Reference: posted by: vejeestu on 7/10/00 to Kirpal Singh Satsang Club; Messages number 508-511
The following article by Radha Krishna Khanna, is reprinted from April 1978 Sat Sandesh. R.K. Khanna was a lawyer and very close disciple of Baba Sawan Singh. He was very involved in the drafting of the early Beas wills of Hazur, though he found himself out of the loop when the will was created through which his Beas successor was purportedly named. Although, he remained somewhat involved with Beas for a time, eventually he became closely associated with Sant Kirpal Singh as lawyer and literary advisor. In a day or two I shall post his rememberances of Sant Kirpal Singh found in the Ocean of Grace Divine. Eventually, I will post several other articles by him found in Sat Sandesh in the late seventies.
I was born eighty-two years ago in Multan which is now part of Pakistan. This city has the reputation of having been the birthplace of many Saints and holy men, and there are many shrines indicating that they flourished there. They are revered by Muslims and Hindus alike. The most famous shrine is that of Prahlad whose father was a king and who did everything in his power to force his son to worship him as God. In spite of all sorts of drastic actions and chastisement, Prahlad survived and became a Saint, while his father was finally slain at the hands of Lord Vishnu who took on the form of a lion.
When I began my law practice as a young man, I was an agnostic like so many young people. I doubted the existence of God, and scornfully spoke about Saints as frauds. It was very fashionable in those days to talk like that if one had been given a western education. I had taken my M.A. and LL.B. at Government College. When I was about thirty-five, an old classfellow and friend of mine came to Multan as the additional Session Judge. As a lawyer I had toappear before him, and having been his friend for a number of years, I visited his home. There he invited me to attend Satsang on Sundays. Very reluctantly did I accept. I went out of regsard for my friend.
He was a disciple of Hazur Baba Sawan Singh Ji, and would talk about him. He gave me a book written by Dr. Juliann Johnson, "With A Great Master in India". I read it. On the front page there was a photo of Hazur, and I was greatly attracted to it. I decided to go to see him—there was no intention whatsoever of becoming his follower, I was just filled with curiosity. When I had dysentery and fever. But somehow that curiosity was so forceful that in spite of this illness I took the night train to Beas. There I found another friend of mine, who said, "You are just in time; Mahaharaj Ji is going to hold Satsang." I thought to myself, "Well, I suppose I better attend, but I have not come for satsang. I have only come to see what sort of person lives here whom people regard as a Godman." At the very first sight of the Master my whole attitude changed, my whole being changed. I had come to scorn, and stayed to worship.
After the satsang my friend took me to see the Master, who said, "Have you any doubts? Do you wish to ask any questions?" I replied, "None." Then I said, "I had all the doubts in the world, but the moment I saw your face, all have disappeared absolutely. My mind is perfectly at peace." I then asked for initiation. Hazur said, "Attend one or two more satsangs, then you will be initiated."
This is how I received my initiation.After a few days I was to part from the Master: he was to go to Amritsar, I was to go back to Multan. But when the train from Beas reached Amritsar en route for Multan, I could not go any further. I detrained there and rushed to hear the Master's Satsang. When Hazur saw me he said, "Oh, you have to leave immediately for Multan, you have some important cases there." With tears in my eyes I replied, "Master, I cannot part from you.
That was my first meeting with the great Hazur. The remarkable thing is that when I arrived at Amritsar there were were hundreds of old satsangis there, and I as a new satsangi took place at the back, very far from the Master. But he did not care for that: he came straight up to me and asked why I had not gone on to Multan. How could I go any further? I was weeping all the time. A profound change had come over me. The Master was very kind and gracious to me, and almost every summer for four or five years in succession when he went to Dalhousie, I used to give up all my professional work so as to follow him and be near him.
Right from the day I followed him to Amritsar I became close to Hazur, and upon my invitation he paid his first visit to Multan. He held Satsangs and visited all the sacred shrines where he told the keepers to keep the shrines cleaner as this was a most solemn duty. I even took him up to the highest point in the Old Fort where he glanced down at the city below and remarked, "Have you had any communal riots here?" I replied, "Yes, two years ago." He then asked, "What is the position now?" I replied, "Master,there can be communal riots at any time." I remember he then looked at the whole city lying below for two or three minutes, and turning to me, said, "For the next ten years there will be no further riots." It happened as he predicted.
