OUR GREATEST TINGLE during the Spring 1979 Bombay Race Meeting was the announcement of a blessed event: the debut in our world of Stoney’s first foal, a colt whom Vimalananda promptly named Redstone. The spring’s most unusual incident, however, occurred midseason when Vimalananda felt obliged to exercise yet another of his siddhis to deal with Behram, the husband of Shernaz and father of Arzoo. He had unexpectedly and inoppor tunely arrived in Poona from Iran just in time for Navroz, the ancient Persian New Year’s Day which many Indian Zoroastrians still celebrate.
Vimalananda hurried to Poona a few days after Behram’s arrival and sum moned me to Shernaz’s place. I arrived there to find him sitting in Shernaz’s front room, smoking and remonstrating with her. Seeing me he smiled with some cynicism and said, “What a life I lead! Is it my job to take responsibility for everybody’s evil karmas? If you knew this family’s whole history you will know what I am up against. Here is Behram, a boozer and womanizer, who used to spend all his money on himself and beat his wife if she asked for any. When it came to the stage that he had decided to desert Shernaz and the children I lost my temper. I came here when he was out and told Shernaz to give me two matchsticks, which I tied together with the help of a mantra. Then I told her, ‘Take these. If Berham can ever leave you as long as you have these I will cut my own throat. That was more than twenty years ago and they are still together-and so are the matchsticks." Shernaz proudly showed them to me,
“Times were tough then, so I told Shernaz, ‘Every day when you go to the little corner where you pray you will find ten rupees. That money is meant for food for you and your children. As long as you don’t misuse it you will continue to receive it, every day of your life. The day you start to act funny that will be it.
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“For years ten rupees appeared daily. She used that money to help keep the wolf away from her door. Sad to say, though—and I’m saying it in front of her-her intellect eventually became perverted …”
“No, it wasn’t that way at all, I…”
“Yes, perverted,” he insisted as Shernaz strove to defend herself, “I know what I am saying; don’t try to deny it. Did you or did you not start to waste that money on liquor, meat, cinemas, and other such trifles?”
“But that was all for the children …”
He cut her short: “But you were told it was for food, weren’t you?” But she continued to try to justify her actions, and Vimalananda, seeing her uncon trite, overrode her and continued: “One day there was no money there. She came to me to complain but I told her: ‘I warned you. If you have bungled I can’t help it. Now you please do without.’
“And what about your maasi (maternal aunt)," he said to Shernaz, an noyed, “what about that dog that I gave her? When she and her husband," he said to me, resuming his narrative tone, “were passing through a difficult pe riod I gave them a small dog. So long as the dog remained in their house their fortunes skyrocketed." Back to Shernaz: “And what about the day your maasi cut her wrists? It was only because the dog set up a howl that people were drawn there and saved her."
Back to me: “Unfortunately she or her husband made a mistake one day, and the dog disappeared. It ran away and was never seen again. Then she came to me for another dog. But I told her, ‘You don’t get halvah (an Indian sweet) whenever you please. You had your chance, but you were not meant for it. Now forget it. Anyway, your work was done; you got your prosperity. Now hold onto it.
“After I joined the matchsticks together for Shernaz, Behram got a steady though low-paying job and started sending money to his family. Eventually he went to the Middle East, where he started to earn lots of money. Now he has just landed here and has announced that he will never go back to work. He feels it is time for him to relax and live off his children’s earnings.
“But the rest of the family doesn’t agree with him! Ask Shernaz, Arzoo and Sohrab and they will all say, ‘Send him back!’ So now what should I do? If I don’t interfere he will become comfortable here and their lives will become hell—and I hate to see that happen to any of my children. And if I do inter fere, well, there’ll be some karma involved. We’ll see what happens.”
Our talk then turned to horses and courses until Behram made his appear ance. That night we drank Behram’s Scotch. The next night Vimalananda, who had carried a bottle of Scotch with him from Bombay, brought his bottle over to Behram’s house to offer him drinks in celebration of his return to India. Af
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ter a couple of drinks Behram’s tongue began to wag freely as he explained all about his plans for his retired life. He was in the midst of describing his plans for his new life in India: “Sohrab has a job, Arzoo will be out of school and then can get one, and we should be able to live comfortably on what they earn…” when all at once Anjaneya entered Vimalananda’s body and gave that poor wretch a withering glance. Behram stopped short in mid-sentence, looking dazed and confused. After a few moments he pulled himself together and said, “No, no, my children should continue as they have been. I will go back and see that they enjoy life at my expense. I am proud to be able to take care of them."
All of us spectators were simultaneously stunned and pleased, but we took great care to show no emotion whatsoever lest Behram change his mind yet again. Vimalananda left for Bombay the next day, and it was only a couple of weeks later, after Behram had departed for the Middle East and Vimalananda had again appeared in Poona, that anyone even dared to mention the events of that evening.
Vimalananda was bemused by the whole episode: “What an unexpected turn of mind, to have him change his tune in mid-sentence, eh? Isn’t it amaz ing what Anjaneya can do?”
“Are you sure you didn’t put something in his drink?" I asked suspiciously. “It was so sudden, such an abrupt reversal of plan.”
“Are you talking out of your wits, Robby? You were drinking from the self same bottle; you tell me. Was there something in the Scotch?”
“You know very well what I mean.”
“Well, nothing physical was added to the Scotch; what was added came from elsewhere. The nice thing is that Behram thinks he changed his mind on his own. That pampers his ego and makes it less likely that he will change his mind again any time soon. He’s the kind of guy that likes to make a decision and stick with it, even if it is the wrong decision. Tamasic people are like that.”
Shernaz then began to thank Vimalananda profusely, but before she could pick up steam he derailed her: “Anjaneya did the job, didn’t he? You’d better thank him instead of me. But now that your work has been done it’s time to have some fun. Let’s celebrate! If you had gone to some sadhu or fakir to do your work he would have taken your money and had you bow down to him and told you to leave. But I am not a sadhu or fakir. I don’t think you’ll ever run into any sadhu or fakir who is such a toy to be played with.”
“So is that what you are,” I asked, pleased, “a toy?"
“For those who love me I am. Everyone in the world is miserable, all due to the effects of their karmas. Why not try to lighten things up?" At Vima lananda’s instance we then enjoyed some drinks, helped him cook a delicious dinner, and ate together in the midst of what he called a “laughing spree."
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Poona allowed Vimalananda time for repose and enjoyment, for fewer people came to disturb him there than when he held court in Bombay. He thus had more occasion to “lighten things up” in the lives of his local loved ones. He delivered his tales with impeccable timing, and his jokes were al ways in good taste even when they were vulgar. Many of them came from the classics: “Sanskrit is a samskaric bhasha (‘well-bred language’),” he would say. “Even its dirty jokes are refined. Here is one: Once a young man wanted to make a living in the king’s court as a poet. No one values poets nowadays, but back then kings made careers in poetry possible. When he arrived at the gate that led into the king’s palace, however, the young man found that he never could seem to catch the king’s attention. The monarch was always sur rounded by big important pundits who did not like any competition and so kept the king perpetually entertained.
“After a few days of this disappointment the young man became frus trated, and wrote on the wall at the king’s doorway a bit of Sanskrit verse. I’ll translate it for you: ‘The king’s door is like a vulva, and the pundits are like a penis. They enter and exit over and over again, enjoying great bliss, whereas I, like the testicles, must remain outside, eternally squeezed between the two.’ Note the hidden meanings as well. By comparing the king’s entranceway to a vagina he also meant that the king was being ‘screwed by the ambitious pun dits. By comparing the pundits to a penis he was suggesting that they had all the intelligence of a pizzle; and so on.
