The Essence of Self-Realization - The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda PDF
The Essence of Self-Realization - The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda PDF
The Essence of Self-Realization - The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda PDF
Introduction
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PREFACE
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER: 1 - My Parents and Early Life
CHAPTER: 2 - My Mother’s Death and the Mystic Amulet
CHAPTER: 3 - The Saint with Two Bodies
CHAPTER: 4 - My Interrupted Flight Toward the Himalayas
CHAPTER: 5 - A “Perfume Saint” Displays his Wonders
CHAPTER: 6 - The Tiger Swami
CHAPTER: 7 - The Levitating Saint
CHAPTER: 8 - India’s Great Scientist, J. C. Bose
CHAPTER: 9 - The Blissful Devotee and his Cosmic
Romance
CHAPTER: 10 - I Meet my Master, Sri Yukteswar
CHAPTER: 11 - Two Penniless Boys in Brindaban
CHAPTER: 12 - Years in my Master’s Hermitage
CHAPTER: 13 - The Sleepless Saint
CHAPTER: 14 - An Experience in Cosmic Consciousness
CHAPTER: 15 - The Cauliflower Robbery
CHAPTER: 16 - Outwitting the Stars
CHAPTER: 17 - Sasi and the Three Sapphires
CHAPTER: 18 - A Mohammedan Wonder-Worker
CHAPTER: 19 - My Master, in Calcutta, appears in
Serampore
CHAPTER: 20 - We Do Not Visit Kashmir
CHAPTER: 21 - We Visit Kashmir
CHAPTER: 22 - The Heart of a Stone Image
CHAPTER: 23 - I Receive My University Degree
CHAPTER: 24 - I Become a Monk of the Swami Order
CHAPTER: 25 - Brother Ananda and Sister Nalini
CHAPTER: 26 - The Science of Kriya Yoga
CHAPTER: 27 - Founding a Yoga School at Ranchi
CHAPTER: 28 - Kashi, Reborn and Rediscovered
CHAPTER: 29 - Rabindranath Tagore and I Compare
Schools
CHAPTER: 30 - The Law of Miracles
CHAPTER: 31 - An Interview with the Sacred Mother
CHAPTER: 32 - Rama is Raised from the Dead
CHAPTER: 33 - Babaji, the Yogi-Christ of Modern India
CHAPTER: 34 - Materializing a Palace in the Himalayas
CHAPTER: 35 - The Christlike Life of Lahiri Mahasaya
CHAPTER: 36 - Babaji’s Interest in the West
CHAPTER: 37 - I Go to America
CHAPTER: 38 - Luther Burbank-A Saint Amidst the Roses
CHAPTER: 39 - Therese Neumann, the Catholic Stigmatist
CHAPTER: 40 - I Return to India
CHAPTER: 41 - An Idyl in South India
CHAPTER: 42 - Last Days with My Guru
CHAPTER: 43 - The Resurrection of Sri Yukteswar
CHAPTER: 44 - With Mahatma Gandhi at Wardha
CHAPTER: 45 - The Bengali “Joy-Permeated Mother”
CHAPTER: 46 - The Woman Yogi Who Never Eats
CHAPTER: 47 - I Return to the West
CHAPTER: 48 - At Encinitas in California
INDEX
A Selection of Audio and Music from Clarity Sound & Light
A Selection of Other Crystal Clarity Books
INTRODUCTION
Printed in Canada
10 9 8 7 6
ISBN 1-56589-734-X
ISBN 1-56589-108-2 paperback
Dedicated to the Memory of
LUTHER BURBANK
An American Saint
PREFACE
W. Y. EVANS-WENTZ
Author’s Acknowledgments
“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,28 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,29
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.30 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.31
“‘Keep your mind concentrated there, and frequently chant
the name of the prophet Rama 32 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 33 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.
CHAPTER: 5
It has been determined within the past few years that when
the nerves transmit messages between the brain and other
parts of the body, tiny electrical impulses are being
generated. These impulses have been measured by delicate
galvanometers and magnified millions of times by modern
amplifying apparatus. Until now no satisfactory method had
been found to study the passages of the impulses along the
nerve fibers in living animals or man because of the great
speed with which these impulses travel.
Drs. K. S. Cole and H. J. Curtis reported having
discovered that the long single cells of the fresh-water plant
nitella, used frequently in goldfish bowls, are virtually
identical with those of single nerve fibers. Furthermore, they
found that nitella fibers, on being excited, propagate
electrical waves that are similar in every way, except
velocity, to those of the nerve fibers in animals and man.
The electrical nerve impulses in the plant were found to be
much slower than those in animals. This discovery was
therefore seized upon by the Columbia workers as a means
for taking slow motion pictures of the passage of the
electrical impulses in nerves.
The nitella plant thus may become a sort of Rosetta stone
for deciphering the closely guarded secrets close to the very
borderland of mind and matter.
A Mohammedan Wonder-Worker
We Visit Kashmir
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by
narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening
thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country
awake!” 185
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
CHAPTER: 30
I Go to America
THERESE NEUMANN
Famous Catholic stigmatist who inspired my 1935 pilgrimage
to Konnersreuth, Bavaria
I Return to India
“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.333 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
stripethroated 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.
At Encinitas in California
“May the good and heroic and bountiful souls of the saints
come here,” reads “A Prayer for a Dwelling,” from the Zend-
Avesta, fastened on one of the hermitage doors, “and may
they go hand in hand with us, giving the healing virtues of
their blessed gifts as widespread as the earth, as far-flung as
the rivers, as high-reaching as the sun, for the furtherance of
better men, for the increase of abundance and glory.
“May obedience conquer disobedience within this house;
may peace triumph here over discord; free-hearted giving
over avarice, truthful speech over deceit, reverence over
contempt. That our minds be delighted, and our souls
uplifted, let our bodies be glorified as well; and 0 Light
Divine, may we see Thee, and may we, approaching, come
round about Thee, and attain unto Thine entire
companionship!”
Encinitas, Califorinia, overlooking the Pacific, Main building
and part of the grounds of the Sefl-Realization Fellowship.
The Path
One Man’s Quest on the Only Path There Is
by J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda)
58
Hindu scriptures teach that family attachment is delusive if it
prevents the devotee from seeking the Giver of all boons,
including the one of loving relatives, not to mention life
itself. Jesus similarly taught: “Who is my mother? and who
are my brethren?” (Matthew 12:48.)
59
Ji is a customary respectful suffix, particularly used in direct
address; thus, “swamiji,” “guruji,” “Sri Yukteswarji,”
“paramhansaji.”
60
Pertaining to the shastras, literally, “sacred books,”
comprising four classes of scripture: the shruti, smriti,
purana, and tantra. These comprehensive treatises cover
every aspect of religious and social life, and the fields of
law, medicine, architecture, art, etc. The shrutis are the
“directly heard” or “revealed” scriptures, the Vedas. The
smritis or “remembered” lore was finally written down in a
remote past as the world’s longest epic poems, the
Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Puranas are literally
“ancient” allegories; tantras literally mean “rites” or “rituals”;
these treatises convey profound truths under a veil of
detailed symbolism.
61
“Divine teacher,” the customary Sanskrit term for one’s
spiritual preceptor. I have rendered it in English as simply
“Master.”
62
See chapter 25.
63
The world-famous mausoleum.
64
A dhoti-cloth is knotted around the waist and covers the
legs.
65
Brindaban, in the Muttra district of United Provinces, is the
Hindu Jerusalem. Here Lord Krishna displayed his glories
for the benefit of mankind.
66
Hari; an endearing name by which Lord Krishna is known to
his devotees.
67
An Indian sweetmeat.
68
A mythological gem with power to grant desires.
69
Spiritual initiation; from the Sanskrit root diksh, to dedicate
oneself
70
“Worship of Durga.” This is the chief festival of the Bengali
year, and lasts for nine days around the end of September.
Immediately following is the ten-day festival of Dashahara
(“the One who removes ten sins”—three of body, three of
mind, four of speech). Both pujas are sacred to Durga,
literally, “the Inaccessible,” an aspect of Divine Mother,
Shakti, the female creative force personified.
