The Unknowing Sage: The Life and Work of Faqir Chand Fifth Edition

Interesting info on this sage and great insight on the spiritual journey

Excellent read. Recommended to all.

I have been very disappointed with this book, and I strongly advise against buying it.First, even though the book is composed of sections by different authors, the same few things are repeated over and over, while the book struggles painfully to reach a small hundred pages of text. Sometimes entire sentences seem to be reported exactly. What is incessantly presented to us as the highest revelation is that the radiant form that one sees inside when meditating (in Surat Shabd Yoga) would not be the form of one's spiritual master but only a mental projection. There really was no need to repeat this in each paragraph of the book.Secondly, I'm sorry to say that the chapters by Faqir Chand himself are extremely confused, repetitive and uninspiring. He writes that all gurus of all times have fooled us (even including Jesus Christ and Buddha at one place), but further on he says that the ancient sages had perfect wisdom, and then he says that one has to find a perfect master and visualize him as perfect inside us... Faqir Chand is perfectly at peace, then he admits he is sometimes afraid, then he wonders if he is not wrong, then he is at least sure that you shall reap what you sow; in the same paragraph you jump from this to that. What a contrast with the few other books from Radhasoami or Sant Mat masters that I have read: an enrapturing logic, beautiful metaphors, a feeling of enthusiasm…D. Lane draws an interesting parallel with the Tibetan Book of the Dead. But as far as I know, Buddhists such as the Dalai Lama don't say that they don't know anything. Is the Dalai Lama less sage or sincere than Faqir Chand? I doubt it. Buddhist masters don’t say that they don’t know what happens after death, too. The worst comes at the end when David Lane tells us that wisdom is knowing that we know nothing. Wow... But why put in from 3 to 12 hours of meditation a day for 75 years to get to that? All this almost sounds like an attempt to discredit any direct spirituality or meditation practice. Why believe one sage against every sage in history? Why choose to believe a sage who himself looks lost and confused? A sage who doesn't know if and what he knows? Is it a sage then? So there would never have been any sage at all, ever?In conclusion, either you are not interested in meditation and spirituality and you don’t need this book to drive you off it, or you are interested in it and this book, with all its repetitions and confusion won’t help you at all. If one is interested in Surat Shabd Yoga (or Nada Yoga in Buddhism), and one wants to read from someone who has had direct experience of sound and light meditation but has remained outside any guru circle, I suggest reading a book by Salim Michael, the British-French symphony composer and mystic.