An Interview With the Sacred Mother — Autobiography of a Yogi — SRF Teachings Portal
31.An Interview With the Sacred Mother
Paramahansa Yogananda·~13 min
"The master glanced at me for a moment, then lo! he was gone. Awed and frightened, I heard a voice resounding from every part of the room:
"'It is all nothing, don't you see? How could a nothing like me produce riches for you?'
"'Guruji,' I cried, 'I implore pardon a million times! My sinful eyes can see you no more; please appear in your sacred form.'
"'I am here.' This reply came from above me. I looked up and saw the master materialize in the air, his head touching the ceiling. His eyes were like blinding flames. Beside myself with fear, I lay sobbing at his feet after he had quietly descended to the floor.
"'Woman,' he said, 'seek divine wealth, not the paltry tinsel of earth. After acquiring inward treasure, you will find that outward supply is always forthcoming.' He added, 'One of my spiritual sons will make provision for you.'
"My guru's words naturally came true; a disciple did leave a considerable sum for our family."
I thanked Kashi Moni for sharing with me her wondrous experiences.² On the following day I returned to her home and enjoyed several hours of philosophical discussion with Tincouri and Ducouri Lahiri. These two saintly sons of India's great yogi followed closely in his ideal footsteps. Both men were fair, tall, stalwart, and heavily bearded, with soft voices and an old-fashioned charm of manner.
His wife was not the only woman disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya; there were hundreds of others, including my mother. A woman chela once asked the guru for his photograph. He handed her a print, remarking, "If you deem it a protection, then it is so; otherwise it is only a picture."
A few days later this woman and Lahiri Mahasaya's daughter-in-law happened to be studying the Bhagavad Gita at a table behind which hung the guru's photograph. An electrical storm broke out with great fury.
"Lahiri Mahasaya, protect us!" The women bowed before the picture. Lightning struck the book on the table, but the two devotees were unhurt.
"I felt as though a sheet of ice were placed around me, to ward off the scorching heat," the chela related.
Lahiri Mahasaya performed two miracles in connection with a woman disciple, Abhoya. She and her husband, a Calcutta lawyer, started one day for Banaras to visit the guru. Their carriage was delayed by heavy traffic; they reached the Howrah main station in Calcutta only to hear the Banaras train whistling for departure.
Abhoya, near the ticket office, stood quietly. "Lahiri Mahasaya, I beseech thee to stop the train!" she silently prayed. "I cannot suffer the pangs of delay in waiting another day to see thee."
The wheels of the snorting train continued to move round and round, but there was no onward progress. The engineer and passengers descended to the platform to view the phenomenon. An English railroad guard approached Abhoya and her husband. Contrary to all precedent, the guard volunteered his services. "Babu," he said, "give me the money. I will buy your tickets while you get aboard."
As soon as the couple was seated and had received the tickets, the train slowly moved forward. In panic, the engineer and passengers clambered again to their places, knowing neither how the train started nor why it had stopped in the first place.
Arriving at the home of Lahiri Mahasaya in Banaras, Abhoya silently prostrated herself before the master, and tried to touch his feet.
"Compose yourself, Abhoya," he remarked. "How you love to bother me! As if you could not have come here by the next train!"
Abhoya visited Lahiri Mahasaya on another memorable occasion. This time she wanted his intercession, not with a train, but with the stork.
"I pray you to bless me that my ninth child live," she said. "Eight babies have been born to me; all died soon after birth."
The master smiled sympathetically. "Your coming child will live. Please follow my instructions carefully. The baby, a girl, will be born at night. See that the oil lamp is kept burning until dawn. Do not fall asleep and thus allow the light to become extinguished."
Abhoya's child was a daughter, born at night, exactly as foreseen by the omniscient guru. The mother instructed her nurse to keep the lamp filled with oil. Both women kept the urgent vigil far into the early morning hours, but finally fell asleep. The lamp oil was almost gone; the light flickered feebly. The bedroom door unlatched and flew open with a violent sound. The startled women awoke. Their astonished eyes beheld the form of Lahiri Mahasaya.
"Abhoya, behold, the light is almost gone!" He pointed to the lamp, which the nurse hastened to refill. As soon as it burned again brightly, the master vanished. The door closed; the latch was affixed without visible agency.
Abhoya's ninth child survived; in 1935, when I made inquiry, she was still living.
One of Lahiri Mahasaya's disciples, the venerable Kali Kumar Roy, related to me many fascinating details of his life with the master.
"I was often a guest at his Banaras home for weeks at a time," Roy told me. "I observed that many saintly figures, dandi swamis,² arrived in the quiet of night to sit at the guru's feet. Sometimes they would engage in discussion of meditational and philosophical points. At dawn the exalted guests would depart. I found during my visits that Lahiri Mahasaya did not once lie down to sleep.
"During an early period of my association with the master, I had to contend with the opposition of my employer," Roy went on. "He was steeped in materialism.
"'I don't want religious fanatics on my staff,' he would sneer. 'If I ever meet your charlatan guru, I shall give him some words to remember.'