71
Sri Yukteswar was born on May 10, 1855.
72
Yukteswar means “united to God.” Giri is a classificatory
distinction of one of the ten ancient Swami branches. Sri
means “holy”; it is not a name but a title of respect.
73
Literally, “to direct together.” Samadhi is a superconscious
state of ecstasy in which the yogi perceives the identity of
soul and Spirit.
74
Snoring, according to physiologists, is an indication of utter
relaxation (to the oblivious practitioner, solely).
75
Dhal is a thick soup made from split peas or other pulses.
Channa is a cheese of fresh curdled milk, cut into squares
and curried with potatoes.
76
The omnipresent powers of a yogi, whereby he sees, hears,
tastes, smells, and feels his oneness in creation without the
use of sensory organs, have been described as follows in the
Taittiriya Aranyaka: “The blind man pierced the pearl; the
fingerless put a thread into it; the neckless wore it; and the
tongueless praised it.”
77
The cobra swiftly strikes at any moving object within its
range. Complete immobility is usually one’s sole hope of
safety.
78
Lahiri Mahasaya actually said “Priya” (first or given name),
not “Yukteswar” (monastic name, not received by my guru
during Lahiri Mahasaya’s lifetime). (See page 105.)
“Yukteswar” is substituted here, and in a few other places in
this book, in order to avoid the confusion, to reader, of two
names.
79
“Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire,
when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have
them.”—Mark 11:24. Masters who possess the Divine Vision
are fully able to transfer their realizations to advanced
disciples, as Lahiri Mahasaya did for Sri Yukteswar on this
occasion.
80
“And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and
cut off his right ear. And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye
thus far. And he touched his ear and healed him.”—Luke
22:50-51.
81
“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye
your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their
feet, and turn again and rend you.”
—Matthew 7:6.
82
Disciples; from Sanskrit verb root, “to serve.”
83
He was once ill in Kashmir, when I was absent from him.
(See page 198.)
84
A courageous medical man, Charles Robert Richet, awarded
the Nobel Prize in physiology, wrote as follows:
“Metaphysics is not yet officially a science, recognized as
such. But it is going to be.... At Edinburgh, I was able to
affirm before 100 physiologists that our five senses are not
our only means of knowledge and that a fragment of reality
sometimes reaches the intelligence in other ways.... Because
a fact is rare is no reason that it does not exist. Because a
study is difficult, is that a reason for not understanding it? ...
Those who have railed at metaphysics as an occult science
will be as ashamed of themselves as those who railed at
chemistry on the ground that pursuit of the philosopher’s
stone was illusory.... In the matter of principles there are
only those of Lavoisier, Claude Bernard, and Pasteur-the
experimental everywhere and always. Greetings, then, to the
new science which is going to change the orientation of
human thought.”
85
Samadhi: perfect union of the individualized soul with the
Infinite Spirit.
86
The subconsciously guided rationalizations of the mind are
utterly different from the infallible guidance of truth which
issues from the superconsciousness. Led by French scientists
of the Sorbonne, Western thinkers are beginning to
investigate the possibility of divine perception in man.
“For the past twenty years, students of psychology,
influenced by Freud, gave all their time to searching the
subconscious realms,” Rabbi Israel H. Levinthal pointed out
in 1929. “It is true that the subconscious reveals much of the
mystery that can explain human actions, but not all of our
actions. It can explain the abnormal, but not deeds that are
above the normal. The latest psychology, sponsored by the
French schools, has discovered a new region in man, which
it terms the superconscious. In contrast to the subconscious
which represents the submerged currents of our nature, it
reveals the heights to which our nature can reach. Man
represents a triple, not a double, personality; our conscious
and subconscious being is crowned by a
superconsciousness. Many years ago the English
psychologist, F. W. H. Myers, suggested that ‘hidden in the
deep of our being is a rubbish heap as well as a treasure
house.’ In contrast to the psychology that centers all its
researches on the subconscious in man’s nature, this new
psychology of the superconscious focuses its attention upon
the treasure-house, the region that alone can explain the
great, unselfish, heroic deeds of men.”
87
Jnana, wisdom, and bhakti, devotion: two of the main paths
to God.
88
“Man in his waking state puts forth innumerable efforts for
experiencing sensual pleasures; when the entire group of
sensory organs is fatigued, he forgets even the pleasure on
hand and goes to sleep in order to enjoy rest in the soul, his
own nature,” Shankara, the great Vedantist, has written.
“Ultra-sensual bliss is thus extremely easy of attainment and
is far superior to sense delights which always end in
disgust.”
89
Mark 2:27.
90
The Upanishads or Vedanta (literally, “end of the Vedas”),
occur in certain parts of the Vedas as essential summaries.
The Upanishads furnish the doctrinal basis of the Hindu
religion. They received the following tribute from
Schopenhauer: “How entirely does the Upanishad breathe
throughout the holy spirit of the Vedas! How is everyone
who has become familiar with that incomparable book
stirred by that spirit to the very depths of his soul! From
every sentence deep, original, and sublime thoughts arise,
and the whole is pervaded by a high and holy and earnest
spirit.... The access to the Vedas by means of the
Upanishads is in my eyes the greatest privilege this century
may claim before all previous centuries.”
91
Commentaries. Shankara peerlessly expounded the
Upanishads.
92
Proverbs 16:32.
93
Hand-played drums, used only for devotional music.
94
One is reminded here of Dostoevski’s observation: “A man
who bows down to nothing can never bear the burden of
himself.”
95
See pp. 296-298.
96
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.”—John 1:1.
97
“For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all
judgment unto the Son.”—John 5:22. “No man hath seen
God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the
bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”-John 1:18.
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the
works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than
these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.”- John 14:12.
“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the
Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things,
and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have
said to you.”—John 14:26.
These Biblical words refer to the threefold nature of God
as Father, Son, Holy Ghost (Sat, Tat, Aum in the Hindu
scriptures). God the Father is the Absolute, Unmanifested,
existing beyond vibratory creation. God the Son is the Christ
Consciousness (Brahma or Kutastha Chaitanya) existing
within vibratory creation; this Christ Consciousness is the
“only begotten” or sole reflection of the Uncreated Infinite.
Its outward manifestation or “witness” is Aum or Holy
Ghost, the divine, creative, invisible power which structures
all creation through vibration. Aum the blissful Comforter is
heard in meditation and reveals to the devotee the ultimate
Truth.
98
Puri, about 310 miles south of Calcutta, is a famous
pilgrimage city for devotees of Krishna; his worship is
celebrated there with two immense annual festivals,
Snanayatra and Rathayatra.
99
The 1939 discovery of a radio microscope revealed a new
world of hitherto unknown rays. “Man himself as well as all
kinds of supposedly inert matter constantly emits the rays
that this instrument ‘seers,’” reported the Associated Press.
“Those who believe in telepathy, second sight, and
clairvoyance, have in this announcement the first scientific
proof of the existence of invisible rays which really travel
from one person to another. The radio device actually is a
radio frequency spectroscope. It does the same thing for
cool, nonglowing matter that the spectroscope does when it
discloses the kinds of atoms that make the stars.... The
existence of such rays coming from man and all living things
has been suspected by scientists for many years. Today is the
first experimental proof of their existence. The discovery
shows that every atom and every molecule in nature is a
continuous radio broadcasting station.... Thus even after
death the substance that was a man continues to send out its
delicate rays. The wave lengths of these rays range from
shorter than anything now used in broadcasting to the
longest kind of radio waves. The jumble of these rays is
almost inconceivable. There are millions of them. A single
very large molecule may give off 1,000,000 different wave
lengths at the same time. The longer wave lengths of this sort
travel with the ease and speed of radio waves.... There is one
amazing difference between the new radio rays and familiar
rays like light. This is the prolonged time, amounting to
thousands of years, which these radio waves will keep on
emitting from undisturbed matter.”
