A Personal Experience with Sant Kirpal Singh


   by Peter Holleran


      "Do not question me about the grief of fruitless waiting;
      That is a long story, not simple in telling." - Sant Darshan Singh


   The following is highly personal and unique. It represents the unfinished story of a soul, and thus is also a prayer in written form. Some of it may surprise, frighten, or confuse a new initiate on this path, or alternately arouse pity for my own situation and dilemma. None of these results are intended. For others, satiated by their experience, weary of struggle or burdened with doubt, there may be a gleam of recognition and perhaps the answering of a question or two. Essentially, however, one should take this account as an example of the skillful means of a true Master in the early 1970's adapting his teaching and teaching methods to those who came to Him, and also of how things may work out differently than one expects, and what the meaning of that may be, in the mysterious play of God. In the end it is but one story, written with that of many in mind.....


   The Beginning

   When I first came to “the path”, it promised a way out of a life that, after a few carefree years (when memories and perceptions of celestial glory had not yet completely faded, and I still perceived a luminosity in the external world), seemed to become only inner pain and a dark enclosure of depression for the most part. I remember having a particular inner tightness before falling asleep at night and also in dreams, at a very early age, maybe four or five, as if I could not cry out for help, for fear of something or other. This despite having a faith in God and feeling movement of the soul in the dream state and other times. I believe this feeling of tightness or inner clenching may have started at a deep layer in the body at birth, or even before, as no conscious memories or efforts to recall them have been successful. My astrologer said he has yet to meet a Pisces who wanted to be born. My birth was a late-night Caesarian due to a medical emergency known as placenta previa, undoubtedly a rude shock to the system. This feeling just described, I believe, covered over in later years by a fear of my father that kept me bottled up even more inside, became built into my body as a chronic emotional state, something I still deal with more than I would like. Although I loved my parents, sister, and grandparents very much, after the age of ten I began to go dead inside. There was no fun anymore. I didn’t know exactly how it happened, but the grandparents had died, their homes which were a great source of joy now gone, my father became angry and aloof, with periodic bouts of alcoholism, and my two parents basically just living together without affection. My older sister moved out, and I was essentially alone, except for a mother's love, in a tense household. The silences at dinner were deafening. It is amazing to look back and realize how a child often doesn't even recognize all of this, yet still suffers it internally.

   I distinctly remember one day at a friend’s house having a subtle shift, a new sensation in my chest, one of dryness, implosion, restriction, a feeling of being cut off from feeling, which never went away. Also particularly remembered was a day in the fall walking home from school when a new sense of being all alone arose inside, which also thereafter remained in some form as an identity. I could retreat there and not suffer so much not being part of the crowd, whatever crowd I wanted to be a part of. Besides discovering a genuine desire for truth, I believe these feelings were a primary motivation for my studying philosophy in college, looking for answers to a primarily personal dilemma. I thus conclude that I escaped into my head to avoid the feelings in my body. The mystical teachings in a more sophisticated but similar manner seemed to justify such an approach, in fact, which I now know is not the right way to begin spiritual life.

   There was alot of obsessive sexual desire that arose as a teenager, which was not true desire, but only a response to inner pain and contraction of life energy and emotion that I could not deal with, understand, or to a great extent even acknowledge or recognize. For the astrologers out there, a satisfactory explanation for this is a natal configuration of Moon in Scorpio square Pluto in the eighth house, a fixed square representing strong tendencies from previous lives that were now to be dealt with and gotten rid of once and for all. Although this obsessive sexual craving was to go away in a seemingly miraculous fashion when I learned to meditate, it was still lying coiled inside waiting for resolution, as I was all too painfully to learn a few years later. Four planets in Pisces - Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars - also made for an escapist disposition that was probably not all too pleased with the prospects of existing in a physical body, although, being in the third house, were to give me the inherited disposition towards all of this writing.

   At Cornell I soon became interested in studying philosophy. The discipline at that institution, while the most prestigious philosophy department among the Ivy League schools, was a really distorted, snooty, holier than thou approach which was called "doing philosophy." This was exemplified by course titles such as "philosophy of literature," "philosophy of history", philosophy of mathematics," "philosophy of language," and even "philosophy of logic." The king among philosophers virtually worshipped by the department was Ludwig Wittgenstein. Not the pursuit of truth, but linguistic analysis was the name of the game. To a naive young student this all was quite intriguing and intimidating. I was convinced these professors knew something that I didn't, and that we were involved in a real quest for knowledge. We studied Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer, E.G. Moore, and the "British empiricists" (Berkeley, Locke, and Hume). This heady approach to a noble subject was epitomized by a thirty-five page article that appeared in the philosophy department's journal entitled, "The Meaning of the Word 'The'." In addition, the only professor teaching courses that closely symbolized anything like real philosophy - that of the ancient Greeks - was denied tenure as being not "rigorous enough. By my junior year I had amassed fifty-five credit hours in philosophy, enough for two majors, and was headed towards a career path in the same. All of this came crumbling down at a rapid rate when two factors entered my life.

   Aside from the fact that a little hashish and a few acid trips made this type of analytical game seem somewhat empty (!), I happened onto the writings of Paul Brunton, in particular, A Search in Secret India and the Wisdom of the Overself. This was like a nuclear bomb in my thinking. India, oh India! Even the subjective idealism of Bishop Berkeley, which I had tediously studied, was given new life by Paul Brunton's doctrine of mentalism. The world was in our minds, and a projection of God, who could be realized. What amazing thoughts! There was a philosophy that was real, and rooted in truth, and more than just the endeavor of some pipe smoking arm-chair intellectuals!

   Second, after dozing off one day in an easy chair in the college library, I awoke to find a copy of The Crown of Life: A Study in Yoga by Sant Kirpal Singh in my lap, along with information on public "satsangs" being held nearby on the path of Sant Mat, or the "path of the masters". The picture on the frontspiece of this book struck me as a numinous image of what a man of God would look like. My world did a 180 degree turn. I coasted in my last year and a half at Cornell taking painting and drawing, music, and "independent research in mathematics 590", which was really astrology at the downtown American Brahman spiritual bookstore, courtesy of a very liberal mathematics professor who will remain unnamed in case he is still teaching.

   After thus awakening to the possibility of spiritual realization and studying many eastern doctrines, including Sant Mat, I became very disciplined and channelled all of my energies and neurosis into that spiritual path as I understood it. Meditation on the inner light and sound appealed to me, but I now realize that a major part of that appeal was because, as opposed to other teachings, such as Zen or Vipassana, Shabd Yoga promised a way OUT of the body, and thus perfectly fit my need for release, based on a felt discomfort IN the body. I am not saying it is not a legitimate path, since we all leave the body one day, only that my pain was a major reason for my decision to pursue it. I have since come to realize that all seekers do not feel that way, nor is their experience of the path felt that way, nor even do all paths speak of the way or the ultimate goal in those escapist terms.

   One morning in early 1970 I made a conscious decision to give up sex, drugs (which I had only experimented with a handful of times, and see as having been a part of my search, like many of my generation), and become a strict vegetarian.

   Soon afterwards while reading in the college library at Cornell one day I discovered that all of a sudden my attention seemed centered in a different part of my head, more abstracted and interiorized, deeper towards the center, so that inner concentration became possible. I began to take up a meditation practise and some inner light began to appear once in a while, and some inner sound, too.

   At my actual initiation by Kirpal Singh in December, 1970 (conducted by the master's representative Ruth Seader, whose son Richard was my roommate at college for a year), I didn’t experience much of any inner light, but the Masters say the real initiation is the thought transference from the Master, and a fair amount of things started to happen. Several significant sleep experiences of sound including a loud pealing of the big bell overhead (which I know heralds the threshold of death but in its ecstatic quality intuitively felt like a flashback to the time of my birth or thereabouts) and a transport without sight over what sounded and smelled like a meadow of celestial bees, and a sound current that, however faint, was always there, offered hope for the future. I also once had an audible preview of a hell realm experience, when one night I sensed my soul or attention begin to be dragged DOWN, wherever that is, and I heard ball and chain ghoulish sounds and groans coming from that place, if indeed it was a place. "Simran" (mantra repetition of the "five charged names corresponding to the deities of the five major inner planes) and desparate calling on the Master seemed to bring me back from the brink. I actually had quite a few somewhat frightening experiences when upon falling asleep I felt an inner, downward pull before quickly reawakening.

   I and many others also noted the smell of the archtypal rose, especially later when in Kirpal Singh's presence. There was also one spontaneous experience of partial withdrawal from the body in meditation during the day where I felt, not that I was going anywhere, but just that I was resolving into myself. Most meditations were not of this quality where the ego was so quiescent, but this time I had a glimpse that inner experience would not truly be happening to “me”, just a dropping away of vehicles or koshas while the Soul remained unchanged. That insight was remembered as unique, and planted a seed of inquiry regarding the concept of "soul travel" as sometimes understood in such mystic paths as Sant Mat. My current understanding is that the value of such an exerience lies not in the experience in itself, in its repeatability, but in the wisdom gained thereby. I realize that in a real sense there is nowhere to go and no one to go anywhere. But that is now, not then.

   I applied myself diligently to the teachings and meditation, as best as I understood them, many hours more than the minimum, and felt His presence in many subtle ways, even though meditation results still were meager. Looking back, I think there were nights when I would sit at the foot of my bed meditating and later wake up in the bed. As naive as it sounds I sometime believe that the Master must have carried me.

   I realize now, however, how unprepared I was for initiation according to traditional criteria and that it was only His grace for accepting me. Nevertheless, I longed to develop love for the Master as described in the writings of the saints and to become receptive to Him. During Kirpal Singh's 1972 U.S.A. tour I felt His radiation and grace and received many loving glances, but still, had great difficultly going inside, and remember having an awful feeling in my body, which by that time I had had for years. The inner knot was so strong that the only times I ever had any apparently fruitful meditations, especially in the mornings, were if I would almost fall asleep thereby forgettng the body momentarily.

   Only His inward-drawing spiritual grace provided any relief in the form of my bypassing the karmas of this body and feeling any better. And that experience re-enforced the teachings of this path that maintained that going within was the only way to feel good and have any peace. In the meantime, however, the teaching provided little at all in the way of a sadhana to deal with the karmas of the body and psyche which were causing most of my pain, teaching only a meditation to bypass all of that, which in turn, however, I now see, made appreciable spiritual progress difficult. As mentioned, I had never felt good in the body itself, which many people do seem capable of, despite its impermanence. In retrospect I realize that at the time I had little real love or true feeling and was very self-centered, due to some kind of core wound and despite my best spiritual efforts. It is also obvious that my ego had only taken on another cloak, a “spiritual” one, that in itself would prevent any real awakening (jnana), true meditation, or even feeling. But back then such insights didn’t exist for me. Books like "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism" by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, had not yet come out, nor had the non-dualists arrived.

