BOMBAY’S SUMMER USUALLY begins near the end of March. With the summer of 1977 summer came the problem of where to send Stoney to brood. Pedigrees of all sorts fascinated Vimalananda; when we watched Wimbledon together he would sigh and say, “If only Jimmy Connors and Chrissy Evert would get together, their child would really be something!!” Now he had the opportunity to select the genes that would mingle with those of his beloved Stoney. He invested more and more of his spare time in pedi gree comparisons, to ensure that the ensuing foal would bring glory to its mare’s name.
I too would have willingly focused my full attention on these family trees, but my college continued to monopolize the majority of my time. Two sepa rate lives developed for me as my regular daily slog of anatomical structures, symptom complexes, and medicinal substances began to intersect, at seem ingly opportune moments, with participation in Vimalananda’s unusual world. When we were together I stuck close to him to sponge up whatever knowledge he chose to spill before our parting left me again on my own, mired in an existence that seemed indecently tedious in his absence.
Shortly after Stoney’s last race Vimalananda’s momentum gathered me up from my Poona purgatory and swept me along with him to inspect a nearby stud farm. At least half a dozen such breeding establishments dot Poona’s en virons, most snuggled up against fields fecund with sugar cane, chickpeas, sorghum, corn and kohlrabi. As our vehicle passed the largest and most re nowned of these studs, the one owned by the two Anklesaria brothers, Vima lananda’s eyes narrowed into seriousness: “The Anklesarias do an excellent job of breeding horses, and they know their horseflesh. Darius is something of a blowhard, but Nariman is a real gentleman. I would love to purchase one of their two-year-olds, but they are simply priced too high for my budget.
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“One of the things I don’t like about their operation, though, is their fac tory for manufacturing serum from horses and mules. Because their prod ucts are used to treat diseases there is some good karma to be had from this business; but what about the bad karma that is their by-product? Slaughter ing animals outright is bad enough, but here you are slowly bleeding them to death–leeching their prana from them little by little, but never enough for them to die outright. You keep them just alive enough that you can continue to suck their blood.”
“Like a moneylender gives a farmer just enough money to keep him func tional so that the farmer can continue to pay the interest on the loan.”
“Exactly. And the interest rate is so high that the farmer can never pay back the principal. Some farmers begin by borrowing as little as Rs. 500 (then about $65) and end up paying the moneylender thousands of rupees over decades—and then the farmer’s children have to take over the debt. That kind of extortion is bloodsucking, without a doubt. But even that doesn’t quite compare to literally having your blood continuously drained from your body.”
“So that your tissues always feel starved because they always lack blood ooh, that’s nasty. Never for a moment any feeling of wellbeing. What sort of karma must that be that causes beings to be born as blood-factory animals?”
“A very horrible karma indeed. Some of them may even have been money lenders in their past lives!”
We laughed over that thought as we turned into the drive to our destina tion. There sat the owner, an eccentric old Parsi lady, anticipating our arrival on the veranda of her bungalow which by the looks of its architecture had been built for a Britisher some decades previously. “Sahibrao,” she called to her servant in desultory Marathi as we walked up to her, “bring these gentle men some refreshments.”
After our snacks we were led down to a paddock where a mare in heat was standing, preparing to be covered. As this was my first visit to a stud farm I had to whisper a question to Vimalananda: “Surely that little pony who is rubbing up against the mare is not the stallion?”
“No, certainly not,” replied Vimalananda in a similar whisper which those around us would take for sage deliberation. “He’s the teaser; his job is to play with the mare until she is fully in heat, to titillate her until she can’t stand it any longer. Then, when she is at her peak they bring out the stallion and send away the teaser. Watch!”
As if on cue the stallion now appeared, tossing his mane like a horse pos sessed, an enormous erection poised ramrod-straight along his belly. The two handlers brought him into position, helped him to mount, and stood
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That pageant turned out to be the high water mark of our visit, and as soon as we were again on the road the comments that I had been suppressing swarmed out: “What a difference in karmas between the stallion and the teaser! Both are male horses who are valued for their hard penises. But one gets pampered with the best of food, shelter and care and does nothing but screw all day, while the other gets by on leftovers and never even gets a chance to have an orgasm. Al ways a groomsman and never a groom; brought to the peak of arousal day after day and never allowed to enjoy release. What a life! What a case of blue balls! Couldn’t they at least have one little mare for him to cover, one little pony?”
“Why should they? Then he would feel satiated, which means he would lose the intense sexual craving that he must transmit to the mare he’s teasing. Besides, he might get the pony he covered in foal, and who would want that child? Who would feed it?”
“They could use it for another teaser, if it were male.”
“Teasers are a dime a dozen. And what if they took your advice, and then sent that foal to the serum factory-how would you like that responsibility?”
“Forget it!”
“Gahanah karmano gatih: ‘The current of karma is very deep.’ Why does one stone go to form an idol which is worshipped and another, perhaps from the same quarry, goes to form a urinal which is insulted? It’s all a matter of previous karma. Karma is so peculiar in India because some of the strangest karmas in the world have been performed here. India is a land where you never know what is going to happen next. If you do not know what is going on you had better be very prudent, because you can get into deep trouble here. Take the practice called Visha Kanya (‘poison damsel), which was very common in ancient times and may even survive somewhere today. Begin ning when she is only a few months old a girl who is to become a Visha Kanya is given gradually increasing doses of many types of poisons. She never gets enough to kill her, just enough make her body immune to them. By the time she reaches her teens she has imbibed a huge amount of poison which has lodged in her tissues forever. Then she is ready to be tested.”
“Tested?”
“If she has been well prepared a fly who alights on her skin should imme diately die.”
“Ooof.”
“After she passes her test she is ready to be used; no need to administer anything more. When the king of the country finds someone he wants to get rid of he invites that fellow to a nice feast and then presents this girl to him to
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enjoy for the night. The moment the man has a nice enjoyment with her he takes in enough of her venom to kill him after a very short time. No one but the king understands what has happened. What do you think happened to Alexander the Great? Part of the tribute he was given after he defeated King Porus was a Visha Kanya. That was sufficient.”
“A horrible way to die.” “Yes, but think of the plight of the girl! How could she ever get married? The first time her husband embraced her she would become a widow. The poison of a Visha Kanya is so strong that even if you just kiss her, once only, your fate is sealed. Nothing can save you, though it may take some time for you to die. What kind of karmas must such a girl have performed in her past to be tortured like this? It is very hard to know karma, but we can guess. And what of the fate of someone who dooms a Visha Kanya to an existence of total sexual and emotional frustration? Perhaps such a person ends up a teaser at a stud farm!”
“That does seem appropriate.”
“And for that matter, what do you think will happen to the stud farm owner who uses such a teaser? It’s not likely to be pleasant. There is really no end to action and reaction in this world of duality in which we live, particu larly in this business of sex. It is a terrible karma to disturb two beings who are in a sexual embrace; even the Rishis have not escaped.”
“So say the texts,” I offered. Indian legend is filled with examples of such karmas. Durvasas Rishi was separated from his wife because he separated In dra, the king of the celestial gods known as devas, and the Apsaras (celestial dancing damsel) Rambha when they were copulating. It was because the planet Jupiter hindered the lovesport of Kamadeva (the god of erotic love) with the Apsaras Ghritachi that the Moon abducted Jupiter’s wife and fa thered a son on her. Gautama Muni interrupted the Moon and Rohini; as a result he was cuckolded, and lost his wife for millennia because of his own curse. And when King Harischandra (whose name was a byword for truth fulness) punished a ploughman who had had an illicit liason by expelling him to wander in a lonely forest, he lost his wife, his son, and his kingdom, and was tormented by the Rishi Vishvamitra.
“Interrupting someone’s sexual enjoyment is bad enough,” Vimalananda continued, “but the karmic repercussions of sex go far further than that. Let’s talk about the billions and trillions of insects in the world, most of whom live for only a few moments and die. Their large numbers are chiefly due to the wastage of semen by human beings. Every sperm is alive; don’t the millions who are killed after each ejaculation have the right to be born again to take revenge on the humans who killed them for no reason except momentary
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pleasure? They have every right to do so. Because this is Kali Yuga, more men waste their semen and more insects are created when asuric (demonic) ten dencies predominate.
“In English we might call this poetic justice.” Kali Yuga is the fourth of the Four Ages through which the world passes again and again. In Kali Yuga, the so-called “Iron Age” which the texts say lasts for 432,000 years, only one fourth of the normal amount of righteousness remains in society, which makes it very easy for people to be overcome by delusion.