100
One hesitates to use “intuition”; Hitler has almost ruined the
word along with more ambitious devastations. The Latin
root meaning of intuition is “inner protection.” The Sanskrit
word agama means intuitional knowledge born of direct
soul-perception; hence certain ancient treatises by the rishis
were called agamas.
101
Sat is literally “being,” hence “essence; reality.” Sanga is
“association.” Sri Yukteswar called his hermitage
organization Sat-Sanga, “fellowship with truth.”
102
“If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full
of light.” —Matthew 6:22. During deep meditation, the single
or spiritual eye becomes visible within the central part of the
forehead. This omniscient eye is variously referred to in
scriptures as the third eye, the star of the East, the inner eye.
the dove descending from heaven, the eye of Shiva, the eye
of intuition, etc.
103
“He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the
eye, shall he not see? ... he that teacheth man knowledge,
shall he not know?”-Psalm 94:9-10.
104
Folklore of all peoples contains references to incantations
with power over nature. The American Indians are well-
known to have developed sound rituals for rain and wind.
Tan Sen, the great Hindu musician, was able to quench fire
by the power of his song. Charles Kellogg, the California
naturalist, gave a demonstration of the effect of tonal
vibration on fire in 1926 before a group of New York
firemen. “Passing a bow, like an enlarged violin bow, swiftly
across an aluminum tuning fork, he produced a screech like
intense radio static. Instantly the yellow gas flame, two feet
high, leaping inside a hollow glass tube, subsided to a height
of six inches and became a sputtering blue flare. Another
attempt with the bow, and another screech of vibration,
extinguished it.”
105
From astronomical references in ancient Hindu scriptures,
scholars have been able to correctly ascertain the dates of the
authors. The scientific knowledge of the rishis was very
great; in the Kaushitaki Brahmana we find precise
astronomical passages which show that in 3100 B.C. the
Hindus were far advanced in astronomy, which had a
practical value in determining the auspicious times for
astrological ceremonies. In an article in East-West, February,
1934, the following summary is given of the Jyotish or body
of Vedic astronomical treatises: “It contains the scientific lore
which kept India at the forefront of all ancient nations and
made her the mecca of seekers after knowledge. The very
ancient Brahmagupta, one of the Jyotish works, is an
astronomical treatise dealing with such matters as the
heliocentric motion of the planetary bodies in our solar
system, the obliquity of the ecliptic, the earth’s spherical
form, the reflected light of the moon, the earth’s daily axial
revolution, the presence of fixed stars in the Milky Way, the
law of gravitation, and other scientific facts which did not
dawn in the Western world until the time of Copernicus and
Newton.”
It is now well-known that the so-called “Arabic
numerals,” without whose symbols advanced mathematics is
difficult, came to Europe in the 9th century, via the Arabs,
from India, where that system of notation had been anciently
formulated. Further light on India’s vast scientific heritage
will be found in Dr. P. C. Ray’s History of Hindu Chemistry,
and in Dr. B. N. Seal’s Positive Sciences of the Ancient
Hindus.
106
The blessing which flows from the mere sight of a saint.
107
One of the girls whom my family selected as a possible bride
for me, afterwards married my cousin, Prabhas Chandra
Ghose.
108
A series of thirteen articles on the historical verification of
Sri Yukteswar’s Yuga theory appeared in the magazine East-
West (Los Angeles) from September, 1932, to September,
1933.
109
In the year A.D. 12,500.
110
The Hindu scriptures place the present world-age as
occurring within the Kali Yuga of a much longer universal
cycle than the simple 24,000-year equinoctial cycle with
which Sri Yukteswar was concerned. The universal cycle of
the scriptures is 4,300,560,000 years in extent, and measures
out a Day of Creation or the length of life assigned to our
planetary system in its present form. This vast figure given
by the rishis is based on a relationship between the length of
the solar year and a multiple of Pi (3.1416, the ratio of the
circumference to the diameter of a circle).
The life span for a whole universe, according to the
ancient seers, is 314,159,000,000,000 solar years, or “One
Age of Brahma.”
Scientists estimate the present age of the earth to be about
two billion years, basing their conclusions on a study of lead
pockets left as a result of radioactivity in rocks. The Hindu
scriptures declare that an earth such as ours is dissolved for
one of two reasons: the inhabitants as a whole become either
completely good or completely evil. The world-mind thus
generates a power which releases the captive atoms held
together as an earth.
Dire pronouncements are occasionally published regarding
an imminent “end of the world.” The latest prediction of
doom was given by Rev. Chas. G. Long of Pasadena, who
publicly set the “Day of Judgment” for Sept. 21, 1945.
United Press reporters asked my opinion; I explained that
world cycles follow an orderly progression according to a
divine plan. No earthly dissolution is in sight; two billion
years of ascending and descending equinoctial cycles are yet
in store for our planet in its present form. The figures given
by the rishis for the various world ages deserve careful study
in the West; the magazine Time (Dec. 17, 1945, p. 6) called
them “reassuring statistics.”
111
Chapter VI:13.
112
“The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is
single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine
eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. Take heed
therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness. ”—
Luke 11:34-35.
113
One of the six systems of Hindu philosophy. Sankhya
teaches final emancipation through knowledge of twenty-
five principles, starting with prakriti or nature and ending
with purusha or soul.
114
Sankhya Aphorisms, 1:92.
115
Matthew 24:35.
116
Matthew 12:50.
117
John 8:31-32. St. John testified: “But as many as received
him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God,
even to them that believe on his name (even to them who are
established in the Christ Consciousness). ”-John 1:12.
118
We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the
fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath
said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye
die.”-Genesis 3:2-3.
119
“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me
of the tree, and I did eat. The woman said, The serpent
beguiled me, and I did eat.”-Gen. 3:12-13.
120
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God
created he him; male and female created he them. And God
blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.”-Gen. 1:27-
28.
121
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man
became a living soul.”-Gen. 2:7.
122
“Now the serpent (sex force) was more subtil than any beast
of the field” (any other sense of the body).-Gen. 3:1.
123
“And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and
there he put the man whom he had formed.”-Gen. 2:8.
“Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of
Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.”—Gen.
3:23. The divine man first made by God had his
consciousness centered in the omnipotent single eye in the
forehead (eastward). The all-creative powers of his will,
focused at that spot, were lost to man when he began to “till
the ground” of his physical nature.
124
In 1936 I heard from a friend that Sasi was still in excellent
health.
125
A Moslem yogi; from the Arabic faqir, poor; originally
applied to dervishes under a vow of poverty.
126
My father later told me that his company, the Bengal-Nagpur
Railway, had been one of the firms victimized by Afzal
Khan.
127
I do not recall the name of Sri Yukteswar’s friend, and must
refer to him simply as “Babu” (Mister).
128
The Bengali “Good-by”; literally, it is a hopeful paradox:
“Then I come.”
129
The characteristic sound of dematerialization of bodily
atoms.
130
Although Master failed to make any explanation, his
reluctance to visit Kashmir during those two summers may
have been a foreknowledge that the time was not ripe for his
illness there (see pp. 198 f.).
131
Literally, “of the mountains.” Parvati, mythologically
represented as a daughter of Himavat or the sacred
mountains, is a name given to the shakti or “consort” of
Shiva.
132
It is a mark of disrespect, in India, to smoke in the presence
of one’s elders and superiors.
133
The Oriental plane tree.
134
Many Christian saints, including Therese Neumann (see page
356), are familiar with the metaphysical transfer of disease.
135
Christ said, just before he was led away to be crucified:
“Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he
shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?
But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it
must be?”-Matthew 26:53-54.
136
See pp. 233, 400 note.
137
Goddess.
138
The Hindu wife believes it is a sign of spiritual advancement
if she dies before her husband, as a proof of her loyal
service to him, or “dying in harness.”
139
I must do Professor Ghoshal the justice of admitting that the
strained relationship between us was not due to any fault of
his, but solely to my absences from classes and inattention in
them. Professor Ghoshal was, and is, a remarkable orator
with vast philosophical knowledge. In later years we came to
a cordial understanding.
