HAD I KNOWN THEN what I know now of Vimalananda’s Junior Guru Maharaj I would have concluded that in the act of awarding him the tran sient felicity of Redstone’s win Guru Maharaj had successfully stolen one of the few remaining joys from Vimalananda’s life. Vimalananda, who must have suspected it all along, tried unsuccessfully to reveal this to me not long after the taxi-driver episode, during the course of an afternoon spent at Bhuleshwar. After offering our worship we sat resting inside the front pas sageway when Vimalananada looked me over in a unusually peculiar way and said, “I’ve told you before about Lord Krishna and His siddhi of Kartum, Akartum, Anyathakartum.”
“Yes, you have.” I remembered his words well. Kartum: that which is diffi cult to do but is doable, which refers to Krishna’s mastery over the mundane world. Akartum: that which is impossible for ordinary beings, which refers to His ascendancy in the spiritual world. Anyathakartum: that which, being be yond both the spiritual and the mundane, is inconceivable to humans. An yathakartum refers to the astral world, the world of the mind, of subjective reality. These three siddhis gave Lord Krishna unlimited power in all three realms: mundane, spiritual and astral.
“Prakriti Siddhi is in the realm of Anyathakartum, that which is not only impossible but also unimaginable. Prakriti Siddhi is the ability to change the innate nature of any part of the Universal Prakriti, which means the ability to alter the consciousness of any being in the universe. When we talk about fate we are talking about Prakriti Siddhi. This is very deep; think about it very carefully. Fate is an ethereal being who knows and uses the highest of all the siddhis: Prakriti Siddhi. This is the only way he can do his work.”
“So this is where Saturn comes in.” “Yes, this is where Saturn comes in. Saturn uses Prakriti Siddhi on his victims.”
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“You mean that Prakriti Siddhi is the means that Saturn uses to change your innate ‘nature,’ your prakriti, to force you to experience your karmas, good and bad alike, whether you want to or not.”
“Correct.”
“And Saturn—who represents the force of your karmas—can affect you so long as you have not completely conquered your prakriti, which is ‘what comes naturally’ to you.”
“Yes.”
“So if your fate comes from your karmas, and Saturn’s influence comes from your fate, and Prakriti Siddhi comes from Saturn, then everytime you perform a karma you basically perform Prakriti Siddhi on yourself??”
“Almost. Everyone is the architect of his own destiny, in one way or an other, via the amazing mechanism of the Law of Karma, which Nature cre ated to coordinate these innumerable destinies. But Prakriti Siddhi goes beyond the constraints of destiny. Prakriti Siddhi permits you to become the architect of destiny, but only if—and this is a big if-you can understand prakriti. If you can know and understand your own prakriti you can change it. This is why they say the real heroes in life are those who change their own svabhava. To change someone else’s prakriti you have to be able to know and understand that person’s prakriti. If you want to be able to alter the con sciousness of any being in the universe you must first know the Universal Prakriti, the universe’s innate nature.
“It takes years and years of penance to achieve Prakriti Siddhi on even a lim ited scale. You begin by learning to change the prakriti of one person, which is much easier than changing the prakriti of a city, or a nation, or a planet. Our Earth is really a very small place. The real Prakriti Siddhi is the ability to change in a trice the character of an entire universe. When you can do that then you become the one who sends the prophets and avataras to the world.
“Prakriti Siddhi as practiced by the senior Rishis can change the behavior of whole nations and planets in the twinkling of an eye. To be able to do that you must be able to control the Adya Shakti, the first Shakti who emanates at the beginning of creation. She being the root of all universes, by controlling Her what cannot be controlled? The reason why only the Rishis possess the true Prakriti Siddhi is that you need to perform continuous penance for mil lions of births in order to control the Adya Shakti. Only the Rishis can even dream of being able to do something like that. Because Fate needs Prakriti Siddhi for his work theyʻlicense’ it him to use, but even with this license he can still only act when they direct him to act. Prakriti Siddhi is the means by which the Rishis control the universe. Fate performs all his work in accor dance with the wishes of the Rishi Mandala (the ‘Circle of Rishis’).”
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“The Rishi Mandala, then, is in control of everything that there is.”
“Yes, it is. They are the real Bosses, of all the universes. But when they go too far even the Rishis can sometimes fall prey to Prakriti Siddhi. Why do you think Angiras Rishi got the idea to curse Anjani? There was no need to do so. And after cursing her, why did he promise to make her the mother of an im mortal monkey god? It was the effect of Prakriti Siddhi. After blessing Anjani Angiras realized that he did not have enough shakti to fulfill the blessing on his own. Then he had acknowledge his misjudgment and request Nature to help to fulfill it.