   Before my initiation, and off and on afterwards, I was a visitor, as mentioned, to the American Brahman Bookstore in Ithaca, New York, where Anthony Damiani (later founder of Wisdom’s Goldenrod Center for Philosophic Studies ) held regular classes and meditations with students from Cornell and the surrounding area. I had read Paul Brunton’s works to date, including The Search in Secret India, The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga, and The Wisdom of the Overself, and many other texts such as Ashtavakra Gita, Talks with Ramana Maharshi, etc., which raised many questions in my mind even at that stage about the nature of realization, the distinction between the heart chakra and the Heart center spoken of by sages that was the source of the “I”, the idea of mentalism, that all is a manifestation within Mind, the relationship between the traditional forms of samadhi, particularly nirvikalpa (ascended formless absorption) and sahaj (the "natural state"), the hierarchy of planes of creation spoken of in Sant Mat, the nature of the ultimate goal itself, and even the Zen concept of makyo, or that all lights and sounds are illusion. There seemed many valid questions in my mind that might determine the nature of the sadhana to be adopted and the understanding to be cultivated even though I as yet had achieved nothing spiritually. As I could not resolve these myself I wrote to Kirpal Singh and sent a few pages of questions, numbered sequentially. I asked about everything above, as well as Ramana, Aurobindo, the nature of lights and visions, sahaj, the Void, and more. He replied as follows (excerpted):

   “Vivek or discrimination will come to you on its own as you progress on the Path and not by intellection. No body has ever solved nor can solve the riddle of life logically or philosophically. You have to resolve it by dissolving yourself into it. That in brief is the secret of success on the Path - and it will be enough for you to understand and assimilate it. It does not mean that there is no answer to your enqueries. but natural unfoldment is better and more stable than worldly exposition, for words, as you know, are too poor to expound the Worldless Word in all its details and any attempt to do so is likely to make confusion worse confounded in the brain already at a feverish white-heat pitch. Maulana Rumi, in his famous Masnavi goes to the extent of saying:

   It is not fitting that I tell thee more,

   For the Stream-bed cannot hold the sea.

   I, for one, do not mean to striffle your honest questions re your personal difficulties on the Path...All I wish to convey to you is that it is not possible to know everything of the Divine Path when you hardly know yet what you are and who you are.

   Self-Realization is just a half-way house in the Path of God-Realization. When you have grasped the human in you, you will automatically know what is what and be able to understand and reconcile what other Mahatmas and other great souls like Shankaracharya, Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi and Shri Aurobindo and Baba Jaimal Singh said, each in his own good time and on particular occasions. Unless you rise to their stature and visualise the times and climes in which they spoke, the time and tenor of the people whom they spoke, you will just be making hazardous guesses only on the level of your intelligence. Unless you see the Midnight Sun, nothing will be clear to you.

   I would, in your overall interest, advise you to unburden yourself of all the mental load on your head and like a little child start afresh and do things, carefuly avoiding all the shoals and sandbanks in the Sea of Spirituality lest you get bogged in the way. Cosmic and Super-cosmic consciousness are much higher states. Self-consciousness comes first and foremost. It is the foundation and the bed-rock and must, therefore, be strengthened to raise the super-structure thereon.

   ‘Self-enquiry’ for instance is just the same thing as ‘self-knowledge’. In both , one has to go deep into the essence lying below the ego-consciousness. The lights and sounds to be avoided as taught by some sages [this referred to my question of the Zen concept of "makyo"] are those of the elementals, arising from concentration on the bodily centers below the eyes, and associated with different elements of which the body is composed.

   Again, the eye-focus is the seat of the soul. Some call it the heart-centre because the heart is the central organ in the body, maintaining and sustaining the entire system. The heart-lotus of the Saints is the Aggya-chakra above the white sepulcher of the body. Do you not realise that when a person wakes up after sleep, eyes are the first to awaken and become conscious of the surroundings and gradually the consciousness travels below bringing into activity the lower sense organs?   [Ramana Maharshi stated things differently, saying that first there is a moment of awakeness (reality), then the birth of the 'I'-thought, then the light of the Self travels upwards to the brain or shasrar from the Heart, before manifesting as, or spreading downwards to, the body and world]

   Yes, any chakra can be used as the means of concentration but why not use the highest - the one lying above the body where you are sitting at the intersection of the physical and subtle, the time and the Timeless and push headlong above instead of descending to one or the other of the centres below the eyes and then start afresh from below?

   The Void, the 4 different types of Samadhis with varying stages in each, the Nirvana and so many other terms are highly technical for you at this stage to grasp fully. As a novitiate one should be content with the simple problems just as two and two make four and take them for granted. As to why and wherefrom of each thing, it will come in due course like an open book.

   I may like you to be patient and persevering for the present. Your ‘all encompassing desire for understanding’ will surely have its chance one day....

   With all love and kind thoughts, yours affectionately,
          Kirpal Singh."

   While this reply certainly was a realistic assessment of my condition as far as it goes, it did not directly answer my questions, especially the chief ones regarding the path of ascent versus the path of jnana, or the transcendental Heart versus the sushumna (the subtle yogic channel parallel to the spinal column), the ajna-chakra (or "spiritual or third eye"), and the higher worlds. The "Self-enquiry" of the Maharshi is obviously a very specific practice and not "the same thing as self-knowledge", which Kirpal did not really explain. The letter was mildly disappointing. As the reader will see as this confession unfolds, however, he might have more accurately answered me in the words of the poet Ranier Maria Rilke, for this is how things were to turn out on my path with Him and afterwards:

   "I would like to beg you
   to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart
   and try to love the questions themselves
   as if they were locked rooms or books in a very foreign language.
   Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now,
   because you would not be able to live them.
   And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.
   Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
   you will gradually, without even noticing it,
   live your way into the answer."

   He never answered my questions, but would lead me to question the questioner. But that time was still a ways off.

   Upon re-reading the letter thirty years later the question about on the elementals, however, became somewhat clearer in light of the following passage I came upon from the book, The Magus of Strovolos:

   " 'Daskale,' I asked, 'do the psychonoetic planes and subplanes have an objective existence independent of the individual's subjective perception of them?' 'I have said before that the psychic worlds have trees, mountains, oceans, rivers, everything that exists on the planet, everything that has ever existed and everything that can exist. What you consider as the real world is actually the shadow or the reflection of other more luminous worlds within which everything material that is considered real exists. In the various planes and subplanes of the psychic worlds there exist not only whatever exists on this planet which was created by archangelic forces, such as water, mountains, forests, but also whatever humans have created either while they are still alive or after they depart. The psychic world is a much richer world. However, most persons who live there perceive it through the elementals; that they themselves create. In the psychic worlds, for example, there is no sun that rises and sets every day, unless we create one ourselves. But the sun we create will be within our individual subjective psychic world, not the external one. Therefore, when a human being abandons his gross material body, he begins to live simultaneously within two planes of existence, the real psychic plane and his own subjective psychic world. Most human beings are so engrossed within their own subjective shell that they are unaware of the nature of the psychic plane within which they vibrate. It is as if, for example, we are on a journey but because of our passions and psychic turmoil, we are oblivious to the beauty of the countryside outside. And let me say something that may seem blasphemous. On the basis of my own personal experience what may be considered an intolerable hell is, in reality, a most beautiful space, assuming that you can coordinate your consciousness with the real psychic plane. It is our predisposition that will let us or prevent us from perceiving that beauty.' Daskalos went on to say that the evolution of the Researcher of Truth implies the development of the ability to distinguish between the real psychic world and the subjective psychic environment that people build around them with the elementals they bring along when they enter there. What is ugly in these psychonoetic planes is what each individual hides within his subjective shell, his own psychic world, which gives him vibrations of evil, hatred and vulgarity. 'Where is this shell?' someone interjected. 'You mean in terms of space? Again, everywhere and nowhere. But a person who constructs his own shell and lives in it, perceives it as having clear limits within which he is confined and is allowed to act.” (1)

   Although this passage suggests that the problem of elementals is not restricted solely to 'concentration on centers below the eyes', it does gives a clue as to why the gurus in Sant Mat advise meditation only on the light and spiritual forms which remains before ones inner gaze after repetition of the five charged names given by the Master at initiation: these would be considered ‘objective’ visions, free of contamination by the elementals of ones own (and others) subjectivity. If one intends to pursue experience in higher planes before Self-Realization, he needs such a means to avoid complete bewilderment and confusion.

   In spite of the fact that my major queries remain unanswered, I nevertheless accepted the wisdom of trying to relax the “white-heat pitch” in my brain and “row in one boat” on the path of Sant Mat. The archtype of the great Guru, the great Light and the great Ecstasies, obviously far beyond my present experience, were too much for the still, small voice inside calling for a counterbalancing rational as well as intuitive understanding, and I shelved it for a time. But I kept hearing its whisper here and there in episodes that spoke to me, some involving my guru. When members of the future Wisdom’s Goldenrod joined me in seeing Kirpal Singh when he came on tour in 1972, I noticed how different his responses were to our questions. Gary Borgida, a friend of mine, went up to him and asked, or rather expressed uncertainty, about whether he should take initiation or not. Kirpal briskly dispatched him with, “you have to make up your own mind!” To another, who respectfully asked for his grace, he said, “you are drowning in it already.” I thought that was interesting, and a hint at recognizing their budding advaitic understanding. To others who pointed out that T.S. Khanna, devoted representative of the master, had commented that PB (Paul Brunton) was a “rogue”, and Ramana Maharshi, “just a yogi,” Kirpal Singh was quick to point out that he himself never said such things. All these little things percolated below the surface of my mind thereafter. I also noticed, interestingly, that before the 1972 tour Anthony Damiani had said in one class regarding Kirpal Singh, “nice man, but not a sage,” yet afterwards was silent regarding him, at least as far as I knew.[Damiani and PB's definition of a sage was one who had constant insight into Reality, regardless of change of state, whether dream, sleep, waking, or trance].

   Paul Cash, a student of Damiani's and co-editor of the voluminous Notebooks of Paul Brunton series, just recently told me an interesting story of a conversation he witnessed between Richard Seader and Anthony, circa 1969. Richard's mother Ruth had discovered the path and told Richard of Master Kirpal. Richard had heard that there was a man in downtown Ithaca who had a spiritual bookstore who knew something about these matters. He asked his friend Paul Cash to go with him to ask if he thought he should take initiation from Kirpal Singh. As Paul told me:

   "Richard was at that time of at least two minds about whether to go through with his scheduled initiation. He asked Anthony if he knew of Master Kirpal. Anthony [an advanced student of philosophic matters and one who had attained stabilized awareness of the Witness state], asked Richard why he wanted to know. Ritchie gave his explanation, and then the fun began (at least for me, if not for Ricjard). I'd never seen anything like it. Anthony was at once totally critical and totally kind. Everything he asked Richard was pointed and challenging, but delivered with a constructive energy.

   It started with Anthony pretty much bombarding Richard with something to the effect of, ‘What makes you think he's a Master? How would YOU know a Master if you bumped into one on the street?’....and so on. He went up and down Richard's assumptions like a guy scraping paint off a house. ‘HOW would your mother KNOW? How would YOU know if your mother knew?’...etc. ‘Don't you know how many phonies there are out there and how much harm they do?’.....

   Not much later Richard seemed befuddled, with no more comebacks, and no more answers, just one huge question looming - or at least it seemed to me.

   Then Anthony told him, in the kindest, warmest voice I'd ever heard, ‘Well, this time you're lucky. You've stumbled across the real thing. If he's willing to take you in, you should accept and count yourself very fortunate.’ - or words to that affect."