140
Although my cousin and I have the same family name of
Ghosh, Prabhas has accustomed himself to transliterating his
name in English as Ghose; therefore I follow his own
spelling here.
141
A disciple always removes his shoes in an Indian hermitage.
142
Matthew 6:33.
143
I Corinthians 7:32-33.
144
Literally, “This soul is Spirit.” The Supreme Spirit, the
Uncreated, is wholly unconditioned (neti, neti, not this, not
that) but is often referred to in Vedanta as Sat-Chit-Ananda,
that is, Being-Intelligence-Bliss.
145
Sometimes called Shankaracharya. Acharya means “religious
teacher.” Shankara’s date is a center of the usual scholastic
dispute. A few records indicate that the peerless monist lived
from 510 to 478 B.C.; Western historians assign him to the
late eighth century A.D. Readers who are interested in
Shankara’s famous exposition of the Brahma Sutras will
find a careful English translation in Dr. Paul Deussen’s
System of the Vedanta (Chicago: Open Court Publishing
Company, 1912). Short extracts from his writings will be
found in Selected Works of Sri Shankaracharya (Natesan &
Co., Madras).
146
“Chitta vritti nirodha”-Yoga Sutra 1:2. Patanjali’s date is
unknown, though a number of scholars place him in the
second century B.C. The rishis gave forth treatises on all
subjects with such insight that ages have been powerless to
out-mode them; yet, to the subsequent consternation of
historians, the sages made no effort to attach their own dates
and personalities to their literary works. They knew their
lives were only temporarily important as flashes of the great
infinite Life; and that truth is timeless, impossible to
trademark, and no private possession of their own.
147
The six orthodox systems (saddarsana) are Sankhya, Yoga,
Vedanta, Mimamsa, Nyaya, and Vaisesika. Readers of a
scholarly bent will delight in the subtleties and broad scope
of these ancient formulations as summarized, in English, in
History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. I, by Prof. Surendranath
DasGupta (Cambridge University Press, 1922).
148
Not to be confused with the “Noble Eightfold Path” of
Buddhism, a guide to man’s conduct of life, as follows (1)
Right Ideals, (2) Right Motive, (3) Right Speech, (4) Right
Action, (5) Right Means of Livelihood, (6) Right Effort, (7)
Right Remembrance (of the Self), (8) Right Realization
(samadhi).
149
Dr. Jung attended the Indian Science Congress in 1937 and
received an honorary degree from the University of Calcutta.
150
Dr. Jung is here referring to Hatha Yoga, a specialized
branch of bodily postures and techniques for health and
longevity. Hatha is useful, and produces spectacular
physical results, but this branch of yoga is little used by
yogis bent on spiritual liberation.
151
In Plato’s Timaeus story of Atlantis, he tells of the
inhabitants’ advanced state of scientific knowledge. The lost
continent is believed to have vanished about 9500 B.C.
through a cataclysm of nature; certain metaphysical writers,
however, state that the Atlanteans were destroyed as a result
of their misuse of atomic power. Two French writers have
recently compiled a Bibliography of Atlantis, listing over
1700 historical and other references.
152
The gracefully draped dress of Indian women.
153
Because most persons in India are thin, reasonable
plumpness is considered very desirable.
154
The Hindu scriptures declare that those who habitually speak
the truth will develop the power of materializing their words.
What commands they utter from the heart will come true in
life.
155
The noted scientist, Dr. George W. Crile of Cleveland,
explained before a 1940 meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science the experiments
by which he had proved that all bodily tissues are electrically
negative, except the brain and nervous system tissues which
remain electrically positive because they take up revivifying
oxygen at a more rapid rate.
156
Bhagavad Gita, IV :29.
157
Ibid. IV :1-2.
158
The author of Manava Dharma Shastras. These institutes of
canonized common law are effective in India to this day. The
French scholar, Louis Jacolliot, writes that the date of Manu
“is lost in the night of the ante-historical period of India; and
no scholar has dared to refuse him the title of the most
ancient lawgiver in the world.” In La Bible dans l’Inde,
pages 33-37, Jacolliot reproduces parallel textual references
to prove that the Roman Code of Justinian follows closely
the Laws of Manu.
159
The start of the materialistic ages, according to Hindu
scriptural reckonings, was 3102 B.C. This was the beginning
of the Descending Dwapara Age (see pp. 167 f.). Modern
scholars, blithely believing that 10,000 years ago all men
were sunk in a barbarous Stone Age, summarily dismiss as
“myths” all records and traditions of very ancient
civilizations in India, China, Egypt, and other lands.
160
Patanjali’s Aphorisms, II:1. In using the words Kriya Yoga,
Patanjali was referring to either the exact technique taught by
Babaji, or one very similar to it. That it was a definite
technique of life control is proved by Patanjali’s Aphorism
II:49.
161
Ibid. I:27.
162
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.... All things were made by
him; and without him was not any thing made that was
made.”-John 1:1-3. Aum (Om) of the Vedas became the
sacred word Amin of the Moslems, Hum of the Tibetans, and
Amen of the Christians (its meaning in Hebrew being sure,
faithful). “These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true
witness, the beginning of the creation of God.”-Revelations
3:14.
163
Aphorisms II:49.
164
I Corinthians 15:31. “Our rejoicing” is the correct
translation; not, as usually given, “your rejoicing.” St. Paul
was referring to the omnipresence of the Christ
consciousness.
165
Kalpa means time or aeon. Sabikalpa means subject to time
or change; some link with prakriti or matter remains.
Nirbikalpa means timeless, changeless; this is the highest
state of samadhi.
166
According to the Lincoln Library of Essential Information,
p. 1030, the giant tortoise lives between 200 and 300 years.
167
Shakespeare: Sonnet #146.
168
Bhagavad Gita, VI:46.
169
Vidyalaya, school. Brahmacharya here refers to one of the
four stages in the Vedic plan for man’s life, as comprising
that of (1) the celibate student (brahmachari); (2) the
householder with worldly responsibilities (grihastha); (3)
the hermit (vanaprastha); (4) the forest dweller or wanderer,
free from all earthly concerns (sannyasi). This ideal scheme
of life, while not widely observed in modern India, still has
many devout followers. The four stages are carried out
religiously under the lifelong direction of a guru.
170
A number of American students also have mastered various
asanas or postures, including Bernard Cole, an instructor in
Los Angeles of the Self-Realization Fellowship teachings.
171
Mark 10:29-30.
172
Yogoda: yoga, union, harmony, equilibrium; da, that which
imparts. Sat-Sanga: sat, truth; sanga, fellowship. In the
West, to avoid the use of a Sanskrit name, the Yogoda Sat-
Sanga movement has been called the Self-Realization
Fellowship.
173
The activities at Ranchi are described more fully in chapter
40. The Lakshmanpur school is in the capable charge of Mr.
G. C. Dey, B.A. The medical department is ably supervised
by Dr. S. N. Pal and Sasi Bhusan Mullick.
174
One of Lahiri Mahasaya’s favorite remarks, given as
encouragement for his students’ perseverance. A free
translation is: “Striving, striving, one day behold! the Divine
Goal!”
175
I.e., give up the body.
176
Lahiri Mahasaya’s guru, who is still living. (See chapter 33.)
177
The second Kriya, as taught by Lahiri Mahasaya, enables the
devotee that has mastered it to leave and return to the body
consciously at any time. Advanced yogis use the second
Kriya technique during the last exit of death, a moment they
invariably know beforehand.
178
My meeting with Keshabananda is described in chapter 42.
179
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.
180
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.
181
Prokash Das is the present director of our Yogoda Math
(hermitage) at Dakshineswar in Bengal.
182
The English writer and publicist, close friend of Mahatma
Gandhi. Mr. Andrews is honored in India for his many
services to his adopted land.
183
“The soul having been often born, or, as the Hindus say,
‘traveling the path of existence through thousands of births’
... there is nothing of which she has not gained the
knowledge; no wonder that she is able to recollect... what
formerly she knew.... For inquiry and learning is
reminiscence all.”-Emerson.
