To be a guru you have to say, “I know and I can teach you.” But if I say that, well, I’m finished. I can never learn anything else. I have shut myself off from anything new. If I remain a student all my life, though, I will always be ready to learn new things.
I never call any of the people who come to me for spiritual guidance “disciples.” I am just an ordinary person. I have lived unknown and I will die unknown, except to a few. I am not interested in anything the world can offer me and even if I die tomorrow I have no regrets. I have lived my life to the fullest; I have done enough. I’ll always be thankful to Nature for permitting me to achieve so much. I will never have disciples, only “children,” because that is the way a real guru should treat a disciple: as a spiritual son or daughter. And the bond between them is far more intense than that between a physical parent and child.
Even if the child is wicked or wayward, do the parents stop loving it? No! In fact if they are true parents they will love the child all the more, because that child gives them an opportunity to demonstrate their generosity and love, just as in the case of the Prodigal Son. The parents have a chance to forgive the child, and that feeds the ego. So no matter what a child might do, its parents are always bound to love it — if they are true parents.
It is the same way with a guru and his disciples. No matter where the “child” goes or how much he curses the guru, the mentor knows the child must return eventually. Where will he go? The guru can afford to wait for the child and forgive him when he returns.
Once there was a guru who made one of his disciples put on a loincloth and then sent him out into the world. Tying on a loincloth symbolized that the boy was meant to be a celibate mendicant. Everything went fine for the boy until one day when he washed his loincloth, and while it was hanging up to dry a mouse came along and chewed up part of it. The boy said to himself, “This will never do. I need a cat.” So he got a cat to save his loincloth from mice. But then the cat had to eat, so he made arrangements for a cow to provide milk for the cat. Who will look after the cow? A cowherd was engaged to cut grass to feed the cow. But then how to pay for the cowherd? A field was taken and farming was begun so there would be produce with which to pay the cowherd. The farm in turn required labor, and in addition the boy had to live nearby in order to oversee it. So a house was constructed. Who is to run the house? A wife is necessary. So the boy married and threw away the loincloth, which was the cause of the whole mess in the first place.
When the guru returned to that area after some time to check on his disciple’s progress he was amazed to see a large farmhouse and cultivated fields where he had expected to find jungle. Outside the gate of the house was a watchman who asked the guru what business he had in the neighborhood. When the guru asked where his boy might be the watchman replied,
“Sahib? Oh, he is in his house.” The guru said to himself, “Wah, wah, my boy, so you have become a great man, a sahib,” and went into the house to meet the boy. After the usual greetings he told his disciple, “Look how you have got yourself reentangled in the world. Now don’t worry, I am here to save you. Forget all this and come back with me to the jungle.”
The boy replied, “Oh, no, Maharaj, this is much more to my liking; I intend to stay here.”
The guru didn’t say anything else, but just went off a little distance to meditate. Within a short time the disciple’s mind changed completely. He realized the cage he had created for himself, and he left everything and returned to his guru. This is the kind of guru to have: one who once he accepts you as his disciple never forsakes you until the end, come what may. The bond between guru and disciple is stronger than any other, which is why the guru is to be respected even before God.
People come to me for many reasons, you know. Basically, though, they come because they are miserable. Most of them have worldly miseries and are satisfied with worldly happiness, which is why I don’t talk to most people about spirituality. Most people are just not interested in experiencing anything other than food, sleep, and sex, no matter what they may claim. I’m sorry, but it’s true. And the few who are after more in life are mainly after the happiness which the world can provide them: fame, money, possessions, children, whatever. Very, very few are really interested in spirituality.
And this is the way it should be. If everyone became spiritual and lost interest in the world all our society would grind to a halt. So the Yoga which teaches you to go out into the jungle is not meant to be taught to everyone. This is why I have not been able to find language foul enough to express how I feel about the so-called Yogis, Swamis, and godmen who India has been exporting to the West to teach spirituality. Yoga is not a system of physical jerks; know it once and for all. Yoga is meant to make every home a happy home. When every family member is giving out his or her best to unite the family and make it a success, that is real Yoga. And I don’t mean the family you were born into or married into, necessarily. Whoever you live with is your family. As we say in Sanskrit, “vasudeva kutumbam” — we are all members of God’s family.