   This simple story has relevance because of the way Sant Kirpal was to treat me, which, I am now certain, was with awareness of, or sensitivity to, my background with Anthony and the teachings of sages like Ramana and PB, and the kind of path I was being readied for in this incarnation. But enough of this, for now our high drama begins in earnest.

   One night in early 1973 I had a peculiar dream. Out of nowhere I suddenly felt to be in an empty space, all alone. A hole in my solar plexus or abdomen opened, and a stream of what was intuited as my life-essence proceeded to gush forth from within. The sense of aloneness was epiphanic, and the words, “I am going to die” spontaneously came out of my mouth. This dream was very strange and I forgot about it. Somewhat later that year I began to feel something happening to me. I can only describe it as an “inner rotting”. It was as if my attention or soul current was slowly but surely beginning to be diffused out into the body from its habitually more collected position and I felt like I was being drained. There was nothing I was doing to cause this to happen. It was as if a bathtub plug had been pulled, and the water began to run out. Even today, the process seems to have been continued. I couldn't - and can't - get back "in". My life was as disciplined, if neurotically so, as ever, I didn’t start drinking, partying, having sex or watching alot of TV. If anything, I redoubled my efforts at meditation, but no matter how hard I tried, I could feel myself over the course of several months being dragged down and out, at first somewhat imperceptibly, then quite obviously and painfully. When I say “down and out”, it is not like I had achieved going very far “in and up”, but at least, pratyahara or withdrawal from the senses had been achieved to a degree through His grace and my efforts, and meditation had a chance. Now it started to become impossible, although that concluson was as yet too horrible for me to accept. Therefore, in August of that year I went to Sawan Ashram, Delhi, thinking that this disaster was something that the physical company of Master Kirpal would remedy.


   The Play Begins

   But how little I knew of the ways of the Masters. Nearly every preconception I had about the path and the guru was undermined over the course of the next three months. I will try to recount some of the events of that time now, however inadequate my understanding and interpretation may be.

   My first meeting presaged the theme of the entire stay: there was no place to hide. A small group of westerners including myself arrived one evening at Dehra Dhun, Master’s retreat in the foothills of the Himalayas. We sat at His feet, and I placed myself in the back and was very quiet as he spoke one after another to each new guest. I was embarrassed at my lack of spirituality and the feeling I had done something wrong to have become in such an arid state after several years of devoted meditation, and I guess inside I just didn’t feel he could possibly love me the way I felt at the time. When everyone had been greeted and spoken to except me, he kind of looked over the head of the group and asked, “is there anyone else?” any one else new here?” - as if he didn’t know. Someone pushed me forward, and he effusively said something like “hello, or “welcome, my friend”, etc, etc.. Little did I know what was to unfold in the days to follow.

   The process that had been going on for months, to my increasing shock, only continued in His company, even at the daily satsangs. We were taught to gaze in the Master’s eyes and the radiation would drag us within, into better and deeper meditations. Indeed, that had been the experience of most, including myself. My present experience, however, was the exact opposite: I was dragged OUT more and more, to an even more arid and helpless condition. There was no one I could talk to, all signs pointed to something terribly going wrong, and who could I blame? I wasn’t doing anything to cause this, and the Master wouldn’t do such a thing, as far as I understood the teaching, and my faith was being sorely tried because, if he didn’t know what was going on, what hope was there for me? This went on for the entire three months I was there. For one who had begun to enjoy some fruits of inner meditation and communion, this was an extremely uncomfortable state to be pushed into. Even before initiation I could meditate, but now it was nearly, and soon to become totally, impossible.

   In the midst of this, there developed quite a drama about my case in the Master’s company. Some incidents and the Master’s words were amusing in retrospect, but the overall process for me at the time was torture and the soul’s worst nightmare. Yet the Beloved gave me much attention, and kept saying, “my friend, I have so much love for you, won’t you let me help you?” He kept calling me his friend, which at the time, Russell Perkins (long-time devotee , editor of Sat Sandesh magazine and manager of Sant Bani Ashram in New Hampshire), who was present, thought to be significant, as the Master was said to be careful with his use of words. (Interestingly, I think I also read a conversation of Him saying once, “I have no friends.” I know the Masters eventually say everything, depending upon who they are talking to, but I have thought about that remark from time to time, considering it unusual). He also said to the people there that I was in a “hospital”, something I thought odd to say but now see as very appropriate.

   One of the first things to happen soon after arriving at the ashram, which I hear is not uncommon, was that I got very sick with some form of dysentery. This had me prostrate on my back for several days with another crippling blow to my meditation. Dr. Moolraj gave me some pills big enough for a horse. People around me told me “just concentrate within”, etc.,etc to avoid the pain. Though somewhat delerious, I remembered a story of some devotee who tried to leave his body to avoid such karmas, and how his guru made him come down to endure them in the body. I recently located this reference in The Wheel of Life (Sant Bani Press, 1980 edition, p. 21, 31-32), by Kirpal Singh:

   "The moment [a competent spiritual Master] accepts an individual as His own, He takes in His own Hand the process of liquidating the endless process of Karma coming down from the untold past...all Karmic debts are to be paid and their accounts squared here and now, and the speedier it is done, the better, instead of keeping any outstanding balances to be paid hereafter. In the time of Hazrat Mian Mir, a great Muslim devout and mystic, it is said that one of his disciples Abdullah, when down with an ailment, withdrew his sensory currents to the eye-focus and closed himself safely in the citadel of peace. His Master Mian Mir when He visited him, pulled Abdullah down to the body consciousness and ordered him to pay what was due from him for he could not indefinitely evade the payment by such tactics."

   When they relayed my reply to Sant Kirpal I was told that He laughed. Now, I do not know why he laughed, whether from recognition of my insight or of my ignorance. I tend to believe, however, based on my intuition of the meaning of my entire stay there, that he knew what I was feeling and was not disappointed with what I said.

   This period of illness made me ponder two different approaches to dealing with pain. One is a yogi way of withdrawing to avoid it, and the other being the way of the jnani, of experiencing but not identifying with it. I was capable of neither, but still thought about the implications of these two points of view. I had seen Sant Kirpal groaning in pain, but also read stories of his operations where he willfully withdrew his soul to avoid the need for anaesthesia. Ramana Maharshi suffered near the end of his life, but said that he no longer had the will or vikalpa to do anything about the pain. He said there was suffering but that he was not identified with the one who suffered.

   "A jnani is as indifferent to death as to life. Even if his physical condition should be the most wretched, even if he should be stricken with the most painful disease and die rolling on the ground, shrieking in pain, he remains unaffected. He is the jnani." (2)

   That seemed to suggest a higher stage than even yogic withdrawal from the body or world, although still somewhat out of reach for mere mortals like myself.

   The Master at the satsang gatherings in regards to my meditations repeatedly kept asking me if things were hopeless yet, and if not, to just keep trying. "Going strong, my friend? Going strong? No? Feeling weak? Feeling withered? Hopeless? Is it hopeless yet? No? Not hopeless yet? Well then, if there's hope, keep trying!" He was to use a flower as a metaphor for my meditation by asking me if my “flower” was going strong, or was “all withered.” He said everything lovingly and with a twinkle in His eyes, but that did little to lessen the inner pain I was experiencing. The flower had been something he had given out one day to anyone who promised to sit all night in meditation, and I hesitated, because I feared the task was impossible for me, as I had become spiritually so dry inside by that point, but when he asked me to take a flower, I accepted. But I really feared the oncoming of the night. After an hour or two meditating I lay down for a minute to rest my back, but then fell asleep and woke up the next morning! Ordinarily this would not raise too many eyebrows, but to my inner state at the time it was then a big deal. I was afraid of going to the gathering that morning. At satsang he eventually got around to me and asked me what happened and when I told him I had fallen asleep he said that I “was making a mockery of the path!” (When I got back to my room, the flower, previously fresh, indeed had somewhat prematurely withered markedly).

   Then He asked to see my diaries, our daily " yamas and niyamas" checklist, another point of contention and confusion for me. The keeping of the diary was supposed to function as a kind of preliminary exercise in raja yoga, whereby one keeps a watch on the thought processes and the outflow of attention throughout the day in order to achieve more fruitful inner meditations. This restraint, or sila, is a prerequisite for successful attainment in yoga, and the diary was a support for that, as well as a means at the end of the day for remembrance of the Master. Such a daily scorecard has been practiced in many schools as far back as the Pythagoreans. During the course of my ordeal, however, I came to have a radical view of the so-called “scientific diary form”, in that I felt that when carried to the extreme, which a neurotic personality can do (and I did), it can serve more to keep attention fixated on the ego and its pursuit of perfection. During this time the Master’s play with me over my diary had the effect of making me sick of self-analysis in a fundamental way. Indeed, much later in my stay I became privy to the Sach Khand initiation experience of one western disciple, who confessed to me that after that the diary form was the first thing she tossed in the garbage, a somewhat heretical concept to me at the time. I came to feel, and this is solely my opinion, that for some the vipassana approach might be more fruitful and "conscious” than, as one western initiate put it, the "Simran / diary approach":

   “ What I like and find myself interested in is the paying attention to one's own responses within to any given situation. For example if I feel myself beginning to get irritated or angry with somebody. I like the idea and hope to employ this method to learn to recognize this arising as it is arising within me. Rather than adopting the simran model of suppressing the anger, of shoving it down or afterwards marking off on a diary that I got angry today...I'd much prefer to just develop that ability to pay greater attention and then find healthier ways by which to defuse any anger...to learn from it and then let it go.”

   [I will comment more on vipassana in a later article on Sant Mat. I am not trying to offer my experience or others as examples to help people decide what they should do, only point out how some have looked at the matter. To modify the commandments of a master is a matter between a disciple and his master. It should also be mentioned that the use of the diary is explained is somewhat softer and psychologically less repressive terms than in previous years, and as something the initiate is supposed to approach intelligently and not to beat himself up with].

   Anyway, because I was perhaps too hard on myself or too mechanical with the filling out of the diary, and because being at the ashram and considering what was happening to me, I was now trying desperately to avoid being “bad” or losing any more “face," I was scrupulous with every stray thought, and did become very neurotic about the diary. Under “chastity in deed”, for instance, I put down checks for every glance or looking at someone in an unchaste way or even just casually looking in the eyes of others. He brought the large amount of check marks to the attention of the entire sangat and accused me of “polluting the ashram”, as if I was an active pervert or something! Mind you, I had been completely continent and celibate for several years at that point, and was trying to meditate 5- 6 hours a day, and more at the ashram. But I was a very shy person, who didn’t speak up for himself, and I failed to explain what my diary entries really meant.

   My true anguish at the time, however, lay in the contradiction between the Beloved Master’s words and my assumption that He must know all my inner thoughts and desires, and that if he was one with God as the teaching proclaims he should have known what the diary meant. I no longer think it works exactly like that, but still I felt he must have known what was really in my heart, yet he acted in this respect much like an ordinary man who knew nothing at all. He had expressed the same advise in several responses to my submitted diaries in the mail before, where I had made the same mistake, always pointing out my failures in “chastity in deed”, which were never really the case, except as latent tendencies, and actions prior to initiation, before I took his teachings to heart.

