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Autobiography of a Yogi

by Paramahansa Yogananda · English · Gutenberg #7452 · 948,163 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Autobiography of a Yogi

Author: Paramahansa Yogananda


        
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[Frontispiece: PARAMHANSA YOGANANDA—see py.jpg]




AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI


By Paramhansa Yogananda

WITH A PREFACE BY
W. Y. Evans-Wentz, M.A., D.Litt., D.Sc.

  “EXCEPT YE SEE SIGNS AND WONDERS,
  YE WILL NOT BELIEVE.”-John 4:48.

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF
LUTHER BURBANK
An American Saint


[Illustration: Map of India—see map.gif]




Contents


  Preface, By W. Y. EVANS-WENTZ
  List of Illustrations

  Chapter

   1. My Parents and Early Life
   2. Mother’s Death and the Amulet
   3. The Saint with Two Bodies (Swami Pranabananda)
   4. My Interrupted Flight Toward the Himalaya
   5. A “Perfume Saint” Performs his Wonders
   6. The Tiger Swami
   7. The Levitating Saint (Nagendra Nath Bhaduri)
   8. India’s Great Scientist and Inventor, Jagadis Chandra Bose
   9. The Blissful Devotee and his Cosmic Romance (Master Mahasaya)
  10. I Meet my Master, Sri Yukteswar
  11. Two Penniless Boys in Brindaban
  12. Years in my Master’s Hermitage
  13. The Sleepless Saint (Ram Gopal Muzumdar)
  14. An Experience in Cosmic Consciousness
  15. The Cauliflower Robbery
  16. Outwitting the Stars
  17. Sasi and the Three Sapphires
  18. A Mohammedan Wonder-Worker (Afzal Khan)
  19. My Guru Appears Simultaneously in Calcutta and Serampore
  20. We Do Not Visit Kashmir
  21. We Visit Kashmir
  22. The Heart of a Stone Image
  23. My University Degree
  24. I Become a Monk of the Swami Order
  25. Brother Ananta and Sister Nalini
  26. The Science of Kriya Yoga
  27. Founding of a Yoga School at Ranchi
  28. Kashi, Reborn and Rediscovered
  29. Rabindranath Tagore and I Compare Schools
  30. The Law of Miracles
  31. An Interview with the Sacred Mother (Kashi Moni Lahiri)
  32. Rama is Raised from the Dead
  33. Babaji, the Yogi-Christ of Modern India
  34. Materializing a Palace in the Himalayas
  35. The Christlike Life of Lahiri Mahasaya
  36. Babaji’s Interest in the West
  37. I Go to America
  38. Luther Burbank—An American Saint
  39. Therese Neumann, the Catholic Stigmatist of Bavaria
  40. I Return to India
  41. An Idyl in South India
  42. Last Days with my Guru
  43. The Resurrection of Sri Yukteswar
  44. With Mahatma Gandhi at Wardha
  45. The Bengali “Joy-Permeated Mother” (Ananda Moyi Ma)
  46. The Woman Yogi who Never Eats (Giri Bala)
  47. I Return to the West
  48. At Encinitas in California




ILLUSTRATIONS


  Frontispiece
  Map of India
  My Father, Bhagabati Charan Ghosh
  Myself at Age 6
  My Mother
  Swami Pranabananda, “The Saint With Two Bodies”
  My Elder Brother, Ananta
  My Sister Uma
  Nagendra Nath Bhaduri, “The Levitating Saint”
  Jagadis Chandra Bose, Famous Scientist
  Master Mahasaya, the Blissful Devotee
  Jitendra Mazumdar, my Companion on the “Penniless Test” at Brindaban
  Sri Yukteswar, My Master
  My Guru’s Seaside Hermitage at Puri
  The Lord in His Aspect as Shiva
  Ranchi School, Main Building
  Kashi, Reborn and Rediscovered
  Rabindranath Tagore
  A Guru and Disciple in an Ancient Hermitage
  Babaji, the Yogi-Christ of Modern India
  Himalayan Cave Occupied by Babaji
  Lahiri Mahasaya
  Group of Delegates to the International Congress of Religious
    Liberals, Boston, 1920
  Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles Headquarters
  A Yoga Class in Washington, D.C.
  Luther Burbank
  Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth, Bavaria
  Two Brothers of Therese Neumann, at Konnersreuth
  Miss Bletch, Mr. Wright, and myself—in Egypt
  Bishnu, Motilal Mukherji, my Father, Mr. Wright, T.N. Bose, Swami
    Satyananda
  My Sisters—Roma, Nalini, and Uma
  My Father
  My Guru and Myself
  Ranchi Students
  Yogoda Math, Hermitage at Dakshineswar
  Festival Gathering in the Courtyard of my Guru’s Hermitage in
    Serampore
  Group on the Dining Patio of my Guru’s Serampore Hermitage
  Shankari Mai Jiew, Only Living Disciple of the great Trailanga Swami
  Krishnananda with his Tame Lioness
  The Taj Mahal at Agra
  Swami Keshabananda, at his Hermitage in Brindaban
  Krishna, Ancient Prophet of India
  Mahatma Gandhi, at Wardha
  Ananda Moyi Ma, the “Joy-Permeated Mother”
  Giri Bala, the Woman Yogi Who Never Eats
  Mr. E. E. Dickinson
  Encinitas
  Self-Realization Church of All Religions, Hollywood
  Self-Realization Church of All Religions, San Diego
  Swami Premananda
  Conference in San Francisco




PREFACE


  By W. Y. EVANS-WENTZ, M.A., D.Litt., D.Sc.
  Jesus College, Oxford; Author of
  THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD,
  TIBET’S GREAT YOGI MILAREPA,
  TIBETAN YOGA AND SECRET DOCTRINES, etc.

The value of Yogananda’s AUTOBIOGRAPHYis greatly enhanced by the
fact that it is one of the few books in English about the wise men
of India which has been written, not by a journalist or foreigner,
but by one of their own race and training—in short, a book ABOUT
yogis BY a yogi.  As an eyewitness recountal of the extraordinary
lives and powers of modern Hindu saints, the book has importance
both timely and timeless.  To its illustrious author, whom I have
had the pleasure of knowing both in India and America, may every
reader render due appreciation and gratitude. His unusual life-document
is certainly one of the most revealing of the depths of the Hindu
mind and heart, and of the spiritual wealth of India, ever to be
published in the West.

It has been my privilege to have met one of the sages whose
life-history is herein narrated-Sri Yukteswar Giri. A likeness of
the venerable saint appeared as part of the frontispiece of my TIBETAN
YOGA AND SECRET DOCTRINES. {FN1-1} It was at Puri, in Orissa, on
the Bay of Bengal, that I encountered Sri Yukteswar. He was then the
head of a quiet ashrama near the seashore there, and was chiefly
occupied in the spiritual training of a group of youthful disciples.
He expressed keen interest in the welfare of the people of the
United States and of all the Americas, and of England, too, and
questioned me concerning the distant activities, particularly those
in California, of his chief disciple, Paramhansa Yogananda, whom
he dearly loved, and whom he had sent, in 1920, as his emissary to
the West.

Sri Yukteswar was of gentle mien and voice, of pleasing presence,
and worthy of the veneration which his followers spontaneously
accorded to him. Every person who knew him, whether of his own
community or not, held him in the highest esteem. I vividly recall
his tall, straight, ascetic figure, garbed in the saffron-colored
garb of one who has renounced worldly quests, as he stood at the
entrance of the hermitage to give me welcome. His hair was long
and somewhat curly, and his face bearded. His body was muscularly
firm, but slender and well-formed, and his step energetic. He had
chosen as his place of earthly abode the holy city of Puri, whither
multitudes of pious Hindus, representative of every province of
India, come daily on pilgrimage to the famed Temple of Jagannath,
“Lord of the World.” It was at Puri that Sri Yukteswar closed his
mortal eyes, in 1936, to the scenes of this transitory state of
being and passed on, knowing that his incarnation had been carried
to a triumphant completion.  I am glad, indeed, to be able to record
this testimony to the high character and holiness of Sri Yukteswar.
Content to remain afar from the multitude, he gave himself unreservedly
and in tranquillity to that ideal life which Paramhansa Yogananda,
his disciple, has now described for the ages.  W. Y. EVANS-WENTZ

{FN1-1} Oxford University Press, 1935.




AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


I am deeply indebted to Miss L. V. Pratt for her long editorial
labors over the manuscript of this book. My thanks are due also
to Miss Ruth Zahn for preparation of the index, to Mr. C. Richard
Wright for permission to use extracts from his Indian travel diary,
and to Dr. W.  Y. Evans-Wentz for suggestions and encouragement.

  PARAMHANSA YOGANANDA
OCTOBER 28, 1945
ENCINITAS, CALIFORNIA




CHAPTER: 1

MY PARENTS AND EARLY LIFE


The characteristic features of Indian culture have long been
a search for ultimate verities and the concomitant disciple-guru
{FN1-2} relationship. My own path led me to a Christlike sage whose
beautiful life was chiseled for the ages. He was one of the great
masters who are India’s sole remaining wealth. Emerging in every
generation, they have bulwarked their land against the fate of
Babylon and Egypt.

I find my earliest memories covering the anachronistic features of
a previous incarnation. Clear recollections came to me of a distant
life, a yogi {FN1-3} amidst the Himalayan snows. These glimpses of
the past, by some dimensionless link, also afforded me a glimpse
of the future.

The helpless humiliations of infancy are not banished from my mind.
I was resentfully conscious of not being able to walk or express
myself freely. Prayerful surges arose within me as I realized
my bodily impotence. My strong emotional life took silent form as
words in many languages. Among the inward confusion of tongues,
my ear gradually accustomed itself to the circumambient Bengali
syllables of my people.  The beguiling scope of an infant’s mind!
adultly considered limited to toys and toes.

Psychological ferment and my unresponsive body brought me to many
obstinate crying-spells. I recall the general family bewilderment
at my distress. Happier memories, too, crowd in on me: my mother’s
caresses, and my first attempts at lisping phrase and toddling
step.  These early triumphs, usually forgotten quickly, are yet a
natural basis of self-confidence.

My far-reaching memories are not unique. Many yogis are known
to have retained their self-consciousness without interruption by
the dramatic transition to and from “life” and “death.” If man be
solely a body, its loss indeed places the final period to identity.
But if prophets down the millenniums spake with truth, man is
essentially of incorporeal nature. The persistent core of human
egoity is only temporarily allied with sense perception.

Although odd, clear memories of infancy are not extremely rare. During
travels in numerous lands, I have listened to early recollections
from the lips of veracious men and women.

I was born in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and passed
my first eight years at Gorakhpur. This was my birthplace in the
United Provinces of northeastern India. We were eight children: four
boys and four girls. I, Mukunda Lal Ghosh {FN1-4}, was the second
son and the fourth child.

Father and Mother were Bengalis, of the KSHATRIYA caste. {FN1-5} Both
were blessed with saintly nature. Their mutual love, tranquil and
dignified, never expressed itself frivolously. A perfect parental
harmony was the calm center for the revolving tumult of eight young
lives.

Father, Bhagabati Charan Ghosh, was kind, grave, at times stern.
Loving him dearly, we children yet observed a certain reverential
distance. An outstanding mathematician and logician, he was guided
principally by his intellect. But Mother was a queen of hearts,
and taught us only through love. After her death, Father displayed
more of his inner tenderness. I noticed then that his gaze often
metamorphosed into my mother’s.

In Mother’s presence we tasted our earliest bitter-sweet acquaintance
with the scriptures. Tales from the MAHABHARATA and RAMAYANA {FN1-6}
were resourcefully summoned to meet the exigencies of discipline.
Instruction and chastisement went hand in hand.

A daily gesture of respect to Father was given by Mother’s dressing us
carefully in the afternoons to welcome him home from the office.
His position was similar to that of a vice-president, in the
Bengal-Nagpur Railway, one of India’s large companies. His work
involved traveling, and our family lived in several cities during
my childhood.

Mother held an open hand toward the needy. Father was also kindly
disposed, but his respect for law and order extended to the budget.
One fortnight Mother spent, in feeding the poor, more than Father’s
monthly income.

“All I ask, please, is to keep your charities within a reasonable
limit.” Even a gentle rebuke from her husband was grievous to Mother.
She ordered a hackney carriage, not hinting to the children at any
disagreement.

“Good-by; I am going away to my mother’s home.” Ancient ultimatum!

We broke into astounded lamentations. Our maternal uncle arrived
opportunely; he whispered to Father some sage counsel, garnered
no doubt from the ages. After Father had made a few conciliatory
remarks, Mother happily dismissed the cab. Thus ended the only trouble
I ever noticed between my parents. But I recall a characteristic
discussion.

“Please give me ten rupees for a hapless woman who has just arrived
at the house.” Mother’s smile had its own persuasion.

“Why ten rupees? One is enough.” Father added a justification: “When
my father and grandparents died suddenly, I had my first taste of
poverty. My only breakfast, before walking miles to my school, was
a small banana. Later, at the university, I was in such need that
I applied to a wealthy judge for aid of one rupee per month. He
declined, remarking that even a rupee is important.”

“How bitterly you recall the denial of that rupee!” Mother’s heart
had an instant logic. “Do you want this woman also to remember
painfully your refusal of ten rupees which she needs urgently?”

“You win!” With the immemorial gesture of vanquished husbands, he
opened his wallet. “Here is a ten-rupee note. Give it to her with
my good will.”

Father tended to first say “No” to any new proposal. His attitude
toward the strange woman who so readily enlisted Mother’s sympathy
was an example of his customary caution. Aversion to instant
acceptance—typical of the French mind in the West-is really only
honoring the principle of “due reflection.” I always found Father
reasonable and evenly balanced in his judgments. If I could bolster
up my numerous requests with one or two good arguments, he invariably
put the coveted goal within my reach, whether it were a vacation
trip or a new motorcycle.

[Illustration: MY FATHER, Bhagabati Charan Ghosh, A Disciple of
Lahiri Mahasaya—see father1.jpg]

Father was a strict disciplinarian to his children in their early
years, but his attitude toward himself was truly Spartan. He
never visited the theater, for instance, but sought his recreation
in various spiritual practices and in reading the BHAGAVAD GITA.
{FN1-7} Shunning all luxuries, he would cling to one old pair of
shoes until they were useless. His sons bought automobiles after
they came into popular use, but Father was always content with the
trolley car for his daily ride to the office. The accumulation of
money for the sake of power was alien to his nature. Once, after
organizing the Calcutta Urban Bank, he refused to benefit himself
by holding any of its shares. He had simply wished to perform a
civic duty in his spare time.

Several years after Father had retired on a pension, an English
accountant arrived to examine the books of the Bengal-Nagpur Railway
Company. The amazed investigator discovered that Father had never
applied for overdue bonuses.

“He did the work of three men!” the accountant told the company.
“He has rupees 125,000 (about $41,250.) owing to him as back
compensation.” The officials presented Father with a check for
this amount. He thought so little about it that he overlooked any
mention to the family. Much later he was questioned by my youngest
brother Bishnu, who noticed the large deposit on a bank statement.

“Why be elated by material profit?” Father replied. “The one who
pursues a goal of evenmindedness is neither jubilant with gain
nor depressed by loss. He knows that man arrives penniless in this
world, and departs without a single rupee.”

Early in their married life, my parents became disciples of a
great master, Lahiri Mahasaya of Benares. This contact strengthened
Father’s naturally ascetical temperament. Mother made a remarkable
admission to my eldest sister Roma: “Your father and myself live
together as man and wife only once a year, for the purpose of having
children.”

Father first met Lahiri Mahasaya through Abinash Babu, {FN1-8}
an employee in the Gorakhpur office of the Bengal-Nagpur Railway.
Abinash instructed my young ears with engrossing tales of many Indian
saints.  He invariably concluded with a tribute to the superior
glories of his own guru.

“Did you ever hear of the extraordinary circumstances under which
your father became a disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya?”

It was on a lazy summer afternoon, as Abinash and I sat together
in the compound of my home, that he put this intriguing question.
I shook my head with a smile of anticipation.

“Years ago, before you were born, I asked my superior officer-your
father-to give me a week’s leave from my Gorakhpur duties in order
to visit my guru in Benares. Your father ridiculed my plan.

“‘Are you going to become a religious fanatic?’ he inquired.
‘Concentrate on your office work if you want to forge ahead.’

“Sadly walking home along a woodland path that day, I met your
father in a palanquin. He dismissed his servants and conveyance,
and fell into step beside me. Seeking to console me, he pointed
out the advantages of striving for worldly success. But I heard
him listlessly. My heart was repeating: ‘Lahiri Mahasaya! I cannot
live without seeing you!’

“Our path took us to the edge of a tranquil field, where the rays
of the late afternoon sun were still crowning the tall ripple of
the wild grass. We paused in admiration. There in the field, only
a few yards from us, the form of my great guru suddenly appeared!
{FN1-9}

“‘Bhagabati, you are too hard on your employee!’ His voice was
resonant in our astounded ears. He vanished as mysteriously as he
had come. On my knees I was exclaiming, ‘Lahiri Mahasaya! Lahiri
Mahasaya!’ Your father was motionless with stupefaction for a few
moments.

“‘Abinash, not only do I give YOU leave, but I give MYSELF leave to
start for Benares tomorrow. I must know this great Lahiri Mahasaya,
who is able to materialize himself at will in order to intercede
for you! I will take my wife and ask this master to initiate us in
his spiritual path. Will you guide us to him?’

“‘Of course.’ Joy filled me at the miraculous answer to my prayer,
and the quick, favorable turn of events.

“The next evening your parents and I entrained for Benares. We
took a horse cart the following day, and then had to walk through
narrow lanes to my guru’s secluded home. Entering his little parlor,
we bowed before the master, enlocked in his habitual lotus posture.
He blinked his piercing eyes and leveled them on your father.

“‘Bhagabati, you are too hard on your employee!’ His words were the
same as those he had used two days before in the Gorakhpur field.
He added, ‘I am glad that you have allowed Abinash to visit me,
and that you and your wife have accompanied him.’

“To their joy, he initiated your parents in the spiritual practice
of KRIYA YOGA. {FN1-10} Your father and I, as brother disciples,
have been close friends since the memorable day of the vision.
Lahiri Mahasaya took a definite interest in your own birth. Your
life shall surely be linked with his own: the master’s blessing
never fails.”

Lahiri Mahasaya left this world shortly after I had entered it.
His picture, in an ornate frame, always graced our family altar in
the various cities to which Father was transferred by his office.
Many a morning and evening found Mother and me meditating before an
improvised shrine, offering flowers dipped in fragrant sandalwood
paste. With frankincense and myrrh as well as our united devotions,
we honored the divinity which had found full expression in Lahiri
Mahasaya.

His picture had a surpassing influence over my life. As I grew,
the thought of the master grew with me. In meditation I would often
see his photographic image emerge from its small frame and, taking
a living form, sit before me. When I attempted to touch the feet
of his luminous body, it would change and again become the picture.
As childhood slipped into boyhood, I found Lahiri Mahasaya transformed
in my mind from a little image, cribbed in a frame, to a living,
enlightening presence. I frequently prayed to him in moments of
trial or confusion, finding within me his solacing direction. At
first I grieved because he was no longer physically living. As I
began to discover his secret omnipresence, I lamented no more. He
had often written to those of his disciples who were over-anxious
to see him: “Why come to view my bones and flesh, when I am ever
within range of your KUTASTHA (spiritual sight)?”

[Illustration: Myself at Age six—see atsix.jpg]

I was blessed about the age of eight with a wonderful healing
through the photograph of Lahiri Mahasaya. This experience gave
intensification to my love. While at our family estate in Ichapur,
Bengal, I was stricken with Asiatic cholera. My life was despaired
of; the doctors could do nothing. At my bedside, Mother frantically
motioned me to look at Lahiri Mahasaya’s picture on the wall above
my head.

“Bow to him mentally!” She knew I was too feeble even to lift my
hands in salutation. “If you really show your devotion and inwardly
kneel before him, your life will be spared!”

I gazed at his photograph and saw there a blinding light, enveloping
my body and the entire room. My nausea and other uncontrollable
symptoms disappeared; I was well. At once I felt strong enough to
bend over and touch Mother’s feet in appreciation of her immeasurable
faith in her guru. Mother pressed her head repeatedly against the
little picture.

“O Omnipresent Master, I thank thee that thy light hath healed my
son!”

I realized that she too had witnessed the luminous blaze through
which I had instantly recovered from a usually fatal disease.

One of my most precious possessions is that same photograph. Given
to Father by Lahiri Mahasaya himself, it carries a holy vibration.
The picture had a miraculous origin. I heard the story from Father’s
brother disciple, Kali Kumar Roy.

It appears that the master had an aversion to being photographed.
Over his protest, a group picture was once taken of him and
a cluster of devotees, including Kali Kumar Roy. It was an amazed
photographer who discovered that the plate which had clear images
of all the disciples, revealed nothing more than a blank space in
the center where he had reasonably expected to find the outlines
of Lahiri Mahasaya. The phenomenon was widely discussed.

A certain student and expert photographer, Ganga Dhar Babu, boasted
that the fugitive figure would not escape him. The next morning,
as the guru sat in lotus posture on a wooden bench with a screen
behind him, Ganga Dhar Babu arrived with his equipment. Taking every
precaution for success, he greedily exposed twelve plates. On each
one he soon found the imprint of the wooden bench and screen, but
once again the master’s form was missing.

With tears and shattered pride, Ganga Dhar Babu sought out his
guru.  It was many hours before Lahiri Mahasaya broke his silence
with a pregnant comment:

“I am Spirit. Can your camera reflect the omnipresent Invisible?”

“I see it cannot! But, Holy Sir, I lovingly desire a picture of
the bodily temple where alone, to my narrow vision, that Spirit
appears fully to dwell.”

“Come, then, tomorrow morning. I will pose for you.”

Again the photographer focused his camera. This time the sacred
figure, not cloaked with mysterious imperceptibility, was sharp on
the plate. The master never posed for another picture; at least,
I have seen none.

