Yogananda, Paramahansa, 1893-1952; Yogis -- India -- Biography
He summoned me again; I remained obstinately silent. The third time
his tone held rebuke.
“Sir, I am meditating,” I shouted protestingly.
“I know how you are meditating,” my guru called out, “with your
mind distributed like leaves in a storm! Come here to me.”
Snubbed and exposed, I made my way sadly to his side.
“Poor boy, the mountains couldn’t give what you wanted.” Master
spoke caressively, comfortingly. His calm gaze was unfathomable.
“Your heart’s desire shall be fulfilled.”
Sri Yukteswar seldom indulged in riddles; I was bewildered. He
struck gently on my chest above the heart.
My body became immovably rooted; breath was drawn out of my lungs
as if by some huge magnet. Soul and mind instantly lost their
physical bondage, and streamed out like a fluid piercing light
from my every pore. The flesh was as though dead, yet in my intense
awareness I knew that never before had I been fully alive. My sense
of identity was no longer narrowly confined to a body, but embraced
the circumambient atoms. People on distant streets seemed to be
moving gently over my own remote periphery. The roots of plants and
trees appeared through a dim transparency of the soil; I discerned
the inward flow of their sap.
The whole vicinity lay bare before me. My ordinary frontal
vision was now changed to a vast spherical sight, simultaneously
all-perceptive. Through the back of my head I saw men strolling far
down Rai Ghat Road, and noticed also a white cow who was leisurely
approaching. When she reached the space in front of the open ashram
gate, I observed her with my two physical eyes. As she passed by,
behind the brick wall, I saw her clearly still.
All objects within my panoramic gaze trembled and vibrated like
quick motion pictures. My body, Master’s, the pillared courtyard,
the furniture and floor, the trees and sunshine, occasionally became
violently agitated, until all melted into a luminescent sea; even
as sugar crystals, thrown into a glass of water, dissolve after
being shaken. The unifying light alternated with materializations
of form, the metamorphoses revealing the law of cause and effect
in creation.
An oceanic joy broke upon calm endless shores of my soul. The Spirit
of God, I realized, is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless
tissues of light. A swelling glory within me began to envelop towns,
continents, the earth, solar and stellar systems, tenuous nebulae,
and floating universes. The entire cosmos, gently luminous, like
a city seen afar at night, glimmered within the infinitude of
my being. The sharply etched global outlines faded somewhat at the
farthest edges; there I could see a mellow radiance, ever-undiminished.
It was indescribably subtle; the planetary pictures were formed of
a grosser light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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