From jamesjs@unixg.ubc.ca Sat Mar 27 16:32:40 1999
Newsgroups: alt.meditation.shabda
Subject: (1/7) Jaimal Singh - A Great Saint
From: jamesjs@unixg.ubc.ca (James Shannon)
Date: 28 Mar 1999 00:32:40 GMT




                              A Great Saint
                         
                 BABA JAIMAL SINGH: HIS LIFE AND TEACHINGS   
                                          
                               [1838 - 1903]

                                     by

                            Sant Kirpal Singh Ji
                              
                               [Part 1 of 7]

                           First Edition,  1960
                           Second Edition, 1968
                           Third Edition,  1971
                          
                         ----Not Copyrighted----

                  

                   This music streams from a transcendent
                               plane within
                     And is caught by a soldier Saint.



                                Dedicated
                           to the Almighty God
                working through all Masters who have come
                     and Baba Sawan Singh Ji Maharaj
                           at whose lotus feet
                    the writer imbibed sweet elixir of
                           Holy Naam - the Word

     ---------------------------------------------------------------
    

                            ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

       
        Grateful thanks are due to all those who have, in one way
        or another, assisted in the publication of this book; but
        Shri Bhadra Sena and Vinod Ji may be mentioned in particular
        for their devoted labor which enabled the finalization of
        the manuscript.
                                             
                                                - KIRPAL SINGH

                 
                             *    *    *
                              
                              FOREWORD
 
 
  Sant Kirpal Singh, the author of this book, needs no introduction.
For the last decade and over he has been at Sawan Ashram, Delhi, and
throughout the length and breadth of the country and abroad, carrying
aloft the torch of pure spirituality for the uplift of humanity. The
call comes to many; but few choose to be chosen. All of us are so
absorbed in meeting the demands of mundane existence on physical and
mental levels that we have little time and thought left for higher
things of the spirit. Talk of self-realization and God-realization
more often than not sounds as mere empty verbiage with no rational
content and substance. The world is too much with us.
 
  A book like this can be truly helpful in awakening in us the desire
for treading the path that leads to enlightenment and liberation from
the cycle of birth and death. It is not merely a brief life story of
a great man, but of a Godman whose impeccable purity, deep humility
and ceaseless devotion to the God-Path at the bidding of a great
Master, which lifted him to peerless spiritual heights, can serve as
an inspiring example for innumerable souls puffing and panting in the
struggle of life, and wishing to be freed from the bondage of mind and
body.
 
   A truly great man needs no other tribute than an account of his life
and work. An attempt has been made to collect in this volume the main
events of Baba Ji's life history and an outline of his teachings as
they have been recorded in his letters and in published and unpublished
accounts left by his disciples and admirers, chief among them being
Maharaj Sawan Singh Ji, his spiritual heir, Baba Surain Singh, Gyani
Partap Singh, etc. It is a story marked by an amazing intensity of
spiritual yearning in its first movement, an equally amazing application
and one-pointed concentration in the next, and a no less remarkable
humility and selflessness allied to supreme spiritual exaltation in its
last and concluding phase.

  The author characterizes the Sant Mat practiced and preached by Baba
Jaimal Singh Ji as a science, and well he might, because he himself is
a distinguished exponent of it, who has been initiated into its
mystique at the feet of a great Saint; and whose mastery of it is
widely acknowledged and acclaimed, as demonstrated by his election as
President of the World Fellowship of Religions on the crest of a wave
of universal ovation and applause in which the sages, scholars and
savants from several parts of the world lustily joined.
 
  The book is an endeavor to present, for the first time in English, the
biography of one of the most outstanding Saints of our times, one who
deserves to be better known than he is. The story is a memorable one,
and is of permanent value in the annals of man's spiritual history. It
deserves to be read by every seeker after God. I am confident that those
who read this book will not fail to be inspired and uplifted, and will
begin to see that spirituality is not what it is generally supposed to
be, but is a science whose Masters have appeared at all times and in all
places, and which may be learned at the feet of an adept wherever he
may be found, irrespective of sects and gaddis; the final touchstone of
his competence being his ability to give direct inner experience to his
disciples here and now, and not in some future life.

