Part 18

I laughed. “It too sometimes vanishes most unaccountably!”

“Afzal was not a man of God-realization,” Master went on. “Miracles of a permanent and beneficial nature are performed by true saints because they have 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 until 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 have 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 the possession of miraculous powers. For years I have 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 am Afzal Khan, the great FAKIR. What have you there?’

“‘This ball of gold is my sole 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:

“‘Do you not recognize 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 did not appear to my inner sight. But some dark veil suddenly lifted within me; I saw clearly the blasphemy of my life.

“‘My guru, I thank you for coming to banish my long delusion.’ I was sobbing at his feet. ‘I promise to forsake my worldly ambitions. I will 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 will 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.”

{FN18-1} A Moslem yogi; from the Arabic FAQIR, poor; originally applied to dervishes under a vow of poverty.

{FN18-2} My father later told me that his company, the Bengal-Nagpur Railway, had been one of the firms victimized by Afzal Khan.

{FN18-3} I do not recall the name of Sri Yukteswar’s friend, and must refer to him simply as “Babu” (Mister).

CHAPTER: 19

MY MASTER, IN CALCUTTA, APPEARS IN SERAMPORE

“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 boardinghouse, 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 A.B. 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 is not 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 am 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 materialized 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 ocher 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 is not an apparition, but my flesh and blood form. I have 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 am 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,” {FN19-1} I heard a peculiar rumbling sound. {FN19-2} 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 was not 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 is there!” I exclaimed joyfully.

“You dream so?” Dijen laughed mockingly.

“Let us 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 cannot 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 boardinghouse that morning, my friend and I had reached Serampore College.

“The account I have just heard of our guru’s powers,” Dijen said, “makes me feel that any university in the world is only a kindergarten.”

{FN19-1} The Bengali “Good-by”; literally, it is a hopeful paradox: “Then I come.”

{FN19-2} The characteristic sound of dematerialization of bodily atoms.

CHAPTER: 20

WE DO NOT VISIT KASHMIR

“Father, I want to invite Master and four friends to accompany me to the Himalayan foothills during my summer vacation. May I have six train passes to Kashmir and enough money to cover our travel expenses?”

As I had expected, Father laughed heartily. “This is the third time you have given me the same cock-and-bull story. Didn’t you make a similar request last summer, and the year before that? At the last moment, Sri Yukteswarji refuses to go.”

“It is true, Father; I don’t know why my guru will not give me his definite word about Kashmir. {FN20-1} But if I tell him that I have already secured the passes from you, somehow I think that this time he will consent to make the journey.”

Father was unconvinced at the moment, but the following day, after some good-humored gibes, he handed me six passes and a roll of ten-rupee bills.

“I hardly think your theoretical trip needs such practical props,” he remarked, “but here they are.”

That afternoon I exhibited my booty to Sri Yukteswar. Though he smiled at my enthusiasm, his words were noncommittal: “I would like to go; we shall see.” He made no comment when I asked his little hermitage disciple, Kanai, to accompany us. I also invited three other friends—Rajendra Nath Mitra, Jotin Auddy, and one other boy. Our date of departure was set for the following Monday.

On Saturday and Sunday I stayed in Calcutta, where marriage rites for a cousin were being celebrated at my family home. I arrived in Serampore with my luggage early Monday morning. Rajendra met me at the hermitage door.

“Master is out, walking. He has refused to go.”

I was equally grieved and obdurate. “I will not give Father a third chance to ridicule my chimerical plans for Kashmir. Come; the rest of us will go anyhow.”

Rajendra agreed; I left the ashram to find a servant. Kanai, I knew, would not take the trip without Master, and someone was needed to look after the luggage. I bethought myself of Behari, previously a servant in my family home, who was now employed by a Serampore schoolmaster. As I walked along briskly, I met my guru in front of the Christian church near Serampore Courthouse.

“Where are you going?” Sri Yukteswar’s face was unsmiling.

“Sir, I hear that you and Kanai will not take the trip we have been planning. I am seeking Behari. You will recall that last year he was so anxious to see Kashmir that he even offered to serve without pay.”

“I remember. Nevertheless, I don’t think Behari will be willing to go.”

I was exasperated. “He is just eagerly waiting for this opportunity!”

My guru silently resumed his walk; I soon reached the schoolmaster’s house. Behari, in the courtyard, greeted me with a friendly warmth that abruptly vanished as soon as I mentioned Kashmir. With a murmured word of apology, the servant left me and entered his employer’s house. I waited half an hour, nervously assuring myself that Behari’s delay was being caused by preparations for his trip. Finally I knocked at the front door.

“Behari left by the back stairs about thirty minutes ago,” a man informed me. A slight smile hovered about his lips.

I departed sadly, wondering whether my invitation had been too coercive or whether Master’s unseen influence were at work. Passing the Christian church, again I saw my guru walking slowly toward me. Without waiting to hear my report, he exclaimed:

“So Behari would not go! Now, what are your plans?”

I felt like a recalcitrant child who is determined to defy his masterful father. “Sir, I am going to ask my uncle to lend me his servant, Lal Dhari.”

“See your uncle if you want to,” Sri Yukteswar replied with a chuckle. “But I hardly think you will enjoy the visit.”

Apprehensive but rebellious, I left my guru and entered Serampore Courthouse. My paternal uncle, Sarada Ghosh, a government attorney, welcomed me affectionately.

“I am leaving today with some friends for Kashmir,” I told him. “For years I have been looking forward to this Himalayan trip.”

“I am happy for you, Mukunda. Is there anything I can do to make your journey more comfortable?”