   At times his repartee was more obvious, and even I didn’t fall for it, although it still made me uncomfortable. One day he asked me how I had spent the day before. I told him “meditating nine hours, and shopping one hour.” He responded loudly, “What! Meditating one hour and shopping nine hours - this is wrong!” Others started to speak up in my defense, assuming he hadn’t heard me properly, saying, “No, Master, he...”, but Kirpal insisted, “NO. Meditating one hour and shopping nine hours - that’s not right!”

   Our daily lila, or play, went on, as he continued to press me into a corner. So then I tried another approach in trying to be a “good satsangi”. He must have called me to the front of the group practically every other day for scrutiny over my lack of “progress” in meditation. It was very embarrassing to say the least. After the experience of putting down too many checkmarks in my diary I tried to be realistic and only enter the more obvious failings. Therefore, at the next occasion my diary looked alot cleaner. This time, however, after examining the diary in front of the morning gathering, he exclaimed, “what, this looks very good, hardly any failings at all - you think you are a saint! You think you are perfect. You don’t need any help. You want to be MY boss. You don’t want to be my disciple. You want to be my master. That is the WORST sin!” I know the traditions say that realized souls often speak to us, and everyone present, at many levels, but to appreciate His skillful means one must truly try to imagine this situation. I was young, just 24, and hadn’t studied much of the traditions, and didn’t know what he was talking about or what was happening, and most of all, was in inner pain. I knew something was going on, but had to try hard to fight the mind’s impression that he just didn’t understand me, which, however, my heart could not accept. Today, with the light of perspective, the words of Paul Brunton come readily to mind, accurately measuring the hidden tendencies or attitudes that Masters try to bring up to consciousness:

"The student must begin with the lowest opinion of himself if he is to end one day with the highest. On no account should he fall into the common blunder of deeming himself more advanced than he really is, for this will lead to failure....The student must beware of the cunning disguises of the retreating ego. He must beware of its self-flattery pretending to be the Oveself's flattery. He must beware of any 'mission' to which he is appointed." ! (Essays on the Quest, p. 184-185)

   Anthony Damiani also states:

   "In the presence of a sage, a past habit which is still alive in you is brought up to the surface and now you have to overcome it once and for all." (Anthony Damiani, Looking Into Mind, p. 134-135)

   Seeing others offer poems and writings to the Master, I tried to do the same. I composed my best devotional poem and waited until he walked by and he stopped and said, "Eh? What's this?" I said, "a poem, Master." He handed it back to me and said forcefully, "No poems. Meditate!" Then, to assuage some of the despair at the fruitlessness of my meditations, I offered to do some seva (service) in the mail room. The next day Kirpal asked me how I had spent my time the day before and I said, "doing some service, etc." He turned it right back on me and said, "how can you help others if you can't help yourself?!" The walls were closing in on me as the double-bind of self-effort increased. Now I couldn't even try to be good or useful!

   At one satsang, I dared ask a question that had been weighing on me for some time. I had always had difficulty relaxing enough to let go and be unaware of my breathing in meditation. Indeed, the breathing is still a painful, core problem for me. Sant Kirpal just told me I was doing it all wrong, that I should not pay any attention to the breathing. That didn’t really help, but when I said, “no one else seems to have this problem,” he immediately leaned over, placing his etched-in-granite forehead (with "Om" sign clearly visible, much like in some photos of Ramana Maharshi) directly in my face, and said forcefully, “What do you care about anybody else - what do you care?!!!" By doing so, I now feel, he was not so much answering my question or helping me with my perceived difficulty, but continuing a central theme of my visit, which, I believe, was to drive me back into myself, instead of looking outward for answers or help . His words burned themselves deep within, and I remember them to this day seemingly as needed in one moment or another. I later read the following words of Sri Atmananda (Sri Krishna Menon):

   “You first listen to the Truth direct from the lips of the Guru. Your mind, turned perfectly sattvic by the luminous presence of the Guru, has become so sensitive and sharp that the whole thing is impressed upon it as if it were a sensitive film. You visualize your real nature then and there. But the moment you come out, the check of the presence of the Guru being removed, other samskaras rush in and you are unable to recapitulate what was said or heard. But later on, whenever you think of that glorious incident, the whole picture comes back to your mind – including the form, words and arguments of the Guru – and you are thrown afresh into the same state of visualization you had experienced on the first day. Thus you constantly hear the same Truth from within. This is how a spiritual tattvopadesha helps you all through life, till you are established in your own real nature.” (3)

   After this particular satsang was over, now one or two months into my three-month stay, I remember standing there like a lost puppy, absolutely crushed and dejected, and I then remember Him motioning to the remaining gathering to get out of the way, separating those in front of Him before he took his leave for the day, opening a corridor as it were between Him and me, then stepping forward and telling me, with the sweetest, most imploring look on his face, “I have so much love for you, my friend.” It brings me sweet and bitter anguish to remember moments like this, because at the time, I could feel no comfort in His words. If it were just a matter of the Guru playing with my head, that would have not been so bad, and in retrospect sweetly remembered, but my soul was getting undermined at the same time in a profound way, and my suffering was undeniable. After that meeting, I even stayed in my room some mornings, because I felt like garbage, and with no experience in meditation but increasing barrenness and aridity, felt impure and unworthy. (I realize now how all of my attention was on me, but that was just the way it was. I didn’t know any better.) Perhaps more basically, however, as mentioned before, I was becoming somewhat afraid of attending the gatherings, anxious over what might happen next. Satsangis would return and tell me that the Master had asked them where “his friend” was that day. I also felt the sting of his repeatedly referring to me as “Peter the Great.”

   It is difficult to convey how painful this all was, even though some of it is wonderful to recall and I know I have grown thereby. I felt the death of all I had strived for and dreamed of for the previous four years, and felt and longed for unknowingly all of my life. This is not to justify my apparent suffering, understanding tells me it is largely due to ego, but because of spiritual blindness I could not see any of that then. The meditation teaching as given about "going within" also seemed to justify and reinforce my distress, considering my inner state at the time.

   One long-time devotee from Florida, Jerry Astra Turk, seeing my dejection, said to me, "honey, one day you are going to love Him more than you can believe." It was she who had earlier exclaimed to Kirpal Singh, "Master, I don't care if I ever see light within, I just want to be with you." He smiled," she said, "because that's what he likes." Russell Perkins had also mentioned the same thing to me, that the only reason he felt one should come to the Master was simply to BE with Him, and not for any benefit, even spiritual, that one might receive. While such a point of view is certainly paradoxical, I would give anything to be able to feel the same in my heart. It was that very confession that Kirpal had made to his Master when he said, "Huzur! The peace and bliss to be had at your holy feet cannot be had in higher planes!"

   There is one other incident I must recount before proceeding further. It will give an idea of how the Master Kirpal worked with people at times, which was actually quite shocking to me. There was a man from the United States I heard about first while doing seva working on some of the foreign correspondence (I addressed and stuffed envelopes, and don’t remember now what I was doing reading someone’s letter to the Master, but, in any case, I did read this one). It was a sad tale. This man wrote that he was severely depressed, had no girlfriend anymore, didn’t play his music anymore, had no contact with inner light and sound, and wanted to come to India so Master could help him. I forgot about his letter until a month or so later, when during a gathering Master Kirpal was interrupted to take a phone call. I was told that normally he did not take calls, but this time he did. I immediately sensed it was from this man. The Master spoke loud enough that anyone present could hear him (although I don’t know if they all did) saying, “No, no, no, don’t kill yourself, relax, take a warm bath, then sit and the Master’s form will appear to you.” That was that, and I had a renewed (but false) hope that the Master would make everything “right”, both for that man as well as for myself.

   This episode somewhat forgotten, a few weeks later this man dragged himself onto the ashram, unannounced, and took up residence in the room next to mine. The next morning he confronted Sant Kirpal directly, although disrespectfully, but, still, in obvious desperation, saying, “You said if I took a warm bath the Master’s form would appear to me, but it didn’t happen!” Master immediately responded forcefully, “You lie!” That remark floored me, because, unless the Master’s form really did appear to him, I KNEW the man was NOT lying. This was doubly conflicting to me, because I believed that Masters never lie, and Kirpal obviously did. I had heard nothing of “skillful means” regardings a guru’s behavior up to that point, so had no where to go with my troubling thoughts.

   The next day the man again challenged the Master, and at one point Kirpal said, “if I give you a contact (or re-contact) will you promise to meditate for two hours a day?”, to which the man replied “yes”. The Master had him sit down and then went over and pressed two fingers in the man’s eyes and asked him if he saw any light. Now, I had seen and heard of Master doing this form of initiation by touch (diksha) many times before, with people having anything from an experience of golden light to a full transport into higher plane samadhis, so I knew that was possible. In the traditions the touch of the Master’s hand was supposed to be a great boon. However, in this case it was plain He had witheld His grace. (I know this both because of the man’s replies and because the same experience happened to me some days later when in response to my unfruitfull meditation reports Kirpal pushed his fingers hard into my eyes and said “fix your gaze!” (knowing full well by that point I had no inner gaze left, although many will refuse to believe that, and then asked if I saw light, which I didn’t, which was very humiliating). Anyway, Kirpal asked the man, “do you see anything, any flash of light?”, to which the reply was a gruff, “no, nothing.” The Master then said, “nothing? is it pitch black , total black - or maybe a little gray?” “I don’t know,” said the man. “Not pitch black, maybe a little gray?” “Maybe,” said the man. “All right then, go on with it!” said the Master. This was obviously not very impressive or satisfying, regardless of the man’s lack of receptivity and still confrontational but obviously stressed-out condition. “Are you going to give me the sound now?” he said, again with a touch of arrogance, as well as frustration, pathos, and despair. “Later,” I think was the Master’s reply. At this point I and those present thought the man was going to be helped, because that was how we were taught to believe it worked. The next morning, however, the Master asked the man how long he had meditated the day before, to which he responded, “five minutes.” Now, I must say that I did not know what the man’s entire story or past had been, or what he was feeling when he came to the ashram, although now, I myself, who once meditated up to ten hours a day, can identify with having difficulty sitting for five minutes. In any case, Sant Kirpal responded with a mini-tirade of how bad the guy was, how he (also) was mocking the path, etc. I started to get scared. It all seemed just and divine retribution. I mean, how could the Master be anything but loving, therefore, this guy, and me, too, must have been just no good.

   The next morning the roommate of this man came over to my room and said that the guy had swallowed a bottle of pills and didn’t look good at all, was repeatedly vomitting and passing out. The Master and doctor were called and came over, and we then thought, “He will fix everything. He will help him.” The ambulance came and took him away, and the next morning, at the gathering, Master informed us, with a tender, but if I may dare to say it, almost chagrined look on his face, “well, our friend died.” Oh God, I thought, the Master called him His friend, too. I was the only one who had seen the entire play between this man and the Master, first his letter, then the phone call, and then at the ashram. Later on that same morning the master shifted gears and shocked me by saying that that man and I were “two birds in the same cage.” I really started to get scared at that point and was fast losing all hope. My mind was in a real dilemma trying to make sense out of the entire chain of unexpected events. Even now, especially in moments of doubt, I sometimes feel fear arising just recalling that moment. I asked my friend Judith (Judith Lamb-Lion, then Judith Vanier) her thoughts on the matter of the poor soul who committed suicide, and why hadn't the Master helped him, etc. Of course, we have a degree of free will, which a true guru will not interfere with, but she ventured what to me was an astounding idea, suggesting that perhaps it was possible that Kirpal knew that the man's physical vehicle had little use left for his present incarnation, and that He had in a sense pushed him into his decision, but would of course still be taking care of him in the Beyond and/or in a future life. That did little to comfort me, but did stretch my mind to new dimensions regarding this path... I only recently learned that the man had been in and out of VA hospitals for months with mental problems and was overwhelmed with his feeling of spiritual "density".