New Delhi                          RADHA KRISHNA KHANNA
August 8, 1960

             
                              *    *    *
                              
                          
                           TABLE OF CONTENTS
                          
  
   PART ONE:  THE GREAT TRADITION
  
   The God-way
   The rich heritage
   Rediscovering lost strands


   PART TWO:  BABA JI - A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
  
   Early years
   The great search
   The consummation
   The Soldier Saint
   The Torch Bearer

         
   PART THREE:  BABA JI & THE SCIENCE SPIRITUAL
  
   The creation
   The Path of Liberation
   The Perfect Master
   Faith, love and self-surrender
   The life without
   The life within  
   An ancient science
   Surat Shabd Yoga
   The Satguru or the True Master
   The Gurmukh or the genuine disciple
   The outer and the inner

              
   GLOSSARY OF ORIENTAL TERMS

   
____________________________________________________________________________  
   
   
                   
                      PART ONE:  THE GREAT TRADITION



THE GOD-WAY
 
  The Way back to God is not of man's making but of
God's, and it is free from artifice and artificiality. God
draws man back to Himself through His chosen elect, the
Godman, to whom the secret of the Path (the God-way)
is revealed directly or made manifest by some Sant Satguru,
for the benefit of the people.

  The Masters, the Messiahs, the teachers and prophets
all the world over fall into two categories with a separate
mission assigned to each. There are, on the one hand,
those whose sole purpose is to keep the world going
harmoniously; and on the other hand there are those who
are commissioned to lead back souls who are ripe for
home-going, and yearn for an early return to the Source
Spiritual from which they parted long ago before drifting
downward to the material plane. In the first category fall
all the reformers, and in the second such Sants and Sadhs
as are competent to reveal the knowledge of God and to
make manifest the power of God in man.
 
  The process of ascent back to the Source is just the
reverse of that of descent down to the physical plane, and
one has therefore to reintegrate himself, to gather all
his wandering wits at the still point of the soul - in
between and behind the two eyes - where time and Timelessness
intersect, before the spirit comes to its own and launches
upon the Sea of Life for an inner journey homeward. This,
in fact, has been the sole theme of all sages and seers
everywhere. None of them, however, wanted to set up any
new creed or institutionalized religion. While referring to
the existence of so many religions and creeds in the world,
all bristling with bewildering theories and conflicting
dogmas, Hazur Baba Sawan Singh Ji Maharaj used to remark,
"There are already so many wells all over, why should
one dig any more pitfalls and make confusion worse
confounded?"
 
  God made man in His own image; and man made religions,
each in his own image, and in his zeal made fetishes of
them all. True religion in its inception is fresh and simple,
like a newly-born babe bubbling over with vital life, but
in course of time, like any other thing, it develops into
an Institution; and with that it begins to deteriorate, tends
to lose its native vital elasticity born of the living touch of
the Master-spirit, and gradually comes to acquire a socio-
economic appearance. Instead of serving as a silken bond
of love between man and man, it becomes a source of constant
strife, rancour and ill will, tearing class from class and
nation from nation. When the cup of human misery is filled
to the brim, then comes the Saviour with the message of hope,
redemption and fulfillment for strife-torn humanity.  He
tries to redress the festering social wounds and preaches
oneness and equality to man in order to restore the
equilibrium in the scales of human values.

Alongside this, his main objective is to save human souls
for a higher purpose: a true life of the spirit as
distinguished from that of the flesh. Such indeed has been
the goal of great Masters like Zoroaster, Mahavira, Buddha,
Christ, Mohammed, Kabir and Nanak, each in his own time,
according to the then prevailing conditions and people's
aspirations; for they always try to lead them from the
line of least resistance, and dole out the basic goodness in
terms that may readily appeal to, and fit in with, their
mental make-up for a step higher in the process of evolution
or unfolding of the spirit.  This is what Saints do for the
general run of mankind, deriving their inspiration from the
great reservoir of the spirit within, which is the same for
all.