184
Rabindranath, too, in his sixties, engaged in a serious study
of painting. Exhibitions of his “futuristic” work were given
some years ago in European capitals and New York.
185
Gitanjali (New York: Macmillan Co.). A thoughtful study of
the poet will be found in The Philosophy of Rabindranath
Tagore, by the celebrated scholar, Sir S. Radhakrishnan
(Macmillan, 1918). Another expository volume is B. K.
Roy’s Rabindranath Tagore: The Man and His Poetry (New
York: Dodd, Mead, 1915). Buddha and the Gospel of
Buddhism (New York: Putnam’s, 1916), by the eminent
Oriental art authority, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, contains a
number of illustrations in color by the poet’s brother,
Abanindra Nath Tagore.
186
This famous Russian artist and philosopher has been living
for many years in India near the Himalayas. “From the peaks
comes revelation,” he has written. “In caves and upon the
summits lived the rishis. Over the snowy peaks of the
Himalayas burns a bright glow, brighter than stars and the
fantastic flashes of lightning.”
187
The story may have a historical basis; an editorial note
informs us that the bishop met the three monks while he was
sailing from Archangel to the Slovetsky Monastery, at the
mouth of the Dvina River.
188
Marconi, the great inventor, made the following admission
of scientific inadequacy before the finalities: “The inability
of science to solve life is absolute. This fact would be truly
frightening were it not for faith. The mystery of life is
certainly the most persistent problem ever placed before the
thought of man.”
189
A clue to the direction taken by Einstein’s genius is given by
the fact that he is a lifelong disciple of the great philosopher
Spinoza, whose best-known work is Ethics Demonstrated in
Geometrical Order.
190
I Timothy 6:15-16.
191
Genesis 1:26.
192
One is reminded here of Milton’s line: “He for God only, she
for God in him.”
193
The venerable mother passed on at Benares in 1930.
194
Staff, symbolizing the spinal cord, carried ritually by certain
orders of monks.
195
He was a muni, a monk who observes mauna, spiritual
silence. The Sanskrit root muni is akin to Greek monos,
“alone, single,” from which are derived the English words
monk, monism, etc.
196
Romans 12:19.
197
Luke 19:37-40.
198
The lives of Trailanga and other great masters remind us of
Jesus’ words: “And these signs shall follow them that
believe; In my name (the Christ consciousness) they shall
cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall
take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall
not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall
recover.”-Mark 16:17-18.
199
John 11:1-4.
200
A cholera victim is often rational and fully conscious right
up to the moment of death.
201
The god of death. † Literally, “Supreme Soul.”
202
Genesis 18:23-32.
203
Sri, a prefix meaning “holy,” is attached (generally twice or
thrice) to names of great Indian teachers.
204
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.
205
Matthew 8:19-20.
206
John 11:41-42.
207
The omnipresent yogi who observed that I failed to bow
before the Tarakeswar shrine (chapter 13).
208
“Holy Mother.” Mataji also has lived through the centuries;
she is almost as far advanced spiritually as her brother. She
remains in ecstasy in a hidden underground cave near the
Dasasamedh ghat.
209
This incident reminds one of Thales. The great Greek
philosopher taught that there was no difference between life
and death. “Why, then,” inquired a critic, “do you not die?”
“Because,” answered Thales, “it makes no difference.”
210
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying
(remain unbrokenly in the Christ Consciousness), he shall
never see death.”-John 8:51.
211
Now a military sanatorium. By 1861 the British Government
had already established certain telegraphic communciations.
212
Ranikhet, in the Almora district of United Provinces, is
situated at the foot of Nanda Devi, the highest Himalayan
peak (25,661 feet) in British India.
213
“The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the
sabbath.”-Mark 2:27.
214
The karmic law requires that every human wish find ultimate
fulfillment. Desire is thus the chain which binds man to the
reincarnational wheel.
215
“What is a miracle?—’Tis a reproach,
‘Tis an implicit satire on mankind.”
-Edward Young, in Night Thoughts.
216
The theory of the atomic structure of matter was expounded
in the ancient Indian Vaisesika and Nyaya treatises. “There
are vast worlds all placed away within the hollows of each
atom, multifarious as the motes in a sunbeam.”
—Yoga Vasishtha.
217
Physical, mental, and spiritual suffering; manifested,
respectively, in disease, in psychological inadequacies or
“complexes,” and in soul-ignorance.
218
Chapter II:40.
219
A town near Benares.
220
In the path to the Infinite, even illumined masters like Lahiri
Mahasaya may suffer from an excess of zeal, and be subject
to discipline. In the Bhagavad Gita, we read many passages
where the divine guru Krishna gives chastisement to the
prince of devotees, Arjuna.
221
A porridge made of cream of wheat fried in butter, and
boiled with milk.
222
The man, Maitra, to whom Lahiri Mahasaya is here referring,
afterward became highly advanced in self-realization. I met
Maitra shortly after my graduation from high school; he
visited the Mahamandal hermitage in Benares while I was a
resident. He told me then of Babaji’s materialization before
the group in Moradabad. “As a result of the miracle,” Maitra
explained to me, “I became a lifelong disciple of Lahiri
Mahasaya.”
223
Matthew 3:15.
224
Many Biblical passages reveal that the law of reincarnation
was understood and accepted. Reincarnational cycles are a
more reasonable explanation for the different states of
evolution in which mankind is found, than the common
Western theory which assumes that something
(consciousness of egoity) came out of nothing, existed with
varying degrees of lustihood for thirty or ninety years, and
then returned to the original void. The inconceivable nature
of such a void is a problem to delight the heart of a medieval
Schoolman.
225
Malachi 4:5.
226
“Before him,” i.e., “before the Lord.”
227
Matthew 17:12-13.
228
II Kings 2:9-14.
229
Matthew 11:13-14.
230
Matthew 17:3.
231
Luke 1:13-17.
232
John 1:21.
233
Matthew 27:46-49.
234
“How many sorts of death are in our bodies! Nothing is
therein but death.” -Martin Luther, in “Table-Talk.”
235
The chief prayer of the Mohammedans, usually repeated
four or five times daily.
236
“Seek truth in meditation, not in moldy books. Look in the
sky to find the moon, not in the pond.”-Persian proverb.
237
As Kriya Yoga is capable of many subdivisions, Lahiri
Mahasaya wisely sifted out four steps which he discerned to
be those which contained the essential marrow, and which
were of the highest value in actual practice.
238
Other titles bestowed on Lahiri Mahasaya by his disciples
were Yogibar (greatest of yogis), Yogiraj (king of yogis),
and Munibar (greatest of saints), to which I have added
Yogavatar (incarnation of yoga).
239
He had given, altogether, thirty-five years of service in one
department of the government.
240
Vast herbal knowledge is found in ancient Sanskrit treatises.
Himalayan herbs were employed in a rejuvenation treatment
which aroused the attention of the world in 1938 when the
method was used on Pundit Madan Mohan Malaviya, 77-
year-old Vice-Chancellor of Benares Hindu University. To a
remarkable extent, the noted scholar regained in 45 days his
health, strength, memory, normal eyesight; indications of a
third set of teeth appeared, while all wrinkles vanished. The
herbal treatment, known as Kaya Kalpa, is one of 80
rejuvenation methods outlined in Hindu Ayurveda or medical
science. Pundit Malaviya underwent the treatment at the
hands of Sri Kalpacharya Swami Beshundasji, who claims
1766 as his birth year. He possesses documents proving him
to be more than 100 years old; Associated Press reporters
remarked that he looked about 40.
Ancient Hindu treatises divided medical science into 8
branches: salya (surgery); salakya (diseases above the neck);
kayachikitsa (medicine proper); bhutavidya (mental
diseases); kaumara (care of infancy); agada (toxicology);
rasayana (longevity); vagikarana (tonics). Vedic physicians
used delicate surgical instruments, employed plastic surgery,
understood medical methods to counteract the effects of
poison gas, performed Caesarean sections and brain
operations, were skilled in dynamization of drugs.
