Vishvas's English lit

“WHY DO YOU THINK I own horses and come to the race track?"

Vimalananda and I sat, in March 1977, on his usual bench in the First En closure of the Bombay Racecourse. We had reached there well in advance of the first race, and while we awaited the arrival of his colleagues, the friendly gamblers with whom he would wrangle, wager and roar, the man who was my mentor sprang this question on me.

“I know you wonder about this all the time,” he went on, “because your or thodox friends in Poona have taught you that good Hindus don’t gamble. Do you have any idea at all why I come here?"

“No,” I responded truthfully, “none at all."

He was right: gambling was anathema to my acquaintances among the or thodox of Poona, the city 100 miles southeast of Bombay where I was a stu dent in a college of Ayurveda, India’s traditional medical system.

“Sometimes I come here to gamble,” he went on,“and at other times I come just to watch the races. But whatever my other reasons I always come to study the karmas of the people who are here with me.”

“Their karmas. “Yes. Do you know Newton’s Third Law of Motion?” “Er, yes: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

“Yes. Newton’s Third Law of Motion is the Law of Karma. We can also call it the Law of Cause and Effect, the law of as you sow, so shall you reap. Any time you self-identify with an action—any time you act and think of yourself as the doer of that action—that action becomes a karma for you. All your self-identi fied actions, good and bad, act as causes which eventually produce effects, good and bad, which you will have to experience. The race track happens to be a great place to gain practice in knowing other people’s karmic accounts.”

“You mean, to know who karmically owes what to whom?”

Aghora III: The Law of Karma

“Right. We call that rnanubandhana, the bondage of karmic debt. Let me give you a little illustration of my point so that you will know exactly what I mean. Suppose you want to predict the results of a horse race, like the race Stoney is running this afternoon.” Stoney was his nickname for Stone Ice, who was his favorite mare. Today was to be the last race of her career.

“To know who will win a horse race you need to know about the luck which means the sum of the karmas and rnanubandhanas—of many differ ent beings. First, and foremost, the horse: Is he or she destined to win? Next, the horse’s syce (groom) and the jemadar (head groom): Are they destined to collect bonuses from the owner, which he awards them when his horse wins? Then, the trainer: Is he destined to obtain his share of the stakes for saddling a winning horse? As for the jockey: Is he destined for both a share of stake money and a big tip from the owner for winning? And what about the owner: Do the horse and the club owe him the stake money for the horse’s victory? Is his horse meant to enhance his fame by a victory, or weaken his prestige by flopping miserably?

“Next to last comes the bookie: Is he karmically meant to pay you, or to collect from you? Only now do we finally come to you, the gambler: Are you meant to win or lose money on that horse?”

“I can see that it is not so simple."

“My God! I should think not! If it were simple someone would have fig-. ured out a foolproof system to predict winners by now, and would be getting rich. Actually, it is fairly simple for the public. Most of the people who come to the track are debtors; they owe money either to the bookies or to the Club. They are the cannon fodder that provides the cash that pays those few people who are the horses’ creditors, who are the only people destined to make money on the horses. These karmic debts get settled up on race days, when the public comes to play its favorites. The horses do the work, the creditors win, and the debtors lose. The horses themselves are mainly debtors: they work hard so that the others can make money. At best, if they win, they get some extra carrots and some sweet words; at worst, if they lose race after race-well, the worst can be pretty gruesome.

“I go to the race track to finish up a large number of rnanubandhanas all at once. I always race my animals to win. Knowing what I do about the Law of Karma, how can I do otherwise? I want to die with a clean karmic balance sheet. Every time my horse wins I pay off hundreds or thousands of bettors. The horse owes them the money, no doubt, but because I own the horse and am supporting him it is really me that is paying them off. Neat, isn’t it?”

“It is for you," I responded, “but what about everyone else? Are all the other people who own horses automatically paying off their rnanubandhanas too?"

Stoney

“They are if they are not creating some substantial new karmas in the pro cess of paying off their previous ones.”

“Oh.” “Clear?” “For now."

“Look at it from this angle: when an owner races a horse to win and doesn’t interfere in any way with how that horse runs the main effect of the race is to pay off existing rnanubandhanas. So far, so good. But things don’t always work this way. Sometimes an owner, in cahoots with a trainer or a jockey, will try to do something to make sure that his horse wins or loses. That effort is a karma, which will either create a new rnanubandhana or per petuate one that already exists.

“These consequences are not limited to the actions of owners, of course, Sometimes the trainer will be in cahoots with the jockey, and they keep the owner in the dark about it. Sometimes the bookies and the jockeys are in ca hoots and leave everyone else in the dark. This sort of thing is unfortunate, but it happens all the time; the lure of easy money is too much for many peo ple, and they become greedy.

“Many bookies get involved in conspiring with the jockeys to make extra money by fixing up races. When he can arrange for a favorite horse to lose a bookie can swallow all the money the public had bet on the favorite.” As in Great Britain, licensed bookies operate legally at Indian racetracks.

“They can swallow the money, but will they be able to digest it?" I contrib uted sardonically.

“That is precisely my point,” he responded with some vehemence. “Here is the creation of a new karma: the mare does her job for her creditors by trying to win, but the jockey and the bookie pocket the money when they stop her from winning. The members of the public who were the horse’s creditors have still not been paid, so they now become creditors of the bookies and jockeys; the debts are transferred. The bookies and jockeys, who think they are getting something for nothing, are merely borrowing money which they will have to pay back later, with interest. Moreover, the jockeys will also have to be reborn so that the horses that they whip into exhaustion now will have an opportunity to work them to death in return. If these people ever realized how many mil lions of lives it will take to pay off all these debts they would never play dirty.

“But they don’t realize it, and they do play dirty. In fact, we’re about to have a practical demonstration of this kind of treachery right now.”

The horses were now leaving the Paddock to tramp toward the starting gate. “Did you hear what that no-account excuse for a rider Jhendu Kumar said to me yesterday at the stables?”

Aghora III: The Law of Karma

“No.” Jhendu Kumar was Stoney’s jockey that day. After a moment of puz zlement I suddenly realized that Vimalananda fully expected Stoney to lose. Sickened by that thought I turned to watch her and the other horses walk and canter away from us, roused into friskiness by the impending race.

“When I told this fellow that this would be Stoney’s last race and that I was confident she would win it he told me, ‘Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.

“Which means that he is not too confident."

“Yes, but why shouldn’t he be? I have watched Stoney work, and I can tell you that she is absolutely at the top of her form. Jhendu Kumar himself has been working her over the past few weeks, and he has also won atop her be fore. So he has to know that in her present form she is unbeatable today——she is a class above the other horses in this race. Isn’t it natural that I become sus picious?"

“You’re suspicious of him?”

“I am very suspicious of his intentions. I could take what he said as an omen, but it just doesn’t add up to one when I consider Stoney’s condition, her track record, and the weakness of the rest of the field. Also, I have to con sider how he said what he said—he seemed to boast when he spoke those words, as if he alone knew what was going to happen. When I add this boast ing to his own previous track record he has been in trouble for hooking horses before–and his own current precarious financial condition, it makes me think that he may hook her today.”

“By ‘hooking her’ you mean prevent her from winning?" “Exactly.” “But won’t anyone notice that he has hooked her?"

“Anyone who has eyes in his head instead of samosas probably will notice, but so what?” I suppressed a snicker as the vision of a Jhendu Kumar with those savory Indian snacks for eyes trotted into my head. There are so many ways to hook horses that look so much like ordinary misfortunes that the Stewards of the Club, even if they suspect foul play, can often do nothing about it."

“But what about the patrol camera, and the instant replay?”

“Horses are not machines, you know; you can’t ever tell what might put them off. Sometimes the tempo of the race won’t agree with the horse. Some times the way the race is run will set the horse off; some horses like to be shut in, and others prefer to see daylight in front of them. Sometimes when a horse visits some other racing venue he may become homesick, or decide that he doesn’t like the taste of the food or water there." I remembered Kincsem, the famous Hungarian mare who would never travel anywhere without her cat.

Stoney

“But those are all legitimate excuses. Hooking is different. One way a jockey can hook a horse is to hesitate for a split second so that he fails to leave the starting gate with the other runners. Then, if he settles in at the rear of the pack he can let himself get hemmed in on the rail at the turn and cross the winning post well behind the leaders. Or, the jockey can craftily send the horse wide and then suddenly veer out into the flat by shortening one rein with a sharp turn of his wrist and swiftly kicking the horse in the ribs with his opposite foot. Or, a jockey who knows that his mount needs to be whipped to win can accidentally’ drop his whip. A jockey who is desperate to lose may even fall off in mid-race—but that takes guts, as it is a very dangerous stunt.

