Vimalananda used to organize a small function each year on Guru Pur nima (“Guru’s Full Moon”), the day on which one’s guru is worshipped. He would arise well before dawn and worship his own gurus, and then all day long his spiritual “children” would drop by to offer their thanks for what he shared with them, and to request his blessings for further spiritual develop ment during the coming year. Lunch would be prepared and served to everyone who came, and the afternoon and evening were reserved for the singing of devotional songs
Because of the difficulty in fitting everyone into his flat, one year we decided to rent a marriage hall for the purpose, and hired a female kirtankar, a sort of spiritual bard, to recount stories of the Lord for us. While we were waiting for her to arrive, someone tumed on a prerecorded cassette of a rec itation of Tulsidas’ Ramayana, performed by M., a very famous kirtankar.
The story of the Ramayana is the story of Prince Ramachandra. Just before He is to be crowned king of Ayodhya His father’s third wife Kaikeyi reminds His father King Dasharatha of two boons the king had given her long before. For her two boons she asks that her son Bharata be made king, and that Rama be sent to the forest for fourteen years. Rama is joined in this
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AGHORA II: Kundalini
penance by His wife Sita and His brother Lakshmana. After many adven tures Sita is stolen by Ravana, the demon king of Lanka. Rama has to search long and hard to find her again, and once He finds her He has to invade Lanka with an army of monkeys and bears headed by Anjaneya, and kill Ravana in order to get her back. This is the mission for which He was born, because Ravana had oppressed the whole world.
The tape we were listening to covered only a small fragment of this epic, and when it ended Vimalananda asked, “Do you know M’s story?” I did not, and if anyone else did they did not let on. “He was once a school teacher in Saurashtra (a region of Western India). When he was small his grandfather used to sit the boy on his knee and recite the Tulsidas Ramayana to him. Eventually M. memorized the entire book. While he had his teach ing job he used to recite this Ramayana here and there for a few hundred rupees at a time.
“One vacation he went to Mount Girnar, and while wandering about came across a sadhu who was very fond of Anjaneya. The sadhu requested him to recite the Ramayana for him, and M. did it so well that the nearby statue of Anjaneya started to shed tears. The sadhu himself was so over whelmed with joy that he blessed M.-really speaking, it was Anjaneya Himself who delivered the blessing, through the medium of the sadhu.
“And the result? M. now lectures before audiences of tens of thousands of people who sit in pindrop silence attending on his every word. People are ready to give him millions, but he doesn’t accept any money, except on one day of the year: today, Guru Purnima. Which is a good thing, since Tulsidas did not write his version of the Ramayana in order to make money off it, and certainly not so that someone else could make money off it.”
At this point our kirtankar suddenly arrived, and Vimalananda inter rupted his story. A few days later when a convenient moment to resume it arose, I casually suggested to him that we listen to another of M.’s Rama yana cassettes. At the end of one side I switched off the tape player and looked expectantly at Vimalananda, who gestured to me to sit down and prepare to listen mindfully.
“The Rishis script everything before it ever happens,” he began. “There is some room for improvisation, just as there is in any stage play, but the basic story does not change.”
He motioned to me to light him a cigarette. “Thanks to the Rishis and their Lila India has been blessed with two great epic poems: the Ramayana, which as you know is the story of Ramachandra, the seventh Avatara of Vishnu; and the Mahabharata, which is basically the story of Krishna, Vish
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THE ESOTERIC RAMAYANA
nu’s eighth Avatara. For thousands of years these epics have been the foun dation of India’s culture. I have already told you a small part of the Krishna Lila, and how it relates to Kundalini Yoga.
“Most Indians know the outline of the story of the Ramayana, and there are so many people, like M., who make their living by reciting and interpret ing the Ramayana. Many of them, like M., are good people; but how little most of them really know of the Ramayana and of Rama! The esoteric Ramayana, the true spiritual essence of the story, is something very few peo ple know. But it is something you should know about, because it relates to the awakening of Kundalini.