   Things continued like this for a while longer, then I remember one day in desperate resignation praying something to the effect, “please, do whatever You have to do for me to eventually be able to come to You, if that be Your will.” When I confessed this later near the end of my stay to Judith, who had become my confidant, she told me that the Master, contrary to what I was feeling at the time, had answered all of my prayers. I quoted to her a verse of Paramahansa Yogananda, where he requested God “never to put him through the test of the obliviousness of His presence”, which Judith said was the “test of a saint.” She was a great friend to me at the time, and helped me understand many delicate points. I had come to respect her advice, as she had previously confessed, with the Master’s permisson and at His request in His company, to having been taken to Sach Khand by Him at the time of her initiation, and she always humbly let me know when she could tell me no more. She also spoke lovingly of Him at all times and and always humbly deferred to Him on spiritual matters. [Her story was very interesting and quite classic. Essentially, she was denied or had her initiation placed on hold for some reason, and then went into the ashram garden and wept, saying "why don't you want me?! or something to that effect. Gyaniji saw her and came over and said to her, "don't worry, dear, those who cry for the Master get the Master." The next day she sat for initiation, and, as reported, Kirpal took her with Him all the way 'in his lap' to Sach Khand. He acknowledged the story, as the jaws dropped among the small group gathered at his feet, mine included. Several dignitaries were also in the audience].

   I described to her my unusual spiritual 'descent' and aridity and impossibility of meditating, with a bit of wry humor characterizing my subjective state by saying, "my nose is where my third eye used to be." She just laughed. Thirty years later when I close my eyes I can barely tell where my head is, so actually that doesn't seem so bad!

   There was one other satsang of significance to me that I will mention. Please note that I was getting very reticent about even being seen at satsang, because inevitably I would be called to the front for one thing or another and get questioned. But this particular day I was getting close to giving up, I now see, and the Master asked me “do you want something, my friend?”, and after a short pause, “do you want to leave the body?” ( The latter question scared me, first because of that man killing himself, and also my remembering a story in one of the books about a devotee begging the Master to take him up to higher planes but being repeatedly refused, until finally the Master relented, and upon returning from the higher plane the man cried and said it was like a thousand lightning bolts tearing him apart, and then the man died a short while afterwards, and I feared the same could happen to me). The first question, “do you want anything, my friend?”, however, seemed to ask for me to finally place before Him all my problems in one final heap, but I was too tired of fighting, and simply replied, “no... nothing.” In an instant He sat up and shouted, animated and very excited, smiling, “Nothing?!! Nothing is God! You are an emperor! I’ll kiss your feet!” I was in somewhat of a shocked state, as I had been for months, and his words went way over my head, but were imbedded forever in my heart, to ponder again and again over the years. But somewhere deep down a process of understanding was beginning. My yearning to escape this world and my present condition, although difficult to give up or feel beyond, was beginning to seem, in the depths of my unconscious understanding, somehow inappropriate. The Master certainly didn't seem to care about it, in my case or, I was coming to feel, even in his own.

   [While risking getting ahead of myself here, I refer the reader to the following passage from Paul Brunton concerning the state of the adept. The godman is the embodiment of the Light, truly, but he is also beyond the Light, standing in the utter humility of Emptiness:

   "This is the true insight, the permanent illumination that neither comes nor goes but always is. While being serious, where the event or situation requires it, he will not be solemn. For behind this seriousness there is detachment. He cannot take the world of Appearances as being Reality's final form. If he is a sharer in this world's experiences, he is also a witness and especially a witness of his own ego--its acts and desires, its thoughts and speech. And because he sees its littleness, he keeps his sense of humor about all things concerning it, a touch of lightness, a basic humility. Others may believe that he stands in the Great Light, but he himself has no particular or ponderous self-importance. (Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 4: Its Realization Beyond Ecstasy > # 205)]

   So, unknowingly, I threw myself and its concerns at the guru's feet. I didn't realize it, but Rumi wrote of this test in his famous Mathnawi:

   "Having died to self-interest, she risks everything and asks for nothing; Love gambles away every gift God bestows." (The Pocket Rumi, p. 212)

   There is a story that somebody went to Ramana Maharshi and said, "Bhagavan, I don't want anything. I only want moksha." Ramana did not say anything but continued to do whatever he was doing. After some time everyone got up to go except for that man. Ramana got up too and was about to go. He said to the man, "If you don't want anything that is moksha," and went away.

   Years later I read the following passages from the book, Journey to the Luminous, by long-time Kirpal devotee Arran Stephens, where the author, I believe, stumbled perhaps without full awareness onto an inner secret of Sant Mat, or at least of satsang in relationship wth Sant Kirpal:

   "An important meeting was called at Sawan Ashram, attended by many distinguished and learned Indian initiates, including the managing committee. The Master invited presentation of their original ideas on how best to further the spiritual mission. During their learned dissertations, I was mentally criticizing, 'Oh, he doesn't meditate...This one doesn't keep a diary..That one doesn't even see the Light...How can they hope to further the great cause?' Towards the end I was unable to restrain my impetuosity and asked to speak a few words. When Master nodded, I stood, heart pounding, and announced, "All these fine talks and lectures are very well and good, but unless we practice what we preach, unless we go within and experience the divine Light and Sound ourselves on a regular basis, up to and including meeting the Radiant Form, I doubt we can effectively further the Master's Cause."

   The author readily admits his faux pax and continues;

   "While there may have been a grain of truth in that, my delivery smacked of pride and intolerance...My insensitive pronouncement had the effect of dropping a bomb on the august assembly...Master stood. He said, "It appears that our Western friend is not in the full know of things." (4)

   At one point in my stay I corralled Russell Perkins in the courtyard of the ashram and asked him to tell me his story. I was pleasantly surprised ten years later to see that he had written a book, The Impact of a Saint, detailing most of what he had told me. At the time I asked him, off-handedly, whether maybe I was going insane. He had worked in a hospital and told me probably not, that most insane people think everyone else is insane! Much later I read that Ramana Maharshi said that "jnana is a form of madness."

   As the date for the end of my stay approached, dear Gyaniji, the Master's assistant who had known Him since the 1920's, dragged me upstairs to see Kirpal about my departure. I didn’t want to go, feeling I would be bothering Him about something unimportant. But Gyaniji insisted. When I entered Sant Kirpal’s room, he was lying down facing the other way, groaning in pain. Gyaniji told him I would be leaving soon and Kirpal turned around, assuming his usual radiance, and looked at me with the most imploring, sweetest look, saying, “you WANT to go?” In my heart I said “no, I never want to leave you, I will never leave you”, but outwardly I simply replied, dejectedly and with resignation, “well, the visa is up”. He then nodded or jerked his head a bit as he often did, adjusting his turban, almost as if he was returning from some divine loka, and said matter of factly, “yes, you should go,” as if it was time for me to go back to my normal life. This was a depressing thought, for I felt much worse off than before I had come to India, and had no idea how I would make it in the world. I felt I had lost everything and life had no meaning.

   One small thing I noticed while I was in the Master’s bedroom which I will mention now. There was a bottle of fish oil on his night stand. Being vegetarians I mentioned that to Gyaniji and he said, “yes, I know, but it is very good for health.” I didn't pursue the conversation further. My being allowed to see this was something that I remembered over the years and have pondered over how much intuition I should use on such health matters. It is possible that perhaps someone left it there and Kirpal did not use it. This of course I do not know. He did not seem to be very directive with his disciples, even to the point of permitting a loud, blaring TV to be on in the room next door where he would give morning satsangs. Ramana Maharshi was accused of being like this, too, even to the point of getting sick eating ganja given to him by a devotee on one occasion. So I do not know the true meaning or significance of what I was allowed to witness there. To some initiates of Sant Mat this tale of the fish oil may seem incredulous, but to many practitioners on other paths it would be nothing much at all. One satsangi who read this article said he didn't believe this story one bit! All I can say is, it was true. I didn't take it as a sign to become a non-vegetarian, but, at the very least it made me much less righteous in my judgement of those who are. Through the years I have observed the attitude and behavior of other masters on this issue. Sri Ramakrishna ate meat. His disciple Brahmananda loved to fish. The Dalai Lama, while quoting sutras on the Buddha teaching vegetarianism, didn't become one himself until 1965, when he was already thirty years old. That suggests to me that it is hard to live on vegetables in cold Tibet! Dr. Sharma, successor to Baba Faqir Chand, said he was o.k. with eggs. Many years of study have shown me that various authorities whose opinions I respect believe there are some people who need small amounts of animal protein in their diet to be in optimal health. Despite all these contraries, I still support the Sant Mat position, and believe in vegetarianism, for many reasons (compassion, karma, health, ecology, etc.), but simply no longer feel the right to judge anyone for their choices. As Kirpal once remarked, "to hurt someones feelings because they eat meat is worse than eating meat itself," and, "more important than what goes into your mouth is what comes out of it."

   The apparent end result of this time with Him, in summary, was that all feelings of any inner faculties at all were deadened and as if totally removed, more so than I had ever felt in my whole life, long before I had even heard of the path. Meditation in the prescribed form became - and has remained thirty years later - impossible. I don’t know anyone who can believe me on this. It was far more than just not being able to see light anymore like some have temporarily experienced, but a painful and shocking total extroversion and perception of spiritual abandonment, an extremely bitter pill. It was as if He had slowly over the course of several months made my soul sink through my head and lashed or welded it firmly to my eyes and face, and later my whole body, with even the possibility of inversion a long-forgotten dream. This was hard to believe, and I continued to fight it and try to regain what I once had (indeed, for several more years), but it was no use. I continued to feel like I was being “pushed out”, and into a twisted and knotted up body that I had been only too willing to leave behind. And, as I had never felt good inside until the beginnings of what I had been led to consider to be spiritual life had been awakened in me through His grace, my condition at the time was devastating.

   On top of this dear William Scotti confronted me in the midst of my self-possession with the cutting observation that he knew a man who had not seen light in thirty years who had more love than me. He didn’t know my inner condition, just my outer struggling and immaturity, but that observation made me sink very low. Of course he was right, and it has only become more clear throughout the years. Perhaps that itself is some form of progress. His brother, Richard, on the other hand, made a very strange remark one day. I don’t agree with what he said, it is so absurd to even consider, but the fact that he would even think to say it seemed strange to me. He was there alot of the time I was and saw much of what was going on. While witnessing some of the interplay between the Master and myself, he said to me, “He’s making you into a satguru.” I only mention this for the synchronicity and completeness of this story. Perhaps in some eon to come it will mean something. I hope not. Richard also said to me, regarding meditation and self-improvement, that if he had to "do it himself" (ie., advance spiritually) he might as well die. He, too, at the time was, in his own way, feeling the limits of his helplessness and incompetency, which he later made into a beautiful talk to the sangat back home. My attempts at self-effort had not yet received enough mortal blows to feel the depth of what he was saying, however, and I was not yet ready to “give up” to what only appeared as hopelessness, but now, many years later, I am beginning to appreciate his words. Kirpal then started calling me a "hard nut to crack," and a "good actor". The "story of me" was facing its nemesis, although this was years before the non-dualists had arrived and we began to hear of ideas like that.