"This threat failed to interrupt my regular program; I spent nearly every evening in my guru's presence. One night my employer followed me and rushed rudely into the parlor. He doubtless intended to utter the remarks he had promised.
No sooner had the man seated himself than Lahiri Mahasaya addressed the group of about twelve disciples.
"Would you all like to see a picture?"
"When we nodded, he asked us to darken the room. 'Sit behind one another in a circle,' he said, 'and place your hands over the eyes of the man in front of you.'
"I was not surprised to observe that my employer also was following, albeit unwillingly, the master's directions. In a few minutes Lahiri Mahasaya asked us what we were seeing.
"'Sir,' I replied, 'a beautiful woman appears. She wears a red-bordered sari, and stands near an elephant-ear plant.' All the other disciples gave the same description. The master turned to my employer, 'Do you recognize that woman?'
"'Yes.' The man was evidently struggling with emotions new to his nature. 'I have been foolishly spending my money on her, though I have a good wife. I am ashamed of the motives that brought me here. Will you forgive me, and receive me as a disciple?'
"'If you lead a good moral life for six months, I shall accept you.' The master added, 'Otherwise I won't have to initiate you.'
"For three months my employer refrained from temptation; then he resumed his former relationship with the woman.
Two months later he died. Thus I came to understand my guru's veiled prophecy about the improbability of the man's initiation."
Lahiri Mahasaya had a famous friend, Trailanga Swami, who was reputed to be over three hundred years old. The two yogis often sat together in meditation. Trailanga's renown is so widespread that few Hindus would deny the possibility of truth in any story of his astounding miracles. If Christ returned to earth and walked the streets of New York, displaying his divine powers, it would cause the same awe among the people that Trailanga created decades ago as he passed through the crowded lanes of Banaras. He was one of the siddhas (perfected beings) who have cemented India against the erosions of time.
On many occasions the swami was seen to drink, with no ill effect, the most deadly poisons. Thousands of people, including a few who are still living, have seen Trailanga floating on the Ganges. For days together he would sit on top of the water or remain hidden for very long periods under the waves. A common sight at Manikarnika Ghat was the swami's motionless body on the blistering stone slabs, wholly exposed to the merciless Indian sun.
By these feats Trailanga sought to teach men that human life need not depend on oxygen or on certain conditions and precautions. Whether the great master was above water or under it, and whether or not his body challenged the fierce solar rays, he proved that he lived by divine consciousness: Death could not touch him.
The yogi was great not only spiritually, but physically. His weight exceeded three hundred pounds: a pound for each year of his life! As he ate very seldom, the mystery is increased. A master, however, easily ignores all usual rules of health when he desires to do so for some special reason, often a subtle one known only to himself.
Great saints who have awakened from the cosmic maya-dream and have realized this world as an idea in the Divine Mind, can do as they wish with the body, knowing it to be only a manipulatable form of condensed or frozen energy. Though physical scientists now understand that matter is nothing but congealed energy, illumined masters have passed victoriously from theory to practice in the field of matter control.
Trailanga always remained completely nude. The harassed police of Banaras came to regard him as a baffling problem child. The natural swami, like the early Adam in the Garden of Eden, was unconscious of his nakedness. The police were quite conscious of it, however, and unceremoniously committed him to jail. General embarrassment ensued: the enormous body of Trailanga was soon seen, in its usual entirety, on the prison roof. His cell, still securely locked, offered no clue to his mode of escape.
The discouraged officers of the law once more performed their duty. This time a guard was posted before the swami's cell. Night again retired before Right: the great master was soon observed in his nonchalant stroll over the roof.
The Goddess of Justice wears a blindfold; in the case of Trailanga the outwitted police decided to follow her example.
The great yogi preserved a habitual silence.⁴ In spite of his round face and huge, barrel-like stomach, Trailanga ate only occasionally. After weeks without food, he would break his fast with potfuls of clabbered milk offered to him by devotees. A skeptic once determined to expose Trailanga as a charlatan. A large bucket of calcium-lime mixture, used in whitewashing walls, was placed before the swami.
"Master," the materialist said, in mock reverence, "I have brought you some clabbered milk. Please drink it."
Trailanga unhesitatingly drank, to the last drop, the quarts of burning lime. In a few minutes the evildoer fell to the ground in agony.
"Help, Swami, help!" he cried. "I am on fire! Forgive my wicked test!"
The great yogi broke his habitual silence. "Scoffer," he said, "you did not realize when you offered me poison that my life is one with your own. Except for my knowledge that God is present in my stomach, as in every atom of creation, the lime would have killed me. Now that you know the divine meaning of boomerang, never again play tricks on anyone."
The sinner, healed by Trailanga's words, slunk feebly away. The reversal of pain was not a result of the master's will but of the operation of the law of justice² that upholds creation's farthest swinging orb. The functioning of the divine law is instantaneous for men of God-realization like Trailanga; they have banished forever all thwarting crosscurrents of ego.
Faith in the automatic adjustments of righteousness (often paid in an unexpected coin, as in the case of Trailanga and the would-be murderer) assuages our hasty indignance at human injustice. "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."⁶ What need for man's poor resources? the universe duly conspires for retribution.
