Heart-to-heart talk by Sant Kirpal Singh, in Washington, D.C. on 26 January 1964
The full talk is also available as mp3 – audio.sant-kirpal-singh.org
This tape began while the talk is in progress. Sant Kirpal Singh is telling a story about Guru Nanak, the first Guru of the Sikhs, who was hired to sell grain in a shop. As he was weighing out grain for customers one day, he fell into a state of intoxication when he reached the number “thirteen” (tera) which, in Punjabi, also means “thine.”
When he lost himself, repeating, “I am thine, O Lord,” he began to weigh out grain without stopping. The shop people were afraid he would give everything away and they went and reported it to their head: “What is happening to your store? Go and see! He is in intoxication, weighing out everything and repeating the words, tera, tera — I am thine, I am thine, I am thine.” But when the account was taken, it was found that about 300 dollars or so were not due from Guru Nanak but due to him. It sometimes happens that when you are lost in Him, the God Power helps in a very mysterious way.
But how many are there who are really His? Can we say, “I am thine, O Lord, mind, heart and soul?” Physically and financially, a few like that might turn up. But how many are there who, heart and soul, are His? Very few.
A real devotee of God is one who surrenders everything to Him: body, mind and soul. In that intoxication, Guru Nanak had gone on, weighing out. If you become His, then He is thine — yours.
Kabir said that all the world is gambling in worldly ways: some lose, some gain; and that goes on again and again all through life. He said, “Oh dear friends, who are gambling in the world, I would like to show you by my example that I am also gambling.” And how? Gambling goes on between two men, is it not so? If you lose, you have to give away everything; if you gain, you have to take everything away from the other one. He said, “Look here. I am also playing at gambling — not with the world, but with God.” And what will happen? He said, “If I lose, I will become His; and if I gain, He will become mine.” Do you see? Both ways, he is the gainer.
So we play with the world. Why not play with God? It is great common sense: if you lose you will become His, is it not so? And if you gain, then He will become yours: either way, you are one with Him. One who comes to that realization and is lost in the very utterance of the words, “O my Lord, I am thine” forgets everything — his mind, body, everything. It is true devotion, true love. And love always gives — knows giving, not taking.
Once it happened in the time of the tenth Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Gobind Singh (these are God-intoxicated people, mind that), that he sat down and was praying to God: “O Lord, all of this, everything is Your emanation; it is Yours; You are immanent in every form; everything is Thine; You are all this that we see; it is all Thine, whether it is the earth or the sky or the stars or the rivers or the mountains, it is all Thou, Yourself, Thou, Thyself.” Then, in that intoxication, he said, “It is You, it is You, everything is You personified.” Then he began repeating: “It is all You, it is all You, it is all You,” and in that intoxication he sat for three days — lost.
This becomes the fate — how very rare — of those who devote everything to Him.
Maha Chaitanya Prabhu was a Saint in Bengal, in India. Every saint has his own saying that reminds him of God. Everywhere he went, he said, “Speak of God! Glorify God! Glorify God!” Once it happened that he went to a place where washermen were washing clothes. (Today there are machines for washing clothes. In the olden days in India, a regular place was set aside for groups of washermen who used to wash clothes.) He went there and stood beside one man who was washing clothes and said, “Glorify God! say God!” — in his own language, of course: “Hari bole.” (Hari bole means: “Glorify God, think of God, glorify God.” ) He said it once, twice, thrice. The washerman thought perhaps some beggar had come and wanted money, so he kept quiet. Again, when Chaitanya insisted, “Say ‘Glorify God!’ Why don’t you glorify God?” the washerman thought, “He will not let me go. I will repeat what He says so that he will leave me alone.” No sooner had he repeated the very words, when he became intoxicated. The charging was there. He also began saying, “Glorify God!” The result was that all the washermen working there began to glorify God.
Do you see? This is the intoxication for which we go to God-intoxicated people. It cannot be had by reading scriptures. Prayers and rites and rituals are meant to lead us to that state.
Shamas Tabrez tells us, “If you glorify God in that way and become intoxicated, everything will become intoxication. Whoever you see will become intoxicated. He is in every form; He is immanent in every form.” Then he said, “Dear friend, I have so much intoxication within myself, within my soul, that if I leave the body and my body is cut into pieces and put into a field as manure, the man who bakes the bread with the corn growing out of that land and the man who serves it (he did not even speak of the man who eats the bread made from that corn), will become intoxicated.”
After all, there is something which we do not know about so far. If we have a little drop of that intoxication, we will forget the world. For that purpose — for radiation — we go to the Masters. For those who are receptive, it works wonders. Just seeing such persons makes them intoxicated like, Maulana Rumi, said, “a drunkard, who only by seeing wine sparkling in a glass, begins to dance up and down.” Similarly, when those who are intoxicated with the love of God look into the Master, they see that God scintillating within him. They become intoxicated; they look into his eyes, they see Him, and they dance up and down.
So these are the things which are the gifts you can get from a God-intoxicated man. It cannot be had by reading scriptures or performing outer rituals: those are steps to it, of course. Say prayers — be lost. When Ramakrishna Paramahansa said prayers, he was like that — gone. This is what is called the love of God.
So that is why it is said, “Love knows no law.” This is a gift; it cannot be had by books or by scriptures. Naturally, when you come across such an environment, you will feel radiation. The more receptive you are, the more you will become prolific. We used to have incidents like these in the time of our Master (Baba Sawan Singh). Sometimes a person came up and stood by him and forgot everything. He stood with his eyes open and didn’t know where he was. That was intoxication.