The photograph is reproduced in this book. Lahiri Mahasaya’s fair
features, of a universal cast, hardly suggest to what race he
belonged. His intense joy of God-communion is slightly revealed in
a somewhat enigmatic smile. His eyes, half open to denote a nominal
direction on the outer world, are half closed also. Completely
oblivious to the poor lures of the earth, he was fully awake at
all times to the spiritual problems of seekers who approached for
his bounty.

Shortly after my healing through the potency of the guru’s picture,
I had an influential spiritual vision. Sitting on my bed one morning,
I fell into a deep reverie.

“What is behind the darkness of closed eyes?” This probing thought
came powerfully into my mind. An immense flash of light at once
manifested to my inward gaze. Divine shapes of saints, sitting in
meditation posture in mountain caves, formed like miniature cinema
pictures on the large screen of radiance within my forehead.

“Who are you?” I spoke aloud.

“We are the Himalayan yogis.” The celestial response is difficult
to describe; my heart was thrilled.

“Ah, I long to go to the Himalayas and become like you!” The vision
vanished, but the silvery beams expanded in ever-widening circles
to infinity.

“What is this wondrous glow?”

“I am Iswara.{FN1-11} I am Light.” The voice was as murmuring
clouds.

“I want to be one with Thee!”

Out of the slow dwindling of my divine ecstasy, I salvaged a permanent
legacy of inspiration to seek God. “He is eternal, ever-new Joy!”
This memory persisted long after the day of rapture.

Another early recollection is outstanding; and literally so, for
I bear the scar to this day. My elder sister Uma and I were seated
in the early morning under a NEEM tree in our Gorakhpur compound.
She was helping me with a Bengali primer, what time I could spare
my gaze from the near-by parrots eating ripe margosa fruit. Uma
complained of a boil on her leg, and fetched a jar of ointment. I
smeared a bit of the salve on my forearm.

“Why do you use medicine on a healthy arm?”

“Well, Sis, I feel I am going to have a boil tomorrow. I am testing
your ointment on the spot where the boil will appear.”

“You little liar!”

“Sis, don’t call me a liar until you see what happens in the
morning.” Indignation filled me.

Uma was unimpressed, and thrice repeated her taunt. An adamant
resolution sounded in my voice as I made slow reply.

“By the power of will in me, I say that tomorrow I shall have
a fairly large boil in this exact place on my arm; and YOUR boil
shall swell to twice its present size!”

Morning found me with a stalwart boil on the indicated spot; the
dimensions of Uma’s boil had doubled. With a shriek, my sister
rushed to Mother. “Mukunda has become a necromancer!” Gravely,
Mother instructed me never to use the power of words for doing
harm. I have always remembered her counsel, and followed it.

My boil was surgically treated. A noticeable scar, left by
the doctor’s incision, is present today. On my right forearm is a
constant reminder of the power in man’s sheer word.

Those simple and apparently harmless phrases to Uma, spoken
with deep concentration, had possessed sufficient hidden force to
explode like bombs and produce definite, though injurious, effects.
I understood, later, that the explosive vibratory power in speech
could be wisely directed to free one’s life from difficulties, and
thus operate without scar or rebuke. {FN1-12}

Our family moved to Lahore in the Punjab. There I acquired a picture
of the Divine Mother in the form of the Goddess Kali. {FN1-13} It
sanctified a small informal shrine on the balcony of our home. An
unequivocal conviction came over me that fulfillment would crown any
of my prayers uttered in that sacred spot. Standing there with Uma
one day, I watched two kites flying over the roofs of the buildings
on the opposite side of the very narrow lane.

“Why are you so quiet?” Uma pushed me playfully.

“I am just thinking how wonderful it is that Divine Mother gives
me whatever I ask.”

“I suppose She would give you those two kites!” My sister laughed
derisively.

“Why not?” I began silent prayers for their possession.

Matches are played in India with kites whose strings are covered
with glue and ground glass. Each player attempts to sever the string
of his opponent. A freed kite sails over the roofs; there is great
fun in catching it. Inasmuch as Uma and I were on the balcony, it
seemed impossible that any loosed kite could come into our hands;
its string would naturally dangle over the roofs.

The players across the lane began their match. One string was cut;
immediately the kite floated in my direction. It was stationary
for a moment, through sudden abatement of breeze, which sufficed
to firmly entangle the string with a cactus plant on top of the
opposite house.  A perfect loop was formed for my seizure. I handed
the prize to Uma.

“It was just an extraordinary accident, and not an answer to your
prayer. If the other kite comes to you, then I shall believe.”
Sister’s dark eyes conveyed more amazement than her words.

I continued my prayers with a crescendo intensity. A forcible tug
by the other player resulted in the abrupt loss of his kite. It
headed toward me, dancing in the wind. My helpful assistant, the
cactus plant, again secured the kite string in the necessary loop
by which I could grasp it. I presented my second trophy to Uma.

“Indeed, Divine Mother listens to you! This is all too uncanny for
me!” Sister bolted away like a frightened fawn.

{FN1-2} Spiritual teacher; from Sanskrit root GUR, to raise, to
uplift.

{FN1-3} A practitioner of yoga, “union,” ancient Indian science of
meditation on God.

{FN1-4} My name was changed to Yogananda when I entered the ancient
monastic Swami Order in 1914. My guru bestowed the religious title
of PARAMHANSA on me in 1935 (see ../chapters 24 and 42).

{FN1-5} Traditionally, the second caste of warriors and rulers.

{FN1-6} These ancient epics are the hoard of India’s history,
mythology, and philosophy. An “Everyman’s Library” volume, RAMAYANA
AND MAHABHARATA, is a condensation in English verse by Romesh Dutt
(New York: E. P. Dutton).

{FN1-7} This noble Sanskrit poem, which occurs as part of the
MAHABHARATA epic, is the Hindu Bible. The most poetical English
translation is Edwin Arnold’s THE SONG CELESTIAL (Philadelphia:
David McKay, 75 cents). One of the best translations with detailed
commentary is Sri Aurobindo’s MESSAGE OF THE GITA (Jupiter Press,
16 Semudoss St., Madras, India, $3.50).

{FN1-8} BABU (Mister) is placed in Bengali names at the end.

{FN1-9} The phenomenal powers possessed by great masters are
explained in chapter 30, “The Law of Miracles.”

{FN1-10} A yogic technique whereby the sensory tumult is stilled,
permitting man to achieve an ever-increasing identity with cosmic
consciousness. (See p. 243.)

{FN1-11} A Sanskrit name for God as Ruler of the universe; from
the root IS, to rule. There are 108 names for God in the Hindu
scriptures, each one carrying a different shade of philosophical
meaning.

{FN1-12} The infinite potencies of sound derive from the Creative
Word, AUM, the cosmic vibratory power behind all atomic energies.
Any word spoken with clear realization and deep concentration
has a materializing value. Loud or silent repetition of inspiring
words has been found effective in Coueism and similar systems of
psychotherapy; the secret lies in the stepping-up of the mind’s
vibratory rate. The poet Tennyson has left us, in his MEMOIRS, an
account of his repetitious device for passing beyond the conscious
mind into superconsciousness:

“A kind of waking trance-this for lack of a better word-I have
frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone,”
Tennyson wrote. “This has come upon me through REPEATING my own
name to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the
intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself
seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not
a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly
beyond words-where death was an almost laughable impossibility-the
loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the
only true life.” He wrote further: “It is no nebulous ecstasy, but
a state of transcendent wonder, associated with absolute clearness
of mind.”

{FN1-13} Kali is a symbol of God in the aspect of eternal Mother
Nature.




CHAPTER: 2

MY MOTHER’S DEATH AND THE MYSTIC AMULET


My mother’s greatest desire was the marriage of my elder brother.
“Ah, when I behold the face of Ananta’s wife, I shall find heaven
on this earth!” I frequently heard Mother express in these words
her strong Indian sentiment for family continuity.

I was about eleven years old at the time of Ananta’s betrothal.
Mother was in Calcutta, joyously supervising the wedding preparations.
Father and I alone remained at our home in Bareilly in northern
India, whence Father had been transferred after two years at Lahore.

I had previously witnessed the splendor of nuptial rites for my
two elder sisters, Roma and Uma; but for Ananta, as the eldest son,
plans were truly elaborate. Mother was welcoming numerous relatives,
daily arriving in Calcutta from distant homes. She lodged them
comfortably in a large, newly acquired house at 50 Amherst Street.
Everything was in readiness-the banquet delicacies, the gay throne
on which Brother was to be carried to the home of the bride-to-be,
the rows of colorful lights, the mammoth cardboard elephants and
camels, the English, Scottish and Indian orchestras, the professional
entertainers, the priests for the ancient rituals.

Father and I, in gala spirits, were planning to join the family
in time for the ceremony. Shortly before the great day, however,
I had an ominous vision.

It was in Bareilly on a midnight. As I slept beside Father on the
piazza of our bungalow, I was awakened by a peculiar flutter of
the mosquito netting over the bed. The flimsy curtains parted and
I saw the beloved form of my mother.

“Awaken your father!” Her voice was only a whisper. “Take the first
available train, at four o’clock this morning. Rush to Calcutta if
you would see me!” The wraithlike figure vanished.

“Father, Father! Mother is dying!” The terror in my tone aroused
him instantly. I sobbed out the fatal tidings.

“Never mind that hallucination of yours.” Father gave his characteristic
negation to a new situation. “Your mother is in excellent health.
If we get any bad news, we shall leave tomorrow.”

“You shall never forgive yourself for not starting now!” Anguish
caused me to add bitterly, “Nor shall I ever forgive you!”

The melancholy morning came with explicit words: “Mother dangerously
ill; marriage postponed; come at once.”

Father and I left distractedly. One of my uncles met us en route
at a transfer point. A train thundered toward us, looming with
telescopic increase. From my inner tumult, an abrupt determination
arose to hurl myself on the railroad tracks. Already bereft, I
felt, of my mother, I could not endure a world suddenly barren to
the bone. I loved Mother as my dearest friend on earth. Her solacing
black eyes had been my surest refuge in the trifling tragedies of
childhood.

“Does she yet live?” I stopped for one last question to my uncle.

“Of course she is alive!” He was not slow to interpret the desperation
in my face. But I scarcely believed him.

When we reached our Calcutta home, it was only to confront the
stunning mystery of death. I collapsed into an almost lifeless
state.  Years passed before any reconciliation entered my heart.
Storming the very gates of heaven, my cries at last summoned the
Divine Mother. Her words brought final healing to my suppurating
wounds:

“It is I who have watched over thee, life after life, in the
tenderness of many mothers! See in My gaze the two black eyes, the
lost beautiful eyes, thou seekest!”

Father and I returned to Bareilly soon after the crematory
rites for the well-beloved. Early every morning I made a pathetic
memorial—pilgrimage to a large SHEOLI tree which shaded the
smooth, green-gold lawn before our bungalow. In poetical moments,
I thought that the white SHEOLI flowers were strewing themselves
with a willing devotion over the grassy altar. Mingling tears with
the dew, I often observed a strange other-worldly light emerging
from the dawn. Intense pangs of longing for God assailed me. I felt
powerfully drawn to the Himalayas.

One of my cousins, fresh from a period of travel in the holy hills,
visited us in Bareilly. I listened eagerly to his tales about the
high mountain abode of yogis and swamis. {FN2-1}

“Let us run away to the Himalayas.” My suggestion one day to
Dwarka Prasad, the young son of our landlord in Bareilly, fell on
unsympathetic ears. He revealed my plan to my elder brother, who
had just arrived to see Father. Instead of laughing lightly over
this impractical scheme of a small boy, Ananta made it a definite
point to ridicule me.

“Where is your orange robe? You can’t be a swami without that!”

But I was inexplicably thrilled by his words. They brought a clear
picture of myself roaming about India as a monk. Perhaps they
awakened memories of a past life; in any case, I began to see with
what natural ease I would wear the garb of that anciently-founded
monastic order.

Chatting one morning with Dwarka, I felt a love for God descending
with avalanchic force. My companion was only partly attentive to
the ensuing eloquence, but I was wholeheartedly listening to myself.

I fled that afternoon toward Naini Tal in the Himalayan foothills.
Ananta gave determined chase; I was forced to return sadly to
Bareilly. The only pilgrimage permitted me was the customary one
at dawn to the SHEOLI tree. My heart wept for the lost Mothers,
human and divine.

[Illustration: My Mother, A Disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya—see
mother.jpg]

The rent left in the family fabric by Mother’s death was irreparable.
Father never remarried during his nearly forty remaining years.
Assuming the difficult role of Father-Mother to his little flock,
he grew noticeably more tender, more approachable. With calmness
and insight, he solved the various family problems. After office
hours he retired like a hermit to the cell of his room, practicing
KRIYA YOGA in a sweet serenity. Long after Mother’s death, I attempted
to engage an English nurse to attend to details that would make my
parent’s life more comfortable. But Father shook his head.

“Service to me ended with your mother.” His eyes were remote with
a lifelong devotion. “I will not accept ministrations from any
other woman.”

Fourteen months after Mother’s passing, I learned that she had left
me a momentous message. Ananta was present at her deathbed and had
recorded her words. Although she had asked that the disclosure be
made to me in one year, my brother delayed. He was soon to leave
Bareilly for Calcutta, to marry the girl Mother had chosen for him.
{FN2-2} One evening he summoned me to his side.

“Mukunda, I have been reluctant to give you strange tidings.”
Ananta’s tone held a note of resignation. “My fear was to inflame
your desire to leave home. But in any case you are bristling with
divine ardor.  When I captured you recently on your way to the
Himalayas, I came to a definite resolve. I must not further postpone
the fulfillment of my solemn promise.” My brother handed me a small
box, and delivered Mother’s message.

“Let these words be my final blessing, my beloved son Mukunda!”
Mother had said. “The hour is here when I must relate a number of
phenomenal events following your birth. I first knew your destined
path when you were but a babe in my arms. I carried you then to
the home of my guru in Benares. Almost hidden behind a throng of
disciples, I could barely see Lahiri Mahasaya as he sat in deep
meditation.

“While I patted you, I was praying that the great guru take
notice and bestow a blessing. As my silent devotional demand grew
in intensity, he opened his eyes and beckoned me to approach. The
others made a way for me; I bowed at the sacred feet. My master
seated you on his lap, placing his hand on your forehead by way of
spiritually baptizing you.

“‘Little mother, thy son will be a yogi. As a spiritual engine, he
will carry many souls to God’s kingdom.’

“My heart leaped with joy to find my secret prayer granted by the
omniscient guru. Shortly before your birth, he had told me you
would follow his path.

“Later, my son, your vision of the Great Light was known to me and
your sister Roma, as from the next room we observed you motionless
on the bed. Your little face was illuminated; your voice rang with
iron resolve as you spoke of going to the Himalayas in quest of
the Divine.

“In these ways, dear son, I came to know that your road lies far
from worldly ambitions. The most singular event in my life brought
further confirmation-an event which now impels my deathbed message.

“It was an interview with a sage in the Punjab. While our family
was living in Lahore, one morning the servant came precipitantly
into my room.

“‘Mistress, a strange SADHU {FN2-3} is here. He insists that he
“see the mother of Mukunda.”’

“These simple words struck a profound chord within me; I went at
once to greet the visitor. Bowing at his feet, I sensed that before
me was a true man of God.

“‘Mother,’ he said, ‘the great masters wish you to know that your
stay on earth will not be long. Your next illness shall prove to
be your last.’ {FN2-4} There was a silence, during which I felt no
alarm but only a vibration of great peace. Finally he addressed me
again:

“‘You are to be the custodian of a certain silver amulet. I will
not give it to you today; to demonstrate the truth in my words, the
talisman shall materialize in your hands tomorrow as you meditate.
On your deathbed, you must instruct your eldest son Ananta to keep
the amulet for one year and then to hand it over to your second
son.  Mukunda will understand the meaning of the talisman from the
great ones. He should receive it about the time he is ready to
renounce all worldly hopes and start his vital search for God. When
he has retained the amulet for some years, and when it has served
its purpose, it shall vanish. Even if kept in the most secret spot,
it shall return whence it came.’

“I proffered alms {FN2-5} to the saint, and bowed before him
in great reverence. Not taking the offering, he departed with a
blessing. The next evening, as I sat with folded hands in meditation,
a silver amulet materialized between my palms, even as the SADHU
had promised.  It made itself known by a cold, smooth touch. I
have jealously guarded it for more than two years, and now leave
it in Ananta’s keeping. Do not grieve for me, as I shall have been
ushered by my great guru into the arms of the Infinite. Farewell,
my child; the Cosmic Mother will protect you.”

A blaze of illumination came over me with possession of the amulet;
many dormant memories awakened. The talisman, round and anciently
quaint, was covered with Sanskrit characters. I understood that it
came from teachers of past lives, who were invisibly guiding my
steps.  A further significance there was, indeed; but one does not
reveal fully the heart of an amulet.

How the talisman finally vanished amidst deeply unhappy circumstances
of my life; and how its loss was a herald of my gain of a guru,
cannot be told in this chapter.

But the small boy, thwarted in his attempts to reach the Himalayas,
daily traveled far on the wings of his amulet.

{FN2-1} Sanskrit root meaning of SWAMI is “he who is one with his
Self (SWA).” Applied to a member of the Indian order of monks, the
title has the formal respect of “the reverend.”

{FN2-2} The Indian custom, whereby parents choose the life-partner
for their child, has resisted the blunt assaults of time. The
percentage is high of happy Indian marriages.

{FN2-3} An anchorite; one who pursues a SADHANA or path of spiritual
discipline.

{FN2-4} When I discovered by these words that Mother had possessed
secret knowledge of a short life, I understood for the first time
why she had been insistent on hastening the plans for Ananta’s
marriage.  Though she died before the wedding, her natural maternal
wish had been to witness the rites.

{FN2-5} A customary gesture of respect to SADHUS.




CHAPTER: 3

THE SAINT WITH TWO BODIES


“Father, if I promise to return home without coercion, may I take
a sight-seeing trip to Benares?”

My keen love of travel was seldom hindered by Father. He permitted
me, even as a mere boy, to visit many cities and pilgrimage spots.
Usually one or more of my friends accompanied me; we would travel
comfortably on first-class passes provided by Father. His position
as a railroad official was fully satisfactory to the nomads in the
family.

Father promised to give my request due consideration. The next
day he summoned me and held out a round-trip pass from Bareilly to
Benares, a number of rupee notes, and two letters.

“I have a business matter to propose to a Benares friend, Kedar
Nath Babu. Unfortunately I have lost his address. But I believe you
will be able to get this letter to him through our common friend,
Swami Pranabananda. The swami, my brother disciple, has attained
an exalted spiritual stature. You will benefit by his company; this
second note will serve as your introduction.”


Father’s eyes twinkled as he added, “Mind, no more flights from
home!”

I set forth with the zest of my twelve years (though time has
never dimmed my delight in new scenes and strange faces). Reaching
Benares, I proceeded immediately to the swami’s residence. The
front door was open; I made my way to a long, hall-like room on
the second floor. A rather stout man, wearing only a loincloth, was
seated in lotus posture on a slightly raised platform. His head and
unwrinkled face were clean-shaven; a beatific smile played about
his lips. To dispel my thought that I had intruded, he greeted me
as an old friend.

“BABA ANAND (bliss to my dear one).” His welcome was given heartily
in a childlike voice. I knelt and touched his feet.

“Are you Swami Pranabananda?”

He nodded. “Are you Bhagabati’s son?” His words were out before I
had had time to get Father’s letter from my pocket. In astonishment,
I handed him the note of introduction, which now seemed superfluous.

“Of course I will locate Kedar Nath Babu for you.” The saint again
surprised me by his clairvoyance. He glanced at the letter, and
made a few affectionate references to my parent.

“You know, I am enjoying two pensions. One is by the recommendation
of your father, for whom I once worked in the railroad office. The
other is by the recommendation of my Heavenly Father, for whom I
have conscientiously finished my earthly duties in life.”

I found this remark very obscure. “What kind of pension, sir, do
you receive from the Heavenly Father? Does He drop money in your
lap?”

He laughed. “I mean a pension of fathomless peace-a reward for many
years of deep meditation. I never crave money now. My few material
needs are amply provided for. Later you will understand the
significance of a second pension.”

Abruptly terminating our conversation, the saint became gravely
motionless. A sphinxlike air enveloped him. At first his eyes
sparkled, as if observing something of interest, then grew dull. I
felt abashed at his pauciloquy; he had not yet told me how I could
meet Father’s friend. A trifle restlessly, I looked about me in
the bare room, empty except for us two. My idle gaze took in his
wooden sandals, lying under the platform seat.

“Little sir, {FN3-1} don’t get worried. The man you wish to see
will be with you in half an hour.” The yogi was reading my mind-a
feat not too difficult at the moment!

[Illustration: Swami Pranabananda, “The Saint With Two Bodies”, An
Exalted Disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya—see pranabananda.jpg]

Again he fell into inscrutable silence. My watch informed me that
thirty minutes had elapsed.

The swami aroused himself. “I think Kedar Nath Babu is nearing the
door.”

I heard somebody coming up the stairs. An amazed incomprehension
arose suddenly; my thoughts raced in confusion: “How is it possible
that Father’s friend has been summoned to this place without the
help of a messenger? The swami has spoken to no one but myself
since my arrival!”

Abruptly I quitted the room and descended the steps. Halfway down
I met a thin, fair-skinned man of medium height. He appeared to be
in a hurry.

“Are you Kedar Nath Babu?” Excitement colored my voice.

“Yes. Are you not Bhagabati’s son who has been waiting here to meet
me?” He smiled in friendly fashion.

“Sir, how do you happen to come here?” I felt baffled resentment
over his inexplicable presence.

“Everything is mysterious today! Less than an hour ago I had just
finished my bath in the Ganges when Swami Pranabananda approached
me.  I have no idea how he knew I was there at that time.