Dull minds discredit the possibility of divine justice, love, omniscience, immortality. "Airy scriptural conjectures!" Men with this insensitive viewpoint, aweless before the cosmic spectacle, set into motion in their lives a discordant train of events that ultimately compels them to seek wisdom.
The omnipotence of spiritual law was referred to by Jesus on the occasion of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. As the disciples and the multitude shouted for joy, and cried, "Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest," certain Pharisees complained of the undignified spectacle. "Master," they protested, "rebuke thy disciples."
But Jesus replied that if his disciples were silenced, "the stones would immediately cry out."²
In this reprimand to the Pharisees, Christ was pointing out that divine justice is no figurative abstraction, and that a man of peace, though his tongue be torn from its roots, will yet find his speech and his defense in the bedrock of creation, the universal order itself.
"Think you," Jesus was saying, "to silence men of peace? As well may you hope to throttle the voice of God, whose very stones sing His glory and His omnipresence. Will you demand that men not celebrate together in honor of the peace in heaven? Will you counsel them to gather in multitudes and express their oneness only on occasions of war on earth? Then make your preparations, O Pharisees, to overtopple the foundations of the world; for gentle men as well as stones or earth, and water and fire and air shall rise up against you, to bear witness to the divine harmony in creation."
The grace of the Christlike yogi, Trailanga, was once bestowed on my sejo mama (maternal uncle). One morning Uncle saw the master amid a crowd of devotees at a Banaras ghat. He managed to edge his way close to Trailanga and humbly to touch the yogi's feet. Uncle was astonished to find himself instantly freed from a painful chronic disease.⁸
The only known living disciple of the great yogi is a woman, Shankari Mai Jiew.⁹ Daughter of one of Trailanga's disciples; she received the swami's training from her early childhood. She lived for forty years in a series of lonely Himalayan caves near Badrinath, Kedarnath, Amarnath, and Pasupatinath. The brahmacharini (woman ascetic), born in 1826, is now well over the century mark. Not aged in appearance, however, she has retained her black hair, sparkling teeth, and amazing energy. She comes out of her seclusion every few years to attend the periodical melas or religious fairs.
This woman saint often visited Lahiri Mahasaya. She has related that one day, in the Barrackpore section near Calcutta, while she was sitting by Lahiri Mahasaya's side, his great guru Babaji quietly entered the room and held converse with them both. "The deathless master was wearing a wet cloth," she recalls, "as though he had just come from a dip in the river. He blessed me with some spiritual counsel."
Trailanga, on a certain occasion in Banaras, forsook his usual silence in order to pay public honor to Lahiri Mahasaya. One of Trailanga's disciples objected.
"Sir," he said, "why do you, a swami and a renunciant, show such respect to a householder?"
"My son," Trailanga replied, "Lahiri Mahasaya is like a divine kitten, remaining wherever the Cosmic Mother has placed him. While dutifully playing the part of a worldly man, he has received that perfect Self-realization which I have sought by renouncing everything — even my loincloth!"
A yogini (woman yogi), Shankari Mai Jiew, only living disciple of Trailanga Swami. She is shown here (with three representatives from the YSS school in Ranchi) at Kumbha Mela in Hardwar, 1938; the yogini was then 112 years old.
Rama Is Raised From the Dead
"Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus....When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby."¹
Sri Yukteswar was expounding the Christian scriptures one sunny morning on the balcony of his Serampore hermitage. Besides a few of Master's other disciples, I was present with a small group of my Ranchi students.
"In this passage Jesus calls himself the Son of God. Though he was truly united with God, his reference here has a deep impersonal significance," my guru explained. "The Son of God is the Christ or Divine Consciousness in man. No mortal can glorify God. The only honor that man can pay his Creator is to seek Him; man cannot glorify an Abstraction that he does not know. The 'glory' or nimbus around the head of the saints is a symbolic witness of their capacity to render divine homage."
Sri Yukteswar went on to read the marvelous story of Lazarus' resurrection. At its conclusion Master fell into a long silence, the sacred book open on his knee.
"I too was privileged to behold a similar miracle." My guru finally spoke with solemn unction. "Lahiri Mahasaya resurrected one of my friends from the dead."
The young lads at my side smiled with keen interest. There was enough of the boy in me, too, to enjoy not only the philosophy but, in particular, any story I could get Sri Yukteswar to relate about his wondrous experiences with his guru.
"My friend Rama and I were inseparable," Master began. "Because he was shy and reclusive, he chose to visit our guru Lahiri Mahasaya only during the hours between midnight and dawn, when the crowd of daytime disciples was absent. As I was Rama's closest friend, he confided to me many of his deep spiritual experiences. I found inspiration in his ideal companionship." My guru's face softened with memories.
"Rama was suddenly put to a severe test," Sri Yukteswar continued. "He contracted the disease of Asiatic cholera. As our master never objected to the services of physicians at times of serious illness, two specialists were summoned. Amidst the frantic rush of ministering to the stricken man, I was deeply praying to Lahiri Mahasaya for help. I hurried to his home and sobbed out the story.