MOD

THE MYSTERY

OF DEATH

by

KiRpAl SingH











Sawan Singh Ji Maharaj

(1858-1948)







Dedicated

to the Almighty God

working through all Masters who have come

and Baba Sawan Singh Ji Maharaj

at whose lotus feet

the writer imbibed sweet elixir of

Holy Naam — the Word











I have written books without any copyright—no rights

reserved—because it is a Gift of God, given by God, as much

as sunlight; other gifts of God are also free.



—from a talk by Krpal Sngh, wth the author of a book

after a talk to students of relgon at Santa Clara Unversty,

San Jose, Calforna on november 16, 1972.



The text of ths book s the same as what was publshed durng

the lfetme of Master Krpal Sngh. Asde from punctuaton

and captalzaton correctons, no changes have been made

to the text. it s exactly the same as what was approved by

Master Krpal Sngh.







Orgnally publshed n inda:

Frst Edton — 1968 n 3000 Copes

Second Edton — 1971 n 3300 Copes

Ths prntng s of the Second Edton — 2007







RUHAni SATSAng

Dvne Scence of the Soul

250 “H” Street, #50

Blane, WA 98230-4018 USA





iSBn 978-0-9764548-6-1 [0-9764548-6-6] Mystery of Death

SAn 854-1906



iSBn 978-0-942735-80-2 [0-942735-80-3]

Combined edition Wheel of Life and Mystery of Death



www.RuhanSatsangUSA.org







v

THE MYSTERY

OF DEATH

by

KiRpAl SingH









v

Sant Kirpal Singh Ji

(1894-1974)









v

TABlE OF COnTEnTS





Author’s preface.....................................................x



introducton .............................................................1



Chapter i



nothng Des n nature .....................................21



Chapter ii



The lght of lfe...............................................29



Chapter iii



lfe n Fullness .................................................43



Chapter iV



Death n Bondage ..............................................63



Chapter V



What After Death? ............................................83



Books by Krpal Sngh ........................................ 111









v

Sant Kirpal Singh Ji

(1894-1974)



v

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

‘Death’ s the greatest engma n lfe. it has baffled

humanknd from tmes out of mnd. And yet despte all

attempts to solve the mystery, t has remaned as mysterous

as ever before.



The Sants of the hghest order—Sant Satgurus, or

the perfect Masters—who come down from the regon of

deathlessness and are ever in tune with the Infinite, know the

shadowy character of death. They teach us that death s not

what t seems. it s a joyous brth (born agan) nto a lfe more

beatific than we ever dreamed of here. It is just as sun sets on

ths sde of the globe and rses n the other part. They pont

out and demonstrate to us the way to conquer the seemngly

nvncble and terrfyng death and thus become fear-free.

Ths s the grand lesson that we can get from the Sants. They

assure us that we do not de—we smply shake off physcal

vesture of body to work n other bodes: physcal or astral

or causal; and ultmately rse to realze our dvne nature and

see oneness n god—the All-conscousness and blss.



in the pages that follow, an attempt has been made to

suggest the way to the soluton of tangled rddle n succnct

and lucd language whch may be easly ntellgble to the

reader. The study offers a somewhat simplified approach to

the abstruse and esoterc doctrnes pertanng to the body

and the soul, the relaton between the two. it also offers the

methods to control the mnd so as to make t a wllng and

obedent nstrument for transcendng body-conscousness,

whch can be a foretaste of the actual death experence whch

all of us have to undergo ultmately.







x

The glory of a perfect Master les not only n teachng

merely on the level of ntellect but n encompassng a drect,

immediate and first-­hand experience of what he teaches. The

scence of the Masters s the only sprtual scence whch s

demonstrable n the laboratory of the mnd. it yelds out-

of-body experences, openng up vast vstas of sprtual

awakenng nto unearthly realms of ndescrbable splendour;

and all this while living in the flesh. Salvation to be real must

be ganed rght now and here.



The way to the Sprt, and power-of-god, s always open

to the sncere seekers after Truth, but success on the path

depends on the dvne grace medated through some god-

man. One who is fired with the love of God is sure to find

the means to reach god. it s just a queston of the ntensty

of yearnng. Where there s sncere and genune love of

god, He comes n the garb of a Sant to lead the asprants to

Hmself. May Hs lght be a lamp unto the feet of those who

aspre for the lfe of the Sprt, and lead the asprants to a

human pole where that lght shnes.



My heartfelt thanks go to Shr Bhadra Sena specally,

and to other dedcated souls lke hm who n one form or

another helped n brngng out ths work; and spent long

hours over the manuscrpt n a sprt of lovng devoton.



August 25, 1968 Kirpal Singh









x

INTRODUCTION

‘lfe’ and ‘Death’ are correlatve terms. in the realm

of relatvty we cannot thnk, speak and act except by

puttng one thng n juxtaposton to another. Ths s the

way to understand what s phenomenal. in multplcty, we

are confronted at every step wth complex jgsaw puzzles,

and have, therefore, to follow an analytcal process of

sortng out the component parts n each case, to name them

ndvdually and to put one n relaton to the other, so as

to comprehend somethng of t on the plane of the senses

and the ntellect. Thus by the very nature of thngs, and by

the nature of the cognzng facultes wth whch nature has

endowed us, we lve by the knowledge of the parts only, and

never get a true pcture of anythng n ts totalty. Snce we

have no knowledge and experence of the noumenon, we are

content all the whle wth forms and colours of the thngs

we see, ther attrbutes and characterstcs whch may be

apparent on the surface, wthout penetratng nto the depth,

the central lfe-prncple, whch s the self-same n all n spte

of the dfferences n the mass, the densty, the volume, the

weght and the shape of what we see and observe. lke the

lady of Shallot, we lve all the tme n the world of shadows

as reflected in the reflecting mirror (of mind and intellect),

wth our back turned, as t were, even upon the objectve

world around us, what to speak of the subjectve world n

each one of us—the world of realty wth wonders greater,

vaster, more gorgeous and more glorous than anythng n

the physcal.

With the dawn of first flicker in man, of Divinity, the

All-controllng and All-sustanng power behnd everythng

organc or norganc, developed the conscousness of some



1

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



prncple whch was the lfe and soul of the unverse. Ths

gradually led to the foundng of varous relgons, each

accordng to the nsght that ts founder had, regard beng to

the needs of the tme and the people and the level of racal

understandng and capacty to accept, dgest, and assmlate

the teachngs of the Apostles, Messahs and prophets who

came from tme to tme for the materal, mental, moral,

socal and economc uplftment of the multtudes.



All relgons sprng from the best of motves. The leaders

of relgous thought are as much the product of the tme as

the condtons they create for the ameloraton of the masses

among whom they preach. Ths beng the case, t may not be

far amss to say that for the majorty of the people, the superb

teachngs of the enlghtened teachers formed what may be

sad soco-relgons, codes of socal and moral precepts so

as to make people lve n peace wth one another, rather than

n a state of perpetual unrest, and fear of war—war of one

aganst all and all aganst one.



All good and vrtuous thoughts; lke other thoughts,

proceed from the mnd. in the case of world teachers such

thoughts had ther orgn n the lfe of the sprt they lved.it s,

however, very few who rise to their level, and profit by their

ntrnsc teachngs, the practcal aspect n each relgon—

mystcsm—consttutng the core of what they taught. Thus

the practcal central theme was mparted to the chosen

few—the elect—whle the masses were gven the theoretcal

aspect of the teachngs n the form of parables as mght, n

course of tme, enable them to grasp and understand the true

mport of what they actually taught. Thus as one probes the

bottom of all relgons, one gets glmpses of the realty no

matter how fant and vague at tmes they appear, because we

have not yet developed the eyes whch ther founders had.

For the common man, relgon remaned, for the most part,

a theory, a ratonalsed theory at the most, to mprove hs lot



2

inTRODUCTiOn



n lfe and make hm a better man, a better member of the

socal order to whch he belonged, a true ctzen of the state,

clothed wth cvc rghts and oblgatons, socal and famly

responsbltes, for the healthy dscharge of whch he was

thus equpped.



All vrtues, all acts, all arts, all scences and all crafts

ncludng statecraft, prest-craft, the gentlecraft have ther

bass n the lowest common multple n varyng degrees,

of the underlyng unversal truth, as conceved by ther

progentors; hence we see an amalgam of relgon wth socal

and moral trappngs to make t presentable and acceptable to

the generalty of manknd. Ths s the aspect of relgon that

provides a firm basis to the social order of the race.



if we move a step further, we come to other stratum n

relgon. it s one of moral vrtues, arsng at dfferent levels,

as rtes and rtuals, forms and formulares, austertes and

penances, humantes and chartes, ncantatons to tame and

reconcle rreconclable powers that be, and nvocatons to

frendly powers for ad and succour n tmes of need.



last, but not the least, come the yogs and yogshweras

well-versed n yogc dscplnes as we shall presently see.



At the apex of the herarchy, are Master-sants, perfected-

bengs or god-men who not only speak of the power and

Sprt of god, but make it manfest n ther ntates and

conscously lnk ndvdual souls wth t. it must be sad to

ther credt that thers s the true relgon, truly relgous,

etymologcally and practcally, bndng men back to the

Creator.



The teachngs of Masters do not form an nsttutonal

relgon as t s ordnarly understood to be. it s a regular

speces of scence—the Scence of Soul. Whoso-

ever fathfully practses ths scence as enjoned by the



3

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



Masters, gets the same experences and arrves at the same

conclusons; rrespectve of the socal relgon to whch he

belongs and the Church; Hgh or low, papal or Anglcan,

Epscopal or presbyteran, to whch he owes allegance.



The Scence of Soul s the kernel and the core of all

relgons. it s the foundaton on whch all relgons rest.

The Masters teach that there are seven planes—pnd, Und,

Brahmand, par Brahmand, Sach Khand, Alakh and Agam.

And above all the cosmos, there s the eghth plane, called

dfferently by the Sants as Anam (nameless), Maha Dayal

(lord of compasson), nrala (the most wonderful) or Swam

(the lord of all). The ntates of the Masters are gven an

account n bref of the dstngushng features of each of

the first five planes and the characteristic sounds and lights

prevalng n each; and the names of the presdng powers.

The initiate who successfully crosses the first plane is

called a sadhak (dscple). And the one who traverses the

second s known a Sadh (a dscplned soul). He who s

washed clean n the par Brahmand of the lngerngs and

longings in him is called a Hansa (a purified soul) and he

who goes further up s called a param-Hansa (an mmaculate

soul). He who reaches the fifth plane (Sach Khand) is called

a Sant or a Sant. And a Sant who s commssoned by the

Supreme Beng to teach Truth (Shksha) and to demonstrate

Truth (Dksha) s called a Sant Satguru (or a perfect Master)

havng authorty to gude jvas (human souls) nto the realms

beyond, to ther ultmate Home (the Kngdom of god).



Yoga means unon of soul wth the Oversoul or god-

power. There are so many forms of yoga—Mantra yoga,

Hatha yoga, Ashtang yoga, Karam yoga, Bhakt yoga,

Jnana yoga, Raja yoga, laya yoga and the lke. These yogc

dscplnes, more or less, deal wth the tranng of the

physcal body, the outgong facultes, the mnd and the





4

inTRODUCTiOn



ntellect. They am at securng a healthy mnd n a healthy

body, so as to achieve health, physical fitness and longevity.

Each has ts own scope and purpose. But all these dfferent

yogc forms do not consttute watertght compartments,

but together they serve to ntegrate man to make hm whole

or an undvded ndvdual. (For a detaled account n ths

behalf, reference may profitably be made to the study of

“Crown of Life” wheren the subject has been dealt wth at

some length).



There s yet another form of yoga—the Surat Shabd Yoga

or Communon wth the Holy Word (Sound Current). it s at

the root of all relgons and yet t s not properly understood

by the theologans. it takes one to the ultmate goal—Anam

or the nameless Absolute who s at the back of the entre

creation both as its material and efficient Causeless Cause. As

the Ocean of pure Conscousness heaved, the Formless and

nameless Absolute came nto expresson, n many dfferent

forms wth many dfferent names by the power of its own

heavng vbratons; the Sound whereof came to be called

the Holy Word. How to get nto drect touch wth the Sprt

and power of god, the prmal Creatve prncple (the lght

of lfe) s the subject of mystcsm. Whle all phlosophes

deal wth the manfested aspect of the Unmanfest and the

creaton of the Uncreate; mystcsm, on the other hand, deals

with the first Creative Principle itself, the vibratory force

charactersed by Sound and lght (Srut and Jyot).



The process of Communon wth the Word starts wth

a conscous contact wth the god-nto-expresson-power

(the naam or the Holy ghost) and t grants one an actual

experence of neffable blss of the hgher planes, not on

credt to be experenced n the hereafter (after death); but

right here and now, while yet living in flesh in the material

physcal world.





5

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



These vbratons, resultng nto varous types of sounds,

gude the ntate through the dfferent planes of varyng

denstes, materal and sprtual, and ultmately lead the

sprt nto a purely sprtual world of Sat naam (the Kng–

dom of god), from where the Dvne Harmony emanates

whch becomes the means of leadng back the world-weary

souls to the True Home of the lovng Father—the heaven of

blss. Tuls Sahb says: “A Sound from afar s comng down

to call you back to god”. Smlarly, we have the testmony

of Shamas Tabrez when he, addressng hmself, says: ‘O

Shamas! Hearken thou to the Voce of god, callng thee unto

Hm”. guru Arjan lkewse says:



He Who sent you nto the world below, s now callng

you back.



in the Quran we have: “O thou soul! return to the lord,

well pleased and pleasng Hm.”



A perfect lvng Master s a ‘must’ on the path godward.

in the gospel of St. John, we have: “no man cometh unto

the Father but by Me.” (14:6). All the Masters say that there

s always n the world a Master or a ‘Murshd’ who functons

as a Qbla numa, or a ponter to the Qbla or the holest of

the holy, sanctum sanctorum, worthy of our adoraton and

worshp. in the Skh scrptures we have: “The teachers come

n successon from age to age.” St. luke lkewse tells us:

“As He, spoke by the mouth of hs holy prophets whch have

been snce the world began.” (1:70).



The law of Demand and Supply s always workng n

nature. There s food for the hungry and water for the thrsty.

Where there is fire, oxygen of its own comes to its aid. But

each prophet and a Messah works out hs msson for the

tme he s sent nto the world. Jesus sad: “As long as i am n

the world, i am the lght of the world.” (John 9:5). But when





6

inTRODUCTiOn



one fulfils his commission, he is recalled, gathered up and

passes away from the scene of hs actvty on the earth-plane.

in nature, there s no such thng as vacuum. The power-of-

god cannot but contnue the work of the regeneraton for t

s a ceaseless task. Whle wthdrawng from one human

pole, the sad power chooses another human pole for ts

manfestaton and work n the world. Such a human pole

may be sad to be the vceregent of god. He steps nto the

breach, fills in the gap and carries on the work. It is just like

replacng a fused bulb wth the new one, to ensure contnuty

of lght. The Chrst power or the power-of-god contnues to

shne undmnshed from one pole or another; may be n the

lkeness of Zoroaster, Confucus, Jesus, Mohammed, Kabr,

nanak, Tuls Sahb or Soam J.



As stated before, the world s never wthout a Master.

After Soam J, Baba Jamal Sngh J carred on hs

Master’s msson n the punjab and then hs llustrous

sprtual son and successor, Hazur Sawan Sngh J whose

grace contnues to shne, even now, more than ever before,

all over the world through ‘Ruhan Satsang’ wth ts

Headquarters n Delh—a common forum where relgous

heads of the country and from abroad meet, from tme to

tme, and work n cementng manknd nto one brother-

hood as chldren of god, rrespectve of the socal relgous

orders and the countres to whch they belong.



When the Sants leave the world, accounts of ther

valuable experences n the course of ther search for Truth

are compled and they add to the sacerdotal lterature of

the world, as extant today. in the twenteth century we are

fortunate to have several scrptures comng down from ages

gone by. We have Zend Avesta, the Vedas, the Upnshadas,

the great epcs of Ramayana and Mahabharata, the Bhagwad

gta, the old and new Testaments, the Al-Quran, the Ad





7

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



granth and many other books lke Sar Bachan and gurmat

Sdhant. All of them deal wth the self-same Truth whch

s one and only one, but approach to Truth s n a varety

of ways, each havng ts pecular termnology and mode of

expresson. But most of us stckng to the teachngs of the

one or the other of the sages, find it hard to comprehend

ther mport for lack of knowledge of the nner meanng of

key-words employed and the language or dalect pressed

nto servce. Unless a man of realsaton, who has hmself

experenced the truths propounded by the wrters, comes to

our ad and explans them to us and n a way ntellgble to

us, we cannot get at the real meanngs. in the hands of such

a competent Master, the past records come alve and become

a source of nspraton for the asprng souls. it s, therefore,

sad:



The scrptures are tools n the hands of a Master, and do

help n ferryng across the sea of lfe,



But the scrptures become ntellgble only when some

god-man comes to nterpret them.



At ntaton, the seeker after Truth s conscously lnked

wth the Holy Word, the god-nto-expresson power n the

form of lght and Sound emanatng from the vbratory

moton n the depth of the Ocean of love, as god s. He s

gven a drect demonstraton of the power and Sprt of god

and begns to see the lght of god and to hear the Musc

of Spheres, vbratng unceasngly everywhere, n space

and out of space, for there s no place where it s not. Of

guru nanak, fully dyed n the colour of the All-pervadng

naam and always lvng n a state of contnuous ecstasy, t s

sad that once n hs travels he, whle n Mecca (n Araba),

was one day found lyng n the sacred precncts wth hs

feet towards the sacred shrne ‘Qaaba’. The attendants of

the shrne could not tolerate ths apparently sacrlegous act.





8

inTRODUCTiOn



They rebuked hm for the affront sayng, “How, s t that

you are lyng wth your feet towards the House of god?”

guru nanak, who was conscous of the Sprt of god surgng

everywhere and n every drecton, meekly asked, “please

tell me where god s not, so that i may turn my feet n that

drecton.” Ths s how god-centred Sants look at thngs.

They see god everywhere and n all drectons as an All-

pervadng lfe-prncple pulsatng n all that s.



Smlarly, n Al-Quran, the prophet has declared: “The

Kngdom of god extends from east to west, and the fathful

can find Him in whatsoever direction they may turn their

face towards Hm, for god s sure to meet them n that very

direction; as He is not confined to any particular space and is

All-knowng, knowng the heart of each.”



Al-nsa, a Muslm darvesh, elaboratng ths pont goes

on to explan: “For me the whole earth s but a tabernacle of

god and a holy place for offerng prayers. My followers are

free to say ther prayers wherever they may happen to be,

when the tme of prayer dawns.”



in the Acts of Apostles (17:24), we have: “god s the

Creator of heaven and earth and He dwelleth not n temples

made by (human) hands.”



Olver Wendell Holmes, therefore, lays more emphass

on devoton than on anythng else; for lovng devoton

sanctifies the place, the time and mode of prayer. He says:

“All s holy where one kneels n devoton.”



The power and Sprt of god s All-pervadng. it s ever-

present and ever-vbratng. By attunng to the Dvne

Melody, the soul s spontaneously lfted, as t were n an

electrc lft, to hgher and hgher regons, and one proceeds

on and on n the wake of the tuneful Musc whch gradually





9

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



becomes more and more subtle untl t gets absorbed nto the

Source whence t proceeds—the Absolute, the Anam or the

nameless and the Wordless.



We all are n search of god accordng to our own lghts.

The souls after passng through a long and wearsome

evolutionary process of self-­discipline and self-­purification,

are ultmately led by the god-power to the feet of a Master-

sant for journey back to god. “no man can come to me

except the Father whch has sent me draw hm: and i wll

rase hm at the last day.” (John 5:44). The ‘last day’ here

means the day when one leaves the dross of the body,

may be voluntarly n one’s lfetme by rsng above body-

conscousness by the practcal process of self-analyss; or

nvoluntarly at the tme of death when the sensory currents

are wrenched out of the body by the Angel of Death. guru

Arjan says: “He that sent you nto the world s now callng

you back. Turn ye Homeward wth ease and comfort.”



The nventons of rado and radar have now proved,

beyond doubt, that the atmosphere around us s full of

vbratng sounds whch can be pcked up and drawn down to

be heard from any dstance whatsoever, provded there s an

nstrument well-equpped, well-adjusted and well-attuned to

catch them. Ths s exactly what a competent Master does at

the tme of ntaton, when he tunes n ndvdual souls and

makes the Sound prncple audble to them.



The outer earthly musc has great mpact on man. The

solders on the march are roused by the materal strans

of bugles and trumpets. The hghlanders, n ther tartan

klts, march trumphantly wth the sound of pbrochs or the

bag-ppes. The salors and seamen tug and pull at the sals

and work at the oars with rhythmic shouts. The muffled

drums play the funeral march to the sorrowng mourners

accompanyng a ber. The dancers dance n unson wth the





10

inTRODUCTiOn



accompanyng musc and the jnglng of ther bracelets and

anklets. Even the anmals lke the chmng of the bells ted

to their horns. The fleet-­footed antelope is enticed from the

hdng thckets by the beatng of drums. The deadly cobras

are charmed by the snake-charmer by the musc of vna.

The outer musc takes the soul to the end of the materal

plane and rases emotons whch otherwse le too deep for

tears. Such ndeed s the power of musc. John Dryden, an

emnent Englsh poet of the seventeenth century, speaks of t

eloquently:



What passon cannot Musc rase and quell?

When Jubal struck the chorded shell,

Hs lstenng brethren stood around,

And wonderng, on ther faces fell

To worshp that celestal sound.

less than a god they thought there could not dwell

Wthn the hollow of that shell,

That spoke so sweetly and so well.

What passon cannot Musc rase and quell?



When such s the power of the earthly musc, one may

well magne what would be the power of the celestal

Musc? How nebratng and exhlaratng t would be when

one would begn to rse above body-conscousness and be

n tune wth the heavenly Harmony. The Word s the god-

power come nto expresson. god s Symphonc love, all

bubblng out and brmmng over. He s the Source at once of

love, lght and lfe.



The way to the Absolute leads through many mansons

(planes and sub-planes) lyng on the way from the physcal

to the Father’s Home. The journey s fraught wth danger.

The mental planes are altogether mpassable wthout a gude

fully conversant wth the turns and twsts of the path. Hence

the mperatve need for a guru (torch-bearer) or a competent





11

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



Master, a regular traveller on the way, fully cognzant of the

difficulties and hazards that beset the path. He alone who is

conversant wth the way godward, can safely take the sprt

through slppery regons of blndng lght and bewlderng

shadows and through delusve sren-charms and the terrors

of the unknown. Maulana Rum therefore exhorts us:



Fnd thou a traveller of the path, for wthout such a

traveller,



The path s full of untold ptfalls and nconcevable

dangers.