“Here in India we call it ‘divine justice,’ and it can be really severe. There is no favoritism in the Law of Karma. Even the prophets and avataras (incarna tions of God) have had to suffer. Think of the doleful life of Ramachandra, who was God incarnate. He had to relinquish His kingdom on the day He was anointed king. He roamed about in the forest for fourteen years, and was separated from His beloved wife Sita for most of His life. And His is only one instance. Why did Mahavira die by a nail in the ear? Why did Buddha die af ter eating the little suckling pig? Why was Zarathustra stabbed? Why was Mo hammed poisoned? Why was Jesus crucified? Why did Krishna die with an arrow in His heel? When you set out to play with God you had best be ready for whatever He is going to dish out, no matter who you think you are.
“Never ask for divine justice. If you think about it with a clear head you will realize that you have so many pending karmas that if you ever did get jus tice you would really have to pay through the nose. You would never be able to take it. Once a sadhu sat in penance for twelve years on the same rock, never leaving it. Eventually God became pleased with his penance. When God appeared to the sadhu and told him to ask for a boon the sadhu replied, ‘I want justice.
“God said to him, “Look, you fool, you have no idea of what justice is all about. I have come here to help you. You please listen to me and ask for some useful boon.
“But the sadhu replied,-No, I insist; I must have justice!
“God gave the sadhu one last chance, but when he insisted on justice God got tired of arguing with such a dunderhead and said, ‘All right, you want jus tice? Fine. You have sat on this rock for twelve years? Now it is the turn of the rock to sit on your head, for twelve years. That is justice, isn’t it? Now enjoy your justice!””
“Ouch.”
“Some of our scriptures discuss the nature of divine justice, and mention penalties for indulging in certain actions. They are not talking about guilt and retribution; they are talking about karmic reaction. Because these scrip tures were originally written by seers who could look ahead to today and
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know what would happen, some of the writings are strangely prophetic. One day a Parsi friend who has read a lot of our scriptures, both Vedas and Puranas (classical texts), was discussing karma with me and he asked, ‘Why is it that in the Garuda Purana they say that a man who enjoys too much sex will be spreadeagled in hell on a red-hot pillar of iron?
“I replied, ‘Well, look at yourself! You have had a lot of sex, through which you have also contracted a venereal disease. For the strictures caused by the VD you were treated by a hot steel rod poked up your urethra. Don’t you think there is some kind of connection there?’ He couldn’t say anything after that.”
“So you maintain that there’s nothing like guilt in Hinduism?” This was a novel idea.
“The word ‘Hindu’ is a Persian corruption of the word ‘Sindhu, which is the Sanskrit name for the River Indus. India is also called Hindustan, which makes anyone who lives there a ‘Hindu. This means there is no Hindu reli gion. There is only the Vedic religion.”
“What about Aghora?”
“We can hardly call Aghora a religion when it has no dogma. And if you ar gue that Aghora is just Tantra taken to the extreme, then what else is Tantra but the Veda expressed in a new way?”
“Hmm.”
“Now, in their original form the Vedas had no commandments and no use for apportioning guilt, so they could not bother themselves with sin. They were concerned only with karma, and there is nothing like a moral sense to the Law of Karma; there is only cause and effect. The Law of Karma is a law of physics, a law which cannot be repealed any more than the law of gravity can be repealed. You can temporarily evade the Law of Karma, just like you can temporarily evade the law of gravity, but eventually it always catches up with you. If you jump off the ground you can avoid gravity for a second or two; if you fly high in an airplane, for a few hours. But what goes up will still have to come down.”
“And if you fly into space?”
“Even if you head off into space you will still be affected by the gravity of some heavenly body or other. But how likely is it for you to fly into space? Do you have enough good karma for that? How many humans in the history of the world have made it into space?”
“A handful.”
“And all of those that have gone and survived thus far have returned to Earth after a few days or weeks at the most. It’s all a matter of shakti. You need just a little shakti to jump; you need a moderate amount of shakti to fly in an airplane you need influence or money to get you a ticket, and influence and
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money are also types of shakti. But to go into space you need tremendous shakti, and to become permanently free of Earth’s gravity while still in your physical body you need more shakti than any human being has been able to accumulate thus far. King Trishanku tried to get to heaven in his physical body, propelled by the force of the Rishi Vishvamitra’s austerities, and where is he now? Hanging upside down for all eternity, suspended between the earth and the sky.”
“What about the people who know how to go into space with their astral bodies?”
“They remain limited by Earth’s astral gravity. To become permanently free of Earth, free even of its astral gravity, is something only the Rishis can do.”
I nodded my head contemplatively.
“The Law of Karma is the law of the universe; it is the basis of divine justice. Like it or not you have to abide by this law. If you break the Law you will have a penalty to pay, but that penalty is only a reaction; it has very little to do with guilt and retribution. A bad karma is bad mainly because you have to pay a price for performing it. Bad karmas make you and those around you suffer. Once you realize this principle you will try to stop performing bad karmas, if you are sensible, rational human being. As you generate less bad karma your suffering will gradually decrease, which will make your joy increase. It is all very simple and mathematical. 2 + 2 = 4; it can’t equal 3 or 5.
“You obtain sin only when you add guilt to bad karma, when you tell peo ple that they are evil and are bound for hell because they have performed bad karmas. There is a tremendous amount of guilt being passed around nowa days by self-proclaimed swamis and babas who chatter on and on about‘sin.’ But are they experts in the Law of Karma that they can know who is headed to hell and who to heaven? In different religions the ideas of sin are different and can conflict. What is a sin in one religion, like killing animals in Jainism, may be required in others, such as in Judaism and Islam. The phony swamis are ruining what is left of the Vedic religion by trying to tie it down to their wrong ideas about its dogma. The Vedic religion is the only religion that tells each individual to carve out his own niche; that is why it is eternal. And if our country now has seven hundred million people then there must be seven hundred million gods here, all with their own individual religions.
“Jesus said, ‘Hate the sins, not the sinners. But I ask you, why should any one even think about sin? If you assume that your followers are going to sin won’t that encourage them to do so? This is why there is only one perfect reli gion: the Veda. It is the Eternal Dharma because there is no question of sin. Show me even a single mention of distinction of sin in the Veda and I will bathe in your urine! In the Upanishads, yes, such things may occur. The Up
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“But even this broadness of vision creates a problem! When people have no fear of sin many of them unfortunately begin to believe that they can somehow escape the Law of Karma. This tends to make them lazy about maintaining their purity, which lets their bad karmas accumulate. It is a real problem: if you harp on sin like some Christians do you tend to perpetuate it; if you try to ignore it, it tends to increase.”
“So what do you do?”
“If you are the head of some religion you have a big problem. But if you are like you and me you worry about your own things, and let God take care of everything else.”
A pause ensued, followed by an engaging discussion of potential mates for Stone Ice. When we reached the section of road which skirted a certain ash ram Vimalananda expelled a puff of air from his cheeks in disgust and spat, “Just what we need here—one more self-styled bhagavan (“God”). You’ve lis tened to this infamous bugger talk, haven’t you? This bhagavan’ says that he contradicts himself because of the nature of Reality, or some such thing. Now, the real Bhagavan will speak only in Para Vani—in telepathic speech and in Para Vani it is impossible to contradict yourself. It cannot be done, be cause Para Vani is Prasadika Vani, a direct expression of Reality which does not require the medium of words for its expression. We can only conclude from this claim of this ‘bhagavan’ that he is irrational.”
“Well, he in fact claims to be irrational, because he says the universe is irra tional.”
“If that is so then I have nothing more to say, because then there is no Law of Karma, no cause and effect, and no meaning to the whole universe. Which may well be—but if that is the case then how does a’bhagavan’ arise from the chaos?”
“Well, if the universe is irrational …”
“Enough of this bull! He is just an idiot who doesn’t know what he is talk ing. He just goes on jabbering to collect donations from his disciples so that he can eat, drink and be merry with his lady devotees.” He paused, then con tinued calmly. “Enough about this character; why should we pollute our minds by bothering ourselves about him? We have our own things to think
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about, instead of finding faults with others. Nature knows Her job best. If the Law of Karma does exist this fellow will one day get the lesson of his lifetime.
“Look,” he said, pointing his index finger at me, “When I point my finger at someone else I always remember that three fingers are pointed at me and only one finger is pointed at him. Then I know that it is my ahamkara, my ego, which is accusing him, and that my accusation makes me fall prey to the law of action and reaction. I may do one finger’s worth of damage to him, but three times as much damage will come to me. This helps keep me from be coming aggressive.”
“Most of the time.”
