Spiritual Revelation (Life and Phiosophy of Nijanaand Swami and Mahamati Prannath)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Reality is infinite and multi-dimensional. The explorers have endeavoured hard to get a glimpse of It since time immemorial. Ten thousand years ago Vedic seers had attempted in their ancient ways. During the last two to three thousand years Buddha, Mahavir, Lao Tse and Greek thinkers in their own critical ways; Moses, Jesus and Muhammad in their prophetic ways were also successful. Later numerous mystics like Sufis, Hassids, Zen monks, Yogis and saintly persons like Kabir and Nanak had sought with their own experimental ways. They all thought that each one has to learn the truth by making one's individual search. Their findings are recorded in the history of theology and mysticism, and we all know what they all have discovered.

But very few know about the two great seekers, born in the Western India nearly four hundred years ago. Both of them commenced their life with similar efforts for the realization of Truth through their personal experiences. Both of them, the master Devchandra and his disciple Mehraj (Prannath), however realized that for discovering the ultimate truth of life one need not go to the forest or mountain, since no one knows what really happened to those who went into seclusion and performed ascetic 'Sadhana'. Eventually when Shri Devchandra became Guru Nijanand Swami after realizing the truth, he discovered that there is a hidden harmony in the existence: on one side, the desire arises, on another side the fulfilment is waiting. They come up together. F or every hungry person the food of his liking exists. The divine cosmic order is benevolent and permeates in every hungry seeker with the kind of food the searching soul is able to grasp. At every step of spiritual growth life reveals that it is a movement of learning, and that we ultimately depend on the Supreme Guidance to show us the way Home, the way out of the prison of our body and mind.

Once Nijanand Swami's chief disciple Mehraj Thakur understood the mysterious journey of his soul, he also began to participate in divine cosmic intelligence in which life appeared to him completely non-fragmentary. With the awakening of universal understanding, he became Mahamati Prannaath to discover the essential core of his religious life, the spiritual wisdom. It could cut across the barriers of all cultural beliefs and ushered him into a new kind of human family, perceiving a higher dimension of an all-inclusive consciousness. Life appeared to Mahamati's universal vision as indivisibly inter-related with a purpose behind every event.

Both the master and the disciple had begun to experience how the ancient manifold religious guidance brought mankind on the threshold of' a new era. The man who had so far been engaged in gathering partial knowledge for thousands of years had risen to the height of great exploration. Now he clearly visualised that the movement of cultural beliefs was independent of the universal understanding, where the vanity of 'my thought' dissolved and its place was taken by 'our spiritual understanding', deriving its strength from the Universal Religion.

The new light bestowed upon Nijanand Swami and Mahamati Prannath turned the spot light within, to plumb the depths of inner spirit and to establish the paradise on earth as anticipated by all religions: The kingdom coming on earth, and the pressing theological conflicts transformed into human love.

Love loses its excitement and becomes of superior kind. It brings lasting contentment In a world where life is no longer fragmentary and is fully inter-twined. This we all can see as we adjust our lives according to the social relationship and mirror other's sensitivities in our consciousness.

God has been described as Sat-Chid-Anand, which means He is full of light of truth (Sat), knowledge (Chid) and bliss (Anand). The question then arises, from where we get untruth and false appearance of this illusory world and from where we get ignorance and misery in our life. The answers discovered by the two great masters, Nijanand Swami and Mahamati Prannath, are very interesting to learn. This worldly drama is a magnificent tragedy and we can get true happiness only in the original Abode of God. There alone we can attain to the real knowledge of eternal and imperishable things.

The present biographical history of the two spiritual explorers is well written by Acharya Buddhi Prakash Bajpai who is a retired professor and learned religious scholar. He gives a vivid account of their life-long investigations based on the biographies written in Hindi by the contemporary disciples of Mahamati Prannath. I trust even a cursory glance of their spiritual experiences would convince the reader of the invaluable findings of both the masters.

Creation consists of the vast expanse of space with trillions of stars. The entire universe is a multitudinous form of countless plays that go on perpetually in a newer field of perception for all the souls to experience, rising to all levels of consciousness in various globes. In such mysterious universe soul-awareness is more important than body-consciousness confined to only traditional beliefs of earth-oriented conceited thinking. This has been the conclusion of the Prannathian search made 400 years ago in India.

