Autobiography of a Yogi

4 6 12

The Cauliflower Robbery – 155
Outwitting the Stars – 167
Sasi and the Three Sapphires – 179
A Mohammedan Wonder-Worker (Afzal Khan) – 186
My Guru Appears Simultaneously in Calcutta and Serampore – 192

Supporting reservations are presupposed throughout:

15 - The cauliflower robbery

Directing a cauliflower robbery, is it dazzling?
Who's most dazzling? It had better be the one that is determined to put an end to infiltration medleys that serve arses.		Start: "No to false teachings" is a dominant "melody" in this first glance survey.
	Just what "Lord" concept is Yogananda writing about, guru followers singing to, and what else lies enveloped in darkness here?

"MASTER, a gift for you! These six huge cauliflowers were planted with my hands; I've watched over their growth with the tender care of a mother nursing her child." I presented the basket of vegetables with a ceremonial flourish.
   "Thank you!" Sri Yukteswar's smile was warm with appreciation. "Please keep them in your room; I shall need them tomorrow for a special dinner."
   I had just arrived in Puri [1] to spend my college summer vacation with my guru at his seaside hermitage. Built by Master and his disciples, the cheerful little two-storied retreat fronts on the Bay of Bengal.
   I awoke early the following morning, refreshed by the salty sea breezes and the charm of my surroundings. Sri Yukteswar's melodious voice was calling; I took a look at my cherished cauliflowers and stowed them neatly under my bed.
   "Come, let's go to the beach." Master led the way; several young disciples and myself followed in a scattered group. Our guru surveyed us in mild criticism.
   "When our Western brothers walk, they usually take pride in unison. Now, please march in two rows; keep rhythmic step with one another." Sri Yukteswar watched as we obeyed; he began to sing: "Boys go to and fro, in a pretty little row." I couldn't but admire the ease with which Master was able to match the brisk pace of his young students.
   "Halt!" My guru's eyes sought mine. "Did you remember to lock the back door of the hermitage?"
   "I think so, sir."
   Sri Yukteswar was silent for a few minutes, a half-suppressed smile on his lips. "No, you forgot," he said finally. "Divine contemplation must not be made an excuse for material carelessness. You've neglected your duty in safeguarding the ashram; you must be punished."
   I thought he was obscurely joking when he added: "Your six cauliflowers will soon be only five."
   We turned around at Master's orders and marched back till we were close to the hermitage.
   "Rest awhile. Mukunda, look across the compound on our left; observe the road beyond. A certain man will arrive there presently; he will be the means of your chastisement."
   I concealed my vexation at these incomprehensible remarks. A peasant soon appeared on the road; he was dancing grotesquely and flinging his arms about with meaningless gestures. Almost paralysed with curiosity, I glued my eyes on the hilarious spectacle. As the man reached a point in the road where he would vanish from our view, Sri Yukteswar said, "Now, he'll return."
   The peasant at once changed his direction and made for the rear of the ashram. Crossing a sandy tract, he entered the building by the back door. I had left it unlocked, even as my guru had said. The man emerged shortly, holding one of my prized cauliflowers. He now strode along respectably, invested with the dignity of possession.
   The unfolding farce, in which my role appeared to be that of bewildered victim, wasn't so disconcerting that I failed in indignant pursuit. I was halfway to the road when Master recalled me. He was shaking from head to foot with laughter.
   "That poor crazy man has been longing for a cauliflower," he explained between outbursts of mirth. "I thought it would be a good idea if he got one of yours, so ill-guarded!"
   I dashed to my room, where I found that the thief, evidently one with a vegetable fixation, had left untouched my gold rings, watch, and money, all lying openly on the blanket. He had crawled instead under the bed where, completely hidden from casual sight, one of my cauliflowers had aroused his single-hearted desire.
   I asked Sri Yukteswar that evening to explain the incident which had, I thought, a few baffling features.
   My guru shook his head slowly. "You'll understand it someday. Science will soon discover a few of these hidden laws."
   When the wonders of radio burst some years later on an astounded world, I remembered Master's prediction. Age-old concepts of time and space were annihilated; no peasant's home so narrow that London or Calcutta couldn't enter! The dullest intelligence enlarged before indisputable proof of one aspect of man's omnipresence.
   The "plot" of the cauliflower comedy can be best understood by a radio analogy. Sri Yukteswar was a perfect human radio. Thoughts are no more than very gentle vibrations moving in the ether. Just as a sensitised radio picks up a desired musical number out of thousands of other programs from every direction, so my guru had been able to catch the thought of the half-witted man who hankered for a cauliflower, out of the countless thoughts of broadcasting human wills in the world. [2]
   By his powerful will, Master was also a human broadcasting station, and had successfully directed the peasant to reverse his steps and go to a certain room for a single cauliflower.
   Intuition [3] is soul guidance, appearing naturally in man during those instants when his mind is calm. Nearly everyone has had the experience of an inexplicably correct "hunch," or has transferred his thoughts effectively to another person.
   The human mind, free from the static of restlessness, can perform through its antenna of intuition all the functions of complicated radio mechanisms—sending and receiving thoughts, and tuning out undesirable ones. As the power of a radio depends on the amount of electrical current it can utilise, so the human radio is energised according to the power of will possessed by each individual.
   All thoughts vibrate eternally in the cosmos. By deep concentration, a Master is able to detect the thoughts of any mind, living or dead. Thoughts are universally and not individually rooted; a truth can't be created, but only perceived. The erroneous thoughts of man result from imperfections in his discernment. The goal of yoga science is to calm the mind, that without distortion it may mirror the divine vision in the universe.
   Radio and television have brought the instantaneous sound and sight of remote persons to the firesides of millions: the first faint scientific intimations that man is an all-pervading spirit. Not a body confined to a point in space, but the vast soul, which the ego in most barbaric modes conspires in vain to cramp.
   "Very strange, very wonderful, seemingly very improbable phenomena may yet appear which, when once established, won't astonish us more than we're now astonished at all that science has taught us during the last century," Charles Robert Richet, Nobel Prizeman in physiology, has declared. "It's assumed that the phenomena which we now accept without surprise, don't excite our astonishment because they are understood. But this isn't the case. If they don't surprise us it's not because they are understood, it's because they are familiar; for if that which isn't understood ought to surprise us, we should be surprised at everything—the fall of a stone thrown into the air, the acorn which becomes an oak, mercury which expands when it's heated, iron attracted by a magnet, phosphorus which burns when it's rubbed. . . . The science of today is a light matter; the revolutions and evolutions which it will experience in a hundred thousand years will far exceed the most daring anticipations. The truths—those surprising, amazing, unforeseen truths—which our descendants will discover, are even now all around us, staring us in the eyes, so to speak, and yet we don't see them. But it's not enough to say that we don't see them; we don't wish to see them; for as soon as an unexpected and unfamiliar fact appears, we try to fit it into the framework of the commonplaces of acquired knowledge, and we're indignant that anyone should dare to experiment further."
   A humorous occurrence took place a few days after I had been so implausibly robbed of a cauliflower. A certain kerosene lamp couldn't be found. Having so lately witnessed my guru's omniscient insight, I thought he would demonstrate that it was child's play to locate the lamp.
   Master perceived my expectation. With exaggerated gravity he questioned all ashram residents. A young disciple confessed that he had used the lamp to go to the well in the back yard.
   Sri Yukteswar gave the solemn counsel: "Seek the lamp near the well."
   I rushed there; no lamp! Crestfallen, I returned to my guru. He was now laughing heartily, without compunction for my disillusionment.
   "Too bad I couldn't direct you to the vanished lamp; I'm not a fortune teller!" With twinkling eyes, he added, "I'm not even a satisfactory Sherlock Holmes!"
   I realised that Master would never display his powers when challenged, or for a triviality.
   Delightful weeks sped by. Sri Yukteswar was planning a religious procession. He asked me to lead the disciples over the town and beach of Puri. The festive day dawned as one of the hottest of the summer.
   "Guruji, how can I take the barefooted students over the fiery sands?" I spoke despairingly.
   "I'll tell you a secret," Master responded. "The Lord will send an umbrella of clouds; you all shall walk in comfort."
   I happily organised the procession; our group started from the ashram with a Sat-Sanga banner. [4] Designed by Sri Yukteswar, it bore the symbol of the single [5] eye, the telescopic gaze of intuition.
   No sooner had we left the hermitage than the part of the sky which was overhead became filled with clouds as though by magic. To the accompaniment of astonished ejaculations from all sides, a very light shower fell, cooling the city streets and the burning seashore. The soothing drops descended during the two hours of the parade. The exact instant at which our group returned to the ashram, the clouds and rain passed away tracelessly.
