Autobiography of a Yogi
God. Man has forgotten this stark simplicity, now befogged by a
million issues. Refusing a monotheistic love to God, the nations
disguise their infidelity by punctilious respect before the outward
shrines of charity. These humanitarian gestures are virtuous, because
for a moment they divert man’s attention from himself, but they do
not free him from his single responsibility in life, referred to
by Jesus as the first commandment. The uplifting obligation to love
God is assumed with man’s first breath of an air freely bestowed
by his only Benefactor.
On one other occasion after her Ranchi visit I had opportunity to
see Ananda Moyi Ma. She stood among her disciples some months later
on the Serampore station platform, waiting for the train.
“Father, I am going to the Himalayas,” she told me. “Generous
disciples have built me a hermitage in Dehra Dun.”
As she boarded the train, I marveled to see that whether amidst a
crowd, on a train, feasting, or sitting in silence, her eyes never
looked away from God. Within me I still hear her voice, an echo of
measureless sweetness:
“Behold, now and always one with the Eternal, ‘I am ever the same.’”
{FN45-1} I find some further facts of Ananda Moyi Ma’s life, printed
in EAST-WEST. The saint was born in 1893 at Dacca in central Bengal.
Illiterate, she has yet stunned the intellectuals by her wisdom.
Her verses in Sanskrit have filled scholars with wonderment. She
has brought consolation to bereaved persons, and effected miraculous
cures, by her mere presence.
{FN45-2} MARK 12:30.
CHAPTER: 46
THE WOMAN YOGI WHO NEVER EATS
“Sir, whither are we bound this morning?” Mr. Wright was driving
the Ford; he took his eyes off the road long enough to gaze at me
with a questioning twinkle. From day to day he seldom knew what
part of Bengal he would be discovering next.
“God willing,” I replied devoutly, “we are on our way to see an
eighth wonder of the world-a woman saint whose diet is thin air!”
“Repetition of wonders-after Therese Neumann.” But Mr. Wright laughed
eagerly just the same; he even accelerated the speed of the car.
More extraordinary grist for his travel diary! Not one of an average
tourist, that!
The Ranchi school had just been left behind us; we had risen before
the sun. Besides my secretary and myself, three Bengali friends
were in the party. We drank in the exhilarating air, the natural
wine of the morning. Our driver guided the car warily among the
early peasants and the two-wheeled carts, slowly drawn by yoked,
hump-shouldered bullocks, inclined to dispute the road with a
honking interloper.
“Sir, we would like to know more of the fasting saint.”
“Her name is Giri Bala,” I informed my companions. “I first heard
about her years ago from a scholarly gentleman, Sthiti Lal Nundy.
He often came to the Gurpar Road home to tutor my brother Bishnu.”
“‘I know Giri Bala well,’ Sthiti Babu told me. ‘She employs a
certain yoga technique which enables her to live without eating. I
was her close neighbor in Nawabganj near Ichapur. {FN46-1} I made
it a point to watch her closely; never did I find evidence that
she was taking either food or drink. My interest finally mounted so
high that I approached the Maharaja of Burdwan {FN46-2} and asked
him to conduct an investigation. Astounded at the story, he invited
her to his palace. She agreed to a test and lived for two months
locked up in a small section of his home. Later she returned for a
palace visit of twenty days; and then for a third test of fifteen
days. The Maharaja himself told me that these three rigorous
scrutinies had convinced him beyond doubt of her non-eating state.’
“This story of Sthiti Babu’s has remained in my mind for over
twenty-five years,” I concluded. “Sometimes in America I wondered
if the river of time would not swallow the YOGINI {FN46-3} before
I could meet her. She must be quite aged now. I do not even know
where, or if, she lives. But in a few hours we shall reach Purulia;
her brother has a home there.”
By ten-thirty our little group was conversing with the brother,
Lambadar Dey, a lawyer of Purulia.
“Yes, my sister is living. She sometimes stays with me here, but at
present she is at our family home in Biur.” Lambadar Babu glanced
doubtfully at the Ford. “I hardly think, Swamiji, that any automobile
has ever penetrated into the interior as far as Biur. It might be
best if you all resign yourselves to the ancient jolt of the bullock
cart!”
As one voice our party pledged loyalty to the Pride of Detroit.
“The Ford comes from America,” I told the lawyer. “It would be a
shame to deprive it of an opportunity to get acquainted with the
heart of Bengal!”
“May Ganesh {FN46-4} go with you!” Lambadar Babu said, laughing.
He added courteously, “If you ever get there, I am sure Giri Bala
will be glad to see you. She is approaching her seventies, but
continues in excellent health.”
“Please tell me, sir, if it is absolutely true that she eats
nothing?” I looked directly into his eyes, those telltale windows
of the mind.
“It is true.” His gaze was open and honorable. “In more than five
decades I have never seen her eat a morsel. If the world suddenly
came to an end, I could not be more astonished than by the sight
of my sister’s taking food!”
We chuckled together over the improbability of these two cosmic
events.
“Giri Bala has never sought an inaccessible solitude for her yoga
practices,” Lambadar Babu went on. “She has lived her entire life
surrounded by her family and friends. They are all well accustomed
now to her strange state. Not one of them who would not be stupefied
if Giri Bala suddenly decided to eat anything! Sister is naturally
retiring, as befits a Hindu widow, but our little circle in Purulia
and in Biur all know that she is literally an ‘exceptional’ woman.”
