Autobiography of a Yogi
Sri Yukteswar dismissed the little group, and motioned me to a
blanket seat at his feet.
“Yogananda,” he said with unusual gravity, “you have been surrounded
from birth by direct disciples of Lahiri Mahasaya. The great
master lived his sublime life in partial seclusion, and steadfastly
refused to permit his followers to build any organization around
his teachings. He made, nevertheless, a significant prediction.
“‘About fifty years after my passing,’ he said, ‘my life will be written
because of a deep interest in yoga which the West will manifest.
The yogic message will encircle the globe, and aid in establishing
that brotherhood of man which results from direct perception of
the One Father.’
“My son Yogananda,” Sri Yukteswar went on, “you must do your part
in spreading that message, and in writing that sacred life.”
Fifty years after Lahiri Mahasaya’s passing in 1895 culminated in
1945, the year of completion of this present book. I cannot but be
struck by the coincidence that the year 1945 has also ushered in
a new age-the era of revolutionary atomic energies. All thoughtful
minds turn as never before to the urgent problems of peace and
brotherhood, lest the continued use of physical force banish all
men along with the problems.
Though the human race and its works disappear tracelessly by time
or bomb, the sun does not falter in its course; the stars keep their
invariable vigil. Cosmic law cannot be stayed or changed, and man
would do well to put himself in harmony with it. If the cosmos is
against might, if the sun wars not with the planets but retires at
dueful time to give the stars their little sway, what avails our
mailed fist? Shall any peace indeed come out of it? Not cruelty
but good will arms the universal sinews; a humanity at peace will
know the endless fruits of victory, sweeter to the taste than any
nurtured on the soil of blood.
The effective League of Nations will be a natural, nameless league
of human hearts. The broad sympathies and discerning insight needed
for the healing of earthly woes cannot flow from a mere intellectual
consideration of man’s diversities, but from knowledge of man’s
sole unity-his kinship with God. Toward realization of the world’s
highest ideal-peace through brotherhood-may yoga, the science of
personal contact with the Divine, spread in time to all men in all
lands.
Though India’s civilization is ancient above any other, few historians
have noted that her feat of national survival is by no means an
accident, but a logical incident in the devotion to eternal verities
which India has offered through her best men in every generation.
By sheer continuity of being, by intransitivity before the ages-can
dusty scholars truly tell us how many?-India has given the worthiest
answer of any people to the challenge of time.
The Biblical story {FN32-5} of Abraham’s plea to the Lord that the
city of Sodom be spared if ten righteous men could be found therein,
and the divine reply: “I will not destroy it for ten’s sake,”
gains new meaning in the light of India’s escape from the oblivion
of Babylon, Egypt and other mighty nations who were once her
contemporaries. The Lord’s answer clearly shows that a land lives,
not by its material achievements, but in its masterpieces of man.
Let the divine words be heard again, in this twentieth century,
twice dyed in blood ere half over: No nation that can produce ten
men, great in the eyes of the Unbribable Judge, shall know extinction.
Heeding such persuasions, India has proved herself not witless
against the thousand cunnings of time. Self-realized masters in
every century have hallowed her soil; modern Christlike sages, like
Lahiri Mahasaya and his disciple Sri Yukteswar, rise up to proclaim
that the science of yoga is more vital than any material advances
to man’s happiness and to a nation’s longevity.
Very scanty information about the life of Lahiri Mahasaya and his
universal doctrine has ever appeared in print. For three decades
in India, America, and Europe, I have found a deep and sincere
interest in his message of liberating yoga; a written account of
the master’s life, even as he foretold, is now needed in the West,
where lives of the great modern yogis are little known.
Nothing but one or two small pamphlets in English has been written
on the guru’s life. One biography in Bengali, SRI SRI {FN32-6}
SHYAMA CHARAN LAHIRI MAHASAYA, appeared in 1941. It was written
by my disciple, Swami Satyananda, who for many years has been the
ACHARYA (spiritual preceptor) at our VIDYALAYA in Ranchi. I have
translated a few passages from his book and have incorporated them
into this section devoted to Lahiri Mahasaya.
It was into a pious Brahmin family of ancient lineage that Lahiri
Mahasaya was born September 30, 1828. His birthplace was the village
of Ghurni in the Nadia district near Krishnagar, Bengal. He was the
youngest son of Muktakashi, the second wife of the esteemed Gaur
Mohan Lahiri. (His first wife, after the birth of three sons, had
died during a pilgrimage.) The boy’s mother passed away during
his childhood; little about her is known except the revealing fact
that she was an ardent devotee of Lord Shiva, {FN32-7} scripturally
designated as the “King of Yogis.”
The boy Lahiri, whose given name was Shyama Charan, spent his early
years in the ancestral home at Nadia. At the age of three or four
he was often observed sitting under the sands in the posture of a
yogi, his body completely hidden except for the head.
The Lahiri estate was destroyed in the winter of 1833, when
the nearby Jalangi River changed its course and disappeared into
the depths of the Ganges. One of the Shiva temples founded by the
Lahiris went into the river along with the family home. A devotee
rescued the stone image of Lord Shiva from the swirling waters and
placed it in a new temple, now well-known as the Ghurni Shiva Site.
Gaur Mohan Lahiri and his family left Nadia and became residents
of Benares, where the father immediately erected a Shiva temple. He
conducted his household along the lines of Vedic discipline, with
regular observance of ceremonial worship, acts of charity, and
scriptural study. Just and open-minded, however, he did not ignore
the beneficial current of modern ideas.