   "You see how God feels for us," Master replied after I had expressed my gratitude. "The Lord responds to all and works for all. Just as he sent rain at my plea, so he fulfils any sincere desire of the devotee. Seldom do men realise how often God heeds their prayers. He isn't partial to a few, but listens to everyone who approaches him trustingly. His children should ever have implicit faith in the loving-kindness of their omnipresent father." [6]
   Sri Yukteswar sponsored four yearly festivals, at the equinoxes and solstices, when his students gathered from far and near. The winter solstice celebration was held in Serampore; the first one I attended left me with a permanent blessing.
   The festivities started in the morning with a barefoot procession along the streets. The voices of a hundred students rang out with sweet religious songs; a few musicians played the flute and khol kartal (drums and cymbals). Enthusiastic townspeople strewed the path with flowers, glad to be summoned from prosaic tasks by our resounding praise of the Lord's blessed name. The long tour ended in the courtyard of the hermitage. There we encircled our guru, while students on upper balconies showered us with marigold blossoms.
   Many guests went upstairs to receive a pudding of channa and oranges. I made my way to a group of brother disciples who were serving today as cooks. Food for such large gatherings had to be cooked outdoors in huge cauldrons. The improvised wood-burning brick stoves were smoky and tear-provoking, but we laughed merrily at our work. Religious festivals in India are never considered troublesome; each one does his part, supplying money, rice, vegetables, or his personal services.
   Master was soon in our midst, supervising the details of the feast. Busy every moment, he kept pace with the most energetic young student.
   A sankirtan (group chanting), accompanied by the harmonium and hand-played Indian drums, was in progress on the second floor. Sri Yukteswar listened appreciatively; his musical sense was acutely perfect.
   "They're off key!" Master left the cooks and joined the artists. The melody was heard again, this time correctly rendered.
   In India, music as well as painting and the drama is considered a divine art. Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva—the Eternal Trinity—were the first musicians. The divine Dancer Shiva is scripturally represented as having worked out the infinite modes of rhythm in His cosmic dance of universal creation, preservation, and dissolution, while Brahma accentuated the time-beat with the clanging cymbals, and Vishnu sounded the holy mridanga or drum. Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu, is always shown in Hindu art with a flute, on which he plays the enrapturing song that recalls to their true home the human souls wandering in maya-delusion. Saraswati, goddess of wisdom, is symbolised as performing on the vina, mother of all stringed instruments. The Sama Veda of India contains the world's earliest writings on musical science.
   The foundation stone of Hindu music is the ragas or fixed melodic scales. The six basic ragas branch out into 126 derivative raginis (wives) and putras (sons). Each raga has a minimum of five notes: a leading note (vadi or king), a secondary note (samavadi or prime minister), helping notes (anuvadi, attendants), and a dissonant note (vivadi, the enemy).
   Each one of the six basic ragas has a natural correspondence with a certain hour of the day, season of the year, and a presiding deity who bestows a particular potency. Thus, (1) the Hindole Raga is heard only at dawn in the spring, to evoke the mood of universal love; (2) Deepaka Raga is played during the evening in summer, to arouse compassion; (3) Megha Raga is a melody for midday in the rainy season, to summon courage; (4) Bhairava Raga is played in the mornings of August, September, October, to achieve tranquillity; (5) Sri Raga is reserved for autumn twilights, to attain pure love; (6) Malkounsa Raga is heard at midnights in winter, for valour.
   The ancient rishis discovered these laws of sound alliance between nature and man. Because nature is an objectification of Aum, the primal pound or vibratory word, man can obtain control over all natural manifestations through the use of certain mantras or chants. [7] Historical documents tell of the remarkable powers possessed by Miyan Tan Sen, sixteenth century court musician for Akbar the Great. Commanded by the Emperor to sing a night raga while the sun was overhead, Tan Sen intoned a mantra which instantly caused the whole palace precincts to become enveloped in darkness.
   Indian music divides the octave into 22 srutis or demi-semitones. These micro-tonal intervals permit fine shades of musical expression unattainable by the Western chromatic scale of 12 semitones. Each one of the seven basic notes of the octave is associated in Hindu mythology with a colour, and the natural cry of a bird or beast—Do with green, and the peacock; Re with red, and the skylark; Mi with golden, and the goat; Fa with yellowish white, and the heron; Sol with black, and the nightingale; La with yellow, and the horse; Si with a combination of all colours, and the elephant.
   Three scales—major, harmonic minor, melodic minor—are the only ones which Occidental music employs, but Indian music outlines 72 thatas or scales. The musician has a creative scope for endless improvisation around the fixed traditional melody or raga; he concentrates on the sentiment or definitive mood of the structural theme and then embroiders it to the limits of his own originality. The Hindu musician doesn't read set notes; he clothes anew at each playing the bare skeleton of the raga, often confining himself to a single melodic sequence, stressing by repetition all its subtle micro-tonal and rhythmic variations. Bach, among Western composers, had an understanding of the charm and power of repetitious sound slightly differentiated in a hundred complex ways.
   Ancient Sanskrit literature describes 120 talas or time-measures. The traditional founder of Hindu music, Bharata, is said to have isolated 32 kinds of tala in the song of a lark. The origin of tala or rhythm is rooted in human movements—the double time of walking, and the triple time of respiration in sleep, when inhalation is twice the length of exhalation. India has always recognised the human voice as the most perfect instrument of sound. Hindu music therefore largely confines itself to the voice range of three octaves. For the same reason, melody (relation of successive notes) is stressed, rather than harmony (relation of simultaneous notes).
   The deeper aim of the early rishi-musicians was to blend the singer with the cosmic song which can be heard through awakening of man's occult spinal centres. Indian music is a subjective, spiritual, and individualistic art, aiming not at symphonic brilliance but at personal harmony with the oversoul. The Sanskrit word for musician is bhagavathar, "he who sings the praises of God." The sankirtans or musical gatherings are an effective form of yoga or spiritual discipline, necessitating deep concentration, intense absorption in the seed thought and sound. Because man himself is an expression of the creative Word, sound has the most potent and immediate effect on him, offering a way to remembrance of his divine origin.
   The sankirtan issuing from Sri Yukteswar's second-story sitting room on the day of the festival was inspiring to the cooks amidst the steaming pots. My brother disciples and I joyously sang the refrains, beating time with our hands.
   By sunset we had served our hundreds of visitors with khichuri (rice and lentils), vegetable curry, and rice pudding. We laid cotton blankets over the courtyard; soon the assemblage was squatting under the starry vault, quietly attentive to the wisdom pouring from Sri Yukteswar's lips. His public speeches emphasised the value of kriya yoga, and a life of self-respect, calmness, determination, simple diet, and regular exercise.
   A group of very young disciples then chanted a few sacred hymns; the meeting concluded with sankirtan. From ten o'clock till midnight, the ashram residents washed pots and pans, and cleared the courtyard. My guru called me to his side.
   "I'm pleased over your cheerful labours today and during the past week of preparations. I want you with me; you may sleep in my bed tonight."
   This was a privilege I had never thought would fall to my lot. We sat awhile in a state of intense divine tranquillity. Hardly ten minutes after we had got into bed, Master rose and began to dress.
   "What is the matter, sir?" I felt a tinge of unreality in the unexpected joy of sleeping beside my guru.
   "I think that a few students who missed their proper train connections will be here soon. Let's have some food ready."
   "Guruji, none would come at one o'clock in the morning!"
   "Stay in bed; you've been working very hard. But I'm going to cook."
   At Sri Yukteswar's resolute tone, I jumped up and followed him to the small daily-used kitchen adjacent to the second-floor inner balcony. Rice and dhal were soon boiling.
   My guru smiled affectionately. "Tonight you've conquered fatigue and fear of hard work; you shall never be bothered by them in the future."
   As he uttered these words of lifelong blessing, footsteps sounded in the courtyard. I ran downstairs and admitted a group of students.
   "Dear brother, how reluctant we are to disturb Master at this hour!" One man addressed me apologetically. "We made a mistake about train schedules, but felt we couldn't return home without a glimpse of our guru."
   "He has been expecting you and is even now preparing your food."
   Sri Yukteswar's welcoming voice rang out; I led the astonished visitors to the kitchen. Master turned to me with twinkling eyes.
   "Now that you've finished comparing notes, no doubt you're satisfied that our guests really did miss their train!"
   I followed him to his bedroom a half hour later, realising fully that I was about to sleep beside a godlike guru.

