The Second Part of the Autobiography of a Yogi E-text!

(Part One of Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi Ended Here: )

No one could be mistaken as to his greatness.

(Part Two Begins Now: )

Imagine the happy life of one unattached to the material world;
free of the clothing problem; free of food craving, never begging,
never touching cooked food except on alternate days, never carrying
a begging bowl; free of all money entanglements, never handling
money, never storing things away, always trusting in God; free
of transportation worries, never riding in vehicles, but always
walking on the banks of the sacred rivers; never remaining in one
place longer than a week in order to avoid any growth of attachment.
 
"Such a modest soul! unusually learned in the VEDAS, and possessing
an M.A. degree and the title of SHASTRI (master of scriptures) from
Benares University. A sublime feeling pervaded me as I sat at his
feet; it all seemed to be an answer to my desire to see the real,
the ancient India, for he is a true representative of this land of
spiritual giants."
 
I questioned Kara Patri about his wandering life. "Don't you have
any extra clothes for winter?"
 
"No, this is enough."
 
"Do you carry any books?"
 
"No, I teach from memory those people who wish to hear me."
 
"What else do you do?"
 
"I roam by the Ganges."
 
At these quiet words, I was overpowered by a yearning for the simplicity
of his life. I remembered America, and all the responsibilities
that lay on my shoulders.
 
"No, Yogananda," I thought, sadly for a moment, "in this life
roaming by the Ganges is not for you."
 
After the sadhu had told me a few of his spiritual realizations,
I shot an abrupt question.
 
"Are you giving these descriptions from scriptural lore, or from
inward experience?"
 
"Half from book learning," he answered with a straightforward smile,
"and half from experience."
 
We sat happily awhile in meditative silence. After we had left his
sacred presence, I said to Mr. Wright, "He is a king sitting on a
throne of golden straw."
 
We had our dinner that night on the MELA grounds under the stars,
eating from leaf plates pinned together with sticks. Dishwashings
in India are reduced to a minimum!
 
Two more days of the fascinating KUMBHA; then northwest along the
Jumna banks to Agra. Once again I gazed on the Taj Mahal; in memory
Jitendra stood by my side, awed by the dream in marble. Then on to
the Brindaban ashram of Swami Keshabananda.
 
My object in seeking out Keshabananda was connected with this book.
I had never forgotten Sri Yukteswar's request that I write the life
of Lahiri Mahasaya. During my stay in India I was taking every
opportunity of contacting direct disciples and relatives of the
Yogavatar. Recording their conversations in voluminous notes, I
verified facts and dates, and collected photographs, old letters,
and documents. My Lahiri Mahasaya portfolio began to swell; I realized
with dismay that ahead of me lay arduous labors in authorship.
I prayed that I might be equal to my role as biographer of the
colossal guru. Several of his disciples feared that in a written
account their master might be belittled or misinterpreted.
 
"One can hardly do justice in cold words to the life of a divine
incarnation," Panchanon Bhattacharya had once remarked to me.
 
Other close disciples were similarly satisfied to keep the Yogavatar
hidden in their hearts as the deathless preceptor. Nevertheless,
mindful of Lahiri Mahasaya's prediction about his biography, I spared
no effort to secure and substantiate the facts of his outward life.
 
Swami Keshabananda greeted our party warmly at Brindaban in his
Katayani Peith Ashram, an imposing brick building with massive
black pillars, set in a beautiful garden. He ushered us at once
into a sitting room adorned with an enlargement of Lahiri Mahasaya's
picture.  The swami was approaching the age of ninety, but his
muscular body radiated strength and health. With long hair and
a snow-white beard, eyes twinkling with joy, he was a veritable
patriarchal embodiment. I informed him that I wanted to mention
his name in my book on India's masters.
 
"Please tell me about your earlier life." I smiled entreatingly;
great yogis are often uncommunicative.
 
Keshabananda made a gesture of humility. "There is little of external
moment. Practically my whole life has been spent in the Himalayan
solitudes, traveling on foot from one quiet cave to another. For
a while I maintained a small ashram outside Hardwar, surrounded on
all sides by a grove of tall trees. It was a peaceful spot little
visited by travelers, owing to the ubiquitous presence of cobras."
Keshabananda chuckled. "Later a Ganges flood washed away the
hermitage and cobras alike. My disciples then helped me to build
this Brindaban ashram."
 
One of our party asked the swami how he had protected himself
against the Himalayan tigers. {FN42-9}
 
Keshabananda shook his head. "In those high spiritual altitudes,"
he said, "wild beasts seldom molest the yogis. Once in the jungle
I encountered a tiger face-to-face. At my sudden ejaculation, the
animal was transfixed as though turned to stone." Again the swami
chuckled at his memories.
 
"Occasionally I left my seclusion to visit my guru in Benares. He
used to joke with me over my ceaseless travels in the Himalayan
wilderness.
 
"'You have the mark of wanderlust on your foot,' he told me once.
'I am glad that the sacred Himalayas are extensive enough to engross
you.'
 
"Many times," Keshabananda went on, "both before and after his
passing, Lahiri Mahasaya has appeared bodily before me. For him no
Himalayan height is inaccessible!"
 
Two hours later he led us to a dining patio. I sighed in silent
dismay. Another fifteen-course meal! Less than a year of Indian
hospitality, and I had gained fifty pounds! Yet it would have been
considered the height of rudeness to refuse any of the dishes,
carefully prepared for the endless banquets in my honor. In India
(nowhere else, alas!) a well-padded swami is considered a delightful
sight. {FN42-10}
 
[Illustration: Mr. Wright, myself, Miss Bletch--in Egypt--see
camel.jpg]
 
[Illustration: Rabindranath Tagore, inspired poet of Bengal, and
Nobel Prizeman in literature--see tagore.jpg ]
 
[Illustration: Mr. Wright and I pose with the venerable Swami
Keshabananda and a disciple at the stately hermitage in Brindaban--see
keshabananda.jpg]
 
After dinner, Keshabananda led me to a secluded nook.
 
"Your arrival is not unexpected," he said. "I have a message for
you."
 
I was surprised; no one had known of my plan to visit Keshabananda.
 
"While roaming last year in the northern Himalayas near Badrinarayan,"
the swami continued, "I lost my way. Shelter appeared in a spacious
cave, which was empty, though the embers of a fire glowed in a hole
in the rocky floor. Wondering about the occupant of this lonely
retreat, I sat near the fire, my gaze fixed on the sunlit entrance
to the cave.
 
"'Keshabananda, I am glad you are here.' These words came from
behind me. I turned, startled, and was dazzled to behold Babaji!
The great guru had materialized himself in a recess of the cave.
Overjoyed to see him again after many years, I prostrated myself
at his holy feet.
 
"'I called you here,' Babaji went on. 'That is why you lost your
way and were led to my temporary abode in this cave. It is a long
time since our last meeting; I am pleased to greet you once more.'
 
"The deathless master blessed me with some words of spiritual help,
then added: 'I give you a message for Yogananda. He will pay you a
visit on his return to India. Many matters connected with his guru
and with the surviving disciples of Lahiri will keep Yogananda
fully occupied. Tell him, then, that I won't see him this time, as
he is eagerly hoping; but I shall see him on some other occasion.'"
 
I was deeply touched to receive from Keshabananda's lips this
consoling promise from Babaji. A certain hurt in my heart vanished;
I grieved no longer that, even as Sri Yukteswar had hinted, Babaji
did not appear at the KUMBHA MELA.
 
Spending one night as guests of the ashram, our party set out the
following afternoon for Calcutta. Riding over a bridge of the Jumna
River, we enjoyed a magnificent view of the skyline of Brindaban
just as the sun set fire to the sky-a veritable furnace of Vulcan
in color, reflected below us in the still waters.
 
The Jumna beach is hallowed by memories of the child Sri Krishna.
Here he engaged with innocent sweetness in his LILAS (plays)
with the GOPIS (maids), exemplifying the supernal love which ever
exists between a divine incarnation and his devotees. The life of
Lord Krishna has been misunderstood by many Western commentators.
Scriptural allegory is baffling to literal minds. A hilarious blunder
by a translator will illustrate this point. The story concerns an
inspired medieval saint, the cobbler Ravidas, who sang in the simple
terms of his own trade of the spiritual glory hidden in all mankind:
 
  Under the vast vault of blue
  Lives the divinity clothed in hide.
 
One turns aside to hide a smile on hearing the pedestrian interpretation
given to Ravidas' poem by a Western writer:
 
"He afterwards built a hut, set up in it an idol which he made from
a hide, and applied himself to its worship."
 
Ravidas was a brother disciple of the great Kabir. One of Ravidas'
exalted chelas was the Rani of Chitor. She invited a large number
of Brahmins to a feast in honor of her teacher, but they refused to
eat with a lowly cobbler. As they sat down in dignified aloofness
to eat their own uncontaminated meal, lo! each Brahmin found at his
side the form of Ravidas. This mass vision accomplished a widespread
spiritual revival in Chitor.
 
In a few days our little group reached Calcutta. Eager to see Sri
Yukteswar, I was disappointed to hear that he had left Serampore
and was now in Puri, about three hundred miles to the south.
 
"Come to Puri ashram at once." This telegram was sent on March 8th
by a brother disciple to Atul Chandra Roy Chowdhry, one of Master's
chelas in Calcutta. News of the message reached my ears; anguished
at its implications, I dropped to my knees and implored God that
my guru's life be spared. As I was about to leave Father's home
for the train, a divine voice spoke within.
 
"Do not go to Puri tonight. Thy prayer cannot he granted."
 
"Lord," I said, grief-stricken, "Thou dost not wish to engage
with me in a 'tug of war' at Puri, where Thou wilt have to deny
my incessant prayers for Master's life. Must he, then, depart for
higher duties at Thy behest?"
 
In obedience to the inward command, I did not leave that night for
Puri. The following evening I set out for the train; on the way,
at seven o'clock, a black astral cloud suddenly covered the sky.
{FN42-11} Later, while the train roared toward Puri, a vision of
Sri Yukteswar appeared before me. He was sitting, very grave of
countenance, with a light on each side.
 
"Is it all over?" I lifted my arms beseechingly.
 
He nodded, then slowly vanished.
 
As I stood on the Puri train platform the following morning, still
hoping against hope, an unknown man approached me.
 
"Have you heard that your Master is gone?" He left me without another
word; I never discovered who he was nor how he had known where to
find me.
 
Stunned, I swayed against the platform wall, realizing that in
diverse ways my guru was trying to convey to me the devastating
news. Seething with rebellion, my soul was like a volcano. By the
time I reached the Puri hermitage I was nearing collapse. The inner
voice was tenderly repeating: "Collect yourself. Be calm."
 
I entered the ashram room where Master's body, unimaginably lifelike,
was sitting in the lotus posture-a picture of health and loveliness.
A short time before his passing, my guru had been slightly ill with
fever, but before the day of his ascension into the Infinite, his
body had become completely well. No matter how often I looked at
his dear form I could not realize that its life had departed. His
skin was smooth and soft; in his face was a beatific expression of
tranquillity. He had consciously relinquished his body at the hour
of mystic summoning.
 
"The Lion of Bengal is gone!" I cried in a daze.
 
I conducted the solemn rites on March 10th. Sri Yukteswar was buried
{FN42-12} with the ancient rituals of the swamis in the garden of
his Puri ashram. His disciples later arrived from far and near to
honor their guru at a vernal equinox memorial service. The AMRITA
BAZAR PATRIKA, leading newspaper of Calcutta, carried his picture
and the following report:
 
The death BHANDARA ceremony for Srimat Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri
Maharaj, aged 81, took place at Puri on March 21. Many disciples
came down to Puri for the rites.
 
One of the greatest expounders of the BHAGAVAD GITA, Swami Maharaj
was a great disciple of Yogiraj Sri Shyama Charan Lahiri Mahasaya
of Benares. Swami Maharaj was the founder of several Yogoda Sat-Sanga
(Self-Realization Fellowship) centers in India, and was the great
inspiration behind the yoga movement which was carried to the West
by Swami Yogananda, his principal disciple. It was Sri Yukteswarji's
prophetic powers and deep realization that inspired Swami Yogananda
to cross the oceans and spread in America the message of the masters
of India.
 
His interpretations of the BHAGAVAD GITA and other scriptures testify
to the depth of Sri Yukteswarji's command of the philosophy, both
Eastern and Western, and remain as an eye-opener for the unity
between Orient and Occident. As he believed in the unity of all
religious faiths, Sri Yukteswar Maharaj established SADHU SABHA
(Society of Saints) with the cooperation of leaders of various
sects and faiths, for the inculcation of a scientific spirit in
religion. At the time of his demise he nominated Swami Yogananda
his successor as the president of SADHU SABHA.
 
India is really poorer today by the passing of such a great man. May
all fortunate enough to have come near him inculcate in themselves
the true spirit of India's culture and SADHANA which was personified
in him.
 
I returned to Calcutta. Not trusting myself as yet to go to the
Serampore hermitage with its sacred memories, I summoned Prafulla,
Sri Yukteswar's little disciple in Serampore, and made arrangements
for him to enter the Ranchi school.
 
"The morning you left for the Allahabad MELA," Prafulla told me,
"Master dropped heavily on the davenport.
 
"'Yogananda is gone!' he cried. 'Yogananda is gone!' He added
cryptically, 'I shall have to tell him some other way.' He sat then
for hours in silence."
 
My days were filled with lectures, classes, interviews, and reunions
with old friends. Beneath a hollow smile and a life of ceaseless
activity, a stream of black brooding polluted the inner river of
bliss which for so many years had meandered under the sands of all
my perceptions.
 
"Where has that divine sage gone?" I cried silently from the depths
of a tormented spirit.
 
No answer came.
 
"It is best that Master has completed his union with the Cosmic
Beloved," my mind assured me. "He is eternally glowing in the
dominion of deathlessness."
 
"Never again may you see him in the old Serampore mansion," my
heart lamented. "No longer may you bring your friends to meet him,
or proudly say: 'Behold, there sits India's JNANAVATAR!'"
 
Mr. Wright made arrangements for our party to sail from Bombay
for the West in early June. After a fortnight in May of farewell
banquets and speeches at Calcutta, Miss Bletch, Mr. Wright and myself
left in the Ford for Bombay. On our arrival, the ship authorities
asked us to cancel our passage, as no room could be found for the
Ford, which we would need again in Europe.
 
"Never mind," I said gloomily to Mr. Wright. "I want to return once
more to Puri." I silently added, "Let my tears once again water
the grave of my guru."
 
{FN42-1} Literally, PARAM, highest; HANSA, swan. The HANSA is
represented in scriptural lore as the vehicle of Brahma, Supreme
Spirit; as the symbol of discrimination, the white HANSA swan is
thought of as able to separate the true SOMA nectar from a mixture
of milk and water. HAM-SA (pronounced HONG-SAU) are two sacred
Sanskrit chant words possessing a vibratory connection with the
incoming and outgoing breath. AHAM-SA is literally "I am He."
 
{FN42-2} They have generally evaded the difficulty by addressing
me as SIR.
 
{FN42-3} At the Puri ashram, Swami Sebananda is still conducting
a small, flourishing yoga school for boys, and meditation groups
for adults. Meetings of saints and pundits convene there periodically.
 
{FN42-4} A section of Calcutta.
 
{FN42-5} APHORISMS: II:9.
 
{FN42-6} Religious MELAS are mentioned in the ancient MAHABHARATA.
The Chinese traveler Hieuen Tsiang has left an account of a vast
KUMBHA MELA held in A.D. 644 at Allahabad. The largest MELA is held
every twelfth year; the next largest (ARDHA or half) KUMBHA occurs
every sixth year. Smaller MELAS convene every third year, attracting
about a million devotees. The four sacred MELA cities are Allahabad,
Hardwar, Nasik, and Ujjain.
 
Early Chinese travelers have left us many striking pictures of
Indian society. The Chinese priest, Fa-Hsien, wrote an account of
his eleven years in India during the reign of Chandragupta II (early
4th century). The Chinese author relates: "Throughout the country
no one kills any living thing, nor drinks wine. . . . They do not
keep pigs or fowl; there are no dealings in cattle, no butchers'
shops or distilleries. Rooms with beds and mattresses, food and
clothes, are provided for resident and traveling priests without fail,
and this is the same in all places. The priests occupy themselves
with benevolent ministrations and with chanting liturgies; or they
sit in meditation." Fa-Hsien tells us the Indian people were happy
and honest; capital punishment was unknown.
 
{FN42-7} I was not present at the deaths of my mother, elder
brother Ananta, eldest sister Roma, Master, Father, or of several
close disciples.
 
(Father passed on at Calcutta in 1942, at the age of eighty-nine.)
 
{FN42-8} The hundreds of thousands of Indian sadhus are controlled
by an executive committee of seven leaders, representing seven
large sections of India. The present MAHAMANDALESWAR or president
is Joyendra Puri. This saintly man is extremely reserved, often
confining his speech to three words-Truth, Love, and Work. A
sufficient conversation!
 
{FN42-9} There are many methods, it appears, for outwitting a
tiger. An Australian explorer, Francis Birtles, has recounted that
he found the Indian jungles "varied, beautiful, and safe." His
safety charm was flypaper. "Every night I spread a quantity of
sheets around my camp and was never disturbed," he explained. "The
reason is psychological.  The tiger is an animal of great conscious
dignity. He prowls around and challenges man until he comes to the
flypaper; he then slinks away. No dignified tiger would dare face
a human being after squatting down upon a sticky flypaper!"
 
{FN42-10} After I returned to America I took off sixty-five pounds.
 
{FN42-11} Sri Yukteswar passed at this hour-7:00 P.M., March 9,
1936.
 
{FN42-12} Funeral customs in India require cremation for householders;
swamis and monks of other orders are not cremated, but buried. (There
are occasional exceptions.) The bodies of monks are symbolically
considered to have undergone cremation in the fire of wisdom at
the time of taking the monastic vow.
 