“When the king emerged from his palace the next day and saw this bit of doggerel he was struck by its sophistication, and asked who had written it. When the young man was produced in front of him he congratulated him on his sagacity, and welcomed him into his court as a full-fledged poet.”
Another favorite ‘anecdote’ of Vimalananda’s, which is even today current in Banaras, addresses the important question of, “How can we know that the famous poet Kalidasa was the he-man of his time?” The answer: Kalidasa was one day wandering partly clothed along the banks of the Kshipra River when he came across a bathing beauty. Embarrassed, the girl quickly covered her breasts with one arm and her pubic region with her other hand. Simulta neously overcome with both passion and inspiration, Kalidasa composed a poem in a flash: “O fortunate young woman, who can cover with but a hand her nakedness. O unfortunate Kalidasa, who even after grasping himself with both fists finds that two fingersworth yet remain to be concealed.” Wide-eyed at her vision of his manhood the girl cried, “O my yes!” We thus have her tes timony that he was the he-man of his time.
Vimalananda’s teasing was also refined, particularly when he turned his truly unrivaled linguistic abilities to its service: “Once I lived in a place where
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my neighbor woman, whose name was Dhani, used to do nothing but gossip all day long. I used to call her ‘Mrs. Wagging Tongue. At first I ignored her, but finally I got so fed up with her that I decided to teach her a lesson. You know how much I like to sing. Well, on that day I composed a new song: Dhani gappa mare, sa ni gappa mare? (“Dhani is gossiping, why is she gossip ing?’). And I began to sing it loudly.
“When Dhani heard it she confronted me. She asked me what I thought I was doing. I told her innocently, ‘All I am doing are my vocal exercises. You know how to sing an Indian scale, don’t you? The scale goes sa re ga mna pa dhi ni sa. I am singing nothing beyond those syllables. And then I began to sing even louder and more ardently, Dha ni ga pa ma re, sa ni ga pa ma re? Dha ni ga pa ma re, and so on, until it was obviously that she understood me. I had no trouble with her gossiping thereafter.”
Vimalananda also liked to demonstrate that ordinary speech can also work wonders when delivered judiciously: “On one occasion, as Dr. Martand and Arzoo and I were driving outside Poona, we saw so many grapes growing alongside the road that we became hungry for some. We stopped where we saw a heavy-set man working in his vineyard, and Dr. Martand insisted on approaching him for us. But when he tried to show off his knowledge by tell ing the man how unhealthy he looked the fellow told him, ‘Get out of here! I won’t sell you anything!
“Then I told Arzoo to go address the farmer as pahalwan (‘wrestler’), and to speak to him sweetly. When she did he told her, Not only can you have some grapes, my girl, you can have them for free. But don’t give any to him, he said, pointing at Dr. Martand, he can’t have any at all!”
Vimalananda obligingly placed his talents for communication at my service when during June and July of 1979 I busied myself with my mother, who had come all the way to India to see for herself my condition and to scrutinize the crowd I had fallen in with. Vimalananda, who regularly reminded me of my rnanubandhana with my parents and the need to fulfill it gracefully, acted the part of host to perfection. Training all his powers of persuasion on her to con vince her of the worth of my studies, he first saw to it that her Bombay tour was a red-letter one, and then set us up with his friends and associates in other parts of India. She and I travelled together pleasingly for five weeks, capping our circuit with a last visit with Vimalananda. She departed confident that I was indeed in good hands, and I could then reoccupy myself with racing.
There was no laughter in Repay’s life that summer, for he had lost his go nads and was now expected to start earning his corn bill. He had dropped down into Class V-B during the period when he was quaffing semen, but now that he was not preoccupied with his penis his interest in racing im
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proved dramatically. By August 1979 he had become fit enough for a hard gallop, which Vimalananda and I drove down to Poona to watch. We had Te hmul schedule it before dawn, that we might watch Repay work without be traying his fine fettle to any tipsters or gamblers. We followed the same procedure at every morning gallop: a swing by the stables to inform Tehmul of our arrival and to make a quick check of the horse before he set hoof to track, a sprint to the stands to take split timings for each furlong (200 meters) of the run on our stopwatches, and a sprint back to the stables to check the horse’s wind and legs as he highstepped his way back in. When the grand stands at a racecourse are empty and a single horse flies down the track bunching and releasing his muscles in the exhilaration of the sprint, you can hear otherwise inaudible sounds that can be remarkably diagnostic: the whoosh of the galloper’s body, the thud of his hooves, even sometimes the grunt of his breathing. On this occasion we both heard and saw Repay do an outstanding job, and no one but us seemed to notice him. The chances for a quick coup seemed to multiply before our eyes.
Too enthused over our prospects to immure ourselves immediately in the hotel, we breakfasted idly at the Club, and then reported again to the stables. It was a beautiful forenoon at the Poona racecourse, a day to laze now that the early work was done, and Dr. Lobo, a friendly chap who was one of the official Turf Club veterinarians, was sitting in Tehmul’s yard. As we chatted Dr. Lobo, who knew a little of Vimalananda’s reputation, delivered up a chal lenge by saying that he doubted that all the stories that people told about yoga could be true. Vimalananda glanced at me and I shrugged my eyebrows. Then Vimalananda asked Dr. Lobo to participate in an experiment. He asked the vet to feel his pulse, and while the man was holding his arm Vimalananda went on and on about the many unusual things that happen here in India. The vet was a man with a dark complexion. When I saw his face become rap idly pallid I knew Vimalananda must have stopped his heart. This being a tre mendous strain on his body I waited only a few seconds before wigwagging to him to quit. He took pity on me and complied, and as he continued to chatter away cheerily his pulse normalized and the color drained back into Dr. Lobo’s face.
In short order the vet found some excuse to depart, and after he left Vim alananda laughed in triumph. I objected, perfunctorily: “Was the showing off really worth the exertion?” He dismissed me with, “His reaction was price less! It was worth it just to see how funky he became. Now he will not prattle on about what yogis can or cannot do!”
Racing in Poona was much more relaxed than racing in Bombay. For one thing, the track is not an island of green in a sea of skyscrapers. In Poona
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broad tree-lined streets cluster about the racecourse and in the east the Em press Gardens offers a thickly arboreal vista. For another, Vimalananda being an outsider in Poona had only a few chums to chat with among the local racegoers. One of the more notable was Poona’s premier Chinese dentist, Dr. Wang, who came like clockwork every week with his wife. We appreciated his occasional work on our teeth and would always smilingly offer whatever in formation we had when he would smilingly ask which horse we favored.
But the Wangs did not sit with us, for in Poona there are but two enclo sures: the Members-cum-First and the Second. When Mr. Lafange had been our trainer we sat just above the Members’ boxes, on benches which though outfitted with green cushions were benches nonetheless. With our switch to Tehmul our status improved, for he had a friend whose box was almost never used. We now arrived on the Poona racing scene like royalty circulating among commoners and seated ourselves among the hoity-toity rather than with the hoi polloi. To the right and below our box was the Indian gentleman who had married his European nurse; a bit further down sat the Maharaja of Gwalior. Far in front perched the wanton Bapsi, who cuckolded her seem ingly-impotent husband Porus with whomever she could. The box to our immediate left was usually occupied by the face and the cigar of the delightful Maharaja of Mudhol, our favorite among the racing gentry, with whom we spent many a pleasant evening over drinks and dinner after a rousing after noon at the track.