“If I didn’t remember this I might be finishing people off left and right. It’s very easy to do, once you have accumulated a certain amount of shakti. This is also one reason that some sadhus scuttle themselves. The more shakti you have the more scrupulous you have to be since the karmic implications for any of your actions become graver and graver. You have to walk through the world like an elephant that is being chased by a yapping dog. The elephant knows that a single tap from his foot will be the end of the dog. But he re frains from squashing the dog because he knows that the dog does not realize the gravity of what it is doing. If you do succeed in enraging an elephant, watch out! You will never escape. When Franklin Roosevelt was informed of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor he said simply, “Does Mikado realize the gravity of what he has done?’ And Admiral Yamamoto, who never was in fa vor of the attack, said, ‘I fear that all we have done is to awaken a sleeping gi ant and fill it with a terrible resolve.’ We all know what happened next: Japan was finished, utterly. But look at the Law of Karma! Japan is now headed for the top again, at the expense of the United States.”
“Do you think the United States shouldn’t have responded to Pearl Har bor?”
“If they hadn’t responded you might be speaking Japanese or German to day. No, the United States had to respond to end the tyranny of Hitler, Mus solini and Tojo. But even though it was the right thing to do it was still a karma, and karma is karma—full stop. Every action creates a reaction which will inevitably occur. But karma is so very deep that whether a specific karma is going to be good or bad for you in the end is no easy thing to know.
“I rarely even give money to beggars and when I do it is almost always to blind ones. Your eyes are the organs that lead you into projecting your mind outward into the world. All your senses tend to do this, but your eyes are pri mary. Suppose you are walking down the street behind someone with long, flowing beautiful hair. You start to fantasize about how her face looks. Then ‘she’ turns around–and you see that she’ is a boy! Your eyes have led you
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astray. The blind find it much more difficult than you or I to project their awareness out into the world; the samsara, the ever-changing outer world, does not exist for them, practically speaking. The blind deserve alms because their lack of sight makes it more difficult for them to perform karmas.
“But suppose I feel so bad for the blind that I donate my eyes after I die. That is quite a blessing for some sightless individual; it is a very fine thing to get sight after many years of blindness. But look at the result for me! The blind person who gets my eyes will be attracted by so many things since ev erything is new to him. The sensory attraction will make him want to enjoy those pleasures. He will make efforts to enjoy them and self-identify with his enjoyment. But karma is created every time he self-identifies. And who is re sponsible for that karma? I am! Why? Because I gave him sight. I enabled him to desire so many things, and to be able to act on those desires. Had I not in terfered he would never have had either the idea or the opportunity to want and to experience so many things. It is thus my responsibility and I have to pay for it. The price may not be too heavy so long as he behaves himself. But suppose he sees a beautiful woman and, overcome with his new desires, rapes her—then it is I who am guilty of rape, because I facilitated his crime! Though it may seem very unfair, this is the way things are. And this applies to any organ that is donated: heart, kidney, liver, even the skin used in skin grafts. You have to be very careful of whom you bless and how you do it.”
Vimalananda swerved a bit to miss a jaywalker and then asked, “Have you ever heard the Hindi phrase ankhon ki tara?”
“Yes’star of the eyes’; isn’t that equivalent to the English phrase, ‘apple of my eye?
“Right. It would be better if that phrase was ankhon ko tara.” “Which would mean, um, ’the eyes were saved?
“Exactly. When your eyes have been ‘saved they are no longer susceptible to being overcome with desires. This is why controlling all your senses is so important. Once there was a king who couldn’t sleep. It’s not uncommon; kings have so many things to worry about. Most rulers even today will look for a woman, or a drink, or some amusement to divert themselves when they have insomnia. Many of our past rulers, though, had more refined sleep-in ducing methods. This one was a poet, so as he strolled sleepless on his terrace he repeated to himself the first line of a poem he was trying to write. It was a poem on the appropriate subject of slumber.
“Shete Sukham Kas Tu?, repeated the king. ‘Shete Sukham Kas Tu? ‘Who is it that sleeps happily?’ Without warning, from out of the darkness beneath him, came a rejoinder: ‘Samadhi Nishtah—‘He who is in permanent sama dhi(spiritual trance)?
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« (Very good, thought the king, and very true. OK, Shete Sukham Kas Tu? Samadhi Nishtah—“He sleeps well whose consciousness is ever connected to the Universal Consciousness”; that is the sort of sleep’that is truly valuable. Good! Now, Ko Shatrur Iva? Ko Shatrur Iva? Who is the enemy?””
“Did he mean, ’the enemy of sleep?””
“Yes, and by extension enemies in general; the Great Enemy. He wanted something that would fit both meanings. What is the use of poetry that does not have many layers of meaning?
“The king kept muttering, ‘Ko Shatrur Iva?’ until the voice he had heard before volunteered, ‘Nijendriyani—‘one’s own sense organs. They are the enemy of sleep. When you fall in love with a woman will you be able to sleep without her? If you are obsessed with riches they are bound to keep you awake at night. And so it is with all the senses; they are the enemy of sleep, and of samadhi.
“Wonderful!’ said the king. “Ko Shatrur Iva? Nijendriyani. And now, Mit rani Kani? Who are my friends?’
“ Jitendriyani—the conquered senses, came the voice, which was right yet again. You don’t want to destroy your senses, like some of these yogis claim. You want to bring them under your control and make them work for you.
“When the king heard this last response he called down below to the speaker: “Please be so kind as to show yourself, great poet!’ And who stepped out into the light but his own watchman! ‘I never knew of your greatness be fore,’ the king continued. “You must become my adviser!’
“No, your majesty,’ came the reply.‘I have been serving as your watchman because I wanted no one to know of my talents, so that I would to be left alone to do my own things. I answered you only because as your servant I felt an obligation to assist you. Now I must leave your service and find a new place where I can live in peace and quiet.’ And off he went, in spite of all the baffled king’s pleas.”
“Just as you continue to escape from the people who discover too much about your talents.”
“If you want to preserve your solitude you have to be ready to leave. You won’t be able to leave if you are not careful of whom you bless or curse, be cause that sort of karma can bind you like steel cables. Moreover, what is a blessing for the person you bless may end up being a curse for you. Think for a moment of the Emperor Akbar, who had no sons until he was blessed by the Muslim saint Sheikh Salim Chishti. Even after that blessing it is said that his Queen became pregnant only after the saint’s own one-year-old son, Balle Miyan, died. By knowing this we can know something of the kind of blessing that Salim Chisti,gave to Akbar. We know that he absorbed some of those of
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Akbar’s karmas which were preventing him from having a son. These karmas then blocked Salim Chishti from having a son—so his own son died. It was as if he transferred his son to Akbar.
“But because Salim Chishti enabled that boy to be born into Akbar’s family the saint became responsible for some of the bad karmas that this boy per formed when he became the Crown Prince and later when he ruled as the Emperor Jehangir. And let me assure you, Jehangir was responsible for some very nasty karmas. I doubt that dealing with these karmas was any fun for the poor saint."
“Do you think he was not aware that there would be repercussions from his blessing?”
“Oh, he probably was, but he must have been overcome with emotion. When he saw that the Emperor himself had come to him barefoot to ask for a son he must have said to himself, “Let whatever happens tomorrow happen; today I will make this man happy! Only a Muslim saint has enough guts to give such a blessing; not a Hindu. Hindu saints are too cautious; they want to make sure whoever they bless will be able to handle the blessing. It is good to be circumspect, but then the emotion can’t freely flow.”
“Does that mean that you think Muslims are superior to Hindus in some regards?”
“Of course! It’s only the bigoted Muslims that I don’t like. And I don’t like the bigoted Hindus any better.”
“How could Salim Chisti have become overcome with emotion if he was a saint? Shouldn’t saints be beyond emotion?"
“Saints are beyond the Three Gunas (the three fundamental qualities of physical and mental reality), but only those who follow the path of jnana (transcendent, unqualified wisdom) go beyond all emotion. Misery remains in bhakti (devotion). But that misery is the misery of separation from the be loved, not the misery of hatred. That misery is so fierce that we call it mahap ida (ʻmassive affliction’)which is why we call bhakti asu ka marg (’the path of tears’). When you become so God-intoxicated that the tears in your eyes blind you to the world you will see nothing but God everywhere you look. And when you see your God standing before you in a pitiable plight, you won’t be able to stand it. You will do whatever you can to help that God out, to make Him happy, even if that act makes you more miserable. Don’t ever listen to the so-called swamis who tell you that you have to become cold and dead in order to make spiritual progress. They can say such things only be cause they have forgotten what it means to have a heart.”
We had now reached the Poona Cantonment, and shortly thereafter we ar rived at our destination: the home of Shernaz, a Zoroastrian who by the time
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I met her had already been part of Vimalananda’s circle of children’ for nearly a quarter of a century. As she scurried off to make us some tea Vima lananda looked out the window to a tree he had become friendly with, laughed suddenly, and said, “Always be mindful, Robby, of everything that you do! Once I told Shernaz to feed monkeys every Saturday for ten Satur days, to reduce an affliction of Saturn in her horoscope. I warned her that not just any monkey would do; they had to be langurs, the type of monkey which Anjaneya (the monkey-god Hanuman) is reputed to be. Langurs are vegetar ian. In spite of being small they are very, very strong. Fortunately for her a troop of langurs lives in the graveyard near here, and they roam through town looking for handouts on Saturdays.”
