The Spirit Born People Puran Singh
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
INTORDUCTION Our life is much influenced by the material attractions and we are least inclined to spiritual progress—the real motive of our life. If one is absorbed in spiritual trance, the worldly attachments vanish away and spiritual pleasures provide solace to the mind and soul. Though the spiritual experiences cannot be described in day-to-day human language, there are some clues showered by the exalted souls for the benefit of humanity. The Guru came to this planet, to bless us with those clues and gave new life to the corpses with His spiritual touch. The present book is an unparalleled account of this resurrection. It provides a spiritual swing to the reader. The author Prof. Puran Singh (1881- 1931 A.D) was not a professional writer or an ordinary scholar. He himself was a mystic par- excellence. The spiritual experiences of course, cannot be shared by any ordinary writer, who has never treaded this path. The present writing is really an expression by an enlightened soul. The reader gets a severe stimulus on his heart and aspires to fly on spiritual heights. The present book was first published in 1928 and it helped many a times to awaken the dead souls. This work has not lost its relevance even today and need to reprint this marvellous work was felt by all quarters. We see the fulfilment of our long-cherished desire in reprinting this book for the benediction of strife-tom humanity. —Publishers PREFACE These are the lecture notes for addresses I proposed to deliver to the Sikh youth of the Punjab. But as I am placed in the desert away from the towns where they gather, I let these go undelivered. And also because the Sikh youth are running in haste after shadows, turning their backs on the Sun of Suns, the Guru. This world of the Guru, the Beautiful, is different and their world how different; so to them the values of fiction and fact have been hopelessly interchanged. Still, I hope these addresses will reach them by and by. And the Sikh youth is everywhere, the youth that has the disciple-consciousness, aspiring to love, the Beautiful, which alone is truly good, truly noble, and truly divine. The form Beautiful appearing once rarely in ages, and fascinating the disciple-consciousness and vanishing in the eternal background of the spiritual inner Infinite, is the Guru Beautiful, the Bridegroom; the disciple-consciousness thenceforward restless without that presence or the sense of that presence is The Spirit Born People,—or The Brides. P.O. Chak 73/19 PURAN SINGH via Jaranwala (Punjab) CONTENTS I. The Discipleship 9 1. Bhai Buddha 10 2. Painde Khan 13 3. Retie the Broken Ties 14 4. The Spirit Born People 15 5. Under a Hank of Hair 17 II. The Spiritual Attitude 19 1. Religion so-called 19 2. The Farthest To-day 20 3. Spiritual Attitude 24 4. Nam Dev 25 5. The King of the Purple Colour 27 6. The Jealous God 30 7. Kabir and His Wife Loi 31 8. Lord Gauranga 33 9. An unknown Sikh saint who cultivated his lands 34 10. The Music of Universal Fellowship 34 11. ‘Bread’, ‘Woman’ and ‘Bridegroom’ 36 (a) Bread 37 (b) Woman 43 (c) The Guru or the Divine Bridegroom 47 III. The Garden of Simrin 50 1. ‘The Name’ 50 2. Our Long Tresses 51 3. The Agitated Doves 52 4. Of equal dignity with the Stars 53 5. The Gum-Personality Impersonal makes the Sangha 53 6. Simrin is the Only Builder of Unselfish Personality 60 7. The One Thing Needful 63 IV. ‘Asa-Di-Var’ of Guru Nanak 71 V. The Message of ‘Sukhmani’ of Guru Arjun Dev 78 VI. Readings from ‘Sukhmani’— The Charmed Gem of Peace 85 VII. The ‘Japuji’ of Guru Nanak 93 VIII. Surta—Soul Consciousness 100 1. The Divine Lamp 106 2. The Spiritual Universe at the Back of the Man of Spirit who is Authorised 110 IX. The Sword of Guru Gobind Singh 115 X. Internationalism and The Sikhs 118 XI. Notes on Art and Personality from The Sikh Viewpoint 129 XII. ‘Guru Prasad’—By His Favour 143 XIII. The Brothers of the Tress-Knot of Guru Gobind Singh 148 XIV. The Doer of Good and the Toiler on Earth 156 I THE DISCIPLESHIP The title ‘Sikh’, ‘The Disciple’, was first given to us by Guru Nanak. We were mere corpses, he poured life into us. We were thus created anew by His love of us. He made us alive with our out-drawn love of Him and left us free. He freed us from the hatred of caste, colour and creed. He made us look straight at the sky towards the Infinite, he made us look