The brother’s sincerity was manifest. Our little party thanked him
warmly and set out toward Biur. We stopped at a street shop for
curry and LUCHIS, attracting a swarm of urchins who gathered round
to watch Mr. Wright eating with his fingers in the simple Hindu
manner. {FN46-5} Hearty appetites caused us to fortify ourselves
against an afternoon which, unknown at the moment, was to prove
fairly laborious.
Our way now led east through sun-baked rice fields into the Burdwan
section of Bengal. On through roads lined with dense vegetation;
the songs of the MAYNAS and the stripe-throated BULBULS streamed
out from trees with huge, umbrellalike branches. A bullock cart
now and then, the RINI, RINI, MANJU, MANJU squeak of its axle and
iron-shod wooden wheels contrasting sharply in mind with the SWISH,
SWISH of auto tires over the aristocratic asphalt of the cities.
“Dick, halt!” My sudden request brought a jolting protest from the
Ford. “That overburdened mango tree is fairly shouting an invitation!”
The five of us dashed like children to the mango-strewn earth; the
tree had benevolently shed its fruits as they had ripened.
“Full many a mango is born to lie unseen,” I paraphrased, “and
waste its sweetness on the stony ground.”
“Nothing like this in America, Swamiji, eh?” laughed Sailesh
Mazumdar, one of my Bengali students.
“No,” I admitted, covered with mango juice and contentment. “How
I have missed this fruit in the West! A Hindu’s heaven without
mangoes is inconceivable!”
I picked up a rock and downed a proud beauty hidden on the highest
limb.
“Dick,” I asked between bites of ambrosia, warm with the tropical
sun, “are all the cameras in the car?”
“Yes, sir; in the baggage compartment.”
“If Giri Bala proves to be a true saint, I want to write about her
in the West. A Hindu YOGINI with such inspiring powers should not
live and die unknown-like most of these mangoes.”
Half an hour later I was still strolling in the sylvan peace.
“Sir,” Mr. Wright remarked, “we should reach Giri Bala before the
sun sets, to have enough light for photographs.” He added with a
grin, “The Westerners are a skeptical lot; we can’t expect them to
believe in the lady without any pictures!”
This bit of wisdom was indisputable; I turned my back on temptation
and reentered the car.
“You are right, Dick,” I sighed as we sped along, “I sacrifice the
mango paradise on the altar of Western realism. Photographs we must
have!”
The road became more and more sickly: wrinkles of ruts, boils of
hardened clay, the sad infirmities of old age! Our group dismounted
occasionally to allow Mr. Wright to more easily maneuver the Ford,
which the four of us pushed from behind.
“Lambadar Babu spoke truly,” Sailesh acknowledged. “The car is not
carrying us; we are carrying the car!”
Our climb-in, climb-out auto tedium was beguiled ever and anon by
the appearance of a village, each one a scene of quaint simplicity.
“Our way twisted and turned through groves of palms among ancient,
unspoiled villages nestling in the forest shade,” Mr. Wright has
recorded in his travel diary, under date of May 5, 1936. “Very
fascinating are these clusters of thatched mud huts, decorated with
one of the names of God on the door; many small, naked children
innocently playing about, pausing to stare or run wildly from
this big, black, bullockless carriage tearing madly through their
village. The women merely peep from the shadows, while the men
lazily loll beneath the trees along the roadside, curious beneath
their nonchalance. In one place, all the villagers were gaily
bathing in the large tank (in their garments, changing by draping
dry cloths around their bodies, dropping the wet ones). Women
bearing water to their homes, in huge brass jars.
“The road led us a merry chase over mount and ridge; we bounced and
tossed, dipped into small streams, detoured around an unfinished
causeway, slithered across dry, sandy river beds and finally, about
5:00 P.M., we were close to our destination, Biur. This minute
village in the interior of Bankura District, hidden in the protection
of dense foliage, is unapproachable by travelers during the rainy
season, when the streams are raging torrents and the roads serpentlike
spit the mud-venom.
“Asking for a guide among a group of worshipers on their way home
from a temple prayer (out in the lonely field), we were besieged by
a dozen scantily clad lads who clambered on the sides of the car,
eager to conduct us to Giri Bala.
“The road led toward a grove of date palms sheltering a group of
mud huts, but before we had reached it, the Ford was momentarily
tipped at a dangerous angle, tossed up and dropped down. The narrow
trail led around trees and tank, over ridges, into holes and deep
ruts. The car became anchored on a clump of bushes, then grounded
on a hillock, requiring a lift of earth clods; on we proceeded,
slowly and carefully; suddenly the way was stopped by a mass of
brush in the middle of the cart track, necessitating a detour down
a precipitous ledge into a dry tank, rescue from which demanded some
scraping, adzing, and shoveling. Again and again the road seemed
impassable, but the pilgrimage must go on; obliging lads fetched
spades and demolished the obstacles (shades of Ganesh!) while
hundreds of children and parents stared.
“Soon we were threading our way along the two ruts of antiquity,
women gazing wide-eyed from their hut doors, men trailing alongside
and behind us, children scampering to swell the procession. Ours