Reference: posted by laura_wind on 6/18/00 to Kirpal Singh Satsang Club; Message number 366-69
Dear One,
I am in receipt of your loving letter of October 28, 1970. The work of the Lord, whatever it be, proceeds on its own and so is the case with Manav Kendra. It is under His Will that Manav Kendra or Man Center, the first of its kind, is coming up in the Dun Valley under the shadow of the Shivalak Hills of the Himalayas.
Every initiate, dear ____, is fired with the zeal to serve others in one way or the other, and I quite understand and appreciate your desire to do so.
To be interested in metaphysics is one thing and to have a direct revelation of the metaphysical phenomena is quite another. While the one is comprehension, just a feat of the intellect, the other is an immediate and direct apprehension by the soul, independent of the intellect and the senses.
Your case stands apart from the common run of the ordinary students of metaphysics because you were, by nature, fitted for the highest teachings of spirituality, or in spiritual terms, "Had God's Name writ in your forehead," as St. John puts it. Don't you realize that you had, may be through books, already gone through the preparatory stage of meditating alone and by yourself for no less than ten years when you felt the urge for spiritual unfoldment.
The teachings of the Masters, as you must have realized by now, center around two things:
(1) Self-realization, and (2) God-realization, through an all-embracing love and selfless service of mankind with chaste hands, pure heart and clean head, all of which are essential pre-requisities on the Path. Those who are really interested in the subject are automatically led to the right place by the God-Power within them. There are instances, on record, of seekers after God who start getting instructions and guidance from the Master within long before actually coming into the physical presence of the Master -- the Word-made-flesh.Where there is fire, oxygen on its own comes to its aid. There is food for the hungry and water for the thirsty. It is all according to the Law of Nature -- the law of demand and supply operating on all the spheres of existence. "Seek and ye shall find," is what we learn from the Gospels.
The Master appears when the disciple is ready, is what all the scriptures tell us. You will please realize that spirituality cannot be taught as empirical sciences are, but it can be caught as one catches an infection from one infected by it. Distance, as you presume otherwise, makes no difference and offers no problems. The Master Power, like all other powers of Nature, electricity, magnetism and gravitation is all-pervading and not confined to any one place. One can have all of the advantages of the gifts of Nature freely and fully if one wants to and is really interested in the same. One can take a horse to the river but cannot make the horse drink.
The spirit of enquiry is, no doubt, the first step. Theory precedes practice but mind, dear ____, that reasoning becomes the bar if stretched to unreasonable lengths of "whys" and "wherefores." It is one's interest and honest quest that sharpens one's intellect, which unfolds the meaning and significance of Satsang Talks which "hit right on the head," to use your words, in the case of seekers with an open mind.
It would be beneficial if selected individuals of the right type are, in the first instance made to understand and realize individually the goal of human life, the basic fact that alongside the pranic centers in the physical body, there are spiritual centers as well, extending from the eye-focus upwards which serve as mile-stones on the Path Godward as one traverses from one plane to another.
The question of vegetarian diet rests on the fundamental principle of harmlessness to all living creatures, pulsating with the same life-breath as in us. One cannot save his life or gain life eternal by cutting life at its roots just for the sake of palate or pleasure and then also escape from the Law of Action and Reaction -- what ye sow, ye shall also reap.
The "going within", as you know, means withdrawal from the plane of the senses, the world of sense-enjoyments in which our attention is engrossed all the time, flowing outside and downward through the sense-instruments, cognitive as well as motor. The God-way, on the other hand, lies inward and upward, and hence the need for inversion or tapping inside -- "Knock and it shall be opened unto Thee."
All such preliminaries can be better explained by you to the earnest seekers who, you will by experience find, are rare souls and not all your friends who accompany you to the Satsang Meetings, for most of them do so just out of regard for you or are led by mere curiosity.
For your guidance, is enclosed a comprehensive note interalia explaining the significance of the five Names and the importance of repeating the same mentally, with the tongue of thought, without disturbing the steady and intently penetrating gaze emanating from the All-seeing eye between and behind the eyes -- the Single Eye or the Inward Eye as it is called.
The scriptures of all the religions including the Gospels, are at one in their fundamentals and if studied carefully, with an open mind, in the light of the teachings of the Masters, reveal the same thing. You would do well to place in the hands of your friends easy literature like "Man Know Thyself" or "Ruhani Satsang--Science of Spirituality," and then see how they react after reading the same. This would enable you to see what real interest they have in the thing and if they have, then you can gradually lead them on by giving further information on the subject.
