Jaimal Singh was popularly called by the honorific 'Baba Ji' by disciples and devotees. He was the son of a Punjabi farmer who as a young teenager set out on a spiritual quest. He became an initiate and later a spiritual successor of Shiv Dayal Singh, the Sant of Āgrā. After his initiation Jaimal Singh served in the British Indian Army as a sepoy from the age of seventeen and attained the rank of havildar. After retirement, he settled in a desolate and isolated spot outside the town of Beas and began to spread the teaching of his guru Shiv Dayal Singh. The place grew into a colony which came to be called the "Dera Baba Jaimal Singh", and which is now the world centre of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas organization. Jaimal Singh was the first spiritual master and head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas until his death in 1903. Before his death he appointed Baba Sawan Singh to continue his mission as his spiritual successor.
Youth and education
Jaimal Singh was born in July 1839 in the village of Lath Ghuman, near Batala, District Gurdaspur, Punjab, Sikh Empire. His parents were Jodh Singh, a farmer, and Daya Kaur. His mother Daya Kaur was a devotee of the North Indian Sant Namdev, and at the age of four Jaimal started visiting the Ghuman shrine of Namdev. At the age of five, Jaimal started his education with Baba Khem Singh, a Vedantic sage. Within two years, Jaimal had become a good reader of the Guru Granth Sahib and also read the Dasam Granth. At the age of 12, he came to understand that the Guru Granth Sāhib rejected pranayama, hatha yoga, tirtha yatra, fasting, and rituals as means to finding the One God described by Guru Nanak. Jaimal came to the conclusion that he needed to find a master who taught the practice of the Anhad Shabad. He especially wanted a master who could explain the Guru Granth Sahib's reference to the Panch Shabd. One such phrase is from Guru Nanak:
Search and discipleship
Between the ages of 15 to 17, Jaimal Singh undertook an arduous journey through North India on a lengthy quest for a teacher, having decided at age 14 that he needed to find a Master of the Panch Shabd. In 1856, his travels culminated in Agra city at the feet of his master Shiv Dayal Singh who initiated him into the practice of the Five Sounds, named Surat Shabd Yoga. After his initiation, Jaimal Singh was set on becoming a renunciate sadhu and devoting his attention full-time to abhyas. His guru, however, told him that the followers of the Sant tradition did not beg like most sadhus, but earned their own living. Jaimal had no inclination to work in his family's tradition of farming since it would then entail taking a wife. Hence, Shiv Dayal advised the teen-aged Jaimal to join the Army.
Ministry
In October 1877, Shiv Dayāl Singh instructed Jaimal Singh to start teaching and initiating people into the practice of the Nam and the Surat Shabd Yoga. Jaimal Singh retired from the Army on 7 June 1889 and returned to his home village Ghuman. Later, he built a hut at the village of Bal Saran on the banks of the Beas River in the Punjab, where he settled. This place is now a huge township known as the Dera Baba Jaimal Singh. On a visit to Mari Pahar, now in Pakistan, Jaimal Singh initiated Baba Sawan Singh, a military engineer, who eventually became his successor. Jaimal Singh spent the rest of his life in the service of disciples and followers who came to his "dera". He died on 29 December 1903.
Teachings
Jaimal Singh's teachings were those of his master who taught the need for a living spiritual guide, adept in the practise of the Nam or Inner Sound. Having practiced many different sadhanas during his youth, Jaimal Singh was able to describe the merits and shortcomings of the various yogic methods in relation to Surat Shabd Yoga, the practice which he learned from his master. Some excerpts from his teachings:
Suffering and troubles are blessings in disguise, for they are ordained by the Lord. If our benefit lies in pain, He sends pain; if in pleasure, He sends pleasure. Pleasures and pains are tests of our strength, and if one does not waver or deflect, then the Almighty blesses such souls with Naam.
What the Lord considers best, He is doing. Do not bring yourself into the picture. Live by the words of the Master, and continue performing your earthly duties. When the fruit is ripe, it will fall of its own accord without injury to itself or the bearing branch. But if we pluck the unripe fruit forcibly from off the tree, the branch is injured and the raw fruit shrivels and is of little use. Meeting a competent Master is the fulfillment of human birth: this is the fruit of life. To live by His commandments insures its proper nurture. Daily Simran and Bhajan, to the maximum possible, are the best food and nourishment, and mergence with Shabd is its ripening and falling off.
