Episode 88 - Having a Ball

I’m going to ask you to try to stretch your mind and imagination a bit for this episode. A true story is going to be presented to you. It took place in India, sometime around 1910 and you may find the cultural differences to be a little unusual for you. But on a subtextual level, a lot of important information is going to be presented as well, and you may find that it takes you to some interesting places within your own intelligence. I know it did for me.

As I mentioned a few episodes earlier, as my interest in Personal Growth began to grow strongly towards the end of 1971, I became aware of certain writers and speakers that grew into significant sources of information for me, and many have remained so.

          One of these was the renowned Indian Yogi, Parmahansa Yogananda, and my earliest introduction to him was in the memoir he had written which was called, “Autobiography of a Yogi.”

          At the time, I was being exposed to an idea about God and religion that was new and somewhat revolutionary for me. Rather than being far away from us, the Divine Essence was actually very close. In fact, closer than our own breath. And you didn’t have to die to get to be with it. You could somehow could turn your attention within and experience it now, while you are alive. Yogananda’s writings were very much in line with this perspective.

          Historically, he came to America in 1920 and became a powerful force in the west until his death in 1952. His towering legacy still lives on, but this story is from a much earlier time in his life, when he was a teenager, still living in India. And according to him, it marked a truly major turning point.  

          For thousands of years, that country has had a tradition of gurus, who are teachers and master practitioners. They usually have a set of disciples that they teach. At the time of this story, Yogananda had recently become a disciple of a master named Sri Yukteswar and had begun living in his ashram, practicing, and studying to become a yogi.

          But as a teenager and young college student, he was getting restless and wanted to travel to the Himalaya mountains. He thought he would go there to sit in silence to achieve continuous divine communion. Although he felt his intense yearning was sincere at the time, he later called it “one of the unpredictable delusions which occasionally assail the devotee.”

          His teacher discouraged the idea, saying that "Wisdom is better sought from a man of realization than from an inert mountain."      But Yogananda decided to go anyway.

As he was preparing for his journey, he heard stories about someone known as the “sleepless saint” who was supposedly always awake in an ecstatic state of consciousness. The story was that he had spent decades alone in a cave, practicing meditation and had achieved some kind of enlightenment. Yogananda decided to travel to the village in the mountains where this man supposedly lived and try to contact him.

          After a few days on the road, as he got nearer to the village, he came upon a shrine that many people in the area considered to be a holy place, like Lourdes. When he walked into the temple, he was surprised to see that it contained nothing but a large stone ball. Most pilgrims bowed before it, but Yogananda, believing he should bow only to God, just walked out without offering any reverence at all to the huge stone ball.

          He finally got to the village and started asking where he might be able to find this holy man, whose name was Ram Gopal Babu. And here is where his nightmare of confusion began.

          He began to be told a series of conflicting bits of information. He was told that no such person lived in the village. He was sent to another village several miles away. When he got there, he was told he had made the wrong turn. In another village he was told he had just missed the man.

          Finally, night fell and he found a place to eat and sleep. The next day, his fruitless journey got even worse, filled with hour after hour of following wrong information, in the blistering hot sun. Toward the end of the day, feeling completely hopeless as he was standing at a crossroad wondering which way to go, the extreme heat made him feel like he was ready to pass out. Then, he noticed someone walking towards him at a casual and very leisurely pace.  

In his autobiography, here is what Yogananda happened next - 

“The stranger halted beside me. Short and slight, he was physically unimpressive save for an extraordinary pair of piercing dark eyes.  "I was planning to leave the village, but your purpose was good, so I awaited you." He shook his finger in my astounded face. "Aren't you clever to think that, unannounced, you could pounce on me?”

In the presence of this master, I stood speechless. His next remark was abruptly put. "Tell me; where do you think God is?"

          “Why, He is within me and everywhere." I doubtless looked as bewildered as I felt.

"All-pervading, eh?" The saint chuckled. "Then why, young sir, did you fail to bow before the Infinite in the stone symbol at the temple yesterday? Your pride caused you the punishment of being misdirected…and today, too, you have had a fairly uncomfortable time of it!"

I agreed wholeheartedly, wonder-struck that an omniscient eye hid within the unremarkable body before me. Healing strength emanated from the yogi; I was instantly refreshed in the scorching field.

"The devotee inclines to think his path to God is the only way," he said. "Yoga, through which divinity is found within, is doubtless the highest road…But discovering the Lord within, we soon perceive Him without. Holy shrines …are rightly venerated as nuclear centers of spiritual power."

The saint's censorious attitude vanished; his eyes became compassionately soft. He patted my shoulder.

"Young yogi, I see you are running away from your master. He has everything you need; you must return to him. Mountains cannot be your guru." Ram Gopal was repeating the same thought which Sri Yukteswar had expressed at our last meeting.

"Masters are under no cosmic compulsion to limit their residence." My companion glanced at me quizzically. "The Himalayas in India and Tibet have no monopoly on saints. What one does not trouble to find within will not be discovered by transporting the body hither and yon. As soon as the devotee is willing to go even to the ends of the earth for spiritual enlightenment, his guru appears near-by."

I silently agreed.  

          “Are you able to have a little room where you can close the door and be alone?"

"Yes." I reflected that this saint descended from the general to the particular with disconcerting speed.

"That is your cave." The yogi bestowed on me a gaze of illumination which I have never forgotten. "That is your sacred mountain. That is where you will find the kingdom of God."

His simple words instantaneously banished my lifelong obsession for the Himalayas.

