SIMRAN

(A REAL PRACTICAL WAY)

Submitted by: Dr. Madho Singh

Human mind is real vast. It consists of mainly two areas, the conscious mind and the sub or unconscious mind. It might surprise you that the conscious mind of which we are aware of makes up only one tenth of the total mind. The rest or 90 percent of the mind is all subconscious or unconscious mind (mostly unexplored). It is the extension of Lord of the Universe(Universal God) i.e, cosmic intelligence and cosmic consciousness(The Heavens) in continuation of our nervous system into transcendency of the subconscious mind. The cosmic concsiousness is the most wonderful source of bliss consciousness right from within us. Since it permeates the subconscious mind and appears as a soul or spirit or Divine Light, which is only next door to the conscious mind, it is possible to make contact with it. Rather, it is the basic human obligation. The subconscious mind also serves as a warehouse for the storage of information as well as the primal source of love, kindness and thought initiation, which expand into the conscious mind. The conscious mind is supposed to remain in the guidance of the soul throughout one’s life, earn virtues and nourish it and result in the wholeness of human personality, because our subconscious mind is the source of bliss consciousness or God consciousness and a huge hidden treasure of biggest happiness and joy or "Anand" which cannot come from the material world as perceived by our conscious mind. We deprive ourselves of this huge potential of happiness because our conscious mind has misguided itself and gone in a wrong direction by accumulating the evils. Our mind in present condition is unworthy of alignment with our true self or the subconscious mind to know it. The only way we can understand the inner picture of ourselves (self awareness)is that we cleanse our conscious mind of all the remnants of evil and fill it with virtues of love and humility and make it worthy of its union or meditation with our subconscious mind where God is residing as soul or spirit. In other words you have to know your ownself to find the hidden treasure. Union or meditation on God is the main purpose of our life. We are missing a golden chance if we do not try to understand the very basics of human life as to what it is all about. Every religion is supposed to bring the human understanding to this level from where the final journey starts for reaching the ultimate destination. This journey or "Yatra"goes on a path or "Marg" which is above the religion. This journey is very long because the determining mind or "dhyan" has to cross the world ocean (Bhav Sagar or Bhav Jal)of our conscious mind. The conscious mind has the ability to make choices and we entangle ourselves by making wrong choices and are totally lost from the true "Marg". We have filled our mind with mostly undesirable information resulting in a continuous internal dialogue. You might be quiet from outside but not inside. Thoughts keep on coming and going almost in a contnuous fashion with absolutely no pause inside and finally leads to day-dreaming. We move from past to future and future to past in quick succesion and cannot focus on the present moment. Such a condition is called mindlessness. It is a great wastage of useful energy of the mind which could be used for a useful purpose of Naam Simran. The ability to focus on the present moment at will is called the condition as mindfulness and it comes only after we are able to eliminate the internal dialogue by means of continuous hard effort. The mindful mind then can absorb the God’s name and attains the ability to become imbued or saturated with Divinity for union with the Lord. This is the reason that the bottomline message of Guru Granth Sahib is,"Naam Japna" or "Naam Simran". Now let us understand the practical way to cleanse our mind to bring it to the mindful state by stopping the internal dialogue. The technique is called Chanting or Naam Simran or constant repitition of "Mantra" or one word. It can be God’s any name, such as Ram, Waheguru, Narayan, -2- Sat Naam, Ishwar, Gopal, Gobind, Jagdish, Prabhu and Haray Krishna etc. As an example I will be using Ram because it is short to write. You can pick up God’s any name of your choice.

First of all, our mind will not accept the concept of Simran. Because it is hard and does not make sense to many people. Therefore, you have to have a complete understanding of the main principles as outlined above. Our mind is basically lazy and lithargic and will not like to change its habits unless it sees the real benefit in something else. It has to be dealt with constantly every second by our firm determination. It may keep on falling out of gear and the determining part of mind has to keep on putting it back on track. This happens when we try to engage our mind in an event it does not like. We try to make it easier by making a goal and keeping track of time or distance to reach it. Our mind has become accustomed to keeping an account of the hard to pass moments of life, whereas it does not need any accounting of the easy or enjoyble moments. That is the reason that time goes very fast during the favorable habits involving such things as parties, watching games and gossip etc. and the time goes so slow if we are forced to wait for something. In other words, our conscious mind goes through the phases of accounting for harder time and no accounting for an easy time, which goes so fast. Unfortunately, the process of Naam Simran falls into the former category and requires a big effort and determination.("Naam Japo Ji Aisai Asai Dhruv Prahalad Japyo Har Jaisai). However, it is only the beginning time which is harder. Ultimately the Simran process becomes easy, joyous, automatic and brings a lot of Anand. This positive hope is certain in every case of determined mind for the noble cause. The process of Simran can fill up your hard moments with the best happiness. Boredom changes into joyous moments of an immense and limitless bounties of flowering Bliss or "Anand", which is thousands of times more than the happiness we normally get from gossip time and parties. Just imagine, how we can fill our moments with joy if we get stuck somewhere to wait for hours or days.

