SSasi and the Three Sapphires
"Because you and my son think so highly of Swami Sri Yukteswar, I will take a look at him." The tone of voice used by Dr. Narayan Chunder Roy implied that he was humoring the whim of half-wits. I concealed my indignation, in the best tradition of the proselyter.
My companion, a veterinary surgeon, was a confirmed agnostic. His young son Santosh had implored me to take an interest in his father. So far, my invaluable aid had been a bit on the invisible side.
Dr. Roy accompanied me the following day to the Serampore hermitage. After Master had granted him a brief interview, marked for the most part by stoic silence on both sides, the visitor brusquely departed.
"Why bring a dead man to the ashram?" Sri Yukteswar looked at me inquiringly as soon as the door had closed on the Calcutta skeptic.
"Sir! The doctor is very much alive!"
"But in a short time he will be dead."
I was shocked. "Sir, this will be a terrible blow to his son. Santosh yet hopes for time to change his father's materialistic views. I beseech you, Master, to help the man."
"Very well — for your sake." My guru's face was impassive. "The proud horse doctor is far gone in diabetes, although he does not know it. In fifteen days he will take to his bed. The physicians will give him up for lost; his natural time to leave this earth is six weeks from today. Owing to your intercession, however, on that date he will recover. But there is one condition: you must get him to wear an astrological bangle. He will doubtless object as violently as one of his horses before an operation." Master chuckled.
After a silence, during which I wondered how Santosh and I might best employ the arts of cajolery on the doctor, Sri Yukteswar made further disclosures.
"As soon as the man gets well, advise him not to eat meat. He will not heed this counsel, however; and in six months, just as he is feeling at his best, he will drop dead." My guru added, "The six-month extension of life is granted him only because of your plea."
The following day I suggested to Santosh that he order an armlet at the jeweler's. It was ready in a week, but Dr. Roy refused to put it on.
"I am in the best of health. You will never impress me with these astrological superstitions." The doctor glanced at me belligerently.
I recalled with amusement that Master had justifiably compared the man to a balky horse. Another seven days passed; the doctor, suddenly ill, meekly consented to wear the bangle. Two weeks later the physician in attendance told me that his patient's case was hopeless. He supplied harrowing details of the ravages inflicted by diabetes.
I shook my head. "My guru has said that, after a sickness lasting one month, Dr. Roy will be well."
The physician stared at me incredulously. But he sought me out a fortnight later, with an apologetic air.
"Dr. Roy has made a complete recovery!" he exclaimed. "It is the most amazing case in my experience. Never before have I seen a dying man show such an inexplicable comeback. Your guru must indeed be a healing prophet!"
After one interview with Dr. Roy, during which I repeated Sri Yukteswar's advice about a meatless diet, I did not see the man again for six months. He stopped for a chat one evening as I sat on the piazza of my family home.
"Tell your teacher that by eating meat frequently, I have wholly regained my strength. His unscientific ideas on diet have not influenced me." It was true that Dr. Roy looked a picture of health.
But the next day Santosh came running to me from his home on the next block. "This morning Father dropped dead!"
This case was one of my strangest experiences with Master. He healed the rebellious veterinary surgeon in spite of his disbelief, and extended the man's natural term on earth by six months, just because of my earnest supplication. Sri Yukteswar was boundless in his kindness when responding to an urgent prayer of a devotee.
It was my proudest privilege to bring college friends to meet my guru. Many of them would lay aside — at least in the ashram! — their fashionable academic cloak of religious skepticism.
One of my friends, Sasi, spent a number of happy weekends in Serampore. Master became immensely fond of the boy, and lamented that his private life was wild and disorderly.
"Sasi, unless you reform, one year hence you will be dangerously ill." Sri Yukteswar gazed at my friend with affectionate exasperation. "Mukunda is the witness; don't say later that I didn't warn you."
Sasi laughed. "Master, I will leave it to you to interest a sweet charity of cosmos in my own sad case! My spirit is willing but my will is weak. You are my only savior on earth; I believe in nothing else."
"At least you should wear a two-carat blue sapphire. It will help you."
"I can't afford one. Anyhow, dear Guruji, if trouble comes, I fully believe you will protect me."
"In a year you will bring three sapphires," Sri Yukteswar replied. "They will be of no use then."
Variations on this conversation took place regularly. "I can't reform!" Sasi would say in comical despair. "And my trust in you, Master, is more precious to me than any stone!"
A year passed. One day I was visiting my guru at the Calcutta home of his disciple, Naren Babu. About ten o'clock in the morning, as Sri Yukteswar and I were sitting in the second-floor parlor, I heard the front door open. Master straightened stiffly.
"It is that Sasi," he remarked gravely. "The year is now up; both his lungs are gone. He has ignored my counsel; tell him I don't want to see him."
Half stunned by Sri Yukteswar's sternness, I raced down the stairway. Sasi was ascending.
"O Mukunda! I do hope Master is here; I had a hunch he might be."
"Yes, but he doesn't wish to be disturbed."
Sasi burst into tears and brushed past me. He threw himself at Sri Yukteswar's feet, placing there three beautiful sapphires.
"Omniscient Guru, the doctors say I have pulmonary tuberculosis. They give me only three months to live! I humbly implore your aid; I know you can heal me!"
"Isn't it a bit late now to be worrying over your life? Depart with your jewels; their time of usefulness is past." Master then sat sphinxlike in an unrelenting silence, punctuated by the boy's sobs for mercy.
An intuitive conviction came to me that Sri Yukteswar was merely testing the depth of Sasi's faith in the divine healing power. I was not surprised a tense hour later when Master turned a sympathetic gaze on my prostrate friend.
