IN EARLY 1978 I was introduced to Vimalananda’s newest horse, a hand some compact colt named Timir, when I watched him win his first race. This occasion was also noteworthy for me—it was the first time I had been able to cheer home one of Vimalananda’s horses..and I found winning to be as electrifying a feeling as he had promised it would be. For the first time I un derstood the seduction of that sensation, how for sporting types like Vima lananda each victory could be as thrilling as his first.
I got an even greater thrill a few weeks later on the day Timir gave jockey Hemant Pawar an armchair ride to the 1000th win of his career. As Timir cat apulted past the finish line all the railbirds around us erupted into huzzahs for horse, owner and rider alike. Cama and young Godrej pumped Vima lananda’s hand; Firoz clapped him hard on the back. I convoyed Timir’s beaming proprietor down the steps toward the gate where his child’ would soon appear. After all the losing mounts had returned dispirited Hemant brought Timir forward so that Vimalananda could grasp one side of his reins. Mr. Lafange, the trainer, then grabbed the other side, and the three hu mans gave the conquering horse his triumph by leading him ceremoniously back to the paddock.
Though I had previously spent time at the Bombay racing stables my visit there after that afternoon’s last race was another first for me: the first day that I helped Vimalananda distribute tips to the grooms after a victory. The heroic Timir got his tip of carrots and alfalfa first, of course, for he was watching us as we arrived. Horses love to watch people, and their heads generally emerge from their stalls instinctively when visitors walk by. Timir was one of those horses who enjoy a telepathic ability to know in advance when a friend is headed for the stable; he always seemed to be expecting us whenever we showed up. After Timir and his handlers had been fed I lowered myself into a
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folding chair and took a good look at the community in which I would spend much of my next seven years. A groom served me tea. As I sipped it I thought, “I could easily get used to all this."
Though no other pleasure can really compare to afternoon tea in the Bom bay racing stables I soon learned that, as in racing venues the world over, its veneer of gentility sits atop a compost heap of plots and paranoia, pride and jealousy, overconfidence and frustration and, above all, cash and the rumors of cash. Skillful players learn that “money makes the mare go," and that innu endo and deviousness can make the mare’s owner gain a status in the racing fraternity that his mares may never gain on the track. Truth at the racecourse can be amusing and interesting, but the appearance of truth usually counts for far more than its reality. That afternoon in the stables, though, I was most struck by how far withdrawn we seemed there from the Bombay which sur rounded us. It was as though the uniformed guards at the gates of that treed and flowered biosphere of repose brandished some sort of authority that pre vented all encroachment from the never-sleeping metropolis beyond. Redo lent of the good farm smells of feed and dung, the stables reverberated with the caws of the ever-watchful jungle crows, the gentle whinnies of the hungry horses, and the fraternal murmurs of their handlers. God must surely be here in this heaven: What could be wrong with this world?
A wave of Vimalananda’s hand summoned me out of my reverie, and I lifted myself from my seat to be introduced to Dr. Kulkarni, the vet who looked after Mr. Lafange’s horses. Laughing, Dr. Kulkarni said to Vima lananda, “Oh, so here’s the American on your team. Now you’ll be able to use American ‘medicines’ for your runners that the lab won’t be able to detect."
“What a joker you are, Dr. Saheb," said Vimalananda with a smile. Every one at the racecourse knew that Vimalananda dosed his horses with all man ner of permissible Ayurvedic, homeopathic and patent medicines, and even some from the Arabic medical system known as Unani. Though he never told anyone but me and Roshni what he was giving, the results they produced were evident to all observers. Perhaps Dr. Kulkarni thought that in the ela tion of victory Vimalananda would let some secret or another slip, but he did not know as I did that Vimalananda never allowed himself to be carried away by any species of intoxication.
After some further racecourse small talk we drove back to our digs. It was a day or two later, as we were driving to the two-thousand-year-old rock-cut Mandapeshwar cave temples in North Bombay to perform some rituals, that an opportunity surfaced to ask Vimalananda the question that had been ex ercising my mind: “Did you know before you bought Timir that he had this sort of rnanubandhana with Hemant Pawar?”
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“Knowing all rnanubandhanas with all beings is a hell of a job,” he replied. “I did know, even before I purchased him at the 1977 Auction Sales, that Timir had the chance to shine out. His pedigree is solid, and he has brought good karmas with him to experience during this lifetime. I knew Timir would do well, based on his fitness, and knew how much Hemant wanted to win his thousandth race. I didn’t ask Hemant to ride him, you know; He mant came on his own to ask me. I’ve known Hemant since way back when he was an apprentice, years and years ago, and I know what a good eye he has. He would not ask for a mount unless he was confident that he could win on it. As soon as he asked me for the mount I agreed. It felt like the right thing to do, and it was."
“Due to the rnanubandhanas between you, him, and the horse?”
“What else could it be? There is nothing in the world but rnanubandhana. Rnanubandhana is created and destroyed according to the mandate of the Law of Karma. Please don’t think that anyone can be exempted from the Law of Karma. There are exceptions to every other law but this one. When God Himself comes to Earth He becomes subject to the Law of Karma, so what about you and me? Even the Rishis have not been spared by the Law of Karma. The Rishi Durvasas, who was the son of the Rishi Atri and the ex traordinary Anasuya, was always irate. He inherited this incredible irritability from the blessing of Shiva, who, when upset, is anger incarnate. It was Dur vasas who cursed Shakuntala, the young girl who neglected to serve him when he came to beg from her. Shakuntala’s only crime was that she was thinking so fondly of her husband that she could remember nothing else. Be cause of this curse the girl was separated from her husband for years. Eventu ally she realized that it was all for her benefit—but what a hard lesson it was!
“But Durvasas too met his karmic Waterloo. King Ambarisha and his wife loved Krishna immensely; every day Krishna Himself would come to eat the food they offered to their little idol of Bala Gopala, the Baby Krishna. One day Durvasas and thousands of his disciples came to Ambarisha’s palace for dinner. Durvasas already had a bad reputation, and whenever he was in town everybody would quake and quiver,
“Ambarisha and his wife were busy feeding Krishna when Durvasas ar rived on the scene. The queen politely told Durvasas, ‘Maharaj, please wait until we put Gopala to bed, and then we will take proper care of you.’ Durva sas, who had come to test Ambarisha, got wild. Ambarisha said, ‘Maharaj, you have such a high respect for God that it really doesn’t behoove you to lose your temper this way. Durvasas snarled at him, and asked, ‘Who is this God of yours?’ He didn’t know Ambarisha. How could he? He had come to Am barisha full of the ego of his bala (might). Bala and kala (stratagem, finesse)
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rarely exist together in one person. Ambarisha could not compete with Dur vasas’s power, but he was full of finesse. As usual, finesse won.”