We, on the other hand, are deeply engrossed n the world.

Kabr gves us a vvd descrpton of our helplessness n the

fearsome sea of the world. He tells us that the way to real

happness s long and dreary; and we are snorng deeply on

the plane of the senses. He asks us to wake-up and start on

the tortuous uphll journey. We all are n the deadly grp of

the steely tentacles of lfe, carryng a heavy load of delusons

on our head. Our so-called frends and relatons are mostly

our credtors and debtors, and they are merclessly pullng

us to peces n devous ways. The wonder s that we lovngly

hold on to them and hug them to our bosom, lttle knowng

that they are bleedng us whte. What we consder as our

very own s just a mrage and s very often taken away from

us n the twnklng of an eye. Agan, the poor soul has, after

death, to tread the soltary path to the judgement seat of god

(Dharam Raj, the Dvne Dspensng power) all alone. Wth

the worn-­out boat of the body, we are floating rudderless

lke weeds n the treacherous streams, contnuous prey to

chance wnds and stormy waters. How then are we gong

to cross over to the other shore? For a mere pttance we are

constantly engaged n a losng game; and n the end pass out

lke a hunted quarry, and know not whther we go. We have

no knowledge of the lfe beyond the grave. How can we be





12

inTRODUCTiOn



saved? This defies our understanding, and we feel baffled

and helpless.



The Master promses to be wth us all the tme, both here

and n the hereafter nto the beyond. He gves a demonstraton

of t to the ntate by manfestng hs Radant Form wthn

each one of the ntates. And he assures us n no uncertan

terms: “Where i am, there shall ye be also.”



The ntate s taught the esoterc way to rse nto the

Kngdom of Heaven whch les wthn hm. The nner journey

starts wth the openng of the sngle eye or ‘shv netra’. it

opens when the sensory currents are wthdrawn and gathered

up to the seat of the soul at the eye focus behnd and between

the two eyebrows. On enterng nto the beyond, the ntate

can talk to the Master wthn and come back wth a fully

conscous recollecton of the experences ganed on the nner

planes. in the Kngdom of Heaven there s nether the chan

of endless cause and effect, nor s there space nor tme. There

s nothng but one contnuous present n whch one lves n a

world of hs own. The communcaton between soul and soul

s through etherc thought-waves or vbratons.



All ths, and much more, can be acheved by daly

and prolonged lovng devoton to the sprtual sadhanas or

practces. in ths way, an ntate attans conscous contact

wth the Master on the hgher planes and by degrees gets

absorbed n Hm, so much so that he becomes one wth Hm;

and paul-lke begns to say:

I am crucified in Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but

Christ liveth in me, and the life I live in the flesh, I live by

the fath of the Son-of-god, who loved me.

—(gal. 2:20)









13

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



The Master is ‘Word-­made-­flesh’, he is all the time in

drect and constant communon wth the Dvne Word n

hm, nay, he actually revels n it and often proclams “i and

my Father are one”, or as we read n gurban, “i and my

Father are dyed n the self-same colour”, or “i and my Father

are n workng partnershp wth each other” (so as to run

together the sprtual admnstraton of the world). in short,

t may be sad that the Master s a conscous co-worker wth

god of the Dvne plan.



At tmes, the Master takes the ntate ‘under cover’ far

beyond certan planes whch are bewtchngly beautful,

so that he may not get entangled theren and be lost n the

wonders of the way. Maulana Rum therefore says:



if you ntend gong on a plgrmage (nto the beyond),

then take thou a plgrm for thy companon,



it matters not whether the sad plgrm s a Hndu, a

Turk or an Arab; but see that He s a real plgrm.



A lvng Master s such a plgrm. “Type of the wse who

soar but never roam; True to the kndred ponts of Heaven

and Home”. To have a lvng Master s a great blessng. He

never leaves nor forsakes the ntates even unto the end of

the world. When one s ntated, the Master lves n hm n

Hs astral or lucform body and ever remans wth hm tll

the end of journey to Sat naam or Sat purush; and absorbs

hmself n Hm and also makes the ntate-soul get absorbed

n Hm —the two becomng one n Hm. Even f at any

tme the dscple goes astray or s led astray, he s brought

back to the path of recttude ether n ths very lfe or n

succeedng ones.



Agan, Chrst and other Masters have, n course of tme,

to pass away from the earth-plane and yet they lve n Shabd





14

inTRODUCTiOn



form wthn, but out of space and out of tme. Bound as we

are wth one or the other of them, we naturally wsh to lve

and de for them. But lttle do we know how to contact them

wthn our own self. Such a contact s possble and well

within our reach, if we but find a Shabd swaroop or Word

personified teacher competent to link us with the Word, nay

transform us nto the Word n whch all Masters of ages gone

by eternally lve.



i am remnded of a lady who met me n Amerca durng

1955. She used to greet Chrst wthn herself and was thus

self-­satisfied and did not like to make further attempt to

advance further on the sprtual path. One day i casually

suggested to her to ask Chrst as to what further steps He

would prescrbe for nner progress. The followng day she

came and warmly pressed for ntaton, remarkng that

Chrst had drected her to seek the gudance of the lvng

perfect Master, f she desred to further advance.



The powers wthn never obstruct the seekers after god;

and f one s n contact wth an ancent Master, he readly

and gladly tells hs devotees what to do for the next steps on

the sprtual path.



A few of the ntates are taken up by the Master and

shown the glory of the fifth region (Sach Khand), and most

of the ntates are guded on to that plane. But as sad

before, there are n all eght regons, and the eghth s the

ultmate goal, whch s reached by those who attan complete

perfecton.



it s after transcendng Sat lok that one gets to know the

neffable and ncomprehensble,



it s n the regon beyond all these that Sants resde and

nanak, the lowly one, also rests there.





15

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



St. John, the Dvne, n the Revelatons, gves us an

exposton of hs nner experences:



i was n the sprt on the lord’s Day and heard behnd

me a great voce as of a trumpet,

Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last;

And i turned to see the voce that spake wth me.

He was one lke unto the Son of man.

His eyes were as a flame of fire;

Hs voce as the sound of many waters;

Hs countenance was as the sun shneth n hs strength,

And when i saw hm, i fell at hs feet dead

and he lad hs rght hand upon me sayng

unto me—Fear not, I am the first and the last;

He that hath an ear, let hm hear what the sprt sath:

To hm that overcometh, wll i gve to eat of the frut

of lfe.

He shall not be hurt of the second death,

To hm wll i gve to eat the hdden manna, and wll

gve hm a whte stone and n the stone a new name

wrtten, whch no man knoweth savng he that

receveth.

And he shall be clothed n whte rament and i wll not

blot hs name out of the Book of lfe,

And i wll make hm a pllar n the temple of my god.

I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire that

thou mayest be rch, and whte rament that thou

mayest be clothed;

And anont thne eyes wth eye salve that mayest see.

—Ch. 1, 2 & 3.



in Ch. 12 of the second book of Cornthans, St. paul,

speakng of hs vsons and revelatons, tells us of the thrd

heaven when he says: “i knew a man caught n the thrd

heaven (Brahmand), whether n the body or out of the body,

i cannot tell, god knoweth.



16

inTRODUCTiOn



“How that he was caught up nto the paradse, and heard

unspeakable words, whch s not lawful for me to utter.”



All the Masters stop short when t comes to revealng the

nnermost secrets. Shamas Tabrez says: “When t comes to

tellng the tale of the Beloved, my pen falters and the page s

torn”. Maulana Rum also forbds the gvng out of the nner

secrets: “Thou mayest tell thy vson, not a jot ths or that

even. Else He wll blot out all that thou hast seen, as t had

never been.” So does Kabr emphatcally declare:



i beseech thee wth all the force at my command,

Be careful that the nner secrets do not go out.

We may as well close ths wth the memorable words

from the famous Masnavi, wheren the great Rum says:

It is not fitting that I tell thee more,

For the stream’s bed cannot hold the sea.



Ths, then, s the way that the Masters of yore kept

hdden to themselves the Secret Doctrne of Dvnty, as a

sacred trust, and mparted somethng of t only to ther

trusted and tested dscples (gurmukhs). indeed t s not a

subject that can adequately be dscussed n mere words.

The proof of the puddng, however, les n ts eatng. it s a

practcal process of self-analyss, tappng and nverson; and

whosoever by the grace of a perfect Master, gans an access

into himself and delves deep within, is sure of find the pearl of

nestmable value. A touch of realty makes one real beyond

all relatvty; and the mortal man s at once transmuted nto

an mmortal sprt, dssolvng the gordan knot between the

nert matter and the lvng soul. Thus s solved the mystery

of ‘lfe’ and ‘death’, for lfe alone exsts through the passng

shadows of all that s transtory, swallowng death n vctory

at every step.





17

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



in the followng pages, an attempt has been made to tell

somethng of the Secret Doctrne n the three dmensonal

language at our dsposal, whch s hghly nadequate to

express the neffable. May the power and Sprt of god help

the readers to a better understandng of the subject at the feet

of some Competent Master, capable of delverng the sprtual

rches here and now n ths lfe, for who knows whether the

Truth wll dawn or not n the hereafter, as t s so solemnly

and serously held out and promsed by so-called teachers

wth whom the world abounds. in ths context, Chrst has

gven a solemn warnng: “Beware of false prophets, whch

come to you n sheep’s clothng, but nwardly they are

ravenng wolves”. (Math. 7:15). if a blnd leads the blnd,

both shall fall nto the dtch.



it s, therefore, of paramount mportance that one must

make a thorough search for a Competent and perfect Master,

and satsfy oneself of the genuneness before acceptng and

adoptng hm as an unerrng gude and an unfalng frend

on the god-way. it does not matter f one may have to spend

hs entre lfe-span n ths momentous quest, rather than be

taken n by pseudo Masters and lose one’s only chance n

lfe. A quest lke ths wll not go n van. ‘Seek and ye shall

find’.









18

inTRODUCTiOn



I died as mineral and became a plant,

I died as plant and rose to animal,

I died as animal and I was a man.

Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

Yet, once more, I shall die as man, to soar—

With angels blessed, but even from angelhood

I must pass on; all except God doth perish.

When I have sacrificed my angel soul,

I shall become what no mind e’er conceived,

Oh! let me not exist, for non-existence

Proclaims in organ-tones, “To Him we shall return”.



Maulana Rum









19

Sant Kirpal Singh Ji

(1894-1974)





20

I

NOTHING DIES IN NATURE





D EATH and deathlessness both nhere n the nature

of all that s—all that combnes n tself both matter

and sprt. Matter s but a projectng screen for the sprt—the

all-pervadng sprt that attracts matter n varyng degrees of

denstes and vbratons to manfest tself n varous patterns

of forms and colours, at dfferent levels of exstence. Sprt

by tself, wthout materal mantle to manfest tself on the

earth-plane, s vod, for sprt wthout the coverng of matter

cannot be seen with the eyes of flesh, just as the power of

spring makes itself felt only when it acts on flowers and

fruts makng them bloom and blossom wth jucy fragrance

and luscious flavour.



Man represents n hm the doctrne of trnty on earth, as

he combnes n hmself body, mnd and soul, the last beng

of the essence of god, the lfe-breath enlvenng both the

body and the mnd makng one a lvng man, wth the breath

of god surgng n hm from top to toe.



The human body s ndvdualsed matter n as much

as sprt enshrouded theren seems to be an ndvdualsed

spirit, like the sun reflected in so many water pots. At death,

the body, composed as t s of dfferent elements, dssolves

and returns to the cosmc reservor of substances, ultmately

mergng n one prmal substance; and the soul returns to

god: “As soon as the slver cord s loosened, the golden bowl

s broken, lke a ptcher at the fountan or the wheel at the

cstern. Then the dust returns unto the earth as t was, and

the sprt returns unto god who gave t.” (Ecc1.12:6-7).



21

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



A lvng man s not somethng ndependent of, and

apart from the Supreme Power, that flows in him. He is a

product of the Supreme power actng on materal plane

through an organsed body of waves whch produce a state

of conscousness n hm. Man exsts when the Supreme

power runs n and through hs bodly mould, but when that

power wthdraws unto itself, he s no more a lvng entty for

all functonal actvty n hm ceases, and what remans?—

nothng but a mass of nert matter, the same as before n

shape and substance, but wthout the lvng lfe-mpulse that

was pulsatng n hm moments before.



lke man, the entre unverse s a manfestaton of the

one lfe-prncple, the prncple of lvng conscousness n

varyng degrees, rght from logos down to the atoms of the

materal elements, perpetually movng n rhythmc moton,

formng and reformng n quck successon many patterns

by the Supreme power actng n and upon them. in short,

the ntellgence of the unverse abdes, and abdes forever

and anon, n the heart of each atom whch s dancng to ts

tune lke the eternal dance of Sva, the lvng embodment

of Shakt, the Mother of the unverse. in the esoterc

cosmogony, the theory of ‘dead’ matter does not find any

place whatsoever, for matter cannot exst by tself wthout

the cohesve power nherent theren. Matter n fact s energy

n congealed form.



in ancent phlosophy, a sharp dstncton was drawn

between ‘beng’ and ‘exstence’. The logos, the Archetypal

world s that of true beng, changeless and eternal; whle

‘exstence’ s an expresson and expanson or a movng

forward and outward nto the world of becomng, a world

of ceaseless change and transformaton from moment to

moment.



physologsts and physcans, lke botansts, hortcultu-





22

nOTHing DiES in nATURE



rsts, florcultursts, tell us a lot of the mechancal and

chemcal processes gong on n the human metabolsm or,

in fact, in any living organism, be it a tree, a flower, a fruit,

an ant, or an elephant; but cannot tell us why they lve, how

they lve, what for they lve, what s lfe tself, and above all,

what s conscousness that characterses the lfe mpulse on

any and every plane of exstence.



The cosmc cycle proves that lfe s eternal. it s an end-

less process. it contnues on and on, assumng one form

after another n endless seres, appearng, dsappearng

and reappearng lke waves and bubbles on the stream of

tme—tme rollng down from eternty to eternty. nature s

but one vast reservor of lfe and matter, n whch nothng s

lost and nothng des, no matter how forms may change, and

change kaledoscopcally n less than the twnklng of an eye.

it s ths changng process that s commonly called death—

death of one form at one place, and brth n another form at

another place or on another plane. invsble vapour arsng

from the sea des so as to change nto vsble sold snow on

the mountantop, and the vsble snow n ts turn takng once

agan the reverse process—the process of death, melts nto

lqud water, and water changes back nto nvsble gaseous

aerform or vapour agan, makng a contnuous chan of

cause and effect. Smlarly, man becomes a vsble entty

when sprt puts on a human form and then, n a course of

tme, that very man of so many parts on the stage of lfe (at

once son, brother, husband and father; now an nfant, then a

young man and lastly a dotard), ultmately becomes nvsble

when the sprt n hm wthdraws causng, to the consternaton

of those around, a vod n the vast web of relatonshps that

he wove around hm durng hs exstence on the earth-plane.

This is what actually happens at the time of the final change

when the physcal body dsntegrates and resolves nto the

cosmc order of thngs, and lfe currents merge nto the great





23

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



cosmc lfe-prncple whch s vtally organc n nature; and

not chemcally norganc and mechancal.



Death s not what t seems to be, and what t s taken

for n common parlance. Death and lfe are correlatve terms

on the earth-plane only, but n realty there s no dfference

between the two, and n fact, one cannot be contradstn–

gushed from the other; for death cannot swallow lfe nor can

death put an end to lfe. it s just an nterchangeable process

as two sdes of a con rotatng on ts axs. Do we not see day

and nght, lght and darkness, alternately comng and gong,

as the rotatng earth spns and revolves round the sun castng

shadows of varyng lengths at dfferent places whle the sun

tself contnues to shne all the tme. Death does not mean

total extncton or annhlaton as, at tmes, t s beleved to

be. it s nothng but a change of conscousness from one

place of exstence to another place of exstence. lfe, on the

contrary, s one contnuous process whch knows no end,

for the so-called death that follows lfe s not lfelessness

but lfe n another form at another place, here on earth or

elsewhere, and n a dfferent form wth a dfferent name, and

under dfferent set of crcumstances as s adjudged by Dvne

Dspensaton workng on the nexorable law of acton ‘as ye

sow, so shall ye reap.’ lfe, beng a postve expresson of

the Supreme Beng, s not subject to the negatvty of death,

and the latter cannot, therefore, extngush the former—the

eternal flame of life.



We have the testmony of an unbroken lne of Masters

who taught that lfe and death are mere words n the world

of dualty, meant to descrbe the surface effect or the

crcumferental shftng of the state of conscousness of the

inner Beng dwellng at the centre. These are merely vsble

and nvsble stages n the cosmc cycle through whch the

nner man passes. The lamentable, horrfyng and much-

dreaded death s, n realty, a rebrth (beng born agan of the



24

nOTHing DiES in nATURE



nner man) nto a lfe whch may be more joyous and more

beautful than known htherto. “Death, the awe-nsprng

and heart-rendng death,” says Kabr, “s to me a harbnger

of joyous lfe, and i welcome t fully.” The gospels also tell

of the Kngdom of god that awats one beyond the death-

door:



Except a man be born agan, he cannot see

the Kngdom of god......



Except a man be born of water and of sprt;

he cannot enter nto the Kngdom of god.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh;

and that whch s born of the sprt s sprt......



The wnd bloweth where t lsteth, and thou hearest the

sound thereof, but cans’t not tell whence t cometh

and whther t goeth: so s everyone that s born of

the sprt.

—John 3:3-8



Thus wth each successve death or dssoluton of form,

the sprt freed from the sold mould, renews from strength

to strength and from power to power, growng n greater

and wder conscousness than ever before. in ths context,

Maulana Rum tells us:



i ded as mneral and became a plant,

i ded as plant and rose to anmal,

i ded as anmal and i was a man.

Why should i fear? When was i less by dyng?

Yet, once more, i shall de as man, to soar—

Wth angels blessed, but even from angelhood

i must pass on; all except god doth persh.

When I have sacrificed my angel soul,

i shall become what no mnd e’er conceved.





25

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



Oh ! let me not exst, for non-exstence

proclams n organ-tones, “To Hm we shall return.”



Death then s another name for a change n the central

lfe-prncple, the pvot round whch the organsed lfe-

monad moves and functons. it s a change from one set of

crcumstances to another set of crcumstances, n dfferent

forms and under dfferent condtons as most suted to the

ultimate unfoldment into full efflorescence of the Self or the

lvng-monad, leadng to greater and greater awareness of,

and arsng nto the hgher sprtual values of lfe:



Behold, i show you a mystery; we shall not sleep (n

death), but we shall all be changed, n a moment, n the

twnklng of an eye...... rased ncorruptble...puttng on

ncorrupton...... and mmortalty...... swallowng Death n

vctory...... (defyng) the stng (both) of death and (the fear

of) grace. —(Cor. 15:51-55)



in ‘Man the Unknown’ Alex Carel says: “Man s made

up of a processon of phantoms, n the mdst of whch

strdes the unknowable Realty.” nanak, lkewse, speaks of

hmself, n much the same stran: “in the mdst of the outer

physcal mould called nanak, plays the nvsble power of

the Supreme Beng.”



in Bhagwad gta, the Song of the Adorable One,

Bhagwan Krshna, the seventh avtar of Vshnu, one of the

famous trad n the Hndu mythology, tells us:



Know thou, O prnce of pandu, that there was never a

tme, when i, nor thou, nor any of these prnces of earth was

not; nor shall there ever come a tme, hereafter, when any of

us shall cease to be. As the soul, wearng ths materal body,

experenceth the stages of nfancy, youth, manhood and old

age, even so shall t, n due course of tme, pass on to another

body, and n other ncarnatons shall t agan lve, and move



26

nOTHing DiES in nATURE



and play ts part. Those who have attaned the wsdom of

the inner Doctrne, know these thngs, and fal to be moved

by aught that cometh to pass n ths world of change—to

such, lfe and Death are but words; and both are but surface

aspects of the deeper Beng (wthn).



Thus t s clear that under the cosmc cyclc law, all thngs

move n a crcle and all thngs are eternal. The dance of Sva,

at once the god of death, and death leadng to rebrth, not

unoften at a hgher level of exstence, goes on forever and

forever. Under ths ever-revolvng wheel of lfe, man, by a

process of evoluton or growth, keeps changng from a mere

physical to an astral, then to causal and finally to a spiritual

beng, on varous planes of exstence untl he rghtly comes

to hs own; knows and realses the ever-evolvng prncple of

conscousness n hm n ts fullness, whch he potentally s,

and embraces the totalty of hs beng. “All the same, we lve,

move and have our ndvdual beng n god (the Unversal

Beng), for we are Hs offsprng and He s the very beng of

our beng and wthout Hs power workng n us, we cannot

exst and functon.” —(Acts 17:23-24)



‘lke begets lke.’ Each thng, be t a plant, an anmal

or a man, grows from the seed after ts own knd, though

accordng to a set pattern of lfe determned by the qualty

nherent n the seed. “god gveth t (the seed) a body as t

hath pleased Hm, and to every seed hs own body.” (1 Cor.

15:38-40). Man, at the hghest rung n the ladder of lfe on

earth, s not fragmented from hs Maker. The Father s n the

son in a potential form and the son is firmly rooted in the

Father, though he may, crcumstanced as he s, not know t

owing to limitations of the fleshly raiments in which he lives

all the tme functonng on the earth-plane. Because of the

power of god workng hm, he verly but unwttngly lves

n the temple of god: “Know ye not that ye are the temple

of the holy god, and the Sprt of god dwelleth n you” (and



27

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



therefore s you). The term. ‘man’ s merely a name appled

to the ncarnated god-sprt on the earth-plane. Ths then s

the famous doctrne of holy trnty: A whole consstng of

three parts—the Father (the Unversal Sprt), the son (the

ndvdualsed sprt clothed n body, mnd and ntellect) and

the Holy ghost (the savng lnks or lfe-lnes between the

two by followng whch the human-sprt transhuman–

ses the human trappngs)—all combned n man. Hence

the exhortaton of the prophet of gallee: “Be ye perfect as

your Father n heaven s perfect.” perfecton comes from the

perfect One.



‘perfecton’ then s the goal of human lfe, whch con–

ssts n self-unfoldment or evoluton of the ndvdual sprt

by transcendng the lmtatons of body, mnd and ntellect,

and by tappng the deep-rooted latences n the depths of the

great sea of unconscousness yet unexplored and unknown.