“And what about the Rishi Yajnavalkya? Once, in the middle of a public philosophical debate, an ordinary young girl named Gargi asked him some questions that he could not answer
“Like what?”
“Like, ‘What is beyond the Absolute?’ After a few of these questions Ya jnavalkya lost his head with her and said, ‘Woman, if you speak another word your head will not remain on your shoulders. In that moment of losing con trol of his temper the fruits of ten thousand years of his penance were taken from him. When he realized what had happened.Well, it was too late. He just had to start all over again. He married Gargi, too, in honor of her debat ing skill. But why should he have lost his temper? He lost it because his prakriti was affected. We have a proverb in Sanskrit: aty ucсhe patanam: ‘That which is too high is bound to fall.? Yajnavalkya had too much pride in his penance, and someone taught him a good lesson. This is the beauty of Fate. Yajnavalkya’s only thought when he went to that assembly was that he would win the debate and walk away with all the cows which were the prizes; instead he came away with a new wife, but minus ten thousand years of penance.”
“Hmm.”
“Parashara Rishi never knew he would marry Matsyagandha. Vasistha Rishi selected the moment for Ramachandra’s crowning without realizing that the result would be that Ramachandra would have to go to the forest for fourteen years. And why should Durvasas Rishi, who loved Lallu (the Baby Krishna), have ever thought to insult King Ambarisha? Only because his in tellect had become perverted. A clear case of Prakriti Siddhi, just to teach him not to be too arrogant. So long as they maintain their own independent exist ence even the Rishis are still subject to the Law of Karma, and when they err Nature creates for them situations in which they will have to admit that they have been wrong, just so their egos will not go out of control.”
“Which means that even the Rishis are not the Biggest of the Bosses.”
“At the center of the circle of the Rishi Mandala sits the Rishi who is running the whole show. He is the chief Rishi of the Rishi Mandala, the only Rishi who
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can fully control the Adya Shakti and the Universal Prakriti. All the other Rishis think they have independent existences, but even they are just his puppets. If the center disappears, can there be a circle? Whenever a Rishi starts to get a swelled head and tries to take over the Number One spot, Mr. Big—we can call him The Seniormost-uses Prakriti Siddhi to teach the offender a good lesson. The Seniormost plays about in his own way and no one can ever know him.”
“Isn’t this frustrating for the Rishis? They do penance for millenia and still they are subject to Prakriti Siddhi?”
“It is terribly frustrating; if you and I don’t like to admit that we have been wrong the Rishis absolutely hate to have to admit that they were wrong. But that’s just the way things are.”
“Hmm. When you mentioned this sort of thing before, you attributed it to Saturn-OK, now I get it! So Shukracharya also used Prakriti Siddhi, to per vert the minds of Kacha and Devayani?”
“Something came over them, didn’t it? Even the gods are not exempt. Krishna Himself never knew that Vishvamitra would curse his entire clan, and even though Krishna did His best to prevent it the curse had its full ef fect. Even the ocean participated in the curse, despite the fact that Krishna is of the lunar race whose progenitor, Moon, is lord of the ocean.
“Not even Mahakala was exempt from Prakriti Siddhi. He never knew He would have to take birth as Anjaneya.”
“Mahakala never knew he would have to take birth as Anjaneya?”
“No. Do you remember that Shiva blessed Ravana that he would die when he stole another man’s wife?”
“Parastri haranam, Ravana maranam (Ravana will die when he steals an other man’s wife.).”
“Precisely. Were it not for Shiva the events of the Ramayana need never have taken place, since without Shiva’s blessing Ravana would never have needed to abduct Sita in order to die. This made Shiva the cause of the whole thing, which gave Him no choice but to take birth. He had to be available to assist Vishnu in His incarnation as Rama to ensure that Rama would success fully kill Ravana, to fulfill the terms of His blessing.
“And for that matter, Shiva would have never blessed Ravana had Ravana not decided to die, and Ravana would not have decided to relinquish his im mortality had he not turned Saturn over, at the recommendation of Narada, when Ravana had the Nine Planets lying face down on the steps leading up to his throne. Something came over Ravana to make him agree with Narada’s suggestion; what came over him was Prakriti Siddhi.”
“Wow!” All these myths suddenly slipped into alignment with one another for me.
