EARLY YEARS It was in 1838 that Baba Jaimal Singh was born in the village of Ghuman
in the Gurdaspur District of the Punjab, to a family of pious Sikh cultivators.
Ghuman was as any other village in the region. If it was distinguished in any
way, it was by its having a shrine known as Dera Baba Namdev, in memory of the
great sage Namdev who, many centuries earlier, had spent his last days there. Legend holds that when the Saint arrived and wished to pray inside the local
temple, he was refused admission because he was an outcaste. Undeterred he went
and sat down behind the back wall and was soon lost in samadhi. The Lord,
unhappy at the insult offered to His disciple, turned the face of the temple
toward the place where Namdev sat, and all the priests and brahmins fell at his
feet asking for forgiveness. It is from that day that the local village is said
to have taken the name of Ghuman, a Punjabi word signifying "to turn
around." The village folk visited the shrine to offer devotion, and many a
wandering sadhu often came there to pay his homage to the great sage. Bhai Jodh Singh and Bibi Daya Kaur, the parents of Jaimal, were frequent
visitors, and the latter, while there, would often pray for a saintly son. Great
souls seldom come unannounced and one night Bibi Daya Kaur was visited by the
great Namdev in a dream who told her that her prayers were granted; and ten
months later Jaimal was born amidst domestic festivity and rejoicing. The history of a Saint is the history of a soul's pilgrimage. It is a
story which to be spiritually complete covers innumerable years and countless
lives. The final enlightenment may seem sudden, but its preparatory stages are
long and arduous. Like Buddha and Jesus, Jaimal showed remarkable spiritual
precocity from a very early age. When visiting the shrine of Baba Namdev with
his parents, unlike other children of his age, he would sit calm and attentive;
and even as a child of three he could repeat many of the verses he heard at
spiritual discourses. The villagers wondered at his prodigiousness. He was soon
nicknamed Bal-Sadhu or "child-saint," and his rural admirers pressed
his parents to give him an opportunity for education. So when Jaimal was five, he was put in the charge of Bhai Khem Das, a
learned vedantist who lived close by. In those times education in India did not
concern itself with training for a vocation. It was pre-eminently a mental and
spiritual discipline based on the study of the scriptures. The young child
displayed keen aptitude for it and soon mastered the Gurmukhi script. Within a
year he had already read carefully the Punj Granthi or five basic Sikh
scriptures, including the Jap Ji, the Sukhmani Sahib, and Raho Ras. In another
six months he had the key passages of these spiritual treasures by heart, and
by the age of seven he had grown into an excellent pathi or one who could
recite the scriptures in a melodious way with professional mastery. The next
year was spent in studying the Dasam Granth - the scriptures compiled by the
last of the Sikh Gurus. Jaimal showed great respect for his teacher who was delighted with the
boy's application and rapid progress. The two would spend long hours together,
and the lad would hear Bhai Khem Das with great attention. His hunger for
knowledge was insatiable and the reading of scriptures only fired his
imagination still further. One day, picking up the Jap Ji, he began reciting
the twentieth stanza, and after finishing the recitation, turned to his teacher
and asked: "Sir, what is the meaning of Naam, of which Nanak has said,
`When one's mind is defiled by sin, it can be cleansed only by communion with
Naam,' and of which all the other great ones have sung such praises in the rest
of the Granth Sahib?" Khem Das was touched by his pupil's questioning
spirit and discrimination, but was unable to enlighten him on the subject as he
himself was not conversant with the mystery of Naam. A day later, Bhai Jodh Singh, seeing that his son, now eight, was old
enough to help him, went to his guru with an offering of a silver rupee and
jaggery in traditional style. After laying it at his feet, he expressed his
desire to have Jaimal released from his studies in order to tend his flock of
goats. Khem Das raised no objection. "He is your son and you may dispose
of him as you consider best." But his young ward could not wish him
farewell so easily. "Sir," he assured him, "I shall work for my
father all day, but in the evening I shall come to you and continue the
studies." Jaimal proved true to his word and kept unbroken his association with
his learned teacher. Proud of his perseverance and piety, Khem Das initiated
him soon after into the Japa of Sohang, which he himself practiced. The boy
would get up long before daybreak, have his bath, read the scriptures and sit
for meditation. He would then lead his goats into the fields. His young friends
soon observed that while the goats grazed over the meadows, he did not hang
around, idly looking on, but kept reading and reciting holy texts and often sat
