Autobiography of a Yogi quotes

Prayerful surges arose within me as I realized my bodily impotence. My strong emotional life took silent form as words in many languages. Among the inward confusion of tongues, my ear gradually accustomed itself to the circumambient Bengali syllables of my people.

The beguiling scope of an infant’s mind! adultly considered limited to toys and toes.

Psychological ferment and my unresponsive body brought me to many obstinate crying-spells. I recall the general family bewilderment at my distress. Happier memories, too, crowd in on me: my mother’s caresses, and my first attempts at lisping phrase and toddling step.

Father and Mother were Bengalis, of the kshatriya caste. 1-5 Both were blessed with saintly nature. Their mutual love, tranquil and dignified, never expressed itself frivolously.

A perfect parental harmony was the calm center for the revolving tumult of eight young lives.

Father, Bhagabati Charan Ghosh, was kind, grave, at times stern. Loving him dearly, we children yet observed a certain reverential distance. An outstanding mathematician and logician, he was guided principally by his intellect.

Father, Bhagabati Charan Ghosh, was kind, grave, at times stern. Loving him dearly, we children yet observed a certain reverential distance. An outstanding mathematician and logician, he was guided principally by his intellect.

But Mother was a queen of hearts, and taught us only through love.

After her death, Father displayed more of his inner tenderness. I noticed then that his gaze often metamorphosed into my mother’s.

My only breakfast, before walking miles to my school, was a small banana. Later, at the university, I was in such need that I applied to a wealthy judge for aid of one rupee per month. He declined, remarking that even a rupee is important.”

“How bitterly you recall the denial of that rupee!”

Mother’s heart had an instant logic. “Do you want this woman also to remember painfully your refusal of ten rupees which she needs urgently?”

“Why be elated by material profit?” Father replied.

“The one who pursues a goal of evenmindedness is neither jubilant with gain nor depressed by loss. He knows that man arrives penniless in this world, and departs without a single rupee.”

Early in their married life, my parents became disciples of a great master, Lahiri Mahasaya of Benares. This contact strengthened Father’s naturally ascetical temperament. Mother made a remarkable admission to my eldest sister Roma:

With tears and shattered pride, Ganga Dhar Babu sought out his guru. It was many hours before Lahiri Mahasaya broke his silence with a pregnant comment:

“I am Spirit. Can your camera reflect the omnipresent Invisible?”

“I see it cannot! But, Holy Sir, I lovingly desire a picture of the bodily temple where alone, to my narrow vision, that Spirit appears fully to dwell.”

My boil was surgically treated. A noticeable scar, left by the doctor’s incision, is present today.

On my right forearm is a constant reminder of the power in man’s sheer word.

Those simple and apparently harmless phrases to Uma, spoken with deep concentration, had possessed sufficient hidden force to explode like bombs and produce definite, though injurious, effects.

I was completely unnerved, shocked to a peculiar numbness. That God would countenance this depressing episode!

The romantic occasion of my first carefully-planned flight after Him was cruelly marred.

“Amar, we must return home.” I was weeping like a child. “Jatinda’s callous departure is an ill omen. This trip is doomed to failure.”

“Amar, we must return home.” I was weeping like a child. “Jatinda’s callous departure is an ill omen. This trip is doomed to failure.”

“Is this your love for the Lord? Can’t you stand the little test of a treacherous companion?”

Through Amar’s suggestion of a divine test, my heart steadied itself. We refreshed ourselves with famous Burdwan sweetmeats, sitabhog (food for the goddess) and motichur (nuggets of sweet pearl). In a few hours, we entrained for Hardwar, via Bareilly.

Amar and I lamented that we had missed the great yogi who could forgive his persecutor in such a Christlike way.

India, materially poor for the last two centuries, yet has an inexhaustible fund of divine wealth; spiritual “skyscrapers” may occasionally be encountered by the wayside, even by worldly men like this policeman.

We thanked the officer for relieving our tedium with his marvelous story. He was probably intimating that he was more fortunate than we: he had met an illumined saint without effort;

My encounter with the “Perfume Saint” had two preambles, one harmonious and the other humorous.

“God is simple. Everything else is complex. Do not seek absolute values in the relative world of nature.”

These philosophical finalities gently entered my ear as I stood silently before a temple image of Kali. Turning, I confronted a tall man whose garb, or lack of it, revealed him a wandering sadhu.

“The saints of every age, sir, have felt like yourself for the sorrows of the world.”

“Only the shallow man loses responsiveness to the woes of others’ lives, as he sinks into narrow suffering of his own.”

The SADHU’S austere face was noticeably softened. “The one who practices a scalpel self-dissection will know an expansion of universal pity. Release is given him from the deafening demands of his ego. The love of God flowers on such soil.

The sage and I were present in Calcutta’s Kalighat Temple, whither I had gone to view its famed magnificence. With a sweeping gesture, my chance companion dismissed the ornate dignity.

“Bricks and mortar sing us no audible tune; the heart opens only to the human chant of being.”

We strolled to the inviting sunshine at the entrance, where throngs of devotees were passing to and fro.

“I will permit them to keep their trade! My own purpose is to demonstrate the power of God.”

“Sir, is it necessary to prove God? Isn’t He performing miracles in everything, everywhere?”

“Yes, but we too should manifest some of His infinite creative variety.”

“For manufacturing scents by astral means! It seems, my honored saint, you have been wasting a dozen years for fragrances which you can obtain with a few rupees from a florist’s shop.”

“Perfumes fade with death. Why should I desire that which pleases the body only?”

“Mr. Philosopher, you please my mind. Now, stretch forth your right hand.” He made a gesture of blessing.

“My sons, it is nothing to me to fight tigers. I could do it today if necessary.” He gave a childlike laugh.

“You look upon tigers as tigers; I know them as pussycats.”

