Autobiography of a Yogi Part 6

Deeming it advisable to leave Hardwar at once, we bought tickets to proceed north to Ris.h.i.+kesh, a soil long hallowed by feet of many masters. I had already boarded the train, while Amar lagged on the platform. He was brought to an abrupt halt by a shout from a policeman. Our unwelcome guardian escorted us to a station bungalow and took charge of our money. He explained courteously that it was his duty to hold us until my elder brother arrived.

Learning that the truants' destination had been the Himalayas, the officer related a strange story.

"I see you are crazy about saints! You will never meet a greater man of G.o.d than the one I saw only yesterday. My brother officer and I first encountered him five days ago. We were patrolling by the Ganges, on a sharp lookout for a certain murderer. Our instructions were to capture him, alive or dead. He was known to be masquerading as a SADHU in order to rob pilgrims. A short way before us, we spied a figure which resembled the description of the criminal. He ignored our command to stop; we ran to overpower him. Approaching his back, I wielded my ax with tremendous force; the man's right arm was severed almost completely from his body.

"Without outcry or any glance at the ghastly wound, the stranger astonis.h.i.+ngly continued his swift pace. As we jumped in front of him, he spoke quietly.

"'I am not the murderer you are seeking.'

"I was deeply mortified to see I had injured the person of a divine--looking sage. Prostrating myself at his feet, I implored his pardon, and offered my turban-cloth to staunch the heavy spurts of blood.

"'Son, that was just an understandable mistake on your part.' The saint regarded me kindly. 'Run along, and don't reproach yourself.

The Beloved Mother is taking care of me.' He pushed his dangling arm into its stump and lo! it adhered; the blood inexplicably ceased to flow.

"'Come to me under yonder tree in three days and you will find me fully healed. Thus you will feel no remorse.'

"Yesterday my brother officer and I went eagerly to the designated spot. The SADHU was there and allowed us to examine his arm. It bore no scar or trace of hurt!

"'I am going via Ris.h.i.+kesh to the Himalayan solitudes.' He blessed us as he departed quickly. I feel that my life has been uplifted through his sanct.i.ty."

The officer concluded with a pious e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n; his experience had obviously moved him beyond his usual depths. With an impressive gesture, he handed me a printed clipping about the miracle. In the usual garbled manner of the sensational type of newspaper (not missing, alas! even in India), the reporter's version was slightly exaggerated: it indicated that the SADHU had been almost decapitated!

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 "skysc.r.a.pers" 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; our earnest search had ended, not at the feet of a master, but in a coa.r.s.e police station!

So near the Himalayas and yet, in our captivity, so far, I told Amar I felt doubly impelled to seek freedom.

"Let us slip away when opportunity offers. We can go on foot to holy Ris.h.i.+kesh." I smiled encouragingly.

But my companion had turned pessimist as soon as the stalwart prop of our money had been taken from us.

"If we started a trek over such dangerous jungle land, we should finish, not in the city of saints, but in the stomachs of tigers!"

Ananta and Amar's brother arrived after three days. Amar greeted his relative with affectionate relief. I was unreconciled; Ananta got no more from me than a severe upbraiding.

"I understand how you feel." My brother spoke soothingly. "All I ask of you is to accompany me to Benares to meet a certain saint, and go on to Calcutta to visit your grieving father for a few days.

Then you can resume your search here for a master."

Amar entered the conversation at this point to disclaim any intention of returning to Hardwar with me. He was enjoying the familial warmth. But I knew I would never abandon the quest for my guru.

Our party entrained for Benares. There I had a singular and instant response to my prayers.

A clever scheme had been prearranged by Ananta. Before seeing me at Hardwar, he had stopped in Benares to ask a certain scriptural authority to interview me later. Both the pundit and his son had promised to undertake my dissuasion from the path of a SANNYASI.

{FN4-1}

Ananta took me to their home. The son, a young man of ebullient manner, greeted me in the courtyard. He engaged me in a lengthy philosophic discourse. Professing to have a clairvoyant knowledge of my future, he discountenanced my idea of being a monk.

"You will meet continual misfortune, and be unable to find G.o.d, if you insist on deserting your ordinary responsibilities! You cannot work out your past karma {FN4-2} without worldly experiences."