So when people come to me for instruction I don’t tell them to do exercises or to pay priests to do some rituals on their behalf or to go on pilgrimage or anything else like that. I tell them to first clear up their personal lives. Most people are not destined to become truly spiritual in this lifetime and there is no use in trying to force them to; they will just become miserable. If they are downright materialistic, well, I always say, “For those who believe in God no proof of His existence is necessary; for those who do not believe in God no proof is possible.” If they are partly materialistic and partly spiritual, the true guru will see that they marry happily and live contentedly and observe simple spiritual practices. This will ensure their progression for future lives. The ones who are destined for it, the ones who have already done plenty of preparation in past existences, will be taught fully.
The guru does not need his physical body to guide you, remember. He may use other teachers or he may work directly through Nature. The first year of my life I took mother’s milk; the next five years, nothing but cow’s milk. For the next eight years I lived on nothing but three fistfuls of chickpeas. I would soak them overnight in water and then take one fistful morning, afternoon, and evening. No one told me to do it; it just seemed to me to be the right thing to do. Then for three and a half years I ate nothing but green chilies and water. When I finally started eating what people would call “normal” food I began by taking only raw vegetables because I wanted something crunchy, something to bite; you know how animals always prefer their food to be raw. For twenty-three years I never tasted salt, just because I didn’t want to.
One day during my boyhood I was standing alone doing nothing in particular when suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, I heard a mantra. I liked it and started to repeat it. No one told me to do so, but I got such a good feeling from it that soon I was repeating it most of the time. You see how Nature works?
When I was in the first year of college my classmates and I went to Benares on a university tour. I met two saints while I was there. One was Bhaskarananda Saraswati, the sadhu who predicted to Lady Willingdon that she would become Vicereine of India. He was honored with a formal reception by the grateful lady when this occurred. Imagine — a naked ascetic, walking through a cordon of honor composed of troopers with drawn swords!
The other saint I met was Telang Swami. He has now left his body, after a life of more than 370 years. He weighed only about 300 pounds, and he had short white hair and a short beard; he never had anything to do with clothing except for a 1,008 bead rosary. He is the only person in the history of Benares ever to perform a ritual bath of Kashi Vishveshvara, the presiding deity of Benares, with his own urine and feces. When he did this one of the temple priests was so outraged that he came over and slapped Telang Swami, who didn’t bother in the least about it and merely went off. That night the King of Benares saw Kashi Vishveshvara in a dream. The god told him, “Telang Swami is my very essence; how dare anyone insult him?” The next day the King tried to locate the priest to punish him, but learned he had died suddenly during the night. Telang Swami was a wonderful Aghori.
When I met him, he motioned to me to come over and sit next to him — he never spoke for almost 100 years — and he started playing with my hair and rubbing the back of my head. I left, and I don’t know what he did to me but back in Bombay I began experiencing some queer things. One night Telang Swami came to me in a dream and requested me to return to Benares to visit him again, which I did. At that time I had no inkling of the nature of the relationship between us; later when Imet my Junior Guru Maharaj I learned that Telang Swami was his disciple. This made us guru-brothers, and in his magnanimity he was helping to prepare me for what was to happen next.
After some time a few of my classmates took me to see a Jain ascetic by the name of Jina Chandra Suri. The old man peered at me and after a close inspection requested me to bring my horoscope to him the next day. I did, and, after carefully perusing it, he inquired about my willingness to learn astrology, palmistry, and physiognomy from him. I don’t know what made me agree, but I agreed, and I studied with him for three years. He taught me how to construct Yantras and perform rituals; I enjoyed it.
One day he casually asked me to accompany him on a trip outside Bombay. He took me to Janakpur, up in the erstwhile Darbhanga State which is now part of Bihar. I thought we were just on a holiday, and for two or three days I had a fine time. The villagers were very hospitable, and I enjoyed a good rest.
On the new-moon night, though, everything went wrong. Jina Chandra Suri came and met me and started speaking very sweetly to me. I wondered what had come over him. There was certainly no need for such ingratiating behavior. I now know he was just fattening me up for the kill, because after all the preliminaries he told me, “Now you are going to do Shava Sadhana.’’