Perhaps the least aesthetic of all our new neighbors were the obese Mr. and Mrs. Kumar and their obese daughter. They wanted nothing to do with us po’ folk, which made me qualmless about dubbing them “The Three Pigs.” Mr. Kumar’s had a way of perpetually rejamming a gigantic cigar into his mouth which wonderfully reinforced, like the apple wedged into the maw of a suckling pig destined for the oven, his own porcineness. Even Vimalananda had to agree that they were three of the most hog-faced humans that he had ever seen. Rumor had it that they made most of their money in “leather cur rency,” which is a euphemism for the flesh trade. It was easy to believe this to be true of the cruel-mouthed Mrs. Kumar, a sow who looked hungry enough to cannibalize the runts from her litters.
We enjoyed many a joke at the expense of the Three Pigs, but there is jus tice in the world, alas, and soon it became evident that Mr. Pig’s beady little eyes had homed in on Repay. Kumar was no fool, and he could see that Teh mul and Vimalananda were cooking up a masala for the first win of Repay’s career. Kumar had access to vast sums of money, with which he could drive Repay’s odds down with or without us; this made it a case of “do we want the porker inside the.tent pissing out or outside the tent pissing in?” Tehmul bro
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kered an agreement and Kumar did all the betting. When Repay scooted comfortably home in September as a 7-to-l outsider I sat silently watching when Kumar arrived at the stables after the race, plunked down our share of the winnings (about $10,000), and left to tend to his other “investments” or perhaps to dip his snout down into his dinner trough. His profit would have been at least ten times as much.
I opened my jaws after Kumar had departed: “Repay did a pretty good job ofʻrepaying,’ didn’t he?”
“Why do you think I agreed to name him ‘Repay?" replied my contented mentor. “I knew that he had that sort of rnanubandhana with me, that he would be able to amply requite his debt, to redeem his pledge. I had no fear of that; I was only uncertain of when it would happen.
“And you’re not sorry Kumar got in on the deal?"
“Not at all. Remember, always distribute your karmas! Sharing your good fortune creates ‘partners in karma. It spreads the karmas around, which re duces your own burden significantly. It is better to share your profits with good people, but if you can’t have good people then use whoever God sends you-within reason.”
Back at the hotel redemption continued to occupy his mind: “We have been talking casually about ‘repaying’ and ‘redemption, but do you know what a serious matter it is to redeem? Probably the best blessing, the best gift of all, is the gift of fearlessness. When you give fearlessness you tell that per son, ‘Look, you must endure your karmas yourself, but I can give you the courage to endure them. In fact, there used to be a sadhu in Girnar named Abhayananda (“Bliss of Fearlessness’) who was ready to give fearlessness to anyone. He didn’t last long, though; how could he? Such behavior interferes with the Divine Plan.
“Fearlessness is a great gift, but it is not redemption. To redeem is to say, “I will bear your karmas for you’—that is the highest. Very few can do this, or even want to do it. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, who was a truly great saint, only took someone else’s karmas onto himself in three cases; only three and no more. No, in all history there has only been one Redeemer: my Jesus. And He had to pay very dearly for taking all those karmas; He had to be crucified.
“A few years ago the Pope came to Bombay. Imagine that! I went with Roshni’s mother to see what would happen. There was a mammoth crowd. The Pope drove up in a Mercedes, got out, raised his arms and said: ‘Repeat after me: That which should have been done by me has not been done by me; that which should not have been done by me has been done by me.’ We all re peated it. Then he said, ‘By the power of the Holy See I absolve you of all your sins.’ Roshni’s mother was very impressed by this drama. But does the Pope
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really think that it is so easy to absolve everyone’s bad karmas? When Jesus tried to do the same thing for the Jews He died a most terrible death. This sort of painless absolution of sins is all a delusion, as of course is the infallibil ity of the Pope. Were the Popes who ordered the Crusades or the Inquisiton infallible? Or the ones who ordered young boys to be castrated just because the church wanted some sopranos? Was any of this Jesus’s idea? I think not!”
“Jesus was the One Who could say, ‘Come unto me. He was the only One Who ever could say, ‘Come, I will suffer for your sins. Forget them, and live a new life.’ One look from those eyes of His and you melt completely; all Raja sic and Tamasic qualities gone! These Christians harp on sin, sin, sin, and by teaching sin they perpetuate it. They have forgotten the teachings of Jesus. Jesus said, ‘Forget your sins! Give them to Me, and I will wipe the slate clean. You start over, and never return to them. And what agonies He had to endure for taking so many karmas over onto himself; my God! But He endured them willingly. Not even Krishna did what Jesus did, and that is why I will ever love Jesus. He was the real thing.”
Rajas and Tamas represent respectively an overwillingness to act and an underwillingness to act. Should both these tendencies disappear from the mind nothing would remain but that state of quiescent clarity known as Sat tva. I too love Jesus dearly, and my own emotions rose to my eyes as I watched the image of His smiling face coalesce in my mind. How deep was His clarity, to sustain Him throughout His ordeal! I asked, “Didn’t Jesus also die on the cross to teach us to bear each other’s karmas in the same way that He bore ours, even to a reduced degree? After all, if you love your neighbor as you love yourself, and if everyone is really an emanation of God, then you are ulti mately me, and when I take on your karmas I am effectively saving myself.”
“That is precisely what so many great Christian saints have done. They have worshipped Jesus by giving back to Him the gift that He gave to us: the
gift of compassion. It’s so wonderful!
“Jesus could create such a marvelous play, such an unprecedented lila, be cause He was the emanation of a certain Rishi. All the avataras of Vishnu, like Rama and Krishna, emanated from Rishis; in fact, Jesus and Krishna ema nated from the same Rishi. But look at the difference in their play! Krishna was Gopala, the ‘Protector of the Cows. “Gopala’ also means ‘He Who Re strains His Senses, and this is what Krishna taught to His devotees. Jesus, on the other hand, was the Good Shepherd.”
“Does this mean that if Krishna was the Gopala Jesus was the Meshapala, the ‘Protector of the Sheep?”
“Yes, I suppose so.” He laughed, momentarily nonplused. A rare pleasure! My bon mot had struck home. Then he shot back, “But why Shepherd? Be
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cause of the sheep mentality of most people. Like sheep people easily become lost in the wilderness of the world; that’s why they need protection. Jesus is prepared to go out into the wilderness to save those sheep, to search for them until He finds them and carries them home with Him. This is why there is no need for intelligence in Jesus’s religion, which is one of pure love. In fact, you can hamper your progress in your sadhana of Jesus if you use your intelli gence. You simply have to be ready to follow wherever Jesus leads you, in per fect faith that as long as you follow Him you can never go astray.
“The main difficulty with everyone is that they have no faith. Jesus used to complain about this all the time. One way in which animals are better than humans is that they have no conscious self-interest; they do not anguish all the time about what happened in the past and what is yet to come. Humans forget that God is doing everything for us already so there is no need to prepare any thing. It is only because of our ill fate that any of us worry. If we didn’t worry we would be perennially happy, for we would accept whatever God chose to offer us according to our karmas. But the weight of our karmas interferes with our happiness. It causes us to plan and anticipate, and to experience anxiety and worry. Look at how we planned Repay’s run and worried over its out come, when we could have just relaxed and let God do His work. This is why a saint is the only truly happy person. A real saint has gone beyond worry.
“Here is a question for you: Millions of people bathe in the external River Ganga every day. All the authorities–the saints, the holy books—say that bathing in the Ganga washes away all evil karmas. If this is true, why hasn’t everyone who bathes in the Ganga become enlightened by now, since you be come ‘enlightened when your karmic burden is lightened?”
“Good question. I don’t think I know why.”
“Well, let’s assume that you bathe in the Ganga and come out perfectly clean of karma. But as soon as you step out onto the riverbank you start to perform new karmas again. Voila! There you are, right back in the soup. Which is why there is no escape from the Law of Karma until you change your consciousness. Though we humans imagine that we are in charge of our destinies, fate is far more complicated than you can even imagine.”
