“Years ago, right in this very room you now occupy, a Mohammedan wonder-worker performed four miracles before me!”
Sri Yukteswar made this surprising statement during his first visit to my new quarters. Immediately after entering Serampore College, I had taken a room in a near-by boardinghouse, called Panthi. It was an old-fashioned brick mansion, fronting the Ganges.
“Master, what a coincidence! Are these newly decorated walls really ancient with memories?” I looked around my simply furnished room with awakened interest.
“It is a long story.” My guru smiled reminiscently. “The name of the fakir 1 was Afzal Khan. He had acquired his extraordinary powers through a chance encounter with a Hindu yogi.
“‘Son, I am thirsty; fetch me some water.’ A dust-covered sannyasi made this request of Afzal one day during his early boyhood in a small village of eastern Bengal.
“‘Master, I am a Mohammedan. How could you, a Hindu, accept a drink from my hands?’
“‘Your truthfulness pleases me, my child. I do not observe the ostracizing rules of ungodly sectarianism. Go; bring me water quickly.’
“Afzal’s reverent obedience was rewarded by a loving glance from the yogi.
“‘You possess good karma from former lives,’ he observed solemnly. ‘I am going to teach you a certain yoga method which will give you command over one of the invisible realms. The great powers that will be yours should be exercised for worthy ends; never employ them selfishly! I perceive, alas! that you have brought over from the past some seeds of destructive tendencies. Do not allow them to sprout by watering them with fresh evil actions. The complexity of your previous karma is such that you must use this life to reconcile your yogic accomplishments with the highest humanitarian goals.’
“After instructing the amazed boy in a complicated technique, the master vanished.
“Afzal faithfully followed his yoga exercise for twenty years. His miraculous feats began to attract widespread attention. It seems that he was always accompanied by a disembodied spirit whom he called ‘Hazrat.’ This invisible entity was able to fulfill the fakir’s slightest wish.
“Ignoring his master’s warning, Afzal began to misuse his powers. Whatever object he touched and then replaced would soon disappear without a trace. This disconcerting eventuality usually made the Mohammedan an objectionable guest!
“He visited large jewelry stores in Calcutta from time to time, representing himself as a possible purchaser. Any jewel he handled would vanish shortly after he had left the shop.
“Afzal was often surrounded by several hundred students, attracted by the hope of learning his secrets. The fakir occasionally invited them to travel with him. At the railway station he would manage to touch a roll of tickets. These he would return to the clerk, remarking: ‘I have changed my mind, and won’t buy them now.’ But when he boarded the train with his retinue, Afzal would be in possession of the required tickets.2
“These exploits created an indignant uproar; Bengali jewelers and ticket-sellers were succumbing to nervous breakdowns! The police who sought to arrest Afzal found themselves helpless; the fakir could remove incriminating evidence merely by saying: ‘Hazrat, take this away.’”
Sri Yukteswar rose from his seat and walked to the balcony of my room which overlooked the Ganges. I followed him, eager to hear more of the baffling Mohammedan Raffles.
“This Panthi house formerly belonged to a friend of mine. He became acquainted with Afzal and asked him here. My friend also invited about twenty neighbors, including myself. I was only a youth then, and felt a lively curiosity about the notorious fakir.” Master laughed. “I took the precaution of not wearing anything valuable! Afzal looked me over inquisitively, then remarked:
“‘You have powerful hands. Go downstairs to the garden; get a smooth stone and write your name on it with chalk; then throw the stone as far as possible into the Ganges.’
“I obeyed. As soon as the stone had vanished under distant waves, the Mohammedan addressed me again:
“‘Fill a pot with Ganges water near the front of this house.’
“After I had returned with a vessel of water, the fakir cried, ‘Hazrat, put the stone in the pot!’
“The stone appeared at once. I pulled it from the vessel and found my signature as legible as when I had written it.
“Babu,3 one of my friends in the room, was wearing a heavy antique gold watch and chain. The fakir examined them with ominous admiration. Soon they were missing!
“‘Afzal, please return my prized heirloom!’ Babu was nearly in tears.
“The Mohammedan was stoically silent for awhile, then said, ‘You have five hundred rupees in an iron safe. Bring them to me, and I will tell you where to locate your timepiece.’
“The distraught Babu left immediately for his home. He came back shortly and handed Afzal the required sum.
“‘Go to the little bridge near your house,’ the fakir instructed Babu. ‘Call on Hazrat to give you the watch and chain.’
“Babu rushed away. On his return, he was wearing a smile of relief and no jewelry whatever.
“‘When I commanded Hazrat as directed,’ he announced, ‘my watch came tumbling down from the air into my right hand! You may be sure I locked the heirloom in my safe before rejoining the group here!’
“Babu’s friends, witnesses of the comicotragedy of the ransom for a watch, were staring with resentment at Afzal. He now spoke placatingly.
“‘Please name any drink you want; Hazrat will produce it.’
“A number asked for milk, others for fruit juices. I was not too much shocked when the unnerved Babu requested whisky! The Mohammedan gave an order; the obliging Hazrat sent sealed containers sailing down the air and thudding to the floor. Each man found his desired beverage.
“The promise of the fourth spectacular feat of the day was doubtless gratifying to our host: Afzal offered to supply an instantaneous lunch!
“‘Let us order the most expensive dishes,’ Babu suggested gloomily. ‘I want an elaborate meal for my five hundred rupees! Everything should be served on gold plates!’
“As soon as each man had expressed his preferences, the fakir addressed himself to the inexhaustible Hazrat. A great rattle ensued; gold platters filled with intricately-prepared curries, hot luchis, and many out-of-season fruits, landed from nowhere at our feet. All the food was delicious. After feasting for an hour, we started to leave the room. A tremendous noise, as though dishes were being piled up, caused us to turn around. Lo! there was no sign of the glittering plates or the remnants of the meal.”
“Guruji,” I interrupted, “if Afzal could easily secure such things as gold dishes, why did he covet the property of others?”
“The fakir was not highly developed spiritually,” Sri Yukteswar explained. “His mastery of a certain yoga technique gave him access to an astral plane where any desire is immediately materialized. Through the agency of an astral being, Hazrat, the Mohammedan could summon the atoms of any object from etheric energy by an act of powerful will. But such astrally-produced objects are structurally evanescent; they cannot be long retained. Afzal still yearned for worldly wealth which, though more hardly earned, has a more dependable durability.”
I laughed. “It too sometimes vanishes most unaccountably!”
“Afzal was not a man of God-realization,” Master went on. “Miracles of a permanent and beneficial nature are performed by true saints because they have attuned themselves to the omnipotent Creator. Afzal was merely an ordinary man with an extraordinary power of penetrating a subtle realm not usually entered by mortals until death.”
“I understand now, Guruji. The after-world appears to have some charming features.”
Master agreed. “I never saw Afzal after that day, but a few years later Babu came to my home to show me a newspaper account of the Mohammedan’s public confession. From it I learned the facts I have just told you about Afzal’s early initiation from a Hindu guru.”
The gist of the latter part of the published document, as recalled by Sri Yukteswar, was as follows: “I, Afzal Khan, am writing these words as an act of penance and as a warning to those who seek the possession of miraculous powers. For years I have been misusing the wondrous abilities imparted to me through the grace of God and my master. I became drunk with egotism, feeling that I was beyond the ordinary laws of morality. My day of reckoning finally arrived.
“Recently I met an old man on a road outside Calcutta. He limped along painfully, carrying a shining object which looked like gold. I addressed him with greed in my heart.
“‘I am Afzal Khan, the great fakir. What have you there?’
“‘This ball of gold is my sole material wealth; it can be of no interest to a fakir. I implore you, sir, to heal my limp.’
“I touched the ball and walked away without reply. The old man hobbled after me. He soon raised an outcry: ‘My gold is gone!’
“As I paid no attention, he suddenly spoke in a stentorian voice that issued oddly from his frail body:
“‘Do you not recognize me?’
“I stood speechless, aghast at the belated discovery that this unimpressive old cripple was none other than the great saint who, long, long ago, had initiated me into yoga. He straightened himself; his body instantly became strong and youthful.
“‘So!’ My guru’s glance was fiery. ‘I see with my own eyes that you use your powers, not to help suffering humanity, but to prey on it like a common thief! I withdraw your occult gifts; Hazrat is now freed from you. No longer shall you be a terror in Bengal!’
“I called on Hazrat in anguished tones; for the first time, he did not appear to my inner sight. But some dark veil suddenly lifted within me; I saw clearly the blasphemy of my life.
“‘My guru, I thank you for coming to banish my long delusion.’ I was sobbing at his feet. ‘I promise to forsake my worldly ambitions. I will retire to the mountains for lonely meditation on God, hoping to atone for my evil past.’
“My master regarded me with silent compassion. ‘I feel your sincerity,’ he said finally. ‘Because of your earlier years of strict obedience, and because of your present repentance, I will grant you one boon. Your other powers are now gone, but whenever food and clothing are needed, you may still call successfully on Hazrat to supply them. Devote yourself wholeheartedly to divine understanding in the mountain solitudes.’
“My guru then vanished; I was left to my tears and reflections. Farewell, world! I go to seek the forgiveness of the Cosmic Beloved.”
These remarks of Dijen Babu, my roommate at the Panthi boardinghouse, were called forth by my invitation that he meet my guru.
“Sri Yukteswarji will initiate you into Kriya Yoga,” I replied. “It calms the dualistic turmoil by a divine inner certainty.”
That evening Dijen accompanied me to the hermitage. In Master’s presence my friend received such spiritual peace that he was soon a constant visitor. The trivial preoccupations of daily life are not enough for man; wisdom too is a native hunger. In Sri Yukteswar’s words Dijen found an incentive to those attempts—first painful, then effortlessly liberating—to locate a realer self within his bosom than the humiliating ego of a temporary birth, seldom ample enough for the Spirit.
As Dijen and I were both pursuing the A.B. course at Serampore College, we got into the habit of walking together to the ashram as soon as classes were over. We would often see Sri Yukteswar standing on his second-floor balcony, welcoming our approach with a smile.
One afternoon Kanai, a young hermitage resident, met Dijen and me at the door with disappointing news.
“Master is not here; he was summoned to Calcutta by an urgent note.”
The following day I received a post card from my guru. “I shall leave Calcutta Wednesday morning,” he had written. “You and Dijen meet the nine o’clock train at Serampore station.”
About eight-thirty on Wednesday morning, a telepathic message from Sri Yukteswar flashed insistently to my mind: “I am delayed; don’t meet the nine o’clock train.”
I conveyed the latest instructions to Dijen, who was already dressed for departure.
“You and your intuition!” My friend’s voice was edged in scorn. “I prefer to trust Master’s written word.”
I shrugged my shoulders and seated myself with quiet finality. Muttering angrily, Dijen made for the door and closed it noisily behind him.
As the room was rather dark, I moved nearer to the window overlooking the street. The scant sunlight suddenly increased to an intense brilliancy in which the iron-barred window completely vanished. Against this dazzling background appeared the clearly materialized figure of Sri Yukteswar!
Bewildered to the point of shock, I rose from my chair and knelt before him. With my customary gesture of respectful greeting at my guru’s feet, I touched his shoes. These were a pair familiar to me, of orange-dyed canvas, soled with rope. His ocher swami cloth brushed against me; I distinctly felt not only the texture of his robe, but also the gritty surface of the shoes, and the pressure of his toes within them. Too much astounded to utter a word, I stood up and gazed at him questioningly.
“I was pleased that you got my telepathic message.” Master’s voice was calm, entirely normal. “I have now finished my business in Calcutta, and shall arrive in Serampore by the ten o’clock train.”
As I still stared mutely, Sri Yukteswar went on, “This is not an apparition, but my flesh and blood form. I have been divinely commanded to give you this experience, rare to achieve on earth. Meet me at the station; you and Dijen will see me coming toward you, dressed as I am now. I shall be preceded by a fellow passenger—a little boy carrying a silver jug.”
My guru placed both hands on my head, with a murmured blessing. As he concluded with the words, “Taba asi,” 1 I heard a peculiar rumbling sound.2 His body began to melt gradually within the piercing light. First his feet and legs vanished, then his torso and head, like a scroll being rolled up. To the very last, I could feel his fingers resting lightly on my hair. The effulgence faded; nothing remained before me but the barred window and a pale stream of sunlight.
I remained in a half-stupor of confusion, questioning whether I had not been the victim of a hallucination. A crestfallen Dijen soon entered the room.
“Master was not on the nine o’clock train, nor even the nine-thirty.” My friend made his announcement with a slightly apologetic air.
“Come then; I know he will arrive at ten o’clock.” I took Dijen’s hand and rushed him forcibly along with me, heedless of his protests. In about ten minutes we entered the station, where the train was already puffing to a halt.
“The whole train is filled with the light of Master’s aura! He is there!” I exclaimed joyfully.
“You dream so?” Dijen laughed mockingly.
“Let us wait here.” I told my friend details of the way in which our guru would approach us. As I finished my description, Sri Yukteswar came into view, wearing the same clothes I had seen a short time earlier. He walked slowly in the wake of a small lad bearing a silver jug.
For a moment a wave of cold fear passed through me, at the unprecedented strangeness of my experience. I felt the materialistic, twentieth-century world slipping from me; was I back in the ancient days when Jesus appeared before Peter on the sea?
As Sri Yukteswar, a modern Yogi-Christ, reached the spot where Dijen and I were speechlessly rooted, Master smiled at my friend and remarked:
“I sent you a message too, but you were unable to grasp it.”
Dijen was silent, but glared at me suspiciously. After we had escorted our guru to his hermitage, my friend and I proceeded toward Serampore College. Dijen halted in the street, indignation streaming from his every pore.
“So! Master sent me a message! Yet you concealed it! I demand an explanation!”
“Can I help it if your mental mirror oscillates with such restlessness that you cannot register our guru’s instructions?” I retorted.
The anger vanished from Dijen’s face. “I see what you mean,” he said ruefully. “But please explain how you could know about the child with the jug.”
By the time I had finished the story of Master’s phenomenal appearance at the boardinghouse that morning, my friend and I had reached Serampore College.
“The account I have just heard of our guru’s powers,” Dijen said, “makes me feel that any university in the world is only a kindergarten.”
As I had expected, Father laughed heartily. “This is the third time you have given me the same cock-and-bull story. Didn’t you make a similar request last summer, and the year before that? At the last moment, Sri Yukteswarji refuses to go.”
“It is true, Father; I don’t know why my guru will not give me his definite word about Kashmir.1 But if I tell him that I have already secured the passes from you, somehow I think that this time he will consent to make the journey.”
Father was unconvinced at the moment, but the following day, after some good-humored gibes, he handed me six passes and a roll of ten-rupee bills.
“I hardly think your theoretical trip needs such practical props,” he remarked, “but here they are.”
That afternoon I exhibited my booty to Sri Yukteswar. Though he smiled at my enthusiasm, his words were noncommittal: “I would like to go; we shall see.” He made no comment when I asked his little hermitage disciple, Kanai, to accompany us. I also invited three other friends—Rajendra Nath Mitra, Jotin Auddy, and one other boy. Our date of departure was set for the following Monday.
On Saturday and Sunday I stayed in Calcutta, where marriage rites for a cousin were being celebrated at my family home. I arrived in Serampore with my luggage early Monday morning. Rajendra met me at the hermitage door.
“Master is out, walking. He has refused to go.”
I was equally grieved and obdurate. “I will not give Father a third chance to ridicule my chimerical plans for Kashmir. Come; the rest of us will go anyhow.”
Rajendra agreed; I left the ashram to find a servant. Kanai, I knew, would not take the trip without Master, and someone was needed to look after the luggage. I bethought myself of Behari, previously a servant in my family home, who was now employed by a Serampore schoolmaster. As I walked along briskly, I met my guru in front of the Christian church near Serampore Courthouse.
“Where are you going?” Sri Yukteswar’s face was unsmiling.
“Sir, I hear that you and Kanai will not take the trip we have been planning. I am seeking Behari. You will recall that last year he was so anxious to see Kashmir that he even offered to serve without pay.”
“I remember. Nevertheless, I don’t think Behari will be willing to go.”
I was exasperated. “He is just eagerly waiting for this opportunity!”
My guru silently resumed his walk; I soon reached the schoolmaster’s house. Behari, in the courtyard, greeted me with a friendly warmth that abruptly vanished as soon as I mentioned Kashmir. With a murmured word of apology, the servant left me and entered his employer’s house. I waited half an hour, nervously assuring myself that Behari’s delay was being caused by preparations for his trip. Finally I knocked at the front door.
“Behari left by the back stairs about thirty minutes ago,” a man informed me. A slight smile hovered about his lips.
I departed sadly, wondering whether my invitation had been too coercive or whether Master’s unseen influence were at work. Passing the Christian church, again I saw my guru walking slowly toward me. Without waiting to hear my report, he exclaimed:
“So Behari would not go! Now, what are your plans?”
I felt like a recalcitrant child who is determined to defy his masterful father. “Sir, I am going to ask my uncle to lend me his servant, Lal Dhari.”
“See your uncle if you want to,” Sri Yukteswar replied with a chuckle. “But I hardly think you will enjoy the visit.”
Apprehensive but rebellious, I left my guru and entered Serampore Courthouse. My paternal uncle, Sarada Ghosh, a government attorney, welcomed me affectionately.
“I am leaving today with some friends for Kashmir,” I told him. “For years I have been looking forward to this Himalayan trip.”
“I am happy for you, Mukunda. Is there anything I can do to make your journey more comfortable?”
These kind words gave me a lift of encouragement. “Dear uncle,” I said, “could you possibly spare me your servant, Lal Dhari?”
My simple request had the effect of an earthquake. Uncle jumped so violently that his chair overturned, the papers on the desk flew in every direction, and his pipe, a long, coconut-stemmed hubble-bubble, fell to the floor with a great clatter.
“You selfish young man,” he shouted, quivering with wrath, “what a preposterous idea! Who will look after me, if you take my servant on one of your pleasure jaunts?”
I concealed my surprise, reflecting that my amiable uncle’s sudden change of front was only one more enigma in a day fully devoted to incomprehensibility. My retreat from the courthouse office was more alacritous than dignified.
I returned to the hermitage, where my friends were expectantly gathered. Conviction was growing on me that some sufficient if exceedingly recondite motive was behind Master’s attitude. Remorse seized me that I had been trying to thwart my guru’s will.
“Mukunda, wouldn’t you like to stay awhile longer with me?” Sri Yukteswar inquired. “Rajendra and the others can go ahead now, and wait for you at Calcutta. There will be plenty of time to catch the last evening train leaving Calcutta for Kashmir.”
“Sir, I don’t care to go without you,” I said mournfully.
My friends paid not the slightest attention to my remark. They summoned a hackney carriage and departed with all the luggage. Kanai and I sat quietly at our guru’s feet. After a half hour of complete silence, Master rose and walked toward the second-floor dining patio.
“Kanai, please serve Mukunda’s food. His train leaves soon.”
Getting up from my blanket seat, I staggered suddenly with nausea and a ghastly churning sensation in my stomach. The stabbing pain was so intense that I felt I had been abruptly hurled into some violent hell. Groping blindly toward my guru, I collapsed before him, attacked by all symptoms of the dread Asiatic cholera. Sri Yukteswar and Kanai carried me to the sitting room.
Racked with agony, I cried, “Master, I surrender my life to you;” for I believed it was indeed fast ebbing from the shores of my body.
Sri Yukteswar put my head on his lap, stroking my forehead with angelic tenderness.
“You see now what would have happened if you were at the station with your friends,” he said. “I had to look after you in this strange way, because you chose to doubt my judgment about taking the trip at this particular time.”
I understood at last. Inasmuch as great masters seldom see fit to display their powers openly, a casual observer of the day’s events would have imagined that their sequence was quite natural. My guru’s intervention had been too subtle to be suspected. He had worked his will through Behari and my Uncle Sarada and Rajendra and the others in such an inconspicuous manner that probably everyone but myself thought the situations had been logically normal.
As Sri Yukteswar never failed to observe his social obligations, he instructed Kanai to go for a specialist, and to notify my uncle.
“Master,” I protested, “only you can heal me. I am too far gone for any doctor.”
“Child, you are protected by the Divine Mercy. Don’t worry about the doctor; he will not find you in this state. You are already healed.”
With my guru’s words, the excruciating suffering left me. I sat up feebly. A doctor soon arrived and examined me carefully.
“You appear to have passed through the worst,” he said. “I will take some specimens with me for laboratory tests.”
The following morning the physician arrived hurriedly. I was sitting up, in good spirits.
“Well, well, here you are, smiling and chatting as though you had had no close call with death.” He patted my hand gently. “I hardly expected to find you alive, after I had discovered from the specimens that your disease was Asiatic cholera. You are fortunate, young man, to have a guru with divine healing powers! I am convinced of it!”
I agreed wholeheartedly. As the doctor was preparing to leave, Rajendra and Auddy appeared at the door. The resentment in their faces changed into sympathy as they glanced at the physician and then at my somewhat wan countenance.
“We were angry when you didn’t turn up as agreed at the Calcutta train. You have been sick?”
“Yes.” I could not help laughing as my friends placed the luggage in the same corner it had occupied yesterday. I quoted: “There was a ship that went to Spain; when it arrived, it came back again!”
Master entered the room. I permitted myself a convalescent’s liberty, and captured his hand lovingly.
“Guruji,” I said, “from my twelfth year on, I have made many unsuccessful attempts to reach the Himalayas. I am finally convinced that without your blessings the Goddess Parvati 2 will not receive me!”
That evening our party of six entrained for the north. Our first leisurely stop was at Simla, a queenly city resting on the throne of Himalayan hills. We strolled over the steep streets, admiring the magnificent views.
“English strawberries for sale,” cried an old woman, squatting in a picturesque open market place.
Master was curious about the strange little red fruits. He bought a basketful and offered it to Kanai and myself, who were near-by. I tasted one berry but spat it hastily on the ground.
“Sir, what a sour fruit! I could never like strawberries!”
My guru laughed. “Oh, you will like them—in America. At a dinner there, your hostess will serve them with sugar and cream. After she has mashed the berries with a fork, you will taste them and say: ‘What delicious strawberries!’ Then you will remember this day in Simla.”
Sri Yukteswar’s forecast vanished from my mind, but reappeared there many years later, shortly after my arrival in America. I was a dinner guest at the home of Mrs. Alice T. Hasey (Sister Yogmata) in West Somerville, Massachusetts. When a dessert of strawberries was put on the table, my hostess picked up her fork and mashed my berries, adding cream and sugar. “The fruit is rather tart; I think you will like it fixed this way,” she remarked.
I took a mouthful. “What delicious strawberries!” I exclaimed. At once my guru’s prediction in Simla emerged from the fathomless cave of memory. It was staggering to realize that long ago Sri Yukteswar’s God-tuned mind had sensitively detected the program of karmic events wandering in the ether of futurity.
Our party soon left Simla and entrained for Rawalpindi. There we hired a large landau, drawn by two horses, in which we started a seven-day trip to Srinagar, capital city of Kashmir. The second day of our northbound journey brought into view the true Himalayan vastness. As the iron wheels of our carriage creaked along the hot, stony roads, we were enraptured with changing vistas of mountainous grandeur.
“Sir,” Auddy said to Master, “I am greatly enjoying these glorious scenes in your holy company.”
I felt a throb of pleasure at Auddy’s appreciation, for I was acting as host on this trip. Sri Yukteswar caught my thought; he turned to me and whispered:
“Don’t flatter yourself; Auddy is not nearly as entranced with the scenery as he is with the prospect of leaving us long enough to have a cigaret.”
I was shocked. “Sir,” I said in an undertone, “please do not break our harmony by these unpleasant words. I can hardly believe that Auddy is hankering for a smoke.” 1 I looked apprehensively at my usually irrepressible guru.
“Very well; I won’t say anything to Auddy.” Master chuckled. “But you will soon see, when the landau halts, that Auddy is quick to seize his opportunity.”
The carriage arrived at a small caravanserai. As our horses were led to be watered, Auddy inquired, “Sir, do you mind if I ride awhile with the driver? I would like to get a little outside air.”
Sri Yukteswar gave permission, but remarked to me, “He wants fresh smoke and not fresh air.”
The landau resumed its noisy progress over the dusty roads. Master’s eyes were twinkling; he instructed me, “Crane up your neck through the carriage door and see what Auddy is doing with the air.”
I obeyed, and was astounded to observe Auddy in the act of exhaling rings of cigaret smoke. My glance toward Sri Yukteswar was apologetic.
“You are right, as always, sir. Auddy is enjoying a puff along with a panorama.” I surmised that my friend had received a gift from the cab driver; I knew Auddy had not carried any cigarets from Calcutta.
We continued on the labyrinthine way, adorned by views of rivers, valleys, precipitous crags, and multitudinous mountain tiers. Every night we stopped at rustic inns, and prepared our own food. Sri Yukteswar took special care of my diet, insisting that I have lime juice at all meals. I was still weak, but daily improving, though the rattling carriage was strictly designed for discomfort.
Joyous anticipations filled our hearts as we neared central Kashmir, paradise land of lotus lakes, floating gardens, gaily canopied houseboats, the many-bridged Jhelum River, and flower-strewn pastures, all ringed round by the Himalayan majesty. Our approach to Srinagar was through an avenue of tall, welcoming trees. We engaged rooms at a double-storied inn overlooking the noble hills. No running water was available; we drew our supply from a near-by well. The summer weather was ideal, with warm days and slightly cold nights.
We made a pilgrimage to the ancient Srinagar temple of Swami Shankara. As I gazed upon the mountain-peak hermitage, standing bold against the sky, I fell into an ecstatic trance. A vision appeared of a hilltop mansion in a distant land. The lofty Shankara ashram before me was transformed into the structure where, years later, I established the Self-Realization Fellowship headquarters in America. When I first visited Los Angeles, and saw the large building on the crest of Mount Washington, I recognized it at once from my long-past visions in Kashmir and elsewhere.
A few days at Srinagar; then on to Gulmarg (“mountain paths of flowers”), elevated by six thousand feet. There I had my first ride on a large horse. Rajendra mounted a small trotter, whose heart was fired with ambition for speed. We ventured onto the very steep Khilanmarg; the path led through a dense forest, abounding in tree-mushrooms, where the mist-shrouded trails were often precarious. But Rajendra’s little animal never permitted my oversized steed a moment’s rest, even at the most perilous turns. On, on, untiringly came Rajendra’s horse, oblivious to all but the joy of competition.
Our strenuous race was rewarded by a breath-taking view. For the first time in this life, I gazed in all directions at sublime snow-capped Himalayas, lying tier upon tier like silhouettes of huge polar bears. My eyes feasted exultingly on endless reaches of icy mountains against sunny blue skies.
