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Autobiography of a YOGI

P >> Paramhansa Yogananda >> Autobiography of a YOGI




[Illustration: MAHATMA GANDHI, I enjoy a quiet lunch with India's
political saint at his hermitage in Wardha, August, 1935.--see
gandhi.jpg]

"The ashram residents are wholly at your disposal; please call on
them for any service." With characteristic courtesy, the Mahatma
handed me this hastily-written note as Mr. Desai led our party from
the writing room toward the guest house.

Our guide led us through orchards and flowering fields to
a tile-roofed building with latticed windows. A front-yard well,
twenty-five feet across, was used, Mr. Desai said, for watering
stock; near-by stood a revolving cement wheel for threshing rice.
Each of our small bedrooms proved to contain only the irreducible
minimum-a bed, handmade of rope. The whitewashed kitchen boasted a
faucet in one corner and a fire pit for cooking in another. Simple
Arcadian sounds reached our ears-the cries of crows and sparrows,
the lowing of cattle, and the rap of chisels being used to chip
stones.

Observing Mr. Wright's travel diary, Mr. Desai opened a page and
wrote on it a list of SATYAGRAHA {FN44-2} vows taken by all the
Mahatma's strict followers (SATYAGRAHIS):

"Nonviolence; Truth; Non-Stealing; Celibacy; Non-Possession;
Body-Labor; Control of the Palate; Fearlessness; Equal Respect for
all Religions; SWADESHI (use of home manufactures); Freedom from
Untouchability. These eleven should be observed as vows in a spirit
of humility."

(Gandhi himself signed this page on the following day, giving the
date also-August 27, 1935.)

Two hours after our arrival my companions and I were summoned
to lunch. The Mahatma was already seated under the arcade of the
ashram porch, across the courtyard from his study. About twenty-five
barefooted SATYAGRAHIS were squatting before brass cups and plates.
A community chorus of prayer; then a meal served from large brass
pots containing CHAPATIS (whole-wheat unleavened bread) sprinkled
with GHEE; TALSARI (boiled and diced vegetables), and a lemon jam.

The Mahatma ate CHAPATIS, boiled beets, some raw vegetables, and
oranges. On the side of his plate was a large lump of very bitter
NEEM leaves, a notable blood cleanser. With his spoon he separated
a portion and placed it on my dish. I bolted it down with water,
remembering childhood days when Mother had forced me to swallow the
disagreeable dose. Gandhi, however, bit by bit was eating the NEEM
paste with as much relish as if it had been a delicious sweetmeat.

In this trifling incident I noted the Mahatma's ability to detach
his mind from the senses at will. I recalled the famous appendectomy
performed on him some years ago. Refusing anesthetics, the saint
had chatted cheerfully with his disciples throughout the operation,
his infectious smile revealing his unawareness of pain.

The afternoon brought an opportunity for a chat with Gandhi's noted
disciple, daughter of an English admiral, Miss Madeleine Slade, now
called Mirabai. {FN44-3} Her strong, calm face lit with enthusiasm
as she told me, in flawless Hindi, of her daily activities.

"Rural reconstruction work is rewarding! A group of us go every
morning at five o'clock to serve the near-by villagers and teach
them simple hygiene. We make it a point to clean their latrines and
their mud-thatched huts. The villagers are illiterate; they cannot
be educated except by example!" She laughed gaily.

I looked in admiration at this highborn Englishwoman whose true
Christian humility enables her to do the scavengering work usually
performed only by "untouchables."

"I came to India in 1925," she told me. "In this land I feel that
I have 'come back home.' Now I would never be willing to return to
my old life and old interests."

We discussed America for awhile. "I am always pleased and amazed,"
she said, "to see the deep interest in spiritual subjects exhibited
by the many Americans who visit India." {FN44-4}

Mirabai's hands were soon busy at the CHARKA (spinning wheel),
omnipresent in all the ashram rooms and, indeed, due to the Mahatma,
omnipresent throughout rural India.