16 - Outwitting the stars

Can outwitting the-outwitting-of-stars plot be?
If you are having liver troubles or stress-linked maladies, there could be a great need to see a doctor too.		Start: Stonehenge detail - Besides, ice-bears don't use astrological bangles. That too seems to helps.
	Let beautiful clarity continue. Neither let a handy fare disintegrate, nor teachings that possess beautiful clarity.

"MUKUNDA, why don't you get an astrological armlet?"
   "Should I, Master? I don't believe in astrology."
   "It's never a question of belief; the only scientific attitude one can take on any subject is whether it's true. The law of gravitation worked as efficiently before Newton as after him. The cosmos would be fairly chaotic if its laws couldn't operate without the sanction of human belief.
   "Charlatans have brought the stellar science to its present state of disrepute. Astrology is too vast, both mathematically [1] and philosophically, to be rightly grasped except by men of profound understanding. If ignoramuses misread the heavens, and see there a scrawl instead of a script, that is to be expected in this imperfect world. One shouldn't dismiss the wisdom with the 'wise.'

"Imperfect world, imperfect teachings," one may say. Stay awake. We have more on astrology here: LINK. And next there is a still quite unfinished astrosophy site with more fun for children.

"All parts of creation are linked together and interchange their influences. The balanced rhythm of the universe is rooted in reciprocity," my guru continued. "Man, in his human aspect, has to combat two sets of forces—first, the tumults within his being, caused by the admixture of earth, water, fire, air, and ethereal elements; second, the outer disintegrating powers of nature. So long as man struggles with his mortality, he is affected by the myriad mutations of heaven and earth.
   "Astrology is the study of man's response to planetary stimuli. The stars have no conscious benevolence or animosity; they merely send forth positive and negative radiations. Of themselves, these don't help or harm humanity, but offer a lawful channel for the outward operation of cause-effect equilibriums which each man has set into motion in the past.
   "A child is born on that day and at that hour when the celestial rays are in mathematical harmony with his individual karma. His horoscope is a challenging portrait, revealing his unalterable past and its probable future results. But the natal chart can be rightly interpreted only by men of intuitive wisdom: these are few.
   "The message boldly blazoned across the heavens at the moment of birth isn't meant to emphasise fate—the result of past good and evil—but to arouse man's will to escape from his universal thraldom. What he has done, he can undo. None other than himself was the instigator of the causes of whatever effects are now prevalent in his life. He can overcome any limitation, because he created it by his own actions in the first place, and because he has spiritual resources which are not subject to planetary pressure.
   "Superstitious awe of astrology makes one an automaton, slavishly dependent on mechanical guidance. The wise man defeats his planets—which is to say, his past—by transferring his allegiance from the creation to the Creator. The more he realises his unity with spirit, the less he can be dominated by matter. The soul is ever-free; it's deathless because birthless. It can't be regimented by stars.
   "Man is a soul, and has a body. When he properly places his sense of identity, he leaves behind all compulsive patterns. So long as he remains confused in his ordinary state of spiritual amnesia, he will know the subtle fetters of environmental law.
   "God is harmony; the devotee who attunes himself will never perform any action amiss. His activities will be correctly and naturally timed to accord with astrological law. After deep prayer and meditation he is in touch with his divine consciousness; there's no greater power than that inward protection."
   "Then, dear Master, why do you want me to wear an astrological bangle?" I ventured this question after a long silence, during which I had tried to assimilate Sri Yukteswar's noble exposition.
   "It's only when a traveller has reached his goal that he is justified in discarding his maps. During the journey, he takes advantage of any convenient short cut. The ancient rishis discovered many ways to curtail the period of man's exile in delusion. There are certain mechanical features in the law of karma which can be skilfully adjusted by the fingers of wisdom.
   "All human ills arise from some transgression of universal law. The scriptures point out that man must satisfy the laws of nature, while not discrediting the divine omnipotence. He should say: 'Lord, I trust in you, and know you can help me, but I too will do my best to undo any wrong I've done.' By a number of means—by prayer, by will power, by yoga meditation, by consultation with saints, by use of astrological bangles—the adverse effects of past wrongs can be minimised or nullified.
   "Just as a house can be fitted with a copper rod to absorb the shock of lightning, so the bodily temple can be benefited by various protective measures. Ages ago our yogis discovered that pure metals emit an astral light which is powerfully counteractive to negative pulls of the planets. Subtle electrical and magnetic radiations are constantly circulating in the universe; when a man's body is being aided, he doesn't know it; when it's being disintegrated, he is still in ignorance. Can he do anything about it?
   "This problem received attention from our rishis; they found helpful not only a combination of metals, but also of plants and—most effective of all—faultless jewels of not less than two carats. The preventive uses of astrology have seldom been seriously studied outside of India. One little-known fact is that the proper jewels, metals, or plant preparations are valueless unless the required weight is secured, and unless these remedial agents are worn next to the skin."
   "Sir, of course I shall take your advice and get a bangle. I'm intrigued at the thought of outwitting a planet!"
   "For general purposes I counsel the use of an armlet made of gold, silver, and copper. But for a specific purpose I want you to get one of silver and lead." Sri Yukteswar added careful directions.
   "Guruji, what 'specific purpose' do you mean?"
   "The stars are about to take an unfriendly interest in you, Mukunda. Fear not; you shall be protected. In about a month your liver will cause you much trouble. The illness is scheduled to last for six months, but your use of an astrological armlet will shorten the period to twenty-four days."
   I sought out a jeweller the next day, and was soon wearing the bangle. My health was excellent; Master's prediction slipped from my mind. He left Serampore to visit Varanasi. Thirty days after our conversation, I felt a sudden pain in the region of my liver. The following weeks were a nightmare of excruciating pain. Reluctant to disturb my guru, I thought I would bravely endure my trial alone.
   But twenty-three days of torture weakened my resolution; I entrained for Varanasi. There Sri Yukteswar greeted me with unusual warmth, but gave me no opportunity to tell him my woes in private. Many devotees visited Master that day, just for a darshan. [2] Ill and neglected, I sat in a corner. It wasn't till after the evening meal that all guests had departed. My guru summoned me to the octagonal balcony of the house.
   "You must have come about your liver disorder." Sri Yukteswar's gaze was averted; he walked to and fro, occasionally intercepting the moonlight. "Let me see; you've been ailing for twenty-four days, haven't you?"
   "Yes, sir."
   "Please do the stomach exercise I've taught you."
   "If you knew the extent of my suffering, Master, you wouldn't ask me to exercise." Nevertheless I made a feeble attempt to obey him.
   "You say you have pain; I say you have none. How can such contradictions exist?" My guru looked at me inquiringly.
   I was dazed and then overcome with joyful relief. No longer could I feel the continuous torment that had kept me nearly sleepless for weeks; at Sri Yukteswar's words the agony vanished as though it had never been.
   I started to kneel at his feet in gratitude, but he quickly prevented me.
   "Don't be childish. Get up and enjoy the beauty of the moon over the Ganges." But Master's eyes were twinkling happily as I stood in silence beside him. I understood by his attitude that he wanted me to feel that not he, but God, had been the healer.
   I wear even now the heavy silver and lead bangle, a memento of that day—long-past, ever-cherished—when I found anew that I was living with a personage indeed superhuman. On later occasions, when I brought my friends to Sri Yukteswar for healing, he invariably recommended jewels or the bangle, extolling their use as an act of astrological wisdom.
   I had been prejudiced against astrology from my childhood, partly because I observed that many people are sequaciously attached to it, and partly because of a prediction made by our family astrologer: "You'll marry three times, being twice a widower." I brooded over the matter, feeling like a goat awaiting sacrifice before the temple of triple matrimony.
   "You may as well be resigned to your fate," my brother Ananta had remarked. "Your written horoscope has correctly stated that you would fly from home toward the Himalayas during your early years, but would be forcibly returned. The forecast of your marriages is also bound to be true."
   A clear intuition came to me one night that the prophecy was wholly false. I set fire to the horoscope scroll, placing the ashes in a paper bag on which I wrote: "Seeds of past karma can't germinate if they are roasted in the divine fires of wisdom." I put the bag in a conspicuous spot; Ananta at once read my defiant comment.
   "You can't destroy truth as easily as you've burnt this paper scroll." My brother laughed scornfully.
   It's a fact that on three occasions before I reached manhood, my family tried to arrange my betrothal. Each time I refused to fall in with the plans, [3] knowing that my love for God was more overwhelming than any astrological persuasion from the past.
   "The deeper the self-realisation of a man, the more he influences the whole universe by his subtle spiritual vibrations, and the less he himself is affected by the phenomenal flux." These words of Master's often returned inspiringly to my mind.
   Occasionally I told astrologers to select my worst periods, according to planetary indications, and I would still accomplish whatever task I set myself. It's true that my success at such times has been accompanied by extraordinary difficulties. But my conviction has always been justified: faith in the divine protection, and the right use of man's God-given will, are forces formidable beyond any the "inverted bowl" can muster.
   The starry inscription at one's birth, I came to understand, isn't that man is a puppet of his past. Its message is rather a prod to pride; the very heavens seek to arouse man's determination to be free from every limitation. God created each man as a soul, dowered with individuality, hence essential to the universal structure, whether in the temporary role of pillar or parasite. His freedom is final and immediate, if he so wills; it doesn't depend on outer but inner victories.
   Sri Yukteswar discovered the mathematical application of a 24,000-year equinoctial cycle to our present age. [4] The cycle is divided into an Ascending Arc and a Descending Arc, each of 12,000 years. Within each Arc fall four Yugas or Ages, called Kali, Dwapara, Treta, and Satya, corresponding to the Greek ideas of Iron, Bronze, Silver, and Golden Ages.

