Book Review: ‘The Celestial Music’
An introduction to Kirpal Singh, by L. Gurney Parrott. Foreword by Sant Kirpal Singh Ji. Delhi: Ruhani Satsang, 200 plus xvi pages. $4.00.
In the pages that follow, Mr Leon Gurney Parrott, an English disciple in Malta of the Living Master, has tried to give some account of the Science Spiritual in the light of his personal Inner Experiences, leading him to the ‘threshold of the Promised Land after forty years of wandering in the wilderness,’ as he afirms.
lt is possible that his interesting account of the unfoldment of his spirit may help many a faltering soul with ‘the Father’s Name written on their foreheads’ to work courageously in the quest for the God-Path.
Where there is fire, oxygen comes to its aid; when the Chela is ready, the Guru appears. May the kindly Light lead the readers to the Fountain of Light and on to the Father of Lights.
Thus the Master concludes His strong and beautiful foreword to this remarkable book – the only Foreword for someone else’s book He has ever written.
The author describes his purpose as follows:
This book is an attempt to describe the tremendous impact of the writer’s meeting with a great Indian Saint and mystic, Sant Kirpal Singh of Delhi.
It also attempts to portray this Saint in both His human and spiritual aspects, and to give an accurate introduction to His work and teachings on ‘The Science of the Soul,’ or ‘The Path of the Masters,’ the most ancient Spiritual Teaching in the world.
It succeeds admirably in both attempts.
His account of his meeting with the Master is told with restraint and dignity, but is nonetheless tremendously moving – a fascinating description of the way Master picks up one of His own. At the time of the meeting – in 1966 – Mr Parrott was 65 years old, retired, and settling – like so many others – into a discontented, lonely old age. The Master came into his life like some kind of explosion, giving him in every sense of the words a new birth, and showing him the Reality for which he had been searching for so long. I don’t think that anyone can read the opening chapters of this book and dismiss their testimony: it is too real, and its author too much above reproach or criticism, to be ignored.
His analysis of the Master’s teachings is also first rate. Calmly and intelligently, from the point of view of a Westerner who is well-versed in comparative religious studies – not as a scholar, as he points out, but as a lifelong seeker – and quoting often from the Bible, he discusses, one by one, the various points of the Masters’ teachings. Always he bases his comments on two solid foundations: his own personal experience with the Master, and the Master’s own words. So the book serves admirably in just the way the subtitle suggests: as an introduction to Kirpal Singh. As such, it is an ideal book for someone who wants to study the Master’s teachings, but prefers to see Him first through Western eyes.
Russell Perkins