upon the sun and the moon and the stars as our kith and kin. He did knit us with the Universe and he wove the design of the Infinite into the texture of our soul. He gave us then the universal music to sing; birds and animals to be our confidants, woods and rivers and hills to sing with us. This world that sat like a nightmare on us was thrown away: the new world was laid open before our eyes in His Vision. The veil was almost torn asunder and this spiritual universe of love was opened to our vision. And we were elevated from the valleys of darkness on to the sunlit heights. Peasants became poets by His touch. The enslaved womanhood was freed from its bondage of the soul. When the Ninth Guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur came to Amritsar, the priests shut the doors against the Master. He turned his back on the Golden Temple, the brick and mortar, and bore away the true Golden Temple in his heart as a holy vision. The Golden Temple would have gone for ever from Amritsar. But the Sikh ladies of Amritsar saw this danger. They, in their freedom, followed the Master and sang to Him His Hymns. He blessed them and blessed Amritsar. The Golden Temple was saved for this poor earth of ours by the freed Sikh womanhood. This is the plain history. Our history is of the soul, all its events are of the soul. All truth for us is personal. We have not to prove it, we have to stand witness to it in our soul. By the title ‘Sikh’, he linked us with Himself forever. And we cannot tear ourselves away from Him. It would be misery for us if we turn our backs on Him. 1. BHAI BUDDHA You remember how Bhai Buddha — The Brother Ancient — got the tide. He saw his mother kindling a fire. And he saw that the smaller twigs caught fire first and the longer ones, a little later. And unlike us, the young men of to-day, who choose to live dull lives, mostly uninterested and unconcerned, that young man was much too sensitive. As the leaves of the sensitive plant are to the touch, so the little boy was sensitive to the touch of wonder. He wondered why the smaller twigs caught fire first. He was a genius. What is genius but that which responds with the sensitiveness of the sensitive plant to the Light of Heaven? He thought his mother would go to see Guru Nanak seated under the shade of a tree. Seeing Guru Nanak is like touching the fire of Heaven. Seeing Him is to be kindled like a star from a star. He thought his mother would follow, but it was he who must first catch that Gleam and burn with it. With this inward realization of wonder, the young man did go to Guru Nanak. At the sight of the Guru, he found he was wholly inflammable. His flesh and bones caught fire. The young man was called by the Guru. He heard his story and the Guru gave him the title of ‘The Brother Ancient’ — so young and yet so ancient in wisdom. Bhai Buddha is the ‘Brother’ — ‘The Sikh’. No historian or biographer can tell us what happened then to Bhai Buddha. Ordinary history gives corpses of events, it registers accurately the dead facts which are mostly wrong. History has no testimony for our soul. You may study a friend of yours for a long time and yet find all your conclusions about his character upset by stumbling over a kind act of his to you, and that one silent act of his may discover to you that he is your Messiah. History and biography are both lies, so far as these matters are concerned. Who can report the soul correctly, which, till to-day remains unrevealed and undescribed, for it is always a surprise and a revelation. Such matters are beyond our analysing intellects. But mark the effects. The whole life of Bhai Buddha thenceforward is a marvel. Living on a few grassy acres near Amritsar, with a few cows grazing by his side quietly, the ‘Brother Ancient’ lives self-enclosed, immersed wholly in the Guru. His lips pipe His Name. He fills himself with glory. The firmament revolves as a torch in his hand in the worship of the Beloved. His bosom throbs like that of a bird that trills a song. His hairs stand on end with ecstasy. His eyes are red, half-closed, rapt, vision-bound, wonder- bound, happy like the full-blown flower, and all so beautiful. And the continuousness of his kindled passion, shaking his day and night with joy, makes of him a radiant presence, a persuasive silence, a soothing influence, a peace incomparable shedding joy all around like the cloud, like the sun, like the moon, like the shade of a tree.