Part 24

“‘Sanandan, be prepared; I am going to kick the frame.’ {FN27-7}

“After a stunned silence, I cried loudly, ‘Master, don’t do it! Please, please, don’t do it!’ The crowd was tongue-tied, watching us curiously. My guru smiled at me, but his solemn gaze was already fixed on Eternity.

“‘Be not selfish,’ he said, ‘nor grieve for me. I have been long cheerfully serving you all; now rejoice and wish me Godspeed. I go to meet my Cosmic Beloved.’ In a whisper, Pranabanandaji added, ‘I shall be reborn shortly. After enjoying a short period of the Infinite Bliss, I shall return to earth and join Babaji. {FN27-8} You shall soon know when and where my soul has been encased in a new body.’

“He cried again, ‘Sanandan, here I kick the frame by the second KRIYA YOGA.’ {FN27-9}

“He looked at the sea of faces before us, and gave a blessing. Directing his gaze inwardly to the spiritual eye, he became immobile. While the bewildered crowd thought he was meditating in an ecstatic state, he had already left the tabernacle of flesh and plunged his soul into the cosmic vastness. The disciples touched his body, seated in the lotus posture, but it was no longer the warm flesh. Only a stiffened frame remained; the tenant had fled to the immortal shore.”

I inquired where Pranabananda was to be reborn.

“That’s a sacred trust I cannot divulge to anyone,” Sanandan replied. “Perhaps you may find out some other way.”

Years later I discovered from Swami Keshabananda {FN27-10} that Pranabananda, a few years after his birth in a new body, had gone to Badrinarayan in the Himalayas, and there joined the group of saints around the great Babaji.

{FN27-1} VIDYALAYA, school. BRAHMACHARYA here refers to one of the four stages in the Vedic plan for man’s life, as comprising that of (1) the celibate student (BRAHMACHARI); (2) the householder with worldly responsibilities (GRIHASTHA); (3) the hermit (VANAPRASTHA); (4) the forest dweller or wanderer, free from all earthly concerns (SANNYASI). This ideal scheme of life, while not widely observed in modern India, still has many devout followers. The four stages are carried out religiously under the lifelong direction of a guru.

{FN27-2} A number of American students also have mastered various ASANAS or postures, including Bernard Cole, an instructor in Los Angeles of the Self-Realization Fellowship teachings.

{FN27-3} MARK 10:29-30..

{FN27-4} Yogoda: YOGA, union, harmony, equilibrium; DA, that which imparts. Sat-Sanga: SAT, truth; SANGA, fellowship. In the West, to avoid the use of a Sanskrit name, the YOGODA SAT-SANGA movement has been called the SELF-REALIZATION FELLOWSHIP.

{FN27-5} The activities at Ranchi are described more fully in chapter 40. The Lakshmanpur school is in the capable charge of Mr. G. C. Dey, B.A. The medical department is ably supervised by Dr. S. N. Pal and Sasi Bhusan Mullick.

{FN27-6} One of Lahiri Mahasaya’s favorite remarks, given as encouragement for his students’ perseverance. A free translation is: “Striving, striving, one day behold! the Divine Goal!”

{FN27-7} i.e., give up the body.

{FN27-8} Lahiri Mahasaya’s guru, who is still living. (See chapter 33.)

{FN27-9} The second KRIYA, as taught by Lahiri Mahasaya, enables the devotee that has mastered it to leave and return to the body consciously at any time. Advanced yogis use the second Kriya technique during the last exit of death, a moment they invariably know beforehand.

{FN27-10} My meeting with Keshabananda is described in chapter 42.

CHAPTER: 28

KASHI, REBORN AND REDISCOVERED

“Please do not go into the water. Let us bathe by dipping our buckets.”

I was addressing the young Ranchi students who were accompanying me on an eight-mile hike to a neighboring hill. The pond before us was inviting, but a distaste for it had arisen in my mind. The group around me followed my example of dipping buckets, but a few lads yielded to the temptation of the cool waters. No sooner had they dived than large water snakes wiggled around them. The boys came out of the pond with comical alacrity.

We enjoyed a picnic lunch after we reached our destination. I sat under a tree, surrounded by a group of students. Finding me in an inspirational mood, they plied me with questions.

“Please tell me, sir,” one youth inquired, “if I shall always stay with you in the path of renunciation.”

“Ah, no,” I replied, “you will be forcibly taken away to your home, and later you will marry.”

Incredulous, he made a vehement protest. “Only if I am dead can I be carried home.” But in a few months, his parents arrived to take him away, in spite of his tearful resistance; some years later, he did marry.