“Swamiji, I think I could impress my subconsciousness with the thought that tigers are pussycats, but could I make tigers believe it?”

“Yes.” He was smiling.

“But there are many kinds of tigers; some roam in jungles of human desires. No spiritual benefit accrues by knocking beasts unconscious. Rather be victor over the inner prowlers.”

“May we hear, sir, how you changed from a tamer of wild tigers to a tamer of wild passions?”

“Maharishi, 7-5 you are the first yogi I have known who always stays indoors.”

“God plants his saints sometimes in unexpected soil, lest we think we may reduce Him to a rule!”

The sage locked his vibrant body in the lotus posture. In his seventies, he displayed no unpleasing signs of age or sedentary life. Stalwart and straight, he was ideal in every respect. His face was that of a rishi, as described in the ancient texts.

“You go often into the silence, but have you developed anubhava?” 7-6 He was reminding me to love God more than meditation.

“Do not mistake the technique for the Goal.”

He offered me some mangoes. With that good-humored wit that I found so delightful in his grave nature, he remarked, “People in general are more fond of Jala Yoga (union with food) than of Dhyana Yoga (union with God).”

The sage indicated several thick envelopes on a table. “I correspond with a few societies there whose members are interested in yoga. They are discovering India anew, with a better sense of direction than Columbus! I am glad to help them.

The knowledge of yoga is free to all who will receive, like the ungarnishable daylight.

“What rishis perceived as essential for human salvation need not be diluted for the West. Alike in soul though diverse in outer experience, neither West nor East will flourish if some form of disciplinary yoga be not practiced.”

I chuckled over this paradoxical view of renunciation-one which puts the cap of Croesus on any saintly beggar, whilst transforming all proud millionaires into unconscious martyrs.

“The divine order arranges our future more wisely than any insurance company.”

The master’s concluding words were the realized creed of his faith. “The world is full of uneasy believers in an outward security. Their bitter thoughts are like scars on their foreheads.

He spread his wisdom by spiritual contagion rather than impermeable precept. Consumed by an unsophisticated passion for the Divine Mother, the saint no more demanded the outward forms of respect than a child.

“I am not your guru; he shall come a little later,” he told me.

“Through his guidance, your experiences of the Divine in terms of love and devotion shall be translated into his terms of fathomless wisdom.”

The saint, ignoring my question, answered my thought.

“Isn’t it true, little sir, that the Beloved’s name sounds sweet from all lips, ignorant or wise?”

He passed his arm around me affectionately; I found myself carried on his magic carpet to the Merciful Presence.

“Faith in God can produce any miracle except one-passing an examination without study.”

Distastefully I closed the book I had picked up in an idle moment.

I cannot pretend to diligence. The passing months found me less frequently in the classroom than in secluded spots along the Calcutta bathing ghats. The adjoining crematory grounds, especially gruesome at night, are considered highly attractive by the yogi.

He who would find the Deathless Essence must not be dismayed by a few unadorned skulls.

Human inadequacy becomes clear in the gloomy abode of miscellaneous bones. My midnight vigils were thus of a different nature from the scholar’s.

But it lacked the art of Swami Pranabananda, who easily appeared in two places at one time. My educational dilemma was plainly a matter for the Infinite Ingenuity. This was my reasoning, though to many it seems illogic.

The devotee’s irrationality springs from a thousand inexplicable demonstrations of God’s instancy in trouble.

“Hello, Mukunda! I catch hardly a glimpse of you these days!” A classmate accosted me one afternoon on Gurpar Road.

I came across the discarded book whose author had denied God precedence in the examination halls. I could not restrain a chuckle at my own silent comment:

“It would only add to this fellow’s confusion, if I were to tell him that divine meditation among the cadavers is a short cut to a high school diploma!”

In my new dignity, I was now openly planning to leave home. Together with a young friend, Jitendra Mazumdar, 10-2 I decided to join a Mahamandal hermitage in Benares, and receive its spiritual discipline.

The ashram members, knowing little of meditation practices, thought I should employ my whole time in organizational duties. They gave me praise for my afternoon work in their office.

“Don’t try to catch God so soon!”

This ridicule from a fellow resident accompanied one of my early departures toward the attic. I went to Dyananda, busy in his small sanctum overlooking the Ganges.

I was in near-collapse. My young stomach, new to deprivation, protested with gnawing vigor. Pictures I had seen of famine victims passed wraithlike before me.

“The next Benares death from starvation is due at once in this hermitage,” I thought.

Impending doom averted at nine o’clock. Ambrosial summons! In memory that meal is vivid as one of life’s perfect hours.

“Gurudeva!” 10-7 The divine face was none other than he of my thousand visions. These halcyon eyes, in leonine head with pointed beard and flowing locks, had oft peered through gloom of my nocturnal reveries, holding a promise I had not fully understood.

“O my own, you have come to me!”

My guru uttered the words again and again in Bengali, his voice tremulous with joy. “How many years I have waited for you!”

“You well know, Ananta, I seek my inheritance from the Heavenly Father.”

“Money first; God can come later! Who knows? Life may be too long.”

“God first; money is His slave! Who can tell? Life may be too short.”

“Money first; God can come later! Who knows? Life may be too long.”

“God first; money is His slave! Who can tell? Life may be too short.”

My retort was summoned by the exigencies of the moment, and held no presentiment. Yet the leaves of time unfolded to early finality for Ananta; a few years later 11-1 he entered the land where bank notes avail neither first nor last.

“Jitendra!” My ejaculation was sharply reproachful. “I will not proceed with the test if you take any money as final security.”

“There is something reassuring about the clink of coins.”

Jitendra said no more as I regarded him sternly.

“You forget God quickly, now that your stomach is filled.” My words, not bitter, were accusatory.

How short is human memory for divine favors! No man lives who has not seen certain of his prayers granted.

“I am not likely to forget my folly in venturing out with a madcap like you!”

