Kirpal Singh

Life originates only from Life

Life originates only from life. A living Master and no one else can transmit a life-impulse to others. The sages and seers have always emphasized that Naam should be made manifest within by whoever may be able to do it; and then the experience obtained from the competent Master-Soul must be developed.

Go wherever thou wilt to get contact with the Divine Link, and then with the grace of the Guru develop this experience. 

Guru Nanak, Asa M1

A Muslim divine says the same thing:

Should you like to go on a Haj (pilgrimage to Mecca), take with you a Haji (one who has been to Mecca) for a guide, no matter if he be a Hindu, a Turk, or an Arab.

For an experience of the Divine Link it is necessary to contact a Sant Satguru, for he alone can explain the theory and grant a practical demonstration of the Reality within each one of us. The charged words of the Master, his magnetic influence and the life-giving rays emanating from Him, quickly help in withdrawal of the sensory currents from the body; for unless the spirit, surging downwards and rushing headlong into the world through the outgoing faculties, is concentrated at its own seat, behind the two eyebrows, it cannot reflect upon itself. It is a practical experience of self-analysis or separating the inner man (Soul or the higher self) from the outer man (lower self consisting of mind and material body). By force of age-old habits we are unfortunately clinging to the outerman and are reveling all the time in the outer world with which we have identified ourselves. There is a regular process of inversion or receding, tapping inside, as Emerson puts it, or conversion into a little child, as Christ called it; and none but an Adept on the spiritual path can help in cutting the Gordian Knot and separating the spirit, for a while, from the mind and outgoing faculties. It is, in other words, a supramental experience of the spirit on a super-sensual plane and can successfully be imparted by a Master-Soul. 

This experiment cannot be practically performed by reading scriptures and holy books, for they can neither speak nor explain their true import; nor can they be a guide to the spirit as it transcends the physical plane and traverses higher regions, most of which are fraught with subtle dangers and difficulties from which the Master in His luminous from can protect and lead the spirit safely from plane to plane. Those who take up the Way without a competent Master are likely to be deceived by the Negative Power and misled. In Surat Shabd Yoga, the importance of the Master cannot be over-emphasized. He is in fact the central figure, from the beginning to the end, in life and after life, helping visibly and invisibly beyond the ends of the earth, right up to the Judgement seat of God and even beyond.

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Source: ‘Naam or Word, Book One – Naam or Word, A Study in Naam: How Naam is reached’, by Kirpal Singh, 1894–1974.