“‘Bhagabati’s son is waiting for you in my apartment,’ he said.
‘Will you come with me?’ I gladly agreed. As we proceeded hand in
hand, the swami in his wooden sandals was strangely able to outpace
me, though I wore these stout walking shoes.

“‘How long will it take you to reach my place?’ Pranabanandaji
suddenly halted to ask me this question.

“‘About half an hour.’

“‘I have something else to do at present.’ He gave me an enigmatical
glance. ‘I must leave you behind. You can join me in my house,
where Bhagabati’s son and I will be awaiting you.’

“Before I could remonstrate, he dashed swiftly past me and disappeared
in the crowd. I walked here as fast as possible.”

This explanation only increased my bewilderment. I inquired how
long he had known the swami.

“We met a few times last year, but not recently. I was very glad
to see him again today at the bathing GHAT.”

“I cannot believe my ears! Am I losing my mind? Did you meet him
in a vision, or did you actually see him, touch his hand, and hear
the sound of his feet?”

“I don’t know what you’re driving at!” He flushed angrily. “I am
not lying to you. Can’t you understand that only through the swami
could I have known you were waiting at this place for me?”

“Why, that man, Swami Pranabananda, has not left my sight a moment
since I first came about an hour ago.” I blurted out the whole
story.

His eyes opened widely. “Are we living in this material age, or
are we dreaming? I never expected to witness such a miracle in my
life! I thought this swami was just an ordinary man, and now I find
he can materialize an extra body and work through it!” Together we
entered the saint’s room.

“Look, those are the very sandals he was wearing at the GHAT,”
Kedar Nath Babu whispered. “He was clad only in a loincloth, just
as I see him now.”

As the visitor bowed before him, the saint turned to me with a
quizzical smile.

“Why are you stupefied at all this? The subtle unity of the phenomenal
world is not hidden from true yogis. I instantly see and converse
with my disciples in distant Calcutta. They can similarly transcend
at will every obstacle of gross matter.”

It was probably in an effort to stir spiritual ardor in my young
breast that the swami had condescended to tell me of his powers of
astral radio and television. {FN3-2} But instead of enthusiasm, I
experienced only an awe-stricken fear. Inasmuch as I was destined
to undertake my divine search through one particular guru-Sri
Yukteswar, whom I had not yet met-I felt no inclination to accept
Pranabananda as my teacher. I glanced at him doubtfully, wondering
if it were he or his counterpart before me.

The master sought to banish my disquietude by bestowing a soul-awakening
gaze, and by some inspiring words about his guru.

“Lahiri Mahasaya was the greatest yogi I ever knew. He was Divinity
Itself in the form of flesh.”

If a disciple, I reflected, could materialize an extra fleshly form
at will, what miracles indeed could be barred to his master?

“I will tell you how priceless is a guru’s help. I used to meditate
with another disciple for eight hours every night. We had to work at
the railroad office during the day. Finding difficulty in carrying
on my clerical duties, I desired to devote my whole time to God.
For eight years I persevered, meditating half the night. I had
wonderful results; tremendous spiritual perceptions illumined my
mind. But a little veil always remained between me and the Infinite.
Even with super-human earnestness, I found the final irrevocable
union to be denied me. One evening I paid a visit to Lahiri Mahasaya
and pleaded for his divine intercession. My importunities continued
during the entire night.

“‘Angelic Guru, my spiritual anguish is such that I can no longer
bear my life without meeting the Great Beloved face to face!’

“‘What can I do? You must meditate more profoundly.’

“‘I am appealing to Thee, O God my Master! I see Thee materialized
before me in a physical body; bless me that I may perceive Thee in
Thine infinite form!’

“Lahiri Mahasaya extended his hand in a benign gesture. ‘You may
go now and meditate. I have interceded for you with Brahma.’ {FN3-3}

“Immeasurably uplifted, I returned to my home. In meditation that
night, the burning Goal of my life was achieved. Now I ceaselessly
enjoy the spiritual pension. Never from that day has the Blissful
Creator remained hidden from my eyes behind any screen of delusion.”

Pranabananda’s face was suffused with divine light. The peace of
another world entered my heart; all fear had fled. The saint made
a further confidence.

“Some months later I returned to Lahiri Mahasaya and tried to
thank him for his bestowal of the infinite gift. Then I mentioned
another matter.

“‘Divine Guru, I can no longer work in the office. Please release
me.  Brahma keeps me continuously intoxicated.’

“‘Apply for a pension from your company.’

“‘What reason shall I give, so early in my service?’

“‘Say what you feel.’

“The next day I made my application. The doctor inquired the grounds
for my premature request.

“‘At work, I find an overpowering sensation rising in my spine.
{FN3-4} It permeates my whole body, unfitting me for the performance
of my duties.’

“Without further questioning the physician recommended me highly
for a pension, which I soon received. I know the divine will of
Lahiri Mahasaya worked through the doctor and the railroad officials,
including your father. Automatically they obeyed the great guru’s
spiritual direction, and freed me for a life of unbroken communion
with the Beloved.” {FN3-5}

After this extraordinary revelation, Swami Pranabananda retired
into one of his long silences. As I was taking leave, touching his
feet reverently, he gave me his blessing:

“Your life belongs to the path of renunciation and yoga. I shall
see you again, with your father, later on.” The years brought
fulfillment to both these predictions. {FN3-6}

Kedar Nath Babu walked by my side in the gathering darkness. I
delivered Father’s letter, which my companion read under a street
lamp.

“Your father suggests that I take a position in the Calcutta office
of his railroad company. How pleasant to look forward to at least
one of the pensions that Swami Pranabananda enjoys! But it is
impossible; I cannot leave Benares. Alas, two bodies are not yet
for me!”

{FN3-1} CHOTO MAHASAYA is the term by which a number of Indian
saints addressed me. It translates “little sir.”.

{FN3-2} In its own way, physical science is affirming the validity
of laws discovered by yogis through mental science. For example,
a demonstration that man has televisional powers was given on Nov.
26, 1934 at the Royal University of Rome. “Dr. Giuseppe Calligaris,
professor of neuro-psychology, pressed certain points of a subject’s
body and the subject responded with minute descriptions of other
persons and objects on the opposite side of a wall. Dr. Calligaris
told the other professors that if certain areas on the skin are
agitated, the subject is given super-sensorial impressions enabling
him to see objects that he could not otherwise perceive. To enable
his subject to discern things on the other side of a wall, Professor
Calligaris pressed on a spot to the right of the thorax for fifteen
minutes. Dr. Calligaris said that if other spots of the body were
agitated, the subjects could see objects at any distance, regardless
of whether they had ever before seen those objects.”.

{FN3-3} God in His aspect of Creator; from Sanskrit root BRIH, to
expand. When Emerson’s poem BRAHMA appeared in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY
in 1857, most the readers were bewildered. Emerson chuckled. “Tell
them,” he said, “to say ‘Jehovah’ instead of ‘Brahma’ and they will
not feel any perplexity.”

{FN3-4} In deep meditation, the first experience of Spirit is on the
altar of the spine, and then in the brain. The torrential bliss is
overwhelming, but the yogi learns to control its outward manifestations.

{FN3-5} After his retirement, Pranabananda wrote one of the most
profound commentaries on the BHAGAVAD GITA, available in Bengali
and Hindi.

{FN3-6} See chapter 27.




CHAPTER: 4

MY INTERRUPTED FLIGHT TOWARD THE HIMALAYAS


“Leave your classroom on some trifling pretext, and engage a hackney
carriage. Stop in the lane where no one in my house can see you.”

These were my final instructions to Amar Mitter, a high school
friend who planned to accompany me to the Himalayas. We had chosen
the following day for our flight. Precautions were necessary,
as Ananta exercised a vigilant eye. He was determined to foil the
plans of escape which he suspected were uppermost in my mind. The
amulet, like a spiritual yeast, was silently at work within me.
Amidst the Himalayan snows, I hoped to find the master whose face
often appeared to me in visions.

The family was living now in Calcutta, where Father had been
permanently transferred. Following the patriarchal Indian custom,
Ananta had brought his bride to live in our home, now at 4 Gurpar
Road. There in a small attic room I engaged in daily meditations
and prepared my mind for the divine search.

The memorable morning arrived with inauspicious rain. Hearing the
wheels of Amar’s carriage in the road, I hastily tied together a
blanket, a pair of sandals, Lahiri Mahasaya’s picture, a copy of
the BHAGAVAD GITA, a string of prayer beads, and two loincloths.
This bundle I threw from my third-story window. I ran down the
steps and passed my uncle, buying fish at the door.

“What is the excitement?” His gaze roved suspiciously over my
person.

I gave him a noncommittal smile and walked to the lane. Retrieving
my bundle, I joined Amar with conspiratorial caution. We drove to
Chadni Chowk, a merchandise center. For months we had been saving
our tiffin money to buy English clothes. Knowing that my clever
brother could easily play the part of a detective, we thought to
outwit him by European garb.

On the way to the station, we stopped for my cousin, Jotin Ghosh,
whom I called Jatinda. He was a new convert, longing for a guru
in the Himalayas. He donned the new suit we had in readiness.
Well-camouflaged, we hoped! A deep elation possessed our hearts.

“All we need now are canvas shoes.” I led my companions to a shop
displaying rubber-soled footwear. “Articles of leather, gotten
only through the slaughter of animals, must be absent on this holy
trip.” I halted on the street to remove the leather cover from my
BHAGAVAD GITA, and the leather straps from my English-made SOLA
TOPEE (helmet).

At the station we bought tickets to Burdwan, where we planned to
transfer for Hardwar in the Himalayan foothills. As soon as the
train, like ourselves, was in flight, I gave utterance to a few of
my glorious anticipations.

“Just imagine!” I ejaculated. “We shall be initiated by the masters
and experience the trance of cosmic consciousness. Our flesh will
be charged with such magnetism that wild animals of the Himalayas
will come tamely near us. Tigers will be no more than meek house
cats awaiting our caresses!”

This remark-picturing a prospect I considered entrancing, both
metaphorically and literally-brought an enthusiastic smile from
Amar.  But Jatinda averted his gaze, directing it through the window
at the scampering landscape.

“Let the money be divided in three portions.” Jatinda broke a long
silence with this suggestion. “Each of us should buy his own ticket
at Burdwan. Thus no one at the station will surmise that we are
running away together.”

I unsuspectingly agreed. At dusk our train stopped at Burdwan.
Jatinda entered the ticket office; Amar and I sat on the platform.
We waited fifteen minutes, then made unavailing inquiries. Searching
in all directions, we shouted Jatinda’s name with the urgency
of fright. But he had faded into the dark unknown surrounding the
little station.

I was completely unnerved, shocked to a peculiar numbness. That God
would countenance this depressing episode! The romantic occasion
of my first carefully-planned flight after Him was cruelly marred.

“Amar, we must return home.” I was weeping like a child. “Jatinda’s
callous departure is an ill omen. This trip is doomed to failure.”

“Is this your love for the Lord? Can’t you stand the little test
of a treacherous companion?”

Through Amar’s suggestion of a divine test, my heart steadied
itself.  We refreshed ourselves with famous Burdwan sweetmeats,
SITABHOG (food for the goddess) and MOTICHUR (nuggets of sweet
pearl). In a few hours, we entrained for Hardwar, via Bareilly.
Changing trains at Moghul Serai, we discussed a vital matter as we
waited on the platform.

“Amar, we may soon be closely questioned by railroad officials.
I am not underrating my brother’s ingenuity! No matter what the
outcome, I will not speak untruth.”

“All I ask of you, Mukunda, is to keep still. Don’t laugh or grin
while I am talking.”

At this moment, a European station agent accosted me. He waved a
telegram whose import I immediately grasped.

“Are you running away from home in anger?”

“No!” I was glad his choice of words permitted me to make emphatic
reply. Not anger but “divinest melancholy” was responsible, I knew,
for my unconventional behavior.

The official then turned to Amar. The duel of wits that followed
hardly permitted me to maintain the counseled stoic gravity.

“Where is the third boy?” The man injected a full ring of authority
into his voice. “Come on; speak the truth!”

“Sir, I notice you are wearing eyeglasses. Can’t you see that
we are only two?” Amar smiled impudently. “I am not a magician; I
can’t conjure up a third companion.”

The official, noticeably disconcerted by this impertinence, sought
a new field of attack.

“What is your name?”

“I am called Thomas. I am the son of an English mother and a
converted Christian Indian father.”

“What is your friend’s name?”

“I call him Thompson.”

By this time my inward mirth had reached a zenith; I unceremoniously
made for the train, whistling for departure. Amar followed with
the official, who was credulous and obliging enough to put us into
a European compartment. It evidently pained him to think of two
half-English boys traveling in the section allotted to natives. After
his polite exit, I lay back on the seat and laughed uncontrollably.
My friend wore an expression of blithe satisfaction at having
outwitted a veteran European official.

On the platform I had contrived to read the telegram. From my brother,
it went thus: “Three Bengali boys in English clothes running away
from home toward Hardwar via Moghul Serai. Please detain them until
my arrival. Ample reward for your services.”

“Amar, I told you not to leave marked timetables in your home.” My
glance was reproachful. “Brother must have found one there.”

My friend sheepishly acknowledged the thrust. We halted briefly
in Bareilly, where Dwarka Prasad awaited us with a telegram from
Ananta.  My old friend tried valiantly to detain us; I convinced him
that our flight had not been undertaken lightly. As on a previous
occasion, Dwarka refused my invitation to set forth to the Himalayas.

While our train stood in a station that night, and I was half asleep,
Amar was awakened by another questioning official. He, too, fell a
victim to the hybrid charms of “Thomas” and “Thompson.” The train
bore us triumphantly into a dawn arrival at Hardwar. The majestic
mountains loomed invitingly in the distance. We dashed through the
station and entered the freedom of city crowds. Our first act was
to change into native costume, as Ananta had somehow penetrated
our European disguise. A premonition of capture weighed on my mind.

Deeming it advisable to leave Hardwar at once, we bought tickets to
proceed north to Rishikesh, a soil long hallowed by feet of many
masters. I had already boarded the train, while Amar lagged on
the platform. He was brought to an abrupt halt by a shout from a
policeman. Our unwelcome guardian escorted us to a station bungalow
and took charge of our money. He explained courteously that it was
his duty to hold us until my elder brother arrived.

Learning that the truants’ destination had been the Himalayas, the
officer related a strange story.

“I see you are crazy about saints! You will never meet a greater
man of God than the one I saw only yesterday. My brother officer
and I first encountered him five days ago. We were patrolling by the
Ganges, on a sharp lookout for a certain murderer. Our instructions
were to capture him, alive or dead. He was known to be masquerading
as a SADHU in order to rob pilgrims. A short way before us, we
spied a figure which resembled the description of the criminal. He
ignored our command to stop; we ran to overpower him. Approaching
his back, I wielded my ax with tremendous force; the man’s right
arm was severed almost completely from his body.

“Without outcry or any glance at the ghastly wound, the stranger
astonishingly continued his swift pace. As we jumped in front of
him, he spoke quietly.

“‘I am not the murderer you are seeking.’

“I was deeply mortified to see I had injured the person of a
divine—looking sage. Prostrating myself at his feet, I implored
his pardon, and offered my turban-cloth to staunch the heavy spurts
of blood.

“‘Son, that was just an understandable mistake on your part.’ The
saint regarded me kindly. ‘Run along, and don’t reproach yourself.
The Beloved Mother is taking care of me.’ He pushed his dangling
arm into its stump and lo! it adhered; the blood inexplicably ceased
to flow.

“‘Come to me under yonder tree in three days and you will find me
fully healed. Thus you will feel no remorse.’

“Yesterday my brother officer and I went eagerly to the designated
spot. The SADHU was there and allowed us to examine his arm. It
bore no scar or trace of hurt!

“‘I am going via Rishikesh to the Himalayan solitudes.’ He blessed
us as he departed quickly. I feel that my life has been uplifted
through his sanctity.”

The officer concluded with a pious ejaculation; his experience had
obviously moved him beyond his usual depths. With an impressive
gesture, he handed me a printed clipping about the miracle. In
the usual garbled manner of the sensational type of newspaper (not
missing, alas! even in India), the reporter’s version was slightly
exaggerated: it indicated that the SADHU had been almost decapitated!

Amar and I lamented that we had missed the great yogi who could
forgive his persecutor in such a Christlike way. India, materially
poor for the last two centuries, yet has an inexhaustible fund of
divine wealth; spiritual “skyscrapers” may occasionally be encountered
by the wayside, even by worldly men like this policeman.

We thanked the officer for relieving our tedium with his marvelous
story. He was probably intimating that he was more fortunate than
we: he had met an illumined saint without effort; our earnest search
had ended, not at the feet of a master, but in a coarse police
station!

So near the Himalayas and yet, in our captivity, so far, I told
Amar I felt doubly impelled to seek freedom.

“Let us slip away when opportunity offers. We can go on foot to
holy Rishikesh.” I smiled encouragingly.

But my companion had turned pessimist as soon as the stalwart prop
of our money had been taken from us.

“If we started a trek over such dangerous jungle land, we should
finish, not in the city of saints, but in the stomachs of tigers!”

Ananta and Amar’s brother arrived after three days. Amar greeted
his relative with affectionate relief. I was unreconciled; Ananta
got no more from me than a severe upbraiding.

“I understand how you feel.” My brother spoke soothingly. “All I
ask of you is to accompany me to Benares to meet a certain saint,
and go on to Calcutta to visit your grieving father for a few days.
Then you can resume your search here for a master.”

Amar entered the conversation at this point to disclaim any intention
of returning to Hardwar with me. He was enjoying the familial
warmth.  But I knew I would never abandon the quest for my guru.

Our party entrained for Benares. There I had a singular and instant
response to my prayers.

A clever scheme had been prearranged by Ananta. Before seeing me
at Hardwar, he had stopped in Benares to ask a certain scriptural
authority to interview me later. Both the pundit and his son had
promised to undertake my dissuasion from the path of a SANNYASI.
{FN4-1}

Ananta took me to their home. The son, a young man of ebullient
manner, greeted me in the courtyard. He engaged me in a lengthy
philosophic discourse. Professing to have a clairvoyant knowledge
of my future, he discountenanced my idea of being a monk.

“You will meet continual misfortune, and be unable to find God, if
you insist on deserting your ordinary responsibilities! You cannot
work out your past karma {FN4-2} without worldly experiences.”

Krishna’s immortal words rose to my lips in reply: “‘Even he with
the worst of karma who ceaselessly meditates on Me quickly loses
the effects of his past bad actions. Becoming a high-souled being,
he soon attains perennial peace. Arjuna, know this for certain:
the devotee who puts his trust in Me never perishes!’” {FN4-3}

[Illustration: I stand behind my elder brother, Ananta.—see
ananta.jpg]

But the forceful prognostications of the young man had slightly
shaken my confidence. With all the fervor of my heart I prayed
silently to God:

“Please solve my bewilderment and answer me, right here and now, if
Thou dost desire me to lead the life of a renunciate or a worldly
man!”

I noticed a SADHU of noble countenance standing just outside
the compound of the pundit’s house. Evidently he had overheard
the spirited conversation between the self-styled clairvoyant and
myself, for the stranger called me to his side. I felt a tremendous
power flowing from his calm eyes.

“Son, don’t listen to that ignoramus. In response to your prayer,
the Lord tells me to assure you that your sole path in this life
is that of the renunciate.”

With astonishment as well as gratitude, I smiled happily at this
decisive message.

“Come away from that man!” The “ignoramus” was calling me from the
courtyard. My saintly guide raised his hand in blessing and slowly
departed.

“That SADHU is just as crazy as you are.” It was the hoary-headed
pundit who made this charming observation. He and his son were
gazing at me lugubriously. “I heard that he too has left his home
in a vague search for God.”

I turned away. To Ananta I remarked that I would not engage in
further discussion with our hosts. My brother agreed to an immediate
departure; we soon entrained for Calcutta.

“Mr. Detective, how did you discover I had fled with two companions?”
I vented my lively curiosity to Ananta during our homeward journey.
He smiled mischievously.

“At your school, I found that Amar had left his classroom and had
not returned. I went to his home the next morning and unearthed a
marked timetable. Amar’s father was just leaving by carriage and
was talking to the coachman.

“‘My son will not ride with me to his school this morning. He has
disappeared!’ the father moaned.

“‘I heard from a brother coachman that your son and two others,
dressed in European suits, boarded the train at Howrah Station,’
the man stated. ‘They made a present of their leather shoes to the
cab driver.’

“Thus I had three clues-the timetable, the trio of boys, and the
English clothing.”

I was listening to Ananta’s disclosures with mingled mirth and
vexation. Our generosity to the coachman had been slightly misplaced!

“Of course I rushed to send telegrams to station officials in all
the cities which Amar had underlined in the timetable. He had checked
Bareilly, so I wired your friend Dwarka there. After inquiries
in our Calcutta neighborhood, I learned that cousin Jatinda had
been absent one night but had arrived home the following morning
in European garb.  I sought him out and invited him to dinner. He
accepted, quite disarmed by my friendly manner. On the way I led him
unsuspectingly to a police station. He was surrounded by several
officers whom I had previously selected for their ferocious
appearance. Under their formidable gaze, Jatinda agreed to account
for his mysterious conduct.

“‘I started for the Himalayas in a buoyant spiritual mood,’ he
explained. ‘Inspiration filled me at the prospect of meeting the
masters. But as soon as Mukunda said, “During our ecstasies in the
Himalayan caves, tigers will be spellbound and sit around us like
tame pussies,” my spirits froze; beads of perspiration formed on
my brow.  “What then?” I thought. “If the vicious nature of the
tigers be not changed through the power of our spiritual trance,
shall they treat us with the kindness of house cats?” In my mind’s
eye, I already saw myself the compulsory inmate of some tiger’s
stomach-entering there not at once with the whole body, but by
installments of its several parts!’”

My anger at Jatinda’s vanishment was evaporated in laughter. The
hilarious sequel on the train was worth all the anguish he had
caused me. I must confess to a slight feeling of satisfaction:
Jatinda too had not escaped an encounter with the police!