“Out from the tiny idol of Krishna sprang Vishnu’s divine weapon, the Su darshana Chakra. It sped straight for Durvasas, who decided to run. The Chakra (discus) chased him over hill and over dale, through deserts and for ests, through all the three worlds. When there was nowhere left to run to Durvasas hid himself in a lake. The Chakra hovered there above his head, whirring menacingly.
“Then Durvasas knew he was defeated. He said to Vishnu, ‘I was wrong, O Lord. Please forgive me. What is my punishment?’
“Vishnu said, ‘The fruit of ten thousand years of your penance is to be for feited? And so it was. Ten thousand years was not much to Durvasas, who had been doing penances for much longer. The worst thing for him was hav ing to admit his fault.
“Durvasas had to pay dearly for insulting Ambarisha. But Durvasas is himself a great devotee of Krishna; how could he ever dream of insulting ei ther Him or His other devotees? The answer is simple: It was the effect of Sat urn. When Saturn’s gaze’ falls on someone it usually causes them hardships, often by making them do things they would never do under normal circum stances. The Rishi Vasistha lost all his sons because of Saturn. Due to Saturn the Rishi Vishvamitra twice lost the benefits of thousands of years of penance because of his dallying with Menaka. In fact, one result of Vishvamitra’s dalli ances was that very Shakuntala who Durvasas cursed with separation from her husband. The play of the Rishis is really unique.”
“I thought you told me that if you can completely conquer ‘what comes naturally’ to you, then Saturn can have no effect on you, and that immortals like the Rishis have been able to truly conquer their own natures.”
“True; but it is also true that even the most minimal attachment of your Kundalini Shakti to your body will interfere with your ability to control your own nature. So long as a Rishi remains embodied he must remain at least slightly attached to his body, and Saturn has to cast his glaze on every em bodied being; there is no exception. Everyone in the universe has to falter sometimes. Even the Lords of the universe remain subject to the Law of Karma. Fate can affect any immortal being who becomes subject to the time, space and causation of our universe, no matter how tenuous or temporary that attachment might be.
“To know karma is to know fate; but fate is not such an easy thing to know,” he repeated, as if to himself. “In fact, I doubt that anyone really knows fate fully. Even the gods are unable to fathom it. Do you know the story of In dra and his parrot?”
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“No, I don’t."
“Indra had a pet parrot. One day he got the thought, ‘Someday my beauti ful little parrot is going to die. But when will that day be?’ This question started to prey on his mind so much that eventually Indra picked up his par rot and went to Brahma, the Creator. Indra asked Brahma, ‘Great lord, when will my beloved parrot die?’
“Brahma replied, ‘I am sorry, Indra, I am only the Creator. I don’t know about things like death. But now I am myself curious, so let us go and ask this of Vishnu.
“Indra, his parrot and Brahma went to Vishnu and asked the Preserver of the Cosmos the same question. But Vishnu responded, ‘I am only the Pre server; I know nothing of destroying. For that we must go to Lord Shiva.
“All four of them trundled off to put the question to Lord Shiva. But Shiva answered, “Though it is true that I am the Destroyer I do nothing on my own initiative. I only act according to fate. When it is written in someone’s destiny that his time has come then I am there to take him. If we want to know when the parrot is going to pass on we must ask Vidhata
“Indra, the parrot, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva accordingly made their way to the residence of Vidhata—Fate personified. As soon as they entered his presence they asked their question, but Vidhata merely said to them, ‘Look at the parrot.’ When they did they saw it lying dead on its back, its little legs sticking forlornly upward. Shocked, the four gods asked for an explanation.
“Vidhata told them, ‘It was written that the bird would die only when it, Indra, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva all met with me at the same time. This was the only way in which the prerequisites for its death could be fulfilled. It was because the parrot’s time had come that you, Indra, got the idea to come and inquire. Had you ignored that thought the parrot need never have died.””
“And that was it? Indra and the Trinity learned a good lesson and had to go home parrotless?”
“That’s right.” “Huh…. Is asking questions what comes naturally to Indra?”
“Of course. From the celestial point of view Indra may be the king of the devas, but in the context of the human body he represents indriya, which means sense organ. All that the sense organs do all day long is ask questions. They are always looking outside to hear, touch, see, taste and smell what is going on. If asking questions is not what comes naturally to the sense organs I don’t know what is. If Indra had been able to control his own nature he would have asked himself why he had asked himself that question. Then he might still have his parrot. Don’t forget: your conquered senses are your friends, and your unconquered senses–the ones that you allow to do what
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comes naturally to them–are your enemies.”
“All right, I can see that. Does this also mean that just as it was written that the parrot had to meet his quietus in the presence of the Big Bosses it was also written that Hemant should win his thousandth on Timir, and that I should be there to watch you lead him in?”
“It certainly seems that way, doesn’t it? There is still a thing like free will in the world, but sometimes when the karmas have become very concentrated there is very little space for free will to operate. If this weren’t the case how could astrologers ever predict the future accurately? We know that they can; you have experienced it yourself.”
“True.”
“When your karmas become very, very concentrated in a certain area no amount of effort can enable you to escape Saturn and cheat your fate.” He laughed a quiet laugh.“R. D. Shah is a mathematical wizard and an amateur palmist who learned some of his palmistry from me. He is also something of the classic absent-minded professor.’ If he is deeply engrossed in some prob lem he will go out into a rainstorm without any cover and will look up into the pouring rain without even being able to recognize what it is.
“One day he came to me so fired up that he could barely talk. I waited pa tiently for him to calm down, when finally he spit out: ‘I’ve seen a palm which is so unusual that you must come look at it and tell me if I am interpreting it correctly. He took me to the man whose palm he had read, and when he saw the palm again R. D. Shah suddenly told the man, ‘You are going to murder someone within four days. Please come to my house so that I can make sure you don’t.
“None of the people there believed this prediction except me, for I did see murder written in his palm. The prospective murderer’s best friend, who was sitting next to him, objected: ‘I’ve known this man for years, and I can tell you that he would never murder anyone.
“R. D. Shah asked for the friend’s hand, looked at his palm for only a mo ment and gasped, ‘You are going to be the victim! Oh, my-please get out of town immediately!’ No one listened. They all probably thought he had gone crazy. But I didn’t, because I had seen the victim’s palm, too, and saw in it the same thing that R. D. Shah saw.
“R. D. Shah went to the prospective victim’s wife, but she ignored him. Three days after the prediction was made the victim carried a large sum of money to the prospective killer, who promptly murdered the man for his trouble. When R. D. Shah heard of this he came to me and broke into tears. It was pitiful. He sobbed, ‘I tried to prevent it but I couldn’t do a thing.’
“On a whim R. D. Shah went down to the jail and looked at the man’s palm
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again. He said, ‘You will be convicted and sentenced to hang, but appeal the conviction! Your conviction will be overturned on appeal. All of this took place exactly as predicted.