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“Lord Shiva was also affected by Prakriti Siddhi on another occasion, when He saw Vishnu in His Mohini form as a gorgeous young tribal girl. When He saw Mohini’s garment drop from Her perfect body Shiva was overwhelmed by Her nakedness. He ran after Her like a bull elephant pursues a cow, com pletely unashamed that His wife was watching Him make a spectacle of Him self. Only after He ejaculated did His mind clear sufficiently for Him to realize His predicament. Why should He have chased Mohini? When the very seeds of lust within Him had been fried, burned to ashes, how could they sprout again? Only Prakriti Siddhi could do it. Lord Shiva forgot Himself, just for a moment, and lust reappeared. And if this power can work against someone like Lord Shiva, who is the embodiment of permanent samadhi and has done the most terrible penances imaginable for eons upon eons, well, it must be something. This is the power of Prakriti Siddhi in the hands of an expert. What do you think happened to King Parikshit?’
“You mean the Parikshit who was the son of Abhimanyu, thanks to whom we have the Shrimad Bhagavata?”
“Yes, that Parikshit. When he was out hunting one day he came upon a Rishi sitting in samadhi, alone in his ashram. Parikshit was feeling terribly thirsty and called out for water. When the Rishi sitting in his trance did not offer him any the king became wild, and hung a dead snake around the Rishi’s neck. Then he rode off.
“The Rishi’s son returned to the ashram a few minutes later and saw the snake around his father’s neck. Then he got wild, and spoke this curse: ‘Seven days from now the snake which has been draped about my father’s neck will come back to life. It will bite the perpetrator of this insult, and he will die.
“The intense Tamas of this curse disturbed his father’s concentration and brought him down from his samadhi. He divined the situation in a few mo ments and said, ‘Child, child, what have you done? You have been overcome by Tamas. You must remain in Sattva!
“The boy replied, “Father, you don’t know me. I am far beyond Sattva and all of that. I have deliberately cursed the king, and my curse will prove a bless ing to him.
“The father was goggle-eyed in amazement, realizing all at once that he knew nothing at all of the power of his son. He asked the boy, ‘How is that?’
“His son said, ‘Shukadeva, the young Rishi, will now meet the king and de liver to him the text of the Shrimad Bhagavata, which otherwise would never have come into the hands of mankind. And Parikshit will obtain moksha by hearing it.
“And that is what happened. At the end of seven days of recitation, when the snake came to bite him Parikshit welcomed the serpent with these words:
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‘Go ahead, bite! Do you think that I am the body, that you can harm me?’ And Parikshit merged his consciousness with the Universal Soul. An ordi nary spirit, Dundubhi, who was sitting nearby listening, was freed as well. So it is all thanks to that young rishi that we have the Shrimad Bhagavata. What superb play! First he perverts Parikshit’s mind, then he curses him for it, then the curse becomes a blessing.”
“How could that young Rishi find any limitations left in King Parikshit’s mind to pervert if he was so well tested’?”
“It was easy. So long as Kundalini identifies with your body you remain subject to time, space and causation. This means that your consciousness re mains subject to the chemical patterns in your brain, patterns which can be tinkered with by anyone who knows Prakriti Siddhi. This is why Prakriti Sid dhi is useful only for the living, because the chemical changes which occur in a corpse are destructive only. If a girl comes to a male corpse and jumps all over it and even climbs on top of it will its penis become erect? No. It is de void of life, devoid of ahamkara. You can, if you like, change the prakriti of the dead spirit, but that change can take effect only after it has been born into another womb-unless you can bring it back temporarily.
“Eknath Maharaj did this when he called one woman’s ancestors down to Earth so that she could feed them in person. Feeding them changed her pra kriti entirely, which is why I always say that Pitri Tarpana is so important. You can really change things in your life if you can properly perform Pitri Tar pana. Obviously it would take too long to try to change the prakriti of a whole nation using Pitri Tarpana, so the Rishis use different methods. But for individuals it can be very effective. My Roshni is very clever. She tells me, ‘If you don’t want to teach me anything else, teach me Pitri Tarpana.‘She knows that if proper Pitri Tarpana is ever done for her, her prakriti will change com pletely. All her bad tendencies will be wiped out.
“But does she realize what tremendous shakti it would take to wipe clean the karmic slate of even seven generations of her ancestors? If you are an ordinary human being it is really not feasible to eliminate all the evil, selfish personality traits of all your ancestors. Instead, you should use your sadhana to interdict and obliterate these traits before they have a chance to enter your mind and distort it. Sadhana is good because through it the gods and goddesses can per form a type of Prakriti Siddhi on you. It is a more limited sort of Prakriti Siddhi than the Rishis use, no doubt, but when a deity uses Prakriti Siddhi on a hu man being the effect is still permanent. That person’s very genes and chromo somes are changed, and there is never a regression to the previous state.