These "ages" or distinctive, cyclic periods that are postulated, are found in Manu Samhita 1:68 ff [Mux] and Visnhupuranam [Vim]. They are both hoary scriptures.
As for the length of the postulated cycles, the nearest known cycle in astronomy refers to the Platonic Year, which is rooted in a slow "backwards" glide of the zodiak through the constellations, i.e. in a retrogression of the vernal point. The complete cycle that is made, is almost 26 000 years. Sri Yukteswar uses the Platonic Year as time reference for the yugas, but astronomical evidence does not fit the 24.000 years scheme. In consequence, Sri Yukteswar's yuga system appears to be much defective. [MORE]

My guru determined by various calculations that the last Kali Yuga or Iron Age, of the Ascending Arc, started about AD 500. [Some astronomers suggest about AD 560] The Iron Age, 1200 years in duration, is a span of materialism; it ended about AD 1700. That year ushered in Dwapara Yuga, a 2400-year period of electrical and atomic-energy developments, the age of telegraph, radio, aeroplanes, and other space-annihilators.
The 3600-year period of Treta Yuga will start in AD 4100; its age will be marked by common knowledge of telepathic communications and other time-annihilators. During the 4800 years of Satya Yuga, final age in an ascending arc, the intelligence of a man will be completely developed; he will work in harmony with the divine plan.
A descending arc of 12,000 years, starting with a descending Golden Age of 4800 years, then begins [5] for the world; man gradually sinks into ignorance. These cycles are the eternal rounds of maya, the contrasts and relativities of the phenomenal universe. [6] Man, one by one, escapes from creation's prison of duality as he awakens to consciousness of his inseverable divine unity with the Creator.

Hello, homo sapiens: There are not a few cyclic calculations in Hinduism. One page by Joseph Morales goes into many of them. One should enjoy various viewpoints - it can and should help against downgrading oneself into blunt belief in any one of them. Further, in the Manu Samhita [Mux] one important outlook of Swami Sri Yukteswar is confirmed: the years presented by Manu are not over-long years, but 24 000 of our common years: The extended year scale in chapter 1, verse 68, is interpolated. That is why it's put in brackets in that book. [Mux]

Master enlarged my understanding not only of astrology but of the world's scriptures. Placing the holy texts on the spotless table of his mind, he was able to dissect them with the scalpel of intuitive reasoning, and to separate errors and interpolations of scholars from the truths as originally expressed by the prophets.
   "Fix one's vision on the end of the nose." This inaccurate interpretation of a Bhagavad Gita stanza, [7] widely accepted by Eastern pundits and Western translators, used to arouse Master's droll criticism.
   "The path of a yogi is singular enough as it is," he remarked. "Why counsel him that he must also make himself cross-eyed? The true meaning of nasikagram is 'origin of the nose, not 'end of the nose.' The nose begins at the point between the two eyebrows, the seat of spiritual vision." [8]
   Because of one Sankhya [9] aphorism, "Iswar-ashidha,"—"A Lord of Creation can't be deduced" or "God isn't proved," [10]—many scholars call the whole philosophy atheistical.
   "The verse isn't nihilistic," Sri Yukteswar explained. "It merely signifies that to the unenlightened man, dependent on his senses for all final judgements, proof of God must remain unknown and therefore non-existent. True Sankhya followers, with unshakeable insight born of meditation, understand that the Lord is both existent and knowable."
   Master expounded the Christian Bible with a beautiful clarity. It was from my Hindu guru, unknown to the roll call of Christian membership, that I learned to perceive the deathless essence of the Bible, and to understand the truth in Christ's assertion—surely the most thrillingly intransigent ever uttered: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." [11]

The Gospel of Thomas can serve to show all his words didn't remain intact for all to learn from. And one had better not get dumbfounded.

The great masters of India mould their lives by the same godly ideals which animated Jesus; these men are his proclaimed kin: "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." [12] "If you continue in my word," Christ pointed out, "then you are my disciples indeed; and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." [13] Freemen all, lords of themselves, the yogi-Christs of India are part of the immortal fraternity: those who have attained a liberating knowledge of the one Father.
   "The Adam and Eve story is incomprehensible to me!" I observed with considerable heat one day in my early struggles with the allegory. "Why did God punish not only the guilty pair, but also the innocent unborn generations?"
   Master was more amused by my vehemence than my ignorance. "Genesis is deeply symbolic, and can't be grasped by a literal interpretation," he explained. "Its 'tree of life' is the human body. The spinal cord is like an upturned tree, with man's hair as its roots, and afferent and efferent nerves as branches. The tree of the nervous system bears many enjoyable fruits, or sensations of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. In these, man may rightfully indulge; but he was forbidden the experience of sex, the 'apple' at the centre of the bodily garden. [14]
   "The 'serpent' represents the coiled-up spinal energy which stimulates the sex nerves. 'Adam' is reason, and 'Eve' is feeling. When the emotion or Eve-consciousness in any human being is overpowered by the sex impulse, his reason or Adam also succumbs. [15]

This talk on Genesis can be a repeatedly upheld old trick that enervates. Or the interpretations or interpolations serve interest groups of this and that kind. It is not automatically forbidden that some might serve dominant views of gurus if basic fairness and true-sounding presentation is into it. And yet Sri Yukteswar's interpretation does not sound too good; you can check for yourself: LINK

