KIRPAL
SINGH NAAM OR WORD Dedicated
To
the Almighty God Working
though all Masters who have come And Baba Sawan Singh Hi MaharajAt
whose lotus feet The
writer imbibed sweet elixir of Holy
Naam--the Word To
the Honest Seeker We have an Upanishadic text that tells us that Truth is one, though
sages have described it variously. But
to define It is to limit, and since Truth (i.e., the whole Truth) is
illimitable, It, by Its very nature, remains undefined. It is more a matter of inner experience and
realization than of comprehension and apprehension on the intellectual level. "The surest way unto Truth," says Henri Bergson, the great
philosopher, "is by perception, by intuition, by reasoning to a certain
point and then by taking a mortal leap." Again, "True knowledge is an action of the soul and is perfect
without the senses," says Ben Jonson.
The Reality can neither be known by the senses, nor by the mind or the
intellect, nor by the vital airs that keep the physical frame, both of the
Universe and the individual, going. "Man is a little world made cunningly of elements and an angelic
spirit" (John Donne). He is a
composite entity that unites in himself the physical, the subtle and the causal
principles: the body, the mind, the supermind and the soul, one behind the
other, the last one being the source of all life, the very life principle
enlivening every-thing that living. There is within the
all-comprehending ambit of animal instincts, some secret urge which drives the
chosen few, called the elect, toward the transcending of animal impulses,
leading to complete disinterestedness by total disregard of the animal-ego on
the one hand and willing submission to a self-sought death on the other, in
spite of the strong opposition of instincts, impulses and ego arrayed against
an inspired soul. There is a subtle
communication between mystery and mystery, between the unknown soul and the
unknown Reality and it is only at one particular point in the texture of life
that the hidden Truth seems to burst through the enveloping veils of ignorance;
and this happens only when one is able to disimprison the soul from the facts
of life. John Keats, the great Romantic
poet, speaks of this blissful state: Wherein lies happiness? In which becks Our ready minds to fellowship Divine A fellowship with Essence; till we shine Full alchemized and free of space. The secret of Truth then lies in the little "great self" in
Man, the self, the seemingly little thing of no consequence neglected and cast
aside and almost lost in the mighty swirl of mind and matter, and yet a great
thing once it comes to its own after breaking through the prison bars of life;
the senses that keep one enmeshed all the time. The inner man or the spirit-in-man is, therefore, to be freed
from the tentacles of the outer man, consisting of matter and mind, before the
Self can rise in self-consciousness and become award of the Cosmic
Awareness. All this is a practical
possibility by a process of self-analysis and withdrawal, and not a figment of
the imagination as most of us might think.
As "self-knowledge" precedes "God-knowledge," all
the sages and seers have from time immemorial laid emphasis on "Gnothe
Seauton" or "Nosce Teipsum" as known among the ancient Greeks
and Romans respectively. And to known
oneself, one must detach one's self from the life of the senses. This is exactly what Jesus meant when the
taught, "He that findeth his life shall lose it" and "he that
loseth his life shall find it."
Thus one has to choose between the two lives: the life of the senses and
flesh on the one hand and the life of the spirit and Awareness on the other,
for one cannot have both at the same time; and unless one is able to rise above
body consciousness, one cannot make his or her choice between the two. "No man can serve two masters: for
either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one
and despise the other." Guru Nanak has said: Without actual transcendence of the spirit The magic spell of the world dissolves not. This then is the way Truthward or Goeward. "Truth is one," says Nanak, "and comes as apure
and simple figt from a Master of Truth."