After answering many questions, I was addressed by a lad named Kashi. He was about twelve years old, a brilliant student, and beloved by all.

“Sir,” he said, “what will be my fate?”

“You shall soon be dead.” The reply came from my lips with an irresistible force.

This unexpected disclosure shocked and grieved me as well as everyone present. Silently rebuking myself as an ENFANT TERRIBLE, I refused to answer further questions.

On our return to the school, Kashi came to my room.

“If I die, will you find me when I am reborn, and bring me again to the spiritual path?” He sobbed.

I felt constrained to refuse this difficult occult responsibility. But for weeks afterward, Kashi pressed me doggedly. Seeing him unnerved to the breaking point, I finally consoled him.

“Yes,” I promised. “If the Heavenly Father lends His aid, I will try to find you.”

During the summer vacation, I started on a short trip. Regretting that I could not take Kashi with me, I called him to my room before leaving, and carefully instructed him to remain, against all persuasion, in the spiritual vibrations of the school. Somehow I felt that if he did not go home, he might avoid the impending calamity.

No sooner had I left than Kashi’s father arrived in Ranchi. For fifteen days he tried to break the will of his son, explaining that if Kashi would go to Calcutta for only four days to see his mother, he could then return. Kashi persistently refused. The father finally said he would take the boy away with the help of the police. The threat disturbed Kashi, who was unwilling to be the cause of any unfavorable publicity to the school. He saw no choice but to go.

I returned to Ranchi a few days later. When I heard how Kashi had been removed, I entrained at once for Calcutta. There I engaged a horse cab. Very strangely, as the vehicle passed beyond the Howrah bridge over the Ganges, I beheld Kashi’s father and other relatives in mourning clothes. Shouting to my driver to stop, I rushed out and glared at the unfortunate father.

“Mr. Murderer,” I cried somewhat unreasonably, “you have killed my boy!”

The father had already realized the wrong he had done in forcibly bringing Kashi to Calcutta. During the few days the boy had been there, he had eaten contaminated food, contracted cholera, and passed on.

My love for Kashi, and the pledge to find him after death, night and day haunted me. No matter where I went, his face loomed up before me. I began a memorable search for him, even as long ago I had searched for my lost mother.

I felt that inasmuch as God had given me the faculty of reason, I must utilize it and tax my powers to the utmost in order to discover the subtle laws by which I could know the boy’s astral whereabouts. He was a soul vibrating with unfulfilled desires, I realized-a mass of light floating somewhere amidst millions of luminous souls in the astral regions. How was I to tune in with him, among so many vibrating lights of other souls?

Using a secret yoga technique, I broadcasted my love to Kashi’s soul through the microphone of the spiritual eye, the inner point between the eyebrows. With the antenna of upraised hands and fingers, I often turned myself round and round, trying to locate the direction in which he had been reborn as an embryo. I hoped to receive response from him in the concentration-tuned radio of my heart. {FN28-1}

I intuitively felt that Kashi would soon return to the earth, and that if I kept unceasingly broadcasting my call to him, his soul would reply. I knew that the slightest impulse sent by Kashi would be felt in my fingers, hands, arms, spine, and nerves.

With undiminished zeal, I practiced the yoga method steadily for about six months after Kashi’s death. Walking with a few friends one morning in the crowded Bowbazar section of Calcutta, I lifted my hands in the usual manner. For the first time, there was response. I thrilled to detect electrical impulses trickling down my fingers and palms. These currents translated themselves into one overpowering thought from a deep recess of my consciousness: “I am Kashi; I am Kashi; come to me!”

The thought became almost audible as I concentrated on my heart radio. In the characteristic, slightly hoarse whisper of Kashi, {FN28-2} I heard his summons again and again. I seized the arm of one of my companions, Prokash Das, {FN28-3} and smiled at him joyfully.

“It looks as though I have located Kashi!”

I began to turn round and round, to the undisguised amusement of my friends and the passing throng. The electrical impulses tingled through my fingers only when I faced toward a near-by path, aptly named “Serpentine Lane.” The astral currents disappeared when I turned in other directions.

“Ah,” I exclaimed, “Kashi’s soul must be living in the womb of some mother whose home is in this lane.”

My companions and I approached closer to Serpentine Lane; the vibrations in my upraised hands grew stronger, more pronounced. As if by a magnet, I was pulled toward the right side of the road. Reaching the entrance of a certain house, I was astounded to find myself transfixed. I knocked at the door in a state of intense excitement, holding my very breath. I felt that the successful end had come for my long, arduous, and certainly unusual quest!