Hippocrates, famous physician of the 5th century B.C.,
borrowed much of his materia medica from Hindu sources.
241
The East Indian margosa tree. Its medicinal values have now
become recognized in the West, where the bitter neem bark
is used as a tonic, and the oil from seeds and fruit has been
found of utmost worth in the treatment of leprosy and other
diseases.
242
“A number of seals recently excavated from archaeological
sites of the Indus valley, datable in the third millennium
B.C., show figures seated in meditative postures now used in
the system of Yoga, and warrant the inference that even at
that time some of the rudiments of Yoga were already
known. We may not unreasonably draw the conclusion that
systematic introspection with the aid of studied methods has
been practiced in India for five thousand years.... India has
developed certain valuable religious attitudes of mind and
ethical notions which are unique, at least in the wideness of
their application to life. One of these has been a tolerance in
questions of intellectual belief—doctrine—that is amazing to
the West, where for many centuries heresy-hunting was
common, and bloody wars between nations over sectarian
rivalries were frequent.”-Extracts from an article by
Professor W. Norman Brown in the May, 1939 issue of the
Bulletin of the American Council of Learned Societies,
Washington, D.C.
243
One thinks here of Carlyle’s observation in Sartor Resartus:
“The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually
wonder (and worship), were he president of innumerable
Royal Societies and carried ... the epitome of all laboratories
and observatories, with their results, in his single head,—is
but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye.”
244
Sri Yukteswar was later formally initiated into the Swami
Order by the Mahant (monastery head) of Buddh Gaya.
245
“Great King”-a title of respect.
246
A guru usually refers to his own disciple simply by his
name, omitting any title. Thus, Babaji said “Lahiri,” not
“Lahiri Mahasaya.”
247
Literally, “eternal religion,” the name given to the body of
Vedic teachings. Sanatan Dharma has come to be called
Hinduism since the time of the Greeks, who designated the
people on the banks of the river Indus as Indoos, or Hindus.
The word Hindu, properly speaking, refers only to followers
of Sanatan Dharma or Hinduism. The term Indian applies
equally to Hindus and Mohammedans and other inhabitants
of the soil of India (and also, through the confusing
geographical error of Columbus, to the American Mongoloid
aboriginals).
The ancient name for India is Aryavarta, literally, “abode
of the Aryans.” The Sanskrit root of arya is “worthy, holy,
noble.” The later ethnological misuse of Aryan to signify not
spiritual, but physical, characteristics, led the great
Orientalist, Max Muller, to say quaintly: “To me an
ethnologist who speaks of an Aryan race, Aryan blood,
Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who
speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic
grammar.”
248
Param-Guru is literally “guru supreme” or “guru beyond,”
signifying a line or succession of teachers. Babaji, the guru
of Lahiri Mahasaya, was the param-guru of Sri Yukteswar.
249
My visit to Keshabananda’s ashram is described on pp. 390-
393.
250
September 26, 1895 is the date on which Lahiri Mahasaya
left his body. In a few more days he would have reached his
sixty-eighth birthday.
251
Facing the north, and thrice revolving the body, are parts of
a Vedic rite used by masters who know beforehand when
the final hour is about to strike for the physical body. The
last meditation, during which the master merges himself in
the Cosmic AUM, is called the maha, or great, samadhi.
252
Kabir was a great sixteenth-century saint whose large
following included both Hindus and Mohammedans. At the
time of his death, the disciples quarreled over the manner of
conducting the funeral ceremonies. The exasperated master
rose from his final sleep, and gave his instructions. “Half of
my remains shall be buried by the Moslem rites;” he said, “let
the other half be cremated with a Hindu sacrament.” He then
vanished. When the disciples opened the coffin which had
contained his body, nothing was found but a dazzling array
of gold-colored champak flowers. Half of these were
obediently buried by the Moslems, who revere his shrine to
this day.
In his youth Kabir was approached by two disciples who
wanted minute intellectual guidance along the mystic path.
The master responded simply:
“Path presupposes distance;
If He be near, no path needest thou at all.
Verily it maketh me smile
To hear of a fish in water athirst!”
253
Panchanon established, in a seventeen-acre garden at
Deogarh in Bihar, a temple containing a stone statue of
Lahiri Mahasaya. Another statue of the great master has been
set by disciples in the little parlor of his Benares home.
254
I Corinthians 15:54-55.
255
Many of those faces I have since seen in the West, and
instantly recognized.
256
Swami Premananda, now the leader of the Self-Realization
Church of All Religions in Washington, D.C., was one of the
students at the Ranchi school at the time I left there for
America. (He was then Brahmachari Jotin.)
257
Sri Yukteswar and I ordinarily conversed in Bengali.
258
New Pilgrimages of the Spirit (Boston: Beacon Press, 1921).
259
Dr. and Mrs. Robinson visited India in 1939, and were
honored guests at the Ranchi school.
260
Mme. Galli-Curci and her husband, Homer Samuels, the
pianist, have been Kriya Yoga students for twenty years. The
inspiring story of the famous prima donna’s years of music
has been recently published (Galli-Curci’s Life of Song, by
C. E. LeMassena, Paebar Co., New York, 1945).
261
Burbank also gave me an autographed picture of himself. I
treasure it even as a Hindu merchant once treasured a picture
of Lincoln. The Hindu, who was in America during the Civil
War years, conceived such an admiration for Lincoln that he
was unwilling to return to India until he had obtained a
portrait of the Great Emancipator. Planting himself
adamantly on Lincoln’s doorstep, the merchant refused to
leave until the astonished President permitted him to engage
the services of Daniel Huntington, the famous New York
artist. When the portrait was finished, the Hindu carried it in
triumph to Calcutta.
262
New York: Century Co., 1922.
263
The remarkable inclusion here of a complete date is due to
the fact that my secretary, Mr. Wright, kept a travel diary.
264
Other books on her life are Therese Neumann: A Stigmatist
of Our Day, and Further Chronicles of Therese Neumann,
both by Friedrich Ritter von Lama (Milwaukee: Bruce Pub.
Co.).
265
Matthew 4:4. Man’s body battery is not sustained by gross
food (bread) alone, but by the vibratory cosmic energy
(word, or AUM). The invisible power flows into the human
body through the gate of the medulla oblongata. This sixth
bodily center is located at the back of the neck at the top of
the five spinal chakras (Sanskrit for “wheels” or centers of
radiating force). The medulla is the principal entrance for the
body’s supply of universal life force (AUM), and is directly
connected with man’s power of will, concentrated in the
seventh or Christ Consciousness center (Kutastha) in the
third eye between the eyebrows. Cosmic energy is then
stored up in the brain as a reservoir of infinite potentialities,
poetically mentioned in the Vedas as the “thousand-petaled
lotus of light.” The Bible invariably refers to AUM as the
“Holy Ghost” or invisible life force which divinely upholds
all creation. “What? know ye not that your body is the
temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of
God, and ye are not your own?”—I Corinthians 6:19.
266
During the hours preceding my arrival, Therese had already
passed through many visions of the closing days in Christ’s
life. Her entrancement usually starts with scenes of the
events which followed the Last Supper. Her visions end with
Jesus’ death on the cross or, occasionally, with his
entombment.
267
Therese has survived the Nazi persecution, and is still
present in Konnersreuth, according to 1945 American news
dispatches from Germany.
268
A passage in Eusebius relates an interesting encounter
between Socrates and a Hindu sage. The passage runs:
“Aristoxenus, the musician, tells the following story about
the Indians. One of these men met Socrates at Athens, and
asked him what was the scope of his philosophy. ‘An
inquiry into human phenomena,’ replied Socrates. At this the
Indian burst out laughing. ‘How can a man inquire into
human phenomena,’ he said, ‘when he is ignorant of divine
ones?’” The Aristoxenus mentioned was a pupil of Aristotle,
and a noted writer on harmonics. His date is 330 B.C.
269
We broke our journey in Central Provinces, halfway across
the continent, to see Mahatma Gandhi at Wardha. Those days
are described in chapter 44.
270
Prafulla was the lad who had been present with Master when
a cobra approached (see page 112).