“Ananta, {FN4-4} you are a born sleuthhound!” My glance of amusement
was not without some exasperation. “And I shall tell Jatinda I am
glad he was prompted by no mood of treachery, as it appeared, but
only by the prudent instinct of self-preservation!”

At home in Calcutta, Father touchingly requested me to curb my roving
feet until, at least, the completion of my high school studies.
In my absence, he had lovingly hatched a plot by arranging for
a saintly pundit, Swami Kebalananda, {FN4-5} to come regularly to
the house.

“The sage will be your Sanskrit tutor,” my parent announced
confidently.

Father hoped to satisfy my religious yearnings by instructions
from a learned philosopher. But the tables were subtly turned: my
new teacher, far from offering intellectual aridities, fanned the
embers of my God-aspiration. Unknown to Father, Swami Kebalananda
was an exalted disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya. The peerless guru had
possessed thousands of disciples, silently drawn to him by the
irresistibility of his divine magnetism. I learned later that Lahiri
Mahasaya had often characterized Kebalananda as RISHI or illumined
sage.

Luxuriant curls framed my tutor’s handsome face. His dark eyes were
guileless, with the transparency of a child’s. All the movements of
his slight body were marked by a restful deliberation. Ever gentle
and loving, he was firmly established in the infinite consciousness.
Many of our happy hours together were spent in deep KRIYA meditation.

Kebalananda was a noted authority on the ancient SHASTRAS or sacred
books: his erudition had earned him the title of “Shastri Mahasaya,”
by which he was usually addressed. But my progress in Sanskrit
scholarship was unnoteworthy. I sought every opportunity to forsake
prosaic grammar and to talk of yoga and Lahiri Mahasaya. My tutor
obliged me one day by telling me something of his own life with
the master.

“Rarely fortunate, I was able to remain near Lahiri Mahasaya for
ten years. His Benares home was my nightly goal of pilgrimage. The
guru was always present in a small front parlor on the first floor.
As he sat in lotus posture on a backless wooden seat, his disciples
garlanded him in a semicircle. His eyes sparkled and danced with
the joy of the Divine. They were ever half closed, peering through
the inner telescopic orb into a sphere of eternal bliss. He seldom
spoke at length. Occasionally his gaze would focus on a student in
need of help; healing words poured then like an avalanche of light.

“An indescribable peace blossomed within me at the master’s glance.
I was permeated with his fragrance, as though from a lotus of
infinity.  To be with him, even without exchanging a word for days,
was experience which changed my entire being. If any invisible
barrier rose in the path of my concentration, I would meditate at
the guru’s feet. There the most tenuous states came easily within
my grasp. Such perceptions eluded me in the presence of lesser
teachers. The master was a living temple of God whose secret doors
were open to all disciples through devotion.

“Lahiri Mahasaya was no bookish interpreter of the scriptures.
Effortlessly he dipped into the ‘divine library.’ Foam of words and
spray of thoughts gushed from the fountain of his omniscience. He
had the wondrous clavis which unlocked the profound philosophical
science embedded ages ago in the VEDAS. {FN4-6} If asked to explain
the different planes of consciousness mentioned in the ancient
texts, he would smilingly assent.

“‘I will undergo those states, and presently tell you what I
perceive.’ He was thus diametrically unlike the teachers who commit
scripture to memory and then give forth unrealized abstractions.

“‘Please expound the holy stanzas as the meaning occurs to you.’
The taciturn guru often gave this instruction to a near-by disciple.
‘I will guide your thoughts, that the right interpretation be
uttered.’ In this way many of Lahiri Mahasaya’s perceptions came
to be recorded, with voluminous commentaries by various students.

“The master never counseled slavish belief. ‘Words are only shells,’
he said. ‘Win conviction of God’s presence through your own joyous
contact in meditation.’

“No matter what the disciple’s problem, the guru advised KRIYA YOGA
for its solution.

“‘The yogic key will not lose its efficiency when I am no longer
present in the body to guide you. This technique cannot be bound,
filed, and forgotten, in the manner of theoretical inspirations.
Continue ceaselessly on your path to liberation through KRIYA,
whose power lies in practice.’

“I myself consider KRIYA the most effective device of salvation through
self-effort ever to be evolved in man’s search for the Infinite.”
Kebalananda concluded with this earnest testimony. “Through its use,
the omnipotent God, hidden in all men, became visibly incarnated
in the flesh of Lahiri Mahasaya and a number of his disciples.”

A Christlike miracle by Lahiri Mahasaya took place in Kebalananda’s
presence. My saintly tutor recounted the story one day, his eyes
remote from the Sanskrit texts before us.

“A blind disciple, Ramu, aroused my active pity. Should he have no
light in his eyes, when he faithfully served our master, in whom
the Divine was fully blazing? One morning I sought to speak to
Ramu, but he sat for patient hours fanning the guru with a hand-made
palm-leaf PUNKHA. When the devotee finally left the room, I followed
him.

“‘Ramu, how long have you been blind?’

“‘From my birth, sir! Never have my eyes been blessed with a glimpse
of the sun.’

“‘Our omnipotent guru can help you. Please make a supplication.’

“The following day Ramu diffidently approached Lahiri Mahasaya. The
disciple felt almost ashamed to ask that physical wealth be added
to his spiritual superabundance.

“‘Master, the Illuminator of the cosmos is in you. I pray you
to bring His light into my eyes, that I perceive the sun’s lesser
glow.’

“‘Ramu, someone has connived to put me in a difficult position. I
have no healing power.’

“‘Sir, the Infinite One within you can certainly heal.’

“‘That is indeed different, Ramu. God’s limit is nowhere! He who
ignites the stars and the cells of flesh with mysterious life-effulgence
can surely bring luster of vision into your eyes.’

“The master touched Ramu’s forehead at the point between the eyebrows.
{FN4-7} “‘Keep your mind concentrated there, and frequently chant
the name of the prophet Rama {FN4-8} for seven days. The splendor
of the sun shall have a special dawn for you.’

“Lo! in one week it was so. For the first time, Ramu beheld the
fair face of nature. The Omniscient One had unerringly directed his
disciple to repeat the name of Rama, adored by him above all other
saints. Ramu’s faith was the devotionally ploughed soil in which
the guru’s powerful seed of permanent healing sprouted.” Kebalananda
was silent for a moment, then paid a further tribute to his guru.

“It was evident in all miracles performed by Lahiri Mahasaya that
he never allowed the ego-principle {FN4-9} to consider itself a
causative force. By perfection of resistless surrender, the master
enabled the Prime Healing Power to flow freely through him.

“The numerous bodies which were spectacularly healed through Lahiri
Mahasaya eventually had to feed the flames of cremation. But the
silent spiritual awakenings he effected, the Christlike disciples
he fashioned, are his imperishable miracles.”

I never became a Sanskrit scholar; Kebalananda taught me a diviner
syntax.

{FN4-1} Literally, “renunciate.” From Sanskrit verb roots, “to cast
aside.”

{FN4-2} Effects of past actions, in this or a former life; from
Sanskrit KRI, “to do.”

{FN4-3} BHAGAVAD GITA, IX, 30-31. Krishna was the greatest prophet
of India; Arjuna was his foremost disciple.

{FN4-4} I always addressed him as Ananta-da. DA is a respectful
suffix which the eldest brother in an Indian family receives from
junior brothers and sisters.

{FN4-5} At the time of our meeting, Kebalananda had not yet joined
the Swami Order and was generally called “Shastri Mahasaya.” To avoid
confusion with the name of Lahiri Mahasaya and of Master Mahasaya
(../chapter 9), I am referring to my Sanskrit tutor only by his
later monastic name of Swami Kebalananda. His biography has been
recently published in Bengali. Born in the Khulna district of
Bengal in 1863, Kebalananda gave up his body in Benares at the age
of sixty-eight. His family name was Ashutosh Chatterji.

{FN4-6} The ancient four VEDAS comprise over 100 extant canonical
books. Emerson paid the following tribute in his JOURNAL to Vedic
thought: “It is sublime as heat and night and a breathless ocean.
It contains every religious sentiment, all the grand ethics which
visit in turn each noble poetic mind. . . . It is of no use to put
away the book; if I trust myself in the woods or in a boat upon the
pond, Nature makes a BRAHMIN of me presently: eternal necessity,
eternal compensation, unfathomable power, unbroken silence. . . .
This is her creed. Peace, she saith to me, and purity and absolute
abandonment—these panaceas expiate all sin and bring you to the
beatitude of the Eight Gods.”

{FN4-7} The seat of the “single” or spiritual eye. At death the
consciousness of man is usually drawn to this holy spot, accounting
for the upraised eyes found in the dead.

{FN4-8} The central sacred figure of the Sanskrit epic, RAMAYANA.

{FN4-9} Ahankara, egoism; literally, “I do.” The root cause of
dualism or illusion of MAYA, whereby the subject (ego) appears as
object; the creatures imagine themselves to be creators.




CHAPTER: 5

A “PERFUME SAINT” DISPLAYS HIS WONDERS


“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose
under the heaven.”

I did not have this wisdom of Solomon to comfort me; I gazed
searchingly about me, on any excursion from home, for the face of
my destined guru. But my path did not cross his own until after
the completion of my high school studies.

Two years elapsed between my flight with Amar toward the Himalayas,
and the great day of Sri Yukteswar’s arrival into my life. During
that interim I met a number of sages-the “Perfume Saint,” the “Tiger
Swami,” Nagendra Nath Bhaduri, Master Mahasaya, and the famous
Bengali scientist, Jagadis Chandra Bose.

My encounter with the “Perfume Saint” had two preambles, one
harmonious and the other humorous.

“God is simple. Everything else is complex. Do not seek absolute
values in the relative world of nature.”

These philosophical finalities gently entered my ear as I stood
silently before a temple image of Kali. Turning, I confronted a
tall man whose garb, or lack of it, revealed him a wandering SADHU.

“You have indeed penetrated the bewilderment of my thoughts!” I
smiled gratefully. “The confusion of benign and terrible aspects
in nature, as symbolized by Kali, {FN5-1} has puzzled wiser heads
than mine!”

“Few there be who solve her mystery! Good and evil is the challenging
riddle which life places sphinxlike before every intelligence.
Attempting no solution, most men pay forfeit with their lives,
penalty now even as in the days of Thebes. Here and there, a towering
lonely figure never cries defeat. From the MAYA {FN5-2} of duality
he plucks the cleaveless truth of unity.”

“You speak with conviction, sir.”

“I have long exercised an honest introspection, the exquisitely
painful approach to wisdom. Self-scrutiny, relentless observance of
one’s thoughts, is a stark and shattering experience. It pulverizes
the stoutest ego. But true self-analysis mathematically operates
to produce seers. The way of ‘self-expression,’ individual
acknowledgments, results in egotists, sure of the right to their
private interpretations of God and the universe.”

“Truth humbly retires, no doubt, before such arrogant originality.”
I was enjoying the discussion.

“Man can understand no eternal verity until he has freed himself
from pretensions. The human mind, bared to a centuried slime, is
teeming with repulsive life of countless world-delusions. Struggles
of the battlefields pale into insignificance here, when man first
contends with inward enemies! No mortal foes these, to be overcome
by harrowing array of might! Omnipresent, unresting, pursuing man
even in sleep, subtly equipped with a miasmic weapon, these soldiers
of ignorant lusts seek to slay us all. Thoughtless is the man who
buries his ideals, surrendering to the common fate. Can he seem
other than impotent, wooden, ignominious?”

“Respected Sir, have you no sympathy for the bewildered masses?”

The sage was silent for a moment, then answered obliquely.

“To love both the invisible God, Repository of All Virtues, and
visible man, apparently possessed of none, is often baffling! But
ingenuity is equal to the maze. Inner research soon exposes a unity
in all human minds-the stalwart kinship of selfish motive. In one
sense at least, the brotherhood of man stands revealed. An aghast
humility follows this leveling discovery. It ripens into compassion
for one’s fellows, blind to the healing potencies of the soul
awaiting exploration.”

“The saints of every age, sir, have felt like yourself for the
sorrows of the world.”

“Only the shallow man loses responsiveness to the woes of others’
lives, as he sinks into narrow suffering of his own.” The SADHU’S
austere face was noticeably softened. “The one who practices a
scalpel self-dissection will know an expansion of universal pity.
Release is given him from the deafening demands of his ego. The
love of God flowers on such soil. The creature finally turns to
his Creator, if for no other reason than to ask in anguish: ‘Why,
Lord, why?’ By ignoble whips of pain, man is driven at last into
the Infinite Presence, whose beauty alone should lure him.”

The sage and I were present in Calcutta’s Kalighat Temple, whither
I had gone to view its famed magnificence. With a sweeping gesture,
my chance companion dismissed the ornate dignity.

“Bricks and mortar sing us no audible tune; the heart opens only
to the human chant of being.”

We strolled to the inviting sunshine at the entrance, where throngs
of devotees were passing to and fro.

“You are young.” The sage surveyed me thoughtfully. “India too is
young. The ancient RISHIS {FN5-3} laid down ineradicable patterns
of spiritual living. Their hoary dictums suffice for this day
and land.  Not outmoded, not unsophisticated against the guiles
of materialism, the disciplinary precepts mold India still. By
millenniums-more than embarrassed scholars care to compute!-the
skeptic Time has validated Vedic worth. Take it for your heritage.”

As I was reverently bidding farewell to the eloquent SADHU, he
revealed a clairvoyant perception:

“After you leave here today, an unusual experience will come your
way.”

I quitted the temple precincts and wandered along aimlessly. Turning
a corner, I ran into an old acquaintance-one of those long-winded
fellows whose conversational powers ignore time and embrace eternity.

“I will let you go in a very short while, if you will tell me all
that has happened during the six years of our separation.”

“What a paradox! I must leave you now.”

But he held me by the hand, forcing out tidbits of information.
He was like a ravenous wolf, I thought in amusement; the longer I
spoke, the more hungrily he sniffed for news. Inwardly I petitioned
the Goddess Kali to devise a graceful means of escape.

My companion left me abruptly. I sighed with relief and doubled my
pace, dreading any relapse into the garrulous fever. Hearing rapid
footsteps behind me, I quickened my speed. I dared not look back.
But with a bound, the youth rejoined me, jovially clasping my
shoulder.

“I forgot to tell you of Gandha Baba (Perfume Saint), who is gracing
yonder house.” He pointed to a dwelling a few yards distant. “Do
meet him; he is interesting. You may have an unusual experience.
Good-by,” and he actually left me.

The similarly worded prediction of the SADHU at Kalighat Temple
flashed to my mind. Definitely intrigued, I entered the house and
was ushered into a commodious parlor. A crowd of people were sitting,
Orient-wise, here and there on a thick orange-colored carpet. An
awed whisper reached my ear:

“Behold Gandha Baba on the leopard skin. He can give the natural
perfume of any flower to a scentless one, or revive a wilted blossom,
or make a person’s skin exude delightful fragrance.”

I looked directly at the saint; his quick gaze rested on mine. He
was plump and bearded, with dark skin and large, gleaming eyes.

“Son, I am glad to see you. Say what you want. Would you like some
perfume?”

“What for?” I thought his remark rather childish.

“To experience the miraculous way of enjoying perfumes.”

“Harnessing God to make odors?”

“What of it? God makes perfume anyway.”

“Yes, but He fashions frail bottles of petals for fresh use and
discard. Can you materialize flowers?”

“I materialize perfumes, little friend.”

“Then scent factories will go out of business.”

“I will permit them to keep their trade! My own purpose is to
demonstrate the power of God.”

“Sir, is it necessary to prove God? Isn’t He performing miracles
in everything, everywhere?”

“Yes, but we too should manifest some of His infinite creative
variety.”

“How long did it take to master your art?”

“Twelve years.”

“For manufacturing scents by astral means! It seems, my honored
saint, you have been wasting a dozen years for fragrances which
you can obtain with a few rupees from a florist’s shop.”

“Perfumes fade with flowers.”

“Perfumes fade with death. Why should I desire that which pleases
the body only?”

“Mr. Philosopher, you please my mind. Now, stretch forth your right
hand.” He made a gesture of blessing.

I was a few feet away from Gandha Baba; no one else was near
enough to contact my body. I extended my hand, which the yogi did
not touch.

“What perfume do you want?”

“Rose.”

“Be it so.”

To my great surprise, the charming fragrance of rose was wafted
strongly from the center of my palm. I smilingly took a large white
scentless flower from a near-by vase.

“Can this odorless blossom be permeated with jasmine?”

“Be it so.”

A jasmine fragrance instantly shot from the petals. I thanked the
wonder-worker and seated myself by one of his students. He informed
me that Gandha Baba, whose proper name was Vishudhananda, had
learned many astonishing yoga secrets from a master in Tibet. The
Tibetan yogi, I was assured, had attained the age of over a thousand
years.

“His disciple Gandha Baba does not always perform his perfume-feats
in the simple verbal manner you have just witnessed.” The student
spoke with obvious pride in his master. “His procedure differs
widely, to accord with diversity in temperaments. He is marvelous!
Many members of the Calcutta intelligentsia are among his followers.”

I inwardly resolved not to add myself to their number. A guru too
literally “marvelous” was not to my liking. With polite thanks to
Gandha Baba, I departed. Sauntering home, I reflected on the three
varied encounters the day had brought forth.

My sister Uma met me as I entered our Gurpar Road door.

“You are getting quite stylish, using perfumes!”

Without a word, I motioned her to smell my hand.

“What an attractive rose fragrance! It is unusually strong!”

Thinking it was “strongly unusual,” I silently placed the astrally
scented blossom under her nostrils.

“Oh, I love jasmine!” She seized the flower. A ludicrous bafflement
passed over her face as she repeatedly sniffed the odor of jasmine
from a type of flower she well knew to be scentless. Her reactions
disarmed my suspicion that Gandha Baba had induced an auto-suggestive
state whereby I alone could detect the fragrances.

Later I heard from a friend, Alakananda, that the “Perfume Saint”
had a power which I wish were possessed by the starving millions
of Asia and, today, of Europe as well.

“I was present with a hundred other guests at Gandha Baba’s home
in Burdwan,” Alakananda told me. “It was a gala occasion. Because
the yogi was reputed to have the power of extracting objects
out of thin air, I laughingly requested him to materialize some
out-of-season tangerines. Immediately the LUCHIS {FN5-4} which
were present on all the banana-leaf plates became puffed up. Each
of the bread-envelopes proved to contain a peeled tangerine. I bit
into my own with some trepidation, but found it delicious.”

[Illustration: My sister Uma, as a young girl—see uma.jpg]

Years later I understood by inner realization how Gandha Baba
accomplished his materializations. The method, alas! is beyond the
reach of the world’s hungry hordes.

The different sensory stimuli to which man reacts-tactual, visual,
gustatory, auditory, and olfactory-are produced by vibratory
variations in electrons and protons. The vibrations in turn are
regulated by “lifetrons,” subtle life forces or finer-than-atomic
energies intelligently charged with the five distinctive sensory
idea-substances.

Gandha Baba, tuning himself with the cosmic force by certain yogic
practices, was able to guide the lifetrons to rearrange their
vibratory structure and objectivize the desired result. His perfume,
fruit and other miracles were actual materializations of mundane
vibrations, and not inner sensations hypnotically produced. {FN5-5}

Performances of miracles such as shown by the “Perfume Saint” are
spectacular but spiritually useless. Having little purpose beyond
entertainment, they are digressions from a serious search for God.

Hypnotism has been used by physicians in minor operations as a sort
of psychical chloroform for persons who might be endangered by an
anesthetic. But a hypnotic state is harmful to those often subjected to
it; a negative psychological effect ensues which in time deranges
the brain cells. Hypnotism is trespass into the territory of
another’s consciousness. Its temporary phenomena have nothing in
common with the miracles performed by men of divine realization.
Awake in God, true saints effect changes in this dream-world by
means of a will harmoniously attuned to the Creative Cosmic Dreamer.

Ostentatious display of unusual powers are decried by masters. The
Persian mystic, Abu Said, once laughed at certain FAKIRS who were
proud of their miraculous powers over water, air, and space.

“A frog is also at home in the water!” Abu Said pointed out in gentle
scorn. “The crow and the vulture easily fly in the air; the Devil
is simultaneously present in the East and in the West! A true man
is he who dwells in righteousness among his fellow men, who buys
and sells, yet is never for a single instant forgetful of God!”
On another occasion the great Persian teacher gave his views on
the religious life thus: “To lay aside what you have in your head
(selfish desires and ambitions); to freely bestow what you have in
your hand; and never to flinch from the blows of adversity!”

Neither the impartial sage at Kalighat Temple nor the Tibetan-trained
yogi had satisfied my yearning for a guru. My heart needed no
tutor for its recognitions, and cried its own “Bravos!” the more
resoundingly because unoften summoned from silence. When I finally
met my master, he taught me by sublimity of example alone the
measure of a true man.

{FN5-1} Kali represents the eternal principle in nature. She is
traditionally pictured as a four-armed woman, standing on the form
of the God Shiva or the Infinite, because nature or the phenomenal
world is rooted in the Noumenon. The four arms symbolize cardinal
attributes, two beneficent, two destructive, indicating the essential
duality of matter or creation.

{FN5-2} Cosmic illusion; literally, “the measurer.” MAYA is the
magical power in creation by which limitations and divisions are
apparently present in the Immeasurable and Inseparable.  Emerson
wrote the following poem, to which he gave the title of MAYA:

Illusion works impenetrable,
Weaving webs innumerable,
Her gay pictures never fail,
Crowd each other, veil on veil,
Charmer who will be believed
By man who thirsts to be deceived.

{FN5-3} The RISHIS, literally “seers,” were the authors of the
VEDAS in an indeterminable antiquity..

{FN5-4} Flat, round Indian bread..

{FN5-5} Laymen scarcely realize the vast strides of twentieth-century
science. Transmutation of metals and other alchemical dreams are
seeing fulfillment every day in centers of scientific research over
the world. The eminent French chemist, M. Georges Claude, performed
“miracles” at Fontainebleau in 1928 before a scientific assemblage
through his chemical knowledge of oxygen transformations. His
“magician’s wand” was simple oxygen, bubbling in a tube on a table.
The scientist “turned a handful of sand into precious stones,
iron into a state resembling melted chocolate and, after depriving
flowers of their tints, turned them into the consistency of glass.