He settled back with his Scotch while ghazals emanated from a well-worn recording of the famous vocalist Begum Akhtar, and began again: “Even Rishis can be bewildered by Fate. Consider the case of Parashara Rishi, who was an authority on Jyotish, a subject which is nothing more nor less than the knowledge of the play of the Nine Planets. One day as Parashara walked through a fishing village on the River Yamuna a realization struck him like a flash of lightning. He saw that a child conceived at a precise instant on that day would become one of the greatest of sages, and a redactor of the Vedas. A
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Rishi can give birth to thousands of beings simply by wiping the sweat off his forehead, but Fate perverted Parashara’s mind. He decided instead that he should enjoy sex with a girl himself and father a child through copulation. That this would cause him to lose the fruits of centuries of his penance did not occur to him at the time.
“As Fate would have it a beautiful young fishergirl named Matsyagandha (‘Fishy Odor’) was standing nearby. She was not an ordinary girl; her father was a king and her mother was a celestial damsel who had taken the form of a fish as the result of a curse. She was called Matsyagandha because her body smelled fishy."
“Only to be expected if your mother was a fish. But I read that her real name was Satyavati.”
“Maybe so, but I call her Matsyagandha. Parashara hailed her and ex plained his plan without any hesitation. Back then people were not as embar rassed about such things as they are today. The girl readily agreed to his proposal, thinking, ‘To become the mother of a Rishi’s child is a rare bless ing! But she told him, ‘It would not be good to enjoy sex right here in the vil lage. Let us go out onto the water. So they got into a boat and went out into the middle of the water, where Parashara created an island for their love making. Then when Parashara approached her she said, “The sun is witness ing our play. Please request him to turn away. So darkness fell at the precise moment when the child had to be conceived.
“After their loveplay was over Parashara was pleased, and granted Matsya gandha the boon of permanent body fragrance. Thereafter she was called Yo janagandha (“She Whose Fragrance Can Be Smelled at a Distance of Eight Miles’). The child, who was born the same day that he was conceived, was Krishna (-Dark-Complexioned, due to the darkness at his conception) Dvai payana (‘Born on an Island’) Vyasa (“The Complier’), who is commonly known as Veda Vyasa (“Veda-Arranger’). Besides reworking the Vedas Vyasa composed a number of literary masterpieces, including the great epic of more than 100,000 verses known as the Mahabharata, and the sublime story of Lord Krishna that is the Shrimad Bhagavata. If Vyasa had never been born, none of these stories would ever have appeared in our world. But isn’t there something strange about all this?”
I drew a blank.
“Why did he ever get the idea to write these stories down? Does a Rishi have any use for the written word? None whatsoever; he always prefers to use Para Vanim-telepathic speech. But Vyasa was the son of a Shudra girl; Shu dras are mired in the awareness of the physical. It’s natural; they have to toil hard to earn a living, and their minds focus on their toil. The only reason that
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the thought of a physical representation of his knowledge even entered Vyasa’s mind was this mundane influence on his intellect. Vyasa was born as he was because Nature wanted that all this should be written down for the benefit of those of us who live in Kali Yuga. Parashara’s intellect was per verted precisely because Nature needed the offspring of a Brahmana and a Shudra to redact the Vedas and create the Mahabharata and the Shrimad Bhagavata. Isn’t Nature wonderful?
“This is another reason why the caste system is no longer applicable in its original form. Even today no orthodox Brahmana will accept into his family any son of a Brahmana father and a Shudra mother—but that was Vyasa’s parentage. And what he accomplished no other Brahmana could accomplish. Does this make him better or worse than an orthodox Brahmana? Neither; he is what he is, a distinguished immortal.
“Vyasa was once asked to father children on two princesses. He agreed, and like his father before him decided to use sexual intercourse instead of some other method to fulfill his commitment. Why did he prefer physical sex? Be cause his consciousness was affected, even if minimally, by the fact that he had been born as the result of a sexual act. Look at how deep and long-lasting the effects of sexual karma can be! Unfortunately, Vyasa’s preference for sex created some unintentioned karmas of its own. The first princess was so ter rified by Vyasa’s imposing demeanor that she paled when he embraced her. This caused Pandu, her son, to be born pale. The second couldn’t endure Vyasa’s intense aura and closed her eyes, which caused her son Dhritarashtra to be born blind.”
“Was it that simple?”
“It is that simple when you’re dealing with a Rishi. A woman takes a man’s shakti when he ejaculates into her, and nourishes that shakti with her own shakti to create a child. When the woman and the man have more or less equal shaktis, as they usually do when they are both humans, their shaktis will have a more or less equal influence on the child that results. But a Rishi is not a human. A Rishi is a super duper who has super shakti, and only a simi larly super woman will be able to unite with him as an equal. Any human woman who tries to unite with him will function mainly as the mold into which he pours his shakti. If the woman doesn’t open herself to him com pletely the Rishi’s shakti will not penetrate her evenly. The ‘mold’ will thus not be completely filled, and wherever the shakti doesn’t reach there will be a deficiency in the child.”
“O.K.”
“The first princess was then requested to return to the Rishi for another try at producing a healthy crown prince. But she wanted no more of that, so she
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secretly sent her servant girl instead. That girl had no inhibitions, and was so pleased that she was going to enjoy sex with a Rishi that she surrendered her self completely to him. Through her surrender some fragment of Vyasa’s su per-qualities were transmitted through her into the fetus, who became her son Vidura. These qualities made Vidura clairvoyant from birth.”
“Let me get something straight,” I interrupted. “The Mahabharata war was fought between the five sons of Pandu and the one hundred sons of Dhrit arashtra, which means that it was actually fought between two sets of grand sons of Vyasa.”
“Precisely.”
“My my, a civil war that was really all in the family. No wonder Vyasa had to write the Mahabharata; it was a family history.”
“Yes, but there’s more. One of Pandu’s five sons was Yuddhisthira. Another was Arjuna, the great warrior who was Lord Krishna’s great friend. Arjuna sired Abhimanyu out of Subhadra, Krishna’s sister, and Abhimanyu died in the war because Arjuna had stolen Subhadra. But before his death Abhi manyu had impregnated his wife Uttara with Parikshit, and it is thanks to King Parikshit that we have the Shrimad Bhagavata. The Shrimad Bhagavata was transmitted to Parikshit by the Suta, who heard it from the great Rishi Shukadeva, who heard it from his father Vyasa.”
“Shukadeva being yet another of Vyasa’s children.”
“He was the most amazing of Vyasa’s children, for he was not born from a womb. He escaped the taint of copulation by springing instead from the rub bing of the arani, the sticks used to create fire for Vedic sacrifices. This is why he is called Araniputra (“Son of the Arani’). Because Shukadeva was not born as the result of sex he did not discriminate according to gender. Celestial damsels would throng to him as he roamed naked in the jungle. They would feel completely relaxed with him because he never showed the slightest trace of awareness of their sexual identity. But if Vyasa approached the women would quickly hide, for they could feel that he saw them in a different way.”
“Even though he was also pure-minded.”
“Yes, even though he never lusted after them, Vyasa’s awareness was ever so slightly sexual, because of his birth. That was enough to make a difference.
“Vyasa created the Shrimad Bhagavat for his own pleasure, and for the pleasure of his son Shukadeva. He might never have released it to the world had he not wanted King Parikshit to obtain moksha (liberation) by hearing it. Parikshit had been cursed by a Rishi to die by being bitten by a snake. As the king listened to the Suta recite the Shrimad Bhagavata for seven days Parikshit released his attachments to the world, and welcomed death when it arrived.”
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“Why would Vyasa want Parikshit to obtain moksha?”
