Primal Principles

“I have been swimming in rivers. I’m very fond of rivers”, Kirpal Singh often said.¹ In India, rivers are always something special, the country basically being dry and hot, and so, a narrow river glistening in blue appears as a lifeline providing for an elixir. So, we are fully authorized to track the ‘light’ and ‘sound’ principle at a very early stage in his life, or his ‘background’, even though this may yet seem to be rather superficial.

Later on, he discovered the effectiveness of these two primal principles in many other areas of human life, in culture and in science. He often quoted the Old Testament where Moses received his revelation in the midst of lightning (light) and thunder (sound), or similar, Mohammed’s mystical ‘ride’ on Temple Mountain, as well as corresponding lines of John’s Revelation in the New Testament, or in masterpieces of Indian and Persian mystics.

The theory of Surat Shabd yoga does well have longer tradition, one that leads back to the meditation and Yoga of Kabir, of Nanak (the founder of the Sikh religion) and of Tulsi Sahib.² In accommodating these highly diverging areas we could use the term SHINES for ‘light’ and SPEAKS for ‘sound’. “There are books in rivulets”, Kirpal Singh liked to say, “and sermons in stones”.

Seen in that way, ‘sound’, the INVOCATION, the SPEAKS, is actually a ubiquitous principle, not just a noise or tone of even the most musical type. As I have concluded in several earlier books, applying such expressions (SHINES / SPEAKS) for both of these primal principles is more suitable than all of the former phrases found (such as: reflection / echo, visibility / symbolism, drive for looking / for speaking).