“When he was freed the murderer came to R. D. Shah for a third look at his hand. The verdict? ‘You will become a yati, a Jain sadhu. And it happened.”
“And all this detail shows up in the palm?”
“No, the outlines are there, but the details have to come from elsewhere, from the palmist’s intuition. Palmistry is after all a form of astrology, and in any form of astrology you can at best be right 85% of the time on calculation alone. For the other 15% you must use your intuition. R. D. Shah is a good palmist; he used his intuition, and it did not mislead him. In spite of all the warnings and implorings the murder happened just as predicted.”
“Couldn’t it have been forcibly averted?”
“Perhaps, if someone had used enough force. When you bless someone, you lighten their heavy load of bad karmas. Someone could have blessed the victim with long life. But we would have had to find someone who had enough shakti to give that sort of blessing and also had the desire to give it. And even if we had found someone like that what is the guarantee that the prospective victim would have been able to digest the blessing?”
“Digest the blessing?”
“Here is an example of what I mean. Sevadas Aghori was a very good sadhu, but he was so heavy that he could not even wash his backside after he defecated. He had a devotee named Chunilal who did this washing for him. When it came time for Sevadasji to die he called Chunilal to his side, gave him a stone, and told him, “Offer incense to this stone every day and you will always have just enough money to live on.”
Chunilal told his guru, “No, Maharaj, I need more.” Sevadasji said, “It is not in your destiny to have more.”
But Chunilal insisted, which caused Sevadasji to reflect over how Chunilal had done a very dirty job for him for so long. So Sevadasji used his power to create the sum of one hundred thousand rupees, which he gave to Chunilal. Chunilal took leave of Sevadasji, but he had not travelled even a couple of miles toward the city of Baroda when this money was robbed from him. Then he had to return to Sevadasji and accept the stone that had first been offered to him.”
We had arrived at the caves, and were welcomed by a group of Vima lananda’s spiritual “children” who were to worship with us.
“Do gurus give out knowledge the way Sevadasji gave out money?” I prompted as we walked toward the temple.
“There are only two ways in which you can get knowledge from a guru,” responded Vimalananda emphatically so that his “children” could hear. “One
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way is via rnanubandhana. If the guru owes you some debt of knowledge from a previous birth, if you are his creditor, then he will have to pay you back. Where will he go? The other way is how Arjuna got the knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita from Krishna: mat prasadat, by God’s grace. There is no third way.
“Look at how easily I step over this channel in the floor,” he said as we en tered the caves. “That is how easy it is when you have kripa (grace) from your guru: you step over the samsara from the physical to the spiritual without any difficulty. If there is no kripa you may slip and bang your foot, or trip and break your leg. When a guru gives kripa to a disciple it is spontaneous; the guru himself doesn’t know how he does it. Krishna saw that Arjuna had pure love for him. When He also saw that Arjuna could not understand what He was trying to explain Krishna said, Divyam dadami te chaksuh: ‘I give you a divine eye.” That was kripa, a spontaneous outpouring from the heart. The result of kripa is that the disciple’s mind becomes utterly firm. Before kripa the mind will always be moving from object to object, but after kripa it be comes perfectly one-pointed. Kripa can be used only for spiritual purposes, and it cannot be spoken. Whoever says kripa can be spoken or willingly given is a fool
“The same holds true for kalyana, which is mainly mundane and only slightly spiritual. Kalyana will improve your material life, but it will not make your mind very one-pointed. You cannot take from a guru anything more than what he owes you unless he gives you grace, either kripa or kalyana; and even if he gives you grace you may not be able to hold onto it, just as Chunilal could not hold onto the kalyana that Sevadasji offered him.”
“This means,” I offered, “that kalyana and kripa are varieties of blessings.”
“Kalyana and kripa are,” continued Vimalananda, “two of the many variet ies of blessings. And kripa is really a wonderful thing; it is so wonderful to have a one-pointed mind! Does anyone really know the power of the mind? Listen to this story. Once in a certain kingdom the king had fallen ill. No one knew how to cure him; even his personal physician failed. The king became so wild that he called his prime minister to his presence and then told him, ‘If you don’t get me cured I’ll have your head separated from your shoulders!’ Kings can be unreasonable like that.”
“So can yogis, fire and water.”
“Right. The prime minister was no physician, and had no idea of what to do. He gadded about the city, trying to find a way to keep his head on his shoulders. As he wandered a madman stopped him and asked him what was wrong. When the prime minister explained, the madman asked, ‘Are you prepared to spend a lot of money?’
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«The prime minister replied, “To save my head I’ll do anything.’ So the madman took him incognito to the biggest sandalwood merchant in the city. This fellow had completely cornered the market in sandalwood, but ap peared to be in agony.
“The prime minister asked, ‘What is wrong, my good man?’
“The merchant replied, ‘My warehouses are so full of sandalwood that I will never be able to sell it all unless the king should die. If the king dies then everyone in the country will burn sandalwood in his memory. So I am pray ing twenty-four hours a day that that bugger of a king should die.?
“The prime minister immediately understood that this single-pointed con centration was the cause of the king’s illness. He therefore immediately bought all the merchant’s sandalwood. The merchant forgot about the king, and when the king became well he rewarded his prime minister handsomely.”
“So in this case, at least, one man’s forgetfulfulness became another man’s salvation.”
“It takes tremendous energy to remember things. This is why Kundalini never gets an opportunity to wake up in most people, much less rise. So long as your memory is strongly connected to your own karmas all of Kundalini’s energy will be taken up just in the act of remembering who you are. And there are plenty of karmas for you to remember. Forget for a moment the karmas in your causal body; what about the ones in your greater causal body?”
“Huh?”
“Your greater causal body, or mahakarana sharira. Everything that has ever happened in the cosmos has left its mark there. Each action gets registered on each particle of Mind throughout creation and can be recalled to awareness. This is the Universal Memory. In order to make Kundalini wake completely you must forget to identify even with that; you require perfect forgetfulness.”
“Perfect forgetfulness.”
“Yes, because as She awakens you will gain access to the memories of all your past karmas. We call this punassmriti in Sanskrit. If you gain punassm riti before you are able to handle it-before you can digest what you will re member—then you might get trapped in those memories.”
“So you don’t think it is good to try to recapture the memories of your past lives, like some Westerners are now starting to try to do?”
“How will that help them? Fortunately most of these people will just hallu cinate something and think it is real, and will build some complicated con struction around it to entertain themselves. But a few will really tune into their rnanubandhanas, and those are the ones who will be in real danger. What do you think would happen if you were a mother who realized that your child had murdered you in a previous life? Would you be able to behave in a
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purely maternal way in this lifetime, and get beyond your desire for revenge? Or would you get stuck in that previous reality and keep the whole cycle of retribution moving along? I thank God for the magnanimity of Nature which causes us to forget almost everything of our past lives when we are born!