So that is why it is said, “Spirituality cannot be taught but caught!” — by radiation. Generally, what we call love is truly no love. It is misfit love, misdirected love. That love that starts with the body and ends in the body is no love; that is lust. If it starts in the body and dissolves in the soul, that is love. There is a very great difference between the two: the first blinds your vision; the second love opens your eyes — you are in a transport.
If we just once have a little experience of that, then the world is nothing. When you fly in a plane 30,000 – 40,000 feet high, everything on the ground below appears to be very insignificant. Even the very mountains appear to be little mounds. Now, all the worldly things and possessions appear to us to be very important, very great; we have ambitions to have them. But as you rise above, they lose all their attraction. These are the wings of love on which one can fly to heaven. All performances of outer prayers, rites, rituals are elementary steps meant for that. So, “As you think, so you become.”
In the Mahabharata epic in the Hindu scriptures, there is a story about Dronacharya. He was a very good archer, and he used to teach others archery.
One day, a man of very low caste — a Bhil, someone considered to be of a lower order came to him. (Although no one is of a lower order in the eyes of God. So Christ asked for water from a Samaritan lady, who said, “Why do you ask for it from us?” on account of having an inferiority complex.)
The man went to Dronacharya and asked him, “Will you teach me archery?” Dronacharya asked him, “Who are you?” and when the man said he was a Bhil, he said, “No, no, I cannot teach you that.”
The man went away. But he had had a look at him, and he made an idol — a model — of Dronacharya at home and began to meditate on him, because he had seen him. That form manifested, and from that manifested form he learned archery. He performed a special feat in which he would shoot an arrow and seal the mouth of a deer with it. He had learned it by practice. One day Dronacharya was passing by and saw an antelope or deer whose mouth was sealed with an arrow. He asked, “Who did it?” — because no one else besides himself knew that art. He came up to the man and asked, “Who is your teacher — your Guru?” . . . “Dronacharya.” — “I never adopted you as my student. How did you learn it?” Then the man explained, “I just dwelt on you and made you manifest. I learned it from you.”
So much force love has! Against the will of Dronacharya he had learned that very art. “As you think, so you become.” And what did he do then? I think that was not very good. He said, “All right, cut off your thumb and give it to me as an offering,” so that he might not be able to aim that arrow.
So, you see, love means everything. Hafiz said, “If the learned people were to have a little drop of this intoxication, they would dance like anything, even more than we.” In due course it comes up; we must be regular, that’s all. When you become devoted, you will have all these things by receptivity. When Masters have to wind up your whole give and take of the reactions of the past, they don’t leave you only with that; they want you to have this intoxication: “All right, go on with it; you’ll have it.”
When there is love, then can there be anyone except the one whom you love? Yet there, also, there is duality; and love knows oneness. The two become one in soul. You forget everything outside. The story of Guru Nanak I was just explaining is an example of this. There were instances like this in the lives of most of the saints.
Comment: We would like to show a little movie that Bibi Hardevi (Taiji) wanted to see.
Sant Kirpal Singh: Yes, yes, you are most welcome. [While preparations are being made to show the movie, Master continues talking.] When one meets a true Master, there is nothing to fear. But he should be devoted. Listen to the tavern owner. Pray to him, “Give us some drops of that wine, by drinking which, we forget everything. And to that, add even more: the intoxication of those who, in their God-intoxication, have forgotten themselves.”
(Taiji sings a prayer in Hindi; after every few lines, Sant Kirpal Singh translates in paraphrase what has been sung.)
“O Master, give me a drink, by drinking which I lose all outward consciousness. Either I remain or you remain; we have become one.” (He indicates to Taiji to continue.) ”Yes.”
(Taiji sings.)
One Saint was ordered to be stripped of all his skin, and while he was in that intoxication, they stripped off his skin. He did not care at all about what was being done to him or what was happening. They pray, “Give us a little of that intoxication — one peg of the wine of that intoxication.”
(Taiji sings.)
All the world over, everyone hates the thought of separation: “It is mine, it is thine. Why must we divide this and that thing?” They pray, “O God, give us that intoxication in which both thine and mine fade away. The very idea of mine and thine should fade away.”
(Taiji sings.)
This is the feat of love: you want to be near him, to sit by him. Even then, there is duality; they want to be one.
(Taiji sings.)
Now, what is the way? How can we drink that wine, that intoxication? He says, “O Master, it is through your eyes — you give a draught of it.” The eyes are the windows of the soul. The radiation comes through in whatever colour that soul is dyed. Intoxicated! “Master, it is through your eyes that you give pegs of wine like that.” It is not a matter of reading and writing — it is a prayer of the soul through the eyes. In whatever colour you are dyed that is the very colour of the radiation. How do people become lusty? Through the eyes. How do you feel that others are angry? Through the eyes. When you are attached, your eyes have a strange colouring. So the eyes are the windows of the soul. “O Master, give me that wine; but that will come through your eyes.” And when Masters transfer their Mastership, they give it through the eyes and not by document.
(Taiji sings.)
That is why I say, God is love. People ask, “How much time should we give for meditation?” Now tell me. When I came to my Master, I asked him how much time I should give. I was a family man; I had to attend to my job. He said, “Five, six hours, minimum; the most you can.” [chuckles] That is His gift. It is had by radiation through the eyes. He is a very highly charged body. That charging gives a lift to everyone, and he sees light. What is it? A little charging, a little help. That’s all. All right, go on with your show now.