Gandhi has sound economic and cultural reasons for encouraging the
revival of cottage industries, but he does not counsel a fanatical
repudiation of all modern progress. Machinery, trains, automobiles,
the telegraph have played important parts in his own colossal life!
Fifty years of public service, in prison and out, wrestling daily
with practical details and harsh realities in the political world,
have only increased his balance, open-mindedness, sanity, and
humorous appreciation of the quaint human spectacle.

Our trio enjoyed a six o'clock supper as guests of Babasaheb Deshmukh.
The 7:00 P.M. prayer hour found us back at the MAGANVADI ashram,
climbing to the roof where thirty SATYAGRAHIS were grouped in
a semicircle around Gandhi. He was squatting on a straw mat, an
ancient pocket watch propped up before him. The fading sun cast
a last gleam over the palms and banyans; the hum of night and the
crickets had started. The atmosphere was serenity itself; I was
enraptured.

A solemn chant led by Mr. Desai, with responses from the group; then
a GITA reading. The Mahatma motioned to me to give the concluding
prayer. Such divine unison of thought and aspiration! A memory
forever: the Wardha roof top meditation under the early stars.

Punctually at eight o'clock Gandhi ended his silence. The herculean
labors of his life require him to apportion his time minutely.

"Welcome, Swamiji!" The Mahatma's greeting this time was not via
paper. We had just descended from the roof to his writing room,
simply furnished with square mats (no chairs), a low desk with books,
papers, and a few ordinary pens (not fountain pens); a nondescript
clock ticked in a corner. An all-pervasive aura of peace and
devotion. Gandhi was bestowing one of his captivating, cavernous,
almost toothless smiles.

"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."

I agreed wholeheartedly. {FN44-5} The Mahatma questioned me about
America and Europe; we discussed India and world conditions.

"Mahadev," Gandhi said as Mr. Desai entered the room, "please
make arrangements at Town Hall for Swamiji to speak there on yoga
tomorrow night."

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, {FN44-6}
Swamiji!" he said, laughing.

The following morning our little group breakfasted early on a tasty
wheat porridge with molasses and milk. At ten-thirty we were called
to the ashram porch for lunch with Gandhi and the SATYAGRAHIS.
Today the menu included brown rice, a new selection of vegetables,
and cardamom seeds.

Noon found me strolling about the ashram grounds, on to the grazing
land of a few imperturbable cows. The protection of cows is a
passion with Gandhi.

"The cow to me means the entire sub-human world, extending man's
sympathies beyond his own species," the Mahatma has explained. "Man
through the cow is enjoined to realize his identity with all that
lives. 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."

Three daily rituals are enjoined on the orthodox Hindu. One is BHUTA
YAJNA, an offering of food to the animal kingdom. This ceremony
symbolizes man's realization of his obligations to less evolved
forms of creation, instinctively tied to bodily identifications which
also corrode human life, but lacking in that quality of liberating
reason which is peculiar to humanity. BHUTA YAJNA thus reinforces
man's readiness to succor the weak, as he in turn is comforted by
countless solicitudes of higher unseen beings. Man is also under
bond for rejuvenating gifts of nature, prodigal in earth, sea, and
sky. The evolutionary barrier of incommunicability among nature,
animals, man, and astral angels is thus overcome by offices of
silent love.

The other two daily YAJNAS are PITRI and NRI. PITRI YAJNA is an offering
of oblations to ancestors, as a symbol of man's acknowledgment of
his debt to the past, essence of whose wisdom illumines humanity
today. NRI YAJNA is an offering of food to strangers or the poor,
symbol of the present responsibilities of man, his duties to
contemporaries.

In the early afternoon I fulfilled a neighborly NRI YAJNA by a
visit to Gandhi's ashram for little girls. Mr. Wright accompanied
me on the ten-minute drive. Tiny young flowerlike faces atop the
long-stemmed colorful SARIS! At the end of a brief talk in Hindi
{FN44-7} which I was giving outdoors, the skies unloosed a sudden
downpour. Laughing, Mr. Wright and I climbed aboard the car and
sped back to MAGANVADI amidst sheets of driving silver. Such tropical
intensity and splash!