The door was opened by a servant, who told me her master was at home. He descended the stairway from the second floor and smiled at me inquiringly. I hardly knew how to frame my question, at once pertinent and impertinent.

“Please tell me, sir, if you and your wife have been expecting a child for about six months?”

“Yes, it is so.” Seeing that I was a swami, a renunciate attired in the traditional orange cloth, he added politely, “Pray inform me how you know my affairs.”

When he heard about Kashi and the promise I had given, the astonished man believed my story.

“A male child of fair complexion will be born to you,” I told him. “He will have a broad face, with a cowlick atop his forehead. His disposition will be notably spiritual.” I felt certain that the coming child would bear these resemblances to Kashi.

Later I visited the child, whose parents had given him his old name of Kashi. Even in infancy he was strikingly similar in appearance to my dear Ranchi student. The child showed me an instantaneous affection; the attraction of the past awoke with redoubled intensity.

Years later the teen-age boy wrote me, during my stay in America. He explained his deep longing to follow the path of a renunciate. I directed him to a Himalayan master who, to this day, guides the reborn Kashi.

{FN28-1} The will, projected from the point between the eyebrows, is known by yogis as the broadcasting apparatus of thought. When the feeling is calmly concentrated on the heart, it acts as a mental radio, and can receive the messages of others from far or near. In telepathy the fine vibrations of thoughts in one person’s mind are transmitted through the subtle vibrations of astral ether and then through the grosser earthly ether, creating electrical waves which, in turn, translate themselves into thought waves in the mind of the other person.

{FN28-2} Every soul in its pure state is omniscient. Kashi’s soul remembered all the characteristics of Kashi, the boy, and therefore mimicked his hoarse voice in order to stir my recognition.

{FN28-3} Prokash Das is the present director of our Yogoda Math (hermitage) at Dakshineswar in Bengal.

CHAPTER: 29

RABINDRANATH TAGORE AND I COMPARE SCHOOLS

“Rabindranath Tagore taught us to sing, as a natural form of self-expression, like the birds.”

Bhola Nath, a bright fourteen-year-old lad at my Ranchi school, gave me this explanation after I had complimented him one morning on his melodious outbursts. With or without provocation, the boy poured forth a tuneful stream. He had previously attended the famous Tagore school of “Santiniketan” (Haven of Peace) at Bolpur.

“The songs of Rabindranath have been on my lips since early youth,” I told my companion. “All Bengal, even the unlettered peasants, delights in his lofty verse.”

Bhola and I sang together a few refrains from Tagore, who has set to music thousands of Indian poems, some original and others of hoary antiquity.

“I met Rabindranath soon after he had received the Nobel Prize for literature,” I remarked after our vocalizing. “I was drawn to visit him because I admired his undiplomatic courage in disposing of his literary critics.” I chuckled.

Bhola curiously inquired the story.

“The scholars severely flayed Tagore for introducing a new style into Bengali poetry,” I began. “He mixed colloquial and classical expressions, ignoring all the prescribed limitations dear to the pundits’ hearts. His songs embody deep philosophic truth in emotionally appealing terms, with little regard for the accepted literary forms.

“One influential critic slightingly referred to Rabindranath as a ‘pigeon-poet who sold his cooings in print for a rupee.’ But Tagore’s revenge was at hand; the whole Western world paid homage at his feet soon after he had translated into English his GITANJALI (‘Song Offerings’). A trainload of pundits, including his one-time critics, went to Santiniketan to offer their congratulations.

“Rabindranath received his guests only after an intentionally long delay, and then heard their praise in stoic silence. Finally he turned against them their own habitual weapons of criticism.

“‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘the fragrant honors you here bestow are incongruously mingled with the putrid odors of your past contempt. Is there possibly any connection between my award of the Nobel Prize, and your suddenly acute powers of appreciation? I am still the same poet who displeased you when I first offered my humble flowers at the shrine of Bengal.’

“The newspapers published an account of the bold chastisement given by Tagore. I admired the outspoken words of a man unhypnotized by flattery,” I went on. “I was introduced to Rabindranath in Calcutta by his secretary, Mr. C. F. Andrews, {FN29-1} who was simply attired in a Bengali DHOTI. He referred lovingly to Tagore as his GURUDEVA.

“Rabindranath received me graciously. He emanated a soothing aura of charm, culture, and courtliness. Replying to my question about his literary background, Tagore told me that one ancient source of his inspiration, besides our religious epics, had been the classical poet, Bidyapati.”

Inspired by these memories, I began to sing Tagore’s version of an old Bengali song, “Light the Lamp of Thy Love.” Bhola and I chanted joyously as we strolled over the VIDYALAYA grounds.