Now as to the points raised by you:
- It is a basic fact that we have been gifted by Providence with physical as well as spiritual bodies. In Corinthians I, Ch. XV, St. Paul while speaking of his experience of daily death gives us a graphic account of these two types of bodies. He calls these bodies "Terrestrial" and "Celestial" at one place and "Natural" and "Spiritual" at another; the one "sown in dishonor" and the other, "raised in glory;" one born of the "corruptible seed" and the other of "incorruptible"... The first man body is said to be of the earth, earthy, and the second man (or spirit body) is the Lord from Heaven...one is the image of the earthly and the other is the image of the heavenly... And then he tells us in no unmistakable terms that the flesh and blood (the physical tabernacle) cannot inherit the Kingdom of God... "I show you a mystery we shall all not sleep but we shall all be changed: the corruptible putting on incorruption, and the mortal, immortality" (31-53).
- Re: Diet, We once again have the testimony of St. Paul in his epistle to the Galatians: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatever a man soweth that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to (the lusts of the) flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting (6:7:-8). Again, for meat, - "destroy not the work of God...It is evil for that man who eateth with offence" (Romans 14:20). "Whatever ye eat or drink or ye do, do all to the glory of God" (I Cor. 10:31). "If any man defiles the temple of God in which the Spirit of God dwelleth, him shall God destroy for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are" (I Cor. 6:13). As already explained in the body of the letter one cannot have life everlasting by destroying life.
- The various planes are like so many mansions in the Father's house to which the Lord repaired to fix habitation for His disciples according to the spiritual development for each of them (John 14:2-3). St. Paul speaks of having been taken in spirit to the third heaven where he experienced things neither seen nor heard nor ever thought of before. St. John reveals the "Holy City, adorned as a bride." In brief, these planes signify different stages in spiritual unfoldment, giving greater awakening to and awareness of a high order as one proceeds from one plane to another. Macrocosm is in the Microcosm. There are three planes therein - Physical, Astral, and Causal - and we have also physical, astral and causal bodies to enable us to work therein.
- The Charged Words are passwords for different planes. Their significance has, at some length, been explained in the separate note for your information and guidance. They at once serve as a test to challenge the spirits that may appear within; their helpers or otherwise inimically disposed. St. John warns us: "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try whether they are of God" (John 4:l).
- The Sound Current is the one Audible Life Stream pulsating in and out of every living being and upholding all that is, in time and space, and out of time and space. It is born of the vibratory motion of the Atoms as they revolve and whirl about producing, as explained in the attached note, different sounds, because of the varying densities of the environs in which they operate. The ancients called it "the Music of the Spheres." In Ch. 14, of Revelations, we read of the "Voice of many waters, the Voice of Thunder and the Voice of Harpers." For the benefits that it accrues please refer to the book "Jap Ji," Stanza VIII to XI.
- The Light within is the primal manifestation of God Power and whosoever attained it became Buddha or the enlightened one. It is one of the twin principles of creation, and serves as an anchorage to the mind as it inverts and it gradually leads the mind-ridden soul to the first stage on the spiritual Path -- the region of the thousand-petalled Lotus.
- Meditation at the eye-focus helps in collecting the wandering attention at one point, the seat of the soul and produces a vacant but conscious trance, and then the soul is lifted and carried up by the sound-current from one plane to the other until it becomes All-knowing, All-pervading and All-powerful, embracing the totality of His being. It is the acme of perfection, making one as perfect as the Father in Heaven is. Besides physical health, it bestows mental and spiritual equilibrium which is the health of spirit and on which the health both of the body and the mind depends.
- The "going within" is nothing but withdrawal of mind from the world of senses. It marks the beginning of spiritual journey inward leading to the Kingdom of God which does not come by mere observation. It is the first step in the process of meditation.
- By "rising above body consciousness," one grows in awareness and consciousness of a higher order: first to supramental consciousness and then to cosmic and super-cosmic consciousness ending in All-consciousness. The repetition of the charged words has its own advantages while attunement with the sound current lifts the soul beyond all bounds.
- What is the Master Power and how it works? You will refer to the book "Godman," as well as study the talk I gave on December 25, 1963 at the St. James Episcopal Church, Houston, Texas, a printed copy of which can have from the local Satsangs. ("God Power, Christ Power, Guru Power").
- Faith in God is the beginning of wisdom. It is the root-cause of all religions and the only terra-firma on which the super-structure of spirituality is raised. Faith is not to be mixed up with blind acceptance and belief on mere authority without rational understanding of the basic concepts. But that too requires rudimentary belief wherewith one has to start. It may be likened to an experimental faith and belief and the Saints simply say: Do and see, so as to test the veracity of spiritual teachings. One has to accept in the beginning that two and two make four, but can know the why and wherefore of it only when one advances. Seeing is believing and there is no greater proof than this to bring in conviction, belief and faith.
And when all is said and done, I may assure you that language as we know it, cannot do full justice to the esoteric teachings and much time and labor would be saved, if one were to be taken from one's line of least resistance and given practical demonstration, however little it may be, to serve as a stock-in-trade for further developments.
With kind thoughts,
Yours affectionately,
(KIRPAL SINGH)
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