For those unfamiliar with Sant Mat, a major goal (as a required means toward what they call Self and God Realization), is "rising above bodily consciousness" - i.e. separation of the subtle body into higher dimensions via the 3-rd eye. The phrase "transcending the body" in Singh's tradition has an altogether different meaning than MMY's usage of the term "transcendence". In the following narrative, Kirpal Singh (died in 1974) makes a curious statement regarding a Yogi from Rishikesh who had attained the "Sahasra" or "first plane" level:
"When my Master left the body, I had to go to the wilderness. I had some experience of the jungle and secluded places for five or six months. I went to [Rishikesh] the home of Hindu theology, so to say. Shivananda, who has since passed away, lived there, and many other yogis as well. I went there and lived in a jungle across the river. I met everybody. All were intellectual wrestlers; debating clubs; all performing this elementary step: how to say prayers, how to perform certain rites and certain rituals. And most of them were doing hatha yoga practices. Of course, with due deference to it, it makes the body fit - that's all right. There was also one fellow, who is still alive, called Raghuvacharya. He's an old man now - I think 106 -107 years old - but he gets around like anything. When I went to see him, people said, "Oh, he never cares for anybody." When I was about more than 100 or 150 yards away, he appeared; he was sitting on his feet. He looked at me and he stood up. People said, "That's strange. He has never cared for any man, yet he stood up." He came forward and met me, and we had a talk. And in the talk it came out that he went to the first plane: to Sahasrara. I found only one man who had transcended the body and reached the first stage. He said that what he had learned by going through all the Shastras, Vedas and Upanishads, "I have come to know something which you speak by yourself!" [Raghuvacharya left the earth plane in 1971, at the age of 115.] That is the grace of my Master. Masters give you a digest of all this knowledge, which is called para vidya. So I found only one man there. The world is not without them, but there have been very few in the past, and even now there are few. You'll find that most of them will give you only: "Read this mantra, this shabda, this scripture, daily." They'll simply perform this ritual in this way or perform that prayer by lighting a candle or ringing a bell - whatever is the custom. Everyone has his own rituals and rites. That is right; prayer is a very good thing: the prayer that gushes out of the heart, God hears, and He makes some arrangement to bring you to Him. And some people direct you to make your body fit. That's good; but that's not spirituality: that's a helping factor for spirituality. Some teach you how to prolong your life - that's all right. Some teach you how to mesmerize others, how to hypnotize others, how you can read the minds of others. But all this is not spirituality. How many are there who really give you an experience of how to rise above body- consciousness?