“Why wouldn’t he? He wanted to wind up the karmas of that branch of his family, and what better way to do it than arrange for his great-great-grand son’s liberation?”
“How would that help the family?”
“Haven’t you been paying attention? If you can help yourself out by doing Pitri Tarpana for your ancestors, you can help your ancestors out even more by becoming liberated. It’s the same sort of thing.”
“Are you saying that Vyasa released the Shrimad Bhagavata into the world just to save his great-great-grandson and to improve his family’s karmic ped igree?”
“That was his immediate purpose, but by doing so he also ensured that it would be handed down to posterity.”
“How did that happen?”
“The Suta, who was present when Shukadeva recited it to Parikshit, later retold the Shrimad Bhagavata to a group of sages who had assembled in the Naimisharanya. These sages and their disciples were responsible for intro ducing the Shrimad Bhagavata to the rest of the world. You should only read or listen to the Shrimad Bhagavata when you are ready to abandon, tempo rarily or permanently, the mundane outside world, as those sages who had withdrawn from the world into the Naimisharanya did.”
Though the Naimisharanya is a forest in North India, some writers have proposed that the word also be read as the ‘forest’ (aranya) of’blinking’ (nai misha), which would refer to the inside of the human body. A sojourn in the Naimisharanya would then imply a turning inward of the normally outward pointed senses, to heighten awareness of the inner cosmos.
“And like Parikshit,” Vimalananda continued,“you must cultivate your in teriority if you hope to enter into the inner, astral world of the Shrimad Bhagavata. What does Parikshit mean?”
“ Tested.” Technically speaking, parikshit means “surrounding, extend ing,” as heaven and earth extend out to surround us, but I knew that Vima lananda was thinking of the word parikshita, which means “tested.”
“Exactly. Only when a disciple is completely tested is he eligible to be taught. You should understand from his name that King Parikshit had gone through the grind. He had become thoroughly prepared for the knowledge that was given to him. Anyone who wants to get the real juice out of the Shri mad Bhagavata needs to be prepared to self-identify with King Parikshit when they listen to it. When you hear it you need to be able to temporarily ‘become’ Parikshit, which you will only be able to do if you have been pains takingly tested.”
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“So King Parikshit was delivered this wisdom via the Suta. I thought suta was just a word that means ‘son.””
“Suta does mean son, but it also means the metal mercury, a woman after delivery, a charioteer—it has so many meanings. Because it is a Sanskrit word all these meanings must be related. You are a student of Sanskrit; you tell me what these things have in common.”
“Well…” I was stuck. .
“They are all carriers. They transport essence around in the world until it reaches the point where it can manifest. Think it over.”
“They deliver things? They represent the cosmic courier service?”
“Yes, they deliver. The Suta’s father was the charioteer Romaharshana, who was personally killed by Lord Krishna, seemingly by mistake but in fact as a blessing."
“How was that?” “Have you ever heard that the father lives on through the son?" “Yes.”
“A child transports the essence of its parents—their genes and chromo somes. Romaharshana was not pure enough to act as a fit vehicle for the Shri mad Bhagavata, but when Krishna killed him He purified him. This made Romaharshana’s son pure enough to deliver the Shrimad Bhagavata to the world. Romaharshana must have already been quite an advanced soul, other wise he would not have even been fit to be killed and purified by Krishna Himself. But he was not quite pure enough. What does romaharshana mean in Sanskrit?”
“Horripilation; goose flesh; the body hairs stand on end."
“Which is caused by cold, fear or some other strong stimulation, including spiritual experiences. Romaharshana was highly evolved, but not quite evolved enough to transport this particular shakti.”
“Did Lord Krishna’s act of killing Romaharshana serve as a sort of Pitri Tarpana for the Romaharshana family?”
“Yes, if you want to look at it that way.”
“Well, Romaharshana’s death paved the way for the transmission of the Shrimad Bhagavata, which has benefitted millions of people. Some of those benefitted are bound to bless it and its writers, and some percentage of those blessings are bound to flow to those who arranged to transport’ it to us, no? Sort of an ongoing astral royalty payment?”
“I think we can be confident that the Shrimad Bhagavata has enormously benefitted everyone who was involved in bringing it to light in our world, and all their ancestors too. It particularly benefitted Parashara, who by siring Vyasa made it all possible. And Parashara certainly needed some benefit, to
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help counteract the karma that he incurred by inseminating Matsyagandha. While it was very good for the world that Vyasa was born, it did not do Parashara much good to have enjoyed sex with a Shudra. That act entangled him in the play of her karmas, which were of a pattern quite different from his. These karmas forced Parashara to take birth again to experience the repercus sions of his act. Every taint, and especially that of copulation, must be erased.”
“Is copulation such a big taint, then?”
“Do you remember that you once asked me about a certain Vedic sacrifice in which beer is brewed?”
Months had passed but he had not forgotten. “Yes, the Sautramani sacri fice. I had asked you why the ritual text specifies that the barley from which the beer will be brewed must be taken from a eunuch.”
“Here is your answer: The Rishis who created this sacrifice intended the barley to be collected from someone who is a born eunuch, not from a eu nuch who has been cut. A natural eunuch has not even been exposed to the energy of sex, much less the experience of copulation. Such a person has the potential to be the living embodiment of the nirakara tattva (“The Principle of Formlessness’), because what is sex about if not the creation of new forms?”
“But even a natural eunuch only has the potential to embody formlessness. Didn’t the Rishis expect the sacrificer to locate someone who had realized this formless potential, and not just find any old barley-donating natural eunuch?”
“Exactly! Our Rishis were not fools. What possible use would an ordinary eunuch have been to them? The essence is what counts, not the outer garb.”
“Is this the sort of thing that Jesus was talking about when he talked about someone who makes himself a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven’s sake?” I was thinking of Matthew 19:12.
“Yes, the same sort of thing. And remember that in this context Jesus says that this is not for everyone, but only for those who properly understand it."
“Maybe for those who have the ears to hear?” “And the eyes to see.”
“Oh… So—the copulation taint was strong enough to force Parashara to take birth yet again.”
“It was. Unfortunately, Parashara’s personality in his new body was rather dull. His father tried to teach him many things, but he failed. Exasperated, he asked his son, ‘Why can’t you learn anything I try to teach you?’
“The boy answered, ‘I do not know, father. I suppose it must be due to my past karmas.
“The father got wild on hearing this from his dull-witted son and told him, You had better get out of here and go do Gayatri!’ So the boy went out into the forest.
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“Here the father’s intellect had become perverted. How could the boy help it if his past karmas were bad; and what father would begrudge his own son his past faults? Parents are there to forgive, not to curse. But without this or der from his father the boy would not have succeeded so quickly. His father probably did not know it, but it was important for Parashara to do sadhana of the sun. Why? Because Parashara had deliberately sent the sun away on that fateful day when he had impregnated Matsyagandha.”
“So even that was a karma?”
“A big karma; you have to be very careful when you play about with the Nine Planets. The boy found himself a good spot and made a hammock of twelve stout ropes made of creepers, braced with three cross ropes. He strung his hammock between two trees and sat on it, with a fire beneath him, re peating the Gayatri Mantra. Every year he cut one of the ropes, so that after eleven years he was balancing on a single strand.
“When the twelve years were almost up he said to himself, ‘If I don’t suc ceed at perfecting this mantra and obtaining a vision of the sun god at the end of these twelve years there will be nothing to do but put an end to myself.
“But deities are not cruel; they are really very kind. On the last day of his penance he saw a sadhu approaching him. The sadhu had an unworldly, ef fulgent glow about him, and the boy realized that the sun himself—Surya Narayana-had come to him in human form. He bowed to the sadhu, and Lord Surya said to him, ‘So, my boy, what do you want?’ The boy asked for proficiency in astrology. Why would he ask for this? Both because of his pre vious expertise in astrology as Parashara—that influence was beginning to re-exert itself–and because who better than the sun to teach astrology?
