THE MOST SINFUL WILL SING HIS PRAISES,

AND THE SECRETS OF YOGA AND MYSTERIES OF THE BODY ARE REVEALED.

THROUGH LISTENING ALL THE SCRIPTURES AND TEACHINGS ARE KNOWN.

NANAK SAYS, THROUGH LISTENING DEVOTEES ATTAIN BLISS,

AND SIN AND SORROW ARE DESTROYED.

He who has heard truth in the guru's words has known fragrance in sitting quietly next to him. He finds that the happening flows towards him through such a person, and begins to penetrate him. Knowledge is contagious; bliss is contagious. If your doors are open bliss enters into you like a breath of wind from a person who has attained it. While you stand to gain he loses nothing since it increases and expands to the extent that it is shared. If you are silent a space is created within you. Remember, existence prefers a vacuum. No sooner do you become empty than existence fills your vacuum. As the river water rushes in to fill your empty jug, create a vacuum and air will rush in to fill it. Prepare to be empty and you will be filled, but as long as you are filled with yourself you will remain empty. Empty yourself and you will be filled with supreme energy. As you depart from one corner God will enter from the other.

Nanak says, Even those who lead sinful lives, whose lips have never spoken a good word, whose tongue has always uttered abuse, whose heads are filled with curses, if even these listen but once, they are filled with glory. An infinitesimal glimpse of shravana can make you fresh, can bathe your entire being.

Nanak does not tell evildoers to stop sinning. He just tells them to listen and the isms will fall away. He doesn't tell them to improve first and only then can they listen, because that would be impossible and then there would be no hope for people to listen.

Nanak says: Listen and forget about sin, forget about evil. And no sooner do you hear than a new sutra, a new path, begins to unfold in your life. A new spark will kindle a fire that will burn away your sins; your past turns into ashes as soon as you become silent.

What is sin? What have you been doing in the past? You have identified totally with your thoughts, constantly turning them into actions, and this is sin. Stand away from your thoughts; actions will crumble, the doer will be lost, and all connection with the past will snap. Then you realize that the past was no more than a dream. Through infinite lives everything you have done is because of the illusion of doing; the day that illusion is broken, all actions come to an end.

People will be unable to understand Nanak if they hold the common belief that each sin has to be wiped out by an equal virtue. For people of calculating minds this seems but fair -- that for each sin you must atone with a corresponding virtue. But if this were so you would never be liberated; for infinite lives you have sinned and where is the guarantee that in the course of your equalization you will not sin further? Then this chain is impossible to break and liberation is impossible.

Your sins spread over infinite lives. If God is a shopkeeper or a magistrate who insists on the cleansing of each sin, when will it ever end? And even assuming that all present deeds are virtuous, it will still take infinite time to make up for the past. And how can you be sure you will perform only good deeds? Wise men follow a different method of calculation altogether, because they say that the question is not of sin but of the basis of sin, its very roots.

Say you have watered a tree for fifty years. Do you think you will have to starve its roots of water for another fifty years before it dies? The tree no longer depends on you for water; it draws its supplies directly from the soil. Cut off its roots and the tree will die today, but you can tear off the leaves one by one and the tree will not die even in fifty years; no sooner do you break one leaf than two new ones are born. No, by cutting leaves and branches you are merely pruning the tree. In the same way you cannot nullify sin by virtue. Eradicate one sin and four new others spring up.

Catch hold of the roots. Actions are the leaves, and the sense of doing is the root. Remove doing and the tree will dry up at once. All flow came from: I am doing. The art of eradicating doing is witnessing, and to witness means shravana.

Nanak sings of such unique and wonderful glory! He says, Be silent and listen. In moments of such listening you are no longer the doer. Listening is a passive state since you have nothing to do in order to listen; it is not an action.

Now this is interesting. In order to see, one has to open one's eyes; whereas the ears are already open. You have nothing to do in order to hear. Therefore, there can be some sense of doing in seeing, but hearing does not involve doing at all! Someone speaks. You listen, sitting empty, motionless, passive; you are in non-action. Therefore that glory is not attained even by seeing which is attained by listening; hence the stress on shravana.

Mahavira speaks of samyak shravana, right listening, which Buddha also emphasizes. To Nanak it is a wonderful glory to hear. There is no doer there. No one is present at the moment of listening. If you are silent, who is there within? There is a solitude in moments of listening in which a voice resounds and passes away. There is no one within. If a thought comes, you come along with it; when thoughts are not, you are not. Since ego is the name given to a collection of thoughts, shravana also means the ego-less state.

