The Other's Attention combines with Echo-Discourse

Every riddle, every auspicious event, everything that is in any way an immediate SHINES / SPEAKS is a kind of ‘assignment’. The riddle, which is – as Lacan says – the „summit of sense“, requires a solution. It is straightforward urgency, and pronounces the ‘assignment’ to: „Solve me! “.

But the Other’s ‘assignment’ is quite a special event.

It starts with the: „Tell it from the hausetops“, what Kirpal Singh used to quote from the New Testament. “You know what real yoga is, go spread it amongst the people. “ „Become fishers of men“, Christ said. Become teachers of wisdom. Become conjectural scientists! Become analysts, for there the ‘assignment’ is nothing else than handing down Freud’s theory through the procedure of transference and its interpretation – but additionally, in a totally renewed form!.

There wasn‘t any intellectual discussion concerning scientific argumentation in the Sawan Ashram in Delhi such as would be usual here in the West. And, in a certain way, it wasn't necessary. But the problem arose at the moment people became interested in scientific criteria.

The fact that students, who were asked about their meditation results, correspondingly raised their hands¹ was no real scientific proof for the validity and effectiveness of Surat Shabd Yoga as would be based on Western scientific standards. The problem was also there when it concerned the issues of ‘assignment’ and ‘succession’ of the master. I am going to demonstrate this shortly, because it is more difficult to completely disengage the intellect.

An ‘assignment’ is from the start to be understood as nothing other than an instruction from a Sant Mat teacher, usually in the sense of the “Follow me!” as used by Jesus Christ, and which I have quoted further above. However, such an instruction is seldom sent directly to a follower – except for general instructions during a lecture.

Kirpal Singh always spoke of an ‘assignment’ that is received as a ‘transference through the ‘master’s’ eyes’, and which he had received in this way from Sawan Singh. This means: in a type of meditative state, ‘spiritually’, in a meditative state of common unity, so that something coming from the ‘outside’ is experienced on the ‘inside’: a SHINES / SPEAKS, a ‚projected identification’. The pure ‘attention of the Other’ now combines itself with the perfect echo-discourse of the master which strives to the conclusion of determination, recognition, or definitive confirmation. This can be written as: O / O (attention / assignment).