I had no idea what he was talking about. When I asked him he explained that a fresh corpse, or Shava, had been obtained and that I was to sit on the corpse and perform a ritual. Apparently he had looked into my horoscope and realized that I could succeed at this sort of sadhana. He must have planned out the whole drama over the last three years.
Well, I told him I had no intention of doing anything like sitting on a corpse and performing sadhana. I had done some Yoga before, but our family worships Krishna, and for us it is unthinkable to have anything to do with dead bodies or spirits or anything like them.
Besides, since childhood I could never see a corpse without breaking out in a sweat and falling into a faint, all because I so strongly self-identified with the dead individual. Once or twice when I was out driving I met a funeral procession and actually lost control of the car and allowed it to run onto the footpath; it was very dangerous. So I couldn’t even imagine what would happen to me were I to sit on a corpse.
Jina Chandra Suri started to try to convince me, but I was adamant. Finally he lost his temper; it was the first time I had ever seen the old man get angry. He told me, “If you refuse to do it I’ll perform the ritual myself on your corpse!”
I flared up: “Who do you think you are threatening?” I assumed he was talking through his hat. To show he meant business he motioned to a group of drunken tribals who were standing nearby, holding knives, clubs, and other weapons. At his signal they walked over and surrounded me.
I was really in a fix. If I did the sadhana there was a very good chance I’d die of sheer terror, or because some spirit would catch hold of me, or maybe the deity Herself would decide to take me as a sacrifice. But if I didn’t do it, it was definite I would die. I decided that if I was going to die either way then I might as well perform the ritual, since there would be at least some minor chance of survival that way.
When I informed the old man that I would do it he immediately brightened up and became cheerful again. He started explaining the details of the ritual to me: how to position the corpse, how to sit on it, how to tie the lifeless thumbs and toes. Then he made me drink a full bottle of country liquor. I am the son of a Hindu merchant, and until that moment in my life I had never even touched an egg, much less a piece of meat or a drop of alcohol. But there was no choice; I took a big pull from the bottle. My God! I thought my throat was on fire! Tears came to my eyes; after all, it was my first time.
Jina Chandra Suri was so overjoyed by my agreeing to do the sadhana that he became very solicitous about my condition. Seeing the effect of the moonshine on me he was so concerned he actually picked up the bottle and started feeding it to me a little at a time.
By the time I had finished the whole bottle all my fear had gone. This was the first time I had ever felt real fear in my entire life and, let me tell you, I was really scared. The only thing left for me was to foul my pants, I was so desperate. I was sweating, my hands were shaking, I was overwhelmed with terror. By the end of that bottle, though, I had lost every iota of my fear. I had made up my mind that I would either succeed at that sadhana or die trying: there was no way out. Challenge and response, the law of the jungle. I was ready.
This is the beautiful effect of alcohol: you never fear or hesitate once you’ve taken it. It has a number of side effects, no doubt, and very few people use it for the right purposes. But for certain practices it is essential. It was really a good thing that I drank that moonshine, because it helped me out in several ways.
Then I was taken to the corpse. It was that of a young girl of about fifteen, very pretty. She belonged to a tribe whose members pressed oil from seeds to earn a living. She had been dead only a few hours and was so lovely that I forgot the ritual, the danger, the fear, and everything else and started thinking only of her. She was beautiful in the way only primitive people can be beautiful. Not an ounce of excess fat, not a wrinkle on her skin. Her thighs? Solid like trees. Her breasts? Absolutely firm. I found myself wishing she were still alive so I could take her off alone to a quiet place and we could enjoy together. I was even ready to marry her, she looked so lovely. This was not necrophilia or anything perverted; I was just very drunk and I was sorry she was dead and unable to play about with me. I am telling you the truth about all this so you’ll have some idea of what it was like.
While I was drinking they had taken her to the appropriate spot and pointed her head in the correct direction. Jina Chandra Suri, who was looking very pleased with himself, handed me an object and explained: “I am giving you my Yantra which I worshipped for forty years in Assam. It will take care of you. There is nothing to worry about. I am going to sit over there,” he said, motioning to a spot about a hundred yards away, “and repeat mantras for your protection.”