Ignorance of our inner self is the cause of all the sufferings of our life. Hence a great stress is laid upon inquiry of one's own self. Once a person knows his true self, he also knows how he is related with the whole, the Supreme Reality. His glory is reflected in his own self. The search has therefore to be at the source. Nijanand Swami and his disciple Shri Prannath have had the privilege of self-realization and the glimpse of the glory of the Supreme in the seventeenth century.

Both the masters have been given to understand that potentially every soul on the earth has the glorious life of higher planes and slowly she has to manifest all the potential forces she carries within and eventually to elevate herself closest to her Lord.

The Supreme Lord is infinite Whole, the Whole means all the parts plus something more, just as human organism is inclusive of all its parts and something additional too. The total Absolute's infinity is self-sufficient energy with infinite possibilities. He is playing with all His potencies. He is playing when He is building up stars and galaxies, plants and satellites. He arranges at first in one way and then through geological changes in another and shakes all of us between life and death.

The ego thinks that it is the real self and acts, as it were, the true centre of action and all exists for its sake. And it is not wrong in thinking that there is someone within ourselves who is the true centre of its action and for whom all exists, just as all the films and dramas are made for the spectator. Radiation of the Supreme projects the universe as the ego wishes to see.

His radiation (Tartamya) is divided into many gradations depending on the diminishing inner consciousness and the consequent distance from Him. Those who exist close to Him may be called divine, and we can also be close to Him by keeping His radiation pure and less enveloped by worldly desires.

The urge lies for going close to the Supreme in everyone, it can blossom forth when there is an increase in one's attachment with Him and decrease in one's obsession with the mundane pleasures. Material desires create an outgoing force and spiritual desires free the soul from this outgoing force enriching her with all the cosmic experience.

As a matter of fact, the existence of the travelling soul is independent of the thought process of the genetic mind. Thoughts are the product of collective human effort in survival through the ages. They are open to the varying environments and grow as conditioned by parental genes. Once the soul dwelling inside the mind is to be existing independent of thought process, she is open to spiritual intuition.

Billions of people are throwing the polluted thoughts of violence which accumulates in the environment. Later its release causes upheavals in nature. The great soul in Devchandra realized this hidden cosmic truth that man, not in harmony with nature, cannot be happy. The egoistic mind must jettison the energy of violence hidden in its animistic heritage and understand the beauty of soul's divine love. One can then become free from all conflicts, violence and lust for power. The soul can indeed see how divine benediction is ever flowing even in every painful event to make the mind realize that what one sows so does one reap: "Jaisa Boyege Katega Soy." Every calamity is to make every ego realize this truth in soul's journey to this planet and the ego has to give up living which is antagonistic to divine laws of mutual love and reverence for life.

"Lo! Those who disbelieve in Allah and His messengers; such are disbelievers in truth; and for disbelievers we prepare a shameful doom" (Quran 4: 150).

"The prophet said: shortly a time is to come when followers of other communities shall pounce on the followers of my community as the hungry devour the food." (Hadis Abu Daud, Quoted from Hadis Mala, Rampur, p.117).

The growth of human civilization has been endeavouring hard to end all violence, but man has not been successful yet. Shri Devchandra was a learner and his whole life became a process of learning. Learning was ultimately for him to perceive what caused the appearance of the world and for what purpose he has been placed in it. He lived all his forty years on such explorations of every emerging new spiritual insight, with an under-current in his conviction that Reality is infinite dimensional. He observed that any explorer with his flame of inquisitiveness could touch the Reality from any direction to satiate his yearning thirst according to his intellectual capacity.

Shri Devchandra's exploration was ultimately to find out what suited his temperament and satisfied his inquiry best. Then the superfluous ideas and beliefs attached to his memory got dropped by themselves. The conscious part of our mind consists of short-range memory and the sub-conscious part consists of the long-range thought. No thought of it is fully original. It is the product of social environment. When Shri Devchandra traced the motivation of every experience and thought, a new quality of understanding was awakened in him and from the explorer he became an enlightened spiritual master Guru Nijanand Swami, with a state of pure perception where the past memories no longer interfered.

Nijanand Swami realized that the subtle mechanism of knowing the truth does not originate in the brain which is only a store-house of memories. The true awakening happens in a non- conceptual creative soul which is reaction free, open and beyond one's memories - a state where observing is ever fresh, unifying and assimilative. Such mutation is possible in the mind through spiritual insight, not through accumulation of worldly information.