It is indeed a difficult task but not impossible to achieve, if

one s lucky enough to contact a Master-soul, well-versed

both n the scence and art of pra Vdya or the knowledge of

the worlds that are heavenly and le beyond the senses, whch

help us only n the realm of Apra Vdya or the knowledge

of the emprcal world of observaton and expermentaton.

“The Kngdom of god cometh not by observaton—the

Kngdom of god s wthn you.” (luke 17: 21). The

Kngdom of god s not to descend from the clouds above.

it s already there n man, and one can wtness ts glory by

the process of nverson (akn to death), a voluntary process

of course whle lvng, as was taught by the Masters to ther

chosen dscples, from tmes mmemoral. What a man has

done, man can do f there s proper help and gudance from

some godman. Every Sant had a past and every snner has

a future.









28

II

THE LIGHT OF LIFE





W E all have come down to the dstant land called earth,

lke so many prodgal chldren of god, carryng wth

us the potental of our Father, whch we are frtterng away,

day by day and moment by moment, n explorng the

ephemeral beautes and glores of ths regon, losng all

recollecton of our dvne orgn and the blssful parental

home, and of our ancestry together wth the great hertage

that is ours. ‘Born of the flesh’, and living in the flesh, we

have lost our touch wth the savng lfelnes wthn, and as

such are sprtually dead—dead n spte of the hectc lfe on

physcal and mental levels and the wondrous achevements

n the felds of art, scence and technology. Wth all the

comforts of lfe that Dame nature has provded to her

foster-chld, man, we yet lve n a state of perpetual fear and

distrust, not only of others but of our own self, for we find

ourselves helplessly and hopelessly adrft on the sea of lfe

wthout any moorngs to hold on and keep our barque on a

steady and even keel on the tumultuous waters.



Man s a mcrocosm, a replca of the macrocosm

(unverse). The two—the ndvdual and the unversal—are

ntmately nter-related, part to part. All that s wthout s

also wthn and the sprt n man, despte the heavy load of

physcal and mental trammels, has the capacty to break

through the thck enshroudng vels and peep nto what les

beyond—the perpetual sway of the Supreme god, the eternal

self-exstng Truth, perennally the same from the begnnng

of tme.





29

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



We have, n ths respect, the testmony of a number of

mystcs:



Thou whle lvng n space, hath thy roots out of space,

learn thou to shutter down ths sde, and soar nto

fields infinite,

For so long as one does not rse above the world

of senses,

One remans an utter stranger to the world of god,

Strve on and on, tll thou art completely out of the cage,

And then shalt thou know the vanty of the realms

below,

Once thou art above the body and the bodly adjuncts,

Thy sprt shall bear testmony to the glory of god;

Thy seat s verly the throne of god,

Fe on thee that thou chooseth to lve n a hovel.

Thou hath a body even when out of the body,

Why then art thou afrad to get out of the body?

O friend! bypass the life of the flesh

That thou mayst experence the lght of lfe,

Thou verly art the lfe of all that exsts here.

nay, both the worlds, here and hereafter art n thee,



it s from thee that all wsdom hath descended,

And t s to thee that god reveals Hs mysteres,

in short, though thou appeareth but so small,

And yet the entre unverse resdeth n thee.



Equpped as thou art wth a human body and

an angelc sprte,

Thou canst at wll roam the world over or soar n the sky

What a great fun t would be to leave the body here

below,

And wng thy way to the hghest heaven above,

Quit thou thy elemental house of flesh and blood,





30

THE ligHT OF liFE



And take wth thee thy mnd and sprt far above.



If you could but come out of the tabernacle of the flesh;

It may enable you to go to the place where flesh is not;

The life of the flesh is from water and food alone;

For on earth you are clothed n the rament of self-same

stuff;

Why not go you nghtly out of the charnel-house?

For you possess hands and feet that are not of ths earth;

It may suffice you to know,

That there s n you an ngress leadng to thy Beloved

When once you get out of the prson-house of the body,

You shall wthout any effort land nto a new world.



The perfect Master, tme and agan, tells us of our lost

Kngdom lyng wthn, neglected snce long and altogether

forgotten n the mghty swrl of the world of mnd and matter,

n whch we have been drftng all the tme. Ths s the god-

gven opportunty for us to tread the untrodden path and to

explore the unexplored, and to redscover wthn us what s

already our own, the real nner beng n us.



Human brth s a rare prvlege ndeed. it comes at the

end of a long evolutonary process, begnnng from rocks

and mnerals, then passng through vegetable kngdom, then

the world of nsects, reptles and rodents, next the feathery

fraternty of brds and fowls and penultmately beasts and

quardrupeds. Man has n hm an element whch all other

creatures lack, or have just n nfntesmal measure—

the skyey or ethereal element that gves hm the power of

ratocnaton and dscrmnaton, enablng hm to dstngush

rght from wrong, vrtue from vce, and to understand and to

practse the hgher and nobler values of lfe, wth freedom

of wll to choose and adopt the same for further progress,

so as to be ‘born of the sprt’, addng new dmensons to

hs conscousness by arsng nto supra-mental awareness—





31

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



first cosmic and then of the Beyond. All this is a certain

possblty, though we may not know of t at the moment.



“Our self,” says Jung, the phlosopher, “as the contaner

of our whole lvng system, ncludes not only all the deposts

and the sum of all that has been lved n the past, but s also

the startng pont, the pregnant mother earth from whch all

future lfe wll sprng; the presentment of thngs to come

s known to our nner feelng as clearly as s the hstorcal

past. The dea of mmortalty whch arses from these

psychologcal fundamentals s qute legtmate.”



imprsoned n the clayey mould and domneered by the

mnd, man s yet a puny chld of clay n the vast creaton,

insignificant in stature and strength. But he is limitless and

all-pervadng n soul; the seemngly ndvdualsed sprt n

hm s a prceless crest-jewel of nestmable value. So says

Bheek, a mystc sage:



O Bheek! none n the world s poor for each one has

tucked n hs grdle a precous ruby;

But alas! he knows not how to unte the knot to get at

the ruby, and hence goes abeggng.



“god,” says the sage of Dakshneshwar (Ramakrshna

paramhans), “s n all, but all are not n Hm.” guru nanak

tells us of the way out—way to unravel the great mystery and

to acqure mastery over everythng else—“By conquerng

the mnd, you conquer the world” s hs smple devce. The

mnd as at present s torn between countless desres of dverse

nature, pullng n dfferent drectons. it has, by degrees, to

be rentegrated and made whole—an undvded whole—wth

the love of God surging in every fibre of its being; for then

alone t would become a wllng nstrument to serve the sprt

nstead of draggng it down and wthout, as t does now, nto

tght bottleneck corners, here, there and everywhere and at





32

THE ligHT OF liFE



all tmes. Unless ths hydra-headed monster s traned and

tamed, t, lke the sea-god proteus, contnues playng wld

antcs, under dfferent guses and varous shapes, puttng

on, chameleon-lke, the varyng ground-colours of ts own

choosng. So long as t keeps attached to the earth and all

that s earthly, t keeps waxng n power and strength derved

from the mother-earth. it has, therefore, to be lfted hgh nto

the ar and held aloft, as Hercules dd wth Antaeus, to get

rd of the gant, who was nvncble as long as he mantaned

hs contact wth the mother-earth from whom he derved hs

strength.



Once the mnd gets n touch wth the Dvne Melody that

comes waftng from above, t s lfted up, losng for good all

nterest n the down-pullng sense-pleasures of the world.

Ths gradually leads to a vrtual death of the body that s

now left far below, as well as of the mnd that goes up some

way to merge n cht-akash—ts natve habtat, the great

storehouse of memores from tmes mmemoral, and from

where t descended wth the blowng down of the vtal ars

(pranas) on the pure conscousness, wrappng t wth a two-

fold coverng (mano-ma and pran-ma koshas), consttutng

the mental apparatus befitting the soul for functioning on

the earth-plane, through yet another coverng—the physcal

covering (ann-­mai kosh) of the body fitted with gross sense-­

organs, so very necessary n the world of sensatons.

While confined, cabined and cramped in the magic box

of the body, we are not chaned to t though all the tme we

thnk and act as fettered prsoners, for we do not know how

to unhook the ndwellng sprt n the body and how to rse

above t. All the Masters from ages past have been tellng

us wth one voce ‘to go wthn and look nwards’ for the

beacon lght, the ‘lght of lfe’ uncreated and shadowless,

All-lumnous n its own lumnosty, the only ray of hope and

delverance n the envelopng darkness of the murky prson-



33

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



house n whch we dwell. Of ths t s sad:



And the lght shneth n darkness; and the darkness

comprehendeth t not. —St. John



Take heed that the lght whch s n thee be not darkness.

—St. luke



it s ths lght whch s acclamed as the ‘day-star’ that

serves as ‘a lamp unto the feet’ of the fathful, enrapturng

both the mnd and the sprt, whch alke are unwttngly

attracted and begn drftng upward nto realms of hgher

conscousness, super-conscousness, along the lghted

current of lfe, the Audble lfe Stream (Shabd), carred as

t were on the wngs of the Dvne Musc sprngng from the

holy lght, metaphorcally descrbed as pegasus, the whte

wnged horse of the gods or barq (the lghtnng) that s sad

to have carred the prophet to heaven (almraj).



The great Masters n all tmes, and n all clmes, speak

of ths unque and wonderful house, the human body, the

vertable temple of god n whch dwell the Father, the Son

and the Holy ghost. Unless the Son (the human sprt) s, by

the grace of some god-man, baptsed wth the Holy ghost

(the Power-­of-­God made manifest in the flesh by a God-­

man), the prodgal Son, wanderng among the wonders of

the wondrous world without, cannot by himself find his way

out of the labyrnth, to the Home of hs Father (god), for

the eternal and fundamental law s: “it s n flesh (clayey

mould) and through flesh (Word-­made-­flesh) that we come

to Him who is beyond the flesh.” (St. Augustine). Within

us s the lght of lfe. Day and nght burneth eternally ths

celestal lamp n the dome of the bodly shrne. ‘Whosoever

comes by ths lght of lghts, to hgher realms, he soars

unfettered.’ Ths s the truth and leads unto Truth. “He that

knows the Truth knows where that lght s, and he who knows





34

THE ligHT OF liFE



that lght, knows eternty” (St. Augustne), “knowng whch

(Truth) shall make you free” (free from all the mpregnable

bondages, regrets of the past, fears of the present and terrors

of death n whch we constantly lve). (John 8:12). The

Word or the Holy ghost s the great Truth at the bottom of

all creaton: “All thngs were made by hm (the Word), and

wthout hm was not anythng made that was made,” says St.

John. “The entre world sprang from Shabd,” s what nanak

tells us. Agan, “Wth one Word of Hs, ths vast creaton

blossomed nto beng; and a thousand streams of lfe sprang

nto exstence.” in Upnshads, t s sad ‘Ekoaham, Bahu

syaam’ meanng, ‘i am one and wsh to become many.’



The Mohammedans speak of the Word as ‘Kun-­fia-­

kun’—He wlled, and lo, all the unverse sprang up. Thus

t s god-n-acton power (lght and lfe—The Melody of

god), All-pervadng and All-powerful, mmanent n all that

s vsble and nvsble, creatng and sustanng countless

creatons. Speakng of creaton, nanak tells us: “And

countless Thy planes; unapproachable and naccessble

Thy nnumerable heavenly plateux.” Even by the word

countless, we fal to descrbe Hm. The words count and

countless are ndeed of lttle consequence for the Almghty.

He who s mmanent n everythng and s the very lfe of the

creaton tself, knows every partcle thereof.



To come to a better understandng of the hgher lfe, the

lfe of the sprt, one has to actually cross the trans-fronters

of the earth lfe and pass through the gates of what s called

death, and be reborn n the ethereal unearthly world beyond.

“That whch s born of the sprt s sprt. Marvel not that i

sad unto thee, ye must be born agan.” (John 3:6-7). it s

ths contact wth the ‘lght of lfe’ as manfested wthn

by a god-man that brngs to an end the peregrnatons of

the soul n the ever-revolvng wheel of brths and rebrths.





35

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



The entre creaton s beleved to be dvded nto eght

mllon and four hundred thousand speces (84 lakhs); ()

water creatures—9,00,000 (9 lakhs), () ar creatures—

14,00,000 (14 lakhs), () nsects, rodents and reptles etc.—

27,00,000 (27 lakhs), (v) trees, shrubs, herbs and other

vegetables and creepers etc.—30,00,000 (30 lakhs), and (v)

all knds of quadrupeds and anmals, human bengs ncludng

gods and goddesses, dem-gods and godly powers, demons and

wanderng sprts etc.—4,00,000 (4 lakhs). A jva-atman or

an ndvdual soul unless lberated (becomes an atman), keeps

revolvng n one or other materal body by the compulsve

force of karmas and mpressons gathered from lfe to lfe.



Ths then s a prelude to real lfe and lfe eternal, comng

as t does from contact wth the ‘Voce of the Son of god

(.e. nner Musc made manfest by Hm) and they that

hear (though dead to it now) shall lve (and lve eternally

by us)’—John 5: 25—for t s sad: “Then the eyes of the

blnd shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf be unstopped.

Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the

dumb sng: for n the wlderness (of the human heart) shall

waters (of lfe) break out and streams n the desert.” (isah

35:5-6). “For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then

face to face: now i see part; but then shall i know even as

i am known. (1 Cor. 13-12). “The sprt, when attuned to

the Sound Current” says nanak lkewse, “begns to see (the

Light of God) without eyes (of flesh), to hear (the Voice of

god) wthout ears, clngs on (to the Dvne Musc) wthout

hands and moves forward (godwards) wthout feet.” Agan,

the great teacher goes on to explan: “The seeng eyes, see

not (the realty) but by the grace of the guru, one begns to

dscern (the power of god) face to face. it s why a worthy

and worshpful dscple can perceve god everywhere.”



Our sense-organs are so formed as may help us n the

physcal world alone and that too mperfectly, but they fal us



36

THE ligHT OF liFE



when we come to the supra-physcal level. ‘By seeng we see

but do not perceve, by hearng we hear but do not understand,

and we have a heart that has nether feelng nor understandng.’

But a complete change, a marvellous change comes about

only when one learns how to nvert and undergo practcally a

process of voluntary death whle lvng. So the exhortaton:

learn how to de (de to the earth lfe) that you begn to lve

(lve freely and fearlessly n the lvng sprt, free from the

lmtng adjuncts of the bodly sheaths). One has, therefore,

to ‘forsake the flesh for the spirit.’ Love not the flesh more

than the sprt, s the age-old advce of the prophet of gallee.



As long as we are ‘at home n the body’ we are absent

from god. And, ‘the more one wthdraws from hmself,

the nearer one gets to god.’ nothng n creaton compares

wth the Creator, for what s not god s nothng. Wth the

transference of conscousness from the earthplane (death as

s commonly known) to the sprtual plane (rebrth or second

brth—brth of the sprt, as t s called through contact

wth the Master-power flowng n the body, one never

pershes. ‘When all others desert (you), i wll not abandon

you, nor allow you to persh the last.’ “He that overcometh

(transcendeth the physcal n hm by transhumansng the

human), shall not be hurt of the second death” because ‘f

ye are led by the sprt ye are not under the law (the law of

acton and reacton or cause and effect leadng to repeated

ncarnatons).’



All ths s not a mere theory but a fact—the ‘fact of lfe’

for ‘the flame of life’ cometh with every individual from the

moment of one’s brth, and t s gven unto every man to know

the secret of the flaming Sound and “the mysteries of heaven

(the Kngdom of god).” (Matt. 13:11). in ths scence of the

Beyond, logc and reasonng have no place. Actual seeng

alone brngs n fath and belef. The lght of lght, the Father

of lghts ‘swayom jyot swarup parmatma’ (self-effulgent



37

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



god), nooran-ala noor (the great celestal lght), and the sprt

n man (the spark from the dvne lght of the unversal sprt,

a drop of conscousness from the ocean of conscousness,

appearng as ndvdualsed sprt clothed n varous mantles),

are all wthn the human body (narnaran deh); but strange as

t may seem that though lvng n so close proxmty to each

other, one has not seen the face of the other; because we have

mstaken the ard wlderness of the world as our real abode.



The Master-souls not only apprse us of the realty and

the rch hertage to whch we are enttled, but Chrst-lke

proclam: “i wll gve unto thee the keys of the Kngdom

of heaven.” (Matt. 16:9). nanak also tells us: “The Master

has the key for the moble house of soul chaned to the

body and the mnd; O nanak! wthout a perfect Master,

there s no way of escape from the prson-house.” But how

many of us have put fath n ther solemn assurances, and

how many of us are prepared to take and accept the keys

of the Kngdom and more so to unlock the steely portals,

behnd the eyes? And much less to hear the Word (the Holy

Word) of whch Chrst says: “He that heareth my Word.. s

passed from death unto lfe” (John 5: 24), n spte of our

vehement daly prayers for beng led from untruth to Truth,

from darkness to lght, and from death to immortalty.



it s ndeed a strange paradox, more paradoxcal than the

rddles ever propounded by Sphnx, the monster of Thebe to

the Thebans or engmas of lfe put by Yaksha, the demon-

guardan of the pool of refreshng water, to the pandva

prnces who went, one by one, to stake ther thrst but could

not do so (except Yudhshtra, the prnce of dharma) and

were turned nto stones for ther nablty to solve the same.



Are we not, n fact, leadng a stark and stff lfe, stff n

death as t were, lke many nsensate thngs, awatng the

advent of the prnce of peace, to rase us once more nto lfe





38

THE ligHT OF liFE



(lfe everlastng) by conquerng the Sphnx and the Yaksha of

old—keepng a dragon-lke strct watch over us lest we, lured

by the legendry golden Fleece, escape, Jason-lke, wth the

much coveted prze, from hs domneerng sway. Ths then s

the great engma of lfe whch has got to be solved, for wthout

solvng t, our bref exstence here s dwarfed and stunted.



The majorty of us smply lead an anmal exstence—

lvng lke them a blnd lfe n the bran. We have never rsen

above the emotonal and mental worlds whch we ourselves

have cast around us and whch now hold us n ther ron grp.

The ‘heaven’s light,’ is to most of us a figment of human

magnaton and not a realty:



Whle wth us n the body, we see Hm not,

Fe on a lfeless lke ths,

O Tuls! everyone s stark blnd.



Kabr tells us:



The entre world s gropng n darkness,

if t were a queston of one or two, they could

be set rght.



nanak also speaks lkewse:



To the Enlghtened One all are purblnd,

For none knows the nner secret.

Nanak then goes on to define blindness:

They who lack eyes are not blnd,

Blnd are such as see not the lord.

And eyes that see the lord are qute dfferent.



Agan, t s sad:

The eyes of flesh see Him not, but when the Master

llumnes the eyes wthn,



39

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



A worthy dscple begns to wtness the power and

glory of god wthn hmself.



How s t that we do not see Hm wth all our earnest and

well-meant endeavours?



Enveloped n darkness we strve darkly for god

by deeds not less dark;

Wthout a perfect Master none has found the way

nor can one do so;

But when one comes across a perfect Master,

one begns to see Hm wth an eye opened

n the closet of hs heart.



it s only by drect Communon wth the name (the Holy

Word) that one comes to know that by knowng it nothng

else remans to be known. in Jap Ji, the great teacher recounts

the innumerable benefits which spontaneously begin to flow

and one becomes the abode of all vrtues:



By Communon wth the Word, one can attan the

status of a Sdha1, a pr2, a Sura3, or a nath4;

By Communon wth the Word, one can understand

the mysteres of the earth, the supportng bull5 and

the heavens;

By Communon wth the Word, the earthly regons,

the heavenly plateaux and the nether worlds stand

revealed;

By Communon wth the Word, we can escape

unscathed through the portals of death;

O nanak! Hs devotees lve n perpetual ecstasy,

for the Word washes away all sn and sorrow.

1. Sdha: A man endowed wth supernatural powers.

2. pr: A Muslm dvne or a sprtual teacher.

3. Sura: A god.

4. nath: Yogn, an adept n yoga.

5. Dhaul: it s the fabled bull, supposed to be supportng the earths

and heavens.





40

THE ligHT OF liFE



By Communon wth the Word, one can attan the

powers of Sva, Brahma and indra;

By Communon wth the Word, one can wn esteem

from all, rrespectve of one’s past;

By Communon wth the Word, one can have yogc

nsght, wth the mysteres of lfe and self all

revealed;

By Communon wth the Word, one can acqure the

true mport of the Sastras6, Smrts7 and Vedas8;

O nanak! Hs devotees lve n perpetual ecstasy,

for the Word washes away all sn and sorrow.

By Communon wth the Word, one becomes the abode

of Truth, contentment and true knowledge;

By Communon wth the Word, one gets the frut of

abluton at sxty-eght plgrmages9;

By Communon wth the Word, one wns the honour

of the learned;

By Communon wth the Word, one attans the stage

of Sehaj10;

O nanak! Hs devotees lve n perpetual ecstasy

for the Word washes away all sn and sorrow,



By Communon wth the Word, one becomes the abode

of all vrtues;

By Communon wth the Word, one becomes a Shekh,

a pr, and a true sprtual kng;

By Communon wth the Word, the sprtually blnd

find their way to Realisation;



6. Sastras: The phlosophcal treates of the Hndus.

7. Smrts: The ancent scrptures of the Hndus.

8. Vedas: The earlest books of human and dvne.

9. Ath-sath: lterally, these two words mean eght and sxty,

.e. sxty-eght. nanak s once agan makng use of the Hndu belef

that ablutons at 68 places of plgrmage purfy all snful acts.

10. Sehaj: Ths term refers to the state when the turmol of the physcal,

astral and causal worlds wth all ther enchanted panorama, are

transcended and the great prncple of lfe s seen wthn.





41

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



By Communon wth the Word, one crosses beyond

the lmtless Ocean of llusory matter;

O nanak! Hs devotees lve n perpetual ecstasy,

for the Word washes away all sn and sorrow.



Thus we see that the secret of success both here and

hereafter les n attunng the ‘self’ wthn to the

Overself or the Sound Current whch s the be-all and

end-all of all exstence. nanak, therefore, exhorts:



it s by a great good fortune that one takes a human

brth and one must make the most of t,



But one goes down n the scale of creaton by

delberately breakng away from the savng

lfe-lnes n hm.



it s, ndeed, a sad plght for one who gans the posses–

sons of the whole world but loses hs own soul. Far from

havng any proft, he ncurs a dead loss, rreparable and

rretrevable, whereby he suffers for ages before he comes

agan to the human level. Once the opportunty s allowed to

slip through the fingers, the gains made so far go overboard,

and one hopelessly flounders on the shoals and sand-­banks

of the stream of lfe. The fall from the top rung of the ladder

of lfe s a terrble fall ndeed!