“But even perfect forgetfulness is a later stage. First you have to learn to re member. You haven’t forgotten Jean Valjean, have you?”
“How could I?” Vimalananda could turn even Les Miserables to his pur poses.
“After Jean Valjean was caught stealing the bishop’s candlesticks the bishop protected him instead of accusing him. That one incident changed Jean Val jean for the rest of his life. That is why I remember, every morning of my life, that I am going to die. When you go to the smashan this is what you should tell yourself: ‘As this corpse is, so will I be; forget not, forget not.
“Now enough—it is time for us to do our work,” he concluded, and we proceeded with our ritual. Though he sat after we completed our worship and joked with his other children’ for a bit he showed no interested in re suming this conversation until we were on our way back to South Bombay. Then he began again: “You were talking of blessings earlier tonight, but do you have any idea of how many types of blessing there are? Each blessing is a karma, which means that each has its own consequences. Probably the sim plest way for me to bless someone is to take away some of that individual’s bad karmas—but if I do that then I will have to suffer those karmas myself. The Law of Karma is very strict: When there is an action, someone or some thing will have to experience the reaction. Taking on someone else’s karmas is therefore a crude and unsatisfactory way of blessing. Not only will I make myself miserable, but I will use up all my shakti working off the bad karmas of only a few people. Then I will have nothing left for all the others who have rnanubandhanas with me.
“One way to bless someone which will cost me almost nothing is for me to rearrange that individual’s karmas. If he or she is destined to suffer miseries to pay off some bad karmas I can arrange for some good karmas, ones which were supposed to ripen and emerge later, to emerge now. But once these good karmas are exhausted there will still be those bad karmas to pay off, and there will not be any good karmas left to cushion the blows. The last condi tion will then be worse than the first. This is obviously not much of a bless ing, but some people I know who did not deserve wealth in this lifetime have demanded it from me and I have given it to them in this way. If they are sen sible they will use this wealth to perform more good karmas, to rebuild their karmic credit balances.”
“And if they don’t they’ll be finished?”
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“Completely finished. Now, Pitri Tarpana can also be a blessing. Suppose you have an ancestor (pitri) who has been reborn as a horse who draws a car riage. Because you still possess some of his genes and chromosomes his con sciousness in his new form is going to affect yours.”
“How?”
“While he was living his ahamkara identified with his entire body. The only part of that body that remains after his death is that body’s pattern of genes and chromosomes, a portion of which resides in you. Because every thing that has ever happened in the cosmos has left its mark there, his ‘mark remains on those genes and chromosomes for as long as the pattern remains relatively intact. As long as his ‘mark’ is there his awareness will continue to resonate, to some extent, with those genes and chromosomes—which means that his awareness will be able to influence your awareness via the genetic material that he has bequeathed you.”
“Oh my God! How long will that influence last?” “Vedic tradition speaks of seven generations.” “Is this some sort of numerological number?”
“Not at all. Don’t you remember how many times an ordinary horse must be crossed with a thoroughbred before its progeny can be registered in the thoroughbred stud book?”
“The eighth cross becomes a thoroughbred.” “Which means that the ordinary bloodline becomes effaced after—“
“Seven generations! Oh my God! So the people in the Bible were not just talking through their hats when they spoke of a sin being visited on their heads, and on their children’s heads, ‘up to the seventh generation.”
“Not at all. Now, if your ancestor was some sort of a saint the influence of his awareness on you might be fairly positive. Otherwise it will probably not help you much, and might prove greatly detrimental. What would be helpful for you is to break your ties with him in such a way that you help him out as well. To do this you perform a Tarpana ritual, which forcibly draws that an cestor’s spirit to you. Obviously it would be easier to do this if your ancestor were bodiless, but it can be done with him embodied all the same.
“When the spirit of your ancestor leaves the body of this carriage horse the body will drop down without warning onto the road. No one in the vicinity will understand what is going on. Someone may even accuse the horse owner of cruelty to dumb animals. During the ritual the horse will remain uncon scious, and after it is finished the horse will jump up and start lurching about. Then at night, when no one is around, that spirit will leave the horse permanently to go to another womb, and the horse will die.”
“And that breaks the tie?”
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“Not at all; you still have his genes and chromosomes. But now he has moved up a little in the world of manifestation, so his influence on you will improve—a little.
“But this is only one of your many ancestors. My Senior Guru Maharaj used to say, ‘When you know just by looking at a person all about his father, father’s father, and so on, twenty-five generations back, and when you can tell what that person was in his last twenty-five births, and you can see into the future to what he will become in his next twenty-five births, then you may say that you have learned—a little bit. You have learned a fraction of what you can know.’ What a mentor! Twenty-five generations is only the be ginning; a real Rishi will know millions of generations, all at once.
“If I perform Pitri Tarpana for your forefathers and foremothers it will bless you by helping you to distance yourself from their negative influences. But an even subtler way to bless you would be to perform Tarpana for the Rishi who founded your gotra (clan). This will make the Rishi so happy that he will bless you from the overflowing of his love and I will stay free of even the slightest stain of karma. Another way for me to bless you would be to worship your per sonal deity—your ishta devata—on your behalf. When your deity is happy you are bound to be blessed! You ‘bless yourself—you improve your own innate na ture-every time you perform sincere worship of your ishta devata. You can also bless yourself when you personally worship the Rishi who originated your gotra, or personally perform Pitri Tarpana for your ancestors. In each case you change your consciousness by regulating the activity of certain of your genes.
“And what about curses?”
There are many, many different ways to curse. Two of them are rituals which are common in South India called Kegamati and Bhanamati. They were so common when the British were ruling the country that a special po lice cell was created to deal with all the cases that occurred.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. These rituals are usually performed only on individuals, but I have seen cases where an entire village was affected. In this village everyone worked hard and was as normal as could be during the day. After sunset, though, they would all take off their clothes and run caterwauling through the streets, stark raving mad. A daughter might show her vulva to her father, and her father might show his pecker to her. Everyone would be shouting and screaming bloody murder. Come daylight, they would all forget what they had done during the night, and start their normal lives again. These people’s lives were thoroughly disrupted by the curse, but the only difference between their daytime and their nighttime lives was a shift in their awareness, a change in consciousness.
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“No one can deny that human consciousness is dependent on chemicals. If it were not how would intoxicants and other psychoactive drugs affect us? Just a change of a few molecules and a whole new pattern is created. All you need is for a few cells to distend or a few tiny blood vessels to contract and the mind changes completely. You must have noticed how your attitude changes from moment to moment. At the office you may be tired, angry and upset, but most of the time you will forget all that as soon as you reach home, where you relax and enjoy yourself. There are many, many factors which affect your nature, your svabhava, but the whole thing boils down to control of the chemical patterns of the brain. How much or how little ahamkara self-identi fies with your body, which determines how free Kundalini can be, is con trolled by your chemistry. When Saturn wants to affect your consciousness all he has to do is make some minor alterations in your metabolism.
