Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda [best free ebook reader txt] 📗

I was only twelve when I joined my husband’s people in Nawabganj. My mother-in-law shamed me morning, noon, and night about my gluttonous habits. Her scoldings were a blessing in disguise, however; they roused my dormant spiritual tendencies. One morning her ridicule was merciless.

“‘I shall soon prove to you,’ I said, stung to the quick, ‘that I shall never touch food again as long as I live.’

“My mother-in-law laughed in derision. ‘So!’ she said, ‘how can you live without eating, when you cannot live without overeating?’

“This remark was unanswerable! Yet an iron resolution scaffolded my spirit. In a secluded spot I sought my Heavenly Father.

“‘Lord,’ I prayed incessantly, ‘please send me a guru, one who can teach me to live by Thy light and not by food.’

“A divine ecstasy fell over me. Led by a beatific spell, I set out for the Nawabganj GHAT on the Ganges. On the way I encountered the priest of my husband’s family.

“‘Venerable sir,’ I said trustingly, ‘kindly tell me how to live without eating.’

“He stared at me without reply. Finally he spoke in a consoling manner. ‘Child,’ he said, ‘come to the temple this evening; I will conduct a special VEDIC ceremony for you.’

“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!

“‘Dear little one,’ he said in a voice of loving compassion, ‘I am the guru sent here by God to fulfill your urgent prayer. He was deeply touched by its very unusual nature! From today you shall live by the astral light, your bodily atoms fed from the infinite current.’”

Giri Bala fell into silence. I took Mr. Wright’s pencil and pad and translated into English a few items for his information.

The saint resumed the tale, her gentle voice barely audible. “The GHAT was deserted, but my guru cast round us an aura of guarding light, that no stray bathers later disturb us. He initiated me into a KRIA technique which frees the body from dependence on the gross food of mortals. The technique includes the use of a certain MANTRA {FN46-8} and a breathing exercise more difficult than the average person could perform. No medicine or magic is involved; nothing beyond the KRIA.”

In the manner of the American newspaper reporter, who had unknowingly taught me his procedure, I questioned Giri Bala on many matters which I thought would be of interest to the world. She gave me, bit by bit, the following information:

“I have never had any children; many years ago I became a widow. I sleep very little, as sleep and waking are the same to me. I meditate at night, attending to my domestic duties in the daytime. I slightly feel the change in climate from season to season. I have never been sick or experienced any disease. I feel only slight pain when accidentally injured. I have no bodily excretions. I can control my heart and breathing. I often see my guru as well as other great souls, in vision.”

“Mother,” I asked, “why don’t you teach others the method of living without food?”

My ambitious hopes for the world’s starving millions were nipped in the bud.

“No.” She shook her head. “I was strictly commanded by my guru not to divulge the secret. It is not his wish to tamper with God’s drama of creation. The farmers would not thank me if I taught many people to live without eating! The luscious fruits would lie uselessly on the ground. It appears that misery, starvation, and disease are whips of our karma which ultimately drive us to seek the true meaning of life.”

“Mother,” I said slowly, “what is the use of your having been singled out to live without eating?”

“To prove that man is Spirit.” Her face lit with wisdom. “To demonstrate that by divine advancement he can gradually learn to live by the Eternal Light and not by food.”

The saint sank into a deep meditative state. Her gaze was directed inward; the gentle depths of her eyes became expressionless. She gave a certain sigh, the prelude to the ecstatic breathless trance. For a time she had fled to the questionless realm, the heaven of inner joy.

The tropical darkness had fallen. The light of a small kerosene lamp flickered fitfully over the faces of a score of villagers squatting silently in the shadows. The darting glowworms and distant oil lanterns of the huts wove bright eerie patterns into the velvet night. It was the painful hour of parting; a slow, tedious journey lay before our little party.

“Giri Bala,” I said as the saint opened her eyes, “please give me a keepsake-a strip of one of your SARIS.”

She soon returned with a piece of Benares silk, extending it in her hand as she suddenly prostrated herself on the ground.

“Mother,” I said reverently, “rather let me touch your own blessed feet!”

{FN46-1} In northern Bengal.

{FN46-2} H. H. Sir Bijay Chand Mahtab, now dead. His family doubtless possesses some record of the Maharaja’s three investigations of Giri Bala.

{FN46-3} Woman yogi.

{FN46-4} “Remover of Obstacles,” the god of good fortune.

{FN46-5} Sri Yukteswar used to say: “The Lord has given us the fruits of the good earth. We like to see our food, to smell it, to taste it—the Hindu likes also to touch it!” One does not mind HEARING it, either, if no one else is present at the meal!

{FN46-6} Mr. Wright also took moving pictures of Sri Yukteswar during his last Winter Solstice Festival in Serampore.

{FN46-7} “What we eat is radiation; our food is so much quanta of energy,” Dr. George W. Crile of Cleveland told a gathering of medical men on May 17, 1933 in Memphis. “This all-important radiation, which releases electrical currents for the body’s electrical circuit, the nervous system, is given to food by the sun’s rays. Atoms, Dr. Crile says, are solar systems. Atoms are the vehicles that are filled with solar radiance as so many coiled springs. These countless atomfuls of energy are taken in as food. Once in the human body, these tense vehicles, the atoms, are discharged in the body’s protoplasm, the radiance furnishing new chemical energy, new electrical currents. ‘Your body is made up of such atoms,’ Dr. Crile said. ‘They are your muscles, brains, and sensory organs, such as the eyes and ears.’”