 
 
CHAPTER: 43
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SRI YUKTESWAR
 
 
"Lord Krishna!" The glorious form of the avatar appeared in a
shimmering blaze as I sat in my room at the Regent Hotel in Bombay.
Shining over the roof of a high building across the street, the
ineffable vision had suddenly burst on my sight as I gazed out of
my long open third-story window.
 
The divine figure waved to me, smiling and nodding in greeting.
When I could not understand the exact message of Lord Krishna, he
departed with a gesture of blessing. Wondrously uplifted, I felt
that some spiritual event was presaged.
 
My Western voyage had, for the time being, been cancelled. I was
scheduled for several public addresses in Bombay before leaving on
a return visit to Bengal.
 
Sitting on my bed in the Bombay hotel at three o'clock in the
afternoon of June 19, 1936-one week after the vision of Krishna-I
was roused from my meditation by a beatific light. Before my open
and astonished eyes, the whole room was transformed into a strange
world, the sunlight transmuted into supernal splendor.
 
Waves of rapture engulfed me as I beheld the flesh and blood form
of Sri Yukteswar!
 
"My son!" Master spoke tenderly, on his face an angel-bewitching
smile.
 
For the first time in my life I did not kneel at his feet in
greeting but instantly advanced to gather him hungrily in my arms.
Moment of moments! The anguish of past months was toll I counted
weightless against the torrential bliss now descending.
 
"Master mine, beloved of my heart, why did you leave me?" I was
incoherent in an excess of joy. "Why did you let me go to the KUMBHA
MELA? How bitterly have I blamed myself for leaving you!"
 
[Illustration: KRISHNA, ANCIENT PROPHET OF INDIA, A modern artist's
conception of the divine teacher whose spiritual counsel in the
Bhagavad Gita has become the Hindu Bible. Krishna is portrayed
in Hindu art with a peacock feather in his hair (symbol of the
Lord's lila, play or creative sport), and carrying a flute, whose
enrapturing notes awaken the devotees, one by one, from their sleep
of maya or cosmic delusion.--see krishna.jpg]
 
"I did not want to interfere with your happy anticipation of seeing
the pilgrimage spot where first I met Babaji. I left you only for
a little while; am I not with you again?"
 
"But is it YOU, Master, the same Lion of God? Are you wearing a
body like the one I buried beneath the cruel Puri sands?"
 
"Yes, my child, I am the same. This is a flesh and blood body.
Though I see it as ethereal, to your sight it is physical. From
the cosmic atoms I created an entirely new body, exactly like that
cosmic-dream physical body which you laid beneath the dream-sands
at Puri in your dream-world. I am in truth resurrected-not on
earth but on an astral planet. Its inhabitants are better able than
earthly humanity to meet my lofty standards. There you and your
exalted loved ones shall someday come to be with me."
 
"Deathless guru, tell me more!"
 
Master gave a quick, mirthful chuckle. "Please, dear one," he said,
"won't you relax your hold a little?"
 
"Only a little!" I had been embracing him with an octopus grip.
I could detect the same faint, fragrant, natural odor which had
been characteristic of his body before. The thrilling touch of his
divine flesh still persists around the inner sides of my arms and
in my palms whenever I recall those glorious hours.
 
"As prophets are sent on earth to help men work out their physical
karma, so I have been directed by God to serve on an astral planet
as a savior," Sri Yukteswar explained. "It is called HIRANYALOKA
or 'Illumined Astral Planet.' There I am aiding advanced beings
to rid themselves of astral karma and thus attain liberation from
astral rebirths. The dwellers on Hiranyaloka are highly developed
spiritually; all of them had acquired, in their last earth-incarnation,
the meditation-given power of consciously leaving their physical
bodies at death. No one can enter Hiranyaloka unless he has passed
on earth beyond the state of SABIKALPA SAMADHI into the higher
state of NIRBIKALPA SAMADHI. {FN43-1}
 
"The Hiranyaloka inhabitants have already passed through the
ordinary astral spheres, where nearly all beings from earth must
go at death; there they worked out many seeds of their past actions
in the astral worlds. None but advanced beings can perform such
redemptive work effectually in the astral worlds. Then, in order
to free their souls more fully from the cocoon of karmic traces
lodged in their astral bodies, these higher beings were drawn by
cosmic law to be reborn with new astral bodies on Hiranyaloka, the
astral sun or heaven, where I have resurrected to help them. There
are also highly advanced beings on Hiranyaloka who have come from
the superior, subtler, causal world."
 
My mind was now in such perfect attunement with my guru's that he
was conveying his word-pictures to me partly by speech and partly
by thought-transference. I was thus quickly receiving his idea-tabloids.
 
"You have read in the scriptures," Master went on, "that God encased
the human soul successively in three bodies-the idea, or causal,
body; the subtle astral body, seat of man's mental and emotional
natures; and the gross physical body. On earth a man is equipped with
his physical senses. An astral being works with his consciousness
and feelings and a body made of lifetrons. {FN43-2} A causal-bodied
being remains in the blissful realm of ideas. My work is with those
astral beings who are preparing to enter the causal world."
 
"Adorable Master, please tell me more about the astral cosmos."
Though I had slightly relaxed my embrace at Sri Yukteswar's request,
my arms were still around him. Treasure beyond all treasures, my
guru who had laughed at death to reach me!
 
"There are many astral planets, teeming with astral beings," Master
began. "The inhabitants use astral planes, or masses of light,
to travel from one planet to another, faster than electricity and
radioactive energies.
 
"The astral universe, made of various subtle vibrations of light
and color, is hundreds of times larger than the material cosmos.
The entire physical creation hangs like a little solid basket
under the huge luminous balloon of the astral sphere. Just as many
physical suns and stars roam in space, so there are also countless
astral solar and stellar systems. Their planets have astral suns and
moons, more beautiful than the physical ones. The astral luminaries
resemble the aurora borealis-the sunny astral aurora being more
dazzling than the mild-rayed moon-aurora. The astral day and night
are longer than those of earth.
 
"The astral world is infinitely beautiful, clean, pure, and
orderly.  There are no dead planets or barren lands. The terrestrial
blemishes--weeds, bacteria, insects, snakes-are absent. Unlike
the variable climates and seasons of the earth, the astral planets
maintain the even temperature of an eternal spring, with occasional
luminous white snow and rain of many-colored lights. Astral planets
abound in opal lakes and bright seas and rainbow rivers.
 
"The ordinary astral universe-not the subtler astral heaven
of Hiranyaloka-is peopled with millions of astral beings who have
come, more or less recently, from the earth, and also with myriads
of fairies, mermaids, fishes, animals, goblins, gnomes, demigods
and spirits, all residing on different astral planets in accordance
with karmic qualifications. Various spheric mansions or vibratory
regions are provided for good and evil spirits. Good ones can travel
freely, but the evil spirits are confined to limited zones. In the
same way that human beings live on the surface of the earth, worms
inside the soil, fish in water, and birds in air, so astral beings
of different grades are assigned to suitable vibratory quarters.
 
"Among the fallen dark angels expelled from other worlds, friction
and war take place with lifetronic bombs or mental MANTRIC {FN43-3}
vibratory rays. These beings dwell in the gloom-drenched regions
of the lower astral cosmos, working out their evil karma.
 
"In the vast realms above the dark astral prison, all is shining
and beautiful. The astral cosmos is more naturally attuned than
the earth to the divine will and plan of perfection. Every astral
object is manifested primarily by the will of God, and partially by
the will-call of astral beings. They possess the power of modifying
or enhancing the grace and form of anything already created by the
Lord.  He has given His astral children the freedom and privilege
of changing or improving at will the astral cosmos. On earth a
solid must be transformed into liquid or other form through natural
or chemical processes, but astral solids are changed into astral
liquids, gases, or energy solely and instantly by the will of the
inhabitants.
 
"The earth is dark with warfare and murder in the sea, land,
and air," my guru continued, "but the astral realms know a happy
harmony and equality. Astral beings dematerialize or materialize
their forms at will. Flowers or fish or animals can metamorphose
themselves, for a time, into astral men. All astral beings are
free to assume any form, and can easily commune together. No fixed,
definite, natural law hems them round-any astral tree, for example,
can be successfully asked to produce an astral mango or other
desired fruit, flower, or indeed any other object. Certain karmic
restrictions are present, but there are no distinctions in the
astral world about desirability of various forms. Everything is
vibrant with God's creative light.
 
"No one is born of woman; offspring are materialized by astral beings
through the help of their cosmic will into specially patterned,
astrally condensed forms. The recently physically disembodied being
arrives in an astral family through invitation, drawn by similar
mental and spiritual tendencies.
 
"The astral body is not subject to cold or heat or other
natural conditions. The anatomy includes an astral brain, or the
thousand-petaled lotus of light, and six awakened centers in the
SUSHUMNA, or astral cerebro-spinal axis. The heart draws cosmic
energy as well as light from the astral brain, and pumps it to
the astral nerves and body cells, or lifetrons. Astral beings can
affect their bodies by lifetronic force or by MANTRIC vibrations.
 
"The astral body is an exact counterpart of the last physical form.
Astral beings retain the same appearance which they possessed in
youth in their previous earthly sojourn; occasionally an astral
being chooses, like myself, to retain his old age appearance."
Master, emanating the very essence of youth, chuckled merrily.
 
"Unlike the spacial, three-dimensional physical world cognized
only by the five senses, the astral spheres are visible to the
all-inclusive sixth sense-intuition," Sri Yukteswar went on. "By
sheer intuitional feeling, all astral beings see, hear, smell,
taste, and touch. They possess three eyes, two of which are partly
closed. The third and chief astral eye, vertically placed on
the forehead, is open. Astral beings have all the outer sensory
organs-ears, eyes, nose, tongue, and skin-but they employ the
intuitional sense to experience sensations through any part of the
body; they can see through the ear, or nose, or skin. They are able
to hear through the eyes or tongue, and can taste through the ears
or skin, and so forth. {FN43-4}
 
"Man's physical body is exposed to countless dangers, and is easily
hurt or maimed; the ethereal astral body may occasionally be cut
or bruised but is healed at once by mere willing."
 
"Gurudeva, are all astral persons beautiful?"
 
"Beauty in the astral world is known to be a spiritual quality,
and not an outward conformation," Sri Yukteswar replied. "Astral
beings therefore attach little importance to facial features. They
have the privilege, however, of costuming themselves at will with
new, colorful, astrally materialized bodies. Just as worldly men
don new array for gala events, so astral beings find occasions to
bedeck themselves in specially designed forms.
 
"Joyous astral festivities on the higher astral planets like
Hiranyaloka take place when a being is liberated from the astral
world through spiritual advancement, and is therefore ready to enter
the heaven of the causal world. On such occasions the Invisible
Heavenly Father, and the saints who are merged in Him, materialize
Themselves into bodies of Their own choice and join the astral
celebration. In order to please His beloved devotee, the Lord takes
any desired form.  If the devotee worshiped through devotion, he
sees God as the Divine Mother. To Jesus, the Father-aspect of the
Infinite One was appealing beyond other conceptions. The individuality
with which the Creator has endowed each of His creatures makes every
conceivable and inconceivable demand on the Lord's versatility!"
My guru and I laughed happily together.
 
"Friends of other lives easily recognize one another in the astral
world," Sri Yukteswar went on in his beautiful, flutelike voice.
"Rejoicing at the immortality of friendship, they realize the
indestructibility of love, often doubted at the time of the sad,
delusive partings of earthly life.
 
"The intuition of astral beings pierces through the veil and
observes human activities on earth, but man cannot view the astral
world unless his sixth sense is somewhat developed. Thousands
of earth-dwellers have momentarily glimpsed an astral being or an
astral world.
 
"The advanced beings on Hiranyaloka remain mostly awake in ecstasy
during the long astral day and night, helping to work out intricate
problems of cosmic government and the redemption of prodigal
sons, earthbound souls. When the Hiranyaloka beings sleep, they
have occasional dreamlike astral visions. Their minds are usually
engrossed in the conscious state of highest NIRBIKALPA bliss.
 
"Inhabitants in all parts of the astral worlds are still subject
to mental agonies. The sensitive minds of the higher beings on
planets like Hiranyaloka feel keen pain if any mistake is made in
conduct or perception of truth. These advanced beings endeavor to
attune their every act and thought with the perfection of spiritual
law.
 
"Communication among the astral inhabitants is held entirely by
astral telepathy and television; there is none of the confusion and
misunderstanding of the written and spoken word which earth-dwellers
must endure. Just as persons on the cinema screen appear to move
and act through a series of light pictures, and do not actually
breathe, so the astral beings walk and work as intelligently guided
and coordinated images of light, without the necessity of drawing
power from oxygen. Man depends upon solids, liquids, gases, and
energy for sustenance; astral beings sustain themselves principally
by cosmic light."
 
"Master mine, do astral beings eat anything?" I was drinking in his
marvelous elucidations with the receptivity of all my faculties-mind,
heart, soul. Superconscious perceptions of truth are permanently
real and changeless, while fleeting sense experiences and impressions
are never more than temporarily or relatively true, and soon lose
in memory all their vividness. My guru's words were so penetratingly
imprinted on the parchment of my being that at any time, by
transferring my mind to the superconscious state, I can clearly
relive the divine experience.
 
"Luminous raylike vegetables abound in the astral soils," he answered.
"The astral beings consume vegetables, and drink a nectar flowing
from glorious fountains of light and from astral brooks and rivers.
Just as invisible images of persons on the earth can be dug out of
the ether and made visible by a television apparatus, later being
dismissed again into space, so the God-created, unseen astral
blueprints of vegetables and plants floating in the ether are
precipitated on an astral planet by the will of its inhabitants.
In the same way, from the wildest fancy of these beings, whole
gardens of fragrant flowers are materialized, returning later to
the etheric invisibility.  Although dwellers on the heavenly planets
like Hiranyaloka are almost freed from any necessity of eating,
still higher is the unconditioned existence of almost completely
liberated souls in the causal world, who eat nothing save the manna
of bliss.
 
"The earth-liberated astral being meets a multitude of relatives,
fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, and friends, acquired during
different incarnations on earth, {FN43-5} as they appear from time
to time in various parts of the astral realms. He is therefore at
a loss to understand whom to love especially; he learns in this way
to give a divine and equal love to all, as children and individualized
expressions of God. Though the outward appearance of loved ones
may have changed, more or less according to the development of new
qualities in the latest life of any particular soul, the astral
being employs his unerring intuition to recognize all those once dear
to him in other planes of existence, and to welcome them to their
new astral home. Because every atom in creation is inextinguishably
dowered with individuality, {FN43-6} an astral friend will be
recognized no matter what costume he may don, even as on earth an
actor's identity is discoverable by close observation despite any
disguise.
 
"The span of life in the astral world is much longer than on earth.
A normal advanced astral being's average life period is from five
hundred to one thousand years, measured in accordance with earthly
standards of time. As certain redwood trees outlive most trees by
millenniums, or as some yogis live several hundred years though
most men die before the age of sixty, so some astral beings live
much longer than the usual span of astral existence. Visitors
to the astral world dwell there for a longer or shorter period in
accordance with the weight of their physical karma, which draws
them back to earth within a specified time.
 
"The astral being does not have to contend painfully with death
at the time of shedding his luminous body. Many of these beings
nevertheless feel slightly nervous at the thought of dropping their
astral form for the subtler causal one. The astral world is free
from unwilling death, disease, and old age. These three dreads
are the curse of earth, where man has allowed his consciousness to
identify itself almost wholly with a frail physical body requiring
constant aid from air, food, and sleep in order to exist at all.
 
"Physical death is attended by the disappearance of breath and
the disintegration of fleshly cells. Astral death consists of the
dispersement of lifetrons, those manifest units of energy which
constitute the life of astral beings. At physical death a being
loses his consciousness of flesh and becomes aware of his subtle
body in the astral world. Experiencing astral death in due time, a
being thus passes from the consciousness of astral birth and death
to that of physical birth and death. These recurrent cycles of
astral and physical encasement are the ineluctable destiny of all
unenlightened beings. Scriptural definitions of heaven and hell
sometimes stir man's deeper-than-subconscious memories of his long
series of experiences in the blithesome astral and disappointing
terrestrial worlds."
 
"Beloved Master," I asked, "will you please describe more in detail
the difference between rebirth on the earth and in the astral and
causal spheres?"
 
"Man as an individualized soul is essentially causal-bodied," my
guru explained. "That body is a matrix of the thirty-five IDEAS
required by God as the basic or causal thought forces from which
He later formed the subtle astral body of nineteen elements and
the gross physical body of sixteen elements.
 
"The nineteen elements of the astral body are mental, emotional,
and lifetronic. The nineteen components are intelligence; ego;
feeling; mind (sense-consciousness); five instruments of KNOWLEDGE,
the subtle counterparts of the senses of sight, hearing, smell,
taste, touch; five instruments of ACTION, the mental correspondence
for the executive abilities to procreate, excrete, talk, walk, and
exercise manual skill; and five instruments of LIFE FORCE, those
empowered to perform the crystallizing, assimilating, eliminating,
metabolizing, and circulating functions of the body. This subtle
astral encasement of nineteen elements survives the death of the
physical body, which is made of sixteen gross metallic and nonmetallic
elements.
 
"God thought out different ideas within Himself and projected them
into dreams. Lady Cosmic Dream thus sprang out decorated in all
her colossal endless ornaments of relativity.
 
"In thirty-five thought categories of the causal body, God elaborated
all the complexities of man's nineteen astral and sixteen physical
counterparts. By condensation of vibratory forces, first subtle,
then gross, He produced man's astral body and finally his physical
form.  According to the law of relativity, by which the Prime
Simplicity has become the bewildering manifold, the causal cosmos
and causal body are different from the astral cosmos and astral body;
the physical cosmos and physical body are likewise characteristically
at variance with the other forms of creation.
 