The boy Lahiri took lessons in Hindi and Urdu in Benares study-groups.
He attended a school conducted by Joy Narayan Ghosal, receiving
instruction in Sanskrit, Bengali, French, and English. Applying
himself to a close study of the VEDAS, the young yogi listened
eagerly to scriptural discussions by learned Brahmins, including
a Marhatta pundit named Nag-Bhatta.
Shyama Charan was a kind, gentle, and courageous youth, beloved by
all his companions. With a well-proportioned, bright, and powerful
body, he excelled in swimming and in many skillful activities.
In 1846 Shyama Charan Lahiri was married to Srimati Kashi Moni,
daughter of Sri Debnarayan Sanyal. A model Indian housewife, Kashi
Moni cheerfully carried on her home duties and the traditional
householder’s obligation to serve guests and the poor. Two saintly
sons, Tincouri and Ducouri, blessed the union.
At the age of 23, in 1851, Lahiri Mahasaya took the post of accountant
in the Military Engineering Department of the English government.
He received many promotions during the time of his service. Thus
not only was he a master before God’s eyes, but also a success in
the little human drama where he played his given role as an office
worker in the world.
As the offices of the Army Department were shifted, Lahiri Mahasaya
was transferred to Gazipur, Mirjapur, Danapur, Naini Tal, Benares,
and other localities. After the death of his father, Lahiri had to
assume the entire responsibility of his family, for whom he bought
a quiet residence in the Garudeswar Mohulla neighborhood of Benares.
It was in his thirty-third year that Lahiri Mahasaya saw fulfillment
of the purpose for which he had been reincarnated on earth.
The ash-hidden flame, long smouldering, received its opportunity
to burst into flame. A divine decree, resting beyond the gaze of
human beings, works mysteriously to bring all things into outer
manifestation at the proper time. He met his great guru, Babaji,
near Ranikhet, and was initiated by him into KRIYA YOGA.
This auspicious event did not happen to him alone; it was a
fortunate moment for all the human race, many of whom were later
privileged to receive the soul-awakening gift of KRIYA. The lost,
or long-vanished, highest art of yoga was again being brought
to light. Many spiritually thirsty men and women eventually found
their way to the cool waters of KRIYA YOGA. Just as in the Hindu
legend, where Mother Ganges offers her divine draught to the parched
devotee Bhagirath, so the celestial flood of KRIYA rolled from the
secret fastnesses of the Himalayas into the dusty haunts of men.
{FN32-1} JOHN 11:1-4.
{FN32-2} A cholera victim is often rational and fully conscious
right up to the moment of death.
{FN32-3} The god of death.
{FN32-4} Literally, “Supreme soul.”
{FN32-5} GENESIS 18:23-32.
{FN32-6} SRI, a prefix meaning “holy,” is attached (generally twice
or thrice) to names of great Indian teachers.
{FN32-7} One of the trinity of Godhead-Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva-whose
universal work is, respectively, that of creation, preservation,
and dissolution-restoration. Shiva (sometimes spelled Siva),
represented in mythology as the Lord of Renunciates, appears in
visions to His devotees under various aspects, such as Mahadeva,
the matted-haired Ascetic, and Nataraja, the Cosmic Dancer.
CHAPTER: 33
BABAJI, THE YOGI-CHRIST OF MODERN INDIA
The northern Himalayan crags near Badrinarayan are still blessed by
the living presence of Babaji, guru of Lahiri Mahasaya. The secluded
master has retained his physical form for centuries, perhaps for
millenniums. The deathless Babaji is an AVATARA. This Sanskrit word
means “descent”; its roots are AVA, “down,” and TRI, “to pass.”
In the Hindu scriptures, AVATARA signifies the descent of Divinity
into flesh.
“Babaji’s spiritual state is beyond human comprehension,” Sri
Yukteswar explained to me. “The dwarfed vision of men cannot pierce
to his transcendental star. One attempts in vain even to picture
the avatar’s attainment. It is inconceivable.”
The UPANISHADS have minutely classified every stage of spiritual
advancement. A SIDDHA (“perfected being”) has progressed from the
state of a JIVANMUKTA (“freed while living”) to that of a PARAMUKTA
(“supremely free”-full power over death); the latter has completely
escaped from the mayic thralldom and its reincarnational round. The
PARAMUKTA therefore seldom returns to a physical body; if he does,
he is an avatar, a divinely appointed medium of supernal blessings
on the world.
An avatar is unsubject to the universal economy; his pure body,
visible as a light image, is free from any debt to nature. The
casual gaze may see nothing extraordinary in an avatar’s form but
it casts no shadow nor makes any footprint on the ground. These are
outward symbolic proofs of an inward lack of darkness and material
bondage. Such a God-man alone knows the Truth behind the relativities
of life and death. Omar Khayyam, so grossly misunderstood, sang of
this liberated man in his immortal scripture, the RUBAIYAT:
“Ah, Moon of my Delight who know’st no wane,
The Moon of Heav’n is rising once again;
How oft hereafter rising shall she look
Through this same Garden after me-in vain!”
The “Moon of Delight” is God, eternal Polaris, anachronous never.
The “Moon of Heav’n” is the outward cosmos, fettered to the law of
periodic recurrence. Its chains had been dissolved forever by the
Persian seer through his self-realization. “How oft hereafter rising