Autobiography of a Yogi
used in scissors and machinery, are subject to fatigue, and regain
efficiency by periodic rest. The life-pulse in metals is seriously
harmed or even extinguished through the application of electric
currents or heavy pressure.”
I looked around the room at the numerous inventions, eloquent
testimony of a tireless ingenuity.
“Sir, it is lamentable that mass agricultural development is
not speeded by fuller use of your marvelous mechanisms. Would it
not be easily possible to employ some of them in quick laboratory
experiments to indicate the influence of various types of fertilizers
on plant growth?”
“You are right. Countless uses of Bose instruments will be made
by future generations. The scientist seldom knows contemporaneous
reward; it is enough to possess the joy of creative service.”
With expressions of unreserved gratitude to the indefatigable sage,
I took my leave. “Can the astonishing fertility of his genius ever
be exhausted?” I thought.
No diminution came with the years. Inventing an intricate instrument,
the “Resonant Cardiograph,” Bose then pursued extensive researches
on innumerable Indian plants. An enormous unsuspected pharmacopoeia
of useful drugs was revealed. The cardiograph is constructed with
an unerring accuracy by which a one-hundredth part of a second
is indicated on a graph. Resonant records measure infinitesimal
pulsations in plant, animal and human structure. The great botanist
predicted that use of his cardiograph will lead to vivisection on
plants instead of animals.
“Side by side recordings of the effects of a medicine given
simultaneously to a plant and an animal have shown astounding
unanimity in result,” he pointed out. “Everything in man has been
foreshadowed in the plant. Experimentation on vegetation will
contribute to lessening of human suffering.”
Years later Bose’s pioneer plant findings were substantiated by other
scientists. Work done in 1938 at Columbia University was reported
by THE NEW YORK TIMES as follows:
It has been determined within the past few years that when the
nerves transmit messages between the brain and other parts of the
body, tiny electrical impulses are being generated. These impulses
have been measured by delicate galvanometers and magnified millions
of times by modern amplifying apparatus. Until now no satisfactory
method had been found to study the passages of the impulses along
the nerve fibers in living animals or man because of the great
speed with which these impulses travel.
Drs. K. S. Cole and H. J. Curtis reported having discovered that the
long single cells of the fresh-water plant nitella, used frequently
in goldfish bowls, are virtually identical with those of single
nerve fibers. Furthermore, they found that nitella fibers, on being
excited, propagate electrical waves that are similar in every way,
except velocity, to those of the nerve fibers in animals and man.
The electrical nerve impulses in the plant were found to be much
slower than those in animals. This discovery was therefore seized
upon by the Columbia workers as a means for taking slow motion
pictures of the passage of the electrical impulses in nerves.
The nitella plant thus may become a sort of Rosetta stone for
deciphering the closely guarded secrets close to the very borderland
of mind and matter.
The poet Rabindranath Tagore was a stalwart friend of India’s
idealistic scientist. To him, the sweet Bengali singer addressed
the following lines: {FN8-6}
O Hermit, call thou in the authentic words
Of that old hymn called SAMA; “Rise! Awake!”
Call to the man who boasts his SHASTRIC lore
From vain pedantic wranglings profitless,
Call to that foolish braggart to come forth
Out on the face of nature, this broad earth,
Send forth this call unto thy scholar band;
Together round thy sacrifice of fire
Let them all gather. So may our India,
Our ancient land unto herself return
O once again return to steadfast work,
To duty and devotion, to her trance
Of earnest meditation; let her sit
Once more unruffled, greedless, strifeless, pure,
O once again upon her lofty seat
And platform, teacher of all lands.
{FN8-1} “All science is transcendental or else passes away. Botany
is now acquiring the right theory-the avatars of Brahma will
presently be the textbooks of natural history.”-EMERSON.
{FN8-2} From the Latin root, CRESCERE, to increase. For his
crescograph and other inventions, Bose was knighted in 1917.
{FN8-3} The lotus flower is an ancient divine symbol in India; its
unfolding petals suggest the expansion of the soul; the growth of
its pure beauty from the mud of its origin holds a benign spiritual
promise.
{FN8-4} “At present, only the sheerest accident brings India into
the purview of the American college student. Eight universities
(Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania,
Chicago, and California) have chairs of Indology or Sanskrit,
but India is virtually unrepresented in departments of history,
philosophy, fine arts, political science, sociology, or any of
the other departments of intellectual experience in which, as we
have seen, India has made great contributions. . . . We believe,
consequently, that no department of study, particularly in the
humanities, in any major university can be fully equipped without
a properly trained specialist in the Indic phases of its discipline.
We believe, too, that every college which aims to prepare its
graduates for intelligent work in the world which is to be theirs
to live in, must have on its staff a scholar competent in the
civilization of India.”-Extracts from an article by Professor W.
Norman Brown of the University of Pennsylvania which appeared in
the May, 1939, issue of the BULLETIN of the American Council of
Learned Societies, 907 15th St., Washington, D. C., 25 cents copy.
This issue (#28) contains over 100 pages of a “Basic Bibliography
for Indic Studies.”
{FN8-5} The atomic structure of matter was well-known to the ancient
Hindus. One of the six systems of Indian philosophy is VAISESIKA,
from the Sanskrit root VISESAS, “atomic individuality.” One of the
foremost VAISESIKA expounders was Aulukya, also called Kanada, “the
atom-eater,” born about 2800 years ago.