“This is why Aghoris are fond of intoxicants. As long as you remain in con trol of your intoxicant—as long as you are consuming the drug and it is not consuming you—you can direct it to alter your nature in any way you see fit. This is especially true of bhang (a preparation of marijuana leaves): whatever thought you hold in your mind stays there without effort. If you can concen trate on disengaging Kundalini from Her coverings you can make quick progress with the help of intoxicants–but they are useful if and only if you can control your mind. If your consciousness is inundated by intoxicants you are sunk, because then they will reinforce and intensify all the limitations of your nature.
“As long as your svabhava is not perfectly controlled you will be subject to Saturn’s control, and believe you me, it is no joke to be able to control your nature. Even Shiva Himself was once affected by Saturn. When He and Par vati were married all the planets except Saturn came to bless the couple. Par vati took Saturn’s absence as an insult and demanded that Saturn be instructed to appear. Shiva smiled gently and told Her, ‘Goddess, why not leave well enough alone? It is better that he is not here. In fact, he has done us a special favor by not coming.
“But Parvati was adamant—Shakti in Her awakened, uncontrollable form—and Saturn was obliged to come. He didn’t stand in front of the cou ple; he just glanced at them from a distance. But as soon as Shiva saw Saturn He experienced his own true nature and went into samadhi. Saturn makes you experience yourself as you really are, down deep inside. Since Shiva’s na ture is pure consciousness, that is what He experienced. Shiva stayed in sa madhi experiencing that consciousness for seven and a half divine years, and all during that time Parvati was livid. How could She enjoy holy nuptials with Her husband when He was deep in samadhi? When at the end of those years
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He came back down to normal consciousness Shiva told Her, ‘Now you see why Saturn was not invited to our wedding.
“Then Parvati in a rage cursed astrology that it would never be 100% accu rate without adding plenty of intuition to it. She also cursed those who make their livings by astrology that they would always be miserable beggars.”
“Has that happened?”
“Many of the astrologers I know are in fact miserable, and some are liter ally beggars.”
I also had seen some suggestive examples. “And this is due to Parvatis curse?”
“Yes, and also because they have forgotten much of the original knowledge of Jyotish. Parvati’s curse is able to affect them strongly because of their weak intuition. Do you know the Sanskrit word for intuition? Ishtabala-literally, ’the strength of your ishta devata, your personal deity. You won’t be much of an astrologer unless you have a healthy relationship with a personal deity.
“In spite of Parvati’s curse, Jyotish is still the best tool we have for predict ing fate, because Saturn represents fate. It is good to be able to predict fate, which can overpower almost anyone.”
“Shouldn’t astrologers also worship the planets?”
“Why just astrologers? Worshipping the Nine Planets is a good way to con trol your nature. We in India worship the well-placed planets, to encourage them to assist us more vigorously, and try to placate the afflicted planets, to request them not to pervert our minds or lives. We respect the planets as Ma hapurushas of the type known as munis. Like any other beings-Rishis, dei ties, your next-door neighbors—they respond positively to attempts to butter them up. A few of India’s kings and yogis have even gained control, or at least influence, over eight of the nine planets by successfully completing sadhanas for them. But very few of these sadhakas (people who perform sad hanas) have ever been able to control the most powerful and difficult to pla cate of all the planets: Saturn. Only the very bold or the very rash attempt to control all Nine Planets, for when you fully control the Nine Planets you con trol the entire manifested universe.”
“Not so easy.”
“No, but it’s been done. Ravana did it. Ravana was a Siddha; he had be come immortal. His Kundalini was therefore completely under his control, which meant that Fate could no longer affect him. He had gained complete control of his svabhava, his innate nature. Control of his svabhava gave him the power to conquer the planets, including Saturn. After he conquered them he took them home with him and kept them face down on the steps leading up to his throne. He could have gone on for ages like this, since the planets could have no effect on him if they could not see him. But that would have
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obstructed the Rishis’ play, so they sent Narada, the Celestial Troublemaker, to solve the problem.
“Narada went to Saturn and said, “You are the most powerful of all the planets, but here you are lying face down in front of Ravana’s throne unable to do anything about your condition.
“Saturn replied, ‘Because I am face down my gaze cannot fall on Ravana, so I cannot affect him. Advise him to turn me over and I will do the rest!
“Narada understood, and went to search out Ravana. After praising him to the skies Narada suggested to Ravana that he might like to turn the planets over, so that he could enjoy their misfortune more fully. Ravana liked this suggestion, and as soon as he turned the planets over onto their backs Sat urn’s gaze fell on him, and his mind became perverted.
“Now, Ravana knew the effects of Saturn as well as anyone else did; some thing came over him to make him agree with Narada’s suggestion. What came over him is another question. Part of it was his own svabhava, his in nate nature. He was a rakshasa, and rakshasas always love to humiliate their enemies. But when he was in complete control of his svabhava how could he lose this control in an instant for no apparent reason? Perhaps it was the words of Saturn, spoken to him through Narada. What is clear is that as soon as Ravana turned the planets over Saturn’s gaze fell upon him, and from that moment on his intellect began to be distorted.
“The first effect of Saturn’s gaze on Ravana came via his wife. One day she enquired of her husband, ‘You are now immortal, which is fine, but when will you ever be free from having to exist?’ Ravana said to himself, ‘Oh my God, I’ve forgotten about that!’ He realized that his wife was right. So long as he was immortal he could never hope to improve further. You must die if you don’t want to stagnate. Ravana was trying to change his innate nature to be come one of the gods, but Nature would not permit him to do that, because it would disturb Her balance. So Ravana’s intellect had to be altered. There was nothing wrong with Ravana’s desire to die, of course, but it would never have occurred to him had not his intellect been impaired.
“It was his previous penance of Lord Shiva that had made Ravana immor tal in the first place, so Ravana went back to do more penance of Shiva. After long, hard penance Ravana again gained a vision of Lord Shiva. Shiva asked him, ‘What do you desire?’
“Ravana told Him,ʻLord, please give me some way to die.
“Lord Shiva looked at him askance and said, ‘I’m very sorry, but you should have thought of this earlier. I have already blessed you with eternal life, and you know that whatever I say must come true. How can I go back on my words now?’.
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“But Ravana insisted, and Shiva eventually gave in. He said, ‘All right. I can’t revoke my boon, but I will amend it: Parastri haranam, Ravana mara nam. (Ravana will die when he steals another man’s wife.)
“Ravana was shocked. He said, “Lord, I am King of Lanka, and I must set an example for my people. If I take someone else’s wife my subjects will follow suit, which will make me the cause of much misery and immorality. I could never stoop so low as to do that?