42

III

LIFE IN FULLNESS





T HiS earth, the arena of so many struggles and strfes,

full of sharp antnomes and contraretes, presentng,

as t does, a vast panorama of lfe n ts varegated forms and

colours, s but a speck n the boundless creaton of the great

Creator:



There s no end to the creaton;

There are countless forms of lfe wth vared names,

speces and colours;

Writ on the objective world by the ever-­flowing pen

of the Creator.

—nanak



Wth all ts seemng mperfectons, ths world serves

a useful purpose n the dvne plan, just lke an apparently

insignificant cog in the machinery of a great powerhouse.

nature, the handwork of god, s not the least extravagant n

ts desgn and plan. Ths world s a pententary, a house of

correcton, a sort of purgatory, a plan of expaton, a tranng

ground where souls get chastened by experence. it s a half-

way house between physcal planes and sprtual realms. The

powers that be of the earth are hard taskmasters, belevng

stll n the ancent Mosac law of ‘an eye for an eye and a

tooth for a tooth’. Here all knds of thrd degree methods

are employed and hard knocks are admnstered; renderng

less than justce, untempered by compasson and mercy, so

that one should take hs lessons serously, and by degrees

turn away from the way of the world to the Way of god.

lfe on the earth-plane then s a dreadful thng ‘dark wth



43

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



horror and fear’, and we are long lost chldren of god n the

labyrnthne wlderness of the world.



Evoluton s n the nature of lvng monads and conssts

n movng towards ts source and becomng one wth t, for

true happness les n ‘fellowshp dvne; fellowshp wth

Essence; tll we shne; fully alchemsed and free of space’.

But the tragedy of lfe on earth s that ‘we do not know what

we are, and much less of what we may become’ for ‘what we

are we do not see; what we see s our shadow’. The ‘nner

beng’ n us s so consttuted after the fashon of god that

t knows no rest untl he rests n Hm. “A truly relgous

experience”, says Plotinus, “consists in the finding of the true

Home by the soul exled from heaven”. And ths experence

can be ours f only we know how to unhook the ‘self’ from

the trammels and trappngs of body and mnd.



Self-realsaton and god-realsaton are the hghest

objects of mundane exstence. Self-realsaton precedes

god-realsaton. ‘Know Thyself’ has ever been an artcle

of fath wth the ancents. Frst the greeks and then the

Romans n ther turn lad great stress on ‘gnothie seauton’

and ‘nosce teipsum’ as they called t respectvely, and both

these terms stand for ‘self-knowledge’ or knowledge of the

‘self’ n us. The knowledge of the self or ‘Atam Jnana’ of the

Hndu Rshs and ‘Khud Shanas’ of the Muslm darveshes

comes first. Next comes the realisation and experience of the

Overself or god—parmatman or Rabul-almeen and ths s

called Khuda Shanas or Knowledge of god.



The process of self-realsaton whereby the self can

be separated from the mghty maze of mnd and matter,

begns wth ntroverson—recedng of attenton, the

outward expresson of sprt n the world outsde. it s

an art of nverson from the world of senses to the world

wthn, and beyond the physcal senses, techncally called





44

liFE in FUllnESS



para Vdya. Real lfe or Realty s somethng that s cognsed

only n a deathlke state, a state that nterveners on conscous

wthdrawal of the sensory currents from the body to the eye-

focus. lfe s ‘an actve prncple, however removed; from

senses and observaton’.



in the workaday world, we are prone to all knds of

lusts—lust of the flesh, eyes, ears and other sense-­organs—

and we are beng constantly swayed by countless attach-

ments, myrads of aspratons and desres, sprngng from

the dverse longngs of the heart and unknown latences

lyng hdden n the folds of the mnd. All types of lkes

and dslkes, prdes and prejudces, loves and hatreds and

many other thngs unwttngly keep creepng nto our

conscousness, personal conscousness, frtterng our energy,

and keepng us away from the ultmate goal and purpose of

lfe; to wt, self-realsaton.



Ths gnorance of the am of lfe s a serous malady we

are afflicted with, and it is the cause of bondage—bondage

of the soul to a world ‘burstng wth sn and sorrow’. Yet,

there s a power wthn us that resurrects the soul. We have,

therefore, to take a turn from ths drama of hectc actvty

and find the still-­centre of our being within the human body

where the All-pervadng and All-free power resdes.



Ths body s verly the temple of god, and the Holy

ghost dwells theren. So all ths present actvty has got to

be reversed and geared back nto the opposte drecton. Ths

s termed by Emerson as ‘tappng nsde’ and ‘gong nto the

fox-hole n the bran’, as once remarked by presdent Truman,

for t was nto ths fox-hole that he repared whenever he

wanted peace and relaxaton from the burden of hs hgh

office. The Vedas call it ‘Brahmrendra’ or the hole through

whch Brahman could be contacted.







45

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



“Knock and t shall be opened unto you,” St. Matthew

says significantly enough. It shows that a door within the

body leads nto the realm beyond—the Kngdom of god.

And of ths nlet t s sad: ‘Strat s the gate, and narrow

s the way whch leadeth unto lfe, and few there be that

find it.” To locate this gate and to have an experience of the

ngress makes for personal convcton, for nothng becomes

real till it is experienced. Intellect is finite and so is reasoning

based on ntellect. Scrptural texts speak of Truth but do not

demonstrate it, much less gve a contact wth Truth. logcal

knowledge s all nferental and cannot be depended upon

wth certanty. Certtude comes only when ‘the eternal Word

speaks.’



The shortest, the swftest and the surest way to plumb

Truth s through a mortal leap (nto the Unknown), says Henr

Bergson, the great phlosopher. percepton, ntuton and

reasonng just help n understandng the Realty to a certan

extent at the level of the ntellect; but seeng s belevng,

seeng wthn wth one’s own eye, the ‘Sngle Eye’ as t s

called. Of ths nlet or ngress lttle s known to the people

at large. Nanak emphatically declares: “The blind find not

the door.” In order to find the ‘strait gate’ and the ‘narrow

way’ leadng unto lfe—lfe eternal—the lfe of sprt as

distinguished from the life of the flesh, we have of necessity

to recol from the present downward and outward expanson,

gather n the outgong facultes of the mnd at the seat of

the soul, behnd and between the eyes. in other words, we

have to change the centre of our beng from the heart-centre,

as at present, to the eye-centre (Tsra Tl or nukta--sweda)

and develop the ‘Sngle’ Eye’ of whch Jesus speaks: “if,

therefore, thne eye be ‘Sngle’ the whole body shall be full

of lght.”



Ths ‘Sngle’ or ‘Thrd Eye’ varously called by the sages

as Shv netra, Dvya chakshu or Chashm--batn provdes an



46

liFE in FUllnESS



ngress nto the sprtual world—the Kngdom of god—now

a lost realm to most of us. it s here that one has to tap wthn,

and to knock and knock hard wth fully concentrated and

sngle-mnded attenton, as an undvded ndvdual, n order

to find the way-­in and gain an entry into the astral world.

Hence the exhortaton: ‘now s the tme to awaken and

lovngly remember the lord.’ But how? We have not seen

Hm. And one cannot concentrate on and contemplate the

formless vod as He s. in the same breath comes the sage’s

counsel as well. ‘learn of ths (approach to the Absolute)

from some god-man.’ What does the god-man say? ‘Fx

thou thy attenton at the eye-focus, the seat of the lord Sva

(the Shva-netra), for then everythng wll follow of tself n

due course, as you wll gan experence of the ‘self’ n you.



The Masters tell us that the entre world s blndly gropng

in the dark, chasing the fleeting shadows, ever eluding

and ever fadng away nto ary nothngs as we draw ngh

to them; whle the fountan-head of all blss and harmony

les untapped wthn at the eye-centre whch s the seat of

the soul n the body n the wakng state. Ths centre, when

located, gves an access to, and provdes a supra-conscous

contact wth, the realms that le beyond the farthest ken of

the human mnd. Equpped wth the sense-organs, our only

means of knowledge s through them. The soul s perfect

wthout the senses, for ts acton s drect and mmedate, and

not ndrect and medate—dependng upon outer ads—as

knowledge of the world s.



After obtanng ths contact, one s led, step by step, to

the true Home of the Father. Ths s lfe n fullness. Thrce

blessed s man, for t s gven unto hm the power to traverse

the regons, both astral and causal, and to go nto the

Beyond (Brahm and par Brahm), the regon of eternal blss

outsde the pale of repettve creaton, dssoluton and grand

dssoluton.



47

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



But so long as one does not wthdraw hmself from the

world and from hmself as well, from hs body, mnd and

ntellect, he does not draw any the nearer to god. “it s only

when the outward man persheth (the human n the body s

transhumansed), that the nward man (sprt) s renewed, and

the dizzy heights of the Mount of Transfiguration are gained,

and one becomes a lvng sprt, freed from the body and ts

mpedments; capable of gettng nner experence of meetng

the ancent Masters lke Moses and Eljah” (Matt. Ch. 17),

“and jonng the lord n the feast of passover.” (Matt. Ch. 26

and Mark Ch. 14). it s at ths place that the lord awats hs

dscples: “Behold, i stand at the door, and knock, f any man

hears my voce, and opens the door, i wll come nto hm,

and wll sup wth hm, and he wth me.” (Rev. 3:20).



All ths experence that St. John reveals to us, he had

when he was transformed nto ‘sprt’, and he speaks of the

comng n of the lord ‘as a thef n the nght’ (n the darkness

of the soul). Hafiz, a Persian mystic of great repute, also

testifies: ‘The Murshid comes in the darkness with a lantern

n hs hands.’



“The way godward,” says prophet Mohammed, “s

narrower than har and sharper than the razor’s edge.” it

s descrbed by nanak as ‘khande-d-dhar’ (sword’s edge)

and thnner than a har; and one has actually to pass through

a death-lke experence. in ths context St. plutarch says:

“At the moment of death, the soul experences the same

mpressons and passes through the same processes as

are experenced by those who are ntated nto the great

Mysteres.”



But how many of us are prepared to experence the death

processes whle lvng? We are all mortally afrad of death.

And why so, partcularly when we know, and know so well

that t s the necessary end of all created thngs? The reasons





48

liFE in FUllnESS



therefore are not far to seek. In the first place, we have not

yet learnt ‘to de at wll’ whle lvng. And secondly, because

we do not know what happens after death. Where do we

go? What les beyond the death-trap? Ths s why we have

a horror of death; and the mere dea of death holds us n a

state of mortal terror:



The entre world s mortally afrad of death,

And everyone desres to have an endless lfe,

if by the grace of the guru one learns of death-n-lfe,

He becomes the knower of dvne wsdom.

O nanak! he who des such a death,

He gans for hmself the gft of lfe eternal.



Death, after all, s not a dreadful ncdent. ‘How charm–

ng s dvne phlosophy; not harsh and crabbed as the

gnoramuses suppose; but sweetly melodous as Appolo’s

lute; and a perpetual feast of nectared sweet.’ it, n realty,

opens new vstas and new horzons of lfe beyond the grave,

and the flames of the funeral pyre, that engulf, entomb and

extngush the mortal remans, do not touch the soul. ‘Dust

thou art and to dust returneth’ was not spoken of the soul.

The lfe-prncple n us or n fact n any other lvng thng

never des. it s only the elemental parts that go through

a process of change whch we erroneously call death, and

wrongly understand t to be an extncton.



‘in nature, death feeds lfe and lfe llumnes death.’ it s

the unversal law that operates everywhere and on all planes

of exstence. ‘The wse men dscover that the percepton of

Realty comes wth the annhlaton of the self (the bodly

self n whch the sprt s ncarcerated).’ The moment

the sprt voluntarly breaks through the fetters, somethng

breaks n upon the sprt wth a ‘terrble llumnaton from

the world behnd the world’ makng it ‘the prophet of the

Most High God’. It is at the Mt. of Transfiguration that one





49

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



gets revelatons and sees the mnglng of heaven and earth.’

It is here that one finds ‘the dark grows luminous and the

vod frutful.’



Everyone has, as a matter of course, to de some day—

man, brd, or beast; rch or poor; healthy or dseased, young

or old. The soul whch takes on the physcal rament has to

shed t one day. Death alone s certan and real, whle lfe

(n ths world) s uncertan. We seldom pause to thnk about

the long journey whch les ahead of the nner beng n us.

We usually lament the death of others and mourn for them

for days on end but are not wse enough to care for our own

end and prepare ourselves for the final journey into the great

unknown that les beyond lfe’s end. Before an analyss s

offered of the death-process, practcal and nformatve as t

may be, t would be worth our whle to know at least what

we are. Who we are? Whence we come? Whther we go?

And above all what s the meanng or purpose of lfe?



Man, as at present consttuted, s an aggregate of body,

mnd and ntellect wth a great motor-power workng from

behnd, called soul. Formed and envroned, as we are, through

the ages, our attention is continuously flowing outwards and

downwards through the nne portals of the body—the eyes,

the ears, the nostrl nares, the mouth and the two passages

below the wast. it s not that we wsh t, or do t voluntarly,

but t has just become a habt wth us. We are not yet master of

the house n whch we lve. We are beng constantly dragged

out by mnd and the senses through the varous sense-organs,

into the vast and varied fields of sense-­enjoyments.



it s ths constant assocaton of the self n us (attenton)

wth the mnd and the materal objects that has not only

debased us, but defaced us beyond recognton, and now

we do not know what we really are. We have become so

identified with our limiting adjuncts that we do not know





50

liFE in FUllnESS



anythng ndependent of, and apart from them.



Unless the self gets depersonalsed by throwng off

the mask of dross personalty wth whch t has covered

tself and becomes dsrobed self, pure and smple; by

dssocaton from these countless lmtng agents: (1) the

mnd, comprsng the facultes of hoardng mpressons

(cht), thnkng (manas), reasonng ntellect (buddh) and

egosm or self-assertveness (ahamkar); (2) the sheaths or

coverngs: physcal (ann-ma), subtle (pran-ma and mono-

ma), causal (vgyan-ma and anand-ma); (3) the nborn

and natural propenstes of rghteousness (satva), mercural

restlessness (rajas) and nacton born of gnorance (tamas);

(4) the five elements (tattvas): earth, water, fire, air and ether

of whch the entre physcal creaton s made and (5) the

twenty-­five compounded elements in varying degrees of

proporton (prakrts) whch prepare the physcal moulds

or bodes n dfferent shapes and patterns, shades and

colours as a result of karmc reactons; the self mprsoned n

so many meshes, cannot know ts own real nature, much less

ts dvne ancestry and the rch hertage, all of whch come

to lght only when t comes to ts own and realses tself as

the self-lumnous ‘Self’.



let us see what some of the Englsh thnkers have to say

n ths context:



Man s a lttle world n hmself, made cunnngly of

elements and angelc sprt. Hs god-lke qualtes

have depraved by the fall, and he s constantly vsted

by dvne wrath—wars, plagues and thunderstorms.

Yet, he can enjoy a cvlsed happness, provded he

treats the world as preparaton for the next, and keeps

the body subject to hs soul.

—J. Donne







51

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



What s t to trust on mutablty,

Sth that n ths world nothng may endure?

—Skelton



There s wthn the all-comprehendng ambt of anmal

nstnct, some secret urge whch drves the chosen

men towards transcendng of anmal mpulse.

Ths transcendng anmal mpulse manfests tself

as complete dsnterestedness (of all that s n the

world wthout). The urge of anmal ego s completely

dsregarded; and the evdence of ths dsregard s

a wllng submsson to a ‘self-sought death,’ an

acceptance of the annhlaton of the anmal nstnct

s arrayed aganst ths acceptance... (tll) nothng

remans on the subjectve sde but pure conscousness,

and one s transformed nto a Superor Beng whom

he magnes (contemplates)...



nothng ever becomes real tll t s (actually) exper–

enced—even a proverb s no proverb tll your lfe has

llustrated t. But how many phlosophers have made

ths acquston?



For ths, the mnd has to be rentegrated (made an

undvded whole), as a faculty of sense, ntegratng

whch s a prelude to and a necessary condton to

total detachment from t. The self must be whole

before one can wholly detach oneself from t (body,

mnd and ntellect). it s an all-seeng mnd whch

embraces the totalty of beng under the aspect of

eternty. As we gan our entrance nto the world of

Beng, a total vson s ours.

—Mddleton Murray









52

liFE in FUllnESS



There s a communcaton between mystery and mystery,

between the unknown soul and the unknown realty;

at one partcular pont n the texture of lfe the hdden

truth seems to break through the vel.

—ibd

How then is this inner urge to be fulfilled? The process

of gettng fully nto, and stayng completely n the eye-focus

(the gateway to the so-called death), s akn to a part of the

process of death.



The process of wthdrawal of the sensory currents from

the body below the eyes s a voluntary one, and one comes to

experence the mysteres of the beyond nto whch a Master-

soul (Sant Satguru) ntates a dscple durng hs lfetme.

He gives a first-­hand inner experience of conscious contact

wth the holy naam—the Dvne lght and the holy Sound-

Current (Holy ghost) as comng from the rght sde, as the

lowest expressons of the dvnty wthn. One cannot by

one’s own unguded and unaded efforts have an access nto

the sprt world when one cannot hold on by hmself even

n the physcal world wthout the actve ad and gudance

of many teachers from the cradle to the grave. Heren les

the paramount need and mportance of Satguru or Murshd-

-Kaml (perfect Master, an adept n the scence and art of

soul), competent enough to dsentangle the sprt-currents

from every pore of the body, the plane of sensatons as t

s, and to rase t above body-conscousness to wtness for

hmself the nner dvne splendferous glory.



Wth the process of wthdrawal of the sensory currents

from the body, the death-lke process commences. You have

not to do anythng but smply to st n a calm, composed

and fully relaxed position with attention fixed at the eye-­

focus and engage n Smran, or repetton of the charged

names, whch carry the lfe-mpluse of the Masters through





53

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



the ages and serve as passwords nto the regons beyond.

Whle so establshed n an easy posture (asan) n healthy

surroundngs, you forget yourself, entrely forgettng even the

lfe-gvng and lfe-sustanng pranas (vtal ars) whch wll

of themselves gradually slow down and grow rhythmc; and

so do the entre respratory and crculatory systems of the

body.



At first, the sensory currents begin to gradually withdraw

from the extremtes of the body—tps of the hands and feet

and come upwards and gradually pass through the varous

bodly centres, each of whch beng the regon of one of the

five elements of which the body is composed, until taking

off from the heart-centre they reach the throat-centre, the

seat of Shakt, the Mother of the unverse (the all-pervadng

energy); benumbng the entre bodly system below the eyes;

and then proceed drectly to the centre behnd the eyes (Agya

Chakra). Ths s where the sprt-currents get collected and

gan an entry nto the fox-hole wthn (Brahmrendra or the

hole of Brahma) and have a peep nto the Brahmand or

the cosmc unverse. Ths s the tenth aperture n the body,

the only nlet, apart from the nne outlets. Ths s the place

where you have to knock and get admttance nto the realms

above—realms more vast, more glorous, self lumnous and

self-resoundng wth rapturous strans of celestal Musc,

unheard of anywhere n the physcal world whch has been

left below; now no more than a great slum area, fraught wth

miseries and tribulations ‘fading into a faint reflection of the

world of deas’ as plato puts t.



At ths stage man becomes truly blessed at havng access

to the aeral regon, the world of sprts. He s now at the

threshold of the astral world n company of the Radant

Form of the Master (guru Dev) wth gurubhakt complete

n every respect. When a dscple reaches the Radant Form

of the Master, hs job of self-effort s over. The guru Dev



54

liFE in FUllnESS



now takes charge of the sprt and trans the sprt n Shabd-

bhakt n the real sense, or devoton to the Sound Current,

whch s hs own real form (Shabd Swaroop). From here

He takes the sprt along wth Hm on the sprtual journey

that les through countless regons of varyng sprtual

sublmty: the causal or nstrumental plane, the seed-world,

the ever pregnant Mother wth vast and countless creatons

lyng nvolved n ts womb; and then nto the Super-cosmc

Beyond (par Brahmand) planes of Slence (Sunn) and

Great Silence (Maha Sunn), and finally Sach Khand where

dwells the Formless One of neffable radance (the Ocean of

Conscousness) called Sat purush, the prmal manfestaton

of the Supreme Beng. Ths holy process s smple, natural

and does not nvolve any onerous austertes. it does not

nvolve drastc control of pranas. The Masters have evolved

ths rare technque and termed t the ‘Scence of Soul’, whch

can best be learnt under the able and competent gudance of

some Master-sant, well versed n the theory and practce of

lfe-current that exsts n all created thngs, the creatve and

sustanng prncple upholdng all.



All the scrptures of the world bear testmony to ths

fundamental truth:



in the begnnng was prajapat (the Supreme Beng),

Wth hm was Vak (the Holy Word),



And the Vak (the Word) was verly the Supreme

Brahma (param Brahma).

—Vedas









55

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



in the begnnng was the Word, and the Word was wth

god, and the Word was god. The same was n the

begnnng wth god. All thngs were made by Hm;

and wthout Hm was not anythng made that hath

been made. in Hm was lfe; and lfe was the lght

of men.

—John 1:1-5



Kalam or Kalma s the All-creatve prncple. god Spake:

“Kun-­fia-­kun,” “Let there be,” and from this fiat the

whole creaton sprang nto beng.

—Alquran



Shabd s the Creator of the earth,

Shabd is the Creator of the firmament,

Shabd s the Source of lght,

And Shabd resdes n the heart of all.

—nanak



it s on ths basc prncple n all exstence (lght and

Sound of god) that the Master gves a practcal experence to

all those who come to hm n search of Truth. The rare boon of

holy ntaton, explanaton of the theory and demonstraton

thereof (shksha and deeksha), nto the esoterc knowledge

and experence of the savng lfelnes wthn, s not an end n

tself but just a begnnng, a prelmnary step for startng on

the long journey for the soul to the true Home of the Father.