“Just on Saturdays?”
“Yes, they somehow know that Saturday is the day they are likely to be fed. A male and my God, he was a big one!-led the pack. When someone of fered the troop some food he would first approach and check out the terrain to make sure it was safe. Once he was satisfied he would summon the others with a peculiar sort of cry. Only then they would come to eat. Every Saturday this whole process would be repeated at Shernaz’s house when she fed them with a prescribed article of food. Unfortunately she then became frivolous and decided that if ten Saturdays would help her eleven Saturdays would do her even more good. So she fed them for an extra Saturday."
“Wouldn’t feeding them more normally do more good?”
“Perhaps, but it was more important for her to do as she was told. She was not feeding them because she loved them. She was feeding them for her own benefit, and when she became greedy for more benefit Nature decided that she needed to be taught a lesson. One fine morning during the week following that eleventh Saturday the langur chief swung into her home through an open window. He strutted around the house for a while in a furious mood and then left. Everyone who was inside was scared silly, including Shernaz, Arzoo, and Shernaz’s son Sohrab. I happened to come to visit shortly afterwards. While they were telling me all about him, exaggerating his size and ferocity and ev erything else, he came back. He was really enormous for a langur. He strutted all through the house, growling but not touching anything.
“When he came to where we were all sitting at the dinner table he sat on the table right in front of me. He caught hold of my right wrist, still growling and showing his teeth, and patted me gently on my head. Then he jumped off the table and jumped back out the window. Because I lived so long in jungles I am used to animals, but you should have seen everyone else! I told my quaking friends that this fellow would not live long, and that they should close their outside windows for the next ten days so that he couldn’t get back
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in. He started harassing everyone in the neighborhood from that day. On the tenth day he was jumping from one roof to another when he slipped and grabbed an overhead wire and was electrocuted. The local people, many of whom regard langurs as incarnations of Hanuman, took his body in a big procession and had it cremated. And you know, even the other langurs in the big fellow’s troop joined the procession! It was just like they knew exactly what was happening. First they collected somberly around the body—even the babies behaved themselves—and when the body was carried away they marched along with everyone else. And people say that animals have no in telligence and no emotions! I think it is the humans who are deficient!
“Everyone learned a good lesson from this incident. Even Shernaz learned not to try to be so smart about things which humans cannot easily under stand, like the relationship between monkeys and Saturn.”
“Now wouldn’t you say,” I said, scratching my head reflectively, that this Goliath of a monkey effectively died because of her extra feeding? Doesn’t this make Shernaz incur at least some of the karma for his death? Not to mention the karma of disturbing the relationship between Saturn and the langurs?”
Just then Shernaz arrived with our tea, and Vimalananda asked her, “You remember the big langur, don’t you, Shernaz?”
Shernaz replied, with some satisfaction, “He was a giant!"
“By having Shernaz try to placate Saturn, Vimalananda went on, “I was trying to relieve her of some of the pressure of the karmas she was having to experience. Suppose you are destined to have a rock fall on your head. If the rock is a boulder there will be nothing left of you after it lands, but if it is only a pebble it will bounce right off. This is how it is with karma. Unless someone takes your karmas on himself you cannot escape experiencing their effect. You can diminish their bad effects, however, and enhance the good effects by the skillful use of sadhana. When you fail to do as you are told, though, as this woman did—I am telling you to your face,” he said, looking pointedly at Shernaz, “you are bound to get yourself into trouble; then all your efforts may be wasted. And that, too, is an experience provided to you by Saturn."
“Is worshipping Anjaneya the best way to control Saturn?”
“Yes it is, for many reasons, but especially because Anjaneya knows how to manage the Law of Karma. I think you know that at one point during the Ra mayana Anjaneya flies over the ocean to Lanka where He was to search for Sita."
The Ramayana, the other of India’s two great epic poems, is the story of the life of King Ramachandra, or Rama, the seventh avatara of Vishnu, the Great God Who Preserves The Cosmos. During the fourteen years that Ram achandra resides in the forest His wife Sita is stolen by the Ravana, a rakshasa (demonic being) who is king of the island of Lanka. With the help of an army
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of monkeys and bears Ramachandra invades Lanka and after many tribula tions kills Ravana in battle and regains Sita. Before the invasion Ramachan dra sends Hanuman over to Lanka to reconnoiter the area and locate Sita.
“Anjaneya leapt into the sky and was flying bravely toward the island when he suddenly felt Himself begin to weaken. When He looked around He saw the reason: the giant demoness Simhika. She said to Him, ‘I am very hungry, O son of the wind god, and very glad to see you! It happens to be your destiny to enter my mouth and be eaten by me!
“When Anjaneya examined His causal body to find out if she was telling Him the truth He got the shock of His lifetime when He saw that, yes, it was His destiny to enter her mouth. But if He allowed Himself to be eaten how would He be able to accomplish the mission that His beloved Lord Ram achandra had sent Him to perform? Anjaneya was not concerned for His own life, but He was concerned for the success of His mission, for He thinks only of Rama. He realized that something needed to be done urgently, because Simhika was drawing His shadow, and so Himself, nearer and nearer to her.”
“How was she doing that?”
“Your shadow is a part of you, isn’t it? If I can grab hold of your body and pull you toward me why shouldn’t I be able to do the same thing with your shadow? Shadows are made up of matter, and even though that matter is very subtle shadows are not that difficult to pull, provided that you know how to grab hold of them.
“Anjaneya, who had been thinking fast, hastily used His siddhi (extra-nat ural ability) of Mahima to expand His body into enormous size. Seeing that her meal had become the size of a billowing cloud Simhika opened her mouth equally wide. Then Anjaneya suddenly contracted His body, using His siddhi of Anima, and fell into her open mouth with the force of a thun derbolt. When He emerged from her body after tearing her vital parts to pieces with His claws Simhika’s hulk fell into the ocean with a gigantic splash. Then Anjaneya was free to continue His flight to find Sita. In this way He complied with the letter of karmic law but escaped its undesirable conse quences.”
“Does Saturn have no effect at all on Anjaneya?”
“Saturn has to cast his glaze on everyone; there is no exception. He also had to affect Anjaneya, but he couldn’t figure out how to do so. In fact, he even asked Anjaneya for help! He said, ‘You are Maha Rudra; how will I sit on you?””
“Rudra is another name for Shiva (the god of death and transformation), fine, but why Maha (great)?”
“Anjaneya is the greatest Rudra because he is the Final Rudra, the last of the eleven Rudras, just as Mahakala (‘Great Time’) is the First Rudra, the Adi
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Rudra. Anjaneya, who is an incarnation of Lord Shiva, is the perfection of Shiva. The Rudras control life and death by controlling memory. Life is just a memory; bitter or sweet, it is nothing but memory.”
“You mean that if I can’t remember I might as well not even be alive?”
“That too, but without memory life itself is not possible. Your exist because of ahamkara, which is your ’l-causing’ faculty. Ahamkara continuously self identifies with every cell of your body and every facet of your limited human personality. Without ahamkara you cannot exist as an individual because it is ahamkara that integrates the many many parts of you into you. Mahakala, the Rudra who separates you from your life, causes you to die by causing your ahamkara to remember that She is the Kundalini Shakti. When Kun dalini sees Mahakala She is so overwhelmed with love for Him that She can think only of Him, and cannot continue to remember your mediocre human personality for even an instant longer.
“But death is not the end; oh no, not by a long shot. So long as your causal body continues to exist you must be reborn after you die, so that you can self identify with a new body and personality. Only when you can completely for get yourself—when you have nothing with which to identify because your karmic warehouse has been emptied of all unpaid karmic debts–can you completely cease to exist. Only when you get into the causal body can you go beyond it. And then, finished! You have gone beyond attribution into Nir vikalpa Samadhi (pure non-dualistic consciousness, unstained by even a shred of ego).”
“But until then you are stuck.”
“So long as you have a causal body filled with rnanubandhanas that re main to be worked out Saturn can keep you under his thumb, subject to fate and to the Law of Karma. Thought waves are continuously being projected into your mind—your astral body–from the karmas collected in your causal body. Most people forget that these thoughts are simply temporary manifestations. They try to cling to them or avoid them, and that creates yet more karma.