“The trainer has more ways to make a horse lose. He can’stuff’ the horse, by substituting normal racing feed (mainly hay and bran) with a full meal of grain on the night before and the morning of the race. Have you ever tried to run a race on a full stomach? Or you can give the horse extra salt to eat and then plenty of water to drink, to make it temporarily gain lots of wa ter weight. It is also easy to overtrain the horse, to gallop it too frequently so that it passes its peak before race day. There was one trainer named Udgith who used to tie up the horse in its stall so that it couldn’t get any rest, or even move, the night before the race. That would certainly mar the horse’s performance for the next day, but how cruel it was to the horse! Udgith was a cruel man.

“Given these words from my jockey and the peculiar omen that I hap pened to see on our way to the track today, I didn’t bet very much on Stoney, despite being so convinced that she is the best horse in this field.”

“Which omen?” No reply. I tried again: “If you think she is going to lose why bet anything at all?”.

“It’s an owner’s bet, an expression of confidence in my mare; it’s like say ing, ‘I still love you, and even if that bastard hooks you I’m going to put money on you because I know that you would run an honest race if only you were permitted to do so. Besides, she might win; who can say? Fixed races also unfix themselves sometimes.”

“How?”

“What if a gang of owners decides that my horse is going to win, but the jockeys conspire together to make your mare succeed? I’ve seen it happen be fore. The jockeys who are in on the plot will select a rank outsider, a horse who will be available at long odds because no one expects him to win. He has to be a horse being ridden by an apprentice jockey, or maybe by a broken-down old rider who is not a member of their clique. The plotters have their accomplices bet heavily on that horse just before the race begins, at the very last moment. That way no one else has an opportunity to get in on the deal. After the start of

Aghora III: The Law of Karma the race the conspirators guide the apprentice along without his knowing it, bunching him in and moving him up. At just the right moment they give him an opening. Out in front he goes, with the others swinging their whips furi ously behind him pretending they are trying their damnedest to catch up. Voila! The kid thinks he’s a champion for booting home a horse who had no chance to win, and the pirates who arranged for him to win enjoy a handsome payday. If it is done properly no one will suspect a thing.”

He was convincing. “If you are so sure about Jhendu Kumar, why didn’t you just replace him? Wasn’t there still time yesterday?”

“There was, but what would I have gained by doing that? I have no proof that he is going to hook her. If I make unsubstantiated allegations against him it will only look bad for me. It might even make all the other jockeys hook all my runners from now on, to teach me a lesson. Jockeys are jockeys, after all; they show solidarity with others of their breed. Besides, why should I be worried? If Stoney still owes me money she’ll have to give it to me later somehow, maybe via one of her foals, even if Jhendu Kumar hinders her from giving it to me now. So I can afford to relax and watch the show unfold. It’s just that it would be so nice for her to go out on a winning note. She’s a horse with so much heart! She deserves to win so that she can enjoy the crowd’s adulation again this one last time.”

“The horses have reached the starting gate,” came the announcer’s voice over the public address system. We lifted our binoculars to watch the race. It was a clean start, and I quickly located Vimalananda’s racing colors-pink with red chevrons–amidst the pack. Stoney looked good coming out of the gate and looked good coming round the bend. But in the stretch she didn’t rise to the challenge of the horse who came on strong from the outside; she finished the race a close second to him. Even though I was just a tyro of a race watcher in those days it didn’t seem to me that Jhendu Kumar had done much to encourage Stoney to win. He had standing orders not to whip her, but nothing precluded him from riding her out with his feet and hands, or from showing her the whalebone (whips were once made of that material). But he had done neither of these things. Instead, he had made a histrionic ex hibition of effort by ineffectually slapping the reins up and down around her neck. I suppose that he brazenly thought that this would somehow impress us, but as I dropped my binoculars for a sidelong glance at Vimalananda I could see that he too was convinced of Jhendu’s guilt.

Vimalananda said nothing more about the matter until that evening, when we were back at home and he had a glass of Scotch at his right hand. He spoke with calm firmness: “Since my mother died two years back life no longer in terests me much. I’ve done a lot in my life, much more than most people. I

Stoney have endured the heights of pleasure and the depths of misery. I’ve gained a lot, and lost a lot, and thanks to my beloved Smashan Tara I have achieved al most everything that I set out to achieve.” Smashan Tara (“The Saviouress of the Cemetery,” “She Who Transports You to the Other Side of Existence”) is the second of the group of Tantric goddesses known as the Ten Mahavidyas. She is the deity that introduced Vimalananda to his spiritual path.

“There is very little in the world that can keep my attention now. I am still interested, though, in my spiritual children, in my little dog, Lizoo," who lifted her head from his lap expectantly when she heard her name, “and in horseflesh.

“For me horse racing is splendid sport because I find something wonderful in the whole process of preparing a horse to race. This is why I keep my horses with lesser-known trainers. The famous trainers like Ardeshir Rus tomjee who probably do a better training job than the smaller fry won’t let you interfere with their plans for the horse. If you make too many sugges tions they just tell you, ‘Get out!’ because they know they can get more horses at any time. But a small trainer who never knows where he’ll be able to find another owner has no alternative; he has to put up with interfering owners like me who interest themselves in the nuts and bolts of training.

“You begin by sifting through the pedigrees of the foals that come into the auction until you find one that you can afford that you think can win, and you bid on it. If you are able to purchase it you then direct its training pro gram until it is ready to see the track. Meanwhile you pore over the racing calendar to find appropriate races in which it might run. As the months pass you check regularly on the progress of your colt or filly by watching her do her morning work and by visiting her at the stables in the evening. You worry over her when she is sick. You pamper her more than you would your own child, feeding her supplements to improve her health and to give her that ex tra vigor that she will need to best the field.

“Eventually you enter her in a race. When the list of entries is published you study each runner, closely comparing their current handicaps with their previous race records. Finally, on those occasions when everything seems to come together you start to get a feeling that yes, in this particular race, your filly can do it! She can trounce the opposition! Then you go to the track and put your money where your mouth is, and she comes and runs her heart out and wins! When you walk out onto the grass near the finish line to lead her in, amidst cheers of adulation from the crowd-well, it’s a unique feeling, I tell you, unique!

“Now, what if, after all this expenditure of time and energy you’ve invested in your mare, she had every chance to win the last race of her life and then at

Aghora III: The Law of Karma

the last moment a scoundrel appeared on the scene, a human scum who spoiled everything. How would you feel? I doubt that it would make you very happy.” He sipped his Scotch sternly. “Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad she’s go ing to retire. She’ll have a chance to relax and be well fed in a peaceful pad dock. She’ll enjoy some nice sex with a well-hung stallion and learn what it means to be a mother. No, I don’t feel bad about her leaving racing at all; I

just feel bad about the way she left.”

“According to you,” I ventured, “because Stoney was destined to win both her syce and the jemadar were destined to receive winning bonuses from your hand, and her trainer Mr. Lafange was destined for his share of the stake money, and you were destined for both stake money and prestige enhance ment. Jhendu Kumar, who was destined only to get stake money and a tip, elected instead to conspire with a bookie who was karmically meant to pay you. The bookie collected from you and Stoney’s other creditors the bets that you all were supponsed to have won money on and gave some of that money to Jhendu Kumar. This makes the two of them the new debtors for all the rest of you.”

“Absolutely correct.” “What about the debtors who owed money to the club and the bookies?” “They were going to lose anyway, and they lost; those debts are cleared.”

“Mustn’t it also have been your karma, or Stoney’s karma, that involved Jhendu Kumar in the first place?”

“Indeed it was, but however much it has been my karma or Stoney’s to be involved with such a cheat it is even more a result of Mamrabahen’s karma.” (Mamrabahen was a woman to whom Vimalananda had long been a father figure.)“Mamrabahen dragged me back into racing, after a gap of nearly thirty years. I had no need for it, but she thought she did. She wanted to be able to parade around at the racecourse in fancy saris, and show off her connection to my horses. I cooperated because I wanted to try to satisfy these desires of hers so that she could get beyond them and drop them. And what was the result? Her new-found’affluence’ went to her head. She acts as if she herself is the owner, which makes everyone think that she is my mistress. Meanwhile she has been running around with all the jockeys, flirting with them and doing God knows what else in order to get hot tips on which horses are going to win.