Those who have chosen to undertake ths course of lfe

are ndeed fortunate, and experence ths rare phenomena

of ‘death-n-lfe’ and thus become jvan-mukat or the

liberated beings, while yet in flesh, leading life in fullness

on whatever plane they lke, but always remanng wthn

the Wll of god. Such a lucky one, fully entrenched n god-

head s n full control of hs ntellect, mnd and senses. He

s the master of the house and not a handmad of hs mnd





56

liFE in FUllnESS



and ntellect. lke a good charoteer, sttng n the charot of

the body; he drects hs ntellect arght whch n turn gves a

correct lead to hs mnd, and mnd, when traned n the path

of rghteousness, refuses to be swayed by the senses, whch

gradually lose ther potency and cease to be attracted by the

glamour of the sense-subjects. Thus s reversed the prmal

process of expanson, and one sets settled n hmself wth

the result that the still waters of the mind begin to reflect the

Light of God, fulfilling the ancient maxim: Unless the senses

are subdued, the mnd s stlled and the ntellect, too, s n a

state of equpose, one cannot wtness the glory of god.



The rch experence of lfe n fullness s varously called

the second brth, the brth of the sprt as dstnct from the

birth of the flesh. Led by the spirit, one now lives and walks

in the spirit, abandoning the lusts of the flesh and cuts right

across the nexorable law of cause and effect or karma,

whch keeps all others n perpetual bondage. Wth the day

to day progress on ths path, new vstas of ndescrbable joy

and beauttude open up and new horzons loom nto vew,

encompassng the totalty of all that s, thus gvng greater

and greater awareness, first personal, then supramental, next

cosmc and supercosmc.



Hereafter the lberated souls, lberated from all the

shackles of mnd and matter, enjoy perpetual blss n the lfe

of the sprt, wth an outlook on lfe entrely changed; the

vast creaton now becomng the manfestaton of the One

lfe-prncple pulsatng everywhere n hm and around hm

and n all thngs, anmate and nanmate. The world that he

now wtnesses s totally dfferent from the world known to

hm before. it now looks as the vertable abode of god and

one sees god truly dwellng n t, nay n every consttuent

part of t; for all created thngs appear lke so many bubbles

n one vast ocean of lfe. Hereafter he lves unto the lord and

dies unto the Lord. Like St. Paul, he gets ‘crucified in Christ’



57

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



(fana-­fi-­sheikh) and Christ lives in him, and with repetitive

experence of the death process he trumphantly swallows

death n vctory—the Father and the Son becomng one.

Though the outward man of flesh and bones still persists and

contnues to exst, to spn out what remans of the web of lfe,

yet the nward man (the sprt n man) s renewed—growng

stronger and more sublme wth tme.



Thomas A. Kemps therefore says:

Forsake the flesh for the spirit. Learn to die

so that you may begn to lve.



in ths context, we have from Kabr:



Whle the people are mortally afrad of death,

i welcome death as a harbngar of blss.

De, and be thou dead to the world,

Such a death i experence many tmes a day.



in all the four gospels, we come across so many

references of lke nature:

He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth

his life for my sake shall find it.

—Matt. 10:39 & 16:25



For whosoever wll save hs lfe shall lose t:

but whosoever shall lose hs lfe for my sake

and the gospel’s the same shall save t.

—Mark 8:25



For whosoever wll save hs lfe shall lose t:

but whosoever wll lose hs lfe for my sake,

the same shall save t.

—luke 9:24 & 17:37







58

liFE in FUllnESS



He that loveth hs lfe shall lose t; and he that hateth

hs lfe n ths world, shall keep t unto lfe eternal.

—John 12:25



Dadu, a celebrated Sant says:



O Dadu! learn to de ere death overtakes thee,

What will it profit thee, when die thou must?



guru nanak also says the same thng:



O nanak! practse such a yoga as may teach thee

to de n lfe.



prophet Mohammed too exhorted hs ummat, or the

fathful, to practse the art of dyng before death: ‘Before thy

death, do thou de—Mautoo-qbalantumautoo’. The mystc

Muslm dvnes lke Khawaja Hafz, Shamas Tabrez and

Maulana Rum greatly emphassed the mportance of such

unque experence:

So long as you do not transcend the plane of the senses,

you reman unaware of the nner lfe.

Thou hast raments besdes the outer (physcal)

one wthout;

Why then dost thou fear to come out of the body?



One can go on multplyng any number of apothegms

on ths subject. We may close t wth a passage from Earl R.

Wassermann:



Many are only mperfect ndvdualsatons of the One;

and death permts the un-ndvdualsed, and hence

unbounded, sprtual lfe. The post-mortal lfe, there–

fore, s a sprtual exstence, for death, destroyng the

many coloured dome, allows the soul to ‘out-soar the

shadows of nght’ nstead of workng nwards to destroy





59

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



organc exstence. What then appears to be physcal

destructon, proves to be sprtual mmortalty... What

we call ‘life’ is a decay; therefore earthly confinement,

the mortal atmosphere stans the radance of Eternty.

On the other hand, the resurrected soul, rencorporated

n the One, not the shadow of death or physcal

matter, s dscovered n the true sense, spreadng tself

throughout nature, for the final reality everywhere is

sprt... Were the atmosphere of mortalty removed,

man would perceve that the ‘One remans’ and that

‘Heaven’s lght forever shnes;’ and that day and nght

are one and so lfe and death, lucfer and Vesper...

and that the ultmate realty of both earthly lfe and

the post-mortal eternty s the Sprtual One;...and

ths realsaton of sprtual dentty of mortal and post-

mortal life finally ceases the pairings of opposites like

lfe and death... Snce One glows ‘through tme and

change, unquenchably the same’.



He then goes on to say:



Learn to go unterrified into the gulf of death, for where

mortal exstence ends, the sprtual exstence begns.

Wth death, the resurrected soul out-soars the shadows

of nght, and s rencarnated nto the changeless One.



prophet Mohammed also speaks of death n lfe n much

the same stran:



A death lke ths wll not take thee to the grave,

But t shall lead thee from darkness to lght,

learn then to de every day by transcendng the body.



When a man learns to transcend the human n hm,

the Master n Hs Radant Form comes n to help the soul

onwards to ts true Home, gudng t on the hgher planes,





60

liFE in FUllnESS



both n one’s lfetme and even after when the mortal col s

finally cast off. In this connection Nanak says:



O nanak! snap all the ephemeral tes of the world and

find thou a real friend in some Saint;

The former shall leave thee whle ye lve but the latter

shall stand by thee even n the hereafter.

Followng the nstructons of a Satguru, take hold

of Truth,

Be thou true to Hm and He shall stand true to thee

unto the last.



A Muslm darvesh lkewse says:

O brave soul! take a firm hold of His hem,

For He s truly above all the worlds, here and above.

So we find in the Gospels:

lo! i shall be wth thee tll the end of the world, i shall

not leave thee nor forsake thee.



in ths way the hghest msson of human lfe s acheved

and the fullness of lfe experenced. Ths s the subject of

contactng the ‘Self’ by the ‘self’ whch dsengages from

the thorns and thstles of the worldly lfe, under the proper

gudance and help of a Master-soul who vouchsafes ths

experence to all alke rrespectve of sex, age, avocaton,

religious affinities and social orders based on blood, caste,

colour and creed.



The sprt has got to be dvested of the false halo of

the self-created and self-projected personalty that one

unwttngly weaves around hmself. Unless one becomes

a pure sprt dvested of the love of all created thngs, one

cannot enjoy the lfe of the Creator whch s a lfe of fullness

n beattude.









61

Sant Kirpal Singh Ji

(1894-1974)





62

IV

DEATH IN BONDAGE



i n nature death follows lfe and lfe proceeds from

death. Death as a cessaton of lfe n one form s but a

prelude to re-lvng n another, and generally at a hgher level

of exstence than before, and n better and more congenal

envrons.



Evoluton s the law of lfe and t conssts n actve

flowering of the latent possibilities in the spirit-­matter, and

comprses n ts compass, not only evoluton of the sprt-

matter whch grows more plastc and translucent n ts onward

march, but also evoluton of forms from mnerals to human

enttes and lastly expanson of self-conscousness. The so-

called dead matter s not really dead though the energy n t

may for some tme be n a congealed state.



A worn-out garment, that has outgrown ts utlty s to

be cast off and replaced by a new one, moulded n a fashon

one desres the most. Such s the law of Dame nature, the

handwork of god. The kndly Father, t s sad, hath ordaned

that Hs chldren may have what they ardently wsh for.



in provdng the essentals of lfe on the earth-plane,

love, lght and lfe and the necessary adjuncts thereto, lke

earth, water, sun, ar and space together wth all the means of

sustenance, the Supreme Lord of the universe is munificent

beyond measure, and provdes the same freely to all though

each one gets accordng to hs need and measure of descent.

Hs bountes are nnumerable and nexhaustble, and for

ages man has fed upon them in diverse ways. Not satisfied





63

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



wth the lmtless gfts, man ever craves for more—more of

slver and gold, more of amentes and convenences of lfe

and more of everythng else, and he struggles and strves

endlessly for them.



instead of beng grateful to the lord for all that He

has, by Hs grace, provded for us, we curse ourselves, curse

those around us in better and more affluent circumstances

than us, and curse the nnocent stars above and do not

hestate to cavl at, and crtcse n stngng terms, our own

fate or destny whch we have by our own actons, forged for

ourselves. ‘Wth all hs possessons, one loses hs head for

just a pttance.’



Human lfe s a great prvlege and a rare asset and

blessng. it comes after passng through a long evolutonary

process extendng over tme unendng. it s an opportunty

for amassng the rches of sprtualty that le hdden wthn

us and of whch we are hardly aware. But the majorty of us

are after ephemeral non-essentals—the sense-pleasures of

the earth-lfe, and not real happness.



For these short-­lived and fleeting pleasures, which we

may or may not get, we, by all means, far or foul, try to move

heaven and earth, and more often than not pay dearly, even

wth our own lfe, and qut the stage of lfe wth many a deep

regret for one thng or the other, and for the unworthy means

employed and for the sorrows suffered n the attempt.



nature s not extravagant n her desgn and purpose.

As one thnks, so he becomes. Our feelngs and emotons,

thoughts and passons, desres and aspratons do not de

wth the death of the body. They consttute an nner vest, an

undergarment (the astral body), below the physcal cloak;

and the sprt clothed theren, goes out to be covered by

yet another mantle, drawng upon the karmc seeds lyng





64

DEATH in BOnDAgE



n store n the seed-body, the precous treasure-chest. it s

ths causal or nstrumental body wth ts vast resources that

helps ts nmate, the sprt, n fashonng a new mould, a

fresh tabernacle of flesh, which may serve as a fitting vehicle

for the fulfilment of what lies uppermost in the unconscious

self.



The curtain finally rises, unfolding the entire panorama

of lfe down to the mnutest detal ere one passes out of sght

from the stage of lfe. On death-bed one may get a glmpse

of realty, but then t s too late to comprehend t. Ths

process works on and on gvng at the end of each span on

earth, fresh momentum to the wheel of lfe and death wth ts

natural concomtants of joys and sorrows, weal and woe—

sometme up and sometme low, movng n ntermnable

gyres, as one s never satated wth all that one gets n one’s

sojourn on earth, and goes on addng new hopes and new

desres, mxed wth many a regret for what he wanted and

dd not get. He s thus unwttngly engaged perpetually n

sowng the dragon’s teeth, and lfe after lfe, he spends n

fighting his self-­started battles with the self-­raised armed

bands whch, lke shadows, follow on hs heels as untamed

fures or the avengng sprts.



nature, lke the potter’s wheel, provdes the means n the

form of many clayey pots, one after the other, for slakng the

nsatable thrst and expectaton of each ndvdual. Weghed

down by countless desres from top to toe, one makes a slave

of hmself. Wthout them one could revel n hs godhood.

What s man after all?—god plus desres. And conversely

what s god?—Man mnus desres.



The great phlosopher-poet, Wllam Wordsworth (1770-

1859) draws a beautful pen-pcture of a growng chld n hs

memorable Ode on immortalty:







65

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



The soul that rses wth us, our lfe’s star,

hath had elsewhere ts settng,

And cometh from afar;

not n entre forgetfulness,

And not n utter nakedness,

But tralng clouds of glory do We come

From god, Who s our home:

Heaven les about us n our nfancy!

Shades of the prson-house begn to close

Upon the growng boy...

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

Yearnngs she hath n her own natural knd,

And, even wth somethng of a mother’s mnd,

And no unworthy am,

The homely nurse doth all she can

To make her foster-chld, her nmate man,

Forget the glores he hath known,

And that mperal palace whence he came.



Ths then s the sordd pcture of lfe on earth as we

witness from day to day. Even having our fill, as preordained,

we are yet hungry—ravenously hungry for more and more

of pelf and power, more of ephemeral pleasures and sense-

enjoyments. Far from beng thankful for what we have of

the bountes of nature, ‘we look before and after, and pne

for what s not.’ nature cannot reman a slent spectator of

our unappeased gluttony and wth her magc wand turns us,

Circe-­like, into swine so that we may have our fill of the

piffle and be done away with. It is only some wise Ulysses,

armed with a magic-­flower from Mercury (the messenger of

gods) who can fight the enchantress on her own ground and

rescue hs followers, gettng them reconverted from swne

nto men, and along wth them all others held n captvty by

the sorceress n many dfferent forms, each accordng to hs

or her nnate nature. it s the type of the rulng passons that





66

DEATH in BOnDAgE



determne our course of lfe, not only here rght now n the

lvng present, also n the hereafter.



now let us have a look at the nevtable process of

change called death. Ths transference from one state of lfe

to another s a necessary adjunct of lfe; and takes place n ts

own good tme but wth a swft and stunnng suddenness, the

more so when t s least expected. Death knows no calendar,

and no one can predct t, nor can anyone escape from t wth

all hs cunnng and wt. Each lvng thng has ts own allotted

span of lfetme. We all lve, move and have our beng n

tme, and when the sands of tme run out, ths change comes

and contnues to do so, tme and agan, untl one gets beyond

the farthest bounds of tme and arses nto tmelessness.



Death, then s somethng terrbly real and unavodable.

it perhaps seems to be the only real thng n the mdst of

the unrealtes of the world. Everyone, rch or poor, kng

or beggar, young or old, healthy or dseased, has to pass

through the death’s trap-door, whether one lkes t or not.

One may lve long or short, a hundred years or just a whle;

but one cannot lve on eternally n one and the same lfe

form, whch n course of tme, s sure to decay and become

wearly burdensome, a mllstone around the neck as t were,

and one n sheer desperaton may cry out n angush for a

quck rddance from the heavy load hangng around the self

n hm:



nether kngs nor beggars reman,

All go, each one n hs own tme.

—Ramkal M.1



A Muslm darvesh therefore advses:



All thy lfe thou hast bemoaned the death of others, Why

not thou st for a whle and ponder over thy own fate?





67

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



is death a panful process? s the next queston.

generally speakng t s so wth most. The scrptures tell us

of the excrucatng pan that a dyng person suffers at the

tme of death. in the Bhagwad purana, t s sad that one

experences the horrors of death-pangs as f one s btten by

a mllon scorpons at once. The holy Quran lkens the throes

of death to the condton of a person when a thorny hedge

were to be pulled through the almentary canal from one end

to the other. The Skh scrptures also speak n much the same

stran: The lfe-currents are wrenched out.



All such statements are merely llustratve of the

mmensty of the torture that one experences when the

demons of death appear to forcbly take the sprt out of

the body. What actually happens at that tme, t s only the

dyng man who knows. no one, after the actual experence

of death, has ever returned from across the borders of the

death-land to tell us of the exact nature of hs sufferngs.

Each one suffers unto hmself and becomes slent forever. To

be on the death-bed s a vertable nalng on the cross, and

the death-chamber s a charnel-house.

One can hardly stand unmoved, when some people

toss restlessly for days on end wth a death-rattle n ther

throat, wrthng n extreme agony on the death-bed. Who

can assuage the tortures of death ? All stand helplessly by;

the best of physcans admnsterng drugs to the last, the

attendant nurses standng on toe-tps, the nearest of kth

and kn wth tearful eyes and woebegone looks and sombre

faces, awatng the nevtable end. Who hears the pteous

cres of the poor vctm and hs lfe companons, hs wfe

and chldren?



As the wfe wth hars dshevelled moans,

The soltary sprt wngs ts way alone.

—Kabr





68

DEATH in BOnDAgE



Of Alexander the great (356-323 B.C.); kng of Mace-

dona and conquerer of the world as known at the tme, t s

sad that t had been prophesed that he would de only when

the earth would be of steel and the sky of gold. As nether

of these two phenomena could be possble, the kng was

lulled nto a false sense of perennal securty. He magned

and beleved that lke the Olympan gods, he was mmortal.

After long and wearsome campagns n the far east, as he

was passng through the desert near Babylon, on hs way

back to greece, he was strcken wth fever. Beng unable to

hold on to the saddle, he was helped to dsmount, and one

of the generals spread hs steel coat-of-mal on the ground,

lned as t was wth velvet on the nsde, and made the kng

le thereon, and held up outstretched hs gold-embrodered

umbrella over hs face to protect hm from the scorchng

rays of the fierce desert sun. It was then that the great hero

of many a battle, the nvncble conquerer, realsed that hs

end was near, for he was now lyng on the steely ground

wth a golden awnng over hm. He was overtaken by

consternaton. Addressng the best of the physcans who

were attendng upon hm, he, wth tearful eyes, begged that

somethng should be done to save hm for the tme beng,

so that he could reach home and meet hs mother whom he

greatly loved. But one and all expressed ther helplessness.

He offered to them, at first, half his kingdom and then the

whole f they could, by ther medcal skll, procure for hm

that much of respte. But who could help to stay the dvne

decree? On the tenth day of llness, as hs generals one by

one, passed through the tented chamber of the dyng kng,

he bade them good-bye and drected that at hs funeral, both

hs hands be kept out of the shroud so that all could see that

a great emperor was leavng empty-handed, just the way he

came nto the world.









69

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



Smlarly, we hear of the sad story of a great and talented

queen who ruled over vast domnons. She was adored by

her people for her dazzlng beauty, and admred for her

sagacty. She had ruled wsely and well for qute a long

tme. Brought up n the lap of luxury, wth hundreds of`

attendants, she could not for a moment beleve that there

was such a thng as ‘death’. When her end came, she was

strcken wth great sorrow and overtaken by pognant gref.

The royal physcans by her bed-sde could do nothng to

assuage her fears and torments. As death stared her n the

face, they tred to console her and advsed her to prepare for

the last journey. ‘What,’ n her horror, she exclamed. And

where was she gong? she wondered.



‘Alas ! to the land from where there s no return,’ was

the smple reply.



She could not beleve her ears. ‘Am i dreamng?’ she

enqured,



‘no, you wll have to go, your majesty.’



‘is there a land of no return? and f so, where s t?’



‘it s far off from ths world,’ sad the courters.



‘Could not you locate t for me n tme? And what

preparatons have you made to make my stay over there

comfortable?’ asked the queen.



‘none, your majesty,’



‘How many of you wll accompany me to that land?’

inquired the terrified queen.



‘You wll have to go alone and by yourself, madam,’ sad

the courters.







70

DEATH in BOnDAgE



‘How many attendants wll i be permtted to take wth

me?’



‘none, not one.’



Such, ndeed, s our gnorance of the realtes of lfe. We

are clever, very clever, n the workaday affars of the world.

But strange as t may seem, we know next to nothng of the

stern retrbuton that awats all of us; and we have, lke all

others, to go all alone and empty-handed.



‘naked i came nto the world, and naked shall i go,’ says

the hymnologst. That, ndeed, s the nevtable fate of all.

Weepng we come nto the world, and weepng we depart

from the world. To come weepng s understandable. A new-

born babe does weep as he emerges from the chamber of the

womb, for he s severed from the lght of lghts, the lght

of lfe, that has been sustanng hm rght through the perod

of gestaton n that chamber, suspended upsde down. Ths s

why we generally keep some sort of lght on for a few nghts

after the brth of the chld, and whenever he cres, we turn

hs face towards that lght, or at tmes, we play the rattle to

amuse the baby and queten hm.



But why should we weep at the tme of departure, when

on the way back to the parental care of the lovng Father?

it was open to us to re-lnk the strands of lfe n us by

conscously workng for that end. Ths we, wlly-nlly, do

not care to do, and the human exstence from cradle to the

grave runs waste. Once ths opportunty s lost, we go down

n the scale of exstence.

To fall from the top rung of the ladder, more often than

not, proves fatal. Snappng tes wth acqured relatonshps

of the world, spread over a number of years, s panful and

the departure terrifically poignant, the more so as we are

qute unprepared for the qut-notce that s sprung on us. We



71

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



do not know how to qut the rented house and where we are

to go. The prospect of beng thrown out nto the unknown as

we take the lfe after death to be, bewlders us. All ths works

up a state of horror, unmagnable horror of the worst type.

Ths s why t s sad:



Remember thou the day you came weepng nto the

world to the jublaton of those around thee; lve thou

a lfe that you may depart laughng amdst the weepng

and walng of all.



Francs Quarles (1592-1644), a mystc poet, speakng

of death tells us: “if thou expect death as a frend, prepare

to entertan t; f thou expect death as an enemy, prepare to

overcome t; death has no advantage, but when t comes a

stranger.”



Heren les the dfference between the eastern and the

western thought on death. St. paul, descrbng death as ‘the

last enemy of man’ sad that he ded daly ‘swallowng death

n vctory’ and mockngly asked: ‘O grave, where s thy

stng?’



The eastern savants hal t as an occason for unon

wth the Beloved. The concluson, however, s the same

n both cases; vz., that death clams an advantage over us

only when t comes suddenly and swftly as an unexpected

stranger, nether as an expected frend nor as a dreaded foe,

and we are entrely unprepared to receve t or to meet ts

challenge.



Those who are prepared for t and are ever ready, they

receve t, welcome t, takng as a home-gong and a means

of unon wth the Beloved. A true lover of god even when

condemned to death for heresy cheerfully lays hs head on

the block and beseechngly calls the executoner, prayng,

to make a short shrft of hs body wth hs sword, as he sees



72

DEATH in BOnDAgE



reflected in it the Light of his Beloved (God). After all, what

s death? “Death,” says Eurpdes “s a debt we must all

pay.” Ths beng the case, why not pay off the debt and be

forever free from the oblgaton? The body s the ransom or

the dower whch the soul has to delver to obtan ultmate

release from the law of Retrbuton.