"The fleshly body is made of the fixed, objectified dreams of the
Creator. The dualities are ever-present on earth: disease and health,
pain and pleasure, loss and gain. Human beings find limitation and
resistance in three-dimensional matter. When man's desire to live
is severely shaken by disease or other causes, death arrives; the
heavy overcoat of the flesh is temporarily shed. The soul, however,
remains encased in the astral and causal bodies. {FN43-7} The adhesive
force by which all three bodies are held together is desire. The
power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all man's slavery.
 
"Physical desires are rooted in egotism and sense pleasures. The
compulsion or temptation of sensory experience is more powerful
than the desire-force connected with astral attachments or causal
perceptions.
 
"Astral desires center around enjoyment in terms of vibration. Astral
beings enjoy the ethereal music of the spheres and are entranced
by the sight of all creation as exhaustless expressions of changing
light. The astral beings also smell, taste, and touch light.
Astral desires are thus connected with an astral being's power to
precipitate all objects and experiences as forms of light or as
condensed thoughts or dreams.
 
"Causal desires are fulfilled by perception only. The nearly-free
beings who are encased only in the causal body see the whole universe
as realizations of the dream-ideas of God; they can materialize
anything and everything in sheer thought. Causal beings therefore
consider the enjoyment of physical sensations or astral delights
as gross and suffocating to the soul's fine sensibilities. Causal
beings work out their desires by materializing them instantly.
{FN43-8} Those who find themselves covered only by the delicate veil
of the causal body can bring universes into manifestation even as
the Creator.  Because all creation is made of the cosmic dream-texture,
the soul thinly clothed in the causal has vast realizations of
power.
 
"A soul, being invisible by nature, can be distinguished only by
the presence of its body or bodies. The mere presence of a body
signifies that its existence is made possible by unfulfilled desires.
{FN43-9}
 
"So long as the soul of man is encased in one, two, or three
body-containers, sealed tightly with the corks of ignorance and
desires, he cannot merge with the sea of Spirit. When the gross
physical receptacle is destroyed by the hammer of death, the other
two coverings-astral and causal-still remain to prevent the soul
from consciously joining the Omnipresent Life. When desirelessness
is attained through wisdom, its power disintegrates the two remaining
vessels. The tiny human soul emerges, free at last; it is one with
the Measureless Amplitude."
 
I asked my divine guru to shed further light on the high and
mysterious causal world.
 
"The causal world is indescribably subtle," he replied. "In order
to understand it, one would have to possess such tremendous powers
of concentration that he could close his eyes and visualize the
astral cosmos and the physical cosmos in all their vastness-the
luminous balloon with the solid basket-as existing in ideas only.
If by this superhuman concentration one succeeded in converting or
resolving the two cosmoses with all their complexities into sheer
ideas, he would then reach the causal world and stand on the
borderline of fusion between mind and matter. There one perceives
all created things--solids, liquids, gases, electricity, energy,
all beings, gods, men, animals, plants, bacteria-as forms of
consciousness, just as a man can close his eyes and realize that
he exists, even though his body is invisible to his physical eyes
and is present only as an idea.
 
"Whatever a human being can do in fancy, a causal being can do in
reality. The most colossal imaginative human intelligence is able,
in mind only, to range from one extreme of thought to another,
to skip mentally from planet to planet, or tumble endlessly down
a pit of eternity, or soar rocketlike into the galaxied canopy,
or scintillate like a searchlight over milky ways and the starry
spaces. But beings in the causal world have a much greater freedom,
and can effortlessly manifest their thoughts into instant objectivity,
without any material or astral obstruction or karmic limitation.
 
"Causal beings realize that the physical cosmos is not primarily
constructed of electrons, nor is the astral cosmos basically
composed of lifetrons-both in reality are created from the minutest
particles of God-thought, chopped and divided by MAYA, the law of
relativity which intervenes to apparently separate the Noumenon
from His phenomena.
 
"Souls in the causal world recognize one another as individualized
points of joyous Spirit; their thought-things are the only objects
which surround them. Causal beings see the difference between
their bodies and thoughts to be merely ideas. As a man, closing his
eyes, can visualize a dazzling white light or a faint blue haze, so
causal beings by thought alone are able to see, hear, feel, taste,
and touch; they create anything, or dissolve it, by the power of
cosmic mind.
 
"Both death and rebirth in the causal world are in thought.
Causal-bodied beings feast only on the ambrosia of eternally
new knowledge.  They drink from the springs of peace, roam on the
trackless soil of perceptions, swim in the ocean-endlessness of
bliss. Lo! see their bright thought-bodies zoom past trillions of
Spirit-created planets, fresh bubbles of universes, wisdom-stars,
spectral dreams of golden nebulae, all over the skiey blue bosom
of Infinity!
 
"Many beings remain for thousands of years in the causal cosmos.
By deeper ecstasies the freed soul then withdraws itself from the
little causal body and puts on the vastness of the causal cosmos.
All the separate eddies of ideas, particularized waves of power,
love, will, joy, peace, intuition, calmness, self-control, and
concentration melt into the ever-joyous Sea of Bliss. No longer
does the soul have to experience its joy as an individualized wave
of consciousness, but is merged in the One Cosmic Ocean, with all
its waves-eternal laughter, thrills, throbs.
 
"When a soul is out of the cocoon of the three bodies it escapes
forever from the law of relativity and becomes the ineffable
Ever-Existent. {FN43-10} Behold the butterfly of Omnipresence, its
wings etched with stars and moons and suns! The soul expanded into
Spirit remains alone in the region of lightless light, darkless
dark, thoughtless thought, intoxicated with its ecstasy of joy in
God's dream of cosmic creation."
 
"A free soul!" I ejaculated in awe.
 
"When a soul finally gets out of the three jars of bodily delusions,"
Master continued, "it becomes one with the Infinite without any
loss of individuality. Christ had won this final freedom even before
he was born as Jesus. In three stages of his past, symbolized in
his earth-life as the three days of his experience of death and
resurrection, he had attained the power to fully arise in Spirit.
 
"The undeveloped man must undergo countless earthly and astral
and causal incarnations in order to emerge from his three bodies.
A master who achieves this final freedom may elect to return
to earth as a prophet to bring other human beings back to God, or
like myself he may choose to reside in the astral cosmos. There a
savior assumes some of the burden of the inhabitants' karma {FN43-11}
and thus helps them to terminate their cycle of reincarnation in
the astral cosmos and go on permanently to the causal spheres. Or
a freed soul may enter the causal world to aid its beings to shorten
their span in the causal body and thus attain the Absolute Freedom."
 
"Resurrected One, I want to know more about the karma which forces
souls to return to the three worlds." I could listen forever,
I thought, to my omniscient Master. Never in his earth-life had I
been able at one time to assimilate so much of his wisdom. Now for
the first time I was receiving a clear, definite insight into the
enigmatic interspaces on the checkerboard of life and death.
 
"The physical karma or desires of man must be completely worked
out before his permanent stay in astral worlds becomes possible,"
my guru elucidated in his thrilling voice. "Two kinds of beings
live in the astral spheres. Those who still have earthly karma to
dispose of and who must therefore reinhabit a gross physical body
in order to pay their karmic debts could be classified, after
physical death, as temporary visitors to the astral world rather
than as permanent residents.
 
"Beings with unredeemed earthly karma are not permitted after
astral death to go to the high causal sphere of cosmic ideas, but
must shuttle to and fro from the physical and astral worlds only,
conscious successively of their physical body of sixteen gross
elements, and of their astral body of nineteen subtle elements.
After each loss of his physical body, however, an undeveloped being
from the earth remains for the most part in the deep stupor of the
death-sleep and is hardly conscious of the beautiful astral sphere.
After the astral rest, such a man returns to the material plane for
further lessons, gradually accustoming himself, through repeated
journeys, to the worlds of subtle astral texture.
 
"Normal or long-established residents of the astral universe,
on the other hand, are those who, freed forever from all material
longings, need return no more to the gross vibrations of earth.
Such beings have only astral and causal karma to work out. At astral
death these beings pass to the infinitely finer and more delicate
causal world. Shedding the thought-form of the causal body at the
end of a certain span, determined by cosmic law, these advanced
beings then return to Hiranyaloka or a similar high astral planet,
reborn in a new astral body to work out their unredeemed astral
karma.
 
"My son, you may now comprehend more fully that I am resurrected by
divine decree," Sri Yukteswar continued, "as a savior of astrally
reincarnating souls coming back from the causal sphere, in
particular, rather than of those astral beings who are coming up
from the earth.  Those from the earth, if they still retain vestiges
of material karma, do not rise to the very high astral planets like
Hiranyaloka.
 
"Just as most people on earth have not learned through meditation-acquired
vision to appreciate the superior joys and advantages of astral life
and thus, after death, desire to return to the limited, imperfect
pleasures of earth, so many astral beings, during the normal
disintegration of their astral bodies, fail to picture the advanced
state of spiritual joy in the causal world and, dwelling on thoughts
of the more gross and gaudy astral happiness, yearn to revisit the
astral paradise. Heavy astral karma must be redeemed by such beings
before they can achieve after astral death a permanent stay in the
causal thought-world, so thinly partitioned from the Creator.
 
"Only when a being has no further desires for experiences in the
pleasing-to-the-eye astral cosmos, and cannot be tempted to go
back there, does he remain in the causal world. Completing there
the work of redeeming all causal karma or seeds of past desires, the
confined soul thrusts out the last of the three corks of ignorance
and, emerging from the final jar of the causal body, commingles
with the Eternal.
 
"Now do you understand?" Master smiled so enchantingly!
 
"Yes, through your grace. I am speechless with joy and gratitude."
 
Never from song or story had I ever received such inspiring knowledge.
Though the Hindu scriptures refer to the causal and astral worlds
and to man's three bodies, how remote and meaningless those pages
compared with the warm authenticity of my resurrected Master! For
him indeed existed not a single "undiscover'd country from whose
bourn no traveller returns"!
 
"The interpenetration of man's three bodies is expressed in many
ways through his threefold nature," my great guru went on. "In
the wakeful state on earth a human being is conscious more or less
of his three vehicles. When he is sensuously intent on tasting,
smelling, touching, listening, or seeing, he is working principally
through his physical body. Visualizing or willing, he is working
mainly through his astral body. His causal medium finds expression
when man is thinking or diving deep in introspection or meditation;
the cosmical thoughts of genius come to the man who habitually
contacts his causal body. In this sense an individual may be
classified broadly as 'a material man,' 'an energetic man,' or 'an
intellectual man.'
 
"A man identifies himself about sixteen hours daily with his
physical vehicle. Then he sleeps; if he dreams, he remains in his
astral body, effortlessly creating any object even as do the astral
beings. If man's sleep be deep and dreamless, for several hours he
is able to transfer his consciousness, or sense of I-ness, to the
causal body; such sleep is revivifying. A dreamer is contacting
his astral and not his causal body; his sleep is not fully refreshing."
 
I had been lovingly observing Sri Yukteswar while he gave his
wondrous exposition.
 
"Angelic guru," I said, "your body looks exactly as it did when
last I wept over it in the Puri ashram."
 
"O yes, my new body is a perfect copy of the old one. I materialize
or dematerialize this form any time at will, much more frequently
than I did while on earth. By quick dematerialization, I now travel
instantly by light express from planet to planet or, indeed, from
astral to causal or to physical cosmos." My divine guru smiled.
"Though you move about so fast these days, I had no difficulty in
finding you at Bombay!"
 
"O Master, I was grieving so deeply about your death!"
 
"Ah, wherein did I die? Isn't there some contradiction?" Sri
Yukteswar's eyes were twinkling with love and amusement.
 
"You were only dreaming on earth; on that earth you saw my
dream-body," he went on. "Later you buried that dream-image. Now
my finer fleshly body-which you behold and are even now embracing
rather closely!-is resurrected on another finer dream-planet of
God. Someday that finer dream-body and finer dream-planet will pass
away; they too are not forever. All dream-bubbles must eventually
burst at a final wakeful touch. Differentiate, my son Yogananda,
between dreams and Reality!"
 
This idea of VEDANTIC {FN43-12} resurrection struck me with wonder.
I was ashamed that I had pitied Master when I had seen his lifeless
body at Puri. I comprehended at last that my guru had always been
fully awake in God, perceiving his own life and passing on earth,
and his present resurrection, as nothing more than relativities of
divine ideas in the cosmic dream.
 
"I have now told you, Yogananda, the truths of my life, death,
and resurrection. Grieve not for me; rather broadcast everywhere
the story of my resurrection from the God-dreamed earth of men to
another God-dreamed planet of astrally garbed souls! New hope will
be infused into the hearts of misery-mad, death-fearing dreamers
of the world."
 
"Yes, Master!" How willingly would I share with others my joy at
his resurrection!
 
"On earth my standards were uncomfortably high, unsuited to the
natures of most men. Often I scolded you more than I should have.
You passed my test; your love shone through the clouds of all
reprimands." He added tenderly, "I have also come today to tell
you: Never again shall I wear the stern gaze of censure. I shall
scold you no more."
 
How much I had missed the chastisements of my great guru! Each one
had been a guardian angel of protection.
 
"Dearest Master! Rebuke me a million times-do scold me now!"
 
"I shall chide you no more." His divine voice was grave, yet with
an undercurrent of laughter. "You and I shall smile together, so
long as our two forms appear different in the MAYA-dream of God.
Finally we shall merge as one in the Cosmic Beloved; our smiles
shall be His smile, our unified song of joy vibrating throughout
eternity to be broadcast to God-tuned souls!"
 
Sri Yukteswar gave me light on certain matters which I cannot reveal
here. During the two hours that he spent with me in the Bombay hotel
room he answered my every question. A number of world prophecies
uttered by him that June day in 1936 have already come to pass.
 
"I leave you now, beloved one!" At these words I felt Master melting
away within my encircling arms.
 
"My child," his voice rang out, vibrating into my very soul-firmament,
"whenever you enter the door of NIRBIKALPA SAMADHI and call on me,
I shall come to you in flesh and blood, even as today."
 
With this celestial promise Sri Yukteswar vanished from my sight.
A cloud-voice repeated in musical thunder: "Tell all! Whosoever
knows by NIRBIKALPA realization that your earth is a dream of God
can come to the finer dream-created planet of Hiranyaloka, and
there find me resurrected in a body exactly like my earthly one.
Yogananda, tell all!"
 
Gone was the sorrow of parting. The pity and grief for his death,
long robber of my peace, now fled in stark shame. Bliss poured
forth like a fountain through endless, newly opened soul-pores.
Anciently clogged with disuse, they now widened in purity at the
driving flood of ecstasy. Subconscious thoughts and feelings of my
past incarnations shed their karmic taints, lustrously renewed by
Sri Yukteswar's divine visit.
 
In this chapter of my autobiography I have obeyed my guru's behest
and spread the glad tiding, though it confound once more an incurious
generation. Groveling, man knows well; despair is seldom alien;
yet these are perversities, no part of man's true lot. The day he
wills, he is set on the path to freedom. Too long has he hearkened
to the dank pessimism of his "dust-thou-art" counselors, heedless
of the unconquerable soul.
 
I was not the only one privileged to behold the Resurrected Guru.
 
One of Sri Yukteswar's chelas was an aged woman, affectionately
known as MA (Mother), whose home was close to the Puri hermitage.
Master had often stopped to chat with her during his morning walk.
On the evening of March 16, 1936, Ma arrived at the ashram and
asked to see her guru.
 
"Why, Master died a week ago!" Swami Sebananda, now in charge of
the Puri hermitage, looked at her sadly.
 
"That's impossible!" She smiled a little. "Perhaps you are just
trying to protect the guru from insistent visitors?"
 
"No." Sebananda recounted details of the burial. "Come," he said,
"I will take you to the front garden to Sri Yukteswarji's grave."
 
Ma shook her head. "There is no grave for him! This morning at ten
o'clock he passed in his usual walk before my door! I talked to
him for several minutes in the bright outdoors.
 
"'Come this evening to the ashram,' he said.
 
"I am here! Blessings pour on this old gray head! The deathless guru
wanted me to understand in what transcendent body he had visited
me this morning!"
 
The astounded Sebananda knelt before her.
 
"Ma," he said, "what a weight of grief you lift from my heart! He
is risen!"
 
{FN43-1} In SABIKALPA SAMADHI the devotee has spiritually progressed
to a state of inward divine union, but cannot maintain his cosmic
consciousness except in the immobile trance-state. By continuous
meditation, he reaches the superior state of NIRBIKALPA SAMADHI,
where he moves freely in the world and performs his outward duties
without any loss of God-realization.
 
{FN43-2} Sri Yukteswar used the word PRANA; I have translated it as
lifetrons. The Hindu scriptures refer not only to the ANU, "atom,"
and to the PARAMANU, "beyond the atom," finer electronic energies;
but also to PRANA, "creative lifetronic force." Atoms and electrons
are blind forces; PRANA is inherently intelligent. The pranic
lifetrons in the spermatozoa and ova, for instance, guide the
embryonic development according to a karmic design.
 
 
{FN43-3} Adjective of MANTRA, chanted seed-sounds discharged by
the mental gun of concentration. The PURANAS (ancient SHASTRAS or
treatises) describe these MANTRIC wars between DEVAS and ASURAS
(gods and demons). An ASURA once tried to slay a DEVA with a potent
chant.  But due to mispronunciation the mental bomb acted as a
boomerang and killed the demon.
 
{FN43-4} Examples of such powers are not wanting even on earth, as
in the case of Helen Keller and other rare beings.
 
{FN43-5} Lord Buddha was once asked why a man should love all
persons equally. "Because," the great teacher replied, "in the
very numerous and varied lifespans of each man, every other being
has at one time or another been dear to him."
 
{FN43-6} The eight elemental qualities which enter into all created
life, from atom to man, are earth, water, fire, air, ether, motion,
mind, and individuality. (BHAGAVAD GITA: VII:4.)
 
{FN43-7} Body signifies any soul-encasement, whether gross or
subtle.  The three bodies are cages for the Bird of Paradise.
 
