

Light & Darkness

By Krishnanand

Published by Mrugank Patel at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

  1. 'Vishvaprem'-The Psychometrist

  2. The Dead Also Guide

  3. Balanced Understanding

  4. Hemavati's Humane Highness

  5. Raksha Rose And Raised

  6. Nature's Reverse Game

  7. Pranavakumar

  8. Shocks And Surprises

Poem: Maturity

Poem: Change Of Vision

Poem: I Have To Leave

Life Sketch of Swami Krishnanand
Preface

Beloved Readers,

It adds to my delight to place before you "LIGHT AND DARKNESS"- the fourth series of experiences of my wandering life.

What I have written about psychometry, self-hypnosis and invisible guidance etc. in this and in my previous book 'REMINISCENCES" are nothing new or novel to the knowledgeable circles. As for the general public who rarely come by or don't very often hear of experiences related to the above said para-normal phenomena, it is understandable that all of these should sound and strike as strange or enigmatical to them . In this regard, my humble suggestion to our brethren is that, when it comes to subjects untackled by us either by serious studies of all the available literature on them, or through independent reflective thinking, one shouldn't ostentatiously step out and sweepingly declare that, ' IT IS ALL HUMBUG-WE DON"T BELIEVE"

Differently said, it would be wise to note that just because something dosen't appeal to our intelligence or because we wish to obsitinately cling to our old beliefs without the readiness of openly examine the researched views and rational facts discovered by the dedicated men in the field of mental culture and spiritual science, ' NATURAL TRUTHS' aren't nullified. Acknowledged facts cannot be buried by the irrational disbelifes of anyone. For, they don't depend upon our beliefs to be proved not can our disbeliefs seal them as disproved.

Though smaller this book is, compared to my earlier publications, yet, I have no doubt that you will find the experiences in this one also as interesting, instructive and inspiring as you found those in the previous printed pages.

If after reading this book, you truthfully happen to regard, Accommodativeness, Balangedness, Continence, Discriminativeness, Earnestness, Forgiveness, Gratefulness, Humbleness, Introspectiveness, Judociousness, Knowingness, Liberality, Mirthfulness, Neatness, Openness, Pentitence, Quiescency, Resolutness, Simpleness, Temperateness, Unitedness, Virtuouness, Winsomeness, Xenialness, Yearningness, and Zealousness, as transforming qualities and as representing 'LIGHT', leading to liberated life, and that all other tendencies that are opposed to them as standing for 'DARKNESS' and bondage; and in the understanding of this factual knowledge, you are prompted to resolve a little more, to further implement the foregoing qualities in your day to day twenty four hours' life and avidly attempt again somehow and somewhat to reject those that go against your fight for full freedom from animality, I should feel that my labor of sharing my travel experiences with you all, has been rightly rewarded. I shall endeavor to include more number of experiences in my next publication.

May the heavenly Lord bless with success such of your genuine efforts as are aimed at achieving abiding happiness here and hereafter. Love and salutation to your all. Amen.

Shanti Ashram,Bhadran, Gujarat, India

15th March 1969.

## 'VISHVAPREM'-THE PSYCHOMETRIST

It was a clear dawn and I started for Vishvaprem's place from 'Tulshisham' - a spot of pilgrimage in Saurashtra which is also popular for hot-springs. I had to cover about two and a half miles. The recent rains had added coolness to the pleasant jungle temperature of May.

Though, I was visiting the place after seven years, the location of the underground cellar was fresh and vivid in my memory and I reached the saint's habitat.

Near the boulder which covered the cellar wherein Vishvaprem lived, there were wet tracks with clear naked foot-prints and puddles of water. All of it indicated that the saint had returned after his bath and had wringed his wet body at the entrance before going into the pit. I hung on, wanting to allow sufficient time for the saint to get through his morning round of meditation, to which I knew, he was used to, immediately after the morning ablutions.

Excepting for the various birds moving past hither and thither with their melodious sing-songs, the surrounding was quiet. The wind was still and so were the green leaves atop the trees and the dried ones fallen on the ground.

Soon, through the thickset leafy branches of the tall jungle trees could be seen the golden-hued ball appearing on the eastern horizon, lending fresh animation all over.

Leaning on to the boulder, I was tacitly enjoying all this when suddenly I heard hushed tones of feminine voices. I turned round and saw middle-aged ladies leisurely heading in my direction. From the general looks and the dress of one, it was clear that she was from South India and the other who was in grey skirts, a foreigner. I instantly recalled having had a passing glimpse of them on the previous evening at 'Bhimchas' another place a little away from 'Tulshisham'. About 'Bhimchas' it is said that 'Bhima', a pouranic character of Mahabharata's fame had summoned the spring of river-water there by an arrow which he had shot into the ground.

Because I held a very poor opinion about the courage of civilize I ladies, their presence in that part of the jungle and that too, at a time when the animals generally return from all sides to go to their respective hideouts, after the nocturnal wandering in search of prey, simply amazed me.

The ladies stopped advancing and stood staring at me in surprise. I moved towards them with folded hands. With folded hands because, I wanted to assure those strange ladies that my intentions were friendly. When I was well near them, by way of greeting I said 'Namaste'. They didn't wish me back. Finding me still standing, the lady in the saris shouted in Hindi "Chale jao'" and the one in skirts snarled in French " Allez-Vous En " - away with you - begone.

Because one of them appeared to be from south-the part from where Vishvaprem himself hailed and also because total strangers cannot reach the spot where I was, with the ease they had appeared to have, l surmised that, may be they were also on a visit to meet Vishvaprem. So, I shot back in English, "Sisters! your rough attitude doesn't fit in with the expected civility of those who have come to meet a gifted saint." In unison they raised their brows in wonderment. ''How come, you know that?" the lady in the skirts sang small. "A mere deductive guess," said I.

They became apologetic and friendly. "Do you know the saint?" asked the south Indian lady - without naming him. "I had the privilege of meeting "Vishvapremji'' the psychometrist some seven years back and I am now on a repeat visit", said I. The foreign lady asked me with visible curiosity if I was sure that the saint was really a psychometrist. I answered her in the affirmative and gave them a brief account of my personal experience recorded in "REMINISCENCES" \- my last book. They were pleased.

Thereafter, the south Indian lady introduced herself as the cousin sister of Vishvaprem and the foreign lady with her, I was told, was her guest. Adding to the detail, she said, "Know me as Dr. Damayanti from Kerala and my French friend as Miss Catherine."

We walked to the boulder and Dr. Damayanti turned it over. Signalling us to hold on, Dr. Damayanti went in and when she was well below, pulled over the boulder to cover the circular entrance of the cellar.

We hadn't to wait long outside, for, Dr. Damayanti carne up turning the rocky cover. Miss Catherine was helped to go down first and I followed her-taking care to pull, over the boulder.

The venerable Vishvaprem was there seated in his usual corner - this time on a deer-skin. He gave me a silent welcome with a smile of recognition and motioned us all to sit. Miss Catherine took her seat directly in front of the saint.

Dr. Damayanti introduced Miss Catherine as a free-lance reporter from France. The saint who appeared to be still in a spell of introvert mood, didn't speak. In the rapt silence which had enveloped the cellar, only the ticks of the watches on the feminine wrists could be heard. Time sped on. We must have passed about three quarter of an hour and I could see Miss Catherine becoming restive. At last, no more able to hold out, she blurted in French, "Dr. Damayanti ! this silence is frightening. Haven't-we come here to talk, listen and to know?" if he is in communion, we may as well do a bit of strolling outside in the open and come back when he is free to talk to us."

Dr. Damayanti hesitantly addressed her brother in Malayalam \- their mother tongue and asked him to say something. Sri Vishvaprem came round, ruffling to a start and addressing Miss Catherine said, "you see, Miss Catherine; the position is, I am currently in a session of penance and haven't much time at my disposal to attend to visitors That's exactly why I had especially intimated to Damayanti not to bother me with a visit right away. Anyway, now that you have come, please let me hear of what service can I be to you?"

"Because I have come short visit and because also I know not when next I may be able to come over again, I implored Dr. Damayanti, inspite of her unwillingness, to bring me here. In view of what you have said, holy sire! I shall be as brief as possible," said Miss Catherine..

Without further loss of time, Miss Catherine questioned Sri Vishvaprem, "holy sire! is it true that after your shifting to this jungle, in spiritual quest, you have come by paranormal powers - I mean, the ability to see with your fingers?"

"It is partially true. At times I am capable of such fets", replied Vishvaprem.

Thereupon, Miss Catherine produced a roll of paper and handing it to the psychometrist asked, "would you sire, care to handle this and favour me with whatever details that may happen to become perceptible to you?"

Sri Vishvaprem took the rolled paper, held it close to his forehead-almost squeezing it. Then, suddenly he became quiet and still. His expressionless face revealed that he was oblivious to his outer surroundings. After a momentary silence, his still lips moved and the following details gushed out of them :- Among the several printed lines in this leaf of paper I can clearly see the 'IFs', I's and 'CAN's' occurring in them more oftener than the other words. The general set-up of the contents of this piece in my hand suggests that it is a poem. I also see you tearing this page from and old bundle of printed pages as you are moving in a vehicle. I see something more, the pictures of Jesus, Mary and good many clergymen. Am I correct?" So asking, Sri Vishvaprem opened his eyes and, handed the piece of paper to Miss Catherine. "Oh! indeed, you are correct to the amazing degree." exclaimed Miss Catherine.

From his passive reaction to the lady's words of praise for his super-sensory powers, it was visibly evident that the psychometrist was above "assertive arrogance and "hypocritical humility."

Miss Catherine then remarked that she was skeptical about such possibilities when she had heard about some psychometrists in European countries and that her doubts were convincingly allayed in the popular jungle of India. Commenting further, she said that it was remarkable that Sri Vishvaprem could see clear visions in respect of the poem contained on that page which she had actually torn out from an old Catholic magazine which had come from London: while she was travelling to Madurai in south India. Unfolding the page and spreading it on the ground, she invited, "let's check-up the words which according to Vishvapremji are oftener used." Our quick check satisfied us that the 'IP's' were used ten times, the 'I's' fifteen times and the 'CAN's' ten times.

Reproduced herebelow is the poem captioned 'IF I CAN' :—

If I can throw a single ray of light,

Across the darkened pathway of another:

If I can aid some soul to clearer sight,

Of light and duty and thus bless my brother;

If I can wipe from any human cheek a tear,

I shall not have, then, lived in vain while here.

If I can guide some erring to truth.

Inspire within his heart a sense of duty;

If I can plant within the soul of a rosy plant,

A sense of light, a love of truth and beauty;

If I can teach one man that God and heaven are near,

I shall not have, then, lived in vain while here.

If from my mind I can banish doubt and fear,

And keep my life attuned to Truth, love and kindness:

If I can scatter light and hope and cheer,

And help and remove the curse of mental blindness;

If I can make joy more, more hope, less pain,

I shall not have, then, lived in vain while here.

If by life's roadside I can plant a tree,

Beneath whose shade some wearied head may rest;

Though I may never share its shade or see –

Its beauty, I shall yet be truly blessed;

Though no one knows my name.

"Now Sire! few more questions, if you kindly permit", requested Miss Catherine. Sri Vishvaprem condescended to hear.

Miss Catherine: How do you account for this super power you possess?

Sri Vishvaprem: Powers such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, psychometry, precognition and telepathy etc., are inherent in varied degrees in all beings. More so, in the human. But, just as clouds cover the shining sun, even so, the clouds of binding desires, anger, cares and anxieties, block their manifestation and working. In the measure of one's mental stability, the aforesaid powers begin to function in the individuals.

Miss Catherine: Dr. Damayanti tells me that you are to remain here for another 9 years or so, to complete your resolve of 32 years of seclusion. Don't you think, you, with your powers, will be able to serve the society more in such ways as helping the location of lost children and articles and as also in reconstruction of crimes etc, if you came out earlier?

Sri Vishvaprem: With the present - day material resources to attend to such incidents of human CARELESSNESS, I don't think that I with my fragmentary abilities can be of much help. That apart, I am more in favour of people leading a life of ethical purity and thereby awakening their natural powers for themselves.

Miss Catherine appeared to have finished.

As though, it was now her turn. Dr. Damayanti produced few sheets of paper containing many questions and requested the venerable Vishvaprem to answer them. She added that they were from one Pushpaben one of her Gujarati friends. Sri Vishvaprem politely excused himself and suggested that Swami Sri Shantipuriji who uses a python for a pillow and who is chummy with lions might undertake to attend to them. He also said that he would arrange the meeting.

After a brief pause, he rose up and asked us all to follow him. We went out of the cellar. Sri Vishvaprem replaced the boulder. He led the way and we trailed behind him. We hadn't to walk more than a furlong when we were shown the spot where at particular hours of the morning Sri Shantipurijii \- the respectable recluse and his python bask in the sun. While myself and Dr. Damayanti made mental note of the place and its surroundings, the more practical Miss Catherine made some markings on few wayside trees with a penknife.

Finally, asking the ladies to proceed to 'Tulshisham' for the night halt, Sri Vishvaprem informed them that he would entreat Shantipuriji to allow us his company an hour after sunrise on the morrow. Then, as an after thought, he quickly added, with his brilliant eyes focussed to me, "Krishnanandji will join you both from here", i bowed in agreement.

Before the ladies' actual departure, Sri Vishvaprem particularly asked them not to disturb him on the next day. In serious and heavy terms he instructed Dr. Damayanti not to revisit him unless she received a call from him. I could notice her eyes dimmening with tears.

Miss Catherine hastened and thanked Vishvaprem profoundly for the audience granted to her and said that she would treasure the meeting as a most unforgetable one and left with Dr. Damayanti.

We both returned to the cellar. Asking me to wait outside, Sri Vishvaprem went in and returned with my water pot from my bag and the snacks given by the ladies. Then he took me to the side of a nearby water-spring, where, he said, he slept in the afternoons.

Clustered with small trees, it was a cool corner away from view. While I settled down to eat, Sri Vishvaprem reclined on the bare ground and fell asleep. I myself slept for few hours. By evening we returned to the cellar and engaged ourselves on talks of mutual interest. Around midnight, Sri Vishvaprem busied himself with his usual midnight meditations. The night passed off with the speed of rabbits' swift running at the sight of jackals and at early dawn we went out of the cellar for a bath.

Bathing over, the venerable Vishvaprem took leave - wishing me a blissful time with Swami Shri Shantipuriji.

That's how my second memorable meeting with Vishvaprem, the psychometrist, came to a profitable end.

##  THE DEAD ALSO GUIDE

After Sn Vishvaprem left me, I walked up to the place where I was to meet Swami Sri Shantipuriji.

While I was hanging about, I was alarmed by the swift running of few foxes, followed by a wolf on a hot chase. I was barely fifteen feet far and the wolf stopped for a moment, sniffed heavily and disappeared in the direction of its escaping prey.

The way the wolf stood, stared, sniffed and sped away, it appeared to me that jungle animals were used to the presence of ochre-robed beings with long hairs, and by experience, perhaps, knew them to be harmless also.

Nature began decorating the vast expanse of the sky with multi-gleams and the colours started to thicken, heralding the rising sun.

As the heat of the sun's rays was increasing, I heard human hailing. Dr. Damanyati and Miss Catherine showed up. They both were in fresh spirits and fine saris.

The first thing they asked me was as to whether Sri Vishvapremji had contacted Shantipuriji and had arranged our meeting with him. I told them that Sri Vishvaprem was all along with me since their departure and till the then very recent hour and that nothing appeared to have been done.

Knowing my brother as I do, I am positive that through TELEPATHY, the thought transference technique Sri Shantipuriji must have been posted about our visit," interjected Dr. Damayanti, airily.

Oh! Surely I am on a wonder trip." - exclaimed Miss Catherine, pleasantly and suggested that we attend to hunger first.

"Yes", agreed Dr. Damayanti and added, "With what little we could give him yesterday, Krishnanandji must be pretty hungry by now.

"They had brought some items of refreshments and milk. We cleaned a portion of the place and settled down to eat. Some squirrels and crows also joined us - partaking of the crumbs of bread which we had scattered for them.

As we were packing -up after the breakfast we sighted a human figure reaching yonder spot where we were to meet Sri Shantipurii. We also saw what appeared to us from that distance a long hefty rope like thing in the hold of his down right hand dandling suspended on his back from over the right shoulder.

We got up and proceeded to the place where he was. By the time we reached near him, he had sat down and by his side we saw a big long python. On seeing us, he stood up and welcomed us in an intimate manner. Asking us not to bother about the python, he said, "Sri Vishrapremji did inform me about his having asked you all to contact me here this morning, i am glad you have come." Dr. Damayanti nudged Miss Catherine as though to mean," DIDN'T I TELL YOU! " Then, motioning us to sit down, he himself sat at the very place where he had stood and drew the python well close to him - perhaps warning it by that act, not to advance ahead The python coiled itself and lay motionless.

Our eyes were focussed on Sri Shantpuriji as he sat erect and cross-legged. He was of medium stature and bodily build. His wasn't the emaciated frame of the ascetic fanatics, nor was he plump and poacher as are those leisure loving monks who insist and subsist on rich food. His long curly face with a broad forehead, bushy the well grown beard acquiline nose and combination. He was made a harmonious dark-garment around his waist and wearing upper red to have crossed the borders of fifty-years.