To have some dea of what happens after death, let us

have recourse to the scrptural texts. The Masters dvde

mankind into four categories. In the first place, there are

those who have not had the good fortune to take refuge n

any Sant Satguru, and these form a consderable bulk. They

have to go, all alone, each a soltary soul by tself, wthout

any frend and companon. All such souls have to appear

before, and abde by the decrees of the just-god (Dharam

Ra), who dspenses stern and strct justce on the prncpal

of ‘as you sow, so shall you reap’, wthout compasson or

commseraton. Ths s what s called the nexorable law

of karma that works relentlessly. Ths law does not take

any count of extraneous crcumstances and admts of no

exceptons: “Castes and colours aval naught there; One gets

hs meed accordng to hs deeds.” (Asa M. 3). “Every way

of a man s rght n hs own eyes; but the lord pondereth the

hearts.” (prov. 21: 2).



At the apponted tme of whch no one s aware, good

angels (Ramgans) or bad angels (Yamgans), as the case

may be, come to forcbly take the sprt out of the body,

and one has to go along wth them. They escort the sprt

to the judgement-seat, so that each has to render account

of hs thoughts, words and deeds. “Fool thnkest thou that

because no Boswell s there to note thy jargon, t therefore

des and s bured. nothng des, nothng can de. The dlest

word thou speakest s a seed cast nto tme, whch brngs

frut to all eternty.” (Carlyle). Jesus n no uncertan terms

has declared: “And i say unto you, that every dle word that



73

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



men shall speak, they shall gve account thereof on the day

of judgement. For by thy words thou shalt be justified: by

thy words thou shalt be condemned.” (Matt. 12: 36-37).



All thoughts, feelngs and emotons, all words uttered

ntentonally or unntentonally, and all deeds done

premedtatedly or casually, leave ndelble mpressons

(samskaras or naqsh--amal) on the tablet of the mnd, and

the account has to be rendered after death. it s all a summary

procedure, but just, wth no provson for logc-choppng or

argument or appeal to any hgher power, nor can there be

any chance of release there from. The one who has ndulged

all hs lfe n snful dongs s sent to hell (narak or Dozakh)

to undergo the penal servtude for a partcular length of

tme as hs deeds may mert, and thereby rd hmself of the

evl mpressons, and understand the law that works for hs

ultmate good. When the allotted tme runs out, he once

agan takes brth so that he may have another chance to

lead a reformed lfe freed from the evl now washed off, and

make a fresh start avodng the ptfalls of the past.



if one leads a lfe of rghteousness, he s assgned a place

n heaven or paradse (Swarg, Bakunth or Bahsht), where

he, for some tme enjoys the fruts of hs good deeds, after

whch he too once agan, comes down to the earth-plane.



Thus all persons ensconced n the karmc wheel of lfe

move up and down by the ceaseless momentum of ther own

deeds. There s no escape from ths ever-revolvng gant

wheel untl one, by a stroke of good fortune, meets some

Sant Satguru and the latter accepts hm and helps hm to a

way-out and to the god-way.



The sprts on comng out of the nether world of pluto,

gradually work ther way up from the mneral to the vegetable

kngdom, and then to the world of nsects and reptles, and on





74

DEATH in BOnDAgE



to that of the feathery fraternty, and next to the quadrupeds,

and finally to human beings:



After passng through the wheel of the eghty-four

thou hast ganed the top,

O nanak! now take hold of the power of god,

and be thou eternally free.

—Shr Rag M. 5



Even the Devas or detes, the varous gods and goddesses

who are sad to regn n regons of blss, are there on account

of ther hghly mertorous deeds on the lower planes.

As soon as they exhaust the mert ganed, they have also to

return to the physcal world. The blessed lord Krshna, the

adorable one, once explanng to Udhav, a devoted dscple

of hs, about the workng of the law of karma, pontng to

an insect crawling in the filth said: “O Udhav, this insect

that you see before you, has oft tmes been indra, the god of

thunder and ran, and has oft tmes been grovellng n drt as

at present. Such ndeed s the fate of all.”



Even the Avtaras or ncarnatons, the embodments of the

Powers of God, are not immune from the inflexible working

of the karmc wheel and are called to judgement. lke a

solder n the army, an Avtara s not mmune from lablty

under the cvl law, n addton to hs oblgatons under the

mltary law governng hs professon. Even f he may be

dong hs duty under the command of hs superors, whch s

law unto hm under mltary regulatons, he may ncur a cvl

lablty under the cvl law. Hs s a two-fold responsblty:

one under the army law—to wt, to obey mplctly what the

offcers order hm to do on pan of beng court-martaled

and the other under the cvl admnstraton f, n the dscharge

of hs dutes, he s found to have exceeded the lmts.



gods and goddesses, and the ncarnatons of varous





75

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



god-powers, are therefore ncluded n ths category, so far

as the law of karma goes. Wth all ther prvleged poston,

they, and the entre hosts of angels, are under the law and

not above the law. Ths s why they too seek human brth,

n whch les the possblty of escape from the tols and

struggles on to the abode of peace-eternal and lfe ever-

lastng. Even the great Rshs wth all ther austertes and

penances, when ther end draws ngh, wsh and aspre for

a human body n preference to celestal abodes n heaven

as the shnng ones (Devas). They do so because t s n

ths way alone that they stand the chance of contactng a

Satguru, gettng nstructons from Hm, and rsng above the

nexorable law of causaton or acton and reacton.



Heroes lke Arjun and the pandva brothers except

Yudhshtra, the dharam-putra (the embodment of dharam),

as he was commonly known and beleved to be, were cast

nto the nether regons for engagng n a war, though of

rghteousness, and enjoned by no less a personage than the

blessed lord Krshna, because n dong so they could not,

wth all Hs exhortatons, dvest themselves of the dea of

doershp.



Agan, of lord Krshna hmself, t s sad that he met

hs death by the chance arrow of a bhl, thus requttng hs

past karma commtted ages before as Rama, who klled the

invincible Bali, a forest prince, by the artifice of shooting an

arrow from behnd the cover of a tree. Rama and Krshna, t

maybe mentoned, were both ncarnatons of lord Vshnu n

dfferent ages.



Smlarly, of Kng Dasrath, the father of Rama, t s sad

that one nght whle huntng n the forest, he heard a gurglng

sound that appeared to hm to be of some wld anmal lappng

water close by among the rushes and the reeds. guded by

the sound, he drected hs arrow n that drecton, httng a





76

DEATH in BOnDAgE



young man, Sarvan, who had gone to the riverside to fill a

ptcher wth water for hs blnd and thrsty parents, whom he

was carryng n a panner across hs shoulder, and had just

left them at some dstance. Hearngs the pteous angushed

cry of hs vctm, the kng rushed towards the dyng man,

who told hm of hs plght and begged hm to take the water

to hs parents. Full of gref, the kng went to the aged couple

and told them of the mshap. They could hardly bear the

shock and ded bemoanng ther lot, wshng the same fate

as ther’s for the unknown perpetrator of the crme. in course

of tme, the kng also met the same fate, when he ded n

btter agony caused by the pangs of separaton from hs son,

Rama, who had been exled for fourteen long years. Ths s

how nemess overtakes each one n hs turn, meetng out

what s due unto hm. Thus each one comes n hs own way

nto the world, and goes out of t nto the valley of death

under the compulsve force of karma.



in the second category fall all persons who come n

contact wth a lvng perfect Master, are accepted by Hm,

and ntated nto the esoterc scence of the soul, but for one

reason or another, are not able to develop Communon wth

the Holy Word to any apprecable extent, be t on account

of ndulgence n sense-pleasures, or because of sloth or

lethargy, or somethng else.



They stand on a different footing from those in the first

category. At the tme of ther death, when the soul-currents

begn to wthdraw from the body, or a lttle earler, the Satguru

n hs Radant Form appears wthn, to take charge of the

departng sprt. Hs Radant Form gladdens the heart of the

devotee, and he gets so absorbed n Hm that all attachments

of the world fall off lke autumn leaves, and he fearlessly

and joyously follows Hm nto the valley of the shadows of

death. “Yea, though i walk through the valley of the shadows

of death, i wll fear no evl: for thou art wth me,” says the



77

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



psalmst. (23:4). And ths ndeed s Hs troth — ‘Everyman,

i wll go wth thee, and be thy gude; in thy most need to go

by thy sde.’ Agan, ‘So... i shall not leave thee nor forsake

thee tll the end of the world.’ The Master constantly keeps a

watch over the affars of the dscple. He s ever wth hm n

weal or woe. “He stands by hm even before the judgement-

seat of god,” says nanak. Wth the darveshes, there s no

reckonng of deeds of ther dscples. The Master s all n all,

the sole judge and arbter of the dscples’ deeds, whether

these be rghteous or unrghteous, and deals wth them as

he thnks best: “The Father hath lfe n Hmself; so hath He

gven to the Son to have lfe n hmself ; And hath gven

hm an authorty to execute judgement also, because he s

the Son of man.” (John 5:26-27). it s because of such a

deep solctude for the dscple that nanak so emphatcally

declares:



love thou the true Master and earn the rches true,

He who beleves n Hm unto the last, the Master

rescues hm true.

lke wanderng sprtes, the mnd-rdden roam up and

down,

Anmals n human form—devod of lght through and

through.

—Malar War. i



Dstance does not count wth the Master. The Master-

power does come at the last moment, or even earler, no

matter where the dscple may be—far or near. He apprses

hm of the mpendng nevtable hour of hs ext from the

world and accordngly comes to escort hm. The Subtle Form

of the Master s resplendent, and leads the sprt nto hgher

regons and assgns each one an approprate place to whch

he may be enttled accordng to hs sadhna or the practce of

the Holy Word durng hs lfetme; and mparts to hm the

necessary nstructons for further and fuller development on



78

DEATH in BOnDAgE



the sprtual path. “in my Father’s house are many mansons;

and f t were not so, i would have told you; for i go to

prepare a place for you. And f i go and prepare a place for

you, i wll come agan and receve you unto myself, that

where i am, there ye may be also.” (John 14:2-3).



in case one s to be chastsed for hs laxtes, He Hmself

admnsters the necessary chastsement, but never lets hm

into the torture of hell-­fire. The divine balance-­holder (the

kng of shadows) who judges each accordng to hs deeds,

has no authorty over the apt dscples of the Master, for

they lve n ‘the name of lord (whch) s a strong tower.’

(ps. 18:10). it s not gven to hm to pass and execute

judgement on them. in all such cases the Master Hmself

decdes and does thngs as He thnks best. “The lord taketh

pleasure n them that fear Hm, n those that hope n Hs

mercy.” (ps. 147:11) Agan, “For whom the lord loveth,

he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receveth

(accepteth).” (Heb. 12:6). in bref:

Those who love the Master, are never alone,

nor are they answerable to any, nor do they suffer pan.

—gujr War M. 3



But such ntates who have no love for the world, they

are not rencarnated on the earth-plane, unless for some

partcular reason the Master deems t necessary to do so, and

n that case, such a one does not slde down the scale but s

reborn n some famly of pous and relgous parents so that

the new-born easly gets nto touch wth a Master-Sant and

resumes on hs path Homeward, from an early age, wthout

any let or hndrance. For the seed of the Word sown by the

Sower (the Master) ever remans wthn the depths of hs

soul and cannot but, n tme, sprout, blossom and fructfy by

the Water of lfe that he s sure to get from the Master of hs

age: “none can take away the gft of the guru; He who has





79

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



bestowed t, knows how to ferry across.” (Maru M. 1) “Once

the seed s sown by a Sant; none has the power to snge t.”

(Soami Ji). Hafiz, the mystic poet of Persia, says:



On the day of reckonng, thou shalt know for certan,

in the land of darveshes, there s no count of deeds.



Shamas Tabrez, another great mystc of persa, says:

Death breaks down the cage, lberatng the sprt,

Death has no sway over phoenx that des to soar agan,

Why should I not fly back to my own home?

Why should i tarry n the clayey mould?



Agan:



The lovers know where and how to de,

They accept and relsh death as a gft from the

Beloved:

Wth nner eye opened, they see the glory of god,

When others are forced blnd-fold nto the blnd alley.

Whle the lovers wend ther way happly to the lord,

The gnorant ones de a horrfyng death.

Those who pass sleepless nghts n fear of god,

They have no regrets n lfe nor any hopes and fears;

Whle here they seek Hs glance of grace,

Merrly do they go n Hs holy presence.



The thrd category comprses such persons as make the

most of the nstructons mparted to them by the Master,

but have not yet attaned perfecton though they are well

on the way to t. Such souls know of the tme and day of

ther departure n advance of the event. Snce they are fully

conversant wth the death process and every day undergo

ts experence; they are not afrad of death and know ts

shadowy character. On the contrary, they wshfully and

wstfully awat the apponted tme and voluntarly throw off

the worn-out mortal mantle, just n the same way as they had



80

DEATH in BOnDAgE



put t on, on ther advent nto the world. They know some

of the hgher planes of the sprt-world whch they traverse

day n and day out along wth the Master-power, and know

the partcular plane to whch they are ultmately to go for

sojourn after death. There they lve for some tme and work

for ther way up to stll hgher regons. They lve all the tme

conscously n the love of the Master, and the Master-power

ever abdes n them. He s ther manstay and support and

they owe no allegance to anyone else. “led by the sprt

they are no more under the law.” (St. paul).



last, but not the least, come the perfected Souls. They,

whle lvng, are lberated bengs (jvanmukats) and lead a

freed lfe of the sprt. They know full well, far ahead of

the tme, as to when they have to go back to the Manson

of the lord, and gladly awat the hour, and welcome the

manner n whch they are requred to qut the bodly

frame—be t on the cross or the gbbet, on the red-hot ron

plates, or on the executoner’s block. Wth no wll of ther

own, they lve n the Wll of god, and joyously embrace

death as a means of reunon wth the Beloved, unmndful

of the swft or lngerng process of death, as may sometme

be ordaned by the relgous zealots and tyranncal pontffs

and potentates, for that s the moment of hghest jublaton

for them. Thenceforth, they lve out ther span of lfe from

moment to moment. They care not if they are flayed alive,

hacked to peces, or burnt at the stake, or made to drnk the

cup of hemlock, or naled to the cross along wth felons.

They gve a hearty handshake to death as t comes n ther

way, no matter what form t may assume. Ths then s the

way that gurmukhs, the Sants and the prophets follow.



Of guru Amar Das, t s sad that when the tme of hs

departure drew ngh, he called for the Sangat (congregaton)

and addressed: “i am gong back to the Har (lord). no

one should weep for me. He who wll do so, wll ncur my



81

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



dspleasure. After i am gone, be ye all engaged n the slent

Musc of the soul.”



Smlarly, Shamas Tabrez sad: “On the day of my death,

as my ber slowly moves along, never for a moment feel

that i am gong wth any regrets n lfe. When you see my

coffin, utter not a word of separation, for then alone I am in

unon wth the lord. When i wll turn my face away from the

world, i wll then be facng the eternal Realty.”



Hazur Baba Jamal Sngh J Maharaj had foretold of hs

approachng end long before t actually came about. When

he was nearng the end of hs earthly plgrmage, he sad: “i

am gong back to my natve place and none should press me

to stay on. My msson n ths lfe s over and i have amassed

mmense sprtual rches. Happly i go to the Mansons of

the lord.”



it s a sacrlege to lament and bewal the passng away

of Sants, for verly do they go back to ther own home. One

may, f he lkes, shed copous tears at the death of a worldlng

who s forcbly ejected from, and dragged out of the body by

the prnce of the nether world, and passes through devous

processes up and down: “O Kabr, why weep for a Sant who

goes back home: Weep, f you must for a worldly-wse who

tosses from hand to hand.”



Sants, when called back, on completon of ther msson,

are gven an honoured place n Hs Court. To de such a death

s a rare prvlege and a real blessng, whch may be enved

by mghty kngs and emperors.









82

V

WHAT AFTER DEATH?





“A nD god sad, let there be lght; and there was

lght.” (gen. 1:3). And ths s the true lght that

lghteth every man that cometh nto the world. And lght s

the lfe of men.



in memorable words lke these, all the scrptures

descrbe the geness or creaton of the world and of all that

s n the world. Rays of lght vbratng wth the Musc of

lfe, emanatng from the Formless Absolute Exstence came

to manfest the world n ts varegated colours n countless

shapes and forms.



As above, so below. The Sprt and power of god

manfested n the vbratng holy lght, pervades all the

four grand Dvsons of the unverse: Sach Khand, the

abode of Truth or the Changeless permanence n its prstne

purty, wth the materal cause (the mnd) yet hdden and

nvolved theren; the Brahmand or the egg of Brahman, the

second grand Dvson of the unverse, brought nto beng

by the unversal mnd of elemental essence by the Wll of

the Supreme Beng; and the next, Und, or the thrd grand

Dvson, called the astral world wth mnd-stuff n ts subtle

state; and lastly, Pind, or the physcal world, the fourth grand

Dvson, the handwork of the gross mnd.



Durng our sojourn on the earth-plane, we work out our

destny or fate as planned wth great precson and exacttude

by what s called Prarabdh Karmas, whch determne n

broad outlne the general framework markng the duraton





83

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



and course of lfe n each case. Ths plane s a bg countng

house or a clearing office, so to say, in which each one has to

square up hs or her account, comng down the ages, and n

dong so, we wlly-nlly open fresh accounts and rase credts

and debts to be pad off and cleared n the dstant future, and

no one knows how and when and n what form and n what

manner. Thus, whle reapng the harvest sown n the past,

we prepare the ground for fresh sowng, n season and out of

season, wth seeds good, bad, or ndfferent; and all ths we

do promscuously, prompted by mnd and the senses.

The sages call the earth-plane as ‘karam khshetra’, or the

field of actions, where sowing and harvesting automatically

go on all the tme, under the superntendence, drecton and

control of Dharam Ra, the kng of shadows, who measures

and judges each thought, word and deed, however trval

and insignificant it may appear to be, rightly and justly, and

admnsters justce to each at the end of one’s lfe-span.

nanak calls ths regon ‘Dharam Khand’, for each plgrm-

soul comng to ths regon has to realse n fullness, the

exstence of the ‘law of Retrbuton and Requtal’, whch

governs all alke wth no favours and no exceptons.



Each s weghed wth the weght of hs own acts and

deeds and learns, sometmes wth hard blows and heavy

knocks, the grand lesson of Brahman, the lord of the three

realms: the gross or physcal, subtle or astral, and causal or

nstrumental (Pind, Und and Brahmand); all of whch

are the mnd-zones of the unversal mnd, wth numberless

planes and sub-planes, ncludng inter alia varous hells and

heavens wth ntermedate stages as one may create by one’s

senses, sensbltes and susceptbltes, lkes and dslkes,

loves and hatreds, prdes and prejudces, born of desres of

one knd or the other.









84

WHAT AFTER DEATH?



Each one thus bulds hs own habtat, and not only here

but also n the hereafter; the astral and mental worlds where

one stores up hs mpressons gathered from tme to tme,

n dfferent ncarnatons from the begnnng of tme. All

these lnger n the soul n the form of general latences n

the folds of the karmc body; and a part of them at the tme

of rebrth prepares an etherc body n advance of the coarse,

dense body. Thus ‘destny s cast nto the mould before the

physcal vesture s prepared’, to work out the causes nvolved

theren.



Smlarly, at the tme of death the departng soul carres

wth t all the lfe-mpressons, deeply engraved on the tablet

of the mnd and the rulng passons of the entre lfetme, now

sngled out n blazng colours whch determne the course of

ts future destnaton n the astral and/or mental world of

sprts. Strpped of the physcal mantle, each soul dsplays

ts subtle ndvdualty, as t were, n the lght of the noonday

sun. Men may deceve themselves here for any length of

tme, by wearng pous looks and dressng n attractve

clothes. They may for the tme beng succeed n decevng

others; but none can play the hypocrte n the astral world,

where one s denuded of the sold outer coverng, the gross

garment of the flesh:



O Nanak! it is there that the divine mystery is finally

revealed,

The perfect are they who worshp perfecton,

And the mperfect are perfected over there;

Such, as dyng come to be born agan are yet mperfect.



The astral world s the world of sprts of dsemboded

souls—souls havng cast off the physcal body and yet

enfolded n the subtle and mental coverngs. it s also called

‘Pitri Lok’ the place of the Pitris or manes of the defined souls

of the departed ancestors. Here the souls are mprsoned n





85

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



the seven-shelled encasement of the astral world, drawng

subtle materal from each of the seven sub-planes exstng

theren. it s here that they work out the causes whch

they set gong on the earthplane, by undergong certan

purificatory processes in the divine crucible, so as to make

them worthy of the land of the shnng ones after the dross

s burnt off.



Mrs. Anne Besant (1847-1933), a pupl of Mme. Blav-

atsky, n her famous study ‘The Ancient Wisdom’, has gven

a graphc descrpton of the varous sub-planes n what she

calls ‘Kam lok’, a lower sub-plane n the astral world. As

the name ndcates, t s a ‘place of desres’ and s sad to

contan seven sub-dvsons n t, each peopled by persons of

varyng natures and temperaments. The scum of the socety,

the vilest of the vile, the murderers and marauders, ruffians

and profligates and persons with bestial tastes and brutish

appettes who, whle lvng on earth, shaped for themselves

bestal astral bodes, now appear, after death, n savage

forms n ther natural lkenesses and natve hdeousnesses,

n the lowest strata of the nfernal regon, roamng about,

roaring, raving and raging, fiercely and furiously, pret-­like

wandering in search of means for the gratification of their

nsatate desres.



in these gloomy and loathsome surroundngs, they reap

the harvest of ther own sowng, and learn the much-needed

lesson whch they faled to learn durng ther lfetme, as they

were whrled away on the tde of lusts and desres. nature’s

lessons are btter and sharp, but mercful n the long run,

desgned, as they are, for ther ultmate good.



To the next sub-plane go such souls as qut ther bodes

wth some deep anxety weghng heavly on them, or such

who had mplacable appettes or desres for self-enjoyment

and gratification.





86

WHAT AFTER DEATH?



Then there are two sub-planes for those who are educated

and thoughtful people, chiefly occupied with worldly affairs

durng ther lfetme on earth. Ther attenton s drected

more onwards than backwards because they belong to the

progressve types.



From the fifth sub-­plane onwards, the environ changes

consderably, becomng astral n the true sense of the

word .e., truly starry, studded as t s wth stars, and the

surroundngs are cheerfully nsprng. These three sub-planes

are euphemstcally termed heavens—heavens of a lower

type, sometme spoken of, as by the later Jews, as nfernal

heavens, beng stuated n the nfernal world as dstngushed

from supernal heavens.



The religious and the philosophic busy-­bodies find their

way to the materialised heavens in the fifth region, which

they desred and coveted whle on earth: lke the Happy

Hunting Grounds, the Valhalla (the final resting place of the

illustrious dead and the heroes slain in battles), the joy-­filled

Bahsht or paradse of the Muslms, the golden Jewelled-

Gated New Jerusalem or the Lyceum-­filled Heaven.