“M. Claude explained how the sea could be turned by oxygen
transformations into many millions of pounds of horsepower; how
water which boils is not necessarily burning; how little mounds of
sand, by a single whiff of the oxygen blowpipe, could be changed
into sapphires, rubies, and topazes; and he predicted the time when
it will be possible for men to walk on the bottom of the ocean minus
the diver’s equipment. Finally the scientist amazed his onlookers
by turning their faces black by taking the red out of the sun’s
rays.”

This noted French scientist has produced liquid air by an expansion
method in which he has been able to separate the various gases of
the air, and has discovered various means of mechanical utilization
of differences of temperature in sea water.




CHAPTER: 6

THE TIGER SWAMI


“I have discovered the Tiger Swami’s address. Let us visit him
tomorrow.”

This welcome suggestion came from Chandi, one of my high school
friends. I was eager to meet the saint who, in his premonastic
life, had caught and fought tigers with his naked hands. A boyish
enthusiasm over such remarkable feats was strong within me.

The next day dawned wintry cold, but Chandi and I sallied forth
gaily.  After much vain hunting in Bhowanipur, outside Calcutta, we
arrived at the right house. The door held two iron rings, which I
sounded piercingly. Notwithstanding the clamor, a servant approached
with leisurely gait. His ironical smile implied that visitors,
despite their noise, were powerless to disturb the calmness of a
saint’s home.

Feeling the silent rebuke, my companion and I were thankful to be
invited into the parlor. Our long wait there caused uncomfortable
misgivings. India’s unwritten law for the truth seeker is patience;
a master may purposely make a test of one’s eagerness to meet him.
This psychological ruse is freely employed in the West by doctors
and dentists!

Finally summoned by the servant, Chandi and I entered a sleeping
apartment. The famous Sohong {FN6-1} Swami was seated on his bed.
The sight of his tremendous body affected us strangely. With bulging
eyes, we stood speechless. We had never before seen such a chest or
such football-like biceps. On an immense neck, the swami’s fierce
yet calm face was adorned with flowing locks, beard and moustache.
A hint of dovelike and tigerlike qualities shone in his dark eyes.
He was unclothed, save for a tiger skin about his muscular waist.

Finding our voices, my friend and I greeted the monk, expressing
our admiration for his prowess in the extraordinary feline arena.

“Will you not tell us, please, how it is possible to subdue with
bare fists the most ferocious of jungle beasts, the royal Bengals?”

“My sons, it is nothing to me to fight tigers. I could do it today
if necessary.” He gave a childlike laugh. “You look upon tigers as
tigers; I know them as pussycats.”

“Swamiji, I think I could impress my subconsciousness with the
thought that tigers are pussycats, but could I make tigers believe
it?”

“Of course strength also is necessary! One cannot expect victory
from a baby who imagines a tiger to be a house cat! Powerful hands
are my sufficient weapon.”

He asked us to follow him to the patio, where he struck the edge
of a wall. A brick crashed to the floor; the sky peered boldly
through the gaping lost tooth of the wall. I fairly staggered in
astonishment; he who can remove mortared bricks from a solid wall
with one blow, I thought, must surely be able to displace the teeth
of tigers!

“A number of men have physical power such as mine, but still lack
in cool confidence. Those who are bodily but not mentally stalwart
may find themselves fainting at mere sight of a wild beast bounding
freely in the jungle. The tiger in its natural ferocity and habitat
is vastly different from the opium-fed circus animal!

“Many a man with herculean strength has nonetheless been terrorized
into abject helplessness before the onslaught of a royal Bengal.
Thus the tiger has converted the man, in his own mind, to a state
as nerveless as the pussycat’s. It is possible for a man, owning a
fairly strong body and an immensely strong determination, to turn
the tables on the tiger, and force it to a conviction of pussycat
defenselessness. How often I have done just that!”

I was quite willing to believe that the titan before me was able to
perform the tiger-pussycat metamorphosis. He seemed in a didactic
mood; Chandi and I listened respectfully.

“Mind is the wielder of muscles. The force of a hammer blow depends
on the energy applied; the power expressed by a man’s bodily instrument
depends on his aggressive will and courage. The body is literally
manufactured and sustained by mind. Through pressure of instincts
from past lives, strengths or weaknesses percolate gradually into
human consciousness. They express as habits, which in turn ossify
into a desirable or an undesirable body. Outward frailty has
mental origin; in a vicious circle, the habit-bound body thwarts
the mind. If the master allows himself to be commanded by a servant,
the latter becomes autocratic; the mind is similarly enslaved by
submitting to bodily dictation.”

At our entreaty, the impressive swami consented to tell us something
of his own life.

“My earliest ambition was to fight tigers. My will was mighty, but
my body was feeble.”

An ejaculation of surprise broke from me. It appeared incredible
that this man, now “with Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear,” could
ever have known weakness.

“It was by indomitable persistency in thoughts of health and
strength that I overcame my handicap. I have every reason to extol
the compelling mental vigor which I found to be the real subduer
of royal Bengals.”

“Do you think, revered swami, that I could ever fight tigers?” This
was the first, and the last, time that the bizarre ambition ever
visited my mind!

“Yes.” He was smiling. “But there are many kinds of tigers; some
roam in jungles of human desires. No spiritual benefit accrues
by knocking beasts unconscious. Rather be victor over the inner
prowlers.”

“May we hear, sir, how you changed from a tamer of wild tigers to
a tamer of wild passions?”

The Tiger Swami fell into silence. Remoteness came into his gaze,
summoning visions of bygone years. I discerned his slight mental
struggle to decide whether to grant my request. Finally he smiled
in acquiescence.

“When my fame reached a zenith, it brought the intoxication of
pride.  I decided not only to fight tigers but to display them in
various tricks. My ambition was to force savage beasts to behave
like domesticated ones. I began to perform my feats publicly, with
gratifying success.

“One evening my father entered my room in pensive mood.

“‘Son, I have words of warning. I would save you from coming ills,
produced by the grinding wheels of cause and effect.’

“‘Are you a fatalist, Father? Should superstition be allowed to
discolor the powerful waters or my activities?’

“‘I am no fatalist, son. But I believe in the just law of retribution,
as taught in the holy scriptures. There is resentment against you
in the jungle family; sometime it may act to your cost.’

“‘Father, you astonish me! You well know what tigers are-beautiful
but merciless! Even immediately after an enormous meal of some
hapless creature, a tiger is fired with fresh lust at sight of new
prey. It may be a joyous gazelle, frisking over the jungle grass.
Capturing it and biting an opening in the soft throat, the malevolent
beast tastes only a little of the mutely crying blood, and goes
its wanton way.

“‘Tigers are the most contemptible of the jungle breed! Who knows?
my blows may inject some slight sanity of consideration into their
thick heads. I am headmaster in a forest finishing school, to teach
them gentle manners!

“‘Please, Father, think of me as tiger tamer and never as tiger
killer. How could my good actions bring ill upon me? I beg you not
to impose any command that I change my way of life.’”

Chandi and I were all attention, understanding the past dilemma.
In India a child does not lightly disobey his parents’ wishes.

“In stoic silence Father listened to my explanation. He followed
it with a disclosure which he uttered gravely.

“‘Son, you compel me to relate an ominous prediction from the lips
of a saint. He approached me yesterday as I sat on the veranda in
my daily meditation.

“’“Dear friend, I come with a message for your belligerent son. Let
him cease his savage activities. Otherwise, his next tiger-encounter
shall result in his severe wounds, followed by six months of deathly
sickness. He shall then forsake his former ways and become a monk.”’

“This tale did not impress me. I considered that Father had been
the credulous victim of a deluded fanatic.”

The Tiger Swami made this confession with an impatient gesture, as
though at some stupidity. Grimly silent for a long time, he seemed
oblivious of our presence. When he took up the dangling thread of
his narrative, it was suddenly, with subdued voice.

“Not long after Father’s warning, I visited the capital city of
Cooch Behar. The picturesque territory was new to me, and I expected
a restful change. As usual everywhere, a curious crowd followed me
on the streets. I would catch bits of whispered comment:

“‘This is the man who fights wild tigers.’

“‘Has he legs, or tree-trunks?’

“‘Look at his face! He must be an incarnation of the king of tigers
himself!’

“You know how village urchins function like final editions of a
newspaper! With what speed do the even-later speech-bulletins of
the women circulate from house to house! Within a few hours, the
whole city was in a state of excitement over my presence.

“I was relaxing quietly in the evening, when I heard the hoofbeats
of galloping horses. They stopped in front of my dwelling place.
In came a number of tall, turbaned policemen.

“I was taken aback. ‘All things are possible unto these creatures
of human law,’ I thought. ‘I wonder if they are going to take me to
task about matters utterly unknown to me.’ But the officers bowed
with unwonted courtesy.

“‘Honored Sir, we are sent to welcome you on behalf of the Prince
of Cooch Behar. He is pleased to invite you to his palace tomorrow
morning.’

“I speculated awhile on the prospect. For some obscure reason I
felt sharp regret at this interruption in my quiet trip. But the
suppliant manner of the policemen moved me; I agreed to go.

“I was bewildered the next day to be obsequiously escorted from my
door into a magnificent coach drawn by four horses. A servant held
an ornate umbrella to protect me from the scorching sunlight. I
enjoyed the pleasant ride through the city and its woodland outskirts.
The royal scion himself was at the palace door to welcome me. He
proffered his own gold-brocaded seat, smilingly placing himself in
a chair of simpler design.

“‘All this politeness is certainly going to cost me something!’ I
thought in mounting astonishment. The prince’s motive emerged after
a few casual remarks.

“‘My city is filled with the rumor that you can fight wild tigers
with nothing more than your naked hands. Is it a fact?’

“‘It is quite true.’

“‘I can scarcely believe it! You are a Calcutta Bengali, nurtured
on the white rice of city folk. Be frank, please; have you not been
fighting only spineless, opium-fed animals?’ His voice was loud
and sarcastic, tinged with provincial accent.

“I vouchsafed no reply to his insulting question.

“‘I challenge you to fight my newly-caught tiger, Raja Begum.
{FN6-2} If you can successfully resist him, bind him with a chain,
and leave his cage in a conscious state, you shall have this royal
Bengal! Several thousand rupees and many other gifts shall also be
bestowed. If you refuse to meet him in combat, I shall blazon your
name throughout the state as an impostor!’

“His insolent words struck me like a volley of bullets. I shot an
angry acceptance. Half risen from the chair in his excitement, the
prince sank back with a sadistic smile. I was reminded of the Roman
emperors who delighted in setting Christians in bestial arenas.

“‘The match will be set for a week hence. I regret that I cannot
give you permission to view the tiger in advance.’

“Whether the prince feared I might seek to hypnotize the beast, or
secretly feed him opium, I know not!

“I left the palace, noting with amusement that the royal umbrella
and panoplied coach were now missing.

“The following week I methodically prepared my mind and body for
the coming ordeal. Through my servant I learned of fantastic tales.
The saint’s direful prediction to my father had somehow got abroad,
enlarging as it ran. Many simple villagers believed that an evil
spirit, cursed by the gods, had reincarnated as a tiger which took
various demoniac forms at night, but remained a striped animal
during the day. This demon-tiger was supposed to be the one sent
to humble me.

“Another imaginative version was that animal prayers to Tiger
Heaven had achieved a response in the shape of Raja Begum. He was
to be the instrument to punish me-the audacious biped, so insulting
to the entire tiger species! A furless, fangless man daring
to challenge a claw-armed, sturdy-limbed tiger! The concentrated
venom of all humiliated tigers-the villagers declared-had gathered
momentum sufficient to operate hidden laws and bring about the fall
of the proud tiger tamer.

“My servant further apprized me that the prince was in his element
as manager of the bout between man and beast. He had supervised
the erection of a storm-proof pavilion, designed to accommodate
thousands.  Its center held Raja Begum in an enormous iron cage,
surrounded by an outer safety room. The captive emitted a ceaseless
series of blood-curdling roars. He was fed sparingly, to kindle a
wrathful appetite.  Perhaps the prince expected me to be the meal
of reward!

“Crowds from the city and suburbs bought tickets eagerly in response
to the beat of drums announcing the unique contest. The day of
battle saw hundreds turned away for lack of seats. Many men broke
through the tent openings, or crowded any space below the galleries.”

As the Tiger Swami’s story approached a climax, my excitement
mounted with it; Chandi also was raptly mute.

“Amidst piercing sound-explosions from Raja Begum, and the hubbub
of the somewhat terrified crowd, I quietly made my appearance. Scantily
clad around the waist, I was otherwise unprotected by clothing. I
opened the bolt on the door of the safety room and calmly locked
it behind me. The tiger sensed blood. Leaping with a thunderous
crash on his bars, he sent forth a fearsome welcome. The audience
was hushed with pitiful fear; I seemed a meek lamb before the raging
beast.

“In a trice I was within the cage; but as I slammed the door, Raja
Begum was headlong upon me. My right hand was desperately torn.
Human blood, the greatest treat a tiger can know, fell in appalling
streams.  The prophecy of the saint seemed about to be fulfilled.

“I rallied instantly from the shock of the first serious injury
I had ever received. Banishing the sight of my gory fingers by
thrusting them beneath my waist cloth, I swung my left arm in a
bone-cracking blow. The beast reeled back, swirled around the rear
of the cage, and sprang forward convulsively. My famous fistic
punishment rained on his head.

“But Raja Begum’s taste of blood had acted like the maddening first
sip of wine to a dipsomaniac long-deprived. Punctuated by deafening
roar, the brute’s assaults grew in fury. My inadequate defense
of only one hand left me vulnerable before claws and fangs. But I
dealt out dazing retribution. Mutually ensanguined, we struggled
as to the death. The cage was pandemonium, as blood splashed in
all directions, and blasts of pain and lethal lust came from the
bestial throat.

“‘Shoot him!’ ‘Kill the tiger!’ Shrieks arose from the audience.
So fast did man and beast move, that a guard’s bullet went amiss.
I mustered all my will force, bellowed fiercely, and landed a final
concussive blow. The tiger collapsed and lay quietly.

“Like a pussycat!” I interjected.

The swami laughed in hearty appreciation, then continued the
engrossing tale.

“Raja Begum was vanquished at last. His royal pride was further
humbled: with my lacerated hands, I audaciously forced open his
jaws.  For a dramatic moment, I held my head within the yawning
deathtrap. I looked around for a chain. Pulling one from a pile
on the floor, I bound the tiger by his neck to the cage bars. In
triumph I moved toward the door.

“But that fiend incarnate, Raja Begum, had stamina worthy of his
supposed demoniac origin. With an incredible lunge, he snapped
the chain and leaped on my back. My shoulder fast in his jaws, I
fell violently. But in a trice I had him pinned beneath me. Under
merciless blows, the treacherous animal sank into semiconsciousness.
This time I secured him more carefully. Slowly I left the cage.

“I found myself in a new uproar, this time one of delight. The crowd’s
cheer broke as though from a single gigantic throat. Disastrously
mauled, I had yet fulfilled the three conditions of the fight-stunning
the tiger, binding him with a chain, and leaving him without
requiring assistance for myself. In addition, I had so drastically
injured and frightened the aggressive beast that he had been content
to overlook the opportune prize of my head in his mouth!

“After my wounds were treated, I was honored and garlanded; hundreds of
gold pieces showered at my feet. The whole city entered a holiday
period. Endless discussions were heard on all sides about my
victory over one of the largest and most savage tigers ever seen.
Raja Begum was presented to me, as promised, but I felt no elation.
A spiritual change had entered my heart. It seemed that with my
final exit from the cage I had also closed the door on my worldly
ambitions.

“A woeful period followed. For six months I lay near death from
blood poisoning. As soon as I was well enough to leave Cooch Behar,
I returned to my native town.

“‘I know now that my teacher is the holy man who gave the wise
warning.’ I humbly made this confession to my father. ‘Oh, if I
could only find him!’ My longing was sincere, for one day the saint
arrived unheralded.

“‘Enough of tiger taming.’ He spoke with calm assurance. ‘Come with
me; I will teach you to subdue the beasts of ignorance roaming in
jungles of the human mind. You are used to an audience: let it be
a galaxy of angels, entertained by your thrilling mastery of yoga!’

“I was initiated into the spiritual path by my saintly guru. He
opened my soul-doors, rusty and resistant with long disuse. Hand
in hand, we soon set out for my training in the Himalayas.”

Chandi and I bowed at the swami’s feet, grateful for his vivid
outline of a life truly cyclonic. I felt amply repaid for the long
probationary wait in the cold parlor!

{FN6-1} SOHONG was his monastic name. He was popularly known as
the “Tiger Swami.”

{FN6-2} “Prince Princess”-so named to indicate that this beast
possessed the combined ferocity of tiger and tigress.




CHAPTER: 7

THE LEVITATING SAINT


“I saw a yogi remain in the air, several feet above the ground,
last night at a group meeting.” My friend, Upendra Mohun Chowdhury,
spoke impressively.

I gave him an enthusiastic smile. “Perhaps I can guess his name.
Was it Bhaduri Mahasaya, of Upper Circular Road?”

Upendra nodded, a little crestfallen not to be a news-bearer. My
inquisitiveness about saints was well-known among my friends; they
delighted in setting me on a fresh track.

“The yogi lives so close to my home that I often visit him.” My
words brought keen interest to Upendra’s face, and I made a further
confidence.

“I have seen him in remarkable feats. He has expertly mastered the
various PRANAYAMAS {FN7-1} of the ancient eightfold yoga outlined
by Patanjali. {FN7-2} Once Bhaduri Mahasaya performed the BHASTRIKA
PRANAYAMA before me with such amazing force that it seemed an actual
storm had arisen in the room! Then he extinguished the thundering
breath and remained motionless in a high state of superconsciousness.
{FN7-3} The aura of peace after the storm was vivid beyond forgetting.”

“I heard that the saint never leaves his home.” Upendra’s tone was
a trifle incredulous.

“Indeed it is true! He has lived indoors for the past twenty years.
He slightly relaxes his self-imposed rule at the times of our holy
festivals, when he goes as far as his front sidewalk! The beggars
gather there, because Saint Bhaduri is known for his tender heart.”

“How does he remain in the air, defying the law of gravitation?”

“A yogi’s body loses its grossness after use of certain PRANAYAMAS.
Then it will levitate or hop about like a leaping frog. Even
saints who do not practice a formal yoga {FN7-4} have been known
to levitate during a state of intense devotion to God.”

“I would like to know more of this sage. Do you attend his evening
meetings?” Upendra’s eyes were sparkling with curiosity.

“Yes, I go often. I am vastly entertained by the wit in his
wisdom.  Occasionally my prolonged laughter mars the solemnity of
his gatherings. The saint is not displeased, but his disciples look
daggers!”

On my way home from school that afternoon, I passed Bhaduri Mahasaya’s
cloister and decided on a visit. The yogi was inaccessible to the
general public. A lone disciple, occupying the ground floor, guarded
his master’s privacy. The student was something of a martinet; he
now inquired formally if I had an “engagement.” His guru put in an
appearance just in time to save me from summary ejection.

“Let Mukunda come when he will.” The sage’s eyes twinkled. “My rule
of seclusion is not for my own comfort, but for that of others.
Worldly people do not like the candor which shatters their delusions.
Saints are not only rare but disconcerting. Even in scripture, they
are often found embarrassing!”

I followed Bhaduri Mahasaya to his austere quarters on the top floor,
from which he seldom stirred. Masters often ignore the panorama
of the world’s ado, out of focus till centered in the ages. The
contemporaries of a sage are not alone those of the narrow present.

“Maharishi, {FN7-5} you are the first yogi I have known who always
stays indoors.”

“God plants his saints sometimes in unexpected soil, lest we think
we may reduce Him to a rule!”

The sage locked his vibrant body in the lotus posture. In his
seventies, he displayed no unpleasing signs of age or sedentary life.
Stalwart and straight, he was ideal in every respect. His face was
that of a RISHI, as described in the ancient texts. Noble-headed,
abundantly bearded, he always sat firmly upright, his quiet eyes
fixed on Omnipresence.

[Illustration: BHADURI MAHASAYA, “The Levitating Saint” “Sir,”
I inquired, “why do you not write a book on yoga for the benefit
of the world?” “I am training disciples,” He replied. “They and
their students will be living volumes, proof against the natural
disintegrations of time and the unnatural interpretations of the
critics.”—see badhuri.jpg]

The saint and I entered the meditative state. After an hour, his
gentle voice roused me.

“You go often into the silence, but have you developed ANUBHAVA?”
{FN7-6} He was reminding me to love God more than meditation.  “Do
not mistake the technique for the Goal.”

He offered me some mangoes. With that good-humored wit that I found
so delightful in his grave nature, he remarked, “People in general
are more fond of JALA YOGA (union with food) than of DHYANA YOGA
(union with God).”

His yogic pun affected me uproariously.

“What a laugh you have!” An affectionate gleam came into his gaze.
His own face was always serious, yet touched with an ecstatic smile.
His large, lotus eyes held a hidden divine laughter.

“Those letters come from far-off America.” The sage indicated several
thick envelopes on a table. “I correspond with a few societies
there whose members are interested in yoga. They are discovering
India anew, with a better sense of direction than Columbus! I am
glad to help them. The knowledge of yoga is free to all who will
receive, like the ungarnishable daylight.

“What RISHIS perceived as essential for human salvation need not
be diluted for the West. Alike in soul though diverse in outer
experience, neither West nor East will flourish if some form of
disciplinary yoga be not practiced.”

The saint held me with his tranquil eyes. I did not realize that
his speech was a veiled prophetic guidance. It is only now, as I
write these words, that I understand the full meaning in the casual
intimations he often gave me that someday I would carry India’s
teachings to America.

“Maharishi, I wish you would write a book on yoga for the benefit
of the world.”