When we say "One," that too is incorrect for that means
limiting the Limitless and finitizing the Infinite. Kabir, therefore, speaks of God or Truth: If I say He is one that too is inapt, The idea of duality in Him but a blasphemy. He is what He is, neither the one nor the other, Something, yet whole and self-contained. The numeral "One" is but a pointer and an index to the Great
Being beyond numerology itself. Guru
Nanak, speaking of Truth, tells us: Truth was when there was nothing: Truth was before all ages began; Truth existeth now, O Nanak! And Truth shall exist forever more. "Absolute Truth is of course imageless, but whenit came into being,
Its primal manifestations were the Sound and the Light Principles, collectively
called Nad in the Vedas, Udgit in the Upanishads, Sraosha in Zend Avesta, Word
in the Holy Gospels, Kalma in the Koran, Naam or Shabd in the Holy Granth--all
singifying the Two-fold aspect of the Divine Nature or the Creative Life
Principle in Nature. Nameless and devoid of all forms He Is, And yet all names and forms are His. The great Rishis and Munis, we are told, had a direct inner contact with
Truth or the Godhead within. To Moses
were revealed the sacred precepts of the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments in
the midst of Truth Itself. The Prophet
Mohammed had to cut his way through the moon--Shaqul-Qamar--as he ascended on
the wings of lightning (barq). Prince Silddhartha,
when he contacted the Light within, came to be known as Buddha or the
Enlightened One. Christ assured his
following of his true nature, in no idle words: I am the Light of the world, and he that followeth Me, shall not walk in
darkness, but shall have the Light of Life. And again, If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of Light. "Mysticism," says Dean Inge, "is the core of
religion," and language has no means of conveying the super-sensual
experiences of the mystics. "The
Light shineth in the Darkness and the Darkness comprehendeth it not," is
the fate of the common man today. Man's spirit can return to God through the deepest of man's conflicts
and negations…(and by) total denial of his finite begin. A. C.
BRADLEY Walter De La Mare, in the "Dreams," fives us a slimpse: And once--from agony set free-- I scanned within the womb of night, A hollow in -woven orb of light. Thrilling with beauty, no tongue could tell, And knew It for life's Citadel. Both soul and God live together in the holy temple of the human body,
but alas! One has not known the
other. About this inborn relationship,
St. Catherine tells us, God is in the soul and the soul is in God, As the sea is in the fish and the fish is in the sea. But can we have this beatific vision? "Yes," say the Masters,
"as surely as two and two make four." Feel we these things? That moment have we stept Into a sort of Oneness,
and our state Is like a floating Spirit. JOHN
KEATS To return to the point from which we began--namely, that Truth is
infinite and can be only inwardly realized and not mentally comprehended--let
us touch upon the claims of science.
Science too declares that it seeks to arrive at Truth in all objective
and a detached fashion, called the "scietific way," and most of its
adherents even go on to say that science is the only means to Truth, for
mysticism and spiritual realization are too personal, too subjective and too
rare a phenomenon to be trusted. But can
science really bring us to Truth? Can
we equate factural knowledge with Truth ? does not Truth imply a knowledge not
only of the various object composing the sum total of existence but also their
interrelations to the finest degree, and is not this aspect of Truth the more
important one? Science of course does give us factual knowledge about object
and to some extent their interrelations as well. But science, at least at present, seems to be an endless process:
the findings of today being outdated by those of tomorrow. Thus its picture of Truth, whatever it may
be, is an ever shifting one and in fact it can never be a picture of Truth for
Truth in Its every nature is changeless.
The adherents of science fail to see this significant limitation of
science for they mistake knowledge for Truth and forget that if science is to
be our only means to Truth, then man can never hope to reach that goal. Looking on the other side of the picture,
the side which we have already discussed, there is the incontroverted testimony
of the saints and the mystics who tell us that Truth can be realized by man,
and who go on to say that a pursuit of objective factual knowledge is a
distraction from It. The poets speak of
intuitive moments when they feel the presence of a spiritual unity behind the
material diversity. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime, Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man. WORDSWORTH While the mystics of all times and climes tell us with one voice that
this Inner Reality or Truth is not only a matter of intuition and feeling but
of actual super-sensuous realization, and it is in this connection that the
study of Yoga-Surag Shabd Yoga in particular--reveals its importance. We cannot, if we really seek the Truth,
afford to ignore spirituality, as so many modern thinkers have tended to do,
for It is a highway to Truth, and as suggested, perhaps the only highway to
Truth. It is in this context that an
attempt has been made to explain in this book the basic concept (which of
course is the same in spite of an endless variety in nomenclature) of the
various words used by the Masters to signify the Wordless in His primordial
manifestation--the life current creating, sustaining and controlling the
endless creation. My heartfelt thanks to Shri Bhadra Sena especially and others who took
great pains in helping to bring out this work and spend many hours in this
labor of love. KIRPAL SINGH |