Autobiography of a Yogi
KASHI, REBORN AND REDISCOVERED
“Please do not go into the water. Let us bathe by dipping our
buckets.”
I was addressing the young Ranchi students who were accompanying
me on an eight-mile hike to a neighboring hill. The pond before
us was inviting, but a distaste for it had arisen in my mind. The
group around me followed my example of dipping buckets, but a few
lads yielded to the temptation of the cool waters. No sooner had
they dived than large water snakes wiggled around them. The boys
came out of the pond with comical alacrity.
We enjoyed a picnic lunch after we reached our destination. I sat
under a tree, surrounded by a group of students. Finding me in an
inspirational mood, they plied me with questions.
“Please tell me, sir,” one youth inquired, “if I shall always stay
with you in the path of renunciation.”
“Ah, no,” I replied, “you will be forcibly taken away to your home,
and later you will marry.”
Incredulous, he made a vehement protest. “Only if I am dead can I
be carried home.” But in a few months, his parents arrived to take
him away, in spite of his tearful resistance; some years later, he
did marry.
After answering many questions, I was addressed by a lad named
Kashi. He was about twelve years old, a brilliant student, and
beloved by all.
“Sir,” he said, “what will be my fate?”
“You shall soon be dead.” The reply came from my lips with an
irresistible force.
This unexpected disclosure shocked and grieved me as well as
everyone present. Silently rebuking myself as an ENFANT TERRIBLE,
I refused to answer further questions.
On our return to the school, Kashi came to my room.
“If I die, will you find me when I am reborn, and bring me again
to the spiritual path?” He sobbed.
I felt constrained to refuse this difficult occult responsibility.
But for weeks afterward, Kashi pressed me doggedly. Seeing him
unnerved to the breaking point, I finally consoled him.
“Yes,” I promised. “If the Heavenly Father lends His aid, I will
try to find you.”
During the summer vacation, I started on a short trip. Regretting
that I could not take Kashi with me, I called him to my room
before leaving, and carefully instructed him to remain, against
all persuasion, in the spiritual vibrations of the school. Somehow
I felt that if he did not go home, he might avoid the impending
calamity.
No sooner had I left than Kashi’s father arrived in Ranchi. For
fifteen days he tried to break the will of his son, explaining that
if Kashi would go to Calcutta for only four days to see his mother,
he could then return. Kashi persistently refused. The father finally
said he would take the boy away with the help of the police. The
threat disturbed Kashi, who was unwilling to be the cause of any
unfavorable publicity to the school. He saw no choice but to go.
I returned to Ranchi a few days later. When I heard how Kashi had
been removed, I entrained at once for Calcutta. There I engaged a
horse cab. Very strangely, as the vehicle passed beyond the Howrah
bridge over the Ganges, I beheld Kashi’s father and other relatives
in mourning clothes. Shouting to my driver to stop, I rushed out
and glared at the unfortunate father.
“Mr. Murderer,” I cried somewhat unreasonably, “you have killed my
boy!”
The father had already realized the wrong he had done in forcibly
bringing Kashi to Calcutta. During the few days the boy had been
there, he had eaten contaminated food, contracted cholera, and
passed on.
My love for Kashi, and the pledge to find him after death, night and
day haunted me. No matter where I went, his face loomed up before
me. I began a memorable search for him, even as long ago I had
searched for my lost mother.
I felt that inasmuch as God had given me the faculty of reason, I
must utilize it and tax my powers to the utmost in order to discover
the subtle laws by which I could know the boy’s astral whereabouts.
He was a soul vibrating with unfulfilled desires, I realized-a mass
of light floating somewhere amidst millions of luminous souls in
the astral regions. How was I to tune in with him, among so many
vibrating lights of other souls?
Using a secret yoga technique, I broadcasted my love to Kashi’s
soul through the microphone of the spiritual eye, the inner point
between the eyebrows. With the antenna of upraised hands and
fingers, I often turned myself round and round, trying to locate
the direction in which he had been reborn as an embryo. I hoped to
receive response from him in the concentration-tuned radio of my
heart. {FN28-1}
I intuitively felt that Kashi would soon return to the earth, and
that if I kept unceasingly broadcasting my call to him, his soul
would reply. I knew that the slightest impulse sent by Kashi would
be felt in my fingers, hands, arms, spine, and nerves.
With undiminished zeal, I practiced the yoga method steadily for
about six months after Kashi’s death. Walking with a few friends
one morning in the crowded Bowbazar section of Calcutta, I lifted
my hands in the usual manner. For the first time, there was response.
I thrilled to detect electrical impulses trickling down my fingers
and palms. These currents translated themselves into one overpowering
thought from a deep recess of my consciousness: “I am Kashi; I am
Kashi; come to me!”
The thought became almost audible as I concentrated on my heart
radio. In the characteristic, slightly hoarse whisper of Kashi,
{FN28-2} I heard his summons again and again. I seized the arm
of one of my companions, Prokash Das, {FN28-3} and smiled at him
joyfully.
“It looks as though I have located Kashi!”
I began to turn round and round, to the undisguised amusement of
my friends and the passing throng. The electrical impulses tingled
through my fingers only when I faced toward a near-by path, aptly
named “Serpentine Lane.” The astral currents disappeared when I
turned in other directions.