As we thus spent some seconds studying the silent saint, he rose all at once and ran past us, leaving the python to lie where it was. All of us turned back to see. Lo' we saw a lioness with two cubs. The running saint signaled to them with the downward waves of his hands, to sit down. The queen of the forest meekly obeyed sprawling itself on the ground and the playful cubs lingered by. As he neared them, Shantipuriji slowed down and quickly sat before the lioness hiding its facial view from us. Then, by his right hand he grabbed one of the cubs and pressed it close to his side and by the other he was stroking the head of the Lioness. In the meanwhile, the other cub stole from behind and stood up holding by its forelegs the left shoulder of the saint. Miss Catherine did a quick clicking with her ' laica '.

Sri Shantipuriji rose and muttered something to the massive beast. Perhaps he said, "You see good lady, I have guests. We shall meet conveniently tomorrow. Now hurry along." The lioness picked up its weighty body under standingly, looked in our direction and sprinted off with the parting pat from its saintly friend. 'Laica' clicked more than few times again in succession.

We weren't farther than thirty feet from the spot where the scene of beastly ferociousness bowing to 'TRUE LOVE' was enacted. We were exihiliarated beyond measure. The effects of TRUE LOVE are magical indeed. Because we lack much in True love, we confront the bad effects of hatred, jealousy, mistrust, attacks and wars.

Sri Shantipuriji returned back casually, took his seat and in a business-like way asked Dr. Damayanti as to what he could do for us.

"Reverend Sire!" began Dr. Damayanti and entreatingly asked, "Before I place before you the chain of questions, may we have the pleasure of knowing from you as to what major incidents in your life influenced you to take to ascetism and how you came to this jungle to become a permanent habitant ?"

"Oh yes, why not! It is going to be a deep dig into my past. I have nothing to hide. Now listen," said he and he shut his eyes trying to recall and knit in words the crowded and colourful events of his past.

Making an artistic start, he began:-

"Nature ushered me into the physical case ready in the womb of a pious lady and I came into this world in the year 1914 to reap the fruits of my destiny."

"My parents belonged to a priestly brahmin family in a town of Bengal and they were in charge of a temple dedicated to Lord Rama, with a holding of fifteen acres of fertile land. I happened to be their only child and we were economically self-sufficient."

"My father was a Sanskrit scholar and also pious. But somehow, I grew up to be bad boy and a poor student. Not a single day passed without some complaints from the neighbours or inhabitants of the town about my mischief or quarrels outside. My parents tried love, cajolry, threats and punishments. To their dismay, none of them worked."

"However, I managed to pass the matriculation examination and my parents gave charge of me to my maternal uncle who was a pleader in Calcutta, for further studies and improvement.

"Instead of improving me, the city life made me more mischievous because of its wider avenues for the bad to become notorious."

"My first day in the college began with a brawl with a professor whose nose I punched with my fist and punctured it. Then I took to pilfering things from the college hostel and my uncle's house. I didn't spare my neighbors either. I used to slyly slip into their kitchens and help myself with cooked food and sweets. Soon I became an object of pointing fingers and a headache to my uncle and aunt. Because of my wayward behavior, I didn't fare well with my college education. I was simply a flop and it all culminated in my being expelled from the college for misconduct, before the second annual examinations.

"I was past nineteen and my parents who were worried about my future yoked me into wedlock with a good girl named Sadhana from a refined family. She was well versed in Ramyana and the culinary art."

"Even as a husband I remained arrogant, rough and exacting. But my faithful wife silently suffered my tormenting behavior and whenever I happened to be in those occasional spells of momentary mild moods, she used to talk to me about the ideal life of different characters and the central figure 'RAMA' of Ramayana-and the dangers of my crooked one. I was so very much coloured in animal delight that, exercising my masculine supremacy. I used to silence her by warning her not to carry her wisdom to teaching tasks. Inspite of my despicable attitude, she cared for me with unremitting love and adaptability-as Hindu women alone are capable of.

"To fill the feathers of my badness, I fell into the company of drunkards and gamblers when I was only twenty three. My fresh adventures as an alcoholic addict and a good gambler, shocked my pious parents, my worthy wife and my respectable relatives. They couldn't tell me anything-for they feared that I might desert them. I had threatened them with doing so on earlier occasions."

"All of them prayed to the Gods for a change of behaviour in me. My wife undertook fasts to ward off the malevolent influences of bad stars. I viewed their ways as wanton efforts on their part to rob me of my fancied pleasures."

"The year 1939 saw some parts in Bengal in the grip of cholera. My father was one of the victims who died in the epidemic."

"After the death of my father, my mother's health began to become baddish due to high blood pressure and she passed away after ten months."

"With the passing away of my parents and my persistent unchanged conduct, my devout wife remained sullen and worried. At the end of the fifth month of my mother's demise, as her ill-luck would have it, my wife who couldn't be domestically happy in the measure she deserved and desired, developed lever and heart trouble. She suffered considerably from the maladies and when the disease got the better of her, she remained bedridden for four fortnights and she was oscillating between life and death."

''Even in that sorrowful struggling state, she used to clasp me and implore me to promise to give up my evil habits and as also to take to the feet of God."

"As those who intent upon sulking away from performances, readily and quickly promise, I also vouchsafed that I would give up what she thought was evil indulgence. That very night she was gasping for breath and turning sides, with her hands pressing the chest. It was a clean case of the final stage to death. I rushed to her side with little water. She thrust aside the glass and held me by her freezing hands and asked me, "May I take it that you will give up drinking and gambling?" I said yes and that she could believe me. Then she made me repeat with her, the following supplication:-

"O' Master of the Raghus! I say the TRUTH to Thee who knowest all, that there is no other wish in my heart Thou who art great of the race of Raghus, do Thou bestow upon me exclusive devotion to THEE and purge me of all sensual cravings.

"We repeated the above prayer a number of times. With her rising emotions, her life force also began coursing upwards for a release from her physical vestment. Sadhana clung to me and partingly said, "Hemant! remember your promise to me and the prayer to the Lord. I shall be watching you," and she collapsed dead on my laps on that night of Ramnavami day of 1941. Her mouth remained open - indicating that life passed out from there; as it does in case of individuals who are earth-bound. The other sources through which the life principle passes out of individuals who are destined to be reborn, are, the eyes and the rectum. It is only when the vital force escapes out of the aperture in the crown of the head - causing a crack there, that the soul is said to attain a complete release from the cycle of births and deaths."

''Sadhana's separation by death caused a feelingful void in my life. By the evening on the next day, when I was somewhat free from people who came to offer condolences, I went to my favourite pub for a dose of that fermented fluid which stills the raked nerves and induces self-forgetfulness."

"I purchased a glass and raised it to my lips for a sip, when, from somewhere I heard the familiar voice of Sadhana, "DIDN'T I TELL YOU THAT I SHALL BE WATCHING YOU? HEM! RECALL YOUR PROMISE, RESTRAIN YOURSELF AND REFRAIN FROM DRINKING," it said in a mixed tone of command and appeal.

"From darkness to light is a pleasant switchover and Sri Shantipuriji's dry narration of his past conduct was taking a mystical turn and we pulled ourselves to greater attentive listening.

Santipuriji continued.

"I was dumbfounded. Sadhana was dead and cremated. And yet, unmistakably, it was her voice. I couldn't believe that the dead could also see and speak with the ease of the living. It was bewildering to the core I who had very often harshly brushed aside entreaties and counsels from her, when she was alive, found it difficult to disregard them. As I was standing there in that state of stupefied indecision, I heard again, "Darling Hem! I see you as clearly as you do the glass in your hand. I say, throw away the poison come now. PLEASE HURRY.'' The force of that voice entered into my brain and generated in my hand a voluntary movement of a throw. The glass with its contents flew past violently crashed and splattered on the opposite wall. The people in the pub gaped at me. They regarded that act of mine as the delirious effect of my wife's recent death."

"I ran back to my house and threw myself on the- cot. Little while after, I saw an apparition of my wife Sadhana. She vanished after few minutes and I heard her voice once more, "I am glad you accommodated my appeal by throwing away the glass of liquor. Pray let it remain thrown out from your life for-ever from now on. You will fare well. From my plane of consciousness I see a very glorious future for you. I shall be guiding you from time to time and so will a saint. React gracefully. I wish you well. Before I come back after a week, I want you to repeat the following vedic prayer 108 times a day:-

"I an aspirant of liberation take refuge in Him who ordained the creator and bestowed to Him the 'vedas' - the reservoir of knowledge. May HE sharpen my intellect that I may also experience the revelation of the eternal self in all its sublimity. "

"There was a claimable compulsion in her suggestion and I followed the course of the prayer and began to feel a magical change taking place in me. I forgot my drinking and gambling habits."

"Exactly on the eighth day, I heard her mystical voice. "Hem dear! call your 'munim' today and ask him to render an uptodate accounts and sack him. Hence-onwards, attend to the lands personally with hired labour." She then asked me to get the copy of 'Ramavana' which was lying on a shelf in my sitting room. I took hold of the dust - laden text from which Sadhana herself daily read a portion till her death. I cleaned it and sat facing the eastward direction from where Sadhana's voice was directing me."

"Open page twentynine and repeat with me the leading verse and complete the first chapter today. Continue the practice daily immediately after your early bath. You are not a total stranger to Sanskrit and with the help of vernacular translation in the begining and frequent reference to other versions in Sanskrit also, you will begin to understand what you read. From today, 'Ramayana' shall be your constant companion." So saying the voice stopped."

"I began to read the following verse and Sadhana's voice instantly joined me and remained attuned to mine till the end of the first half of the opening invocation of the 'mahatmaya' (an account of merits said to accrue from reading Ramayana) and it ceased."

"Sri Rama is the sole refuge of the whole world. There is no other redeeming recourse I salute Rama, through whose intercession alone, the impurities of worldliness can be annihilated. Before Rama who controls the entire world, even the powerful of God of death trembles in fright. May I grow in abiding devotion to THEE O' Rama! May I grow in abiding devotion to THEE O' Rama! Thou alone art my succour.

I proceeded on and completed the first chapter there and then.

That finished, I called for the 'munim' and when he came with the books. I inspected the accounts and found a good number of false entries leading to misappropriation of monies. I dismissed him from service. Thenceonwards, I applied myself seriously to attending to the cultivation of the fields and as also to the care of the temple."

"My knowledge of Sanskrit was only rudimentary and as I took to the study of Valmiki Ramayana, with the aid Bengali translations, Sanskrit essays on it and with the help of a Sanskrit dictionary, I began to like the reading. After few months, I engaged a tutor and equipped myself with the essential knowledge of Sanskrit grammar for a thorough understanding of Ramayana. The passing months found me getting a better peep into the lofty teachings of that epic."

"Sadhana continued to guide me from time to time. She taught me to cook also and advised me not to partake anything prepared by people who aren't mentally and morally pure. Her invisible presence and voice exercised a shaping influence over me. For, moral education also to which I had all along been a stranger, began to enter into my ears and heart."

"I who was hated by all those who chose to call themselves good and discarded by the relatives who rated me as a curse in the family fold, all of them began to treat my change from rank rascality to serious devotion to Ramayana, as a grand miracle. A MIRACLE NO DOUBT IT WAS."

"When I talked to some of my close relatives about the mysterious presence of Sadhana and her help, they thought I was mentally deranged. IT WAS BUT MEET THAT THEY WHO KNEW NOTHING ABOUT THEIR OWN EXISTENCE, SHOULD VIEW THE TRUTH OF INVISIBLE EXISTENCE AND HELP AS A FALLACY; AND MENTAL RE-REARRANGEMENT AS DERANGEMENT."

"I myself was used to thinking that no one guides anyone and much less, the dead, about whom I knew nothing before. All of us were guided, I thought, by our individual likes and dislikes. As for the virtuous acts and sins, I believed that actions which brought what one thought was good for himself were alone the virtuous and the effects of those that were contrary to one's well feeling were likewise the sins. But from what I learnt from Sadhana and Ramajana. I stood profitably corrected. And thus, in the warp of my earlier base life over which the weft of Sadhana's imperceptible nearness and guidance were well woven, there ran a spiritual lining of impulsive aspiration for a higher life.

"Day after day, I punctually continued the practices and began feeling being filled with noble and uplifting thoughts. I could sit for long hours, concentrate well and above all, the revolting thought - traffic which used to keep me agitated, never dared to converge in my-mind. This much progress I had earned at the close of my fifteen month's self-training."

"Few more months passed in that way and on a day before Dussera in the year 1942, my wife's voice directed me to proceed to Patna. The capital of Bihar to meet one Shivapuri Baba."

"Shivapuri Baba, I learnt from intimate quarters, was a great saint and had travelled far and wide throughout the world. The royal family of Nepal was reverentially attached to him and that his head-quarters was Shivapuri near Khatmandu, the parent city of Nepal. Many Indian pilgrims to Nepal during the annual 'Mahashivaratri' festival used to meet him and gain spiritually."

"I proceeded to Patna and met him there. He asked me to meet him in Shivapuri when he would initiate me into the order of sanyasa."

I returned back. On a full-moon-night, for the second time since her passing away, I saw Sadhanas apparition. She appeared pleased. She instructed me to become free of all possessions. As per her guidance, everything which belonged to me was given away in 'charily to different individuals and institutions in my hometown. With a bare piece of an old sheet on my body and the copy of Ramayana, I bid the last good-bye, to my place."

I went to Jagannathpuri in Orissa first. On the very first day of my disowning everything which belonged to me, I felt a different feeling of assured security; the kind I had never experienced when in possession of worldly property. As I moved from place to place for three months thereafter, this feeling was all the more strengthened; for, I saw all hearts and doors were open for me. In the course of my peregrination, I never stayed in a place for more than a night. Wherever I went, people came after me with food, fruits, milk, blankets and money. I only accepted what little items of food I needed and never visited anyone's house.

"In February 1943 I travelled to Nepal and went to Sri Shivapuri Baba, He received me with greater warmth and on the Mahashivaratri day that year, formally blessed me with the secret techniques of spiritual meditation and named me as Shantipuri."

"Later, in obedience to his orders. I wandered to several places of pilgrimage both in the plains and the Himalayas."

"Sadhana's voice visited me almost wherever I went and at last, I reached this place for a permanent settlement in April 1945, of course, at the bidding of my spiritual master. I am told that Sri Shivapuri Baba passed away recently."

"During the first few years here I ate whatever I got from the different batches of cattle owners who are in the outskirts of the jungle with their respective cattle wealth. Now since the last fifteen years I have been exclusively subsisting on the rich wild roots that are available in plentiful here. Like several others here, I also took quite sometime to get used to my present diet."

"Having come before me, Sri Vishvapremji is also one of the earlier residents here and his nearness has also been one of the sources that stimulate spiritual inspiration. We do meet occasionally."

"I no more hear Sadhana's voice. Possibly she has reincarnated somewhere according to her latencies to work out her karmas".

"Sri Shantipuriji concluded thus, the latter second half of the thought-provoking details of how he came to take to ascetic life and residence in the jungle.

"Your experiences with Sadhana's spirit are indeed most wonderful and thrilsome." said Miss Catherine by way of a brief praise and Dr. Damayanti nodded her head in affirmation.

"What are your questions?" demanded Shantipuriji and Dr. Damayanti placed in his hands the sheets containing the questions Because it was getting hotter, Sri Shantipuriji suggested that we go into his cellar. His proposal pleased me, because I stood the chance of spending little time in the rich atmosphere, created by his long stay of spiritual contemplation and meditation there.

We walked after him in a row. There was no path as such - the ground being covered with dry and withered leaves. We must have gone less than two hundred feet when we reached a joint which was widely walled with many tall trees. In the midst of them were patchy growth of bushy ,shrubs. With the absence of human touch to the surroundings, there was nothing to reveal the possibility of human habitation there. Sri Shantipuriji bent himself down at a central point and lifted a thick square plank which was covered with green wild creepers. Unfolded to our view were well-cut earthen steps leading downwards. The saint asked me to go in. I walked down, followed by Dr. Damayanti and her French friend. The hermit came over later, after closing the entrance.

It was an oval-shaped cellar plastered with red clay. Its floor was covered with soft wooden chips-and it was spacious enough to allow about six persons to sit circularly. The atmosphere was cool and arrestingly serene. From the slanty slits above, the cellar was fed with sufficient sunlight and adequate ventilation. Excepting a large-size deer-skin, the place was empty. Shantipuriji possessed nothing - not even a water-pot. When Miss Catherine asked him as to where he kept his bedding and other little items of utility which one would in the ordinary course need for use, Shantipuriji's ready reply was. "Because I want to belong to God alone, I believe nothing should belong to me and that I must use nothing which money alone can procure." Even the Ramayana with which he had left his house wasn't there either. His sense of renunciation was something uncommon and puts to shame the irresistible love for luxuries by the modern day spiritual preachers.

We sat down and without loss of time Sri Shantipuriji began replying the written questions of Pushpaben \- brought by Dr. Damayanti. The medico took down the replies in her note book while myself and Miss Catherine listened with interest.

Reproduced herebelow are some of the questions with Shantipuriji's replies to them. This I have done in the hope that they might throw fresh light on the understanding of my readers arid correct their misconceptions on good many vital points :-

Pushpaben (1) ... -Who can be said to be enjoying happiness in this world

Shantipurijii ,..They who motivelessly love and respect all and who at the same time are free from care, anxiety, apprehensions and attachment, to them this world can be a veritable heaven and they alone can be said to be really happy.

Pushpaben (2) What are the qualities of a God-minded man?