He then took a black thread and did Kilana in a big circle around me. Kila means nail, and Kilana is meant to “nail off” or seal off an area to prevent any troublemaking spirit from disturbing your concentration. As long as you remain within the circle you are safe. The moment you step outside the circle you’ve had it: you become a spirit yourself unless there is some ethereal being nearby who can come to your rescue, which is highly unlikely.
After the Kilana the old man told me which mantra to recite, gave me a japamala, or rosary, to count the repetitions, and shoved a dish of raw meat and a bowl of wine in front of me. The idea was that when the Goddess appeared, in the form of an animal, I should offer the meat and wine to please Her. Satisfied with my worship, She would tell me to ask for a boon, and I should reply, “Do whatever my guru says to do,” meaning Jina Chandra Suri. This was all the old man’s idea, of course, and I had no intention of saying anything like that. First I wanted to see whether or not the sadhana would actually work, and then if it did I would think about what to ask Her for.
Jina Chandra Suri walked off and sat down to start doing japa for my protection, and I knelt on the corpse in the manner I had been shown. The supine girl’s mouth was open and had been filled with oil. The old man had showed me how to make a wick of raw cotton, and I lit my wick from one of the torches the tribals were carrying. Since it was a new moon night there was absolute blackness except for this lamp, and I could see nothing but the poor girl’s face, which looked ghastly, grotesque in the flickering light of the flame. All my previous desire for enjoyment with her melted away as I peered down into her open, fixed, unstaring eyes. Both of us were stark naked, and her cold body underneath mine caused a sort of creepy feeling to spread through my body and mind.
Here again the alcohol saved me. Being drunk I was able to shake off the dread and begin my japa, gazing full into her face to concentrate my mind there. The old man had warned me that if she tried to get up I should knock her down and pin her firmly, so I was intently watching for the least twitch or flinch in her body to alert me to the danger. I suppose this is the most terrifying part of Shava Sadhana, because it is an immense strain on your nerves if the corpse suddenly tries to sit up and begins to growl and scream at you. Many people have died of fright at this stage. One old fellow died right in front of me. He was trying to show off and challenged me to a contest. We procured two corpses. The idea was to see who could bring life into one most quickly and control it most firmly. I warned him that he was too old to be trying such stunts but he was beyond reasoning with. As soon as the corpse started to sit up and he tried to control it, the spirit which had been forced to sit in the corpse caught hold of him. His nerves failed, his heart failed, and he died.
But I didn’t have this problem on that first night, which is good since otherwise I probably would not be sitting here telling you this story now. I sat and did my japa. I don’t know how many I did, but it can’t have been too many before I suddenly began to get a very eerie, extremely queer feeling, and I saw a pair of eyes watching me from the darkness.
The animal, a jackal, approached me, snarling and baring its teeth. I don’t know what came over me — it must have been the alcohol, because I was so drunk I didn’t care for man or beast — but I became furious. I forgot everything I had been told to do, I forgot the wine and meat I was supposed to offer. I reached out of the circle which had been drawn on the ground to protect me and I grabbed the jackal. I was really incensed, and said to it: “So, you want blood, do you? Take this!” And I stuck my hand into its mouth. That liquor really did me immense good; I don’t know what I would have done without it.
The Goddess, who was temporarily in the form of the jackal, was interested only in blood. One of the beast’s teeth pricked my hand between the thumb and index finger, and the jackal licked up the drop of blood that oozed out — and then all of a sudden there was Smashan Tara standing before me, smiling, asking what I wanted from Her.
Tears come to my eyes whenever I remember that scene. For years the scar remained on my hand as a reminder of the night when I was there in that cemetery sitting on that corpse, and I caught my first glimpse of Smashan Tara. I don’t know what your condition would be if you were to catch sight of Her. You might even die of shock. She is very tall, and Her skin is a beautiful deep midnight-blue color. Her eyes are beautiful; that’s the only way I know to describe them. She has a long red tongue lolling from Her mouth. Blood, the blood She is eternally drinking, drips slowly from the tip. She is ghatastani, or pot-breasted, and lambodari, or full-bellied. Around Her neck there is a garland of freshly severed human heads which are freshly bleeding. She wears wristlets and armlets of bones, and anklets of snakes. Her four hands grasp a pair of scissors, a sword, a noose, and a skull. She wears a skirt of human arms, and to me She is one of the loveliest beings in the universe, because She is my Mother.