“Lord Surya then blessed him, saying, ‘Your name will last as long as the sun and moon exist as the greatest-ever expert in astrology. Then he disp peared, and the boy left his place of penance. When he reached his home his remorse-filled father recognized him, and tearfully said, ‘I don’t care if you are a dud or not, please come and embrace me. When the boy responded with a beautiful Sanskrit verse his father realized that, yes, he had indeed been doing Gayatri all this time, for Gayatri is the mother of Sanskrit. Over the course of time this boy, now called Mihiracharya in honor of his penance (Mihira is one of the names of the sun), became a gem at the king’s court.
“When the king’s son was born the court astrologers were directed to pre dict his fate. All except Mihira said that he would live long, rule wisely and enjoy his glory. Mihira alone said, “The boy will die at age three, on such-and such a day, at this exact moment, gored to death by a varaha (wild boar).
“The king said, ‘Please, Mihira, everyone else has said something good. Kindly change your prediction. Mihira replied, ‘I am sorry, o king, but it will
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happen as I have said; that is his fate.’
“The king built a seven-story building and put his son on the top floor sur rounded by a strong guard so that no boar could get to him. When the app pointed day arrived the king and all the jealous courtiers were waiting to see Mihira proved wrong and then punished.
“Exactly at the given moment the flagstaff on the seventh story of the build ing broke and fell on top of the little boy who happened to be playing below it. Atop the flagpole sat the king’s symbol, which was a boar’s head made of solid gold and weighing more than eighty pounds. When this image landed on the child one of its golden tusks pierced his chest, and he died instantly.
“Mihira said to the shocked king, ‘Oking! The boar has killed the boy, as I predicted.
“The grieving king replied, ‘You are the wisest of my astrologers. In honor of this brilliant prediction I now name you Varaha (boar) Mihira.’ Varaha Mihira went on to write many well-known treatises on astrology. His system follows Parashara’s system, though, with only a few principles changed here and there.”
“As it should; after all, he had only recently been Parashara.”
“But even Varaha Mihira did not realize the significance of his words when he spoke of Fate. Fate is so powerful that even things which seem impossible become possible if they are meant to be. And even stronger than Fate is God. As they say in Hindi, khuda meherban to gadda bhi pahalwan: ‘If God is gra cious even a donkey can become a wrestler.”
“Even Jhendu Kumar?”
“Quit baiting me! Yes, even Jhendu Kumar, but if and only if God went along with his schemes. But God is not going to do that, so you can forget about it. And so can he!”
“At least God was kind enough to let Repay finally repay you.”
“Nature is very kind to me, Robby; that’s all I can tell you, that Nature is very kind to me. There is absolutely nothing that God cannot do; I have seen it over and over again in my life. This is why I pray day and night for more bhakti, because I know that if my devotion is truly sincere God will provide me with whatever it is that I need.”
After my final grueling round of university exams in the fall of 1979 I pro ceeded to Bombay and watched Repay continue to win there during the early months of 1980. Around this time Vimalananda bought Onslaught, a reliable Class 1 horse, from Boman Hansotia. Though Onslaught had never won for
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Boman he did for Vimalananda, and it began to seem that all our horses were doing well-even Bajarangi, the last horse Vimalananda had purchased when he kept his string with Lafange. In one of his more egregious transgres sions, Lafange had insisted that Vimalananda purchase this horse, and Vima lananda had regretted his acquisition ever since. “For one thing,” he would say, “his color is liver chestnut, and everyone knows that liver chestnuts rarely keep good health.” In Bajarangi’s case, at least, this was true. Jockeys would complain that when they sat on him he would try to move his back out from under them, as if they were causing him pain. No one could discover any ob vious pathology or do him any good, not even Dr. Singh, the eccentric vet who sought to prove his expertise at equine massage by flaunting at us his copy of the Turaga Samhita, a Sanskrit treatise on horses.
I had meanwhile been studying Ayurvedic herbology at the college, and I came one morning to Vimalananda with a proposal that we try on Bajarangi a local preparation of bhallataka (Semecarpus anacardium), an extremely poisonous fruit which when appropriately manufactured often shows good results in such varied afflictions as goiter, paralysis, and infertility. At his wit’s end over Bajarangi Vimalananda agreed, and being dutiful experimenters he and I decided to try some of this restorative as well, just to see what it would do. The horse got two tablespoons, and Vimalananda and I took a half-tea spoon each.
The medication, which had in fact not been properly prepared, gave the horse extreme colic and us two humans extreme skin rashes. At least Tehmul could report that Bajarangi, who luckily survived, became significantly more spirited afterwards than he had been before the medicine, though he was still uneasy when mounted. Vimalananda and I also noticed vastly improved zest and energy.
Vimalananda’s skin being darker than mine, his rash disappeared a mere two or three days after he began to ingest the antidote. A bhallataka reaction is always more severe in a white-skinned individual, though, and even with the antidote it took a full two weeks for my skin color to fade from bright pink back to normal. Everyone at the college thought I had been fiercely sun burned, but it was just the effects of urushiol, the poison in bhallataka which is also the poison in poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, cashew shells, mango skins, and Chinese lacquer. It was a poison ivy rash but from the in side out, which meant that I felt the intense itching about an inch below the surface of my skin. It like the pinkness gradually faded with the antidote, but it cost me a couple of sleepless nights of vain attempts to scratch it. “Thank God we knew what was the main ingredient in this concoction,” said Vima lananda to me, once it became clear that my reaction would indeed disap
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pear. “I once treated a woman who had been secretly given bhallataka. No ordinary remedy could give her any relief because no one had suspected the truth. She suffered for two full years from its poison before she came to me and got the specific antidote.”
Bajarangi was a real preoccupation during much of 1979, and by the spring of 1980 we were ready to throw in the towel on him when the enter prising Dr. Martanda happened to drive us to the stables one afternoon. We escorted the doctor from stall to stall introducing him to Vimalananda’s “four-legged children” until we reached Bajarangi, where we recounted our woes in full. “What?” said the doctor. “Such a minor thing, and no one has been able to deal with it? It is obvious that he lacks marrow in the bones of his back. Since the Marrow Tissue is the foundation of Shukra he must have a deficiency of sperms, which has kept his vitality low.” Great, I thought. Repay couldn’t get enough of his own sperm, and Bajarangi doesn’t have enough to go around. “I can cure him,” said Dr. Martanda, “with just two doses of med icine. All you have to do after I dose him is to feed him the soup made from one dozen goat thigh bones, and I can guarantee you a cure.”
“Dr. Saheb,” said Vimalananda smoothly, “horses have no gall bladders, and feeding him something as fatty as marrow soup will give him colic that will kill him.”
“Don’t worry yourself in the least,” replied the ever theatrical Dr. Martand. “I guarantee that no harm will come to him.”
Vimalananda and I looked at one another until at last he said to me, “What do we have to lose?” Though Tehmul was not pleased with this proposal at all he agreed to permit the doctor try his potion, for he realized that if anything untoward did happen we would at least be able to collect on Bajarangi’s in surance money. The groom was therefore ordered to proceed to the market and buy the appropriate bones. The next morning Dr. Martanda arrived at the stables promptly after the morning work to administer the first dose, Te hmul standing by expecting calamity at any minute. But Bajarangi showed complications neither that day nor the next, and the next jockey to mount him testified that the horse was no longer doing his previous “dance.” The goat marrow had presumably filled his bones, for his track work improved weekly. The day that he actually ran a race was one of the highlights of our season. Vimalananda laid no wager on this horse who had let us down so of ten in the past, but we were just happy to see him out competing with his fel lows on the grass.