“Shiva replied, “Rama, the incarnation of Vishnu, is going to be born on Earth. You will take His wife, and He will be forced to kill you. Then, dying at the hands of God Himself, you will go to the heaven meant for warriors who die on the field of battle, and your merit will be great. Moreover, your death will act as a warning to anyone who would be tempted to steal another man’s wife.
“And so it happened. It was only because Ravana was such a great devotee of Lord Shiva that he got the opportunity of enjoying such an auspicious death. If Shiva, the god of death, cannot make His devotee die well then what is the use of Shiva? Because no one knows this everyone thinks Ravana stole Sita out of lust. If that were the case would he have kept her a prisoner so long in the grove, unharmed? No, he would have had his way with her long before.”
“Orthodox Hindus think of Ravana as a total blighter.”
“Don’t mention those idiots to me; what do they know about the Ramay ana? They only know how to parrot what someone else has told them.”
“So was it Ravana’s fate to become immortal and then to die?”
“It would seem so. He had performed tremendous penances in order to achieve immortality, and he never would have been able to complete them unless he had been fated to do so.”
“So his death was fated too.”
“It was, and there is a good reason for it too. He and his brother Kumb hakarna were originally Jaya and Vijaya, Vishnu’s two doorkeepers. Once they foolishly insulted the four Rishis known as the Sanatkumaras, who cursed the pair to fall to Earth as demons. Vishnu then promised that He too would be born on Earth to redeem them. First they were born as Hiranyak sha and Hiranyakashipu, and Vishnu killed them in the Boar and Man-Lion Avataras respectively. Then they became Ravana and Kumbhakarna, who were killed by Vishnu in his Rama incarnation. Then they incarnated again, and Krishna killed them. Curses and blessings, for seven births at a time.
“It was a curse that caused Rama to lose Sita in the first place. When Parashurama met Ramachandra they fought, and Parashurama cursed Rama.”
“Parashurama was the sixth Avatara of Vishnu, and Ramachandra was Vishnu’s seventh Avatara. It doesn’t seem very spiritual for Vishnu to fight Vishnu.”
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“Parashurama (“Rama-with-the-Axe”), who is immortal, is a Brahmana, and Ramachandra was a Kshatriya, a warrior. Because Parashurama’s father had been killed by a Kshatriya Parashurama vowed to use his battle axe to rid the earth of warriors. He did it, too; he did it several times. As soon as he heard of Ramachandra, the powerful young Kshatriya, a clash between them became inevitable.
“Ramachandra defeated Parashurama handily, though, and took Para shurama’s power away for Himself. Then Parashurama, irate at being de feated by a upstart youth, looked at Ramachandra and said, smiling ironically, ‘All right, my child, you have taken my Shakti. It doesn’t matter. But you will be thrown out of your kingdom. You will lose your own Sha kti, —meaning Sita—and you will have great difficulty in retrieving her. And so it happened. Without that curse there would have been no Ramay
ana.”
This was not the version of the Parashurama-Rama story that appeared in either the Sanskrit Valmiki Ramayana or Tulsidas’s Ram Charit Manas. In both of those texts Parashurama came to Rama upset that Rama had broken Lord Shiva’s bow. Although Parashurama wanted to fight Rama, Rama re fused to fight and thus pacified Parashurama gifted his shakti to Rama.
Since it did not seem apropos to object to his choice of story at that mo ment I asked instead, “If Rama took away all of Parashurama’s shakti how did
the old man have any left to curse Rama?”
But he was ready for me: “If Rama had taken all Parashurama’s shakti Parashurama would have fallen dead right there. But Parashurama is immor tal, so obviously some of his shakti remained.”
“Some sort of core, personal shakti remained, and Rama merely took away his discretionary’shakti, you mean?”
“Something like that. Parashurama’s words had the effect of a curse. He was so upset that his emotions took control of him and he spoke from his heart. He may not have even meant to do it; it may just have been something that was pressing on him so strongly that it had to come out. But when it came out it had enough force behind it to come true.
“Besides, Nature wanted Parashurama to lose his shakti somehow or other. Both he and Rama were avataras of Vishnu, but Parashurama had already finished the work that he had been sent to Earth to do. Rama was adhikara (fit, apropriate) to take on the older avatara’s sakti, and he needed that extra shakti to be better be able to do his own work, which was just beginning. It was only a matter of Nature’s finding a way to transfer that shakti from the one to the other. In this case a curse did the job; in some other situation it might be a blessing.”
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All I could say in response to this was, “This business of blessings and curses is really complicated.”
“I’ll say! Here’s an illustration from my own life. A poor musician named Damle once came to me for help. He was paralyzed from the waist down, and maintained himself by tutoring pupils for a few rupees a month. When I saw him something came over me and I kicked him. I don’t know what hap pened, but after that kick he could walk again. Then I told him, ‘A young woman has just started studying music with you. Please ask her to marry you. You and she can then teach classes together, and she will be very lucky for you. You will have plenty of money. He listened to my words and married her, and they were happy.
“All this happened years ago. Then one day a few weeks back I suddenly got the thought, ‘I wonder how Damle is? Why don’t I go see him and check him out?’ I had helped him out, but I was wondering if the blessing had been suf ficient. How strong a blessing is, is determined by how many of those bad karmas disappear or are reshuffled for later experience. Changing someone’s destiny is not a joke. If there is a tremendous load of bad karmas, even a strong blessing may only make a dent in them. This is why they say garib ki naseeb garib hai: a poor person’s destiny is to be poor.
“When I arrived at his house Damle greeted me with every mark of re spect. Eventually the conversation came around to him, and he told me, ‘All is fine with me and my family that way, except that some one or another of us is always sick. My wife and I make plenty of money, but it all seems to go to the doctors
“I had been afraid of this. Too many bad karmas. I told him, “I really love your music. Please play Kedara Raga for me, and let us see what happens’I knew that if he could play Kedara well that something would come over me again, and he would be benefitted. But his destiny was such that he never got around to playing it for me. So I had to leave him to his destiny. Beware of fiddling about too much with other people’s destinies, my boy, or you might end up like Sheikh Salim Chishti!”
“At least you didn’t follow his example, and bless Damle and his wife to have a child.”
“Thank God! But that probably wouldn’t have been necessary anyway. Poor people, even in rich countries like America, always have many children. It is easy to be born into a poor family because there are many spirits who have such a heavy load of evil karmas that they are destined to be afflicted on Earth. To be born poor into a large family in a cruel, dangerous environment will make any soul miserable. It takes plenty of luck-good karmas, bless ings—to be born into a rich family; look at how long it took John F. Kennedy
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to get a son. All across America people who can’t have children are literally purchasing them from other countries, including India. Think what sort of karmas those children must have: born in poverty as an orphan, then whisked away to opulence. If you are meant to enjoy wealth, if Nature desires it, then you will have it whether you want it or not, and no one can stop you from getting it.