I suppose I should have been frightened at this terrific vision, but actually when I saw Ma for the first time I felt as if I had known Her before, perhaps in some previous birth, and that this was just a continuation of that previous sadhana. I am sure this is the case because otherwise it would have been impossible for me to achieve so quickly.
Anyway, She asked me what I wanted and I told Her, “Look, I never did this for myself. I never wanted to do anything like this. That fellow sitting over there made me do it. I don’t want anything except to go back to Bombay.”
“Don’t worry,” Tara assured me, “I’ll see that you get to Bombay, but first you have to ask for something.”
“But I don’t want anything except to go back to Bombay.” “But you have to ask for something,” Tara insisted, smiling. “Just get me out of here first. Take me to Bombay and then I’ll ask for something.”
Tara laughed and told me to close my eyes. I did, and when I opened them again I was in my bedroom in our family mansion in Bombay, soaked in sweat from fear and shock. I was stunned for at least fifteen minutes and did not even know where I was. I walked from room to room like a zombie, trying to convince myself I was really back home. Gradually I realized that I had indeed returned to Bombay, and that thought gave me some relief. I was still drunk, so there was nothing to do but go to sleep.
When I woke up at 11 A.M. I had a terrible hangover. Of course I didn’t know then it was a hangover because I had never experienced one before. All I knew was that my head was splitting open, bursting at the seams. I called my servant Dhondu and told him to bring me some Bayer aspirin. It came as a powder back then, so I took two teaspoonsful, and after half an hour or so I started sweating and my headache disappeared.
I felt good enough to start planning my revenge on Jina Chandra Suri for daring to lie to me about the purpose of our jaunt and getting me into such a situation: “I’ll never see his face again. No — I’ll butcher him. Let him return to Bombay and we’ll see how long his head remains on his shoulders.”
Thinking in this way I suddenly remembered the Yantra and rosary which were still with me. I said to myself, “Wait, I’m safe here in my own home. Let me try this out.” There was some doubt in my mind that I had imagined or dreamed the whole thing. Just as an experiment I sat down and started doing japa. I had not finished even one hundred repetitions when Tara appeared in front of me again and asked me what I wanted from Her.
I said, “Ma, I really never had any intention of doing Shava Sadhana, and I don’t want anything.”
Again She smiled and said, “Ask Me for something.” When Ma wants to give you something She creates a situation so that you must accept it. I finally had to tell Her, “Ma, I never wanted any of this, but now that I’ve succeeded I would most like for You to come to me every day and permit me to worship You.’’
She said, “But I can’t come here. You will have to go daily to the smashan.’’
And that is just what I did. At that time Bombay was not so crowded as it is today, and the smashans were very lonely places. I began with the Worli smashan. A friend of mine would drive me there every night and wait in the car while I did my work. I had arranged for a man to provide me with fresh coconut water nightly. After offering it to Ma I would drink the rest as Her prasad, a gift from Her to me. There was an old fakir, a Muslim ascetic, named Mishkin Shah, who lived nearby and who knew why I visited the cemetery nightly. After we met we became good friends and I would have tea with him every night.
Ma would come to me nightly and we’d talk. After some time, when I knew Her better, I asked Her to show me all Her forms: Chinnamasta, who carries Her head in Her hands and drinks Her own blood as it gushes from Her neck; Bagalamukhi, who has the head of a crane, or heron; and all the rest of the Great Goddesses. Many rituals were involved in achieving success at the sadhanas for them all. I also had to perform Shava Sadhana twice more, each time with a different technique. For instance, the second time I did Shava Sadhana I did it on the corpse of a man instead of a woman, and the third time I did it on the corpse of a woman who had died while pregnant.
Jina Chandra Suri was not there to “assist” me those next two times I did Shava Sadhana. A few days after my experience in Janakpur he returned to Bombay and came to meet me. He began by praising me: “I am so pleased with you, my boy. I knew you could do it from the first time I saw your horoscope. Now do just as I say and we’ll be able to collect plenty of money from all the maharajas and merchants.”
