I would like to voice some doubt: is it at all possible for me to write a comparative study by applying a biography of such a great Indian person? Daily life in India is inherently so much different to the lives we lead here in Europe. What we cannot at all seem to assimilate in the same way is what is called 'spiritual' life.
Strong feelings of being associated, of admiration, of reverence and a variety of other emotions that are found between a follower and his master are no longer known here.
Extreme sacrifice and daily devotion to a religious quest seem to us to be more of an illusion, or of being over-challenged, than a reasonable undertaking. We see the Indians sitting together in their Satsang and falling into ecstasy while their master speaks the usual impressive and advisory words from upon a raised rostrum at the front of the room.1
How should we credibly be able to put ourselves into such a situation of behavior and emotion? Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, straightforwardly suspected such 'oceanic' emotions to be infantile megalomania. And, as stated before, we can actually only interpret the vision of Guru Nanak as none other than at least an experience related to hallucinatory events. Though we might then say that the SHINES / SPEAKS of that experience was seemingly not psychotic, but dealing with a hypomanic condition and guided to a 'realistic direction', such as is known in 'lucid dreams'. Does a 'lucid dream' produce knowledge?2
1 In some Satsangs Indian devotees had such intense mystical experiences that they fell into unconsciousness.
2 Kirpal Singh expresses it this way: his master Sawan Singh ‚appeared' to him on a (mutual) ‚astral level', though this is actually based on the causal level. But, Kirpal Singh makes no further reference. In our language we would say, that he 'appeared' to him at the SHINES level, but the SPEAKS level had nothing to do with it, else the 'vision' would have offered explanation. Only the uprightness had an effect, represented through our slash or faction stroke. Weren't it for that, we would rightfully be able to claim his having had a hallucination. Insofar a 'Klartraum' constitutes a pure SHINES with uprightness, attention directed inward, but which lacks any complex SPEAKS.