“I am training disciples. They and their students will be living
volumes, proof against the natural disintegrations of time and the
unnatural interpretations of the critics.” Bhaduri’s wit put me
into another gale of laughter.

I remained alone with the yogi until his disciples arrived in the
evening. Bhaduri Mahasaya entered one of his inimitable discourses.
Like a peaceful flood, he swept away the mental debris of his listeners,
floating them Godward. His striking parables were expressed in a
flawless Bengali.

This evening Bhaduri expounded various philosophical points
connected with the life of Mirabai, a medieval Rajputani princess
who abandoned her court life to seek the company of sadhus. One
great-sannyasi refused to receive her because she was a woman; her
reply brought him humbly to her feet.

“Tell the master,” she had said, “that I did not know there was
any Male in the universe save God; are we all not females before
Him?” (A scriptural conception of the Lord as the only Positive
Creative Principle, His creation being naught but a passive MAYA.)

Mirabai composed many ecstatic songs which are still treasured in
India; I translate one of them here:

  “If by bathing daily God could be realized
  Sooner would I be a whale in the deep;
  If by eating roots and fruits He could be known
  Gladly would I choose the form of a goat;
  If the counting of rosaries uncovered Him
  I would say my prayers on mammoth beads;
  If bowing before stone images unveiled Him
  A flinty mountain I would humbly worship;
  If by drinking milk the Lord could be imbibed
  Many calves and children would know Him;
  If abandoning one’s wife would summon God
  Would not thousands be eunuchs?
  Mirabai knows that to find the Divine One
  The only indispensable is Love.”

Several students put rupees in Bhaduri’s slippers which lay by his
side as he sat in yoga posture. This respectful offering, customary
in India, indicates that the disciple places his material goods at
the guru’s feet. Grateful friends are only the Lord in disguise,
looking after His own.

“Master, you are wonderful!” A student, taking his leave, gazed
ardently at the patriarchal sage. “You have renounced riches and
comforts to seek God and teach us wisdom!” It was well-known that
Bhaduri Mahasaya had forsaken great family wealth in his early
childhood, when single-mindedly he entered the yogic path.

“You are reversing the case!” The saint’s face held a mild rebuke.
“I have left a few paltry rupees, a few petty pleasures, for a cosmic
empire of endless bliss. How then have I denied myself anything?
I know the joy of sharing the treasure. Is that a sacrifice? The
shortsighted worldly folk are verily the real renunciates! They
relinquish an unparalleled divine possession for a poor handful of
earthly toys!”

I chuckled over this paradoxical view of renunciation-one which
puts the cap of Croesus on any saintly beggar, whilst transforming
all proud millionaires into unconscious martyrs.

“The divine order arranges our future more wisely than any insurance
company.” The master’s concluding words were the realized creed
of his faith. “The world is full of uneasy believers in an outward
security.  Their bitter thoughts are like scars on their foreheads.
The One who gave us air and milk from our first breath knows how
to provide day by day for His devotees.”

I continued my after-school pilgrimages to the saint’s door. With
silent zeal he aided me to attain ANUBHAVA. One day he moved to
Ram Mohan Roy Road, away from the neighborhood of my Gurpar Road
home. His loving disciples had built him a new hermitage, known as
“Nagendra Math.” {FN7-7}

Although it throws me ahead of my story by a number of years, I
will recount here the last words given to me by Bhaduri Mahasaya.
Shortly before I embarked for the West, I sought him out and humbly
knelt for his farewell blessing:

“Son, go to America. Take the dignity of hoary India for your
shield.  Victory is written on your brow; the noble distant people
will well receive you.”

{FN7-1} Methods of controlling life-force through regulation of
breath.

{FN7-2} The foremost ancient exponent of yoga.

{FN7-3} French professors were the first in the West to be willing
to scientifically investigate the possibilities of the superconscious
mind. Professor Jules-Bois, member of the L’Ecole de Psychologie of
the Sorbonne, lectured in America in 1928; he told his audiences that
French scientists have accorded recognition to the superconsciousness,
“which is the exact opposite of Freud’s subconscious mind and is the
faculty which makes man really man and not just a super-animal.” M.
Jules-Bois explained that the awakening of the higher consciousness
“was not to be confused with Coueism or hypnotism. The existence
of a superconscious mind has long been recognized philosophically,
being in reality the Oversoul spoken of by Emerson, but only recently
has it been recognized scientifically.” The French scientist pointed
out that from the superconsciousness come inspiration, genius, moral
values.  “Belief in this is not mysticism though it recognized and
valued the qualities which mystics preached.”

{FN7-4} St. Theresa of Avila and other Christian saints were often
observed in a state of levitation.

{FN7-5} “Great sage.”

{FN7-6} Actual perception of God.

{FN7-7} The saint’s full name was Nagendranath Bhaduri. MATH means
hermitage or ASHRAM.




CHAPTER: 8

INDIA’S GREAT SCIENTIST, J.C. BOSE


“Jagadis Chandra Bose’s wireless inventions antedated those of
Marconi.”

Overhearing this provocative remark, I walked closer to a sidewalk
group of professors engaged in scientific discussion. If my motive
in joining them was racial pride, I regret it. I cannot deny my
keen interest in evidence that India can play a leading part in
physics, and not metaphysics alone.

“What do you mean, sir?”

The professor obligingly explained. “Bose was the first one to invent
a wireless coherer and an instrument for indicating the refraction
of electric waves. But the Indian scientist did not exploit his
inventions commercially. He soon turned his attention from the
inorganic to the organic world. His revolutionary discoveries as a
plant physiologist are outpacing even his radical achievements as
a physicist.”

I politely thanked my mentor. He added, “The great scientist is
one of my brother professors at Presidency College.”

I paid a visit the next day to the sage at his home, which was close
to mine on Gurpar Road. I had long admired him from a respectful
distance. The grave and retiring botanist greeted me graciously. He
was a handsome, robust man in his fifties, with thick hair, broad
forehead, and the abstracted eyes of a dreamer. The precision in
his tones revealed the lifelong scientific habit.

“I have recently returned from an expedition to scientific societies
of the West. Their members exhibited intense interest in delicate
instruments of my invention which demonstrate the indivisible unity
of all life. {FN8-1} The Bose crescograph has the enormity of ten
million magnifications. The microscope enlarges only a few thousand
times; yet it brought vital impetus to biological science. The
crescograph opens incalculable vistas.”

“You have done much, sir, to hasten the embrace of East and West
in the impersonal arms of science.”

[Illustration: JAGADIS CHANDRA BOSE, India’s great physicist,
botanist, and inventor of the Crescograph—see bose.jpg]

“I was educated at Cambridge. How admirable is the Western method
of submitting all theory to scrupulous experimental verification!
That empirical procedure has gone hand in hand with the gift for
introspection which is my Eastern heritage. Together they have enabled
me to sunder the silences of natural realms long uncommunicative.
The telltale charts of my crescograph {FN8-2} are evidence for
the most skeptical that plants have a sensitive nervous system and
a varied emotional life. Love, hate, joy, fear, pleasure, pain,
excitability, stupor, and countless appropriate responses to stimuli
are as universal in plants as in animals.”

“The unique throb of life in all creation could seem only poetic
imagery before your advent, Professor! A saint I once knew would
never pluck flowers. ‘Shall I rob the rosebush of its pride in
beauty? Shall I cruelly affront its dignity by my rude divestment?’
His sympathetic words are verified literally through your discoveries!”

“The poet is intimate with truth, while the scientist approaches
awkwardly. Come someday to my laboratory and see the unequivocable
testimony of the crescograph.”

Gratefully I accepted the invitation, and took my departure. I
heard later that the botanist had left Presidency College, and was
planning a research center in Calcutta.

When the Bose Institute was opened, I attended the dedicatory
services. Enthusiastic hundreds strolled over the premises. I was
charmed with the artistry and spiritual symbolism of the new home
of science. Its front gate, I noted, was a centuried relic from
a distant shrine. Behind the lotus {FN8-3} fountain, a sculptured
female figure with a torch conveyed the Indian respect for woman
as the immortal light-bearer. The garden held a small temple
consecrated to the Noumenon beyond phenomena. Thought of the divine
incorporeity was suggested by absence of any altar-image.

Bose’s speech on this great occasion might have issued from the
lips of one of the inspired ancient RISHIS.

“I dedicate today this Institute as not merely a laboratory but
a temple.” His reverent solemnity stole like an unseen cloak over
the crowded auditorium. “In the pursuit of my investigations I was
unconsciously led into the border region of physics and physiology.
To my amazement, I found boundary lines vanishing, and points
of contact emerging, between the realms of the living and the
non-living.  Inorganic matter was perceived as anything but inert;
it was athrill under the action of multitudinous forces.

“A universal reaction seemed to bring metal, plant and animal under
a common law. They all exhibited essentially the same phenomena
of fatigue and depression, with possibilities of recovery and of
exaltation, as well as the permanent irresponsiveness associated
with death. Filled with awe at this stupendous generalization, it
was with great hope that I announced my results before the Royal
Society—results demonstrated by experiments. But the physiologists
present advised me to confine myself to physical investigations, in
which my success had been assured, rather than encroach on their
preserves. I had unwittingly strayed into the domain of an unfamiliar
caste system and so offended its etiquette.

“An unconscious theological bias was also present, which confounds
ignorance with faith. It is often forgotten that He who surrounded
us with this ever-evolving mystery of creation has also implanted
in us the desire to question and understand. Through many years
of miscomprehension, I came to know that the life of a devotee of
science is inevitably filled with unending struggle. It is for him
to cast his life as an ardent offering-regarding gain and loss,
success and failure, as one.

“In time the leading scientific societies of the world accepted my
theories and results, and recognized the importance of the Indian
contribution to science. {FN8-4} Can anything small or circumscribed
ever satisfy the mind of India? By a continuous living tradition,
and a vital power of rejuvenescence, this land has readjusted itself
through unnumbered transformations. Indians have always arisen who,
discarding the immediate and absorbing prize of the hour, have
sought for the realization of the highest ideals in life-not through
passive renunciation, but through active struggle. The weakling
who has refused the conflict, acquiring nothing, has had nothing
to renounce.  He alone who has striven and won can enrich the world
by bestowing the fruits of his victorious experience.

“The work already carried out in the Bose laboratory on the
response of matter, and the unexpected revelations in plant life,
have opened out very extended regions of inquiry in physics, in
physiology, in medicine, in agriculture, and even in psychology.
Problems hitherto regarded as insoluble have now been brought within
the sphere of experimental investigation.

“But high success is not to be obtained without rigid exactitude.
Hence the long battery of super-sensitive instruments and apparatus
of my design, which stand before you today in their cases in the
entrance hall. They tell you of the protracted efforts to get behind
the deceptive seeming into the reality that remains unseen, of the
continuous toil and persistence and resourcefulness called forth
to overcome human limitations. All creative scientists know that
the true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions they uncover
the laws of truth.

“The lectures given here will not be mere repetitions of second-hand
knowledge. They will announce new discoveries, demonstrated for
the first time in these halls. Through regular publication of the
work of the Institute, these Indian contributions will reach the
whole world.  They will become public property. No patents will
ever be taken. The spirit of our national culture demands that we
should forever be free from the desecration of utilizing knowledge
only for personal gain.

“It is my further wish that the facilities of this Institute be
available, so far as possible, to workers from all countries. In
this I am attempting to carry on the traditions of my country. So
far back as twenty-five centuries, India welcomed to its ancient
universities, at Nalanda and Taxila, scholars from all parts of
the world.

“Although science is neither of the East nor of the West but rather
international in its universality, yet India is specially fitted to
make great contributions. {FN8-5} The burning Indian imagination,
which can extort new order out of a mass of apparently contradictory
facts, is held in check by the habit of concentration. This restraint
confers the power to hold the mind to the pursuit of truth with an
infinite patience.”

Tears stood in my eyes at the scientist’s concluding words. Is
“patience” not indeed a synonym of India, confounding Time and the
historians alike?

I visited the research center again, soon after the day of opening.
The great botanist, mindful of his promise, took me to his quiet
laboratory.

“I will attach the crescograph to this fern; the magnification is
tremendous. If a snail’s crawl were enlarged in the same proportion,
the creature would appear to be traveling like an express train!”

My gaze was fixed eagerly on the screen which reflected the magnified
fern-shadow. Minute life-movements were now clearly perceptible;
the plant was growing very slowly before my fascinated eyes. The
scientist touched the tip of the fern with a small metal bar. The
developing pantomime came to an abrupt halt, resuming the eloquent
rhythms as soon as the rod was withdrawn.

“You saw how any slight outside interference is detrimental to the
sensitive tissues,” Bose remarked. “Watch; I will now administer
chloroform, and then give an antidote.”

The effect of the chloroform discontinued all growth; the antidote
was revivifying. The evolutionary gestures on the screen held me
more raptly than a “movie” plot. My companion (here in the role
of villain) thrust a sharp instrument through a part of the fern;
pain was indicated by spasmodic flutters. When he passed a razor
partially through the stem, the shadow was violently agitated, then
stilled itself with the final punctuation of death.

“By first chloroforming a huge tree, I achieved a successful
transplantation. Usually, such monarchs of the forest die very
quickly after being moved.” Jagadis smiled happily as he recounted
the life-saving maneuver. “Graphs of my delicate apparatus have
proved that trees possess a circulatory system; their sap movements
correspond to the blood pressure of animal bodies. The ascent of
sap is not explicable on the mechanical grounds ordinarily advanced,
such as capillary attraction. The phenomenon has been solved through
the crescograph as the activity of living cells. Peristaltic waves
issue from a cylindrical tube which extends down a tree and serves
as an actual heart! The more deeply we perceive, the more striking
becomes the evidence that a uniform plan links every form in manifold
nature.”

The great scientist pointed to another Bose instrument.

“I will show you experiments on a piece of tin. The life-force in
metals responds adversely or beneficially to stimuli. Ink markings
will register the various reactions.”

Deeply engrossed, I watched the graph which recorded the characteristic
waves of atomic structure. When the professor applied chloroform
to the tin, the vibratory writings stopped. They recommenced as
the metal slowly regained its normal state. My companion dispensed
a poisonous chemical. Simultaneous with the quivering end of the
tin, the needle dramatically wrote on the chart a death-notice.

“Bose instruments have demonstrated that metals, such as the steel
used in scissors and machinery, are subject to fatigue, and regain
efficiency by periodic rest. The life-pulse in metals is seriously
harmed or even extinguished through the application of electric
currents or heavy pressure.”

I looked around the room at the numerous inventions, eloquent
testimony of a tireless ingenuity.

“Sir, it is lamentable that mass agricultural development is
not speeded by fuller use of your marvelous mechanisms. Would it
not be easily possible to employ some of them in quick laboratory
experiments to indicate the influence of various types of fertilizers
on plant growth?”

“You are right. Countless uses of Bose instruments will be made
by future generations. The scientist seldom knows contemporaneous
reward; it is enough to possess the joy of creative service.”

With expressions of unreserved gratitude to the indefatigable sage,
I took my leave. “Can the astonishing fertility of his genius ever
be exhausted?” I thought.

No diminution came with the years. Inventing an intricate instrument,
the “Resonant Cardiograph,” Bose then pursued extensive researches
on innumerable Indian plants. An enormous unsuspected pharmacopoeia
of useful drugs was revealed. The cardiograph is constructed with
an unerring accuracy by which a one-hundredth part of a second
is indicated on a graph. Resonant records measure infinitesimal
pulsations in plant, animal and human structure. The great botanist
predicted that use of his cardiograph will lead to vivisection on
plants instead of animals.

“Side by side recordings of the effects of a medicine given
simultaneously to a plant and an animal have shown astounding
unanimity in result,” he pointed out. “Everything in man has been
foreshadowed in the plant. Experimentation on vegetation will
contribute to lessening of human suffering.”

Years later Bose’s pioneer plant findings were substantiated by other
scientists. Work done in 1938 at Columbia University was reported
by THE NEW YORK TIMES as follows:

It has been determined within the past few years that when the
nerves transmit messages between the brain and other parts of the
body, tiny electrical impulses are being generated. These impulses
have been measured by delicate galvanometers and magnified millions
of times by modern amplifying apparatus. Until now no satisfactory
method had been found to study the passages of the impulses along
the nerve fibers in living animals or man because of the great
speed with which these impulses travel.

Drs. K. S. Cole and H. J. Curtis reported having discovered that the
long single cells of the fresh-water plant nitella, used frequently
in goldfish bowls, are virtually identical with those of single
nerve fibers. Furthermore, they found that nitella fibers, on being
excited, propagate electrical waves that are similar in every way,
except velocity, to those of the nerve fibers in animals and man.
The electrical nerve impulses in the plant were found to be much
slower than those in animals. This discovery was therefore seized
upon by the Columbia workers as a means for taking slow motion
pictures of the passage of the electrical impulses in nerves.

The nitella plant thus may become a sort of Rosetta stone for
deciphering the closely guarded secrets close to the very borderland
of mind and matter.

The poet Rabindranath Tagore was a stalwart friend of India’s
idealistic scientist. To him, the sweet Bengali singer addressed
the following lines: {FN8-6}

  O Hermit, call thou in the authentic words
  Of that old hymn called SAMA; “Rise! Awake!”
  Call to the man who boasts his SHASTRIC lore
  From vain pedantic wranglings profitless,
  Call to that foolish braggart to come forth
  Out on the face of nature, this broad earth,
  Send forth this call unto thy scholar band;
  Together round thy sacrifice of fire
  Let them all gather. So may our India,
  Our ancient land unto herself return
  O once again return to steadfast work,
  To duty and devotion, to her trance
  Of earnest meditation; let her sit
  Once more unruffled, greedless, strifeless, pure,
  O once again upon her lofty seat
  And platform, teacher of all lands.

{FN8-1} “All science is transcendental or else passes away. Botany
is now acquiring the right theory-the avatars of Brahma will
presently be the textbooks of natural history.”-EMERSON.

{FN8-2} From the Latin root, CRESCERE, to increase. For his
crescograph and other inventions, Bose was knighted in 1917.

{FN8-3} The lotus flower is an ancient divine symbol in India; its
unfolding petals suggest the expansion of the soul; the growth of
its pure beauty from the mud of its origin holds a benign spiritual
promise.

{FN8-4} “At present, only the sheerest accident brings India into
the purview of the American college student. Eight universities
(Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania,
Chicago, and California) have chairs of Indology or Sanskrit,
but India is virtually unrepresented in departments of history,
philosophy, fine arts, political science, sociology, or any of
the other departments of intellectual experience in which, as we
have seen, India has made great contributions. . . . We believe,
consequently, that no department of study, particularly in the
humanities, in any major university can be fully equipped without
a properly trained specialist in the Indic phases of its discipline.
We believe, too, that every college which aims to prepare its
graduates for intelligent work in the world which is to be theirs
to live in, must have on its staff a scholar competent in the
civilization of India.”-Extracts from an article by Professor W.
Norman Brown of the University of Pennsylvania which appeared in
the May, 1939, issue of the BULLETIN of the American Council of
Learned Societies, 907 15th St., Washington, D. C., 25 cents copy.
This issue (#28) contains over 100 pages of a “Basic Bibliography
for Indic Studies.”

{FN8-5} The atomic structure of matter was well-known to the ancient
Hindus. One of the six systems of Indian philosophy is VAISESIKA,
from the Sanskrit root VISESAS, “atomic individuality.” One of the
foremost VAISESIKA expounders was Aulukya, also called Kanada, “the
atom-eater,” born about 2800 years ago.

In an article in EAST-WEST, April, 1934, a summary of VAISESIKA
scientific knowledge was given as follows: “Though the modern
‘atomic theory’ is generally considered a new advance of science,
it was brilliantly expounded long ago by Kanada, ‘the atom-eater.’
The Sanskrit ANUS can be properly translated as ‘atom’ in the latter’s
literal Greek sense of ‘uncut’ or indivisible. Other scientific
expositions of VAISESIKA treatises of the B.C. era include (1) the
movement of needles toward magnets, (2) the circulation of water
in plants, (3) AKASH or ether, inert and structureless, as a basis
for transmitting subtle forces, (4) the solar fire as the cause of
all other forms of heat, (5) heat as the cause of molecular change,
(6) the law of gravitation as caused by the quality that inheres in
earth-atoms to give them their attractive power or downward pull,
(7) the kinetic nature of all energy; causation as always rooted
in an expenditure of energy or a redistribution of motion, (8)
universal dissolution through the disintegration of atoms, (9)
the radiation of heat and light rays, infinitely small particles,
darting forth in all directions with inconceivable speed (the modern
‘cosmic rays’ theory), (10) the relativity of time and space.

“VAISESIKA assigned the origin of the world to atoms, eternal in
their nature, i.e., their ultimate peculiarities. These atoms were
regarded as possessing an incessant vibratory motion. . . . The
recent discovery that an atom is a miniature solar system would be
no news to the old VAISESIKA philosophers, who also reduced time to
its furthest mathematical concept by describing the smallest unit
of time (KALA) as the period taken by an atom to traverse its own
unit of space.”

{FN8-6} Translated from the Bengali of Rabindranath Tagore, by
Manmohan Ghosh, in VISWA-BHARATI.




CHAPTER: 9

THE BLISSFUL DEVOTEE AND HIS COSMIC ROMANCE


“Little sir, please be seated. I am talking to my Divine Mother.”

Silently I had entered the room in great awe. The angelic
appearance of Master Mahasaya fairly dazzled me. With silky white
beard and large lustrous eyes, he seemed an incarnation of purity.
His upraised chin and folded hands apprized me that my first visit
had disturbed him in the midst of his devotions.

His simple words of greeting produced the most violent effect my
nature had so far experienced. The bitter separation of my mother’s
death I had thought the measure of all anguish. Now an agony at
separation from my Divine Mother was an indescribable torture of
the spirit. I fell moaning to the floor.

“Little sir, quiet yourself!” The saint was sympathetically
distressed.

Abandoned in some oceanic desolation, I clutched his feet as the
sole raft of my rescue.

