SUNDAR SINGH. – Hindu mystic, called Sadhu = “pious,” born in Rampur, on the border of Nepal, on 3 September 1889, died in 1932.
From the religious sect into which he had been born, that of the Sick, which is a compromise between Islam and Hinduism, he received the opportunity to become acquainted with and understand the various orientations of mysticism: the fervor of Sufi Islam, the ritualism of Brahmanism, the practical-spiritual exercise of Yoga, and the doctrine of salvation of Buddhism. But none of these fully satisfied him. Christianity alone, which he came to know through the Anglican Communion, convinced him, and in this church he received Baptism on 3 September 1905, on his sixteenth birthday. At the age of 19 he went to the Missions of Tibet, from where he subsequently traveled throughout northern and southern India, China, Japan, North America, and then the West: England, Germany, and Sweden, where he formed a friendship with the Lutheran archbishop of Uppsala, N. Söderblom. He also traveled to Palestine to retrace the footsteps of Jesus, whose apparition at the age of 15 had directed him toward Christianity; he made an in-depth study of the great mystics of the West.
His vision is anti-intellectualist, directed solely toward the love of God, whom Jesus Christ revealed to the world, and satisfied solely by prayer, which is the only path to an understanding of divine things. His faith has the character of childlike ingenuousness, which led him to regard as real miracles and marvelous apparitions concerning which doubts have been raised objectively.
In substance, apart from the distinctive characteristics deriving from his lineage and his initial religious orientation, it is mystical faith of the Protestant type, insofar as it is not concerned with ecclesiology and is chiefly satisfied with the union of the individual soul with the divinity through prayer.