“By permitting myself to get involved with Mamrabahen and her schemes I opened myself to being influenced by her karmas, almost all of which are bad—if they had been good something good would have have happened to her by now.”

“If her karmas are so evil why would you want to expose yourself to their influence?”

50Stoney

“Well, it is a complicated situation. For one thing, I have been part of her life ever since she was small. How can a mother ever give up on her child? For another, she is part of my karmic family–part of the group of people that I have an obligation to relate to during this lifetime whether I like it or not.”

“Since you are so karmically connected to her why can’t your influence, which I have seen help so many others, help her overcome the bad influences in her life so that she can make some progress too?”

“It is not an easy thing to explain, Robby, but it has to do with her causal body. Do you remember the difference between the causal body and the astral body?”

“The causal body is the storehouse of all the memories of all your rnanubandhanas. Karmas when ripe and ready to be experienced project from the causal body into the subtle or astral body, which is the mind, where they cause us to act in conformity with the karmas we have to expe rience.”

“Correct. The problem is that in Mamrabahen’s causal body there are so many negative karmas that it will be almost impossible for her to get rid of them all in the space of one short lifetime.”

“You mean that if Mamrabahen’s causal body were a shirt it would be so coated with the greasy dirt of her nasty karmas that no matter how many times you wash it and bleach it it will still be absolutey filthy?”

“Yes,” replied Vimalananda with cold sobriety as he continued to sip, “that’s the idea. Her karmas are so bad that she has steadfastly continued down the road to ruin no matter how many times I have tried to change her course. I have had to save her dozens of times from all sorts of unpleasant cir cumstances. Once she had even been sold into slavery and was about to be sent to the Persian Gulf! We only caught up with her the day before she was to depart and extricated her with great difficulty.

“I forced this girl to do her M.A.; I have found jobs for her; I have tried to find her a husband. I have spent thousands and thousands of rupees on her, but has she appreciated anything that I have done for her? Not a thing; she even says to my face, ‘What have you ever done for me?’ She’s wretchedly spiteful and thankless, yet I still continue to try to save her. Why? Because it’s my karma to do so. You see, I once ordered her to be killed.”

“You ordered her to be killed?” I asked, incredulous.

“Yes, in a previous lifetime, as the result of a pre-existing curse. Most of what we call karma is made up of the effects of curses and blessings. As a mat ter of fact I would say that 75%, or maybe even 90%, of all karma is either ab hishapa (curse) or ashirwada (blessing).”

“When you sayʻcurse you don’t mean vulgarity—what we call’cuss words’ in Texas—do you? You must mean some kind of hex like the gypsies use,

Aghora III: The Law of Karma

which makes it sound like almost all karma results from people throwing whammies on one another?”

“Not exactly. There are still a few people who know how to consciously de liver real curses and blessings, but very few. Most curses and blessings are not deliberate. If you do something really nice for someone, if you help him out when he really needs help his heart will melt, if he is any kind of human at all, and a wave of gratitude will flow from him towards you. This is a blessing. A curse is the same sort of thing: if you afflict someone terribly then at some point, often at the moment of death, he in his misery will cry out from his heart. That cry will act on you like a curse; its vibrations will follow you around and interfere with your life. A sadhu (Hindu religious mendicant) can only bless or curse when he is overwhelmed with emotion; only then does the real shakti (power, energy) flow. When he is overcome with anger out comes a curse; when it is joy that overflows it comes out in a blessing.

“I’ll explain to you just exactly how this works—eventually. All you need to know right now that the curse that binds Mamrabahen and me together is a true curse, delivered on purpose by someone who was very powerful—which is why we are still being affected by it. The force of a real curse lasts for seven births. In our case those seven are still not complete. I have already killed her more than once, and she has been taunting me for years that she will force me to kill her in this incarnation also. This is not her speaking, really; it is the curse speaking through her. If she succeeds at inciting me and I kill her that progression will continue and I will kill her in a total of seven births. After that she will gain the right to kill me in seven incarnations.”

“Huh???”

“It’s nothing but the Law of Karma, Robby, Newton’s Third Law of Mo tion, the Law of Action and Reaction: If I kill her she gets to kill me in return.”

“That’s all there is to it?”

“Basically, that’s all there is to it. But does that sound like nothing to you? The Law of Karma may sound simple, but understanding all its ramifications is truly a hell of a job. There was once a disciple who claimed that his guru never taught him anything. Disciples are always like this; it is part of God’s lila, His Cosmic Play. We humans perform krida, which is unconscious play, play which we do not know how to control. Only the play of the gods, and of our ancient Rishis (Seers), is lila: cosmic pastimes which are always under their control.

“Anyway, this disciple pestered his guru for knowledge for so long that the guru finally decided to force the boy to learn something. The next day when they were out walking together they saw a cobra being gobbled up by thou sands of ants. No matter how the cobra twised and turned he couldn’t escape

Stoney

a horrible death. The disciple asked, ‘Guruji, what has the cobra done to suf fer like this?’ The guru replied, ‘Keep quiet! Come on!

“Further along the road they came to a fishing village. One fisherman had just returned to shore after hauling in a big catch. He was resting, obviously enjoying himself, smoking a good pipe.

“Do you understand?’ asked the guru. “No, replied the boy.

« That cobra we saw will become a fisherman, and those ants will become fish. This man was once a cobra who was eaten by ants, and that is why he has a right to torture and destroy these fish who were once ants.”

“Oh,” I said, in a tone of hush. “I see. If you slay Mamrabahen again she will eventually get to slay you, one way or another.”

“Yes, and if I break this cycle right now I will never have to kill her again and she will never get the right to kill me. That will end this peculiar karmic dance, which is what I want. There are times that the force of that curse on her mind makes her provoke me so much that the force of the curse on my mind makes me decide to wring her neck-but then I calm down and remember my plan.”

“And this will continue until the entire energy of the curse is expended?”

“Exactly, for that long and not one moment longer. But who knows how much power remains behind the curse? There is no limit of time. It’s difficult to know such things, but I have seen no change in her behavior thus far. This makes me think that I still have a long way to go to pay off this particular rna (karmic debt). Once the rna is paid the rnanubandhana ends. In the mean while I help to moderate the curse’s force by sharing in her karmas. Because she is destined to suffer I have to suffer, and I have really suffered due to Mamrabahen, on so many accounts. After involving myself with her some of her evil karmas have affected me directly—my recent heart attack was partly due to her making me furious, partly to my taking on some other karmas that I don’t want to talk about right now. Some of her evil karmas have also affected me through others. Currently one portion of her karmas is affecting me through the person of Jhendu Kumar. She has latched onto him thinking that together they will collaborate with the bookies, hook lots of horses, and make quick money. Quick money, that is all she can think of; ’long-range planning’is not in her vocabulary.

“Now, just because Jhendu Kumar had the ability and the opportunity to hook Stoney doesn’t mean that he was forced to do so. He had the free will to say‘no,’ and to go ahead and win. If he had won he would have obtained a lit tle less money this time, but he would have maintained good relations with me. That would have helped him out in the long run. But he followed a pol icy of short-term.gains, for which he will have to pay.”

Aghora III: The Law of Karma

“Eventually.’

“Eventually, and also very soon, since I will never give him a mount again. I will also tell of my experience to my owner friends, who are unlikely to give him any mounts either. And then where will he be? He could have seen this coming, but his own evil karmas, coupled with all the booze that he drinks, have clouded his mind. To refrain from taking easy money when it is offered to you on a platter takes backbone, and you can’t really expect many jockeys to show much of that. A few do have character, I know, but most jockeys are taught to be crooks from an early age. They are tutored in crime by the train ers and the bookies.

“Today’s debacle was partly my own fault. One of my previous trainers, old Maneckjee, always warned me about giving a jockey a winning mount more than twice. “Let him win twice, you moron-molester,’ he would say, “and then give the mount to someone else. A jockey will try hard to win the first two times, but after two victories he will start to think that you can’t do without him, that he can do as he pleases and you won’t dare to do anything about it. Remember what I say, you sister-screwer! Maneckjee was a true Parsi-he couldn’t speak a single sentence without at least one vulgarity in it. One of the reasons that I love Parsis is their colorful way of speaking.”

The ancestors of today’s Parsis emigrated to India from Persia more than 1300 years ago. The Parsis, who worship fire, follow the religion of Zarathus tra (Zoroaster) who 2500 years ago or more preached a dualistic faith in which good and evil continuously battle for control of the universe. About half of the world’s one hundred thousand Zoroastrians live in Bombay.

