Earth’s history bears testimony to the presence of spiritually advanced beings endowed with magnetic energy and enriched auras. They could magnetise the negative energies manifesting in others and were advanced spiritual healers. Jesus, Shirdi Sai and Guru Nanak can be counted on this list of a few. Gurudev was among the most remarkable healers that ever walked this planet.

MAGNETISING NEGATIVE ENERGY

Mostly, negativity manifests due to the following reasons:

• The negative samskars factored in your life by destiny
• Physical and mental ailments resulting from specific planetary influences
• Hither and thither due to ageing body parts
• Black magic performed on you by another entity
• Possession by spirits resulting in bodily damage can be complicated for the victims to identify and deal with
• Curses of ancestors (pitra peeda) or other powerful entities can ground your good luck.
• Sometimes you may unknowingly crossover diseases removed from others and left on pavements, road crossings, etc.

Therefore, sometimes you may be born with negativity, sometimes it can be thrown at you, and sometimes you may pick it up. Whatever the form of negativity, the mahaguru endeavoured to offset it. Spiritual healing was a significant part of his seva. And he did it without accepting a dime in return.

I have been subject to black magic initiated by a relative. It triggered acute arthritis, and I suffered for ten years until the mahaguru cured me in under a minute! Besides arthritis, the mahaguru could partly or wholly cure other orthopaedic problems, pains in various parts of the body, abdominal and digestive tract issues, diabetes, jaundice, kidney and gall bladder stones, cancer, venereal diseases, burns and infections, multiple sclerosis, multiple personality disorders, and various mental maladies like depression, neurosis, psychosis, etc. While there are not many known cases of regaining lost eyesight, Bittu ji is proof of how Gurudev restored his vision following third-degree burns sustained in a house fire.

Negativity became the excuse for many of the mahaguru’s disciples to meet him. Giri ji was suffering from an incurable disease, and it was only when the doctors gave up all hope that he joined a group of friends keen to meet the mahaguru. Santosh ji was led by kidney stones to seek the mahaguru’s help in Kathog but ended up healing people instead. Dr Shankar Narayan worked in the same office as the great guru and sought help to cure his daughter of fits. Virender ji sought help for his wife, Surender ji sought it for his sister, and Harish ji appealed for his alcoholic brother-in-law. The mahaguru not only helped but also inducted us into his tribe and passed many of his healing powers on to us.

APPROACH TO HEALING

Spiritual healing must be done with dispassion and without nepotism. Gurudev never used his healing powers on his kith and kin. Medicine, not spiritual intervention, came to their rescue during their illness. He tended to his ailing younger brother only as a devoted elder (not as a guru) and did not budge an inch to heal his mother, despite holding her in very high regard. When his children complained about aches and pains, he told them they should learn to heal themselves. However, on some occasions, his family became an extension in his acts of seva. It’s commonly known that he transferred a young girl’s typhoid to his daughter so the girl would be rid of the disease.

Despite being advanced healers, Santosh ji is still troubled by kidney stones, Ravi ji by a skin allergy, and Puran ji by orthopaedic problems. Nonetheless, they continue to bear it gracefully, rarely complaining. Ravi ji recalls his guru’s words when he discussed his chronic skin allergy with him for the first time, “You take away the pain of so many people. Sometimes a fraction of that pain has to be borne by you too”. Being a healer comes with its own set of responsibilities.

Several years ago, in the departure lounge of London’s Heathrow airport, Rajpal ji asked Gurudev whether Bhagwan was upset by the great guru’s ability to change, erase, and rewrite people’s destinies. The mahaguru explained to his disciple that Bhagwan was pleased with him for curing his fever and removing his illness. Seeing the perplexed look on Rajpal ji’s face, he added, “Bhagwan is within each being. Bhagwan has given me the stature of a guru and the authority that comes with it. I exercise this authority so that the sick can be healed.”