"God created the human species by materialising the bodies of man and woman through the force of his will; He endowed the new species with the power to create children in a similar 'immaculate' or divine manner. [16] Because his manifestation in the individualised soul had hitherto been limited to animals, instinct-bound and lacking the potentialities of full reason, God made the first human bodies, symbolically called Adam and Eve. To these, for advantageous upward evolution, He transferred the souls or divine essence of two animals. [17] In Adam or man, reason predominated; in Eve or woman, feeling was ascendant. Thus was expressed the duality or polarity which underlies the phenomenal worlds. Reason and feeling remain in a heaven of cooperative joy so long as the human mind isn't tricked by the serpentine energy of animal propensities.
   "The human body was therefore not solely a result of evolution from beasts, but was produced by an act of special creation by God. The animal forms were too crude to express full divinity; the human being was uniquely given a tremendous mental capacity—the 'thousand-petalled lotus' of the brain—as well as acutely awakened occult centres in the spine.
   "God, or the divine consciousness [mind] present within the first created pair, counselled them to enjoy all human sensibilities, but not to put their concentration on touch sensations. [18] These were banned in order to avoid the development of the sex organs, which would enmesh humanity in the inferior animal method of propagation. The warning not to revive subconsciously-present bestial memories wasn't heeded. Resuming the way of brute procreation, Adam and Eve fell from the state of heavenly joy natural to the original perfect man.
   "Knowledge of 'good and evil' refers to the cosmic dualistic compulsion. Falling under the sway of maya through misuse of his feeling and reason, or Eve—and Adam—consciousness, man relinquishes his right to enter the heavenly garden of divine self-sufficiency. [19] The personal responsibility of every human being is to restore his 'parents' or dual nature to a unified harmony or Eden."

Interesting as Yukteswar's teaching might sound, it is no big deal. And it appears he is out of tune with the bible message to press his own thoughts onto an old story.
   Eve and Adam that were made with organs fit for sex and breeding - and commanded to procreate and become many so even before the Fall in the first of the Genesis tales that are amalgamated in the first few chapters of the Bible. It is also worth noting and comparing with passages from letters by the apostle Paul:
"Christ.
   In him we were also chosen [also: made heirs], having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, [Ephesians 1:10-11]
By him all things were created ... whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (...) so that in everything he might have the supremacy. - Colossians 1:15-18)
Then we don't have to give up a very handy, all right fare, all in all. Frankly, even if you're told you're predestined too, slightly in step with such sayings of Jesus as "None comes to him unless the Father draws that one (slight paraphrase)", you can or should (?) be admonished to repent and do your very best each day to find heaven, and follow good teachings to your ability. What looks mightily like personal efforts are asked for - and work and its possible value is not left out in the letter of James and the Catholic church either.
For all that we see that some gurus were just knocked into the fruits of kriya. It happend to Lahiri Baba, it happened to Yogananda, and who else?
   You could ask what right a Hindu swami has to "interpret" biblical teachings in order to promote his own sort of thinking that diverges from quite sensible, bibically grounded ones.
   The swami guru's ideas that man and woman misused their reason and will and so on, and thus brought on the Fall of man, conflicts in no small way with other words they hail. Here is one: "God is the sole Doer, not you and I." That God (the Lord) is the (sole) Doer is taught by Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, and Yogananda. If that is a premised, then, God caused the Fall as the Sole Doer . . . That is their teaching - too. And so on.
Two very conflicting attitudes are to be counted on as valid - is that the hallmark of modern physics too? Yes, somehow. There may appear paradoxes for a time. [Cf. Thd]
   To do one's best and leave the rest to no blunders should bring an easy fare, all in all. The guru also talks of "personal responsibility" to restore Eden harmony inside oneself and so on. Yes, the guru of Yogananda maintains the value of personal endeavours too. And if he and the other sheltering avatars of SRF seem to contradict one another or themselves and "talk in riddles" - so did Jesus too here and there.
It is sensible to find a good way to go on living. And you could grow cabbage instead of licking guru boots, if those are your alternatives. It should be good to be forewarned.
The favoured teachings of gurus of former days and years and centuries will be found to vary and diverge. Historically there is a glide towards more Vedanta opinions among gurus. That is much of what Britannica Online finds out, if not Klaus Klostermaier in a textbook on Hinduism. [Soh] One such outlook is that the universe is not real. Yogananda finds that to be fit too, and teaches it at times. Hence: "Make efforts, but it's not real . . ." that is also their teaching.
Conclusion: Gurus and others frequently have odd and inconsistent teachings. Some seem to help many of them on and up.

As Sri Yukteswar ended his discourse, I glanced with new respect at the pages of Genesis.
   "Dear Master,' I said, "for the first time I feel a proper filial obligation toward Adam and Eve!"

17 - Sasi and the three sapphires

Let not expensive jewellry make others suffer
The wearing of this and that bangle against coming ills can be understood as one cherished yogic means to outwit righteous, jolly good retributions too. And that could make others suffer. There is that risk - or what?		Start: The man that is counselled - out of boundless kindness - to wear not cheap jewellery, has a first-class need to recover, it is to be hoped and not feared.
	Fit labour-saving measures may include influencing the deep minds of others - even transgressing there - Maybe being worthy isn't all.