I told him, “I will do nothing of the sort. You forced me to go and do a sadhana which I never would have done willingly. I will allow you to leave with your life only because you introduced me to my Mother. I must show my appreciation to you for such a boon, even though your wicked, dirty mind had different plans for me. Were it not for this I would ask Her to make a nice mince of you, just as you had planned to do to me. Now please get out.”
First he pleaded a little. Then when he saw I was intransigent he got wild: “I’ll perform a death ritual on you!”
I lost my temper, but I just laughed in his face and said, “Now I spend twenty-four hours of the day in the lap of my Mother, so your puny threats do not worry me at all. But my Mother may not like to hear you abusing Her son; I suggest you keep quiet.”
This only infuriated him further: “Give me back my Yantra!” he shouted. I told him firmly, “I am not going to give you anything. It is time for you to leave,” and I had him bodily ejected from my house. And what happened? After some time he raped a little teenaged girl, and that was the end of all his spiritual power. Thereafter he earned his living by making Yantras for rich Jain merchants, charging them 10,000 or 15,000 rupees each (about $1,000 to $1,500).
We kept up our relationship, however. I guess it was because he knew the power of Smashan Tara, since he had worshipped Her for forty years, and he probably still thought he might be able to get some benefit from Her through me. Sometimes he would come and meet me at my house, but the connection between us was strained.
He was unique, really, in his own way. As far as astrology, palmistry, and physiognomy are concerned he was a master.
He had been able to dig up a number of buried treasures and texts. I have never met anyone in this world who could exceed his ability to make other people rich. “Why do you want to waste your time on spiritual things?” he would always tell me. “Do your penance, then cash in on it, make money, and enjoy your life. You are from a merchant’s family, which means you are meant to make money, not be spiritual. Spirituality is for Brahmins.”
He had himself owned tea estates earlier in his life and had fallen in love with an English girl, the daughter of a fellow tea planter. Everyone was against them and succeeded in breaking up the relationship. He was so disgusted with the whole situation that he left everything and became an ascetic.
Although he had worshipped Smashan Tara for forty years he never dared try to perform Shava Sadhana himself; he knew he could never succeed. He did attempt to make one Rati Bhai do Shava Sadhana, but as soon as Rati Bhai reached the smashan he got such a fright that he fouled his pants and then fainted. He has not fully recovered from the effect, even today.
Unfortunately for Jina Chandra Suri, I was a very different sort and paid no attention to him. I was listening only to my Mother, Smashan Tara. It is only by Her grace that I have achieved whatever I have achieved in this life.
I never told Ma that he should rape that little girl, mind you. I don’t like rape; it makes me furious. It is one of the three acts which supposedly can’t be atoned for or forgiven, along with murder of your guru, and gambling. What happened to Jina Chandra Suri was that Ma withdrew Her protection from him, and his mind was overcome with desire. He could have satisfied his desire in other ways but he could not restrain himself and this is what resulted. And besides, there must have been some karmic connection there, otherwise there never would have been an opportunity for him to be alone with her long enough to rape her. Had this old man been in his senses he could have postponed the repayment of this karmic debt for some future lifetime, but because his balance of mind was lost, his natural underlying lust which had been suppressed all those years suddenly spurted out. It is a fine thing to collect great spiritual power, but you are headed for trouble if you ever lose control over it.
You know, one person may do sadhana for years and years and still get no result, whereas someone else may only do a very small amount of penance and get a very great result, as was the case with me and my Shava Sadhana. It looks unfair, doesn’t it? But the person who achieves easily in this lifetime must have spent many, many lifetimes of tough austerities, just as Kalidasa did, to reach the point where only a small further effort will bring results. Someday I’ll tell you the story of Kalidasa. Right now I have a better story for you. Listen!
One time an Aghori decided to perform Shava Sadhana. Naturally he couldn’t do it in the city because the people there would be scandalized and would accuse him of black magic and attack him. To avoid this he procured a corpse, carried it out into the deep jungle, sat on top of it, and began to do his japa.