“There are ways to lose your causal body other than Nirvikalpa Samadhi, but most of them are not so easy to come by. You know, even if you live in In dia for lifetimes on end, there are some things going on that you would never suspect. You would never even dream about them unless you are meant to see them. For instance, there is a place in India where every day three or four chosen people bring a fresh corpse. They remove its clothing, wash it, and prepare it in certain other ways. Then they take it to a giant luminous figure with long black matted locks and fixed, staring eyes which never blink. He takes the corpse’s head and cracks it open and eats part of the brain. Some
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times, depending on his intentions, he may eat other parts of the body as well. By his consumption of the brain the dead person’s causal body gets completely eradicated, which means that he or she never has to be born again. This being has to have one corpse every day, and where he gets them from is a mystery. To see it is truly horrifying, but I saw it, and survived.”
“My goodness! But this doesn’t mean that anyone who eats brain is de stroying that corpse’s causal body, does it?”
“If that were true then all the cannibals in New Guinea would have merged by now! No, it is no easy thing to destroy your causal body, and so long as you have a causal body you will continue to be subject to the Law of Karma, and to fate. So long as you have karmas you will have memories and experiences, which is where Saturn comes in. Saturn stands for experience, good or bad, and your memory is the sum of your experiences. The Rudras cause forget fulness, which is the only way in which old life can cease and new life can be gin. The Rudras can do this because They self-identify so little with Their own ‘bodies.’ Mahakala, for example, has no single form; He takes whatever form He needs to perform His task. Anjaneya may be Mahavira–the Great est of Heroes’–but He is also Dasanudasa—the ‘Servant of Servants.’ He self-identifies with Rama so much that He rarely remembers His own body. Because of this detachment Saturn cannot affect the Rudras..much.
“When it came time for Saturn to afflict Anjaneya he couldn’t figure out how to do so. So he asked Anjaneya, ‘How can I sit on you?’
“Anjaneya told him, ‘Sit on my tail. When Saturn did, Anjaneya’s tail flipped him over and pinned him. Then Saturn could not even move, much less throw his gaze on Anjaneya. Anjaneya’s mace controls all the planets ex cept Saturn, who is controlled by His tail.
“In spite of being pinned, though, Saturn still eventually exerted his effect. When Anjaneya went to Lanka and was captured there Ravana caused His tail to be set afire—the same tail that had pinned Saturn. Thereafter Anjaneya he roically set fire to the entire city of Lanka. Sita’s prayers protected Him from be ing scorched, but even so the tip of His tail was slightly burned in the process.
“Moreover, due to the exuberance of his heroic nature Anjaneya lost con trol of Himself just for a moment. As He soared through the sky He was so full of shakti that just for a moment some of this shakti overflowed into His sweat. He caught Himself in the next moment and retracted most of that shakti back into Himself, but a tiny amount of that shakti escaped His body in a drop of sweat. That drop of sweat happened to drop from His body into the open mouth of a female crocodile who lay just below Him. She conceived immediately, and shortly after gave birth to the sage Makaradhwaja (“The Crocodile-Bannered One’).
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“Anjaneya, the perfect celibate, thus had to experience loss of His ojas (subtle essence of semen), however slight, which caused Him to father a son, just as an ordinary householder does. Anjaneya had to experience that aspect of life thanks to the effect of Saturn, the planet of experience. In certain things no one is spared by Nature.”
“I have never seen Anjaneya’s name mentioned in the Vedic lists of the eleven Rudras.”
“Anjaneya does not appear anywhere in the Vedas; He has nothing to do with the Vedas. He is strictly Rama’s heart. Do you know the story of His birth?”
“Not entirely.”
“The story of Anjaneya begins with a Rishi who was named Rishya Shringa (“Antelope Horn’) because he had a horn on his head. King Dasharatha had wanted for long years to father a child, and although his guru Vasistha Rishi had tried various methods he had failed to produce any offspring for the king. Vasistha therefore requested Rishya Shringa to perform a sacrifice known as the Putra Kameshti Yajna for this purpose. After the sacrifice Rishya Shringa distributed its prasada (consecrated offerings) to the king’s three wives. As Kaikeyi, the king’s third wife, was trying to decide whether or not to eat it a hawk, of the kind we call a kite, came along and snatched the prasada from her grasp. The kite flew straight to where a certain female langur named Anjani sat, and dropped the prasada into her hands. Anjanii ate it and be came pregnant with Anjaneya.
“Back at the sacrifice the remaining prasada had to be divided so that Kaikeyi could have some. All three queens ate the prasada, and became preg nant with Rama and his three brothers as a result. All four of these brothers were filled with divinity, but their divinity was limited, because the prasada had been subdivided. Only Anjaneya’s mother Anjani got a full piece, which is why Anjaneya’s power is unlimited.
“Besides, Anjaneya was born because of the intervention of two Rishis, Angiras and Rishya Shringa, whereas Rama and His brothers were blessed by Rishya Shringa alone. The blessing of a single Rishi is enough to create a god, but when you are blessed by two, well, that is something else. That’s one of the reasons why I love Anjaneya so much.”
“Where does Angiras come into the picture?”
“Before Anjani was a monkey she was one of Indra’s celestial dancers. One day Angiras Rishi was sitting in Indra’s court deep in meditation, watching her dance. When she finished her dance she mocked him, saying, ‘Look here, you old man, didn’t you enjoy my dance? If you did you should tell me so.’
“Angiras replied, ‘My dear, I was admiring not your artistry but the artistry of the One who made you and Who made you want to dance.’
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“She became annoyed, and told him, ‘What do you know about dance, anyway? You are bereft of artistry.
“It is never wise to insult a Rishi. Angiras replied, ‘Oh, is that so? Would you like to see my artistry? All right then: become a female monkey!’ Then Anjani realized what she had done. But it was too late; a Rishi’s curse must al ways come true. All she could do then was beg for forgiveness. Angiras, after his heart had been softened by her wretched pleas, modified his curse: ‘You will become the mother of a monkey god who will be immortal and whose fame will endure as long as the sun and the moon endure.
“A Rishi’s curse is always a blessing in disguise. It will change you for the better, no doubt about it, just as it changed Anjani. Without the curse she would never have become the mother of such a great being. Anjani was born on the earth as a female monkey, but with the memory of her previous exist ence. Before she fell to earth Angiras had given her precise instructions on how to worship Lord Shiva. When the kite flew by and dropped the prasada from the Putra Kameshti Yajna into her hands she had no idea of what it was or where it had come from, but she took it to be Shiva’s prasada and ate it. This is what faith can do for you.”
“Faith, and following instructions,” I said, mischievously, with a quick glance at Shernaz, and we all laughed.
More obedient than Shernaz, and more fortunate than she, was a Bomaby couple in financial distress who invited Vimalananda to their home. While there he observed, “It is a good thing that you have a well in front of your house. Burn a little incense there every day and wait. If I am correct a monkey will come. Offer him a wheat chappati (unleavened bread) and a lump of gud (crude cane sugar). If he eats any of it you are made.” Four days after this con versation a monkey appeared, took one bite of the chappati, and vanished. Within a month this fellow sold some property for a fabulous profit and quickly parlayed that money into more than a million rupees. All this hap pened in the middle of Bombay city, in an area where there are no monkeys for miles around.
If Vimalananda had been willing to use even one of his various “knacks” for his own benefit he could easily have made for himself the millions that he “made” for others. Instead, he was perennially short on ready cash. This se verely limited his stud choices for Stoney, for mares continue to eat even after they cease to race, and stallions charge covering fees for impregnating those mares. Many were the stud farms that Vimalananda surveyed, and many
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were the stallions, both Indian and foreign born, whose racing and breeding prowess we discussed over many a cup of tea, but the choice finally came down to the best deal rather than the best stallion.
The best deal he could strike in 1977 was with Vitu Karve, a trainer who was the son of the well-known jockey Ramu Karve, whom Vimalananda had first known thirty years before during his first foray into the world of racing. Vitu, who had recently opened a small stud farm, needed mares and was will ing to make contingency deals. He was willing to pay for Stoney’s upkeep himself and to give over to Vimalananda her first live foal, after which Stoney would belong to Vitu. It was an all-round gamble: Vimalananda was wager ing that her first live foal would be a humdinger while Vitu was betting that Stoney would throw some additional good foals after that first one. Vima lananda’s enthusiasm for this bargain was minimal, for Vitu’s stallion would pass on merely adequate genes to Stoney’s child, but without cash there was then no alternative that would have paid Stoney’s way other than selling her outright, an idea which Vimalananda detested.
On the day Stoney left for stud Vimalananda sat in Bombay with me and Roshni, staring long and hard at the wall on which hung one of his favorite photos: a shot of him and his then-trainer Maneckjee leading Stoney back to the Paddock after she had won the Mother Lode Cup. Vimalananda looked in the photo to be on the brink of kicking up his heels with pleasure as he es corted in the prancing Stoney.