“When I call Jhendu Kumar a bastard, by the way, I’m not just talking out of my wits. He is a bastard; no one knows his pedigree. He grew up in an or phanage. You know how important pedigree is to racehorses; do you think it is any less important to humans? Oh no—it is tremendously important. And even more important than your physical heredity is your mental heredity, the lineage of karmas and samskaras (personality characteristics) that you carry with you from birth to birth. How can I expect Jhendu Kumar to be honest when he doesn’t seem either to have inherited any good samskaras from his parents or brought over into this lifetime any good karmas from his previous incarnations? Some people leave the orphanage and go on to live decent lives, but not this fellow. In fact, he was tossed out of the orphanage for miscon duct. Now he is misbehaving with me. It is his fate to be a cheat, and there is nothing I can do about it, unless I want to get myself filthy cleaning out the cesspool of his karmas. But why bother? My job is to complete my rnanu bandhana with him. Then I can go my own way, and he can go on experienc ing the results of his own karmas, which is his fate.

Stoney

“What is fate, after all, but the sum of all your past karmas? And what are karmas except debts to be paid? You act, and your action sows the seeds of a reaction that you will have to endure, like it or not. I can’t try to prevent ev eryone from enduring their fate. People go on and on arguing about fate ver sus free will, but they’re all fools. Everyone has free will. You are free to decide either to live your life cooperating with Nature or to try to go off on your own. But even if you go off on your own you will still end up having to walk the path that Nature (which means the Law of Karma) has set for you. If you cooperate with Nature from the beginning you will waste less time and en ergy, and suffer less misery. Isn’t it more sensible and rational to choose the path of least resistance that entails the least pain? It is always better to live with reality, Robby, because otherwise, you can be sure of it, reality will come to live with you.”

“So we can be absolutely sure that reality will eventually come to live with Jhendu Kumar?”

“As sure as you and I are sitting here. Nature’s wheels grind slowly, but they grind very, very thoroughly, and nothing escapes them. Do you know who Vidhata is?”

“I do not.”

“Vidhata is Fate personified, an ethereal being who manages the conver sion of past karmas into present results. Vidhata exerts his influence on us through his representatives, the ethereal beings who create the circumstances in which he can work. In Jyotish (Indian astrology) we recognize nine such representatives, which we call the Nine Planets. Each planet influences differ ent aspects of an individual’s life. The Sun, for instance, represents the soul. The Moon represents the mind, especially its intuitive and emotional as pects. The position of the Moon in the horoscope thus shows a good astrolo ger exactly how an individual’s emotions are innately arranged, and how those emotions will change as the planets transit the skies.

“The most important of the Nine Planets is Saturn, the planet in charge of experience (anubhava). We call Saturn the ‘son of the Sun’in Jyotish because all experience occurs due to the presence of the soul, who is the true ’experi encer’ in a living being. It is Saturn who is responsible for your fate, who forces you to experience your karmas whether you want to or not.”

“Good karmas and bad.”

“Good karmas and bad. Saturn causes dramatic changes, both good and bad, in everyone’s life. Saturn can cause you to reach the heights of fame or riches or whatever, or can make you sink into the depths of misery, all accord ing to the credit or debit balance in your karmic account. Some people are naturally lucky; you see it everywhere, and there is no accounting for it except

Aghora III: The Law of Karma

by invoking the Law of Karma. In one and the same family one man may have to slog all day long just to keep bread on his family’s table, while his brother may unexpectedly receive some windfall that allows him to live a luxurious, carefree life. ‘Bad luck’ is the state in which your karmic account consists mainly of bad karmas, which causes Saturn to dish out mostly miseries for you to endure. Good luck’ means that you have plenty of good karmas to en joy. To have a positive karmic credit balance means that you are the creditor of a large number of rnanubandhanas, that you will have many things to col lect from other beings. A person with a negative credit balance owes lots of things to other beings; he is the debtor of a large number of rnanubandhanas.

“Saturn causes you to experience pleasure or pain by affecting your innate ‘nature’ (svabhava, prakriti), which is the thing that determines how you re late to your surroundings. Some people have an angry, irritable nature; oth ers are naturally calm and complacent; still others are by nature fearful and timid. This nature is inborn in each of us; it is present in our genes and chro mosomes, and controls how we experience the world. The ‘nature’ of Ma, the Great Goddess, is Nature itself, the force which causes the creation, preserva tion, and destruction of the universes.”

“Doesn’t environment count for anything?” Roughly speaking prakriti represents the root and svabhava the fruit of human awareness.

“It counts for a tremendous amount. If you are given proper samskaras when you are young enough you can go a long way off. But beneath all your samskaras is still your nature.

“In the limited human sense your prakriti is your ‘first action’ (pra + kriti), the choice of action which you naturally, instinctively make when you are confronted by some situation. Except in a few rare cases this choice is purely instinctive in animals, whose conscious minds are very limited. And even if you teach an animal to restrain itself you can rely on it only so far. After a cer tain point the temptation to return to its original temperament will prove too great for its training. After all, the nature of Nature is automatic and in stinctual behavior. The consciousness of human beings is supposed to be more advanced than that of animals, but how much more advanced is it? Your human consciousness has plenty of limitations which can cause you in critical situations to forget all the good things you have learned. These influ ences include your food, your air, and the company you keep, but without a doubt the most important of the limitations on your consciousness is the he reditary characteristics that you have inherited from your family and your past births.

“Until you have conquered this innate nature, either through long, hard penances or by creating overwhelming affection and love for your deity, Sat

Stoney

urn can still affect you. Directed by Fate, Saturn searches out the weaknesses in your personality and exposes them to full view. This forces you to experi ence the many limitations of your nature. In life you ultimately have to de pend on your own inner knowledge, which is all you’d be able to save in a shipwreck. How well you can tap into your inner knowledge depends on how strong an influence Saturn exerts on your mind. This in turn is determined by ahamkara (ego). Ahamkara is called Kundalini Shakti when it begins to awaken from its sleep’ of self-delusion. Until that time ahamkara creates and reinforces your limited human personality by self-identifying with your physical and mental attributes. So long as your awareness remains trapped in your body you will be at Saturn’s mercy, for you will be unable to control your own nature. Only when you have completely overcome ‘what comes naturally’ to you can Saturn no longer have any effect on you.

“This is why we say in Sanskrit, Svabhavo vijayati iti shauryamm-’the true heroism is to conquer your own nature. But it’s not so easy to permanently conquer your own nature! Not at least until you become immortal. Fate can affect an immortal being only if he or she again willfully accepts subjection to time, space and causation. I emphasize all this just so you will know that to make any kind of fundamental change in your nature—which means to alter your fate–you must be able to change the chemical patterns in your brain, patterns which are controlled by your genes and chromosomes.”

“So there is no hope for Jhendu Kumar?”

“There is hope for everyone; everyone will eventually realize God. But eventually is a long way off for Jhendu Kumar. Given the karmas he came in with and the ones he has been creating there is very little likelihood that he is going to make any sort of desirable progress during this birth. Translate this Sanskrit phrase for me: Purva datteshu vidya, purva datteshu bharya, purva datteshu dhanam, purva datteshu maranam.”

“Well… previously given knowledge, previously given wife, previously given money, previously given demise.’ Is that close?”

“It is. What it means is that whatever knowledge or skills, spouse, wealth and property, and death you enjoyed in previous lives you will also enjoy in this one. Good karmas and bad, curses and blessings, all your rnanubandha nas continue with you from life to life for at least seven births in a row. Saturn is the planet who by swaying your mind forces you into the situations which will fulfill the conditions set out in the karmic debts that you have con tracted. Suppose because of your rnanubandhanas you are destined to marry a certain girl. When you meet her you will probably fall into some love-aria which will cause you to jump into matrimony. The stage is then set for the two of you to square up your karmic accounts.”

Aghora III: The Law of Karma

“ ‘Love-aria??”

“Love-aria is just like malaria except that it is caused by romance instead of by a physical parasite. Most of the time a sufferer from love-aria remains nor mal, sane, and rational, but during an attack of the fever of love he falls into delirium. Like malaria love-aria usually won’t kill you, and like malaria it is very difficult to cure.”

“Huh.” I paused for thought before I asked, “If you get your exact same spouse back in a new form will you get your exact same knowledge back?”