Reentering the guest house I was struck anew by the stark simplicity
and evidences of self-sacrifice which are everywhere present.
The Gandhi vow of non-possession came early in his married life.
Renouncing an extensive legal practice which had been yielding him
an annual income of more than $20,000, the Mahatma dispersed all
his wealth to the poor.

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!"

Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible
material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of
selfish motive and private goal, merging their inmost being in the
stream of humanity as a whole.

The Mahatma's remarkable wife, Kasturabai, did not object when he
failed to set aside any part of his wealth for the use of herself
and their children. Married in early youth, Gandhi and his wife
took the vow of celibacy after the birth of several sons. {FN44-8}
A tranquil heroine in the intense drama that has been their life
together, Kasturabai has followed her husband to prison, shared
his three-week fasts, and fully borne her share of his endless
responsibilities. She has paid Gandhi the following tribute:

I thank you for having had the privilege of being your lifelong
companion and helpmate. I thank you for the most perfect marriage
in the world, based on BRAHMACHARYA (self-control) and not on sex.
I thank you for having considered me your equal in your life work
for India. I thank you for not being one of those husbands who spend
their time in gambling, racing, women, wine, and song, tiring of
their wives and children as the little boy quickly tires of his
childhood toys. How thankful I am that you were not one of those
husbands who devote their time to growing rich on the exploitation
of the labor of others.

How thankful I am that you put God and country before bribes, that
you had the courage of your convictions and a complete and implicit
faith in God. How thankful I am for a husband that put God and his
country before me. I am grateful to you for your tolerance of me
and my shortcomings of youth, when I grumbled and rebelled against
the change you made in our mode of living, from so much to so
little.

As a young child, I lived in your parents' home; your mother was a
great and good woman; she trained me, taught me how to be a brave,
courageous wife and how to keep the love and respect of her son,
my future husband. As the years passed and you became India's most
beloved leader, I had none of the fears that beset the wife who may
be cast aside when her husband has climbed the ladder of success,
as so often happens in other countries. I knew that death would
still find us husband and wife.

For years Kasturabai performed the duties of treasurer of the public
funds which the idolized Mahatma is able to raise by the millions.
There are many humorous stories in Indian homes to the effect that
husbands are nervous about their wives' wearing any jewelry to
a Gandhi meeting; the Mahatma's magical tongue, pleading for the
downtrodden, charms the gold bracelets and diamond necklaces right
off the arms and necks of the wealthy into the collection basket!

One day the public treasurer, Kasturabai, could not account for a
disbursement of four rupees. Gandhi duly published an auditing in
which he inexorably pointed out his wife's four rupee discrepancy.

I had often told this story before classes of my American students.
One evening a woman in the hall had given an outraged gasp.

"Mahatma or no Mahatma," she had cried, "if he were my husband
I would have given him a black eye for such an unnecessary public
insult!"

After some good-humored banter had passed between us on the subject of
American wives and Hindu wives, I had gone on to a fuller explanation.

"Mrs. Gandhi considers the Mahatma not as her husband but as her
guru, one who has the right to discipline her for even insignificant
errors," I had pointed out. "Sometime after Kasturabai had been
publicly rebuked, Gandhi was sentenced to prison on a political
charge. As he was calmly bidding farewell to his wife, she fell at
his feet. 'Master,' she said humbly, 'if I have ever offended you,
please forgive me.'" {FN44-9}

At three o'clock that afternoon in Wardha, I betook myself,
by previous appointment, to the writing room of the saint who had
been able to make an unflinching disciple out of his own wife-rare
miracle! Gandhi looked up with his unforgettable smile.

"Mahatmaji," I said as I squatted beside him on the uncushioned
mat, "please tell me your definition of AHIMSA."

"The avoidance of harm to any living creature in thought or deed."

"Beautiful ideal! But the world will always ask: May one not kill
a cobra to protect a child, or one's self?"

"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!"

I remarked on several very recent Western books on diet which lay
on his desk.