“Ah,” I exclaimed, “Kashi’s soul must be living in the womb of some
mother whose home is in this lane.”
My companions and I approached closer to Serpentine Lane; the
vibrations in my upraised hands grew stronger, more pronounced.
As if by a magnet, I was pulled toward the right side of the road.
Reaching the entrance of a certain house, I was astounded to find
myself transfixed. I knocked at the door in a state of intense
excitement, holding my very breath. I felt that the successful end
had come for my long, arduous, and certainly unusual quest!
The door was opened by a servant, who told me her master was at
home. He descended the stairway from the second floor and smiled
at me inquiringly. I hardly knew how to frame my question, at once
pertinent and impertinent.
“Please tell me, sir, if you and your wife have been expecting a
child for about six months?”
“Yes, it is so.” Seeing that I was a swami, a renunciate attired
in the traditional orange cloth, he added politely, “Pray inform
me how you know my affairs.”
When he heard about Kashi and the promise I had given, the astonished
man believed my story.
“A male child of fair complexion will be born to you,” I told him.
“He will have a broad face, with a cowlick atop his forehead. His
disposition will be notably spiritual.” I felt certain that the
coming child would bear these resemblances to Kashi.
Later I visited the child, whose parents had given him his old name
of Kashi. Even in infancy he was strikingly similar in appearance
to my dear Ranchi student. The child showed me an instantaneous
affection; the attraction of the past awoke with redoubled intensity.
Years later the teen-age boy wrote me, during my stay in America.
He explained his deep longing to follow the path of a renunciate.
I directed him to a Himalayan master who, to this day, guides the
reborn Kashi.
{FN28-1} The will, projected from the point between the eyebrows,
is known by yogis as the broadcasting apparatus of thought. When the
feeling is calmly concentrated on the heart, it acts as a mental
radio, and can receive the messages of others from far or near.
In telepathy the fine vibrations of thoughts in one person’s mind
are transmitted through the subtle vibrations of astral ether and
then through the grosser earthly ether, creating electrical waves
which, in turn, translate themselves into thought waves in the mind
of the other person.
{FN28-2} Every soul in its pure state is omniscient. Kashi’s soul
remembered all the characteristics of Kashi, the boy, and therefore
mimicked his hoarse voice in order to stir my recognition.
{FN28-3} Prokash Das is the present director of our Yogoda Math
(hermitage) at Dakshineswar in Bengal.
CHAPTER: 29
RABINDRANATH TAGORE AND I COMPARE SCHOOLS
“Rabindranath Tagore taught us to sing, as a natural form of
self-expression, like the birds.”
Bhola Nath, a bright fourteen-year-old lad at my Ranchi school,
gave me this explanation after I had complimented him one morning
on his melodious outbursts. With or without provocation, the boy
poured forth a tuneful stream. He had previously attended the famous
Tagore school of “Santiniketan” (Haven of Peace) at Bolpur.
“The songs of Rabindranath have been on my lips since early youth,”
I told my companion. “All Bengal, even the unlettered peasants,
delights in his lofty verse.”
Bhola and I sang together a few refrains from Tagore, who has set
to music thousands of Indian poems, some original and others of
hoary antiquity.
“I met Rabindranath soon after he had received the Nobel Prize
for literature,” I remarked after our vocalizing. “I was drawn to
visit him because I admired his undiplomatic courage in disposing
of his literary critics.” I chuckled.
Bhola curiously inquired the story.
“The scholars severely flayed Tagore for introducing a new style
into Bengali poetry,” I began. “He mixed colloquial and classical
expressions, ignoring all the prescribed limitations dear to
the pundits’ hearts. His songs embody deep philosophic truth in
emotionally appealing terms, with little regard for the accepted
literary forms.
“One influential critic slightingly referred to Rabindranath
as a ‘pigeon-poet who sold his cooings in print for a rupee.’ But
Tagore’s revenge was at hand; the whole Western world paid homage
at his feet soon after he had translated into English his GITANJALI
(‘Song Offerings’). A trainload of pundits, including his one-time
critics, went to Santiniketan to offer their congratulations.
“Rabindranath received his guests only after an intentionally long
delay, and then heard their praise in stoic silence. Finally he
turned against them their own habitual weapons of criticism.
“‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘the fragrant honors you here bestow are
incongruously mingled with the putrid odors of your past contempt.
Is there possibly any connection between my award of the Nobel
Prize, and your suddenly acute powers of appreciation? I am still
the same poet who displeased you when I first offered my humble
flowers at the shrine of Bengal.’
“The newspapers published an account of the bold chastisement given
by Tagore. I admired the outspoken words of a man unhypnotized by
flattery,” I went on. “I was introduced to Rabindranath in Calcutta
by his secretary, Mr. C. F. Andrews, {FN29-1} who was simply attired
in a Bengali DHOTI. He referred lovingly to Tagore as his GURUDEVA.
“Rabindranath received me graciously. He emanated a soothing aura
of charm, culture, and courtliness. Replying to my question about
his literary background, Tagore told me that one ancient source of
his inspiration, besides our religious epics, had been the classical
poet, Bidyapati.”
Inspired by these memories, I began to sing Tagore’s version of an