ggo on; obliging lads fetched spades and demolished the obstacles (blessings of Ganesh!) while hundreds of children and parents stared.
"Soon we were threading our way along the two ruts of antiquity, women gazing wide-eyed from their hut doors, men trailing alongside and behind us, children scampering to swell the procession. Ours was perhaps the first auto to traverse these roads; the 'bullock cart union' must be omnipotent here! What a sensation we created — a group piloted by an American and pioneering in a snorting car right into their hamlet fastness, invading the ancient privacy and sanctity!
"Halting by a narrow lane we found ourselves within a hundred feet of Giri Bala's ancestral home. We felt the thrill of fulfillment after the long road struggle crowned by a rough finish. We approached a large, two-storied building of brick and plaster, dominating the surrounding adobe huts; the house was under the process of repair, for around it was the characteristically tropical framework of bamboo.
"With feverish anticipation and suppressed rejoicing we stood before the open doors of the one blessed by the Lord's 'hungerless' touch. Constantly agape were the villagers, young and old, bare and dressed, women aloof somewhat but inquisitive too, men and boys unabashedly at our heels as they gazed on this unprecedented spectacle.
"Soon a short figure came into view in the doorway — Giri Bala! She was swathed in a cloth of dull, goldish silk; in typically Indian fashion, she drew forward modestly and hesitatingly, peering at us from beneath the upper fold of her swadeshi cloth. Her eyes glistened like smoldering embers from the shadows of her headpiece; we were enamored by a face of benevolence and Self-realization, free from the taint of earthly attachment.
"Meekly she approached and silently assented to our snapping a number of pictures with our 'still' and 'movie' cameras.⁶ Patiently and shyly she endured our photo techniques of posture adjustment and light arrangement. Finally we had recorded for posterity many photographs of the only woman in the world who is known to have lived without food or drink for over fifty years. (Therese Neumann, of course, has fasted since 1923.) Most motherly was Giri Bala's expression as she stood before us, completely covered in the loose-flowing cloth, nothing of her body visible but her face with its downcast eyes, her hands, and her tiny feet. A face of rare peace and innocent poise — a wide, childlike, quivering lip, a feminine nose, narrow, sparkling eyes, and a wistful smile."
Mr. Wright's impression of Giri Bala was shared by me; spirituality enfolded her like her gently shining veil. She pranāmed before me in the customary gesture of greeting from a householder to a monk. Her simple charm and quiet smile gave us a welcome beyond that of honeyed oratory; forgotten was our difficult, dusty trip.
The little saint seated herself cross-legged on the verandah. Though bearing the scars of age, she was not emaciated; her olive-colored skin had remained clear and healthy in tone.
"Mother," I said in Bengali, "for over twenty-five years I have thought eagerly of this very pilgrimage! I heard about your sacred life from Sthiti Lal Nundy Babu."
She nodded in acknowledgment. "Yes, my good neighbor in Nawabganj."
"During those years I have crossed the oceans, but never forgot my plan someday to see you. The sublime drama that you are here playing so inconspicuously should be blazoned before a world that has long forgotten the inner food divine."
The saint lifted her eyes for a minute, smiling with serene interest.
"Baba (honored father) knows best," she answered meekly.
I was happy that she had taken no offense; one never knows how yogis and yoginis will react to the thought of publicity. They shun it, as a rule, wishing to pursue in silence the profound soul research. An inner sanction comes to them when the proper time arrives to display their lives openly for the benefit of seeking minds.
"Mother," I went on, "forgive me, then, for burdening you with many questions. Kindly answer only those that please you; I shall understand your silence, also."
She spread her hands in a gracious gesture. "I am glad to reply, insofar as an insignificant person like myself can give satisfactory answers."
"Oh, no, not insignificant!" I protested sincerely. "You are a great soul."
"I am the humble servant of all." She added quaintly, "I love to cook, and to feed people."
A strange pastime, I thought, for a non-eating saint!
"Tell me, Mother, from your own lips—do you live without food?"
"That is true." She was silent for a few moments; her next remark showed that she had been struggling with mental arithmetic. "From the age of twelve years four months down to my present age of sixty-eight — a period of over fifty-six years — I have not eaten food or taken liquids."
"Are you never tempted to eat?"
"If I felt a craving for food, I would have to eat." Simply yet regally she stated this axiomatic truth, one known too well by a world revolving around three meals a day!
"But you do eat something!" My tone held a note of remonstrance.
"Of course!" She smiled in swift understanding.