down cross-legged for meditition. At sundown he would return with his herd, have some milk and food, and
then proceed to his guru. There he would sit attentively, learning how to read
and interpret the scriptures. After he had mastered the Granth Sahib, he began,
at the age of nine, the study of Hindi and the Hindu texts. Studies over, he
would visit the shrine of Namdev and return home late at night. Often, while
away in the evening, he would sit down and be lost in meditation, so much so
that once he was away for the whole night while his parents searched
frantically every part of the village in vain. This intense application did not go unrewarded, and the boy once told
his teacher that he could see stars and moon within and glimpse inner Light -
the first spiritual experience of the mystic soul. Bhai Jodh Singh was far from satisfied with his eldest son's unworldly
ways. However religious-minded a man may be, he is seldom happy to see his son
turned a renunciate. Jaimal was growing up, but instead of showing any interest in family affairs, he was moving in the opposite direction. He not only
spent a great deal of his time reading scriptures, practicing spiritual sadhnas
and visiting his teacher, Bhai Khem Das, but also began passing long hours in
the company of the sadhus and holy men who came to the village to pay homage to
the shrine of Namdev. Wishing to curb his son's inordinate religious
inclination, his father thought it best to send him away from Ghuman and its visiting
sadhus. So at the age of eleven years and eight months Jaimal was sent off with
his fiock to the home of one of his two sisters, Bibi Tabo, who lived in the
village of Sathyala. At his sister's, Jaimal continued his old schedule of religious
practices and goat-grazing. Many a month passed away in this uneventful manner.
Then one day while following his herd he met a yogi who had just arrived at the
village. Happy to find the company of the holy, he bowed in reverence, milked
his goats and offered the yogi a drink of milk. The man in saffron was touched
by the lad's piety and began to question him. Jaimal told him of the scriptures
he had read and the intense desire for enlightenment they had sparked in him. The
sadhu was very pleased by the account and offered to train him. He told him
frankly that as regards the mystique of Naam he knew little, but whatever he
himself practiced he would freely impart. So next morning as instructed, Jaimal
proceeded, without having eaten anything, to his newly-discovered guide for
initiation. The yogi was an adept in pranayama and instructed his young
disciple into its secrets. Having found a spiritual guide, Jaimal was once again lost to the world.
His old holy indifference to family ties and worldly affairs returned, if
anything with redoubled intensity. He would often sit for three hours at a
stretch in meditation. The yogi, pleased by his devotion, stayed on in the
village and Jaimal was more often than not to be found in his company. These developments caused his sister much
concern, and anxiety finally drove her to send word to her father to take the
boy away. Bhai Jodh Singh soon arrived on the scene and ordered his son back
home. The two set out homeward early next morning, but while they were on the
point of leaving the village, Jaimal, his eyes moist with tears, begged his
father to permit him to see the yogi for the last time and bid him farewell. His
father agreed and the boy, with an offering of fresh milk, hurried to his
preceptor. He sadly related how his father had arrived and of their intended
departure that day. The yogi smiled, blessed him and bade him be of good cheer.
"Continue your sadhnas at home as before," he said, "and all
will be well. I myself shall see you there some day." At Ghuman Jaimal revived his association with Bhai Khem Das and
continued to greet visiting sadhus as of yore. He was now in his fourteenth
year and continued with unmitigated zeal the practice of the sadhnas he had
learned. But he soon began to hunger for more. The yogic practices he had
mastered failed to satisfy him, and on reading the Granth Sahib he became
convinced of a higher reality, to be attained by different means. As he
progressed on the path, he became progressively more detached from the world. He
noted all the esoteric hints and references to the five-worded Word, the Panch
Shabd, to be found in the Sikh scriptures, and kept pondering over them, asking
every new yogi or sadhu he met if he could explain them to him; but all in
vain. At this stage of his search, he and his family suffered a sad
bereavement. He was not yet fourteen when his father fell ill and died. The
family was grief stricken but Jaimal's spiritual discipline worked as a
protective shield. Quoting from the scriptures, he comforted his mother and his
two younger brothers and discouraged any weeping or wailing. If the soul was
deathless and if all was according to the Lord's Will, then why any mourning?
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