A woodcutter happened to pass nearby and, seeing the Aghori and the corpse, took fright and climbed a tree to hide. While he was in the tree the woodcutter overheard the mantra which the Aghori was repeating. He was repeating it aloud to improve his pronunciation, which was proof he was still raw, because a real Aghori never speaks a mantra aloud.
Suddenly from out of nowhere a tiger appeared and with one cuff from its paw killed the Aghori. Immediately it began to lap up the freely flowing blood. Tigers always do that to a fresh kill. While it was busily engaged in slaking its thirst for blood, the tiger was frightened by a sound nearby and plunged into the deep underbrush.
The woodcutter knew well that a tiger always returns to its kill, but he had become curious about the whole thing and in spite of the danger got down from the tree to investigate. Then he wondered to himself, “Why shouldn’t I try this out?” He sat on the fresh corpse of the Aghori and started to repeat the mantra he had overheard. After less than a hundred repetitions the deity suddenly appeared in front of him and said, “Ask for a boon!”
The woodcutter told Her, “Ma, I have only done this out of curiosity.”
Ma told him, “That doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I have come to you. Now ask for something.”
He said, “All right then, tell me which law states that this fellow should not succeed even after long penance and that I should achieve within seconds?’’
Ma smiled and said, “Close your eyes.” When he did he saw that he had been doing this same sadhana for the past ten births. Ma continued: “Do you understand now? If you hadn’t done this before, how could you have remembered the mantra? How would you have developed the courage to attempt the sadhana knowing the tiger would return at any moment? I was the tiger who killed this Aghori. I made him come here, where I knew you would be waiting. I gave you the intelligence to remember the mantra and do the sadhana. You had only a few japas left remaining from your past birth in order to get Siddhi, and now you have it. This Aghori must still go through two more lives before he gets an opportunity like this. Now ask me for something!’’
The woodcutter said, “Ma, all that I desire is that you should keep me forever in Your sweet gaze.” In that instant, he was made.
When I said he was made, I mean he obtained Siddhi. Not Kaya Siddhi, which is immortality, or Maya Siddhi, which is control over the mundane world. When you have one of these, of course, you have the other as well. No, I mean the Siddhi of having Ma with him twenty-four hours a day. Ma took possession of him. Not of his body, because if She had come for his body he would have become immortal. She possessed his mind;
She plugged him into the Universal Computer so that he was able to get answers for any question, and could continuously play about with Her.
Ma came to me in the same way. Only because of the efforts of my past lives did I get the desire to study with Jina Chandra Suri; I could have easily refused. And unless I had done it in some previous existence I would never have agreed to do Shava Sadhana, even under threat of death. Ma wanted me to do it, that’s all. And what I have gained by succeeding at Her sadhana is beyond speech. She taught me how to move around in my subtle body; She made me clairaudient and clairvoyant. I can go anywhere in the world without leaving my chair; nothing can be hidden from me.
I am talking as if I do these things, but in fact it is beyond me to do anything. Only Ma can do it; She does it all. When someone who is afflicted by disease comes to me Ma tells me the treatment. Sometimes She will tell me, “This person does not deserve to get well,” or, “It is not in this person’s destiny to be cured.” Whereupon I ask Her, “Then why did you send this particular individual to me, if you didn’t want them to be benefited in some way?” And then Her compassion flows and something incomprehensible occurs and the person is cured. I always pray to Her, “Ma, make me a leper, ruin me, do whatever You like but don’t ever remove me from Your lap.” And I know She hears me. This is the foundation of all my confidence in my abilities. Do I have any capabilities? Ha! Everything is from Ma.
My ideas are individual, no one else knows about them. People sometimes ask me, “How can you have learned so much in such a short span of sixty years?” I tell them, “I studied at Jnanaganj at Manasasarovara.” Jnanaganj — heap of knowledge. Manasasarovara — ocean of the mind. My knowledge is all Nijajnana*,* knowledge from within, from Ma. My mentor has taught me a wonderful method of being able to tune in on knowledge from anywhere, with Ma’s help.
Other people have wondered, “How can you treat someone as terrifying as Smashan Tara as your Mother?” They can ask such stupid questions only because they are ignorant. Once you know the meaning of the form in which you see Smashan Tara you will be able to understand why She is the Universal Mother.