I rolled merrily with my young companions, all wearing overcoats, on the sparkling white slopes. On our downward trip we saw afar a vast carpet of yellow flowers, wholly transfiguring the bleak hills.
Our next excursions were to the famous royal “pleasure gardens” of the Emperor Jehangir, at Shalimar and Nishat Bagh. The ancient palace at Nishat Bagh is built directly over a natural waterfall. Rushing down from the mountains, the torrent has been regulated through ingenious contrivances to flow over colorful terraces and to gush into fountains amidst the dazzling flower-beds. The stream also enters several of the palace rooms, ultimately dropping fairy like into the lake below. The immense gardens are riotous with color roses of a dozen hues, snapdragons, lavender, pansies, poppies. An emerald enclosing outline is given by symmetrical rows of chinars,2 cypresses, cherry trees; beyond them tower the white austerities of the Himalayas.
Kashmir grapes are considered a rare delicacy in Calcutta. Rajendra, who had been promising himself a veritable feast on reaching Kashmir, was disappointed to find there no large vineyards. Now and then I chaffed him jocosely over his baseless anticipation.
“Oh, I have become so much gorged with grapes I can’t walk!” I would say. “The invisible grapes are brewing within me!” Later I heard that sweet grapes grow abundantly in Kabul, west of Kashmir. We consoled ourselves with ice cream made of rabri, a heavily condensed milk, and flavored with whole pistachio nuts.
We took several trips in the shikaras or houseboats, shaded by red-embroidered canopies, coursing along the intricate channels of Dal Lake, a network of canals like a watery spider web. Here the numerous floating gardens, crudely improvised with logs and earth, strike one with amazement, so incongruous is the first sight of vegetables and melons growing in the midst of vast waters. Occasionally one sees a peasant, disdaining to be “rooted to the soil,” towing his square plot of “land” to a new location in the many-fingered lake.
In this storied vale one finds an epitome of all the earth’s beauties. The Lady of Kashmir is mountain-crowned, lake-garlanded, and flower-shod. In later years, after I had toured many distant lands, I understood why Kashmir is often called the world’s most scenic spot. It possesses some of the charms of the Swiss Alps, and of Loch Lomond in Scotland, and of the exquisite English lakes. An American traveler in Kashmir finds much to remind him of the rugged grandeur of Alaska and of Pikes Peak near Denver.
As entries in a scenic beauty contest, I offer for first prize either the gorgeous view of Xochimilco in Mexico, where mountains, skies, and poplars reflect themselves in myriad lanes of water amidst the playful fish, or the jewel-like lakes of Kashmir, guarded like beautiful maidens by the stern surveillance of the Himalayas. These two places stand out in my memory as the loveliest spots on earth.
Yet I was awed also when I first beheld the wonders of Yellowstone National Park and of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and of Alaska. Yellowstone Park is perhaps the only region where one can see innumerable geysers shooting high into the air, performing year after year with clockwork regularity. Its opal and sapphire pools and hot sulphurous springs, its bears and wild creatures, remind one that here Nature left a specimen of her earliest creation. Motoring along the roads of Wyoming to the “Devil’s Paint Pot” of hot bubbling mud, with gurgling springs, vaporous fountains, and spouting geysers in all directions, I was disposed to say that Yellowstone deserves a special prize for uniqueness.
The ancient majestic redwoods of Yosemite, stretching their huge columns far into the unfathomable sky, are green natural cathedrals designed with skill divine. Though there are wonderful falls in the Orient, none match the torrential beauty of Niagara near the Canadian border. The Mammoth Caves of Kentucky and the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, with colorful iciclelike formations, are stunning fairylands. Their long needles of stalactite spires, hanging from cave ceilings and mirrored in underground waters, present a glimpse of other worlds as fancied by man.
Most of the Hindus of Kashmir, world-famed for their beauty, are as white as Europeans and have similar features and bone structure; many have blue eyes and blonde hair. Dressed in Western clothes, they look like Americans. The cold Himalayas protect the Kashmiris from the sultry sun and preserve their light complexions. As one travels to the southern and tropical latitudes of India, he finds progressively that the people become darker and darker.
After spending happy weeks in Kashmir, I was forced to return to Bengal for the fall term of Serampore College. Sri Yukteswar remained in Srinagar, with Kanai and Auddy. Before I departed, Master hinted that his body would be subject to suffering in Kashmir.
“Sir, you look a picture of health,” I protested.
“There is a chance that I may even leave this earth.”
“Guruji!” I fell at his feet with an imploring gesture. “Please promise that you won’t leave your body now. I am utterly unprepared to carry on without you.”
Sri Yukteswar was silent, but smiled at me so compassionately that I felt reassured. Reluctantly I left him.
“Master dangerously ill.” This telegram from Auddy reached me shortly after my return to Serampore.
“Sir,” I wired my guru frantically, “I asked for your promise not to leave me. Please keep your body; otherwise, I also shall die.”
“Be it as you wish.” This was Sri Yukteswar’s reply from Kashmir.
A letter from Auddy arrived in a few days, informing me that Master had recovered. On his return to Serampore during the next fortnight, I was grieved to find my guru’s body reduced to half its usual weight.
Fortunately for his disciples, Sri Yukteswar burned many of their sins in the fire of his severe fever in Kashmir. The metaphysical method of physical transfer of disease is known to highly advanced yogis. A strong man can assist a weaker one by helping to carry his heavy load; a spiritual superman is able to minimize his disciples’ physical or mental burdens by sharing the karma of their past actions. Just as a rich man loses some money when he pays off a large debt for his prodigal son, who is thus saved from dire consequences of his own folly, so a master willingly sacrifices a portion of his bodily wealth to lighten the misery of disciples.3
By a secret method, the yogi unites his mind and astral vehicle with those of a suffering individual; the disease is conveyed, wholly or in part, to the saint’s body. Having harvested God on the physical field, a master no longer cares what happens to that material form. Though he may allow it to register a certain disease in order to relieve others, his mind is never affected; he considers himself fortunate in being able to render such aid.
The devotee who has achieved final salvation in the Lord finds that his body has completely fulfilled its purpose; he can then use it in any way he deems fit. His work in the world is to alleviate the sorrows of mankind, whether through spiritual means or by intellectual counsel or through will power or by the physical transfer of disease. Escaping to the superconsciousness whenever he so desires, a master can remain oblivious of physical suffering; sometimes he chooses to bear bodily pain stoically, as an example to disciples. By putting on the ailments of others, a yogi can satisfy, for them, the karmic law of cause and effect. This law is mechanically or mathematically operative; its workings can be scientifically manipulated by men of divine wisdom.
The spiritual law does not require a master to become ill whenever he heals another person. Healings ordinarily take place through the saint’s knowledge of various methods of instantaneous cure in which no hurt to the spiritual healer is involved. On rare occasions, however, a master who wishes to greatly quicken his disciples’ evolution may then voluntarily work out on his own body a large measure of their undesirable karma.
Jesus signified himself as a ransom for the sins of many. With his divine powers,4 his body could never have been subjected to death by crucifixion if he had not willingly cooperated with the subtle cosmic law of cause and effect. He thus took on himself the consequences of others’ karma, especially that of his disciples. In this manner they were highly purified and made fit to receive the omnipresent consciousness which later descended on them.
Only a self-realized master can transfer his life force, or convey into his own body the diseases of others. An ordinary man cannot employ this yogic method of cure, nor is it desirable that he should do so; for an unsound physical instrument is a hindrance to God-meditation. The Hindu scriptures teach that the first duty of man is to keep his body in good condition; otherwise his mind is unable to remain fixed in devotional concentration.
A very strong mind, however, can transcend all physical difficulties and attain to God-realization. Many saints have ignored illness and succeeded in their divine quest. St. Francis of Assisi, severely afflicted with ailments, healed others and even raised the dead.
I knew an Indian saint, half of whose body was once festering with sores. His diabetic condition was so acute that under ordinary conditions he could not sit still at one time for more than fifteen minutes. But his spiritual aspiration was undeterrable. “Lord,” he prayed, “wilt Thou come into my broken temple?” With ceaseless command of will, the saint gradually became able to sit daily in the lotus posture for eighteen continuous hours, engrossed in the ecstatic trance.
“And,” he told me, “at the end of three years, I found the Infinite Light blazing within my shattered form. Rejoicing in the joyful splendour, I forgot the body. Later I saw that it had become whole through the Divine Mercy.”
A historical healing incident concerns King Baber (1483-1530), founder of the Mogul empire in India. His son, Prince Humayun, was mortally ill. The father prayed with anguished determination that he receive the sickness, and that his son be spared. After all physicians had given up hope, Humayun recovered. Baber immediately fell sick and died of the same disease which had stricken his son. Humayun succeeded Baber as Emperor of Hindustan.
Many people imagine that every spiritual master has, or should have, the health and strength of a Sandow. The assumption is unfounded. A sickly body does not indicate that a guru is not in touch with divine powers, any more than lifelong health necessarily indicates an inner illumination. The condition of the physical body, in other words, cannot rightfully be made a test of a master. His distinguishing qualifications must be sought in his own domain, the spiritual.
Numerous bewildered seekers in the West erroneously think that an eloquent speaker or writer on metaphysics must be a master. The rishis, however, have pointed out that the acid test of a master is a man’s ability to enter at will the breathless state, and to maintain the unbroken samadhi of nirbikalpa.5 Only by these achievements can a human being prove that he has “mastered” maya or the dualistic Cosmic Delusion. He alone can say from the depths of realization: “Ekam sat,”—“Only One exists.”
When I ventured a few words of sympathy over his emaciated figure, my guru said gaily:
“It has its good points; I am able now to get into some small ganjis (undershirts) that I haven’t worn in years!”
Listening to Master’s jovial laugh, I remembered the words of St. Francis de Sales: “A saint that is sad is a sad saint!”
My eldest sister Roma gazed beseechingly at me. I was paying a
short visit at her Calcutta home on Girish Vidyaratna Lane. Her plea
touched me, for she had exercised a profound spiritual influence over my
early life, and had lovingly tried to fill the void left in the family
circle by Mother’s death.
“Beloved sister, of course I will do anything I can.” I smiled, eager to lift the gloom plainly visible on her face, in contrast to her usual calm and cheerful expression.
Roma and I sat awhile in silent prayer for guidance. A year earlier, my sister had asked me to initiate her into Kriya Yoga, in which she was making notable progress.
An inspiration seized me. “Tomorrow,” I said, “I am going to the Dakshineswar temple. Please come with me, and persuade your husband to accompany us. I feel that in the vibrations of that holy place, Divine Mother will touch his heart. But don’t disclose our object in wanting him to go.”
Sister agreed hopefully. Very early the next morning I was pleased to find that Roma and her husband were in readiness for the trip. As our hackney carriage rattled along Upper Circular Road toward Dakshineswar, my brother-in-law, Satish Chandra Bose, amused himself by deriding spiritual gurus of the past, present, and future. I noticed that Roma was quietly weeping.
“Sister, cheer up!” I whispered. “Don’t give your husband the satisfaction of believing that we take his mockery seriously.”
“Mukunda, how can you admire worthless humbugs?” Satish was saying. “A sadhu’s very appearance is repulsive. He is either as thin as a skeleton, or as unholily fat as an elephant!”
I shouted with laughter. My good-natured reaction was annoying to Satish; he retired into sullen silence. As our cab entered the Dakshineswar grounds, he grinned sarcastically.
“This excursion, I suppose, is a scheme to reform me?”
As I turned away without reply, he caught my arm. “Young Mr. Monk,” he said, “don’t forget to make proper arrangements with the temple authorities to provide for our noon meal.”
“I am going to meditate now. Do not worry about your lunch,” I replied sharply. “Divine Mother will look after it.”
“I don’t trust Divine Mother to do a single thing for me. But I do hold you responsible for my food.” Satish’s tones were threatening.
I proceeded alone to the colonnaded hall which fronts the large temple of Kali, or Mother Nature. Selecting a shady spot near one of the pillars, I arranged my body in the lotus posture. Although it was only about seven o’clock, the morning sun would soon be oppressive.
The world receded as I became devotionally entranced. My mind was concentrated on Goddess Kali, whose image at Dakshineswar had been the special object of adoration by the great master, Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa. In answer to his anguished demands, the stone image of this very temple had often taken a living form and conversed with him.
“Silent Mother with stony heart,” I prayed, “Thou becamest filled with life at the request of Thy beloved devotee Ramakrishna; why dost Thou not also heed the wails of this yearning son of Thine?”
My aspiring zeal increased boundlessly, accompanied by a divine peace. Yet, when five hours had passed, and the Goddess whom I was inwardly visualizing had made no response, I felt slightly disheartened. Sometimes it is a test by God to delay the fulfillment of prayers. But He eventually appears to the persistent devotee in whatever form he holds dear. A devout Christian sees Jesus; a Hindu beholds Krishna, or the Goddess Kali, or an expanding Light if his worship takes an impersonal turn.
Reluctantly I opened my eyes, and saw that the temple doors were being locked by a priest, in conformance with a noon-hour custom. I rose from my secluded seat under the open, roofed hall, and stepped into the courtyard. Its stone floor was scorching under the midday sun; my bare feet were painfully burned.
“Divine Mother,” I silently remonstrated, “Thou didst not come to me in vision, and now Thou art hidden in the temple behind closed doors. I wanted to offer a special prayer to Thee today on behalf of my brother-in-law.”
My inward petition was instantly acknowledged. First, a delightful cold wave descended over my back and under my feet, banishing all discomfort. Then, to my amazement, the temple became greatly magnified. Its large door slowly opened, revealing the stone figure of Goddess Kali. Gradually it changed into a living form, smilingly nodding in greeting, thrilling me with joy indescribable. As if by a mystic syringe, the breath was withdrawn from my lungs; my body became very still, though not inert.
An ecstatic enlargement of consciousness followed. I could see clearly for several miles over the Ganges River to my left, and beyond the temple into the entire Dakshineswar precincts. The walls of all buildings glimmered transparently; through them I observed people walking to and fro over distant acres.
Though I was breathless and my body in a strangely quiet state, yet I was able to move my hands and feet freely. For several minutes I experimented in closing and opening my eyes; in either state I saw distinctly the whole Dakshineswar panorama.
Spiritual sight, x-raylike, penetrates into all matter; the divine eye is center everywhere, circumference nowhere. I realized anew, standing there in the sunny courtyard, that when man ceases to be a prodigal child of God, engrossed in a physical world indeed dream, baseless as a bubble, he reinherits his eternal realms. If “escapism” be a need of man, cramped in his narrow personality, can any escape compare with the majesty of omnipresence?
In my sacred experience at Dakshineswar, the only extraordinarily-enlarged objects were the temple and the form of the Goddess. Everything else appeared in its normal dimensions, although each was enclosed in a halo of mellow light—white, blue, and pastel rainbow hues. My body seemed to be of ethereal substance, ready to levitate. Fully conscious of my material surroundings, I was looking about me and taking a few steps without disturbing the continuity of the blissful vision.
Behind the temple walls I suddenly glimpsed my brother-in-law as he sat under the thorny branches of a sacred bel tree. I could effortlessly discern the course of his thoughts. Somewhat uplifted under the holy influence of Dakshineswar, his mind yet held unkind reflections about me. I turned directly to the gracious form of the Goddess.
“Divine Mother,” I prayed, “wilt Thou not spiritually change my sister’s husband?”
The beautiful figure, hitherto silent, spoke at last: “Thy wish is granted!”
I looked happily at Satish. As though instinctively aware that some spiritual power was at work, he rose resentfully from his seat on the ground. I saw him running behind the temple; he approached me, shaking his fist.
The all-embracing vision disappeared. No longer could I see the glorious Goddess; the towering temple was reduced to its ordinary size, minus its transparency. Again my body sweltered under the fierce rays of the sun. I jumped to the shelter of the pillared hall, where Satish pursued me angrily. I looked at my watch. It was one o’clock; the divine vision had lasted an hour.
“You little fool,” my brother-in-law blurted out, “you have been sitting there cross-legged and cross-eyed for six hours. I have gone back and forth watching you. Where is my food? Now the temple is closed; you failed to notify the authorities; we are left without lunch!”
The exaltation I had felt at the Goddess’ presence was still vibrant within my heart. I was emboldened to exclaim, “Divine Mother will feed us!”
Satish was beside himself with rage. “Once and for all,” he shouted, “I would like to see your Divine Mother giving us food here without prior arrangements!”
His words were hardly uttered when a temple priest crossed the courtyard and joined us.
“Son,” he addressed me, “I have been observing your face serenely glowing during hours of meditation. I saw the arrival of your party this morning, and felt a desire to put aside ample food for your lunch. It is against the temple rules to feed those who do not make a request beforehand, but I have made an exception for you.”
I thanked him, and gazed straight into Satish’s eyes. He flushed with emotion, lowering his gaze in silent repentance. When we were served a lavish meal, including out-of-season mangoes, I noticed that my brother-in-law’s appetite was meager. He was bewildered, diving deep into the ocean of thought. On the return journey to Calcutta, Satish, with softened expression, occasionally glanced at me pleadingly. But he did not speak a single word after the moment the priest had appeared to invite us to lunch, as though in direct answer to Satish’s challenge.
The following afternoon I visited my sister at her home. She greeted me affectionately.
“Dear brother,” she cried, “what a miracle! Last evening my husband wept openly before me.
“‘Beloved devi,’ 1 he said, ‘I am happy beyond expression that this reforming scheme of your brother’s has wrought a transformation. I am going to undo every wrong I have done you. From tonight we will use our large bedroom only as a place of worship; your small meditation room shall be changed into our sleeping quarters. I am sincerely sorry that I have ridiculed your brother. For the shameful way I have been acting, I will punish myself by not talking to Mukunda until I have progressed in the spiritual path. Deeply I will seek the Divine Mother from now on; someday I must surely find Her!’”
Years later, I visited my brother-in-law in Delhi. I was overjoyed to perceive that he had developed highly in self-realization, and had been blessed by the vision of Divine Mother. During my stay with him, I noticed that Satish secretly spent the greater part of every night in divine meditation, though he was suffering from a serious ailment, and was engaged during the day at his office.
The thought came to me that my brother-in-law’s life span would not be a long one. Roma must have read my mind.
“Dear brother,” she said, “I am well, and my husband is sick. Nevertheless, I want you to know that, as a devoted Hindu wife, I am going to be the first one to die.2 It won’t be long now before I pass on.”
Taken aback at her ominous words, I yet realized their sting of truth. I was in America when my sister died, about a year after her prediction. My youngest brother Bishnu later gave me the details.
“Roma and Satish were in Calcutta at the time of her death,” Bishnu told me. “That morning she dressed herself in her bridal finery.
“‘Why this special costume?’ Satish inquired.
“‘This is my last day of service to you on earth,’ Roma replied. A short time later she had a heart attack. As her son was rushing out for aid, she said:
“‘Son, do not leave me. It is no use; I shall be gone before a doctor could arrive.’ Ten minutes later, holding the feet of her husband in reverence, Roma consciously left her body, happily and without suffering.
“Satish became very reclusive after his wife’s death,” Bishnu continued. “One day he and I were looking at a large smiling photograph of Roma.
“‘Why do you smile?’ Satish suddenly exclaimed, as though his wife were present. ‘You think you were clever in arranging to go before me. I shall prove that you cannot long remain away from me; soon I shall join you.’
“Although at this time Satish had fully recovered from his sickness, and was enjoying excellent health, he died without apparent cause shortly after his strange remark before the photograph.”
Thus prophetically passed my dearly beloved eldest sister Roma, and her husband Satish—he who changed at Dakshineswar from an ordinary worldly man to a silent saint.
Professor D. C. Ghoshal of Serampore College was addressing me sternly. If I failed to pass his final written classroom test, I would be ineligible to take the conclusive examinations. These are formulated by the faculty of Calcutta University, which numbers Serampore College among its affiliated branches. A student in Indian universities who is unsuccessful in one subject in the A.B. finals must be examined anew in all his subjects the following year.
My instructors at Serampore College usually treated me with kindness, not untinged by an amused tolerance. “Mukunda is a bit over-drunk with religion.” Thus summing me up, they tactfully spared me the embarrassment of answering classroom questions; they trusted the final written tests to eliminate me from the list of A.B. candidates. The judgment passed by my fellow students was expressed in their nickname for me—“Mad Monk.”
I took an ingenious step to nullify Professor Ghoshal’s threat to me of failure in philosophy. When the results of the final tests were about to be publicly announced, I asked a classmate to accompany me to the professor’s study.
“Come along; I want a witness,” I told my companion. “I shall be very much disappointed if I have not succeeded in outwitting the instructor.”
Professor Ghoshal shook his head after I had inquired what rating he had given my paper.
“You are not among those who have passed,” he said in triumph. He hunted through a large pile on his desk. “Your paper isn’t here at all; you have failed, in any case, through non-appearance at the examination.”
I chuckled. “Sir, I was there. May I look through the stack myself?”
The professor, nonplused, gave his permission; I quickly found my paper, where I had carefully omitted any identification mark except my roll call number. Unwarned by the “red flag” of my name, the instructor had given a high rating to my answers even though they were unembellished by textbook quotations.1
Seeing through my trick, he now thundered, “Sheer brazen luck!” He added hopefully, “You are sure to fail in the A.B. finals.”
For the tests in my other subjects, I received some coaching, particularly from my dear friend and cousin, Prabhas Chandra Ghose,2 son of my Uncle Sarada. I staggered painfully but successfully—with the lowest possible passing marks—through all my final tests.
Now, after four years of college, I was eligible to sit for the A.B. examinations. Nevertheless, I hardly expected to avail myself of the privilege. The Serampore College finals were child’s play compared to the stiff ones which would be set by Calcutta University for the A.B. degree. My almost daily visits to Sri Yukteswar had left me little time to enter the college halls. There it was my presence rather than my absence that brought forth ejaculations of amazement from my classmates!
My customary routine was to set out on my bicycle about nine-thirty in the morning. In one hand I would carry an offering for my guru—a few flowers from the garden of my Panthi boardinghouse. Greeting me affably, Master would invite me to lunch. I invariably accepted with alacrity, glad to banish the thought of college for the day. After hours with Sri Yukteswar, listening to his incomparable flow of wisdom, or helping with ashram duties, I would reluctantly depart around midnight for the Panthi. Occasionally I stayed all night with my guru, so happily engrossed in his conversation that I scarcely noticed when darkness changed into dawn.
One night about eleven o’clock, as I was putting on my shoes 3 in preparation for the ride to the boardinghouse, Master questioned me gravely.
“When do your A.B. examinations start?”
“Five days hence, sir.”
“I hope you are in readiness for them.”
Transfixed with alarm, I held one shoe in the air. “Sir,” I protested, “you know how my days have been passed with you rather than with the professors. How can I enact a farce by appearing for those difficult finals?”
Sri Yukteswar’s eyes were turned piercingly on mine. “You must appear.” His tone was coldly peremptory. “We should not give cause for your father and other relatives to criticize your preference for ashram life. Just promise me that you will be present for the examinations; answer them the best way you can.”
Uncontrollable tears were coursing down my face. I felt that Master’s command was unreasonable, and that his interest was, to say the least, belated.
“I will appear if you wish it,” I said amidst sobs. “But no time remains for proper preparation.” Under my breath I muttered, “I will fill up the sheets with your teachings in answer to the questions!”
When I entered the hermitage the following day at my usual hour, I presented my bouquet with a certain mournful solemnity. Sri Yukteswar laughed at my woebegone air.
“Mukunda, has the Lord ever failed you, at an examination or elsewhere?”
“No, sir,” I responded warmly. Grateful memories came in a revivifying flood.
“Not laziness but burning zeal for God has prevented you from seeking college honors,” my guru said kindly. After a silence, he quoted, “‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.’” 4
For the thousandth time, I felt my burdens lifted in Master’s presence. When we had finished our early lunch, he suggested that I return to the Panthi.
“Does your friend, Romesh Chandra Dutt, still live in your boardinghouse?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get in touch with him; the Lord will inspire him to help you with the examinations.”
“Very well, sir; but Romesh is unusually busy. He is the honor man in our class, and carries a heavier course than the others.”
Master waved aside my objections. “Romesh will find time for you. Now go.”
I bicycled back to the Panthi. The first person I met in the boardinghouse compound was the scholarly Romesh. As though his days were quite free, he obligingly agreed to my diffident request.
“Of course; I am at your service.” He spent several hours of that afternoon and of succeeding days in coaching me in my various subjects.
“I believe many questions in English literature will be centered in the route of Childe Harold,” he told me. “We must get an atlas at once.”
I hastened to the home of my Uncle Sarada and borrowed an atlas. Romesh marked the European map at the places visited by Byron’s romantic traveler.
A few classmates had gathered around to listen to the tutoring. “Romesh is advising you wrongly,” one of them commented to me at the end of a session. “Usually only fifty per cent of the questions are about the books; the other half will involve the authors’ lives.”
When I sat for the examination in English literature the following day, my first glance at the questions caused tears of gratitude to pour forth, wetting my paper. The classroom monitor came to my desk and made a sympathetic inquiry.
“My guru foretold that Romesh would help me,” I explained. “Look; the very questions dictated to me by Romesh are here on the examination sheet! Fortunately for me, there are very few questions this year on English authors, whose lives are wrapped in deep mystery so far as I am concerned!”
My boardinghouse was in an uproar when I returned. The boys who had been ridiculing Romesh’s method of coaching looked at me in awe, almost deafening me with congratulations. During the week of the examinations, I spent many hours with Romesh, who formulated questions that he thought were likely to be set by the professors. Day by day, Romesh’s questions appeared in almost the same form on the examination sheets.
The news was widely circulated in the college that something resembling a miracle was occurring, and that success seemed probable for the absent-minded “Mad Monk.” I made no attempt to hide the facts of the case. The local professors were powerless to alter the questions, which had been arranged by Calcutta University.
Thinking over the examination in English literature, I realized one morning that I had made a serious error. One section of the questions had been divided into two parts of A or B, and C or D. Instead of answering one question from each part, I had carelessly answered both questions in Group I, and had failed to consider anything in Group II. The best mark I could score in that paper would be 33, three less than the passing mark of 36. I rushed to Master and poured out my troubles.
“Sir, I have made an unpardonable blunder. I don’t deserve the divine blessings through Romesh; I am quite unworthy.”
“Cheer up, Mukunda.” Sri Yukteswar’s tones were light and unconcerned. He pointed to the blue vault of the heavens. “It is more possible for the sun and moon to interchange their positions in space than it is for you to fail in getting your degree!”