Shantipurijii..... He who is free from fear, envy, pride, ostentation, anger, greed and mineness, such a person is worthy of being known as God-minded.

Pushpaben (3) How to overcome ignorance?

Shantipurijii.....Half of the ignorance is destroyed by free exchange of thoughts; half of the remainder is dispelled by application to philosophical studies and the rest fades away in the light of self-realisation.

Pushpaben (4) What is the truth about God having a form and devotees having had a vision of HIM ?

Shantipurijii....No one who has really experienced God, in His true essence has ever said anything about God having a form and name. The idols in our temples are manmade models and concentrated contemplation of the forms of such idols create a thought - form for the mental vision of a particular sadhaka and he begins to dance in ecstasy and proclaims that he has seen God in form.

Pushpaben (5) What is the utility of IDOL worship?

Shantipurijii... ... Even as milk is recommended to those who cannot digest or afford butter, so also, people of poor intellect are asked to start with image worship. THAT ALONE WILL APPEAL TO THEM.

Pushpaben (6) Do you think that children should be encouraged to visit temples and attend religious discourses?

Shaniipuriji ... ... No. The growing children shouldn't be allowed to waste their time in such activities. They should first be made to develop faith in themselves. Otherwise, faith in the invisible God will make them dependent and hinder their natural growth and understanding. Particular care should be taken to see that children devote all their time to education and they should be artfully imparted healthy lessons on good behaviour. As they mature mentally and intellectually, they will of their own accord take a dip in spiritual matters. They may however be helped to understand higher issues of life, without imposing anything upon them - when they grow up. Till then, they should be wisely discouraged from taking interest in shrines and scriptural sermons.

Pushpaben (7) What should the religious institutions function like?

Shantipurijii...Temples and religious institutions should exclusively function as places where true devotees may gather at regular times to silently and unitedly offer their worship and also as centres where, in times of need, the followers may seek and receive monetary, medical and educational aid to tide over their bad weather of want. Harendranath Chatopadhyaya satirically says:-

"O' I am sure that God above,

Would cease to feel a fool;

If every church and temple

Became a hospital or school.

Pushpaben (8) Which is the easiest way to self-realisation?

Shantipurijii.... Because all of us are in different stages of spiritual evolution, there cannot be any generalisation. According to the great ones, people of emotional temperament evolve through devotion, (bhakti) the intellectual type through con-templation, the active type through 'karma yoga' and individuals of mystic temperament through 'Raja Yoga'. The twin qualifications of mental purity and volcanic aspiration, are however, a common must to the above different approaches that are based on one's mental and intellectual blend.

Pushpaben (9) Within what period can an individual reach God-head?

Shantipurijii... Unless it is a case of an individual with a good balance of developed spiritual practices; brought forward to merit rapid progress leading to the highest realisation at any stage of one's present birth itself, it takes sufficiently too long, NAY, MANYBIRTHS TO RISE ABOVE NESCIENCE.

Pushpaben (10)...The custom prevalent in the fold of Hinduism, particularly among the Vaishnavites, people get themselves initiated by the householder - acharyas. Do you think such initiation can prove productive?

Shantipurijii ...Householders can become good sadhakas. But generally, because they are also prone to be obsessed with the domestic problems and down ward tendencies of attachment, infatuation and other weaknesses of family men, they don't make effective preceptors. Discerning people don't get caught into the trappy nets of the married acharyas. A peep into the history of successful spiritual masters of the world religions, reveals that the society has abundantly profited spiritually from the ascetic teachers. Lord Buddha, Lord Christ. Lord Mahavira. Lord Zarathustra. Lord Shankaracharya, Lord Ramanujacharya, Sant Gyaneshwar, Sant Eknath, Swami Ramtirth, Swami Vivekananda, Swami Dayananda, Ramana Maharishi, are just some to name from the long chain of renowned spiritual preceptors who influenced the course of orderly social and progressive spiritual lives of their respective followers. Certainly, there were a fair number of gradely preceptors from the house-holders too. But then, unfortunately, the present day married preceptors can by no means and in no little measure even be compared to the ideal life led by Sant Tukaram, Sant Kabir, Sri Vallabhacharya, Sri Ramkrishna Paramahamsa and such like divine personalities. But then, because of ignorant women & widows, spiritual quacks are bound to flourish.

Pushpaben (11) What distinguishing qualities of a potential spiritual master differentiates him from the common modern-day religious pedlars?.

Skantipuriji.... They who own nothing, do not foster worldliness in their followers and who at the same time, because of their equal love for all living beings, inspire others to own them spontaneously, they are the very ones who are worthy of acceptance as qualified spiritual guides.

Pushpaben (12) Orthodox circles among the Hindus hold that having accepted an individual as a preceptor, it is sinful to change over to another. What is your opinion in this regard?

Shantipuriji.... Such irrational religious laws have been laid down by commercial preceptors to protect their interests. To stick to a proven pseudo preceptor would be as detrimental to one's progress as continuing to be under the treatment of a medical quack, having chosen him out of mistake or ignorance.

Pushpaben (13) ...Is isolation essential for spiritual progress?

Shantipurijii... Just as a motorist who learns his first lessons in driving on empty grounds and traffic less roads, in order that he may effectually make his way through the roads crowded with vehicular and pedestrian traffic-without being caught up in or causing a traffic jam or accidents, even so, a novitiate in spiritual practices should in the initial stages segregate himself from the dust and din of worldly distractions. Once he gains sufficient control over his mind by taking to self-confinement in solitude, he would be able to freely mix without getting into a fix.

Pushpaben (14) ... Could it be true that a section of class Hindus ate beef also, as they did meat of other animals and birds?

Shantipurijii ...Yes. Historians are of that view. But, beef eating, we learn, was restricted to special religious occasions and wasn't so wide-spread as meat eating was during the periods before and after some centuries after Christ. Meat itself used to be taken occasionally as against the increasing extent of its consumption prevalent in the present times.

Pushpaben (15) ... Can't we stop Muslims and Christians from killing cows for food?

Shantipurijii... Because of its economical value, milched cows aren't generally slaughtered. And yet, such a wholesale ban would be as impossible as the attempt to stop the vast majority of Hindus who are used to eating meat.

Pushpaben (16)... What's your opinion about non-vegetarians being more susceptible to the attacks of diseases?

Shantipurijii ..... That view isn't correct. Being a Bengalee by birth and blood, I myself was circumstanced to eat and grow up by non-vegetarian food; and like most others, I have maintained good health. But of one thing I have no doubt -'FLESH EATING GENERALLY PROMOTES AGGRESSIVENESS.' I am certainly in favour of reverence for' all living beings.

Pushpaben (17) ... What would you say to non-vegetarian food being a hindrance to spiritual practices and progress?

Shantipurijii....It can't be wholly true. There have been a good number of great saints and sages in the fold of Islam, Christianity. Buddhism and Hindus who were used to fleshy food. But then, I suppose, at a particular stage of spiritual consciousness, when one comes to identify himself with all beings, animal food is given up. The great Ramkrishna Paramahamsa, Vivekananda and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu are some of the glaring examples.

Pushpaben (18) A section of Hindus, I mean, the Vaisnavites hold that scriptures prohibit the eating of onions. What's bad about, onions?

Shantipuriji... There's no specific mention anywhere in the scriptures tabooing the eating of onions. Onion contains calcium, sodium - sulphur and iron - including proteins and vitamin 'B' in a good measure. As a body builder and rejuvenating agent, onion has been praised by medical opinion. Because of its heat generating properties, cheapness and because also of its availability throughout the year, it has earned the title of 'POOR MAN'S MUSK.' Its efficacy in the cure of cholera, plague rheumatism, sun-stroke, influenza and impotency is an acknowledged fact. As such, taboo on the use of onions on religious grounds is not rational.

.Pushpaben (19) Do you think that through hypnotism to good can be done to people?

Shantipurijii Hypnotism isn't witchcraft as is wrongly believed by people. It is a good technique of transferring suggestions and inducing involuntary reactions. People who don't respond to good advises in their wakeful state, generally do so while in normal or hypnotic sleep. People can be taught lessons, healed and made to recall their past; reveal what they conceal in the present and even foretell coming events under the spell of hypnosis.

Pushpaben (20) ... How can one break away from a long-standing habit?

Shantipurijii ...The quickest way is to strongly resolve and give it up altogether and all at once. The next best way is to free oneself from the hold of a habit on the lines suggested in the following verses :—

How shall I a habit break?

As you did that habit make.

As you gathered you must lose,

As you yielded, now refuse.

Thread by thread the strand we twist,

Till they bind us neck and wrist.

Thread by thread, the patient hand,

Must untwine ere free we stand.

As we builded stone by stone,

We must toil unhelped alone:

Till the wall is overthrown.

Pushpaben (21) How far in your opinion is it desirable for women entering the arena of public careers?

Shantipurijii ...In the present changed social circumstances when women are proving to be much more intelligent than men, there is nothing wrong in women taking up jobs. Capable women with a good educational background shouldn't waste their talents in the kitchens. Apart from the economical advantages, careers can keep them usefully busy. However, mothers shouldn't take to jobs at the cost of neglecting child care.

Miss Catherine (22) Do you think that belief in religion and God is absolutely essential for one's spiritual evolution? I mean, wouldn't it suffice if one gave up the animality in oneself, became good and ethically perfect?

Shantipurijii ...Belief in. the existence of a supreme power superintending the day to day creation, preservation and dissolution in the world of our being is common to all. It is only the mode of belief which might be differing. As such, the relative term 'atheist' only signifies a person of dissenting belief as contrast to his negation of God. But, paradoxically enough, the so called atheists have proved to be much more humane than the vast majority of fanatical believers in God. A PERFECT HUMANE CONDUCT IS INDEED THE PRIME REQUISITE FOR SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION. THERE'S NO DENYING IT.

Miss Catherine (23) Is it true that God puts his devotees to tests?

Shantipurijii ... ... No. The Lord in His omniscience knows our worth, and as such, there is no necessity for a physical test by HIM. That aside, what chances can there be for we puny beings to pass the tests by the omnipotent Lord? When in self - created troubles, the hypocrites foolishly say that God is testing them.

Miss Catherine (24) How would you, Sir! account for the poverty, hunger and disorder that are rampant in the God made world?

Shantipurijii ...There is absolute law, order and harmony in the God created Universe. But man in his imagined wisdom has been attempting to disrupt them and hence the present chaotic conditions throughout the world. Man cannot change creator's cardinal scheme and God does not interfere with the wanton human blunders. HE EXPECTS US TO MAKE AMENDS AND LIVE IN PEACE.

Miss Catherine (25) Are there in India living personalities who have realised the self? Can you name some whom I can meet?

Shantipurijii.... At no time the world is empty of them. But then, the difficulty is, the realised ones don't run about drum-beating their spiritual achievements and those that do, aren't worth running after. However he who radiates bliss, he whose presence and dealing stimulate an irresistible sense of belonging and he whose very sight generates a feeling of upliftment, such a one can be deemed to be a realised soul.

Miss Catherine (26) What is your opinion about the foreign missionaries' social work in India?

Shantipurijii ...Barring their clever practice of Proselytisation, honest admission would lead us to believe that they have worked more sincerely and have bettered the lot of the cruelly neglected and suffering Hindus than what the Indian social institutions and Hindu religious leaders have done.

Miss Catherine (27) I hear many big people even believing that Sri Satya Sai Baba has come down on earth solely to rid people of all their calamities and afflictions. Could it be true?

Shantipurijii...Intelligent people don't believe in such deceptive declarations. If by big people you mean the rich and the high-placed ones, it is a very common knowledge that they are all worldly and therefore gullible. To be guided by their beliefs on issues into which their intellect hardly penetrate, can only be compared to the foolish act of going out for boating on the rough river waters without oars and sails. Through my very reliable informants I learn that as against numerous known and knowable failures of his blessings of cure, there are not even a few verifiable cases of genuine successes to the credit of the wizard who is falsely operating in the name of God. From what I have heard of the popular Mohamed Chel of Gujarat and Mohamed Be of Egypt who could also read - peoples' thoughts and produce things, I am inclined to aver that they were honest entertainers who never made any false claim of being Gods or possessing divine powers as distinct from the spirits' which aided them.

Miss Catherine (28) Can the partial or the cumulous effects of one's fate impede one's , spiritual progress?

Shantipurijii.... No-fate only creates situations. The discerning, view them rationally and don't allow them to affect their mental health. Spiritual evolution is essentially a mental process and outer conditions - the off-shoots of fate cannot check the progress of an awakened soul.

Someone has beautifully put it this way:-

"One ship drives east and another west.

With the self same winds that biow.

T's the set of the sails,

And not the gales,

Which tells the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate

As we voyage along through life:

T's the set of the soul

That decides its goal

And not the calm or strife.

Shantipurijii finished and returned the questionnaire to Dr. Damayanti and rose up saying, "I was tied up to you all for good many hours. I must now take up my delayed sadhana.

We offered our salutations, begged leave of him and walked out of the cellar.

Out in the open, Dr. Damayanti asked Miss Catherine as to how she liked Shri Shantipurijii's replies.

"Well, truly, they breathe sapience and carry conviction. His transformation, breadth of vision and catholicity of outlook are most remarkable," said she.

We went to Veraval, an historical place of pilgrimage and the sisters parted from me. I went my way, feeling, that just as a barren land when ploughed well and fed with rich fertilizers become cultivable and yield good crops, even so, when good thoughts are pumped into a base person, either by the living or the dead, he too does become good and transformed.

## BALANCED UNDERSTANDING

"Hallao! Swamiji; namaskars to you," greeted a lady familiarly, from across the riverside, as 1 was entering Mana, a village near Badrinarayan in the Himalayas.

She came up to me in fast strides. It was Parvati, the daughter of Roopsingh, a Gadwali friend of mine. She touched my feet offering her respects. "It is a pleasant surprise meeting you after so many years!" exclaimed she, with affection and said that her father was at home and that she would herself hurry homewards as soon as she finished washing the dirty linen. Pale and pulled down, Parvati presented an appearance of a lady in post -delivery condition.

My friendship with Roopsingh started during my visit to Badrinarayan, a renown place of pilgrimage in Uttar Pradesh, in 1949. He had endeared himself to me by his bravery and a high sense of honesty. I had witnessed him saving a Punjabi lady who in the course of bathing in the Ganges was being carried away by the turbulent waters. On another occasion I saw him restoring to a pilgrim a purse containing Rs. 1300/-, found by him.

I plodded on and reached Roopsingh's residence. I was going to him after three years and Roopsingh who was preparing a hookah for himself received me with pleasant feelings.

After offering me a seat next to him, he excused himself for few minutes and went to the adjacent room with his hookah for privacy plus pulls from its long pipe.

He returned charging his lungs and the nervous system with sufficient intakes of the nicotian smoke and was badly smelling tobacco. We talked about the various known, unknown and unknowable saints in the Himalayan region.

As we were absorbed that way a person came in. My friend Roopsingh ruffled himself to a start on his feet and welcomed him with awe and respect. Making the gentleman to wait a while, he ran in and brought a mattress and quickly spread it on the swing-board in the room and asked his respectable visitor to sit thereon. That person of drooping moustach settled himself on the mattress-spread swing-board and holding on to its bars, backed himself with a little pressure of his feet and gave the swing - board slow motions of swinging.

Roopsingh introduced that gentleman as being one Sri Amarsingh, the head of a nearby village and that he had come to negotiate a deal to sell a piece of his land in Mana. Then they triflingly talked to themselves, in their language, on common matters first and sale and purchase of land subsequently.

Not much time later, I saw Roopsingh counting time to rise. He stole an opportunity, went into an inner room and came with a soft quilt and a big resting pillow. Folding the quilt into fours, he placed it near the wall and adjusted the pillow over it for a support. Then, pointing towards that prepared seat and by way of beckoning Sri Amarsingh, he said, "please, brother, come down here, you will be more comfortable on this." Roopsingh's elderly visitor transferred himself to that seat near me.

Thereafter, Roopsingh gathered the mattress from the swing-board by his outstretched hands, with a downward sweeping fold, went in and returned with the prepared hookah for Sri Amarsingh.

Amarsingh was comfortable enough on the swing-board and the little rays of sunlight which fell on it was a welcome warmth at that part of the still chilly morning and I failed to understand as to why, in the name of greater comfort, Roopsingh transferred Amarsingh from that warm and higher seat to the one which he had prepared below. Stranger was also his manner of taking back the mattress in that introvert sweep. But his facial features were however, quite normal.

Roopsingh resumed his seat and they spent little more time talking tersely and terminated it by shaking each other by hands and stood up together. Sri Amarsingh took leave of Roopsingh, waved me a good-bye and walked off in the gait of big people.

When Roopsingh turned towards me after sending off his visitor, I found his countenance changing, his ever-gay spirits sinking and his tough hands shivering. I watched on puzzled Roopsingh came over to me and seating himself said, "Swamiji! something bad has happened." "I guess so,"I rejoined and asked him as to what was the matter."

Disclosingly he said, "Swamiji ! you know my daughter Parvati. Exactly nine days back she gave birth to a baby girl. We celebrated the occasion befittingly. You perhaps, know not, in our Gadwal here, masculine population predominates and as such, the birth of a baby girl is heralded with gaiety. Women in these parts are very hard working and they are married against fat-dowries from the bridegroom side. All this is said, swamiji, to give you an idea of the high degree in which the feminine births in the family are therefore valued. Now, unfortunately, DUE TO MY FORGETFULNESS, the baby girl has been killed." Roopsingh burst into a momentary sobbing. I patted him on the back and asked him to take it easy.