Gurudev would say the most unconventional things about healing. He once said, “I don’t cure anyone who comes for help. They cure themselves. I am not the doer”. The mahaguru recommended and practised the philosophy of non-doership, implying that only those meant to get cured came to him. He could not take any credit for their recovery since he was merely the facilitator. Be that as it may, hardly a rare few have achieved such feats in history.

A senior disciple shared another compelling piece of information, “Whatever be the illness or disease, when Gurudev placed his hand on a sick person, the pain would reduce and eventually disappear. Most seekers would find relief. When I asked him why he did not cure everyone, he told me that some came only to gauge his powers and test him. He added that if ever those people came to him in genuine need of help, he would help them too.”

While faith does appear to be a common denominator in the lives of the spiritually healed, the mahaguru did not believe in binding people to faith. The sthan was obligated to serve those who came for help and healing. It was perfectly acceptable if people stopped coming after their needs were met. (Logistically speaking, if all those healed would attend Bada Guruvar regularly, then the bada day would become a bada week!)

However, those who stayed the course and became regulars at the sthans also became his long-term responsibility. And he took on the mantle of their well-being and spiritual development.

RELIEF FROM SUFFERING

Often people possessed by spirits would seek the mahaguru’s help. The victims were troubled either by their ancestors’ spirits or unknown spirits cast into them by black magic. Most times, their weakened auras made them vulnerable to spirit possession.

Gurudev treated all life forms as extensions of himself. While he did not approve of spirits possessing other bodies and making their victims suffer, he did not want the spirits to suffer either. He would tell us that spirits and humans are similar except for their composition and capabilities. And since spirits are also a part of the Shiv-parivaar, it was our job to serve them too. While most practitioners capable of relieving spirits usually attack, torture, or overpower them, the mahaguru would offer the spirits a reward for freeing their victims. The spirits usually wanted him to grant them birth in human form or help them crossover to higher dimensions since the lack of adequate energy kept them trapped in the lower realms and on earth, either in their homes or empty buildings or as captives of djinns and black magicians.

I have seen my guru handle possessed cases with the utmost ease. I distinctly remember him dealing with a man named Om Singh, who arrived at his door shackled to thirteen chains, each held by a huge man. Om Singh had incredible physical strength because he was possessed by a spirit. Once the great guru had rid him of the possessing spirit, he deputed me to take this man out shopping for T-shirts and trousers, adding the ‘cool’ factor to this village lad!

Spirits know that spiritual transformation is faster in the human form than as a spirit. Therefore, the opportunity to take birth as a human is the biggest reward for most. Gurudev also allowed certain animal spirits to be born as humans.

Just as he had the power to will birth for the spirits, he could extend human life by subtracting a few years from that person’s future lifetime and adding it to his present. He could gift years in multiples of two or five. His son, Parvesh ji, spoke about his friend’s cancer-stricken mother, who had been granted twenty years by the mahaguru and lived to tell the tale.

Victimisation by black magic or negative spirits is a typical misadventure in India and other parts of the world. Guddan ji’s health was deteriorating when, as a young girl, she requested her brother to take her to Gurgaon. She could hardly stand or walk and barely ate. As Gurudev treated her, she vomited a square piece of barfi (sweetmeat) and soon recovered from a long-term illness. Often, under the mahaguru’s treatment, people would vomit out the carriers of dark energy. I most vividly remember the incident of Kamlesh throwing up colourful glass bangles. When she came to the sthan seeking help, Gurudev deputed Mohan Chira ji to pick out pieces of glass from her vomit and put them together to form a round bangle. He said that she would be free of the negativity when she had vomited out all the material that could create nine bangles. The grand finale was when she vomited a taweez after Gurudev tapped her on her back! I was standing right next to him when that happened.

Kamlesh throws up a taweez after being tapped on the back by Gurudev.

While black magic is triggered by envy, curses are triggered by anger. Pitra peeda is a short word for the long-suffering that ensues due to ancestral curses. Such curses on a family line or kula are not targeted toward any specific individual. However, the brunt of that curse is undoubtedly borne by some individuals in the kula. Many cases of pitra peeda would come to Gurudev. I was one on this list. He made me take up farming for several years and donate the proceeds to charitable causes. That ended the pitra peeda for me and my kula.