But as the tale was unfolded, my brother turned sober, then solemn.

“The law of demand and supply reaches into subtler realms than I had supposed.”

Ananta spoke with a spiritual enthusiasm never before noticeable. “I understand for the first time your indifference to the vaults and vulgar accumulations of the world.”

Visitors appeared in the afternoons. A steady stream poured from the world into the hermitage tranquillity. Everyone found in Master an equal courtesy and kindness.

To a man who has realized himself as a soul, not the body or the ego, the rest of humanity assumes a striking similarity of aspect.

The impartiality of saints is rooted in wisdom. Masters have escaped maya; its alternating faces of intellect and idiocy no longer cast an influential glance. Sri Yukteswar showed no special consideration to those who happened to be powerful or accomplished;

none left his ashram hungry or dissatisfied. Sri Yukteswar was never at a loss, never dismayed by unexpected visitors; scanty food would emerge a banquet under his resourceful direction. Yet he was economical; his modest funds went far.

“Be comfortable within your purse,” he often said. “Extravagance will buy you discomfort.”

Whether in the details of hermitage entertainment, or his building and repair work, or other practical concerns, Master manifested the originality of a creative spirit.

He was incapable of striking a pose, or of flaunting his inner withdrawal. Always one with the Lord, he needed no separate time for communion. A self-realized master has already left behind the stepping stone of meditation.

“The flower falls when the fruit appears.”

But saints often cling to spiritual forms for the encouragement of disciples.

Sri Yukteswar was reserved and matter-of-fact in demeanor. There was naught of the vague or daft visionary about him.

His feet were firm on the earth, his head in the haven of heaven.

Practical people aroused his admiration. “Saintliness is not dumbness! Divine perceptions are not incapacitating!” he would say. “The active expression of virtue gives rise to the keenest intelligence.”

Sri Yukteswar was reserved and matter-of-fact in demeanor. There was naught of the vague or daft visionary about him. His feet were firm on the earth, his head in the haven of heaven. Practical people aroused his admiration.

“Saintliness is not dumbness! Divine perceptions are not incapacitating!”

he would say. “The active expression of virtue gives rise to the keenest intelligence.”

The silence habitual to Sri Yukteswar was caused by his deep perceptions of the Infinite. No time remained for the interminable “revelations” that occupy the days of teachers without self- realization.

“In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.”

This observation from the Hindu scriptures is not without discerning humor.

Though born a mortal like all others, Master had achieved identity with the Ruler of time and space. In his life I perceived a godlike unity. He had not found any insuperable obstacle to mergence of human with Divine.

No such barrier exists, I came to understand, save in man’s spiritual unadventurousness.

I always thrilled at the touch of Sri Yukteswar’s holy feet. Yogis teach that a disciple is spiritually magnetized by reverent contact with a master; a subtle current is generated. The devotee’s undesirable habit-mechanisms in the brain are often cauterized;

Sri Yukteswar affected me similarly. If I entered the hermitage in a worried or indifferent frame of mind, my attitude imperceptibly changed.

A healing calm descended at mere sight of my guru.

Every day with him was a new experience in joy, peace, and wisdom. Never did I find him deluded or intoxicated with greed or emotion or anger or any human attachment.

“The darkness of maya is silently approaching. Let us hie homeward within.” With these words at dusk Master constantly reminded his disciples of their need for Kriya Yoga. A new student occasionally expressed doubts regarding his own worthiness to engage in yoga practice.

“Forget the past,” Sri Yukteswar would console him.

“The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until anchored in the Divine. Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now.”

“Forget the past,” Sri Yukteswar would console him. “The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until anchored in the Divine.

Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now.

”

His purpose was to give respect to the worldly custom: “Physicians must carry on their work of healing through God’s laws as applied to matter.” But he extolled the superiority of mental therapy, and often repeated:

“Wisdom is the greatest cleanser.”

“The body is a treacherous friend. Give it its due; no more,” he said. “Pain and pleasure are transitory; endure all dualities with calmness, while trying at the same time to remove their hold.

“The body is a treacherous friend. Give it its due; no more,” he said. “Pain and pleasure are transitory; endure all dualities with calmness, while trying at the same time to remove their hold.

Imagination is the door through which disease as well as healing enters.

Disbelieve in the reality of sickness even when you are ill; an unrecognized visitor will flee!”

at home Father was strict, Ananta often severe. But Sri Yukteswar’s training cannot be described as other than drastic. A perfectionist, my guru was hypercritical of his disciples, whether in matters of moment or in the subtle nuances of behavior.

“Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady,” he remarked on suitable occasion.

“Straightforwardness without civility is like a surgeon’s knife, effective but unpleasant. Candor with courtesy is helpful and admirable.”

“Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady,” he remarked on suitable occasion. “Straightforwardness without civility is like a surgeon’s knife, effective but unpleasant.

Candor with courtesy is helpful and admirable.

”

when I had neglected or carelessly performed my tasks, I was not chastised. Human nature finds such instruction very easy of assimilation. Under Master’s unsparing rod, however, I soon recovered from the agreeable delusions of irresponsibility.

“Those who are too good for this world are adorning some other,” Sri Yukteswar remarked.

“So long as you breathe the free air of earth, you are under obligation to render grateful service. He alone who has fully mastered the breathless state 12-16 is freed from cosmic imperatives.

For every humbling blow he dealt my vanity, for every tooth in my metaphorical jaw he knocked loose with stunning aim, I am grateful beyond any facility of expression.

The hard core of human egotism is hardly to be dislodged except rudely.

With its departure, the Divine finds at last an unobstructed channel. In vain It seeks to percolate through flinty hearts of selfishness.

Students came, and generally went. Those who craved a path of oily sympathy and comfortable recognitions did not find it at the hermitage. Master offered shelter and shepherding for the aeons, but many disciples miserly demanded ego-balm as well.