   The End Game

   There is, fortunately, a culmination to my story up to this point in the form of an insight that arose in a moment the day before my stay at the ashram ended. Some may find this rather boring, as it is more ordinary than mystically or phenomenally fantastic. It changed nothing, yet it changed everything. I was playing with a young boy in the inner courtyard, having given up hope for a life of meditation or anything else. Due to return to New York in a few days, I was adrift about my future. At that moment, Judith walked over to me and said enigmatically, “it’s a nice day to die, isn’t it?” I thought, “huh?” when it hit me: something had changed. We silently looked at each other, and I realized that everything was different, but yet, at the same time everything was the same, and had always been the same. There was nothing mystical or psychic about the experience, or change of state. In fact is wasn't an experience or change of state in the usual sense at all. It was as if my self-identity had shifted or been made vague. Only months later understood this moment as a kensho or satori of some degree. She said, “you’ve just been through the eye of the needle,” “You have a hole in your head,” and things like that. All the while I was in a mesmerized condition, mindlessly pondering a newness I didn’t understand, but also knew was the only real thing I had ever known, and it had always been the case. She also said, "not a bad world, isn't it?," which I thought an amazing thing at the time to say by one who had confessed to soaring on the highest inner planes. What baffled me no end was that, as there were no visible signs, no light or sound or anything identifiable by another mystic, how could this person Judith have known about this BEFORE I did?! That was perhaps the most remarkable thing about this. We talked for a while, and she told me many things about myself and the Master, some of them strange and also enigmatic, which I also thought about for years, like “You were in a hypnotic state"...."Master speaks with forked tongue, and has a hard time keeping a straight face"...."Kirpal is a Sat Master, and not the usual saint or mystic"...."Master would rather have a disciple who is a simple jerk than a self-righteous seeker".... and also "Kirpal ended an age.” That one really had me thinking. What did she mean? I later took it to mean that maybe he ended the age of fascination with mysticism, that henceforth things should be explained in a more straight forward fashion. He did say that in the coming golden age of spirituality “many more saints would appear." [Sri Ramakrishna also had stated: “in the not too distant future Christs would grow like grapes on a vine, in clusters.”] What could that have meant in light of the general Sant Mat claim that there is one perfect master on earth at any one time? Did Kirpal mean they would all be saints from within the Sant Mat tradition, or was he proclaming a universalization of that path to include other methods and schools? (I once pointed out to Judith that Buddhist Master Fuji, who had sat with Master Kirpal on the dais, had tears of laughter streaming down his face, with a smile as wide as the room, and she said to me, "that smile comes all the way from Sach Khand." I thought to myself, "what did she mean? Master Fuji doesn't do shabd yoga.")

   She also said to me, “you’ll find out sooner or later that you are just pinching yourself,” which fits in nicely with current and historical non-dual thought. It is so simple, but something that can take a long time to be made permanent in one’s life and not just seen intermittently.

   At any rate, when I went to Satsang later that day at the Master’s house, he looked right at me and said, “well, my friend, are you a new man today, are you a new man?! Are you going to go home and tell everyone you are a new man?” That was it; no explanation, no hand holding, just a cryptic remark and a mostly wordless communication. I was speechless, still uncomprehending at the level of the mind what had happened. But this time Kirpal no longer asked me to "keep trying". It was as if He recognized my earlier sadhana had come to an end and could never be taken up again in the same form. I was not enlightened, but had received a true glimpse. Papaji spoke in a similar manner about his time with Ramana, and on how a genuine master works:

   "When I came and sat in front of the Maharshi, he didn’t tell me to keep on trying because he could see that I had reached a state in which my sadhana could never be resumed again. ‘You have arrived,’ he said. He knew I was ready for realisation and through his divine look he established me in his own state."

   "The real Master looks into your mind and Heart, sees what state you are in, and gives out advice which is always appropriate and relevant. Other people, who are not established in the Self, can only give out advice which is based on either their own limited experience or on what they have heard or read. This advice is often foolish. The true teacher will never mislead you with bad advice because he always knows what you need, and he always knows what state you are in."

   Sri Nisargadatta made a remarkable observation which I later came upon that related to my question about how someone else could recognize such a change before I did:

   "With some, realization comes imperceptibly, but somehow they need convincing. They have changed, but they do not notice it. Such non-spectacular cases are often the most reliable." (I AM THAT, p. 291)

   He also mentioned the price for such a realization:

   "When you don't require anything from the world and nothing from God, when you don't desire anything, when you don't strive for anything, don't expect anything, the divine will enter you, unasked and unexpected....The wish for truth is the best of all wishes, but it's still a wish. All wishes must be given up, that the truth can enter your life.” (source misplaced)

   Paul Brunton spoke enigmatically about this shift:

   "The authentic thing does not enter consciousness. You do not know that it has transpired. You discover it is already here only by looking back at what you were and contrasting it with what you now are; or when others recognize it in you and draw attention to it; or when a situation arises which throws up your real status." (Paul Brunton, Notebooks, Vol 16, Part 4, 2.139)

   And Zen Master Dogen (1200-1253) said:

   “Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment.”

   In my case no-thing had changed. I was still contracted and in pain; as one Zen monk once said, "Now that liberation is first seen, I am just as miserable as ever." A glimpse of truth is not the end. It was, however, like a “spoke” had been removed from my innermost being. I told Judith that for the first time in my life I actually felt that realization was possible, and not just an unattainable dream, because I was intuiting it right then at some level. Contemporary teacher Adyashanti seems to concur that this is most important:

   "Enlightenment depends to a large extent on believing that you are born for freedom in this lifetime, and that it is available now, in this moment." (The Impact of Awakening, p. 8)

   This was not the case before, no matter how much I thought and felt that I desired the Truth. The glimpse I had been given , at the expense of the death of all mysticism or even inner comfort, was that the one, the ego, that used to go within, and wanted to go within, was unreal. And I knew that such a form of insight does not automatically come from mystical experience alone, but from another process altogether. I forget the context, but I remember saying something to Judith to the effect that I now saw the Master was more than a mystic, that He was truly a sacrificial being, that He, in fact, “had died”, and see said, “Yes, He has died many times.” That penetrated my being in a new way, in that I felt it meant more than just that he had “died daily” in meditation, as was often repeated on the path; I recalled Kirpal himself saying to us one time, “what more do you want, I have given you my life’s breath.” The phrase from Light on the Path comes to mind about the feet being bathed "in the blood of the heart," and also the quote of Paul Brunton, paraphrasing Huang Yang-Ming, that on the way to becoming a sage “one will die a hundred deaths and suffer a thousand sufferings.” I thought again of seeing Kirpal groaning in pain on his bed, then becoming radiant and glowing only a moment later. The image of Him as a rag doll in the hands of God, squeezed dry as if from taking on the pain and suffering of the world, only to burn it up within and then turn gracefully to emanate light and love. He often had said, "I know my own worth. I am a mere pipe. If my Master doesn't send His grace, I am nothing." How profound the words, "the Master has died many times," seemed to become. The sage is the summit, the crown of human evolution, and the agent of the Lord in this world. For despite the simplicity of the non-dual realizations, the Idea of Man calls for its fulfillment. The peerless Al Ghazali wrote:

   "Know, 0 beloved, that man was not created in jest or at random, but marvelously made and for some great end."

   Judith said that the path to real enlightenment which I had been granted was a gift in the form of a “reward-punishment”, that "God was economy and pressure," "that out of thousands of disciples Kirpal would be lucky to have even one to make it to Sach Khand or be enlightened", and that “I had volunteered for the trip” (supposedly, I felt, on the day of my silent prayer for Him to ‘do whatever it took to allow me to come to Him’, but now, in retrospect, I think most likely through a prayer made before this life). Her remark produced am immediate question in my mind, as my math was pretty good: if she had been to Sach Khand, and as she promised that I would get there , well, that already makes two, not one, and there must undoubtedly be many others much more capable or qualified than I. But the point was well-taken: true enlightenment and transformation was a big deal, requiring everything from both guru and disciple. Yet, at the same time, there is much precedent that it is truly a kind of foolishness and "nothing special":

Shih-t'ou: "My ignorance far exceeds yours."

Sri Nisargaddata Maharaj: "I do not claim to know what you do not. In fact, I know much less than you do."

Lao Tzu: "I alone have the mind of a fool, and am all muddled and vague. The people are so smart and bright. While I am just dull and confused."

“Those who say, do not know; those who know, do not say.”

   I think this paradox may never go away as long as the body lives. I asked many more questions, but at one point Judith simply said, “I can tell you no more,” as if she recognized the limits of her knowledge or permission to speak. After all, even though she had gone to Sach Khand once didn't mean that she knew everything. Personally, from my grasp of the teachings, I no longer think even the Masters know everything, as we sometimes naively understand it, and that that is a preconception we get from reading the occult and mystic traditions, particularly from India, which unfortunately some teachers reinforce by repeating dogma of their lineage. It may seem to be that way some times, but I think it would be more accurate to say that knowledge comes spontaneously to them as required for the situation. Or they may simply act and say things from the position of Truth without conscious awareness of knowing anything, although some times they DO know. To assume omniscience on their part, however, is to attempt to improve upon an already fully magnificant truth: their divine realization, and its being an agency of grace. Judith also told me, as I went in and out of doubt with my new experience, “you can either believe it - or not," and that, “Master saved your life,” something I have had to think long and hard about for years. In the pit of trial I have often felt quite the opposite. Thankfully, that feeling doesn't last too long.

   Later I thought it particularly remarkable that Kirpal Singh also recognized this shift which I still barely noticed or believed, and also pondered what he meant by telling everyone that I was a “new man”. As it wasn't mystical or psychic, the words "only a jnani can recognize a jnani" come to mind. Not that I was a jnani, but that I felt to a small degree initiated onto that path or made privy to some of its secret.

   Reading scripture I found out that the “Old Man” is spoken of alot, as something that has to die, while the New Man is one reborn. None of my character had changed, however, or inner pain diminished as yet. I simply saw, in a moment of reality, something profoundly different from the world of mystic India, saints and yoga that I was accustomed to. It was quite ordinary, but forever changed my outlook on things, appreciated even more as the years go by. Judith that morning in the courtyard also made me a promise. She said “IN THIS INCARNATION YOU WILL KNOW ALL TRUTHS.” I asked, did you mean intellectually, etc., and she once again forcefully repeated “IN THIS INCARNATION...” I asked how long it would take and she said, “the rest of your life.” It was a magical time and in the heady atmosphere of the sacred place I believed what she said; it felt like the words just automatically came from her mouth. Whether she was conveying to me His truth, or just being nice, however, it has gotten me through many a rough patch since then, of which there have been many. For the real purgation was only starting, and is yet to be complete, and in some respects is worse than ever as I write. [Hopefully, the period of my complaining will be over by the time this is read!] I took her words to be coming from Kirpal Singh, as she seemed to be speaking for him - calling herself his donkey, his messenger, etc. - and when he told everyone I was a new man he gave me a penetrating glance that seemed to say, “yes, it is real, and you are mine now, and yourself as well.”