THE RICH HERITAGE

 In the religious thought of modern India the period from
the middle of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth
century is one of outstanding importance. It is an era in
which an attempt was made to reorient religion and present
it in its simplest form: the form of true faith, universal
love and single-minded devotion as against the rigors of
priestly ritualism and fanaticism leading to intolerance
and bigotry. Among the great teachers of the period we find
figures like Ramananda, with his principal disciples drawn
from various walks of life (Raja Pipa, Ravidas the cobbler,
Saina the barber, Kabir the weaver, Dhanna the jat, Narhari,
Sukha Padmavati, Sursura and his wife, etc.); Vallabhacharya,
the famous exponent of the Krishna cult; Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
of Nadia in Bengal, with his characteristic stress on
Hari-bhole or chanting of the Lord's name; Namdev, the
calico printer in Maharashtra; and the great Kabir and Nanak
in the North.

None of them laid much stress on idol worship and observance
of outer religious forms and symbols. Self-purity, love and
inner yearning were their constant themes. Namdev said:

        Love for him who filleth my heart shall
          never be sundered;
        Nama applied his heart to the True Name.
        As the love between a child and his mother,
        So is my soul imbued in God.

Kabir likewise said:
   
    It is needless to ask of a Saint the caste
      to which he belongs;
    The barber has sought God, the washerman
      and the carpenter;
    Even Ravidas was a seeker after God.
    The Rishi Swapacha was a tanner by caste.
    Hindus and Muslims alike have achieved that
      End, where remains no mark of distinction.

Again he proclaimed:
   
    It is not by fasting and repeating the
      prayers and the creed
    That one goeth to heaven;
    The inner veil of the temple of Mecca
    Is in man's heart, if the Truth be known.

So spoke Nanak:
   
    Abide in the pure amidst
      the impurity of the world;
    Thus shalt thou find the way to religion.

This movement, however, attained its greatest heights
at the hands of Kabir (1398-1518) and his younger
contemporary, Nanak (1469-1539). Both of them rose above
the fetters of the world and transcended religious barriers
and so were acclaimed alike by Hindus and Muslims both.

Their teachings mainly centered around God and man and
the relationship between the two. Both of them were
exponents of the Surat Shabd Yoga (Yoga of the Sound
Current or communion with the Holy Word), and their
writings extol this as the crown of life. If we study
the essential core of any of the religious teachings in
its pristine purity and truth as it appeared in the original
sayings of the Masters - what they themselves actually
practiced and what they gave to their chosen disciples
(Gurmukhs or apostles) - we cannot fail to get an insight
into the reality that they were, one and all, in one form
or another, votaries of the transcendental seeing and hearing,
no matter at what level; though to the laymen they gave
their subtle thoughts in the form of parables only, as
otherwise they would not hear and much less understand
their teachings.

Such world teachers serve as beacon lights in the stormy
sea and try to save humanity from floundering in the
quicksands of time. Children of Light as they are, they
come to dispel the darkness of the soul and are naturally
called Guru, the dispeller of darkness: darkness born of
ignorance of the true values of life. They have unbounded
love for all religions and religious heads and have equal
respect for all scriptures. Theirs is a universal fold that
takes in, in one long sweep, the entire humanity with all
its variegated patterns and colors, and steeps them equally
in the love of God. Kabir tells us in this context:
   
    All our sages are worthy of veneration,
    But my devotion is for One who has mastered
      the Word.

He further tells us that he, with his divine message,
incarnated from age to age for the benefit of the people.
He appeared in all the four Yugas or cycles of time: first
as Sat Sukrat, then as Karna Mai, again as Maninder, and
finally as Kabir in Kali Yuga, the present phase of time.

 Guru Nanak also ceaselessly tells us of the great
importance and supreme efficacy of the method of Surat
Shabd Yoga as the means of salvation:

    Like a lotus standing aloft out of the muddy
      pool,
    Or like a royal swan that flies high and dry out
      of water,
    So does one by communion with the Word cross
      unscathed the fearsome sea of life.