They departed, preferring life’s countless humiliations before any humility.

Master’s blazing rays, the open penetrating sunshine of his wisdom, were too powerful for their spiritual sickness. They sought some lesser teacher who, shading them with flattery, permitted the fitful sleep of ignorance.

Enjoyment of wine and sex are rooted in the natural man, and require no delicacies of perception for their appreciation. Sense wiles are comparable to the evergreen oleander, fragrant with its multicolored flowers: every part of the plant is poisonous.

The land of healing lies within, radiant with that happiness blindly sought in a thousand misdirections.

12-19

Sense wiles are comparable to the evergreen oleander, fragrant with its multicolored flowers: every part of the plant is poisonous. The land of healing lies within, radiant with that happiness blindly sought in a thousand misdirections. 12-19

“Keen intelligence is two-edged,” Master once remarked in reference to Kumar’s brilliant mind.

“It may be used constructively or destructively like a knife, either to cut the boil of ignorance, or to decapitate one’s self. Intelligence is rightly guided only after the mind has acknowledged the inescapability of spiritual law.”

A brilliant conversationalist, he enjoyed an exchange of views on countless topics with his guests. My guru’s ready wit and rollicking laugh enlivened every discussion. Often grave, Master was never gloomy.

“To seek the Lord, one need not disfigure his face,” he would remark.

“Remember that finding God will mean the funeral of all sorrows.”

“I give up!” The scholar’s chagrin was comical. “I have no inner realization.”

For the first time, perhaps, he understood that discerning placement of the comma does not atone for a spiritual coma.

“These bloodless pedants smell unduly of the lamp,” my guru remarked after the departure of the chastened one. “They prefer philosophy to be a gentle intellectual setting-up exercise.

Master stressed on other occasions the futility of mere book learning.

“Do not confuse understanding with a larger vocabulary,” he remarked.

“Sacred writings are beneficial in stimulating desire for inward realization, if one stanza at a time is slowly assimilated. Continual intellectual study results in vanity and the false satisfaction of an undigested knowledge.”

Sri Yukteswar directed the study of his own disciples by the same intensive method of one-pointedness.

“Wisdom is not assimilated with the eyes, but with the atoms,” he said.

“When your conviction of a truth is not merely in your brain but in your being, you may diffidently vouch for its meaning.” He discouraged any tendency a student might have to construe book-knowledge as a necessary step to spiritual realization.

“Mr. Magistrate, you forget that this is not your courtroom,” Master replied evenly. “From your childish remarks I would have surmised that your college career was unremarkable. A university degree, in any case, is not remotely related to Vedic realization.

Saints are not produced in batches every semester like accountants.

”

There are always those in this world who, in Browning’s words, “endure no light, being themselves obscure.” An outsider occasionally berated Sri Yukteswar for an imaginary grievance. My imperturbable guru listened politely, analyzing himself to see if any shred of truth lay within the denunciation.

These scenes would bring to my mind one of Master’s inimitable observations: “Some people try to be tall by cutting off the heads of others!”

The unfailing composure of a saint is impressive beyond any sermon. “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.” 12-23

I often reflected that my majestic Master could easily have been an emperor or world-shaking warrior had his mind been centered on fame or worldly achievement.

He had chosen instead to storm those inner citadels of wrath and egotism whose fall is the height of a man.

12-1: “Worship of Durga.” This is the chief festival of the Bengali year and lasts for nine days around the end of September. Immediately following is the ten-day festival of Dashahara (“the One who removes ten sins”-three of body, three of mind, four of speech).

“Many hillmen live in the Himalayas, yet possess no God-perception.” My guru’s answer came slowly and simply.

“Wisdom is better sought from a man of realization than from an inert mountain.”

Ignoring Master’s plain hint that he, and not a hill, was my teacher, I repeated my plea. Sri Yukteswar vouchsafed no reply. I took his silence for consent, a precarious interpretation readily accepted at one’s convenience.

“Masters are under no cosmic compulsion to limit their residence.” My companion glanced at me quizzically. “The Himalayas in India and Tibet have no monopoly on saints.

What one does not trouble to find within will not be discovered by transporting the body hither and yon.

As soon as the devotee is willing to go even to the ends of the earth for spiritual enlightenment, his guru appears near-by.”

His simple words instantaneously banished my lifelong obsession for the Himalayas.

In a burning paddy field I awoke from the monticolous dreams of eternal snows.

“Young sir, your divine thirst is laudable. I feel great love for you.” Ram Gopal took my hand and led me to a quaint hamlet. The adobe houses were covered with coconut leaves and adorned with rustic entrances.

“The guest is God,” a Hindu proverb, has commanded devout observance from time immemorial. In my later world travels, I was charmed to see that a similar respect for visitors is manifested in rural sections of many countries.

The city dweller finds the keen edge of hospitality blunted by superabundance of strange faces.

The marts of men seemed remotely dim as I squatted by the yogi in the isolation of the tiny jungle village. The cottage room was mysterious with a mellow light.

To assume that one can fully know Him by forty-five years of meditation is rather a preposterous expectation. Babaji assures us, however, that even a little meditation saves one from the dire fear of death and after-death states.

Do not fix your spiritual ideal on a small mountain, but hitch it to the star of unqualified divine attainment.

If you work hard, you will get there.”

“No, of course not!

Wrath springs only from thwarted desires.

I do not expect anything from others, so their actions cannot be in opposition to wishes of mine. I would not use you for my own ends; I am happy only in your own true happiness.”

My body became immovably rooted; breath was drawn out of my lungs as if by some huge magnet. Soul and mind instantly lost their physical bondage, and streamed out like a fluid piercing light from my every pore.

The flesh was as though dead, yet in my intense awareness I knew that never before had I been fully alive.