Someday scientists will discover how man can live directly on solar energy. “Chlorophyll is the only substance known in nature that somehow possesses the power to act as a ‘sunlight trap,’” William L. Laurence writes in the NEW YORK TIMES. “It ‘catches’ the energy of sunlight and stores it in the plant. Without this no life could exist. We obtain the energy we need for living from the solar energy stored in the plant-food we eat or in the flesh of the animals that eat the plants. The energy we obtain from coal or oil is solar energy trapped by the chlorophyll in plant life millions of years ago. We live by the sun through the agency of chlorophyll.”

{FN46-8} Potent vibratory chant. The literal translation of Sanskrit MANTRA is “instrument of thought,” signifying the ideal, inaudible sounds which represent one aspect of creation; when vocalized as syllables, a MANTRA constitutes a universal terminology. The infinite powers of sound derive from AUM, the “Word” or creative hum of the Cosmic Motor.

 

CHAPTER: 47

I RETURN TO THE WEST

“I have given many yoga lessons in India and America; but I must confess that, as a Hindu, I am unusually happy to be conducting a class for English students.”

My London class members laughed appreciatively; no political turmoils ever disturbed our yoga peace.

India was now a hallowed memory. It is September, 1936; I am in England to fulfill a promise, given sixteen months earlier, to lecture again in London.

England, too, is receptive to the timeless yoga message. Reporters and newsreel cameramen swarmed over my quarters at Grosvenor House. The British National Council of the World Fellowship of Faiths organized a meeting on September 29th at Whitefield’s Congregational Church where I addressed the audience on the weighty subject of “How Faith in Fellowship may Save Civilization.” The eight o’clock lectures at Caxton Hall attracted such crowds that on two nights the overflow waited in Windsor House auditorium for my second talk at nine-thirty. Yoga classes during the following weeks grew so large that Mr. Wright was obliged to arrange a transfer to another hall.

The English tenacity has admirable expression in a spiritual relationship. The London yoga students loyally organized themselves, after my departure, into a Self-Realization Fellowship center, holding their meditation meetings weekly throughout the bitter war years.

Unforgettable weeks in England; days of sightseeing in London, then over the beautiful countryside. Mr. Wright and I summoned the trusty Ford to visit the birthplaces and tombs of the great poets and heroes of British history.

Our little party sailed from Southampton for America in late October on the BREMEN. The majestic Statue of Liberty in New York harbor brought a joyous emotional gulp not only to the throats of Miss Bletch and Mr. Wright, but to my own.

The Ford, a bit battered from struggles with ancient soils, was still puissant; it now took in its stride the transcontinental trip to California. In late 1936, lo! Mount Washington.

The year-end holidays are celebrated annually at the Los Angeles center with an eight-hour group meditation on December 24th (Spiritual Christmas), followed the next day by a banquet (Social Christmas). The festivities this year were augmented by the presence of dear friends and students from distant cities who had arrived to welcome home the three world travelers.

The Christmas Day feast included delicacies brought fifteen thousand miles for this glad occasion: GUCCHI mushrooms from Kashmir, canned RASAGULLA and mango pulp, PAPAR biscuits, and an oil of the Indian KEORA flower which flavored our ice cream. The evening found us grouped around a huge sparkling Christmas tree, the near-by fireplace crackling with logs of aromatic cypress.

Gift-time! Presents from the earth’s far corners-Palestine, Egypt, India, England, France, Italy. How laboriously had Mr. Wright counted the trunks at each foreign junction, that no pilfering hand receive the treasures intended for loved ones in America! Plaques of the sacred olive tree from the Holy Land, delicate laces and embroideries from Belgium and Holland, Persian carpets, finely woven Kashmiri shawls, everlastingly fragrant sandalwood trays from Mysore, Shiva “bull’s eye” stones from Central Provinces, old Indian coins of dynasties long fled, bejeweled vases and cups, miniatures, tapestries, temple incense and perfumes, SWADESHI cotton prints, lacquer work, Mysore ivory carvings, Persian slippers with their inquisitive long toe, quaint old illuminated manuscripts, velvets, brocades, Gandhi caps, potteries, tiles, brasswork, prayer rugs-booty of three continents!

One by one I distributed the gaily wrapped packages from the immense pile under the tree.

“Sister Gyanamata!” I handed a long box to the saintly American lady of sweet visage and deep realization who, during my absence, had been in charge at Mt. Washington. From the paper tissues she lifted a SARI of golden Benares silk.

“Thank you, sir; it brings the pageant of India before my eyes.”

“Mr. Dickinson!” The next parcel contained a gift which I had bought in a Calcutta bazaar. “Mr. Dickinson will like this,” I had thought at the time. A dearly beloved disciple, Mr. Dickinson had been present at every Christmas festivity since the 1925 founding of Mt. Washington. At this eleventh annual celebration, he was standing before me, untying the ribbons of his square little package.

“The silver cup!” Struggling with emotion, he stared at the present, a tall drinking cup. He seated