"BECAUSE you and my son think so highly of Swami Sri Yukteswar, I'll take a look at him." The tone of voice used by Dr. Narayan Chunder Roy implied that he was humouring the whim of half-wits. I concealed my indignation, in the best traditions of the proselyter.
   My companion, a veterinary surgeon, was a confirmed agnostic. His young son Santosh had implored me to take an interest in his father. So far my invaluable aid had been a bit on the invisible side.
   Dr. Roy accompanied me the following day to the Serampore hermitage. After Master had granted him a brief interview, marked for the most part by stoic silence on both sides, the visitor brusquely departed.
   "Why bring a dead man to the ashram?" Sri Yukteswar looked at me inquiringly as soon as the door had closed on the Calcutta sceptic.
   "Sir! The doctor is very much alive!"
   "But in a short time he'll be dead."
   I was shocked. "Sir, this will be a terrible blow to his son. Santosh yet hopes for time to change his father's materialistic views. I beseech you, Master, to help the man."
   "Very well; for your sake." My guru's face was impassive. "The proud horse doctor is far gone in diabetes, although he doesn't know it. In fifteen days he'll take to his bed. The physicians will give him up for lost; his natural time to leave this earth is six weeks from today. Due to your intercession, however, on that date he'll recover. But there's one condition. You must get him to wear an astrological bangle; he'll doubtless object as violently as one of his horses before an operation!" Master chuckled.
   After a silence, during which I wondered how Santosh and I could best employ the arts of cajolery on the recalcitrant doctor, Sri Yukteswar made further disclosures.
   "As soon as the man gets well, advise him not to eat meat. He won't heed this counsel, however, and in six months, just as he is feeling at his best, he'll drop dead. Even that six-month extension of life is granted him only because of your plea."
   The following day I suggested to Santosh that he order an armlet at the jeweller's. It was ready in a week, but Dr. Roy refused to put it on.
   "I'm in the best of health. You'll never impress me with these astrological superstitions." The doctor glanced at me belligerently.
   I recalled with amusement that Master had justifiably compared the man to a balky horse. Another seven days passed; the doctor, suddenly ill, meekly consented to wear the bangle. Two weeks later the physician in attendance told me that his patient's case was hopeless. He supplied harrowing details of the ravages inflicted by diabetes.
   I shook my head. "My guru has said that after a sickness lasting one month, Dr. Roy will be well."
   The physician stared at me incredulously. But he sought me out a fortnight later, with an apologetic air.
   "Dr. Roy has made a complete recovery!" he exclaimed. "It's the most amazing case in my experience. Never before have I seen a dying man show such an inexplicable comeback. Your guru must indeed be a healing prophet!"
   After one interview with Dr. Roy, during which I repeated Sri Yukteswar's advice about a meatless diet, I didn't see the man again for six months. He stopped for a chat one evening as I sat on the piazza of my family home on Gurpar Road.
   "Tell your teacher that by eating meat often, I've wholly regained my strength. His unscientific ideas on diet haven't influenced me." It was true that Dr. Roy looked a picture of health.
   But the next day Santosh came running to me from his home on the next block. "This morning Father dropped dead!"
   This case was one of my strangest experiences with Master. He healed the rebellious veterinary surgeon in spite of his disbelief, and extended the man's natural term on earth by six months, just because of my earnest supplication. Sri Yukteswar was boundless in his kindness when confronted by the urgent prayer of a devotee.
   It was my proudest privilege to bring college friends to meet my guru. Many of them would lay aside—at least in the ashram!—their fashionable academic cloak of religious scepticism.
   One of my friends, Sasi, spent a number of happy week ends in Serampore. Master became immensely fond of the boy, and lamented that his private life was wild and disorderly.
   "Sasi, unless you reform, one year hence you'll be dangerously ill." Sri Yukteswar gazed at my friend with affectionate exasperation. "Mukunda is the witness: don't say later that I didn't warn you."
   Sasi laughed. "Master, I'll leave it to you to interest a sweet charity of cosmos in my own sad case! My spirit is willing but my will is weak. You're my only saviour on earth; I believe in nothing else."
   "At least you should wear a two-carat blue sapphire. It will help you."
   "I can't afford one. Anyhow, dear guruji, if trouble comes, I fully believe you'll protect me."
   "In a year you'll bring three sapphires," Sri Yukteswar replied cryptically. "They will be of no use then."
   Variations on this conversation took place regularly. "I can't reform!" Sasi would say in comical despair. "And my trust in you, Master, is more precious to me than any stone!"
   A year later I was visiting my guru at the Calcutta home of his disciple, Naren Babu. About ten o'clock in the morning, as Sri Yukteswar and I were sitting quietly in the second-floor parlour, I heard the front door open. Master straightened stiffly.
   "It's that Sasi," he remarked gravely. "The year is now up; both his lungs are gone. He has ignored my counsel; tell him I don't want to see him."
   Half stunned by Sri Yukteswar's sternness, I raced down the stairway. Sasi was ascending.
   "Mukunda! I do hope Master is here; I had a hunch he might be."
   "Yes, but he doesn't wish to be disturbed."
   Sasi burst into tears and brushed past me. He threw himself at Sri Yukteswar's feet, placing there three beautiful sapphires.
   "Omniscient guru, the doctors say I have galloping tuberculosis! They give me no longer than three more months! I humbly implore your aid; I know you can heal me!"
   "Isn't it a bit late now to be worrying over your life? Depart with your jewels; their time of usefulness is past." Master then sat sphinxlike in an unrelenting silence, punctuated by the boy's sobs for mercy.
   An intuitive conviction came to me that Sri Yukteswar was merely testing the depth of Sasi's faith in the divine healing power. I wasn't surprised a tense hour later when Master turned a sympathetic gaze on my prostrate friend.
   "Get up, Sasi; what a commotion you make in other people's houses! Return your sapphires to the jeweller's; they are an unnecessary expense now. But get an astrological bangle and wear it. Fear not; in a few weeks you shall be well."
   Sasi's smile illumined his tear-marred face like sudden sun over a sodden landscape. "Beloved guru, shall I take the medicines prescribed by the doctors?"
   Sri Yukteswar's glance was longanimous. "Just as you wish—drink them or discard them; it doesn't matter. It's more possible for the sun and moon to interchange their positions than for you to die of tuberculosis." He added abruptly, "Go now, before I change my mind!"
   With an agitated bow, my friend hastily departed. I visited him several times during the next few weeks, and was aghast to find his condition increasingly worse.
   "Sasi can't last through the night." These words from his physician, and the spectacle of my friend, now reduced almost to a skeleton, sent me post-haste to Serampore. My guru listened coldly to my tearful report.
   "Why do you come here to bother me? You've already heard me assure Sasi of his recovery."
   I bowed before him in great awe, and retreated to the door. Sri Yukteswar said no parting word, but sank into silence, his unwinking eyes half-open, their vision fled to another world.
   I returned at once to Sasi's home in Calcutta. With astonishment I found my friend sitting up, drinking milk.
   "Mukunda! What a miracle! Four hours ago I felt Master's presence in the room; my terrible symptoms at once disappeared. I feel that through his grace I'm entirely well."
   In a few weeks Sasi was stouter and in better health than ever before. [1] But his singular reaction to his healing had an ungrateful tinge: he seldom visited Sri Yukteswar again! My friend told me one day that he so deeply regretted his previous mode of life that he was ashamed to face Master.
   I could only conclude that Sasi's illness had had the contrasting effect of stiffening his will and impairing his manners.
   The first two years of my course at Scottish Church College were drawing to a close. My classroom attendance had been very spasmodic; what little studying I did was only to keep peace with my family. My two private tutors came regularly to my house; I was regularly absent: I can discern at least this one regularity in my scholastic career!
   In India two successful years of college bring an Intermediate Arts diploma; the student may then look forward to another two years and his AB degree.
   The Intermediate Arts final examinations loomed ominously ahead. I fled to Puri, where my guru was spending a few weeks. Vaguely hoping that he would sanction my non-appearance at the finals, I related my embarrassing unpreparedness.
   But Master smiled consolingly. "You've wholeheartedly pursued your spiritual duties, and couldn't help neglecting your college work. Apply yourself diligently to your books for the next week: you shall get through your ordeal without failure."
   I returned to Calcutta, firmly suppressing all reasonable doubts that occasionally arose with unnerving ridicule. Surveying the mountain of books on my table, I felt like a traveller lost in a wilderness. A long period of meditation brought me a labour-saving inspiration. Opening each book at random, I studied only those pages which lay thus exposed. Pursuing this course during eighteen hours a day for a week, I considered myself entitled to advise all succeeding generations on the art of cramming.
   The following days in the examination halls were a justification of my seemingly haphazard procedure. I passed all the tests, though by a hairbreadth. The congratulations of my friends and family were ludicrously mixed with ejaculations betraying their astonishment.
   On his return from Puri, Sri Yukteswar gave me a pleasant surprise. "Your Calcutta studies are now over. I'll see that you pursue your last two years of university work right here in Serampore."
   I was puzzled. "Sir, there's no Bachelor of Arts course in this town." Serampore College, the sole institution of higher learning, offered only a two-year course in Intermediate Arts.
   Master smiled mischievously. "I'm too old to go about collecting donations to establish an AB college for you. I guess I shall have to arrange the matter through someone else."
   Two months later Professor Howells, president of Serampore College, publicly announced that he had succeeded in raising sufficient funds to offer a four-year course. Serampore College became a branch affiliation of the University of Calcutta. I was one of the first students to enrol in Serampore as an AB candidate.
   "Guruji, how kind you're to me! I've been longing to leave Calcutta and be near you every day in Serampore. Professor Howells doesn't dream how much he owes to your silent help!"
   Sri Yukteswar gazed at me with mock severity. "Now you won't have to spend so many hours on trains; what a lot of free time for your studies! Perhaps you'll become less of a last-minute crammer and more of a scholar." But somehow his tone lacked conviction.

18 - A Mohammedan wonder-worker

The mature Fjord horse is used as a therapist - wonderful!
Hoping to cope, some dream of miracles. Not every ship comes in.		Start: A truly great man or woman may show that not all that is called wonder-work, is much to brag about.
	If ruthlessness or hardheartedness escalates in some miracle-working hick, it's not haphasardly - much was allowed to go wrong first. [Now, hails and thanks for the Fjord Horse.]