My sense of identity was no longer narrowly confined to a body, but embraced the circumambient atoms. People on distant streets seemed to be moving gently over my own remote periphery. The roots of plants and trees appeared through a dim transparency of the soil;

even as sugar crystals, thrown into a glass of water, dissolve after being shaken. The unifying light alternated with materializations of form, the metamorphoses revealing the law of cause and effect in creation.

An oceanic joy broke upon calm endless shores of my soul.

The Spirit of God, I realized, is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless tissues of light. A swelling glory within me began to envelop towns, continents, the earth, solar and stellar systems, tenuous nebulae, and floating universes.

Suddenly the breath returned to my lungs. With a disappointment almost unbearable, I realized that my infinite immensity was lost. Once more I was limited to the humiliating cage of a body, not easily accommodative to the Spirit.

Like a prodigal child, I had run away from my macrocosmic home and imprisoned myself in a narrow microcosm.

My guru was standing motionless before me; I started to drop at his holy feet in gratitude for the experience in cosmic consciousness which I had long passionately sought. He held me upright, and spoke calmly, unpretentiously.

I fetched a broom; Master, I knew, was teaching me the secret of balanced living.

The soul must stretch over the cosmogonic abysses, while the body performs its daily duties.

When we set out later for a stroll, I was still entranced in unspeakable rapture. I saw our bodies as two astral pictures, moving over a road by the river whose essence was sheer light.

My guru was smiling. “I am sure you aren’t expecting a venerable Personage, adorning a throne in some antiseptic corner of the cosmos! I see, however, that you are imagining that the possession of miraculous powers is knowledge of God.

One might have the whole universe, and find the Lord elusive still!

Spiritual advancement is not measured by one’s outward powers, but only by the depth of his bliss in meditation.

“How quickly we weary of earthly pleasures! Desire for material things is endless; man is never satisfied completely, and pursues one goal after another.

The ‘something else’ he seeks is the Lord, who alone can grant lasting joy.

“Outward longings drive us from the Eden within; they offer false pleasures which only impersonate soul-happiness. The lost paradise is quickly regained through divine meditation. As God is unanticipatory Ever-Newness, we never tire of Him. Can we be surfeited with bliss, delightfully varied throughout eternity?”

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 cannot 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.

“The message boldly blazoned across the heavens at the moment of birth is not meant to emphasize fate-the result of past good and evil-but to arouse man’s will to escape from his universal thralldom.

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.

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 realizes his unity with Spirit, the less he can be dominated by matter.

The soul is ever-free; it is deathless because birthless.

It cannot be regimented by stars.

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 depends not on outer but inner victories.

Sri Yukteswar discovered the mathematical application of a 24,000-year equinoctial cycle to our present age. 16-4 The cycle is divided into an Ascending Arc and a Descending Arc, each of 12,000 years.

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.

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.”

19-1: The Bengali “Good-by”; literally, it is a hopeful paradox: “Then I come.”

In this storied vale one finds an epitome of all the earth’s beauties.

The Lady of Kashmir is mountain-crowned, lake-garlanded, and flower- shod.

In later years, after I had toured many distant lands, I understood why Kashmir is often called the world’s most scenic spot. It possesses some of the charms of the Swiss Alps, and of Loch Lomond in Scotland, and of the exquisite English lakes.

Though I was breathless and my body in a strangely quiet state, yet I was able to move my hands and feet freely. For several minutes I experimented in closing and opening my eyes; in either state I saw distinctly the whole Dakshineswar panorama.

Spiritual sight, x-raylike, penetrates into all matter; the divine eye is center everywhere, circumference nowhere.

I realized anew, standing there in the sunny courtyard, that when man ceases to be a prodigal child of God, engrossed in a physical world indeed dream, baseless as a bubble, he reinherits his eternal realms.

Though He is the sole Owner of the cosmos, silently showering us with gifts from life to life, one thing yet remains which He does not own, and which each human heart is empowered to withhold or bestow-man’s love.

The Creator, in taking infinite pains to shroud with mystery His presence in every atom of creation, could have had but one motive-a sensitive desire that men seek Him only through free will.

With what velvet glove of every humility has He not covered the iron hand of omnipotence!

Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevent all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit.

Yoga cannot know a barrier of East and West any more than does the healing and equitable light of the sun.

So long as man possesses a mind with its restless thoughts, so long will there be a universal need for yoga or control.

Father embraced me warmly as I entered our Gurpar Road home. “You have come,” he said tenderly. Two large tears dropped from his eyes. Ordinarily undemonstrative, he had never before shown me these signs of affection.

Outwardly the grave father, inwardly he possessed the melting heart of a mother.

In all his dealings with the family, his dual parental role was distinctly manifest.

Sri Yukteswar smiled. “There is a deeper astrology, not dependent on the testimony of calendars and clocks.

Each man is a part of the Creator, or Cosmic Man; he has a heavenly body as well as one of earth.

The human eye sees the physical form, but the inward eye penetrates more profoundly, even to the universal pattern of which each man is an integral and individual part.”

Sri Yukteswar smiled. “

There is a deeper astrology, not dependent on the testimony of calendars and clocks.

Each man is a part of the Creator, or Cosmic Man; he has a heavenly body as well as one of earth.

Their attempts to forcibly hold breath in the lungs is not only unnatural but decidedly unpleasant. Kriya, on the other hand, is accompanied from the very beginning by an accession of peace, and by soothing sensations of regenerative effect in the spine.

The ancient yogic technique converts the breath into mind.

By spiritual advancement, one is able to cognize the breath as an act of mind-a dream-breath.

The rejuvenating effects of sleep are due to man’s temporary unawareness of body and breathing.

The sleeping man becomes a yogi; each night he unconsciously performs the yogic rite of releasing himself from bodily identification, and of merging the life force with healing currents in the main brain region and the six sub-dynamos of his spinal centers.

The sleeper thus dips unknowingly into the reservoir of cosmic energy which sustains all life.