I left the hermitage in a more tranquil mood, though it seemed mathematically inconceivable that I could pass. I looked once or twice apprehensively into the sky; the Lord of Day appeared to be securely anchored in his customary orbit!
As I reached the Panthi, I overheard a classmate’s remark: “I have just learned that this year, for the first time, the required passing mark in English literature has been lowered.”
I entered the boy’s room with such speed that he looked up in alarm. I questioned him eagerly.
“Long-haired monk,” he said laughingly, “why this sudden interest in scholastic matters? Why cry in the eleventh hour? But it is true that the passing mark has just been lowered to 33 points.”
A few joyous leaps took me into my own room, where I sank to my knees and praised the mathematical perfections of my Divine Father.
Every day I thrilled with the consciousness of a spiritual presence that I clearly felt to be guiding me through Romesh. A significant incident occurred in connection with the examination in Bengali. Romesh, who had touched little on that subject, called me back one morning as I was leaving the boardinghouse on my way to the examination hall.
“There is Romesh shouting for you,” a classmate said to me impatiently. “Don’t return; we shall be late at the hall.”
Ignoring the advice, I ran back to the house.
“The Bengali examination is usually easily passed by our Bengali boys,” Romesh told me. “But I have just had a hunch that this year the professors have planned to massacre the students by asking questions from our ancient literature.” My friend then briefly outlined two stories from the life of Vidyasagar, a renowned philanthropist.
I thanked Romesh and quickly bicycled to the college hall. The examination sheet in Bengali proved to contain two parts. The first instruction was: “Write two instances of the charities of Vidyasagar.” As I transferred to the paper the lore that I had so recently acquired, I whispered a few words of thanksgiving that I had heeded Romesh’s last-minute summons. Had I been ignorant of Vidyasagar’s benefactions to mankind (including ultimately myself), I could not have passed the Bengali examination. Failing in one subject, I would have been forced to stand examination anew in all subjects the following year. Such a prospect was understandably abhorrent.
The second instruction on the sheet read: “Write an essay in Bengali on the life of the man who has most inspired you.” Gentle reader, I need not inform you what man I chose for my theme. As I covered page after page with praise of my guru, I smiled to realize that my muttered prediction was coming true: “I will fill up the sheets with your teachings!”
I had not felt inclined to question Romesh about my course in philosophy. Trusting my long training under Sri Yukteswar, I safely disregarded the textbook explanations. The highest mark given to any of my papers was the one in philosophy. My score in all other subjects was just barely within the passing mark.
It is a pleasure to record that my unselfish friend Romesh received his own degree cum laude.
Father was wreathed in smiles at my graduation. “I hardly thought you would pass, Mukunda,” he confessed. “You spend so much time with your guru.” Master had indeed correctly detected the unspoken criticism of my father.
For years I had been uncertain that I would ever see the day when an A.B. would follow my name. I seldom use the title without reflecting that it was a divine gift, conferred on me for reasons somewhat obscure. Occasionally I hear college men remark that very little of their crammed knowledge remained with them after graduation. That admission consoles me a bit for my undoubted academic deficiencies.
On the day I received my degree from Calcutta University, I knelt at my guru’s feet and thanked him for all the blessings flowing from his life into mine.
“Get up, Mukunda,” he said indulgently. “The Lord simply found it more convenient to make you a graduate than to rearrange the sun and moon!”
“Very well; tomorrow I will initiate you into swamiship.” He went on quietly, “I am happy that you have persisted in your desire to be a monk. Lahiri Mahasaya often said: ‘If you don’t invite God to be your summer Guest, He won’t come in the winter of your life.’”
“Dear master, I could never falter in my goal to belong to the Swami Order like your revered self.” I smiled at him with measureless affection.
“He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married careth for the things of the world, how he may please his wife.” 1 I had analyzed the lives of many of my friends who, after undergoing certain spiritual discipline, had then married. Launched on the sea of worldly responsibilities, they had forgotten their resolutions to meditate deeply.
To allot God a secondary place in life was, to me, inconceivable. Though He is the sole Owner of the cosmos, silently showering us with gifts from life to life, one thing yet remains which He does not own, and which each human heart is empowered to withhold or bestow—man’s love. The Creator, in taking infinite pains to shroud with mystery His presence in every atom of creation, could have had but one motive—a sensitive desire that men seek Him only through free will. With what velvet glove of every humility has He not covered the iron hand of omnipotence!
The following day was one of the most memorable in my life. It was a sunny Thursday, I remember, in July, 1914, a few weeks after my graduation from college. On the inner balcony of his Serampore hermitage, Master dipped a new piece of white silk into a dye of ocher, the traditional color of the Swami Order. After the cloth had dried, my guru draped it around me as a renunciate’s robe.
“Someday you will go to the West, where silk is preferred,” he said. “As a symbol, I have chosen for you this silk material instead of the customary cotton.”
In India, where monks embrace the ideal of poverty, a silk-clad swami is an unusual sight. Many yogis, however, wear garments of silk, which preserves certain subtle bodily currents better than cotton.
“I am averse to ceremonies,” Sri Yukteswar remarked. “I will make you a swami in the bidwat (non-ceremonious) manner.”
The bibidisa or elaborate initiation into swamiship includes a fire ceremony, during which symbolical funeral rites are performed. The physical body of the disciple is represented as dead, cremated in the flame of wisdom. The newly-made swami is then given a chant, such as: “This atma is Brahma” 2 or “Thou art That” or “I am He.” Sri Yukteswar, however, with his love of simplicity, dispensed with all formal rites and merely asked me to select a new name.
“I will give you the privilege of choosing it yourself,” he said, smiling.
“Yogananda,” I replied, after a moment’s thought. The name literally means “Bliss (ananda) through divine union (yoga).”
“Be it so. Forsaking your family name of Mukunda Lal Ghosh, henceforth you shall be called Yogananda of the Giri branch of the Swami Order.”
As I knelt before Sri Yukteswar, and for the first time heard him pronounce my new name, my heart overflowed with gratitude. How lovingly and tirelessly had he labored, that the boy Mukunda be someday transformed into the monk Yogananda! I joyfully sang a few verses from the long Sanskrit chant of Lord Shankara:
In addition to his new name, usually ending in ananda, the swami takes a title which indicates his formal connection with one of the ten subdivisions of the Swami Order. These dasanamis or ten agnomens include the Giri (mountain), to which Sri Yukteswar, and hence myself, belong. Among the other branches are the Sagar (sea), Bharati (land), Aranya (forest), Puri (tract), Tirtha (place of pilgrimage), and Saraswati (wisdom of nature).
The new name received by a swami thus has a twofold significance, and represents the attainment of supreme bliss (ananda) through some divine quality or state—love, wisdom, devotion, service, yoga—and through a harmony with nature, as expressed in her infinite vastness of oceans, mountains, skies.
The ideal of selfless service to all mankind, and of renunciation
of personal ties and ambitions, leads the majority of swamis to engage
actively in humanitarian and educational work in India, or occasionally
in foreign lands. Ignoring all prejudices of caste, creed, class, color,
sex, or race, a swami follows the precepts of human brotherhood. His
goal is absolute unity with Spirit. Imbuing his waking and sleeping
consciousness with the thought, “I am He,” he roams contentedly, in the
world but not of it. Thus only may he justify his title of swami—one who
seeks to achieve union with the Swa or Self. It is needless to add that not all formally titled swamis are equally successful in reaching their high goal.
Sri Yukteswar was both a swami and a yogi. A swami, formally a monk by virtue of his connection with the ancient order, is not always a yogi. Anyone who practices a scientific technique of God-contact is a yogi; he may be either married or unmarried, either a worldly man or one of formal religious ties. A swami may conceivably follow only the path of dry reasoning, of cold renunciation; but a yogi engages himself in a definite, step-by-step procedure by which the body and mind are disciplined, and the soul liberated. Taking nothing for granted on emotional grounds, or by faith, a yogi practices a thoroughly tested series of exercises which were first mapped out by the early rishis. Yoga has produced, in every age of India, men who became truly free, truly Yogi-Christs.
Like any other science, yoga is applicable to people of every clime and time. The theory advanced by certain ignorant writers that yoga is “unsuitable for Westerners” is wholly false, and has lamentably prevented many sincere students from seeking its manifold blessings. Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevent all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit. Yoga cannot know a barrier of East and West any more than does the healing and equitable light of the sun. So long as man possesses a mind with its restless thoughts, so long will there be a universal need for yoga or control.
The ancient rishi Patanjali defines “yoga” as “control of the fluctuations of the mind-stuff.” 4 His very short and masterly expositions, the Yoga Sutras, form one of the six systems of Hindu philosophy.5 In contradistinction to Western philosophies, all six Hindu systems embody not only theoretical but practical teachings. In addition to every conceivable ontological inquiry, the six systems formulate six definite disciplines aimed at the permanent removal of suffering and the attainment of timeless bliss.
The common thread linking all six systems is the declaration that no true freedom for man is possible without knowledge of the ultimate Reality. The later Upanishads uphold the Yoga Sutras, among the six systems, as containing the most efficacious methods for achieving direct perception of truth. Through the practical techniques of yoga, man leaves behind forever the barren realms of speculation and cognizes in experience the veritable Essence.
The Yoga system as outlined by Patanjali is known as the Eightfold Path. The first steps, (1) yama and (2) niyama, require observance of ten negative and positive moralities—avoidance of injury to others, of untruthfulness, of stealing, of incontinence, of gift-receiving (which brings obligations); and purity of body and mind, contentment, self-discipline, study, and devotion to God.
The next steps are (3) asana (right posture); the spinal column must be held straight, and the body firm in a comfortable position for meditation; (4) pranayama (control of prana, subtle life currents); and (5) pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses from external objects).
The last steps are forms of yoga proper: (6) dharana (concentration); holding the mind to one thought; (7) dhyana (meditation), and (8) samadhi (superconscious perception). This is the Eightfold Path of Yoga 6 which leads one to the final goal of Kaivalya (Absoluteness), a term which might be more comprehensibly put as “realization of the Truth beyond all intellectual apprehension.”
“Which is greater,” one may ask, “a swami or a yogi?” If and when final oneness with God is achieved, the distinctions of the various paths disappear. The Bhagavad Gita, however, points out that the methods of yoga are all-embracive. Its techniques are not meant only for certain types and temperaments, such as those few who incline toward the monastic life; yoga requires no formal allegiance. Because the yogic science satisfies a universal need, it has a natural universal applicability.
A true yogi may remain dutifully in the world; there he is like butter on water, and not like the easily-diluted milk of unchurned and undisciplined humanity. To fulfill one’s earthly responsibilities is indeed the higher path, provided the yogi, maintaining a mental uninvolvement with egotistical desires, plays his part as a willing instrument of God.
There are a number of great souls, living in American or European or other non-Hindu bodies today who, though they may never have heard the words yogi and swami, are yet true exemplars of those terms. Through their disinterested service to mankind, or through their mastery over passions and thoughts, or through their single hearted love of God, or through their great powers of concentration, they are, in a sense, yogis; they have set themselves the goal of yoga-self-control. These men could rise to even greater heights if they were taught the definite science of yoga, which makes possible a more conscious direction of one’s mind and life.
Yoga has been superficially misunderstood by certain Western writers, but its critics have never been its practitioners. Among many thoughtful tributes to yoga may be mentioned one by Dr. C. G. Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist.
“When a religious method recommends itself as ‘scientific,’ it can be certain of its public in the West. Yoga fulfills this expectation,” Dr. Jung writes.7 “Quite apart from the charm of the new, and the fascination of the half-understood, there is good cause for Yoga to have many adherents. It offers the possibility of controllable experience, and thus satisfies the scientific need of ‘facts,’ and besides this, by reason of its breadth and depth, its venerable age, its doctrine and method, which include every phase of life, it promises undreamed-of possibilities.
“Every religious or philosophical practice means a psychological discipline, that is, a method of mental hygiene. The manifold, purely bodily procedures of Yoga 8 also mean a physiological hygiene which is superior to ordinary gymnastics and breathing exercises, inasmuch as it is not merely mechanistic and scientific, but also philosophical; in its training of the parts of the body, it unites them with the whole of the spirit, as is quite clear, for instance, in the Pranayama exercises where Prana is both the breath and the universal dynamics of the cosmos.
“When the thing which the individual is doing is also a cosmic event, the effect experienced in the body (the innervation), unites with the emotion of the spirit (the universal idea), and out of this there develops a lively unity which no technique, however scientific, can produce. Yoga practice is unthinkable, and would also be ineffectual, without the concepts on which Yoga is based. It combines the bodily and the spiritual with each other in an extraordinarily complete way.
“In the East, where these ideas and practices have developed, and where for several thousand years an unbroken tradition has created the necessary spiritual foundations, Yoga is, as I can readily believe, the perfect and appropriate method of fusing body and mind together so that they form a unity which is scarcely to be questioned. This unity creates a psychological disposition which makes possible intuitions that transcend consciousness.”
The Western day is indeed nearing when the inner science of self-control will be found as necessary as the outer conquest of nature. This new Atomic Age will see men’s minds sobered and broadened by the now scientifically indisputable truth that matter is in reality a concentrate of energy. Finer forces of the human mind can and must liberate energies greater than those within stones and metals, lest the material atomic giant, newly unleashed, turn on the world in mindless destruction.9
These inexorable words reached my inner consciousness as I sat one morning in deep meditation. Shortly after I had entered the Swami Order, I paid a visit to my birthplace, Gorakhpur, as a guest of my elder brother Ananta. A sudden illness confined him to his bed; I nursed him lovingly.
The solemn inward pronouncement filled me with grief. I felt that I could not bear to remain longer in Gorakhpur, only to see my brother removed before my helpless gaze. Amidst uncomprehending criticism from my relatives, I left India on the first available boat. It cruised along Burma and the China Sea to Japan. I disembarked at Kobe, where I spent only a few days. My heart was too heavy for sightseeing.
On the return trip to India, the boat touched at Shanghai. There Dr. Misra, the ship’s physician, guided me to several curio shops, where I selected various presents for Sri Yukteswar and my family and friends. For Ananta I purchased a large carved bamboo piece. No sooner had the Chinese salesman handed me the bamboo souvenir than I dropped it on the floor, crying out, “I have bought this for my dear dead brother!”
A clear realization had swept over me that his soul was just being freed in the Infinite. The souvenir was sharply and symbolically cracked by its fall; amidst sobs, I wrote on the bamboo surface: “For my beloved Ananta, now gone.”
My companion, the doctor, was observing these proceedings with a sardonic smile.
“Save your tears,” he remarked. “Why shed them until you are sure he is dead?”
When our boat reached Calcutta, Dr. Misra again accompanied me. My youngest brother Bishnu was waiting to greet me at the dock.
“I know Ananta has departed this life,” I said to Bishnu, before he had had time to speak. “Please tell me, and the doctor here, when Ananta died.”
Bishnu named the date, which was the very day that I had bought the souvenirs in Shanghai.
“Look here!” Dr. Misra ejaculated. “Don’t let any word of this get around! The professors will be adding a year’s study of mental telepathy to the medical course, which is already long enough!”
Father embraced me warmly as I entered our Gurpar Road home. “You have come,” he said tenderly. Two large tears dropped from his eyes. Ordinarily undemonstrative, he had never before shown me these signs of affection. Outwardly the grave father, inwardly he possessed the melting heart of a mother. In all his dealings with the family, his dual parental role was distinctly manifest.
Soon after Ananta’s passing, my younger sister Nalini was brought back from death’s door by a divine healing. Before relating the story, I will refer to a few phases of her earlier life.
The childhood relationship between Nalini and myself had not been of the happiest nature. I was very thin; she was thinner still. Through an unconscious motive or “complex” which psychiatrists will have no difficulty in identifying, I often used to tease my sister about her cadaverous appearance. Her retorts were equally permeated with the callous frankness of extreme youth. Sometimes Mother intervened, ending the childish quarrels, temporarily, by a gentle box on my ear, as the elder ear.
Time passed; Nalini was betrothed to a young Calcutta physician, Panchanon Bose. He received a generous dowry from Father, presumably (as I remarked to Sister) to compensate the bridegroom-to-be for his fate in allying himself with a human bean-pole.
Elaborate marriage rites were celebrated in due time. On the wedding night, I joined the large and jovial group of relatives in the living room of our Calcutta home. The bridegroom was leaning on an immense gold-brocaded pillow, with Nalini at his side. A gorgeous purple silk sari 1 could not, alas, wholly hide her angularity. I sheltered myself behind the pillow of my new brother-in-law and grinned at him in friendly fashion. He had never seen Nalini until the day of the nuptial ceremony, when he finally learned what he was getting in the matrimonial lottery.
Feeling my sympathy, Dr. Bose pointed unobtrusively to Nalini, and whispered in my ear, “Say, what’s this?”
“Why, Doctor,” I replied, “it is a skeleton for your observation!”
Convulsed with mirth, my brother-in-law and I were hard put to it to maintain the proper decorum before our assembled relatives.
As the years went on, Dr. Bose endeared himself to our family, who called on him whenever illness arose. He and I became fast friends, often joking together, usually with Nalini as our target.
“It is a medical curiosity,” my brother-in-law remarked to me one day. “I have tried everything on your lean sister—cod liver oil, butter, malt, honey, fish, meat, eggs, tonics. Still she fails to bulge even one-hundredth of an inch.” We both chuckled.
A few days later I visited the Bose home. My errand there took only a few minutes; I was leaving, unnoticed, I thought, by Nalini. As I reached the front door, I heard her voice, cordial but commanding.
“Brother, come here. You are not going to give me the slip this time. I want to talk to you.”
I mounted the stairs to her room. To my surprise, she was in tears.
“Dear brother,” she said, “let us bury the old hatchet. I see that your feet are now firmly set on the spiritual path. I want to become like you in every way.” She added hopefully, “You are now robust in appearance; can you help me? My husband does not come near me, and I love him so dearly! But still more I want to progress in God-realization, even if I must remain thin 2 and unattractive.”
My heart was deeply touched at her plea. Our new friendship steadily progressed; one day she asked to become my disciple.
“Train me in any way you like. I put my trust in God instead of tonics.” She gathered together an armful of medicines and poured them down the roof drain.
As a test of her faith, I asked her to omit from her diet all fish, meat, and eggs.
After several months, during which Nalini had strictly followed the various rules I had outlined, and had adhered to her vegetarian diet in spite of numerous difficulties, I paid her a visit.
“Sis, you have been conscientiously observing the spiritual injunctions; your reward is near.” I smiled mischievously. “How plump do you want to be—as fat as our aunt who hasn’t seen her feet in years?”
“No! But I long to be as stout as you are.”
I replied solemnly. “By the grace of God, as I have spoken truth always, I speak truly now.3 Through the divine blessings, your body shall verily change from today; in one month it shall have the same weight as mine.”
These words from my heart found fulfillment. In thirty days, Nalini’s weight equalled mine. The new roundness gave her beauty; her husband fell deeply in love. Their marriage, begun so inauspiciously, turned out to be ideally happy.
On my return from Japan, I learned that during my absence Nalini had been stricken with typhoid fever. I rushed to her home, and was aghast to find her reduced to a mere skeleton. She was in a coma.
“Before her mind became confused by illness,” my brother-in-law told me, “she often said: ‘If brother Mukunda were here, I would not be faring thus.’” He added despairingly, “The other doctors and myself see no hope. Blood dysentery has set in, after her long bout with typhoid.”
I began to move heaven and earth with my prayers. Engaging an Anglo-Indian nurse, who gave me full cooperation, I applied to my sister various yoga techniques of healing. The blood dysentery disappeared.
But Dr. Bose shook his head mournfully. “She simply has no more blood left to shed.”
“She will recover,” I replied stoutly. “In seven days her fever will be gone.”
A week later I was thrilled to see Nalini open her eyes and gaze at me with loving recognition. From that day her recovery was swift. Although she regained her usual weight, she bore one sad scar of her nearly fatal illness: her legs were paralyzed. Indian and English specialists pronounced her a hopeless cripple.
The incessant war for her life which I had waged by prayer had exhausted me. I went to Serampore to ask Sri Yukteswar’s help. His eyes expressed deep sympathy as I told him of Nalini’s plight.
“Your sister’s legs will be normal at the end of one month.” He added, “Let her wear, next to her skin, a band with an unperforated two-carat pearl, held on by a clasp.”
I prostrated myself at his feet with joyful relief.
“Sir, you are a master; your word of her recovery is enough But if you insist I shall immediately get her a pearl.”
My guru nodded. “Yes, do that.” He went on to correctly describe the physical and mental characteristics of Nalini, whom he had never seen.
“Sir,” I inquired, “is this an astrological analysis? You do not know her birth day or hour.”
Sri Yukteswar smiled. “There is a deeper astrology, not dependent on the testimony of calendars and clocks. Each man is a part of the Creator, or Cosmic Man; he has a heavenly body as well as one of earth. The human eye sees the physical form, but the inward eye penetrates more profoundly, even to the universal pattern of which each man is an integral and individual part.”
I returned to Calcutta and purchased a pearl for Nalini. A month later, her paralyzed legs were completely healed.
Sister asked me to convey her heartfelt gratitude to my guru. He listened to her message in silence. But as I was taking my leave, he made a pregnant comment.
“Your sister has been told by many doctors that she can never bear children. Assure her that in a few years she will give birth to two daughters.”
Some years later, to Nalini’s joy, she bore a girl, followed in a few years by another daughter.
“Your master has blessed our home, our entire family,” my sister said. “The presence of such a man is a sanctification on the whole of India. Dear brother, please tell Sri Yukteswarji that, through you, I humbly count myself as one of his Kriya Yoga disciples.”
Because of certain ancient yogic injunctions, I cannot give a full explanation of Kriya Yoga in the pages of a book intended for the general public. The actual technique must be learned from a Kriyaban or Kriya Yogi; here a broad reference must suffice.
Kriya Yoga is a simple, psychophysiological method by which the human blood is decarbonized and recharged with oxygen. The atoms of this extra oxygen are transmuted into life current to rejuvenate the brain and spinal centers.1 By stopping the accumulation of venous blood, the yogi is able to lessen or prevent the decay of tissues; the advanced yogi transmutes his cells into pure energy. Elijah, Jesus, Kabir and other prophets were past masters in the use of Kriya or a similar technique, by which they caused their bodies to dematerialize at will.
Kriya is an ancient science. Lahiri Mahasaya received it from his guru, Babaji, who rediscovered and clarified the technique after it had been lost in the Dark Ages.
“The Kriya Yoga which I am giving to the world through you in this nineteenth century,” Babaji told Lahiri Mahasaya, “is a revival of the same science which Krishna gave, millenniums ago, to Arjuna, and which was later known to Patanjali, and to Christ, St. John, St. Paul, and other disciples.”
Kriya Yoga is referred to by Krishna, India’s greatest prophet, in a stanza of the Bhagavad Gita: “Offering inhaling breath into the outgoing breath, and offering the outgoing breath into the inhaling breath, the yogi neutralizes both these breaths; he thus releases the life force from the heart and brings it under his control.” 2 The interpretation is: “The yogi arrests decay in the body by an addition of life force, and arrests the mutations of growth in the body by apan (eliminating current). Thus neutralizing decay and growth, by quieting the heart, the yogi learns life control.”
Krishna also relates 3 that it was he, in a former incarnation, who communicated the indestructible yoga to an ancient illuminato, Vivasvat, who gave it to Manu, the great legislator.4 He, in turn, instructed Ikshwaku, the father of India’s solar warrior dynasty. Passing thus from one to another, the royal yoga was guarded by the rishis until the coming of the materialistic ages.5 Then, due to priestly secrecy and man’s indifference, the sacred knowledge gradually became inaccessible.
Kriya Yoga is mentioned twice by the ancient sage Patanjali, foremost exponent of yoga, who wrote: “Kriya Yoga consists of body discipline, mental control, and meditating on Aum.” 6 Patanjali speaks of God as the actual Cosmic Sound of Aum heard in meditation.7 Aum is the Creative Word,8 the sound of the Vibratory Motor. Even the yoga-beginner soon inwardly hears the wondrous sound of Aum. Receiving this blissful spiritual encouragement, the devotee becomes assured that he is in actual touch with divine realms.
Patanjali refers a second time to the life-control or Kriya technique thus: “Liberation can be accomplished by that pranayama which is attained by disjoining the course of inspiration and expiration.” 9
St. Paul knew Kriya Yoga, or a technique very similar to it, by which he could switch life currents to and from the senses. He was therefore able to say: “Verily, I protest by our rejoicing which I have in Christ, I die daily.” 10 By daily withdrawing his bodily life force, he united it by yoga union with the rejoicing (eternal bliss) of the Christ consciousness. In that felicitous state, he was consciously aware of being dead to the delusive sensory world of maya.
In the initial states of God-contact (sabikalpa samadhi) the devotee’s consciousness merges with the Cosmic Spirit; his life force is withdrawn from the body, which appears “dead,” or motionless and rigid. The yogi is fully aware of his bodily condition of suspended animation. As he progresses to higher spiritual states (nirbikalpa samadhi), however, he communes with God without bodily fixation, and in his ordinary waking consciousness, even in the midst of exacting worldly duties.11
“Kriya Yoga is an instrument through which human evolution can be quickened,” Sri Yukteswar explained to his students. “The ancient yogis discovered that the secret of cosmic consciousness is intimately linked with breath mastery. This is India’s unique and deathless contribution to the world’s treasury of knowledge. The life force, which is ordinarily absorbed in maintaining the heart-pump, must be freed for higher activities by a method of calming and stilling the ceaseless demands of the breath.”
The Kriya Yogi mentally directs his life energy to revolve, upward and downward, around the six spinal centers (medullary, cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral, and coccygeal plexuses) which correspond to the twelve astral signs of the zodiac, the symbolic Cosmic Man. One-half minute of revolution of energy around the sensitive spinal cord of man effects subtle progress in his evolution; that half-minute of Kriya equals one year of natural spiritual unfoldment.
The astral system of a human being, with six (twelve by polarity) inner constellations revolving around the sun of the omniscient spiritual eye, is interrelated with the physical sun and the twelve zodiacal signs. All men are thus affected by an inner and an outer universe. The ancient rishis discovered that man’s earthly and heavenly environment, in twelve-year cycles, push him forward on his natural path. The scriptures aver that man requires a million years of normal, diseaseless evolution to perfect his human brain sufficiently to express cosmic consciousness.
One thousand Kriya practiced in eight hours gives the yogi, in one day, the equivalent of one thousand years of natural evolution: 365,000 years of evolution in one year. In three years, a Kriya Yogi can thus accomplish by intelligent self-effort the same result which nature brings to pass in a million years. The Kriya short cut, of course, can be taken only by deeply developed yogis. With the guidance of a guru, such yogis have carefully prepared their bodies and brains to receive the power created by intensive practice.