Picking up the threads, he went on, "what was to happen has happened and I and my friend from the other village were accidental instruments to the episode. All this is well understood; but what am I to tell my daughter is the question that is bothering me. Much as I know my daughter and her philosophical bent of mind, in the face of the incident having taken place in tragic circumstances, I don't know how she will react over the death of her first daughter," and he questioned, "How am I to break the news to her ?"

"But how did it all happen? I was right here," enquired I.

"You see, swamiji," began Roopsingh and answering my query said, "as you well know, whenever you happened to visit me, I always offered you a seat on the swing-board. But today, when you came, because my grand-daughter was lying wrapped up in sleep on it, I made you to sit next to me. But somehow, when Sri Amarsingh came, the knowledge of my grand-daughter lying on the swing-board, clean escaped from my head and in my joy over his visit and in my enthusiasm to make him comfortable, brought a mattress and spread it on the swing-board and the bundled nine-day old babe and made him sit over it. Because of the thickness of the mattress and the narrowness of the board, the bulge, which the live object lying below must have caused, wasn't noticed by any of us. The other contributory factor was, because Parvati had put the baby to sleep with a little paste of opium on its tongue, as is customer for mothers in this cold Himalayan region to do so, occasionally, to keep their children warm and sleeping for quite sometime till they attended to the household work without let or hindrance, possibly induced a comma in the child and therefore brought forth no cry from the infant - neither as the weight of the mattress touched it and nor even when Amarsingh sat over it. With the result, the pressure so caused on it, crushed the life out of the little one instantly."

It was only well after sometime, that I remembered the presence of the baby underneath the mattress over which Sri Amarsingh was seated. A quick glance at the position was enough for me to surmise the inevitable to have happened. The situation was past any remedy and I didn't want Amarsingh to know of the accident and pain him too. So, suppressing my disturbed emotions, I went in and brought the quilt and this pillow and casually requested him to come over on this seat. Then of course, I removed the mattress and the flattened dead remains of the baby to the inner room. A quick examination was enough to reveal that life was extinct in it. For the reason stated earlier, I controlled my feelings till Amarsingh left," concluded Roopsingh."

I was taken into the room and Roopsingh showed me the lifeless little body. Because of the tenderness of the infant baby just nine days old and weighing about six pounds; it appeared to me that with the very fall of the heavy mattress on it, the as yet infirm frame must have been smothered and that death must have taken place due to that altered condition of blood which hinders replacement of carbonic acid by oxygen - medically termed as Asphyxia.

The way it all had happened was really very inadvertent and tragic. Roopsingh who made no hue and cry over it, lest the shockful result of his forgetfulness should hurt the feelings of his friend, brought to the fore Roopsingh's commendable abilities in self-restraint. Amidst calamities also, people of developed understanding see to it that they don't cause pain to others. Even today, Sri Amarsingh does not know, the causes which led to the sorrowful death of Roopsingh's grand-daughter.

The hurrying foot-steps of his daughter which could be heard, alerted Roopsingh and he was feeling out of sorts. Parvati put the washed clothes on the line for drying and stepped in.

She engaged me into talking with her and I could see Roopsingh thoughtfully getting ready to apprise Parvati of what had happened during her absence from the house.

In a serious demeanour, Roopsingh posed, "Parvati! will you tell me as to how you would react if the Director of a drama having given you some, valuable ornaments for use, to act the role of a queen in a play, took back those ornaments after the show ends?"

"That's easily answered, daddy. I would, as expected of me, use them in the knowledge that they don't belong to me and that they are in my temporary charge to be taken back from me after the drama is over. And when it comes to returning them physically, I would thankfully hand them over - feeling grateful for having been allowed to make use of them while the show lasted. This is what I have learnt from the human characters of 'Ramlila' parties which enact the episodes of Ramayana on a public stage," replied Parvati.

"And Parvati what would you say to this human life on earth being a drama and Lord God being its director?" asked Roopsingh, next.

In reply to it, the intelligent daughter of Roopsingh at once said, "our day to day experiences, daddy, compel us to believe that all the bounties which we enjoy here on earth, including relationships with the living come from God, the Universal Director; and the ever-changing situations in our lives are indeed like shifting scenes in a big drama."

"But then, father! what's wrong with you? Why, as never before, are you asking me such questions today?" demanded Parvati.

"Parvati! there's nothing wrong with me. I simply tested the ground of your understanding to see if it can withstand the knowledge of a seemingly sad situation. The fact is, by an accidental forgetfulness on my part, your daughter died an hour back." revealed Roopsingh at last.

"If that is so," said Parvati, and punctuated by adding, "I take it that it has happened according to the will of nature and I have no grouse or bitterness for what has taken place. Now, pray, you attend to the burial while I get through the cooking in time."

Roopsingh called some people from the village and proceeded to the riverside to give the dead infant a suitable burial.

Parvati asked nothing about how it all had happened. For, she seemed to rightly hold that such a knowledge wouldn't make any difference. Said otherwise, her attitude was reminiscent of those prudent persons who don't waste time to delve into the causes of irremediable results and resort to insensible worrying, weeping, wailing and whining over the past.

Her understanding was commendable. Ordinarily, any other woman in her place would have taken the incident too much to heart, particularly, because, it took place for want of awakened care on the part of Roopsingh. Though Parvati was not much educated, yet, to her practical wisdom, forget fulness was not synonymous with wanton neglect and she saw no usefulness in blaming her father or herself. It could be said that she was free from the weaknesses of infatuation and mineness-the principal causes of mental unrest .

Parvati had lost her daughter who would have otherwise grown up to be a beautiful and intelligently a useful lady like herself and got happily married had she lived. Now, unless Parvati happens to be blessed with a further baby girl, she wouldn't be privileged to enjoy that happiness and respect which normally goes to the share of girls' mothers, in those parts and clans where females are in shortage. Even in the face of such odd prospects too, Parvati reconciled herself to the whole situation with an appreciable calmness of feelings.

The way Roopsingh handled the tight situation, when weighed wholly, reveals the able psychologist in him and not as one who attempted to cleverly get away with his carelessness, as it may on the surface appear.

Gita's definition of an individual of mental equanimity, derives positive proofs of human possibility of its factual experience in life, more through the mental attitudes of persons like Parvati who can face the common and uncommon situations with the balanced understanding and certainly not by those platform preachers who only deliver lucid loudspeaker lectures and not again by those weak minded ink and pen pushers who write classic commentaries on it. It would do an abundant good to all, if most of our current day religious preachers who crave and clamour for comforts cum currency notes, sit at the feet of stable minded beings like Parvati and first learn live lessons in detachment and dispassion with a view to adding life to their present unproductive preaching. This is how I felt as I returned to Badrinarayan after my meals with Roopsingh and Parvati.

##  HEMAVATI'S HUMANE HIGHNESS

Jimmy, the dog came running to me as I entered the compound of my friend's bungalow in a quiet suburb of Calcutta. It rolled itself on my feet, licking them and wagging its tail.

The maid-servant ushered me into the drawing room and informed that Mr. Parikh and Mrs. Hemavati Parikh were away in the city attending a religious meeting, the junior was in his study room and that my apartment was ready.

I went into my room, had a bath and was seated watching the floating incense smoke in the room. In the meantime, Bhaskar, the junior, rushed into the room with his tape-recorder. "Om Namo Narayanaya, Swamiji," he greeted and presently said that his parents would be back in time for dinner.

"If you are not otherwise busy, I want you to listen to a good poem which I have just now recorded," said he and went on, "it is in a metre of your fancy, it is good because it is on ALMIGHTY and I chanced to find it in a monthly," he concluded, by way of an explanation.

He connected the plug in the switchboard and I heard the following poem :-

"Upbraid not, or curse not His fame,

If not the brief span's yearnings blest,

For the bright light that wrought your frame,

That glows in north; south, east and west.

Aware he is of sinful hearts,

Of wretched hands and crooked minds:

That slowly brightens cloudy parts.

Or holds rods for unlawful kinds.

That too with perfect true measure

And with unerring reason's touch,

That would enrich the mind's treasure

And snugly free from passions' clutch.

Oh, lament not for selfish want,

Like a child, just few summers spent;

For ye must deem of others gaunt

And myriads towards HIM bent.

And bribe Him not with batty pelf,

Or threaten if the game is lost,

For He's not man of one's own self,

But guide of future, present, past.

Nay, He loathes all effusive shows,

But is within, oneself to soothe;

His voice in silence calm echoes

And re-choes with dazzling TRUTH.

May we then fare with wisdom's aid

And onward march firmly till death;

And humbly find His grace sprayed

And better bliss in 'very breath ?'

"Sure enough, it is a very nice poem," remarked I and asked him, "do you at this age of yours understand all the lofty thoughts that are couched in the verses?"

Bhaskar replied, "no, I need not pretend that I do follow everything that is said But mummy tells me that in order that I may not be caught doing small things when I, am big, I should sensibly strive to learn big things while I am yet small."

It was something pleasant to hear that from the teenager.

Mr. and Mrs. Parikh returned in time. We had our dinner, jointly said our prayers and went to sleep.

On the following day, a little before evening when sri Parikh was away in his office, the junior, in his school and the servants were out of the house - after my usual bath then, I was taking lime - juice with shrimati Hemavati Parikh. At that time the door bell rang.

My hostess rose and opened the main door. There was a young man of forty with a revolver in his hand. Hemavati was momentarily taken aback.

He ordered her in Bengali to march backwards to the seat and warned me not to move. There was firmness in his voice.

Disregarding the orders of the stranger, shrimati Parikh turned back and coolly returned to her seat unperturbed. That non-chalant attitude of a lady perplexed the stranger. She then said to him invitingly, "gentleman, close the door, come right here and take your seat."

He came in without closing the door and standing a little away from us, he declared, "I have not come here to enjoy your hospitality, I want money-come now, out with it or else I will shoot you both."

"Don't be childish," quipped Hemavati smilingly and added, "you may be in need of money, but you don't appear that good to be able to shoot and kill. Be sensible, come over and tell us what is troubling you."

The stranger who must have necessarily come expecting either a courageous resistance or the lady's yielding to his demands, out of fear, was put out of his wits when he heard what Hemavati had said. So, he was turning to go away.

Hemavati got up, held him by his arm and said, "now brother, pocket your revolver, collect yourself and confide to us your case. I assure you, I mean good."

That peculiar appeal, coming as it did from a lady whom he had come to rob. worked magically and he fell at the feet of Hemavati and imploringly said, "I am sorry madam, for my wrongful entry into your place with criminal intentions. I now realize that I ought not to have taken recourse to such an offence."

Hemavati helped that dazed man to the nearby sofa and offered him her glass of lime juice. After he had gulped the drink and wiped off the thick trickles of perspiration from his forehead, my hostess once again pressed him to tell the true details of the necessity which forced him to stage that unsuccessful hold-up with the dreadful revolver.

Like the repentent good men who don't conceal anything, he gave us the following account of himself and the circumstances which motivated him to do what he had tried to :-

"My name is Prafulchandra Ghosh and I was employed as a Purchasing Officer in one or the popular local mills. My relationship with the General Manager of the mill got strained because i didn't work to the tune of his corrupt designs. As a result, he somehow managed to throw me out of job at the end of my eight years of service."

After my dismissal, I had been on a hunt for a suitable position, but without any success. What little money I had as personal savings got spent in the past two years of my unemployment. With no useful relatives or capable contacts to give me a restart anywhere, I had to carry on for quite sometime, meeting the expenses of maintaining my family made up of my mother, wife and three children. This I did with what meagre, payments I received out of temporary jobs here and there. Then came a time when we had to dispose off items after items of household things including the used and unused clothing to keep the wolf from the door."

"When we had nothing more to sell and when the walls of want were closing in on us, having been razed to utter poverty, much against the will and warning of my mother, I sent my wife to take up the job of cooking in a rich family. Her employers treated her generously - giving her Rs. 60/- p. m. and enough food to feed all of us. Whether they were treating her so nicely, being solely pleased with her work or they were pleasing her that way so that she may be trapped to please them by her person, we didn't know. My daughter, who was doing her first year in B. A., also happened to engage herself to coach the three children of a magistrate."

"Things went well for few months and one day my wife returned home unusually early, to report that she had quit the job because of the indecent advances by all the male members of the house where she worked. It was a case of a start with a brilliant blaze which soon ended in ashes. My mother's fears that it is never safe for honour-loving women to take up jobs under men or where males also work, came shockingly true. She told me to stop my daughter Daksha also from going to Magistrate's house to coach. She argued that the human dispensators of justice were no angels, and therefore, they should not be trusted also when it comes to allowing marriageable daughters to visit their places alone."

"Providence seemed to be vexed with us all who valued honesty and honour above everything. The worst came when on an evening my daughter reached home with her honour hurt and harmed by the magistrate's brother."

"Because of our bad circumstances, we could do nothing. For, to rise against people in authority can only spell doom. Even though we took the disgrace, lying low, the moony magistrate, methinks, scented trouble from us. To save his face, therefore, he caused a false report to be made against me to the effect that I was running a brothel in my house. We suffered police enquiries and harassment. I was served with a notice by the Commissioner of Police to show cause why I should not be externed from the city limits. It was all horrowing and my old mother who couldn't stand the bitter embarassment, threw herself in front of a speeding bus and commited suicide."

"Since about a week my youngest son is suffering from typhoid. I couldn't get him admitted into any of the public hospitals and for want of money he has been denied proper medicinal treatment."

"To top this all, our land-lord, grocer and few other creditors are pressing for the payment of their dues. Thus sunk in distress, the lone star in the sky of alternatives was to rob someone to provide myself to live on. After considerable hesitation I decided to have a try and since the past three days, I had been watching your house and came by the knowledge that you must be all alone in the house at this part of the day. So, during the course of my daily visit to a friend of mine who is a police official, I was able to slip away with his loaded revolver after filling the empty holster with heavy iron pieces - as planned, and that's how I came over with the intention to rob you."

"From your gentle ways I know I have been forgiven by you both. But, because of the theft of the revolver, the hunt for me might be on and I must return the revolver to my friend and face the consequences" concluded he, his pitiable story.

"From the way he spoke in a remorse-stricken tone, without pausing or fumbling, we were more than convinced" about the truth of everything he had said.

Hemavati then asked him as to what were his immediate monetary needs. Sri Praful Ghosh informed her that Rs. 900/- would suffice to clear off all his debts.

Hemavati brought Rs.1000/- and handing the same to Sri Praful Ghosh said to him, "take this amount and pay away your debts. Come over to me tomorrow at 8a.m. In the meantime, I shall speak to my husband and fix you up somewhere."

"Now pass on the revolver to me, I shall persuade the official to forget the whole affair. You yourself may meet him after eight tonight." directed Hemavati.

Sri Praful Ghosh handed over the revoIver to her, gave her the official's residential address and left with mixed feelings of gloom, glee, and gratitude.

After Sri Praful Ghosh had left us, I remarked appreciatingly, "sister! Your captivating courage cum classic, compassion is admirable. You got through the tragic test triumphantly."

With unmixed modesty, Hemavati said, "swamiji! to serenely face a loaded revolver demands more than human courage. The true position was. the way that forlorn fellow held the revolver with his index finger on the trigger-guard, instead of on the trigger itself, and from his trembling hand, I deduced that he had never before used a gun and that he was not a trained robber. That's what kept me unruffled. Moreover, having seriously read a number of Sexton Blake's detective series, I have learnt quite a few practical lessons tactfully tackle such stunning situations. The circumstances attending sri Ghosh's life are indeed sorrowful. It is our duty to share with the distressed, a little from the God given gifts. Unless such persons are helped in time, they would either take to crime or commit suicide. Both the courses can be bad for the society."

Thereafter, Hemavati proceeded to the police official's house and without telling him anything about the hold-up, she deftly handed over to him his revolver. The officer hadn't discovered the theft till then. To her satisfaction, Hemavati found the officer quite understanding and forgiving.

At dinner time, she cleverly discussed with her husband about the desirability of helping the displaced persons and made him to promise to suitably rehabilitate sri Praful Ghosh who was seething in poverty. Her husband also wasn't informed about sri Ghosh's pranks with the stolen revolver.

I mutely and musingly listened to it all and felt that :-

Between a desiderate dame's decision and demand;

There's hardly any scope for masculine command.

Sri Praful Ghosh didn't turn up on the following day. Hemavati got his address from the police officer and when she went there, she found the house vacated. The neighbours told her that sri Ghosh had cleared his debts and that they knew not where he had shifted to with his family members.

However, with the chance help of a tongawallah, we managed to trace him with his family members in a Goddess's temple in Mathurapura, a small town about forty miles away from Calcutta.

When asked as to why he had left Calcutta that way, sri Ghosh simply said, "dear sister! you have done more than what a lowly man like me can expect and I didn't want to hang on to your generosity any further."

Persuading him to return to Calcutta, the charitable minded Hemavati told him that her husband had agreed to do everything to enable him to re-establish himself, sri Ghosh came along with his dear ones.

He was temporarily accommodated in the out-house of the bungalow. On the next day, Hemavati provided suitable clothes for all of them and sri Ghosh was appointed as a Site Manager of the colliery in the - hold of the Parikhs. After about a week, Mrs. Parikh procured for the new Manager, a decent house on rent and gave him sufficient money to equip the family with the various household essentials to start the house.

