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Autobiography of a YOGI

P >> Paramhansa Yogananda >> Autobiography of a YOGI




Kebalananda was a noted authority on the ancient SHASTRAS or sacred
books: his erudition had earned him the title of "Shastri Mahasaya,"
by which he was usually addressed. But my progress in Sanskrit
scholarship was unnoteworthy. I sought every opportunity to forsake
prosaic grammar and to talk of yoga and Lahiri Mahasaya. My tutor
obliged me one day by telling me something of his own life with
the master.

"Rarely fortunate, I was able to remain near Lahiri Mahasaya for
ten years. His Benares home was my nightly goal of pilgrimage. The
guru was always present in a small front parlor on the first floor.
As he sat in lotus posture on a backless wooden seat, his disciples
garlanded him in a semicircle. His eyes sparkled and danced with
the joy of the Divine. They were ever half closed, peering through
the inner telescopic orb into a sphere of eternal bliss. He seldom
spoke at length. Occasionally his gaze would focus on a student in
need of help; healing words poured then like an avalanche of light.

"An indescribable peace blossomed within me at the master's glance.
I was permeated with his fragrance, as though from a lotus of
infinity. To be with him, even without exchanging a word for days,
was experience which changed my entire being. If any invisible
barrier rose in the path of my concentration, I would meditate at
the guru's feet. There the most tenuous states came easily within
my grasp. Such perceptions eluded me in the presence of lesser
teachers. The master was a living temple of God whose secret doors
were open to all disciples through devotion.

"Lahiri Mahasaya was no bookish interpreter of the scriptures.
Effortlessly he dipped into the 'divine library.' Foam of words and
spray of thoughts gushed from the fountain of his omniscience. He
had the wondrous clavis which unlocked the profound philosophical
science embedded ages ago in the VEDAS. {FN4-6} If asked to explain
the different planes of consciousness mentioned in the ancient
texts, he would smilingly assent.

"'I will undergo those states, and presently tell you what I
perceive.' He was thus diametrically unlike the teachers who commit
scripture to memory and then give forth unrealized abstractions.

"'Please expound the holy stanzas as the meaning occurs to you.'
The taciturn guru often gave this instruction to a near-by disciple.
'I will guide your thoughts, that the right interpretation be
uttered.' In this way many of Lahiri Mahasaya's perceptions came
to be recorded, with voluminous commentaries by various students.

"The master never counseled slavish belief. 'Words are only shells,'
he said. 'Win conviction of God's presence through your own joyous
contact in meditation.'

"No matter what the disciple's problem, the guru advised KRIYA YOGA
for its solution.

"'The yogic key will not lose its efficiency when I am no longer
present in the body to guide you. This technique cannot be bound,
filed, and forgotten, in the manner of theoretical inspirations.
Continue ceaselessly on your path to liberation through KRIYA,
whose power lies in practice.'

"I myself consider KRIYA the most effective device of salvation through
self-effort ever to be evolved in man's search for the Infinite."
Kebalananda concluded with this earnest testimony. "Through its use,
the omnipotent God, hidden in all men, became visibly incarnated
in the flesh of Lahiri Mahasaya and a number of his disciples."

A Christlike miracle by Lahiri Mahasaya took place in Kebalananda's
presence. My saintly tutor recounted the story one day, his eyes
remote from the Sanskrit texts before us.

"A blind disciple, Ramu, aroused my active pity. Should he have no
light in his eyes, when he faithfully served our master, in whom
the Divine was fully blazing? One morning I sought to speak to
Ramu, but he sat for patient hours fanning the guru with a hand-made
palm-leaf PUNKHA. When the devotee finally left the room, I followed
him.

"'Ramu, how long have you been blind?'

"'From my birth, sir! Never have my eyes been blessed with a glimpse
of the sun.'

"'Our omnipotent guru can help you. Please make a supplication.'

"The following day Ramu diffidently approached Lahiri Mahasaya. The
disciple felt almost ashamed to ask that physical wealth be added
to his spiritual superabundance.

"'Master, the Illuminator of the cosmos is in you. I pray you
to bring His light into my eyes, that I perceive the sun's lesser
glow.'

"'Ramu, someone has connived to put me in a difficult position. I
have no healing power.'

"'Sir, the Infinite One within you can certainly heal.'