"Your nourishment is derived from the finer energies of the air and sunlight,² and from the cosmic power that recharges your body through the medulla oblongata."
"Baba knows." Again she acquiesced, her manner soothing and unemphatic.
"Mother, please tell me about your early life. It holds a deep interest for all of India, and even for our brothers and sisters beyond the seas."
Giri Bala put aside her habitual reserve, relaxing into a conversational mood.
"So be it." Her voice was low and firm. "I was born in these forest regions. My childhood was unremarkable save that I was possessed by an insatiable appetite.
"I had been betrothed when I was about nine years old. 'Child,' my mother often warned me, 'try to control your greed. When the time comes for you to live among strangers in your husband's family, what will they think of you if your days are spent in nothing but eating?'
'The calamity she had foreseen came to pass. 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 had entered my heart. 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.'
'An ecstasy fell over me. In 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 riverbank, 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 shall be recharged by 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 kriya technique that frees the body from dependence on the gross food of mortals. The technique includes the use of a certain mantra⁸ and a breathing exercise more difficult than the average person could perform. No medicine or magic is involved; nothing beyond the kriya."
In the manner of the American newspaper reporter, who had unknowingly taught me his procedure, I questioned Giri Bala on many matters that 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 heartbeat and breathing. In visions I often see my guru and other great souls."
"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 quickly shattered.
"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 that 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."²
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 heads of many 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 from one of your saris."
She soon returned with a piece of Banaras 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!"
"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."
8 Potent vibratory chant. The literal translation of Sanskrit mantra is "instrument of thought." It signifies "the ideal, inaudible sounds which represent one aspect of creation; when vocalized as syllables, a mantra constitutes a universal terminology" (Webster's New International Dictionary, 2nd ed.). The infinite powers of sound are derived from Aum, the "Word" or creative hum of the Cosmic Motor.
9 The non-eating state attained by Giri Bala is a yogic power mentioned in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras III:31. She employs a certain breathing exercise that affects the vishuddha chakra, the fifth center of subtle energies located in the spine. The vishuddha chakra, opposite the throat, controls the fifth element; akash or ether, pervasive in the intra-atomic spaces of the physical cells. Concentration on this chakra ("wheel") enables the devotee to live by etheric energy.
Therese Neumann neither lives by gross food nor practices a scientific yogic technique for non-eating. The explanation is hidden in the complexities of personal karma. Many lives of dedication to God lie behind a Therese Neumann and a Giri Bala, but their channels for outward expression have been different. Among Christian saints who lived without eating (they were also stigmatists) may be mentioned St. Lidwina of Schiedam, Blessed Elizabeth of Rent, St. Catherine of Siena, Dominica Lazarri, Blessed Angela of Foligno, and the 19th-century Louise Lateau. St. Nicholas of Flüe (Bruder Klaus, the 15th-century hermit whose impassioned plea for union saved the Swiss Confederation) was an abstainer from food for twenty years.
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 29 at Whitefield 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.
English tenacity has an 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 sight-seeing in London, then over the beautiful countryside. Mr. Wright and I used 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 sight of the majestic Statue of Liberty in New York harbor brought to our throats joyous emotional gulps.
The Ford, a bit battered from struggles over ancient soils, was still puissant; it now took in its stride the transcontinental trip to California. In late 1936, lo! Mount Washington Center.
The year-end holidays are celebrated annually at the Los Angeles center with an eight-hour group meditation on December 24 (Spiritual Christmas),¹ 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 for flavoring ice cream. The evening found us grouped around a huge sparkling Christmas tree, the nearby 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 Kashmir shawls, everlastingly fragrant sandalwood trays from Mysore, Shiva "bull's eye" stones from Central Provinces, 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 the Mt. Washington Center. From the paper tissues she lifted a sari of golden Banaras silk.
"Thank you, sir; it brings before my eyes the pageant of India."
"Mr. Dickinson!" The next parcel contained a gift that I had bought in a Calcutta bazaar. "Mr. Dickinson will like this," I had thought at the time. A beloved disciple, Mr. E. E. Dickinson had been present at every Christmas festivity since the 1925 founding of the Mt. Washington Center.
At this eleventh annual celebration, he stood before me, untying the ribbons of an oblong package.
"The silver cup!" Struggling with emotion, he stared at the present, a tall drinking cup. He seated himself some distance away, apparently in a daze. I smiled at him affectionately before resuming my role as Santa Claus.