This in brief is the grand message coming down to us
from the dawn of creation, chanting out the path Godward.
All the Indian Saints and many Christian mystics practiced
the inner science and contacted individual souls with the
saving lifeline within. (*1) 

(*1. For fuller details in this connection, the reader is
referred to "Naam or Word" by the same author, a study that
gives a full account of the teachings of the Masters in
all ages.)

Time and again, as people forget the reality, God's grace
materializes Itself in a human body, called a Saint, to
guide erring humanity in the time-honored eternal way.
It is the privilege and the prerogative that the Most High
confers, and this authority is passed on according to His
behests. "The wind bloweth where it listeth" and no one can
lay down or predict any rules of succession, place or time.

This rich heritage goes from eye to eye and refuses to be
bound to traditional gaddis (so-called sanctified seats and
sacred places), nor does it depend on human sanctions of
temporal or clerical character. Guru Nanak, with his seat at
Kartarpur, passed on his spiritual heritage to Bhai Lehna,
who, as Guru Angad, shifted to Khadur Sahib; while his
successor Guru Amar Das was obliged to transfer his seat
to Goindwal.

With Guru Ram Das, Amritsar came into being, and later
on became the headquarters of Guru Arjan. Thus we see
that there is nothing special about places as such. They
owe their sanctity to the sanctifying influence of the
Saints who pass their time at one place or another. "All
is holy where devotion kneels." It is not the places that
grace men but men the places.



REDISCOVERING LOST STRANDS

  The stream of life rolls on ceaselessly in the endless
course of time; the power of the Timeless appears and
disappears in the realm of relativity.

  Before proceeding with the life sketch of Baba Jaimal
Singh Ji, it would be worth our while to have a peep into
the background that made him what he was. It was indeed
the power of Swami Ji that flowed through him in whatever
he did and wherever he worked, for he was wholly lost to
himself and given over to the Divine in him.

 In order to understand things in their proper perspective
and link up the history of our spiritual heritage, we will
have to go back to Guru Gobind Singh, the last of the ten
Gurus in the line of succession to Guru Nanak.
 
  The Rani (Queen) of one Ratan Rao Peshwa, accompanied
by Bhai Nand Lal, came to the feet of Guru Gobind Singh
for refuge. (*2)
 
 (*2 Cf. Shri Des Raj, Hindu Sikh Ithras.)

  Guru Gobind Singh traveled widely, penetrating the
Himalayas in the North and going to Deccan in the South.
During his extensive travels, he met and lived with the
ruling family of the Peshwas and initiated some of its
members into the inner science. It is said that one
Ratnagar Rao of the Peshwa family was initiated and
authorized to carry on the work by Guru Gobind Singh.

Sham Rao Peshwa, the elder brother of Baji Rao Peshwa,
the then ruling chief, who must have contacted Ratnagar Rao,
showed a remarkable aptitude for the spiritual path and
made rapid headway. In course of time, this young scion
of the royal family settled in Hathras, a town thirty-three
miles away from Agra in the Uttar Pradesh, and came to
be known as Tulsi Sahib (1763-1843), the famous author
of Ghat Ramayana, the science of the inner life-principle
pervading alike in man and nature. The vita lampada of
Spirituality was passed on by Tulsi Sahib to Swami Shiv
Dayal Singh Ji (1818-1878).
 
  The link between Tulsi Sahib of Hathras and Swami Ji
of Agra is likely to be overlooked, but there can be little
doubt of it. From the manuscript account of Baba Surain
Singh, the Jivan Charitar Swamiji Maharaj by Chacha
Partap Singh, and the book entitled Correspondence with
Certain Americans by Shri S. D. Maheshwari, we learn
that Swami Ji's parents were the disciples of the Hathras
Saint and frequently visited him at his home for darshan
and attended his discourses whenever he visited Agra. It
was he who named the sons of Lala Dilwali Singh Seth;
that is, Shiv Dayal Singh, Brindaban and Partap Singh.
Before the birth of the eldest child he prophesied that a
great Saint was about to manifest himself in their home,
and after his birth he told the parents that they need no
longer come to Hathras for the Lord Almighty had come
in their midst. (*3)

 (*3 Chacha Partap Singh, Jivan Charitar Swamiji Maharaj,
   p. 6; S.D. Maheshwari, Correspondence with Certain
   Americans, p. 221.)