As the three of us sat together thinking our private thoughts we chewed paan, that popular Indian chaw that is composed of betel nut, betel leaf, khatta paste, slaked lime, and sundry other additives. Vimalananda always enjoyed a good paan, not least because he had fond memories of his mother and aunts feeding it to him when he was young. I was learning the art of paan preparation, which is a ritual in itself, from Roshni, who had recently started making paan for Vimalananda. First you select the leaf, which must have no brown spots of deterioration on it. As Vimalananda loved to remind us, “Three things must always be kept turning: betel leaves, rotis, and horses.” If you don’t turn betel leaves regularly they will rot; an unflipped roti (tortilla like flatbread) will burn; and a horse who does not keep walking or running will likely to die of acute colic. Once you have selected a worthy leaf you deftly slice out its central rib, then coat the leaf with the lime and khatta, whose mixture creates the red color that paan chewers are always spitting out. Atop this sanguine spread go the other ingredients, and then the whole mixture is folded into a triangle, square or cone.
Roshni had added a little tobacco to Vimalananda’s paan—she wanted it to have none and he insisted that it have some—and as he spat out its remains
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he began to tell me the secret of his prize mare’s racing success: “Just after Stoney had come to me I asked my son, ‘What do you want for your birth day?’ That fellow knows me too well, so he replied, ‘First promise me that you’ll give it to me? I promised, and then he told me, ‘I want Stoney to win a race. Now I was stuck. What if she wasn’t destined to win, or I was not des tined to make money from her? But I had promised, and I had to go through with it. I sat and did homa on Stoney’s behalf, and she won a race as a result. Then I warned my son: ‘Don’t you ever try to trap me like this again or you’ve had it, whether or not you are my son.
“Stoney won six races altogether. I knew that she had it in her to win, but I wanted to make it sure. So one day I went to my Junior Guru Maharaj to get some insurance. I pleaded, I pestered, and I coaxed. I told him all sorts of things, and even accused him of not caring for me. I also hinted that maybe it was beyond his capabilities. Finally he lost his temper and said, ‘You don’t think I can do it, do you? Well, I will show you just how I can do it. I will sit on that mare myself and win five races for you. First, I will come from the back. Then, I will go start to finish. Then …
“The old man described in detail exactly how each race would be run. And you can believe it or not, but those five races were run just as he had pre dicted and she won each one. Am I right, Roshni?” Roshni nodded her as sent. “He must have done just as he had predicted he would do; he must have possessed the bodies of the jockeys at race time, and forced them to do as he wanted them to do.”
“Which made him responsible for the karma involved in arranging things so that she would win.”
“Naturally; why else would I bother my mentor with such trifles? To deal with such karmas is child’s play for him, but it is better for him to have to deal with it as a favor he has done for me than it is for me to deal with it as some thing I did for myself. And it’s not like I expected something for nothing; I did something nice for him in return for this favor. After all, a fair exchange is no robbery.”
“So why should he have refused at first to grant your request?”
“Well, why should he grant it? Should he indulge me in every request that I make? Besides, even if such karmas are child’s play for him they are still kar mas. I am asking him to soil his hands for me. Guru Maharaj has the power to make my mare win a hundred or a thousand races, if he wants to. But each race that he manipulates adds to the load of karmic filth that he has to wash off. Why should he bother?
“You know, most people go to saints to ask them for money, or to punish their enemies, or to get their children married, or whatever, but they are all
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stupid. When a saint has given up everything worldly how will he be able to help you with your worldly problems? I was equally stupid at first. My Junior Guru Maharaj asked me at least ten times if I preferred to have money or de votion to God, and I always said, ‘Money, because I thought that if I had money I could purchase anything I needed.
“One day when I was with him he asked me the same question. When I gave him the same answer he got so angry that he gave me a good slap. That slap somehow changed my way of thinking, and from that day on when any one asks me what I want I always say, ‘Bhakti, because if I have true devotion God will provide me with whatever I need!”
I opened my mouth to speak but he intercepted my riposte.
“I know what you are thinking; you need not speak. You are thinking: ‘If now you want nothing but bhakti, why did you ask Guru Maharaj to make Stoney win?’ Don’t worry, I am already prepared for that question. I have plenty of reasons ready for you. First, my rnanubandhana with Stoney, which I want to be completed in the best way possible. And whether anyone likes it or not this time around she is a racehorse, and racing is her lot in life. The more she wins the more she’ll be respected and the better she’ll be treated, both in the racing stables and now at stud. Second, it’s a sort of competition between me and Guru Maharaj: I am testing him to see how much he is will ing to soil his hands while doing things for me, and he is testing me in much the same way. Third, what about my rnanubandhanas with my poor friends at the racecourse? When one of my horses wins and they make money they bless me, and there is value in such blessings.”
“And in curses too, I guess.”
“O my God, there is tremendous power in curses! When I say that most of these jockeys and bookies are going to be finished I am not talking through my hat. Some years back there was a horse named Mount Everest. What a horse he was, Robby—a real mountain! He won race after race, and the punt ers at the track all knew that they could bet him fearlessly.
“Derby Day came around, and Mount Everest instantaneously became the ‘on money’ favorite. Everyone backed him down to 1 to 10‘on money’ - meaning that for a bet of 10 rupees you’d get only 11 back: your bet of 10, plus 1. For most horses this is terrible odds, but not for Mount Everest. Ev eryone knew he was going to win, so it was just like getting 10% interest on your money for leaving it in the bank for half an hour.
“The bookies also knew he was going to win and decided to do something about it to save themselves from certain ruin. They got to the jockey and of fered him an immense sum. The jockey refused, hesitated, wavered, and then agreed. Derby Day arrived, and everyone who was anyone went to the track
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to watch Mount Everest win in convincing fashion. And what happened? Mount Everest’s jockey tried frantically to hook him by making his pre planned errors. But the horse was so much better than his rivals that the best the jockey could do was to cross the finish line neck and neck with another horse in a photo finish. Like everyone else at the track I was watching very carefully, and I was sure that Mount Everest had won. But the bookies had prepared for this too; in a few moments word came that the photo finish camera had failed. Failed! This was the only time in the world, up to that mo ment, that a photo finish camera had failed. The company that made the camera was so concerned to protect their reputation that they checked the camera later–and found nothing wrong with it. But that was later; on the day of the race there was no photo, which meant no review, which meant that the unbeatable Mount Everest had been pipped at the post.”
“These things happen.”
“Of course they do; unbeatable horses do get beat. It is also true that win ning a photo finish is often just a matter of luck. When a horse gallops he thrusts his head first forward and then back with each of his strides. Suppose that at the finish line two horses are nose and nose, and one’s head is pushing forward when the other is pulling back. Then the first one’s nose will cross the finish line before the second one’s will, even if the second one’s body is in front of the first one’s body. That nose will make all the difference between first and second place.
“But Mount Everest was not supposed to have been in a photo finish in the first place. He should have trounced his rivals, and when he did not there was silence at the racecourse. Total silence-everyone was so shocked. Everyone knew what had happened, it was so obvious. Mount Everest himself made the conniving even more obvious when he won his next race, the R.W.I.T.C. Invitational Cup, convincingly—by streets! In fact, the Derby was the only race he ever lost. There was an enquiry and everything, but nothing could be proved, so the culprits went’scot-free.
“Or so they thought, until the morning after the race when The Times of India carried the tragic news of the death of an entire family that had drowned in the Arabian Sea. A few days later a suicide note surfaced and the truth came out. It seems that the father of the family had been skimming money from where he had worked to feed his gambling habit. He had lost steadily, as ordinary racegoers always do, until he was about to be found out. Then he recklessly took an enormous sum from the office on Friday. He planned to wager it all on Mount Everest, recover his arrears, and replace it before anyone would come to know. After the unthinkable occurred and Mount Everest lost the race, he realized that he would be going to jail, and
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that as the family’s only breadwinner his wife and children would starve. He took what he thought was the only honorable course of action left to him. At least this way they would still be together as a family and would see what fate had in store for them next time around.
“Can you imagine what his last thoughts must have been as he choked to death under the water? Like everyone else at the racecourse he knew that Mount Everest had been hooked. Don’t you think he must have been think ing of the jockey and the bookies, the people who had caused him to kill him self? And what about the last thoughts of his family? This kind of curse, one that is delivered with all the force of someone’s last breath, possesses a terrible power. So I would not want to be in that jockey’s shoes, not even if you of fered me tens of millions of rupees. He’s going to be regretting his action for a long, long time.”
“And the bookies will surely regret as well.” “Yes, the bookies too; where will they go? They cannot escape.”
“If the curses of poor people are so powerful, what about all the curses that Mamrabahen has been spewing at me?” Mamrabahen hated me ever since she asked Vimalananda whether he loved me or her more and he had told her that he loved me more because I did not double-cross him. Mamrabahen thereupon began to repeatedly threaten to kill me, or at the very least to dis figure my face with acid, and amused herself thereafter by continually hurl ing maledictions in my direction, consigning me to multifarious hells in a multiplicity of unpleasant ways.