My guru’s retort was accompanied by a stern glance. “Could you or anyone else achieve God-contact through yoga if a line of generous- hearted masters had not been willing to convey their knowledge to others?” He added, “

God is the Honey, organizations are the hives; both are necessary.

Any form is useless, of course, without the spirit, but why should you not start busy hives full of the spiritual nectar?”

“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.” 29-2

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.

” 29-2

I agreed. “

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

”

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!

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!

Modern science has, as yet, no answer; though with the advent of the atomic bomb and the wonders of radar, the scope of the world-mind has been abruptly enlarged.

The word “impossible” is becoming less prominent in the scientific vocabulary.

-by B. K. Mitra in “Kalyana-Kalpatur”

This cyclic pattern assumes a certain anguishing monotony, after man has gone through a few thousand human births; he begins to cast a hopeful eye beyond the compulsions of maya.

To tear the veil of maya is to pierce the secret of creation.

The yogi who thus denudes the universe is the only true monotheist. All others are worshiping heathen images. So long as man remains subject to the dualistic delusions of nature, the Janus-faced Maya is his goddess; he cannot know the one true God.

and the earth shined with his glory.” Through the divine eye in the forehead (east), the yogi sails his consciousness into omnipresence, hearing the Word or Aum, divine sound of many waters or vibrations which is the sole reality of creation.

Among the trillion mysteries of the cosmos, the most phenomenal is light.

Unlike sound-waves, whose transmission requires air or other material media, light-waves pass freely through the vacuum of interstellar space.

Not abstractly eternal as hitherto considered, time and space are relative and finite factors, deriving their measurement validity only in reference to the yardstick of light-velocity. In joining space as a dimensional relativity, time has surrendered age- old claims to a changeless value.

Time is now stripped to its rightful nature-a simple essence of ambiguity!

With a few equational strokes of his pen, Einstein has banished from the cosmos every fixed reality except that of light.

“

What has life or death to do with Light?

In the image of My Light I have made you. The relativities of life and death belong to the cosmic dream. Behold your dreamless being! Awake, my child, awake!”

A cinema audience can look up and see that all screen images are appearing through the instrumentality of one imageless beam of light. The colorful universal drama is similarly issuing from the single white light of a Cosmic Source.

With inconceivable ingenuity God is staging an entertainment for His human children, making them actors as well as audience in His planetary theater.

One day I entered a motion picture house to view a newsreel of the European battlefields. World War I was still being waged in the West; the newsreel recorded the carnage with such realism that I left the theater with a troubled heart.

The good and evil of maya must ever alternate in supremacy. If joy were ceaseless here in this world, would man ever seek another? Without suffering he scarcely cares to recall that he has forsaken his eternal home.

Pain is a prod to remembrance.

The way of escape is through wisdom! The tragedy of death is unreal; those who shudder at it are like an ignorant actor who dies of fright on the stage when nothing more is fired at him than a blank cartridge.

My heart was still not comforted. The divine voice went on: “

Creation is light and shadow both, else no picture is possible.

The good and evil of maya must ever alternate in supremacy. If joy were ceaseless here in this world, would man ever seek another? Without suffering he scarcely cares to recall that he has forsaken his eternal home. Pain is a prod to remembrance.

The discouraged officers of the law once more performed their duty. This time a guard was posted before the swami’s cell. Might again retired before right. Trailanga was soon observed in his nonchalant stroll over the roof.

Justice is blind; the outwitted police decided to follow her example.

The great yogi preserved a habitual silence. 31-4 In spite of his round face and huge, barrel-like stomach, Trailanga ate only occasionally. After weeks without food, he would break his fast with potfuls of clabbered milk offered to him by devotees.

“The mysterious saint replied in English, ‘

The office was brought for you, and not you for the office.

’

Babaji’s voice rang with celestial love. ‘You slipped away and vanished into the tumultuous waves of the life beyond death. The magic wand of your karma touched you, and you were gone!

Though you lost sight of me, never did I lose sight of you!

I pursued you over the luminescent astral sea where the glorious angels sail. Through gloom, storm, upheaval, and light I followed you, like a mother bird guarding her young.

“‘I will gladly enlighten you.’ My companion’s dark eyes sparkled with wisdom. ‘In reality there is nothing inexplicable about this materialization.

The whole cosmos is a materialized thought of the Creator.

This heavy, earthly clod, floating in space, is a dream of God. He made all things out of His consciousness, even as man in his dream consciousness reproduces and vivifies a creation with its creatures.

“‘I will gladly enlighten you.’ My companion’s dark eyes sparkled with wisdom. ‘In reality there is nothing inexplicable about this materialization. The whole cosmos is a materialized thought of the Creator.

This heavy, earthly clod, floating in space, is a dream of God.

He made all things out of His consciousness, even as man in his dream consciousness reproduces and vivifies a creation with its creatures.

It stands solidly, a monumental challenge to man. 34-5 Whoever realizes himself as a son of God, even as Babaji has done, can reach any goal by the infinite powers hidden within him.

A common stone locks within itself the secret of stupendous atomic energy; 34-6 even so, a mortal is yet a powerhouse of divinity.

’

“‘

There is no separation for us, my beloved child.

’ He touched my shoulder affectionately. ‘Wherever you are, whenever you call me, I shall be with you instantly.’

“‘Lahiri, do you call me for a trifle?’ The master’s gaze was stern. ‘Truth is for earnest seekers, not for those of idle curiosity.

It is easy to believe when one sees; there is nothing then to deny.

Supersensual truth is deserved and discovered by those who overcome their natural materialistic skepticism.’ He added gravely, ‘Let me go!’

“‘Lahiri, do you call me for a trifle?’ The master’s gaze was stern. ‘Truth is for earnest seekers, not for those of idle curiosity. It is easy to believe when one sees; there is nothing then to deny.