"Yes, diet is important in the SATYAGRAHA movement-as everywhere
else," he said with a chuckle. "Because I advocate complete continence
for SATYAGRAHIS, I am always trying to find out the best diet for
the celibate. One must conquer the palate before he can control the
procreative instinct. Semi-starvation or unbalanced diets are not
the answer. After overcoming the inward GREED for food, a SATYAGRAHI
must continue to follow a rational vegetarian diet with all necessary
vitamins, minerals, calories, and so forth. By inward and outward
wisdom in regard to eating, the SATYAGRAHI'S sexual fluid is easily
turned into vital energy for the whole body."

The Mahatma and I compared our knowledge of good meat-substitutes.
"The avocado is excellent," I said. "There are numerous avocado
groves near my center in California."

Gandhi's face lit with interest. "I wonder if they would grow in
Wardha? The SATYAGRAHIS would appreciate a new food."

"I will be sure to send some avocado plants from Los Angeles to
Wardha." {FN44-10} I added, "Eggs are a high-protein food; are they
forbidden to SATYAGRAHIS?"

"Not unfertilized eggs." The Mahatma laughed reminiscently. "For
years I would not countenance their use; even now I personally
do not eat them. One of my daughters-in-law was once dying of
malnutrition; her doctor insisted on eggs. I would not agree, and
advised him to give her some egg-substitute.

"'Gandhiji,' the doctor said, 'unfertilized eggs contain no life
sperm; no killing is involved.'

"I then gladly gave permission for my daughter-in-law to eat eggs;
she was soon restored to health."

On the previous night Gandhi had expressed a wish to receive
the KRIYA YOGA of Lahiri Mahasaya. I was touched by the Mahatma's
open-mindedness and spirit of inquiry. He is childlike in his
divine quest, revealing that pure receptivity which Jesus praised
in children, ". . . of such is the kingdom of heaven."

The hour for my promised instruction had arrived; several SATYAGRAHIS
now entered the room-Mr. Desai, Dr. Pingale, and a few others who
desired the KRIYA technique.

I first taught the little class the physical YOGODA exercises. The
body is visualized as divided into twenty parts; the will directs
energy in turn to each section. Soon everyone was vibrating before
me like a human motor. It was easy to observe the rippling effect
on Gandhi's twenty body parts, at all times completely exposed to
view! Though very thin, he is not unpleasingly so; the skin of
his body is smooth and unwrinkled.

Later I initiated the group into the liberating technique of KRIYA
YOGA.

The Mahatma has reverently studied all world religions. The
Jain scriptures, the Biblical New Testament, and the sociological
writings of Tolstoy {FN44-11} are the three main sources of Gandhi's
nonviolent convictions. He has stated his credo thus:

I believe the Bible, the KORAN, and the ZEND-AVESTA {FN44-12} to
be as divinely inspired as the VEDAS. I believe in the institution
of Gurus, but in this age millions must go without a Guru, because
it is a rare thing to find a combination of perfect purity and
perfect learning. But one need not despair of ever knowing the
truth of one's religion, because the fundamentals of Hinduism as
of every great religion are unchangeable, and easily understood.

I believe like every Hindu in God and His oneness, in rebirth and
salvation. . . . I can no more describe my feeling for Hinduism
than for my own wife. She moves me as no other woman in the world
can. Not that she has no faults; I daresay she has many more than
I see myself. But the feeling of an indissoluble bond is there.
Even so I feel for and about Hinduism with all its faults and
limitations. Nothing delights me so much as the music of the GITA,
or the RAMAYANA by Tulsidas. When I fancied I was taking my last
breath, the GITA was my solace.

Hinduism is not an exclusive religion. In it there is room for
the worship of all the prophets of the world. {FN44-13} It is not
a missionary religion in the ordinary sense of the term. It has
no doubt absorbed many tribes in its fold, but this absorption has
been of an evolutionary, imperceptible character. Hinduism tells
each man to worship God according to his own faith or DHARMA,
{FN44-14} and so lives at peace with all religions.