The mahaguru could also dilute the curses of mighty saints and temples. Vishwamitra ji, from the sthan in Mukerian, shared the story of a couple who would lose their newborns to blood cancer. After four deliveries and four related deaths, they approached Gurudev for help. However, their fifth child also died of blood cancer. It was then that the mahaguru told them that their next child would be cancer-free. And so it came to pass as decreed by him.

Aside from that, he could heal energy blocks in people, the most common of which was Laxmi bandh. It meant overcoming the lack of barkat in those who had been cursed with tight-fisted living. Unblocking this bandh (energy lock) would ensure that a poor man’s buck would fetch more for any amount spent. In this manner, the mahaguru manipulated the restoration of barkat.

MODES OF HEALING

His healing abilities extended not only to physical interactions with patients but also to people thousands of miles away. Effectively, the mahaguru could heal a person telephonically or mentally from afar. He could also heal someone he had never met or spoken to.

Usually, he used specific spices as carriers of healing energy. Cloves, cardamoms, peppercorns, yellow mustard, areca nuts, and water, energised by mantras, were given to people in different measures depending on the issues from which they sought relief. Gurudev had, over time, put together about 100 natural prescriptions that worked for most ailments.

As a healer, he was unfathomable. Sometimes he would heal by shocking the person into doing precisely the opposite of what any logical mind would think should be done. For example, when a lady with a chronic sore throat approached him for help, he asked her to snack on spicy gol-gappas. While she did so hesitatingly, the sheer act of following his advice restored her voice to its original decibels and made her a staunch believer. Awe was a sentiment he inspired in millions.

The mahaguru gave anything he felt like to cure another. To teach Rajpal ji a lesson for showing off his singing skills during seva, Gurudev made his voice so hoarse that he could hardly utter an understandable word. A few months later, when he again sought forgiveness from his guru, Gurudev asked him to eat a ball of snow to reclaim his vocals. Rajpal picked up some snow from the ground he was standing on and ate it. The cure was almost instantaneous.

When Giri ji’s sister’s hands became infected with fungal growth, Gurudev asked her to apply ghee on the rotis made at the sthan for eleven days. By the twelfth day, the fungal infection had subsided, leaving no trace of its stinky pus.

Once on a Thursday seva, I gave a piles remedy to a hernia patient because I forgot the difference between the two treatments. However, later I realised my mistake. On Thursday of the following week, I met the patient again. I was expecting aggravated symptoms, but instead, he said he was much better than before. I realised that healing was not backed by the science we were conditioned to, and it wasn’t only about the cardamoms, cloves, jal or any of what we were taught. It was more the magic of intention than the process of the cure. As proof of this point, I remember the great guru’s words, “Even mud from the sthan would work as effectively as any other spiritual treatment.”

He deployed novel methods to heal. Frequently, dreams and visions served as conduits for his healing rays, not just while he was alive but more so afterwards. When Bittu ji sustained severe burns in a home fire, the mahaguru appeared in his dream, spoke to him, and offered him his sipped water. Within a week of this dream, Bittu ji’s scorched skin flaked off, and he was able to walk.

During Charan Singh ji’s tenure as head of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas, his daughter contracted cancer. He asked his wife and daughter to meet Gurudev, telling them, “He is Shiv. I treat him like a brother”. When the mahaguru met with Charan Singh ji’s daughter, he asked her to drink his sipped water. Disagreeing that she had cancer, he suggested that she undergo a medical re-examination to be doubly sure. The results indicated the tumour-like growth had receded.

The number of people receiving help from the mahaguru’s astral avatar continues to rise.

Healing wasn’t the mahaguru’s end game though it occupied most of his time. He was purposefully driven towards increasing the market share of spiritual existence versus a time-wasting social one. To those he empowered with healing abilities, his legacy is threefold:

1. To spiritually transform themselves through the medium of seva
2. To grant relief to others
3. To inspire others to walk in their shoes