Reference: posted by: vejeetsu on 2/13/2002 to Kirpal Singh Satsang Club; Messages number 993 - 998
The following is a talk given at the celebration in honor of the 108th. birth anniversary of Sant Kirpal Singh, held in Vancouver on Sunday Feb 10, 2002.
In remembering the beloved Master, Sant Kirpal Singh Ji Maharaj, I thought it would be worthwhile to address what it is that inspires us to celebrate the lives of the Saints, to gather together in their name. Let us consider how we came to the Master and what we found for ourselves and what we found in Him. Let us also consider something of his impact on our lives.
In each aspirant who came to the Master, there was a longing for spirituality. Yet each was met at the level of their own nature. A surprising number came through visions or remarkable experiences, others came through more common ways, such as discovering some of the literature and feeling a deep resonance with His image and his words. All who came to the Master were attracted by his remarkable spiritual beauty. In each photograph, or with vastly greater intensity, in his physical presence, one could see image after image of human virtues and spiritual attainment. There was a quality to the Master that drew the heart of the seeker before the mind had begun to understand.
If or when the mind became interested, Kirpal Singh's remarkable literary output offered discussion of virtually every facet of the spiritual path, taken from many angles, and each charged with the authority of the writer. Books like Crown of Life and Naam or Word, conveyed in depth and detail the larger context of the Teachings of the Masters, other books such as the Wheel of Life and the Mystery of Death discussed some of the esoteric principles of life. Other books such as Morning Talks explained helping factors on the spiritual path.
The Master's circular letters formed a remarkable body of literature in themselves, including some of the most moving and informative talks. So there was plenty to chew on intellectually.
Master showed us through detailed references to every major world religion and many of the esoteric traditions, that the awakening of inner vision to see the Light and hear the Music of the Spheres, the very Sound of creation, was the path back to the creator, the place from which the Eternal Sound emanated. He taught that this inner way required the human and spiritual guidance of one who had already taken the inner journey to its end. He taught us that the outer aspect of religion could only carry us to the threshold of spirituality. He gave out that the teaching of the Masters was that each individual had the capacity to rise above body consciousness and begin the journey home through direct experience with the inner spiritual realms in this life. In this way the issue of death's inevitability was solved in this very life. He explained that the deep mysteries of spirituality centered on the experience of learning how to die, while yet bound to the physical body. In this way, consideration of the issues of God and man of the mysteries of life, ceased to be a matter of dogma and doctrine and became a direct experience that was available to any individual of any creed or faith, given right guidance. The Master taught that spirit knew no otherness, that the first and grandest principle of all was that God was everywhere. In this way he showed us that while the path was transcendent, taking us beyond this world, it was also rooted in a loving view of life. In Morning Talks he says:
"The first principle, the basic principle and I would say the grandest of all, is to know that God is everywhere. We are living in Him and He is in us. We live and have our being in Him, like fish in the river. The fish lives in the water, its whole life depends on water. It lives in water, it lives on water, from whence it gets its food. When God wished "I am One and wish to be many," the whole Universe emanated, came into being. The whole world is an expression, a manifestation of God. Where is that place where He is not? We are in Him, He is in us and is our Controlling Power. All ensouled bodies are the drops of the Ocean of all Consciousness. When we know this, all is beautiful. God is beautiful and any world made by Him, manifested by Him, is also beautiful. Beauty comes out of beauty. Anything that appears to be ugly in the world is the result of the spectacles that we are wearing. If the glass of the spectacles is smoky, you will see all smoke. If it is red, everything will appear red. If it is black, everything will appear black. Well, the world is not black, red or smoky, mind that! So we have to change the trend of our mind, of our heart."
Besides discussing the theory of spirituality, the Master offered a practical experience, which he said should come at the very time of initiation... some glimpse of the inner light and sound, so that the individual could move forward with a degree of confidence.
So there was food for the intellect and food for the heart as well as food for the soul itself. We can truly say that as each of us has walked through this journey of life we have found that the path of the Master was something more then we ever expected, that no matter what struggles we went through or worldly winds tossed us, our lives were somehow suffused with the presence of the Master, that this great sea of love and light was always close and always breaking through into our lives, bringing solace, insight, courage, and sometimes remarkable awakening.
The Master used to say that the guru's love was more then that of a thousand mothers, he used to say that if we knew how much he loved us, we'd be dancing all around. One could see that this was true by the patience and warmth that the Master showered on his disciples, by the remarkable ways his presence entered in our lives. He was kind and loving and yet even at times a stern guide. He used various methods to reach and transform the ego bound heart of the initiate. We could say that he was a guide in every aspect of our lives.
So these have been our own experiences as students as disciples.