{FN43-8} Even as Babaji helped Lahiri Mahasaya to rid himself of a
subconscious desire from some past life for a palace, as described
in chapter 34.
 
{FN43-9} "And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither
will the eagles be gathered together."-LUKE 17:37. Wherever the
soul is encased in the physical body or in the astral body or in
the causal body, there the eagles of desires-which prey on human
sense weaknesses, or on astral and causal attachments-will also
gather to keep the soul a prisoner.
 
{FN43-10} "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple
of my God, and he shall go no more out (i.e., shall reincarnate
no more). .  . . To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with
me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my
Father in his throne."-REVELATION 3:12, 21.
 
{FN43-11} Sri Yukteswar was signifying that, even as in his earthly
incarnation he had occasionally assumed the weight of disease to
lighten his disciples' karma, so in the astral world his mission
as a savior enabled him to take on certain astral karma of dwellers
on Hiranyaloka, and thus hasten their evolution into the higher
causal world.
 
{FN43-12} Life and death as relativities of thought only. VEDANTA
points out that God is the only Reality; all creation or separate
existence is MAYA or illusion. This philosophy of monism received
its highest expression in the UPANISHAD commentaries of Shankara.
 
 
 
CHAPTER: 44
 
WITH MAHATMA GANDHI AT WARDHA
 
"Welcome to Wardha!" Mahadev Desai, secretary to Mahatma Gandhi,
greeted Miss Bletch, Mr. Wright, and myself with these cordial words
and the gift of wreaths of KHADDAR (homespun cotton). Our little
group had just dismounted at the Wardha station on an early morning
in August, glad to leave the dust and heat of the train. Consigning
our luggage to a bullock cart, we entered an open motor car with
Mr. Desai and his companions, Babasaheb Deshmukh and Dr. Pingale.
A short drive over the muddy country roads brought us to MAGANVADI,
the ashram of India's political saint.
 
Mr. Desai led us at once to the writing room where, cross-legged,
sat Mahatma Gandhi. Pen in one hand and a scrap of paper in the
other, on his face a vast, winning, warm-hearted smile!
 
"Welcome!" he scribbled in Hindi; it was a Monday, his weekly day
of silence.
 
Though this was our first meeting, we beamed on each other
affectionately. In 1925 Mahatma Gandhi had honored the Ranchi school
by a visit, and had inscribed in its guest-book a gracious tribute.
 
The tiny 100-pound saint radiated physical, mental, and spiritual
health. His soft brown eyes shone with intelligence, sincerity,
and discrimination; this statesman has matched wits and emerged the
victor in a thousand legal, social, and political battles. No other
leader in the world has attained the secure niche in the hearts of
his people that Gandhi occupies for India's unlettered millions.
Their spontaneous tribute is his famous title-MAHATMA, "great
soul." {FN44-1} For them alone Gandhi confines his attire to the
widely-cartooned loincloth, symbol of his oneness with the downtrodden
masses who can afford no more.
 
[Illustration: MAHATMA GANDHI, I enjoy a quiet lunch with India's
political saint at his hermitage in Wardha, August, 1935.--see
gandhi.jpg]
 
"The ashram residents are wholly at your disposal; please call on
them for any service." With characteristic courtesy, the Mahatma
handed me this hastily-written note as Mr. Desai led our party from
the writing room toward the guest house.
 
Our guide led us through orchards and flowering fields to
a tile-roofed building with latticed windows. A front-yard well,
twenty-five feet across, was used, Mr. Desai said, for watering
stock; near-by stood a revolving cement wheel for threshing rice.
Each of our small bedrooms proved to contain only the irreducible
minimum-a bed, handmade of rope. The whitewashed kitchen boasted a
faucet in one corner and a fire pit for cooking in another. Simple
Arcadian sounds reached our ears-the cries of crows and sparrows,
the lowing of cattle, and the rap of chisels being used to chip
stones.
 
Observing Mr. Wright's travel diary, Mr. Desai opened a page and
wrote on it a list of SATYAGRAHA {FN44-2} vows taken by all the
Mahatma's strict followers (SATYAGRAHIS):
 
"Nonviolence; Truth; Non-Stealing; Celibacy; Non-Possession;
Body-Labor; Control of the Palate; Fearlessness; Equal Respect for
all Religions; SWADESHI (use of home manufactures); Freedom from
Untouchability. These eleven should be observed as vows in a spirit
of humility."
 
(Gandhi himself signed this page on the following day, giving the
date also-August 27, 1935.)
 
Two hours after our arrival my companions and I were summoned
to lunch. The Mahatma was already seated under the arcade of the
ashram porch, across the courtyard from his study. About twenty-five
barefooted SATYAGRAHIS were squatting before brass cups and plates.
A community chorus of prayer; then a meal served from large brass
pots containing CHAPATIS (whole-wheat unleavened bread) sprinkled
with GHEE; TALSARI (boiled and diced vegetables), and a lemon jam.
 
The Mahatma ate CHAPATIS, boiled beets, some raw vegetables, and
oranges. On the side of his plate was a large lump of very bitter
NEEM leaves, a notable blood cleanser. With his spoon he separated
a portion and placed it on my dish. I bolted it down with water,
remembering childhood days when Mother had forced me to swallow the
disagreeable dose. Gandhi, however, bit by bit was eating the NEEM
paste with as much relish as if it had been a delicious sweetmeat.
 
In this trifling incident I noted the Mahatma's ability to detach
his mind from the senses at will. I recalled the famous appendectomy
performed on him some years ago. Refusing anesthetics, the saint
had chatted cheerfully with his disciples throughout the operation,
his infectious smile revealing his unawareness of pain.
 
The afternoon brought an opportunity for a chat with Gandhi's noted
disciple, daughter of an English admiral, Miss Madeleine Slade, now
called Mirabai. {FN44-3} Her strong, calm face lit with enthusiasm
as she told me, in flawless Hindi, of her daily activities.
 
"Rural reconstruction work is rewarding! A group of us go every
morning at five o'clock to serve the near-by villagers and teach
them simple hygiene. We make it a point to clean their latrines and
their mud-thatched huts. The villagers are illiterate; they cannot
be educated except by example!" She laughed gaily.
 
I looked in admiration at this highborn Englishwoman whose true
Christian humility enables her to do the scavengering work usually
performed only by "untouchables."
 
"I came to India in 1925," she told me. "In this land I feel that
I have 'come back home.' Now I would never be willing to return to
my old life and old interests."
 
We discussed America for awhile. "I am always pleased and amazed,"
she said, "to see the deep interest in spiritual subjects exhibited
by the many Americans who visit India." {FN44-4}
 
Mirabai's hands were soon busy at the CHARKA (spinning wheel),
omnipresent in all the ashram rooms and, indeed, due to the Mahatma,
omnipresent throughout rural India.
 
Gandhi has sound economic and cultural reasons for encouraging the
revival of cottage industries, but he does not counsel a fanatical
repudiation of all modern progress. Machinery, trains, automobiles,
the telegraph have played important parts in his own colossal life!
Fifty years of public service, in prison and out, wrestling daily
with practical details and harsh realities in the political world,
have only increased his balance, open-mindedness, sanity, and
humorous appreciation of the quaint human spectacle.
 
Our trio enjoyed a six o'clock supper as guests of Babasaheb Deshmukh.
The 7:00 P.M. prayer hour found us back at the MAGANVADI ashram,
climbing to the roof where thirty SATYAGRAHIS were grouped in
a semicircle around Gandhi. He was squatting on a straw mat, an
ancient pocket watch propped up before him. The fading sun cast
a last gleam over the palms and banyans; the hum of night and the
crickets had started. The atmosphere was serenity itself; I was
enraptured.
 
A solemn chant led by Mr. Desai, with responses from the group; then
a GITA reading. The Mahatma motioned to me to give the concluding
prayer. Such divine unison of thought and aspiration! A memory
forever: the Wardha roof top meditation under the early stars.
 
Punctually at eight o'clock Gandhi ended his silence. The herculean
labors of his life require him to apportion his time minutely.
 
"Welcome, Swamiji!" The Mahatma's greeting this time was not via
paper. We had just descended from the roof to his writing room,
simply furnished with square mats (no chairs), a low desk with books,
papers, and a few ordinary pens (not fountain pens); a nondescript
clock ticked in a corner. An all-pervasive aura of peace and
devotion.  Gandhi was bestowing one of his captivating, cavernous,
almost toothless smiles.
 
"Years ago," he explained, "I started my weekly observance
of a day of silence as a means for gaining time to look after my
correspondence.  But now those twenty-four hours have become a vital
spiritual need. A periodical decree of silence is not a torture
but a blessing."
 
I agreed wholeheartedly. {FN44-5} The Mahatma questioned me about
America and Europe; we discussed India and world conditions.
 
"Mahadev," Gandhi said as Mr. Desai entered the room, "please
make arrangements at Town Hall for Swamiji to speak there on yoga
tomorrow night."
 
As I was bidding the Mahatma good night, he considerately handed
me a bottle of citronella oil.
 
"The Wardha mosquitoes don't know a thing about AHIMSA, {FN44-6}
Swamiji!" he said, laughing.
 
The following morning our little group breakfasted early on a tasty
wheat porridge with molasses and milk. At ten-thirty we were called
to the ashram porch for lunch with Gandhi and the SATYAGRAHIS.
Today the menu included brown rice, a new selection of vegetables,
and cardamom seeds.
 
Noon found me strolling about the ashram grounds, on to the grazing
land of a few imperturbable cows. The protection of cows is a
passion with Gandhi.
 
"The cow to me means the entire sub-human world, extending man's
sympathies beyond his own species," the Mahatma has explained. "Man
through the cow is enjoined to realize his identity with all that
lives. Why the ancient rishis selected the cow for apotheosis is
obvious to me. The cow in India was the best comparison; she was
the giver of plenty. Not only did she give milk, but she also made
agriculture possible. The cow is a poem of pity; one reads pity in
the gentle animal. She is the second mother to millions of mankind.
Protection of the cow means protection of the whole dumb creation
of God. The appeal of the lower order of creation is all the more
forceful because it is speechless."
 
Three daily rituals are enjoined on the orthodox Hindu. One is BHUTA
YAJNA, an offering of food to the animal kingdom. This ceremony
symbolizes man's realization of his obligations to less evolved
forms of creation, instinctively tied to bodily identifications which
also corrode human life, but lacking in that quality of liberating
reason which is peculiar to humanity. BHUTA YAJNA thus reinforces
man's readiness to succor the weak, as he in turn is comforted by
countless solicitudes of higher unseen beings. Man is also under
bond for rejuvenating gifts of nature, prodigal in earth, sea, and
sky. The evolutionary barrier of incommunicability among nature,
animals, man, and astral angels is thus overcome by offices of
silent love.
 
The other two daily YAJNAS are PITRI and NRI. PITRI YAJNA is an offering
of oblations to ancestors, as a symbol of man's acknowledgment of
his debt to the past, essence of whose wisdom illumines humanity
today. NRI YAJNA is an offering of food to strangers or the poor,
symbol of the present responsibilities of man, his duties to
contemporaries.
 
In the early afternoon I fulfilled a neighborly NRI YAJNA by a
visit to Gandhi's ashram for little girls. Mr. Wright accompanied
me on the ten-minute drive. Tiny young flowerlike faces atop the
long-stemmed colorful SARIS! At the end of a brief talk in Hindi
{FN44-7} which I was giving outdoors, the skies unloosed a sudden
downpour. Laughing, Mr.  Wright and I climbed aboard the car and
sped back to MAGANVADI amidst sheets of driving silver. Such tropical
intensity and splash!
 
Reentering the guest house I was struck anew by the stark simplicity
and evidences of self-sacrifice which are everywhere present.
The Gandhi vow of non-possession came early in his married life.
Renouncing an extensive legal practice which had been yielding him
an annual income of more than $20,000, the Mahatma dispersed all
his wealth to the poor.
 
Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate
conceptions of renunciation.
 
"A beggar cannot renounce wealth," Master would say. "If a man laments:
'My business has failed; my wife has left me; I will renounce all
and enter a monastery,' to what worldly sacrifice is he referring?
He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!"
 
Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible
material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of
selfish motive and private goal, merging their inmost being in the
stream of humanity as a whole.
 
The Mahatma's remarkable wife, Kasturabai, did not object when he
failed to set aside any part of his wealth for the use of herself
and their children. Married in early youth, Gandhi and his wife
took the vow of celibacy after the birth of several sons. {FN44-8}
A tranquil heroine in the intense drama that has been their life
together, Kasturabai has followed her husband to prison, shared
his three-week fasts, and fully borne her share of his endless
responsibilities. She has paid Gandhi the following tribute:
 
I thank you for having had the privilege of being your lifelong
companion and helpmate. I thank you for the most perfect marriage
in the world, based on BRAHMACHARYA (self-control) and not on sex.
I thank you for having considered me your equal in your life work
for India. I thank you for not being one of those husbands who spend
their time in gambling, racing, women, wine, and song, tiring of
their wives and children as the little boy quickly tires of his
childhood toys.  How thankful I am that you were not one of those
husbands who devote their time to growing rich on the exploitation
of the labor of others.
 
How thankful I am that you put God and country before bribes, that
you had the courage of your convictions and a complete and implicit
faith in God. How thankful I am for a husband that put God and his
country before me. I am grateful to you for your tolerance of me
and my shortcomings of youth, when I grumbled and rebelled against
the change you made in our mode of living, from so much to so
little.
 
As a young child, I lived in your parents' home; your mother was a
great and good woman; she trained me, taught me how to be a brave,
courageous wife and how to keep the love and respect of her son,
my future husband. As the years passed and you became India's most
beloved leader, I had none of the fears that beset the wife who may
be cast aside when her husband has climbed the ladder of success,
as so often happens in other countries. I knew that death would
still find us husband and wife.
 
For years Kasturabai performed the duties of treasurer of the public
funds which the idolized Mahatma is able to raise by the millions.
There are many humorous stories in Indian homes to the effect that
husbands are nervous about their wives' wearing any jewelry to
a Gandhi meeting; the Mahatma's magical tongue, pleading for the
downtrodden, charms the gold bracelets and diamond necklaces right
off the arms and necks of the wealthy into the collection basket!
 
One day the public treasurer, Kasturabai, could not account for a
disbursement of four rupees. Gandhi duly published an auditing in
which he inexorably pointed out his wife's four rupee discrepancy.
 
I had often told this story before classes of my American students.
One evening a woman in the hall had given an outraged gasp.
 
"Mahatma or no Mahatma," she had cried, "if he were my husband
I would have given him a black eye for such an unnecessary public
insult!"
 
After some good-humored banter had passed between us on the subject of
American wives and Hindu wives, I had gone on to a fuller explanation.
 
"Mrs. Gandhi considers the Mahatma not as her husband but as her
guru, one who has the right to discipline her for even insignificant
errors," I had pointed out. "Sometime after Kasturabai had been
publicly rebuked, Gandhi was sentenced to prison on a political
charge. As he was calmly bidding farewell to his wife, she fell at
his feet. 'Master,' she said humbly, 'if I have ever offended you,
please forgive me.'" {FN44-9}
 
At three o'clock that afternoon in Wardha, I betook myself,
by previous appointment, to the writing room of the saint who had
been able to make an unflinching disciple out of his own wife-rare
miracle!  Gandhi looked up with his unforgettable smile.
 
"Mahatmaji," I said as I squatted beside him on the uncushioned
mat, "please tell me your definition of AHIMSA."
 
"The avoidance of harm to any living creature in thought or deed."
 
"Beautiful ideal! But the world will always ask: May one not kill
a cobra to protect a child, or one's self?"
 
"I could not kill a cobra without violating two of my vows--fearlessness,
and non-killing. I would rather try inwardly to calm the snake by
vibrations of love. I cannot possibly lower my standards to suit
my circumstances." With his amazing candor, Gandhi added, "I must
confess that I could not carry on this conversation were I faced
by a cobra!"
 
I remarked on several very recent Western books on diet which lay
on his desk.
 
"Yes, diet is important in the SATYAGRAHA movement-as everywhere
else," he said with a chuckle. "Because I advocate complete continence
for SATYAGRAHIS, I am always trying to find out the best diet for
the celibate. One must conquer the palate before he can control the
procreative instinct. Semi-starvation or unbalanced diets are not
the answer. After overcoming the inward GREED for food, a SATYAGRAHI
must continue to follow a rational vegetarian diet with all necessary
vitamins, minerals, calories, and so forth. By inward and outward
wisdom in regard to eating, the SATYAGRAHI'S sexual fluid is easily
turned into vital energy for the whole body."
 
The Mahatma and I compared our knowledge of good meat-substitutes.
"The avocado is excellent," I said. "There are numerous avocado
groves near my center in California."
 
Gandhi's face lit with interest. "I wonder if they would grow in
Wardha? The SATYAGRAHIS would appreciate a new food."
 
"I will be sure to send some avocado plants from Los Angeles to
Wardha." {FN44-10} I added, "Eggs are a high-protein food; are they
forbidden to SATYAGRAHIS?"
 
"Not unfertilized eggs." The Mahatma laughed reminiscently. "For
years I would not countenance their use; even now I personally
do not eat them. One of my daughters-in-law was once dying of
malnutrition; her doctor insisted on eggs. I would not agree, and
advised him to give her some egg-substitute.
 
"'Gandhiji,' the doctor said, 'unfertilized eggs contain no life
sperm; no killing is involved.'
 
"I then gladly gave permission for my daughter-in-law to eat eggs;
she was soon restored to health."
 
On the previous night Gandhi had expressed a wish to receive
the KRIYA YOGA of Lahiri Mahasaya. I was touched by the Mahatma's
open-mindedness and spirit of inquiry. He is childlike in his
divine quest, revealing that pure receptivity which Jesus praised
in children, ". .  . of such is the kingdom of heaven."
 
