Autobiography of a Yogi
indicated to the little ones that they should touch his body. Lo!
instantly the whole group was transported to Madura. The children
wandered happily among the thousands of pilgrims. In a few hours
the yogi brought his small charges home by his simple mode of
transportation. The astonished parents heard the vivid tales of the
procession of images, and noted that several children were carrying
bags of Madura sweets.
An incredulous youth derided the saint and the story. The following
morning he approached Sadasiva.
“Master,” he said scornfully, “why don’t you take me to the festival,
even as you did yesterday for the other children?”
Sadasiva complied; the boy immediately found himself among the
distant city throng. But alas! where was the saint when the youth
wanted to leave? The weary boy reached his home by the ancient and
prosaic method of foot locomotion.
{FN41-1} Miss Bletch, unable to maintain the active pace set by Mr.
Wright and myself, remained happily with my relatives in Calcutta.
{FN41-2} This dam, a huge hydro-electric installation, lights Mysore
City and gives power to factories for silks, soaps, and sandalwood
oil. The sandalwood souvenirs from Mysore possess a delightful
fragrance which time does not exhaust; a slight pinprick revives
the odor. Mysore boasts some of the largest pioneer industrial
undertakings in India, including the Kolar Gold Mines, the Mysore
Sugar Factory, the huge iron and steel works at Bhadravati, and
the cheap and efficient Mysore State Railway which covers many of
the state’s 30,000 square miles.
The Maharaja and Yuvaraja who were my hosts in Mysore in 1935 have
both recently died. The son of the Yuvaraja, the present Maharaja,
is an enterprising ruler, and has added to Mysore’s industries a
large airplane factory.
{FN41-3} Six volumes on ANCIENT INDIA (Calcutta, 1879).
{FN41-5} Neither Alexander nor any of his generals ever crossed
the Ganges. Finding determined resistance in the northwest, the
Macedonian army refused to penetrate farther; Alexander was forced
to leave India and seek his conquests in Persia.
{FN41-5} From this question we may surmise that the “Son of Zeus”
had an occasional doubt that he had already attained perfection.
{FN41-6} All Greek observers comment on the lack of slavery in
India, a feature at complete variance with the structure of Hellenic
society.
{FN41-7} CREATIVE INDIA by Prof. Benoy Kumar Sarkar gives a
comprehensive picture of India’s ancient and modern achievements
and distinctive values in economics, political science, literature,
art, and social philosophy. (Lahore: Motilal Banarsi Dass, Publishers,
1937, 714 pp., $5.00.)
Another recommended volume is INDIAN CULTURE THROUGH THE AGES, by
S. V. Venatesvara (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., $5.00).
{FN41-8} Manu is the universal lawgiver; not alone for Hindu society,
but for the world. All systems of wise social regulations and even
justice are patterned after Manu. Nietzsche has paid the following
tribute: “I know of no book in which so many delicate and kindly
things are said to woman as in the LAWBOOK OF MANU; those old
graybeards and saints have a manner of being gallant to women which
perhaps cannot be surpassed . . . an incomparably intellectual and
superior work . . . replete with noble values, it is filled with a
feeling of perfection, with a saying of yea to life, and a triumphant
sense of well-being in regard to itself and to life; the sun shines
upon the whole book.”
{FN41-9} “Inclusion in one of these four castes originally depended
not on a man’s birth but on his natural capacities as demonstrated
by the goal in life he elected to achieve,” an article in EAST-WEST
for January, 1935, tells us. “This goal could be (1) KAMA, desire,
activity of the life of the senses (SUDRA stage), (2) ARTHA, gain,
fulfilling but controlling the desires (VAISYA stage), (3) DHARMA,
self-discipline, the life of responsibility and right action
(KSHATRIYA stage), (4) MOKSHA, liberation, the life of spirituality
and religious teaching (BRAHMIN stage). These four castes render
service to humanity by (1) body, (2) mind, (3) will power, (4)
Spirit.
“These four stages have their correspondence in the eternal GUNAS
or qualities of nature, TAMAS, RAJAS, and SATTVA: obstruction,
activity, and expansion; or, mass, energy, and intelligence. The four
natural castes are marked by the GUNAS as (1) TAMAS (ignorance), (2)
TAMAS-RAJAS (mixture of ignorance and activity), (3) RAJAS-SATTVA
(mixture of right activity and enlightenment), (4) SATTVA
(enlightenment). Thus has nature marked every man with his caste,
by the predominance in himself of one, or the mixture of two, of the
GUNAS. Of course every human being has all three GUNAS in varying
proportions. The guru will be able rightly to determine a man’s
caste or evolutionary status.
“To a certain extent, all races and nations observe in practice, if
not in theory, the features of caste. Where there is great license
or so-called liberty, particularly in intermarriage between extremes
in the natural castes, the race dwindles away and becomes extinct.
The PURANA SAMHITA compares the offspring of such unions to barren
hybrids, like the mule which is incapable of propagation of its own
species. Artificial species are eventually exterminated. History
offers abundant proof of numerous great races which no longer have
any living representatives. The caste system of India is credited
by her most profound thinkers with being the check or preventive
against license which has preserved the purity of the race and
brought it safely through millenniums of vicissitudes, while other
races have vanished in oblivion.”
