KIRPAL SINGH AND CHRISTIAN INCARNATION

 

Rev. R. Stephen Drane, Ph.D.

 

For too long, Christian teaching about incarnation have been only backward-looking. But today there is an intense search for values and loyalties. Some people develop a conservative reaction in facing current doubts and changes. Others, the majority, seem to reject all interest in older doctrines and dogmas as repressive. Christianity, along with all world religions, is affected by this current cultural turmoil. But hopefully, youth seem today to be searching for practical demonstrations of honesty and truth. It was hopeful for the writer in his own search to become acquainted with the person and teaching of Kirpal singh, who pointed out demonstrated practical truths where only mental constructs were before in the Christian Western world. This blessing can be helpful to the agnostic, questioning majority of people who have no direction. Through Ruhani Satsang, the meeting of the seeker after personal spiritual truths, it can be shown and known that “God is not dead.”

 

Many people within and without organized religion have given up, i.e., are agnostic by default in facing the frustrations of life. They become bitter when the theories and teachings of the faith were not demonstrated. This is one reason the writer sought work outside the institutional church. He needed to help himself and others in finding integrated self-awareness, before God-awareness could come about. The difficulty for many persons is a lack of a reference point, a guided experience, by which they can patiently learn to know the reality of their own inner spiritual life. Kirpal Singh’s booklet, Man, Know thy self, is very important as a beginning, along with his book, prayer. Yet the experience itself, through Master’s meditation practice, is the real knowledge.

 

Secondly, believing Christians usually stop on the surface with social and cultural benefits. Master Kirpal Singh would not criticize people to stay and serve. However, emphases for deepening one’s spiritual life are often seen as “foreign”, even with Western leaders. Glen Clark, Frank Laubach, E. Stanley Jones, Sam Shoemaker, and other Protestant  spiritual leaders were often looked upon as “foreign”. Yet it seems these and other Christians of great magnitude had an awareness of Jesus as an “Easterner”, breaking cultural dogmas. E. Stanley Jones reflected this by beautifully calling his retreats in the United States “ashrams”, from the spirit he found serving many years in India.

 

Another barrier in this search is the human problem of lethargy. The Western world, as all other civilizations, has fallen into the cultural traditions of its immediate past. Pitirim Sorokin, the Russian sociologist at Harvard a few years ago, said we have substituted another religion in the last two hundred years in our “sensate culture”: the religion of the “good neighbor.” While this serves some social purpose, it does not endure in times of social turmoil as today.

 

Our institutions of religion, as in Jesus time and all others, aren’t able to produce the ideals set forth. Why? How might one renew one’s faith in oneself or Christianity? Kirpal Singh has shown that the “Human Bridge” is the vital one: “Wanted – reformers; not of others but of yourself!” These are powerful words, like Jesus :  “By your fruits you are known.” Kirpal Singh, again like Jesus, avoided all special privileges to divine right – the self imposed hierarchies of false prophets – when he said, “God made man and man made religions.” At this point the theoretical and doctrinal traps of religion are avoided, without discarding their eternal truths. No arguments ever gave new life. With Kirpal Singh, non-violence would include non-argument. No one can be convinced of a truth if he or she isn’t ready.

 

Confusions always come when theories or doctrines are added as rational attempts to “make sense” out of earlier positive experiences or events. We forget that beliefs are secondary to the experience, the person who acted in such a totally loving, extraordinary way. Jesus was called “The Christ” by Peter when he demonstrated such love. Later political allegiance or salvation was granted by the church on this second hand belief structure with the little feeling for no contact with the living Christ. Now people confuse the man Jesus with the Universal Christ power.

 

From many varied experiences and understandings, the writers in the early church developed the isolated doctrine of Christian Incarnation. The idea was not uniquely Christian, but often misused under political pressures, with a desire for group loyalty. Probably many in the new Testament times believed in reincarnation, as they thought Jesus was  Elijah or Elisha returned. Yet, a narrow view has played havoc in the pressures for conversion in the Western world, with some of the greatest persecutions and scapegoating of all history. This persecution has run from Constantine to Hitler in our own times, often in the name of religion, “keeping the faith pure.” Incarnation – the exclusive Christian application only to Jesus – some what like segregation in the southern United states, has had much negative attachment. The west is just now awakening to its karma or guilt, its inability to get contact with its origins in a truly loving, giving, saintly person. Jesus also had to push aside the pious critics: “Why do you call me good (Master) – there is none good but the Father.” His most frequently used term for himself was “son of man”, yet most Christians overemphasize the later segregating doctrine of the Virgin Birth (implied only “son of God”). Jesus, later in his ministry, told his disciples “greater things than these you shall do,” but they did not take him seriously. It seems that men, in their spiritual poverty, reject the inner power possibly through the Master power. In man’s rejection of his inner light, he persecutes others through his own blindness.

 

Some Christians writers have continually sought to overcome the separation of man from God. Some catholic mystics throughout the centuries have called us to be “little Christs”, to “Practice the presence of God”, to be “imitations of Christ”. The recent theologian Paul Tillich talked of the Christ in Jesus as “the new being”. He emphasized, experientially, that the new being was not one person but an awakening, a rebirth, touching personal life and transforming it wherever and whenever it happened. Tillich sought with this view, to help Christians to see the transforming experience as primary, the older focus on the historical Jesus as secondary. This was not to discount Jesus, but to find an inner Christ-even today, in order to have a living religion, instead of just historical traditions.

 

Jesus once was asked by his followers to criticize others for “casting out demons”. He refused to criticize any doctors or workers for helping people. Kirpal Singh also refused to Criticize other religious leaders in their work. His practical openness in doing one’s own work shows the “spirit of Christ” today, a continuing incarnation in the way of the Masters, a spiritual apostolic succession.”

 

God in his providence is not cheap. He has given great teachers to sincere seekers through the ages. We are fortunate today to have a living Master. Many Christians, in attempting to be faithful, avoid exploring through other teachers the depths of the living Christ today. This search within and without for the Christ the Master of life and death, is not an easy one. It sometimes means criticism for those within strict traditions. Yet this writer feels that the truths shown by Kirpal Singh can do nothing but verify the original teachings of Jesus, within and beneath the overlays of the centuries.

 

Many people today in the West are seeking a new view of their religion and a vital faith for themselves. Ruhani Satsang offers this experience to all, Christian and secular alike. A Christian should find a special fulfillment, to find the true life through daily struggles, through the death in life – the being born again that Jesus spoke of. The ever living Christ spirit is the same.

 

Jesus would want us to fulfill ourselves, his Kingdom in acknowledging the Christ, the New Being. We can discover him in spiritual leader today. Kirpal Singh is a Godman in the life of this writer. This is not giving up one Master for another. It is finding the Christian gospel fulfilled today in a living person, acknowledging the same God and father.