“Holy sir, thy intercession! Ask Divine Mother if I find any favor
in Her sight!”

This promise is one not easily bestowed; the master was constrained
to silence.

Beyond reach of doubt, I was convinced that Master Mahasaya was in
intimate converse with the Universal Mother. It was deep humiliation
to realize that my eyes were blind to Her who even at this moment
was perceptible to the faultless gaze of the saint. Shamelessly
gripping his feet, deaf to his gentle remonstrances, I besought
him again and again for his intervening grace.

“I will make your plea to the Beloved.” The master’s capitulation
came with a slow, compassionate smile.

What power in those few words, that my being should know release
from its stormy exile?

“Sir, remember your pledge! I shall return soon for Her message!”
Joyful anticipation rang in my voice that only a moment ago had
been sobbing in sorrow.

Descending the long stairway, I was overwhelmed by memories. This
house at 50 Amherst Street, now the residence of Master Mahasaya,
had once been my family home, scene of my mother’s death. Here
my human heart had broken for the vanished mother; and here today
my spirit had been as though crucified by absence of the Divine
Mother. Hallowed walls, silent witness of my grievous hurts and
final healing!

My steps were eager as I returned to my Gurpar Road home. Seeking
the seclusion of my small attic, I remained in meditation until
ten o’clock. The darkness of the warm Indian night was suddenly
lit with a wondrous vision.

Haloed in splendor, the Divine Mother stood before me. Her face,
tenderly smiling, was beauty itself.

“Always have I loved thee! Ever shall I love thee!”

The celestial tones still ringing in the air, She disappeared.

The sun on the following morning had hardly risen to an angle of
decorum when I paid my second visit to Master Mahasaya. Climbing
the staircase in the house of poignant memories, I reached his
fourth-floor room. The knob of the closed door was wrapped around
with a cloth; a hint, I felt, that the saint desired privacy. As
I stood irresolutely on the landing, the door was opened by the
master’s welcoming hand. I knelt at his holy feet. In a playful
mood, I wore a solemn mask over my face, hiding the divine elation.

“Sir, I have come-very early, I confess!-for your message. Did the
Beloved Mother say anything about me?”

“Mischievous little sir!”

Not another remark would he make. Apparently my assumed gravity
was unimpressive.

“Why so mysterious, so evasive? Do saints never speak plainly?”
Perhaps I was a little provoked.

“Must you test me?” His calm eyes were full of understanding. “Could
I add a single word this morning to the assurance you received last
night at ten o’clock from the Beautiful Mother Herself?”

Master Mahasaya possessed control over the flood-gates of my soul:
again I plunged prostrate at his feet. But this time my tears welled
from a bliss, and not a pain, past bearing.

“Think you that your devotion did not touch the Infinite Mercy?
The Motherhood of God, that you have worshiped in forms both human
and divine, could never fail to answer your forsaken cry.”

[Illustration: Master Mahasaya, Ever engrossed in his blissful
cosmic romance.—see mmahasaya.jpg]

Who was this simple saint, whose least request to the Universal Spirit
met with sweet acquiescence? His role in the world was humble, as
befitted the greatest man of humility I ever knew. In this Amherst
Street house, Master Mahasaya {FN9-1} conducted a small high school
for boys. No words of chastisement passed his lips; no rule and
ferule maintained his discipline. Higher mathematics indeed were
taught in these modest classrooms, and a chemistry of love absent
from the textbooks. He spread his wisdom by spiritual contagion
rather than impermeable precept. Consumed by an unsophisticated
passion for the Divine Mother, the saint no more demanded the
outward forms of respect than a child.

“I am not your guru; he shall come a little later,” he told me.
“Through his guidance, your experiences of the Divine in terms of
love and devotion shall be translated into his terms of fathomless
wisdom.”

Every late afternoon, I betook myself to Amherst Street. I
sought Master Mahasaya’s divine cup, so full that its drops daily
overflowed on my being. Never before had I bowed in utter reverence;
now I felt it an immeasurable privilege even to tread the same
ground which Master Mahasaya sanctified.

“Sir, please wear this champak garland I have fashioned especially
for you.” I arrived one evening, holding my chain of flowers. But
shyly he drew away, repeatedly refusing the honor. Perceiving my
hurt, he finally smiled consent.

“Since we are both devotees of the Mother, you may put the garland
on this bodily temple, as offering to Her who dwells within.” His
vast nature lacked space in which any egotistical consideration
could gain foothold.

“Let us go tomorrow to the Dakshineswar Temple, forever hallowed
by my guru.” Master Mahasaya was a disciple of a Christlike master,
Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa.

The four-mile journey on the following morning was taken by boat
on the Ganges. We entered the nine-domed Temple of Kali, where the
figures of the Divine Mother and Shiva rest on a burnished silver
lotus, its thousand petals meticulously chiseled. Master Mahasaya
beamed in enchantment. He was engaged in his inexhaustible romance
with the Beloved. As he chanted Her name, my enraptured heart seemed
shattered into a thousand pieces.

We strolled later through the sacred precincts, halting in a
tamarisk grove. The manna characteristically exuded by this tree
was symbolic of the heavenly food Master Mahasaya was bestowing.
His divine invocations continued. I sat rigidly motionless on the
grass amid the pink feathery tamarisk flowers. Temporarily absent
from the body, I soared in a supernal visit.

This was the first of many pilgrimages to Dakshineswar with the holy
teacher. From him I learned the sweetness of God in the aspect of
Mother, or Divine Mercy. The childlike saint found little appeal in
the Father aspect, or Divine Justice. Stern, exacting, mathematical
judgment was alien to his gentle nature.

“He can serve as an earthly prototype for the very angels of
heaven!” I thought fondly, watching him one day at his prayers.
Without a breath of censure or criticism, he surveyed the world
with eyes long familiar with the Primal Purity. His body, mind,
speech, and actions were effortlessly harmonized with his soul’s
simplicity.

“My Master told me so.” Shrinking from personal assertion, the
saint ended any sage counsel with this invariable tribute. So deep
was his identity with Sri Ramakrishna that Master Mahasaya no longer
considered his thoughts as his own.

Hand in hand, the saint and I walked one evening on the block of his
school. My joy was dimmed by the arrival of a conceited acquaintance
who burdened us with a lengthy discourse.

“I see this man doesn’t please you.” The saint’s whisper to me was
unheard by the egotist, spellbound by his own monologue. “I have
spoken to Divine Mother about it; She realizes our sad predicament.
As soon as we get to yonder red house, She has promised to remind
him of more urgent business.”

My eyes were glued to the site of salvation. Reaching its red gate,
the man unaccountably turned and departed, neither finishing his
sentence nor saying good-by. The assaulted air was comforted with
peace.

Another day found me walking alone near the Howrah railway station.
I stood for a moment by a temple, silently criticizing a small group
of men with drum and cymbals who were violently reciting a chant.

“How undevotionally they use the Lord’s divine name in mechanical
repetition,” I reflected. My gaze was astonished by the rapid
approach of Master Mahasaya. “Sir, how come you here?”

The saint, ignoring my question, answered my thought. “Isn’t it
true, little sir, that the Beloved’s name sounds sweet from all
lips, ignorant or wise?” He passed his arm around me affectionately;
I found myself carried on his magic carpet to the Merciful Presence.

“Would you like to see some bioscopes?” This question one afternoon
from Master Mahasaya was mystifying; the term was then used in India
to signify motion pictures. I agreed, glad to be in his company in
any circumstances. A brisk walk brought us to the garden fronting
Calcutta University. My companion indicated a bench near the GOLDIGHI
or pond.

“Let us sit here for a few minutes. My Master always asked me
to meditate whenever I saw an expanse of water. Here its placidity
reminds us of the vast calmness of God. As all things can be
reflected in water, so the whole universe is mirrored in the lake
of the Cosmic Mind. So my GURUDEVA often said.”

Soon we entered a university hall where a lecture was in progress.
It proved abysmally dull, though varied occasionally by lantern
slide illustrations, equally uninteresting.

“So this is the kind of bioscope the master wanted me to see!” My
thought was impatient, yet I would not hurt the saint by revealing
boredom in my face. But he leaned toward me confidentially.

“I see, little sir, that you don’t like this bioscope. I have
mentioned it to Divine Mother; She is in full sympathy with us
both.  She tells me that the electric lights will now go out, and
won’t be relit until we have a chance to leave the room.”

As his whisper ended, the hall was plunged into darkness. The
professor’s strident voice was stilled in astonishment, then remarked,
“The electrical system of this hall appears to be defective.” By
this time, Master Mahasaya and I were safely across the threshold.
Glancing back from the corridor, I saw that the scene of our
martyrdom had again become illuminated.

“Little sir, you were disappointed in that bioscope, {FN9-2} but I
think you will like a different one.” The saint and I were standing
on the sidewalk in front of the university building. He gently
slapped my chest over the heart.

A transforming silence ensued. Just as the modern “talkies” become
inaudible motion pictures when the sound apparatus goes out of
order, so the Divine Hand, by some strange miracle, stifled the
earthly bustle. The pedestrians as well as the passing trolley cars,
automobiles, bullock carts, and iron-wheeled hackney carriages were
all in noiseless transit. As though possessing an omnipresent eye,
I beheld the scenes which were behind me, and to each side, as
easily as those in front. The whole spectacle of activity in that
small section of Calcutta passed before me without a sound. Like
a glow of fire dimly seen beneath a thin coat of ashes, a mellow
luminescence permeated the panoramic view.

My own body seemed nothing more than one of the many shadows,
though it was motionless, while the others flitted mutely to and
fro. Several boys, friends of mine, approached and passed on; though
they had looked directly at me, it was without recognition.

The unique pantomime brought me an inexpressible ecstasy. I drank
deep from some blissful fount. Suddenly my chest received another
soft blow from Master Mahasaya. The pandemonium of the world burst
upon my unwilling ears. I staggered, as though harshly awakened
from a gossamer dream. The transcendental wine removed beyond my
reach.

“Little sir, I see you found the second bioscope to your liking.”
The saint was smiling; I started to drop in gratitude on the ground
before him. “You can’t do that to me now; you know God is in your
temple also! I won’t let Divine Mother touch my feet through your
hands!”

If anyone observed the unpretentious master and myself as we walked
away from the crowded pavement, the onlooker surely suspected
us of intoxication. I felt that the falling shades of evening
were sympathetically drunk with God. When darkness recovered from
its nightly swoon, I faced the new morning bereft of my ecstatic
mood. But ever enshrined in memory is the seraphic son of Divine
Mother-Master Mahasaya!

Trying with poor words to do justice to his benignity, I wonder if
Master Mahasaya, and others among the deep-visioned saints whose
paths crossed mine, knew that years later, in a Western land,
I would be writing about their lives as divine devotees. Their
foreknowledge would not surprise me nor, I hope, my readers, who
have come thus far with me.

{FN9-1} These are respectful titles by which he was customarily
addressed. His name was Mahendra Nath Gupta; he signed his literary
works simply “M.”

{FN9-2} The Oxford English Dictionary gives, as rare, this definition
of BIOSCOPE: A view of life; that which gives such a view.

Master Mahasaya’s choice of a word was, then, peculiarly justified.




CHAPTER: 10

I MEET MY MASTER, SRI YUKTESWAR


“Faith in God can produce any miracle except one-passing an
examination without study.” Distastefully I closed the book I had
picked up in an idle moment.

“The writer’s exception shows his complete lack of faith,” I thought.
“Poor chap, he has great respect for the midnight oil!”

My promise to Father had been that I would complete my high school
studies. I cannot pretend to diligence. The passing months found me
less frequently in the classroom than in secluded spots along the
Calcutta bathing GHATS. The adjoining crematory grounds, especially
gruesome at night, are considered highly attractive by the yogi.
He who would find the Deathless Essence must not be dismayed by a
few unadorned skulls. Human inadequacy becomes clear in the gloomy
abode of miscellaneous bones. My midnight vigils were thus of a
different nature from the scholar’s.

The week of final examinations at the Hindu High School was fast
approaching. This interrogatory period, like the sepulchral haunts,
inspires a well-known terror. My mind was nevertheless at peace.
Braving the ghouls, I was exhuming a knowledge not found in lecture
halls. But it lacked the art of Swami Pranabananda, who easily
appeared in two places at one time. My educational dilemma was
plainly a matter for the Infinite Ingenuity. This was my reasoning,
though to many it seems illogic. The devotee’s irrationality springs
from a thousand inexplicable demonstrations of God’s instancy in
trouble.

“Hello, Mukunda! I catch hardly a glimpse of you these days!” A
classmate accosted me one afternoon on Gurpar Road.

“Hello, Nantu! My invisibility at school has actually placed me
there in a decidedly awkward position.” I unburdened myself under
his friendly gaze.

Nantu, who was a brilliant student, laughed heartily; my predicament
was not without a comic aspect.

“You are utterly unprepared for the finals! I suppose it is up to
me to help you!”

The simple words conveyed divine promise to my ears; with alacrity
I visited my friend’s home. He kindly outlined the solutions to
various problems he considered likely to be set by the instructors.

“These questions are the bait which will catch many trusting boys
in the examination trap. Remember my answers, and you will escape
without injury.”

The night was far gone when I departed. Bursting with unseasoned
erudition, I devoutly prayed it would remain for the next few
critical days. Nantu had coached me in my various subjects but,
under press of time, had forgotten my course in Sanskrit. Fervently
I reminded God of the oversight.

I set out on a short walk the next morning, assimilating my new
knowledge to the rhythm of swinging footsteps. As I took a short
cut through the weeds of a corner lot, my eye fell on a few loose
printed sheets. A triumphant pounce proved them to be Sanskrit verse.
I sought out a pundit for aid in my stumbling interpretation. His
rich voice filled the air with the edgeless, honeyed beauty of the
ancient tongue. {FN10-1}

“These exceptional stanzas cannot possibly be of aid in your Sanskrit
test.” The scholar dismissed them skeptically.

But familiarity with that particular poem enabled me on the following
day to pass the Sanskrit examination. Through the discerning help
Nantu had given, I also attained the minimum grade for success in
all my other subjects.

Father was pleased that I had kept my word and concluded my secondary
school course. My gratitude sped to the Lord, whose sole guidance
I perceived in my visit to Nantu and my walk by the unhabitual route
of the debris-filled lot. Playfully He had given a dual expression
to His timely design for my rescue.

I came across the discarded book whose author had denied God
precedence in the examination halls. I could not restrain a chuckle
at my own silent comment:

“It would only add to this fellow’s confusion, if I were to tell
him that divine meditation among the cadavers is a short cut to a
high school diploma!”

In my new dignity, I was now openly planning to leave home. Together
with a young friend, Jitendra Mazumdar, {FN10-2} I decided to join a
Mahamandal hermitage in Benares, and receive its spiritual discipline.

A desolation fell over me one morning at thought of separation from
my family. Since Mother’s death, my affection had grown especially
tender for my two younger brothers, Sananda and Bishnu. I rushed
to my retreat, the little attic which had witnessed so many scenes
in my turbulent SADHANA. {FN10-3} After a two-hour flood of tears,
I felt singularly transformed, as by some alchemical cleanser. All
attachment {FN10-4} disappeared; my resolution to seek God as the
Friend of friends set like granite within me. I quickly completed
my travel preparations.

“I make one last plea.” Father was distressed as I stood before him
for final blessing. “Do not forsake me and your grieving brothers
and sisters.”

“Revered Father, how can I tell my love for you! But even greater
is my love for the Heavenly Father, who has given me the gift of
a perfect father on earth. Let me go, that I someday return with
a more divine understanding.”

With reluctant parental consent, I set out to join Jitendra, already
in Benares at the hermitage. On my arrival the young head swami,
Dyananda, greeted me cordially. Tall and thin, of thoughtful mien,
he impressed me favorably. His fair face had a Buddhalike composure.

I was pleased that my new home possessed an attic, where I managed
to spend the dawn and morning hours. The ashram members, knowing
little of meditation practices, thought I should employ my whole
time in organizational duties. They gave me praise for my afternoon
work in their office.

“Don’t try to catch God so soon!” This ridicule from a fellow
resident accompanied one of my early departures toward the attic. I
went to Dyananda, busy in his small sanctum overlooking the Ganges.

“Swamiji, {FN10-5} I don’t understand what is required of me here.
I am seeking direct perception of God. Without Him, I cannot be
satisfied with affiliation or creed or performance of good works.”

The orange-robed ecclesiastic gave me an affectionate pat. Staging
a mock rebuke, he admonished a few near-by disciples. “Don’t bother
Mukunda. He will learn our ways.”

I politely concealed my doubt. The students left the room, not overly
bent with their chastisement. Dyananda had further words for me.

“Mukunda, I see your father is regularly sending you money. Please
return it to him; you require none here. A second injunction for
your discipline concerns food. Even when you feel hunger, don’t
mention it.”

Whether famishment gleamed in my eye, I knew not. That I was hungry,
I knew only too well. The invariable hour for the first hermitage
meal was twelve noon. I had been accustomed in my own home to a
large breakfast at nine o’clock.

The three-hour gap became daily more interminable. Gone were the
Calcutta years when I could rebuke the cook for a ten-minute delay.
Now I tried to control my appetite; one day I undertook a twenty-four
hour fast. With double zest I awaited the following midday.

“Dyanandaji’s train is late; we are not going to eat until he
arrives.” Jitendra brought me this devastating news. As gesture
of welcome to the swami, who had been absent for two weeks, many
delicacies were in readiness. An appetizing aroma filled the air.
Nothing else offering, what else could be swallowed except pride
over yesterday’s achievement of a fast?

“Lord hasten the train!” The Heavenly Provider, I thought, was hardly
included in the interdiction with which Dyananda had silenced me.
Divine Attention was elsewhere, however; the plodding clock covered
the hours. Darkness was descending as our leader entered the door.
My greeting was one of unfeigned joy.

“Dyanandaji will bathe and meditate before we can serve food.”
Jitendra approached me again as a bird of ill omen.

I was in near-collapse. My young stomach, new to deprivation,
protested with gnawing vigor. Pictures I had seen of famine victims
passed wraithlike before me.

“The next Benares death from starvation is due at once in this
hermitage,” I thought. Impending doom averted at nine o’clock.
Ambrosial summons! In memory that meal is vivid as one of life’s
perfect hours.

Intense absorption yet permitted me to observe that Dyananda ate
absent-mindedly. He was apparently above my gross pleasures.

“Swamiji, weren’t you hungry?” Happily surfeited, I was alone with
the leader in his study.

“O yes! I have spent the last four days without food or drink.
I never eat on trains, filled with the heterogenous vibrations of
worldly people. Strictly I observe the SHASTRIC {FN10-6} rules for
monks of my particular order.

“Certain problems of our organizational work lie on my mind.
Tonight at home I neglected my dinner. What’s the hurry? Tomorrow
I’ll make it a point to have a proper meal.” He laughed merrily.

Shame spread within me like a suffocation. But the past day of my
torture was not easily forgotten; I ventured a further remark.

“Swamiji, I am puzzled. Following your instruction, suppose I never
asked for food, and nobody gives me any. I should starve to death.”

“Die then!” This alarming counsel split the air. “Die if you must
Mukunda! Never admit that you live by the power of food and not by
the power of God! He who has created every form of nourishment, He
who has bestowed appetite, will certainly see that His devotee is
sustained!  Do not imagine that rice maintains you, or that money
or men support you! Could they aid if the Lord withdraws your
life-breath? They are His indirect instruments merely. Is it by
any skill of yours that food digests in your stomach? Use the sword
of your discrimination, Mukunda! Cut through the chains of agency
and perceive the Single Cause!”

I found his incisive words entering some deep marrow. Gone was
an age-old delusion by which bodily imperatives outwit the soul.
There and then I tasted the Spirit’s all-sufficiency. In how many
strange cities, in my later life of ceaseless travel, did occasion
arise to prove the serviceability of this lesson in a Benares
hermitage!

The sole treasure which had accompanied me from Calcutta was the
SADHU’S silver amulet bequeathed to me by Mother. Guarding it for
years, I now had it carefully hidden in my ashram room. To renew
my joy in the talismanic testimony, one morning I opened the locked
box.  The sealed covering untouched, lo! the amulet was gone.
Mournfully I tore open its envelope and made unmistakably sure. It
had vanished, in accordance with the SADHU’S prediction, into the
ether whence he had summoned it.

My relationship with Dyananda’s followers grew steadily worse. The
household was alienated, hurt by my determined aloofness. My strict
adherence to meditation on the very Ideal for which I had left
home and all worldly ambitions called forth shallow criticism on
all sides.

Torn by spiritual anguish, I entered the attic one dawn, resolved
to pray until answer was vouchsafed.

“Merciful Mother of the Universe, teach me Thyself through visions,
or through a guru sent by Thee!”

The passing hours found my sobbing pleas without response. Suddenly
I felt lifted as though bodily to a sphere uncircumscribed.

“Thy Master cometh today!” A divine womanly voice came from everywhere
and nowhere.

This supernal experience was pierced by a shout from a definite
locale. A young priest nicknamed Habu was calling me from the
downstairs kitchen.

“Mukunda, enough of meditation! You are needed for an errand.”

Another day I might have replied impatiently; now I wiped
my tear-swollen face and meekly obeyed the summons. Together Habu
and I set out for a distant market place in the Bengali section of
Benares. The ungentle Indian sun was not yet at zenith as we made
our purchases in the bazaars. We pushed our way through the colorful
medley of housewives, guides, priests, simply-clad widows, dignified
Brahmins, and the ubiquitous holy bulls. Passing an inconspicuous
lane, I turned my head and surveyed the narrow length.

A Christlike man in the ocher robes of a swami stood motionless at
the end of the road. Instantly and anciently familiar he seemed;
my gaze fed hungrily for a trice. Then doubt assailed me.

“You are confusing this wandering monk with someone known to you,”
I thought. “Dreamer, walk on.”

After ten minutes, I felt heavy numbness in my feet. As though
turned to stone, they were unable to carry me farther. Laboriously
I turned around; my feet regained normalcy. I faced the opposite
direction; again the curious weight oppressed me.