"YEARS ago, right in this very room you now occupy, a Mohammedan wonder-worker performed four miracles before me!"
   Sri Yukteswar made this surprising statement during his first visit to my new quarters. At once after entering Serampore College, I had taken a room in a near-by boarding-house, called Panthi. It was an old-fashioned brick mansion, fronting the Ganges.
   "Master, what a coincidence! Are these newly decorated walls really ancient with memories?" I looked around my simply furnished room with awakened interest.
   "It's a long story." My guru smiled reminiscently. "The name of the fakir [1] was Afzal Khan. He had acquired his extraordinary powers through a chance encounter with a Hindu yogi.
   "'Son, I'm thirsty; fetch me some water.' A dust-covered sannyasi made this request of Afzal one day during his early boyhood in a small village of eastern Bengal.
   "'Master, I'm a Mohammedan. How could you, a Hindu, accept a drink from my hands?'
   "'Your truthfulness pleases me, my child. I don't observe the ostracising rules of ungodly sectarianism. Go; bring me water quickly.'
   "Afzal's reverent obedience was rewarded by a loving glance from the yogi.
   "'You possess good karma from former lives,' he observed solemnly. 'I'm going to teach you a certain yoga method which will give you command over one of the invisible realms. The great powers that will be yours should be exercised for worthy ends; never employ them selfishly! I perceive, alas! that you've brought over from the past some seeds of destructive tendencies. Don't allow them to sprout by watering them with fresh evil actions. The complexity of your previous karma is such that you must use this life to reconcile your yogic accomplishments with the highest humanitarian goals.'
   "After instructing the amazed boy in a complicated technique, the master vanished.
   "Afzal faithfully followed his yoga exercise for twenty years. His miraculous feats began to attract widespread attention. It seems that he was always accompanied by a disembodied spirit whom he called 'Hazrat.' This invisible entity was able to fulfil the fakir's slightest wish.
   "Ignoring his master's warning, Afzal began to misuse his powers. Whatever object he touched and then replaced would soon disappear without a trace. This disconcerting eventuality usually made the Mohammedan an objectionable guest!
   "He visited large jewellery stores in Calcutta from time to time, representing himself as a possible purchaser. Any jewel he handled would vanish shortly after he had left the shop.
   "Afzal was often surrounded by several hundred students, attracted by the hope of learning his secrets. The fakir occasionally invited them to travel with him. At the railway station he would manage to touch a roll of tickets. These he would return to the clerk, remarking: 'I've changed my mind, and won't buy them now.' But when he boarded the train with his retinue, Afzal would have the needed tickets. [2]
   "These exploits created an indignant uproar; Bengali jewellers and ticket-sellers were succumbing to nervous breakdowns! The police who sought to arrest Afzal found themselves helpless; the fakir could remove incriminating evidence merely by saying: 'Hazrat, take this away.'"
   Sri Yukteswar rose from his seat and walked to the balcony of my room which overlooked the Ganges. I followed him, eager to hear more of the baffling Mohammedan raffles.
   "This Panthi house formerly belonged to a friend of mine. He became acquainted with Afzal and asked him here. My friend also invited about twenty neighbours, including myself. I was only a youth then, and felt a lively curiosity about the notorious fakir." Master laughed. "I took the precaution of not wearing anything valuable! Afzal looked me over inquisitively, then remarked:
   "'You have powerful hands. Go downstairs to the garden; get a smooth stone and write your name on it with chalk; then throw the stone as far as possible into the Ganges.'
   "I obeyed. As soon as the stone had vanished under distant waves, the Mohammedan addressed me again:
   "'Fill a pot with Ganges water near the front of this house.'
   "After I had returned with a vessel of water, the fakir cried, 'Hazrat, put the stone in the pot!'
   "The stone appeared at once. I pulled it from the vessel and found my signature as legible as when I had written it.
   "Babu, [3] one of my friends in the room, was wearing a heavy antique gold watch and chain. The fakir examined them with ominous admiration. Soon they were missing!
   "'Afzal, please return my prized heirloom!' Babu was nearly in tears.
   "The Mohammedan was stoically silent for a while, then said, 'You have five hundred rupees in an iron safe. Bring them to me, and I'll tell you where to locate your timepiece.'
   "The distraught Babu left at once for his home. He came back shortly and handed Afzal the required sum.
   "'Go to the little bridge near your house,' the fakir instructed Babu. 'Call on Hazrat to give you the watch and chain.'
   "Babu rushed away. On his return, he was wearing a smile of relief and no jewellery whatever.
   "'When I commanded Hazrat as directed,' he announced, 'my watch came tumbling down from the air into my right hand! You may be sure I locked the heirloom in my safe before rejoining the group here!'
   "Babu's friends, witnesses of the comicotragedy of the ransom for a watch, were staring with resentment at Afzal. He now spoke placatingly.
   "'Please name any drink you want; Hazrat will produce it.'
   "A number asked for milk, others for fruit juices. I wasn't too much shocked when the unnerved Babu requested whisky! The Mohammedan gave an order; the obliging Hazrat sent sealed containers sailing down the air and thudding to the floor. Each man found his desired beverage.
   "The promise of the fourth spectacular feat of the day was doubtless gratifying to our host: Afzal offered to supply an instantaneous lunch!
   "'Let's order the most expensive dishes,' Babu suggested gloomily. 'I want an elaborate meal for my five hundred rupees! Everything should be served on gold plates!'
   "As soon as each man had expressed his preferences, the fakir addressed himself to the inexhaustible Hazrat. A great rattle ensued; gold platters filled with intricately-prepared curries, hot luchis, and many out-of-season fruits, landed from nowhere at our feet. All the food was delicious. After feasting for an hour, we started to leave the room. A tremendous noise, as though dishes were being piled up, caused us to turn around. Lo! there was no sign of the glittering plates or the remnants of the meal."
   "Guruji," I interrupted, "if Afzal could easily secure such things as gold dishes, why did he covet the property of others?"
   "The fakir wasn't highly developed spiritually," Sri Yukteswar explained. "His mastery of a certain yoga technique gave him access to an astral plane where any desire is at once materialised. Through the agency of an astral being, Hazrat, the Mohammedan could summon the atoms of any object from etheric energy by an act of powerful will. But such astrally-produced objects are structurally evanescent; they can't be long retained. Afzal still yearned for worldly wealth which, though more hardly earned, has a more dependable durability."
   I laughed. "It too sometimes vanishes most unaccountably!"
   "Afzal wasn't a man of God-realisation," Master went on. "Miracles of a permanent and beneficial nature are performed by true saints because they've attuned themselves to the omnipotent Creator. Afzal was merely an ordinary man with an extraordinary power of penetrating a subtle realm not usually entered by mortals till death."
   "I understand now, Guruji. The after-world appears to have some charming features."
   Master agreed. "I never saw Afzal after that day, but a few years later Babu came to my home to show me a newspaper account of the Mohammedan's public confession. From it I learned the facts I've just told you about Afzal's early initiation from a Hindu guru."
   The gist of the latter part of the published document, as recalled by Sri Yukteswar, was as follows: "I, Afzal Khan, am writing these words as an act of penance and as a warning to those who seek to have miraculous powers. For years I've been misusing the wondrous abilities imparted to me through the grace of God and my master. I became drunk with egotism, feeling that I was beyond the ordinary laws of morality. My day of reckoning finally arrived.
   "Recently I met an old man on a road outside Calcutta. He limped along painfully, carrying a shining object which looked like gold. I addressed him with greed in my heart.
   "'I'm Afzal Khan, the great fakir. What have you there?'
   "'This ball of gold is my only material wealth; it can be of no interest to a fakir. I implore you, sir, to heal my limp.'
   "I touched the ball and walked away without reply. The old man hobbled after me. He soon raised an outcry: 'My gold is gone!'
   "As I paid no attention, he suddenly spoke in a stentorian voice that issued oddly from his frail body:
   "'Don't you recognise me?'
   "I stood speechless, aghast at the belated discovery that this unimpressive old cripple was none other than the great saint who, long, long ago, had initiated me into yoga. He straightened himself; his body instantly became strong and youthful.
   "'So!' My guru's glance was fiery. 'I see with my own eyes that you use your powers, not to help suffering humanity, but to prey on it like a common thief! I withdraw your occult gifts; Hazrat is now freed from you. No longer shall you be a terror in Bengal!'
   "I called on Hazrat in anguished tones. For the first time he didn't appear to my inner sight. But some dark veil suddenly lifted within me; I saw clearly the blasphemy of my life.
   "'My guru, thank you for coming to banish my long delusion.' I was sobbing at his feet. 'I promise to forsake my worldly ambitions. I'll retire to the mountains for lonely meditation on God, hoping to atone for my evil past.'
   "My master regarded me with silent compassion. 'I feel your sincerity,' he said finally. 'Because of your earlier years of strict obedience, and because of your present repentance, I'll grant you one boon. Your other powers are now gone, but whenever food and clothing are needed, you may still call successfully on Hazrat to supply them. Devote yourself wholeheartedly to divine understanding in the mountain solitudes.'
   "My guru then vanished; I was left to my tears and reflections. Farewell, world! I go to seek the forgiveness of the cosmic beloved."

