Reference: posted by: mysticbumwipe on 7/22/01 to Kirpal Singh Satsang Club; Messages number 858 - 859
Sawan Singh, 20th July 1858 - April 2nd 1948
by Professor Jag Mohan Lal
About three miles from the small, bare railway station of Beas, far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, lived a Great Master, popularly known as the Saint of Beas.
He was neither a Sannyasin nor an ascetic and did not wear the yellow robe nor do His followers unless they already happened to belong to some order of Sannyasis. He dressed in plain white, even as His Master, Baba Jaimal Singh, did before Him. Nevertheless he lived a wonderfully detached life and was a living embodiment of the Ideal held up and emphasised by the great world teacher, Guru Nanak Sahib, in the following lines:
As the lotus, unsullied in water,
the duck with its wings dry;
similarly, 0 Nanak
cross over this ocean of Existence
with the help of Surat Shabd Practice.This, indeed, admirably sums up His Creed both esoteric and exoteric in the fewest words.
His teachings were so simple and His exposition so lucid and beautiful that even the ordinary peasant could follow Him. Yet these same teachings and expositions were pregnant with such deep meaning that sometimes even learned men and scholastic philosophers remained awe-struck at their significance.
He laid no claim to novelty or originality. After all, there is nothing new under the sun. It is the same old wine but in new bottles that Kabir and Nanak, Dadu and Paltu, Hafiz and Shams Tabriz offered in their times to their choicest followers. Baba Sawan Singh Ji Maharaj maintained that Saints are an institution and do not recognise the limitations of caste, creed or race. One takes up the work where the other left it. Their message is for all humanity. Guru Nanak said:
“My teachings are the same for all.”Baba Sawan Singh Maharaj's followers numbered about two hundred thousand and included men of all classes: hard-headed business men, learned professors, Cabinet Ministers and ruling princes. On the last Sunday of every month, when the monthly Satsang was held, people flocked from all parts of the country to listen to His words of wisdom, born of intuition and experience, and His exposition of the teachings of the Saints and Mystics. Pin-drop silence prevailed though the number was often twenty thousand or more.
Though literally adored by thousands of people, He never played the God and was always easily accessible to every seeker after Truth to the extent of even permitting encroachment on His hours of rest and sleep, despite the remonstrance of His secretary and others. he would say,
'After all, that is the best use to which I can put this body.'
And sometimes He would add in an undertone:
'Want of ease is the inheritance of the servants of God. They come here not to take their ease but to work for others and even to suffer for them.'
And that usually settled the matter.
He accepted no gifts or presents. He held with Guru Nanak Sahib:
Only he who earns his living and spares something out of it by way of charity can see the way.His followers [and they include men in all walks of life] likewise are strictly enjoined to live entirely on their own earnings and not to accept gifts or presents.
Master of the wonderful secrets of Nature and Man, with two hundred thousand disciples who came from all castes and classes and all parts of the country even from distant Europe and America, yet he was full of a true and sweet humility that is rare to behold. He helped so many souls to various degrees of Enlightenment and self-realisation. They beheld His wonderful Astral form and received unerring help and guidance. Having thus realised His greatness, they wished to prostrate themselves and touch His feet but he would not allow them to do so. He greeted them all with joined hands and a smiling countenance and would say that he was only a humble servant, nay one of the humblest, and it was His duty to help and serve them all.
Essence of His teachings:
He taught that man himself is the most sacred temple or mosque and it is in this house that an esoteric student must worship. If man is inclined to reason or investigate instead, He will still find within himself the best laboratory in which he can investigate and experiment and 'know himself'. For the Kingdom of God is within and cannot be taken by storm but by humble and patient surrender to the Divine Word (NAM), the Word that was with God and was God and is still God, and can, even in this Iron Age, be contacted through a Perfect Master. It is by contact with this Divine Word which is not only the hub and the prop of the universe, but also reverberates in the chambers of our heart that our sin-burdened soul is lightened and enabled to resume its flight till it becomes one with the Ultimate Reality. What is more, He never forced any dogmas down our throats nor did He ask us to take things on faith alone. On the contrary, He exhorted us to test the correctness of His assertions and prove everything for ourselves, taking only certain minimum things for granted, provisionally, in order to provide a working hypothesis, as in Euclid.He had a universal outlook with no tinge of sectarianism. During His expositions and sermons he freely quoted from the writings of Muslim Saints and Sufis, particularly emphasising the Quranic precept:
‘Die before your physical death’.
It is only when one has learned to die daily, i.e. to withdraw all consciousness at will to a particular centre in the brain, the body being apparently lifeless, that death loses its sting and the grave it victory.
Human life, He would say, is a most precious gift and a rare opportunity. It is only while in the human form that we can work for our Liberation, i.e. free ourselves from the meshes of Mind and Maya, and go back to our Spiritual Home whence we came.
To achieve this end, we should put ourselves under the discipline of a Kamil Murshid or Perfect Satguru who would not only tell us how, but also would lead us within till the Goal is reached. That such a Kamil Murshid or Perfect Satguru continues to guide His disciples even after he has left the body, is abundantly proved by the grateful testimony of His numerous disciples. Such was Baba Sawan Singh, the Saint of Beas, who carried on His wonderful ministry for 45 years and helped and guided erring souls, irrespective of caste or creed. He shook off the mortal coil at Beas on 2 April, 1948, at the ripe age of 90 years.
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