"'That is indeed different, Ramu. God's limit is nowhere! He who
ignites the stars and the cells of flesh with mysterious life-effulgence
can surely bring luster of vision into your eyes.'

"The master touched Ramu's forehead at the point between the eyebrows.
{FN4-7} "'Keep your mind concentrated there, and frequently chant
the name of the prophet Rama {FN4-8} for seven days. The splendor
of the sun shall have a special dawn for you.'

"Lo! in one week it was so. For the first time, Ramu beheld the
fair face of nature. The Omniscient One had unerringly directed his
disciple to repeat the name of Rama, adored by him above all other
saints. Ramu's faith was the devotionally ploughed soil in which
the guru's powerful seed of permanent healing sprouted." Kebalananda
was silent for a moment, then paid a further tribute to his guru.

"It was evident in all miracles performed by Lahiri Mahasaya that
he never allowed the ego-principle {FN4-9} to consider itself a
causative force. By perfection of resistless surrender, the master
enabled the Prime Healing Power to flow freely through him.

"The numerous bodies which were spectacularly healed through Lahiri
Mahasaya eventually had to feed the flames of cremation. But the
silent spiritual awakenings he effected, the Christlike disciples
he fashioned, are his imperishable miracles."

I never became a Sanskrit scholar; Kebalananda taught me a diviner
syntax.

{FN4-1} Literally, "renunciate." From Sanskrit verb roots, "to cast
aside."

{FN4-2} Effects of past actions, in this or a former life; from
Sanskrit KRI, "to do."

{FN4-3} BHAGAVAD GITA, IX, 30-31. Krishna was the greatest prophet
of India; Arjuna was his foremost disciple.

{FN4-4} I always addressed him as Ananta-da. DA is a respectful
suffix which the eldest brother in an Indian family receives from
junior brothers and sisters.

{FN4-5} At the time of our meeting, Kebalananda had not yet joined
the Swami Order and was generally called "Shastri Mahasaya." To avoid
confusion with the name of Lahiri Mahasaya and of Master Mahasaya
(../chapter 9), I am referring to my Sanskrit tutor only by his
later monastic name of Swami Kebalananda. His biography has been
recently published in Bengali. Born in the Khulna district of
Bengal in 1863, Kebalananda gave up his body in Benares at the age
of sixty-eight. His family name was Ashutosh Chatterji.

{FN4-6} The ancient four VEDAS comprise over 100 extant canonical
books. Emerson paid the following tribute in his JOURNAL to Vedic
thought: "It is sublime as heat and night and a breathless ocean.
It contains every religious sentiment, all the grand ethics which
visit in turn each noble poetic mind. . . . It is of no use to put
away the book; if I trust myself in the woods or in a boat upon the
pond, Nature makes a BRAHMIN of me presently: eternal necessity,
eternal compensation, unfathomable power, unbroken silence. . . .
This is her creed. Peace, she saith to me, and purity and absolute
abandonment--these panaceas expiate all sin and bring you to the
beatitude of the Eight Gods."

{FN4-7} The seat of the "single" or spiritual eye. At death the
consciousness of man is usually drawn to this holy spot, accounting
for the upraised eyes found in the dead.

{FN4-8} The central sacred figure of the Sanskrit epic, RAMAYANA.

{FN4-9} Ahankara, egoism; literally, "I do." The root cause of
dualism or illusion of MAYA, whereby the subject (ego) appears as
object; the creatures imagine themselves to be creators.



CHAPTER: 5

A "PERFUME SAINT" DISPLAYS HIS WONDERS

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose
under the heaven."

I did not have this wisdom of Solomon to comfort me; I gazed
searchingly about me, on any excursion from home, for the face of
my destined guru. But my path did not cross his own until after
the completion of my high school studies.

Two years elapsed between my flight with Amar toward the Himalayas,
and the great day of Sri Yukteswar's arrival into my life. During
that interim I met a number of sages-the "Perfume Saint," the "Tiger
Swami," Nagendra Nath Bhaduri, Master Mahasaya, and the famous
Bengali scientist, Jagadis Chandra Bose.

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.

"You have indeed penetrated the bewilderment of my thoughts!" I
smiled gratefully. "The confusion of benign and terrible aspects
in nature, as symbolized by Kali, {FN5-1} has puzzled wiser heads
than mine!"