  The Hathras Saint took a keen and lively interest in
casting the life of Swami Ji in his own mold. He initiated
the young child at a very early age and Swami Ji, on the
last day of his life, told his disciples that he had been
practicing the inner science from the age of six. (*4)
 
  Swami Ji's veneration for the Hathras Saint becomes  
abundantly clear from his life. He held Tulsi Sahib's
disciples in great respect, honoring among them especially
Sadhu Girdhari Dass, whom he supported during his last
years. Once when the Sadhu fell ill at Lucknow, Swami Ji
hurried there from Agra and helped him to contact the
inner Sound Current, with which he had lost touch (owing
presumably to some past karma), before his death. (*5)
 
  Again, Swami Ji very often gave to his followers
instances from the life of his great predecessor, to teach
them the importance of virtues like patience, forbearance,
forgiveness and Godliness. (*6)

 Before his passing away in 1843, Tulsi Sahib bequeathed
his spiritual heritage to Swami Ji. For six months Tulsi
Sahib lay in a state of samadhi (spiritual trance) lost in
Divine consciousness. It was only after Swami Ji had paid
him a visit that Tulsi Sahib left his mortal frame. Baba
Garib Das, one of the earliest disciples of Tulsi Sahib,
confirmed that the spiritual mantle had been entrusted by his
Master to Munshi Ji (as Swami Ji was then known on account
of his great learning in Persian). (*7) Swami Ji was to
spend fifteen years of his life in almost incessant abhyasa
(spiritual practice) in a small closet.

 (*4 Chacha Partap Singh, op. cit., p. 109.
  *5 Ibid., pp. 33-34          
  *6 Ibid., pp. 93-96.
  *7 Jivan Charitar Babuji Maharaj, Vol. III, p. 29.)

  After the passing away of Tulsi Sahib, Swami Ji continued
to visit Hathras to honor the memory of his preceptor. On
one such occasion, we are told, when Swami Ji went to Hathras,
the heat was so great that his disciples Rai Saligram and
Baba Jiwan Lal had to carry him between themselves over the
last lap of the journey where no transport was available and
the ground was very uneven. (*8)
 
  The great respect that Swami Ji displayed for the
Granth Sahib embodying the teachings of Guru Nanak
and his successors seems ultimately to have been derived
from family tradition. The recitation of the Sikh scriptures
was an article of faith in the family. His father, Lala
Dilwali Singh (a Sahejdhari khatri Sikh, belonging to the
order of Nanak Panthis), was devotedly attached to Jap
Ji, Raho Ras and Sukhmani (Sikh scriptures), which he
read from day to day with great religious fervor and deep
reverence. A copy of Sukhmani in Persian script, in the
hand of Swami Ji's grandfather, Seth Maluk Chand, at one
time Diwan of Dholpur State, is still preserved in the
archives of Soamibagh. (*9)

 (*8 Ajodhya Parshad, Jivan Charitar Hazur Maharaj, p. 36.
  *9 Chacha Partap Singh, op. cit., p. 5.)

The essence of Sant Mat thus came to permeate the very
being of Swami Ji. In later years, at least on one occasion,
while discoursing on the Jap Ji at his home in Punni Gali,
Swami Ji clearly acknowledged his spiritual debt to the
Punjab, referring to Nanak and his successors as the
fountainhead of Spirituality and to Paltu Sahib and
Tulsi Sahib as great subsequent exponents of the inner
science. We will deal with this incident while tracing
the life of Baba Jaimal Singh Ji in the succeeding
chapter.
 
  His younger brother, Rai Brindaban Singh, a postmaster
in Ajodhia, was a close disciple of Baba Madhodas of
Mahant Dera Rano Pali in Ajodhia. He, like his elder
brother Shiv Dayal Singh, had a firm faith in and a great
regard for Gurbani. He was continually engaged in the
sweet remembrance of the Lord (Bishambar) whose praises
he chanted with a beautiful refrain, as is evident
from his compositions under the caption Wah-e-Guru
Nama in his Urdu book Bahar-i-Brindaban: (*10)
   
    O Brindaban! Leave aside all else and do the
      Japa of the great name Wah-e-Guru.
    It shall not only purify your body, mind and
      soul,
    But give you salvation, peace and happiness
      besides.

