul in every other body. The soul only comes to earth for one major reason and that is to collect karma (karm – future and present deeds), and to serve past deeds.

The body in the end after death just becomes dust and ashes, and is forgotten over time. But all the deeds committed by this person – good or bad go with the soul which merges with the supreme soul, and is ready for duty in the world again. In a completely different body. This soul, holding the same mind. This body then lives it’s life to the deeds that the soul has brought with it and slowly after many incarnations in many many bodily forms, every soul in the universe ends up merging with the supreme soul.

Meditate in this lifetime for the blessed vision of the pure and true guru (God). If you don’t meet God in this lifetime you are definitely very close, the reason being God has blessed us with the realisation of meeting God which is the best realisation man can have.

With this realisation we do not have many lifetimes to go. If you look around you the world is turning itself upside down through people that practice and preach in a very wrong way. Wars are taking place – the only people that survive in this world are those people who meditate on the name of the Lord and go by the guru’s teachings which are asking for (Sarbat da Palla – the wellbeing of the universe) this is asked for twice a day by the Sikhs.

Let’s free our minds and merge with those blessed souls in Sach Khand – the gate of truth to stop our coming and going in the dark age of Kaljug – dark age.

Sikhism is not a religion it is a way of god formed by the first Guru – Guru Nanak born in 1469. He was born with a smile on his face and a beautiful presence at the age of 1 day. He was born enlightend and pure minded. He had only come into this dark age of Kaljug for duty by God to spread the devine wisdom of God into the world. His teachings were direct from God – Dhur Ki Bhani Ai. Tin Suglee Chint Matai – these teachings have come from God to rid the world of its delusions. The world had been turned upside down by evil, caste systems, higher and lower, women being treated like slaves, cannibals, mass murders, religious conversions, ritualistic acts, superstition , black magic, and many more vicious acts. He had been sent to the world to enlighten these poor but very blessed souls, to spread love and harmony in the world and spread the beautiful teachings of humanity and truth. He travelled all over India and Pakistan spreading the beautiful teachings of God all compiled in the embodiment of the 10 guru’s the Guru Granth Sahib.

There are 10 gurus in the Sikh religion who all played a beautiful part in adding to the Guru Granth or enlightening the world with God’s beautiful teachings. All these guru’s had the same soul (joth) from the 1st to the 10th. The 5th guru - Guru Arjun Dev Ji was martyred for not accepting conversion and was placed on a burning hot iron plate with hot sand poured over his head. He sat there in total bliss and meditation uttering the beautiful words – thera kia meetha laagai – God your fate is so sweet.

The 6th Guru - Guru Har Gobind picked up two swords – miri and piri –for spiritual power, and political power, saint soldier. The reason for this was that the people in this age wanted to convert everybody and keep one religion but the sikh guru’s decided to make it there duty to protect every religion.

The 9th guru – Guru Tegh Bahadur was martyred for protecting another religion. At that time the religion with the most followers wanted the rest to convert into the same religion. So these poor people decided to go for help to the pure minded enlightend 9th guru who was sent by his 9 year old son Gobind Rai – who became the 10th guru. He said that there is no better person for this duty than you father. Guru Tegh Bahadur said to the leader of the stronger faith – you want to make one faith from two faiths but we are going to make a third faith. If you can convert me all these people will accept your faith.

The 10th guru who created the beautiful Sikh religion and purified all of the teachings of the 10 guru’s created the Khalsa (the pure). He asked for 5 heads from the Sangat (congregation) on Vaisakhi April 1699 he blessed them with baptism and gave the 5 beloved ones (panj pyare) the duty to bless the blessed ones with amrit (ambosial nectar) while in the presence of the living guru – Guru Granth Sahib Ji. After the ceremony the 10th guru got on his knees and begged the 5 beloved ones for baptism – Apae Gur Chaila – no higher status no lower status, complete equality. He named the five beloved ones and all males – Singh and the women – Kaur, they should only receive this name after baptism. No third name no cast just all completely equal.

It took the 10 guru’s 230 years to purify this beautiful religion from 1469 to 1699 and compile the Guru Granth Sahib direct teachings from God through the guru’s. The Guru Granth Sahib also has beautiful teachings from many enlightened bhagats and pats – enlightened beings, from different faiths, this also proving the complete equality of this beautiful faith.

Sikhism is not a religion it is a way of life, for anybody and everybody – there are 25000 verses in the Guru Granth Sahib, every single verse teaching us about God, Who is God? Where is God? Why is there a god? When was God born? (Always been here we just never realised him/her). Teaching us about meditation the naam, conversations with God by the guru’s, conversations by the guru’s with other spiritualists, begging God for his mercy and blessings, the command of God, and basically how to live a beautiful life in the age of darkness in peace and contentment with God’s creation. Being one to one with God and how to spread the teachings of God, to love all his beautiful beings.

THE FIVE EVILS

there are five evils what control our mind; kaam – lust, krodh – anger, lobh – greed, moh – attachment and hankar – pride. This is the biggest evil to battle against. We can try to kill the rest through meditation, and spreading love but we can never really get rid of our self pride until the very latter stages of our spirituality. The reason being we always think I and me do everything in this world even if it is practicing spirituality and faith.

Self pride is very different to devine pride. Divine pride is something you have, not for yourself but for the wellbeing of others and your faith.

QUALITIES OF A GURSIKH

To kill the five thieves: love every being, sincere effort, truth and kindness, never fear, forgiveness, dealing with anger through patience, contentment, compassion for the feelings of others, accepting what happens in the world, giving, the biggest thing we can give is our time because we think that we never have enough of it, to stay away from worldly desires, never slander or quarrel, falseness, selfishness, gossip and jealousy, good conduct, speak sweet words, humility. Keep an open mind, always act by understanding in the world, good virtue and keep smiling.

These qualities can only be practiced by the guru’s teachings and the meditation of naam which is very important. The only way we can practice good qualities is if negativity comes our way for example, an angry parent, comfort with patience and love. Giving fills people’s hearts with love. A genuine smile causes an amazingly outwardly presence which changes the environment around you. Most of all don’t forget to find a faith and let’s purify our filthy minds through meditation. There is always the option to talk to young like minded people. “win over the mind and you win over the world” – Guru Nanak Dev Ji.