Now, after ten years of faithful service, sri Ghosh is a happy man enjoying a share in the business of his benefactors.

Isn't it too clear that Hemavati was instrumental not only in uplifting a good family thrown in unfavourable circumstances, but she has thereby also saved the society from the atrocities of a decoit that sri Ghosh could have easily turned into, had his first hold-up succeeded?

Whenever I recall Hemavati's humane highness, my little head bows down to her, out of admiration and respect.

##  RAKSHA ROSE AND RAISED

As we stepped out of the car outside the city jail, we heard the prison guards being ordered to attention and to present arms to the Jail Superintendent.

It was a full-moon day of the Hindu month of 'shraavana' and I had to accompany a government official to watch the ceremony of tying of the bands of protection to the prisoners lodged in one of the city jails of Gujarat, by the women members of some social institutions.

Legend has it that 'kshatriya' ladies tied small cloth packets containing mustard grains and barley on the right wrists of their dear ones, wishing them protection and success in the battles. In the Hindu puranas, we come across the case of the royal mother Kunti having tied such a packet to her grand-son Abhimanyu. A mythological instance of this ceremony tells us that the lady who ties the incanted packet of protection to a person's wrist, becomes an accepted sister to him and as such, he is bound to protect her interests. The glaring case in point comes from the episode in which Lord Vishnu, it is said, was won over to function as the gateman of Raja Bali who was sent down to rule 'Patala,' the last of the seven regions of the world underneath the earth and that Goddess Laxmi secured His release by tying the protective packet to Bali's wrist. Then we have cases from the Moghul period when Rajasthan queens are believed to have employed these protective packets of sisterly sentiments and love to make peace treaties with the Muslim rulers.

With the passage of time, however, this practice took a different turn and in the present days we find women tying cotton or silken tufted threads on the wrists of their brothers, on the full-moon day of every 'shraavana' month. This is generally done to get gifts of monies from their elder brothers and from others who have been accepted as such, for the said gain. When the expected gifts don't come, the faces some of these disappointed sisters make, can win first prizes in any photographic competition.

When a lady formally establishes a sisterly bond with an acquaintance or even a rank stranger, by fastening the band of protection, by that solemn act she also pledges to offer him every possible help in times of need. This sacred aspect of obligation involved in the practice of tying the protection bands, isn't ordinarily respected in the present times of mass degeneration when love and relationships are anything but sincere feelings.

Six cars soon pulled up outside the prison gates and about twenty women got out of them. I happened to know most of them. They belonged to the group of out-door pleasure plus publicity loving women. Many of them were well to do, all were educated and a few among them, i knew, were discarded and frustrated housewives. While some in the group were really doing some good to the society, though in a patronising way, most of them never knew what it is to pity or to help the needy.

One Rakshaben's presence in the group surprised me. A graduate from a Bombay college, Raksha was the only daughter of a benevolent big businessman of the city. She shunned sophistry, publicity and the fashionable ladies' clubs where irresponsible housewives who have scant care for their children or elders at home, usually gather, to waste and while away their time, in the name of social service. Like me, some alone know Rakshaben functioning as an institution all by herself; dedicated to live and silently work for the welfare of the helpless. Like all the useful selfless social workers, she is also free from encumbrances, being under a vow not to marry.

The Superintendent of the jail welcomed all of us and we were taken inside the prison. About twenty five prisoners were lined up on the main ground there. We were told that the convicts with white caps were the casual offenders, black-capped ones, habituate, those with yellow caps were long-term prisoners, and that the one in the row with the black and red head-wear was a habitual who had escaped from the prison a few times. We were also told that the normal practice was to allow only casual prisoners to participate in the ceremony and that it was at the instance of a popular lady social worker who believed in the Gandhian ideals of equality, that all categories of prisoners were chosen to take part on that day.

One of the jailors told me that the importance which those annually visiting women attached to the ceremony, was such that the function began only when the pressmen arrived.

Not much later, one reporter and a press photographer came in and we saw the leader of the women team direct the ladies to go and stand in front of each prisoner, ready with the thread band.

The ceremony started with a popular prayer of Mahatma Gandhi and the ladies began tying the self-made thread bands on the right wrists of the prisoners. The whole thing was done in a routine manner, without the slightest trace of fine feelings. They said nothing to the prisoners but had their well made up and smiling faces turned to the press camera.

Rakshaben was however the lone exception. She conducted herself quite differently. She who had to tie that band of bond to the black and red-capped prisoner, genuinely seemed to feel that from the moment she fastened that tufted thread to the wrist of the said convict, he would thenceonwards become her adopted brother and that it would be her duty, by reason of his being displaced, to protect him by rendering whatever help he might thereafter need.

Rakshaben therefore asked him some personal questions and learned from him that he was one Ramnik from a family of harijans, that he had studied upto tenth standard and that he had no relatives. He told her also that he fell into the company of slick housebreakers and that he was in the jail for the fourth term, with two more years to pass behind the bars.

Rakshaben said to him, "notwithstanding your bad past, from now onwards, you are my accepted brother and because you happen to be in odd circumstances, it shall be my duty, henceonwards, to take care of you and to put you on the road to a changed good life. I shall be visiting you as often as the prison rules permit and shall also write to you."

That hearing moved him and tears flowed out of his eyes spontaneously. Ramnik's reaction was a pointer to Rakshaben that he could certainly change on to a better life.

The function ended and all of us left after the lady in-charge of the party made a note of their visit in the visitors' book maintained by the prison.

Four months later, when i occasioned to meet Rakshaben at her house, true to her promise to the prisoner, she was getting ready to go to the jail that month also, to meet Ramnik, her adopted brother. She asked me to accompany her.

On our way to the jail, she showed me some letters which she had received from Ramnik in reply to those she had written to him. The general contents of those letters from Ramnik revealed real repentance and reaffirmed resolve to start afresh to become and remain good.

Then, giving me the particulars of what she had herself written to Ramnik in her earlier letters, Rakshaben told me that she had asked him to reflect upon the harm and losses his bad ways must have caused to many; to sincerely pray to the Lord for His forgiveness and also for bestowing upon him better understanding of life's highest purpose augmented with an unflinching determination to live it profitably well.

We reached the prison and met Ramnik. From the way he met and spoke to us, it was clear that he was surely serious and sincere about switching over to self-improvement. Rakshaben gave him a written prayer which was somewhat similar to the following versified yearning of R. K. Dalal:-

"When the great eternal auditor,

My hook of life receives,

And he checks the daily entries

That are written on the leaves;

May He find the accounts in order

And no need for fear or shame,

But a credit carried forward

To the.glory of HIS NAME."

Rakshaben also handed him some eatables, we bade him good-bye and returned home.

After a spell of nine months, when I again met Rakshaben, I still found her intent upon doing what she could to retrieve Ramnik and robe him to lead an honourable life. She was in fact eagerly counting the days of his release from the prison.

Rakshaben seemed to believe that refraining from causing harm to others, and sympathies expressed by the lips are only partial goodness. But, doing something positive for the welfare of the forlorn, the forsaken and the fallen is what can and does truly add to our being fully good to others - making us dear to the society and the Saviour.

Rakshaben gave me for my further perusal, one of the letters she had received from Ramnik after my last meeting her. Though it appeared to have been laboured, all the same, it carried conviction to the reader that the writer of that letter was bent upon turning a new leaf in his life. Rakshaben also gave me to understand that she had been making enquiries from the prison staff about Ramnik and that the reliable reports received, reassured her that Ramnik's general behaviour was coursing in the direction of desirable goodness and also that he had earned till then full quota of remissions for good conduct.

One day, well after six months of my last information about Ramnik, I received a letter from Rakshaben intimating to me that Ramnikbhai was to be released from the prison after five days and that she would be happy if I went along with her then, to receive her accepted brother. Due to earlier engagements which I had to keep, I had to regretfully send in a negative reply.

Time whisked away and I didn't hear anything from Rakshaben about Ramnik's whereabouts. Over two and a half years must have passed and on one sunny day, unexpectedly I met Ilaben the cousin sister of Rakshaben, in Veeraval, Saurashtra, where I go every year for a bath at the point where it is said that Lord Krishna gave up his human tabernacle.

There was a stranger with her and an infant .boy in her arms. Pointing to him, Ilaben asked me, "swamiji! do you recognise this gentleman?"

"I don't recall having met him," I replied and readily rejoined, "if I am told as to where, when and with whom you know me to have met him, that would perhaps connect me to recapitulate."

"Don't tell me that you have forgotten the person whom Rakshaben ..... !"

"Goodness God! it is Ramnik." I exclaimed interjectingly.

That person bowed in acknowledgement. Iinstantly recalled the big old prison, the ceremony of the tying of those bands of protection, my subsequent visit to Ramnik in the company of Rakshaben and his letters to her. All of it flashed forth afresh and I was face to face with the one-time black and red-capped prisoner Ramnik who was then undergoing imprisonment for house - breaking.

His presence in the company of Ilaben was self-explanatory. For Rakshaben had far earlier confided to me her intention to induce Ilaben to marry Ramnik if everything went well. So, I hastened to congratulate them over their matrimonial union and the baby boy's birth.

After my bath, I was taken to their third floor house in Veeraval, to be told all that had taken place after Ramnik's release from the prison.

At their well-kept house, Ramnikbhai informed me in detail how on the day of his release from the prison, Rakshaben had gone there to receive him with new sets of clothes and took him to her hospitable house. Carrying on ahead, he said. "all the inmates of the house took me into their fold without interesting themselves about my antecedents to avoid embarassing me. It seemed to me that the considerate Rakshaben had so prepared the ground in advance. I who was used to living in slums and in the dispicable company of thugs, didn't dream to be rocketted that way to enjoy the love and comforts of the affluent. As such, the first few fortnights found me in a pool of estrangement. But, by beloving treatment, everyone at home loosened the shackles of my inferiority complex and I began to get on well."

I had done nothing in life except picking locks, thieving and spending the monies so got, in the various slums of my choice. During my first term of imprisonment, I was allotted the work of assisting in the tailoring section in the jail. Subsequently, whenever I went back to the jail, I was given the same work. That way I had learnt little light stitching work and used to prepare prisoners' clothing, but the knowledge of that rough pattern of tailoring was going to be of no use to me even in the villages. Because of this handicap, the problem of making me do something was felt to be somewhat difficult. However, one qualification of mine which appealed to my benefactors, was my ability to sit in a place for a long many hours at a stretch. So, at last, after weighing many other thoughts about me, they decided to make me run a small store, selling sweets and chocolates. But before being able to do that all by myself, it was thought necessary that I undergo little training in the line. Accordingly, I was sent to assist a big store owner in the sales and despatches. Outside shop hours I was instructed to read books on h'ves of great people and improve my handwriting. Rakshaben herself helped me to learn little lessons in maintaining small accounts. As the days went by, their love and liking for me increased. By diligent work and good behaviour, I endeared myself to them, all the more. So much so, even the visitors to the house were told that I was a member in the family. Thus passed six months.''

I was very soon considered to be fit enough to run a shop independently. Rakshaben therefore made necessary arrangements and installed me as a little shop keeper. My progress was watched with interest. I began faring well. Now and then, some of my old friends from the criminal world used to visit me in the shop. To avoid those notorious ones wasn't easy. Yet, I somehow succeeded in keeping myself clear from their contaminative contacts."

"The one sustaining force which wrought wholesome changes in me, was the love which Rakshaben, her noble parents and other inmates of the house showered upon me in a measure and of a kind I had never enjoyed and much less dreamt I would ever do."'

Time passed on like the wind and Ila, the cousin sister of Rakshaben who was influenced by Gandhiji's love for that section of the society whom the brainless brahmins and the other so called people of high birth abhor, married me according to the Arya Samaj rites."

"For many reasons, it was thought good for us to be shifted to Veeraval; and with the substantial help from Rakshaben's parents, I have started a General Store here and am doing fine."

"But for Rakshaben and her generous, parents, I should have landed in the jails again - after a few bouts of cheap pleasures earned through crime - missing the present freedom and respectability." thus punctuated Sri Ramnikbhai.

Truly, Ramnik was completely changed. His general appearance, his way of talking, his language, expressions, manners and the gait of walking, the pose of sitting and every conduct concomitantly connected with living, showed remarkable refinement. Just as sandal trees transfer their fragrance to the wild creepers that coil to their trunks and branches; even so, Ramnik's continued stay in the fold of noble persons, instilled in him civility and goodness. Such are the marvelous effects of the company, communion and closeness with the good.

Rakshaben has proved it for all of us, beyond all reasonable doubts too, that through true love, understanding, tolerance, sympathy and suitable help, those that take to criminal living - drifting from the honourable path of goodness can certainly be won back - allowing them also to drink at the God's fountain of better and blissful life.

For our common good and safety, it is imperative that all of us should concertedly pool our possibilities and pull together to wean away our misled brethren who take to crime out of ignorance of life's higher values, and because of unemployment and also due to continued mistrust with which they are treated after they come out of the prisons.

To speed up this important social welfare work and to bring about mass results, trained members from the various social institutions in the country should visit the prisons periodically and conduct character correction classes. The resourceful clubs of Rotarians, the Lions' and the Junior chambers which are patronised by mill owners and industrialists also, can conveniently create employment opportunities for the convicts on their release from the jails. The rich Shankaracharyas who madly oblate lakhs of rupeesin meaningless 'yagnas' should also wake up and divert their funds and interest to this more divine aspect of their duties also. Above all, the Government of the country, by virtue of its being the parent body of the society should shoulder a lead in this direction by amending unjust rules and absorbing into its departments qualified ex-convicts also as servicemen. It should also grant a reasonable monetary allowance on compassionate grounds, to the otherwise innocent dependents of the convicted persons, for their maintenance.

If some such sensible can arrest the increasing steps are taken, incidents of crimes perpetrated by hundreds of prisoners who come out of the jails, from all over the country everyday, with nothing else to do for subsistence.

After all this is done, there may yet be some hardened individuals with thick - bred criminal propensities. In such extreme cases of proven incorrigibility, the government can cause to summarily impose upon them continued imprisonment till death, This deterrent measure, besides saving the society from the major harm and losses in the hands of such seasoned criminal brutes, will also help instill fear into those who want only wish to lean on to the commission of crimes.

##  NATURE'S REVERSE GAME

"His attainments as an adorable ascetic and as an adept astrologer are affirmably acknowledgeable." "His sublime spiritual speeches soothe and stir, and to me, they are what the healing dew is to the sun-scorched saplings." "His general bearing inspires love and keeps one gripped to him". "Rare are such souls". Thus remarked different people from the crowd of devotees who were walking out of Santram temple of NADIAD in Gujarat, one day, after attending the discourse by a saint from the Himalayas.

I myself had gone there to meet the saint that evening, after his daily lectures, as desired by him. He was tall, with a captivating presence, fine features, large expressive eyes; his speech was indeed sweet and his appearance and manners had about them everything to indicate careful breeding, high education and penetrating intelligence. In the midst of our conversation, a local gentleman came with his teen-aged daughter and offered his salutations to the holy man.

Being given to understand that the Sanyasin was well-up in the system of ayurvedic treatment, the caller had also come for consultations. He introduced himself as one Chotubhai Desai, a partner in a private transport services. He gave his daughter's name as being Susilaben.

Nature had blessed Susilaben with attractive looks and figure. But a small circular white-patch of luecoderma on the central part of her forehead, her parents and relatives thought would come in the way of her marriage; the modern Patel boys being fastidious in the selection of brides. Only against heavy dowry would someone come forward to wed a girl with that sort of physical deformity.

Sri Chotubhai told us that he had consulted several doctors practicing the diverse systems of medicine and that he had even placed her under their treatment without any success. The saint was requested to see if he could do anything to rid her of that bad looking patch.

The mahatmaji examined her and informed her father that the white patch won't go. Yet, suggesting an alternative approach, aimed at covering the ugly spot, he brought out a foot-long root, rubbed it on the hard stone surface with water and produced a fine filament of paste. The paste was smeared on the affected part of Sushila's forehead. When it had dried sufficiently, he asked the girl to wash her forehead with soap and water. That she did and amazingly enough, we noticed the white patch having disappeared completely. The colour of the paste-applied part then matched with that of her skin. The mahatmaji gave that root to Sri Chotubhai with instructions to use it the way he had done, as and when the effect of the induced colour begins to fade-showing the white-patch. He was also told that through turpentine alone can the effect of the colour be washed off instantly and that normally the effect of a single application of the paste would last for well over two months inspite of regular washing. The mahatmaji charged nothing: as he never did, when it came to giving away items which cost him nothing.

Sri Chotubhai felt pleased and profited by the consultation and he invited us both for a lunch at his place on the following day. And that's how I happened to become friendly with the family and from thenceonwards I visited them too, occasionally.

Susilaben was made to apply the paste from the root, from time to time and she came to pass off as one who was wholly cured of luecoderma. The paste application process continued and after three years or so, her parents made arrangements for her marriage.

Because bride-grooms from the families of his social standard generally demand minimum ten-thousand rupees as dowry, over and above the ornaments and clothes of equal amount which a patel bride is expected to take with her, and other occasional requirements to wait for fulfilments by the girl's father from time to time, Chotubhai selected one Arvindbhai from a middle class family with a view to economising the marriage expenses commensurate with his financial resources.

Arvindbhai, the bride - groom elect, a son of a carting agent was in government service as a clerk with chances for higher promotions. The family's gross income was limited and just enough for the six members to pull on. As such, he and his parents felt jubilant over the impending marriage alliance with Susilaben, for, they stood the benefit of additional source of income through her parents.