On his first visit to Multan, many Muslims came to hear Hazur's Satsangs. Some called him "The Angel of Light." A few took initiation. The visit was repeated after three or four years; he graced my home and stayed there for about five days. By the time he came again after only two years, we had built a Satsang hall where he stayed. During the partition of the country in 1947 I wrote to the great Master explaining that as we had to leave everything, we could at least get a lakh and a half (150,000) rupees from a Muslim who was ready to buy the Satsang hall. But the Master wrote back, "Please do not sell the hall. Leave it for the use of the Muslims, for by giving them this property many satsangis' lives will be saved." So of course I did not sell it; I left everything. When I arrived at the Dera I came to know that not a single satsangi from Multan had been killed or injured in the riots that had flared up. There were many fatalities in those days because of violent communal riots—and most of the casualties were Hindus—but not one satsangi had been even hurt. The Master's injunction not to sell the Satsang hall was absolutely right, and it bore fruit.
I might add here that under the Master's orders I used to hold Satsang every Sunday for several years in this specially constructed hall. When I started I had no idea what to say or how to say it; I just sat there, thought of the Master, and words would come out of my mouth as if they were being delivered by the Master through me.
Sometimes I would accompany Hazur to his farm at Sikandarpur near Sirsa where he had his summer place and a sugar factory. His two sons lived here. In the morning Hazur would give darshan to the satsangis and then go to the fields to supervise the sowing and reaping. Then he would go to the factory, and at mealtimes he distributed the food with his own hands to the laborers. They were all satsangis. After taking rest, he would sit in his courtyard, and in the evening give Satsang. Hazur had purchased this place when still in service at the bidding of his Master, Baba Jaimal Singh. When he first saw it, the land was covered with thorns and thistles, but when he mentioned this to his Master, Baba Ji replied, "No, no. You purchase it. It is very fertile." The result was that after some work the land began to yield one lakh of rupees each year.
There was only one photograph of Baba Jaimal Singh, which Hazur kept in a secret box in his room. At my insistence he asked Bibi Rali, who was his cook, to show it to me. I was allowed to look at it for only a few minutes, that was all. Baba Jaimal Singh had said that this photo was not to be published. He only initiated about two thousand people; he left the work to Hazur Maharaj Ji.
Very often two hundred persons would turn up for initiation, and Hazur would scrutinize them all very closely. Once, out of two hundred, about fifty were turned away; he would say quite softly, "You are not ready. Come again." In Dalhousie, three holy men came and sought initiation. Maharaj Ji said, "No, no, no. You are already sadhus. I am not as holy as you are as I am a householder, and you are coming to me for initiation?" They went away Hazur turned to me and said, "They do not earn their own livelihood, they are living on the earnings of others. A man in order to become entitled to Naam must earn his keep in an honest way and also be able to give help to others in the form of charity. Then his ground is level for spirituality."
About twenty-five percent of all those asking for initiation were always turned away. A man once came all the way from Bombay for Naam, but the Master said, "Well, you have attended the Satsangs here; that is enough." But the man went on insisting. Hazur said, "Do not provoke me to tear the veil and explain why you cannot be given Naam." The man replied, "There is nothing against me." Hazur said, "Is it good for you to be carrying on with your daughter-in law in Bombay?" Hazur had never set eyes on him before. Then he added, "Unless you get rid of this habit, you cannot receive initiation." The man was taken aback; I was wonderstruck. Then Hazur asked, "Is it true?" The man said, "Yes." The great Master was very reluctant to say these things, but the man had gone on insisting, so by just looking for half a minute at his forehead he put an end to the matter.
Hazur once said, "People from abroad come from thousands of miles with a real desire for spirituality. It is not like here where someone on his way from one town to another stops off at Beas out of curiosity." He never turned away someone from another country; that was his principle. I sat in at many initiations, and sometimes he would ask me to drill the new initiates while they were learning the five charged Names. He would go away and leave me there. At the end, he never asked who had seen this or heard that. That is something Maharaj Kirpal Singh Ji had started.
The Master had foreseen that I would move to Delhi. A few days before his physical departure I said to him, "Master, you have given houses to everybody in the Dera. I would like to purchase a house, too." Hazur said, "What have you to do witb Dera Beas? Your connection is with me, not with these houses made of bricks. When I go away, you will have nothing to do with this place." Then he recited this verse, "When the nightingale flies from the garden, it is immaterial if the owl or the bird of paradise come." He was talking of himself. And when Hazur did leave that perfect garden, although I was asked to stay on and help with the work, I knew my place was with Sant Kirpal Singh Ji in Delhi. So it appears that the great Hazur wanted me to leave and be here with Maharaj Kirpal Singh Ji to look into the legal affairs and go through the manuscripts of his many books.
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