Yet quite apart from this, His own life story is one of the greatnesses of Sant Kirpal Singh. His life is one of the most remarkable of modern spiritual biographies. From an early age he had intense spiritual aspiration and powerful psychic and spiritual experiences. Very early he came away from the religion and habits of his own family. In this way he showed that sometimes being true to oneself meant defying social convention. However, when his father was felled by a stroke, for an entire year he who had been the son became the father and nursed his father from complete dependence back to health. At the end of this period his father conferred a blessing on him and from that point forward Hazur Baba Sawan Singh Ji Maharaj began appearing to him. However, despite daily visions of Hazur, it was seven long years before an apparent coincidence led him to find his Master by the side of the Beas river. In Kirpal Singh's very first visits to Beas, Baba Sawan Singh gave clear indications of his new disciples future destiny, as if the God Power in the Master had recognized the advent of the one who would carry forward after him.
As a disciple Kirpal Singh was unsparing, putting in six hours a day of meditation as ordered by his Master. Yet the accounts of family and friends also shows that while working ten to twelve hours in his government position, he spent several hours every day looking after the needs of sick and needy disciples of his district. He was an embodiment of steadfast spiritual effort as well as selfless service to all humanity. Later his vision of human unity was one of the foundations of his spiritual mission, leading him to meet spiritual and political leaders worldwide.
He also exemplified the principle of clarity of intention, which he called having a ruling passion. He taught that having a ruling passion was critical to success in all walks of life. In this regard he taught how ones passion and love empowered concentration, the prerequisite of inner awakening:
"Without absolute surrender of the last vestiges of ego and selfhood and without such complete absorption in the object of one's love, one cannot attain that unwavering concentration of all one's faculties which is the prerequisite of all inner progress. Absolute love and self-surrender are only other aspects of complete and flawless concentration. The moment the "self" enters into the picture and the question of "I-ness" arises, the single-pointedness of concentration is dissipated and inner advancement is made impossible. Besides, the goal of the spiritual aspirant lies far beyond the limits of individuality. His goal is union with the Absolute and such union must necessarily be a denial of the limits that separate us from each other. He who cannot rise above the ego, the faculty which creates these very limits, cannot hope to attain to that station which is the denial of all individuality and a realization of the oneness of all life.
Hence it is that all mystics of all traditions have been untiring in their stress of the need for absolute self-surrender. It was this cross of sacrifice of the self, the ego, of which Jesus spoke when he exhorted his disciples to bear their cross daily. For in every little act, word or thought, the ego is seeking to dominate us and if the seeker is to triumph over it, he must be prepared to crucify it every moment. To achieve this degree of self-surrender, one must not look up to the Deity in its Abstract form but in Its human form as the Master. For how else is one to know God's Will directly, in order to surrender one's self to it? What one may take as an intuition inspired by the Divine may be really one's own self speaking in disguise, and surrender to such seeming intentions may be really surrender to the self, the ego. However, if one has found a true Master, who is attuned to the Lord and is His mouthpiece, and obeys him in all things completely and absolutely, he will surely destroy the hydra-headed serpent of the ego and reach his heavenly home one day."
Circular 17So Master is explicitly saying that love of the Master energized our attention, which was so necessary to enliven spiritual efforts. Love and sincerity created the commitment to make ones best efforts. However, the Master often reminded that our efforts must be effortless, we are to sit at the inner door without clutching to have one thing or another. We are to allow God or the Master Power to be the giver.
The term Master Power was a phrase he used to differentiate the physical Master from the Universal spiritual power that was conscious in the Master but the very life of the disciple as well. He would often say, that the real Guru is the Power of God that works through the Master, not his human form as such. Yet being human beings, it was impossible not to become drawn and attached to his manifold qualities. This was as it should be, yet in fact, he was always drawing us to find the true Master within in the form of Shabd or the great inner spiritual principles.
One of his great innovations was the spiritual diary. The self-introspection diary was a way given by the Master to reflect on exactly what the trend of the mind was each moment of the day. He would say that if the diary was done accurately, one would develop an excellent memory and be inspired daily on the spiritual path, and gradually weed out the qualities that stood in the way of our highest spiritual ideals.
Really there was no part of our life that was untouched by the Master's wisdom. So when we celebrate the life of Sant Kirpal Singh Ji Maharaj, we are celebrating someone who was not only successful in attaining the highest stages of spirituality, but someone who through their example, through their biography, through their words, through their actions, exemplified all the characteristics of spirituality to which the longing heart aspires.
So we celebrate the gift of his life in our lives, whether as children, grandchildren or great grandchildren of the Master. And we pray that the great current of inspiration reaches us in every greater measure.
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