Susilaben was married to Arvindbhai and she was treated well by her husband and the in-laws for few months. Then began the pestering, the type that is usually resorted to by the covetous husbands, who only marry and even remarry for personal profit, in kind and cash.

Human love for persons generally remain in a high pitch of continuity only for a brief spell in the beginning and then it dwindles to rise and fall in favourable and adverse circumstances respectively. True to this trait, Arvindbhai and his parents also treated Susilaben well for some months and thereafter with the indifference of acquisitive minded people capable of showing false love for material gains only.

Susilaben used to be sent to her parents from time to time. Whenever she brought things from her parental place, her husband and the in-laws felt happy and made her feel at home for a month or so. As their attitude towards her changed to coldness, she used to know that it was another signal for her to go to her parents or brothers to bring something.

Susilaben's visit to her parental place became as frequent as the demands for money and material from her husband's house. Her parents and brothers did their best to satisfy the expensive requirements of their son-in-law, by sending things and cash through Sushila with a view to ensuring her happiness. Then came a time when they could no more give all that was asked of them, and later, not even a part of what was expected by Sushila's greedy husband and his parents.

Troubles brewed up for Susilaben and she had, to painfully put up with the tantrums of her husband and others at home. Gentleness, docility, and obedience to the elders in the family, with these three basic qualities of nobility, a wife should ordinarily be adored in the family. But Susilaben who exemplarily combined the above good nature, wasn't treated with even the ordinary consideration of love due to her. On the other hand, her husband was threatening to abandon her.

To add to the bad situation, the himalayan root, with the paste of which she had so long concealed the white patch on her forehead, unluckily for her, was somehow lost and with the fading of the effect of the last application, the patch began to show up. Susilaben was perplexed, she didn't know what to do.

People in the house noticed the white patch and regarded it as an additional cause for driving away Susilaben who couldn't any longer bring things from her parents whose times were then bad.

So, the parents of Susilaben were called and she was sent away with them as no more acceptable because of the white patch on her forehead. The helpless parents of Sushila pleaded with her husband and the in - laws, differently, for a re - consideration of their inhuman decision, without any effect. Susilaben went off with her parents, sore, sullen and sad at heart. A woman that she was, she knew helplessness and dependence to be her lot.

Few months later, Susilaben's husband and his parents tried through a third person to extort ten thousand rupees from Chotubhai, as a pre- condition to reaccept her. But, their tactics didn't fructify. Sri Chotubhai's financial conditions weren't good. Yet, he could have managed to raise that amount. But wiser counsels prevailed and he checked himself from becoming a prey to the mercenary machinations hatched by Arvindbhai and his parents.

After this failure, Arvindbhai began negotiating in eligible circles for a remarriage.

Because the aggrieved members of the high class patel families of some select towns in kaira district of Qujarat, very seldom take recourse to law courts for the settlement of disputes arising out of marriages or for demanding separation, divorce or apply for alimony; and also because there are other eager patel parents with daughters to dispose off, remarrying becomes easy for the commercial minded patel boys wanting to treat marriage as a paying relationship of convenience.

While Arvindbhai had almost struck a deal to remarry, his parents noticed one day tiny eruptions of white patches of luecoderma in several parts of Arvindbhai's body. Within a month of its first appearance, the white patches thickened and the left side of his face, all over the neck, both hands and his right leg became covered with spread patches of white colour.

Because they did not know that according to the medical theory of atavism, some diseases like luecoderma generally get inherited only to grand daughters if the mother happens to be the original victim to the disease and grandsons in case of the father being the affected. Arvindbhai and his parents wrongly felt that he had contacted the disease from his wife Sushila.

Due to the sudden attack of luecoderma, the girl and her parents who had earlier accepted Arvindbhai's remarriage proposals, cancelled it and fortunately for that girl, she was married to a really good boy of much better social status.

Because his sinister attempts to remarry also failed, Arvind and his parents were in a quandary and they were cursing Susilaben.

In the meantime, strangely enough, it so happened that the white patch on Susilaben's forehead began becoming faint and gradually it disappeared once and forever without any treatment whatever. This natural cure amazed everyone in the same measure as it had surprised them to learn and see Aruindbhai's bodily skin covered with the white spots of luecoderma.

Later on, well-meaning friends of Arvindbhai interceded and advised him to recall Susilaben and to live with her as a dutiful and responsible husband. The shamefaced Arvindbhai and his knavish parents remorsefully gave in.

Susilaben who had all along loved her bad husband and who still valued the pledges of the marriage ceremony, went back to her husband's house.

Arvindbhai's parents died painfully due to cancer and I learn with relief that he and Susilaben are leading on well since then.

With regard to the sudden eruption of the white patches of luecoderma on the person of Arvindbhai, the medical opinion would have us to believe that a great increase in the number of white corpuscles in the blood affecting the lymphatic tissues had caused them.

But, viewing it from the circumstances narrated in this episode, I for one, am inclined to hold that it is one of the enigmatical process of nature to punish the malevolent, who with their fancied impunity harass, deceive and play ruinous game with others' lives.

##  PRANAVAKUMAR

"As a scientist, I am a man of results. I gave religious practices and God a fair trial. But disappointingly enough, I must say, my continued prayers and worship haven't blessed me with a child. Because I alone know the sincerity with which I have pursued your so called God, I do not wish to be told that my approach was wrong. Now I am inclined to disbelieve Whitehead and others who wrongly hold that "God is that non-temporal actuality which has to be taken account of in every creative phase," thus submitted Sri Kantilal, a government official of Saurashtra \- an acquaintance of mine, to the Himalayan saint sri Someshwar Tirth who some years back was camping with me in Rajkot.

Sri Someshwar Tirth heard him with wise calmness and seriously said, "young man! this drum-beating announcement of your disbelief in religion and God is meaningless. I am not concerned with your belief or disbelief, much less is God Himself. The God you ignorantly negate because your personal prayers weren't fulfilled, is not an imperious personality who imposes Himself upon others. While you are certainly free to think the way it pleases your immature understanding, yet I must advise you to patiently and reflectively research on Whitehead's another sane declaration that "the universe exhibits a creativity with infinite freedom, and a realm of forms are together impotent to achieve actuality apart from the completed ideal harmony, which is God. "What appeals to you scientists whose brains don't comprehend faith, emotions and intuition can't be the whole truth. Cast aside your hurried opinion, have a peep into the intellectual laboratory of the world thinkers on the subject-with an unbiased mind. If you so pursued this issue, you will also gain essential and profitable knowledge on religion and God.

Countered thus, with a verbatim quotation from Whitehead's book "RELIGION IN THE MAKING," Sri Kantilal felt humbled. He thanked the saint for the suggestion and asked, "now sire! my wife says that she has heard from feminine friends that you are good in predictive astrology. Could you take the trouble to read my horoscope and let me know if I am to become a father, even now. After sixteen years of my married life ?"

Sri Someshwar Tirth smiled, took the horoscope from sri Kantilal and said with a chuckle, "now I am convinced that your disbelief in religion and God is more an outcome of your personal failure to have your desires fulfilled -rather than the result of your earnest examination. Recourse to and reliance on astrology it will at once strike to you, if you care to apply little commonsense, are synonymous with belief in a divine superintending principle universally acknowledged as God and as also His wonderful scheme.

After that another sharp quip, sri Someshwar Tirth did some mental working and pronounced – "progeny is indicated by the planetary positions in this horoscope. By the close of next year your wife will give birth to a baby boy. The boy will come with a short span of life. There is also a positive indication that you will adopt a son of your friend."

Sri Kantilal's reactions to the predictions weren't discernible. He quietly rose and thankfully took leave of us.

True to the predictions of sri Someshwar Tirth, Kantilal's wife Rohitaben did give birth to a baby boy and the couple became happier. At the same time, with the coming to pass of sri Someshwar Tirth prediction, they also remained apprehensive, for, they feared that sri Someshwar Tirth's reading about their son's short span of life might also come to pass. They simply shuddered at the thought of losing such a charming child. They wrote to the mahatmaji enclosing the child's horoscope -praying for an independent reading. They received no reply.

As is customary in the Hindu families, the paternal aunt of the baby named him as "PRANAVAKUMAR" on the sixth day of his birth. Because of his loveable form and also because he was the only male child in the neighborhood where sri Kantilal lived, one and all showered their love on him.

One sri Govindbhai Parmar an Electrical Engineer and his graduate wife Kalpanaben who lived immediately next to sri Kantilal's bungalow, had no children and therefore, they happened to love the boy much more. So much so. that from the time he was nine months old, he remained more in the charge and care of Kalpanaben. 'Photography' was sri Parmar's hobby and many rolls of films had they used for taking snaps of Pranavakumar in different natural poses and pranks of his different stages of growth; the first snap-shot being when the baby boy was only two months old. The walls in the house of the Parmars were profusely arrayed with the photographs of Pranavkumar \- their neighbour's winsome child.

Pranavakumar grew on and all loved him with added delight. On the day of his fourth birth-day, however, he fell ill and despite best available medical attention, he died within seven days-all of a sudden.

The Kantila's fears and Sri Someshuuar Tirth's prediction had this time shockfully come true and Pranavakumar's parents remained sorrowing. More so also, because his birth was brought about with instrumental interference and due to some infection of the uterine adenexa, Rohitaben would no more conceive.

Now because the Late Pranarakumar happened to be an object of greater love to Mrs. Kalpanaben Parmar, the neighbour, she felt the loss of the child much more.

A month after the demise of Pranavakumar, Kalpanaben became pregnant and she longed to have her laps filled with a baby boy like 'PRANAV'- in looks and form.

Kalpanaben's special subject in the college was psychology and even after graduation, she kept herself applied to the serious studies of the different available treatises on mental culture. Thus, she equipped herself with the rich techniques of constructive thinking and made up her mind to put them into action even as all success seeking souls do.

To Kalpanaben's wise understanding, the human body with the thinking mechanism in its cranium was verily the legendary 'wish-yielding tree' depicted in the ancient epics; and all circumstances and physical objects are offsprings of our thoughts.

The more she read and rationally reflected upon the literary works wherein are described in detail the general and subtle functions of the outer and inner mind respectively, greater was she convinced that through methodically regulated and one-pointed thinking, there is nothing which the grand 'TREE' of human body can't yield.

To work-out and to bring into being what she most cherished, Kalpanaben began by creating mental pictures of Pranavakumar oft and on and continued the process hour after hour, day after day and week after week during the different stages of pregnancy through which, she in the natural course had to pass. Otherwise said, on the impressionable canvas of her inner mind, she drew the image of her desire, with the paints of one-pointed resolving and thinking.

In her bed-room she had hung a made to order placard with the following guiding passage inscribed on it:- "YOUR INNERMIND IS LIKE A MAGNET WHICH ATTRACTS TO IT THE THINGS YOU PICTURE. BUT YOU DEMAGNETIZE THIS MARVELLOUS CREATIVE FORCE WHEN YOU LACK DECISION - WHEN YOU FAIL TO DIRECT YOUR MIND ON A CERTAIN OBJECTIVE -WHEN YOU SHIFT UNCERTAINLY FROM ONE THING TO ANOTHER." Following the above rich hints, Kalpanaben took, particular care to see that the thought-waves released from her brain coursed through into the embryo to take shape according to her intense willing. She was alertfully careful also not to allow any negative thoughts to build within her and disintegrate the form which her thought currents were intended to create. To elaborate a little, Kalpanaben didn't allow thoughts of possible miscarriage, abortion or deformity to collide with the positive thought-currents of her excessively firm will to be a successful mother.

Because she also had the elementary knowledge of the different phases of the limb-formation that take place in the uterus and as also being endowed with the developed penetrative mental possibilities, she forcefully willed to hear and happily heard the heart-beats of the not yet well-formed body-during the close of the fourth-week of her pregnancy - distinct from her own heart functions. At the end of the fourth month, she could even clearly sense the movement and kicking of the baby around the edges of her abdomen and between her hipbones.

Kalpanaben stuck to the technique of making thought-pictures and mentally visualising the formation of the different limbs of the babe in her womb. So deep was her absorption in concentrated thinking and mental peep into the mechanical working within her, that, very often, after the completion of the fifth month of her carrying period, she could delve within herself to have a glimpse of the by the then one-foot tall grown baby with an elongated head and transparent tender frame surrounded by the naval line and nutritional structure known as placenta.

From after the fifth month period and right upto the end of the seventh month-the important two months which give the final touches to the general formation of all the parts of the baby in the womb, to make it viable, Kalpamben chalked-out for herself a detailed course of contemplation to be followed daily-at regular times.

According to that prepared routine, our Kalpanaben set about ruminating over the different features, parts of the body, and the characteristics of the late Pranavakumar; and over and over again she strongly willed that all of them must measuredly manifest in the physical frame of the babe which was gaining gradual growth within her. So saturated was she with the various thoughts of events connected with the dead Pranavakumar in general and his loveful association - full with rib tickling fun with her, in particular, that she remained lost now and then, to her immediate surroundings for hours at stretch. Her considerate and research-minded husband gave her all facilities to pursue her encourageable aspiration.

Thus-wise, after the two months' continued course of contemplation, Kalpanaben felt with certitude that the streams of suggestions which she had let loose during those impressionable months, did indeed exercise a shaping influence over her unborn babe, in the measure and manner she had all along desired.

The subsequent two months being that stage of pregnancy when the baby which has been mothered in the womb, begins to become sturdy and ready for an exit, Kalpanaben was found mentally preparing herself, through auto-suggestions again, for a painless delivery.

Because she desired that her child should grow to be a seeded individual endowed with creative thinking and abilities, she also pressingly willed that it should be born on a full-moon day which was to fall on three days after the normal 266 days stay in the womb.

As per her designed desire, she did give post-mature birth to a baby boy weighing nine-pounds, on a full-moon day and without pains too. The success of her technique pleased her and amazed all in general and Kantilal and Rohitaben in particular.

When before embarking upon the course of creative self-suggestions, Kalpanaben had talked about her resolve to bring into being a prototype Pranavakumar, the Kantilal's then just took it as a fantasy.

Because her new-born babe possessed such features as would in the course of time surely develop to resemble in exactitude with that of the late Pranarakumar, and also with the view to perpetuating tne memory of the dead boy whom she had so very much loved. Kalpanaben named her son also as PRANAVAKUMAR.

As the child grew up month after month, except for a small mole on his collar -bone, its general appearance began to verily match in every detail to that of the late Pranavakumar. Sri Kantilal and Rohitaben couldn't differentiate him from their own late son. Different photographs of their Pranavakumar; taken at his different periods of his growth were existing testimonials to the thorough truth which at once convinced one and all.

The new arrival was lovefully nursed and cared for by Kalpanaben and by the time he was nine months old, the earlier found similarities between him and the dead child of Rohitaben became all the more developed in all respects and they were strikingly pronounced. The sight and fondling of the baby soothed the still painful heart of Rohitaben.

One day three months later, sri Govindbhai Parmar, his wife Kalpanaben, the little Pranavakumar, Sri and Srimati Kantilal and some select friends went on a picnic to a place near jasdan state in Saurashtra itself. They had a pleasant time there cooking, eating, playing, chess and swimming. Around evening, a little before their leaving the place. Kalpanaben and Rohitaben went to ease themselves on the riverside. After answering the nature's call, Rohitaben went on to the path and was waiting for Kalpanaben to return.

As Kalpanaben rose from the bushy part of the river-bank where she had sat even without knowing that there was a snake-pit immediately behind her, at that very moment, a snake sprang out of it and stung her on the right heel. Kalpanaben soon felt a burning sensation - such as one does after accidentally stamping on a piece of fire and she suddenly stepped forward by a leap and turned back. She beheld a snake, screamed and swooned on the spot, out of pain and scare.

Rohitaben instantly raised a cry summoning for help. All the members of the party reached the place where Kalpanaben lay unconscious. They were horror-stricken on noticing the tragic happening. To stop the upward coursing of the poisoned-blood through normal circulation, one of them tourniquetted the part below her right thigh, with a string band and they rushed her to the nearby bigger town for an anti-venom treatment.

Inspite of requisite surgical treatment at the hospital, Kalpanaben passed away after regaining consciousness for a brief while. During that short time, she took hold of her Pranavakumar, hugged him heartily, showered snappy kisses all over his face and hastily passed him over to Rohitaben with the following parting message. "FROM NOW ONWARDS, THIS PRANAVAKUMAR SHALL BE THINE -TO BE CARED FOR AND BROUGHT-UP AS YOUR VERY OWN." Then she turned to her horrified husband questioningly Sri Govindbhai Parmar sensed the drawing end of his better-half and not wanting to displease, Kalpanaben at her that last moment, he readily replied, "I HAVE NO OBJECTION WHAT EVER."

Pranavakumar's adoption by the Kantilals raised a storm of objection because he happened to be the child of low-caste parents. But .his broad-minded brahmin foster parents ignored their society's protests and they didn't budge from their decision to raise up Pranavakumar as their son. In doing so, they were guided by the wise esoteric understanding that true highness is more dependent on the standing values of intellectual get-up and humane conduct of the individual rather than the already waxing foolish Hindu convention which regards caste of birth as the basis for class determination.