Again, we learn that when the end of Lala Dilwali Singh
drew near, his son Shiv Dayal Singh (Swami Ji), sitting
near his bedstead, began reciting the Gurbani, so as to
keep his father's attention steadily fixed therein at
that crucial time.
 
  Giani Partap Singh, basing himself on Baba Bhola Singh's
Radhasoami Mat Darpan, tells us in his study of world
religions (*11) how Swami Ji in course of time became a
frequent visitor to the holy Sikh shrine of Mai Than at
Agra, commemorating the visit of the ninth Guru, Tegh
Bahadur; where Sant Mauj Parkash, originally known as
Didar Singh of the Nirmala order and a great Sanskrit
scholar, used to give lucid expositions of the Gurbani or
Sikh scriptures. It was because of his close association
with Sant Mauj Parkash that Swami Ji learned Gurbani
and its significance in Surat Shabd Yoga, and he began
using this very shrine for his discourses on Gurbani.
Chacha Partap Singh in his life sketch has given in
rapturous terms a graphic description of one such
discourse:

 (*10 Lucknow: Nawalkishore Printing Press.
  *11 Sansar Da Dharmic Ithas.)
 
 "It was about eight in the morning that the Maharaj
one day went to the Gurdwara in Mai Than. After
reciting a shabd or two from the Granth Sahib, he
began expounding the subject. In a rich and sonorous
voice, the sublime thoughts seemed to flow from him
like endless waves from an inexhaustible reservoir
within. I was so overwhelmed by the sweep of his words
that all at once I felt lifted above the body and
bodily environments, lost to all that was of the world.
From that very day I was a changed man altogether,
with an intense longing for the Divine, fully convinced
of the greatness of Swami Ji and of his holy mission."
(*l2)

   (*12 Chacha Partap Singh, op. cit., p. 52.)

   After some time Swami Ji shifted the venue of his
teachings to his private apartments in Punni Gali and
continued his discourses from the Granth Sahib (the copy
he used was brought by Hazur Sawan Singh Ji from Agra
and is still treasured in the archives of Dera Baba Jaimal
Singh at Beas in the Punjab). This system of addressing
private gatherings at his home continued for quite a long
time; but on Basant Panchmi Day in the year 1861, the
floodgates of Surat Shabd Yoga as revived in this age by
Kabir and his contemporary Guru Nanak, and firmly
entrenched by his successors in the Gurbani, were now
thrown open by Swami Ji to the general public.
  
   Lest there still be any doubt lingering in the minds of
the skeptics, Swami Ji who till the last continued initiating
people into the secret of the traditional five-melodied
Melody (Panch Shabd Dhunkar Dhun), significantly enough
on the last day of his departure from the earth-plane,
cleared his position beyond the least shadow of doubt
by declaring:
  
   "My path was the path of Sat Naam and Anami Naam.
The Radhasoami faith is of Saligram's making, but let it
also continue. And let the Satsang flourish and prosper."

Among Swami Ji's trusted and devoted disciples was Rai
Saligram Sahib Bahadur, popularly known in later times
as Hazur Maharaj, after he came to occupy the spiritual
headship. While Hazur Maharaj, after the passing away of
Swami Ji, continued his discourses at Pipal Mandi in the
heart of Agra city, Partap Singh, the younger brother of
Swami Ji, generally called Chacha Sahib (respected uncle),
carried on the work in Radhasoami Garden, three miles
away from Agra city.

Another disciple, Baba Jaimal Singh Ji, one of the earliest
and most spiritually advanced disciples of Swami Ji, as
directed by the great Master himself, settled down at Beas
in the Punjab to revitalize the work of Spirituality and
to repay in some measure the debt that the world owed to
Guru Nanak. We will now examine in some detail the life
and work of this distinguished spiritual son of Swami Ji.


                      [End of Part 1 of 7]

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