The ejaculatory evening closed with a prayer to the Giver of all gifts; then a group singing of Christmas carols.
Mr. Dickinson and I were chatting together some time later. "Sir," he said, "please let me thank you now for the silver cup. I could not find any words on Christmas night."
"I brought the gift especially for you."
"For forty-three years I have been waiting for that silver cup! It is a long story, one I have kept hidden within me." Mr. Dickinson looked at me shyly. "The beginning was dramatic: I was drowning. My older brother had playfully pushed me into a fifteen foot pool in a small town in Nebraska. I was only five years old then. As I was about to sink for the second time under the water, a dazzling multicolored light appeared, filling all space. In the midst was the figure of a man with tranquil eyes and a reassuring smile. My body was sinking for the third time when one of my brother's companions bent a tall slender willow tree in such a low dip that I could grasp it with my desperate fingers. The boys lifted me to the bank and successfully gave me first-aid treatment.
"Twelve years later, a youth of seventeen, I visited Chicago with my mother. It was September 1893; the great World Parliament of Religions was in session. Mother and I were walking down a main street, when again I saw the mighty flash of light. A few paces away, strolling leisurely along, was the same man I had seen years before in vision. He approached a large auditorium and vanished within the door.
'Mother,' I cried, 'that was the man who appeared at the time I was drowning!'
"She and I hastened into the building; the man was seated on a lecture platform. We soon learned that he was Swami Vivekananda of India.² After he had given a soul-stirring talk, I went forward to meet him. He smiled on me graciously, as though we were old friends. I was so young that I did not know how to give expression to my feelings, but in my heart I was hoping that he would offer to be my teacher. He read my thought.
"'No, my son, I am not your guru.' Vivekananda gazed with his beautiful, piercing eyes deep into my own. 'Your teacher will come later. He will give you a silver cup.' After a little pause, he added, smiling, 'He will pour out to you more blessings than you are now able to hold.'
"I left Chicago in a few days," Mr. Dickinson went on, "and never saw the great Vivekananda again. But every word he had uttered was indelibly written on my inmost consciousness. Years passed; no teacher appeared. One night in 1925 I prayed deeply that the Lord would send me my guru. A few hours later, I was awakened from sleep by soft strains of melody. A band of celestial beings, carrying flutes and other instruments, came before my view. After filling the air with glorious music, the angels slowly vanished.
"The next evening I attended, for the first time, one of your lectures here in Los Angeles, and knew then that my prayer had been granted."
We smiled at each other in silence.
"For eleven years now I have been your Kriya Yoga disciple," Mr. Dickinson continued. "Sometimes I wondered about the silver cup; I had almost persuaded myself that the words of Vivekananda were only metaphorical.
"But on Christmas night, as you handed me the little box by the tree, I saw, for the third time in my life, the same dazzling flash of light. In another minute I was gazing on my guru's gift that Vivekananda had foreseen for me forty-three years earlier² — a silver cup!"
Paramahansaji also established a Prayer Council at the Mt. Washington Center (the nucleus of Self-Realization Fellowship's Worldwide Prayer Circle), which offers prayers daily for all who request help in solving or dissolving their particular problem. (Publisher's Note)
In 1965 Mr. Dickinson, still well and active at 89, received the title of Yogacharya (teacher of yoga) in a ceremony at Self-Realization Fellowship headquarters in Los Angeles.
He often meditated for long periods with Paramahansaji, and never missed Kriya Yoga practice, three times daily.
Two years before his passing on June 30, 1967, Yogacharya Dickinson gave a talk to the SRF monks. He told them an interesting detail he had forgotten to mention to Paramahansaji. Yogacharya Dickinson said: "When I went up to the lecture platform in Chicago to speak to Swami Vivekananda, before I could greet him he said:
"'Young man, I want you to stay out of the water!'" (Publisher's Note)
At Encinitas in California
"A surprise, sir! During your absence abroad we have had this Encinitas hermitage built; it is a 'welcome-home' gift!" Mr. Lynn, Sister Gyanamata, Durga Ma, and a few other devotees smilingly led me through a gate and up a tree-shaded walk.
I saw a building jutting out like a great white ocean liner toward the blue brine. First speechlessly, then with "Oh's!" and "Ah's!", finally with man's insufficient vocabulary of joy and gratitude, I examined the ashram: sixteen unusually large rooms, each one charmingly appointed.
The stately central hall, with immense ceiling-high windows, looks out on an altar of grass, ocean, and sky: a symphony in emerald, opal, and sapphire. A mantel over the huge fireplace of the hall holds pictures of Christ, Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, and Sri Yukteswar; bestowing, I feel, their blessings on this tranquil Western ashram.