The Kriya beginner employs his yogic exercise only fourteen to twenty-eight times, twice daily. A number of yogis achieve emancipation in six or twelve or twenty-four or forty-eight years. A yogi who dies before achieving full realization carries with him the good karma of his past Kriya effort; in his new life he is harmoniously propelled toward his Infinite Goal.
The body of the average man is like a fifty-watt lamp, which cannot accommodate the billion watts of power roused by an excessive practice of Kriya. Through gradual and regular increase of the simple and “foolproof” methods of Kriya, man’s body becomes astrally transformed day by day, and is finally fitted to express the infinite potentials of cosmic energy—the first materially active expression of Spirit.
Kriya Yoga has nothing in common with the unscientific breathing exercises taught by a number of misguided zealots. Their attempts to forcibly hold breath in the lungs is not only unnatural but decidedly unpleasant. Kriya, on the other hand, is accompanied from the very beginning by an accession of peace, and by soothing sensations of regenerative effect in the spine.
The ancient yogic technique converts the breath into mind. By spiritual advancement, one is able to cognize the breath as an act of mind—a dream-breath.
Many illustrations could be given of the mathematical relationship between man’s respiratory rate and the variations in his states of consciousness. A person whose attention is wholly engrossed, as in following some closely knit intellectual argument, or in attempting some delicate or difficult physical feat, automatically breathes very slowly. Fixity of attention depends on slow breathing; quick or uneven breaths are an inevitable accompaniment of harmful emotional states: fear, lust, anger. The restless monkey breathes at the rate of 32 times a minute, in contrast to man’s average of 18 times. The elephant, tortoise, snake and other animals noted for their longevity have a respiratory rate which is less than man’s. The tortoise, for instance, who may attain the age of 300 years,12 breathes only 4 times per minute.
The rejuvenating effects of sleep are due to man’s temporary unawareness of body and breathing. The sleeping man becomes a yogi; each night he unconsciously performs the yogic rite of releasing himself from bodily identification, and of merging the life force with healing currents in the main brain region and the six sub-dynamos of his spinal centers. The sleeper thus dips unknowingly into the reservoir of cosmic energy which sustains all life.
The voluntary yogi performs a simple, natural process consciously, not unconsciously like the slow-paced sleeper. The Kriya Yogi uses his technique to saturate and feed all his physical cells with undecaying light and keep them in a magnetized state. He scientifically makes breath unnecessary, without producing the states of subconscious sleep or unconsciousness.
By Kriya, the outgoing life force is not wasted and abused in the senses, but constrained to reunite with subtler spinal energies. By such reinforcement of life, the yogi’s body and brain cells are electrified with the spiritual elixir. Thus he removes himself from studied observance of natural laws, which can only take him—by circuitous means as given by proper food, sunlight, and harmonious thoughts—to a million-year Goal. It needs twelve years of normal healthful living to effect even slight perceptible change in brain structure, and a million solar returns are exacted to sufficiently refine the cerebral tenement for manifestation of cosmic consciousness.
Untying the cord of breath which binds the soul to the body, Kriya serves to prolong life and enlarge the consciousness to infinity. The yoga method overcomes the tug of war between the mind and the matter-bound senses, and frees the devotee to reinherit his eternal kingdom. He knows his real nature is bound neither by physical encasement nor by breath, symbol of the mortal enslavement to air, to nature’s elemental compulsions.
Introspection, or “sitting in the silence,” is an unscientific way of trying to force apart the mind and senses, tied together by the life force. The contemplative mind, attempting its return to divinity, is constantly dragged back toward the senses by the life currents. Kriya, controlling the mind directly through the life force, is the easiest, most effective, and most scientific avenue of approach to the Infinite. In contrast to the slow, uncertain “bullock cart” theological path to God, Kriya may justly be called the “airplane” route.
The yogic science is based on an empirical consideration of all forms of concentration and meditation exercises. Yoga enables the devotee to switch off or on, at will, life current from the five sense telephones of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Attaining this power of sense-disconnection, the yogi finds it simple to unite his mind at will with divine realms or with the world of matter. No longer is he unwillingly brought back by the life force to the mundane sphere of rowdy sensations and restless thoughts. Master of his body and mind, the Kriya Yogi ultimately achieves victory over the “last enemy,” death.
The superior method of soul living frees the yogi who, shorn of his ego-prison, tastes the deep air of omnipresence. The thralldom of natural living is, in contrast, set in a pace humiliating. Conforming his life to the evolutionary order, a man can command no concessionary haste from nature but, living without error against the laws of his physical and mental endowment, still requires about a million years of incarnating masquerades to know final emancipation.
The telescopic methods of yogis, disengaging themselves from physical and mental identifications in favor of soul-individuality, thus commend themselves to those who eye with revolt a thousand thousand years. This numerical periphery is enlarged for the ordinary man, who lives in harmony not even with nature, let alone his soul, but pursues instead unnatural complexities, thus offending in his body and thoughts the sweet sanities of nature. For him, two times a million years can scarce suffice for liberation.
Gross man seldom or never realizes that his body is a kingdom, governed by Emperor Soul on the throne of the cranium, with subsidiary regents in the six spinal centers or spheres of consciousness. This theocracy extends over a throng of obedient subjects: twenty-seven thousand billion cells—endowed with a sure if automatic intelligence by which they perform all duties of bodily growths, transformations, and dissolutions—and fifty million substratal thoughts, emotions, and variations of alternating phases in man’s consciousness in an average life of sixty years. Any apparent insurrection of bodily or cerebral cells toward Emperor Soul, manifesting as disease or depression, is due to no disloyalty among the humble citizens, but to past or present misuse by man of his individuality or free will, given to him simultaneous with a soul, and revocable never.
Identifying himself with a shallow ego, man takes for granted that it is he who thinks, wills, feels, digests meals, and keeps himself alive, never admitting through reflection (only a little would suffice!) that in his ordinary life he is naught but a puppet of past actions (karma) and of nature or environment. Each man’s intellectual reactions, feelings, moods, and habits are circumscribed by effects of past causes, whether of this or a prior life. Lofty above such influences, however, is his regal soul. Spurning the transitory truths and freedoms, the Kriya Yogi passes beyond all disillusionment into his unfettered Being. All scriptures declare man to be not a corruptible body, but a living soul; by Kriya he is given a method to prove the scriptural truth.
“Outward ritual cannot destroy ignorance, because they are not mutually contradictory,” wrote Shankara in his famous Century of Verses. “Realized knowledge alone destroys ignorance. . . . Knowledge cannot spring up by any other means than inquiry. ‘Who am I? How was this universe born? Who is its maker? What is its material cause?’ This is the kind of inquiry referred to.” The intellect has no answer for these questions; hence the rishis evolved yoga as the technique of spiritual inquiry.
Kriya Yoga is the real “fire rite” often extolled in the Bhagavad Gita. The purifying fires of yoga bring eternal illumination, and thus differ much from outward and little-effective religious fire ceremonies, where perception of truth is oft burnt, to solemn chanted accompaniment, along with the incense!
The advanced yogi, withholding all his mind, will, and feeling from false identification with bodily desires, uniting his mind with superconscious forces in the spinal shrines, thus lives in this world as God hath planned, not impelled by impulses from the past nor by new witlessnesses of fresh human motivations. Such a yogi receives fulfillment of his Supreme Desire, safe in the final haven of inexhaustibly blissful Spirit.
The yogi offers his labyrinthine human longings to a monotheistic bonfire dedicated to the unparalleled God. This is indeed the true yogic fire ceremony, in which all past and present desires are fuel consumed by love divine. The Ultimate Flame receives the sacrifice of all human madness, and man is pure of dross. His bones stripped of all desirous flesh, his karmic skeleton bleached in the antiseptic suns of wisdom, he is clean at last, inoffensive before man and Maker.
Referring to yoga’s sure and methodical efficacy, Lord Krishna praises the technological yogi in the following words: “The yogi is greater than body-disciplining ascetics, greater even than the followers of the path of wisdom (Jnana Yoga), or of the path of action (Karma Yoga); be thou, O disciple Arjuna, a yogi!” 14
“Do you want the whole divine channa (milk curd) for yourself alone?” My guru’s retort was accompanied by a stern glance. “Could you or anyone else achieve God-contact through yoga if a line of generous-hearted masters had not been willing to convey their knowledge to others?” He added, “God is the Honey, organizations are the hives; both are necessary. Any form is useless, of course, without the spirit, but why should you not start busy hives full of the spiritual nectar?”
His counsel moved me deeply. Although I made no outward reply, an adamant resolution arose in my breast: I would share with my fellows, so far as lay in my power, the unshackling truths I had learned at my guru’s feet. “Lord,” I prayed, “may Thy Love shine forever on the sanctuary of my devotion, and may I be able to awaken that Love in other hearts.”
On a previous occasion, before I had joined the monastic order, Sri Yukteswar had made a most unexpected remark.
“How you will miss the companionship of a wife in your old age!” he had said. “Do you not agree that the family man, engaged in useful work to maintain his wife and children, thus plays a rewarding role in God’s eyes?”
“Sir,” I had protested in alarm, “you know that my desire in this life is to espouse only the Cosmic Beloved.”
Master had laughed so merrily that I understood his observation was made merely as a test of my faith.
“Remember,” he had said slowly, “that he who discards his worldly duties can justify himself only by assuming some kind of responsibility toward a much larger family.”
The ideal of an all-sided education for youth had always been close to my heart. I saw clearly the arid results of ordinary instruction, aimed only at the development of body and intellect. Moral and spiritual values, without whose appreciation no man can approach happiness, were yet lacking in the formal curriculum. I determined to found a school where young boys could develop to the full stature of manhood. My first step in that direction was made with seven children at Dihika, a small country site in Bengal.
A year later, in 1918, through the generosity of Sir Manindra Chandra Nundy, the Maharaja of Kasimbazar, I was able to transfer my fast-growing group to Ranchi. This town in Bihar, about two hundred miles from Calcutta, is blessed with one of the most healthful climates in India. The Kasimbazar Palace at Ranchi was transformed into the headquarters for the new school, which I called Brahmacharya Vidyalaya 1 in accordance with the educational ideals of the rishis. Their forest ashrams had been the ancient seats of learning, secular and divine, for the youth of India.
At Ranchi I organized an educational program for both grammar and high school grades. It included agricultural, industrial, commercial, and academic subjects. The students were also taught yoga concentration and meditation, and a unique system of physical development, “Yogoda,” whose principles I had discovered in 1916.
Realizing that man’s body is like an electric battery, I reasoned that it could be recharged with energy through the direct agency of the human will. As no action, slight or large, is possible without willing, man can avail himself of his prime mover, will, to renew his bodily tissues without burdensome apparatus or mechanical exercises. I therefore taught the Ranchi students my simple “Yogoda” techniques by which the life force, centred in man’s medulla oblongata, can be consciously and instantly recharged from the unlimited supply of cosmic energy.
The boys responded wonderfully to this training, developing
extraordinary ability to shift the life energy from one part of the body
to another part, and to sit in perfect poise in difficult body
postures.2
They performed feats of strength and endurance which many powerful
adults could not equal. My youngest brother, Bishnu Charan Ghosh, joined
the Ranchi school; he later became a leading physical culturist in
Bengal. He and one of his students traveled to Europe and America,
giving exhibitions of strength and skill which amazed the university
savants, including those at Columbia University in New York.
At the end of the first year at Ranchi, applications for admission reached two thousand. But the school, which at that time was solely residential, could accommodate only about one hundred. Instruction for day students was soon added.
In the Vidyalaya I had to play father-mother to the little children, and to cope with many organizational difficulties. I often remembered Christ’s words: “Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.” 3 Sri Yukteswar had interpreted these words: “The devotee who forgoes the life-experiences of marriage and family, and exchanges the problems of a small household and limited activities for the larger responsibilities of service to society in general, is undertaking a task which is often accompanied by persecution from a misunderstanding world, but also by a divine inner contentment.”
One day my father arrived in Ranchi to bestow a paternal blessing, long withheld because I had hurt him by refusing his offer of a position with the Bengal-Nagpur Railway.
“Son,” he said, “I am now reconciled to your choice in life. It gives me joy to see you amidst these happy, eager youngsters; you belong here rather than with the lifeless figures of railroad timetables.” He waved toward a group of a dozen little ones who were tagging at my heels. “I had only eight children,” he observed with twinkling eyes, “but I can feel for you!”
With a large fruit orchard and twenty-five fertile acres at our disposal, the students, teachers, and myself enjoyed many happy hours of outdoor labor in these ideal surroundings. We had many pets, including a young deer who was fairly idolized by the children. I too loved the fawn so much that I allowed it to sleep in my room. At the light of dawn, the little creature would toddle over to my bed for a morning caress.
One day I fed the pet earlier than usual, as I had to attend to some business in the town of Ranchi. Although I cautioned the boys not to feed the fawn until my return, one of them was disobedient, and gave the baby deer a large quantity of milk. When I came back in the evening, sad news greeted me: “The little fawn is nearly dead, through over feeding.”
In tears, I placed the apparently lifeless pet on my lap. I prayed piteously to God to spare its life. Hours later, the small creature opened its eyes, stood up, and walked feebly. The whole school shouted for joy.
But a deep lesson came to me that night, one I can never forget. I stayed up with the fawn until two o’clock, when I fell asleep. The deer appeared in a dream, and spoke to me:
“You are holding me back. Please let me go; let me go!”
“All right,” I answered in the dream.
I awoke immediately, and cried out, “Boys, the deer is dying!” The children rushed to my side.
I ran to the corner of the room where I had placed the pet. It made a last effort to rise, stumbled toward me, then dropped at my feet, dead.
According to the mass karma which guides and regulates the destinies of animals, the deer’s life was over, and it was ready to progress to a higher form. But by my deep attachment, which I later realized was selfish, and by my fervent prayers, I had been able to hold it in the limitations of the animal form from which the soul was struggling for release. The soul of the deer made its plea in a dream because, without my loving permission, it either would not or could not go. As soon as I agreed, it departed.
All sorrow left me; I realized anew that God wants His children to love everything as a part of Him, and not to feel delusively that death ends all. The ignorant man sees only the unsurmountable wall of death, hiding, seemingly forever, his cherished friends. But the man of unattachment, he who loves others as expressions of the Lord, understands that at death the dear ones have only returned for a breathing-space of joy in Him.
The Ranchi school grew from small and simple beginnings to an institution now well-known in India. Many departments of the school are supported by voluntary contributions from those who rejoice in perpetuating the educational ideals of the rishis. Under the general name of Yogoda Sat-Sanga,4 flourishing branch schools have been established at Midnapore, Lakshmanpur, and Puri.
The Ranchi headquarters maintains a Medical Department where medicines and the services of doctors are supplied freely to the poor of the locality. The number treated has averaged more than 18,000 persons a year. The Vidyalaya has made its mark, too, in Indian competitive sports, and in the scholastic field, where many Ranchi alumni have distinguished themselves in later university life.
The school, now in its twenty-eighth year and the center of many activities,5 has been honored by visits of eminent men from the East and the West. One of the earliest great figures to inspect the Vidyalaya in its first year was Swami Pranabananda, the Benares “saint with two bodies.” As the great master viewed the picturesque outdoor classes, held under the trees, and saw in the evening that young boys were sitting motionless for hours in yoga meditation, he was profoundly moved.
“Joy comes to my heart,” he said, “to see that Lahiri Mahasaya’s ideals for the proper training of youth are being carried on in this institution. My guru’s blessings be on it.”
A young lad sitting by my side ventured to ask the great yogi a question.
“Sir,” he said, “shall I be a monk? Is my life only for God?”
Though Swami Pranabananda smiled gently, his eyes were piercing the future.
“Child,” he replied, “when you grow up, there is a beautiful bride waiting for you.” The boy did eventually marry, after having planned for years to enter the Swami Order.
Sometime after Swami Pranabananda had visited Ranchi, I accompanied my father to the Calcutta house where the yogi was temporarily staying. Pranabananda’s prediction, made to me so many years before, came rushing to my mind: “I shall see you, with your father, later on.”
As Father entered the swami’s room, the great yogi rose from his seat and embraced my parent with loving respect.
“Bhagabati,” he said, “what are you doing about yourself? Don’t you see your son racing to the Infinite?” I blushed to hear his praise before my father. The swami went on, “You recall how often our blessed guru used to say: ‘Banat, banat, ban jai.’ 6 So keep up Kriya Yoga ceaselessly, and reach the divine portals quickly.”
The body of Pranabananda, which had appeared so well and strong during my amazing first visit to him in Benares, now showed definite aging, though his posture was still admirably erect.
“Swamiji,” I inquired, looking straight into his eyes, “please tell me the truth: Aren’t you feeling the advance of age? As the body is weakening, are your perceptions of God suffering any diminution?”
He smiled angelically. “The Beloved is more than ever with me now.” His complete conviction overwhelmed my mind and soul. He went on, “I am still enjoying the two pensions—one from Bhagabati here, and one from above.” Pointing his finger heavenward, the saint fell into an ecstasy, his face lit with a divine glow—an ample answer to my question.
Noticing that Pranabananda’s room contained many plants and packages of seed, I asked their purpose.
“I have left Benares permanently,” he said, “and am now on my way to the Himalayas. There I shall open an ashram for my disciples. These seeds will produce spinach and a few other vegetables. My dear ones will live simply, spending their time in blissful God-union. Nothing else is necessary.”
Father asked his brother disciple when he would return to Calcutta.
“Never again,” the saint replied. “This year is the one in which Lahiri Mahasaya told me I would leave my beloved Benares forever and go to the Himalayas, there to throw off my mortal frame.”
My eyes filled with tears at his words, but the swami smiled tranquilly. He reminded me of a little heavenly child, sitting securely on the lap of the Divine Mother. The burden of the years has no ill effect on a great yogi’s full possession of supreme spiritual powers. He is able to renew his body at will; yet sometimes he does not care to retard the aging process, but allows his karma to work itself out on the physical plane, using his old body as a time-saving device to exclude the necessity of working out karma in a new incarnation.
Months later I met an old friend, Sanandan, who was one of Pranabananda’s close disciples.
“My adorable guru is gone,” he told me, amidst sobs. “He established a hermitage near Rishikesh, and gave us loving training. When we were pretty well settled, and making rapid spiritual progress in his company, he proposed one day to feed a huge crowd from Rishikesh. I inquired why he wanted such a large number.
“‘This is my last festival ceremony,’ he said. I did not understand the full implications of his words.
“Pranabanandaji helped with the cooking of great amounts of food. We fed about 2000 guests. After the feast, he sat on a high platform and gave an inspired sermon on the Infinite. At the end, before the gaze of thousands, he turned to me, as I sat beside him on the dais, and spoke with unusual force.
“‘Sanandan, be prepared; I am going to kick the frame.7’
“After a stunned silence, I cried loudly, ‘Master, don’t do it! Please, please, don’t do it!’ The crowd was tongue-tied, watching us curiously. My guru smiled at me, but his solemn gaze was already fixed on Eternity.
“‘Be not selfish,’ he said, ‘nor grieve for me. I have been long cheerfully serving you all; now rejoice and wish me Godspeed. I go to meet my Cosmic Beloved.’ In a whisper, Pranabanandaji added, ‘I shall be reborn shortly. After enjoying a short period of the Infinite Bliss, I shall return to earth and join Babaji.8 You shall soon know when and where my soul has been encased in a new body.’
“He cried again, ‘Sanandan, here I kick the frame by the second Kriya Yoga.’ 9
“He looked at the sea of faces before us, and gave a blessing. Directing his gaze inwardly to the spiritual eye, he became immobile. While the bewildered crowd thought he was meditating in an ecstatic state, he had already left the tabernacle of flesh and plunged his soul into the cosmic vastness. The disciples touched his body, seated in the lotus posture, but it was no longer the warm flesh. Only a stiffened frame remained; the tenant had fled to the immortal shore.”
I inquired where Pranabananda was to be reborn.
“That’s a sacred trust I cannot divulge to anyone,” Sanandan replied. “Perhaps you may find out some other way.”
Years later I discovered from Swami Keshabananda 10 that Pranabananda, a few years after his birth in a new body, had gone to Badrinarayan in the Himalayas, and there joined the group of saints around the great Babaji.
Sri Yukteswar made this surprising statement during his first visit to my new quarters. Immediately after entering Serampore College, I had taken a room in a near-by boardinghouse, called Panthi. It was an old-fashioned brick mansion, fronting the Ganges.
“Master, what a coincidence! Are these newly decorated walls really ancient with memories?” I looked around my simply furnished room with awakened interest.
“It is a long story.” My guru smiled reminiscently. “The name of the fakir 1 was Afzal Khan. He had acquired his extraordinary powers through a chance encounter with a Hindu yogi.
“‘Son, I am thirsty; fetch me some water.’ A dust-covered sannyasi made this request of Afzal one day during his early boyhood in a small village of eastern Bengal.
“‘Master, I am a Mohammedan. How could you, a Hindu, accept a drink from my hands?’
“‘Your truthfulness pleases me, my child. I do not observe the ostracizing rules of ungodly sectarianism. Go; bring me water quickly.’
“Afzal’s reverent obedience was rewarded by a loving glance from the yogi.
“‘You possess good karma from former lives,’ he observed solemnly. ‘I am going to teach you a certain yoga method which will give you command over one of the invisible realms. The great powers that will be yours should be exercised for worthy ends; never employ them selfishly! I perceive, alas! that you have brought over from the past some seeds of destructive tendencies. Do not allow them to sprout by watering them with fresh evil actions. The complexity of your previous karma is such that you must use this life to reconcile your yogic accomplishments with the highest humanitarian goals.’
“After instructing the amazed boy in a complicated technique, the master vanished.
“Afzal faithfully followed his yoga exercise for twenty years. His miraculous feats began to attract widespread attention. It seems that he was always accompanied by a disembodied spirit whom he called ‘Hazrat.’ This invisible entity was able to fulfill the fakir’s slightest wish.
“Ignoring his master’s warning, Afzal began to misuse his powers. Whatever object he touched and then replaced would soon disappear without a trace. This disconcerting eventuality usually made the Mohammedan an objectionable guest!
“He visited large jewelry stores in Calcutta from time to time, representing himself as a possible purchaser. Any jewel he handled would vanish shortly after he had left the shop.
“Afzal was often surrounded by several hundred students, attracted by the hope of learning his secrets. The fakir occasionally invited them to travel with him. At the railway station he would manage to touch a roll of tickets. These he would return to the clerk, remarking: ‘I have changed my mind, and won’t buy them now.’ But when he boarded the train with his retinue, Afzal would be in possession of the required tickets.2
“These exploits created an indignant uproar; Bengali jewelers and ticket-sellers were succumbing to nervous breakdowns! The police who sought to arrest Afzal found themselves helpless; the fakir could remove incriminating evidence merely by saying: ‘Hazrat, take this away.’”
Sri Yukteswar rose from his seat and walked to the balcony of my room which overlooked the Ganges. I followed him, eager to hear more of the baffling Mohammedan Raffles.
“This Panthi house formerly belonged to a friend of mine. He became acquainted with Afzal and asked him here. My friend also invited about twenty neighbors, including myself. I was only a youth then, and felt a lively curiosity about the notorious fakir.” Master laughed. “I took the precaution of not wearing anything valuable! Afzal looked me over inquisitively, then remarked:
“‘You have powerful hands. Go downstairs to the garden; get a smooth stone and write your name on it with chalk; then throw the stone as far as possible into the Ganges.’
“I obeyed. As soon as the stone had vanished under distant waves, the Mohammedan addressed me again:
“‘Fill a pot with Ganges water near the front of this house.’
“After I had returned with a vessel of water, the fakir cried, ‘Hazrat, put the stone in the pot!’
“The stone appeared at once. I pulled it from the vessel and found my signature as legible as when I had written it.
“Babu,3 one of my friends in the room, was wearing a heavy antique gold watch and chain. The fakir examined them with ominous admiration. Soon they were missing!
“‘Afzal, please return my prized heirloom!’ Babu was nearly in tears.
“The Mohammedan was stoically silent for awhile, then said, ‘You have five hundred rupees in an iron safe. Bring them to me, and I will tell you where to locate your timepiece.’
“The distraught Babu left immediately for his home. He came back shortly and handed Afzal the required sum.
“‘Go to the little bridge near your house,’ the fakir instructed Babu. ‘Call on Hazrat to give you the watch and chain.’
“Babu rushed away. On his return, he was wearing a smile of relief and no jewelry whatever.
“‘When I commanded Hazrat as directed,’ he announced, ‘my watch came tumbling down from the air into my right hand! You may be sure I locked the heirloom in my safe before rejoining the group here!’
“Babu’s friends, witnesses of the comicotragedy of the ransom for a watch, were staring with resentment at Afzal. He now spoke placatingly.
“‘Please name any drink you want; Hazrat will produce it.’
“A number asked for milk, others for fruit juices. I was not too much shocked when the unnerved Babu requested whisky! The Mohammedan gave an order; the obliging Hazrat sent sealed containers sailing down the air and thudding to the floor. Each man found his desired beverage.
“The promise of the fourth spectacular feat of the day was doubtless gratifying to our host: Afzal offered to supply an instantaneous lunch!
“‘Let us order the most expensive dishes,’ Babu suggested gloomily. ‘I want an elaborate meal for my five hundred rupees! Everything should be served on gold plates!’
“As soon as each man had expressed his preferences, the fakir addressed himself to the inexhaustible Hazrat. A great rattle ensued; gold platters filled with intricately-prepared curries, hot luchis, and many out-of-season fruits, landed from nowhere at our feet. All the food was delicious. After feasting for an hour, we started to leave the room. A tremendous noise, as though dishes were being piled up, caused us to turn around. Lo! there was no sign of the glittering plates or the remnants of the meal.”
“Guruji,” I interrupted, “if Afzal could easily secure such things as gold dishes, why did he covet the property of others?”
“The fakir was not highly developed spiritually,” Sri Yukteswar explained. “His mastery of a certain yoga technique gave him access to an astral plane where any desire is immediately materialized. Through the agency of an astral being, Hazrat, the Mohammedan could summon the atoms of any object from etheric energy by an act of powerful will. But such astrally-produced objects are structurally evanescent; they cannot be long retained. Afzal still yearned for worldly wealth which, though more hardly earned, has a more dependable durability.”
I laughed. “It too sometimes vanishes most unaccountably!”