Nanak says: Through shravana alone you know the tactics of yoga and the secrets of the body. This is very significant. The Western physicians have not been able to understand where and how the East acquired its knowledge of the human body and its secrets. Surgery developed in the West mainly because the dead are not burned by Christians and corpses were therefore available to be removed from their graves and taken for dissection.

Since Hindus burn their dead and no bodies were available for dissection, then how did the East acquire its knowledge of the human body? The East had no means: no corpses, no scientific development, no technique, no technology, and yet its knowledge of the human body is perfect. There is much research and discussion on the subject, but this sutra of Nanak provides an answer to the mystery.

Through shravana alone you know the knack of yoga and the secrets of the body. When you become empty and are established within yourself, you begin to see your body within. Right now all you have seen of your body is the skin. Until now you have gone round and round your house and know only the outside walls; you have no knowledge of what is inside.

From within you begin to see the entire network of the different systems. It is a unique experience to enter the palace and see all the grandeur within. It happens when you become silent and tranquil, when the mind poses no problems. The mind is a door to the world outside, and the moment you join it you move outward; whatever you think will be outside of you -- wealth, woman, house, car, fame, status. All objects of thought are outside of you.

So as soon as you stop thinking, you withdraw from the outside and the energy is focused within. Now you sit on your own throne and see inside yourself for the first time. Then you know that this body is not as small as it looks; this small body holds a miniature universe within itself. It is a model of the vast universe, the vast existence. Therefore the Hindus say the whole of the universe is contained in an eggshell. Nanak says that he who becomes quiet, he who has become silent and learned the art of listening, and who has begun to hear his own body from within, comes to know the secrets of the body as well as the methods of yoga.

Whatever Patanjali has written in the Yoga Sutras derives from the experience of his own body and no one else's. His findings still stand totally correct even to this day. All the methods of yoga have been discovered with his own body.

I shall give you a few examples. If you become tranquil you will find that the rate of your breathing changes. As soon as thoughts stop, respiratory movements change; when thoughts start again the rate of breathing changes. If you begin to recognize the rate of breathing when you are tranquil, all you have to do is breathe in that rhythm and you will become tranquil. So you have learned one secret; you have the key to one mystery.

When you are absolutely peaceful, the spinal column becomes perpendicular to the ground you are sitting on. This happens on its own if the man is healthy and not ill or too old. Therefore, when you want to be peaceful, fix your spinal cord at a ninety-degree angle. Thus gradually a yogi comes to experience what is going on within him.

As you progress further you will feel energy rising upwards from your spine. You will feel it as a sharp warmth that flows through the spine. Ripples of electricity rise within, and as they climb higher and higher, you are filled with joy. Pain and despondency begin to vanish and a feeling of joy arises. As the electrical waves go even higher, all that is trivial and base in life falls away into the valley below and you are as if on a high mountain. The fog of the village, the talk of people and the mundane struggles of life are left far behind as you have risen.

This is why the spinal column is called the meru dand. Meru is a mountain in heaven; thus it is the Meru spine and it is said that he who climbs the heights of Meru Dand reaches the same height as Mt. Meru in heaven. The Hindu never shaves a tuft of hair at the top of the head; this is the last peak, the seventh door from which the energy then is absorbed into the infinite. When your energy begins to diffuse from this place you attain to brahmacharya, celibacy. You need do nothing to attain brahmacharya; whenever sexual desire arises you needn't actively suppress it. You have only to straighten your spine for all the energy to flow upward. The same energy that flowed into sexual desire becomes the energy of brahmacharya. It is the same whether it flows downward through the first door into nature, or upward through the seventh door to reach pARAMATMA, the divine.

The person who develops the art of sitting quietly finds that his own body begins to provide a thousand experiences. You can know all of the Yoga Sutras through your own body. There is no need to read Patanjali. Actually, Patanjali should be read later on, only for corroboration, to show that you are on the right path. When you go within, many a time you will be frightened and not know whether the proper things are happening to you. By referring to scripture, it can be encouraging and reassuring to know that all who have attained have followed the same way. Such-and-such happened to them also and such-and-such will occur again in the future.

The scriptures are the evidence of the sages, but the authentic knowledge is attained only from within oneself and not through their words.