After running once or twice more Bajarangi still showed no signs of want ing to win, so we disposed of him. After the fact Vimalananda questioned the wisdom of his decision to name our “sperm-deficient” horse Bajarangi, which
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is the Hindi version of one of the Sanskrit names of Anjaneya. He had hoped in vain that carrying such a name would make him want to live up to the stan dards of his namesake and run well. Now Vimalananda speculated that the opposite might have been the case:
“It is always good to name your child after God; that’s how Ajamila was saved. Do you recall? When death came for him he called for his son Naray ana, but got through to Lord Vishnu, Narayana Himself. I had no intention of commercializing Anjaneya’s name when I named my horse Bajarangi, but it is possible that it might have seemed that way to the Law of Karma, since he was racing for money. This might in fact have been one of the factors that prevented his progress. It is so difficult to know the Law of Karma in detail!”
“And impossible to know in its entirety.”
“Completely impossible, even for the Rishis. It didn’t seem like a bad idea to me at the time because Anjaneya has helped me advance my career in the past. During my salad days as a pro wrestler it was the power of Anjaneya that sustained me. Could I have ever done it on my own? Ha!” Anjaneya, who has from His birth been the patron deity of wrestlers, continued to sustain Vima lananda even in my era when he would challenge to arm wrestling the young Maharashtrian wrestlers who used to come to him to get his blessing for an upcoming bout. Invariably the heart patient in his mid-sixties would easily defeat the youthful musclemen, and when they would shamefacedly admit defeat he would tell them, “Don’t worry, my boy; which human can with stand the power of Anjaneya? Remember this, and when you return to your village don’t forget to pay your regards to the temple of Anjaneya there,” a temple whose new image had been purchased by that very Dr. Martanda who had treated Anjaneya’s equine namesake.
The Ayurvedic internship program at the Tarachand Ramnath Charitable Ayurvedic Hospital depleted my 1980 spring and summer. Aside from the odd weekend in Bombay I could meet Vimalananda only when he came to Poona to pay a visit to his four-legged friends.” A few of my instructors made regular pilgrimages to his hotel during his stays, hoping to mop up for their own practices the odd treatment tip that Vimalananda would occasion ally spill. They were intrigued with his knowledge of herbs and minerals and with his ability to diagnose people by taking his own pulse; he was intrigued with the possibility that he might somehow get some of them to think origi nally for a change. Aside from Dr. Vasant Lad, though, few of these physicians impressed him.
Vimalananda, who appreciated Dr. Lad’s devotion to his guru Hambir Baba and his personal deity Ganesha (the elephant-headed remover of obsta cles), assisted him and his family in various ways. This favoritism made some
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of the other faculty members, who regarded Dr. Lad’s station in life as being beneath theirs, determine to take from Vimalananda the assistance that they felt they deserved. As these men had no deep interest in Ayurveda, Jyotish, Tantra, or any other form of classical Indian wisdom, Vimalananda protected himself creatively from them. For example, after Dr. Potdukhe brought his father to Vimalananda one day to ask his help in reversing a chronic intesti nal infirmity, Vimalananda said, “Oh, it can be fixed all right—I can guaran tee it—but if it is he will lose all his money. Which will it be: health without wealth or wealth without health?” After they left Vimalananda confidently predicted that he would never see them again, and he never did.
The crassness of the bulk of these doctors disappointed Vimalananda acutely. He expected that anyone who had been blessed with the opportunity to imbibe Sanskritic learning ought to evince the same broadness of mind, quickness of wit, and keenness of awareness that seemed to come effortlessly to him. A lack of art, grace and culture” in otherwise knowledgeable men and women always seemed to disgruntle him. In 1980 he responded to the only invitation he ever received from my college with an address to its staff that went something like this:
It is no surprise that no one wants to learn Ayurveda nowadays since no one is teaching the real meat of Ayurveda. If you really want your students to understand Ayurveda you must teach them that there are only four things in medicine: duhkha, duhkha ka karana, karana ka upaya, aur upaya ka anta (“misery, the cause of misery, the remedy for the cause, and the end of the remedy’). As Ayurvedic physicians we want to liberate our patients mostly from physical sorrow. This means that we must be fully conversant with the structures in which diseases develop: the dhatus (tissues) and malas (wastes). Teach your students why diagnosis of disease is usually by mala. The wastes are produced during the metabolic processes which produce the tissues, which means that if you know the malas you will know the dhatus.
Unfortunately you people overlook many of the malas, like dandruff. Even examination of dandruff can yield significant in formation, in particular about the bones, given that head hair is an upadhatu (secondary tissue) of bone. In a way the bones are a bridge between the astral body, which is the mind, and the physical body. Bone is governed by Vayu (the Air Element), which also ap pears in the body as prana; what controls prana controls the mind, and vice versa. Also, as a tissue, Bone is the foundation of Marrow, which is the foundation of Shukra, which is the foundation of ojas,
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which is the foundation of health. Know dandruff in detail and you can know the patient’s health.
If you want good health you must nourish your tissues well, which means you must nourish the tastes in your body. When you lack tastes your metabolism is affected. Even if you lay a big meal before a sick man he will not be interested; his taste is not there. Lack of taste within the body causes a patient of jaundice to lack appetite. Disturbance of the inner taste process causes the appetite to be lost in fever. Ayurveda is the only medical system which de scribes medicines for supplying to the body the tastes which it lacks; teach your students that!
Actually all the tastes are inside, but we look for them outside, in our food. Our job as physicians is to create the proper taste within a sick person so that proper tissue nourishment will resume and natural immunity in the form of ojas will increase. This is why we use medicines; not just to suppress disease, like the allopaths do, but to return the patient’s balance to normal. Your great Ayurvedic author Charaka learned about medicinal herbs by watching what animals ate when they were sick. Students should learn in the same way. You should teach them how to make the plant talk to you, how to make it tell you,“These are my qualities, my tastes, and my useful parts, and I am useful in this disease.” Those who really know Ayurveda know that every plant has a thousand uses.
Teach your students why we like to use plants for our medicines. Plants and animals complement one another nicely. Plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, while animals exhale carbon dioxide and inhale oxygen. Teach them all the details of how to collect medicinal plants. When you inform them that plants should never be collected at night, tell them the reason why. Plants breathe at night; and if you collect them then it is like stran gling them. If you strangle the plant, do you think it will be inter ested in trying to help you help your patient? Teach your pupils how one plant antidotes another. Teach them the secret uses of apamarga (Achyranthes aspera), tulsi (Ocimum sanctum), and bilva (Aegle marmelos), plants which can make you clairaudient and clairvoyant. Teach them the limitations of herbs, and why we also use medicines made from minerals. Above all, teach them the real meaning of Rasayana (rejuvenation; literally, “the Path of Rasa”), because it is only through rasa (taste, juice, emotion) that rejuvenation can occur.
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All the assembled physicians nodded sagaciously and thanked him for his comments, but when we were alone again Vimalananda shook his head with resignation and said, “Is it any wonder that Ayurveda is in such a desperate state today? Your professors seem to be good people, by and large, but most of them simply do not know Ayurveda–so how do they think they are going to teach it? They don’t even know the simplest things about Ayurveda, such as how to develop your body. What is the use in knowing about Ayurveda if you can’t even develop your body?”
A wrestler was talking. I asked, “What method do you like best for body development?”
He replied, “It depends on the individual. Bhang works well for many peo ple. Wrestlers who live in Banaras have made a science of how to use bhang as part of their training regimen. After their morning workout they will bathe in the Ganga, get a two-hour massage, bathe again, eat well, and take a nap. On arising they will defecate, to lighten their bodies and minds, then bathe again, then get yet another massage, then take bhang. They eat when the intoxica tion of the bhang is at its height. Try it; your body will develop amazingly.”