“Afzal was not a man of God-realization,” Master went on. “Miracles of a permanent and beneficial nature are performed by true saints because they have attuned themselves to the omnipotent Creator. Afzal was merely an ordinary man with an extraordinary power of penetrating a subtle realm not usually entered by mortals until death.”
“I understand now, Guruji. The after-world appears to have some charming features.”
Master agreed. “I never saw Afzal after that day, but a few years later Babu came to my home to show me a newspaper account of the Mohammedan’s public confession. From it I learned the facts I have just told you about Afzal’s early initiation from a Hindu guru.”
The gist of the latter part of the published document, as recalled by Sri Yukteswar, was as follows: “I, Afzal Khan, am writing these words as an act of penance and as a warning to those who seek the possession of miraculous powers. For years I have been misusing the wondrous abilities imparted to me through the grace of God and my master. I became drunk with egotism, feeling that I was beyond the ordinary laws of morality. My day of reckoning finally arrived.
“Recently I met an old man on a road outside Calcutta. He limped along painfully, carrying a shining object which looked like gold. I addressed him with greed in my heart.
“‘I am Afzal Khan, the great fakir. What have you there?’
“‘This ball of gold is my sole material wealth; it can be of no interest to a fakir. I implore you, sir, to heal my limp.’
“I touched the ball and walked away without reply. The old man hobbled after me. He soon raised an outcry: ‘My gold is gone!’
“As I paid no attention, he suddenly spoke in a stentorian voice that issued oddly from his frail body:
“‘Do you not recognize me?’
“I stood speechless, aghast at the belated discovery that this unimpressive old cripple was none other than the great saint who, long, long ago, had initiated me into yoga. He straightened himself; his body instantly became strong and youthful.
“‘So!’ My guru’s glance was fiery. ‘I see with my own eyes that you use your powers, not to help suffering humanity, but to prey on it like a common thief! I withdraw your occult gifts; Hazrat is now freed from you. No longer shall you be a terror in Bengal!’
“I called on Hazrat in anguished tones; for the first time, he did not appear to my inner sight. But some dark veil suddenly lifted within me; I saw clearly the blasphemy of my life.
“‘My guru, I thank you for coming to banish my long delusion.’ I was sobbing at his feet. ‘I promise to forsake my worldly ambitions. I will retire to the mountains for lonely meditation on God, hoping to atone for my evil past.’
“My master regarded me with silent compassion. ‘I feel your sincerity,’ he said finally. ‘Because of your earlier years of strict obedience, and because of your present repentance, I will grant you one boon. Your other powers are now gone, but whenever food and clothing are needed, you may still call successfully on Hazrat to supply them. Devote yourself wholeheartedly to divine understanding in the mountain solitudes.’
“My guru then vanished; I was left to my tears and reflections. Farewell, world! I go to seek the forgiveness of the Cosmic Beloved.”
-
A Moslem yogi; from the Arabic faqir, poor; originally applied to dervishes under a vow of poverty.▲
-
My father later told me that his company, the Bengal-Nagpur Railway, had been one of the firms victimized by Afzal Khan.▲
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I do not recall the name of Sri Yukteswar’s friend, and must refer to him simply as “Babu” (Mister).▲
Chapter: 19
My Master, in Calcutta, Appears
in Serampore
“I am often beset by atheistic doubts. Yet a torturing surmise sometimes haunts me: may not untapped soul possibilities exist? Is man not missing his real destiny if he fails to explore them?”These remarks of Dijen Babu, my roommate at the Panthi boardinghouse, were called forth by my invitation that he meet my guru.
“Sri Yukteswarji will initiate you into Kriya Yoga,” I replied. “It calms the dualistic turmoil by a divine inner certainty.”
That evening Dijen accompanied me to the hermitage. In Master’s presence my friend received such spiritual peace that he was soon a constant visitor. The trivial preoccupations of daily life are not enough for man; wisdom too is a native hunger. In Sri Yukteswar’s words Dijen found an incentive to those attempts—first painful, then effortlessly liberating—to locate a realer self within his bosom than the humiliating ego of a temporary birth, seldom ample enough for the Spirit.
As Dijen and I were both pursuing the A.B. course at Serampore College, we got into the habit of walking together to the ashram as soon as classes were over. We would often see Sri Yukteswar standing on his second-floor balcony, welcoming our approach with a smile.
One afternoon Kanai, a young hermitage resident, met Dijen and me at the door with disappointing news.
“Master is not here; he was summoned to Calcutta by an urgent note.”
The following day I received a post card from my guru. “I shall leave Calcutta Wednesday morning,” he had written. “You and Dijen meet the nine o’clock train at Serampore station.”
About eight-thirty on Wednesday morning, a telepathic message from Sri Yukteswar flashed insistently to my mind: “I am delayed; don’t meet the nine o’clock train.”
I conveyed the latest instructions to Dijen, who was already dressed for departure.
“You and your intuition!” My friend’s voice was edged in scorn. “I prefer to trust Master’s written word.”
I shrugged my shoulders and seated myself with quiet finality. Muttering angrily, Dijen made for the door and closed it noisily behind him.
As the room was rather dark, I moved nearer to the window overlooking the street. The scant sunlight suddenly increased to an intense brilliancy in which the iron-barred window completely vanished. Against this dazzling background appeared the clearly materialized figure of Sri Yukteswar!
Bewildered to the point of shock, I rose from my chair and knelt before him. With my customary gesture of respectful greeting at my guru’s feet, I touched his shoes. These were a pair familiar to me, of orange-dyed canvas, soled with rope. His ocher swami cloth brushed against me; I distinctly felt not only the texture of his robe, but also the gritty surface of the shoes, and the pressure of his toes within them. Too much astounded to utter a word, I stood up and gazed at him questioningly.
“I was pleased that you got my telepathic message.” Master’s voice was calm, entirely normal. “I have now finished my business in Calcutta, and shall arrive in Serampore by the ten o’clock train.”
As I still stared mutely, Sri Yukteswar went on, “This is not an apparition, but my flesh and blood form. I have been divinely commanded to give you this experience, rare to achieve on earth. Meet me at the station; you and Dijen will see me coming toward you, dressed as I am now. I shall be preceded by a fellow passenger—a little boy carrying a silver jug.”
My guru placed both hands on my head, with a murmured blessing. As he concluded with the words, “Taba asi,” 1 I heard a peculiar rumbling sound.2 His body began to melt gradually within the piercing light. First his feet and legs vanished, then his torso and head, like a scroll being rolled up. To the very last, I could feel his fingers resting lightly on my hair. The effulgence faded; nothing remained before me but the barred window and a pale stream of sunlight.
I remained in a half-stupor of confusion, questioning whether I had not been the victim of a hallucination. A crestfallen Dijen soon entered the room.
“Master was not on the nine o’clock train, nor even the nine-thirty.” My friend made his announcement with a slightly apologetic air.
“Come then; I know he will arrive at ten o’clock.” I took Dijen’s hand and rushed him forcibly along with me, heedless of his protests. In about ten minutes we entered the station, where the train was already puffing to a halt.
“The whole train is filled with the light of Master’s aura! He is there!” I exclaimed joyfully.
“You dream so?” Dijen laughed mockingly.
“Let us wait here.” I told my friend details of the way in which our guru would approach us. As I finished my description, Sri Yukteswar came into view, wearing the same clothes I had seen a short time earlier. He walked slowly in the wake of a small lad bearing a silver jug.
For a moment a wave of cold fear passed through me, at the unprecedented strangeness of my experience. I felt the materialistic, twentieth-century world slipping from me; was I back in the ancient days when Jesus appeared before Peter on the sea?
As Sri Yukteswar, a modern Yogi-Christ, reached the spot where Dijen and I were speechlessly rooted, Master smiled at my friend and remarked:
“I sent you a message too, but you were unable to grasp it.”
Dijen was silent, but glared at me suspiciously. After we had escorted our guru to his hermitage, my friend and I proceeded toward Serampore College. Dijen halted in the street, indignation streaming from his every pore.
“So! Master sent me a message! Yet you concealed it! I demand an explanation!”
“Can I help it if your mental mirror oscillates with such restlessness that you cannot register our guru’s instructions?” I retorted.
The anger vanished from Dijen’s face. “I see what you mean,” he said ruefully. “But please explain how you could know about the child with the jug.”
By the time I had finished the story of Master’s phenomenal appearance at the boardinghouse that morning, my friend and I had reached Serampore College.
“The account I have just heard of our guru’s powers,” Dijen said, “makes me feel that any university in the world is only a kindergarten.”
Chapter: 20
We Do Not Visit Kashmir
“Father, I want to invite Master and four friends to accompany me to the Himalayan foothills during my summer vacation. May I have six train passes to Kashmir and enough money to cover our travel expenses?”As I had expected, Father laughed heartily. “This is the third time you have given me the same cock-and-bull story. Didn’t you make a similar request last summer, and the year before that? At the last moment, Sri Yukteswarji refuses to go.”
“It is true, Father; I don’t know why my guru will not give me his definite word about Kashmir.1 But if I tell him that I have already secured the passes from you, somehow I think that this time he will consent to make the journey.”
Father was unconvinced at the moment, but the following day, after some good-humored gibes, he handed me six passes and a roll of ten-rupee bills.
“I hardly think your theoretical trip needs such practical props,” he remarked, “but here they are.”
That afternoon I exhibited my booty to Sri Yukteswar. Though he smiled at my enthusiasm, his words were noncommittal: “I would like to go; we shall see.” He made no comment when I asked his little hermitage disciple, Kanai, to accompany us. I also invited three other friends—Rajendra Nath Mitra, Jotin Auddy, and one other boy. Our date of departure was set for the following Monday.
On Saturday and Sunday I stayed in Calcutta, where marriage rites for a cousin were being celebrated at my family home. I arrived in Serampore with my luggage early Monday morning. Rajendra met me at the hermitage door.
“Master is out, walking. He has refused to go.”
I was equally grieved and obdurate. “I will not give Father a third chance to ridicule my chimerical plans for Kashmir. Come; the rest of us will go anyhow.”
Rajendra agreed; I left the ashram to find a servant. Kanai, I knew, would not take the trip without Master, and someone was needed to look after the luggage. I bethought myself of Behari, previously a servant in my family home, who was now employed by a Serampore schoolmaster. As I walked along briskly, I met my guru in front of the Christian church near Serampore Courthouse.
“Where are you going?” Sri Yukteswar’s face was unsmiling.
“Sir, I hear that you and Kanai will not take the trip we have been planning. I am seeking Behari. You will recall that last year he was so anxious to see Kashmir that he even offered to serve without pay.”
“I remember. Nevertheless, I don’t think Behari will be willing to go.”
I was exasperated. “He is just eagerly waiting for this opportunity!”
My guru silently resumed his walk; I soon reached the schoolmaster’s house. Behari, in the courtyard, greeted me with a friendly warmth that abruptly vanished as soon as I mentioned Kashmir. With a murmured word of apology, the servant left me and entered his employer’s house. I waited half an hour, nervously assuring myself that Behari’s delay was being caused by preparations for his trip. Finally I knocked at the front door.
“Behari left by the back stairs about thirty minutes ago,” a man informed me. A slight smile hovered about his lips.
I departed sadly, wondering whether my invitation had been too coercive or whether Master’s unseen influence were at work. Passing the Christian church, again I saw my guru walking slowly toward me. Without waiting to hear my report, he exclaimed:
“So Behari would not go! Now, what are your plans?”
I felt like a recalcitrant child who is determined to defy his masterful father. “Sir, I am going to ask my uncle to lend me his servant, Lal Dhari.”
“See your uncle if you want to,” Sri Yukteswar replied with a chuckle. “But I hardly think you will enjoy the visit.”
Apprehensive but rebellious, I left my guru and entered Serampore Courthouse. My paternal uncle, Sarada Ghosh, a government attorney, welcomed me affectionately.
“I am leaving today with some friends for Kashmir,” I told him. “For years I have been looking forward to this Himalayan trip.”
“I am happy for you, Mukunda. Is there anything I can do to make your journey more comfortable?”
These kind words gave me a lift of encouragement. “Dear uncle,” I said, “could you possibly spare me your servant, Lal Dhari?”
My simple request had the effect of an earthquake. Uncle jumped so violently that his chair overturned, the papers on the desk flew in every direction, and his pipe, a long, coconut-stemmed hubble-bubble, fell to the floor with a great clatter.
“You selfish young man,” he shouted, quivering with wrath, “what a preposterous idea! Who will look after me, if you take my servant on one of your pleasure jaunts?”
I concealed my surprise, reflecting that my amiable uncle’s sudden change of front was only one more enigma in a day fully devoted to incomprehensibility. My retreat from the courthouse office was more alacritous than dignified.
I returned to the hermitage, where my friends were expectantly gathered. Conviction was growing on me that some sufficient if exceedingly recondite motive was behind Master’s attitude. Remorse seized me that I had been trying to thwart my guru’s will.
“Mukunda, wouldn’t you like to stay awhile longer with me?” Sri Yukteswar inquired. “Rajendra and the others can go ahead now, and wait for you at Calcutta. There will be plenty of time to catch the last evening train leaving Calcutta for Kashmir.”
“Sir, I don’t care to go without you,” I said mournfully.
My friends paid not the slightest attention to my remark. They summoned a hackney carriage and departed with all the luggage. Kanai and I sat quietly at our guru’s feet. After a half hour of complete silence, Master rose and walked toward the second-floor dining patio.
“Kanai, please serve Mukunda’s food. His train leaves soon.”
Getting up from my blanket seat, I staggered suddenly with nausea and a ghastly churning sensation in my stomach. The stabbing pain was so intense that I felt I had been abruptly hurled into some violent hell. Groping blindly toward my guru, I collapsed before him, attacked by all symptoms of the dread Asiatic cholera. Sri Yukteswar and Kanai carried me to the sitting room.
Racked with agony, I cried, “Master, I surrender my life to you;” for I believed it was indeed fast ebbing from the shores of my body.
Sri Yukteswar put my head on his lap, stroking my forehead with angelic tenderness.
“You see now what would have happened if you were at the station with your friends,” he said. “I had to look after you in this strange way, because you chose to doubt my judgment about taking the trip at this particular time.”
I understood at last. Inasmuch as great masters seldom see fit to display their powers openly, a casual observer of the day’s events would have imagined that their sequence was quite natural. My guru’s intervention had been too subtle to be suspected. He had worked his will through Behari and my Uncle Sarada and Rajendra and the others in such an inconspicuous manner that probably everyone but myself thought the situations had been logically normal.
As Sri Yukteswar never failed to observe his social obligations, he instructed Kanai to go for a specialist, and to notify my uncle.
“Master,” I protested, “only you can heal me. I am too far gone for any doctor.”
“Child, you are protected by the Divine Mercy. Don’t worry about the doctor; he will not find you in this state. You are already healed.”
With my guru’s words, the excruciating suffering left me. I sat up feebly. A doctor soon arrived and examined me carefully.
“You appear to have passed through the worst,” he said. “I will take some specimens with me for laboratory tests.”
The following morning the physician arrived hurriedly. I was sitting up, in good spirits.
“Well, well, here you are, smiling and chatting as though you had had no close call with death.” He patted my hand gently. “I hardly expected to find you alive, after I had discovered from the specimens that your disease was Asiatic cholera. You are fortunate, young man, to have a guru with divine healing powers! I am convinced of it!”
I agreed wholeheartedly. As the doctor was preparing to leave, Rajendra and Auddy appeared at the door. The resentment in their faces changed into sympathy as they glanced at the physician and then at my somewhat wan countenance.
“We were angry when you didn’t turn up as agreed at the Calcutta train. You have been sick?”
“Yes.” I could not help laughing as my friends placed the luggage in the same corner it had occupied yesterday. I quoted: “There was a ship that went to Spain; when it arrived, it came back again!”
Master entered the room. I permitted myself a convalescent’s liberty, and captured his hand lovingly.
“Guruji,” I said, “from my twelfth year on, I have made many unsuccessful attempts to reach the Himalayas. I am finally convinced that without your blessings the Goddess Parvati 2 will not receive me!”
-
Although Master failed to make any explanation, his
reluctance to visit Kashmir during those two summers may have been a
foreknowledge that the time was not ripe for his illness there (see chapter 23).▲
-
Literally, “of the mountains.” Parvati, mythologically
represented as a daughter of Himavat or the sacred mountains, is a name
given to the shakti or “consort” of Shiva.▲
Chapter: 21
We Visit Kashmir
“You are strong enough now to travel. I will accompany you to Kashmir,” Sri Yukteswar informed me two days after my miraculous recovery from Asiatic cholera.That evening our party of six entrained for the north. Our first leisurely stop was at Simla, a queenly city resting on the throne of Himalayan hills. We strolled over the steep streets, admiring the magnificent views.
“English strawberries for sale,” cried an old woman, squatting in a picturesque open market place.
Master was curious about the strange little red fruits. He bought a basketful and offered it to Kanai and myself, who were near-by. I tasted one berry but spat it hastily on the ground.
“Sir, what a sour fruit! I could never like strawberries!”
My guru laughed. “Oh, you will like them—in America. At a dinner there, your hostess will serve them with sugar and cream. After she has mashed the berries with a fork, you will taste them and say: ‘What delicious strawberries!’ Then you will remember this day in Simla.”
Sri Yukteswar’s forecast vanished from my mind, but reappeared there many years later, shortly after my arrival in America. I was a dinner guest at the home of Mrs. Alice T. Hasey (Sister Yogmata) in West Somerville, Massachusetts. When a dessert of strawberries was put on the table, my hostess picked up her fork and mashed my berries, adding cream and sugar. “The fruit is rather tart; I think you will like it fixed this way,” she remarked.
I took a mouthful. “What delicious strawberries!” I exclaimed. At once my guru’s prediction in Simla emerged from the fathomless cave of memory. It was staggering to realize that long ago Sri Yukteswar’s God-tuned mind had sensitively detected the program of karmic events wandering in the ether of futurity.
Our party soon left Simla and entrained for Rawalpindi. There we hired a large landau, drawn by two horses, in which we started a seven-day trip to Srinagar, capital city of Kashmir. The second day of our northbound journey brought into view the true Himalayan vastness. As the iron wheels of our carriage creaked along the hot, stony roads, we were enraptured with changing vistas of mountainous grandeur.
“Sir,” Auddy said to Master, “I am greatly enjoying these glorious scenes in your holy company.”
I felt a throb of pleasure at Auddy’s appreciation, for I was acting as host on this trip. Sri Yukteswar caught my thought; he turned to me and whispered:
“Don’t flatter yourself; Auddy is not nearly as entranced with the scenery as he is with the prospect of leaving us long enough to have a cigaret.”
I was shocked. “Sir,” I said in an undertone, “please do not break our harmony by these unpleasant words. I can hardly believe that Auddy is hankering for a smoke.” 1 I looked apprehensively at my usually irrepressible guru.
“Very well; I won’t say anything to Auddy.” Master chuckled. “But you will soon see, when the landau halts, that Auddy is quick to seize his opportunity.”
The carriage arrived at a small caravanserai. As our horses were led to be watered, Auddy inquired, “Sir, do you mind if I ride awhile with the driver? I would like to get a little outside air.”
Sri Yukteswar gave permission, but remarked to me, “He wants fresh smoke and not fresh air.”
The landau resumed its noisy progress over the dusty roads. Master’s eyes were twinkling; he instructed me, “Crane up your neck through the carriage door and see what Auddy is doing with the air.”
I obeyed, and was astounded to observe Auddy in the act of exhaling rings of cigaret smoke. My glance toward Sri Yukteswar was apologetic.
“You are right, as always, sir. Auddy is enjoying a puff along with a panorama.” I surmised that my friend had received a gift from the cab driver; I knew Auddy had not carried any cigarets from Calcutta.
We continued on the labyrinthine way, adorned by views of rivers, valleys, precipitous crags, and multitudinous mountain tiers. Every night we stopped at rustic inns, and prepared our own food. Sri Yukteswar took special care of my diet, insisting that I have lime juice at all meals. I was still weak, but daily improving, though the rattling carriage was strictly designed for discomfort.
Joyous anticipations filled our hearts as we neared central Kashmir, paradise land of lotus lakes, floating gardens, gaily canopied houseboats, the many-bridged Jhelum River, and flower-strewn pastures, all ringed round by the Himalayan majesty. Our approach to Srinagar was through an avenue of tall, welcoming trees. We engaged rooms at a double-storied inn overlooking the noble hills. No running water was available; we drew our supply from a near-by well. The summer weather was ideal, with warm days and slightly cold nights.
We made a pilgrimage to the ancient Srinagar temple of Swami Shankara. As I gazed upon the mountain-peak hermitage, standing bold against the sky, I fell into an ecstatic trance. A vision appeared of a hilltop mansion in a distant land. The lofty Shankara ashram before me was transformed into the structure where, years later, I established the Self-Realization Fellowship headquarters in America. When I first visited Los Angeles, and saw the large building on the crest of Mount Washington, I recognized it at once from my long-past visions in Kashmir and elsewhere.
A few days at Srinagar; then on to Gulmarg (“mountain paths of flowers”), elevated by six thousand feet. There I had my first ride on a large horse. Rajendra mounted a small trotter, whose heart was fired with ambition for speed. We ventured onto the very steep Khilanmarg; the path led through a dense forest, abounding in tree-mushrooms, where the mist-shrouded trails were often precarious. But Rajendra’s little animal never permitted my oversized steed a moment’s rest, even at the most perilous turns. On, on, untiringly came Rajendra’s horse, oblivious to all but the joy of competition.
Our strenuous race was rewarded by a breath-taking view. For the first time in this life, I gazed in all directions at sublime snow-capped Himalayas, lying tier upon tier like silhouettes of huge polar bears. My eyes feasted exultingly on endless reaches of icy mountains against sunny blue skies.
I rolled merrily with my young companions, all wearing overcoats, on the sparkling white slopes. On our downward trip we saw afar a vast carpet of yellow flowers, wholly transfiguring the bleak hills.
Our next excursions were to the famous royal “pleasure gardens” of the Emperor Jehangir, at Shalimar and Nishat Bagh. The ancient palace at Nishat Bagh is built directly over a natural waterfall. Rushing down from the mountains, the torrent has been regulated through ingenious contrivances to flow over colorful terraces and to gush into fountains amidst the dazzling flower-beds. The stream also enters several of the palace rooms, ultimately dropping fairy like into the lake below. The immense gardens are riotous with color roses of a dozen hues, snapdragons, lavender, pansies, poppies. An emerald enclosing outline is given by symmetrical rows of chinars,2 cypresses, cherry trees; beyond them tower the white austerities of the Himalayas.
Kashmir grapes are considered a rare delicacy in Calcutta. Rajendra, who had been promising himself a veritable feast on reaching Kashmir, was disappointed to find there no large vineyards. Now and then I chaffed him jocosely over his baseless anticipation.
“Oh, I have become so much gorged with grapes I can’t walk!” I would say. “The invisible grapes are brewing within me!” Later I heard that sweet grapes grow abundantly in Kabul, west of Kashmir. We consoled ourselves with ice cream made of rabri, a heavily condensed milk, and flavored with whole pistachio nuts.
We took several trips in the shikaras or houseboats, shaded by red-embroidered canopies, coursing along the intricate channels of Dal Lake, a network of canals like a watery spider web. Here the numerous floating gardens, crudely improvised with logs and earth, strike one with amazement, so incongruous is the first sight of vegetables and melons growing in the midst of vast waters. Occasionally one sees a peasant, disdaining to be “rooted to the soil,” towing his square plot of “land” to a new location in the many-fingered lake.
In this storied vale one finds an epitome of all the earth’s beauties. The Lady of Kashmir is mountain-crowned, lake-garlanded, and flower-shod. In later years, after I had toured many distant lands, I understood why Kashmir is often called the world’s most scenic spot. It possesses some of the charms of the Swiss Alps, and of Loch Lomond in Scotland, and of the exquisite English lakes. An American traveler in Kashmir finds much to remind him of the rugged grandeur of Alaska and of Pikes Peak near Denver.
As entries in a scenic beauty contest, I offer for first prize either the gorgeous view of Xochimilco in Mexico, where mountains, skies, and poplars reflect themselves in myriad lanes of water amidst the playful fish, or the jewel-like lakes of Kashmir, guarded like beautiful maidens by the stern surveillance of the Himalayas. These two places stand out in my memory as the loveliest spots on earth.
Yet I was awed also when I first beheld the wonders of Yellowstone National Park and of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and of Alaska. Yellowstone Park is perhaps the only region where one can see innumerable geysers shooting high into the air, performing year after year with clockwork regularity. Its opal and sapphire pools and hot sulphurous springs, its bears and wild creatures, remind one that here Nature left a specimen of her earliest creation. Motoring along the roads of Wyoming to the “Devil’s Paint Pot” of hot bubbling mud, with gurgling springs, vaporous fountains, and spouting geysers in all directions, I was disposed to say that Yellowstone deserves a special prize for uniqueness.
The ancient majestic redwoods of Yosemite, stretching their huge columns far into the unfathomable sky, are green natural cathedrals designed with skill divine. Though there are wonderful falls in the Orient, none match the torrential beauty of Niagara near the Canadian border. The Mammoth Caves of Kentucky and the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, with colorful iciclelike formations, are stunning fairylands. Their long needles of stalactite spires, hanging from cave ceilings and mirrored in underground waters, present a glimpse of other worlds as fancied by man.
Most of the Hindus of Kashmir, world-famed for their beauty, are as white as Europeans and have similar features and bone structure; many have blue eyes and blonde hair. Dressed in Western clothes, they look like Americans. The cold Himalayas protect the Kashmiris from the sultry sun and preserve their light complexions. As one travels to the southern and tropical latitudes of India, he finds progressively that the people become darker and darker.
After spending happy weeks in Kashmir, I was forced to return to Bengal for the fall term of Serampore College. Sri Yukteswar remained in Srinagar, with Kanai and Auddy. Before I departed, Master hinted that his body would be subject to suffering in Kashmir.
“Sir, you look a picture of health,” I protested.
“There is a chance that I may even leave this earth.”
“Guruji!” I fell at his feet with an imploring gesture. “Please promise that you won’t leave your body now. I am utterly unprepared to carry on without you.”
Sri Yukteswar was silent, but smiled at me so compassionately that I felt reassured. Reluctantly I left him.
“Master dangerously ill.” This telegram from Auddy reached me shortly after my return to Serampore.
“Sir,” I wired my guru frantically, “I asked for your promise not to leave me. Please keep your body; otherwise, I also shall die.”
“Be it as you wish.” This was Sri Yukteswar’s reply from Kashmir.
A letter from Auddy arrived in a few days, informing me that Master had recovered. On his return to Serampore during the next fortnight, I was grieved to find my guru’s body reduced to half its usual weight.