So there is definitely a need for some thing to solve our hard to pass time of life. To make the learning process a fun by remaining in the accounting nature of human mind, some people make the use of a "Mala"(beads in a string). The number of beads are between 100 and 110. The mind can easily remember the concept of Simran with Mala in hand all the time and keep on doing Simran whenever possible by letting pass the beads one by one between fingers alongwith God,s name coming from the lips. Each time the Mala goes through full circle between fingures, one finishes uttering God’s name 100 times. The mind can keep on setting goals of so many Malas a day and keep on fininshing one by one. In modern times, it is not customary to carry Mala around and may not serve the means for many people. Moreover, one will miss the most important thing, i.e, remebering God in each and every second of Sas and Gras phases.

The Almighty blessed me with another concept of Mala which I will call "Kanth Mala". It proved to be highly practical for me because it requires no beads or any thing and does not miss any thing. It makes lot of sense and should be easy for every body. It is giving back Hisab Kitab to the Hisabi Kitabi mind while doing the Naam Simran and makes the harder job much easier at the same time. You can make your own Kanth Mala by supposing numbers one through hundred.

("Nit Japiay Sas Gras Naon Parvardigar Da)We should always worship God’s name with each inhale and exhale duration of our breath. Our breath or "Swas" or "Parana" has two phases, the "Sas" or the inhaling phase and the "Gras" or the exhaling phase. With each Sas God flows into us and with each Gras, we flow into God. To remain fully aware of God in each and every moment of our inhale and exhale phases, we will associate Ram or any other God’s name with each phase, with counting going on at the same time. It starts by making determination that you -3- will do Simran for atleast 5 minutes each day on regular basis for the rest of your life. Once it starts from here, it will expand to full potential of much more time automatically. Ultimately, it has to become a habit and every Sas and Gras will become associated from within the mind. You are not even doing Simran. It is coming automatically from within. That is the final stage. Start the inhale phase by saying one in mind in a split second and then stretch the utterance of R......A........M to the end of the inhale phase. Start and finish the exhale phase exactly in the same way, i.e., one and then R....A.....M. The second breath will start with 2 and R....A....M and will end in the same way with 2 and R....A.....M. Remember your Kanth Mala is 100 number long. So you will continue through 100. You will utter Ram’s Name 200 times with each Kanthmala. It should take about 6 to 7 minutes. See, how easy it will be to meet the goal of your first determination of 5 minute Simran each and every day. Beacause I was the beginner, in the absence of this technique, I found it hard to concentrate even for 5 minutes without looking at the watch every few seconds to know as to how much time is left. You can very well imagine the difficulty if one has to do for a longer period of time without Kanthmala. Now with this technique, I can spend more than one hour at ease with full happiness in every second. In a few days you will start enjoying it and might like to do more Malas. Ten Malas will cover one hour. Regularity is more important than the number of Malas. Absolutely no miss is also the goal. During Simran your mind will become more aware of your breathing phases and will provide good health to your lungs. This will be more so when you will get into the advanced phase of the Kanth Mala Simran process. Normally we take 1000 breaths per hour. With the process of Advanced Simran, you can easily reduce the breaths to less than 150 per hour and increase the frequency of utterence more than 24 during inhale phase and more than 24 during exhale phase. . You will accomplish two things at the same time, i.e., Naam Simran and exercise the lungs for better capacity, good health and stamina. In advanced phase you will prolong the inhale and exhale process to the maximum possible. The inhaling will start with quick one and then uttering Ram as many times as possible till the end of inhale. The exhaling goes in the same way, starting with one and followed by repeating Ram many times. The second breath and the remaining up to 100 will go the same way. One Mala will cover easily 25 or more minutes may be even 40 or more. It will be real easy to cover even one hour with just less than two Malas. You will be uttering God’s name anywhere from 4000 to 7000 times in each Mala. You can easily invent your own Kanthmala by varying the number of times you will utter God’s name during each phase of your breath. The continuation of Kanth Mala Simran will end up finally in Simran without Kanth Mala. That is the ultimate purpose and goal. It will become a habit as an essential part of our life and will ease our final journey.

As regards finding time from your already busy schedule, it should not be too hard. It would simply be a matter of replacing some timewasting habits with Simran, such as time of going to bed and the time we spend in the bed after we wake up in the morning and many other occasions every day. While doing Simran we have to reduce the internal dialogue as much as possible before we are able to stop it completely. The mind is cunning and it will find a way to carry on unnessasary thoughts during the Simran. Do not worry. Just relax during Simran. Do not participate in any thought. Let them come and go by themselves. Gradually over time they will disappear. It requires lot of patience. Think of some best scene of your life and keep it as a background in your mind during Simran. That will cut down some unwanted thoughts. A real good effort will bring a flying success to fulfil your life. (Simro,Simar Simar Sukh Pawo----- -4- Sukhmani Sahib)GOD BLESS YOU.

Question: What is the bottomline message of each Hukam Nama (The order of the day) from our Holy Scriptures?
Answer: Naam Simran.

Dr. Madho Singh
600 Brentwood Ct.
Winston-Salem, N.C. 27104

Telephone.336-768-5502
E-mail. Nanak98@aol.com

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