Krishna's immortal words rose to my lips in reply: "'Even he with the worst of karma who ceaselessly meditates on Me quickly loses the effects of his past bad actions. Becoming a high-souled being, he soon attains perennial peace. Arjuna, know this for certain: the devotee who puts his trust in Me never perishes!'" {FN4-3}

But the forceful prognostications of the young man had slightly shaken my confidence. With all the fervor of my heart I prayed silently to G.o.d:

"Please solve my bewilderment and answer me, right here and now, if Thou dost desire me to lead the life of a renunciate or a worldly man!"

I noticed a SADHU of n.o.ble countenance standing just outside the compound of the pundit's house. Evidently he had overheard the spirited conversation between the self-styled clairvoyant and myself, for the stranger called me to his side. I felt a tremendous power flowing from his calm eyes.

"Son, don't listen to that ignoramus. In response to your prayer, the Lord tells me to a.s.sure you that your sole path in this life is that of the renunciate."

With astonishment as well as grat.i.tude, I smiled happily at this decisive message.

"Come away from that man!" The "ignoramus" was calling me from the courtyard. My saintly guide raised his hand in blessing and slowly departed.

"That SADHU is just as crazy as you are." It was the h.o.a.ry-headed pundit who made this charming observation. He and his son were gazing at me lugubriously. "I heard that he too has left his home in a vague search for G.o.d."

I turned away. To Ananta I remarked that I would not engage in further discussion with our hosts. My brother agreed to an immediate departure; we soon entrained for Calcutta.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I stand behind my elder brother, Ananta.--see ananta.jpg]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Last Solstice Festival celebrated by Sri Yukteswar, December, 1935. My Guru is seated in the center; I am at his right, in the large courtyard of his hermitage in Serampore.--see festival.jpg]

"Mr. Detective, how did you discover I had fled with two companions?"

I vented my lively curiosity to Ananta during our homeward journey.

He smiled mischievously.

"At your school, I found that Amar had left his cla.s.sroom and had not returned. I went to his home the next morning and unearthed a marked timetable. Amar's father was just leaving by carriage and was talking to the coachman.

"'My son will not ride with me to his school this morning. He has disappeared!' the father moaned.

"'I heard from a brother coachman that your son and two others, dressed in European suits, boarded the train at Howrah Station,'

the man stated. 'They made a present of their leather shoes to the cab driver.'

"Thus I had three clues-the timetable, the trio of boys, and the English clothing."

I was listening to Ananta's disclosures with mingled mirth and vexation. Our generosity to the coachman had been slightly misplaced!

"Of course I rushed to send telegrams to station officials in all the cities which Amar had underlined in the timetable. He had checked Bareilly, so I wired your friend Dwarka there. After inquiries in our Calcutta neighborhood, I learned that cousin Jatinda had been absent one night but had arrived home the following morning in European garb. I sought him out and invited him to dinner. He accepted, quite disarmed by my friendly manner. On the way I led him unsuspectingly to a police station. He was surrounded by several officers whom I had previously selected for their ferocious appearance. Under their formidable gaze, Jatinda agreed to account for his mysterious conduct.

"'I started for the Himalayas in a buoyant spiritual mood,' he explained. 'Inspiration filled me at the prospect of meeting the masters. But as soon as Mukunda said, "During our ecstasies in the Himalayan caves, tigers will be spellbound and sit around us like tame p.u.s.s.ies," my spirits froze; beads of perspiration formed on my brow. "What then?" I thought. "If the vicious nature of the tigers be not changed through the power of our spiritual trance, shall they treat us with the kindness of house cats?" In my mind's eye, I already saw myself the compulsory inmate of some tiger's stomach-entering there not at once with the whole body, but by installments of its several parts!'"

My anger at Jatinda's vanishment was evaporated in laughter. The hilarious sequel on the train was worth all the anguish he had caused me. I must confess to a slight feeling of satisfaction: Jatinda too had not escaped an encounter with the police!

"Ananta, {FN4-4} you are a born sleuthhound!" My glance of amus.e.m.e.nt was not without some exasperation. "And I shall tell Jatinda I am glad he was prompted by no mood of treachery, as it appeared, but only by the prudent instinct of self-preservation!"

At home in Calcutta, Father touchingly requested me to curb my roving feet until, at least, the completion of my high school studies.

In my absence, he had lovingly hatched a plot by arranging for a saintly pundit, Swami Kebalananda, {FN4-5} to come regularly to the house.