Autobiography of a Yogi
Thou dost desire me to lead the life of a renunciate or a worldly
man!”
I noticed a SADHU of noble countenance standing just outside
the compound of the pundit’s house. Evidently he had overheard
the spirited conversation between the self-styled clairvoyant and
myself, for the stranger called me to his side. I felt a tremendous
power flowing from his calm eyes.
“Son, don’t listen to that ignoramus. In response to your prayer,
the Lord tells me to assure you that your sole path in this life
is that of the renunciate.”
With astonishment as well as gratitude, I smiled happily at this
decisive message.
“Come away from that man!” The “ignoramus” was calling me from the
courtyard. My saintly guide raised his hand in blessing and slowly
departed.
“That SADHU is just as crazy as you are.” It was the hoary-headed
pundit who made this charming observation. He and his son were
gazing at me lugubriously. “I heard that he too has left his home
in a vague search for God.”
I turned away. To Ananta I remarked that I would not engage in
further discussion with our hosts. My brother agreed to an immediate
departure; we soon entrained for Calcutta.
“Mr. Detective, how did you discover I had fled with two companions?”
I vented my lively curiosity to Ananta during our homeward journey.
He smiled mischievously.
“At your school, I found that Amar had left his classroom and had
not returned. I went to his home the next morning and unearthed a
marked timetable. Amar’s father was just leaving by carriage and
was talking to the coachman.
“‘My son will not ride with me to his school this morning. He has
disappeared!’ the father moaned.
“‘I heard from a brother coachman that your son and two others,
dressed in European suits, boarded the train at Howrah Station,’
the man stated. ‘They made a present of their leather shoes to the
cab driver.’
“Thus I had three clues-the timetable, the trio of boys, and the
English clothing.”
I was listening to Ananta’s disclosures with mingled mirth and
vexation. Our generosity to the coachman had been slightly misplaced!
“Of course I rushed to send telegrams to station officials in all
the cities which Amar had underlined in the timetable. He had checked
Bareilly, so I wired your friend Dwarka there. After inquiries
in our Calcutta neighborhood, I learned that cousin Jatinda had
been absent one night but had arrived home the following morning
in European garb. I sought him out and invited him to dinner. He
accepted, quite disarmed by my friendly manner. On the way I led him
unsuspectingly to a police station. He was surrounded by several
officers whom I had previously selected for their ferocious
appearance. Under their formidable gaze, Jatinda agreed to account
for his mysterious conduct.
“‘I started for the Himalayas in a buoyant spiritual mood,’ he
explained. ‘Inspiration filled me at the prospect of meeting the
masters. But as soon as Mukunda said, “During our ecstasies in the
Himalayan caves, tigers will be spellbound and sit around us like
tame pussies,” my spirits froze; beads of perspiration formed on
my brow. “What then?” I thought. “If the vicious nature of the
tigers be not changed through the power of our spiritual trance,
shall they treat us with the kindness of house cats?” In my mind’s
eye, I already saw myself the compulsory inmate of some tiger’s
stomach-entering there not at once with the whole body, but by
installments of its several parts!’”
My anger at Jatinda’s vanishment was evaporated in laughter. The
hilarious sequel on the train was worth all the anguish he had
caused me. I must confess to a slight feeling of satisfaction:
Jatinda too had not escaped an encounter with the police!
“Ananta, {FN4-4} you are a born sleuthhound!” My glance of amusement
was not without some exasperation. “And I shall tell Jatinda I am
glad he was prompted by no mood of treachery, as it appeared, but
only by the prudent instinct of self-preservation!”
At home in Calcutta, Father touchingly requested me to curb my roving
feet until, at least, the completion of my high school studies.
In my absence, he had lovingly hatched a plot by arranging for
a saintly pundit, Swami Kebalananda, {FN4-5} to come regularly to
the house.
“The sage will be your Sanskrit tutor,” my parent announced
confidently.
Father hoped to satisfy my religious yearnings by instructions
from a learned philosopher. But the tables were subtly turned: my
new teacher, far from offering intellectual aridities, fanned the
embers of my God-aspiration. Unknown to Father, Swami Kebalananda
was an exalted disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya. The peerless guru had
possessed thousands of disciples, silently drawn to him by the
irresistibility of his divine magnetism. I learned later that Lahiri
Mahasaya had often characterized Kebalananda as RISHI or illumined
sage.
Luxuriant curls framed my tutor’s handsome face. His dark eyes were
guileless, with the transparency of a child’s. All the movements of
his slight body were marked by a restful deliberation. Ever gentle
and loving, he was firmly established in the infinite consciousness.
Many of our happy hours together were spent in deep KRIYA meditation.
Kebalananda was a noted authority on the ancient SHASTRAS or sacred
books: his erudition had earned him the title of “Shastri Mahasaya,”
by which he was usually addressed. But my progress in Sanskrit
scholarship was unnoteworthy. I sought every opportunity to forsake
prosaic grammar and to talk of yoga and Lahiri Mahasaya. My tutor
obliged me one day by telling me something of his own life with
the master.
“Rarely fortunate, I was able to remain near Lahiri Mahasaya for
ten years. His Benares home was my nightly goal of pilgrimage. The
guru was always present in a small front parlor on the first floor.
As he sat in lotus posture on a backless wooden seat, his disciples
garlanded him in a semicircle. His eyes sparkled and danced with
the joy of the Divine. They were ever half closed, peering through
the inner telescopic orb into a sphere of eternal bliss. He seldom
spoke at length. Occasionally his gaze would focus on a student in
need of help; healing words poured then like an avalanche of light.