To elucidate the point in the last sentence of the above paragraph; it may be said that regardless of one's birth in a particular caste, the man of intellectual wisdom is a brahmin, the individual of developed physique a kshatria, (protector), they who because of their economical well-being are engaged in mercantile pursuits are vaishyas and that section of people who are intellectually, physically and monetarily backward are the sudras menials. This is the rational 'vedic' interpretation of caste classification for the distribution of social labour; birth of any of the above category of families having nothing to do with the superiority or inferiority of any individual.

Notwithstanding the above classifications, hatred for or untouchability of sudras is not a vedic preaching. This despicable practice in the fold of Hinduism, was advocated and introduced into the society by the self-centred brahmin preachers in the false name of religion.

Now, reverting to the main narration, astrological indications are that Pranava-kumar would grow up to be a very scholarly person of enlightenment as cherished by his late mother Kalpanaben and that he would even enjoy a wide following. Possibly, he will succeed to one of the gadis of Shankaracharyas \- fulfilling the venerable Kaka Kalelkarji's desire that a sudra should also be entitled to the right of becoming a religious head so as to establish a casteless society and boot the inhuman practice of untouchability.

In the preceding pages I have narrated to you, beloved readers, the spectacular results of self-suggestions.

In order that we may also productively put to use all our thought-powers and achieve what we want, it would be of great help for us all to know that our thoughts are verily the architects of our destinies.

Repeated self-suggestions go down and deposit themselves in the sub-conscious mind; and this inner-mind is so constituted as to respond to the strong self-suggestions sown into it. Whatever or whoever we are, there is no escaping the fact that all of us and all our diverse circumstances are essentially the effects of our own thoughts.

Determinate, discriminative and designed dreaming determines destiny. So, the three 'D's' of desiring, dreaming and doing must be impulsively interlinked and integrally implemented. Abundance of success is reserved for them who wholeheartedly will, wish and work. Further clarified, sorrows, sicknesses and sufferings or successes and salvation are all actualities of our thoughts.

The following poem by Ella W. Wheelcox also adequately amplifies the above grand truths:-

"'We build our future thought by thought:

Of good or bad. and know it not:

Yet. so the universe is wrought.

Thought is another name for fate;

Choose thou thy destiny and wait;

For love brings love and hate brings hate.

Thought like an arrow - flies where sent;

Aim well; be sure of thy intent:

And make thy own environment.

Nothing can bid thy purpose pause;

Mr. Mind is the universal cause;

The Lord God thought and Lo' He was!

Let God in thee rise and say;

To adverse circumstance - 'obey'

And thy dear wish shall have its way.

The long and short of it is, through tenacious thoughts of intelligent insight, indulgent interest and invasive initiative, the imagined, inevitable or imminent impossibilities change into inviolable possibilities.

##  SHOCKS AND SURPRISES

Seth Sri Premchand Bhatia who owned a Hardware Store and a Saw-Mill was enjoying rood business and he lived in a city of Saurashtra with his three graduate sons and grand-children.

Some years back, I happened to stay with them. On a wintry night then, as we were warming ourselves by the fire-side, Premchand's eldest son sri Karamchand proposed to his father as follows:- "dear daddy! by the grace of God, you have all these years worked much and have enjoyed everything which a successful businessman of your calibre could cherish. Now that you are sixty years old and we three sons of yours are able enough to shoulder the responsibility of the business house, it is my desire that you should retire from active work and devote your time to spiritual pursuits, even as did our grandparents, at your this age. The present stage of your life is such, as should be lived without much mental burden and exclusively with view to enlisting true peace of mind here and hereafter. Because of your being tied down to the calls of business, our pious mother who has herself been yearning all along, to visit the various places of pilgrimage in your company, hasn't been able to do so. In the light of what I have submitted, therefore, I am confident that you will give the matter what consideration, you in your polished wisdom may deem fit."

"And luckily for us," Vijayaben, sethji's wife picked up to add. "Krishnanandji who has wandered throughout the country, is amidst us now and I am sure he will condescend to take us to the several soul-soothing places of pilgrimage and make our trip easy, entertaining and enriching.

"In his reply, seth Premchand said, "your proposal has gladdened me. I had myself been thinking of some such steps and I am happy that the suggestion has come from you. I have no doubt whatever, that the three of you brothers are capable enough to run the business concerns on the traditional lines-all to your advantage. I shall soon take up the matter and do the needful in this regard."

Accordingly, seth Premchand got a transfer deed prepared in favour of his three sons and distributed all his properties to them without reserving any independent rights either for himself or for his wife.

A month thereafter, sethji solicitingly sought my company on a three months' pilgrimage tour which they were to undertake. Much against my will, however, I couldn't join them.

Their sons had provided them sufficiently for the ninety - days' trip and seth Premchand and his wife visited various vitalising Vaishnavite religious places, spread out in all directions of the country and returned back with rich and profitable memories of association with saintly personages and holy places.

But, after their return, to their sad dismay, they found undreamt changes having taken place in the house. They who had come with delightsome desires of sharing pleasantries of their fine pilgrimage, with their dear ones, encountered themselves in a bad situation to hear of hurtful happenings having visited the family.

Karamchand, their eldest son, charged his father with insensibleness and violently said, "you made a 'mess of the whole affair. Had you reposed in me the sole right of management of the business and running the house, by virtue of my being your senior son, the split in the family and the consequent loss in the business wouldn't have occurred. Devchand and Laxmichand, your other two sons began to bully me and my wife within a week after your departure and inspite of my pleading to them, to hold on till your return, they severed all connections from the house and the business management. Because of their double-crossing, I have had to suffer considerably both mentally and financially."

The sethji's head reeled, his sagging shoulders stilted and suffocation's stifle shadow swarmed his face as he heard what Karamchand told him.

Truly, the whole atmosphere of the house was one of strange changes and Vijajaben who was meticulous in house-keeping, felt a peculiar sense of estrangement in her own house. As she went round the house, the over-haul changes became all the more apparent. The changes she saw were not confined to the household arrangements alone but the inmates were also thoroughly and badly changed. Her ever submissive eldest daughter-in-law didn't even take notice of Vijayaben's presence, the grand children who could never remain without her, now shrieked at her sight. As for the servants who were all new they simply gaped at her. And when she moved into her dear kitchen, to make a cup of tea for her husband, she couldn't lay hands on things she needed. There too, radical changes were introduced. Hence, when she asked her daughter-in-law for tea-leaves and sugar, the cold retort she received was, "THIS IS NOT TEA TIME." Vijayaben's annoyance and embarrassment found expression by way of teeth-gnashing and lip-biting and unable to stand the insult, she ran and buried her head, like a little child, in her husband's Japs and sobbed.

After a little while later, sethji caused his other two sons to be summoned - with a view to knowing as to what they had to say. They both sent word that they were under an irrevocable vow not to step into that house of selfishness and cruelty and that if he were that keen to meet them, he may as well call on them at his convenience. The sethji couldn't understand as to how his sons who so very much had loved their elder brother right through, could detest him in the degree they seemed to presently do.

Seth Premchand along with his wife went to the house of Devchand, their second son. Devchand was out and his wife and children weren't communicative. Shortly after, Devchand returned and when asked as to what had motivated the brothers to separate, to the extent of hating one another so vehemently, the non-committal reply was, "it is all over now. I, from my side, shall henceforth have nothing to do with your eldest and youngest son. As for you both, you may stick on to your Karamchand, whom you have been partial to. You may as well know, that the suggestion for the change-over of reins, so casually moved and intelligently induced into acceptance by your eldest son, first originated in the cruel head of your brother and the same was transferred to the deceitful Karamchand who wanted to free himself from the orthodox yoke of dependence upon you."

This second bomb-shell left sethji and Vijajaben with no other alternative but to instantly quit the place. Before doing so, however, they asked Devchand as to where his brother Laxmichand resided. "I know not as to which corner of the condemned hell he haunts," was the acrid reply.

With down-cast head and mixed expectations, they left Devchand's house and managed to locate and reach their third and last son's residence. There they found their youngest daughter-in-law busy dressing the vegetables. On seeing her in-laws coming in, she bawled out to her husband who was in his room. O' you! do you hear ? Come out the cronies have come to meet you." Because of that contemptuous manner in which their arrival was announced, the Premchands were almost repairing to go back, when Laxmichand came out in the open.

He received them airily, and apologetically added, falsely of course, that his wife was mentally deranged and he pretentitiously begged of them not to take her offensive conduct seriously. Proceeding further, with a mocking smile, Laxmichand said, "I am glad you have come back from the pilgrimage. I hear pappa! that arrangements are being made by your brother to have you both admitted as regular inmates of the 'house for the aged.' It must be quite an uplifting place where the advanced age aspirants avidly activate all abstruse adventures, aimed at awfully achieving an affirmable and abiding anand. I shall certainly be visiting you both now and then. Elders as you both are, it is not my function to wish you well. But where-ever you happen to be, do please remember us all and write to me too when any necessities trouble you. O.K, then, yes, you too mummy, good-bye to you both. I must now hurry along to attend a dinner party at an admirer's abode."

With their feelings all the more pricked by the attitude and utterances of their third son also, Seth Premchand and Vijayaben left that place too without saying a word. He realised only then that tongues which lavish one with praises and affection could also be good at leashing out painful and humiliating insults. Sethji changed his earlier intention to visit his brother-after what he had heard from Laxmichand about his brother's plans for him and his wife. They moved on, knowing not what to do or where to go. Somewhere on the way, they entered a public park and posited them-selves in a quiet corner, wanting to take little rest.

As they sat there, giving vent to her disturbed feelings. Vijayaben said, 'I didn't know that in this ever-changing world such rapid and unbelievable changes could also take place as to make one's children to outright disown and humiliate their good parents who had so lovefully brought them up, educating them well, getting them married and finally handing over all the properties to them. Since we have in no way wronged them, provocating them to ill-treat us in the way they all have so cold-bloodedly done, I must say that there must be something unjust in God's dispensations of fruits, which are said to be according to one's actions. The very law of cause and effect stands violated to our disadvantage, inspite of our having discharged our obligations wall and with honourable motives."

Sethji didn't say anything. That way, he wasn't an outright dullard. In the course of his active business life, he had heard, read and knew many heart-rending accounts of domestic discords and bad behaviour by sons. As such, he had rightly regarded human relationship as a vast play-ground whereon people sport in FALSE LOVE, RANK SELFISHNESS, GREED, COVETUOUSNESS, INGRATITUDE, BREACH OF TRUST, DOUBLE-CROSSING, BETRAYAL, ABANDONING OR NEGLECTING THE AGED ELDERS, SWINDLING THE IN-LAWS, EXPLOITING THE SERVANTS, and such other inhuman practices. But, in the blindness of infatuation and love for his begotten ones, like all others, he had also over-rated his sons - in his expectations and evaluation and had never anticipated that his ones could also belong to the general bad stocks of children.

Now that he was done down by his children, for the well-being of whom he had toiled hard all through his life-without even enjoying the ordinary amenities of modern life, he stood repentantly corrected. It dawned to him that in the worldly life of desires and wants, the "PROFIT MOTIVE" rules supreme in all human relationship, and as such, its weak bonds generally snap when circumstances for mutual gains don't continue to exist.

With the above understanding coursing on the threshold of his mind, his former feelings of depressions subsided even as fever does when the patient profusely perspires. He pulled up his wife who was immersed in negative thoughts of apprehensions and told her, "from henceonwards, let's forget the whole issue and discard from the store of our thoughts these sons and the so called relatives in the same manner as we do unwanted and useless things. Brush them all aside as you do the dust on your clothes. We shall start afresh and live our own more peacefully."

Seth Premchand also drew mental courage from the following spirited verses of WilliamTodd:-

"If you want to be happy.

Begin from where you are,

Don't wait for some rapture.

That's future and far.

'Begin to be joyous,

Begin to be glad,

And soon you will forget-

That you ever were sad.

They rose from the garden and went to a decent hotel in the city and got themselves booked as residents for an indefinite stay there. Members of the management of that public place, knew sethji well and were naturally surprised that a big person like him, with his home and children in the city should choose to lodge himself with his wife, in their hotel.

Next morning, Seth Premchand reserved space in the local papers to announce that, for personal reasons he had severed all ties with his sons and that whatever transactions which interested parties might enter into with them would in no way be binding upon him. He had to take this step as a measure to safeguard himself against possible deceitful tactics from his sons. He didn't know how his sons reacted to the advertisement.

Local people and inland business parties soon learnt about the tragic episode in which the ungrateful sons had deftly conspired and betrayed Seth Premchand, They were all sorry for him. For, as a potential buyer and an able seller, he was a source of quick profits to them all.

In view of the aforesaid advantages in the sethji, some of them held out offers to him to establish anew and continue in the business of Hardware material-independent of his eldest son. But the soft-hearted Seth Premchandji declined the offer. He did not want to hinder the business prospects of his errant eldest son Karamchand, by re-entering the business market.

That apart, now that he was free from domestic encumbrances, there were none for whom he had to earn or provide for. As for maintaining himself and his wife, he had made up his mind to seek employment as a manager of a Dharmshala in the next city.

So, he applied for the vacant post and was engaged right away. Because he had wisely resigned to and had understandingly accepted the situation arising out of the ouster by his sons, he was free from fuming and fretful feelings. He received a nominal salary-yet, sufficient enough for an aged couple to live tolerably.

The Premchands fared well in their new place of engagement and habitation, without cares and anxieties and thus passed a full calendar year. Thereafter, some unusual developments took place and it so happened that a friend of Premchand's father who some thirty years ago had illegally divested the sethji of his rights to the hold of twenty acres of land, called Sri Premchand to his death-bed and penitently made over the lands to him together with forty-thousand rupees as compensation. Two other persons who had similarly defrauded Seth Premchand, also voluntarily made amends and jointly returned to him a sum of seventy thousand rupees. Sethji was certainly surprised at the display of change of heart by the three of his many criminal minded debtors; but this inflow of wealth failed to generate in him feelings of jubilance or elation, because his love for possession was totally dried-up. Even while receiving the payments, he had hospitable plans in his mind.

When Sri Premchand's sons learnt about the fresh fortunes of their discarded parents, unmindful of their personal differences with each other, they readily united themselves with the common intention of winning over the old ones and preying upon their unexpected windfall of wealth.

Karamcand, Devchand and Laxmichand, the three trickster sons rushed to the place where their parents lived. They fell on their feet and weepingly implored them for pardon. Thereafter, Karamchand said to his parents, "we wronged you both and forced sufferings upon you. Believe us, we were misguided by our uncle and our in-laws. Our unwise wives also played a fair part in the plot. Only a fortnight back we learnt of their earlier sinister scheme to which we had unfortunately become ready tools. Please forget our bad behaviour and forgive us heartily. We have come to take you both to your own house. Please come back and grant us all, the renewed and profitable privilege of living and careering through the course of life under the protective shade of your affection and guidance."

Sethji was prepared for this situation. Among other rich lessons of life that he had learnt as a discarded man, the knowledge of the following couplet:--

"People hang around persons with position and money,

As flies too swarm the places with sweets and honey."

was even lingering in his mind. So, after seeing his sons and having humorously heard what Karamchand had said, Sri Premckand addressed them thus :- "Wise men! we are beholden to you all for the hard lessons which you all had so easily taught us. We have no grouse against you all. Our thirst for possessions, attachment and affection has been quenched from few days after we were wisely dispossessed by you all. We are sorry, if we disappoint you. but the truth is, all the monies and landed properties which by providence were restored to us recently, we had donated them all, only yesterday - impelled by inner dictates, for the benefit of orphans, the disabled and the helpless widows. During this twelve months stay in this Dharmashala, we have also learnt that in this short sojourn on earth it isn't wise to get involved in infatuation and love for the perishable. Pray, leave us alone to our wearily won wisdom. May the Lord bless you all."

The trio returned back with frozen feelings, after drawing a blank in their repeat ruse to knock out more material gains from their abandoned parents. Out of greed, the self-centered bad sons had foolishly cut-off the branch of their support and succour, with the axe of their ingratitude and hatred.

The Sethji's after attitude towards his sons who had wantonly ousted him and his wife, was wholly one of practical wisdom. For, TO EARN AND PROVIDE FOR THE SENSUAL COMFORTS OF THE KNAVISH AND THE RANK SELFISH ONES, IS NOT ONLY FOOLISH BUT DETRIMENTAL TO SOCIAL GOOD TOO. YET, WORSE AND SHAMEFULLY ACCURSED IS IT TO REMAIN-DEPENDENT IN THE FOLD OF UNGRATEFUL SONS OR RELATIVES.

## MATURITY

MATURITY is the ability to control anger and settle differences without violence and destruction.

MATURITY is patience, the willingness to give-up immediate pleasures in favor of the long-term gain.

MATURITY is perseverance, sweating out a project inspite of opposition an discouraging setbacks.

MATURITY is unselfishness, responding to the needs of others.

MATURITY is the capacity to face unpleasantness and disappointment without becoming bitter.

MATURITY is humility. A mature person is able to say,

"I WAS WRONG". He is also able to say "I AM SORRY", and when proved right, he does not have to say, "I TOLD YOU SO".

MATUITY means self-dependability, integrity, keeping one's word. The immature have excuses for everything. They are chronically tardy, the no-shows, the gutless wonders who fold in crisis. Their lives are a maze of broken promises and unfinished works.

MATURITY is the ability to live in peace.

MATURITY is the ability to give more than to receive, most of the time comfortably.

## CHANGE OF VISION

The laughing man is soon found crying,

Having fallen, to climb, he is trying.

