Comments & Notices

Reno Sirrine, in a letter to all of us accompanying the new circular from Master appearing on page 1 of this issue¹, made some very helpful and apt comments:

The enclosed circular from our Beloved Master Sant Kirpal Singh Ji Maharaj should be read and reread to help you with your Spiritual Progress.

Do not send any more diaries to Master. Contact your group leader or your representative for assistance in keeping the diary. For the time being, keep all your diaries and use them as a guide for yourself to check your Inner Progress.

The more we read this circular, the more the profundity and Love underlying every word becomes apparent. While the first reading may be dominated by a sense of loss over not being able to write Master regularly anymore, a little reflection reminds us that He never never takes anything away without giving us a hundred times more in compensation. The circular is really a double challenge: to the initiates to respond with humility and Love for Master, and to the representatives and group leaders to respond with sensitivity, receptivity, and a profound sense of the way the initiates feel. If we can all see it as another gift given us by Master to stimulate our growth and receptivity, we will feel a lot better about it. His will is sweeter than honey; if He does not wish us to write, then it is our pleasure not to write.

We found the following passage exceptionally significant:

[…] most of the correspondence is of a stereotyped nature and as such can be easily handled and disposed of locally, by explaining matters sweetly and gently and putting things in their right perspective. In this way you can relieve the Master to a great extent […] an attempt should be made to make each realise the importance of minimising the work load at this end.

This is a most solemn warning and request from the Master, and the way in which we respond may well determine the answers to such questions as how long He remains in the body and how soon – if ever – He visits the West again.

It would be sad indeed if thousands of letters were now to pour into Him asking Him if He really means it …

*****

Master’s discourse on the Ramayana brings back vividly the beautiful October night in 1969 when we – a dozen or so western disciples – accompanied by Bibi Hardevi and Princess Narendra, attended a performance of the Ramlila, the dramatization of Tulsi Das’s Ramayana, in Delhi. The dark blue evening, permeated through and through with the sharp clear feeling of India; the heartbreakingly beautiful music on the stage; and the running translation provided by the Princess for those of us lucky enough to sit near her, which was so good that I remember all the characters as though they spoke in English: all of these are as clear and vivid now as they were that night. When we returned home to Sawan Ashram, Master was waiting for us, so pleased that we had seen it; He proceeded to give us a 15-minute Spiritual Commentary on what we had seen – the perfect finale of one of the most delicious nights ever.

According to Hindu tradition, the Ramayana was originally written in Sanskrit by the Great Saint Valmiki in the Treta Yuga, the second or silver age, which would make it about two million years old; all that anyone knows for sure is that the Sanskrit epic predates the dawn of history, the oldest poem known. The tradition also says that it was written as a Spiritual Allegory 18.000 years before the Negative Power incarnated as Lord Rama and the events actually took place; after which the story was taken as history and the Spiritual Meaning was lost.

So in the sixteenth century of our era, another Great Saint, Tulsi Das, a Master of Surat Shabd Yoga, rewrote the Ramayana in Hindi, the language of the people, in such a way that there could be no doubt of its Spiritual Meaning. His great poem, which he called the ‘Ram Charit Manas’ or ‘The Holy Lake of the Acts of Rama’ has completely superseded the Sanskrit epic in India today, and is considered to be the masterpiece of Hindi literature. Because it is the only widely accepted Hindu scripture written in the vernacular, it has become in practice, the ‘Bible of Northern India,’ the one scripture understood and loved by the common man. Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, called it ‘the only scripture I may be said to know.’ And every autumn, the Ramlila is performed on tens of thousands of stages throughout India, so that the many many people who cannot read or write can low it and learn it by heart.

Russell Perkins

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Editorial Note, 2012: 1) See the ‘Circular Letter on Receptivity.’