   Sat Sandesh magazine (August 1973 issue) coincidentally came out that day with a Bible passage on the back saying “I no longer speak to you as servants, but as friends.” Judith pointedly said that that quote was for me. While gazing at each other I noticed tears in her eyes. She noticed that I noticed, and without my asking said that there was no emotion behind those tears, that it was just the "purification of the ascending force." She also said there was no thinking going on when she was talking, giving me an insight into her condition at that time. [Note: my frequent respectful and affectionate remembrances of Judith are not meant to imply to anyone that I endorse her or anyone else as a successor or the sole legitimate "successor" to Kirpal Singh. As many know, there was, as there often is when a master dies, some controversy over that issue. Nor am I agreeing or disagreeing with any and everything that may have transpired in her company since that time. I have not, for that matter, seen her in twenty-five years, although to me those years are but a day, and I still think lovingly of her. The words I speak only reflect a certainty in my heart of what transpired back in 1973.] We spoke further of the soul, and gazing out at the world around us she said, "isn't this the Soul?" thus giving me my first glimpse of a non-dual perspective. As I now write, the following words of Ch'an master Hakuin come to mind:

   "Not knowing how near the Truth is, People seek It far away, -- what a pity!...As the eternally quiescent Truth reveals Itself to them, This very earth is the lotus-land of Purity, And this body - is the body of the Buddha."

   And the great Huang Po:

   "People neglect the reality of the 'illusory' world..On no account make a distinction between the Absolute and the sentient world...All the visible universe IS the Buddha...Full understanding of this must come before [one] can enter the way." (Wang Ling Record)

   Yet to make this real, for enlightenment to become deep and profound, the masters would say that more than a mere "cognitive" shift is required (as some current radical non-dualists assert); rather, a complete transformation or surrender is necessary:

   "When all the desires that surge in the heart
   Are renounced, the mortal becomes immortal.

   When all the knots that strangle the heart
   Are loosened, the mortal becomes immortal,
   Here in this very life."

     - Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.6-7

   Zen Master Ummon made the statement that the first real step along the path of Zen was to see into our void nature, but that getting rid of our bad karma came afterwards. That further work is more easier said than done.

   Master Kirpal called me his friend many times during the three months of my being “beaten into the ground”, and how much love he had for me. Of course, I had hardly been in a condition to feel it, or understand his ways. But after this surprising finale to my stay I became convinced he "knew" more than he publically taught.

   The last day there was spent in a bit of a surreal daze. India, gurus, inner experiences, light and sound, all seemed unreal. The scene at the ashram appeared strange and foreign, and still is. As I see it now, years later, because the "me" had started to disintegrate, the reality of all the rest was now in question. Because this was not completely explained yet to the satisfaction of the mind, however, the tendency to continue the search, although hopeless, was still all too firmly in place. At the last darshan, as a group of us filed out, I felt in my self the subtle movement to resume this posture or "form" of a still ignorant seeker who wanted something from the master, and without either of us saying a word Kirpal reflected this back to me immediately with an impatient, "don't-you-get-it-yet?" look, which was uncomfortable, but I now see as compassionate. It was almost as if he were mentally transmitting these words of Hafiz:

   “What is the difference between your experience of existence and that of a saint? The saint knows that the spiritual path is a sublime chess game with God and that the Beloved has just made such a fantastic move that the saint is now continually tripping over joy and bursting out in laughter and saying, "I surrender!" Whereas, my dear, I am afraid you still think you have a thousand serious moves.” !

   In a moment of still not accepting the possibility of such a state and feeling a need to "do something" about the ongoing mental chatter I remembered an earlier exchange where someone had said to Kirpal, "Master, I just can't stop my mind," to which he replied, in a light-hearted but enigmatic way, "well, that is a problem for all of us!" Today, as I write, that led me to think of a saying of Ramana to a disciple, "there is room even when it's crowded," meaning that our natural state is there whether thoughts arise or not. Hung-Jen similarly remarked:

   “The triple realm is an empty apparition that is solely the creation of the individual mind. Do not worry if you cannot achieve concentration and do not experience the various psychological states. Just constantly maintain clear awareness of the True Mind in all your actions.” - (The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch’an Buddhism by John R. McRae 1986)

   Huang Po stated:

   "Our original Buddha-Nature is, in highest truth, devoid of any trace of objectivity.... Even if you go through all the stages of a Bodhisattva's progress toward Buddhahood, one by one, when at last, in a single flash, you attain to full realization, you will only be realizing the Buddha-Nature that has been with you all the time; and by all the foregoing stages you will have added to it nothing at all. You will come to look upon those aeons of work and achievement as no better than unreal actions performed in a dream. That is why the Tathagata [the Buddha] said: I truly attained nothing from complete, unexcelled Enlightenment." (John Blofeld, trans., The Zen Teachings of Huang Po, New York: Grove Press, 1958, p131)

   "There is absolutely nothing which can be attained." (Wang Ling Record, p. 125)

   "I assure you that one who comprehends the truth of 'nothing to be attained' is already seated in the sanctuary (bodhimandala) where he will gain his Enlightenment." (Wan Ling Record, p. 128)

   Wei Wu Wei (Terence Gray) gave an description of satori that uncannily mirrored my experience - which wasn't an experience, but more of a shift in 'center of gravity':

   "Nothing happens to anything, nothing is changed, there is no psycho-somatic event at all; mind is unaffected. It is just the
   recovery of clear vision. It has no objective existence: it is a purely subjective adjustment.
   It is not phenomenal: it has no direct body-mind impact.
   It is entirely noumenal: its existence is intemporal, and it does not manifest phenomenally.
   It is essentially impersonal - the impersonalisation of a pseudo-individual psyche.
   It is a looking in the right direction: it is a sudden understanding that there is no I subject to time." (Ask the Awakened, 2002, p. 174-175)

   Though such a glimpse can be unfathomably deepened, and many tests lie ahead for us all, I remain convinced that it was this very taste, or "direct transmission from mind to mind", that I had received from Kirpal Singh. He had asked me what I wanted, I said "nothing," and he gave me "no-thing" ! It was many years later that help came from many sources to confirm that this was a "Nibbanic" or "Stream-Entry", a point of no-return and radically different from samadhis, jhanas, or the fruit of concentrative meditation, although it was only a beginning to a radical point of view that, in my understanding, would have to be further stabilized under many conditions over time, and brought into both the feeling nature and the will - the "truth is above all, but higher still is true living" of Guru Nanak.

   One last gift of prasad, and Kirpal's usual "remain in contact," and we parted. But this time there was an irreconciliable quandary. "Remain in contact" - with what? The "path", which had been taken from me? With light and sound, which likewise had been removed? With a physical guru himself who would die within a year? Or with the enigmatic presence that was as yet a fragile thing, and which a mountain of karma would challenge the acceptance of over many, many years? Indeed, the words "remain in contact" were something I many times wished I had asked clarification of, rather than accept as an injunction I could no longer understand. To this day the words bring, if intuition and insight are in the forefront, acceptance; otherwise, pain and anguish present themselves. "Oh guru, where art thou?" the heart cries, until through grace it finds a modicum of peace. There are moments when, like Rumi, I wander like a madman searching for my Shamaz Tabriz.

   As the taxi to the airport was late there was time for another brief farewell darshan, and devotee Leon Ponce asked me if I was going to go and say good-bye again, and I think that I then said the first spontaneous thing I ever had in my life, which was simply, "no, once is enough." He looked at me like I was from Mars. It doesn't sound like much, but at the time this was a little remarkable to me, as the experience of not thinking or judging the correctness of my thoughts before saying something was quite new, as was the absence of motivation to rush to "get more grace" from the Master. [That was then. If it was today, I would go back one more time.] A little story of Rinzai, however, comes to mind:

   "When Rinzai (Lin-chi) was meekly submitting to the thirty blows of Obaku (Huang-po), he presented a pitiable sight, but as soon as he had attained satori he was quite a different personage. His first exclamation was, "There is not much after all in the Buddhism of Obaku." (The Gospel According to Zen, 1970, p. 41)

   Wei Wu Wei, speaking of the manner of the Ch'an masters and sages like Ramana, wrote:

   "Those who were qualified to teach, those few, like the Maharshi, said that silence was more efficacious, but in the early stages teaching can only be given via a series of untruths diminishing in veracity in ratio to the pupil's apprehension of the falsity of what he is being taught."..Truth cannot be communicated; it can only be laid bare....the masters never explained anything, knowing that it was essential that the understanding should come from within and not from without." (Ask the Awakened, 2002, p. 23, 85)

   [Interestingly, while on the subject of Zen, I later came to find out that Paul Repps, author of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, had become an initiate of Kirpal.]

   Kirpal never explained anything, and repeatedly asked me questions for which any answers were usually cast aside as inept; he made spectacular play after play for which I had no counter-move or retreat, what a wonder, what a great Master! The next day I was on a plane for New York, 24 years old, shell shocked and not knowing exactly what happened, but knew something was not the same, nor would ever be the same. But the mind needed a long time to digest what had happened. This was for the most part before the advent and proliferation of the current crop of non-dualists and the teachings of no-seeking, abandoning the search, etc., so I felt quite on my own. As I said, Kirpal left me with his usual fairwell words, “remain in contact”, but that was the last thing that I felt I had anymore, meditation was dead, and I didn’t know what he meant, at the level of the mind in any way - except to remain held by the enigmatic no-thing-ness that presented itself to my consciousness - and I was to be in a real sense without the consolation of a spiritual "home" ever since, and never had a chance to get that explained further by Him. Satsangis uninitiated into such a path may not understand what I am saying, nor do I feel overly compelled to speak about it. It would make no sense to most, and I am not yet 'done', but a work in process. I still have doubts, but interspersed with moments of 'unknowing certainty'.


   The Years Pass

   Without going into too much detail, I will say that after my return to the States I began what subjectively was experienced as a long and even more terrifying and depressing descent back into my body and world. The sense of being drained spiritually continued for years, at times beyond belief, immense inner exhaustion with no outward reason, and after a time I gave up trying to meditate formally for good, surrendering to the unknown process that was taking over what seemed like the remnants of what was left of my spiritual life. Within a few months of my return, the sense of normal support for my breathing mechanism were undermined, and a new difficult struggle began. Merely sitting comfortably was impossible. The nature of my sleep changed also. The sense of going inside at all at night gradually was eliminated, and externalization became more profound. It was as if I had been thrown back to what I had been since birth, with the unhealed effects of all its attendant psychic wounds intact, but without even any natural spiritual capacity remaining to distance myself from them, and this would become the battleground in the years to come. The unconscious was to become conscious, and not merely left behind by a celestial yoga. This was not my choice. Whether such a process is necessary for all I do not know. The Buddha, however, suggested such was the case:

   “If its root remains undamaged and strong, a tree, even if cut, will grow back. So too if latent craving is not rooted out, this suffering returns again and again.” (Dhammapadda, 338)

   Likewise, C. G. Jung stated:

   "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."