"Few there be who solve her mystery! Good and evil is the challenging
riddle which life places sphinxlike before every intelligence.
Attempting no solution, most men pay forfeit with their lives,
penalty now even as in the days of Thebes. Here and there, a towering
lonely figure never cries defeat. From the MAYA {FN5-2} of duality
he plucks the cleaveless truth of unity."

"You speak with conviction, sir."

"I have long exercised an honest introspection, the exquisitely
painful approach to wisdom. Self-scrutiny, relentless observance of
one's thoughts, is a stark and shattering experience. It pulverizes
the stoutest ego. But true self-analysis mathematically operates
to produce seers. The way of 'self-expression,' individual
acknowledgments, results in egotists, sure of the right to their
private interpretations of God and the universe."

"Truth humbly retires, no doubt, before such arrogant originality."
I was enjoying the discussion.

"Man can understand no eternal verity until he has freed himself
from pretensions. The human mind, bared to a centuried slime, is
teeming with repulsive life of countless world-delusions. Struggles
of the battlefields pale into insignificance here, when man first
contends with inward enemies! No mortal foes these, to be overcome
by harrowing array of might! Omnipresent, unresting, pursuing man
even in sleep, subtly equipped with a miasmic weapon, these soldiers
of ignorant lusts seek to slay us all. Thoughtless is the man who
buries his ideals, surrendering to the common fate. Can he seem
other than impotent, wooden, ignominious?"

"Respected Sir, have you no sympathy for the bewildered masses?"

The sage was silent for a moment, then answered obliquely.

"To love both the invisible God, Repository of All Virtues, and
visible man, apparently possessed of none, is often baffling! But
ingenuity is equal to the maze. Inner research soon exposes a unity
in all human minds-the stalwart kinship of selfish motive. In one
sense at least, the brotherhood of man stands revealed. An aghast
humility follows this leveling discovery. It ripens into compassion
for one's fellows, blind to the healing potencies of the soul
awaiting exploration."

"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 creature finally turns to
his Creator, if for no other reason than to ask in anguish: 'Why,
Lord, why?' By ignoble whips of pain, man is driven at last into
the Infinite Presence, whose beauty alone should lure him."

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.

"You are young." The sage surveyed me thoughtfully. "India too is
young. The ancient RISHIS {FN5-3} laid down ineradicable patterns
of spiritual living. Their hoary dictums suffice for this day
and land. Not outmoded, not unsophisticated against the guiles
of materialism, the disciplinary precepts mold India still. By
millenniums-more than embarrassed scholars care to compute!-the
skeptic Time has validated Vedic worth. Take it for your heritage."

As I was reverently bidding farewell to the eloquent SADHU, he
revealed a clairvoyant perception:

"After you leave here today, an unusual experience will come your
way."

I quitted the temple precincts and wandered along aimlessly. Turning
a corner, I ran into an old acquaintance-one of those long-winded
fellows whose conversational powers ignore time and embrace eternity.

"I will let you go in a very short while, if you will tell me all
that has happened during the six years of our separation."

"What a paradox! I must leave you now."

But he held me by the hand, forcing out tidbits of information.
He was like a ravenous wolf, I thought in amusement; the longer I
spoke, the more hungrily he sniffed for news. Inwardly I petitioned
the Goddess Kali to devise a graceful means of escape.

My companion left me abruptly. I sighed with relief and doubled my
pace, dreading any relapse into the garrulous fever. Hearing rapid
footsteps behind me, I quickened my speed. I dared not look back.
But with a bound, the youth rejoined me, jovially clasping my
shoulder.

"I forgot to tell you of Gandha Baba (Perfume Saint), who is gracing
yonder house." He pointed to a dwelling a few yards distant. "Do
meet him; he is interesting. You may have an unusual experience.
Good-by," and he actually left me.

The similarly worded prediction of the SADHU at Kalighat Temple
flashed to my mind. Definitely intrigued, I entered the house and
was ushered into a commodious parlor. A crowd of people were sitting,
Orient-wise, here and there on a thick orange-colored carpet. An
awed whisper reached my ear:

"Behold Gandha Baba on the leopard skin. He can give the natural
perfume of any flower to a scentless one, or revive a wilted blossom,
or make a person's skin exude delightful fragrance."