“We do not expect, though, that using bhang like this is going to help them free Kundalini from its constraints.”
“How could it? In fact, it will make ahamkara identify even more firmly with the body. But you have to decide what you want to do with your life; only then can Ayurveda help you. If you want to go the way of awakening Kundalini using bhang then you have to use it in another way, which I am sure that your professors are also unaware of. Do they have any idea of the real way to perform rejuvenation? Do they know that while herbs can make you live 400-500 years you can go on almost indefinitely if you know how to use mercury? Do they know that you can extract copper from peacock feath ers, and mercury from bilva leaves? Or that alchemical gold shows different results from mined gold when seen in the mass spectrometer? They teach chemistry at your college, but do they know anything at all of the real Rasa Shastra (alchemy)? Have they ever heard of, much less seen, the many ways to solidify mercury? Or the few ways in which you can make mercury agnisthayi (‘fire-fast’) so that it will not melt when placed into a fire? The true alchemy, my boy, is not even easy to understand, much less do. I wonder how many of your instructors are even interested in understanding it.
“One way in which I am different from most doctors is that most doc tors—not all, but most—see sick people as money-making projects. I look at them with Smashan Tara’s eyes instead, and see them as my own children. When I can help someone escape from a disease I feel as if I’ve helped cure my own son or daughter. I love to do that, but I don’t want anyone to know
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how I’m doing it. Why should they know? If they’re sick they should be inter ested in the result, not in the process. And if they’re doctors I don’t want them to know how I do things. If they learn they will just go out and com mercialize my knowledge; they will use it to earn money from sick people. Besides, can they ever know how many days and weeks of hard work it took me to learn what I know? This is why I always like to try out new methods of treatment, so that no one will be able to pinpoint exactly what I am doing.
“During one period of my life I used to give an ounce of castor oil to every sick person who came my way. No one had any reaction or got diarrhea from it. On the contrary, everyone got some relief from the ailment they had brought to me. One lady who watched me do this to various people decided to be smart. She tried to do the same thing herself, but none of her patients ever responded. In fact, they invariably got worse. Then she came to me and demanded to know why this was happening.
“I asked her in response, ‘Who told you to do this?”” “Then what did she say?” “Nothing; what is she going to say?”
“Obviously,” I said, “something other than the castor oil was doing the trick.”
“Obviously,” he echoed. “In fact it was something ethereal, something that used the castor oil as a medium through which to exert its effect. Castor oil is itself a wonderful medicine, but this ethereal thing could have used any me dium. One day my friend Faram was suffering from intestinal colic. To help him out I picked up the first bottle I could reach on the shelf and gave him two pills from it. The pain disappeared. When I was out of Bombay a few weeks later the pain recurred, and Faram looked for the bottle to dose him self again. This time he looked at the label and discovered that it was a hor monal preparation meant for regulating his wife’s menses. He flew into such a rage that he threw the bottle out of the window!”
“He must have had some choice words for you when you got back.”
“He always had choice words for me—but then I always fired him too. That’s the way our friendship was.” To be “fired” in Indian English is to be chewed out, dressed down, or similarly raked over the coals.
“You know, Faram’s wife suffered for years with excessive menstrual bleed ing. She would bleed for twenty days out of the month. She tried everything, but got no relief. Finally she came to me one day and said, “Look, I’ve had enough. I just can’t stand it anymore. I am going to go and get a hysterectomy.
“I told her, ‘All you want to do is stop the flow, isn’t it? Then why do you worry? Drink this water, and I handed her a full glass. She drank it, and her menses stopped from that day onwards.
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Aghora III: The Law of Karma
“Whenever I look at a woman I see Ma, and I can’t bear to see Ma in pain, One day when I was at a friend’s house I heard moaning from the next room. I asked him what the problem was, and he said, ‘Oh, it’s my sister. She’s been in labor for the whole day, and there has been no progress so far. I’m not sure whether we’ll need to do a Caesarian or what.
“I told him, ‘Give me a shiny metal tray, one of those German silver ones you are so fond of. I traced a yantra on it with my finger. He asked me what I thought I was doing, because he couldn’t see anything on the tray. I ignored him and went into the room where the girl was lying on the bed. I showed her the tray. She couldn’t see the yantra either, but within a matter of minutes the child was born. That is the power of yantras.”
“Now I understand why all these old friends of yours keep pestering you to heal them or their family members. It’s because they know your capabilities.”
“Having learned a few of my capabilities they are trying to capitalize on them, for their own benefit. Some of them have even told me that I should start healing the sick en masse. But besides the fact that the fame from such programs would ruin my life, what about the rnanubandhana? I have to have an appropriate rnanubandhana with someone in order to heal them.”
“Is that true of any doctor?”
“Yes, and of any astrologer, or any other professional who wants to do help someone out. But there are so many people with whom I have rnanu bandhanas that if I tried to heal all of them at once I would run out of shakti before very long. I’m not Jesus, and I have never claimed to be a bhagavan.
“Sometimes even my own karmas become too much to bear, and I’ve even had to use some funny business to cure myself. I don’t like to do it, because I believe that it is better to suffer now and be free of the burden of your karmas rather than to hide from them. After all, they are sure to catch up with you anyway, eventually. But in a crisis you do whatever is necessary.
“Some years ago a Dr. Durandar lived in Bombay. Somehow or other he had lost his son and nearly went mad as a result. Afterwards he began to treat me like I was his son. He was always coming around to see how I was, and to check on my health. He would give me medicine whenever I needed it and sometimes even when I didn’t. When I needed antibiotics he would usually give me an injection of penicillin, but one day when he was out of penicillin he gave me streptomycin instead. I had never taken streptomycin before and once had a severe reaction to it: high fever, rigors, the works. I thought I was done for. I called some of my friends who all sat around me crying, thinking I was going to die. So did I. Faram was abusing me, as was his wont. The days he didn’t abuse me I would ask him, ‘What, my child, I have heard none of your beautiful language today; are you ill?’ That would start him off again,
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insulting my family members with the foulest of words. I enjoyed it; it was his peculiar way of expressing his love for me.
“Just as Faram was abusing Dr. Durandar left and right for giving me the injection Dr. Durandar unexpectedly arrived to check on his patient. I couldn’t let him see me in this condition–when he looked at me he saw his son, and if he saw me near death now it would be a second big shock for him that might prove fatal. So somehow the fever disappeared and I became per fectly normal again. I complimented him on his treatment, made him happy, and showed him the door. As soon as he left the fever returned, and Faram started to abuse me again!
“Then I lost my temper. I told Roshni to bring me her quilt. It was a beau tiful brown satin quilt which her father had brought to her from Burma, and she never lent it to anyone else. It was so precious to her that she slept with it each and every night, but as soon as she heard that I wanted it she handed it over to me. I told her to cover me with it, and after about five minutes I threw the quilt on the floor. I was perfectly all right–but the quilt was hot; all the fever had gone into it. There it lay, literally shivering by itself on the ground. I told Faram, ‘Be careful now: whoever uses this quilt next will get the fever.’
“Then Faram abused everyone loudly and, shouting out the Parsi equiva lent of Not in my house!’ had Roshni throw it out the window.”
“And that was it?” “That was all; I was cured. Don’t ask me how.”
“But if somehow you transfered your fever to the quilt, where did your karmas go? They must have somehow gone into the quilt too.”
“Something like that.”
I cringed slightly, thinking of whoever must have picked it up, and then said to him, “So the moral to the story is never pick up anything from the street!”
“Especially not in India!” he laughed.
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