The hour for my promised instruction had arrived; several SATYAGRAHIS
now entered the room-Mr. Desai, Dr. Pingale, and a few others who
desired the KRIYA technique.
 
I first taught the little class the physical YOGODA exercises. The
body is visualized as divided into twenty parts; the will directs
energy in turn to each section. Soon everyone was vibrating before
me like a human motor. It was easy to observe the rippling effect
on Gandhi's twenty body parts, at all times completely exposed to
view!  Though very thin, he is not unpleasingly so; the skin of
his body is smooth and unwrinkled.
 
Later I initiated the group into the liberating technique of KRIYA
YOGA.
 
The Mahatma has reverently studied all world religions. The
Jain scriptures, the Biblical New Testament, and the sociological
writings of Tolstoy {FN44-11} are the three main sources of Gandhi's
nonviolent convictions. He has stated his credo thus:
 
I believe the Bible, the KORAN, and the ZEND-AVESTA {FN44-12} to
be as divinely inspired as the VEDAS. I believe in the institution
of Gurus, but in this age millions must go without a Guru, because
it is a rare thing to find a combination of perfect purity and
perfect learning. But one need not despair of ever knowing the
truth of one's religion, because the fundamentals of Hinduism as
of every great religion are unchangeable, and easily understood.
 
I believe like every Hindu in God and His oneness, in rebirth and
salvation. . . . I can no more describe my feeling for Hinduism
than for my own wife. She moves me as no other woman in the world
can. Not that she has no faults; I daresay she has many more than
I see myself.  But the feeling of an indissoluble bond is there.
Even so I feel for and about Hinduism with all its faults and
limitations. Nothing delights me so much as the music of the GITA,
or the RAMAYANA by Tulsidas. When I fancied I was taking my last
breath, the GITA was my solace.
 
Hinduism is not an exclusive religion. In it there is room for
the worship of all the prophets of the world. {FN44-13} It is not
a missionary religion in the ordinary sense of the term. It has
no doubt absorbed many tribes in its fold, but this absorption has
been of an evolutionary, imperceptible character. Hinduism tells
each man to worship God according to his own faith or DHARMA,
{FN44-14} and so lives at peace with all religions.
 
Of Christ, Gandhi has written: "I am sure that if He were living
here now among men, He would bless the lives of many who perhaps
have never even heard His name . . . just as it is written: 'Not
every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord . . . but he that doeth
the will of my Father.' {FN44-15} In the lesson of His own life,
Jesus gave humanity the magnificent purpose and the single objective
toward which we all ought to aspire. I believe that He belongs not
solely to Christianity, but to the entire world, to all lands and
races."
 
On my last evening in Wardha I addressed the meeting which had
been called by Mr. Desai in Town Hall. The room was thronged to
the window sills with about 400 people assembled to hear the talk
on yoga. I spoke first in Hindi, then in English. Our little group
returned to the ashram in time for a good-night glimpse of Gandhi,
enfolded in peace and correspondence.
 
Night was still lingering when I rose at 5:00 A.M. Village life was
already stirring; first a bullock cart by the ashram gates, then
a peasant with his huge burden balanced precariously on his head.
After breakfast our trio sought out Gandhi for farewell PRONAMS.
The saint rises at four o'clock for his morning prayer.
 
"Mahatmaji, good-by!" I knelt to touch his feet. "India is safe in
your keeping!"
 
Years have rolled by since the Wardha idyl; the earth, oceans, and
skies have darkened with a world at war. Alone among great leaders,
Gandhi has offered a practical nonviolent alternative to armed
might.  To redress grievances and remove injustices, the Mahatma
has employed nonviolent means which again and again have proved
their effectiveness. He states his doctrine in these words:
 
I have found that life persists in the midst of destruction.
Therefore there must be a higher law than that of destruction. Only
under that law would well-ordered society be intelligible and life
worth living.
 
If that is the law of life we must work it out in daily existence.
Wherever there are wars, wherever we are confronted with an opponent,
conquer by love. I have found that the certain law of love has
answered in my own life as the law of destruction has never done.
 
In India we have had an ocular demonstration of the operation of
this law on the widest scale possible. I don't claim that nonviolence
has penetrated the 360,000,000 people in India, but I do claim
it has penetrated deeper than any other doctrine in an incredibly
short time.
 
It takes a fairly strenuous course of training to attain a mental
state of nonviolence. It is a disciplined life, like the life of
a soldier. The perfect state is reached only when the mind, body,
and speech are in proper coordination. Every problem would lend
itself to solution if we determined to make the law of truth and
nonviolence the law of life.
 
Just as a scientist will work wonders out of various applications
of the laws of nature, a man who applies the laws of love with
scientific precision can work greater wonders. Nonviolence is
infinitely more wonderful and subtle than forces of nature like,
for instance, electricity. The law of love is a far greater science
than any modern science.
 
Consulting history, one may reasonably state that the problems of
mankind have not been solved by the use of brute force. World War
I produced a world-chilling snowball of war karma that swelled into
World War II. Only the warmth of brotherhood can melt the present
colossal snowball of war karma which may otherwise grow into World
War III. This unholy trinity will banish forever the possibility
of World War IV by a finality of atomic bombs. Use of jungle logic
instead of human reason in settling disputes will restore the earth
to a jungle.  If brothers not in life, then brothers in violent
death.
 
War and crime never pay. The billions of dollars that went up in
the smoke of explosive nothingness would have been sufficient to
have made a new world, one almost free from disease and completely
free from poverty. Not an earth of fear, chaos, famine, pestilence,
the DANSE MACABRE, but one broad land of peace, of prosperity, and
of widening knowledge.
 
The nonviolent voice of Gandhi appeals to man's highest conscience.
Let nations ally themselves no longer with death, but with life; not
with destruction, but with construction; not with the Annihilator,
but with the Creator.
 
"One should forgive, under any injury," says the MAHABHARATA. "It
hath been said that the continuation of species is due to man's being
forgiving. Forgiveness is holiness; by forgiveness the universe is
held together. Forgiveness is the might of the mighty; forgiveness is
sacrifice; forgiveness is quiet of mind. Forgiveness and gentleness
are the qualities of the self-possessed. They represent eternal
virtue."
 
Nonviolence is the natural outgrowth of the law of forgiveness and
love. "If loss of life becomes necessary in a righteous battle,"
Gandhi proclaims, "one should be prepared, like Jesus, to shed his
own, not others', blood. Eventually there will be less blood spilt
in the world."
 
Epics shall someday be written on the Indian SATYAGRAHIS who withstood
hate with love, violence with nonviolence, who allowed themselves
to be mercilessly slaughtered rather than retaliate. The result on
certain historic occasions was that the armed opponents threw down
their guns and fled, shamed, shaken to their depths by the sight
of men who valued the life of another above their own.
 
"I would wait, if need be for ages," Gandhi says, "rather than
seek the freedom of my country through bloody means." Never does
the Mahatma forget the majestic warning: "All they that take the
sword shall perish with the sword." {FN44-16} Gandhi has written:
 
I call myself a nationalist, but my nationalism is as broad as the
universe. It includes in its sweep all the nations of the earth.
{FN44-17} My nationalism includes the well-being of the whole world.
I do not want my India to rise on the ashes of other nations. I
do not want India to exploit a single human being. I want India to
be strong in order that she can infect the other nations also with
her strength. Not so with a single nation in Europe today; they do
not give strength to the others.
 
President Wilson mentioned his beautiful fourteen points, but said:
"After all, if this endeavor of ours to arrive at peace fails,
we have our armaments to fall back upon." I want to reverse that
position, and I say: "Our armaments have failed already. Let us
now be in search of something new; let us try the force of love and
God which is truth." When we have got that, we shall want nothing
else.
 
 
By the Mahatma's training of thousands of true SATYAGRAHIS (those
who have taken the eleven rigorous vows mentioned in the first part
of this chapter), who in turn spread the message; by patiently
educating the Indian masses to understand the spiritual and
eventually material benefits of nonviolence; by arming his people
with nonviolent weapons--non-cooperation with injustice, the willingness
to endure indignities, prison, death itself rather than resort to
arms; by enlisting world sympathy through countless examples of
heroic martyrdom among SATYAGRAHIS, Gandhi has dramatically portrayed
the practical nature of nonviolence, its solemn power to settle
disputes without war.
 
Gandhi has already won through nonviolent means a greater number
of political concessions for his land than have ever been won by
any leader of any country except through bullets. Nonviolent methods
for eradication of all wrongs and evils have been strikingly applied
not only in the political arena but in the delicate and complicated
field of Indian social reform. Gandhi and his followers have removed
many longstanding feuds between Hindus and Mohammedans; hundreds
of thousands of Moslems look to the Mahatma as their leader.
The untouchables have found in him their fearless and triumphant
champion.  "If there be a rebirth in store for me," Gandhi wrote,
"I wish to be born a pariah in the midst of pariahs, because thereby
I would be able to render them more effective service."
 
The Mahatma is indeed a "great soul," but it was illiterate millions
who had the discernment to bestow the title. This gentle prophet
is honored in his own land. The lowly peasant has been able to rise
to Gandhi's high challenge. The Mahatma wholeheartedly believes in
the inherent nobility of man. The inevitable failures have never
disillusioned him. "Even if the opponent plays him false twenty times,"
he writes, "the SATYAGRAHI is ready to trust him the twenty-first
time, for an implicit trust in human nature is the very essence of
the creed." {FN44-18}
 
"Mahatmaji, you are an exceptional man. You must not expect the
world to act as you do." A critic once made this observation.
 
"It is curious how we delude ourselves, fancying that the body can
be improved, but that it is impossible to evoke the hidden powers
of the soul," Gandhi replied. "I am engaged in trying to show that
if I have any of those powers, I am as frail a mortal as any of
us and that I never had anything extraordinary about me nor have I
now. I am a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow
mortal. I own, however, that I have enough humility to confess
my errors and to retrace my steps. I own that I have an immovable
faith in God and His goodness, and an unconsumable passion for truth
and love. But is that not what every person has latent in him? If
we are to make progress, we must not repeat history but make new
history. We must add to the inheritance left by our ancestors. If we
may make new discoveries and inventions in the phenomenal world,
must we declare our bankruptcy in the spiritual domain? Is it
impossible to multiply the exceptions so as to make them the rule?
Must man always be brute first and man after, if at all?" {FN44-19}
 
Americans may well remember with pride the successful nonviolent
experiment of William Penn in founding his 17th century colony in
Pennsylvania. There were "no forts, no soldiers, no militia, even
no arms." Amidst the savage frontier wars and the butcheries that
went on between the new settlers and the Red Indians, the Quakers
of Pennsylvania alone remained unmolested. "Others were slain; others
were massacred; but they were safe. Not a Quaker woman suffered
assault; not a Quaker child was slain, not a Quaker man was tortured."
When the Quakers were finally forced to give up the government of
the state, "war broke out, and some Pennsylvanians were killed. But
only three Quakers were killed, three who had so far fallen from
their faith as to carry weapons of defence."
 
"Resort to force in the Great War (I) failed to bring tranquillity,"
Franklin D. Roosevelt has pointed out. "Victory and defeat were
alike sterile. That lesson the world should have learned."
 
"The more weapons of violence, the more misery to mankind," Lao-tzu
taught. "The triumph of violence ends in a festival of mourning."
 
"I am fighting for nothing less than world peace," Gandhi
has declared. "If the Indian movement is carried to success on a
nonviolent SATYAGRAHA basis, it will give a new meaning to patriotism
and, if I may say so in all humility, to life itself."
 
Before the West dismisses Gandhi's program as one of an impractical
dreamer, let it first reflect on a definition of SATYAGRAHA by the
Master of Galilee:
 
"Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and
a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil:
{FN44-20} but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn
to him the other also."
 
Gandhi's epoch has extended, with the beautiful precision of
cosmic timing, into a century already desolated and devastated by
two World Wars. A divine handwriting appears on the granite wall
of his life: a warning against the further shedding of blood among
brothers.
 
MAHATMA GANDHI'S HANDWRITING IN HINDI
 
[Illustration--see gandhi2.jpg]
 
Mahatma Gandhi visited my high school with yoga training at Ranchi.
He graciously wrote the above lines in the Ranchi guest-book. The
translation is: "This institution has deeply impressed my mind.
I cherish high hopes that this school will encourage the further
practical use of the spinning wheel."
 
(SIGNED) MOHANDAS GANDHI September 17, 1925
 
[Illustration--see gandhiflag.jpg]
 
A national flag for India was designed in 1921 by Gandhi. The
stripes are saffron, white and green; the CHARKA (spinning wheel)
in the center is dark blue.  "The CHARKA symbolizes energy,"
he wrote, "and reminds us that during the past eras of prosperity
in India's history, hand spinning and other domestic crafts were
prominent."
 
{FN44-1} His family name is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He never
refers to himself as "Mahatma."
 
{FN44-2} The literal translation from Sanskrit is "holding to
truth." SATYAGRAHA is the famous nonviolence movement led by Gandhi.
 
{FN44-3} False and alas! malicious reports were recently circulated
that Miss Slade has severed all her ties with Gandhi and forsaken
her vows. Miss Slade, the Mahatma's SATYAGRAHA disciple for twenty
years, issued a signed statement to the UNITED PRESS, dated Dec.
29, 1945, in which she explained that a series of baseless rumors
arose after she had departed, with Gandhi's blessings, for a small
site in northeastern India near the Himalayas, for the purpose of
founding there her now-flourishing KISAN ASHRAM (center for medical
and agricultural aid to peasant farmers). Mahatma Gandhi plans to
visit the new ashram during 1946.
 
{FN44-4} Miss Slade reminded me of another distinguished Western
woman, Miss Margaret Woodrow Wilson, eldest daughter of America's
great president. I met her in New York; she was intensely interested
in India. Later she went to Pondicherry, where she spent the last
five years of her life, happily pursuing a path of discipline at
the feet of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh. This sage never speaks; he silently
greets his disciples on three annual occasions only.
 
{FN44-5} For years in America I had been observing periods of
silence, to the consternation of callers and secretaries.
 
{FN44-6} Harmlessness; nonviolence; the foundation rock of Gandhi's
creed. He was born into a family of strict Jains, who revere AHIMSA
as the root-virtue. Jainism, a sect of Hinduism, was founded in the
6th century B.C. by Mahavira, a contemporary of Buddha. Mahavira
means "great hero"; may he look down the centuries on his heroic
son Gandhi!
 
{FN44-7} Hindi is the lingua franca for the whole of India. An
Indo-Aryan language based largely on Sanskrit roots, Hindi is the
chief vernacular of northern India. The main dialect of Western
Hindi is Hindustani, written both in the DEVANAGARI (Sanskrit)
characters and in Arabic characters. Its subdialect, Urdu, is spoken
by Moslems.
 
{FN44-8} Gandhi has described his life with a devastating candor
in THE STORY OF MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH (Ahmedabad: Navajivan
Press, 1927-29, 2 vol.) This autobiography has been summarized in
MAHATMA GANDHI, HIS OWN STORY, edited by C. F. Andrews, with an
introduction by John Haynes Holmes (New York: Macmillan Co., 1930).
 
Many autobiographies replete with famous names and colorful
events are almost completely silent on any phase of inner analysis
or development. One lays down each of these books with a certain
dissatisfaction, as though saying: "Here is a man who knew many
notable persons, but who never knew himself." This reaction is
impossible with Gandhi's autobiography; he exposes his faults and
subterfuges with an impersonal devotion to truth rare in annals of
any age.
 
{FN44-9} Kasturabai Gandhi died in imprisonment at Poona on February
22, 1944. The usually unemotional Gandhi wept silently. Shortly
after her admirers had suggested a Memorial Fund in her honor, 125
lacs of rupees (nearly four million dollars) poured in from all
over India.  Gandhi has arranged that the fund be used for village
welfare work among women and children. He reports his activities
in his English weekly, HARIJAN.
 
{FN44-10} I sent a shipment to Wardha, soon after my return to
America.  The plants, alas! died on the way, unable to withstand
the rigors of the long ocean transportation.
 
{FN44-11} Thoreau, Ruskin, and Mazzini are three other Western
writers whose sociological views Gandhi has studied carefully.
 
{FN44-12} The sacred scripture given to Persia about 1000 B.C. by
Zoroaster.
 
{FN44-13} The unique feature of Hinduism among the world religions
is that it derives not from a single great founder but from the
impersonal Vedic scriptures. Hinduism thus gives scope for worshipful
incorporation into its fold of prophets of all ages and all lands.
The Vedic scriptures regulate not only devotional practices but all
important social customs, in an effort to bring man's every action
into harmony with divine law.
 
{FN44-14} A comprehensive Sanskrit word for law; conformity to law
or natural righteousness; duty as inherent in the circumstances in
which a man finds himself at any given time. The scriptures define
DHARMA as "the natural universal laws whose observance enables man
to save himself from degradation and suffering."
 
{FN44-15} MATTHEW 7:21.
 
{FN44-16} MATTHEW 26:52.
 
{FN44-17} "Let not a man glory in this, that he love his country;
Let him rather glory in this, that he love his kind."-PERSIAN
PROVERB.
 
{FN44-18} "Then came Peter to him and said, Lord, how oft shall my
brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus
saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until
seventy times seven."-MATTHEW 18:21-22.
 
{FN44-19} Charles P. Steinmetz, the great electrical engineer, was
once asked by Mr. Roger W. Babson: "What line of research will see
the greatest development during the next fifty years?" "I think the
greatest discovery will be made along spiritual lines," Steinmetz
replied. "Here is a force which history clearly teaches has been
the greatest power in the development of men. Yet we have merely
been playing with it and have never seriously studied it as we
have the physical forces. Someday people will learn that material
things do not bring happiness and are of little use in making men
and women creative and powerful. Then the scientists of the world
will turn their laboratories over to the study of God and prayer
and the spiritual forces which as yet have hardly been scratched.
When this day comes, the world will see more advancement in one
generation than it has seen in the past four."
 