“The form of all these things may change but the essence will remain the same. A butcher may be reborn as a surgeon, perhaps, but both live by cleav ing flesh. In fact, whenever you see an expert surgeon, like my son, you should know that he must have been a butcher in a previous birth. Otherwise he would not have such a love for his job. Sometimes my son will tell me, ‘Papa, whenever I go in to operate I feel such a thrill!’ That love for cutting is characteristic of a flesh-cleaver. When I hear these words come out of my son’s mouth I say to myself: ‘Purva datteshu vidya!’

“A person who can play a part well can do so because of the traits of previ ous lives which he retains within him. If I can convincingly play a king I was very likely a ruler in a previous life. If I can perfectly self-identify with mer chants, villains or prostitutes then I must have been a merchant or a villain or a prostitute in the past. And so on.”

“Does this mean that Akbar likes to come to you because you play the king well, which you do because you were a ruler in some previous life?” Vima lananda was fond of opening himself to possession by the spirits of deities and saints, a process known in Sanskrit as avishkara, and he would frequently host the shade of the Mughal Emperor Mohammed Jalal-ud-Din Akbar.

“Yes, I was a ruler, more than once, and if I have achieved something in this life it is because I have some pedigree, both from my past lives and from my parents. Jhendu Kumar might hope to make something of himself in this life time if he had some foundation to build on, some previous knowledge. But he has nothing to build on. And what can he do well? Nothing! He is no great shakes as a jockey, and he is useless as a crook. He is a nobody.”

“He can cook.” “He can cook-adequately. Are you prepared to call him a chef?” “By no means.”

“And even in the food he cooks he continues to create future limitations for himself.”

“How?”

“By cooking meat. Unless you are a Tantric adept or an Aghori (a practitio ner of Aghora, the ‘super-Tantra’ in which all sense of limitation is removed),

Stoney

meat-eating creates a powerful negative influence on your mind by causing your ego to self-identify with the animals that you eat. You’ll notice that most Indians who eat meat eat goats, chicken, and fish—and have you noticed all the chicken and goat and fish mentality in people nowadays? And this effect is not even limited to the animals that we kill for food. With the big rat eradica tion program that’s going on now in our country rat qualities will appear more and more. You will see it. Do you know the character of a rat? You get along fine with the fellow until one day he gives you a good bite!” He laughed.

“Like Jhendu Kumar bit you.”

He laughed again. “Precisely. Every animal, even an insect, which is will fully killed by a human gains thereby the right to be eventually reborn as a human. Whenever I see a line of animals being led to the slaughterhouse I want to say to them, ‘Quick! Quick! Quick work! Just a little pain, and then you are in the queue to come back and be reborn as a human. That is its right, and why shouldn’t it be? It’s the Law of Karma. Even insects have this privilege. Fortunately for us, though, insects and other non-mammals are not adapted to live as mammals. They can’t thrive as mammals, and they don’t enjoy it either. They each get their chance, but they die very young. This is why we don’t see more cockroach, ant, fly, or mosquito humans. Can you imagine how terrible a bedbug human or a tsetsefly human would be?”

“Oh my God!”

“We are fortunate that insects and other animals which are killed acciden tally don’t have this privilege. They don’t have it because you didn’t intend for them to die. You don’t kill them intentionally; they die thanks to their own karmas. But vermin that are deliberately killed get a chance to be hu man, if even temporarily. This is bad enough for those who kill vermin for a living, because it establishes a rnanubandhana with the vermin they kill. But that’s not the end of it. Most of those vermin will be human only tempo rarily; this is why the number of abortions increases with the number of ver min exterminated. Even so, some vermin–most likely those that have already been mammals in some birth or other—will probably develop into humans, if even briefly. Suppose those vermin-humans then perform some evil karmas during their human rebirth. It is likely that they will; mayhem comes natural to vermin. If they do, won’t the exterminator be at least par tially responsible for that mayhem, since he enabled them, violently, to be come human in the first place? He must be!”

“But if we don’t kill off cockroaches, rats and other vermin how can we keep them under control?”

“Well, there are better ways. In Rajasthan there is a famous temple of Karni Mata. Thousands of white mice live in it. If you sit inside the temple long

Aghora III: The Law of Karma enough they will begin to climb all over you, which is an eerie feeling. The Maharaja of Bikaner allots to the temple a certain amount of grain, which is distributed to these mice. And in the surrounding area, for miles around, very little if any of the grain in the fields is ever eaten by rodents. Nature likes it when we try to work with Her, and She loses Her temper when we don’t.

“But at least when you kill vermin they can’t remain human for too long. Most of the higher mammals that we murder, though, can adapt fairly well to the human body. Most Westerners are fond of beef and pork, and when I have visited the West I have not been surprised to find large numbers of pig humans and cow-humans there; pigs and cows who have been temporarily reborn as humans. They gravitate to the flesh of the animal they used to be because it feels so familiar to them. But even those people who were recently other animals show a perverse sort of fondness for beef or pork. Why per verse? Well, for one thing neither of those meats is fit for human consump tion. From the point of view of your health a regular diet of either beef or pork will make you more prone to degenerative diseases like arthritis, rheu matism and gout.

“But the worst effects of beef and pork are on the mind. One of the words for cow in Sanskrit is go, which also means sense organ. This suggests that anyone who eats the flesh of the cow becomes more animalistic, more physi cal, more attached to the world of the senses and their objects. Those who eat beef will find it very difficult to control their senses and soar into the astral re gions, which is what you must do if you want to make real spiritual progress. And pork! If you want to know what pork can do to you just look at the sow. She will have sex with any boar she likes whenever she likes, even if she is preg nant. And if she is hungry after delivery she will eat her own piglets.”

I knew this to be true.

“If you think carefully about this whole meat business you will realize that the more violence you use to obtain your food the more violence you will use and experience in your everyday life. Violent food will cause you to tend to attract violence to yourself, and will make you more interested in inflicting violence on others. For example, it is because meat eaters are so intent upon cutting flesh that both they and the doctors that treat them usually prefer surgical medicine.”

“The Law of Karma; curses and blessings.”

“Exactly. You know, once all the goats who had been slaughtered by hu mans, in ritual sacrifices and for food, held a congress. After they compared notes with one another regarding the various miseries they had suffered at the hands of priests and butchers they decided that they should perform some rituals themselves. So the goats organized a Maha Vidweshan PrayogaStoney

(a great ritual for causing hatred and discord), and dedicated the fruits of this ritual to the human race so that men would slaughter one another just as they slaughter goats.”

“The goats seem to have done a pretty good job of spreading strife with their prayoga (ritual).”

“Yes they have. And I’ll tell you this too: until people stop eating meat the population of the world will not go down no matter what the governments try to do. Animals love to procreate, you know, and when they become hu mans they retain many of the impressions of their animal lives, including es pecially the desire for sex. No matter how much the authorities push birth control it won’t help. And abortion is not the answer either! Sometimes abor tion may be necessary, of course, and when it is necessary it is not so bad if it is done before the fourth month. Before the fourth month the jiva (individ ual soul) is not so firmly connected to the fetus that the baby has started to move. The karma for an abortion which is done later, though, after the heart begins to beat, is the same as for murder.”

“Hitler was a vegetarian.”

“Yes, I know that. Meat-eating is just one of the factors which causes war but it is a significant one.”

“Some people insist that the earliest humans were hunter-gatherers whose diet consisted almost entirely of meat.”

“There is considerable doubt among modern scientists that ancient men were strict carnivores. I personally believe that primitive man in India never ate meat. Instead he ate only tubers, roots and fruits, and when he realized what he was doing he began to live only on air. Some of those early men and women who were super-dupers went beyond air also. However, it would not astound me if in most other countries people became more and more primitive instead of more and more refined as time passed, and started to kill and eat animals.

“And don’t think that this belief of mine makes me some sort of namby pamby pacifist. I have killed. men when I was in the army. I also used to enjoy hunting, until the day I went out with Mr. Williams of Stanvac, the company that later became Esso. He was an American, and I wasn’t much impressed with him; he would get tired after a few miles and then go back to the tent and drink beer.

“Anyway, on this trip I happened to shoot a gaur (Indian bison). I dropped him with a clean shot. As I stepped up to finish him off, if need be, I looked into his eyes. The look he gave me made me stop dead in my tracks. It said, *The only reason you killed me is that I am so much better than you. You couldn’t appreciate me for being stronger and more handsome than you are; in your weakness your only way to gain power over me was to kill me. He was

Aghora III: The Law of Karma

right. I pulled my earlobes and I have never hunted since that day.”

