Part 4

 
Subsequently Gul Rukh traveled farther south into the Punjab, and eventually arrived in Multan (also now in Pakistan), sometime in the 1850's. Here she trained under a Sufi meditation teacher, and learned to completely master the formless trance states of ego-free awareness known in Sufism as fana ("annihilation"), and in Hinduism as nirvikalpa samadhi.

After attaining such spiritual heights, she returned to her Hindu guru in the Rawalpindi area, wandering about as a majdhub, one of those "wise fools" so deeply God-absorbed as to be entirely free of body consciousness and social conventions. Gul Rukh dwelt in and around Rawalpindi for several decades, leading a radically simple life, allowing God to fill every corner of her being.

Eventually, she completely stabilized in the final state of God-Realization which the Sufis call baqa ("remaining" in God), identical to what the Hindus call sahaja samadhi (the "natural state of absorption"), wherein the adept blends an intuition of formless Divinity with the appearance of the manifest world as God's lovely dream-play.

The absolute freedom, bliss, peace, love and spontaneous (ego-free) functioning of this unbelievably refined state is also identical to the highest level of spiritual awakening in Buddhist, Taoist, Hasidic and Christian contemplative traditions.