The souls of the more advanced type, like artists, find a

place n the sxth sub-dvson. The seventh or the hghest

sub-dvson s entrely for the materalstcally-orented

ntellectuals, lke poltcans and admnstrators, and men of

scence who were pronouncedly materalstc on earth, and

wedded to the ways of the world n acqurng knowledge.



lfe n Kam lok s sad to be more actve, forms more

plastc and the sprt-matter more hghly charged and more

subtle, and ntangble and mperceptble though transparent

or translucent. The thought-forms here appear and dsappear

wth kaledoscopc rapdty because of the great velocty of the

vbratons generated by sensatons, feelngs and emotons.





87

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



A spiritually advanced person with a purified astral body

merely passes through Kam lok wthout delay. The pure and

the temperate, though less vapd n hs plght, dreams away

peacefully through t. Others, less developed stll; awaken

to conscousness n the regon smlar to the one n whch

they worked n ther lfetme. Those whose anmal passons

stll clng to them (prets) wake up, each lterally and exactly

‘to hs own place’ n the approprate regon to whch he

belongs.



Ths plane s treacherous and trcky, and as such, those

who are ntated by a perfect Master of the tme nto the

dvne mysteres of the Beyond are not permtted to tarry, lest

they be bewtched here. On the contrary, they are quckly led

under cover through t, to hgher regons for ganng maturty

and stablty so as to be able, at a later tme, to face t wth

confidence and to stand the tempting witchery and delusive

and llusory charms of the place, and do not get stuck-up n

ther march upwards n the sprtual regon.



From the astral world of desres, some of the souls pass

on to another world, the world of thoughts. it s a mental

zone (mano-ma srsht) created by the thnkng mnd or

manas as t s called. Thoughts have tremendous energy and

each person, whle on earth, creates hs own dream-land by

flights of imagination and fancy; and to this, the soul, after

death, s gradually led on to experence ‘the castles bult n

the ar’, as the sayng goes.



Mnd at every stage, from the unversal Brahman, wth

Hs pure mnd-essence, down to the ndvdual, weaves a

world of ts own and takes delght to lve n t, as a spder

caught in the web of its own making, and flits up and down,

rght and left, on the gossamer texture so artstcally set up

with a light filmy substance coming out of its own body.

So do the thought-patterns and thought-mages of each





88

WHAT AFTER DEATH?



ndvdual go out to make a wonderful thought-kngdom,

far n advance of the tme that the thnker n the body s

freed from the prson-house of the physcal exstence n the

materal world.



As you thnk, so you become. Ths s the law of nature,

and no one can escape from ts operaton. in ths world

of thoughts, thought-vbratons are the only channels of

communcaton between soul and soul, and all the souls lve

n close communon wth each other. There space and tme

do not matter. if at all there s any separaton between them,

t s only due to the lack of sympathy and not for anythng

else.



All n all, lfe there s rcher, fuller and more advanced

than n any of the foregong regons, but t contnues to be

delusve, t beng the outcome of the mnd-stuff of each, and

no one here can totally escape from deluson, though each

one enjoys n full, hs own heaven-world, vast and expandng

or shallow and restrcted accordng to one’s own mnd-stuff,

but all the same each one retans n hm, a sense of realty n

the mdst of surroundng lluson.



A sanctuary of specal nterest n the mental world s Dev

lok, the abode of the Devas or the shnng ones—people

hghly enlghtened n ther tme and greatly advanced n ther

researches. Here are located the Svargas and Bakunths of the

Hndus, the Sukh Vat of the Buddhsts, the heavens of the

Zoroastrans and Chrstans, the Arsha of the less materalsed

Muslms and the Supernal paradses or pleasure-grounds of

the later Jews. Here les the garden of Eden from where man

was expelled and excluded by God for his first disobedience

of Hs commandments. John Mlton (1608-74), a great poet

and genus of hs age, and a profound poltcal and sprtual

thnker has, n hs mmortal classcs, ‘Paradise Lost’, and

‘Paradise Regained’ gven a wonderful account of the Fall





89

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



of Man and hs Resurrecton and return unto Hm through

the ntercesson of the Son of Man.



Wthout wadng through the scrptures of varous

relgons, dealng wth post-mortal exstence of man n

the varous realms, we would do well to once agan refer

to Brahma Vdya or the Dvne Wsdom, rghtly termed

by the greeks as ‘Theosopha’, whch provdes an adequate

phlosophy, embracng n ts fold, the wsdom of the east and

the west.



Turnng agan to the great occultst, Mrs. Anne Besant,

we find the mental plane inhabited by human beings after

they cast off ther physcal and astral vestures. purged of the

selfish animal passions, each one enters into this region to

reap the harvest of hs good deeds, whatever the same may

be, large or small, accordng to the measure of good thoughts

of personal self-aspratons and ambtons, hopes and fears,

loves and nterests. “We cannot have more than what we are,

and our harvest s accordng to our sowng. Be not deceved;

god s not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall

he also reap.” (galatans 6:7).



it s a unverse of the ‘good law,’ mercfully just, and

brngs to each, the exact wages or meed of hs work on earth.

Everythng thought of, every aspraton worked up nto

power, frustrated efforts transmuted nto facultes, struggles

and defeats becomng pllars of strength and power,

sorrows and errors forged into shining armour; now find

fruton n one of the seven sub-planes or heavens n the

land of mdnght sun where self-conscousness awakenng,

makes one fully conscous of hs non-self surroundngs:

wth memory spreadng out nto the htherto unknown past,

brngng to vew the cause that worked out hs lfe on earth

and the causes that are wrought by hm lkewse for the vast

future. The past, the present and the future now present





90

WHAT AFTER DEATH?



to hm an ntegrated vew of lfe, lke an open book, wth

nothng to hde and wthhold. Here he develops for hmself

an all-seeng eye, and becomes a perfect seer, so far as hs

ndvdualty s concerned, n the true sense of the word.



in ths heaven-world, the lowest part s assgned to the

least developed souls with sincere and unselfish love for

ther famles and frends, an admraton for nobler, purer

and better persons than themselves. The measure of ther

meed s accordngly narrow and shallow, the cup of ther

receptvty beng small; but stll bubblng over to the brm

wth joy, purty and harmony; and they are reborn after a

whle on ths plane wth mproved powers and facultes.



next, come n men and women of relgous fath wth

hearts and mnds turned towards god—the personal god of

ther own choce, wth any name and any form they had fath

n, and to them the nameless and the Formless appears n

the sad lkeness n whch they lovngly worshpped Hm,

overwhelmng them wth devotonal ecstasy accordng

to ther mental and emotonal capacty. The Dvne vels

Hmself n the form famlar to Hs devotee. it s really

strange that men forget that all detes resde n the human

breast. We have but to turn nward to get a glmpse of the

Formless n the very form n whch we adore Hm the most.

it s therefore sad: “Formless s He and yet all forms are

Hs; nameless s He and yet all names are Hs; Call Hm by

any name thou wshest; And He turns to thee.”



To the thrd plane, come devoted and earnest souls

who see and serve god n man, and worshp Hm n Hs

manfested creaton. At ths place they are perfected nto

great phlanthropsts of tmes yet unborn, and endowed wth

a rich power of unselfish love for mankind.



The souls of Master-mnds n fne arts, lke musc,





91

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



sculpture and pantng; the researchers and dscoverers of

the laws of nature; eager and reverent students delvng nto

the depths of knowledge, get an opportunty n the fourth

sub-plane for developng nto perfect Teachers of manknd

n the ages to come; and when they do come, they serve

as torch-bearers and leave ther footprnts on the sands of

tme.



next, there are three lofty regons of formless heavens.

A large number of souls smply reach the lowest reaches,

have but a brief stay, and a flash of insight, according to their

sowng and then they come back to the earth-plane wth a

dp nto the great unknown. But souls wth deep thnkng and

noble lvng, correctly and mmedately perceve truths, see

the fundamental causes and the underlyng untes, and learn

of the changeless workng of the dvne law n all harmony,

n the mdst of the most ncongruous effects as appear to

untraned eye—And where, “though all thngs dffer, all

agree.” (Alexander pope).



More advanced souls, wth memory perfect and unbroken,

fnd ther way to the sxth sub-plane, and after garnerng

the rches of the dvne mnd (Brahmand), return as great

poneers of manknd, to justfy the ways of god to man and

to glorfy god. The ‘mghty dead’ of ages gone by here get

a taste of the ‘glorous lvng,’ seeng and wtnessng as they

do, the workng of the Wll of Brahman n its fullness, wth

no lnk mssng n the chan of causaton.



in the loftest sub-plane come the souls of the Masters of

Brahma Vdya and ther ntates (Brahmachars), for none

but an initiate can find the ‘strait gate’ and the ‘narrow path

that leadeth unto lfe’, and so the chosen few enter nto the

land and lfe of Brahman. They enjoy ther self-conscousness

to the hghest pont, but are not yet endowed wth cosmc

conscousness.





92

WHAT AFTER DEATH?



in the end, Mrs. Anne Besant sums up the poston thus:

“Such s an outlne of the ‘seven heavens’ nto one or other

of whch men pass n due tme after the ‘change that men

call death.’ For death s only a change that gves the soul

a partal lberaton, releasng hm from the heavest of hs

chans. it s but a brth nto a wder lfe, a return after bref

exle on earth to the soul’s true Home (Home of the unversal

mnd), passng from a prson nto the freedom of the upper

ar. Death s the greatest of earth’s llusons; there s no

death, but only changes n lfe condtons. lfe s contnuous,

unbroken, unbreakable; ‘unborn, eternal, ancent, constant,’

t pershes not wth the pershng of the bodes that clothe t.

We mght as well thnk that the sky s fallng when a pot s

broken, as magne that the soul pershes when the body falls

to peces.”

The run of mankind after death finds no rest in the three

worlds: the physcal, the astral and the mental. The souls

freed from the physcal vesture are carred on, up and down,

n the gant Brahmanc wheel of lfe by the momentum of

ther own thoughts, words and deeds. it s all a play of the

individual mind, with its vast field of ramifications, spreading

out from the lowest, the physcal, to the mental worlds

wheren one bulds hs own tabernacles n the hereafter, for

a temporary stay, long or short, accordng to one’s needs for

learnng the lessons of Brahman; as he advances on the path

towards perfecton, and each soul gathers as rch a harvest as

he can; before exhaustng the causes set n moton through

the external stmul from powers that be n hs surroundngs

n the varous planes n the three worlds thus descrbed.

The causal or the seed-body of the human soul, the

nnermost vest, has yet two more very subtle and sublme

lnngs underneath, respectvely called the buddhc (the

vgyanc) and nrvanc (the anandc or blssful). it s only a

brave soul, very brave ndeed, lke that of prnce Sdharatha,



93

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



who may enter nto Buddha-hood and become Buddha,

the Enlghtened one and enjoy the blss of the Creator of

the three unverses; and comes to the earthplane to gve

the law—the law of Dhamma or Dharma unto the world,

wth emphass on desrelessness so as to free the mnd of

all attachments, and then to tread the eght-fold path of

rghteousness leadng to perfecton. Agan, t may be a Jan

Trthankara, the Mahavra, the bravest of the brave, who

could dare approach the dvne throne of Brahman and gve

out to the world the law of Unversal love and Ahmsa, love

for all creatures from the tnest nsect, helplessly crawlng

in the dust, and the water and air spirits, floating in countless

numbers, n ther respectve spheres, nvsble to the naked

eye.



in the Buddhc plane, one develops the ntellectual sde

of dvnty n hm, and begns to see and realse the self-same

Self n hm, as n all around hm, and he s as much n that

Self as others are. Thus he comes to the great fundamental

unty of exstence, the ‘Sutra Atma,’ carryng everythng

from an ant to the elephant, as so many beads on the strng

of a rosary; n spte of the dfferences n shape, sze and

colour, both wthn and wthout, due to clmatc condtons,

and mental make-up and nner development and growth.



now the human monad, the outbreathed lfe of Brahman,

dwells n the nbreathed lfe of Brahman, wth dvne powers

and attrbutes, and aspres for the blss-aspect of the dvnty

n hm—the Atmc or the nrvanc conscousness of Sat-

Cht-Anand—the heart and soul of the unverse, whch now

becomes hs, and he s one wth t.



it s ndeed a long and weary process to understand

correctly the Brahm Vdya, and then to successfully practse

t, to traverse the Brahmand from end to end, stage by stage,







94

WHAT AFTER DEATH?



from the physcal world of coarse matter to Brahm lok

proper, the region where maha-­maya in its finest and most

subtle form regns. The Brahmand s the manfestaton of

the power of god, lodged n Om, the most sacred syllable n

the Vedc lore; hence it s the akar or form of Om (Om-kar),

it s the logos of the greeks and Ek-Onkar of the varous

scrptures.



Ths s the ultmate end of human attanment, says

Vedanta—the hghest teachngs as gven by the later Vedc

teachers and scholars (the Rshs of old), as a result of ther

ntense medtatve experences n the snow-capped mountan

fastnesses, or n the thck forest dwellngs. Brahman s the

very lfe of the unverse, comprsng, as t does, the three

worlds descrbed above wth all that exsts n each—the

Trlok nath, the lord of the three-fold panoramc lfe n ts

fullness.



Their words of wisdom, we find in aphoristic form, as

gems of ‘purest ray serene,’ n ther valuable treatses known

as Upnshads, whch are rghtly consdered as Vedantas, or

the final rungs or parts of Veda, the efflorescence of divine

wsdom; whch ends wth the Maha Vakya (the great Truth):

‘that thou art’ meanng that man s Brahman, n hs real

nature and essence, and when one realses ths fundamental

truth, he nvoluntarly proclams “aham Brahm asm” or

‘i am Brahman’ or ‘i and my Father are one,’ or ‘i speak

nothng on my own but as my Father bds me do.’



The greatest lesson that one derves from Vedanta

s—we are all one; one n our orgn, one n our make-up,

both nner and outer formaton, one n our potentaltes

and powers, however latent and nvolved they maybe, but

equally capable of developng the same, may be sooner or

later, but the process of development or unfoldment of the

self s essentally the same for all; and then the goal too s one





95

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



for all manknd, for all of us are worshppers of Brahman.



in ths way, the out-breathed lfe consttutng as t does,

the ndvdual mnd merges n the n-breathed lfe of the

unversal mnd or Mahat, ‘the great mnd of the cosmos’—

the thrd logos or Dvne Creatve intellgence, the Brahma

of the Hndus, the Mandjusr of the Buddhsts, the holy

Spirit of the Christians, and Allah-­hu of the mystics and Sufi

darveshes.



Here n Brahm lok souls lve for long, and n close

proxmty to Brahman, mbbng the love, the ntellgence

and the blss of that Beng or power, and agan, so long ndeed

s the stay, that one s prone to beleve and call t a vertable

salvation, ‘the flame merging in the flame (of Brahman).’

But the stay there, however long t may be, s not eternal

and t lasts only tll the Brahmand tself dssolves, and the

unversal mnd rolls up ts lfe, absorbng all the souls n

ts fold wherever they may be. Ths drama of nfoldng and

unfoldng of lfe called Brahmand s repeated agan and

agan; and the grand play contnually goes on n and through

eternty. The dvne phlosophy deals wth t so beautfully:



How charmng s dvne phlosophy,

not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose;

But muscal as s Appolo’s lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectared sweet.



it s from Brahman that there sprng the three great

powers (Brahma, Vshnu and Shva), creatng, sustanng and

dssolvng all that s of the matter or maya, n one form or

the other. These three offsprngs or powers come nto beng

by Hs Shakt or Maha-maya, called the Mother of Unverse,

not n the sense of sex as we ordnarly know t to be. Once

again we have to take the simile of the spider’s light filmy

substance that comes out not from wthout but from wthn





96

WHAT AFTER DEATH?



the spder’s body, or the cocoon or a slky case as s spun

by a larva from fine threads of its own making, to protect

tself as a chrysals especally as a slkworm; wherewth we

n course of tme prepare all sorts of slken garments of so

many desgns and colours, to cover our nakedness and take

delght to stunt n borrowed clothngs.



nanak, speakng of the workng of god’s creaton,

also refers to the trple prncple concerned wth creatng,

sustanng and destroyng t—all workng accordng to the

Wll of the Supreme Beng, as vceregents, only exercsng

delegated authorty; and strange as t may seem, t s not

gven to them to know Hm, snce they are but the part of the

objectve creaton and He, the Supreme Beng, s subjectve

and formless:



The great Mother, concevng, brought forth three

regents;

The first creating, the second sustaining, and the

last destroyng.

What he desres, they perform,

They work under Hs Wll.

But great the wonder, though

He watches over them, they behold Hm not.

Hal, hal to hm alone,

The prmal, pure, Eternal, immortal, and immutable

n all ages!



As to the vast and stupendous work connected wth

the runnng of the three worlds n the creaton, ncludng

all sorts of hells and heavens n them, Vshnu, the second

counterpart of Brahma, n the great trumvrate or trmurt,

welds the power of admnstraton. Once questoned as to

how he (Vshnu) could manage such a bg show and make

elaborate arrangements for the nnumerable souls entrusted

to hs care, for provdng all sorts of comforts and woes n





97

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



the supernal and nether worlds n hs doman, he just smled

and sad: “Oh! i have nothng to do at all, for whosoever

comes nto any of my worlds, he brngs wth hm hs own

load of pans and pleasures, thereby creatng hs own hell or

heaven both on the earth-plane and thereafter. Whatsoever

each one needs, n any of my realms, he arranges the same

for hmself, and i smply look on, unconcerned, at the human

drama, tragc or comc or trag-comc, as the case may

be, unfoldng the nfold n hmself.” Thus runs the dvne

machnery automatcally, all on ts own and by tself but all

under Hs Wll.



Brahman s a great power, too great for the human

mnd to conceve, and of the Beyond, none but the Sants

know of and can speak wth authorty—not the formally

canonzed sants, as we know of, but Sants of the status of

Sant-Satguru, authorsed and commssoned by Truth—the

Truth that was n the begnnng, the Truth that now s, and

the Truth that shall reman hereafter—to teach manknd and

ntate such asprng souls nto the mysteres of the Beyond

and beyond the Beyond state; as may be rpe for the purpose

of understandng correctly and properly the Causeless

Cause of all the causes that operate down below, n each

of the worlds; and are ready to lve the lfe of the sprt as

jivan mukats or liberated beings while yet in flesh: “A jivan

mukat,” says nanak, “s one who knows and practses the art

of ‘death-­in-­life’ and when he finally quits the stage, he quits

t for good, never to return agan.” Ths s what pra Vdya or

the knowledge of the Beyond teaches.



Apart from ths, there are many categores of teachers

of Brahma Vdya whch s ‘Apra’ n character and paves the

way for the ‘pra’, and all of them teach people n the ways

of Brahman, each accordng to hs own capabltes. The

prophets and the Messahs generally prophesy the comng

of great events, tran manknd to lve a godly lfe, and brng



98

WHAT AFTER DEATH?



to them the tdngs and messages of god (Brahman). The

Avtaras are ncarnatons of the varous powers of Brahman,

and ther functon s to keep the world agong n a balanced

and orderly manner, holdng the balance of the socal order

arght between rghteousness and unrghteousness. The yogs

and yogshwars reman wthn the sphere of ther yog-maya

(mnd-force), and lead ther ntates up to the hghest pont

wthn ther yogc powers.



The Brahm lok has many sub-loks called purs,

Bhavans, Tabaqs or Dvsons; each allotted to one or other

of the powers of Brahman lke Brahma pur, Vshnu pur,

Shv pur, indra pur, etc., to each of whch the souls of the

worshppers of these powers, collectvely called Brahman,

are rresstbly attracted and drawn n course of tme, each to

hs own destnaton n the place to whch he belongs.



The ancent greeks speak of ths three-fold aspect of

Dvnty as the ‘Three Ssters of the Spnnng Wheel’—one

engaged n spnnng the thread of lfe for each, the other n

adornng and embellshng the thread of lfe, and the thrd n

cuttng the sad thread of lfe when the allotted tme comes

to an end. Similarly, in the Christian theology we have first

logos, the creatve prncple n nature, the second logos and

the thrd logos, who carry on smlar dutes of ther own.

Ths s the famous Doctrne of Trnty: the Father, the Son

and the Holy ghost.



Where all the phlosophes of the world end, there the

true relgon begns. it s only after soul, the ‘dweller n the

body,’ sheds ts dross personalty comprsng as t does, the

three vestures or vehcles of body, mnd and ntellect, and

becomes an entty n ts prstne smplcty, an undvded

whole, the great mmortal tree, evergreen and ever fresh n

ts natve essence, n spte of the ever-changng panorama

of lfe around; t can break through the magc hall of mult-





99

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



coloured mrrors, and transcend the trgunatmac egg of

Brahmand, and escape nto the Beyond.



One has to be born anew, lke a new-born phoenx, arsng

out of the ashes of ts own prevous self, wth renewed youth

and vgour, so as to be able to lve through the lfe of the

sprt that les ahead.



To cross the mental world s not so easy as t may seem

to the untraned n the mysteres of the Beyond. it s the most

delusve world where even the Mahatmas and the Rshs,

wth all ther learnng and tapas, fal to hold on to ther own

ground. What s there n that vast unverse whch Brahman

would not lke to offer to those earnest souls who try to

escape through hs domans and reach the true Home of ther

Father!



At every step, be t n the physcal world, the astral or

the mental, he tres to block the way of the asprng souls.

The great prophets and Messahs and all others have gven

their experiences of the fierce encounters that they had with

Satan, Mara, Ahrman; the evl sprts,—Asuras, Demons

and ther agents n countless ways, far or foul, whereby they

try to obstruct the way, to wn over the seekers after Truth

by assurances of worldly kngdoms and prncpaltes; and

f they do not succumb to these temptatons, then by threats

of violence by fire, thunder, earthquakes, heaven-­splittings,

cloud-bursts, lghtnngs and what have you.



it s n predcaments lke these that one can only stand

these trals and trbulatons when one has by hs sde, hs

guru or Murshd, for the guru-power then draws and absorbs

the dscple soul nto Hmself and takes hm along the path

of ‘Rngng Radance’. For each soul the Brahman stakes

hs all, and does not yeld, unless he s convnced that the

seeker clngs to the protecton of the Master-power (Akal or





100

WHAT AFTER DEATH?



the Tmeless). Do we not see even n the materal world that

the rulers and governments of one state seal ther borders

to prevent unauthorsed emgraton of ther subjects, and

devise laws to control such outflow?



great ndeed s the power of Tme, and none can

conquer t.