“One day Rani Rasmani, who owned the temple in which Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was employed as a priest, had gone there to worship Ma. But in
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stead of concentrating on her worship she was thinking about her business af fairs. When Ramakrishna Paramahamsa noticed this he got up from where he was sitting and gave her a good slap. Then he told her, ‘If you want to come to the temple come with an empty mind, and leave your worldly cares outside.
“Most people interpret this story shallowly. They think that Ramakrishna Paramahamsa read her mind and then slapped her as a sort of shock treat ment, so that she would not forget the lesson. But these people forget that at that moment Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was in unmani, a state in which he was not conscious of what he was doing. In real unmani there is not an iota of body consciousness, not even for a second. When you grope after the percep tion of Absolute Reality for too long it leads to madness, the divine madness of unmani. Your limited body consciousness is completely effaced, and something else plays within your body. In the case of Ramakrishna Parama hamsa it was the Divine Mother, in the form of the goddess Bhavatarini, Who played within him. It was She Who administered the slap to Rani Ras mani, using Ramakrishna Paramahamsa’s hand as an instrument. That slap was a form of Prakriti Siddhi; after that slap Rani Rasmani’s mind was always fixed on God.
“Any blessing or curse that you get from a saint or guru is actually one sort of Prakriti Siddhi. Why? Because by blessing or cursing you they are trans mitting into you some of the power of their personal deities. For example, Eknath Maharaj had a son who was a bigoted Brahmana. He thought his fa ther was soiling the family name by associating with outcastes and low-born people and he and his wife regularly harassed Eknath Maharaj. Then one day Eknath Maharaj asked the couple to appear before him in the clothes in which they had been married. He sat them down in front of him and said, “The two of you make such a beautiful couple. Why can’t your conscious nesses be as beautiful as you are?’ In that second Prakriti Siddhi was per formed on them, and their lives changed for good. This is the kind of guru to have: one who can force your mind to remain straight.
“In our world Prakriti Siddhi can be done in two ways: immediately, with a slap or whatever; and slowly, over a period of time. The fast way is much bet ter, because there is an end to the thing. Unfortunately, unless the power of a deity is flowing through you at the proper moment you won’t be able to do it the fast way. Then you will have to use the slow way, which makes everything linger on. But even if you have to use the slow way you can contrive to make the effect permanent. Take the recent case of a wastrel, an inveterate drunk ard and debauchee. Even such punishments as being expelled from his home and getting a good beating from the police had failed to help improve him. But after his nature was affected he has apologized to his father, wife and
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family, and even worshipped their feet, as a sign of complete submission. He did all these things of his own free will, on his own initiative.
“This fellow will never know what is happening to him, because the pro cess is entirely internal. He will never resist it, because all the changes in his personality come from within. The more egocentric a man is, the more he re quires attention, the less likely he is to disagree with his own suggestions. It is only natural for such a man to be in the habit of believing that anything he says or does is right and desirable. He may even congratulate himself for do ing such a fine thing, believing that he had thought of it himself. Could any external coercion ever provide motivation like that? No.
“This effect is temporary, to be sure. But even when the treatment is over and the old tendencies of mind return—as they must, since they are deeply embedded—they will have to compete with the new habits which have been formed. How long the effect will last will depend on the quality of material you are working with. A person who has a fundamentally good environment, like a good family, good teaching, and such, will be less likely to backslide than someone like Behram.”
“Is this what happened the night that Behram changed his mind about go ing back to Iran and Anjaneya came through you? Did Anjaneya give him a dose of Prakriti Siddhi?”
“Yes, He did. I like to try to harmonize families, to improve people who have gone wrong, and Prakriti Siddhi can be very useful for this. Hasn’t that family been materially benefitted because Behram went back?”
“It has.”
“Though Prakriti Siddhi in the context of a family is almost always used for harmonization, there are times that it must be used for destruction as well. This problem is very uncommon, of course, because the truly harmoni ous family is very rare today. But if there is a family which is completely har monious that family would go on being harmonious endlessly, which cannot be permitted to occur. So, the intellect of only one of the family members is perverted and the whole family falls apart. It sounds cruel, I know, and I know that it is hard to understand why it could be necessary. But only then can a new pattern form.”