{FN44-20} That is, resist not evil with evil. (MATTHEW 5:38-39)
 
 
 
CHAPTER: 45
 
THE BENGALI "JOY-PERMEATED" MOTHER
 
"Sir, please do not leave India without a glimpse of Nirmala Devi.
Her sanctity is intense; she is known far and wide as Ananda Moyi Ma
(Joy-Permeated Mother)." My niece, Amiyo Bose, gazed at me earnestly.
 
"Of course! I want very much to see the woman saint." I added, "I
have read of her advanced state of God-realization. A little article
about her appeared years ago in EAST-WEST."
 
"I have met her," Amiyo went on. "She recently visited my own little
town of Jamshedpur. At the entreaty of a disciple, Ananda Moyi Ma
went to the home of a dying man. She stood by his bedside; as her
hand touched his forehead, his death-rattle ceased. The disease
vanished at once; to the man's glad astonishment, he was well."
 
A few days later I heard that the Blissful Mother was staying at
the home of a disciple in the Bhowanipur section of Calcutta. Mr.
Wright and I set out immediately from my father's Calcutta home. As
the Ford neared the Bhowanipur house, my companion and I observed
an unusual street scene.
 
Ananda Moyi Ma was standing in an open-topped automobile, blessing
a throng of about one hundred disciples. She was evidently on the
point of departure. Mr. Wright parked the Ford some distance away,
and accompanied me on foot toward the quiet assemblage. The woman
saint glanced in our direction; she alit from her car and walked
toward us.
 
"Father, you have come!" With these fervent words she put her arm
around my neck and her head on my shoulder. Mr. Wright, to whom I
had just remarked that I did not know the saint, was hugely enjoying
this extraordinary demonstration of welcome. The eyes of the one
hundred chelas were also fixed with some surprise on the affectionate
tableau.
 
I had instantly seen that the saint was in a high state of SAMADHI.
Utterly oblivious to her outward garb as a woman, she knew herself
as the changeless soul; from that plane she was joyously greeting
another devotee of God. She led me by the hand into her automobile.
 
"Ananda Moyi Ma, I am delaying your journey!" I protested.
 
"Father, I am meeting you for the first time in this life, after
ages!" she said. "Please do not leave yet."
 
We sat together in the rear seats of the car. The Blissful Mother
soon entered the immobile ecstatic state. Her beautiful eyes
glanced heavenward and, half-opened, became stilled, gazing into
the near-far inner Elysium. The disciples chanted gently: "Victory
to Mother Divine!"
 
I had found many men of God-realization in India, but never before
had I met such an exalted woman saint. Her gentle face was burnished
with the ineffable joy that had given her the name of Blissful
Mother. Long black tresses lay loosely behind her unveiled head. A
red dot of sandalwood paste on her forehead symbolized the spiritual
eye, ever open within her. Tiny face, tiny hands, tiny feet-a
contrast to her spiritual magnitude!
 
I put some questions to a near-by woman chela while Ananda Moyi Ma
remained entranced.
 
"The Blissful Mother travels widely in India; in many parts she has
hundreds of disciples," the chela told me. "Her courageous efforts
have brought about many desirable social reforms. Although a Brahmin,
the saint recognizes no caste distinctions. {FN45-1} A group of
us always travel with her, looking after her comforts. We have to
mother her; she takes no notice of her body. If no one gave her
food, she would not eat, or make any inquiries. Even when meals
are placed before her, she does not touch them. To prevent her
disappearance from this world, we disciples feed her with our own
hands. For days together she often stays in the divine trance,
scarcely breathing, her eyes unwinking. One of her chief disciples
is her husband. Many years ago, soon after their marriage, he took
the vow of silence."
 
The chela pointed to a broad-shouldered, fine-featured man with
long hair and hoary beard. He was standing quietly in the midst of
the gathering, his hands folded in a disciple's reverential attitude.
 
Refreshed by her dip in the Infinite, Ananda Moyi Ma was now focusing
her consciousness on the material world.
 
"Father, please tell me where you stay." Her voice was clear and
melodious.
 
"At present, in Calcutta or Ranchi; but soon I shall be returning
to America."
 
"America?"
 
"Yes. An Indian woman saint would be sincerely appreciated there
by spiritual seekers. Would you like to go?"
 
"If Father can take me, I will go."
 
This reply caused her near-by disciples to start in alarm.
 
"Twenty or more of us always travel with the Blissful Mother," one
of them told me firmly. "We could not live without her. Wherever
she goes, we must go."
 
Reluctantly I abandoned the plan, as possessing an impractical
feature of spontaneous enlargement!
 
"Please come at least to Ranchi, with your disciples," I said on
taking leave of the saint. "As a divine child yourself, you will
enjoy the little ones in my school."
 
"Whenever Father takes me, I will gladly go."
 
A short time later the Ranchi VIDYALAYA was in gala array for the
saint's promised visit. The youngsters looked forward to any day
of festivity-no lessons, hours of music, and a feast for the climax!
 
"Victory! Ananda Moyi Ma, ki jai!" This reiterated chant from
scores of enthusiastic little throats greeted the saint's party
as it entered the school gates. Showers of marigolds, tinkle of
cymbals, lusty blowing of conch shells and beat of the MRIDANGA
drum! The Blissful Mother wandered smilingly over the sunny VIDYALAYA
grounds, ever carrying within her the portable paradise.
 
"It is beautiful here," Ananda Moyi Ma said graciously as I led her
into the main building. She seated herself with a childlike smile
by my side. The closest of dear friends, she made one feel, yet an
aura of remoteness was ever around her-the paradoxical isolation
of Omnipresence.
 
"Please tell me something of your life."
 
"Father knows all about it; why repeat it?" She evidently felt that
the factual history of one short incarnation was beneath notice.
 
I laughed, gently repeating my question.
 
"Father, there is little to tell." She spread her graceful hands
in a deprecatory gesture. "My consciousness has never associated
itself with this temporary body. Before I came on this earth, Father,
'I was the same.' As a little girl, 'I was the same.' I grew into
womanhood, but still 'I was the same.' When the family in which
I had been born made arrangements to have this body married, 'I
was the same.' And when, passion-drunk, my husband came to me and
murmured endearing words, lightly touching my body, he received a
violent shock, as if struck by lightning, for even then 'I was the
same.'
 
"My husband knelt before me, folded his hands, and implored my
pardon.
 
"'Mother,' he said, 'because I have desecrated your bodily temple
by touching it with the thought of lust-not knowing that within it
dwelt not my wife but the Divine Mother-I take this solemn vow: I
shall be your disciple, a celibate follower, ever caring for you
in silence as a servant, never speaking to anyone again as long as
I live. May I thus atone for the sin I have today committed against
you, my guru.'
 
"Even when I quietly accepted this proposal of my husband's, 'I
was the same.' And, Father, in front of you now, 'I am the same.'
Ever afterward, though the dance of creation change around me in
the hall of eternity, 'I shall be the same.'"
 
Ananda Moyi Ma sank into a deep meditative state. Her form was
statue-still; she had fled to her ever-calling kingdom. The dark
pools of her eyes appeared lifeless and glassy. This expression
is often present when saints remove their consciousness from the
physical body, which is then hardly more than a piece of soulless
clay. We sat together for an hour in the ecstatic trance. She
returned to this world with a gay little laugh.
 
"Please, Ananda Moyi Ma," I said, "come with me to the garden. Mr.
Wright will take some pictures."
 
"Of course, Father. Your will is my will." Her glorious eyes retained
the unchanging divine luster as she posed for many photographs.
 
Time for the feast! Ananda Moyi Ma squatted on her blanket-seat,
a disciple at her elbow to feed her. Like an infant, the saint
obediently swallowed the food after the chela had brought it to
her lips. It was plain that the Blissful Mother did not recognize
any difference between curries and sweetmeats!
 
As dusk approached, the saint left with her party amidst a shower
of rose petals, her hands raised in blessing on the little lads.
Their faces shone with the affection she had effortlessly awakened.
 
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength:" Christ
has proclaimed, "this is the first commandment." {FN45-2}
 
Casting aside every inferior attachment, Ananda Moyi Ma offers her
sole allegiance to the Lord. Not by the hairsplitting distinctions
of scholars but by the sure logic of faith, the childlike saint has
solved the only problem in human life-establishment of unity with
God.  Man has forgotten this stark simplicity, now befogged by a
million issues. Refusing a monotheistic love to God, the nations
disguise their infidelity by punctilious respect before the outward
shrines of charity. These humanitarian gestures are virtuous, because
for a moment they divert man's attention from himself, but they do
not free him from his single responsibility in life, referred to
by Jesus as the first commandment. The uplifting obligation to love
God is assumed with man's first breath of an air freely bestowed
by his only Benefactor.
 
On one other occasion after her Ranchi visit I had opportunity to
see Ananda Moyi Ma. She stood among her disciples some months later
on the Serampore station platform, waiting for the train.
 
"Father, I am going to the Himalayas," she told me. "Generous
disciples have built me a hermitage in Dehra Dun."
 
As she boarded the train, I marveled to see that whether amidst a
crowd, on a train, feasting, or sitting in silence, her eyes never
looked away from God. Within me I still hear her voice, an echo of
measureless sweetness:
 
"Behold, now and always one with the Eternal, 'I am ever the same.'"
 
{FN45-1} I find some further facts of Ananda Moyi Ma's life, printed
in EAST-WEST. The saint was born in 1893 at Dacca in central Bengal.
Illiterate, she has yet stunned the intellectuals by her wisdom.
Her verses in Sanskrit have filled scholars with wonderment. She
has brought consolation to bereaved persons, and effected miraculous
cures, by her mere presence.
 
{FN45-2} MARK 12:30.
 
 
 
CHAPTER: 46
 
THE WOMAN YOGI WHO NEVER EATS
 
"Sir, whither are we bound this morning?" Mr. Wright was driving
the Ford; he took his eyes off the road long enough to gaze at me
with a questioning twinkle. From day to day he seldom knew what
part of Bengal he would be discovering next.
 
"God willing," I replied devoutly, "we are on our way to see an
eighth wonder of the world-a woman saint whose diet is thin air!"
 
"Repetition of wonders-after Therese Neumann." But Mr. Wright laughed
eagerly just the same; he even accelerated the speed of the car.
More extraordinary grist for his travel diary! Not one of an average
tourist, that!
 
The Ranchi school had just been left behind us; we had risen before
the sun. Besides my secretary and myself, three Bengali friends
were in the party. We drank in the exhilarating air, the natural
wine of the morning. Our driver guided the car warily among the
early peasants and the two-wheeled carts, slowly drawn by yoked,
hump-shouldered bullocks, inclined to dispute the road with a
honking interloper.
 
"Sir, we would like to know more of the fasting saint."
 
"Her name is Giri Bala," I informed my companions. "I first heard
about her years ago from a scholarly gentleman, Sthiti Lal Nundy.
He often came to the Gurpar Road home to tutor my brother Bishnu."
 
"'I know Giri Bala well,' Sthiti Babu told me. 'She employs a
certain yoga technique which enables her to live without eating. I
was her close neighbor in Nawabganj near Ichapur. {FN46-1} I made
it a point to watch her closely; never did I find evidence that
she was taking either food or drink. My interest finally mounted so
high that I approached the Maharaja of Burdwan {FN46-2} and asked
him to conduct an investigation. Astounded at the story, he invited
her to his palace.  She agreed to a test and lived for two months
locked up in a small section of his home. Later she returned for a
palace visit of twenty days; and then for a third test of fifteen
days. The Maharaja himself told me that these three rigorous
scrutinies had convinced him beyond doubt of her non-eating state.'
 
"This story of Sthiti Babu's has remained in my mind for over
twenty-five years," I concluded. "Sometimes in America I wondered
if the river of time would not swallow the YOGINI {FN46-3} before
I could meet her. She must be quite aged now. I do not even know
where, or if, she lives. But in a few hours we shall reach Purulia;
her brother has a home there."
 
By ten-thirty our little group was conversing with the brother,
Lambadar Dey, a lawyer of Purulia.
 
"Yes, my sister is living. She sometimes stays with me here, but at
present she is at our family home in Biur." Lambadar Babu glanced
doubtfully at the Ford. "I hardly think, Swamiji, that any automobile
has ever penetrated into the interior as far as Biur. It might be
best if you all resign yourselves to the ancient jolt of the bullock
cart!"
 
As one voice our party pledged loyalty to the Pride of Detroit.
 
"The Ford comes from America," I told the lawyer. "It would be a
shame to deprive it of an opportunity to get acquainted with the
heart of Bengal!"
 
"May Ganesh {FN46-4} go with you!" Lambadar Babu said, laughing.
He added courteously, "If you ever get there, I am sure Giri Bala
will be glad to see you. She is approaching her seventies, but
continues in excellent health."
 
"Please tell me, sir, if it is absolutely true that she eats
nothing?" I looked directly into his eyes, those telltale windows
of the mind.
 
[Illustration: GIRI BALA, This great woman yogi has not taken food
or drink since 1880. I am pictured with her, in 1936, at her home
in the isolated Bengal village of Biur. Her non-eating state has
been rigorously investigated by the Maharaja of Burdwan. She employs
a certain yoga technique to recharge her body with cosmic energy
from the ether, sun, and air.--see giribala.jpg]
 
"It is true." His gaze was open and honorable. "In more than five
decades I have never seen her eat a morsel. If the world suddenly
came to an end, I could not be more astonished than by the sight
of my sister's taking food!"
 
We chuckled together over the improbability of these two cosmic
events.
 
"Giri Bala has never sought an inaccessible solitude for her yoga
practices," Lambadar Babu went on. "She has lived her entire life
surrounded by her family and friends. They are all well accustomed
now to her strange state. Not one of them who would not be stupefied
if Giri Bala suddenly decided to eat anything! Sister is naturally
retiring, as befits a Hindu widow, but our little circle in Purulia
and in Biur all know that she is literally an 'exceptional' woman."
 
The brother's sincerity was manifest. Our little party thanked him
warmly and set out toward Biur. We stopped at a street shop for
curry and LUCHIS, attracting a swarm of urchins who gathered round
to watch Mr. Wright eating with his fingers in the simple Hindu
manner. {FN46-5} Hearty appetites caused us to fortify ourselves
against an afternoon which, unknown at the moment, was to prove
fairly laborious.
 
Our way now led east through sun-baked rice fields into the Burdwan
section of Bengal. On through roads lined with dense vegetation;
the songs of the MAYNAS and the stripe-throated BULBULS streamed
out from trees with huge, umbrellalike branches. A bullock cart
now and then, the RINI, RINI, MANJU, MANJU squeak of its axle and
iron-shod wooden wheels contrasting sharply in mind with the SWISH,
SWISH of auto tires over the aristocratic asphalt of the cities.
 
"Dick, halt!" My sudden request brought a jolting protest from the
Ford. "That overburdened mango tree is fairly shouting an invitation!"
 
The five of us dashed like children to the mango-strewn earth; the
tree had benevolently shed its fruits as they had ripened.
 
"Full many a mango is born to lie unseen," I paraphrased, "and
waste its sweetness on the stony ground."
 
"Nothing like this in America, Swamiji, eh?" laughed Sailesh
Mazumdar, one of my Bengali students.
 
"No," I admitted, covered with mango juice and contentment. "How
I have missed this fruit in the West! A Hindu's heaven without
mangoes is inconceivable!"
 
I picked up a rock and downed a proud beauty hidden on the highest
limb.
 
"Dick," I asked between bites of ambrosia, warm with the tropical
sun, "are all the cameras in the car?"
 
"Yes, sir; in the baggage compartment."
 
"If Giri Bala proves to be a true saint, I want to write about her
in the West. A Hindu YOGINI with such inspiring powers should not
live and die unknown-like most of these mangoes."
 
Half an hour later I was still strolling in the sylvan peace.
 
"Sir," Mr. Wright remarked, "we should reach Giri Bala before the
sun sets, to have enough light for photographs." He added with a
grin, "The Westerners are a skeptical lot; we can't expect them to
believe in the lady without any pictures!"
 
This bit of wisdom was indisputable; I turned my back on temptation
and reentered the car.
 
"You are right, Dick," I sighed as we sped along, "I sacrifice the
mango paradise on the altar of Western realism. Photographs we must
have!"
 
The road became more and more sickly: wrinkles of ruts, boils of
hardened clay, the sad infirmities of old age! Our group dismounted
occasionally to allow Mr. Wright to more easily maneuver the Ford,
which the four of us pushed from behind.
 
"Lambadar Babu spoke truly," Sailesh acknowledged. "The car is not
carrying us; we are carrying the car!"
 
Our climb-in, climb-out auto tedium was beguiled ever and anon by
the appearance of a village, each one a scene of quaint simplicity.
 
"Our way twisted and turned through groves of palms among ancient,
unspoiled villages nestling in the forest shade," Mr. Wright has
recorded in his travel diary, under date of May 5, 1936. "Very
fascinating are these clusters of thatched mud huts, decorated with
one of the names of God on the door; many small, naked children
innocently playing about, pausing to stare or run wildly from
this big, black, bullockless carriage tearing madly through their
village.  The women merely peep from the shadows, while the men
lazily loll beneath the trees along the roadside, curious beneath
their nonchalance. In one place, all the villagers were gaily
bathing in the large tank (in their garments, changing by draping
dry cloths around their bodies, dropping the wet ones). Women
bearing water to their homes, in huge brass jars.
 
"The road led us a merry chase over mount and ridge; we bounced and
tossed, dipped into small streams, detoured around an unfinished
causeway, slithered across dry, sandy river beds and finally, about
5:00 P.M., we were close to our destination, Biur. This minute
village in the interior of Bankura District, hidden in the protection
of dense foliage, is unapproachable by travelers during the rainy
season, when the streams are raging torrents and the roads serpentlike
spit the mud-venom.
 
"Asking for a guide among a group of worshipers on their way home
from a temple prayer (out in the lonely field), we were besieged by
a dozen scantily clad lads who clambered on the sides of the car,
eager to conduct us to Giri Bala.
 