Fortunately for his disciples, Sri Yukteswar burned many of their sins in the fire of his severe fever in Kashmir. The metaphysical method of physical transfer of disease is known to highly advanced yogis. A strong man can assist a weaker one by helping to carry his heavy load; a spiritual superman is able to minimize his disciples’ physical or mental burdens by sharing the karma of their past actions. Just as a rich man loses some money when he pays off a large debt for his prodigal son, who is thus saved from dire consequences of his own folly, so a master willingly sacrifices a portion of his bodily wealth to lighten the misery of disciples.3
By a secret method, the yogi unites his mind and astral vehicle with those of a suffering individual; the disease is conveyed, wholly or in part, to the saint’s body. Having harvested God on the physical field, a master no longer cares what happens to that material form. Though he may allow it to register a certain disease in order to relieve others, his mind is never affected; he considers himself fortunate in being able to render such aid.
The devotee who has achieved final salvation in the Lord finds that his body has completely fulfilled its purpose; he can then use it in any way he deems fit. His work in the world is to alleviate the sorrows of mankind, whether through spiritual means or by intellectual counsel or through will power or by the physical transfer of disease. Escaping to the superconsciousness whenever he so desires, a master can remain oblivious of physical suffering; sometimes he chooses to bear bodily pain stoically, as an example to disciples. By putting on the ailments of others, a yogi can satisfy, for them, the karmic law of cause and effect. This law is mechanically or mathematically operative; its workings can be scientifically manipulated by men of divine wisdom.
The spiritual law does not require a master to become ill whenever he heals another person. Healings ordinarily take place through the saint’s knowledge of various methods of instantaneous cure in which no hurt to the spiritual healer is involved. On rare occasions, however, a master who wishes to greatly quicken his disciples’ evolution may then voluntarily work out on his own body a large measure of their undesirable karma.
Jesus signified himself as a ransom for the sins of many. With his divine powers,4 his body could never have been subjected to death by crucifixion if he had not willingly cooperated with the subtle cosmic law of cause and effect. He thus took on himself the consequences of others’ karma, especially that of his disciples. In this manner they were highly purified and made fit to receive the omnipresent consciousness which later descended on them.
Only a self-realized master can transfer his life force, or convey into his own body the diseases of others. An ordinary man cannot employ this yogic method of cure, nor is it desirable that he should do so; for an unsound physical instrument is a hindrance to God-meditation. The Hindu scriptures teach that the first duty of man is to keep his body in good condition; otherwise his mind is unable to remain fixed in devotional concentration.
A very strong mind, however, can transcend all physical difficulties and attain to God-realization. Many saints have ignored illness and succeeded in their divine quest. St. Francis of Assisi, severely afflicted with ailments, healed others and even raised the dead.
I knew an Indian saint, half of whose body was once festering with sores. His diabetic condition was so acute that under ordinary conditions he could not sit still at one time for more than fifteen minutes. But his spiritual aspiration was undeterrable. “Lord,” he prayed, “wilt Thou come into my broken temple?” With ceaseless command of will, the saint gradually became able to sit daily in the lotus posture for eighteen continuous hours, engrossed in the ecstatic trance.
“And,” he told me, “at the end of three years, I found the Infinite Light blazing within my shattered form. Rejoicing in the joyful splendour, I forgot the body. Later I saw that it had become whole through the Divine Mercy.”
A historical healing incident concerns King Baber (1483-1530), founder of the Mogul empire in India. His son, Prince Humayun, was mortally ill. The father prayed with anguished determination that he receive the sickness, and that his son be spared. After all physicians had given up hope, Humayun recovered. Baber immediately fell sick and died of the same disease which had stricken his son. Humayun succeeded Baber as Emperor of Hindustan.
Many people imagine that every spiritual master has, or should have, the health and strength of a Sandow. The assumption is unfounded. A sickly body does not indicate that a guru is not in touch with divine powers, any more than lifelong health necessarily indicates an inner illumination. The condition of the physical body, in other words, cannot rightfully be made a test of a master. His distinguishing qualifications must be sought in his own domain, the spiritual.
Numerous bewildered seekers in the West erroneously think that an eloquent speaker or writer on metaphysics must be a master. The rishis, however, have pointed out that the acid test of a master is a man’s ability to enter at will the breathless state, and to maintain the unbroken samadhi of nirbikalpa.5 Only by these achievements can a human being prove that he has “mastered” maya or the dualistic Cosmic Delusion. He alone can say from the depths of realization: “Ekam sat,”—“Only One exists.”
“The Vedas declare that the ignorant man who rests content with making the slightest distinction between the individual soul and the Supreme Self is exposed to danger,” Shankara the great monist has written. “Where there is duality by virtue of ignorance, one sees all things as distinct from the Self. When everything is seen as the Self, then there is not even an atom other than the Self. . . .Only great gurus are able to assume the karma of disciples. Sri Yukteswar would not have suffered in Kashmir unless he had received permission from the Spirit within him to help his disciples in that strange way. Few saints were ever more sensitively equipped with wisdom to carry out divine commands than my God-tuned Master.
“As soon as the knowledge of the Reality has sprung up, there can be no fruits of past actions to be experienced, owing to the unreality of the body, in the same way as there can be no dream after waking.”
When I ventured a few words of sympathy over his emaciated figure, my guru said gaily:
“It has its good points; I am able now to get into some small ganjis (undershirts) that I haven’t worn in years!”
Listening to Master’s jovial laugh, I remembered the words of St. Francis de Sales: “A saint that is sad is a sad saint!”
-
It is a mark of disrespect, in India, to smoke in the presence of one’s elders and superiors.▲
-
The Oriental plane tree.▲
-
Many Christian saints, including Therese Neumann (see chapter 39), are familiar with the metaphysical transfer of disease.▲
-
Christ said, just before he was led away to be crucified:
“Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall
presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall
the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?”—Matthew 26:53-54.▲
-
See chapters 26, 43 notes.▲
Chapter: 22
The Heart of a Stone Image
“As a loyal Hindu wife, I do not wish to complain of my husband. But I yearn to see him turn from his materialistic views. He delights in ridiculing the pictures of saints in my meditation room. Dear brother, I have deep faith that you can help him. Will you?”
Self-Realization Church of All Religions, San Diego, California
I stand with my two sisters, Roma (at left) and Nalini
My sister Uma, as a young girl
“Beloved sister, of course I will do anything I can.” I smiled, eager to lift the gloom plainly visible on her face, in contrast to her usual calm and cheerful expression.
Roma and I sat awhile in silent prayer for guidance. A year earlier, my sister had asked me to initiate her into Kriya Yoga, in which she was making notable progress.
An inspiration seized me. “Tomorrow,” I said, “I am going to the Dakshineswar temple. Please come with me, and persuade your husband to accompany us. I feel that in the vibrations of that holy place, Divine Mother will touch his heart. But don’t disclose our object in wanting him to go.”
Sister agreed hopefully. Very early the next morning I was pleased to find that Roma and her husband were in readiness for the trip. As our hackney carriage rattled along Upper Circular Road toward Dakshineswar, my brother-in-law, Satish Chandra Bose, amused himself by deriding spiritual gurus of the past, present, and future. I noticed that Roma was quietly weeping.
“Sister, cheer up!” I whispered. “Don’t give your husband the satisfaction of believing that we take his mockery seriously.”
“Mukunda, how can you admire worthless humbugs?” Satish was saying. “A sadhu’s very appearance is repulsive. He is either as thin as a skeleton, or as unholily fat as an elephant!”
I shouted with laughter. My good-natured reaction was annoying to Satish; he retired into sullen silence. As our cab entered the Dakshineswar grounds, he grinned sarcastically.
“This excursion, I suppose, is a scheme to reform me?”
As I turned away without reply, he caught my arm. “Young Mr. Monk,” he said, “don’t forget to make proper arrangements with the temple authorities to provide for our noon meal.”
“I am going to meditate now. Do not worry about your lunch,” I replied sharply. “Divine Mother will look after it.”
“I don’t trust Divine Mother to do a single thing for me. But I do hold you responsible for my food.” Satish’s tones were threatening.
I proceeded alone to the colonnaded hall which fronts the large temple of Kali, or Mother Nature. Selecting a shady spot near one of the pillars, I arranged my body in the lotus posture. Although it was only about seven o’clock, the morning sun would soon be oppressive.
The world receded as I became devotionally entranced. My mind was concentrated on Goddess Kali, whose image at Dakshineswar had been the special object of adoration by the great master, Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa. In answer to his anguished demands, the stone image of this very temple had often taken a living form and conversed with him.
“Silent Mother with stony heart,” I prayed, “Thou becamest filled with life at the request of Thy beloved devotee Ramakrishna; why dost Thou not also heed the wails of this yearning son of Thine?”
My aspiring zeal increased boundlessly, accompanied by a divine peace. Yet, when five hours had passed, and the Goddess whom I was inwardly visualizing had made no response, I felt slightly disheartened. Sometimes it is a test by God to delay the fulfillment of prayers. But He eventually appears to the persistent devotee in whatever form he holds dear. A devout Christian sees Jesus; a Hindu beholds Krishna, or the Goddess Kali, or an expanding Light if his worship takes an impersonal turn.
Reluctantly I opened my eyes, and saw that the temple doors were being locked by a priest, in conformance with a noon-hour custom. I rose from my secluded seat under the open, roofed hall, and stepped into the courtyard. Its stone floor was scorching under the midday sun; my bare feet were painfully burned.
“Divine Mother,” I silently remonstrated, “Thou didst not come to me in vision, and now Thou art hidden in the temple behind closed doors. I wanted to offer a special prayer to Thee today on behalf of my brother-in-law.”
My inward petition was instantly acknowledged. First, a delightful cold wave descended over my back and under my feet, banishing all discomfort. Then, to my amazement, the temple became greatly magnified. Its large door slowly opened, revealing the stone figure of Goddess Kali. Gradually it changed into a living form, smilingly nodding in greeting, thrilling me with joy indescribable. As if by a mystic syringe, the breath was withdrawn from my lungs; my body became very still, though not inert.
An ecstatic enlargement of consciousness followed. I could see clearly for several miles over the Ganges River to my left, and beyond the temple into the entire Dakshineswar precincts. The walls of all buildings glimmered transparently; through them I observed people walking to and fro over distant acres.
Though I was breathless and my body in a strangely quiet state, yet I was able to move my hands and feet freely. For several minutes I experimented in closing and opening my eyes; in either state I saw distinctly the whole Dakshineswar panorama.
Spiritual sight, x-raylike, penetrates into all matter; the divine eye is center everywhere, circumference nowhere. I realized anew, standing there in the sunny courtyard, that when man ceases to be a prodigal child of God, engrossed in a physical world indeed dream, baseless as a bubble, he reinherits his eternal realms. If “escapism” be a need of man, cramped in his narrow personality, can any escape compare with the majesty of omnipresence?
In my sacred experience at Dakshineswar, the only extraordinarily-enlarged objects were the temple and the form of the Goddess. Everything else appeared in its normal dimensions, although each was enclosed in a halo of mellow light—white, blue, and pastel rainbow hues. My body seemed to be of ethereal substance, ready to levitate. Fully conscious of my material surroundings, I was looking about me and taking a few steps without disturbing the continuity of the blissful vision.
Behind the temple walls I suddenly glimpsed my brother-in-law as he sat under the thorny branches of a sacred bel tree. I could effortlessly discern the course of his thoughts. Somewhat uplifted under the holy influence of Dakshineswar, his mind yet held unkind reflections about me. I turned directly to the gracious form of the Goddess.
“Divine Mother,” I prayed, “wilt Thou not spiritually change my sister’s husband?”
The beautiful figure, hitherto silent, spoke at last: “Thy wish is granted!”
I looked happily at Satish. As though instinctively aware that some spiritual power was at work, he rose resentfully from his seat on the ground. I saw him running behind the temple; he approached me, shaking his fist.
The all-embracing vision disappeared. No longer could I see the glorious Goddess; the towering temple was reduced to its ordinary size, minus its transparency. Again my body sweltered under the fierce rays of the sun. I jumped to the shelter of the pillared hall, where Satish pursued me angrily. I looked at my watch. It was one o’clock; the divine vision had lasted an hour.
“You little fool,” my brother-in-law blurted out, “you have been sitting there cross-legged and cross-eyed for six hours. I have gone back and forth watching you. Where is my food? Now the temple is closed; you failed to notify the authorities; we are left without lunch!”
The exaltation I had felt at the Goddess’ presence was still vibrant within my heart. I was emboldened to exclaim, “Divine Mother will feed us!”
Satish was beside himself with rage. “Once and for all,” he shouted, “I would like to see your Divine Mother giving us food here without prior arrangements!”
His words were hardly uttered when a temple priest crossed the courtyard and joined us.
“Son,” he addressed me, “I have been observing your face serenely glowing during hours of meditation. I saw the arrival of your party this morning, and felt a desire to put aside ample food for your lunch. It is against the temple rules to feed those who do not make a request beforehand, but I have made an exception for you.”
I thanked him, and gazed straight into Satish’s eyes. He flushed with emotion, lowering his gaze in silent repentance. When we were served a lavish meal, including out-of-season mangoes, I noticed that my brother-in-law’s appetite was meager. He was bewildered, diving deep into the ocean of thought. On the return journey to Calcutta, Satish, with softened expression, occasionally glanced at me pleadingly. But he did not speak a single word after the moment the priest had appeared to invite us to lunch, as though in direct answer to Satish’s challenge.
The following afternoon I visited my sister at her home. She greeted me affectionately.
“Dear brother,” she cried, “what a miracle! Last evening my husband wept openly before me.
“‘Beloved devi,’ 1 he said, ‘I am happy beyond expression that this reforming scheme of your brother’s has wrought a transformation. I am going to undo every wrong I have done you. From tonight we will use our large bedroom only as a place of worship; your small meditation room shall be changed into our sleeping quarters. I am sincerely sorry that I have ridiculed your brother. For the shameful way I have been acting, I will punish myself by not talking to Mukunda until I have progressed in the spiritual path. Deeply I will seek the Divine Mother from now on; someday I must surely find Her!’”
Years later, I visited my brother-in-law in Delhi. I was overjoyed to perceive that he had developed highly in self-realization, and had been blessed by the vision of Divine Mother. During my stay with him, I noticed that Satish secretly spent the greater part of every night in divine meditation, though he was suffering from a serious ailment, and was engaged during the day at his office.
The thought came to me that my brother-in-law’s life span would not be a long one. Roma must have read my mind.
“Dear brother,” she said, “I am well, and my husband is sick. Nevertheless, I want you to know that, as a devoted Hindu wife, I am going to be the first one to die.2 It won’t be long now before I pass on.”
Taken aback at her ominous words, I yet realized their sting of truth. I was in America when my sister died, about a year after her prediction. My youngest brother Bishnu later gave me the details.
“Roma and Satish were in Calcutta at the time of her death,” Bishnu told me. “That morning she dressed herself in her bridal finery.
“‘Why this special costume?’ Satish inquired.
“‘This is my last day of service to you on earth,’ Roma replied. A short time later she had a heart attack. As her son was rushing out for aid, she said:
“‘Son, do not leave me. It is no use; I shall be gone before a doctor could arrive.’ Ten minutes later, holding the feet of her husband in reverence, Roma consciously left her body, happily and without suffering.
“Satish became very reclusive after his wife’s death,” Bishnu continued. “One day he and I were looking at a large smiling photograph of Roma.
“‘Why do you smile?’ Satish suddenly exclaimed, as though his wife were present. ‘You think you were clever in arranging to go before me. I shall prove that you cannot long remain away from me; soon I shall join you.’
“Although at this time Satish had fully recovered from his sickness, and was enjoying excellent health, he died without apparent cause shortly after his strange remark before the photograph.”
Thus prophetically passed my dearly beloved eldest sister Roma, and her husband Satish—he who changed at Dakshineswar from an ordinary worldly man to a silent saint.
Chapter: 23
I Receive My University Degree
“You ignore your textbook assignments in philosophy. No doubt you are depending on an unlaborious ‘intuition’ to get you through the examinations. But unless you apply yourself in a more scholarly manner, I shall see to it that you don’t pass this course.”Professor D. C. Ghoshal of Serampore College was addressing me sternly. If I failed to pass his final written classroom test, I would be ineligible to take the conclusive examinations. These are formulated by the faculty of Calcutta University, which numbers Serampore College among its affiliated branches. A student in Indian universities who is unsuccessful in one subject in the A.B. finals must be examined anew in all his subjects the following year.
My instructors at Serampore College usually treated me with kindness, not untinged by an amused tolerance. “Mukunda is a bit over-drunk with religion.” Thus summing me up, they tactfully spared me the embarrassment of answering classroom questions; they trusted the final written tests to eliminate me from the list of A.B. candidates. The judgment passed by my fellow students was expressed in their nickname for me—“Mad Monk.”
I took an ingenious step to nullify Professor Ghoshal’s threat to me of failure in philosophy. When the results of the final tests were about to be publicly announced, I asked a classmate to accompany me to the professor’s study.
“Come along; I want a witness,” I told my companion. “I shall be very much disappointed if I have not succeeded in outwitting the instructor.”
Professor Ghoshal shook his head after I had inquired what rating he had given my paper.
“You are not among those who have passed,” he said in triumph. He hunted through a large pile on his desk. “Your paper isn’t here at all; you have failed, in any case, through non-appearance at the examination.”
I chuckled. “Sir, I was there. May I look through the stack myself?”
The professor, nonplused, gave his permission; I quickly found my paper, where I had carefully omitted any identification mark except my roll call number. Unwarned by the “red flag” of my name, the instructor had given a high rating to my answers even though they were unembellished by textbook quotations.1
Seeing through my trick, he now thundered, “Sheer brazen luck!” He added hopefully, “You are sure to fail in the A.B. finals.”
For the tests in my other subjects, I received some coaching, particularly from my dear friend and cousin, Prabhas Chandra Ghose,2 son of my Uncle Sarada. I staggered painfully but successfully—with the lowest possible passing marks—through all my final tests.
Now, after four years of college, I was eligible to sit for the A.B. examinations. Nevertheless, I hardly expected to avail myself of the privilege. The Serampore College finals were child’s play compared to the stiff ones which would be set by Calcutta University for the A.B. degree. My almost daily visits to Sri Yukteswar had left me little time to enter the college halls. There it was my presence rather than my absence that brought forth ejaculations of amazement from my classmates!
My customary routine was to set out on my bicycle about nine-thirty in the morning. In one hand I would carry an offering for my guru—a few flowers from the garden of my Panthi boardinghouse. Greeting me affably, Master would invite me to lunch. I invariably accepted with alacrity, glad to banish the thought of college for the day. After hours with Sri Yukteswar, listening to his incomparable flow of wisdom, or helping with ashram duties, I would reluctantly depart around midnight for the Panthi. Occasionally I stayed all night with my guru, so happily engrossed in his conversation that I scarcely noticed when darkness changed into dawn.
One night about eleven o’clock, as I was putting on my shoes 3 in preparation for the ride to the boardinghouse, Master questioned me gravely.
“When do your A.B. examinations start?”
“Five days hence, sir.”
“I hope you are in readiness for them.”
Transfixed with alarm, I held one shoe in the air. “Sir,” I protested, “you know how my days have been passed with you rather than with the professors. How can I enact a farce by appearing for those difficult finals?”
Sri Yukteswar’s eyes were turned piercingly on mine. “You must appear.” His tone was coldly peremptory. “We should not give cause for your father and other relatives to criticize your preference for ashram life. Just promise me that you will be present for the examinations; answer them the best way you can.”
Uncontrollable tears were coursing down my face. I felt that Master’s command was unreasonable, and that his interest was, to say the least, belated.
“I will appear if you wish it,” I said amidst sobs. “But no time remains for proper preparation.” Under my breath I muttered, “I will fill up the sheets with your teachings in answer to the questions!”
When I entered the hermitage the following day at my usual hour, I presented my bouquet with a certain mournful solemnity. Sri Yukteswar laughed at my woebegone air.
“Mukunda, has the Lord ever failed you, at an examination or elsewhere?”
“No, sir,” I responded warmly. Grateful memories came in a revivifying flood.
“Not laziness but burning zeal for God has prevented you from seeking college honors,” my guru said kindly. After a silence, he quoted, “‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.’” 4
For the thousandth time, I felt my burdens lifted in Master’s presence. When we had finished our early lunch, he suggested that I return to the Panthi.
“Does your friend, Romesh Chandra Dutt, still live in your boardinghouse?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get in touch with him; the Lord will inspire him to help you with the examinations.”
“Very well, sir; but Romesh is unusually busy. He is the honor man in our class, and carries a heavier course than the others.”
Master waved aside my objections. “Romesh will find time for you. Now go.”
I bicycled back to the Panthi. The first person I met in the boardinghouse compound was the scholarly Romesh. As though his days were quite free, he obligingly agreed to my diffident request.
“Of course; I am at your service.” He spent several hours of that afternoon and of succeeding days in coaching me in my various subjects.
“I believe many questions in English literature will be centered in the route of Childe Harold,” he told me. “We must get an atlas at once.”
I hastened to the home of my Uncle Sarada and borrowed an atlas. Romesh marked the European map at the places visited by Byron’s romantic traveler.
A few classmates had gathered around to listen to the tutoring. “Romesh is advising you wrongly,” one of them commented to me at the end of a session. “Usually only fifty per cent of the questions are about the books; the other half will involve the authors’ lives.”
When I sat for the examination in English literature the following day, my first glance at the questions caused tears of gratitude to pour forth, wetting my paper. The classroom monitor came to my desk and made a sympathetic inquiry.
“My guru foretold that Romesh would help me,” I explained. “Look; the very questions dictated to me by Romesh are here on the examination sheet! Fortunately for me, there are very few questions this year on English authors, whose lives are wrapped in deep mystery so far as I am concerned!”
My boardinghouse was in an uproar when I returned. The boys who had been ridiculing Romesh’s method of coaching looked at me in awe, almost deafening me with congratulations. During the week of the examinations, I spent many hours with Romesh, who formulated questions that he thought were likely to be set by the professors. Day by day, Romesh’s questions appeared in almost the same form on the examination sheets.
The news was widely circulated in the college that something resembling a miracle was occurring, and that success seemed probable for the absent-minded “Mad Monk.” I made no attempt to hide the facts of the case. The local professors were powerless to alter the questions, which had been arranged by Calcutta University.
Thinking over the examination in English literature, I realized one morning that I had made a serious error. One section of the questions had been divided into two parts of A or B, and C or D. Instead of answering one question from each part, I had carelessly answered both questions in Group I, and had failed to consider anything in Group II. The best mark I could score in that paper would be 33, three less than the passing mark of 36. I rushed to Master and poured out my troubles.
“Sir, I have made an unpardonable blunder. I don’t deserve the divine blessings through Romesh; I am quite unworthy.”
“Cheer up, Mukunda.” Sri Yukteswar’s tones were light and unconcerned. He pointed to the blue vault of the heavens. “It is more possible for the sun and moon to interchange their positions in space than it is for you to fail in getting your degree!”
I left the hermitage in a more tranquil mood, though it seemed mathematically inconceivable that I could pass. I looked once or twice apprehensively into the sky; the Lord of Day appeared to be securely anchored in his customary orbit!
As I reached the Panthi, I overheard a classmate’s remark: “I have just learned that this year, for the first time, the required passing mark in English literature has been lowered.”
I entered the boy’s room with such speed that he looked up in alarm. I questioned him eagerly.
“Long-haired monk,” he said laughingly, “why this sudden interest in scholastic matters? Why cry in the eleventh hour? But it is true that the passing mark has just been lowered to 33 points.”
A few joyous leaps took me into my own room, where I sank to my knees and praised the mathematical perfections of my Divine Father.
Every day I thrilled with the consciousness of a spiritual presence that I clearly felt to be guiding me through Romesh. A significant incident occurred in connection with the examination in Bengali. Romesh, who had touched little on that subject, called me back one morning as I was leaving the boardinghouse on my way to the examination hall.
“There is Romesh shouting for you,” a classmate said to me impatiently. “Don’t return; we shall be late at the hall.”
Ignoring the advice, I ran back to the house.
“The Bengali examination is usually easily passed by our Bengali boys,” Romesh told me. “But I have just had a hunch that this year the professors have planned to massacre the students by asking questions from our ancient literature.” My friend then briefly outlined two stories from the life of Vidyasagar, a renowned philanthropist.
I thanked Romesh and quickly bicycled to the college hall. The examination sheet in Bengali proved to contain two parts. The first instruction was: “Write two instances of the charities of Vidyasagar.” As I transferred to the paper the lore that I had so recently acquired, I whispered a few words of thanksgiving that I had heeded Romesh’s last-minute summons. Had I been ignorant of Vidyasagar’s benefactions to mankind (including ultimately myself), I could not have passed the Bengali examination. Failing in one subject, I would have been forced to stand examination anew in all subjects the following year. Such a prospect was understandably abhorrent.
The second instruction on the sheet read: “Write an essay in Bengali on the life of the man who has most inspired you.” Gentle reader, I need not inform you what man I chose for my theme. As I covered page after page with praise of my guru, I smiled to realize that my muttered prediction was coming true: “I will fill up the sheets with your teachings!”
I had not felt inclined to question Romesh about my course in philosophy. Trusting my long training under Sri Yukteswar, I safely disregarded the textbook explanations. The highest mark given to any of my papers was the one in philosophy. My score in all other subjects was just barely within the passing mark.
It is a pleasure to record that my unselfish friend Romesh received his own degree cum laude.
Father was wreathed in smiles at my graduation. “I hardly thought you would pass, Mukunda,” he confessed. “You spend so much time with your guru.” Master had indeed correctly detected the unspoken criticism of my father.
For years I had been uncertain that I would ever see the day when an A.B. would follow my name. I seldom use the title without reflecting that it was a divine gift, conferred on me for reasons somewhat obscure. Occasionally I hear college men remark that very little of their crammed knowledge remained with them after graduation. That admission consoles me a bit for my undoubted academic deficiencies.
On the day I received my degree from Calcutta University, I knelt at my guru’s feet and thanked him for all the blessings flowing from his life into mine.
“Get up, Mukunda,” he said indulgently. “The Lord simply found it more convenient to make you a graduate than to rearrange the sun and moon!”
