Table of Contents
A guru said to his disciple:
Saying this, the teacher gave the disciple a pill and said to him:
The disciple followed the teacher’s instructions and lay on his bed like a dead person: The house was filled with loud wailing. His mother, his wife, and the others lay on the ground weeping bitterly.
Just then a brahmin entered the house and said to them,
‘This boy is dead’, they replied. The brahmin felt his pulse and said:
The joy of the relatives was unbounded; it seemed to them that heaven itself had come down into their house.
But another person must take some of this medicine first and then the boy must swallow the rest. But the other person will die.
I see he has so many dear relatives here. One of them will certainly agree to take the medicine. I see his wife and mother crying bitterly. Surely they will not hesitate to take it.'
At once the weeping stopped and all sat quiet. The mother said:
She fell into a reflective mood. The wife, who had been crying a minute before and bemoaning her ill luck, said: ‘Well, he has gone the way of mortals. I have these two or three young children. Who will look after them if I die?’
The disciple saw everything and heard everything. He stood up at once and said to the teacher:
(All laugh.)
Another disciple said to his teacher:
‘Revered sir, my wife takes great care of me. It is for her sake that I cannot give up the world.’ The disciple practised hathayoga.
The teacher taught him, too, a trick to test his wife’s love. One day there was a great wailing in his house. The neighbours came running and saw the hathayogi seated in a posture, his limbs paralysed and distorted. They thought he was dead. His wife fell on the ground, weeping piteously: ‘Oh, what has befallen me? How have you provided for our future?
Oh, friends, I never dreamt I should meet such a fate!’
“In the mean time the relatives and friends had brought a cot to take the corpse out. But suddenly a difficulty arose as they started to move it.
Since the body was twisted and stiff, it could not be taken out through the door. A neighbour quickly brought an axe and began to chop away the door-frame. The wife was crying bitterly, when she heard the sound of the axe. She ran to the door. ‘What are you doing, friends?’ she asked, still weeping. The neighbour said, ‘We can’t take the body out; so we are chopping away the door-frame.’
“‘Please’, said the wife, ‘don’t do any such thing. I am a widow now; I have no one to look after me. I have to bring up these young children. If you destroy this door, I shall not be able to replace it. Friends, death is inevitable for all, and my husband cannot be called back to life. You had better cut his limbs.’
The hathayogi at once stood up. The effect of the medicine had worn off. He said to his wife: ‘You evil one! You want to cut off my hands and feet, do you?’ So saying, he renounced home and followed his teacher.
(All laugh.)
“Many women make a show of grief. Knowing beforehand that they will have to weep, they first take off their nose-rings and other ornaments, put them securely in a box, and lock it. Then they fall on the ground and weep, O friends, what has befallen us?’”
NARENDRA: “How can I believe, without proof, that God incarnates Him self as a man?”
GIRISH: “Faith alone is sufficient. What is the proof that these objects exist here? Faith alone is the proof.”
A DEVOTEE: “Have philosophers been able to prove that the external world exists outside us? But they say we have an irresistible belief in it.”
GIRISH (to Narendra): “You wouldn’t believe, even if God appeared before you. God Himself might say that He was God born as a man, but perhaps you would say that He was a liar and a cheat.”
The conversation turned to the immortality of the gods.
NARENDRA: “What is the proof of their immortality?”
GIRISH: “You wouldn’t believe it even if the gods appeared before you.”
NARENDRA: “That the immortals existed in the past requires proof.”
M whispered something to Paltu.
PALTU (smiling, to Narendra): “What need is there for the immortals to be without beginning? To be immortal one need only be without end.” MASTER (smiling): “Narendra is the son of a lawyer, but Paltu of a deputy magistrate.” (All laugh.)
All kept silent awhile.
JOGIN (smiling): “He: [meaning the Master] doesn’t accept Narendra’s words any more.”
MASTER (smiling); “One day I remarked that the chatak bird doesn’t drink any water except that which falls from the sky. Narendra said, ‘The chatak drinks ordinary water as well.’
Then I said to the Divine Mother, ‘Mother, then are my words untrue?’ I was greatly worried about it. Another day, later on, Narendra was here. Several birds were flying about in the room. He exclaimed, ‘There! There!’ ‘What is there?’ I asked. He said,
There is your chatak!’ I found they were only bats. Since that day I don’t accept what he says. (All laugh.)
At Jadu Mallick’s garden house Narendra said to me, The forms of God that you see are the fiction of your mind.’ I was amazed and said to him, ‘But they speak too!
‘Narendra answered, ‘Yes, one may think so.’ I went to the temple and wept before the Mother. ‘O Mother,’ I said, ‘what is this?
Then is this all false? How could Narendra say that?’ Instantly I had a revelation. I saw Consciousness-Indivisible Consciousness-and a divine being formed of that Consciousness. The divine form said to me, ‘If your words are untrue, how is that they tally with the facts? Thereupon I said to Narendra: ‘You rogue! You created unbelief in my mind. Don’t come here any more.’
The discussion continued. Narendra was arguing. He was then slightly Over 22 years of age.
Narendra (to Girish, M., and others): “How am I to believe in the Words of scripture? The Mahanirvana Tantra says, in one place, that unless a man attains the Knowledge of Brahman he goes to hell; and the same book says, in another place, that there is no salvation without the worship of Parvathi, the Divine Mother. Manu writes about himself in the Manusamhita; Moses describes his own death in Pentateuch.
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