“The saint is magnetically drawing me to him!” With this thought,
I heaped my parcels into the arms of Habu. He had been observing
my erratic footwork with amazement, and now burst into laughter.

“What ails you? Are you crazy?”

My tumultuous emotion prevented any retort; I sped silently away.

Retracing my steps as though wing-shod, I reached the narrow lane.
My quick glance revealed the quiet figure, steadily gazing in my
direction. A few eager steps and I was at his feet.

“Gurudeva!” {FN10-7} The divine face was none other than he of my
thousand visions. These halcyon eyes, in leonine head with pointed
beard and flowing locks, had oft peered through gloom of my nocturnal
reveries, holding a promise I had not fully understood.

“O my own, you have come to me!” My guru uttered the words again
and again in Bengali, his voice tremulous with joy. “How many years
I have waited for you!”

We entered a oneness of silence; words seemed the rankest
superfluities. Eloquence flowed in soundless chant from heart of
master to disciple. With an antenna of irrefragable insight I sensed
that my guru knew God, and would lead me to Him. The obscuration
of this life disappeared in a fragile dawn of prenatal memories.
Dramatic time! Past, present, and future are its cycling scenes.
This was not the first sun to find me at these holy feet!

My hand in his, my guru led me to his temporary residence in the
Rana Mahal section of the city. His athletic figure moved with firm
tread.  Tall, erect, about fifty-five at this time, he was active
and vigorous as a young man. His dark eyes were large, beautiful with
plumbless wisdom. Slightly curly hair softened a face of striking
power.  Strength mingled subtly with gentleness.

As we made our way to the stone balcony of a house overlooking the
Ganges, he said affectionately:

“I will give you my hermitages and all I possess.”

“Sir, I come for wisdom and God-contact. Those are your treasure-troves
I am after!”

The swift Indian twilight had dropped its half-curtain before my
master spoke again. His eyes held unfathomable tenderness.

“I give you my unconditional love.”

Precious words! A quarter-century elapsed before I had another
auricular proof of his love. His lips were strange to ardor; silence
became his oceanic heart.

“Will you give me the same unconditional love?” He gazed at me with
childlike trust.

“I will love you eternally, Gurudeva!”

“Ordinary love is selfish, darkly rooted in desires and satisfactions.
Divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change.
The flux of the human heart is gone forever at the transfixing touch
of pure love.” He added humbly, “If ever you find me falling from
a state of God-realization, please promise to put my head on your
lap and help to bring me back to the Cosmic Beloved we both worship.”

He rose then in the gathering darkness and guided me to an inner
room.  As we ate mangoes and almond sweetmeats, he unobtrusively
wove into his conversation an intimate knowledge of my nature. I
was awe-struck at the grandeur of his wisdom, exquisitely blended
with an innate humility.

“Do not grieve for your amulet. It has served its purpose.” Like
a divine mirror, my guru apparently had caught a reflection of my
whole life.

“The living reality of your presence, Master, is joy beyond any
symbol.”

“It is time for a change, inasmuch as you are unhappily situated
in the hermitage.”

I had made no references to my life; they now seemed superfluous!
By his natural, unemphatic manner, I understood that he wished no
astonished ejaculations at his clairvoyance.

“You should go back to Calcutta. Why exclude relatives from your
love of humanity?”

His suggestion dismayed me. My family was predicting my return,
though I had been unresponsive to many pleas by letter. “Let the
young bird fly in the metaphysical skies,” Ananta had remarked.
“His wings will tire in the heavy atmosphere. We shall yet see him
swoop toward home, fold his pinions, and humbly rest in our family
nest.” This discouraging simile fresh in my mind, I was determined
to do no “swooping” in the direction of Calcutta.

“Sir, I am not returning home. But I will follow you anywhere.
Please give me your address, and your name.”

“Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri. My chief hermitage is in Serampore, on
Rai Ghat Lane. I am visiting my mother here for only a few days.”

I wondered at God’s intricate play with His devotees. Serampore is
but twelve miles from Calcutta, yet in those regions I had never
caught a glimpse of my guru. We had had to travel for our meeting
to the ancient city of Kasi (Benares), hallowed by memories of
Lahiri Mahasaya. Here too the feet of Buddha, Shankaracharya and
other Yogi—Christs had blessed the soil.

“You will come to me in four weeks.” For the first time, Sri
Yukteswar’s voice was stern. “Now I have told my eternal affection,
and have shown my happiness at finding you-that is why you disregard
my request. The next time we meet, you will have to reawaken my
interest: I won’t accept you as a disciple easily. There must be
complete surrender by obedience to my strict training.”

I remained obstinately silent. My guru easily penetrated my
difficulty.

“Do you think your relatives will laugh at you?”

“I will not return.”

“You will return in thirty days.”

“Never.” Bowing reverently at his feet, I departed without lightening
the controversial tension. As I made my way in the midnight darkness,
I wondered why the miraculous meeting had ended on an inharmonious
note. The dual scales of MAYA, that balance every joy with a grief!
My young heart was not yet malleable to the transforming fingers
of my guru.

The next morning I noticed increased hostility in the attitude
of the hermitage members. My days became spiked with invariable
rudeness. In three weeks, Dyananda left the ashram to attend a
conference in Bombay; pandemonium broke over my hapless head.

“Mukunda is a parasite, accepting hermitage hospitality without
making proper return.” Overhearing this remark, I regretted for the
first time that I had obeyed the request to send back my money to
Father.  With heavy heart, I sought out my sole friend, Jitendra.

“I am leaving. Please convey my respectful regrets to Dyanandaji
when he returns.”

“I will leave also! My attempts to meditate here meet with no more
favor than your own.” Jitendra spoke with determination.

“I have met a Christlike saint. Let us visit him in Serampore.”

And so the “bird” prepared to “swoop” perilously close to Calcutta!

{FN10-1} SANSKRITA, polished; complete. Sanskrit is the eldest
sister of all Indo-European tongues. Its alphabetical script is
DEVANAGARI, literally “divine abode.” “Who knows my grammar knows
God!” Panini, great philologist of ancient India, paid this tribute
to the mathematical and psychological perfection in Sanskrit. He
who would track language to its lair must indeed end as omniscient.

{FN10-2} He was not Jatinda (Jotin Ghosh), who will be remembered
for his timely aversion to tigers!

{FN10-3} Path or preliminary road to God.

{FN10-4} Hindu scriptures teach that family attachment is delusive
if it prevents the devotee from seeking the Giver of all boons,
including the one of loving relatives, not to mention life itself.
Jesus similarly taught: “Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?”
(MATTHEW 12:48.)

{FN10-5} JI is a customary respectful suffix, particularly used
in direct address; thus “swamiji,” “guruji,” “Sri Yukteswarji,”
“paramhansaji.”

{FN10-6} Pertaining to the SHASTRAS, literally, “sacred books,”
comprising four classes of scripture: the SHRUTI, SMRITI, PURANA,
and TANTRA. These comprehensive treatises cover every aspect
of religious and social life, and the fields of law, medicine,
architecture, art, etc. The SHRUTIS are the “directly heard” or
“revealed” scriptures, the VEDAS. The SMRITIS or “remembered” lore
was finally written down in a remote past as the world’s longest
epic poems, the MAHABHARATA and the RAMAYANA. PURANAS are literally
“ancient” allegories; TANTRAS literally mean “rites” or “rituals”;
these treatises convey profound truths under a veil of detailed
symbolism.

{FN10-7} “Divine teacher,” the customary Sanskrit term for one’s
spiritual preceptor. I have rendered it in English as simply
“Master.”




CHAPTER: 11

TWO PENNILESS BOYS IN BRINDABAN


“It would serve you right if Father disinherited you, Mukunda! How
foolishly you are throwing away your life!” An elder-brother sermon
was assaulting my ears.

Jitendra and I, fresh from the train (a figure of speech merely;
we were covered with dust), had just arrived at the home of Ananta,
recently transferred from Calcutta to the ancient city of Agra.
Brother was a supervising accountant for the Bengal-Nagpur Railway.

“You well know, Ananta, I seek my inheritance from the Heavenly
Father.”

“Money first; God can come later! Who knows? Life may be too long.”

“God first; money is His slave! Who can tell? Life may be too
short.”

My retort was summoned by the exigencies of the moment, and held
no presentiment. Yet the leaves of time unfolded to early finality
for Ananta; a few years later {FN11-1} he entered the land where
bank notes avail neither first nor last.

“Wisdom from the hermitage, I suppose! But I see you have left
Benares.” Ananta’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction; he yet hoped to
secure my pinions in the family nest.

“My sojourn in Benares was not in vain! I found there everything my
heart had been longing for! You may be sure it was not your pundit
or his son!”

Ananta joined me in reminiscent laughter; he had had to admit that
the Benares “clairvoyant” he selected was a shortsighted one.

“What are your plans, my wandering brother?”

“Jitendra persuaded me to Agra. We shall view the beauties of the
Taj Mahal {FN11-2} here,” I explained. “Then we are going to my
newly-found guru, who has a hermitage in Serampore.”

Ananta hospitably arranged for our comfort. Several times during
the evening I noticed his eyes fixed on me reflectively.

“I know that look!” I thought. “A plot is brewing!”

The denouement took place during our early breakfast.

“So you feel quite independent of Father’s wealth.” Ananta’s gaze
was innocent as he resumed the barbs of yesterday’s conversation.

“I am conscious of my dependence on God.”

“Words are cheap! Life has shielded you thus far! What a plight
if you were forced to look to the Invisible Hand for your food and
shelter!  You would soon be begging on the streets!”

“Never! I would not put faith in passers-by rather than God! He can
devise for His devotee a thousand resources besides the begging-bowl!”

“More rhetoric! Suppose I suggest that your vaunted philosophy be
put to a test in this tangible world?”


“I would agree! Do you confine God to a speculative world?”

“We shall see; today you shall have opportunity either to enlarge
or to confirm my own views!” Ananta paused for a dramatic moment;
then spoke slowly and seriously.

“I propose that I send you and your fellow disciple Jitendra this
morning to the near-by city of Brindaban. You must not take a
single rupee; you must not beg, either for food or money; you must
not reveal your predicament to anyone; you must not go without your
meals; and you must not be stranded in Brindaban. If you return
to my bungalow here before twelve o’clock tonight, without having
broken any rule of the test, I shall be the most astonished man in
Agra!”

“I accept the challenge.” No hesitation was in my words or in
my heart. Grateful memories flashed of the Instant Beneficence:
my healing of deadly cholera through appeal to Lahiri Mahasaya’s
picture; the playful gift of the two kites on the Lahore roof with
Uma; the opportune amulet amidst my discouragement; the decisive
message through the unknown Benares SADHU outside the compound of
the pundit’s home; the vision of Divine Mother and Her majestic
words of love; Her swift heed through Master Mahasaya to my trifling
embarrassments; the last-minute guidance which materialized my
high school diploma; and the ultimate boon, my living Master from
the mist of lifelong dreams.  Never could I admit my “philosophy”
unequal to any tussle on the world’s harsh proving ground!

“Your willingness does you credit. I’ll escort you to the train
at once.” Ananta turned to the openmouthed Jitendra. “You must go
along as a witness and, very likely, a fellow victim!”

A half hour later Jitendra and I were in possession of one-way
tickets for our impromptu trip. We submitted, in a secluded corner
of the station, to a search of our persons. Ananta was quickly
satisfied that we were carrying no hidden hoard; our simple DHOTIS
{FN11-3} concealed nothing more than was necessary.

As faith invaded the serious realms of finance, my friend spoke
protestingly. “Ananta, give me one or two rupees as a safeguard.
Then I can telegraph you in case of misfortune.”

“Jitendra!” My ejaculation was sharply reproachful. “I will not
proceed with the test if you take any money as final security.”

“There is something reassuring about the clink of coins.” Jitendra
said no more as I regarded him sternly.

“Mukunda, I am not heartless.” A hint of humility had crept into
Ananta’s voice. It may be that his conscience was smiting him;
perhaps for sending two insolvent boys to a strange city; perhaps
for his own religious skepticism. “If by any chance or grace you
pass successfully through the Brindaban ordeal, I shall ask you to
initiate me as your disciple.”

This promise had a certain irregularity, in keeping with the
unconventional occasion. The eldest brother in an Indian family
seldom bows before his juniors; he receives respect and obedience
second only to a father. But no time remained for my comment; our
train was at point of departure.

Jitendra maintained a lugubrious silence as our train covered the
miles. Finally he bestirred himself; leaning over, he pinched me
painfully at an awkward spot.

“I see no sign that God is going to supply our next meal!”

“Be quiet, doubting Thomas; the Lord is working with us.”

“Can you also arrange that He hurry? Already I am famished merely
at the prospect before us. I left Benares to view the Taj’s mausoleum,
not to enter my own!”

“Cheer up, Jitendra! Are we not to have our first glimpse of the
sacred wonders of Brindaban? {FN11-4} I am in deep joy at thought
of treading the ground hallowed by feet of Lord Krishna.”

[Illustration: (Left to Right) Jitendra Mazumdar, my companion
on the “penniless test” at Brindaban; Lalit-da, my cousin; Swami
Kebelananda (“Shastri Mahasaya”), my saintly Sanskrit tutor; myself,
as a high school youth—see friends.jpg]

The door of our compartment opened; two men seated themselves. The
next train stop would be the last.

“Young lads, do you have friends in Brindaban?” The stranger opposite
me was taking a surprising interest.

“None of your business!” Rudely I averted my gaze.

“You are probably flying away from your families under the enchantment
of the Stealer of Hearts. {FN11-5} I am of devotional temperament
myself. I will make it my positive duty to see that you receive
food, and shelter from this overpowering heat.”

“No, sir, let us alone. You are very kind; but you are mistaken in
judging us to be truants from home.”

No further conversation ensued; the train came to a halt. As Jitendra
and I descended to the platform, our chance companions linked arms
with us and summoned a horse cab.

We alit before a stately hermitage, set amidst the evergreen trees
of well-kept grounds. Our benefactors were evidently known here; a
smiling lad led us without comment to a parlor. We were soon joined
by an elderly woman of dignified bearing.

“Gauri Ma, the princes could not come.” One of the men addressed
the ashram hostess. “At the last moment their plans went awry; they
send deep regrets. But we have brought two other guests. As soon
as we met on the train, I felt drawn to them as devotees of Lord
Krishna.”

“Good-by, young friends.” Our two acquaintances walked to the door.
“We shall meet again, if God be willing.”

“You are welcome here.” Gauri Ma smiled in motherly fashion on her
two unexpected charges. “You could not have come on a better day.
I was expecting two royal patrons of this hermitage. What a shame
if my cooking had found none to appreciate it!”

These appetizing words had disastrous effect on Jitendra: he burst
into tears. The “prospect” he had feared in Brindaban was turning
out as royal entertainment; his sudden mental adjustment proved
too much for him. Our hostess looked at him with curiosity, but
without remark; perhaps she was familiar with adolescent quirks.

Lunch was announced; Gauri Ma led the way to a dining patio, spicy
with savory odors. She vanished into an adjoining kitchen.

I had been premeditating this moment. Selecting the appropriate
spot on Jitendra’s anatomy, I administered a pinch as resounding
as the one he had given me on the train.

“Doubting Thomas, the Lord works-in a hurry, too!”

The hostess reentered with a PUNKHA. She steadily fanned us in the
Oriental fashion as we squatted on ornate blanket-seats. Ashram
disciples passed to and fro with some thirty courses. Rather than
“meal,” the description can only be “sumptuous repast.” Since
arriving on this planet, Jitendra and I had never before tasted
such delicacies.

“Dishes fit for princes indeed, Honored Mother! What your royal
patrons could have found more urgent than attending this banquet,
I cannot imagine! You have given us a memory for a lifetime!”

Silenced as we were by Ananta’s requirement, we could not explain
to the gracious lady that our thanks held a double significance.
Our sincerity at least was patent. We departed with her blessing
and an attractive invitation to revisit the hermitage.

The heat outdoors was merciless. My friend and I made for the
shelter of a lordly cadamba tree at the ashram gate. Sharp words
followed; once again Jitendra was beset with misgivings.

“A fine mess you have got me into! Our luncheon was only accidental
good fortune! How can we see the sights of this city, without a
single pice between us? And how on earth are you going to take me
back to Ananta’s?”

“You forget God quickly, now that your stomach is filled.” My words,
not bitter, were accusatory. How short is human memory for divine
favors! No man lives who has not seen certain of his prayers granted.

“I am not likely to forget my folly in venturing out with a madcap
like you!”

“Be quiet, Jitendra! The same Lord who fed us will show us Brindaban,
and return us to Agra.”

A slight young man of pleasing countenance approached at rapid
pace.  Halting under our tree, he bowed before me.

“Dear friend, you and your companion must be strangers here. Permit
me to be your host and guide.”

It is scarcely possible for an Indian to pale, but Jitendra’s face
was suddenly sickly. I politely declined the offer.

“You are surely not banishing me?” The stranger’s alarm would have
been comic in any other circumstances.

“Why not?”

“You are my guru.” His eyes sought mine trustfully. “During my
midday devotions, the blessed Lord Krishna appeared in a vision.
He showed me two forsaken figures under this very tree. One face
was yours, my master! Often have I seen it in meditation! What joy
if you accept my humble services!”

“I too am glad you have found me. Neither God nor man has forsaken
us!” Though I was motionless, smiling at the eager face before me,
an inward obeisance cast me at the Divine Feet.

“Dear friends, will you not honor my home for a visit?”

“You are kind; but the plan is unfeasible. Already we are guests
of my brother in Agra.”

“At least give me memories of touring Brindaban with you.”

I gladly consented. The young man, who said his name was Pratap
Chatterji, hailed a horse carriage. We visited Madanamohana Temple
and other Krishna shrines. Night descended while we were at our
temple devotions.

“Excuse me while I get SANDESH.” {FN11-6} Pratap entered a shop
near the railroad station. Jitendra and I sauntered along the
wide street, crowded now in the comparative coolness. Our friend
was absent for some time, but finally returned with gifts of many
sweetmeats.

“Please allow me to gain this religious merit.” Pratap smiled
pleadingly as he held out a bundle of rupee notes and two tickets,
just purchased, to Agra.

The reverence of my acceptance was for the Invisible Hand. Scoffed
at by Ananta, had Its bounty not far exceeded necessity?

We sought out a secluded spot near the station.

“Pratap, I will instruct you in the KRIYA of Lahiri Mahasaya, the
greatest yogi of modern times. His technique will be your guru.”

The initiation was concluded in a half hour. “KRIYA is your CHINTAMANI,”
{FN11-7} I told the new student. “The technique, which as you see
is simple, embodies the art of quickening man’s spiritual evolution.
Hindu scriptures teach that the incarnating ego requires a million
years to obtain liberation from MAYA. This natural period is
greatly shortened through KRIYA YOGA. Just as Jagadis Chandra Bose
has demonstrated that plant growth can be accelerated far beyond
its normal rate, so man’s psychological development can be also
speeded by an inner science. Be faithful in your practice; you will
approach the Guru of all gurus.”

“I am transported to find this yogic key, long sought!” Pratap
spoke thoughtfully. “Its unshackling effect on my sensory bonds
will free me for higher spheres. The vision today of Lord Krishna
could only mean my highest good.”

We sat awhile in silent understanding, then walked slowly to the
station. Joy was within me as I boarded the train, but this was
Jitendra’s day for tears. My affectionate farewell to Pratap had
been punctuated by stifled sobs from both my companions. The journey
once more found Jitendra in a welter of grief. Not for himself this
time, but against himself.

“How shallow my trust! My heart has been stone! Never in future
shall I doubt God’s protection!”

Midnight was approaching. The two “Cinderellas,” sent forth
penniless, entered Ananta’s bedroom. His face, as he had promised,
was a study in astonishment. Silently I showered the table with
rupees.

“Jitendra, the truth!” Ananta’s tone was jocular. “Has not this
youngster been staging a holdup?”

But as the tale was unfolded, my brother turned sober, then solemn.

“The law of demand and supply reaches into subtler realms than I
had supposed.” Ananta spoke with a spiritual enthusiasm never before
noticeable. “I understand for the first time your indifference to
the vaults and vulgar accumulations of the world.”

Late as it was, my brother insisted that he receive DIKSHA {FN11-8}
into KRIYA YOGA. The “guru” Mukunda had to shoulder the responsibility
of two unsought disciples in one day.

Breakfast the following morning was eaten in a harmony absent the
day before. I smiled at Jitendra.

“You shall not be cheated of the Taj. Let us view it before starting
for Serampore.”

Bidding farewell to Ananta, my friend and I were soon before the
glory of Agra, the Taj Mahal. White marble dazzling in the sun,
it stands a vision of pure symmetry. The perfect setting is dark
cypress, glossy lawn, and tranquil lagoon. The interior is exquisite
with lacelike carvings inlaid with semiprecious stones. Delicate
wreaths and scrolls emerge intricately from marbles, brown and
violet. Illumination from the dome falls on the cenotaphs of Emperor
Shah-Jahan and Mumtaz Mahall, queen of his realm and his heart.

Enough of sight-seeing! I was longing for my guru. Jitendra and I
were shortly traveling south by train toward Bengal.

“Mukunda, I have not seen my family in months. I have changed my
mind; perhaps later I shall visit your master in Serampore.”

My friend, who may mildly be described as vacillating in temperament,
left me in Calcutta. By local train I soon reached Serampore, twelve
miles to the north.

A throb of wonderment stole over me as I realized that twenty-eight
days had elapsed since the Benares meeting with my guru. “You will
come to me in four weeks!” Here I was, heart pounding, standing
within his courtyard on quiet Rai Ghat Lane. I entered for the first
time the hermitage where I was to spend the best part of the next
ten years with India’s JYANAVATAR, “incarnation of wisdom.”

{FN11-1} See chapter 25.

{FN11-2} The world-famous mausoleum..

{FN11-3} A DHOTI-cloth is knotted around the waist and cove

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