I looked directly at the saint; his quick gaze rested on mine. He
was plump and bearded, with dark skin and large, gleaming eyes.

"Son, I am glad to see you. Say what you want. Would you like some
perfume?"

"What for?" I thought his remark rather childish.

"To experience the miraculous way of enjoying perfumes."

"Harnessing God to make odors?"

"What of it? God makes perfume anyway."

"Yes, but He fashions frail bottles of petals for fresh use and
discard. Can you materialize flowers?"

"I materialize perfumes, little friend."

"Then scent factories will go out of business."

"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."

"How long did it take to master your art?"

"Twelve years."

"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 flowers."

"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.

I was a few feet away from Gandha Baba; no one else was near
enough to contact my body. I extended my hand, which the yogi did
not touch.

"What perfume do you want?"

"Rose."

"Be it so."

To my great surprise, the charming fragrance of rose was wafted
strongly from the center of my palm. I smilingly took a large white
scentless flower from a near-by vase.

"Can this odorless blossom be permeated with jasmine?"

"Be it so."

A jasmine fragrance instantly shot from the petals. I thanked the
wonder-worker and seated myself by one of his students. He informed
me that Gandha Baba, whose proper name was Vishudhananda, had
learned many astonishing yoga secrets from a master in Tibet. The
Tibetan yogi, I was assured, had attained the age of over a thousand
years.

"His disciple Gandha Baba does not always perform his perfume-feats
in the simple verbal manner you have just witnessed." The student
spoke with obvious pride in his master. "His procedure differs
widely, to accord with diversity in temperaments. He is marvelous!
Many members of the Calcutta intelligentsia are among his followers."

I inwardly resolved not to add myself to their number. A guru too
literally "marvelous" was not to my liking. With polite thanks to
Gandha Baba, I departed. Sauntering home, I reflected on the three
varied encounters the day had brought forth.

My sister Uma met me as I entered our Gurpar Road door.

"You are getting quite stylish, using perfumes!"

Without a word, I motioned her to smell my hand.

"What an attractive rose fragrance! It is unusually strong!"

Thinking it was "strongly unusual," I silently placed the astrally
scented blossom under her nostrils.

"Oh, I love jasmine!" She seized the flower. A ludicrous bafflement
passed over her face as she repeatedly sniffed the odor of jasmine
from a type of flower she well knew to be scentless. Her reactions
disarmed my suspicion that Gandha Baba had induced an auto-suggestive
state whereby I alone could detect the fragrances.

Later I heard from a friend, Alakananda, that the "Perfume Saint"
had a power which I wish were possessed by the starving millions
of Asia and, today, of Europe as well.

"I was present with a hundred other guests at Gandha Baba's home
in Burdwan," Alakananda told me. "It was a gala occasion. Because
the yogi was reputed to have the power of extracting objects
out of thin air, I laughingly requested him to materialize some
out-of-season tangerines. Immediately the LUCHIS {FN5-4} which
were present on all the banana-leaf plates became puffed up. Each
of the bread-envelopes proved to contain a peeled tangerine. I bit
into my own with some trepidation, but found it delicious."

Years later I understood by inner realization how Gandha Baba
accomplished his materializations. The method, alas! is beyond the
reach of the world's hungry hordes.

The different sensory stimuli to which man reacts-tactual, visual,
gustatory, auditory, and olfactory-are produced by vibratory
variations in electrons and protons. The vibrations in turn are
regulated by "lifetrons," subtle life forces or finer-than-atomic
energies intelligently charged with the five distinctive sensory
idea-substances.

Gandha Baba, tuning himself with the cosmic force by certain yogic
practices, was able to guide the lifetrons to rearrange their
vibratory structure and objectivize the desired result. His perfume,
fruit and other miracles were actual materializations of mundane
vibrations, and not inner sensations hypnotically produced. {FN5-5}

Performances of miracles such as shown by the "Perfume Saint" are
spectacular but spiritually useless. Having little purpose beyond
entertainment, they are digressions from a serious search for God.

Hypnotism has been used by physicians in minor operations as a sort
of psychical chloroform for persons who might be endangered by an
anesthetic. But a hypnotic state is harmful to those often subjected to
it; a negative psychological effect ensues which in time deranges
the brain cells. Hypnotism is trespass into the territory of
another's consciousness. Its temporary phenomena have nothing in
common with the miracles performed by men of divine realization.
Awake in God, true saints effect changes in this dream-world by
means of a will harmoniously attuned to the Creative Cosmic Dreamer.