-
I must do Professor Ghoshal the justice of admitting that the
strained relationship between us was not due to any fault of his, but
solely to my absences from classes and inattention in them. Professor
Ghoshal was, and is, a remarkable orator with vast philosophical
knowledge. In later years we came to a cordial understanding.▲
-
Although my cousin and I have the same family name of Ghosh,
Prabhas has accustomed himself to transliterating his name in English as
Ghose; therefore I follow his own spelling here.▲
-
A disciple always removes his shoes in an Indian hermitage.▲
-
Matthew 6:33.▲
Chapter: 24
I Become a Monk of the Swami Order
“Master, my father has been anxious for me to accept an executive position with the Bengal-Nagpur Railway. But I have definitely refused it.” I added hopefully, “Sir, will you not make me a monk of the Swami Order?” I looked pleadingly at my guru. During preceding years, in order to test the depth of my determination, he had refused this same request. Today, however, he smiled graciously.“Very well; tomorrow I will initiate you into swamiship.” He went on quietly, “I am happy that you have persisted in your desire to be a monk. Lahiri Mahasaya often said: ‘If you don’t invite God to be your summer Guest, He won’t come in the winter of your life.’”
“Dear master, I could never falter in my goal to belong to the Swami Order like your revered self.” I smiled at him with measureless affection.
“He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married careth for the things of the world, how he may please his wife.” 1 I had analyzed the lives of many of my friends who, after undergoing certain spiritual discipline, had then married. Launched on the sea of worldly responsibilities, they had forgotten their resolutions to meditate deeply.
To allot God a secondary place in life was, to me, inconceivable. Though He is the sole Owner of the cosmos, silently showering us with gifts from life to life, one thing yet remains which He does not own, and which each human heart is empowered to withhold or bestow—man’s love. The Creator, in taking infinite pains to shroud with mystery His presence in every atom of creation, could have had but one motive—a sensitive desire that men seek Him only through free will. With what velvet glove of every humility has He not covered the iron hand of omnipotence!
The following day was one of the most memorable in my life. It was a sunny Thursday, I remember, in July, 1914, a few weeks after my graduation from college. On the inner balcony of his Serampore hermitage, Master dipped a new piece of white silk into a dye of ocher, the traditional color of the Swami Order. After the cloth had dried, my guru draped it around me as a renunciate’s robe.
“Someday you will go to the West, where silk is preferred,” he said. “As a symbol, I have chosen for you this silk material instead of the customary cotton.”
In India, where monks embrace the ideal of poverty, a silk-clad swami is an unusual sight. Many yogis, however, wear garments of silk, which preserves certain subtle bodily currents better than cotton.
“I am averse to ceremonies,” Sri Yukteswar remarked. “I will make you a swami in the bidwat (non-ceremonious) manner.”
The bibidisa or elaborate initiation into swamiship includes a fire ceremony, during which symbolical funeral rites are performed. The physical body of the disciple is represented as dead, cremated in the flame of wisdom. The newly-made swami is then given a chant, such as: “This atma is Brahma” 2 or “Thou art That” or “I am He.” Sri Yukteswar, however, with his love of simplicity, dispensed with all formal rites and merely asked me to select a new name.
“I will give you the privilege of choosing it yourself,” he said, smiling.
“Yogananda,” I replied, after a moment’s thought. The name literally means “Bliss (ananda) through divine union (yoga).”
“Be it so. Forsaking your family name of Mukunda Lal Ghosh, henceforth you shall be called Yogananda of the Giri branch of the Swami Order.”
As I knelt before Sri Yukteswar, and for the first time heard him pronounce my new name, my heart overflowed with gratitude. How lovingly and tirelessly had he labored, that the boy Mukunda be someday transformed into the monk Yogananda! I joyfully sang a few verses from the long Sanskrit chant of Lord Shankara:
“Mind, nor intellect, nor ego, feeling;Every swami belongs to the ancient monastic order which was organized in its present form by Shankara.3 Because it is a formal order, with an unbroken line of saintly representatives serving as active leaders, no man can give himself the title of swami. He rightfully receives it only from another swami; all monks thus trace their spiritual lineage to one common guru, Lord Shankara. By vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to the spiritual teacher, many Catholic Christian monastic orders resemble the Order of Swamis.
Sky nor earth nor metals am I.
I am He, I am He, Blessed Spirit, I am He!
No birth, no death, no caste have I;
Father, mother, have I none.
I am He, I am He, Blessed Spirit, I am He!
Beyond the flights of fancy, formless am I,
Permeating the limbs of all life;
Bondage I do not fear; I am free, ever free,
I am He, I am He, Blessed Spirit, I am He!”
In addition to his new name, usually ending in ananda, the swami takes a title which indicates his formal connection with one of the ten subdivisions of the Swami Order. These dasanamis or ten agnomens include the Giri (mountain), to which Sri Yukteswar, and hence myself, belong. Among the other branches are the Sagar (sea), Bharati (land), Aranya (forest), Puri (tract), Tirtha (place of pilgrimage), and Saraswati (wisdom of nature).
The new name received by a swami thus has a twofold significance, and represents the attainment of supreme bliss (ananda) through some divine quality or state—love, wisdom, devotion, service, yoga—and through a harmony with nature, as expressed in her infinite vastness of oceans, mountains, skies.
—By B. K. Mitra in “Kalyana-Kalpataru”
The Lord in his aspect as Shiva
Not a historical personage
like Krishna, Shiva is the name given to God in the last aspect of His
threefold nature (Creator-Preserver-Destroyer). Shiva, the Annihilator
of maya or delusion, is symbolically represented in the
scriptures as the Lord of Renunciates, the King of Yogis. In Hindu art
He is always shown with the new moon in His hair, and wearing a garland
of hooded snakes, ancient emblem of evil overcome and perfect wisdom.
The “single” eye of omniscience is open on His forehead.
Sri Yukteswar was both a swami and a yogi. A swami, formally a monk by virtue of his connection with the ancient order, is not always a yogi. Anyone who practices a scientific technique of God-contact is a yogi; he may be either married or unmarried, either a worldly man or one of formal religious ties. A swami may conceivably follow only the path of dry reasoning, of cold renunciation; but a yogi engages himself in a definite, step-by-step procedure by which the body and mind are disciplined, and the soul liberated. Taking nothing for granted on emotional grounds, or by faith, a yogi practices a thoroughly tested series of exercises which were first mapped out by the early rishis. Yoga has produced, in every age of India, men who became truly free, truly Yogi-Christs.
Like any other science, yoga is applicable to people of every clime and time. The theory advanced by certain ignorant writers that yoga is “unsuitable for Westerners” is wholly false, and has lamentably prevented many sincere students from seeking its manifold blessings. Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevent all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit. Yoga cannot know a barrier of East and West any more than does the healing and equitable light of the sun. So long as man possesses a mind with its restless thoughts, so long will there be a universal need for yoga or control.
The ancient rishi Patanjali defines “yoga” as “control of the fluctuations of the mind-stuff.” 4 His very short and masterly expositions, the Yoga Sutras, form one of the six systems of Hindu philosophy.5 In contradistinction to Western philosophies, all six Hindu systems embody not only theoretical but practical teachings. In addition to every conceivable ontological inquiry, the six systems formulate six definite disciplines aimed at the permanent removal of suffering and the attainment of timeless bliss.
The common thread linking all six systems is the declaration that no true freedom for man is possible without knowledge of the ultimate Reality. The later Upanishads uphold the Yoga Sutras, among the six systems, as containing the most efficacious methods for achieving direct perception of truth. Through the practical techniques of yoga, man leaves behind forever the barren realms of speculation and cognizes in experience the veritable Essence.
The Yoga system as outlined by Patanjali is known as the Eightfold Path. The first steps, (1) yama and (2) niyama, require observance of ten negative and positive moralities—avoidance of injury to others, of untruthfulness, of stealing, of incontinence, of gift-receiving (which brings obligations); and purity of body and mind, contentment, self-discipline, study, and devotion to God.
The next steps are (3) asana (right posture); the spinal column must be held straight, and the body firm in a comfortable position for meditation; (4) pranayama (control of prana, subtle life currents); and (5) pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses from external objects).
The last steps are forms of yoga proper: (6) dharana (concentration); holding the mind to one thought; (7) dhyana (meditation), and (8) samadhi (superconscious perception). This is the Eightfold Path of Yoga 6 which leads one to the final goal of Kaivalya (Absoluteness), a term which might be more comprehensibly put as “realization of the Truth beyond all intellectual apprehension.”
“Which is greater,” one may ask, “a swami or a yogi?” If and when final oneness with God is achieved, the distinctions of the various paths disappear. The Bhagavad Gita, however, points out that the methods of yoga are all-embracive. Its techniques are not meant only for certain types and temperaments, such as those few who incline toward the monastic life; yoga requires no formal allegiance. Because the yogic science satisfies a universal need, it has a natural universal applicability.
A true yogi may remain dutifully in the world; there he is like butter on water, and not like the easily-diluted milk of unchurned and undisciplined humanity. To fulfill one’s earthly responsibilities is indeed the higher path, provided the yogi, maintaining a mental uninvolvement with egotistical desires, plays his part as a willing instrument of God.
There are a number of great souls, living in American or European or other non-Hindu bodies today who, though they may never have heard the words yogi and swami, are yet true exemplars of those terms. Through their disinterested service to mankind, or through their mastery over passions and thoughts, or through their single hearted love of God, or through their great powers of concentration, they are, in a sense, yogis; they have set themselves the goal of yoga-self-control. These men could rise to even greater heights if they were taught the definite science of yoga, which makes possible a more conscious direction of one’s mind and life.
Yoga has been superficially misunderstood by certain Western writers, but its critics have never been its practitioners. Among many thoughtful tributes to yoga may be mentioned one by Dr. C. G. Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist.
“When a religious method recommends itself as ‘scientific,’ it can be certain of its public in the West. Yoga fulfills this expectation,” Dr. Jung writes.7 “Quite apart from the charm of the new, and the fascination of the half-understood, there is good cause for Yoga to have many adherents. It offers the possibility of controllable experience, and thus satisfies the scientific need of ‘facts,’ and besides this, by reason of its breadth and depth, its venerable age, its doctrine and method, which include every phase of life, it promises undreamed-of possibilities.
“Every religious or philosophical practice means a psychological discipline, that is, a method of mental hygiene. The manifold, purely bodily procedures of Yoga 8 also mean a physiological hygiene which is superior to ordinary gymnastics and breathing exercises, inasmuch as it is not merely mechanistic and scientific, but also philosophical; in its training of the parts of the body, it unites them with the whole of the spirit, as is quite clear, for instance, in the Pranayama exercises where Prana is both the breath and the universal dynamics of the cosmos.
“When the thing which the individual is doing is also a cosmic event, the effect experienced in the body (the innervation), unites with the emotion of the spirit (the universal idea), and out of this there develops a lively unity which no technique, however scientific, can produce. Yoga practice is unthinkable, and would also be ineffectual, without the concepts on which Yoga is based. It combines the bodily and the spiritual with each other in an extraordinarily complete way.
“In the East, where these ideas and practices have developed, and where for several thousand years an unbroken tradition has created the necessary spiritual foundations, Yoga is, as I can readily believe, the perfect and appropriate method of fusing body and mind together so that they form a unity which is scarcely to be questioned. This unity creates a psychological disposition which makes possible intuitions that transcend consciousness.”
The Western day is indeed nearing when the inner science of self-control will be found as necessary as the outer conquest of nature. This new Atomic Age will see men’s minds sobered and broadened by the now scientifically indisputable truth that matter is in reality a concentrate of energy. Finer forces of the human mind can and must liberate energies greater than those within stones and metals, lest the material atomic giant, newly unleashed, turn on the world in mindless destruction.9
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I Corinthians 7:32-33.▲
-
Literally, “This soul is Spirit.” The Supreme Spirit, the Uncreated, is wholly unconditioned (neti, neti, not this, not that) but is often referred to in Vedanta as Sat-Chit-Ananda, that is, Being-Intelligence-Bliss.▲
-
Sometimes called Shankaracharya. Acharya means
“religious teacher.” Shankara’s date is a center of the usual scholastic
dispute. A few records indicate that the peerless monist lived from 510
to 478 B.C.; Western historians assign him to the late eighth century
A.D. Readers who are interested in Shankara’s famous exposition of the Brahma Sutras will find a careful English translation in Dr. Paul Deussen’s System Of The Vedanta (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1912). Short extracts from his writings will be found in Selected Works of Sri Shankaracharya (Natesan & Co., Madras).▲
-
“Chitta vritti nirodha”—Yoga Sutra I:2. Patanjali’s
date is unknown, though a number of scholars place him in the second
century B.C. The rishis gave forth treatises on all subjects with such
insight that ages have been powerless to outmode them; yet, to the
subsequent consternation of historians, the sages made no effort to
attach their own dates and personalities to their literary works. They
knew their lives were only temporarily important as flashes of the great
infinite Life; and that truth is timeless, impossible to trademark, and
no private possession of their own.▲
-
The six orthodox systems (saddarsana) are Sankhya, Yoga, Vedanta, Mimamsa, Nyaya, and Vaisesika.
Readers of a scholarly bent will delight in the subtleties and broad
scope of these ancient formulations as summarized, in English, in History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. I, by Prof. Surendranath DasGupta (Cambridge University Press, 1922).▲
-
Not to be confused with the “Noble Eightfold Path” of
Buddhism, a guide to man’s conduct of life, as follows (1) Right Ideals,
(2) Right Motive, (3) Right Speech, (4) Right Action, (5) Right Means
of Livelihood, (6) Right Effort, (7) Right Remembrance (of the Self),
(8) Right Realization (samadhi).▲
-
Dr. Jung attended the Indian Science Congress in 1937 and received an honorary degree from the University of Calcutta.▲
-
Dr. Jung is here referring to Hatha Yoga, a specialized branch of bodily postures and techniques for health and longevity. Hatha
is useful, and produces spectacular physical results, but this branch
of yoga is little used by yogis bent on spiritual liberation.▲
-
In Plato’s Timaeus story of Atlantis, he tells of
the inhabitants’ advanced state of scientific knowledge. The lost
continent is believed to have vanished about 9500 B.C. through a
cataclysm of nature; certain metaphysical writers, however, state that
the Atlanteans were destroyed as a result of their misuse of atomic
power. Two French writers have recently compiled a Bibliography of Atlantis, listing over 1700 historical and other references.▲
Chapter: 25
Brother Ananta and Sister Nalini
“Ananta cannot live; the sands of his karma for this life have run out.”These inexorable words reached my inner consciousness as I sat one morning in deep meditation. Shortly after I had entered the Swami Order, I paid a visit to my birthplace, Gorakhpur, as a guest of my elder brother Ananta. A sudden illness confined him to his bed; I nursed him lovingly.
The solemn inward pronouncement filled me with grief. I felt that I could not bear to remain longer in Gorakhpur, only to see my brother removed before my helpless gaze. Amidst uncomprehending criticism from my relatives, I left India on the first available boat. It cruised along Burma and the China Sea to Japan. I disembarked at Kobe, where I spent only a few days. My heart was too heavy for sightseeing.
On the return trip to India, the boat touched at Shanghai. There Dr. Misra, the ship’s physician, guided me to several curio shops, where I selected various presents for Sri Yukteswar and my family and friends. For Ananta I purchased a large carved bamboo piece. No sooner had the Chinese salesman handed me the bamboo souvenir than I dropped it on the floor, crying out, “I have bought this for my dear dead brother!”
A clear realization had swept over me that his soul was just being freed in the Infinite. The souvenir was sharply and symbolically cracked by its fall; amidst sobs, I wrote on the bamboo surface: “For my beloved Ananta, now gone.”
My companion, the doctor, was observing these proceedings with a sardonic smile.
“Save your tears,” he remarked. “Why shed them until you are sure he is dead?”
When our boat reached Calcutta, Dr. Misra again accompanied me. My youngest brother Bishnu was waiting to greet me at the dock.
“I know Ananta has departed this life,” I said to Bishnu, before he had had time to speak. “Please tell me, and the doctor here, when Ananta died.”
Bishnu named the date, which was the very day that I had bought the souvenirs in Shanghai.
“Look here!” Dr. Misra ejaculated. “Don’t let any word of this get around! The professors will be adding a year’s study of mental telepathy to the medical course, which is already long enough!”
Father embraced me warmly as I entered our Gurpar Road home. “You have come,” he said tenderly. Two large tears dropped from his eyes. Ordinarily undemonstrative, he had never before shown me these signs of affection. Outwardly the grave father, inwardly he possessed the melting heart of a mother. In all his dealings with the family, his dual parental role was distinctly manifest.
Soon after Ananta’s passing, my younger sister Nalini was brought back from death’s door by a divine healing. Before relating the story, I will refer to a few phases of her earlier life.
The childhood relationship between Nalini and myself had not been of the happiest nature. I was very thin; she was thinner still. Through an unconscious motive or “complex” which psychiatrists will have no difficulty in identifying, I often used to tease my sister about her cadaverous appearance. Her retorts were equally permeated with the callous frankness of extreme youth. Sometimes Mother intervened, ending the childish quarrels, temporarily, by a gentle box on my ear, as the elder ear.
Time passed; Nalini was betrothed to a young Calcutta physician, Panchanon Bose. He received a generous dowry from Father, presumably (as I remarked to Sister) to compensate the bridegroom-to-be for his fate in allying himself with a human bean-pole.
Elaborate marriage rites were celebrated in due time. On the wedding night, I joined the large and jovial group of relatives in the living room of our Calcutta home. The bridegroom was leaning on an immense gold-brocaded pillow, with Nalini at his side. A gorgeous purple silk sari 1 could not, alas, wholly hide her angularity. I sheltered myself behind the pillow of my new brother-in-law and grinned at him in friendly fashion. He had never seen Nalini until the day of the nuptial ceremony, when he finally learned what he was getting in the matrimonial lottery.
Feeling my sympathy, Dr. Bose pointed unobtrusively to Nalini, and whispered in my ear, “Say, what’s this?”
“Why, Doctor,” I replied, “it is a skeleton for your observation!”
Convulsed with mirth, my brother-in-law and I were hard put to it to maintain the proper decorum before our assembled relatives.
As the years went on, Dr. Bose endeared himself to our family, who called on him whenever illness arose. He and I became fast friends, often joking together, usually with Nalini as our target.
“It is a medical curiosity,” my brother-in-law remarked to me one day. “I have tried everything on your lean sister—cod liver oil, butter, malt, honey, fish, meat, eggs, tonics. Still she fails to bulge even one-hundredth of an inch.” We both chuckled.
A few days later I visited the Bose home. My errand there took only a few minutes; I was leaving, unnoticed, I thought, by Nalini. As I reached the front door, I heard her voice, cordial but commanding.
“Brother, come here. You are not going to give me the slip this time. I want to talk to you.”
I mounted the stairs to her room. To my surprise, she was in tears.
“Dear brother,” she said, “let us bury the old hatchet. I see that your feet are now firmly set on the spiritual path. I want to become like you in every way.” She added hopefully, “You are now robust in appearance; can you help me? My husband does not come near me, and I love him so dearly! But still more I want to progress in God-realization, even if I must remain thin 2 and unattractive.”
My heart was deeply touched at her plea. Our new friendship steadily progressed; one day she asked to become my disciple.
“Train me in any way you like. I put my trust in God instead of tonics.” She gathered together an armful of medicines and poured them down the roof drain.
As a test of her faith, I asked her to omit from her diet all fish, meat, and eggs.
After several months, during which Nalini had strictly followed the various rules I had outlined, and had adhered to her vegetarian diet in spite of numerous difficulties, I paid her a visit.
“Sis, you have been conscientiously observing the spiritual injunctions; your reward is near.” I smiled mischievously. “How plump do you want to be—as fat as our aunt who hasn’t seen her feet in years?”
“No! But I long to be as stout as you are.”
I replied solemnly. “By the grace of God, as I have spoken truth always, I speak truly now.3 Through the divine blessings, your body shall verily change from today; in one month it shall have the same weight as mine.”
These words from my heart found fulfillment. In thirty days, Nalini’s weight equalled mine. The new roundness gave her beauty; her husband fell deeply in love. Their marriage, begun so inauspiciously, turned out to be ideally happy.
On my return from Japan, I learned that during my absence Nalini had been stricken with typhoid fever. I rushed to her home, and was aghast to find her reduced to a mere skeleton. She was in a coma.
“Before her mind became confused by illness,” my brother-in-law told me, “she often said: ‘If brother Mukunda were here, I would not be faring thus.’” He added despairingly, “The other doctors and myself see no hope. Blood dysentery has set in, after her long bout with typhoid.”
I began to move heaven and earth with my prayers. Engaging an Anglo-Indian nurse, who gave me full cooperation, I applied to my sister various yoga techniques of healing. The blood dysentery disappeared.
But Dr. Bose shook his head mournfully. “She simply has no more blood left to shed.”
“She will recover,” I replied stoutly. “In seven days her fever will be gone.”
A week later I was thrilled to see Nalini open her eyes and gaze at me with loving recognition. From that day her recovery was swift. Although she regained her usual weight, she bore one sad scar of her nearly fatal illness: her legs were paralyzed. Indian and English specialists pronounced her a hopeless cripple.
The incessant war for her life which I had waged by prayer had exhausted me. I went to Serampore to ask Sri Yukteswar’s help. His eyes expressed deep sympathy as I told him of Nalini’s plight.
“Your sister’s legs will be normal at the end of one month.” He added, “Let her wear, next to her skin, a band with an unperforated two-carat pearl, held on by a clasp.”
I prostrated myself at his feet with joyful relief.
“Sir, you are a master; your word of her recovery is enough But if you insist I shall immediately get her a pearl.”
My guru nodded. “Yes, do that.” He went on to correctly describe the physical and mental characteristics of Nalini, whom he had never seen.
“Sir,” I inquired, “is this an astrological analysis? You do not know her birth day or hour.”
Sri Yukteswar smiled. “There is a deeper astrology, not dependent on the testimony of calendars and clocks. Each man is a part of the Creator, or Cosmic Man; he has a heavenly body as well as one of earth. The human eye sees the physical form, but the inward eye penetrates more profoundly, even to the universal pattern of which each man is an integral and individual part.”
I returned to Calcutta and purchased a pearl for Nalini. A month later, her paralyzed legs were completely healed.
Sister asked me to convey her heartfelt gratitude to my guru. He listened to her message in silence. But as I was taking my leave, he made a pregnant comment.
“Your sister has been told by many doctors that she can never bear children. Assure her that in a few years she will give birth to two daughters.”
Some years later, to Nalini’s joy, she bore a girl, followed in a few years by another daughter.
“Your master has blessed our home, our entire family,” my sister said. “The presence of such a man is a sanctification on the whole of India. Dear brother, please tell Sri Yukteswarji that, through you, I humbly count myself as one of his Kriya Yoga disciples.”
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The gracefully draped dress of Indian women.▲
-
Because most persons in India are thin, reasonable plumpness is considered very desirable.▲
-
The Hindu scriptures declare that those who habitually speak
the truth will develop the power of materializing their words. What
commands they utter from the heart will come true in life.▲
Chapter: 26
The Science of Kriya Yoga
The science of Kriya Yoga, mentioned so often in these pages, became widely known in modern India through the instrumentality of Lahiri Mahasaya, my guru’s guru. The Sanskrit root of Kriya is kri, to do, to act and react; the same root is found in the word karma, the natural principle of cause and effect. Kriya Yoga is thus “union (yoga) with the Infinite through a certain action or rite.” A yogi who faithfully follows its technique is gradually freed from karma or the universal chain of causation.Because of certain ancient yogic injunctions, I cannot give a full explanation of Kriya Yoga in the pages of a book intended for the general public. The actual technique must be learned from a Kriyaban or Kriya Yogi; here a broad reference must suffice.
Kriya Yoga is a simple, psychophysiological method by which the human blood is decarbonized and recharged with oxygen. The atoms of this extra oxygen are transmuted into life current to rejuvenate the brain and spinal centers.1 By stopping the accumulation of venous blood, the yogi is able to lessen or prevent the decay of tissues; the advanced yogi transmutes his cells into pure energy. Elijah, Jesus, Kabir and other prophets were past masters in the use of Kriya or a similar technique, by which they caused their bodies to dematerialize at will.
Kriya is an ancient science. Lahiri Mahasaya received it from his guru, Babaji, who rediscovered and clarified the technique after it had been lost in the Dark Ages.
“The Kriya Yoga which I am giving to the world through you in this nineteenth century,” Babaji told Lahiri Mahasaya, “is a revival of the same science which Krishna gave, millenniums ago, to Arjuna, and which was later known to Patanjali, and to Christ, St. John, St. Paul, and other disciples.”
Kriya Yoga is referred to by Krishna, India’s greatest prophet, in a stanza of the Bhagavad Gita: “Offering inhaling breath into the outgoing breath, and offering the outgoing breath into the inhaling breath, the yogi neutralizes both these breaths; he thus releases the life force from the heart and brings it under his control.” 2 The interpretation is: “The yogi arrests decay in the body by an addition of life force, and arrests the mutations of growth in the body by apan (eliminating current). Thus neutralizing decay and growth, by quieting the heart, the yogi learns life control.”
Krishna also relates 3 that it was he, in a former incarnation, who communicated the indestructible yoga to an ancient illuminato, Vivasvat, who gave it to Manu, the great legislator.4 He, in turn, instructed Ikshwaku, the father of India’s solar warrior dynasty. Passing thus from one to another, the royal yoga was guarded by the rishis until the coming of the materialistic ages.5 Then, due to priestly secrecy and man’s indifference, the sacred knowledge gradually became inaccessible.
Kriya Yoga is mentioned twice by the ancient sage Patanjali, foremost exponent of yoga, who wrote: “Kriya Yoga consists of body discipline, mental control, and meditating on Aum.” 6 Patanjali speaks of God as the actual Cosmic Sound of Aum heard in meditation.7 Aum is the Creative Word,8 the sound of the Vibratory Motor. Even the yoga-beginner soon inwardly hears the wondrous sound of Aum. Receiving this blissful spiritual encouragement, the devotee becomes assured that he is in actual touch with divine realms.
Patanjali refers a second time to the life-control or Kriya technique thus: “Liberation can be accomplished by that pranayama which is attained by disjoining the course of inspiration and expiration.” 9
St. Paul knew Kriya Yoga, or a technique very similar to it, by which he could switch life currents to and from the senses. He was therefore able to say: “Verily, I protest by our rejoicing which I have in Christ, I die daily.” 10 By daily withdrawing his bodily life force, he united it by yoga union with the rejoicing (eternal bliss) of the Christ consciousness. In that felicitous state, he was consciously aware of being dead to the delusive sensory world of maya.