271
Literally, “holy name,” a word of greeting among Hindus,
accompanied by palm-folded hands lifted from the heart to
the forehead in salutation. A pronam in India takes the place
of the Western greeting by handshaking.
272
Mental training through certain concentration techniques has
produced in each Indian generation men of prodigious
memory. Sir T. Vijayaraghavachari, in the Hindustan Times,
has described the tests put to the modern professional
“memory men” of Madras. “These men,” he wrote, “were
unusually learned in Sanskrit literature. Seated in the midst
of a large audience, they were equal to the tests that several
members of the audience simultaneously put them to. The
test would be like this: one person would start ringing a bell,
the number of rings having to be counted by the ‘memory
man.’ A second person would dictate from a paper a long
exercise in arithmetic, involving addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division. A third would go on reciting
from the Ramayana or the Mahabharata a long series of
poems, which had to be reproduced; a fourth would set
problems in versification which required the composition of
verses in proper meter on a given subject, each line to end in
a specified word; a fifth man would carry on with a sixth a
theological disputation, the exact language of which had to
be quoted in the precise order in which the disputants
conducted it, and a seventh man was all the while turning a
wheel, the number of revolutions of which had to be
counted. The memory expert had simultaneously to do all
these feats purely by mental processes, as he was allowed no
paper and pencil. The strain on the faculties must have been
terrific. Ordinarily men in unconscious envy are apt to
depreciate such efforts by affecting to believe that they
involve only the exercise of the lower functionings of the
brain. It is not, however, a pure question of memory. The
greater factor is the immense concentration of mind.”
273
Miss Bletch, unable to maintain the active pace set by Mr.
Wright and myself, remained happily with my relatives in
Calcutta.
274
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.
275
Six volumes on Ancient India (Calcutta, 1879).
276
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.
277
From this question we may surmise that the “Son of Zeus”
had an occasional doubt that he had already attained
perfection.
278
All Greek observers comment on the lack of slavery in India,
a feature at complete variance with the structure of Hellenic
society.
279
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).
280
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.”
281
“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.”
282
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.
283
Literally, param, highest; hansa, swan. The hansa is
represented in scriptural lore as the vehicle of Brahma,
Supreme Spirit; as the symbol of discrimination, the white
hansa swan is thought of as able to separate the true soma
nectar from a mixture of milk and water. Ham-sa
(pronounced hong-sau) are two sacred Sanskrit chant words
possessing a vibratory connection with the incoming and
outgoing breath. Aham-Sa is literally “I am He.”
284
They have generally evaded the difficulty by addressing me
as sir.
285
At the Puri ashram, Swami Sebananda is still conducting a
small, flourishing yoga school for boys, and meditation
groups for adults. Meetings of saints and pundits convene
there periodically.
286
A section of Calcutta.
287
Aphorisms: 11:9.
288
Religious melas are mentioned in the ancient Mahabharata.
The Chinese traveler Hieuen Tsiang has left an account of a
vast Kumbha Mela held in A.D. 644 at Allahabad. The
largest mela is held every twelfth year; the next largest
(Ardha or half) Kumbha occurs every sixth year. Smaller
melas convene every third year, attracting about a million
devotees. The four sacred mela cities are Allahabad,
Hardwar, Nasik, and Ujjain.
Early Chinese travelers have left us many striking pictures
of Indian society. The Chinese priest, Fa-Hsien, wrote an
account of his eleven years in India during the reign of
Chandragupta II (early 4th century). The Chinese author
relates: “Throughout the country no one kills any living
thing, nor drinks wine.... They do not keep pigs or fowl;
there are no dealings in cattle, no butchers’ shops or
distilleries. Rooms with beds and mattresses, food and
clothes, are provided for resident and traveling priests
without fail, and this is the same in all places. The priests
occupy themselves with benevolent ministrations and with
chanting liturgies; or they sit in meditation.” Fa-Hsien tells us
the Indian people were happy and honest; capital
punishment was unknown.
289
I was not present at the deaths of my mother, elder brother
Ananta, eldest sister Roma, Master, Father, or of several
close disciples.
(Father passed on at Calcutta in 1942, at the age of eighty-
nine.)
290
The hundreds of thousands of Indian sadhus are controlled
by an executive committee of seven leaders, representing
seven large sections of India. The present
mahamandaleswar or president is Joyendra Puri. This
saintly man is extremely reserved, often confining his speech
to three words—Truth, Love, and Work. A sufficient
conversation!
291
There are many methods, it appears, for outwitting a tiger.
An Australian explorer, Francis Birtles, has recounted that he
found the Indian jungles “varied, beautiful, and safe.” His
safety charm was flypaper. “Every night I spread a quantity
of sheets around my camp and was never disturbed,” he
explained. “The reason is psychological. The tiger is an
animal of great conscious dignity. He prowls around and
challenges man until he comes to the flypaper; he then slinks
away. No dignified tiger would dare face a human being
after squatting down upon a sticky flypaper!”
292
After I returned to America I took off sixty-five pounds.
293
Sri Yukteswar passed at this hour—7:00 P.M., March 9,
1936.
294
Funeral customs in India require cremation for
householders; swamis and monks of other orders are not
cremated, but buried. (There are occasional exceptions.) The
bodies of monks are symbolically considered to have
undergone cremation in the fire of wisdom at the time of
taking the monastic vow.
295
In sabikalpa samadhi the devotee has spiritually progressed
to a state of inward divine union, but cannot maintain his
cosmic consciousness except in the immobile trance-state. By
continuous meditation, he reaches the superior state of
nirbikalpa samadhi, where he moves freely in the world and
performs his outward duties without any loss of God-
realization.
296
Sri Yukteswar used the word prana; I have translated it as
lifetrons. The Hindu scriptures refer not only to the anu,
“atom,” and to the paramanu, “beyond the atom,” finer
electronic energies; but also to prana, “creative lifetronic
force.” Atoms and electrons are blind forces; prana is
inherently intelligent. The pranic lifetrons in the spermatozoa
and ova, for instance, guide the embryonic development
according to a karmic design.
297
Adjective of mantra, chanted seed-sounds discharged by the
mental gun of concentration. The Puranas (ancient shastras
or treatises) describe these mantrie wars between devas and
asuras (gods and demons). An asura once tried to slay a
deva with a potent chant. But due to mispronunciation the
mental bomb acted as a boomerang and killed the demon.
298
Examples of such powers are not wanting even on earth, as
in the case of Helen Keller and other rare beings.
299
Lord Buddha was once asked why a man should love all
persons equally. “Because,” the great teacher replied, “in the
very numerous and varied lifespans of each man, every
other being has at one time or another been dear to him.”
300
The eight elemental qualities which enter into all created life,
from atom to man, are earth, water, fire, air, ether, motion,
mind, and individuality. (Bhagavad Gita: VII:4.)
301
Body signifies any soul-encasement, whether gross or subtle.
The three bodies are cages for the Bird of Paradise.
302
Even as Babaji helped Lahiri Mahasaya to rid himself of a
subconscious desire from some past life for a palace, as
described in chapter 34.
303
“And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither
will the eagles be gathered together.”—Luke 17:37. Wherever
the soul is encased in the physical body or in the astral body
or in the causal body, there the eagles of desires—which
prey on human sense weaknesses, or on astral and causal
attachments—will also gather to keep the soul a prisoner.
304
“Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of
my God, and he shall go no more out (i.e., shall reincarnate
no more).... To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with
me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down
with my Father in his throne.”—Revelation 3:12, 21.
305
Sri Yukteswar was signifying that, even as in his earthly
incarnation he had occasionally assumed the weight of
disease to lighten his disciples’ karma, so in the astral world
his mission as a savior enabled him to take on certain astral
karma of dwellers on Hiranyaloka, and thus hasten their
evolution into the higher causal world.
306
Life and death as relativities of thought only. Vedanta points
out that God is the only Reality; all creation or separate
existence is maya or illusion. This philosophy of monism
received its highest expression in the Upanishad
commentaries of Shankara.