   Sense desires long ago left behind came back with a vengeance, and it took a number of years for that to mellow out, to put it mildly. And there was a real battle. It was as if my suppressed body craved deep in its cells what it had denied itself and what had been replaced by spiritual comfort but which now was no more. I learned what real physical need was, likely the degree of touch an infant needs in the first few days of his life, like water to a man dying of thirst in the desert.

   Aside from that, every attempt I made to resurrect or reconnect with the “path” as I had known it met with total failure. I later found some consolation and confirmation of my dilemma over this in the writings of the eighteenth-century mystic Jean-Pierre deCaussade:

   "For the soul that desires nothing else but the will of God, what could be more miserable than the impossibility of being certain of loving Him? Formerly it was mentally enlightened to perceive in what consisted the plan for its perfection, but it is no longer able to do so in its present state...God and His grace are given in a hidden and strange manner, for the soul feels too weak to bear the weight of its crosses, and disgusted with its obligations...The ideal it has formed of sanctity reproaches it interiorly for its mean and contemptible disposition. All books treating of the lives of the saints condemn it, it can find nothing in vindication of its conduct; it beholds a brilliant sanctity which renders it disconsolate because it has not strength sufficient to attain it, and it does not see that its weakness is divinely ordered, but looks upon it as cowardice....This is, without a doubt, a death-blow to the soul, for it loses sight of the divine will which, so to speak, withdraws itself from observation to stand behind it and push it on, becoming thus its invisible principle, and no longer its clearly defined object...

   This soul has made its way, like others, at the beginning; like them it knew what to do, and did it faithfully; it would be vain now to attempt to keep it bound to the same practices. Since God, moved by the efforts it has made to advance with these helps, has taken Himself to lead it to this happy union, from the time it arrived at the state of abandonment, and by love possessed God; in fine, from the time that the God of all goodness, relieving it of all its trouble and industry, made Himself the principle of its operation, these first methods lost all their value and were but the road it had traversed. To insist upon these methods being resumed and constantly followed, would be to make the soul forsake the end at which it had arrived to re-enter the way which led to it." (Abandonment to Divine Providence, Chapter III, Section I, IV)

   Or as Rumi said:

   "This affliction is not because you are despised. When you were green and fresh, you were watered in the garden; that watering was for the sake of this fire." (The Pocket Rumi, p. 161)

   Even meditation made me more extroverted, impossible as that may seem to be, whether in a successor Master's company or not. Here it was that I had never completed the course of inner meditation and succeeded in experiencing what the theosophical classic The Voice of the Silence described as the "voidness of the seeming full" (i.e., the spiritual realm), but now I was being forced into the "fullness of the seeming void!" (i.e., the world).

   Fortunately, this kind of thing is not unheard of. A similar process seems to have been described as "embodiment" by contemporary non-dual teacher Adyashanti, although he has since made clear to avoid any confusion that this itself is not something a "me" can do, and that, in fact, the re-assumption of identification with a “me” will stop such a process:

   "After sudden Awakening to the Self, there begins a process of gradual embodiment of the transcendental into the human personality...This process of embodiment is a continual stripping away of every remnant of attachment and ego. It is a movement of continual surrender to the vast implications contained within true spiritual Awakening. It is a phase of spiritual unfolding fraught with many dangers, self-deceptions, and misunderstandings....As the opening progresses, the body must readjust. When space opens up, it provides room for the body to re-harmonize and to return to its natural state. During this process, some people's bodies experience a real shake-down. This can be quite dramatic because energy that has been trapped on the various levels - physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual - is released. This trapped energy is what keeps you off-balance and in a state of suffering...This energy has to break loose before it can re-harmonize and get into the proper flow. This bursting out can feel exhilarating or terrible; it can be tremendously powerful or mild. The harmonization may take weeks, months, or years. It may be very strong or imperceptible. Everyone is different; it just depends on how out-of-whack you've been...Having a profound awakening can be like taking the lid off of a jar. All the karma that has been repressed, all the karma at the bottom of our misery that we aren't conscious of, comes flying out because there is finally space in which it can emerge. When it hits you in the face, you wonder where your Freedom went and what went wrong. But understand that this is a consequence of the Freedom; it is not a mistake. Everything wants to come up into and be transformed by the Freedom. If you let it come up into this Aware Space, which is Love, it will re-harmonize." (5)

   This was furthered clarified by the writing of neo-Gurdjieffian, E.J. Gold:

   "In our little glimpses of the awakened state, because they are only glimpses, and therefore momentary and incomplete, we should remember that our experiences of these states are imperfect...Secondly, we should realize that, because the machine [physical and emotional bodies] was not fully awake during these glimpses of awakening, the machine still exerted its will, and because the machine was not fully awake, and vestigial traces of the sleeping state remained somewhat active to a greater or lesser degree, we inevitably experienced some discomfort which would not be a part of a complete waking state."(6)

   This confirms that the proccess of awakening may first take place in the head, and only later descend and infiltrate the heart or the emotional body. This part may be far more difficult and painful due to all the knots we tend to carry in that area. Even so, we can see how different all this is from the conventional description of the path in Sant Mat. The Sants yearn for the soul to ascend and reach Sach Khand and merge therein; the sages say they no longer have a separate self to care about any such thing, and also speak of a "downward" practice whereby the enlightened state penetrates deeper into the life vehicle. Mysteries and paradoxes abound, which I spent years grappling with, and I remain in a cloud of unknowing.

   Nevertheless, I have sometimes pondered how useful such information and guidance might have been in those early years. But everything is at it should be. Perhaps the "me", the ego would have corrupted such knowledge to delay its own demise. Most likely it would. God knows what is best. What is certain is that the result of a heartfelt prayer is profound. "Never be too proud to pray," Anthony Damiani once said. But if the higher Self takes you at your word, be prepared. Even Adyashanti spoke of going through a period where his Zen practise was in essence reduced to nothing but a constant prayer to a God he didn't even believe in, saying, "I can't do it, speed this process up, as fast as you can, whatever it takes, make me an instrument of thy will."   Doubting his motives, he asked his teacher about his condition and received the reply, "no, such a prayer is the prayer of the buddha, it's o.k." I feel at bottom we must all reach such a point. It is not even a question of reaching it, we are always and already there. [If this does not feel true for you, dear reader, forget all this, and don't go looking for it either; be as you are, and be happy!]

   I found a great description of the process leading up to that moment in the courtyard, as well as the many years afterwards, in a little-known gem of a book, which I highly recommend, called Do You See What I See? by Jah Jae Noh (Edwin Smith):

   “How, then, does the student finally come to truth? Since everything a student does is unconsciously aimed at avoiding truth, it is only through constant confrontation with truth that the student finally understands, accepts. In effect, truth simply outlasts the student. No matter what the student tries to do, truth keeps on “coming at” him until he finally wears out and surrenders. But this process obviously requires that the student persists. It requires that the student be dedicated, sincere...Since everything he does only avoids truth, he surrenders to That Which Is, Reality, Truth, God. He allows himself to be “done” by Reality. His activity is to not inhibit the process of Truth..He does all this in the faith that it is alright.....Among sincere students, any “method” will serve to promote spiritual realization. Among the insincere no method will serve. Thus, methodology is irrelevant to realization. Methods are illusory, serving only to pacify and gratify the mind. That which accounts for the realization of some and not others is readiness. Readiness is the activity of surrendering at each moment to the flow of guidance, until that form appropriate for realization is presented....It is the dedication and sincerity of the individual which acounts for even the possibility of realization..All methods are merely activities performed while waiting for divine presence to make itself known to you.” (7 )

   Not only was it impossible to go back to the old way of following the path, but my growing understanding was saying that it would, in fact, be wrong and fruitless to do so. The genie was out of the bottle, and there would be no point in trying to stuff it back in. This may well be the case for others also at a particular point on their journey. As Paul Brunton wrote:

   "The philosophic approach does not limit the seeker rigidly to a single specific technique. While it asks him to follow the basic path and fulfill the fundamental requirements which all beginners must follow, it also points out that this is only general preparation. A point is reached when he is ready for more advanced work, and when the personal characteristics and circumstances which are particularly his own must be brought in for adjustment if he is to receive the greatest benefit. No two seekers and the surrounding conditions are ever exactly alike and, at a certain stage, what is helpful to one will be time-wasting to another."

   "It is a common error, among the pious and even the mystics, to believe that one path alone - theirs - is the best. This may be quite correct in the case of each person, but it may not necessarily be correct for others, and then it is only correct for a period or at most a number of lifetimes."

   "Each man's path is his unique one, with its own experiences. Some are shared in common with all other seekers but others are not; they remain peculiar to himself. Therefore a part - whether large or small - of what he has to do cannot be prescribed by another person, be he guru or not. In the groups, organizations, schools, there is too much rigidity in the instruction, the rules, and the expectancy aroused of what should happen at each stage."

   "The human being will bring about its own redemption, if only we would allow it to do so. But instead we hypnotize the mind with ideas that may suit other persons but that are unsuited to us, we practise techniques that warp our proper development, we follow leaders who know only the way they themselves walked and who insist on crowding all seekers on it regardless of suitability, and we join groups which obstruct our special line of natural growth."

"There is a way suited to the particular individuality of each separate person, which will bring out all his spiritual possibilities as no other way could." (Notebooks, Vol. 2, 5.198-203, 218)

   After this I greatly expanded my study of the traditions as well as reading everything new that I could, which became a consuming passion, spent time with other teachers, not so much searching for another guru, as in any case none I found came close to what I saw in Kirpal, but for deriving benefit wherever I might find it, much as in the tradition of disciples of the Ch'an Masters of old who wandered about, in attempting to more fully understand and test their experience, condition and practice. Judith had said to me that I would need another guru, and while I took that with a grain of salt, it stayed in my head and I thought of it from time to time. I eventually was to spend seven years in the community of Adi Da (aka Da Free John), from 1984-1991, attracted at first by his teaching of "radical understanding" in The Knee of Listening and The Method of the Siddhas, which I came upon soon after arriving back in the States in 1973, and much of which seemed to mirror my own experience. I had sensed that he might be that "other guru" that Judith had said I would need, but finally left for several basic reasons: one, a growing sense of needing space to find my own way; two, a glaring discrepency between the brilliant written teaching and the actual goings on within the inner circle of the guru; and three, a feeling that there was still a heart connection with Kirpal. Do not misunderstand me, it is not that I ever felt that I had left Him. I had gone to Adi Da because it seemed right for me at the time, and the further workings of grace on my path. One disciple of his had even claimed as early as 1975 that he had a vision on the grounds of their sanctuary in northern California in which Kirpal had appeared and said that "He liked the vibrations of the place." This person supposedly had never even seen a picture of Kirpal before that time, which I took as a good sign about my decision. But that was then, this was now; much had changed, and it was time to move on.

   Meanwhile, I had two careers: computer programming, then chiropractic; got married at age forty; raised three step-children, etc., basically trying to live a normal life, while dealing with a paradoxical demolition from within...It has been an interesting thirty-five years, filled with mistakes, humiliations, revelations of ego, attempts at therapy, successes, failures, adventures, fulfillments, heartaches, simple pleasures, agonizing pain, occasional