Supersensual truth is deserved and discovered by those who overcome their natural materialistic skepticism.

’ He added gravely, ‘Let me go!’

“‘Child,’ the master said, though apparently I was nearly twice his own age, ‘for the faults of the many, judge not the whole.

Everything on earth is of mixed character, like a mingling of sand and sugar.

Be like the wise ant which seizes only the sugar, and leaves the sand untouched. Though many sadhus here still wander in delusion, yet the mela is blessed by a few men of God-realization.’

“‘Child,’ the master said, though apparently I was nearly twice his own age, ‘for the faults of the many, judge not the whole. Everything on earth is of mixed character, like a mingling of sand and sugar.

Be like the wise ant which seizes only the sugar, and leaves the sand untouched.

Though many sadhus here still wander in delusion, yet the mela is blessed by a few men of God-realization.’

“‘Child, you must meditate more,’ he said. ‘

Your gaze is not yet faultless-you could not see me hiding behind the sunlight.

’ With these words in the voice of a celestial flute, Babaji disappeared into the hidden radiance.

“Forget you were born a Hindu, and don’t be an American. Take the best of them both,” Master said in his calm way of wisdom. “

Be your true self, a child of God.

Seek and incorporate into your being the best qualities of all your brothers, scattered over the earth in various races.”

“The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love.”

Luther Burbank uttered this wisdom as I walked beside him in his Santa Rosa garden. We halted near a bed of edible cacti.

In the span of my own lifetime I have observed such wondrous progress in plant evolution that I look forward optimistically to a healthy, happy world as soon as its children are taught the principles of simple and rational living.

We must return to nature and nature’s God.

”

“My friend Henry Ford and I both believe in the ancient theory of reincarnation,” Luther told me. “It sheds light on aspects of life otherwise inexplicable.

Memory is not a test of truth; just because man fails to remember his past lives does not prove he never had them.

Memory is blank concerning his womb-life and infancy, too; but he probably passed through them!” He chuckled.

“Behold a man,” I quoted, “in whom there is no guile!” His heart was fathomlessly deep, long acquainted with humility, patience, sacrifice. His little home amidst the roses was austerely simple; he knew the worthlessness of luxury, the joy of few possessions.

The modesty with which he wore his scientific fame repeatedly reminded me of the trees that bend low with the burden of ripening fruits; it is the barren tree that lifts its head high in an empty boast.

I was in New York when, in 1926, my dear friend passed away. In tears I thought, “Oh, I would gladly walk all the way from here to Santa Rosa for one more glimpse of him!”

“Certainly you could not have lived on that, for twelve whole years?”

“I live by God’s light.”

How simple her reply, how Einsteinian!

Evil is pointed out to them as being that which produces misery; good as those actions which result in true happiness.

Evil may be compared to poisoned honey, tempting but laden with death.

Overcoming restlessness of body and mind by concentration techniques has achieved astonishing results:

As for me, I lie upon the forest leaves, and having nothing which requires guarding, close my eyes in tranquil slumber; whereas had I anything to guard, that would banish sleep.

The earth supplies me with everything, even as a mother her child with milk.

I go wherever I please, and there are no cares with which I am forced to cumber myself.

“The day was first by one day.” This reply caused Alexander to betray surprise; the Brahmin added:

“Impossible questions require impossible answers.”

“How best may a man make himself beloved?”

“How best may a man make himself beloved?”

“A man will be beloved if, possessed with great power, he still does not make himself feared.”

“How may a man become a god?” 41-5

So entrancing is southern India that Mr. Wright and I yearned to prolong our idyl.

But time, in its immemorial rudeness, dealt us no courteous extensions.

I was scheduled soon to address the concluding session of the Indian Philosophical Congress at Calcutta University. At the end of the visit to Mysore, I enjoyed a talk with Sir C. V. Raman, president of the Indian Academy of Sciences.

Master lowered his gaze.

“Yogananda, must I bring out into the cold realms of speech the warm sentiments best guarded by the wordless heart?”

“Guruji, I know you love me, but my mortal ears ache to hear you say so.”

We sat happily awhile in meditative silence. After we had left his sacred presence, I said to Mr. Wright,

“He is a king sitting on a throne of golden straw.”

We had our dinner that night on the mela grounds under the stars, eating from leaf plates pinned together with sticks. Dishwashings in India are reduced to a minimum!

Here he engaged with innocent sweetness in his lilas (plays) with the gopis (maids), exemplifying the supernal love which ever exists between a divine incarnation and his devotees. The life of Lord Krishna has been misunderstood by many Western commentators.

Scriptural allegory is baffling to literal minds.

A hilarious blunder by a translator will illustrate this point. The story concerns an inspired medieval saint, the cobbler Ravidas, who sang in the simple terms of his own trade of the spiritual glory hidden in all mankind:

“The astral universe, made of various subtle vibrations of light and color, is hundreds of times larger than the material cosmos.

The entire physical creation hangs like a little solid basket under the huge luminous balloon of the astral sphere.

Just as many physical suns and stars roam in space, so there are also countless astral solar and stellar systems. Their planets have astral suns and moons, more beautiful than the physical ones.

the heavy overcoat of the flesh is temporarily shed. The soul, however, remains encased in the astral and causal bodies. 43-7 The adhesive force by which all three bodies are held together is desire.

The power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all man’s slavery.

“Physical desires are rooted in egotism and sense pleasures. The compulsion or temptation of sensory experience is more powerful than the desire-force connected with astral attachments or causal perceptions.

“When a soul is out of the cocoon of the three bodies it escapes forever from the law of relativity and becomes the ineffable Ever- Existent. 43-10

Behold the butterfly of Omnipresence, its wings etched with stars and moons and suns!

The soul expanded into Spirit remains alone in the region of lightless light, darkless dark, thoughtless thought, intoxicated with its ecstasy of joy in God’s dream of cosmic creation.”