“I have told you before not to worry in the least about Mamrabahen’s curses. First of all, I am there to protect you. Second, everyone asks me about blessings and curses but no one bothers to ask me how long a blessing or a curse will last. Isn’t it important to know? If you know that a certain curse will only be short-lived you need not go to much trouble to try to lift it. You need only keep quiet until the end of the time limit and then you are free. Likewise, if you know how long a blessing will last you will be able to know how long you have to make use of it to progress.
“To know how long a blessing or curse will last you must first know in which form of speech (vani) it was delivered: Vaikhari (oral), Madhyama (mental), Pashyanti (visual), or Para (telepathic) Vani. Oral curses and blessings are al most worthless because your tongue burns whatever it speaks. This is why speaking mantras aloud dissipates their shakti. Even speaking someone’s name too much spoils its sweetness. Even saying ‘I love you’ aloud is far less mean ingful or effective than saying it mentally, or looking at someone and letting the love flow through your eyes or, best of all, using telepathy. In the old days the real gurus would bless their children’ with Para Vani. Those blessings
Ways
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would go directly to the target and hit the mark; their effects would last a life time and nothing else needed to be done. That is the power of Para Vani.”
“When that man committed suicide because of Mount Everest’s defeat, was his dying curse in some higher form of speech?”
“Very likely it was, even though he probably was not aware of it.” “But Mamrabahen cannot use higher speech herself?”
“How can she? She tries to do sadhana, but she has no niyama (internal discipline). As soon as she gets some shakti she gets angry with someone and shouts at them, which burns it away with her tongue. Or she goes with some man and screws it away with her lower mouth, or does something else that eliminates its effect. The time to get worried is when you are cursed by some one who does good sadhana, because she will put some of her shakti into that curse.
“This applies to blessings, too. Think of it this way: if you beg money from a beggar you will only get small change, because that is all he has to give you. This is like an oral blessing. If you go to a merchant and he is pleased with you he will give you a good amount, but he will still calculate how much he gives you according to how much he can afford to give. This is like a mental blessing. But if a king is pleased with you, well, the sky’s the limit. Real kings know how to give. This is one reason why they call good sadhus maharaj (great king), because they know how to bless—and to curse. A saint or a sadhu can only really bless or curse you when they are overcome by love or by wrath. Then the force flows from them without their even being aware of it.
“You can know a lot about a saint from the results produced by his bless ings. Think of Mukunda Babu, who in his earlier years was a schoolteacher. When Mukunda Babu was growing up his grandfather had gradually taught the boy the entire Ram Charit Manas (the version of the Ramayana com posed by Tulsidas). After he got older Mukunda Babu used to recite this Ra mayana here and there in his spare time, for which he earned a little money. Then a sadhu who worshipped Anjaneya blessed Mukunda Babu, and now the ex-schoolteacher lectures before huge audiences of people. People are ready to give him millions, but fortunately for him he accepts their money on only one day of the year. Tulsidas clearly did not write his book on Rama with the intention that other people would use it to make money. But by not de manding money for his programs Mukunda Babu limits his exposure to the negative karma of selling spiritual knowledge.
“Any blessing that you get has to filter through both your causal and astral bodies, causing certain of your karmas to project outwards for fulfillment. Because a good sadhu delivered the blessing Mukunda Babu’s mind is kept firm so that he does not desire name, fame and so on. He is tempted, accord
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ing to the Law of Karma, but he does not succumb to temptation like so many’swamis’ do. If he did succumb we would know that the sadhu who blessed him was a false sadhu.”
“Do you know the sadhu that blessed him?”
“The sadhu was just an excuse, a medium through which the blessing was given. It was in fact Anjaneya Himself who blessed Mukunda Babu through the sadhu.”
As if in thought Vimalananda paused, which permitted the flat to fill with street noise from two floors below. Then he continued: “Now I have given you a couple of good examples of saints’ blessings. Here is an example of the power of a saint’s curse: Kamran, king of Kandahar, was the brother of Hum ayun, Akbar’s father. One day when Kamran was out hunting he shot a preg nant deer, who even though she was mortally wounded managed to struggle to the feet of Shri Chand Ji to die with her head on his foot.
“Now, Shri Chand Ji was no ordinary mortal. He was a great saint in his own right, and was also the son of Guru Nanak, who was a Siddha (perfected being). Shri Chand Ji was amazed that this doe had sought him out to die at his feet. He was so amazed, and so filled with love for her and for the Nature that had created her, that he blessed her from the depths of his heart. He was still in this mood of tremendous love when Kamran, who had been tracking the deer, arrived to claim his prize.
“Shri Chand Ji tried to reason with him, and explained that since the doe had come to him and taken refuge at his feet that he could not part even with her body. But Kamran was a cruel and unreasoning man, and he insisted. He was the king, after all, and was not used to people defying him.
“Then Shri Chand Ji was filled with such agony for the fate of the deer that it poured from him in the form of a terrible curse: “Your son will blind you, and make you beg in the streets before he murders you!” And it happened. In fact, Kamran was disemboweled.”
“He shouldn’t have insisted.”
“No, and neither should you. If you are ever cursed by a real saint you have to expect the worst.”
“And if a real saint blesses me should I expect the best?”
“You must. If an ordinary sadhu blesses you, expect an ordinary blessing that will last a short time. The effects of a great saint’s blessing will last months, or years, or maybe your entire life. A Siddha’s blessing gives you both worldly and spiritual benefits. At first you will prosper like anything. Then, after three or four years—-seven years maximum—you will begin to feel, ‘Why do I have all this? What is it for? Why should I not go out and live in the jungle?’ And you will.”
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“And if a Rishi blesses you?”
“A Rishi’s blessing lasts for lives and lives. Sometimes a Rishi, or some other Mahapurusha (immortal being), will give the blessing Chirayur bhava! (‘Live indefinitely long!’) If this meant that the person who was blessed should become a Chiranjivi, one who lives for millions of years at a time, then the whole world would be populated with ancient people by now. There would be no room for anyone new, which we can see is not the case. What this sort of blessing really means is that those who receive it will be reborn as humans every time they reincarnate. This gives them a chance to finish their jobs sooner, continuing their progression along the road to liberation through each succeeding birth without any further delays as animals or plants.
“A Rishi’s curse is something unique because it always turns out to be a blessing in the end. It may plague you for many lives, but it will purify so many of your bad karmas that once you emerge from it you will become quite different. The curse makes all those bad karmas come out all at once.
“Will the curse on Mamrabahen cause all of her bad karmas to come out?”
“That is obviously happening already. But in order for such a curse to change you you have to admit your faults and stop performing evil karmas. Mamrabahen, on the contrary, is performing more and more evil karmas; she refuses to improve. I have been trying to improve her, but it is not work ing. You know, one of the greatest blessings you can obtain is to have some one near you who will always correct your mistakes for you.”
“Is that why Birbal used to correct all of Akbar’s mistakes, because he ap preciated what Prithviraj had done for Chand Barot?” I asked, as the story of the great king and his loyal servant who had been reborn as the mighty Em peror Akbar and his closest confidant abruptly recalled itself to my mind.
“Perhaps.” “Surely Mamrabahen must be able to do something right.”
“Oh, yes, she is quite clever. One thing she knows is pedigree; she can tell you the pedigree of almost every horse racing here in Western India. She also knows the sorts of influence that the various sires and dams have on their progeny.”
“But the only good this has done her is to embroil her with jockeys.”
“Yes, that long-ago curse has prevented her from ever being able to profit from her knowledge. It is so very difficult to escape from the effects of your karmas.
“This is a true story: There was a king who, having fathered no child dur ing his first marriage, adopted a son. Sometime thereafter he married an other wife who bore him a son. The second son’s mother wanted her own son to suceed to the throne, and eventually, blood being thicker than water, she
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convinced the king to accede to her demand. But how to get rid of the adopted son?
“After some thinking the king decided to send the boy to his neighbor, a vassal king who did most of his dirty work for him, including murders. The boy carried a sealed letter from his adopted father to the vassal. The letter read: “Give this boy visha (poison)
“When the boy reached the river at the edge of the vassal king’s city he lay down on the riverbank for a nap. The king’s daughter happened to come down to the river, and when she saw the handsome boy on the bank she in stantly fell in love with him. Seeing the letter he was carrying she opened it and read, ‘Give this boy visha.
“Looking at him with eyes of love she said to herself, ‘What a fine young man! How could anyone, and his own father in particular, want to poison him? The king must have simply left out the letter’yaHe must have meant to write ‘Vishaya’—and that is my name! So I am to be given to this prince in marriage! How wonderful! But I must correct this oversight.’ She added ‘ya’ to the word ‘visha, replaced the letter, and awoke the boy.