Of Christ, Gandhi has written: "I am sure that if He were living
here now among men, He would bless the lives of many who perhaps
have never even heard His name . . . just as it is written: 'Not
every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord . . . but he that doeth
the will of my Father.' {FN44-15} In the lesson of His own life,
Jesus gave humanity the magnificent purpose and the single objective
toward which we all ought to aspire. I believe that He belongs not
solely to Christianity, but to the entire world, to all lands and
races."

On my last evening in Wardha I addressed the meeting which had
been called by Mr. Desai in Town Hall. The room was thronged to
the window sills with about 400 people assembled to hear the talk
on yoga. I spoke first in Hindi, then in English. Our little group
returned to the ashram in time for a good-night glimpse of Gandhi,
enfolded in peace and correspondence.

Night was still lingering when I rose at 5:00 A.M. Village life was
already stirring; first a bullock cart by the ashram gates, then
a peasant with his huge burden balanced precariously on his head.
After breakfast our trio sought out Gandhi for farewell PRONAMS.
The saint rises at four o'clock for his morning prayer.

"Mahatmaji, good-by!" I knelt to touch his feet. "India is safe in
your keeping!"

Years have rolled by since the Wardha idyl; the earth, oceans, and
skies have darkened with a world at war. 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.

In India we have had an ocular demonstration of the operation of
this law on the widest scale possible. I don't claim that nonviolence
has penetrated the 360,000,000 people in India, but I do claim
it has penetrated deeper than any other doctrine in an incredibly
short time.

It takes a fairly strenuous course of training to attain a mental
state of nonviolence. It is a disciplined life, like the life of
a soldier. The perfect state is reached only when the mind, body,
and speech are in proper coordination. Every problem would lend
itself to solution if we determined to make the law of truth and
nonviolence the law of life.

Just as a scientist will work wonders out of various applications
of the laws of nature, a man who applies the laws of love with
scientific precision can work greater wonders. 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. Only the warmth of brotherhood can melt the present
colossal snowball of war karma which may otherwise grow into World
War III. This unholy trinity will banish forever the possibility
of World War IV by a finality of atomic bombs. Use of jungle logic
instead of human reason in settling disputes will restore the earth
to a jungle. If brothers not in life, then brothers in violent
death.

War and crime never pay. The billions of dollars that went up in
the smoke of explosive nothingness would have been sufficient to
have made a new world, one almost free from disease and completely
free from poverty. Not an earth of fear, chaos, famine, pestilence,
the DANSE MACABRE, but one broad land of peace, of prosperity, and
of widening knowledge.

The nonviolent voice of Gandhi appeals to man's highest conscience.
Let nations ally themselves no longer with death, but with life; not
with destruction, but with construction; not with the Annihilator,
but with the Creator.

"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."

Nonviolence is the natural outgrowth of the law of forgiveness and
love. "If loss of life becomes necessary in a righteous battle,"
Gandhi proclaims, "one should be prepared, like Jesus, to shed his
own, not others', blood. Eventually there will be less blood spilt
in the world."

Epics shall someday be written on the Indian SATYAGRAHIS who withstood
hate with love, violence with nonviolence, who allowed themselves
to be mercilessly slaughtered rather than retaliate. The result on
certain historic occasions was that the armed opponents threw down
their guns and fled, shamed, shaken to their depths by the sight
of men who valued the life of another above their own.

"I would wait, if need be for ages," Gandhi says, "rather than
seek the freedom of my country through bloody means." Never does
the Mahatma forget the majestic warning: "All they that take the
sword shall perish with the sword." {FN44-16} Gandhi has written:

I call myself a nationalist, but my nationalism is as broad as the
universe. It includes in its sweep all the nations of the earth.
{FN44-17} My nationalism includes the well-being of the whole world.
I do not want my India to rise on the ashes of other nations. I
do not want India to exploit a single human being. I want India to
be strong in order that she can infect the other nations also with
her strength. Not so with a single nation in Europe today; they do
not give strength to the others.

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