· “When India was rich it was the same way, which is why Akbar could have a son only after Sheikh Salim Chishti blessed him. After all, how many people can accumulate enough good karmas to be born Emperor of the World? Very few. The being who became Akbar’s son Salim had many good karmas, but not quite enough to be born as Akbar’s son. In order to be born he needed that extra push in the form of the saint’s blessing. But what about all the bad karmas? They still had to come out, and when they did they corrupted his mind. He became an opium-eating drunkard who was not at all worthy of his father.
“Akbar himself was born as the result of a blessing, but the circumstances were different. After his father Humayun had been driven from his throne and was roving about in Sindh he met a good fakir, who understood some thing of what was going on. When the fakir, who knew Prithviraj Chauhan’s capabilities, perceived that Prithviraj needed a womb in which to be born, he decided to endow his daughter with a matchless son. He gave her away in marriage to Humayun, and then blessed the couple by saying that their son would rule as Emperor of India.
“To be born as the child of a deposed ruler is not so difficult. To be born into power and luxury is much harder and a much harder situation to ‘di gest. In fact Akbar’s chief disappointment in life was his son Salim, the very person he had gone to so much trouble to bring into his life! He always called Salim Sheikhu Baba’ in honor of the fakir whose blessing had caused the boy to be born. By the time Salim was in his mid-thirties he had despaired of ever succeeding to the throne, because his father’s health seemed indestructible. He took to heavy drinking and, his mind was addled by intoxicants, his ears were swayed by evil counsel. He rebelled against his father, and set himself up as King of Allahabad. Eventually he marched on his father’s capital city, and soon two armies, one his and one his father’s, were arrayed facing one an other, ready to fight.
“This time Akbar, who had indulged his son in everything throughout his life, had had enough. His wife sensed this. Before every battle Salim’s mother would worship Akbar’s favorite sword and then present it to him. This time as she handed the sword to her husband she said, ‘My only request is that you spare my son’s life.
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“He told her, ‘You have forgotten that a wife should think of her husband first. You are more attached to your son. All right, for your sake alone will I spare his life.
“Out on the field of battle the two antagonists met. Akbar told his son, ‘Sheikhu, why do you want all these men and their families to suffer? The quarrel is between you and me. Why don’t we fight it out together? I am an old man, and you are young and strong. Whoever wins can take the kingdom
“In his drunken foolhardiness Salim agreed, and the two men fought as both armies looked on. Within a few minutes Akbar, who was an old wres tling crony, had pinned Salim, who was no fighter, to the ground. There is nothing worse than to be humiliated in front of those you command, and Akbar knew it. He told his son, ‘Now, shall I kill you? No, I won’t. I have promised your mother. He had Salim thrown into the dungeon and took his wine and opium away from him for four days.
“Then he sent for his son, who was thoroughly chastened, and made him Crown Prince. But Akbar’s enthusiasm for life had been snuffed out, and within a year and a half he died, having realized the futility of pomp and worldly glory.”
“That must have been when he came under the influence of Saturn.” “Yes, that was when his fate caught up with him.”
“I have tried to explain your theory of karma to various of my friends,” I said, resigned to being dim,“and many of them ask me, ‘If this business of ac tion and reaction is true, and if you kill me today it is because I killed you sometime in the past, how did this all begin? What was that first karmic debt?””
Vimalananda smilingly answered, “That first debt is the first step in the creation of the universe: the projection of the Adya Shakti, the original Shakti, Nature, the foundation of everything. Because she projected from the Absolute, She owes the Absolute everything, beginning with Her very exist ence. Debts multiply from there as She tries to reunite with Her source, the Supreme Shiva. Because she feels incomplete on Her own She craves re union. When this transcendent, cosmic Shakti merges again with Her Lord Shiva there is nothing left to support creation, and the universe dissolves. This is called pralaya. When your Kundalini Shakti—your own ahamkara, the thing which self-identifies—merges with her personal Lord Shiva then you cease to exist as an individual. This is laya, dissolution of your false iden tity in the ocean of the Absolute Reality. Laya, which is pralaya on the micro cosmic scale, involves withdrawal of all your projections back into their source. After laya occurs there is no karma, because no individual remains to self-identify,
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“Every action including passivity contains karmic activity. Passivity is active in the sense that it is a conditioned state, which makes it part of Shakti. The cosmos exists so long as Shakti exists; without Shakti there is nothing, not even Shiva. Without Shakti shiva (auspiciousness) becomes shava (corpse). You keep asking me about the Kaulas; now listen carefully: Only after you have realized Shava in your life will you be fit enough to understand Kaula.
“Everyone is lecturing on the Bhagavad Gita, which Krishna recited to Ar juna, but does anyone really understand it? Take the first two words only: Dharmakshetre kurukshetre. How can a kurukshetra—a place where actions, or karmas, are performed be a dharmakshetra-a place of dharma, of righ teousness and holiness? It seems to be a contradiction until you think it through clearly. First, what is a ‘kurukshetra? Your heart, which is continu ally beating.—‘kuru, kuru, kuru. Your heart can become a place of dharma, a dharmakshetra, in only one way, and that is by taking Lord Krishna’s advice: Go ahead and perform karmas, because you were born to do them, but leave the results to me.‘What he means is, you can write as many checks as you like on the Bank of Karma—but don’t sign any of them! You don’t have enough credit in your account to pay for all the karmas that you perform, but Krishna does. Let Him sign the check instead. Then you will be free-free not from action but from your self-identification with your action. This is the essence of the Gita. Turn the word gita (song) around and you get tyagi (renunciate). What you have to renounce is your ignorant self-identification with your actions. Right now you are a kshetra (a field of activity), and what you must become is a kshetrajna (a knower of the field). Only through jnana (wisdom) can dharma arise.
“But just telling yourself that you are not going to self-identify with your ac tions will not work. Your ahamkara must self-identify with your body, even to a small extent, for as long as your body exists. Otherwise none of your essential bodily processes would be able to continue to work, which would spell the end of your physical being. But this self-identification, which creates more karma, is often karmically fatal. Ahamkara is free to identify with anything She likes; there is no guarantee at all that she will only self-identify with beneficial things. Even identification with mental images can be dangerous, because any image with which your mind self-identifies gains the power to affect you. Sadhana is essential because sadhana gives you a beneficial image for ahamkara to identify with an image which once empowered can help you tremendously.
“When you worship a deity and completely self-identify with Him or Her your ahamkara will no longer find it easy to self-identify with the actions of your body. If you can completely identify yourself with your deity He or She will then do all your work, and karma will not be able to touch you. When an
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Aghori eats meat and drinks wine, for example, he doesn’t bother about it. He thinks to himself, ‘Because of rnanubandhana the body must do these things. I offer it all to You.’ But if when you eat meat you think, ‘Oh, how deli cious! I like it, then you are lost. Finished! Karma will cling to you like mud. It is better to be like the lotus, which rises out of the mud but is not defiled by it. Mud cannot stain or soil a lotus. As long as you fail to self-identify you can remain a witness to everything you do while your body continues to fulfill its rnanubandhanas for as long as it continues to live. But is it so easy to act without self-identification? Try to enjoy sex without self-identification and you will see how hard it is.”