“Later you buried that dream-image. Now my finer fleshly body-which you behold and are even now embracing rather closely!-is resurrected on another finer dream-planet of God. Someday that finer dream-body and finer dream-planet will pass away; they too are not forever.

All dream-bubbles must eventually burst at a final wakeful touch.

Differentiate, my son Yogananda, between dreams and Reality!”

“Years ago,” he explained, “I started my weekly observance of a day of silence as a means for gaining time to look after my correspondence. But now those twenty-four hours have become a vital spiritual need.

A periodical decree of silence is not a torture but a blessing.

”

As I was bidding the Mahatma good night, he considerately handed me a bottle of citronella oil.

“The Wardha mosquitoes don’t know a thing about ahimsa, 44-6 Swamiji!”

he said, laughing.

Why the ancient rishis selected the cow for apotheosis is obvious to me. The cow in India was the best comparison; she was the giver of plenty. Not only did she give milk, but she also made agriculture possible.

The cow is a poem of pity; one reads pity in the gentle animal.

She is the second mother to millions of mankind. Protection of the cow means protection of the whole dumb creation of God. The appeal of the lower order of creation is all the more forceful because it is speechless.”

Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation.

“A beggar cannot renounce wealth,”

Master would say. “If a man laments: ‘My business has failed; my wife has left me; I will renounce all and enter a monastery,’ to what worldly sacrifice is he referring? He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!”

“I could not kill a cobra without violating two of my vows- fearlessness, and non-killing. I would rather try inwardly to calm the snake by vibrations of love.

I cannot possibly lower my standards to suit my circumstances.

” With his amazing candor, Gandhi added, “I must confess that I could not carry on this conversation were I faced by a cobra!”

Alone among great leaders, Gandhi has offered a practical nonviolent alternative to armed might. To redress grievances and remove injustices, the Mahatma has employed nonviolent means which again and again have proved their effectiveness. He states his doctrine in these words:

I have found that life persists in the midst of destruction. Therefore there must be a higher law than that of destruction.

Only under that law would well-ordered society be intelligible and life worth living.

If that is the law of life we must work it out in daily existence.

Wherever there are wars, wherever we are confronted with an opponent, conquer by love.

I have found that the certain law of love has answered in my own life as the law of destruction has never done.

Nonviolence is infinitely more wonderful and subtle than forces of nature like, for instance, electricity.

The law of love is a far greater science than any modern science.

Consulting history, one may reasonably state that the problems of mankind have not been solved by the use of brute force. World War I produced a world-chilling snowball of war karma that swelled into World War II.

“One should forgive, under any injury,” says the Mahabharata. “It hath been said that the continuation of species is due to man’s being forgiving. Forgiveness is holiness; by forgiveness the universe is held together.

Forgiveness is the might of the mighty; forgiveness is sacrifice; forgiveness is quiet of mind.

Forgiveness and gentleness are the qualities of the self-possessed. They represent eternal virtue.”

I own that I have an immovable faith in God and His goodness, and an unconsumable passion for truth and love. But is that not what every person has latent in him?

If we are to make progress, we must not repeat history but make new history.

We must add to the inheritance left by our ancestors. If we may make new discoveries and inventions in the phenomenal world, must we declare our bankruptcy in the spiritual domain? Is it impossible to multiply the exceptions so as to make them the rule?

“Victory! Ananda Moyi Ma, ki jai!” This reiterated chant from scores of enthusiastic little throats greeted the saint’s party as it entered the school gates. Showers of marigolds, tinkle of cymbals, lusty blowing of conch shells and beat of the mridanga drum!

The Blissful Mother wandered smilingly over the sunny Vidyalaya grounds, ever carrying within her the portable paradise.

“It is beautiful here,” Ananda Moyi Ma said graciously as I led her into the main building. She seated herself with a childlike smile by my side.

The Ranchi school had just been left behind us; we had risen before the sun. Besides my secretary and myself, three Bengali friends were in the party.

We drank in the exhilarating air, the natural wine of the morning.

Our driver guided the car warily among the early peasants and the two-wheeled carts, slowly drawn by yoked, hump-shouldered bullocks, inclined to dispute the road with a honking interloper.

“No,” I admitted, covered with mango juice and contentment. “How I have missed this fruit in the West!

A Hindu’s heaven without mangoes is inconceivable!

”

“You are right, Dick,” I sighed as we sped along, “I sacrifice the mango paradise on the altar of Western realism. Photographs we must have!”

The road became more and more sickly: wrinkles of ruts, boils of hardened clay, the sad infirmities of old age!

Our group dismounted occasionally to allow Mr. Wright to more easily maneuver the Ford, which the four of us pushed from behind.

Mr. Wright’s impression of Giri Bala was shared by myself; spirituality enfolded her like her gently shining veil. She pronamed before me in the customary gesture of greeting from a householder to a monk.

Her simple charm and quiet smile gave us a welcome beyond that of honeyed oratory; forgotten was our difficult, dusty trip.

The little saint seated herself cross-legged on the verandah. Though bearing the scars of age, she was not emaciated; her olive-colored skin had remained clear and healthy in tone.

“Oh, no, not insignificant!” I protested sincerely. “You are a great soul.”

“I am the humble servant of all.”

She added quaintly, “I love to cook and feed people.”

“I am the humble servant of all.” She added quaintly, “I love to cook and feed people.”

A strange pastime, I thought, for a non-eating saint!

“Tell me, Mother, from your own lips-do you live without food?”

“This remark was unanswerable!

Yet an iron resolution scaffolded my spirit.

In a secluded spot I sought my Heavenly Father.

“This vague answer was not the one I was seeking; I continued toward the ghat.

The morning sun pierced the waters; I purified myself in the Ganges, as though for a sacred initiation.

As I left the river bank, my wet cloth around me, in the broad glare of day my master materialized himself before me!