"Young sir, your divine thirst is laudable. I feel great love for you." Ram Gopal took my hand and led me to a quaint hamlet. The adobe houses were covered with coconut leaves and adorned with rustic entrances.

The saint seated me on the umbrageous bamboo platform of his small cottage. After giving me sweetened lime juice and a piece of rock candy, he entered his patio and assumed the lotus posture. In about four hours I opened my meditative eyes and saw that the moonlit figure of the yogi was still motionless. As I was sternly reminding my stomach that man does not live by bread alone, Ram Gopal approached me.

"I see you are famished; food will be ready soon."

A fire was kindled under a clay oven on the patio; rice and dhal were quickly served on large banana leaves. My host courteously refused my aid in all cooking chores. "The guest is God," a Hindu proverb, has commanded devout observance from time immemorial.

Ram Gopal arranged some torn blankets on the floor for my bed, and seated himself on a straw mat. Overwhelmed by his spiritual magnetism, I ventured a request.

"Sir, why don't you grant me a samadhi ?" (Note: In Hindu yoga, samadhi is regarded as the final elevated state of consciousness, at which union with the divine is reached.)

"Dear one, I would be glad to convey the divine contact, but it is not my place to do so." The saint looked at me with half-closed eyes. "Your master will bestow that experience shortly. Your body is not tuned just yet. As a small lamp cannot withstand excessive electrical voltage, so your nerves are unready for the cosmic current. If I gave you the infinite ecstasy right now, you would burn as if every cell were on fire.

"You are asking illumination from me," the yogi continued musingly, "while I am wondering-inconsiderable as I am, and with the little meditation I have done-if I have succeeded in pleasing God, and what worth I may find in His eyes at the final reckoning."

"Sir, have you not been singleheartedly seeking God for a long time?"

"I have not done much. For twenty years I occupied a secret grotto, meditating eighteen hours a day. Then I moved to a more inaccessible cave and remained there for twenty-five years, entering the yoga union for twenty hours daily. I did not need sleep, for I was ever with God. My body was more rested in the complete calmness of super consciousness than it could be by the partial peace of the ordinary subconscious state.

"In super consciousness, the internal organs remain in a state of suspended animation, electrified by the cosmic energy. By such means I have found it unnecessary to sleep for years. The time will come when you too will dispense with sleep."

"My goodness, you have meditated for so long and yet are unsure of the Lord's favor!" I gazed at him in astonishment. "Then what about us poor mortals?"

"Well, don't you see, my dear boy, that God is Eternity Itself? To assume that one can fully know Him by forty-five years of meditation is rather a preposterous expectation. However, even a little meditation saves one from the dire fear of death and after-death states. Do not fix your spiritual ideal on a small mountain, but hitch it to the star of unqualified divine attainment. If you work hard, you will get there."

Enthralled by the prospect, I asked him for further enlightening words. He related a wondrous story of his first meeting with a renowned Hindu avatar.

Around midnight Ram Gopal fell into silence, and I lay down on my blankets. Closing my eyes, I saw flashes of lightning; the vast space within me was a chamber of molten light. I opened my eyes and observed the same dazzling radiance. The room became a part of that infinite vault which I beheld with interior vision.

"Why don't you go to sleep?"

"Sir, how can I sleep in the presence of lightning, blazing whether my eyes are shut or open?"

"You are blessed to have this experience; the spiritual radiations are not easily seen." The saint added a few words of affection.

At dawn Ram Gopal gave me rock candies and said I must depart. I felt such reluctance to bid him farewell that tears coursed down my cheeks.

"I will not let you go empty-handed." The yogi spoke tenderly. "I will do something for you."

He smiled and looked at me steadfastly. I stood rooted to the ground, peace rushing like a mighty flood through the gates of my eyes. I was instantaneously healed of a pain in my back, which had troubled me intermittently for years.

 Renewed, bathed in a sea of luminous joy, I wept no more. After touching the saint's feet, I sauntered into the jungle, making my way through its tropical tangle until I reached the village with the holy temple.

There I made a second pilgrimage to the famous shrine, and prostrated myself fully before the altar. The round stone enlarged before my inner vision until it became the cosmical spheres, ring within ring, zone after zone, all dowered with divinity.”

And so ends this part of Yogananda’s remarkable story, which was clearly worlds away from our own. As I mentioned earlier, I came upon this in the very early stages of my interest in personal growth and a few parts of it really hit me. And these parts still impress me, but on a deeper level as I continue to age.

Here are a few of them for your consideration. First was the general state of consciousness of Ram Gopal. He knew all about Yogananda before they ever met. He knew that he was travelling to try to find him and he knew about Yogananda’s refusal to bow before the stone in the shrine.

Also, he had meditated alone in a cave for decades and seemed to be in a permanently exalted state. Yet, even in that state, he mentioned that when we are talking about the Divine Force, or God, we are talking about the infinite, and practicing meditation for several decades in one lifetime isn’t necessarily as big a deal as it may seem to us. And finally, he healed Yogananda of back pain that he had suffered from for most of his life.

All this made me look at the state of my awareness at that time. I was a standard, twenty-two year old American know it all, who thought he knew it all, but was starting to find out a thing or two about some of the illusions of this life. And I started wondering what the greater potential of our consciousness is? It suddenly seemed like there was more to life than learning how to master the skills of how much, how many, where and when. All centered around the stone cathedral of “I, Me, Mine.”

We don’t have the time to go into more detail about how this story affected me. I just wanted to present it to you for your own personal consideration, and I hope you found it interesting and helpful, as well as somewhat enlightening. Enough has been expressed for this episode As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.