He meets and greets a fellow friend,

Very soon, he shows a quarrelsome trend

Lacking in understanding, man, always gets bumped,

Liking now, hating soon, finds himself dumped.

Like 'fondness' the water and 'hatred' the fire,

One burns to become ashes the other becomes mire.

None and nothing can make us happy or sad,

These are the effects of our actions good or bad.

Man vainly blames the distant planets & helps all,

Through this haughtiness he registers a grim fall,

Having forgotten God and with developed animalistic nature,

Man roams about-empty of spiritual stature.

Spoiling everything of creation, man, leisurely within burns,

Time passes of – the easterly sun, to the westward turns,

Sad yes, the saga of man, simply rusts in lusts,

With wasted abilities and aloofness from life's musts.

By seeing good in all an God in all,

Man can yet escape from the hellish downfall.

Greatness of man truly lies in his outlook high,

Without perception, man is doomed to sorrowfully die

A changed vision, enlists a meaningful changed life,

CHANGE OF VISION, indeed, redeems from stress & Strife.

## I HAVE TO LIVE

I have to live myself, and so,

I want to be fair for myself to know;

Always to look myself straight in the eyes;

I don't want to stand, with the setting sun-

And hate myself for the things I have done.

I want to go out with my head erect;

I want to deserve all men's respect.

But here in the struggle for fame and pelf.

I want to be able to like myself.

I don't want to look at myself and know,

That I am bluster and bluff and empty show.

I never can fool myself and so-

Whatever happens I want to be.

Self- respecting & conscience free,

## Life Sketch of Swami Krishnanand

Man is the superb and supreme creation of God. Among all the animals, he has distinguished himself by his sense, intelligence and awakening to the highest level of life. Even among all the human beings, there are very few who have devoted their lives for others by offering them peace, happiness and mental satisfaction. Though few in number, such Saints are welcomed and worshiped by people. Among such saints the name of Swami Krishnani is glorious, unique and worth to be proud of. Despite having a common name "Krishnanand" he was a very unique and charismatic human being. This is only life sketch of Swami Krishnanand of Shanti Ashram, Bhadran.

Biography or Autobiography is a description of man's life right from his birth till the end, in chronological order. Swamjii never wrote or allowed anyone to write about his life. He very firmly believed that his life was not meant to get exposed in words as he didn't want publicity. Long back in 1980 I very humbly tried to get his consent to write about him, but very quietly and peacefully he denied my request. Every person's spiritual progress is really a personal process. Swamiji believed, when right maturity is achieved by a human being, he does find a Guru [a pathfinder, guide and teacher] who shows path to the follower. It is now for the follower to go ahead on the path. He firmly believed, one person's life and progress cannot lead or encourage other person to live such life. This personal belief did not allow him to write his own autobiography or allowed others to write his biography. Now that he is not with us, I try to write his life sketch for the followers and friends to quench their thirst, to know him a little bit better.

He has never written detailed accounts of his life events but sometimes he described them during conversations and lectures. There were some who used to note down this events. Of those members, Dr. C.P.Goswmi - a pathologist from Ahmedabad, used to keep notes of his lectures. During my 20 years of his company I noted some events of his life, so in this attempt of drawing his life sketch I have taken help of Swamiji's books, Dr. Goswami's notes and my own notes.

Swamiji was Born on 26th August, 1920 at 12.18 p.m. at Maymyo (now Pyin Oo Lwin) in Burma a country near North-East of India. This birth date is confirmed in 'Pathik-na-Anubhavo' (Episodes & Experiences), where a ghost tells Swamiji his birth date during their conversation. Despite being born overseas Swamiji's background was of an Indian family. The family migrated from India some three or four generations back and settled in Burma.

Swamiji enjoyed his childhood in a very rich and happy family. His father was Director in a bank and also a partner in Indo-Burma Petroleum (I.B.P) Company. Though a bit religious, his father was more conservative, well-disciplined and under the Western influence, while his mother was totally religious, having firm faith in God and well cultured. Because his father was busy in business, service and day-to-day affairs, Swamiji like other children, did spend most of the time with his mother. Other members in the family were a maternal uncle, six sisters, and a cousin brother. After five daughters, the family got twins - a daughter and a son. This son was he himself-the Swamiji. Swamiji had most affection with his twin-sister from all the family members; till he took Sanyas (renounce worldly and materialistic pursuits and dedicate life to spiritual pursuits).

During the childhood Swamiji was very influenced by his mama-the maternal uncle. After death of his wife [Mami - wife of his maternal uncle] at young age, mama left everything and became a Sanyasi. Mama used to live on the top floor of the house and his visitors were mostly Saints. His father did not like this group of Saints in his house and Mama was also aware of this dislike. But for the child this presence of Saints, religion, God, the talk and discussion-became the foundation for his future. In 1940 Ma Anandamayi conducted a yagya (an ancient ritual of offering and sublimating the havana sámagri (herbal preparations) in the fire) at a waterfall known as Aniskhan and Mama went there to attend and remained there till he died. Swamiji used to re-collect this incident interestingly and talked in details.

Born with a very high sense of understanding, this intelligent child started his primary education at home. Then passed his competitive test and straightway entered in fourth grade. Studying in an English medium school of Maymyo, this child cleared all his exams with very good result and used to keep his rank in between first and seventh in the class. He became one of the favorite students of his Principal. He appeared for the 1st year of College test but to the surprise and shock of all, was declared 'Fail'. The Principal himself, along with Swamiji went to the university and on re-checking found the mistake in the total of marks, he was declared pass with 1st class. In 1940, he cleared his graduation with English Literature as special subject and General subjects as subsidiary once. He secured First Class and as a result a Gold Medal. He joined M.A. degree and kept English and History as his primary subjects. But unfortunately before the result was declared, the Second World War broke out. Along with many Indian, Families, this family also left Burma to migrate back to India. So naturally his study for M.A. was left unfinished and reminded so till the end.

Though he was a bright student with an excellent progress, he was a bit timid. Not to get harassed by the co-students, Swamiji used to keep his pockets full of chocolates to please them, he gave them generously. This gave him a nickname of 'Sweety'. Although he was timid by nature, he did play mischief at times. It happened once that he slapped a co-student so hard that the glasses of that boy got broken. The result was obviously punishment. The teacher beat him with a wooden stick in front of the class. Swamiji used to narrate this uncommon-event in his lectures often. He was always quiet eager to learn something. Because of this nature he was loved by the wife of the principal. She compensated the absence of love from his mother who was busy with family duties. Apart from the motherly love from her, he learnt the manners of western life, western education and its impact on human nature. He never went to foreign countries after his arrival in India, but Swamiji was well versed in western manners of life due to the contact with principle's wife.

Generally the studious students are not much interested in sports, but to the contrary Swamiji was taking part in Table-Tennis, Billiard and chess in his college days. He participated in Table-Tennis tournaments and won a Gold Medal, not only this he was also selected at the National Level. Though he remained aloof in other sports in his later age, but he had soft corner for chess. He had very good knowledge of chess; he read many books on it and even used electronic chess. He organized a State Level tournament for chess players at Bhadran. He organized it so nicely that some of the participants remember it even today. He had no interest in cricket and he did not miss a chance to narrate these in his lectures and books.

Due to the Second World War many Indian families left Burma for their home country India. Swamiji's family was one of them. They, with a desire to go to Nagpur, their native place, left Burma. Four married and one unmarried sister left Burma by plane. Before Swamiji, his twin sister and parents reached the airport, the airport got destroyed by bombs during the war. Due to the collapse of air services they were forced to walk to Calcutta. Deserted areas, full of dead-bodies, absence of all the necessities like food and water, no shelter, pools of blood, limbs scattered all over was the picture he saw. Migrants were playing with the ornaments of gold and silver as none was needed, all they needed was food and water. People living nearby exploited the people and charged insanely for water and food. It was very tough to survive on with what little they had or found from empty houses on the way. He used to survive for 5-6 days from small amount of rice by adding water in it. Swamiji helped a rich man by risking his own life to get little rice for him. They reached Calcutta after three months. Swamiji was all with tears in his eyes whenever he used to narrate this horrific journey from Burma to Calcutta in his lectures.

At Calcutta they got shelter at a refugee camp. Now it was time to think about missing sisters who left by plane and about monetary conditions. During this tough time, fortunately they met his father's friend Mr. Bashir who was one of the directors of Indo-Burma Petroleum Company. He helped them a lot, made arrangements for stay in a well-furnished hotel and in search of the sisters who were missing. Mr.Bashir helped to get the family money from the Burmese government, cash for the family's shares in IBP Company and Insurance Company. The family got well-established again after receiving the financial aid.

At the end of 1942 the family shifted to Nagpur and settled there. Next year in 1943, his mother died and at the end of the same year his father died, that left both Swamiji and his twin-sister without family. He got a message informing that the missing sisters were in Manipur, Assam. Both Mr. Bashir and Swamiji left for Manipur to meet the sisters. On way Mr. Bashir got injured in an accident and was admitted to a hospital. Luckily they met the sisters and all came to Nagpur where they lived happily and peacefully. In 1944 Swamiji distributed the family property among sisters. His own part of around Rs. 1,00,000/- gave to his twin-sister. With this carefree position Swamiji left the house and opted for Sanyas.

"I used to be timid from childhood and also was not fully devoted in god, so I took money enough to survive for almost a year. With one pair of clothe I left the house", Swamiji used to tell his followers about his immature state when he took Sanyas. An Astrologer has forecasted when he was in Burma that three of his relatives would adopt Sanyas and so it did get materialized. First it was his maternal uncle, then a cousin brother and then he, himself. There was no intention to seek enlightenment (ultimate spiritual state) nor did he have any childhood dreams of becoming a saint.

By leaving your home you don't become a saint, it was just the beginning of his preparation to become a Sanyasi. He left his home-town and came to Nagpur where he purchased a ticket for Hubli, Karnataka. He reached to Kishkindhaa, a famous holy place. During his stay at Kishkindhaa, he roamed and visited many temples and caves. Then he went to Pampa Sarovar [a lake] where a carefree saint asked him to go to Anjanay cave and pray and visit Kartik Swami's place. On third day he went and spent the whole night of non-stop prayer and meditation but to his surprise his co-partner in that Anjanay Cave was none other than a huge python. Swamiji has described this event in one of his books. He believed his journey to self-realization started from here.

In 1948, he came back to Nagpur from Hubli and officially adopted Sanyas. He was given the official name "Krishnanand" after that. He then started his long-journey on foot. The first long distance journey was from Nagpur to Karachi. Then it was from Surat to Pondicherry. At Karachi he met Capitan Ramdas. After Karachi he went to Sakkar, there he met a saint known as Aghori Mastram and served him well. Aghori Mastram sent him to Mirpurkhas where one Shri Makrana gave him proper guidance to become fearless. He went to Saurashtra where in Adityana in Ranavav he came in touch with Yogini Devi. He also met Vishwapremji and Shantipuriji while somewhere near Shillong he met a well-versed Yogi known as "Punarjanma". In 1946 in Madhya Pradesh he met a great saint who described in detail Swamiji's two former births before this one. All this helped him to learn and increase his own knowledge about spiritual-progress. He ended up in Bhadran first time in 1952.

On the cross roads near Ananand, without any reason Swamiji stared walking towards Borsad and was directed to go to Napa village. He stayed in a Shiv temple for three days. On fourth day when Swamiji started his journey to Petlad the Pujari of temple requested him to spend Chaturmas' [a period of 4 months in monsoon during which the Saints don't travel fearing to crush insects] in Bhadran. Swamiji took the path to Bhadran.

'Shanti Ashram' is located in the west of Bhadran near the narrow-gauge railway station. A Patel built the ashram in memory of his young son's death. The ashram was built in 1925, for any Saints to stay there for few days. When Swamiji came to this Ashram he was given welcome by a blind saint named Shri Gyaniji. Initially he was treated by the local devotees and trustees as an ordinary saint. After a month or so, one of the trustees came across an English book lying by the side of Swamiji, which was biography of Shri Ram Krishna Paramhans. He then realized that Swamiji was a learned one. Slowly Swamiji attracted some old aged and educated people from the town. He was given some facilities, especially that of water by the Late Chunibhai F. Patel and also invited him for the next 'Chatur Mas'. Swamiji liked this quiet, lonely and peaceful place so he decides to spend next twelve Chatur Mas in Bhadran. In 1965, after the 12th Chaturmas Swamiji wanted to visit Cairo, Egypt which was his birth place in previous birth, but he did not get visa as war between India and Pakistan broke out.

After fulfilling his desire to complete 12 Chaturmas, he continued to do Chaturmas in Bhadran. He lived in Bhadran for 37 years more than half of his 69 years life.

In the beginning Swamiji's daily schedule was different, most of the time was spent in prayer, meditation and reading. In the evening he would talk about his own experience from his travels. He was requested to write his experiences in a book to spread the true and inspiring stories. Due to his poor writing skills in Gujarati he started writing in English, which was translated in Gujarati. He was regarded as a very good writer by many, despite him being a saint.

Until 1975, Swamiji used to beg from houses for his food. It was mentioned by an astrologer that Swamiji reached highest pick of his 'sadhana' and achieved the supreme stage of self-realization and enlightenment during 1974-75.

After 1975, Swamiji's daily routine changed. Instead of going to beg for food, he got a kitchen constructed in the Ashram. He also constructed a spacious bathroom near his prayer-room. He made some facilities for the guests also. During 1975 electricity was connected in the Ashram, till then he was using kerosene lamps.

Suitable to the nature of a spiritually devoted person, his schedule of the entire day was very perfect. He used to get up at 2.30 am in the morning every day in Bhadran or while travelling. He never altered this mid-night wake up time. After taking tea, he used to perform prayer and meditation between 3 am to 5.30 am. 5.30 am to 6.30 am for bath and other activities, 6.30 am to 7.30 am morning payers. 8 am to 9.30 am meeting with his devotees. 9.30 am to 10 am lunch, 10 am to 12 pm in the prayer room for meditation and rest. 12 pm to 2 pm was spent reading and responding to letters. 2.30 pm to 3.30 pm was spent for the mid-day bath. He used to meet people from outside of Bhadran in between 4 pm and 5 pm. 5 pm to 7 pm was spent again with the local devotees. Dinner at 7.30 pm and sleep from 8.15 pm was his unbroken daily schedule.

He never missed three occasions to visit Saurashtra.

1)To attend a mela (fair) at Mount Girnar on Maha Sivaratri (Maha Shivratri is a Hindu festival celebrated every year in reverence of Lord Shiva)

2)He would go to Savarkundla on the occasion of Jalzilana Ekadashi in the month of Bhadarva (11th month according to Gujarati calendar)

3)He would go to Bhavnagar in the month of January-Maha Shud Bij for a week.

When came in contact with the followers of Rajkot and Bhavnagar, it was learnt that Swamiji who used to keep his schedule tight and without a little change at the Ashram, he was not very strict follower of it in Saurashtra.

Guru Purnima is the unique celebration where and when a guru – a teacher is worshiped by all of his students and followers. Since his arrival in 1952, Guru Purnima was celebrated without a break.

Despite being a saint he was very proficient in social aspects of the world. He will advise his hosts well in advance of his intention of arrival. He never would use his host's phone or vehicle. He was a very good person to manage long travels. He used to say 'I never forget the person who has invited me for a dinner". He served one of his host's wife in the Ashram with same words and tone, he was served 22 years ago.

As mentioned earlier, Swamiji used to do very long distance travel by foot. He travelled to Badri-Kedar on foot three times, twice from Haridwar and once from Rudra Prayag. Due to extensive travel on foot his health deteriorated and he was unable to perform long travels. Then he started travelling in train, he preferred first class or A.C. Chair car. During his life time he visited Amarnath 5 times and Badri-Kedar 36 times. He has travelled roughly around 24,000 kms by foot and around 29,000 kms in train/car/plane.

Due to his difficult travels by foot his health got affected. First time in 1979 he got mild heart-attack. He needed to stay in Lady Pillar Hospital of Baroda for one and half month when he got the second heart-attack in 1980. In 1981, coronary bypass surgery operation was performed on him at the CMC hospital in Velor. Due to the dust of tobacco near the Ashram, Swamiji was having difficulty breathing. One of the devotee started building new Ashram for Swamiji in Dandi but due to legal issues the work was stopped. In the February of 1988 he underwent surgery for prostate gland, where he lost a lot of blood and experienced significant pain. His health was not very well in the last 10 years of his life. On 3rd August, 1989, while sleeping in his prayer room, in between 11 and 11.30 am he got a severe heart attack and he left us.

The medical students hardly get good bodies for study, which was known to Swamiji. So after the 1981 operation in Velor he decided that he would give his body to a Medical College. He arranged donation of his body to Karamsad Medical Hospital. He strongly recommended not starting any religion or fellowship after his death. He strongly stated that Shanti Ashram is a public place for saints and should not become a private property of his followers.

Swamiji created his own personality by learning and staying in touch with great soul and personalities like J. Krishnamurti, Dada Lekhraj, Shri Pandurang Athwale, Shri Mataji of Pondicherry, Dongreji Maharaj, Shambhu Maharaj and Acharya Rajnish. He accepted Shri Mota of Hariom Ashram as his guru and took deep interest in the activities of Hariom Ashram. Born in Burma, migrated to India and eventually made Bhadran his karmabhoomi (the land where one works). This soul was very unique and a privilege for the human kind.

May God Bless Us All.

Originally in Gujarati written by – N.N.Trivedi.

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