In the initial states of God-contact (sabikalpa samadhi) the devotee’s consciousness merges with the Cosmic Spirit; his life force is withdrawn from the body, which appears “dead,” or motionless and rigid. The yogi is fully aware of his bodily condition of suspended animation. As he progresses to higher spiritual states (nirbikalpa samadhi), however, he communes with God without bodily fixation, and in his ordinary waking consciousness, even in the midst of exacting worldly duties.11
“Kriya Yoga is an instrument through which human evolution can be quickened,” Sri Yukteswar explained to his students. “The ancient yogis discovered that the secret of cosmic consciousness is intimately linked with breath mastery. This is India’s unique and deathless contribution to the world’s treasury of knowledge. The life force, which is ordinarily absorbed in maintaining the heart-pump, must be freed for higher activities by a method of calming and stilling the ceaseless demands of the breath.”
The Kriya Yogi mentally directs his life energy to revolve, upward and downward, around the six spinal centers (medullary, cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral, and coccygeal plexuses) which correspond to the twelve astral signs of the zodiac, the symbolic Cosmic Man. One-half minute of revolution of energy around the sensitive spinal cord of man effects subtle progress in his evolution; that half-minute of Kriya equals one year of natural spiritual unfoldment.
The astral system of a human being, with six (twelve by polarity) inner constellations revolving around the sun of the omniscient spiritual eye, is interrelated with the physical sun and the twelve zodiacal signs. All men are thus affected by an inner and an outer universe. The ancient rishis discovered that man’s earthly and heavenly environment, in twelve-year cycles, push him forward on his natural path. The scriptures aver that man requires a million years of normal, diseaseless evolution to perfect his human brain sufficiently to express cosmic consciousness.
One thousand Kriya practiced in eight hours gives the yogi, in one day, the equivalent of one thousand years of natural evolution: 365,000 years of evolution in one year. In three years, a Kriya Yogi can thus accomplish by intelligent self-effort the same result which nature brings to pass in a million years. The Kriya short cut, of course, can be taken only by deeply developed yogis. With the guidance of a guru, such yogis have carefully prepared their bodies and brains to receive the power created by intensive practice.
The Kriya beginner employs his yogic exercise only fourteen to twenty-eight times, twice daily. A number of yogis achieve emancipation in six or twelve or twenty-four or forty-eight years. A yogi who dies before achieving full realization carries with him the good karma of his past Kriya effort; in his new life he is harmoniously propelled toward his Infinite Goal.
The body of the average man is like a fifty-watt lamp, which cannot accommodate the billion watts of power roused by an excessive practice of Kriya. Through gradual and regular increase of the simple and “foolproof” methods of Kriya, man’s body becomes astrally transformed day by day, and is finally fitted to express the infinite potentials of cosmic energy—the first materially active expression of Spirit.
Kriya Yoga has nothing in common with the unscientific breathing exercises taught by a number of misguided zealots. Their attempts to forcibly hold breath in the lungs is not only unnatural but decidedly unpleasant. Kriya, on the other hand, is accompanied from the very beginning by an accession of peace, and by soothing sensations of regenerative effect in the spine.
The ancient yogic technique converts the breath into mind. By spiritual advancement, one is able to cognize the breath as an act of mind—a dream-breath.
Many illustrations could be given of the mathematical relationship between man’s respiratory rate and the variations in his states of consciousness. A person whose attention is wholly engrossed, as in following some closely knit intellectual argument, or in attempting some delicate or difficult physical feat, automatically breathes very slowly. Fixity of attention depends on slow breathing; quick or uneven breaths are an inevitable accompaniment of harmful emotional states: fear, lust, anger. The restless monkey breathes at the rate of 32 times a minute, in contrast to man’s average of 18 times. The elephant, tortoise, snake and other animals noted for their longevity have a respiratory rate which is less than man’s. The tortoise, for instance, who may attain the age of 300 years,12 breathes only 4 times per minute.
The rejuvenating effects of sleep are due to man’s temporary unawareness of body and breathing. The sleeping man becomes a yogi; each night he unconsciously performs the yogic rite of releasing himself from bodily identification, and of merging the life force with healing currents in the main brain region and the six sub-dynamos of his spinal centers. The sleeper thus dips unknowingly into the reservoir of cosmic energy which sustains all life.
The voluntary yogi performs a simple, natural process consciously, not unconsciously like the slow-paced sleeper. The Kriya Yogi uses his technique to saturate and feed all his physical cells with undecaying light and keep them in a magnetized state. He scientifically makes breath unnecessary, without producing the states of subconscious sleep or unconsciousness.
By Kriya, the outgoing life force is not wasted and abused in the senses, but constrained to reunite with subtler spinal energies. By such reinforcement of life, the yogi’s body and brain cells are electrified with the spiritual elixir. Thus he removes himself from studied observance of natural laws, which can only take him—by circuitous means as given by proper food, sunlight, and harmonious thoughts—to a million-year Goal. It needs twelve years of normal healthful living to effect even slight perceptible change in brain structure, and a million solar returns are exacted to sufficiently refine the cerebral tenement for manifestation of cosmic consciousness.
Untying the cord of breath which binds the soul to the body, Kriya serves to prolong life and enlarge the consciousness to infinity. The yoga method overcomes the tug of war between the mind and the matter-bound senses, and frees the devotee to reinherit his eternal kingdom. He knows his real nature is bound neither by physical encasement nor by breath, symbol of the mortal enslavement to air, to nature’s elemental compulsions.
Introspection, or “sitting in the silence,” is an unscientific way of trying to force apart the mind and senses, tied together by the life force. The contemplative mind, attempting its return to divinity, is constantly dragged back toward the senses by the life currents. Kriya, controlling the mind directly through the life force, is the easiest, most effective, and most scientific avenue of approach to the Infinite. In contrast to the slow, uncertain “bullock cart” theological path to God, Kriya may justly be called the “airplane” route.
The yogic science is based on an empirical consideration of all forms of concentration and meditation exercises. Yoga enables the devotee to switch off or on, at will, life current from the five sense telephones of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Attaining this power of sense-disconnection, the yogi finds it simple to unite his mind at will with divine realms or with the world of matter. No longer is he unwillingly brought back by the life force to the mundane sphere of rowdy sensations and restless thoughts. Master of his body and mind, the Kriya Yogi ultimately achieves victory over the “last enemy,” death.
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men:The life of an advanced Kriya Yogi is influenced, not by effects of past actions, but solely by directions from the soul. The devotee thus avoids the slow, evolutionary monitors of egoistic actions, good and bad, of common life, cumbrous and snail-like to the eagle hearts.
And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.13
The superior method of soul living frees the yogi who, shorn of his ego-prison, tastes the deep air of omnipresence. The thralldom of natural living is, in contrast, set in a pace humiliating. Conforming his life to the evolutionary order, a man can command no concessionary haste from nature but, living without error against the laws of his physical and mental endowment, still requires about a million years of incarnating masquerades to know final emancipation.
The telescopic methods of yogis, disengaging themselves from physical and mental identifications in favor of soul-individuality, thus commend themselves to those who eye with revolt a thousand thousand years. This numerical periphery is enlarged for the ordinary man, who lives in harmony not even with nature, let alone his soul, but pursues instead unnatural complexities, thus offending in his body and thoughts the sweet sanities of nature. For him, two times a million years can scarce suffice for liberation.
Gross man seldom or never realizes that his body is a kingdom, governed by Emperor Soul on the throne of the cranium, with subsidiary regents in the six spinal centers or spheres of consciousness. This theocracy extends over a throng of obedient subjects: twenty-seven thousand billion cells—endowed with a sure if automatic intelligence by which they perform all duties of bodily growths, transformations, and dissolutions—and fifty million substratal thoughts, emotions, and variations of alternating phases in man’s consciousness in an average life of sixty years. Any apparent insurrection of bodily or cerebral cells toward Emperor Soul, manifesting as disease or depression, is due to no disloyalty among the humble citizens, but to past or present misuse by man of his individuality or free will, given to him simultaneous with a soul, and revocable never.
Identifying himself with a shallow ego, man takes for granted that it is he who thinks, wills, feels, digests meals, and keeps himself alive, never admitting through reflection (only a little would suffice!) that in his ordinary life he is naught but a puppet of past actions (karma) and of nature or environment. Each man’s intellectual reactions, feelings, moods, and habits are circumscribed by effects of past causes, whether of this or a prior life. Lofty above such influences, however, is his regal soul. Spurning the transitory truths and freedoms, the Kriya Yogi passes beyond all disillusionment into his unfettered Being. All scriptures declare man to be not a corruptible body, but a living soul; by Kriya he is given a method to prove the scriptural truth.
“Outward ritual cannot destroy ignorance, because they are not mutually contradictory,” wrote Shankara in his famous Century of Verses. “Realized knowledge alone destroys ignorance. . . . Knowledge cannot spring up by any other means than inquiry. ‘Who am I? How was this universe born? Who is its maker? What is its material cause?’ This is the kind of inquiry referred to.” The intellect has no answer for these questions; hence the rishis evolved yoga as the technique of spiritual inquiry.
Kriya Yoga is the real “fire rite” often extolled in the Bhagavad Gita. The purifying fires of yoga bring eternal illumination, and thus differ much from outward and little-effective religious fire ceremonies, where perception of truth is oft burnt, to solemn chanted accompaniment, along with the incense!
The advanced yogi, withholding all his mind, will, and feeling from false identification with bodily desires, uniting his mind with superconscious forces in the spinal shrines, thus lives in this world as God hath planned, not impelled by impulses from the past nor by new witlessnesses of fresh human motivations. Such a yogi receives fulfillment of his Supreme Desire, safe in the final haven of inexhaustibly blissful Spirit.
The yogi offers his labyrinthine human longings to a monotheistic bonfire dedicated to the unparalleled God. This is indeed the true yogic fire ceremony, in which all past and present desires are fuel consumed by love divine. The Ultimate Flame receives the sacrifice of all human madness, and man is pure of dross. His bones stripped of all desirous flesh, his karmic skeleton bleached in the antiseptic suns of wisdom, he is clean at last, inoffensive before man and Maker.
Referring to yoga’s sure and methodical efficacy, Lord Krishna praises the technological yogi in the following words: “The yogi is greater than body-disciplining ascetics, greater even than the followers of the path of wisdom (Jnana Yoga), or of the path of action (Karma Yoga); be thou, O disciple Arjuna, a yogi!” 14
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The noted scientist, Dr. George W. Crile of Cleveland,
explained before a 1940 meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science the experiments by which he had proved that all
bodily tissues are electrically negative, except the brain and nervous
system tissues which remain electrically positive because they take up
revivifying oxygen at a more rapid rate.▲
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Bhagavad Gita, IV:29.▲
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Bhagavad Gita IV:1-2.▲
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The author of Manava Dharma Shastras. These
institutes of canonized common law are effective in India to this day.
The French scholar, Louis Jacolliot, writes that the date of Manu “is
lost in the night of the ante-historical period of India; and no scholar
has dared to refuse him the title of the most ancient lawgiver in the
world.” In La Bible dans l’Inde, pages 33-37, Jacolliot reproduces parallel textual references to prove that the Roman Code of Justinian follows closely the Laws of Manu.▲
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The start of the materialistic ages, according to Hindu
scriptural reckonings, was 3102 B.C. This was the beginning of the
Descending Dwapara Age (see chapter 16).
Modern scholars, blithely believing that 10,000 years ago all men were
sunk in a barbarous Stone Age, summarily dismiss as “myths” all records
and traditions of very ancient civilizations in India, China, Egypt, and
other lands.▲
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Patanjali’s Aphorisms, II:1. In using the words Kriya Yoga,
Patanjali was referring to either the exact technique taught by Babaji,
or one very similar to it. That it was a definite technique of life
control is proved by Patanjali’s Aphorism II:49.▲
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Patanjali’s Aphorisms, I:27.▲
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“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. . . . All things were made by him; and without him
was not any thing made that was made.”—John 1:1-3. Aum (Om) of the Vedas became the sacred word Amin of the Moslems, Hum of the Tibetans, and Amen of the Christians (its meaning in Hebrew being sure, faithful). “These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.”—Revelations 3:14.▲
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Aphorisms II:49.▲
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I Corinthians 15:31. “Our rejoicing” is the correct translation; not, as usually given, “your rejoicing.” St. Paul was referring to the omnipresence of the Christ consciousness.▲
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Kalpa means time or aeon. Sabikalpa means subject to time or change; some link with prakriti or matter remains. Nirbikalpa means timeless, changeless; this is the highest state of samadhi.▲
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According to the Lincoln Library of Essential Information, p. 1030, the giant tortoise lives between 200 and 300 years.▲
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Shakespeare: Sonnet #146.▲
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Bhagavad Gita, VI:46.▲
Chapter: 27
Founding a Yoga School in Ranchi
“Why are you averse to organizational work?”
Master’s question startled me a
bit. It is true that my private conviction at the time was that
organizations were “hornets’ nests.”
“It is a thankless task, sir,” I answered. “No matter what the leader does or does not, he is criticized.”“Do you want the whole divine channa (milk curd) for yourself alone?” My guru’s retort was accompanied by a stern glance. “Could you or anyone else achieve God-contact through yoga if a line of generous-hearted masters had not been willing to convey their knowledge to others?” He added, “God is the Honey, organizations are the hives; both are necessary. Any form is useless, of course, without the spirit, but why should you not start busy hives full of the spiritual nectar?”
His counsel moved me deeply. Although I made no outward reply, an adamant resolution arose in my breast: I would share with my fellows, so far as lay in my power, the unshackling truths I had learned at my guru’s feet. “Lord,” I prayed, “may Thy Love shine forever on the sanctuary of my devotion, and may I be able to awaken that Love in other hearts.”
On a previous occasion, before I had joined the monastic order, Sri Yukteswar had made a most unexpected remark.
“How you will miss the companionship of a wife in your old age!” he had said. “Do you not agree that the family man, engaged in useful work to maintain his wife and children, thus plays a rewarding role in God’s eyes?”
“Sir,” I had protested in alarm, “you know that my desire in this life is to espouse only the Cosmic Beloved.”
Master had laughed so merrily that I understood his observation was made merely as a test of my faith.
“Remember,” he had said slowly, “that he who discards his worldly duties can justify himself only by assuming some kind of responsibility toward a much larger family.”
The ideal of an all-sided education for youth had always been close to my heart. I saw clearly the arid results of ordinary instruction, aimed only at the development of body and intellect. Moral and spiritual values, without whose appreciation no man can approach happiness, were yet lacking in the formal curriculum. I determined to found a school where young boys could develop to the full stature of manhood. My first step in that direction was made with seven children at Dihika, a small country site in Bengal.
A year later, in 1918, through the generosity of Sir Manindra Chandra Nundy, the Maharaja of Kasimbazar, I was able to transfer my fast-growing group to Ranchi. This town in Bihar, about two hundred miles from Calcutta, is blessed with one of the most healthful climates in India. The Kasimbazar Palace at Ranchi was transformed into the headquarters for the new school, which I called Brahmacharya Vidyalaya 1 in accordance with the educational ideals of the rishis. Their forest ashrams had been the ancient seats of learning, secular and divine, for the youth of India.
At Ranchi I organized an educational program for both grammar and high school grades. It included agricultural, industrial, commercial, and academic subjects. The students were also taught yoga concentration and meditation, and a unique system of physical development, “Yogoda,” whose principles I had discovered in 1916.
Realizing that man’s body is like an electric battery, I reasoned that it could be recharged with energy through the direct agency of the human will. As no action, slight or large, is possible without willing, man can avail himself of his prime mover, will, to renew his bodily tissues without burdensome apparatus or mechanical exercises. I therefore taught the Ranchi students my simple “Yogoda” techniques by which the life force, centred in man’s medulla oblongata, can be consciously and instantly recharged from the unlimited supply of cosmic energy.
Yogoda Math,
beautiful hermitage of Self-Realization Fellowship at Dakshineswar on
the Ganges. Founded in 1938 as a yoga retreat for students of East and
West.
Central building of the Yogoda Sat-Sanga Brahmacharya Vidyalaya
at Ranchi, Bihar, established in 1918 as a yoga school for boys, with
grammar and high school education. Connected with it is the
philanthropic Lahiri Mahasaya Mission.
At the end of the first year at Ranchi, applications for admission reached two thousand. But the school, which at that time was solely residential, could accommodate only about one hundred. Instruction for day students was soon added.
In the Vidyalaya I had to play father-mother to the little children, and to cope with many organizational difficulties. I often remembered Christ’s words: “Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.” 3 Sri Yukteswar had interpreted these words: “The devotee who forgoes the life-experiences of marriage and family, and exchanges the problems of a small household and limited activities for the larger responsibilities of service to society in general, is undertaking a task which is often accompanied by persecution from a misunderstanding world, but also by a divine inner contentment.”
One day my father arrived in Ranchi to bestow a paternal blessing, long withheld because I had hurt him by refusing his offer of a position with the Bengal-Nagpur Railway.
“Son,” he said, “I am now reconciled to your choice in life. It gives me joy to see you amidst these happy, eager youngsters; you belong here rather than with the lifeless figures of railroad timetables.” He waved toward a group of a dozen little ones who were tagging at my heels. “I had only eight children,” he observed with twinkling eyes, “but I can feel for you!”
With a large fruit orchard and twenty-five fertile acres at our disposal, the students, teachers, and myself enjoyed many happy hours of outdoor labor in these ideal surroundings. We had many pets, including a young deer who was fairly idolized by the children. I too loved the fawn so much that I allowed it to sleep in my room. At the light of dawn, the little creature would toddle over to my bed for a morning caress.
One day I fed the pet earlier than usual, as I had to attend to some business in the town of Ranchi. Although I cautioned the boys not to feed the fawn until my return, one of them was disobedient, and gave the baby deer a large quantity of milk. When I came back in the evening, sad news greeted me: “The little fawn is nearly dead, through over feeding.”
In tears, I placed the apparently lifeless pet on my lap. I prayed piteously to God to spare its life. Hours later, the small creature opened its eyes, stood up, and walked feebly. The whole school shouted for joy.
But a deep lesson came to me that night, one I can never forget. I stayed up with the fawn until two o’clock, when I fell asleep. The deer appeared in a dream, and spoke to me:
“You are holding me back. Please let me go; let me go!”
“All right,” I answered in the dream.
I awoke immediately, and cried out, “Boys, the deer is dying!” The children rushed to my side.
I ran to the corner of the room where I had placed the pet. It made a last effort to rise, stumbled toward me, then dropped at my feet, dead.
According to the mass karma which guides and regulates the destinies of animals, the deer’s life was over, and it was ready to progress to a higher form. But by my deep attachment, which I later realized was selfish, and by my fervent prayers, I had been able to hold it in the limitations of the animal form from which the soul was struggling for release. The soul of the deer made its plea in a dream because, without my loving permission, it either would not or could not go. As soon as I agreed, it departed.
All sorrow left me; I realized anew that God wants His children to love everything as a part of Him, and not to feel delusively that death ends all. The ignorant man sees only the unsurmountable wall of death, hiding, seemingly forever, his cherished friends. But the man of unattachment, he who loves others as expressions of the Lord, understands that at death the dear ones have only returned for a breathing-space of joy in Him.
The Ranchi school grew from small and simple beginnings to an institution now well-known in India. Many departments of the school are supported by voluntary contributions from those who rejoice in perpetuating the educational ideals of the rishis. Under the general name of Yogoda Sat-Sanga,4 flourishing branch schools have been established at Midnapore, Lakshmanpur, and Puri.
The Ranchi headquarters maintains a Medical Department where medicines and the services of doctors are supplied freely to the poor of the locality. The number treated has averaged more than 18,000 persons a year. The Vidyalaya has made its mark, too, in Indian competitive sports, and in the scholastic field, where many Ranchi alumni have distinguished themselves in later university life.
The school, now in its twenty-eighth year and the center of many activities,5 has been honored by visits of eminent men from the East and the West. One of the earliest great figures to inspect the Vidyalaya in its first year was Swami Pranabananda, the Benares “saint with two bodies.” As the great master viewed the picturesque outdoor classes, held under the trees, and saw in the evening that young boys were sitting motionless for hours in yoga meditation, he was profoundly moved.
“Joy comes to my heart,” he said, “to see that Lahiri Mahasaya’s ideals for the proper training of youth are being carried on in this institution. My guru’s blessings be on it.”
A young lad sitting by my side ventured to ask the great yogi a question.
“Sir,” he said, “shall I be a monk? Is my life only for God?”
Though Swami Pranabananda smiled gently, his eyes were piercing the future.
“Child,” he replied, “when you grow up, there is a beautiful bride waiting for you.” The boy did eventually marry, after having planned for years to enter the Swami Order.
Sometime after Swami Pranabananda had visited Ranchi, I accompanied my father to the Calcutta house where the yogi was temporarily staying. Pranabananda’s prediction, made to me so many years before, came rushing to my mind: “I shall see you, with your father, later on.”
As Father entered the swami’s room, the great yogi rose from his seat and embraced my parent with loving respect.
“Bhagabati,” he said, “what are you doing about yourself? Don’t you see your son racing to the Infinite?” I blushed to hear his praise before my father. The swami went on, “You recall how often our blessed guru used to say: ‘Banat, banat, ban jai.’ 6 So keep up Kriya Yoga ceaselessly, and reach the divine portals quickly.”
The body of Pranabananda, which had appeared so well and strong during my amazing first visit to him in Benares, now showed definite aging, though his posture was still admirably erect.
“Swamiji,” I inquired, looking straight into his eyes, “please tell me the truth: Aren’t you feeling the advance of age? As the body is weakening, are your perceptions of God suffering any diminution?”
He smiled angelically. “The Beloved is more than ever with me now.” His complete conviction overwhelmed my mind and soul. He went on, “I am still enjoying the two pensions—one from Bhagabati here, and one from above.” Pointing his finger heavenward, the saint fell into an ecstasy, his face lit with a divine glow—an ample answer to my question.
Noticing that Pranabananda’s room contained many plants and packages of seed, I asked their purpose.
“I have left Benares permanently,” he said, “and am now on my way to the Himalayas. There I shall open an ashram for my disciples. These seeds will produce spinach and a few other vegetables. My dear ones will live simply, spending their time in blissful God-union. Nothing else is necessary.”
Father asked his brother disciple when he would return to Calcutta.
“Never again,” the saint replied. “This year is the one in which Lahiri Mahasaya told me I would leave my beloved Benares forever and go to the Himalayas, there to throw off my mortal frame.”
My eyes filled with tears at his words, but the swami smiled tranquilly. He reminded me of a little heavenly child, sitting securely on the lap of the Divine Mother. The burden of the years has no ill effect on a great yogi’s full possession of supreme spiritual powers. He is able to renew his body at will; yet sometimes he does not care to retard the aging process, but allows his karma to work itself out on the physical plane, using his old body as a time-saving device to exclude the necessity of working out karma in a new incarnation.
Months later I met an old friend, Sanandan, who was one of Pranabananda’s close disciples.
“My adorable guru is gone,” he told me, amidst sobs. “He established a hermitage near Rishikesh, and gave us loving training. When we were pretty well settled, and making rapid spiritual progress in his company, he proposed one day to feed a huge crowd from Rishikesh. I inquired why he wanted such a large number.
“‘This is my last festival ceremony,’ he said. I did not understand the full implications of his words.
“Pranabanandaji helped with the cooking of great amounts of food. We fed about 2000 guests. After the feast, he sat on a high platform and gave an inspired sermon on the Infinite. At the end, before the gaze of thousands, he turned to me, as I sat beside him on the dais, and spoke with unusual force.
“‘Sanandan, be prepared; I am going to kick the frame.7’
“After a stunned silence, I cried loudly, ‘Master, don’t do it! Please, please, don’t do it!’ The crowd was tongue-tied, watching us curiously. My guru smiled at me, but his solemn gaze was already fixed on Eternity.
“‘Be not selfish,’ he said, ‘nor grieve for me. I have been long cheerfully serving you all; now rejoice and wish me Godspeed. I go to meet my Cosmic Beloved.’ In a whisper, Pranabanandaji added, ‘I shall be reborn shortly. After enjoying a short period of the Infinite Bliss, I shall return to earth and join Babaji.8 You shall soon know when and where my soul has been encased in a new body.’
“He cried again, ‘Sanandan, here I kick the frame by the second Kriya Yoga.’ 9
“He looked at the sea of faces before us, and gave a blessing. Directing his gaze inwardly to the spiritual eye, he became immobile. While the bewildered crowd thought he was meditating in an ecstatic state, he had already left the tabernacle of flesh and plunged his soul into the cosmic vastness. The disciples touched his body, seated in the lotus posture, but it was no longer the warm flesh. Only a stiffened frame remained; the tenant had fled to the immortal shore.”
I inquired where Pranabananda was to be reborn.
“That’s a sacred trust I cannot divulge to anyone,” Sanandan replied. “Perhaps you may find out some other way.”
Years later I discovered from Swami Keshabananda 10 that Pranabananda, a few years after his birth in a new body, had gone to Badrinarayan in the Himalayas, and there joined the group of saints around the great Babaji.
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Vidyalaya, school. Brahmacharya here refers to one of the four stages in the Vedic plan for man’s life, as comprising that of (1) the celibate student (brahmachari); (2) the householder with worldly responsibilities (grihastha); (3) the hermit (vanaprastha); (4) the forest dweller or wanderer, free from all earthly concerns (sannyasi).
This ideal scheme of life, while not widely observed in modern India,
still has many devout followers. The four stages are carried out
religiously under the lifelong direction of a guru.▲
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A number of American students also have mastered various asanas or postures, including Bernard Cole, an instructor in Los Angeles of the Self-Realization Fellowship teachings.▲
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Mark 10:29-30.▲
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Yogoda: yoga, union, harmony, equilibrium; da, that which imparts. Sat-Sanga: sat, truth; sanga, fellowship. In the West, to avoid the use of a Sanskrit name, the Yogoda Sat-Sanga movement has been called the Self-Realization Fellowship.▲
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The activities at Ranchi are described more fully in chapter 40.
The Lakshmanpur school is in the capable charge of Mr. G. C. Dey, B.A.
The medical department is ably supervised by Dr. S. N. Pal and Sasi
Bhusan Mullick.▲
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One of Lahiri Mahasaya’s favorite remarks, given as
encouragement for his students’ perseverance. A free translation is:
“Striving, striving, one day behold! the Divine Goal!”▲
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I.e., give up the body.▲
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Lahiri Mahasaya’s guru, who is still living. (See chapter 33.)▲
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The second Kriya, as taught by Lahiri Mahasaya,
enables the devotee that has mastered it to leave and return to the body
consciously at any time. Advanced yogis use the second Kriya technique
during the last exit of death, a moment they invariably know beforehand.▲
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My meeting with Keshabananda is described in chapter 42.▲
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