“Is it better then to enjoy vicariously?”
“Not much better; that can become a karma too. Have you ever heard that saying in Marathi which refers to a certain well-known Maharaja of yester year: Malle chode, mallerao raje?”
“I haven’t heard it.”
“It is really untranslatable, but it roughly translates, “The wrestler does the pumping and the king gets the pleasure? As he got older this king could no longer sustain an erection. He still liked sex, though, so to get some vicarious enjoyment he would order one of his wrestlers to screw a woman in his pres ence. The sort of gratification that the Maharaja got from this kind of sex did in fact create less karma than if he had gone out and had sex himself—had he been able to do so. But he still collected some karma from having ordered the couple to copulate. And what if he decided to go around and secretly spy on couples who were engaged in sexual embraces? That invasion of privacy without being asked would also be a karma. Only if the event happened in front of him without any request on his part could he be completely free of all karmic attachment to that sexual act—provided that he didn’t mentally self identify himself with the wrestler.”
“And if he did?”
“Then he would be participating in the karma. Karma is a matter of self identification.”
“So better to avoid sex altogether.”
“Maybe—but that can also lead you into trouble. We say in Hindi: Tapesh wari se rajeshwari, aur rajeshwari se narakeshwari (penance to riches, and riches to ruination). The first part of this saying means that the Law of Action and Reaction causes a yogi who does severe penances in this life to be reborn as a prince, or as the scion of a very rich family. If you have done a really good job of penance you may get a chance to be reborn into a family of yogis, where you will be able to continue right from where you left off. However, as Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, this is rare. Usually it is shuchinam
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shrimatam gehe—rebirth in splendor-in which case you will be able to dis cover your dharma, your proper job in life, only through your guru’s grace.
“But what happened to ante matih sa gatih? If you die planning to continue your penance won’t you do so, since the thought you have when you die de termines where you will end up?”
“But who says that the very last thought you have before you die will be for more penance? If you have spent your entire life restricting yourself you’ll probably be thinking of those restrictions when you die. But thinking of a re striction is really a thought of the thing you are restricting—which is where you will proceed.”
“So doing sadhana (spiritual practices) in this life is no guarantee that you’ll be doing it in your next life?” An alarming prospect.
“No, there is no guarantee at all, because of the Law of Action and Reac tion. When a sadhu stringently restricts his food during one lifetime Nature will say to him in his next life, ‘Since you denied yourself so much last time around you will now have the most delicious foods.’ If he lived naked or in skins or rags he will wear silks and gold brocades encrusted with jewels in his next birth. If he lived in a cave or out under the sky Nature will give him a palace to play in. And if he tied up a loincloth and never went with a woman in this birth then in his next birth he will be chased by women even during his childhood, and will be introduced to sex very early. All of this holds true for women too.
“The result? Well, unless the child is very special he will be unable to re member anything of his previous life. Instead he will become enthralled by all the beautiful sense objects that Nature will give him. Ma is so magnani mous; She never frees anyone from the world so long as they continue to de sire it. Becoming enmeshed in Maya the child will remember nothing of his past penances; he will not realize that he is now a ruler or a rich man because of his past austerities. During his life of luxury he will enjoy his karmic pen sion until all his good karmas are finished. After he dies all the evil karmas that he performed during his riotous life of indulgence will catch up with him, and he will fall into hell. And hell is not out in space or under the ground somewhere; hell is right here. Hells are types of wombs, some of which can be really terrible. Only after most of these evil karmas have been burned away will he then be qualified take birth in the world again, though not necessarily as a human. So watch out! You may get yourself into trouble if you try to go against Nature, even if you only mean to speed up your own progress, unless you have a good guide who will keep his eye on you.”
I had by then developed confidence in Vimalananda’s competence in mat ters arcane. He impressed me at our first-ever meeting when he answered all
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the questions on my ethnographic questionnaire (which was the tool I was using to fulfill the conditions of a project funded by NEH to investigate Ayurveda in Poona) before I could even ask them. Months later, after I had tied my loincloth too tight, he showed me how to tie a tobacco leaf to my swollen testicle to relieve the swelling (and grinned an I-told-you-so at my nausea when I left the leaf on too long). He taught me to follow instructions by creating a persistent and vexatiously itchy skin rash after I had a glass of milk at Shernaz’s house on a day when he had specifically told me only to
drink water there until further notice.
Once he saw that he had my obedient attention he included me in some of his experiments, like the one with the packet of ash from a Tantric homa in Kashmir. He had me mix a pinch of the ash into hot milk every night for a week, and when I did a pack of howling dogs showed up outside my dormi tory room punctually at 1 A.M. on each of those seven nights to serenade me. Greatly though my sleep-deprived fellow students groused, they never dis covered the source of these visitations. Nor did I, for though Vimalananda was pleased with the results of his experiment he said no more, when I en quired as to its significance, than, “My idea was to introduce to you a certain ethereal presence, and that has been done. Your concern should be with get ting your work done. If you need to know more than that this presence’ will tell you itself, in due time.”
It was because I wanted my work to be done expeditiously that I turned to Vimalananda when a spirit who had harassed me during my first year at the college returned after a sabbatical. Long afterward I learned that the college hostel had been built on land that had previously served as a Christian ceme tery, but when I was first assaulted a few months after my arrival there my as sailant’s provenance was a complete mystery. During an attack, which would come when I entered that no-man’s-land between wakefulness and sleep which is called in Sanskrit tandra, the entity would jump without warning onto my chest and squeeze the breath out of my lungs. Though enfeebled with fear during the initial encounter I somehow realized that my only avenue of rescue was to awaken, and somehow I did that when next it beset me. Fear quickly became animosity; soon I was driving the thing away by angrily repeat ing in that twilight state a mantra taught to me by a yogi. After some months the shade went on furlough. When it resumed its predation I complained to Vimalananda, who merely said, “It won’t be back.” And it hasn’t, since.
I had had a generalized faith in Vimalananda from the moment I met him, but the seemingly unrelated permanent departure of the weird spirit and the unforeseen arrival of the barking dogs convinced me that his knowledge of the ethereal world was unparalleled. He quickly became the helmsman of my
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voyage through Indian society as well when he saved me from official censure after my Sanskrit professor had finagled me into making unnecessarily dis paraging remarks about the near-moribund state of Ayurvedic teaching and practice at the time. When to his demonstrated expertise in both the physical and non-physical realms I added the marvelous erudition he used to expand my perceptual skyline in every subject I raised with him, I became persuaded beyond any reasonable doubt that I had found in Vimalananda an exemplary friend, philosopher and guide.
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