{FN41-10} His full title was Sri Sadasivendra Saraswati Swami. The
illustrious successor in the formal Shankara line, Jagadguru Sri
Shankaracharya of Sringeri Math, wrote an inspiring ODE dedicated
to Sadasiva. EAST-WEST for July, 1942, carried an article on
Sadasiva’s life.
CHAPTER: 42
LAST DAYS WITH MY GURU
“Guruji, I am glad to find you alone this morning.” I had just
arrived at the Serampore hermitage, carrying a fragrant burden of
fruit and roses. Sri Yukteswar glanced at me meekly.
“What is your question?” Master looked about the room as though he
were seeking escape.
“Guruji, I came to you as a high-school youth; now I am a grown
man, even with a gray hair or two. Though you have showered me with
silent affection from the first hour to this, do you realize that
once only, on the day of meeting, have you ever said, ‘I love you’?”
I looked at him pleadingly.
Master lowered his gaze. “Yogananda, must I bring out into the cold
realms of speech the warm sentiments best guarded by the wordless
heart?”
“Guruji, I know you love me, but my mortal ears ache to hear you
say so.”
“Be it as you wish. During my married life I often yearned for a
son, to train in the yogic path. But when you came into my life,
I was content; in you I have found my son.” Two clear teardrops
stood in Sri Yukteswar’s eyes. “Yogananda, I love you always.”
“Your answer is my passport to heaven.” I felt a weight lift from
my heart, dissolved forever at his words. Often had I wondered at
his silence. Realizing that he was unemotional and self-contained,
yet sometimes I feared I had been unsuccessful in fully satisfying
him. His was a strange nature, never utterly to be known; a nature
deep and still, unfathomable to the outer world, whose values he
had long transcended.
A few days later, when I spoke before a huge audience at Albert
Hall in Calcutta, Sri Yukteswar consented to sit beside me on the
platform, with the Maharaja of Santosh and the Mayor of Calcutta.
Though Master made no remark to me, I glanced at him from time to
time during my address, and thought I detected a pleased twinkle
in his eyes.
Then came a talk before the alumni of Serampore College. As I gazed
upon my old classmates, and as they gazed on their own “Mad Monk,”
tears of joy showed unashamedly. My silver-tongued professor of
philosophy, Dr. Ghoshal, came forward to greet me, all our past
misunderstandings dissolved by the alchemist Time.
A Winter Solstice Festival was celebrated at the end of December
in the Serampore hermitage. As always, Sri Yukteswar’s disciples
gathered from far and near. Devotional SANKIRTANS, solos in the
nectar-sweet voice of Kristo-da, a feast served by young disciples,
Master’s profoundly moving discourse under the stars in the thronged
courtyard of the ashram-memories, memories! Joyous festivals of
years long past! Tonight, however, there was to be a new feature.
“Yogananda, please address the assemblage-in English.” Master’s
eyes were twinkling as he made this doubly unusual request; was he
thinking of the shipboard predicament that had preceded my first
lecture in English? I told the story to my audience of brother
disciples, ending with a fervent tribute to our guru.
“His omnipresent guidance was with me not alone on the ocean
steamer,” I concluded, “but daily throughout my fifteen years in
the vast and hospitable land of America.”
After the guests had departed, Sri Yukteswar called me to the same
bedroom where-once only, after a festival of my early years-I had
been permitted to sleep on his wooden bed. Tonight my guru was
sitting there quietly, a semicircle of disciples at his feet. He
smiled as I quickly entered the room.
“Yogananda, are you leaving now for Calcutta? Please return here
tomorrow. I have certain things to tell you.”
The next afternoon, with a few simple words of blessing, Sri Yukteswar
bestowed on me the further monastic title of PARAMHANSA. {FN42-1}
“It now formally supersedes your former title of SWAMI,” he said as
I knelt before him. With a silent chuckle I thought of the struggle
which my American students would undergo over the pronunciation of
PARAMHANSAJI. {FN42-2}
“My task on earth is now finished; you must carry on.” Master
spoke quietly, his eyes calm and gentle. My heart was palpitating
in fear.
“Please send someone to take charge of our ashram at Puri,” Sri
Yukteswar went on. “I leave everything in your hands. You will be
able to successfully sail the boat of your life and that of the
organization to the divine shores.”
In tears, I was embracing his feet; he rose and blessed me endearingly.
The following day I summoned from Ranchi a disciple, Swami Sebananda,
and sent him to Puri to assume the hermitage duties. {FN42-3}
Later my guru discussed with me the legal details of settling his
estate; he was anxious to prevent the possibility of litigation by
relatives, after his death, for possession of his two hermitages
and other properties, which he wished to be deeded over solely for
charitable purposes.
“Arrangements were recently made for Master to visit Kidderpore,
{FN42-4} but he failed to go.” Amulaya Babu, a brother disciple, made
this remark to me one afternoon; I felt a cold wave of premonition.
To my pressing inquiries, Sri Yukteswar only replied, “I shall
go to Kidderpore no more.” For a moment, Master trembled like a
frightened child.
(“Attachment to bodily residence, springing up of its own nature
[i.e., arising from immemorial roots, past experiences of death],”
Patanjali wrote, {FN42-5} “is present in slight degree even in great
saints.” In some of his discourses on death, my guru had been wont
to add: “Just as a long-caged bird hesitates to leave its accustomed
home when the door is opened.”)
“Guruji,” I entreated him with a sob, “don’t say that! Never utter
those words to me!”