“Is this what happened to your own family? That after fifteen generations someone thought that it was time for a change and perverted Putlibai’s mind so that she could pervert your father’s brother’s mind and have him bring the family crashing down?”
“Something like that.”
At this a thin, dejected-looking pariah dog wandered up to us, tail between his legs, and we offered him a sugar cookie. After an brief conceptual struggle
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over whether accepting it might entail an eventual kick his hunger overcame his fear and he came up to my hand, accepted the cookie, and began to eat it weakly. I continued to feed him as Vimalananda talked.
“But these are not the only uses of Prakriti Siddhi. There is no end to its usefulness. For instance, long ago when I was a naked sadhu I was invited to Nepal by the Rana. He wanted to test me, so he lined the main staircase of his palace with beautiful young teenage girls, all of them naked to the waist. They had lovely, enticing breasts, but as I was deep in my sadhana I saw all of them as skeletons. I thought to myself, ‘How can I have a romance with a skeleton?’ And Nature was kind, because their prakritis changed, not mine, and instead of seeing me as a sexual object they saw me as a father or brother. Wasn’t that better?”
“It was much better.”
“And why go so far away? I used to play about with Chotu right here in Bombay. When I had a dairy in Borivali sometimes we would take the subur ban train to the Churchgate Terminus. When I was in a certain peculiar mood I would tell him, ‘Everyone will get down at Churchgate. All of the people in our compartment would then get down at Churchgate, no matter what intervening station they had meant to alight at. They would walk out the door of the station and then realize, ‘Oh, no, what have I done? I wanted to get down at such-and-such station, and here I am at Churchgate. I must have slept through it. But they had not slept through it. Sometimes I would make everyone on the platform get on the train, even if it was the wrong train for them. Only later on would they figure it out. I used to enjoy playing about in this way. It was harmless fun, because there are plenty of trains for people to catch, and it gave me a chance to test my range, which is important for any siddhi.
“Now an example on a larger scale. Look at India, a poor country with rich enemies. But we have Prakriti Siddhi to protect us. America can send any number of planes, tanks and other armaments to Pakistan, and we don’t bother about it. Why? Because planes, ships, tanks, cannon and everything else will not work without human beings. All that is necessary is to pervert the Pakistani soldiers’ intelligence. Suppose a formation of warplanes is flying to wards our country. What if all the pilots suddenly change course and go in the wrong direction at the wrong altitude, flying straight into our anti-aircraft guns? If they then forget to evade the anti-aircraft fire they will all be shot down. Just think: in the last war seventeen Sabre jets were shot down by one anti-aircraft gun. Seventeen! Is that at all possible? Only with Prakriti Siddhi.
“Or take the sinking of the submarine Ghazi in Vishakhpatnam harbor. We didn’t even know it was there until the military police picked up two fish
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ermen who were quarreling over the division of the money that the Paki stanis had given them to keep quiet about their presence. Then the Navy started dropping random depth charges. Random depth charges! They had absolutely no idea where the damned thing was and yet they sank it! Isn’t that hard to believe? But it happened. Couldn’t the Pakistani captain have thought to move his sub out of the harbor temporarily? He could have but he didn’t, because his prakriti was perverted.
“A formation of Patton tanks crossed our borders. What to do? First, Na ture was very kind to us; there was tremendous rain for twenty-four hours, quite out of season. The tanks were moving through sugarcane fields, where they got bogged down. Would any general ever think of attacking when the Pakistanis did, when crops are standing in the fields and the ground is still soggy from rain? Everyone knows that it is suicide to send out waves of tanks in these conditions. The Pakistani generals are not idiots, but they forgot what they knew at a crucial moment because their prakritis were changed. Then someone in our army got the bright idea of taking an iron bar and sticking it into the treads of the tanks. With the treads gone the tanks couldn’t move, and were easily destroyed. You see, India cannot afford all sorts of pre mium weapons; we have to make do with what we have. An iron bar costs a few rupees, but it can stop a tank! Isn’t the job done just as well? Nature is very kind to India.”
“Prakriti Siddhi, then, could be used in any war.”
“Why not? Think about the Second World War. Why did Hitler fail to pur sue the English and French at Dunkirk? Why did he call off the Battle of Brit ain and the invasion of England, just when it might have succeeded? Why did he invade Russia two weeks too late? At crucial moments his mind was per verted, just a bit-but that was enough to sabotage all his plans. It was enough to dissolve his dream-edifice of conquest, his Thousand-Year Reich, after a mere dozen years.”
