By Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj
In many places around the world parents read to their children a famous fairy tale, the story of ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ In this story a princess is cast under a spell and sleeps for a hundred years. Only the kiss of a true prince can awaken her. While the story is entertaining, few parents realize that it is also the story of our own lives. In fact, it serves as an allegory for the human condition.
Sleeping Beauty slept for a hundred years, but we have been sleeping for eons. She was sleeping at the physical level but we are sleeping at the level of the soul.
What does it mean to be asleep spiritually? We think that because we are aware of this physical world that we are awake, but even scientists and doctors are coming to recognize that there is more to this creation than our planet earth and the planets and stars we can see through the telescope. They are discovering that there are realms which our soul can enter that are teeming with life and experiences of which we can never even dream.
There are regions beyond this physical world into which we can enter. As long as we remain unaware of them, we are asleep. Our soul is awakened when it experiences these inner realms. These luminous worlds of light and love make this world pale in comparison. Those who experience them speak of a love and bliss far beyond any of this world. Their consciousness is expanded and increased. They are filled with love and compassion, and they realize the true values of life.
It is strange that our scientific upbringing, which should have expanded our horizons, has limited them. Science encourages exploration and discovery, yet science has limited the people of the modern day world into thinking that they can only believe what they see with their physical eyes.
In the last twenty years with the scientifically documented cases of near-death experiences (NDEs), repeated accounts of worlds beyond have been reported by doctors, scientists, and lay persons of sound mind and intellect which bear out the findings of many of the world religions which speak of higher realms. We tend to limit our thinking and believe we can only enter higher realms after death, but since these spiritual regions are going on simultaneously, we may wonder why we can’t visit these places now. We need to awaken to the spiritual worlds within us, to the vast expanse of God’s creation.
How to awaken? Fortunately, this experience is not limited to those who have near-death experiences. We do not have to undergo physical trauma in order to leave the body. Through the ages, others have reported entering into the regions of light through easier methods. Those methods have been meditation, contemplation, and prayer—call it by whatever name you like.
Meditation is the process by which we withdraw our attention from our body and from the world outside and concentrate it at a point between and behind the two eyebrows, called the third or single eye. By focusing our attention there, we come in contact with a current of Light and Sound which will lead us from our physical consciousness into higher consciousness, into the Beyond.
If we can realize ourselves as soul by focusing our attention at a point in the body known as the seat of the soul, it will come in contact with the stream of Light and Sound. This Light and Sound is the creative vibration which emanated from God and which brought all creation into being.
The reason we are not aware of the Light and Sound within is due to our attention. The outer expression of the soul is known as the attention, which is presently scattered throughout our body and goes out of our body into this world through the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.
We are so caught up in this world that we are asleep at the level of the soul, but this world is but a shadowy illusion of what lies beyond. By learning the art of meditation on the inner Light and Sound, we, too, like Sleeping Beauty, can be awakened from our slumber and experience joy and happiness for all time to come. (www.sos.org)