And yet Tme tself s n mortal dread of the Tmeless

Musc,

lest He hmself may get lost n the Dvne Harmony.



We had exegess of Dharam Khand by nanak else-

where n these pages. After that the great teacher goes on

to descrbe the journey of the plgrm-soul through varous

regons culmnatng n Sach Khand. The next two regons,

he respectvely calls gyan Khand (the realm of knowledge)

and Saram Khand (the realm of ecstasy). in the former, the

soul’s horzon expands mmeasurably, for it comprehends at

once the manifold nature of all created things with infinity of

forms and phenomena, and understands the mmutable laws

of the workngs of nature. in the latter, the soul becomng

attracted by the power of the Word, gets a taste of, and

nsght nto the real nature of thngs.



next comes Karm Khand or the realm of grace. Wth the

purification wrought by the Holy Word, soul is freed once

and for all times of even the faintest, vague and indefinite

traces of the dross n the form of vasnas, and matter no

longer blnds the vson, and one becomes fully conscous of

Hm, comng as he does, face to face wth the pure Essence

of the Word, the lght of lfe, gvng brth to Brahmand and

all the worlds ncluded theren.



Fnally, the soul reachng Sach Khand—the abode of

Truth, realses n fullness, complete oneness and harmony

according to His Will — ‘All hearts filled with God, they live





101

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



Beyond the reach of death and of deluson... All destned

to move accordng to Hs Wll.. Such s the beauty that to

descrbe t s to attempt the mpossble.’ Ths arsng of

the soul nto Super-conscous awareness s termed, as sad

before, lfe everlastng from whch there s no return.



What nanak has descrbed above, falls wthn the

realm of Vjnana (subjectve nner experence, drect and

mmedate), as dstnct from jnana or theoretcal knowledge

whch the Master expounds and mparts to the dscple

through a correct renderng of the scrptures. A perfect

Master s all the scrptures combned and somethng more.

The scrptures, after all, are the record of the experences of

holy men, who appeared from tme to tme to teach manknd

n the ways of god. We can, no doubt, read the scrptures f

we are proficient enough in the ancient and archaic original

languages n whch they are wrtten; but cannot get at ther

true mport nor can we reasonably reconcle the apparent

dfferences and explan the dscrepances n the scrptural

texts of varous relgons. He who has an access to the nner

fountanhead of the lfe and sprt of all these texts, whch

of course is common to all men, with his first-­hand inner

knowledge, makes thngs easly ntellgble to us all n a way

smple enough both for hmself and for us.



in the company of a Sant, t s sad, god comes nearer

to man, for god Hmself speaks through hm. As we all are

scrpture-bound n one way or the other, the Master takes

full advantage of these dfferent scrptures whch come n

handy to hm as ads n hs work of sprtual regeneraton, to

lead dfferent types of people arght along the lne of least

resstance n each case.



A Murshd-e-Kaml s not content wth mpartng mere

theoretcal knowledge. He gves a practcal demonstraton

of what he says and theren les hs greatness. One who





102

WHAT AFTER DEATH?



cannot grant on soul-level some actual experence of what

he asserts on the level of the ntellect, s not a Master n the

true sense of the word, and hs words cannot carry weght

and convcton.

A Satguru is verily Truth personified, God in the garb of

man. Hs msson s to lead human souls to the True Home

of Hs Father (Sat or Truth) called Sach Khand or the abode

of Truth; the first Grand Division that came into being by

Hs Wll and hence the regon of pure Sprt, eternal and

ndestructble.



The path of the Masters s a grand road leadng from

merely physcal materal world to the purely sprtual realm,

beyond all dualty and parngs of oppostes. The Satguru

says:



Move ye n the vast sea of lght substance,

in your hearts, n your perfecton.

go on, and on and on, untl there s not a vestge

of the human left.

The lght substance knows no lmt.



Hs s the path not of hells and heavens, nor of tols and

sorrows, but one of flowery boulevard ‘studded with heavenly

lghts and soul-strrng strans of Dvne Harmones;’ and

above all, He hmself as an unfalng frend and an unerrng

gude comes, n all hs glory n full radance, and accompanes

the plgrm-soul nto the great Beyond, nstructng n the lfe

of sprt, as he proceeds along, explanng the beautes and

mysteres of the way, guardng aganst ptfalls and warnng

us of the sharp turns and twsts that le en route.



The dscple, from the very begnnng s taught how

to wthdraw from the body and rse above body-conscous-

ness nto hgher regons. The nner man s to draw hmself

from hs coarse bodly encasement, as a har s drawn out



103

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



of butter, for t s the soul n the ‘lucform body’, to use

the Neo-­Platonist phraseology, that rises to find the Self.

Mandukopnshad tells us:



not grasped by the eye, nor by speech, nor by the gods

(senses), nor by austerty, nor by relgous rtes and

rtuals and ceremones, but by serene wsdom, the

pure essence doth see the partless One n medtaton,

So do the western scholars say:



True happness never comes through the avenue of senses,

as t les beyond the senses. Boundless joy can be ours,

only f we know how to rse above the senses and catch

the sublme vson whch comes to the pure.



The dvne wsdom, n short, s at once the Scence

and Art of soul and only a Theocentrc Sant, well-versed

n both, can solve for us the rddle of lfe and death by

giving us a first-­hand experience of ‘death-­ in-­life’, thereby

demonstratng beyond the least shadow of doubt:

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun

wthn us.



What has lfe and death to do wth lght? in the mage

of My lght, i have made you. The relatvtes of lfe

and death belong to the cosmc dream. Behold your

dreamless beng.



Creaton s lght and shadow both, else no pcture s

possble.



The darkness grows lumnous and the vod becomes

frutful only when you wll understand that you are

nothing. It is only at the Mount of Transfiguration that

you wll get revelaton and see the mnglng of heaven

and earth.



104

WHAT AFTER DEATH?



To worshp perfecton s the hghest educaton n lfe, and

only a perfect one can, by transmttng hs own lfe-mpulse,

release the soul from ts trammels of mnd and matter and

grant a vson of the sublme Realty. He who can, at the very

first sitting, open the inner eye more or less to a glimpse of

heaven’s Holy lght and unstop the nner ear to the Musc of

the Spheres, alone s enttled to be called a perfect Sant and

a True guru. it s of such a one that Shankara says:



no known comparson exsts n the three worlds for a

true guru. if the phlosopher’s stone s assumed to be

truly such, t can only turn ron nto gold and not nto

another phlosopher’s stone. The venerated Teacher,

on the other hand, creates equalty wth Hmself n

the dscple who takes refuge at Hs feet. The guru s

therefore peerless, nay transcendental.



guru Arjun speakng of hs Master, guru Ram Das, says:

“i have searched the entre Brahmand but have not found one

who may come up to my Master.” And finally he said: “Hari

(god), t seems to me, has taken for Hmself the appellaton

of Ram Das.”



in the workaday world, we are all very busy, very busy

ndeed, too busy to thnk of god, much less to practse the

presence of lvng god and stll less to lve n Hs holy

presence. if, at all, at odd moments we speak and talk of

Hm, worshp Hm, and offer our prayers to Hm, we do so

not to wn Hm for Hs own sake or to reach unto Hm for

our own sake but just to seek favours from Hm and to get an

easy and quick riddance from our difficulties, and to escape

from trals and trbulatons.



Agan, f we at tmes, feel serous about god, we try to

find Him in the earthly surroundings about us, the snow-­

covered mountan caves, the burnng desert sands, the depths





105

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



of sacred pools and rvers, worshppng Hm n the elemental

powers of nature lke the rsng sun, the vacuous expanse

above, the thunderous clouds, the lucfer and the Vesper,

and worse still, in the hollows of trees, in the fish of the sea

and the fowls of the ar; and no wonder that wth all our

efforts we do not find Him.



god Hmself has declared: i am so bg that the entre

world cannot hold Me, nor the heavens can provde an

adequate support to Me, nor the earth can provde Me a seat;

but strange as t may seem to you, i resde n the heart of

Holy Men. if you desre to see Me, seek Me there and you

shall find Me. Kabir also tells us:



How can you find the Reality, where It is not,

Seek thou the Real, where Realty dwells,

Take hold of hm who knows the Real,

He shall he thee to Hm n no tme.



Ths then s the way to self-llumnaton. The process

though seemingly complicated and lengthy is simplified by

the grace of a perfect Master (Sant Satguru). He provdes

the magc wand, the ‘Open Sesame,’ that does the trck and

enables one to get access to what s naccessble:



He who goes beyond the Sat lok,

He knows the incomprehensble and the inexpressble.

it s n the nameless that the Sants lve,

The slave Nanak finds peace in Him.



Thus we see that f one could learn to de whle lvng, a

voluntary death at wll, one gans lfe everlastng, free from

the endless cycle of brths and deaths and rebrths. Sants,

therefore, sng prases beyond measure of such a death, and

teach us how to transcend the varous planes, and to traverse

nto the Beyond and gan the Kngdom of god, whch s





106

WHAT AFTER DEATH?



our brthrght now lost to us. it s wthn our reach f we

but lsten to them, accept ther teachngs, and follow them

dlgently and wth wllng obedence.



After death, each one of us has to go blndly n a state

of utter desttuton and helplessness. The scrptures, all the

world over, place a hgh premum on crossng the borderland

between lfe and death on ths sde of the world, and then,

death and lfe on the other sde:

Where thou hast to go after death,

Why not gan a foothold whle alve?

—Sr Rag M. 1



O nanak! learn to de whle there s yet tme,

For verly ths ndeed s a real yoga.

—Suh M. 1



De thou and reman dead to the world,

A death lke ths i experence many tmes a day.

—Kabr



Wth the grace of the Master, one may rde over the

mnd;

By vanqushng the mnd, you meet the lord for

certan. —Kabr



Be ye dead whle ye lve and be fearlessly free,

Wth a competent Master by thy sde, there wll be

nothng to rue.

—Kabr



You wll get rch dvdends should you know

How to de before death overtakes you.

—Bulleh Shah









107

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



Shabd or the eternal lfe Current s the only help on

ths path:



in Shabd we de (get absorbed), n Shabd we lve

eternally wth no fear of death,



Ths s the true Water of lfe that a rare soul may get

wth Hs grace.

—Sorath M. 3



What does the Master gve? He makes manfest the

eternal Sound Current whch s the lfe of the unverse and

n whch we all lve. By rdng on ths Audble lfe Stream

we, whle lvng, can at wll transcend the varous planes

of exstence; and come back nto the physcal when we so

desre:



Wthout of the ad of Shabd, thou cannot get out of the

clayey mould. There s no other way besdes.

—Soam J



Salvaton or lfe-everlastng cannot be earned by deeds

howsoever rghteous or commendable n themselves they

may be or n the eyes of the world. it s purely a gft of grace

from a god-man wth the power of god workng n hm to

the full. “For by grace ye are saved... and not by yourselves;

it s a gft of god; not of works, lest any man should

boast.” (Ephesans 2:8-9). “not by works of rghteousness

whch we have done, but accordng to hs mercy he saved

us, by the washng of regeneraton, and renewng of the

Holy ghost”. (Ttus 3:5). “nether s there salvaton n any

other: for there s none other name, under heaven gven

among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12). “And

the grace of god that brngeth salvaton hath appeared to all

men,” (Ttus 2:11) and Hs grace shall contnue to appear

hereafter so long as god exsts and Hs creaton contnues to

people the earth.



108

WHAT AFTER DEATH?



Ths then s the way to eternal lfe, by lvng n the lfe-

prncple tself, ever n Communon wth the Holy Word, the

Wll of god (Hukam); and there s no way other than ths, try

howsoever hard one may. But the revelaton of the god-way

n the lvng lfe-lnes wthn (the Holy lght and the Voce

of god) solely depends upon the grace of some god-man, a

World-­personified Saint, ‘unto whom all things have been

delvered by the Father,’ and of whom t s sad, “no one

knoweth the Son, save the Father, nether doth any know the

Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son wlleth

to reveal Hm.” (Matt. 11: 27).



Tme and agan, great souls come nto the world to

remnd us of our true Home. They tell us wth claron call

that ths world s not our natural habtat. We are here just for

a bref span as travellers n a caravansera and must therefore

prepare to qut, and sooner we do t, the better t would be.

We must, therefore, work for the kngdom of heaven and

gan lfe-eternal. ‘May Thy Kngdom come on earth as t s

n heaven.’ And of ths kngdom, t s sad: “The Kngdom of

god does not come by observaton. The Kngdom of god s

wthn, and verly ths body s the temple of the Holy ghost

and the Holy ghost dwells n t.’ Ths s why all the sages

and the seers exhort us:



The place whch thou hast to qut n the end has

grpped thee most.

lttle doth thou know of the place where thou hath to

dwell for good.

—nanak



Arsh (Heaven) s thy true abode, my soul,

Fe on thee, thou art entangled n clayey mould.

—Shamas Tabrez







109

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH



Thou, my lord dwelleth n Thy natve land,

Whle i am here grovellng n dust.

—nanak



Your place s where earth s not,

Why doth thou clng to the earth ?

—Soam J



Human lfe s just as a vapour,

Why not lve n Communon wth the Eternal Word?

—Kabr



Those who have Communed wth the Word,

ther tols shall end,

And their faces shall flame with glory,

not only shall they have salvaton,

O Nanak! but many more shall find freedom with them.

—nanak









Sant Kirpal Singh Ji

(1894-1974)



110

BOOKS by Kirpal Singh

CROWN OF LIFE

A comparson of the varous yogas and ther scope; ncludng Surat Shabd

Yoga—the dscplned approach to Sprtualty. Relgous parallels and

varous modern movements cted. paperback; 256 pages; ndex.

iSBn 978-0-942735-77-2



GODMAN

if there s always at least one authorzed sprtual gude on earth at any

tme, what are the characterstcs whch wll enable the honest seeker to

dstngush hm from those who are not competent? A complete study of

the supreme mystcs and ther hallmarks. paperback; 185 pages.

iSBn 978-0-942735-64-2



A GREAT SAINT: BABA JAIMAL SINGH

His Life and Teachings

A unque bography, tracng the development of one of the most outstandng

Sants of modern tmes. Should be read by every seeker after god for the

encouragement t offers. Also ncluded, A BRIEF LIFE SKETCH OF

THE GREAT SAINT, BABA SAWAN SINGH, the successor of Baba

Jamal Sngh. He carred on Baba J’s work, greatly expandng the Satsang

and carryng t across the seas. paperback; 230 pages; glossary; ndex.

iSBn 978-0-942735-27-7



THE JAP JI: The Message of Guru Nanak

An extensve explanaton of the basc prncples taught by guru nanak

(1469-1539 A.D.) wth comparatve scrptures cted. Stanzas of the Hymns

n Englsh, as well as the orgnal text n phonetc wordng. paperback; 189

pages; glossary. iSBn 978-0-942735-81-9



HIS GRACE LIVES ON

Durng 17 days n the month of August 1974, precedng Hs physcal

departure on August 21st, Krpal Sngh gave 15 darshan talks, mostly n

the form of questons and answers, to a small group of Hs dscples at Hs

ashram n new Delh, inda. These talks have been bound together wth the

unabrdged text from Master Krpal’s address to the parlament of inda

and Hs 1971 afternoon darshan talk, True Medtaton. Hard cover and

paperback; 17 photos; 203 pages.

Hard cover iSBn 978-0-942735-93-2

Soft cover iSBn 978-0-9764548-3-0





111

THE LIGHT OF KIRPAL

A collecton of 87 talks gven from September 1969 to December 1971,

contanng extensve questons and answers between the Master and

western dscples vstng at that tme. A different version of this book was

published under the title Heart to Heart Talks. paperback; 446 pages; 15

photos. iSBn 978-0-89142-033-0



MORNING TALKS

A transcrpton of a sequence of talks gven by Sant Krpal Sngh between

October 1967 and January 1969. “To gve further help and encouragement

on the Way, my new book Morning Talks wll soon be avalable for general

dstrbuton. Ths book, whch covers most aspects of Sprtualty, s a god-

gven textbook to whch all ntates should constantly refer to see how they

are measurng up to the standards requred for success n ther man-makng.

i cannot stress suffcently the mportance of readng ths book, dgestng ts

contents, and then lvng up to what t contans.” —Master Krpal Sngh

paperback; 258 pages. iSBn 978-0-942735-16-1



NAAM or WORD

“in the begnnng was the WORD. . . and the WORD was god.” Quotatons

from Hndu, Buddhst, islamc, and Chrstan sacred wrtngs confrm the

unversalty of ths sprtual manfestaton of god n relgous tradton and

mystcal practces. paperback; 335 pages. iSBn 978-0-942735-94-9



THE NIGHT IS A JUNGLE

A compendum of 14 talks delvered by the author pror to 1972, the frst

four of whch were gven n phladelpha n 1955. The remanng ten talks

were delvered n inda. All of these talks were checked for ther accuracy

by Krpal Sngh pror to ther complaton n ths book. paperback; 358

pages; wth an ntroducton. iSBn 978-0-89142-017-0



PRAYER: Its Nature and Technique

Dscusses all forms and aspects of prayer, from the most elementary to the

ultmate state of “prayng wthout ceasng.” Also contans collected prayers

from all relgous tradtons. paperback; 147 pages; ncludng appendx;

ndex of references. iSBn 978-0-942735-50-5



SPIRITUALITY: What It Is

Explores the Scence of Sprtualty. Man has unravelled the mysteres

of the starry welkn, sounded the depths of the seas, delved deep nto the

bowels of the earth, braved the blndng blzzards of snowy Mount Everest,

and s now out explorng space so as to establsh nterplanetary relatons,

but sad to say, has not found out the mystery of the human soul wthn hm.

paperback; 103 pages plus ntroductory. iSBn 978-0-942735-78-9









112

SPIRITUAL ELIXIR

Collected questons addressed to Krpal Sngh n prvate correspondence,

together wth respectve answers. Also contans varous messages gven on

specal occasons. paperback; 382 pages; glossary.

iSBn 978-0-942735-02-4

SURAT SHABD YOGA (Chapter 5 of Crown of Life)

The Yoga of the Celestal Sound Current. A perfect scence, t s free from

the drawbacks of other yogc forms. Emphass s placed on the need for a

competent lvng Master. paperback, 74 pages.

iSBn 978-0-942735-95-1



THE TEACHINGS OF KIRPAL SINGH

Volume i: The Holy path; 98 pages. iSBn 978-0-9764548-0-9

Volume ii: Self introspecton/Medtaton; 180 pages.

iSBn 978-0-9764548-1-6

Volume iii: The new lfe; 186 pages iSBn 978-0-9764548-2-3

Defntve statements from varous talks and books by the author, collected

to llumnate the aspects of self-dscplne pertnent to Sprtualty. Relevant

questons are answered. Text selectons are ndexed to a source lst at the end

of each volume. Ths collecton nvtes the reader to browse.

Three volumes sold as one book; 464 pages iSBn 978-0-9764548-4-7



THE WAY OF THE SAINTS

An encyclopeda of Sant Mat from every pont of vew. Ths s a collecton

of the late Master’s short wrtngs from 1949 to 1974. included s a bref

bography of Baba Sawan Sngh, the author’s Master, plus many pctures.

paperback; 418 pages. iSBn 978-0-89142-026-2



THE WHEEL OF LIFE & THE MYSTERY OF DEATH

Orgnally two separate books; now bound n one volume. The meanng of

one’s lfe on earth s carefully examned n the frst text; n the followng

text, the reader s presented wth the whys and wherefores of “the great fnal

change called death.” paperback; 293 pages; plus ndex for the frst text; and

ntroducton. iSBn 978-0-942735-80-2

THE WHEEL OF LIFE

Avalable n hard cover; 98 pages plus glossary and ndex

iSBn 978-0-9764548-5-4

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH

Avalable n hard cover; 125 pages iSBn 978-0-9764548-6-1



THE THIRD WORLD TOUR OF KIRPAL SINGH

Ths book was prnted drectly from the pages of Sat Sandesh magazne,

the ssues from October 1972 through February 1973, whch were prmarly

devoted to Master Krpal Sngh’s Thrd World Tour. 160 pages, 80 black

and whte pctures.







113

BOOKLETS BY KIRPAL SINGH

GOD POWER / CHRIST POWER / MASTER POWER

Dscusses the ongong manfestaton of the Chrst-power and the temporal

nature of the human bodes through whch that power addresses humanty.

“Chrst exsted long before Jesus.” paperback; 17 pages.

iSBn 978-0-942735-04-8

HOW TO DEVELOP RECEPTIVITY

Three Crcular letters (of June 13, 1969; november 5, 1969; and January

27, 1970) concernng the atttudes whch must be developed n order to

become more sprtually receptve. paperback; 20 pages.

iSBn 978-0-942735-05-5

MAN! KNOW THYSELF

A talk especally addressed to seekers after Truth. gves a bref coverage

of the essentals of Sprtualty and the need for open-mnded cautousness

on the part of the careful seeker. paperback; 30 pages.

iSBn 978-0-942735-06-2

RUHANI SATSANG: Science of Spirituality

Brefly dscusses “The Scence of the Soul”; “The practce of Sprtual

Dscplne”; “Death n lfe”; “The Quest for a True Master”; and “Surat

Shabd Yoga.” paperback; 36 pages. iSBn 978-0-942735-03-1



SEVEN PATHS TO PERFECTION

Descrbes the seven basc requstes enumerated n the prescrbed self-

ntrospectve dary whch ad mmeasurably n coverng the entre feld of

ethcs, and help to nvoke the Dvne Mercy. paperback; 20 pages.

iSBn 978-0-942735-07-9

SIMRAN: The Sweet Remembrance of God

Dscusses the process of centerng the attenton wthn by repeatng the

“Orgnal or Basc names of god” gven by a true Master. paperback; 34

pages. iSBn 978-0-942735-08-6



THE SPIRITUAL AND KARMICASPECTS

OF THE VEGETARIAN DIET

An overvew of the vegetaran det contanng a letter from Krpal Sngh on

the Sprtual aspects, a letter from Sawan Sngh on the karmc aspects, and

excerpts from varous books by Krpal Sngh. paperback; 36 pages.

iSBn 978-0-942735-47-5

Books, Booklets and Audio-Visual Material of Master Kirpal Singh

can be ordered from this address or directly online.

RUHANI SATSANG®

250 “H” St. #50, Blane, WA 98230-4018 USA

1 (888) 530-1555 Fax (604) 530-9595 (Canada)

E-mal: MedaSales@RuhanSatsangUSA.org

www.RuhanSatsangUSA.org



114

Sant Kirpal Singh Ji

(1894-1974)









115