Like many people in India Vimalananda would pull his earlobes when ad mitting to being at fault. Though convinced of his sincerity on this subject one thing still bothered me: “You yourself still eat meat occasionally,” I noted.

“Yes I do, but only when I am convinced that doing so is the best to settle a specific rnanubandhana. Besides, I know how to eat that meat so that it will not pollute my mind. Nor I have not forgotten the Law of Karma, for after I eat meat I always repay my debt to the animal by making sure that it will be promptly reborn in a higher womb. Do we think that Jhendu Kumar knows anything at all about such things, or that he would bother to think about them even if he did? Any meat eater who can’t take care of the animal he eats is asking for big trouble.”

“Which is a big reason that you have told me never to eat meat.” I had actually become vegetarian a year and a half before being introduced to Vimalananda.

“Correct. If I told you to eat meat either I would have to take responsibility for that animal’s welfare, even if it was your gullet that its body went down, or I would have to teach you how to repay your debt to the animal, which I am not yet ready to do. There may be some times, though, that I will advise you to eat a specific piece of meat in order to settle a specific rnanubandhana. In those cases I will take personal responsibility for the animal and will do something for it. And for you, too, if your mental digestion is not yet strong enough to handle its meat.”

During our years together Vimalananda enjoined me to eat meat on three separate occasions.

“It is because killing the animal is far worse than just enjoying its meat that the Buddhists have the Three-Hand Law. They say that three hands partici pate in preparing of meat for the table: the hands of the slaughterer, the butcher, and the cook. Each of these people takes up part of the meat’s karma, leaving the eater of the meat with much less karma to take on than if he had killed, dressed and prepared the flesh himself. This is why I tell those of my children’ who eat meat that they should never select a living animal and instruct a butcher to kill it for them. That action of identifying yourself with the karma—that intention that this animal should die for me’-magni fies its effects tremendously. I always advise people to go to the cold storage shop and see what is available. If nothing is there, well, your rnanubandhanas are with other animals than those whose bodies lie there, and you will have to wait until later to eat meat. As it is everyone who goes to a butcher can only obtain meat from those animals with which they have some rnanubandhana. Furthermore, they can only buy those body parts which that animal owes to them. If no animal that day has any rnanubandhana with them, then even if

Stoney they want to buy the meat they will not be able to do so: they will run out of money, or will suddely have to leave, or will change their minds at the last minute, or whatever.”

“The butcher is also ruled by rnanubandhana. He has a right to slaughter animals because he himself was slaughtered in so many births. He can kill as many as killed him in times past; only that number and no more. When he runs out of animals to kill he will automatically retire, or change his business, or develop arthritis in his hands so he can no longer hold his knife, or some thing like that. Nature really knows Her job best.

“Remember this: Any time you have an opportunity to deliberately slay an animal it is nothing but payback for a time in the past when the animal slew you. This is the only reason that you get the chance to kill it now. If you decide to go ahead and settle your score your new action will guarantee that animal the opportunity to hunt you down later and kill you yet again—unless you know how to avoid it. Butchers could also, if they liked, refuse to exercise their right to slaughter. If they did their personal karmic cycles of killing and being killed would then cease—but the weight of their accumulated karmas is so heavy that only a handful of butchers have ever even considered such a thing.

“One who did was a poor fellow who eked out a meager living for himself and his family by slaughtering and butchering one goat each day. It so hap pened that one night a guest arrived at his place after the family had already eaten. The law of hospitality clearly states that a guest must be fed, but there was no food left in the house. The butcher could slaughter the next day’s goat, but the meat that was not eaten that night would spoil by the next day, for there was nothing like refrigeration then. Such a loss would ruin him.

“The butcher went out into the pen and looked morosely at the goat, which was a mature billy-goat. Suddenly he had an idea: If he only castrated the goat instead of killing it he would be able to get just enough meat from the testicles to feed the guest. The goat would continue to live, albeit in agony, until the next morning, when he could be dispatched.

“Pleased with this plan the butcher had begun to sharpen his knife when he heard a strange noise coming from the goat. When he removed the knife from the grindstone and listened more attentively he found that the goat was simultaneously crying and laughing. A more intellectual man would have been astonished that he could understand goat language, but the butcher simply went over and asked the goat what he was doing. Calming somewhat the goat replied, ‘I am crying because I am thinking of the torture I will suffer tonight after you cut me, but I am laughing because that torture will last only until morning. Then I will die, which will free me from my misery, and after I am reborn I will be able to seek you out and take my revenge!

Aghora III: The Law of Karma

“The butcher dropped his knife and stood stock still for a moment. Then he left the goat, left his family, left the guest in the house, and went straight to the jungle without saying anything to anyone. Eventually he became a saint.”

“He was lucky.”

“He was lucky—which means that he was destined for it. His good karmas had matured to the point that he was able to hear the goat, and to understand what the goat told him. Most beings, though, never realize what they are do ing, and remain bound tightly to the wheel of karma. A dead mink, who was still weeping bitterly from the pain of having been flayed alive, was once ush ered into the presence of God. God’s heart was so touched that He told the mink, ‘Ask whatever you want and I will give it to you.

“Sobbing between its words, the little mink said, ‘O Lord, now I have no skin to keep me warm. What I want is a human skin coat, so the humans who tormented me will know what it means to have your skin torn from your liv ing body

“God replied softly but firmly, ‘If you understood the Law of Karma you would know why you had to be flayed alive and such words would never emerge from your mouth.”

“But according to the Law of Karma the mink will eventually get a chance to flay its flayer alive, right?”

“Yes indeed—but how will that help? It will just keep the whole process in motion. Forget about revenge; that is God’s job. The Old Testament says, *Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. Jesus went even further; He said, ‘Turn the other cheek. An ordinary person has no patience. He wants immediate revenge when he is wronged; he always strikes back when injured. But that is not the way to do things. That way ties you even more firmly to the wheel of action and reaction. So often when someone plays dirty with me I want to re taliate. But then I remember, kshamam virasya bhushanam (‘forbearance is the ornament of a hero’). If you can be patient Nature will arrange your life for you in such a way that you will eventually gain what you desire; about this there is no doubt. Doubt exists only in how long it will take for your desired result to come to pass.”

“Is this what you are talking about when you talk about cooperating with Nature?”

“Yes. When you get to the point where you can manipulate your karmas on your own, or you find someone who is willing to manipulate them for you, then you may be able to fine-tune your destiny to some extent. Otherwise, your fate in the form of your karmas is going to determine your path for you. Then your job will be to walk that path in the most graceful way possible. There is nothing graceful about revenge because it is so very difficult to know

Stoney

☺

precisely how much retribution your previous karmas entitle you to. Do you remember Shylock from the Merchant of Venice? He was entitled to a pound of flesh but to none of the blood therein. Any compensation beyond the amount to which you are entitled creates a rnanubandhana, a new karmic ac count that you will eventually have to square up.

“Moreover, the world of rnanubandhana is such that if I owe you cash I will have to pay you back in cash even if I want to pay you back in kind. And I will pay you as much as I owe you even if I don’t want to. Everything depends on the size of the debt. If I reach into my pocket to give a ten-paise coin to a beggar and I pull out a fifty-paise coin, I owed him more than I thought I did. And what if I offer a beggar a ten-paise coin and he gets wild and refuses to accept it, saying, ‘Why are you trying to give me this when I want a rupee?’ The reason I cannot pay him is because I don’t owe him anything. If you know about debt you can know how to repay.”

All I could say at this point was, “This is all very complex.” “Let us take a practical example,” responded Vimalananda with increasing enthusiasm, “so that you will understand exactly what I mean. Mohammed Jalal-ud-din Akbar, the greatest of the Great Mughals, was every inch a ruler. Although he grew up among the cruelest of the cruel, and although he him self was very hard about certain things, Akbar was never overcome by blood lust. At thirteen he won his father’s empire back from the Hindu usurper Hemu. When Akbar’s adviser and boyhood mentor Bairam Khan dragged the defeated Hemu in front of Akbar he told the boy, ‘Cut his throat person ally, my lord, and become ghazi (the title applied to a Muslim who has killed an infidel).’ But Akbar told Bairam Khan, ‘I am not a butcher to kill an un armed captive. Let my butchers do it? The 99.9% of rulers who lack true no bility destroy themselves; only the rare ones, like Akbar, have any idea of what is really going on. Akbar was a true king, and the life he lived is the type of life one calls shahi (regal, majestic). Even though at that tender age Akbar proba bly knew nothing of the Law of Karma, he seemed to have a natural under standing of right actions and wrong actions.