These kind words gave me a lift of encouragement. “Dear uncle,” I said, “could you possibly spare me your servant, Lal Dhari?”

My simple request had the effect of an earthquake. Uncle jumped so violently that his chair overturned, the papers on the desk flew in every direction, and his pipe, a long, coconut-stemmed hubble-bubble, fell to the floor with a great clatter.

“You selfish young man,” he shouted, quivering with wrath, “what a preposterous idea! Who will look after me, if you take my servant on one of your pleasure jaunts?”

I concealed my surprise, reflecting that my amiable uncle’s sudden change of front was only one more enigma in a day fully devoted to incomprehensibility. My retreat from the courthouse office was more alacritous than dignified.

I returned to the hermitage, where my friends were expectantly gathered. Conviction was growing on me that some sufficient if exceedingly recondite motive was behind Master’s attitude. Remorse seized me that I had been trying to thwart my guru’s will.

“Mukunda, wouldn’t you like to stay awhile longer with me?” Sri Yukteswar inquired. “Rajendra and the others can go ahead now, and wait for you at Calcutta. There will be plenty of time to catch the last evening train leaving Calcutta for Kashmir.”

“Sir, I don’t care to go without you,” I said mournfully.

My friends paid not the slightest attention to my remark. They summoned a hackney carriage and departed with all the luggage. Kanai and I sat quietly at our guru’s feet. After a half hour of complete silence, Master rose and walked toward the second-floor dining patio.

“Kanai, please serve Mukunda’s food. His train leaves soon.”

Getting up from my blanket seat, I staggered suddenly with nausea and a ghastly churning sensation in my stomach. The stabbing pain was so intense that I felt I had been abruptly hurled into some violent hell. Groping blindly toward my guru, I collapsed before him, attacked by all symptoms of the dread Asiatic cholera. Sri Yukteswar and Kanai carried me to the sitting room.

Racked with agony, I cried, “Master, I surrender my life to you;” for I believed it was indeed fast ebbing from the shores of my body.

Sri Yukteswar put my head on his lap, stroking my forehead with angelic tenderness.

“You see now what would have happened if you were at the station with your friends,” he said. “I had to look after you in this strange way, because you chose to doubt my judgment about taking the trip at this particular time.”

I understood at last. Inasmuch as great masters seldom see fit to display their powers openly, a casual observer of the day’s events would have imagined that their sequence was quite natural. My guru’s intervention had been too subtle to be suspected. He had worked his will through Behari and my Uncle Sarada and Rajendra and the others in such an inconspicuous manner that probably everyone but myself thought the situations had been logically normal.

As Sri Yukteswar never failed to observe his social obligations, he instructed Kanai to go for a specialist, and to notify my uncle.

“Master,” I protested, “only you can heal me. I am too far gone for any doctor.”

“Child, you are protected by the Divine Mercy. Don’t worry about the doctor; he will not find you in this state. You are already healed.”

With my guru’s words, the excruciating suffering left me. I sat up feebly. A doctor soon arrived and examined me carefully.

“You appear to have passed through the worst,” he said. “I will take some specimens with me for laboratory tests.”

The following morning the physician arrived hurriedly. I was sitting up, in good spirits.

“Well, well, here you are, smiling and chatting as though you had had no close call with death.” He patted my hand gently. “I hardly expected to find you alive, after I had discovered from the specimens that your disease was Asiatic cholera. You are fortunate, young man, to have a guru with divine healing powers! I am convinced of it!”

I agreed wholeheartedly. As the doctor was preparing to leave, Rajendra and Auddy appeared at the door. The resentment in their faces changed into sympathy as they glanced at the physician and then at my somewhat wan countenance.

“We were angry when you didn’t turn up as agreed at the Calcutta train. You have been sick?”

“Yes.” I could not help laughing as my friends placed the luggage in the same corner it had occupied yesterday. I quoted: “There was a ship that went to Spain; when it arrived, it came back again!”

Master entered the room. I permitted myself a convalescent’s liberty, and captured his hand lovingly.

“Guruji,” I said, “from my twelfth year on, I have made many unsuccessful attempts to reach the Himalayas. I am finally convinced that without your blessings the Goddess Parvati {FN20-2} will not receive me!”

{FN20-1} 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 chapter 22).

{FN20-2} 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.

CHAPTER: 21

WE VISIT KASHMIR

“You are strong enough now to travel. I will accompany you to Kashmir,” Sri Yukteswar informed me two days after my miraculous recovery from Asiatic cholera.

That evening our party of six entrained for the north. Our first leisurely stop was at Simla, a queenly city resting on the throne of Himalayan hills. We strolled over the steep streets, admiring the magnificent views.

“English strawberries for sale,” cried an old woman, squatting in a picturesque open market place.

Master was curious about the strange little red fruits. He bought a basketful and offered it to Kanai and myself, who were near-by. I tasted one berry but spat it hastily on the ground.

“Sir, what a sour fruit! I could never like strawberries!”

My guru laughed. “Oh, you will like them-in America. At a dinner there, your hostess will serve them with sugar and cream. After she has mashed the berries with a fork, you will taste them and say: ‘What delicious strawberries!’ Then you will remember this day in Simla.”

Sri Yukteswar’s forecast vanished from my mind, but reappeared there many years later, shortly after my arrival in America. I was a dinner guest at the home of Mrs. Alice T. Hasey (Sister Yogmata) in West Somerville, Massachusetts. When a dessert of strawberries was put on the table, my hostess picked up her fork and mashed my berries, adding cream and sugar. “The fruit is rather tart; I think you will like it fixed this way,” she remarked.