In an article in EAST-WEST, April, 1934, a summary of VAISESIKA
scientific knowledge was given as follows: “Though the modern
‘atomic theory’ is generally considered a new advance of science,
it was brilliantly expounded long ago by Kanada, ‘the atom-eater.’
The Sanskrit ANUS can be properly translated as ‘atom’ in the latter’s
literal Greek sense of ‘uncut’ or indivisible. Other scientific
expositions of VAISESIKA treatises of the B.C. era include (1) the
movement of needles toward magnets, (2) the circulation of water
in plants, (3) AKASH or ether, inert and structureless, as a basis
for transmitting subtle forces, (4) the solar fire as the cause of
all other forms of heat, (5) heat as the cause of molecular change,
(6) the law of gravitation as caused by the quality that inheres in
earth-atoms to give them their attractive power or downward pull,
(7) the kinetic nature of all energy; causation as always rooted
in an expenditure of energy or a redistribution of motion, (8)
universal dissolution through the disintegration of atoms, (9)
the radiation of heat and light rays, infinitely small particles,
darting forth in all directions with inconceivable speed (the modern
‘cosmic rays’ theory), (10) the relativity of time and space.
“VAISESIKA assigned the origin of the world to atoms, eternal in
their nature, i.e., their ultimate peculiarities. These atoms were
regarded as possessing an incessant vibratory motion. . . . The
recent discovery that an atom is a miniature solar system would be
no news to the old VAISESIKA philosophers, who also reduced time to
its furthest mathematical concept by describing the smallest unit
of time (KALA) as the period taken by an atom to traverse its own
unit of space.”
{FN8-6} Translated from the Bengali of Rabindranath Tagore, by
Manmohan Ghosh, in VISWA-BHARATI.
CHAPTER: 9
THE BLISSFUL DEVOTEE AND HIS COSMIC ROMANCE
“Little sir, please be seated. I am talking to my Divine Mother.”
Silently I had entered the room in great awe. The angelic
appearance of Master Mahasaya fairly dazzled me. With silky white
beard and large lustrous eyes, he seemed an incarnation of purity.
His upraised chin and folded hands apprized me that my first visit
had disturbed him in the midst of his devotions.
His simple words of greeting produced the most violent effect my
nature had so far experienced. The bitter separation of my mother’s
death I had thought the measure of all anguish. Now an agony at
separation from my Divine Mother was an indescribable torture of
the spirit. I fell moaning to the floor.
“Little sir, quiet yourself!” The saint was sympathetically
distressed.
Abandoned in some oceanic desolation, I clutched his feet as the
sole raft of my rescue.
“Holy sir, thy intercession! Ask Divine Mother if I find any favor
in Her sight!”
This promise is one not easily bestowed; the master was constrained
to silence.
Beyond reach of doubt, I was convinced that Master Mahasaya was in
intimate converse with the Universal Mother. It was deep humiliation
to realize that my eyes were blind to Her who even at this moment
was perceptible to the faultless gaze of the saint. Shamelessly
gripping his feet, deaf to his gentle remonstrances, I besought
him again and again for his intervening grace.
“I will make your plea to the Beloved.” The master’s capitulation
came with a slow, compassionate smile.
What power in those few words, that my being should know release
from its stormy exile?
“Sir, remember your pledge! I shall return soon for Her message!”
Joyful anticipation rang in my voice that only a moment ago had
been sobbing in sorrow.
Descending the long stairway, I was overwhelmed by memories. This
house at 50 Amherst Street, now the residence of Master Mahasaya,
had once been my family home, scene of my mother’s death. Here
my human heart had broken for the vanished mother; and here today
my spirit had been as though crucified by absence of the Divine
Mother. Hallowed walls, silent witness of my grievous hurts and
final healing!
My steps were eager as I returned to my Gurpar Road home. Seeking
the seclusion of my small attic, I remained in meditation until
ten o’clock. The darkness of the warm Indian night was suddenly
lit with a wondrous vision.
Haloed in splendor, the Divine Mother stood before me. Her face,
tenderly smiling, was beauty itself.
“Always have I loved thee! Ever shall I love thee!”
The celestial tones still ringing in the air, She disappeared.
The sun on the following morning had hardly risen to an angle of
decorum when I paid my second visit to Master Mahasaya. Climbing
the staircase in the house of poignant memories, I reached his
fourth-floor room. The knob of the closed door was wrapped around
with a cloth; a hint, I felt, that the saint desired privacy. As
I stood irresolutely on the landing, the door was opened by the
master’s welcoming hand. I knelt at his holy feet. In a playful
mood, I wore a solemn mask over my face, hiding the divine elation.
“Sir, I have come-very early, I confess!-for your message. Did the
Beloved Mother say anything about me?”
“Mischievous little sir!”
Not another remark would he make. Apparently my assumed gravity
was unimpressive.
“Why so mysterious, so evasive? Do saints never speak plainly?”
Perhaps I was a little provoked.
“Must you test me?” His calm eyes were full of understanding. “Could
I add a single word this morning to the assurance you received last
night at ten o’clock from the Beautiful Mother Herself?”