Yogananda, Paramahansa, 1893-1952; Yogis -- India -- Biography
The thought became almost audible as I concentrated on my heart
radio. In the characteristic, slightly hoarse whisper of Kashi,
{FN28-2} I heard his summons again and again. I seized the arm
of one of my companions, Prokash Das, {FN28-3} and smiled at him
joyfully.
“It looks as though I have located Kashi!”
I began to turn round and round, to the undisguised amusement of
my friends and the passing throng. The electrical impulses tingled
through my fingers only when I faced toward a near-by path, aptly
named “Serpentine Lane.” The astral currents disappeared when I
turned in other directions.
“Ah,” I exclaimed, “Kashi’s soul must be living in the womb of some
mother whose home is in this lane.”
My companions and I approached closer to Serpentine Lane; the
vibrations in my upraised hands grew stronger, more pronounced.
As if by a magnet, I was pulled toward the right side of the road.
Reaching the entrance of a certain house, I was astounded to find
myself transfixed. I knocked at the door in a state of intense
excitement, holding my very breath. I felt that the successful end
had come for my long, arduous, and certainly unusual quest!
The door was opened by a servant, who told me her master was at
home. He descended the stairway from the second floor and smiled
at me inquiringly. I hardly knew how to frame my question, at once
pertinent and impertinent.
“Please tell me, sir, if you and your wife have been expecting a
child for about six months?”
“Yes, it is so.” Seeing that I was a swami, a renunciate attired
in the traditional orange cloth, he added politely, “Pray inform
me how you know my affairs.”
When he heard about Kashi and the promise I had given, the astonished
man believed my story.
“A male child of fair complexion will be born to you,” I told him.
“He will have a broad face, with a cowlick atop his forehead. His
disposition will be notably spiritual.” I felt certain that the
coming child would bear these resemblances to Kashi.
Later I visited the child, whose parents had given him his old name
of Kashi. Even in infancy he was strikingly similar in appearance
to my dear Ranchi student. The child showed me an instantaneous
affection; the attraction of the past awoke with redoubled intensity.
Years later the teen-age boy wrote me, during my stay in America.
He explained his deep longing to follow the path of a renunciate.
I directed him to a Himalayan master who, to this day, guides the
reborn Kashi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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