“She then led him joyously to her father, who read the note and said, ‘How fine! My daughter is to become a queen! They must be married immedi ately!’ And so they were. The young couple was then sent back to the first king with many presents-jewels, elephants, and whatnot–and a note from the princess’s father: ‘King, you have done me great honor by marrying your son to my daughter and thus making a queen of her. Please accept these mea ger presents in gratitude!
“When the boy’s adopted father read the note he realized both that his plan had backfired, and that there was nothing he could do about it. If he were to make his natural son king after him the other king would be terribly insulted, and might disrupt the whole alliance system. So he had to keep his trap shut, and after he died his adopted son became king. And that was that.”
“So everything is predestined?”
“By no means; there is such a thing as free will in the world. How much free will you have in any given situation, though, depends on how much you have used up in the past. Using your free will today creates karmas that be come your fate tomorrow. Every time you use your free will to try to avoid your fate, to try to swim against Nature’s current, you create new karmas whose effects will not always be obvious to you until much, much later.”
“And presumably the more people you affect the bigger your karma, like the jockey who hooked Mount Everest. Which means that someone like Mao Tse-tung, what with the Cultural Revolution and everything else he has done to the people of China, is going to have an ocean of karmas to answer for.”
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“Without a shadow of a doubt. The more authority you have over people the more conscientiously you must exercise it.”
“Lao Tse said, ‘Ruling a great kingdom is like cooking small fish.””
“And I agree with him. When you are a ruler you must be very cautious, for things that you might think of as minor can soon become major when you look at them from the perspective of the people you rule. If enough of them die cursing you with their last breath you’ll be finished, done for, for ages. It is the rare person, like Akbar, who can endure the luxuries of princely life with out being ensnared by them. But even he made some missteps—he was only human, after all, and no human is perfect. He may even be still be paying for some of these mistakes today.
“Tansen, Akbar’s chief musician, was really Tansen Pandey. His father’s name was Makaranda Pandey. ‘Pandey’ is derived from panda (priest’), which means they were a Brahmana family. Makaranda Pandey was unsuc cessful at siring a child until he started to perform devotional services for one fakir (Muslim religious mendicant) named Mohammed Gous who lived near him. After some time Gous became pleased with Makaranda. One day when he was in a peculiar mood he called the Brahmana over to him and spit in his palm, and then put the spit in a paan. He told Makaranda, ‘Eat this and your work will be done.’ He did, and it was; Tansen was the result.
“The other Brahmanas, bigoted as Brahmanas usually are, told Maka randa, ‘You have swallowed the spittle of a Mohammedan, so now you have become a Mohammedan. Makaranda replied, ‘All right, then I am a Moham medan. And so Tansen was reared as a Muslim, even though he came from a Brahmana family. What do you have to say to that?”
“Nothing,” I replied with bitter heat. “I have no more use for orthodox Brahmanas than I have for any other kind of Hindu fundamentalists. I have already had difficulties with Brahmanas who refuse me entry into certain temples, as well as Brahmanas who think that the secrets of Ayurveda should not be opened to me just because my skin is white. Whites may be racist, but there seems to be a vast amount of anti-white discrimination right here in India too.”
“You are lucky that you have come here in the ’70s,” Vimalananda replied soothingly. “Twenty or thirty years ago it would have been nearly impossible for you to do what you are doing.
“After Tansen entered Akbar’s service he was recognized almost immedi ately as one of the Nine Jewels of the court. He became famous throughout the kingdom, and Akbar was very pleased with him. Then one day when Ak bar was feeling expansive he said to Tansen, ‘Wah, wah, what a superb musi cian you are!’ He was taken aback when Tansen replied humbly, ‘Compared
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to my guruji I am nothing at all, O Refuge of the World. Yes, I am a good mu sician, but Haridas Swami, my teacher, is much greater than I. I sing for money and fame and to please you, but he sings only for God?
“This piqued Akbar’s curiosity. He loved excellence, so he told Tansen, ‘You must request your guruji to come to my court so that I can hear him sing. Tansen replied, ‘He will never come here, Your Majesty. He cares noth ing for the world’s grandeur. But if you will come with me in disguise then perhaps we will be able to hear him sing?
“Akbar went incognito as Tansen’s guest to listen to Swami Haridas wor ship the Lord with song. Midway through the performance he was so over come by Haridas’s singing that he forgot himself and cried ‘Subanullah!’, which is a Muslim way of saying, ‘Outstanding! A marvel of God!’ Haridas then immediately knew that a Muslim was listening to his music, and asked
Tansen who he was.
“Tansen said, “This is the Emperor, and he is very pleased with your singing. “Haridas said, ‘He may be the Emperor, but I do not sing for emperors.
“Then, to show his humility, Akbar offered Haridas Swami a vial of price less perfume from Persia. Haridas took it and poured it onto the ground in front of him.
“Akbar gasped, and forgot his humility. He said, ‘If you were not going to use it you should have given it to Krishna.’ Haridas said, ‘Go and see.
“When Akbar went to the Krishna temple nearby he found that the image was covered with the same essence which he had just poured out onto the ground. Then Akbar understood–a little of what Haridas was. Akbar was fortunate in that he behaved as a servant toward God-and God was the only thing he ever respected in that way—and so he respected the servants of God. Here is another effect of having ample good karmas in your account. Good karmas give you the opportunity to be exposed to saints who will help you get your priorities straight by humbling you. This happened to Akbar more than once.
“Meanwhile, Tansen stayed on with Akbar. He was really a great musician, though he did have some major character flaws.”
“Like what?”
“How about the vicious jealousy that led him to kill everyone, like Gopal Naik, who might remotely be construed to be a threat to him?”
I had no answer to that, so Vimalananda continued: “Tansen composed two ragas (modes of Indian music —-Darbari Kannada and Miya ke Mal har–especially for Akbar. If you play Darbari correctly you’ll see an image of Akbar, sitting on his throne, raising a rose to his nostrils. Tansen was widely famous for his ability to sing the Raga Deepaka (the Kindling or Igniting
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Mode). He had so thoroughly mastered Deepaka that when he sang it at dusk all the lamps in the palace would light themselves, automatically. When Hari das Swami left his body, certain courtiers challenged him to light the Swami’s funeral pyre by singing Deepaka. Tansen’s arrogance got the best of him, and he accepted the challenge. He was able to light the pyre, but it was too much of a strain on him. He immediately fell ill. He was engulfed in heat; he felt as if his entire organism was on fire.”
“Do we think that maybe the evil karmas created by killing Gopal Naik and all those other musicians somehow influenced this malady?”
“It’s very likely.” “I guess this served him right for being so egotistical.”
“Yes; you might keep that in mind. None of the court physicians knew how to treat this sort of disease. For six months Tansen was in agony, roving aim less about the country, his very being aflame, looking for relief. As luck would have it–which means, as his karmas arranged it—he ultimately reached the small village of Vadnagar in Gujarat. As he dragged himself through its streets he heard beautiful music coming from one of the houses. He recog nized the music as the Raga Megha, the Cloud Mode and what better thing to put out a fire than rain! The singers were two sisters, Tana and Riri, and Tansen requested permission to meet them. When the villagers discovered that the great Tansen himself had arrived they advised the girls’ father Kan chanrai to have nothing to do with this Muslim entertainer. They warned him that he and his entire family would become outcasts if they helped him in any way. In spite of these threats to his family Kanchanrai invited Tansen into his house. The girls sang Megha so well for him that he was cured. Tansen offered Kanchanrai immense rewards, but they were politely de clined. For Kanchanrai and his family wanted nothing to do with the Mughal court. Tansen then returned to Akbar’s court, where the Emperor was won derstruck at his story.
“Then it became Kanchanrai’s turn to experience the results of his karmas. The courtiers who had challenged Tansen to misuse Deepaka goaded Akbar to believe that it was Kanchanrai’s disdain for the throne that had led him to refuse a reward. Now it became a matter of principle, and Akbar insisted on summoning the father and his daughters to the imperial court. When the vil lagers discovered this they told Kanchanrai, ‘You see, we told you so. Now you too will become Muslims. Perhaps the Emperor will even take your girls into his harem.’ In order to protect their honor, and that of their family and village, Tana and Riri snuck away from their home and commited suicide to gether. And we can be sure that they were not thinking pleasant thoughts about the Emperor as they died.”
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“Didn’t Akbar regret what he had done?”
“Oh, he did, he did, much later; but what was the use of regret then? Two brilliant musicians, who like Tansen could control prana through song, were lost to the world. And why? Simply because Akbar insisted on having his way. Remember this, when you are tempted to insist on having things your way.”
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