"The road led toward a grove of date palms sheltering a group of
mud huts, but before we had reached it, the Ford was momentarily
tipped at a dangerous angle, tossed up and dropped down. The narrow
trail led around trees and tank, over ridges, into holes and deep
ruts. The car became anchored on a clump of bushes, then grounded
on a hillock, requiring a lift of earth clods; on we proceeded,
slowly and carefully; suddenly the way was stopped by a mass of
brush in the middle of the cart track, necessitating a detour down
a precipitous ledge into a dry tank, rescue from which demanded some
scraping, adzing, and shoveling. Again and again the road seemed
impassable, but the pilgrimage must go on; obliging lads fetched
spades and demolished the obstacles (shades of Ganesh!) while
hundreds of children and parents stared.
 
"Soon we were threading our way along the two ruts of antiquity,
women gazing wide-eyed from their hut doors, men trailing alongside
and behind us, children scampering to swell the procession. Ours
was perhaps the first auto to traverse these roads; the 'bullock
cart union' must be omnipotent here! What a sensation we created-a
group piloted by an American and pioneering in a snorting car
right into their hamlet fastness, invading the ancient privacy and
sanctity!
 
"Halting by a narrow lane we found ourselves within a hundred feet
of Giri Bala's ancestral home. We felt the thrill of fulfillment
after the long road struggle crowned by a rough finish. We approached
a large, two-storied building of brick and plaster, dominating the
surrounding adobe huts; the house was under the process of repair,
for around it was the characteristically tropical framework of
bamboos.
 
"With feverish anticipation and suppressed rejoicing we stood
before the open doors of the one blessed by the Lord's 'hungerless'
touch.  Constantly agape were the villagers, young and old, bare
and dressed, women aloof somewhat but inquisitive too, men and
boys unabashedly at our heels as they gazed on this unprecedented
spectacle.
 
"Soon a short figure came into view in the doorway-Giri Bala! She
was swathed in a cloth of dull, goldish silk; in typically Indian
fashion, she drew forward modestly and hesitatingly, peering
slightly from beneath the upper fold of her SWADESHI cloth. Her
eyes glistened like smouldering embers in the shadow of her head
piece; we were enamored by a most benevolent and kindly face, a face
of realization and understanding, free from the taint of earthly
attachment.
 
"Meekly she approached and silently assented to our snapping a
number of pictures with our 'still' and 'movie' cameras. {FN46-6}
Patiently and shyly she endured our photo techniques of posture
adjustment and light arrangement. Finally we had recorded for
posterity many photographs of the only woman in the world who is
known to have lived without food or drink for over fifty years.
(Therese Neumann, of course, has fasted since 1923.) Most motherly
was Giri Bala's expression as she stood before us, completely
covered in the loose-flowing cloth, nothing of her body visible
but her face with its downcast eyes, her hands, and her tiny feet.
A face of rare peace and innocent poise-a wide, childlike, quivering
lip, a feminine nose, narrow, sparkling eyes, and a wistful smile."
 
Mr. Wright's impression of Giri Bala was shared by myself; spirituality
enfolded her like her gently shining veil. She PRONAMED before me
in the customary gesture of greeting from a householder to a monk.
Her simple charm and quiet smile gave us a welcome beyond that of
honeyed oratory; forgotten was our difficult, dusty trip.
 
The little saint seated herself cross-legged on the verandah. Though
bearing the scars of age, she was not emaciated; her olive-colored
skin had remained clear and healthy in tone.
 
"Mother," I said in Bengali, "for over twenty-five years I have
thought eagerly of this very pilgrimage! I heard about your sacred
life from Sthiti Lal Nundy Babu."
 
She nodded in acknowledgment. "Yes, my good neighbor in Nawabganj."
 
"During those years I have crossed the oceans, but I never forgot
my early plan to someday see you. The sublime drama that you are
here playing so inconspicuously should be blazoned before a world
that has long forgotten the inner food divine."
 
The saint lifted her eyes for a minute, smiling with serene interest.
 
"Baba (honored father) knows best," she answered meekly.
 
I was happy that she had taken no offense; one never knows how
great yogis or yoginis will react to the thought of publicity. They
shun it, as a rule, wishing to pursue in silence the profound soul
research. An inner sanction comes to them when the proper time
arrives to display their lives openly for the benefit of seeking
minds.
 
"Mother," I went on, "please forgive me, then, for burdening you
with many questions. Kindly answer only those that please you; I
shall understand your silence, also."
 
She spread her hands in a gracious gesture. "I am glad to reply,
insofar as an insignificant person like myself can give satisfactory
answers."
 
"Oh, no, not insignificant!" I protested sincerely. "You are a
great soul."
 
"I am the humble servant of all." She added quaintly, "I love to
cook and feed people."
 
A strange pastime, I thought, for a non-eating saint!
 
"Tell me, Mother, from your own lips-do you live without food?"
 
"That is true." She was silent for a few moments; her next remark
showed that she had been struggling with mental arithmetic. "From
the age of twelve years four months down to my present age of
sixty-eight--a period of over fifty-six years--I have not eaten
food or taken liquids."
 
"Are you never tempted to eat?"
 
"If I felt a craving for food, I would have to eat." Simply yet
regally she stated this axiomatic truth, one known too well by a
world revolving around three meals a day!
 
"But you do eat something!" My tone held a note of remonstrance.
 
"Of course!" She smiled in swift understanding.
 
"Your nourishment derives from the finer energies of the air and
sunlight, {FN46-7} and from the cosmic power which recharges your
body through the medulla oblongata."
 
"Baba knows." Again she acquiesced, her manner soothing and
unemphatic.
 
"Mother, please tell me about your early life. It holds a deep
interest for all of India, and even for our brothers and sisters
beyond the seas."
 
Giri Bala put aside her habitual reserve, relaxing into a conversational
mood.
 
"So be it." Her voice was low and firm. "I was born in these forest
regions. My childhood was unremarkable save that I was possessed
by an insatiable appetite. I had been betrothed in early years.
 
"'Child,' my mother often warned me, 'try to control your greed.
When the time comes for you to live among strangers in your husband's
family, what will they think of you if your days are spent in
nothing but eating?'
 
"The calamity she had foreseen came to pass. I was only twelve
when I joined my husband's people in Nawabganj. My mother-in-law
shamed me morning, noon, and night about my gluttonous habits.
Her scoldings were a blessing in disguise, however; they roused my
dormant spiritual tendencies. One morning her ridicule was merciless.
 
"'I shall soon prove to you,' I said, stung to the quick, 'that I
shall never touch food again as long as I live.'
 
"My mother-in-law laughed in derision. 'So!' she said, 'how can
you live without eating, when you cannot live without overeating?'
 
"This remark was unanswerable! Yet an iron resolution scaffolded
my spirit. In a secluded spot I sought my Heavenly Father.
 
"'Lord,' I prayed incessantly, 'please send me a guru, one who can
teach me to live by Thy light and not by food.'
 
"A divine ecstasy fell over me. Led by a beatific spell, I set out
for the Nawabganj GHAT on the Ganges. On the way I encountered the
priest of my husband's family.
 
"'Venerable sir,' I said trustingly, 'kindly tell me how to live
without eating.'
 
"He stared at me without reply. Finally he spoke in a consoling
manner. 'Child,' he said, 'come to the temple this evening; I will
conduct a special VEDIC ceremony for you.'
 
"This vague answer was not the one I was seeking; I continued toward
the GHAT. The morning sun pierced the waters; I purified myself in
the Ganges, as though for a sacred initiation. As I left the river
bank, my wet cloth around me, in the broad glare of day my master
materialized himself before me!
 
"'Dear little one,' he said in a voice of loving compassion, 'I
am the guru sent here by God to fulfill your urgent prayer. He was
deeply touched by its very unusual nature! From today you shall
live by the astral light, your bodily atoms fed from the infinite
current.'"
 
Giri Bala fell into silence. I took Mr. Wright's pencil and pad
and translated into English a few items for his information.
 
The saint resumed the tale, her gentle voice barely audible. "The
GHAT was deserted, but my guru cast round us an aura of guarding
light, that no stray bathers later disturb us. He initiated me
into a KRIA technique which frees the body from dependence on the
gross food of mortals. The technique includes the use of a certain
MANTRA {FN46-8} and a breathing exercise more difficult than the
average person could perform. No medicine or magic is involved;
nothing beyond the KRIA."
 
In the manner of the American newspaper reporter, who had unknowingly
taught me his procedure, I questioned Giri Bala on many matters
which I thought would be of interest to the world. She gave me,
bit by bit, the following information:
 
"I have never had any children; many years ago I became a widow.
I sleep very little, as sleep and waking are the same to me. I
meditate at night, attending to my domestic duties in the daytime. I
slightly feel the change in climate from season to season. I have
never been sick or experienced any disease. I feel only slight
pain when accidentally injured. I have no bodily excretions. I
can control my heart and breathing. I often see my guru as well as
other great souls, in vision."
 
"Mother," I asked, "why don't you teach others the method of living
without food?"
 
My ambitious hopes for the world's starving millions were nipped
in the bud.
 
"No." She shook her head. "I was strictly commanded by my guru
not to divulge the secret. It is not his wish to tamper with God's
drama of creation. The farmers would not thank me if I taught
many people to live without eating! The luscious fruits would lie
uselessly on the ground. It appears that misery, starvation, and
disease are whips of our karma which ultimately drive us to seek
the true meaning of life."
 
"Mother," I said slowly, "what is the use of your having been
singled out to live without eating?"
 
"To prove that man is Spirit." Her face lit with wisdom. "To
demonstrate that by divine advancement he can gradually learn to
live by the Eternal Light and not by food."
 
The saint sank into a deep meditative state. Her gaze was directed
inward; the gentle depths of her eyes became expressionless. She
gave a certain sigh, the prelude to the ecstatic breathless trance.
For a time she had fled to the questionless realm, the heaven of
inner joy.
 
The tropical darkness had fallen. The light of a small kerosene
lamp flickered fitfully over the faces of a score of villagers
squatting silently in the shadows. The darting glowworms and distant
oil lanterns of the huts wove bright eerie patterns into the velvet
night.  It was the painful hour of parting; a slow, tedious journey
lay before our little party.
 
"Giri Bala," I said as the saint opened her eyes, "please give me
a keepsake-a strip of one of your SARIS."
 
She soon returned with a piece of Benares silk, extending it in
her hand as she suddenly prostrated herself on the ground.
 
"Mother," I said reverently, "rather let me touch your own blessed
feet!"
 
{FN46-1} In northern Bengal.
 
{FN46-2} H. H. Sir Bijay Chand Mahtab, now dead. His family doubtless
possesses some record of the Maharaja's three investigations of
Giri Bala.
 
{FN46-3} Woman yogi.
 
{FN46-4} "Remover of Obstacles," the god of good fortune.
 
{FN46-5} Sri Yukteswar used to say: "The Lord has given us the fruits
of the good earth. We like to see our food, to smell it, to taste
it--the Hindu likes also to touch it!" One does not mind HEARING
it, either, if no one else is present at the meal!
 
{FN46-6} Mr. Wright also took moving pictures of Sri Yukteswar
during his last Winter Solstice Festival in Serampore.
 
{FN46-7} "What we eat is radiation; our food is so much quanta
of energy," Dr. George W. Crile of Cleveland told a gathering of
medical men on May 17, 1933 in Memphis. "This all-important radiation,
which releases electrical currents for the body's electrical circuit,
the nervous system, is given to food by the sun's rays. Atoms, Dr.
Crile says, are solar systems. Atoms are the vehicles that are
filled with solar radiance as so many coiled springs. These countless
atomfuls of energy are taken in as food. Once in the human body,
these tense vehicles, the atoms, are discharged in the body's
protoplasm, the radiance furnishing new chemical energy, new
electrical currents.  'Your body is made up of such atoms,' Dr.
Crile said. 'They are your muscles, brains, and sensory organs,
such as the eyes and ears.'"
 
Someday scientists will discover how man can live directly on solar
energy. "Chlorophyll is the only substance known in nature that
somehow possesses the power to act as a 'sunlight trap,'" William
L.  Laurence writes in the NEW YORK TIMES. "It 'catches' the energy
of sunlight and stores it in the plant. Without this no life could
exist.  We obtain the energy we need for living from the solar
energy stored in the plant-food we eat or in the flesh of the
animals that eat the plants. The energy we obtain from coal or oil
is solar energy trapped by the chlorophyll in plant life millions
of years ago. We live by the sun through the agency of chlorophyll."
 
{FN46-8} Potent vibratory chant. The literal translation of Sanskrit
MANTRA is "instrument of thought," signifying the ideal, inaudible
sounds which represent one aspect of creation; when vocalized as
syllables, a MANTRA constitutes a universal terminology. The infinite
powers of sound derive from AUM, the "Word" or creative hum of the
Cosmic Motor.
 
 
 
CHAPTER: 47
 
I RETURN TO THE WEST
 
"I have given many yoga lessons in India and America; but I must
confess that, as a Hindu, I am unusually happy to be conducting a
class for English students."
 
My London class members laughed appreciatively; no political turmoils
ever disturbed our yoga peace.
 
India was now a hallowed memory. It is September, 1936; I am
in England to fulfill a promise, given sixteen months earlier, to
lecture again in London.
 
England, too, is receptive to the timeless yoga message. Reporters
and newsreel cameramen swarmed over my quarters at Grosvenor House.
The British National Council of the World Fellowship of Faiths
organized a meeting on September 29th at Whitefield's Congregational
Church where I addressed the audience on the weighty subject of
"How Faith in Fellowship may Save Civilization." The eight o'clock
lectures at Caxton Hall attracted such crowds that on two nights
the overflow waited in Windsor House auditorium for my second talk
at nine-thirty.  Yoga classes during the following weeks grew so
large that Mr. Wright was obliged to arrange a transfer to another
hall.
 
The English tenacity has admirable expression in a spiritual
relationship. The London yoga students loyally organized themselves,
after my departure, into a Self-Realization Fellowship center,
holding their meditation meetings weekly throughout the bitter war
years.
 
Unforgettable weeks in England; days of sight-seeing in London,
then over the beautiful countryside. Mr. Wright and I summoned the
trusty Ford to visit the birthplaces and tombs of the great poets
and heroes of British history.
 
Our little party sailed from Southampton for America in late October
on the BREMEN. The majestic Statue of Liberty in New York harbor
brought a joyous emotional gulp not only to the throats of Miss
Bletch and Mr. Wright, but to my own.
 
The Ford, a bit battered from struggles with ancient soils, was
still puissant; it now took in its stride the transcontinental trip
to California. In late 1936, lo! Mount Washington.
 
The year-end holidays are celebrated annually at the Los Angeles
center with an eight-hour group meditation on December 24th
(Spiritual Christmas), followed the next day by a banquet (Social
Christmas). The festivities this year were augmented by the presence
of dear friends and students from distant cities who had arrived
to welcome home the three world travelers.
 
The Christmas Day feast included delicacies brought fifteen thousand
miles for this glad occasion: GUCCHI mushrooms from Kashmir, canned
RASAGULLA and mango pulp, PAPAR biscuits, and an oil of the Indian
KEORA flower which flavored our ice cream. The evening found us
grouped around a huge sparkling Christmas tree, the near-by fireplace
crackling with logs of aromatic cypress.
 
Gift-time! Presents from the earth's far corners-Palestine, Egypt,
India, England, France, Italy. How laboriously had Mr. Wright
counted the trunks at each foreign junction, that no pilfering hand
receive the treasures intended for loved ones in America! Plaques
of the sacred olive tree from the Holy Land, delicate laces and
embroideries from Belgium and Holland, Persian carpets, finely
woven Kashmiri shawls, everlastingly fragrant sandalwood trays from
Mysore, Shiva "bull's eye" stones from Central Provinces, old Indian
coins of dynasties long fled, bejeweled vases and cups, miniatures,
tapestries, temple incense and perfumes, SWADESHI cotton prints,
lacquer work, Mysore ivory carvings, Persian slippers with their
inquisitive long toe, quaint old illuminated manuscripts, velvets,
brocades, Gandhi caps, potteries, tiles, brasswork, prayer rugs-booty
of three continents!
 
One by one I distributed the gaily wrapped packages from the immense
pile under the tree.
 
"Sister Gyanamata!" I handed a long box to the saintly American
lady of sweet visage and deep realization who, during my absence,
had been in charge at Mt. Washington. From the paper tissues she
lifted a SARI of golden Benares silk.
 
"Thank you, sir; it brings the pageant of India before my eyes."
 
"Mr. Dickinson!" The next parcel contained a gift which I had
bought in a Calcutta bazaar. "Mr. Dickinson will like this," I had
thought at the time. A dearly beloved disciple, Mr. Dickinson had
been present at every Christmas festivity since the 1925 founding
of Mt. Washington.  At this eleventh annual celebration, he was
standing before me, untying the ribbons of his square little package.
 
"The silver cup!" Struggling with emotion, he stared at the present,
a tall drinking cup. He seated himself some distance away, apparently
in a daze. I smiled at him affectionately before resuming my role
as Santa Claus.
 
The ejaculatory evening closed with a prayer to the Giver of all
gifts; then a group singing of Christmas carols.
 
Mr. Dickinson and I were chatting together sometime later.
 
"Sir," he said, "please let me thank you now for the silver cup.
I could not find any words on Christmas night."
 
"I brought the gift especially for you."
 
"For forty-three years I have been waiting for that silver cup! It
is a long story, one I have kept hidden within me." Mr. Dickinson
looked at me shyly. "The beginning was dramatic: I was drowning.
My older brother had playfully pushed me into a fifteen-foot pool
in a small town in Nebraska. I was only five years old then. As I
was about to sink for the second time under the water, a dazzling
multicolored light appeared, filling all space. In the midst was
the figure of a man with tranquil eyes and a reassuring smile.
My body was sinking for the third time when one of my brother's
companions bent a tall slender willow tree in such a low dip that
I could grasp it with my desperate fingers. The boys lifted me to
the bank and successfully gave me first-aid treatment.
 
