Brief life sketch of

Shiv Dayal Singh
1818–1878

Shiv Dayal Singh was a Great Saint from Agra, mostly known as Swami Ji Maharaj. He was the Guru of Baba Jaimal Singh of Beas.

He revived the teachings of Kabir Sahib and Guru Nanak Sahib and explained them to the general public in very simple language. The Guru of Swami Ji Maharaj (Shiv Dayal Singh) was Tulsi Sahib (1763–1843) from Hathras, Who passed on His Spiritual Mantle to Him. Tulsi Sahib was a disciple and Spiritual Successor of Ratnagar Rao, the Spiritual Successor of Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru, and wrote the Ghat Ramayana.

Tulsi Sahib was originally called Sham Rao Peshwa. He was the elder brother of Baji Rao Peshwa; He gave up His throne for Spirituality and settled in Hathras.

He should not be confused with Tulsi Das, Who was a much earlier Saint (sixteenth century) and wrote the Ram Charitra Mansa or Hindi Ramayana.

According to available sources, Swami Ji’s parents were disciples of Tulsi Sahib. They frequently visited Him at Hathras, thirty miles away, to have His Darshan and whenever He came to Agra, they listened to His discourses. It was also from the Saint of Hathras that the sons of the two received their names: Shiv Dayal Singh, Brindaban and Partap Singh.

Before the birth of the eldest child, He prophesied that a Great Saint was about to manifest Himself in their home.  After the boy was born, Tulsi Sahib told the parents that they no longer needed to come to Hathras as the Lord Almighty had come in their midst.

The Saint of Hathras began to cast Swami Ji’s life in His own mold, initiating him at the age of six. Swami Ji, in turn, spent fifteen years of His life in a dark back room, where He devoted Himself almost incessantly to Spiritual Exercises.

Before leaving the world in 1843, Tulsi Sahib passed the Spiritual Mantle on to Swami Ji. He had previously been in a state of samadhi for six months, immersed in Divine Consciousness. Only after Swami Ji had been with Him did He leave His mortal body.

The passing of the torch of Spirituality from Tulsi Sahib to Swami Ji was confirmed by Baba Garib Das, one of Tulsi Sahib’s first disciples.

Swami Ji had great veneration for His Guru and also held His disciples in great respect, especially Sadhu Girdhari Das, whom He had supported in his final years. He once rushed from Agra to help the sadhu regain his connection to the Sound Current before his death, which he had lost – presumably for karmic reasons..

For his devotees, Swami Ji often gave examples from Tulsi Sahib’s life to explain the meaning of virtues such as patience, forbearance, forgiveness and fear of God.

Even after Tulsi Sahib had left the world, Swami Ji continued to visit Hathras to honour His memory. It is said that on one of these visits, the heat was so intense that – as there was no means of transport available and the road was very uneven – His disciples Rai Saligram and Baba Jiwan Lal had to carry Him between them.

Swami Ji held great the Guru Granth Sahib in high regard. This was apparently rooted in a family tradition, as reading the Sikh scriptures was a matter of faith in His family. His father, Lala Dilwali Singh – who was a Sahejdhari khatri Sikh and Nanak Panti – particularly loved Jap Ji, Raho Ras and Sukhmani, and read these scriptures daily with great religious fervour and deep reverence. Soami Ji’s grandfather, Seth Maluk Chand, who was temporarily the Diwan of the state of Dolphur, had made a handwritten copy of the Sukhmani, which is still kept in the archives of the Soamibagh.

Later, when Swami Ji was explaining the Jap Ji in His house in Puni Gali, He clearly acknowledged, at least on this occasion, how much He owed to the Punjab, by referring to Guru Nanak and His successors as the source of Spirituality, and also honouring Paltu Sahib and Tulsi Sahib as the later Great Saints in this lineage.

Rai Brindaban Singh, Soami Ji’s younger brother – postmaster in Ajodhia – was a follower of Baba Madhodas from Mahant Dera Rano Pali in Ajodhia. Like his older brother, he also had a firm belief in the Gurbani, which he honoured. He constantly remembered the Lord in a loving way and wrote beautiful verses in His honour, which can be found in His Urdu book Bahar-i-Brindaban under the title Wah-e-Guru-Nama.

Oh Brindaban, leave aside all else and do the Japa of the great name Wah-e-Guru. It shall not only purify your body, mind and soul, but give you salvation, peace and happiness besides.

As Lala Diwali Singh’s hour of death approached, his son Shiv Dayal Singh, Swami Ji, sat with him and recited the Gurbani to focus his father’s attention at the time of his physical end.

It is reported that Swami Ji often visited – in commemoration of the visit of Teg Bahadur, the ninth Guru – the Sikh sanctuarium of Mai Than in Agra. There Sant Mauj Parkash, originally known as Didar Singh of the Nirmala Order and as a great Sanskrit scholar, had clearly explained the meaning of the Gurbani or the Sikh scriptures. Since Swami Ji had a close connection with Sant Mauj Parkash, He studied the Gurbani and its significance for Surat Shabd Yoga and began to give lectures on the Gurbani at this holy place.

The description of one such lecture has been recorded by Chacha Partap Singh in his biography:

It was about 8 o’clock in the morning when Maharaj went to the Gurdawara in Mai Than one day. After reciting one or two verses from the Granth Sahib, He began to explain their meaning. With a full and sonorous voice, the sublime thoughts seemed to flow out of Him like endless waves from an inexhaustible inner source. I was so overwhelmed by the power of His words that I suddenly felt myself lifted above the body and its surroundings, lost to all that was of this world. From that day I was a new man and felt a strong yearning for the Divine, fully convinced of the greatness of Swami Ji and His holy mission.

Some time later, Swami Ji changed the venue for His discourses, beginning to hold them in a relatively small circle in His private residence in Punni Gali. Here He continued to give lectures on the Guru Granth Sahib. He maintained this for a long time, until the floodgates of Surat Shabd Yoga were opened to the general public on Basant Panchmi Day in 1861.

One day before He left the world, Swami Ji – Who had given initiation into the secret of the five-tone melody, Panch Shabd Dhun-kar Dhun, until the very end – said unequivocally:

My path was that of Sat Naam and Anami Naam. The Radhasoami faith is of Saligram’s making …¹

The Spiritual Mantle was passed on by Swami Ji to His devoted disciple Jaimal Singh, who settled in Beas in Punjab to revive the work there and to create a certain balance for what the world owed to Guru Nanak.

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1) Origin:

A Great Saint – Baba Jaimal Singh,
His Life and Teachings –
I./(iii.) Rediscovering lost Strands,
by Kirpal Singh, 1894–1974