“True kingliness has always been rare among rulers, all throughout his tory, and we do not see it at all among today’s rulers. So ask yourself now how we could see it in Akbar? On one side of his family he was descended from Genghis Khan and on the other side from Tamerlane, both extremely cruel, bloodthirsty conquerors. Why did he not show their traits of barbar ism in his own life when he showed that he had inherited their expertise in strategy and in battle? The answer is not too difficult. In his previous life Ak bar had been Prithviraj Chauhan, the Hindu emperor of Northwest India. Prithviraj was a Rajput, a warrior from Western India, who exhibited all the

Aghora III: The Law of Karma

noble traits that he had inherited from the Rajput rulers who came before him. Akbar inherited these traits from his previous incarnation, and they were strong enough to overshadow the viciousness that he inherited from his immediate forebears.

“Prithviraj’s story is very educational. Like Akbar Prithviraj was a great king with great associates, and yet he was defeated in battle, blinded, and forced to commit mutual suicide with his best friend. Prithviraj was a fear less and able warrior whose kingdom was well defended. Even his servants had achieved success with their worship of Ma. The goddess Chamunda, one of Ma’s terrifying destructive aspects, appeared to Prithviraj’s general Chamunda Rai every day to invigorate and advise him. A different aspect of Ma appeared each day to Chand Barot, Prithviraj’s bard, and provided even more shakti to strengthen Prithviraj’s authority. With such powerful shaktis at Prithviraj’s beck and call what could have gone wrong? How could he have ever been conquered? I’ll tell you how: Prithviraj lost his throne, his sight, and his life because of the theft of a woman. He stole his wife Sanyukta from her father’s house. This was no doubt a custom of the time, but it was still a karma. Back in the time of the Mahabharata the great hero Arjuna stole Lord Krishna’s sister Subhadra. It is true that Arjuna did so at Krishna’s instigation, but karma is karma. What was the result? Arjuna’s en emies conspired to isolate Abhimanyu, Arjuna’s son by Subhadra, on the battlefield, and killed him there. To obtain shakti is not so difficult; to retain

it is no joke.”

The Mahabharata is one of India’s two great epic poems. “How exactly did all this happen?”

“Sanyukta’s father hated Prithviraj. When he arranged a swayamvara for his daughter he made it a point not to invite Prithviraj.” In a swayamvara (personal choice” ceremony) a girl chose her own husband from among a number of eligible suitors. “To insult Prithviraj yet further Sanyukta’s father ordered a statue of Prithviraj to be made. He installed this statue outside his door and told all his visitors, ‘Look, Prithviraj is my doorkeeper; how will he marry my daughter?’

“This was because the law books stated that a lowly doorkeeper was not fit to marry a princess?”

“That’s right. But Prithviraj was not to be denied. He came to the swayam vara anyway, in disguise, with Chand Barot and some supporters. Sanyukta, who had been secretly informed of the plot, made a big show of circulating among the assembled princes, trying to choose, when suddenly she gar landed the statue! That sparked off a major fracas which expanded into a brawl when Prithviraj and his men sprang up and ran off with Sanyukta.

Stoney

They escaped to Prithviraj’s kingdom, where they married.”

“Hold on-if Sanyukta voluntarily went off with Prithviraj, how can you call it a theft? Was Sanyukta her father’s property, like Hebrew girls were their father’s property in Biblical days, that he could do with her as he willed?”

“Not at all. If that were the case, where would the question of svayamvara have arisen? But Sanyukta’s father saw it as a theft, and acted accordingly.”

“Wait, wait, wait! If one day I pick something up off the road that is free for the asking, do you mean that you could accuse me of theft just because you happen to think you own it?”

“Why not? Remember, almost all of karma is curses and blessings. There is no law that says a curse or a blessing has to be based in clear perception. If people had really clear perception they would never curse each other! Even a misguided blessing or curse can produce some effect if it is strong enough. I could give you plenty of incidents from Indian tradition, but let us take one that you are probably already familiar with. Have you forgotten your own Bi ble? Don’t you remember how Jacob covered himself with fur to trick his fa ther Isaac into giving him the blessing that was really meant for Jacob’s brother Esau? Even though it was not what Isaac had intended it happened anyway, and when Esau arrived late Isaac had to tell him, ‘I’m sorry, but your brother has taken by guile that which was yours. Jacob had to pay for his de ception—he lost his favorite son Joseph for so many years—but the blessing accrued to him nonetheless. And this is just one instance of misdirected blessings and curses in the Bible. Read it again and you’ll find many more!”

I knew there was more to Jacob’s story than this, but I also knew that Vi malananda was intent on making a point.

“Don’t forget that the size of the blessing or the curse will determine the size of its effects. Isaac’s words had extra power because he was a patriarch, and a dedicated worshipper of God. His blessing became extraordinarily powerful because it was a deathbed blessing. In moments of extreme emo tion even ordinary people can put powerful shakti behind their words. Right or wrong, if I have some good shakti you are going to feel the effects of my curse when if I curse you, even if it is for taking something that I only think belongs to me. It is true that I will eventually have to suffer for cursing you, but first you will have to suffer. That is the Law of Karma.”

“Do I understand this correctly? Even though Prithviraj’s elopement was in no way a theft Prithviraj had to suffer just because Sanyukta’s father acted as if it were a theft?”

“Yes, the curse had an effect because Sanyukta’s father hated Prithviraj pas sionately for carrying off his daughter. That effect was multiplied because Sanyukta’s father was a king, a man of power in the mundane world. You

Aghora III: The Law of Karma

have to be cautious with the mighty. We have a saying in Hindi:

Raja jogi agni jal, kabhi na kijiye prit,

Are prit kiye to nibayie Parashuramji, kyonki un ke ulti rit. “Lord Dattatreya, who is teaching his disciple Parashurama, says, ‘O Para shurama, you should never befriend a king, a yogi, the fire, or water, but if you do befriend them then tend to that friendship very carefully, because their nature is very contrary. The king can award you lands and wealth in one breath and sentence you to death in the next. The fire can cook your food, or burn you. Water can wash you or drown you. And a sadhu? If he is pleased with you he’ll do anything for you; the sky’s the limit. But if you get him an gry you’ll be finished, totally ruined.

“Sanyukta’s father cursed Prithviraj by sending a message to the tyrannical Mohammed Ghori of Afghanistan to invite him to invade India and conquer Prithviraj. He also provided Ghori with many of the defense secrets of the kingdom. This was bad enough. Still, Prithviraj had all the advantages that I just told you about, and he could easily have survived Ghori’s attacks had he not made one fatal blunder.”

“What was that?”

“Not too long after the wedding Prithviraj’s guru, who happened to be an Aghori, came to call. The guru told the king, ‘I will take a nail and put it into the head of Shesha Naga (the great thousand-headed serpent who supports the earth). Then the Hindu Empire will be firmly established and will remain unassailable for centuries. Everyone watched solemnly while the guru cere moniously placed an iron nail into the ground. Then Prithviraj’s wife Sanyukta said to her husband, ‘What is this naked fellow trying to tell you? “Put the nail in the head of Shesha Naga?” What nonsense! Tell him to prove that the nail has reached Shesha Naga. It was always foolish to taunt an Ag hori and dare him to prove himself, but we can’t blame Sanyukta too much because something else was speaking through her mouth.”

“Something like the curse of her own father?”

“At least in part. Some other karmas were probably influencing her mind too. Whatever the factors may have been Prithviraj now fell wholly under their influence because of his own karmas. The Aghori told him, ‘Great King, do not listen to her!’ But Prithviraj insisted that the Aghori do as the queen had bidden him. The guru stared sadly for a moment at his wayward child. Then he sighed, ‘Led astray by a woman’s words,’ and pulled up the nail which was dripping with blood. Everyone was horrified. Prithviraj begged his guru to return the nail to Shesha Naga’s head, but the guru told him, ‘It is too late now; the auspicious moment has passed. You were blinded then by love for your wife, but now you will literally be blinded; you cannot escape it.

Stoney

“And what happened next? Ten times Mohammed Ghori invaded India, and ten times he was defeated and captured by Prithviraj. Each time that he was brought into Prithviraj’s presence Ghori would say, ‘I am your cow. A Ks hatriya (member of the warrior caste) must protect all cows. I put myself at your mercy.’ Each time this happened, Prithviraj would release him kshamam virasya bhushanam.

