Jerry Astra Turk

My Search for God

We are very near to God in our child-hood and see through the eyes of innocence. If the adults in a child’s life lean towards God, propelling the young soul ever towards the heavenly Father, it is a lucky child indeed. As a child I always felt a strong urge to fly amongst the fleecy clouds and saw Satdeva Kirpal in turban sitting in a huge chair with the clouds providing a luminous background for His ever-pervading presence. I asked the other small children if they could see God sitting in the sky, but alas, they could not. This made me feel very sorry for them. Even as a child I knew that God lived in a human form somewhere on this sad earth and I had made up my mind that I was going to find Him. Instead it was He Who found me. I was ready to give up the mortal coil and wished for death so that I could be with Him.

My physical birth took place in New York, but the True Birth of my spirit took place on 27th July, 1958, and this is when I really began to live as immortal soul, not subject to wheel of birth and death, as I had found the Godman Who took residence in the Holy Form of Satdeva Guru Dev Kirpal.

Guru Dev Kirpal appeared to me in many forms – in the guise of many Masters. He took me in the Inner Planes and told me I had an alliance with God. I had awaited Him for many years. When He did not come, I at last thought that my beloved had forsaken me.

I prayed:

If You do not come for me within two weeks, I will take my own life … for I want only You.

Within this period, the Great Guru Anami Kirpal was walking about my house in radiant astral form, His turban brushing the ceiling. At that time a dear soul, Tanya Shook, came to me and asked me how I knew so much about yoga. I told her that my Father appears and gives me books to read. She looked at me, paused and amused over what I had said and asked me:

Do you know that you must have a Living Master to get to God.

Of course, I immediately disagreed with her and told her that when I was seeing God Himself, why should I leave Him and look upon a Master as God!

No,

she said,

they say that you cannot get to God unless one has a Master.

I gave her a strong look. Then, suddenly my Beloved said:

Tell her to go home and get the picture of the Master.

So I told her accordingly.

She complied with my request and was back with the picture within an hour. I took one look at it and cried out:

Don’t you know Who your Master is?

She looked at me with questioning eyes as though I had gone mad. I was mad indeed but with relief from my grief and longing to find God in a human form.

He is the One I see and talk about, the One Who tells me all these things and takes me to the strangest places. He is God,

I told her.

Well,

said Tanya,

you have to be a vegetarian.

– I am a vegetarian, I must have Him now,

I replied.

No, you are not,

she said.

I am,

I cried. She asked:

Since when?

I replied,

as of this very moment, nothing, which is not of His law shall I do. I want Him and will have Him.

The very next day I flew off to Louisville Kentucky to get Godguru Gurugod Kirpal’s sacred instructions from a wonderful and dear devoted lady, Mrs M. Gordon Hughes. I still cannot believe that Holy God Himself had plunged down His wonderful arm and pulled my feeble and yearning soul out of the jaws of hell to His pristine lap of Spiritual Splendour.

There is only one cry in my heart now: I shall always love Him with all my soul, heart, mind and strength and that I have no other God or gods before him for He is the absolute Shabda Anaami-Purusha and without Him we are but the walking dead.

I see no face before me but my beloved Kirpal. I hear only one voice, His. I walk in all places for He carries me in His heart. Seeing He is everywhere, I too am there. Desiring only Him, I have become desireless. He is all Love, I too am Love. By abiding within Him, nothing else exists: so I do not exist: yet am what my Holy Father Kirpal is.

_______________

Source: Sat Sandesh / January 1968, pp. 25–26.