"Twelve years later, a youth of seventeen, I visited Chicago with
my mother. It was 1893; the great World Parliament of Religions
was in session. Mother and I were walking down a main street, when
again I saw the mighty flash of light. A few paces away, strolling
leisurely along, was the same man I had seen years before in vision.
He approached a large auditorium and vanished within the door.
 
[Illustration: Mr. E. E. Dickinson of Los Angeles; he sought a
silver cup--see dickinson.jpg]
 
[Illustration: Sri Yukteswar and myself in Calcutta, 1935. He is
carrying the gift umbrella-cane--see gurus.jpg]
 
[Illustration:  A group of Ranchi students and teachers pose with
the venerable Maharaja of Kasimbazar (at center, in white). In 1918
he gave his Kasimbazar Palace and twenty-five acres in Ranchi as
a permanent site for my yoga school for boys.--see teachers.jpg]
 
 
"'Mother,' I cried, 'that was the man who appeared at the time I
was drowning!'
 
"She and I hastened into the building; the man was seated on a
lecture platform. We soon learned that he was Swami Vivekananda of
India. {FN47-1} After he had given a soul-stirring talk, I went
forward to meet him. He smiled on me graciously, as though we
were old friends. I was so young that I did not know how to give
expression to my feelings, but in my heart I was hoping that he
would offer to be my teacher. He read my thought.
 
"'No, my son, I am not your guru.' Vivekananda gazed with his
beautiful, piercing eyes deep into my own. 'Your teacher will come
later. He will give you a silver cup.' After a little pause, he
added, smiling, 'He will pour out to you more blessings than you
are now able to hold.'
 
"I left Chicago in a few days," Mr. Dickinson went on, "and never
saw the great Vivekananda again. But every word he had uttered
was indelibly written on my inmost consciousness. Years passed; no
teacher appeared. One night in 1925 I prayed deeply that the Lord
would send me my guru. A few hours later, I was awakened from sleep
by soft strains of melody. A band of celestial beings, carrying
flutes and other instruments, came before my view. After filling
the air with glorious music, the angels slowly vanished.
 
"The next evening I attended, for the first time, one of your lectures
here in Los Angeles, and knew then that my prayer had been granted."
 
We smiled at each other in silence.
 
"For eleven years now I have been your KRIYA YOGA disciple," Mr.
Dickinson continued. "Sometimes I wondered about the silver cup;
I had almost persuaded myself that Vivekananda's words were only
metaphorical. But on Christmas night, as you handed me the square
box by the tree, I saw, for the third time in my life, the same
dazzling flash of light. In another minute I was gazing on my
guru's gift which Vivekananda had foreseen for me forty-three years
earlier-a silver cup!"
 
{FN47-1} The chief disciple of the Christlike master Sri Ramakrishna.
 
 
 
CHAPTER: 48
 
AT ENCINITAS IN CALIFORNIA
 
"A surprise, sir! During your absence abroad we have had this
Encinitas hermitage built; it is a 'welcome-home' gift!" Sister
Gyanamata smilingly led me through a gate and up a tree-shaded
walk.
 
I saw a building jutting out like a great white ocean liner toward
the blue brine. First speechlessly, then with "Oh's!" and "Ah's!",
finally with man's insufficient vocabulary of joy and gratitude,
I examined the ashram-sixteen unusually large rooms, each one
charmingly appointed.
 
The stately central hall, with immense ceiling-high windows, looks
out on a united altar of grass, ocean, sky-a symphony in emerald,
opal, sapphire. A mantle over the hall's huge fireplace holds the
framed likeness of Lahiri Mahasaya, smiling his blessing over this
far Pacific heaven.
 
Directly below the hall, built into the very bluff, two solitary
meditation caves confront the infinities of sky and sea. Verandahs,
sun-bathing nooks, acres of orchard, a eucalypti grove, flagstone
paths leading through roses and lilies to quiet arbors, a long
flight of stairs ending on an isolated beach and the vast waters!
Was dream ever more concrete?
 
"May the good and heroic and bountiful souls of the saints come
here," reads "A Prayer for a Dwelling," from the ZEND-AVESTA,
fastened on one of the hermitage doors, "and may they go hand in
hand with us, giving the healing virtues of their blessed gifts as
widespread as the earth, as far-flung as the rivers, as high-reaching
as the sun, for the furtherance of better men, for the increase of
abundance and glory.
 
"May obedience conquer disobedience within this house; may peace
triumph here over discord; free-hearted giving over avarice, truthful
speech over deceit, reverence over contempt. That our minds be
delighted, and our souls uplifted, let our bodies be glorified as
well; and O Light Divine, may we see Thee, and may we, approaching,
come round about Thee, and attain unto Thine entire companionship!"
 
[Illustration: Encinitas, California, overlooking the Pacific.
Main building and part of the grounds of the Self-Realization
Fellowship--see encinitas.jpg]
 
This Self-Realization Fellowship ashram had been made possible through
the generosity of a few American disciples, American businessmen
of endless responsibilities who yet find time daily for their KRIYA
YOGA.  Not a word of the hermitage construction had been allowed to
reach me during my stay in India and Europe. Astonishment, delight!
 
During my earlier years in America I had combed the coast of
California in quest of a small site for a seaside ashram; whenever I
had found a suitable location, some obstacle had invariably arisen
to thwart me. Gazing now over the broad acres of Encinitas, {FN48-1}
humbly I saw the effortless fulfillment of Sri Yukteswar's long-ago
prophecy: "a hermitage by the ocean."
 
A few months later, Easter of 1937, I conducted on the smooth lawns
at Encinitas the first of many Sunrise Services. Like the magi of
old, several hundred students gazed in devotional awe at the daily
miracle, the early solar fire rite in the eastern sky. To the west
lay the inexhaustible Pacific, booming its solemn praise; in the
distance, a tiny white sailing boat, and the lonely flight of a
seagull. "Christ, thou art risen!" Not alone with the vernal sun,
but in the eternal dawn of Spirit!
 
Many happy months sped by; in the peace of perfect beauty I was
able to complete at the hermitage a long-projected work, COSMIC
CHANTS. I set to English words and Western musical notation about
forty songs, some original, others my adaptations of ancient
melodies. Included were the Shankara chant, "No Birth, No Death";
two favorites of Sri Yukteswar's: "Wake, Yet Wake, O my Saint!" and
"Desire, my Great Enemy"; the hoary Sanskrit "Hymn to Brahma"; old
Bengali songs, "What Lightning Flash!" and "They Have Heard Thy Name";
Tagore's "Who is in my Temple?"; and a number of my compositions:
"I Will be Thine Always," "In the Land Beyond my Dreams," "Come
Out of the Silent Sky," "Listen to my Soul Call," "In the Temple
of Silence," and "Thou Art my Life."
 
For a preface to the songbook I recounted my first outstanding
experience with the receptivity of Westerners to the quaintly
devotional airs of the East. The occasion had been a public lecture;
the time, April 18, 1926; the place, Carnegie Hall in New York.
 
"Mr. Hunsicker," I had confided to an American student, "I am planning
to ask the audience to sing an ancient Hindu chant, 'O God Beautiful!'"
 
"Sir," Mr. Hunsicker had protested, "these Oriental songs are alien
to American understanding. What a shame if the lecture were to be
marred by a commentary of overripe tomatoes!"
 
I had laughingly disagreed. "Music is a universal language.
Americans will not fail to feel the soul-aspiration in this lofty
chant." {FN48-2}
 
During the lecture Mr. Hunsicker had sat behind me on the platform,
probably fearing for my safety. His doubts were groundless; not
only had there been an absence of unwelcome vegetables, but for
one hour and twenty-five minutes the strains of "O God Beautiful!"
had sounded uninterruptedly from three thousand throats. Blase' no
longer, dear New Yorkers; your hearts had soared out in a simple
paean of rejoicing!  Divine healings had taken place that evening
among the devotees chanting with love the Lord's blessed name.
 
The secluded life of a literary minstrel was not my role for long.
Soon I was dividing every fortnight between Los Angeles and Encinitas.
Sunday services, classes, lectures before clubs and colleges,
interviews with students, ceaseless streams of correspondence, articles
for EAST-WEST, direction of activities in India and numerous small
centers in American cities. Much time was given, also, to the
arrangement of KRIYA and other Self-Realization Fellowship teachings
into a series of studies for the distant yoga seekers whose zeal
recognized no limitation of space.
 
Joyous dedication of a Self-Realization Church of All Religions took
place in 1938 at Washington, D.C. Set amidst landscaped grounds,
the stately church stands in a section of the city aptly called
"Friendship Heights." The Washington leader is Swami Premananda,
educated at the Ranchi school and Calcutta University. I had summoned
him in 1928 to assume leadership of the Washington Self-Realization
Fellowship center.
 
"Premananda," I told him during a visit to his new temple, "this
Eastern headquarters is a memorial in stone to your tireless
devotion.  Here in the nation's capital you have held aloft the
light of Lahiri Mahasaya's ideals."
 
Premananda accompanied me from Washington for a brief visit to
the Self-Realization Fellowship center in Boston. What joy to see
again the KRIYA YOGA band who had remained steadfast since 1920!
The Boston leader, Dr. M. W. Lewis, lodged my companion and myself
in a modern, artistically decorated suite.
 
"Sir," Dr. Lewis said to me, smiling, "during your early years in
America you stayed in this city in a single room, without bath. I
wanted you to know that Boston possesses some luxurious apartments!"
 
The shadows of approaching carnage were lengthening over the world;
already the acute ear might hear the frightful drums of war. During
interviews with thousands in California, and through a world-wide
correspondence, I found that men and women were deeply searching
their hearts; the tragic outer insecurity had emphasized need for
the Eternal Anchorage.
 
"We have indeed learned the value of meditation," the leader of the
London Self-Realization Fellowship center wrote me in 1941, "and
know that nothing can disturb our inner peace. In the last few weeks
during the meetings we have heard air-raid warnings and listened
to the explosion of delayed-action bombs, but our students still
gather and thoroughly enjoy our beautiful service."
 
Another letter reached me from war-torn England just before America
entered the conflict. In nobly pathetic words, Dr. L. Cranmer Byng,
noted editor of THE WISDOM OF THE EAST SERIES, wrote:
 
"When I read EAST-WEST I realized how far apart we seemed to be,
apparently living in two different worlds. Beauty, order, calm,
and peace come to me from Los Angeles, sailing into port as a
vessel laden with the blessings and comfort of the Holy Grail to
a beleaguered city.
 
"I see as in a dream your palm tree grove, and the temple at
Encinitas with its ocean stretches and mountain views, and above
all its fellowship of spiritually minded men and women, a community
comprehended in unity, absorbed in creative work, and replenished
in contemplation. It is the world of my own vision, in
the making of which I hoped to bear my little part, and now . . .
 
"Perhaps in the body I shall never reach your golden shores nor
worship in your temple. But it is something and more, to have had
the vision and know that in the midst of war there is still a peace
that abides in your harbors and among your hills. Greetings to all
the Fellowship from a common soldier, written on the watchtower
waiting for the dawn."
 
The war years brought a spiritual awakening among men whose diversions
had never before included a study of the New Testament. One sweet
distillment from the bitter herbs of war! To satisfy a growing
need, an inspiring little Self-Realization Church of All Religions
was built and dedicated in 1942 at Hollywood. The site faces Olive
Hill and the distant Los Angeles Planetarium. The church, finished
in blue, white, and gold, is reflected amidst the water hyacinths
in a large pool. The gardens are gay with flowers, a few startled
stone deer, a stained-glass pergola, and a quaint wishing well.
Thrown in with the pennies and the kaleidoscopic wishes of man
has been many a pure aspiration for the sole treasure of Spirit! A
universal benignity flows from small niches with statues of Lahiri
Mahasaya and Sri Yukteswar, and of Krishna, Buddha, Confucius, St.
Francis, and a beautiful mother-of-pearl reproduction of Christ at
the Last Supper.
 
Another Self-Realization Church of All Religions was founded in
1943 at San Diego. A quiet hilltop temple, it stands in a sloping
valley of eucalypti, overlooking sparkling San Diego Bay.
 
Sitting one evening in this tranquil haven, I was pouring out my
heart in song. Under my fingers was the sweet-toned organ of the
church, on my lips the yearning plaint of an ancient Bengali devotee
who had searched for eternal solace:
 
  In this world, Mother, none can love me;
  In this world they do not know love divine.
  Where is there pure loving love?
  Where is there truly loving Thee?
  There my heart longs to be.
 
My companion in the chapel, Dr. Lloyd Kennell, the San Diego center
leader, was smiling a little at the words of the song.
 
"Tell me truly, Paramhansaji, has it been worth it?" He gazed at
me with an earnest sincerity. I understood his laconic question:
"Have you been happy in America? What about the disillusionments,
the heartaches, the center leaders who could not lead, the students
who could not be taught?"
 
"Blessed is the man whom the Lord doth test, Doctor! He has remembered
now and then to put a burden on me!" I thought, then, of all the
faithful ones, of the love and devotion and understanding that
lay in the heart of America. With slow emphasis I went on, "But my
answer is: Yes, a thousand times yes! It has been worth-while; it
has been a constant inspiration, more than ever I dreamed, to see
West and East brought closer in the only lasting bond, the spiritual!"
 
Silently I added a prayer: "May Babaji and Sri Yukteswarji feel
that I have done my part, not disappointing the high hope in which
they sent me forth."
 
I turned again to the organ; this time my song was tinged with a
martial valor:
 
  The grinding wheel of Time doth mar
  Full many a life of moon and star
  And many a brightly smiling morn--
  But still my soul is marching on!
 
  Darkness, death, and failures vied;
  To block my path they fiercely tried;
  My fight with jealous Nature's strong--
  But still my soul is marching on!
 
New Year's week of 1945 found me at work in my Encinitas study,
revising the manuscript of this book.
 
"Paramhansaji, please come outdoors." Dr. Lewis, on a visit from
Boston, smiled at me pleadingly from outside my window. Soon we
were strolling in the sunshine. My companion pointed to new towers
in process of construction along the edge of the Fellowship property
adjoining the coast highway.
 
"Sir, I see many improvements here since my last visit." Dr. Lewis
comes twice annually from Boston to Encinitas.
 
"Yes, Doctor, a project I have long considered is beginning to
take definite form. In these beautiful surroundings I have started
a miniature world colony. Brotherhood is an ideal better understood
by example than precept! A small harmonious group here may inspire
other ideal communities over the earth."
 
"A splendid idea, sir! The colony will surely be a success if
everyone sincerely does his part!"
 
"'World' is a large term, but man must enlarge his allegiance,
considering himself in the light of a world citizen," I continued.
"A person who truly feels: 'The world is my homeland; it is my
America, my India, my Philippines, my England, my Africa,' will
never lack scope for a useful and happy life. His natural local pride
will know limitless expansion; he will be in touch with creative
universal currents."
 
Dr. Lewis and I halted above the lotus pool near the hermitage.
Below us lay the illimitable Pacific.
 
"These same waters break equally on the coasts of West and East,
in California and China." My companion threw a little stone into
the first of the oceanic seventy million square miles. "Encinitas
is a symbolic spot for a world colony."
 
"That is true, Doctor. We shall arrange here for many conferences
and Congresses of Religion, inviting delegates from all lands. Flags
of the nations will hang in our halls. Diminutive temples will be
built over the grounds, dedicated to the world's principal religions.
 
"As soon as possible," I went on, "I plan to open a Yoga Institute
here. The blessed role of KRIYA YOGA in the West has hardly more
than just begun. May all men come to know that there is a definite,
scientific technique of self-realization for the overcoming of all
human misery!"
 
[Illustration: Speakers at a 1945 Interracial Meeting in San Francisco
during the convening of the Peace Conference. (Left to right) Dr.
Maneck Anklesaria, John Cohee, myself, Hugh E. MacBeth, Vince M.
Townsend, Jr., Richard B. Moore--see sanfr.jpg]
 
[Illustration: The Self-Realization Church of All Religions in
Washington, D.C., whose leader, Swami Premananda, is here pictured
with me--see premananda.jpg ]
 
[Illustration: My venerable father, seated in the tranquil lotus
posture, Calcutta, 1936--see father2.jpg]
 
Far into the night my dear friend-the first KRIYA YOGI
in America--discussed with me the need for world colonies founded
on a spiritual basis. The ills attributed to an anthropomorphic
abstraction called "society" may be laid more realistically at the
door of Everyman.  Utopia must spring in the private bosom before
it can flower in civic virtue. Man is a soul, not an institution;
his inner reforms alone can lend permanence to outer ones. By stress
on spiritual values, self-realization, a colony exemplifying world
brotherhood is empowered to send inspiring vibrations far beyond
its locale.
 
August 15, 1945, close of Global War II! End of a world; dawn of
an enigmatic Atomic Age! The hermitage residents gathered in the
main hall for a prayer of thanksgiving. "Heavenly Father, may never
it be again! Thy children go henceforth as brothers!"
 
Gone was the tension of war years; our spirits purred in the sun
of peace. I gazed happily at each of my American comrades.
 
"Lord," I thought gratefully, "Thou hast given this monk a large
family!"
 
{FN48-1} A small town on Coast Highway 101, Encinitas is 100 miles
south of Los Angeles, and 25 miles north of San Diego.
 
{FN48-2} I translate here the words of Guru Nanak's song:
 
  O God beautiful! O God beautiful!
  In the forest, Thou art green,
  In the mountain, Thou art high,
  In the river, Thou art restless,
  In the ocean, Thou art grave!
  To the serviceful, Thou art service,
  To the lover, Thou art love,
  To the sorrowful, Thou art sympathy,
  To the yogi, Thou art bliss!
  O God beautiful! O God beautiful!
  At Thy feet, O I do bow!
 
 
 
 
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