“An indescribable peace blossomed within me at the master’s glance.
I was permeated with his fragrance, as though from a lotus of
infinity. To be with him, even without exchanging a word for days,
was experience which changed my entire being. If any invisible
barrier rose in the path of my concentration, I would meditate at
the guru’s feet. There the most tenuous states came easily within
my grasp. Such perceptions eluded me in the presence of lesser
teachers. The master was a living temple of God whose secret doors
were open to all disciples through devotion.
“Lahiri Mahasaya was no bookish interpreter of the scriptures.
Effortlessly he dipped into the ‘divine library.’ Foam of words and
spray of thoughts gushed from the fountain of his omniscience. He
had the wondrous clavis which unlocked the profound philosophical
science embedded ages ago in the VEDAS. {FN4-6} If asked to explain
the different planes of consciousness mentioned in the ancient
texts, he would smilingly assent.
“‘I will undergo those states, and presently tell you what I
perceive.’ He was thus diametrically unlike the teachers who commit
scripture to memory and then give forth unrealized abstractions.
“‘Please expound the holy stanzas as the meaning occurs to you.’
The taciturn guru often gave this instruction to a near-by disciple.
‘I will guide your thoughts, that the right interpretation be
uttered.’ In this way many of Lahiri Mahasaya’s perceptions came
to be recorded, with voluminous commentaries by various students.
“The master never counseled slavish belief. ‘Words are only shells,’
he said. ‘Win conviction of God’s presence through your own joyous
contact in meditation.’
“No matter what the disciple’s problem, the guru advised KRIYA YOGA
for its solution.
“‘The yogic key will not lose its efficiency when I am no longer
present in the body to guide you. This technique cannot be bound,
filed, and forgotten, in the manner of theoretical inspirations.
Continue ceaselessly on your path to liberation through KRIYA,
whose power lies in practice.’
“I myself consider KRIYA the most effective device of salvation through
self-effort ever to be evolved in man’s search for the Infinite.”
Kebalananda concluded with this earnest testimony. “Through its use,
the omnipotent God, hidden in all men, became visibly incarnated
in the flesh of Lahiri Mahasaya and a number of his disciples.”
A Christlike miracle by Lahiri Mahasaya took place in Kebalananda’s
presence. My saintly tutor recounted the story one day, his eyes
remote from the Sanskrit texts before us.
“A blind disciple, Ramu, aroused my active pity. Should he have no
light in his eyes, when he faithfully served our master, in whom
the Divine was fully blazing? One morning I sought to speak to
Ramu, but he sat for patient hours fanning the guru with a hand-made
palm-leaf PUNKHA. When the devotee finally left the room, I followed
him.
“‘Ramu, how long have you been blind?’
“‘From my birth, sir! Never have my eyes been blessed with a glimpse
of the sun.’
“‘Our omnipotent guru can help you. Please make a supplication.’
“The following day Ramu diffidently approached Lahiri Mahasaya. The
disciple felt almost ashamed to ask that physical wealth be added
to his spiritual superabundance.
“‘Master, the Illuminator of the cosmos is in you. I pray you
to bring His light into my eyes, that I perceive the sun’s lesser
glow.’
“‘Ramu, someone has connived to put me in a difficult position. I
have no healing power.’
“‘Sir, the Infinite One within you can certainly heal.’
“‘That is indeed different, Ramu. God’s limit is nowhere! He who
ignites the stars and the cells of flesh with mysterious life-effulgence
can surely bring luster of vision into your eyes.’
“The master touched Ramu’s forehead at the point between the eyebrows.
{FN4-7} “‘Keep your mind concentrated there, and frequently chant
the name of the prophet Rama {FN4-8} for seven days. The splendor
of the sun shall have a special dawn for you.’
“Lo! in one week it was so. For the first time, Ramu beheld the
fair face of nature. The Omniscient One had unerringly directed his
disciple to repeat the name of Rama, adored by him above all other
saints. Ramu’s faith was the devotionally ploughed soil in which
the guru’s powerful seed of permanent healing sprouted.” Kebalananda
was silent for a moment, then paid a further tribute to his guru.
“It was evident in all miracles performed by Lahiri Mahasaya that
he never allowed the ego-principle {FN4-9} to consider itself a
causative force. By perfection of resistless surrender, the master
enabled the Prime Healing Power to flow freely through him.
“The numerous bodies which were spectacularly healed through Lahiri
Mahasaya eventually had to feed the flames of cremation. But the
silent spiritual awakenings he effected, the Christlike disciples
he fashioned, are his imperishable miracles.”
I never became a Sanskrit scholar; Kebalananda taught me a diviner
syntax.
{FN4-1} Literally, “renunciate.” From Sanskrit verb roots, “to cast
aside.”
{FN4-2} Effects of past actions, in this or a former life; from
Sanskrit KRI, “to do.”
{FN4-3} BHAGAVAD GITA, IX, 30-31. Krishna was the greatest prophet
of India; Arjuna was his foremost disciple.
{FN4-4} I always addressed him as Ananta-da. DA is a respectful
suffix which the eldest brother in an Indian family receives from
junior brothers and sisters.
{FN4-5} At the time of our meeting, Kebalananda had not yet joined
the Swami Order and was generally called “Shastri Mahasaya.” To avoid