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THE
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Excerpt from: |
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THE
KIRPAL STATISTIC Excerpt from:
Using
Inner Visions to Your Social
Advantage
The
Indian Background Index
EXPOSING CULTS: When the Skeptical Mind Confronts the
Mystical.
(More chapters of 'Exposing Cults' online
here.)
Author: David Christopher Lane
Publisher: Garland Publishing, Inc. New York and London.
Publication date: August 1994.
It turns out that almost everybody has the inherent
ability to see inner light and hear inner sound. Moreover,
almost everybody has the capacity to have an out-of-body
experience and behold wondrous inner visions. You don't need
to go to an Indian guru to have such experiences indeed, you
don't need to go anywhere at all.
But that's not what Kirpal Singh and his successors told
their vast following. Instead, unsuspecting seekers(who
number in the thousands) were taught to believe that it was
the guru himself, not the disciple, who was orchestrating
the elevation of the soul into higher regions. But Kirpal
and crew were not being completely forthcoming about the
mechanism which governs access to such amazing sights and
sounds. That mechanism is the brain and that three pounds of
glorious tissue is the lot of all humans.
In the early 1980s when I was teaching religious studies at
a Catholic high school, I tried several meditation
experiments with my students which convinced me that Kirpal
Singh and other gurus like him were taking undue credit for
their disciples' inner experiences. In my trial mediation
sessions, I informed my students beforehand about the
possibility of seeing inner lights and hearing inner
sounds.
Naturally, given the boring routine of secondary education,
my students were intrigued. I informed them that I knew of
an ancient yoga technique that would facilitate their inner
voyages. I turned the lights off, instructed them briefly
about closing their eyes gently and looking for sparks of
light at the proverbial third eye. I told them that I would
touch some students on the forehead lightly with my fingers.
They meditated for some five minutes. I then proceeded to
ask them about their experiences.
[Kirpal Singh invariably did such a process directly
after his initiation ceremonies; he also kept a running
tally of how many saw stars and so on-something which I have
called the 'Kirpal Statistic'.]
To my amazement, since I felt that Kirpal Singh and others
were actually transmitting spiritual power, the majority of
my students reported seeing light. A few students even
claimed to have visions of personages in the middle of the
light. Others reported hearing subtle sounds and the
like.
I repeated the experiment on four other classes that day. I
have also in the past ten years conducted the same
experiment on my college students (both undergraduate and
graduate). The result, though differing in terms of absolute
numbers, is remarkably the same. The majority see and hear
something. It doesn't take a neuropsychologist or a
sociologist trained in statistics to realize that Kirpal
Singh and others were simply tapping into an already built
reservoir of meditational possibilities.
What was unique about Kirpal's approach, at least in
comparison with other Radhasoami gurus, was that he claimed
to be the responsible agent, the medium through which such
inner experiences can be transmitted. Kirpal's disciples
generally did not question his grandiose claims, since many
of them did indeed see and hear something during their
meditation. What they, of course, did not fully appreciate
was that almost anybody could have induced them to have
inner experiences.
[I don't mean to suggest, though, that Kirpal Singh was
not a good catalyst, but only that he was not unique and
that his success at providing thousands with access to inner
lights and sounds was not necessarily connected to his
mastership.]
Religious devotees seem overly eager to give up
responsibility for their own neurological happenings,
believing instead that it takes a 'Master' to draw their
attention 'within.' This may or may not be the case (and I
am not implying that gurus don't have anything good to
offer), but one thing is certain: Kirpal's claims, and
others like his, cannot be divorced (as they often are in
Sant Mat related groups ) from an initiates own cultural and
psychological field of interplay.
It is that interplay, that acceptance as fact of a guru's
method and the disciple's own inherent capacity-neurological
or mystical-for inner experiences, which fuels the claims of
would-be masters.
It seems wise to me, in light of Near-Death Experiences and
the plethora of other meditation accounts, to inspect how we
see and hear during our inner voyages of light and sound.
Then we may be able to understand why such experiences can
occur to almost anybody, anywhere, anytime. It may also help
us contextualize and appraise the claims of gurus like
Kirpal Singh, who insist on taking credit for their
disciples' wondrous visions.
If, as I have suggested, that anybody can act as a conduit
for such other-worldly experiences, then Kirpal and gurus
like him should be judged on some other criteria, since
their claims for uniqueness and exclusiveness are anything
but unique and exclusive.
The 'Kirpal Statistic' is exactly that: the probable outcome
that the majority of meditators, provided the necessary
instructions in Shabd or Nad yoga practice, will see and
hear something.