“Prithviraj resisted revenge ten times. The eleventh time his luck-his good karmas—finally ran out, and he was captured by Mohammed Ghori. Ghori then exhibited his own variety of compassion and gratitude by imme diately blinding Prithviraj, thus fulfilling the Aghori’s prophecy. How low can a man go! Only a bigoted barbarian would dare to touch the person of the man who had forgiven and protected him not once but ten times before. And that’s what Ghori was: a filthy, vulgar barbarian, human dregs. He took Prithviraj back with him to Afghanistan as sport for his populace. After pa rading him around for a while Ghori installed Prithviraj in his palace, along with Chand Barot. Prithviraj now had plenty of time to reflect over his guru’s words, and he realized all his follies. He became filled with a terrible resolve and determined that such a brute as Ghori should not continue to live. He and Chand concocted a plan.

“The next day Prithviraj boasted to Ghori: ‘You consider yourself a great conqueror, but you are just a vandal. I, on the other hand, am a true warrior. Why, even without eyes I can still hit a target’s bull’s-eye with an arrow, solely with the help of Chand Barot’s guidance. You could not do such a thing even in your dreams.

“This stung Ghori, so he decided to force Prithviraj to make good his boast. He even invited all the residents of his city to watch Prithviraj make a fool of himself. As Prithviraj stood facing the target, Chand gave him directions not for the target but for the conqueror, who sat nearby on a throne observing the proceedings. Chand being a bard, his directions came out in a couplet:

Char bhanj, chaubis gaz, angula ashta praman, Vahan pe baitho sultan he, mat chuke Chauhan. “Four bhanj, twenty-four gaz, eight angulas away,

There is sitting the Sultan, Chauhan, don’t dare miss him now.”! “These instructions were so accurate that Prithviraj’s arrow sped straight to Ghori’s chest, pierced his heart, and killed him. Then, to forestall recap ture and torture, Prithviraj and Chand swiftly stabbed each other to death.”

“Wow.”

An angula is approximately 3/4 of an inch, and a gaz is about 25 inches.

The length of a bhanj is uncertain.

Aghora III: The Law of Karma

“Ghori was a beast, and Prithviraj was a hero. Prithviraj, who had been un able to succeed as emperor, was rewarded for his sufferings by being reborn as Akbar, and as Akbar he reigned as the most glorious of emperors. Chand was reborn as Birbal, Akbar’s closest confidant and the originator of much of his policy. See how karma works! Prithviraj was a Kshatriya and Chand was a low-caste bard. Akbar, though Emperor of India, was not a Hindu, and Bir bal was born a Brahmana (a member of India’s priestly caste)!

“Many of Akbar’s personality traits were holdovers from his life as Prithvi raj. Even when he had the chance to personally kill Hemu he refused to sink to Ghori’s level of predation.”

“Yes, but he still had him executed.”

“True, but in those days if you let a rival live there was every chance that one fine morning you would find a dagger between your shoulder blades. At least Akbar had Hemu executed quickly without torture. That in no way saved Akbar from the karma of Hemu’s death, but it was still a form of com passion. It was in fact the form of compassion that was appropriate in this sit uation. Torture was omnipresent in those days; why, Akbar’s own son used to enjoy watching condemned prisoners being flayed alive. For Akbar to have been able to live in the environment of intrigue and assassination into which he was born and still not become a boodthirsty tyrant showed remarkable nobility.

“Akbar could not have learned this sort of nobility in his one lifetime as Prithviraj, of course. It had to be cultivated within him over many, many lives. But Akbar did`inherit’ many of his principal character traits from Prithviraj. Because Prithviraj had been a Hindu Akbar’s chief advisers were Hindus and Jodha Bai, his favorite wife, was a Hindu. He loved her dearly, but because Prithviraj had been blinded when he was led astray by Sanyukta, Akbar never allowed himself be ruled by his wife’s advice alone. And because a Muslim had betrayed and blinded him he was always wary of his fellow Muslims. Most of the Rajput chiefs realized this, and cooperated with Akbar to build the empire. Man Singh of Jaipur, who was Akbar’s commander-in chief, was a Kshatriya, and Man Singh’s sister Jodha Bai, who became Akbar’s empress, was the mother of his son Salim, who succeeded Akbar as the Em peror Jehangir.”

I have recently learned that Jodha Bai, daughter of Udai Singh of Marwar, was actually Jehangir’s wife, mother of the Emperor Shahjehan. Jehangir’s mother, daughter of Bhar Mal of Amber and sister of Man Singh, was named Harkha.

“Although Akbar was a Muslim he wore a Vedic sacred thread, worshipped the sun, and put an end to cow slaughter throughout his empire. The secular

70Stoney

government of India has not been able to end cow slaughter, but the Muslim Emperor Akbar could! What do you have to say to that?”

“Td say that it showed substantial compassion for the cows.”

“Indeed it did. But what is even more remarkable is that Akbar even started his own religion, which called Din-e-ilahi (’the religion of God’). His own religion—can you beat that? Has any other Muslim ever dared to try this? Most Muslims think that Islam is the only true religion, and those Mus lims who have strayed even slightly from the path, like Mansur and Shams-i Tabrizi, have been butchered. And here was a Muslim who said, ‘No, what we need is a religion of God!”

“Didn’t Akbar have a profound mystical experience during his youth? Per haps that had something to do with his interest in religion.”

“I’m sure that it did. Akbar wanted Din-e-ilahi to be a synthesis of all the religions, just as his Empire was a federation of all the Indian states. He wanted to make people realize that everyone worships the same God and that everyone works toward reaching God at his own rate of speed. This is what I also say: everyone should carve out his own niche. Akbar wanted to stop all the animal sacrifices and other meaningless rituals. He wanted to show peo ple that the way to God leads inwards, not outwards into repetitious rites. This attitude caused many of the clergy from all the religions to hate him, but he was their Emperor, so there was nothing they could do about it. They dared not even wag their tongues lest those tongues be torn out by their roots by Akbar’s executioner, Mian Kamruddin. Akbar was very strict about deco rum and discipline.

“Akbar was meant by Nature to be Emperor. He was able to bring all of In dia under his control because it was his destiny to do it. If the English and the Germans believe in divide and conquer,’ well, I think Akbar was greater. He believed in ‘unify and rule, and he practiced what he preached. Nowadays in India Rana Pratap Singh of Udaipur is regarded as a great hero because he was the sole major Rajput king to resist Akbar. The Hindu fanatics say that this showed his willingness to resist tyranny. But what was the ultimate result of his actions? Thousands of Rajput women commited mass suicide by self-im molation after their husbands had died on the battlefield, and that’s about it. When Akbar requested Rana Pratap to enter the federation peacefully he said, ‘No, never!’ with great bravado. Is that the way to behave with someone who is infinitely stronger than you? A true Kshatriya would think of his subjects and their wives and have compassion for them before starting a futile war.

“You know, I did my M.A. in Mughal history, and I think I know what I am saying when I say that Akbar was one of the greatest rulers ever. His was a truly secular state. Even though he was an illiterate Afghani he patronized the

Aghora III: The Law of Karma

arts and sciences, and gathered all the top men of music, poetry and adminis tration into his court. He built Fatehpur Sikri entirly from scratch as his cap ital city; even today you can see how architecturally unequaled and amazing it is. Akbar’s rule was really the culmination of the entire age. There were other kingdoms in the world at that time, but none could rival the splendor, the power and the glory that was his. He was and until today still is unique, one of a kind. None of his successors could match him, and after him the de cline of independent India began in earnest.

“And even though India is again independent we are in such deep decline that the wisdom of the world has become kshamam virasya dushanam-not bhushanam (ornament) but dushanam (error).”

“Forbearance is a hero’s stain?”

“Yes, today children are taught, ‘Do unto others before they do unto you’; they are told that only stupid people fail to speedily retaliate. After Stoney lost I had a good mind to take the whalebone to Jhendu Kumar’s hide myself, but why? I could have Jhendu Kumar maimed or killed in a trice by paying a few rupees to a thug, or by showing some fake tears to one of my ethereal friends. But that would make me beholden to them, which would cost me dearly later on. No thanks! I’d rather bide my time and let Nature deal with Jhendu Kumar so that I need not soil my hands. I try to live my life cooperat ing with Nature from the beginning, which is the true path of least resistance. When I take this sort of long-term look at the situation I remember where I am headed, and I think of how retaliation would make me detour from my course. It would be such a pity for a boat to cross a storm-filled ocean and then sink within sight of the shore.”

“So all you have to do is to be patient.”

“Do you think that’s some kind of joke? The hardest thing in the world is to bide your time.”