Seva

Kathy doing seva at the Radha Soami Punjab ashram

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When I first met Kathy, I had some idea of what seva was – at least, I thought I did. Before I met Her, I had traveled to the Siddha Yoga ashram multiple times, passing my True Teacher each time(!) and had participated in different types of seva there, including one particularly unpleasant lengthy onion-cutting session. There wasn’t any real difference between that seva and the seva I performed when I moved to the Highlands.

I learned to clean and feed her many, many birds. She had African Greys and Eclectus, conures, finch, and canaries – two rooms filled with cages and one huge aviary for the finches and canaries.  I also cleaned – a lot. We all did.  Scrubbing down all of the buildings and preparing massive meals every night, and especially on weekends when a large number of initiates would come from various parts of the country for Satsang or some other special event. The best seva was cleaning Kathy’s room, of course, and we all loved being able to do that seva, although sometimes She was too sick or didn’t want anyone in Her room for some other reason. We cleaned and prepared for interviews – meetings between Kathy and initiates or seekers, that were either informal in Her room or more formal in the library.

Then there was the water and the wood. We definitely chopped wood and carried water literally. Well, usually the men chopped the wood and we would stack it in huge piles next to the back door of the Parsonage for easy access to the wood stove in the kitchen. I know how that sounds, and no one was misogynistic or in any way would have stopped any woman from chopping wood, and I’m sure there were times when some did, but in my history, and for me personally, I had no interest in it and so would carry it once or twice a year from a huge tractor pull to wheelbarrows and then stack it by the back door. Filling water bottles were another weekly seva that involved loading 24 gallon-sized glass water bottles with handles, recycled organic apple juice bottles, into the back of someone’s car and driving them from the Parsonage down to the Lodge in the Winter and early Spring, or to the hand-pumped well at one of the entrances to a group of retreat cabins, to fill. The water at the Parsonage and the Satsang Hall contained sulpher and tasted horrible to me and most of us, although Kathy would drink it if there was nothing else. She said She couldn’t tell a difference. Doing this seva in the dead of winter on the top of a northeast Pennsylvania mountain was intense and involved driving up and down gravel-packed roads on The Highlands that were packed hard with ice and snow from Halloween until sometimes late April. Walking with them was another challenge, because we were essentially walking on a parking lot that was a skating rink. No one ever seemed to mind and I can’t recall anyone complaining.

Every Decoration Day, initiates would come and we would all spend the entire weekend preparing the Highlands grounds including cabins, the lodge, the Parsonage, and the Satsang Hall, for retreats – there were three every summer. This was a really involved yearly seva that required wood being chipped for the paths to the cabins, weed whacking around all of the main areas and the paths, deep cleaning all bedding, curtains, and each tiny cabin window, along with planting flowers, trimming trees, fixing path lights, and making huge meals for everyone. Preparing initiate bags was the best part of retreats. We would make up a huge bucket of parsad, a sweet treat blessed by the Master, and then when Kathy was ready, take it to Her along with journals, pens, little gifts, and a notepad for writing since retreats were silent. Kathy would bless the parsad while we all said our Names, and then we would get to stay in Her room while we bagged up all the parsad and She picked each individual journal for every initiate on the retreat and wrote a little note in the front of each one. We would add the notepads, pens, and gifts and then take the bags around to the rooms in the lodge and to each cabin.

Pretty early on, I learned that bhakti seva was the highest form of seva to the guru. While all seva performed was done while saying our Names and thinking of the guru, meditation and the repetition of the Names while focusing on our third eye, is the highest form of worship. Kathy told us often that through meditation, we were able to build love and do more to change the consciousness of the world then by any other means. “You’ll do more good in the chair,” She used to tell me when I would want to run to the aid of another initiate or someone else that I knew. “Go meditate.”

Kathy said in Her Satsang titled “Seva not Meditation,” dated April 18, 2004, “Could seva for God, service to God, on the Path in some way, giving it all up in service because I can’t meditate, will that be compensatory enough if I can’t meditate? Will that take it’s place? Will that please God?”

“And it isn’t a question of pleasing God. Of course seva pleases God. But the point is, the point of seva itself is that you are giving of yourself in some way without expectation. You’re not doing seva because you want to have some kind of reward in the material universe. Maybe you’re thinking in terms of the spiritual reward, but in order to have any kind of spiritual reward, you can’t run around. I mean, you’re not going to get it unless you sit and meditate. That’s where the reward comes from.”  

“We have read this stuff from the time we have been interested in looking at anything about religion and the Path. But we’ve not understood it. We’ve not understood it! Or we’d do it! You’ve got to do it! You can’t just say, ‘I’m initiated. I’m on the Path. I love God. I can’t wait to go Home.’ You’ve got to practice it. If you love music and from a child you want to play brilliantly, say the piano, you can’t just all of a sudden become a brilliant player. You’ve got to practice it. Well it’s the same with the Path. And it’s the studied way of time and space and separation. It is the Way. It is in this plane of consciousness. We cannot avoid it. We must give it the necessary attention that is required, which is to do it. We are asked to give ten percent of the 24-hour day towards it if we want it.”

Maharaj Ji, Kathy’s teacher said in His book Die To Live, “Any other type of seva then meditation leads you to meditation. They are simply the means. But they can’t substitute for the end of the meditating itself.” When a questioner asked Him, “So there is no substitute for meditation?” Maharaj Ji replies, “No. I’m sorry to say, no. The Creator has determined how we are to go back Home, and we cannot take any shortcut or any other route. You go to the top of a mountain, you don’t get there by going around it. Even if you’re trying to get to the other side of the mountain. If you want to go to the top of the mountain, you can’t get to the top of the mountain by any other way then going to the top of the mountain. Whether you take a direct route or a circuitous route, you can only go up the mountain.”

Ultimately, I have learned that meditation is the key to all Love and truly is the highest service. It doesn’t negate other types of seva or service to others in the sense that it will help lead to that end goal of meditating every day for 2 ½ hours, but nothing will replace it.

Love,

Kelly