On Sant Mat Theories

Further aspects of Sant Mat theories¹, as Sawan Singh’s and Kirpal Singh’s ‘spiritual’ road is also called, consist – as just mentioned - of several rules concerning nutrition and behavior, which often had extremely ascetic features (vegetarian diet, sexual abstinence). Indians love the direct, general and practically oriented implementations of simplest asceticism.

Many yogis remain in the same positions for years. Wishful thinking is to be deadened that way and the strength of semen preserved. Kirpal Singh usually attempted to alleviate such aspects in order not to annoy Western devotees too much, but in the end he wasn’t able to completely get rid of this primal Indian use of language.

So he often seemed to be rigid and inflexible, but the focus of attention was not on such external rules. Kirpal Singh raised exercise (meditation) of both of the basic principles through Surat Shabd Yoga to the main topic, the practice of which I will be explaining later on. For the time being we may recognize, that Kirpal Singh had already gained proximity to the SHINES and SPEAKS during his childhood and adolescence, and that he was thoroughly occupied with these teachings, or at least with similar teachings and theories. But, as his biographers repeatedly stress, he could not regard anyone as being competent enough to be his Guru or teacher.

None of the existing Yoga systems seemed adequately substantiated. Nobody was able to veraciously quench his ‘spiritual’ thirst. It wasn’t till 1917 that he had a vision which helped him along. His ‘vision’ included a bearded old man of whom he thought was the founder of the Sikh religion, namely Guru Nanak. He often stressed, that this represented an important step in his development. And this was actually a special, further developed combination of pictographic (‘shining form’), namely SHINES and of verbosity (name), the SPEAKS.