Some days later when I was in Bombay I accompanied Vimalananda on an uneventful visit to K., one of his old friends. Afterward I noticed that Vim alananda was quieter than usual, so after we reached home and had tea I casually asked him, “Have you known that gentleman for very long?”
| 148 1
MANTRA
He replied, “There are many restrictions to follow if you really want to perfect a mantra. One of the most important is that you must never tell any one which mantra you repeat. When you tell someone else your mantra you allow them access to the Shakti you are trying to accumulate, which is tan tamount to giving them a blank check and asking them to clean out your bank account. Anyone who needs to know your mantra will be able to find out without asking you; whoever cannot find it out without asking does not need to know
“About twenty years ago K. wanted me to give him a mantra to repeat. He pleaded with me so long and so insistently that finally, against my better judgment, I gave in. K. was proud of his new acquisition, and when my Jun ior Guru Maharaj came to Bombay in 1959 and K. came to pay his respects, Guru Maharaj asked him what kind of sadhana he was doing. K. told him, “Vimalananda has given me a mantra which I am repeating regularly with great care.'
“Now, Guru Maharaj did not ask K. about his sadhana because he wanted to know about it. He already knew about it, finding out such things is child’s play for him. He asked because he wanted to know how solid K.’s dedication to sadhana had become. When Guru Maharaj learned that his dedication was not at all solid he decided to teach K. a lesson.”
“He knew it was not solid because K. was willing to speak about it, you mean?”
“That’s it; he knew the rules. Anyway, Guru Maharaj got wild and told K., ‘Who does Babuji’—meaning me; he always calls me Babuji..–‘who does Babuji think he is-God?—that he is giving out mantras? Besides, he has not told you the entire mantra. He is trying to keep something from you; he has left out one syllable.’
“K. became alarmed; if the mantra was incomplete he might repeat it for many years and nothing would happen! So he said, ‘Oh, Maharaj, please
take pity on me. Tell me the rest of it.’
“Guru Maharaj played his part well. At first he refused, but K. begged, pleaded and wheedled so sincerely that eventually Guru Maharaj took ‘pity’ on him and gave him the additional syllable.’
“The result? Since 1959 K. has repeated that mantra faithfully every day for ten to twelve hours. Ten to twelve hours! He passed the ten million mark long back, and is probably near the twenty million mark now—but there has been no concrete result whatsoever. That extra syllable changed the entire phonetic effect of the mantra’s vibration. It didn’t belong there, of course; Guru Maharaj added it just to teach K. a lesson. But what a lesson!
[149]
AGHORA II: Kundalini
Twenty or thirty years of sadhana down the drain! To Guru Maharaj, of course, twenty or thirty years means nothing at all, but to us mortals it is our lives. It just serves K. right for speaking his mantra aloud.”
I had heard stories of Guru Maharaj before, and after meeting him I found him to be as strict as Vimalananda portrayed him. At this stage in my life, however, such stories made me lose all interest in ever meeting Guru Maha raj myself, which is the effect Vimalananda intended. And he was right, of course; had I met Guru Maharaj then I would have been lucky to escape still wearing my skin.
“This is why people hate my Guru Maharaj,” Vimalananda continued, noting my reaction with satisfaction. “When people come to him he sees to it that they have a good purge of bad karmas from their causal bodies. All that person knows is that he went to Guru Maharaj and suddenly every thing started to go wrong, so Guru Maharaj is blamed. But he doesn’t care. You can say he is just doing his job. He is very strict about doing his job, and rarely lets anyone escape if he finds out they are exceeding their limits. His lessons are really tough.
“Secrecy is always the best policy in sadhana. There is even a proverb to this effect: ‘maunam sarvartha-sadhanam.’ Translate please.”
“Uh, ‘silence accomplishes everything.”"
“Right. Consider this: whenever we are having a good discussion about spirituality some idiot always comes along to spoil it. Why? Because God does not like his secrets to be discussed so easily. How much more must He hate to have His mantras spoken?
“Knowing all these things I still allowed K. to have that mantra. Well, Guru Maharaj taught me a good lesson from this experience too: test an aspirant thoroughly before you teach him or her anything. If you give a monkey a razor, do you think he will shave himself or chop his neck? Very few people can understand the sort of play I have with my mentors."
I certainly didn’t understand it.
“If I were to put my mind to it,” he went on “no one, including you, would ever be able to get anything out of me. Once when I was living the life of a naked sadhu in Girnar some baba heard about me and came to me to see what sort of knowledge he could extract. He brought a 5-barrelled chil lum (straight pipe) along with him, and filled each barrel with a different sort of intoxicant: one held marijuana, another hashish, a third opium, a fourth chendool, and I don’t recall what was in the fifth. Chendool is certainly the worst; I don’t know what its equivalent is in the West, but it is very, very addictive.
( 150 )MANTRA
“The baba, who thought he was being very smart, didn’t realize who he was dealing with. I smoked that chillum, and asked for more. He refilled it, I smoked it, and I asked for more. For the third pipeful all he had left was a piece of hashish the size of a walnut. I finished that too.
“After I was done I told him, ‘All smoked up? I’m so sorry; what I had to tell you has been burned up by all this smoking. Now get out!’ How did I do it? Well, that’s my secret. But it has something to do with mantras.”