"Get up, Sasi; what a commotion you make in another person's house! Return the sapphires to the jeweler's; they are an unnecessary expense now. But get an astrological bangle and wear it. Fear not; in a few weeks you shall be well."
Sasi's smile illumined his tear-marred face like sudden sun over a sodden landscape. "Beloved Guru, shall I take the medicines prescribed by the doctors?"
"Just as you wish — drink them or discard them; it does not matter. It is as impossible for you to die of tuberculosis as it would be for the sun and moon to interchange their positions." Sri Yukteswar added abruptly, "Go now, before I change my mind!"
With an agitated bow, my friend hastily departed. I visited him several times during the next few weeks, and was aghast to find his condition increasingly worse.
"Sasi cannot last through the night." These words from his physician, and the spectacle of my friend, now reduced almost to a skeleton, sent me posthaste to Serampore. My guru listened coldly to my tearful report.
"Why do you come here to bother me? You have already heard me assure Sasi of his recovery."
I bowed before him in great awe, and retreated to the door. Sri Yukteswar said no parting word, but sank into silence, his unwinking eyes half open, their vision fled to another world.
I returned at once to Sasi's home in Calcutta. With astonishment I found my friend sitting up, drinking milk.
"O Mukunda! What a miracle! Four hours ago I felt Master's presence in the room; my terrible symptoms immediately disappeared. I feel that through his grace I am entirely well."
In a few weeks Sasi was stouter and in better health than ever before.¹ But his reaction to his healing was tinged with ingratitude: he seldom visited Sri Yukteswar again! My friend told me one day that he so deeply regretted his previous mode of life that he was ashamed to face Master.
I could only conclude that Sasi's illness had had the contrasting effect of stiffening his will and impairing his manners.
The first two years of my course at Scottish Church College were drawing to a close. My classroom attendance had been very spasmodic; what little studying I did was only to keep peace with my family. My two private tutors came regularly to my house: I was regularly absent: I discern at least this one regularity in my scholastic career!
In India two successful years of college bring an Intermediate Arts diploma; the student may then look forward to another two years and his A.B. degree.
The Intermediate Arts final examinations loomed ominously ahead. I fled to Puri, where my guru was spending a few weeks. Vaguely hoping that he would say I need not appear at the finals, I told him of my unpreparedness.
Sri Yukteswar smiled consolingly. "You have wholeheartedly pursued your spiritual duties, and could not help neglecting your college work. Apply yourself diligently to your books for the next week; you shall get through your ordeal without failure."
I returned to Calcutta, firmly suppressing the reasonable doubts that occasionally assailed me. Surveying the mountain of books on my table, I felt like a traveler lost in a wilderness.
A long period of meditation brought me a labor-saving inspiration. Opening each book at random, I studied only those pages that lay thus exposed. After I had pursued this course during eighteen hours a day for one week, I considered myself an expert on the art of cramming.
The following days in the examination halls were a justification of my seemingly haphazard procedure. I passed all the tests, though by a hairbreadth. The congratulations of my friends and family were ludicrously mixed with ejaculations betraying their astonishment.
On his return from Puri, Sri Yukteswar gave me a pleasant surprise.
"Your Calcutta studies are now over," he said. "I shall see that you pursue your last two years of university work right here in Serampore."
I was puzzled. "Sir, there is no Bachelor of Arts course in this town." Serampore College, the sole institution of higher learning, offered only a two-year course in Intermediate Arts.
Master smiled mischievously. "I am too old to go about collecting donations to establish an A.B. college for you. I guess I shall have to arrange the matter through someone else."
Two months later Professor Howells, president of Serampore College, publicly announced that he had succeeded in raising sufficient funds to offer a four-year course. Serampore College became an affiliated branch of Calcutta University. I was one of the first students to enroll in Serampore as an A.B. candidate.
"Guruji, how kind you are to me! I have been longing to leave Calcutta and be near you every day in Serampore. Professor Howells does not dream how much he owes to your silent help!"
Sri Yukteswar gazed at me with mock severity. "Now you won't have to spend so many hours on trains; what a lot of free time for your studies! Perhaps you will become less of a last-minute crammer and more of a scholar."
But somehow his tone lacked conviction.²
1 In 1936 I heard from a friend that Sasi was still in excellent health.
2 Sri Yukteswar, like many another sage, grieved at the materialistic trend of modern education. Few schools expound the spiritual laws for happiness or teach that wisdom consists in guiding one's life in the "fear of God," that is, in awe of one's Maker.
Young people, who today hear in high schools and colleges that man is merely a "higher animal," often become atheists. They do not attempt any soul exploration or consider themselves, in their essential nature, to be "images of God." Emerson observed: "That only which we have within, can we see without. If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none." He who imagines his animal nature to be his only reality is cut off from divine aspirations.
Sri Yogananda at the age of sixteen
An educational system that does not present Spirit as the central Fact of man's existence is offering avidya, false knowledge. "Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked" (Revelation 3:17).
The education of youth in ancient India was ideal. At the age of nine, the pupil was received "as a son" in a gurukula (guru's family home as a seat of learning). "The modern boy spends [annually] an eighth of his time at school; the Indian spent his whole time there," Professor S. V. Venkatesvara writes in Indian Culture Through the Ages (Vol. I; Longmans, Green & Co.). "There was a healthy feeling of solidarity and responsibility, and ample opportunity for the exercise of self-reliance and individuality. There was a high standard of culture, self-imposed discipline, and stern regard for duty, selfless action, and sacrifice, combined with self-respect and reverence for others; a high standard of academic dignity, and a sense of...the nobility and the great purpose of human life."