19 - My master, in Calcutta, appears in Serampore

What is "sold" now, is telepathic transmission and body transference
If death's fingers touch your hair, the bet is those fingers are hard to measure.		Start: It's a good rule not to send a pollywog to tackle a whale. (American finding) It pays to be well rooted.
	A green salesman will sell more than a blue one. (American proverb)

"I AM OFTEN beset by atheistic doubts. Yet a torturing surmise sometimes haunts me: may not untapped soul possibilities exist? Is man not missing his real destiny if he fails to explore them?"
   These remarks of Dijen Babu, my roommate at the Panthi boarding-house, were called forth by my invitation that he meet my guru.
   "Sri Yukteswarji will initiate you into kriya yoga," I replied. "It calms the dualistic turmoil by a divine inner certainty."
   That evening Dijen accompanied me to the hermitage. In Master's presence my friend received such spiritual peace that he was soon a constant visitor. The trivial preoccupations of daily life are not enough for man; wisdom too is a native hunger. In Sri Yukteswar's words Dijen found an incentive to those attempts—first painful, then effortlessly liberating—to locate a realer self within his bosom than the humiliating ego of a temporary birth, seldom ample enough for the Spirit.
   As Dijen and I were both pursuing the AB course at Serampore College, we got into the habit of walking together to the ashram as soon as classes were over. We would often see Sri Yukteswar standing on his second-floor balcony, welcoming our approach with a smile.
   One afternoon Kanai, a young hermitage resident, met Dijen and me at the door with disappointing news.
   "Master isn't here; he was summoned to Calcutta by an urgent note."
   The following day I received a post card from my guru. "I shall leave Calcutta Wednesday morning," he had written. "You and Dijen meet the nine o'clock train at Serampore station."
   About eight-thirty on Wednesday morning, a telepathic message from Sri Yukteswar flashed insistently to my mind: "I'm delayed; don't meet the nine o'clock train."
   I conveyed the latest instructions to Dijen, who was already dressed for departure.
   "You and your intuition!" My friend's voice was edged in scorn. "I prefer to trust Master's written word."
   I shrugged my shoulders and seated myself with quiet finality. Muttering angrily, Dijen made for the door and closed it noisily behind him.
   As the room was rather dark, I moved nearer to the window overlooking the street. The scant sunlight suddenly increased to an intense brilliancy in which the iron-barred window completely vanished. Against this dazzling background appeared the clearly materialised figure of Sri Yukteswar!
   Bewildered to the point of shock, I rose from my chair and knelt before him. With my customary gesture of respectful greeting at my guru's feet, I touched his shoes. These were a pair familiar to me, of orange-dyed canvas, soled with rope. His ochre swami cloth brushed against me; I distinctly felt not only the texture of his robe, but also the gritty surface of the shoes, and the pressure of his toes within them. Too much astounded to utter a word, I stood up and gazed at him questioningly.
   "I was pleased that you got my telepathic message." Master's voice was calm, entirely normal. "I have now finished my business in Calcutta, and shall arrive in Serampore by the ten o'clock train."
   As I still stared mutely, Sri Yukteswar went on, "This isn't an apparition, but my flesh and blood form. I've been divinely commanded to give you this experience, rare to achieve on earth. Meet me at the station; you and Dijen will see me coming toward you dressed as I'm now. I shall be preceded by a fellow passenger—a little boy carrying a silver jug."
   My guru placed both hands on my head, with a murmured blessing. As he concluded with the words, "Taba asi," [1] I heard a peculiar rumbling sound. [2] His body began to melt gradually within the piercing light. First his feet and legs vanished, then his torso and head, like a scroll being rolled up. To the very last, I could feel his fingers resting lightly on my hair. The effulgence faded; nothing remained before me but the barred window and a pale stream of sunlight.
   I remained in a half-stupor of confusion, questioning whether I had not been the victim of a hallucination. A crestfallen Dijen soon entered the room.
   "Master wasn't on the nine o'clock train, nor even the nine-thirty." My friend made his announcement with a slightly apologetic air.
   "Come then; I know he will arrive at ten o'clock." I took Dijen's hand and rushed him forcibly along with me, heedless of his protests. In about ten minutes we entered the station, where the train was already puffing to a halt.
   "The whole train is filled with the light of Master's aura! He's there!" I exclaimed joyfully.
   "You dream so?" Dijen laughed mockingly.
   "Let's wait here." I told my friend details of the way in which our guru would approach us. As I finished my description, Sri Yukteswar came into view, wearing the same clothes I had seen a short time earlier. He walked slowly in the wake of a small lad bearing a silver jug.
   For a moment a wave of cold fear passed through me, at the unprecedented strangeness of my experience. I felt the materialistic, twentieth-century world slipping from me; was I back in the ancient days when Jesus appeared before Peter on the sea?
   As Sri Yukteswar, a modern yogi-christ, reached the spot where Dijen and I were speechlessly rooted, Master smiled at my friend and remarked:
   "I sent you a message too, but you were unable to grasp it."
   Dijen was silent, but glared at me suspiciously. After we had escorted our guru to his hermitage, my friend and I proceeded toward Serampore College. Dijen halted in the street, indignation streaming from his every pore.
   "So! Master sent me a message! Yet you concealed it! I demand an explanation!"
   "Can I help it if your mental mirror oscillates with such restlessness that you can't register our guru's instructions?" I retorted.
   The anger vanished from Dijen's face. "I see what you mean," he said ruefully. "But please explain how you could know about the child with the jug."
   By the time I had finished the story of Master's phenomenal appearance at the boarding-house that morning, my friend and I had reached Serampore College.
   "The account I've just heard of our guru's powers," Dijen said, "makes me feel that any university in the world is only a kindergarten."

Notes

Chapter 15

[1] 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.

[2] 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 'sees,'" 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."

[3] 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.

[4] SAT is literally "being," hence "essence; reality." Sanga is "association." Sri Yukteswar called his hermitage organization Sat-Sanga, "fellowship with truth."

[5] "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.

[6] "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.

[7] 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."

Chapter 16

[1] 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 BC. 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.

[2] The blessing which flows from the mere sight of a saint.

[3] One of the girls whom my family selected as a possible bride for me, afterwards married my cousin, Prabhas Chandra Ghose.

[4] 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.

[5] In the year A.D. 12,500.

[6] 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."

[7] chapter VI:13.

[8] "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.

[9] 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.

[10] Sankhya Aphorisms, I:92.

[11] Matthew 24:35.

[12] Matthew 12:50.

[13] 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.

[14] "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.

[15] "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." - Genesis 3:12-13.

[16] "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." - Genesis 1:27-28.

[17] "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." - Genesis 2:7.

[18] "Now the serpent (sex force) was more subtil than any beast of the field" (any other sense of the body). - Genesis 3:1.

[19] "And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed." - Genesis 2:8. "Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken." - Genesis 3:23. The divine man first made by God had his consciousness centreed 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.

Chapter 17

[1] In 1936 I heard from a friend that Sasi was still in excellent health.

Chapter 18

[1] A Moslem yogi; from the Arabic faqir, poor; originally applied to dervishes under a vow of poverty.

[2] My father later told me that his company, the Bengal-Nagpur Railway, had been one of the firms victimized by Afzal Khan.

[3] I do not recall the name of Sri Yukteswar's friend, and must refer to him simply as "Babu" (Mister).

Chapter 19

[1] The Bengali "Good-by"; literally, it is a hopeful paradox: "Then I come."

[2] The characteristic sound of dematerialization of bodily atoms.

Adjoined

Ak: Yogananda, Pa.: Man's Eternal Quest. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1975.
Ay: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 1st ed. New York: Philosophical Library, 1946. Online. [oaks.nvg.org/pv6bk12.html]
Ebu: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2006.
Op: Simpson, John, and Jennifer Speake. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Pa: Yogananda, Pa.: Autobiography of a Yogi. 11th ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1971.
Say: Yogananda, Pa. Sayings of Yogananda. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1958.

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