Ostentatious display of unusual powers are decried by masters. The
Persian mystic, Abu Said, once laughed at certain FAKIRS who were
proud of their miraculous powers over water, air, and space.

"A frog is also at home in the water!" Abu Said pointed out in gentle
scorn. "The crow and the vulture easily fly in the air; the Devil
is simultaneously present in the East and in the West! A true man
is he who dwells in righteousness among his fellow men, who buys
and sells, yet is never for a single instant forgetful of God!"
On another occasion the great Persian teacher gave his views on
the religious life thus: "To lay aside what you have in your head
(selfish desires and ambitions); to freely bestow what you have in
your hand; and never to flinch from the blows of adversity!"

Neither the impartial sage at Kalighat Temple nor the Tibetan-trained
yogi had satisfied my yearning for a guru. My heart needed no
tutor for its recognitions, and cried its own "Bravos!" the more
resoundingly because unoften summoned from silence. When I finally
met my master, he taught me by sublimity of example alone the
measure of a true man.

{FN5-1} Kali represents the eternal principle in nature. She is
traditionally pictured as a four-armed woman, standing on the form
of the God Shiva or the Infinite, because nature or the phenomenal
world is rooted in the Noumenon. The four arms symbolize cardinal
attributes, two beneficent, two destructive, indicating the essential
duality of matter or creation.

{FN5-2} Cosmic illusion; literally, "the measurer." MAYA is the
magical power in creation by which limitations and divisions are
apparently present in the Immeasurable and Inseparable. Emerson
wrote the following poem, to which he gave the title of MAYA:

Illusion works impenetrable,
Weaving webs innumerable,
Her gay pictures never fail,
Crowd each other, veil on veil,
Charmer who will be believed
By man who thirsts to be deceived.

{FN5-3} The RISHIS, literally "seers," were the authors of the
VEDAS in an indeterminable antiquity..

{FN5-4} Flat, round Indian bread..

{FN5-5} Laymen scarcely realize the vast strides of twentieth-century
science. Transmutation of metals and other alchemical dreams are
seeing fulfillment every day in centers of scientific research over
the world. The eminent French chemist, M. Georges Claude, performed
"miracles" at Fontainebleau in 1928 before a scientific assemblage
through his chemical knowledge of oxygen transformations. His
"magician's wand" was simple oxygen, bubbling in a tube on a table.
The scientist "turned a handful of sand into precious stones,
iron into a state resembling melted chocolate and, after depriving
flowers of their tints, turned them into the consistency of glass.

"M. Claude explained how the sea could be turned by oxygen
transformations into many millions of pounds of horsepower; how
water which boils is not necessarily burning; how little mounds of
sand, by a single whiff of the oxygen blowpipe, could be changed
into sapphires, rubies, and topazes; and he predicted the time when
it will be possible for men to walk on the bottom of the ocean minus
the diver's equipment. Finally the scientist amazed his onlookers
by turning their faces black by taking the red out of the sun's
rays."

This noted French scientist has produced liquid air by an expansion
method in which he has been able to separate the various gases of
the air, and has discovered various means of mechanical utilization
of differences of temperature in sea water.



CHAPTER: 6

THE TIGER SWAMI

"I have discovered the Tiger Swami's address. Let us visit him
tomorrow."

This welcome suggestion came from Chandi, one of my high school
friends. I was eager to meet the saint who, in his premonastic
life, had caught and fought tigers with his naked hands. A boyish
enthusiasm over such remarkable feats was strong within me.

The next day dawned wintry cold, but Chandi and I sallied forth
gaily. After much vain hunting in Bhowanipur, outside Calcutta, we
arrived at the right house. The door held two iron rings, which I
sounded piercingly. Notwithstanding the clamor, a servant approached
with leisurely gait. His ironical smile implied that visitors,
despite their noise, were powerless to disturb the calmness of a
saint's home.

Feeling the silent rebuke, my companion and I were thankful to be
invited into the parlor. Our long wait there caused uncomfortable
misgivings. India's unwritten law for the truth seeker is patience;
a master may purposely make a test of one's eagerness to meet him.
This psychological ruse is freely employed in the West by doctors
and dentists!

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