Directly below the hall, built into the very bluff, two meditation caves confront the infinities of sky and sea. On the grounds are sun-bathing nooks, flagstone paths leading to quiet arbors, rose gardens, a eucalyptus grove, and a fruit orchard.
"May the good and heroic souls of the saints come here (so reads 'A Prayer for a Dwelling,' from the Zend-Avesta, that hangs on one of the hermitage doors) and may they go hand in hand with us, giving the healing virtues of their blessed gifts that are as ample as the earth, as high-reaching as the heavens!"
The large estate in Encinitas, California, is a gift to Self-Realization Fellowship from Mr. James J. Lynn, a faithful Kriya Yogi since his initiation in January 1932. An American businessman of endless responsibilities (as head of vast oil interests and as president of the world's largest reciprocal fire-insurance exchange), Mr. Lynn nevertheless finds time daily for long and deep Kriya Yoga meditation. Leading thus a balanced life, he has attained in samadhi the grace of unshakable peace.
During my stay in India and Europe (June 1935 to October 1936), Mr. Lynn¹ had lovingly plotted with my correspondents in California to prevent any word from reaching me about the construction of the ashram in Encinitas. Astonishment, delight!
During my earlier years in America I had combed the coast of California in quest of a small site for a seaside ashram. Whenever I had found a suitable location some obstacle had invariably arisen to thwart me. Gazing now over the sunny acres in Encinitas, humbly I saw the fulfillment of Sri Yukteswar's long-ago prophecy: "a retreat by the ocean."
Paramahansa Yogananda and James J. Lynn, later Sri Rajarsi Janakananda, meditating at SRF-YSS International Headquarters, Los Angeles, 1933
Paramahansa Yogananda and James J. Lynn, later Sri Rajarsi Janakananda. Guru and disciple are meditating at SRF-YSS International Headquarters, Los Angeles, 1933. "Some people say, 'The Western man cannot meditate.' That is not true," Yoganandaji said. "Since Mr. Lynn first received Kriya Yoga, I have never seen him when he was not inwardly communing with God."
A few months later, Easter of 1937, I conducted on the lawn of the new ashram the first of many Easter sunrise services. Like the Magi of old, several hundred students gazed in devotional awe at the daily miracle: the awakening solar rite in the eastern sky. To the west lay the Pacific Ocean, booming its solemn praise; in the distance a tiny white sailing boat and the lonely flight of a seagull. "Christ, thou art risen!" Not with the vernal sun alone, but in Spirit's eternal dawn.
Many happy months went by. In the Encinitas setting of perfect beauty, I completed a long-projected work, Cosmic Chants.² I gave English words and Western musical notation to many Indian songs. Included were Shankara's chant, "No Birth, No Death"; the Sanskrit "Hymn to Brahma"; Tagore's "Who Is in My Temple?"; and a number of my compositions: "I Will Be Thine Always," "In the Land Beyond My Dreams," "I Give You My Soul Call," "Come, Listen to My Soul Song," and "In the Temple of Silence."
In the preface to the songbook I recounted my first outstanding experience with Western reaction to Eastern chants. The occasion had been a public lecture; the time, April 18, 1926; the place, Carnegie Hall in New York.
On April 17 I had confided to an American student, Mr. Alvin Hunsicker, "I am planning to ask the audience to sing an old Hindu chant, 'O God Beautiful.'"²
Mr. Hunsicker had protested that Oriental songs are not easily understood by Americans.
"Music is a universal language," I had replied. "Americans will not fail to feel the soul aspiration in this lofty chant."
The following night the devotional strains of "O God Beautiful" had come for over an hour from three thousand throats. Blasé no longer, dear New Yorkers! your hearts had soared out in a simple paean of rejoicing. Divine healings had taken place that evening among the devotees chanting with love the Lord's blessed name.
In 1941 I paid a visit to the Self-Realization Fellowship Center in Boston. The Boston center leader, Dr. M. W. Lewis, lodged me in an artistically decorated suite. "Sir," Dr. Lewis said, smiling, "during your early years in America you stayed in this city in a single room, without bath. I wanted you to know that Boston boasts some luxurious apartments!"
Happy years in California sped by, filled with activity. A Self-Realization Fellowship Colony⁴ in Encinitas was established in 1937. The numerous activities at the Colony give many-sided training to disciples in accordance with
