Kirpal Singh's biographer, H. Dressel, also mentions, that Kirpal Singh had a 'gaze into the future'. But at the same place you will also find that he regarded it to be an illness and requested his master Sawan Singh to rid him of it.¹

Thus, it could only have been a pre-cognition of the slightly 'incorrect' type - of which Freud also spoke, and which Kirpal Singh did not want to overstate. Can this kind of formulation not unite and reconcile eastern and western ways of thinking?

Kirpal Singh's pupils darkened their gaze considerably by constantly applying their 'déjà raconté', and this up to the point where they could hardly see anything anymore (this description is purposely gross). This put Kirpal Singh in the position of using this 'jamais vu' with them in order to recognise and seemingly influence them.

Later on, I will be calling this gaze the 'urgent, sincere gaze' or the 'imaginary signifier'.² This is the case, - at this point, it can be expressed differently, and with slightly more obligation - because such a gaze (as we also find in a cinema) is not an 'interference of multiple correct achievements', but rather an 'interference of multiple correct gazes' (perspectives of the camera, of the watcher, of the actors, of the director, etc.). These appear to be correct, as they occur 'synchronously', or even strongly linked. C. Metz associates this with 'All-Wahrnehmung' (German for: omni-perception³) in which multiple perceptions are held together through one and the same symbolic value - thus, again through an synchronous echo, a unified discourse, or self-contained message.

That's why Kirpal Singh's gaze didn't only have a perceiving, but also a revealing effect! He was capable of uniting the 'imaginary' with the 'verbal' signifier, and that's what I am attempting to do in this book.

 

1 Dressel, H., Das Leben des Vollendeten ( The Life of the Master ) (1989), page 9

2 The signifier is a term used in linguistics, and will be explained in detail later on. For the time being it is sufficient to know that it can be understood as a trademark, or as a certification mark, that creates significance with and between words. An 'imaginary signifier' additionally provides for supporting images.

3 Metz, C., The Imaginary Signifier, Psychoanalysis and Cinema, Nodus (2000)

 

Anmerkung der Redaktion: Dieser Artikel stammt aus einer Beitragsreihe zum Thema: Analytische Psychocatharsis