About two years after founding the Ranchi school, I received an invitation from Rabindranath to visit him at Santiniketan in order to discuss our educational ideals. I went gladly. The poet was seated in his study when I entered; I thought then, as at our first meeting, that he was as striking a model of superb manhood as any painter could desire. His beautifully chiseled face, nobly patrician, was framed in long hair and flowing beard. Large, melting eyes; an angelic smile; and a voice of flutelike quality which was literally enchanting. Stalwart, tall, and grave, he combined an almost womanly tenderness with the delightful spontaneity of a child. No idealized conception of a poet could find more suitable embodiment than in this gentle singer.

Tagore and I were soon deep in a comparative study of our schools, both founded along unorthodox lines. We discovered many identical features-outdoor instruction, simplicity, ample scope for the child’s creative spirit. Rabindranath, however, laid considerable stress on the study of literature and poetry, and the self-expression through music and song which I had already noted in the case of Bhola. The Santiniketan children observed periods of silence, but were given no special yoga training.

The poet listened with flattering attention to my description of the energizing “Yogoda” exercises and the yoga concentration techniques which are taught to all students at Ranchi.

Tagore told me of his own early educational struggles. “I fled from school after the fifth grade,” he said, laughing. I could readily understand how his innate poetic delicacy had been affronted by the dreary, disciplinary atmosphere of a schoolroom.

“That is why I opened Santiniketan under the shady trees and the glories of the sky.” He motioned eloquently to a little group studying in the beautiful garden. “A child is in his natural setting amidst the flowers and songbirds. Only thus may he fully express the hidden wealth of his individual endowment. True education can never be crammed and pumped from without; rather it must aid in bringing spontaneously to the surface the infinite hoards of wisdom within.” {FN29-2}

I agreed. “The idealistic and hero-worshiping instincts of the young are starved on an exclusive diet of statistics and chronological eras.”

The poet spoke lovingly of his father, Devendranath, who had inspired the Santiniketan beginnings.

“Father presented me with this fertile land, where he had already built a guest house and temple,” Rabindranath told me. “I started my educational experiment here in 1901, with only ten boys. The eight thousand pounds which came with the Nobel Prize all went for the upkeep of the school.”

The elder Tagore, Devendranath, known far and wide as “Maharishi,” was a very remarkable man, as one may discover from his AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Two years of his manhood were spent in meditation in the Himalayas. In turn, his father, Dwarkanath Tagore, had been celebrated throughout Bengal for his munificent public benefactions. From this illustrious tree has sprung a family of geniuses. Not Rabindranath alone; all his relatives have distinguished themselves in creative expression. His brothers, Gogonendra and Abanindra, are among the foremost artists {FN29-3} of India; another brother, Dwijendra, is a deep-seeing philosopher, at whose gentle call the birds and woodland creatures respond.

Rabindranath invited me to stay overnight in the guest house. It was indeed a charming spectacle, in the evening, to see the poet seated with a group in the patio. Time unfolded backward: the scene before me was like that of an ancient hermitage-the joyous singer encircled by his devotees, all aureoled in divine love. Tagore knitted each tie with the cords of harmony. Never assertive, he drew and captured the heart by an irresistible magnetism. Rare blossom of poesy blooming in the garden of the Lord, attracting others by a natural fragrance!

In his melodious voice, Rabindranath read to us a few of his exquisite poems, newly created. Most of his songs and plays, written for the delectation of his students, have been composed at Santiniketan. The beauty of his lines, to me, lies in his art of referring to God in nearly every stanza, yet seldom mentioning the sacred Name. “Drunk with the bliss of singing,” he wrote, “I forget myself and call thee friend who art my lord.”

The following day, after lunch, I bade the poet a reluctant farewell. I rejoice that his little school has now grown to an international university, “Viswa-Bharati,” where scholars of all lands have found an ideal setting.

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action; Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake!” {FN29-4} RABINDRANATH TAGORE

{FN29-1} The English writer and publicist, close friend of Mahatma Gandhi. Mr. Andrews is honored in India for his many services to his adopted land.

{FN29-2} “The soul having been often born, or, as the Hindus say, ‘traveling the path of existence through thousands of births’ . . . there is nothing of which she has not gained the knowledge; no wonder that she is able to recollect . . . what formerly she knew. . . . For inquiry and learning is reminiscence all.”-EMERSON.

{FN29-3} Rabindranath, too, in his sixties, engaged in a serious study of painting. Exhibitions of his “futuristic” work were given some years ago in European capitals and New York.