307
His family name is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He never
refers to himself as “Mahatma.”
308
The literal translation from Sanskrit is “holding to truth.”
Satyagraha is the famous nonviolence movement led by
Gandhi.
309
False and alas! malicious reports were recently circulated
that Miss Slade has severed all her ties with Gandhi and
forsaken her vows. Miss Slade, the Mahatma’s Satyagraha
disciple for twenty years, issued a signed statement to the
United Press, dated Dec. 29, 1945, in which she explained
that a series of baseless rumors arose after she had departed,
with Gandhi’s blessings, for a small site in northeastern India
near the Himalayas, for the purpose of founding there her
now-flourishing Kisan Ashram (center for medical and
agricultural aid to peasant farmers). Mahatma Gandhi plans
to visit the new ashram during 1946.
310
Miss Slade reminded me of another distinguished Western
woman, Miss Margaret Woodrow Wilson, eldest daughter of
America’s great president. I met her in New York; she was
intensely interested in India. Later she went to Pondicherry,
where she spent the last five years of her life, happily
pursuing a path of discipline at the feet of Sri Aurobindo
Ghosh. This sage never speaks; he silently greets his
disciples on three annual occasions only.
311
For years in America I had been observing periods of
silence, to the consternation of callers and secretaries.
312
Harmlessness; nonviolence; the foundation rock of Gandhi’s
creed. He was born into a family of strict Jains, who revere
ahitnsa as the root-virtue. Jainism, a sect of Hinduism, was
founded in the 6th century B.C. by Mahavira, a
contemporary of Buddha. Mahavira means “great hero”; may
he look down the centuries on his heroic son Gandhi!
313
Hindi is the lingua franca for the whole of India. An Indo-
Aryan language based largely on Sanskrit roots, Hindi is the
chief vernacular of northern India. The main dialect of
Western Hindi is Hindustani, written both in the Devanagari
(Sanskrit) characters and in Arabic characters. Its subdialect,
Urdu, is spoken by Moslems.
314
Gandhi has described his life with a devastating candor in
The Story of my Experiments with Truth (Ahmedabad:
Navajivan Press, 1927-29, 2 vol.) This autobiography has
been summarized in Mahatma Gandhi, His Own Story,
edited by C. F. Andrews, with an introduction by John
Haynes Holmes (New York: Macmillan Co., 1930).
Many autobiographies replete with famous names and
colorful events are almost completely silent on any phase of
inner analysis or development. One lays down each of these
books with a certain dissatisfaction, as though saying: “Here
is a man who knew many notable persons, but who never
knew himself.” This reaction is impossible with Gandhi’s
autobiography; he exposes his faults and subterfuges with an
impersonal devotion to truth rare in annals of any age.
315
Kasturabai Gandhi died in imprisonment at Poona on
February 22, 1944. The usually unemotional Gandhi wept
silently. Shortly after her admirers had suggested a Memorial
Fund in her honor, 125 lacs of rupees (nearly four million
dollars) poured in from all over India. Gandhi has arranged
that the fund be used for village welfare work among
women and children. He reports his activities in his English
weekly, Harijan.
316
I sent a shipment to Wardha, soon after my return to
America. The plants, alas! died on the way, unable to
withstand the rigors of the long ocean transportation.
317
Thoreau, Ruskin, and Mazzini are three other Western
writers whose sociological views Gandhi has studied
carefully.
318
The sacred scripture given to Persia about 1000 B.C. by
Zoroaster.
319
The unique feature of Hinduism among the world religions
is that it derives not from a single great founder but from the
impersonal Vedic scriptures. Hinduism thus gives scope for
worshipful incorporation into its fold of prophets of all ages
and all lands. The Vedic scriptures regulate not only
devotional practices but all important social customs, in an
effort to bring man’s every action into harmony with divine
law.
320
A comprehensive Sanskrit word for law; conformity to law
or natural righteousness; duty as inherent in the
circumstances in which a man finds himself at any given
time. The scriptures define dharma as “the natural universal
laws whose observance enables man to save himself from
degradation and suffering.”
321
Matthew 7:21.
322
Matthew 26:52.
323
“Let not a man glory in this, that he love his country; Let him
rather glory in this, that he love his kind.”—Persian
proverb.
324
“Then came Peter to him and said, Lord, how oft shall my
brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?
Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times:
but, Until seventy times seven.”—Matthew 18:21-22.
325
Charles P. Steinmetz, the great electrical engineer, was once
asked by Mr. Roger W. Babson: “What line of research will
see the greatest development during the next fifty years?” “I
think the greatest discovery will be made along spiritual
lines,” Steinmetz replied. “Here is a force which history
clearly teaches has been the greatest power in the
development of men. Yet we have merely been playing with
it and have never seriously studied it as we have the physical
forces. Someday people will learn that material things do not
bring happiness and are of little use in making men and
women creative and powerful. Then the scientists of the
world will turn their laboratories over to the study of God
and prayer and the spiritual forces which as yet have hardly
been scratched. When this day comes, the world will see
more advancement in one generation than it has seen in the
past four.”
326
That is, resist not evil with evil. (Matthew 5:38-39)
327
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.
328
Mark 12:30.
329
In northern Bengal.
330
H. H. Sir Bijay Chand Mahtab, now dead. His family
doubtless possesses some record of the Maharaja’s three
investigations of Giri Bala.
331
Woman yogi.
332
“Remover of Obstacles,” the god of good fortune.
333
Sri Yukteswar used to say: “The Lord has given us the fruits
of the good earth. We like to see our food, to smell it, to
taste it-the Hindu likes also to touch it!” One does not mind
hearing it, either, if no one else is present at the meal!
334
Mr. Wright also took moving pictures of Sri Yukteswar
during his last Winter Solstice Festival in Serampore.
335
“What we eat is radiation; our food is so much quanta of
energy,” Dr. George W. Crile of Cleveland told a gathering
of medical men on May 17, 1933 in Memphis. “This all-
important radiation, which releases electrical currents for the
body’s electrical circuit, the nervous system, is given to food
by the sun’s rays. Atoms, Dr. Crile says, are solar systems.
Atoms are the vehicles that are filled with solar radiance as
so many coiled springs. These countless atomfuls of energy
are taken in as food. Once in the human body, these tense
vehicles, the atoms, are discharged in the body’s protoplasm,
the radiance furnishing new chemical energy, new electrical
currents. ‘Your body is made up of such atoms,’ Dr. Crile
said. ‘They are your muscles, brains, and sensory organs,
such as the eyes and ears.’”
Someday scientists will discover how man can live
directly on solar energy. “Chlorophyll is the only substance
known in nature that somehow possesses the power to act as
a ‘sunlight trap,’” William L. Laurence writes in the New
York Times. “It ‘catches’ the energy of sunlight and stores it
in the plant. Without this no life could exist. We obtain the
energy we need for living from the solar energy stored in the
plant-food we eat or in the flesh of the animals that eat the
plants. The energy we obtain from coal or oil is solar energy
trapped by the chlorophyll in plant life millions of years ago.
We live by the sun through the agency of chlorophyll.”
336
Potent vibratory chant. The literal translation of Sanskrit
mantra is “instrument of thought,” signifying the ideal,
inaudible sounds which represent one aspect of creation;
when vocalized as syllables, a mantra constitutes a universal
terminology. The infinite powers of sound derive from
AUM, the “Word” or creative hum of the Cosmic Motor.
337
The chief disciple of the Christlike master Sri Ramakrishna.
338
A small town on Coast Highway 101, Encinitas is 100 miles
south of Los Angeles, and 25 miles north of San Diego.
339
I translate here the words of Guru Nanak’s song:
O God beautiful! 0 God beautiful!
In the forest, Thou art green,
In the mountain, Thou art high,
In the river, Thou art restless,
In the ocean, Thou art grave!
To the serviceful, Thou art service,
To the lover, Thou art love,
To the sorrowful, Thou art sympathy,
To the yogi, Thou art bliss!
O God beautiful! 0 God beautiful!
At Thy feet, O I do bow!