“Who was it that perverted his mind? Some Rishi?”
“Maybe. And maybe not. But how does that matter? What matters is that the real use of siddhis, Robby, including Prakriti Siddhi, the ultimate siddhi, is not all this fancy stuff. The real use of siddhis is to make life a little easier for all the suffering beings in our wretched and thankless world. Look at what a gift we are giving to this poor little doggie! When we convinced him that we would not harm him he came near to us in trust, and we’ve been feeding him. Like all of us he has taken birth just to endure his karmas and is endur ing them without even knowing why. We have satisfied his hunger, and loved him. Now we must make him go to sleep so he can get a good rest for once in his life of pain.”
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The dog did not want to snooze; he wanted to eat more. But we didn’t want him to get sick. He sat down all of a sudden, as if pushed, and his head started to droop; though he made several valiant efforts to lift it, sleep overtook him inexorably. Soon he was peacefully snoozing, and Vimalananda and I shared a gentle grin over him. “When you love God,” he said softly to me,“you see God in all His creations and cannot bear to see Him miserable. And then you offer everything you can to Him, spontaneously from the depths of your heart, even if that means using siddhis to tinker with fate.”
“So don’t feel bad,” he concluded with a twinkle in his eye, “if you are ex posed to Prakriti Siddhi someday. When even the Rishis and the gods have been affected by it why shouldn’t you be?” Unexpectedly and unaccountably I had a vision of Vimalananda, his Junior Guru Maharaj and his Senior Guru Maharaj all aiming Prakriti Siddhi at one another, but I brushed it away as inspired by the gust of wind that had just ruffled our hair.
On November 28, 1982 Redstone was nominated by the editor of our rac ing weekly as Champion Three-Year-Old Colt at Poona in honor of winning both the races in which he ran during the Poona season. His future looked bright, but as he was still not up to par by the time acceptances for the 1983 Indian Derby came due he was scratched from that race as well. We still had no reason to suspect any serious problem, nor had we any time for suspicion with the Auctions Sales impending. Thoroughbred breeding, which is one of the most speculative of businesses, attracts to it a smooth and sophisticated variety of operator. For a week before the sales begin these stud proprietors go on display along with their colts and fillies, and prospective owners buzz about them, Auction Catalogue in hand, evaluating and interrogating. The sellers calculate, cogitate, and deliberate; much tea is drunk and many com ments are exchanged; and the vets do a brisk business in examinations for configuration and soundness.
About a third of the horseflesh brought to be vended is disposed of by pri- . vate sale during these days. What is not purchased privately comes into the auction ring, where it fell in those days under a hammer brandished by Mr. B.K.F. Damania, an aged and crotchety Parsi sports writer known to all by his initials. BKFD’s job was to extract the highest price for the lots he was assigned over the three days that the auctions continued, and he speckled his banter with temptations, threats, pleas and coaxings to spur recalcitrant buyers into commitments. There he sat on his little throne under an awning in the Pad dock while the rest of us crowded into the seats surrounding him to hear his
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patter: “I want some more, I’m not a seller at that price”; “No more, then? All done? Sold, to …”; or, when the reserve bid was not met, “Bought in.”
Because this February we were just watching and not bidding, I sat there surveying the scene on this second of the three auction days. I was thinking of the fact that perhaps two out of every three of these two-year-olds might actually see the racecourse, that maybe half of those might win a race, and that with great luck one out of ten might be a fairly impressive racer. From this perspective Vimalananda was either exceptionally lucky or exceedingly perceptive. For, I had known him his horses’s records had far surpassed these odds. An eye for talent, creative dietary supplementation, race manipulation, or Prakriti Siddhi: was there one principal instrumentality of his success, or did they all play their parts?
I mused on until BKFD’s gavel fell for the last time that day, when Vima lananda and I progressed to another corral on the Club’s grounds to enjoy the highlight of the Sales: the annual auction dinner. It was catered that year by a firm from Delhi, and was excellent. The Club’s Stewards were apparently still reeling from the fiasco of two years before, when the Parsi Stewards had ordered Parsi food for everyone. The meat dishes were said to have been tasty that year, but the vegetarian menu was largely inedible. I personally was re duced to making a meal of Kersasp Kolah’s Spicy Carrot Pickle with wheat rotis that a myopic eye and a lazy tongue might have misconstrued to be well worn shoe soles. That dinner caused the Club’s vegetarians to rise as one in rebellion. The next year’s result was a happier meal, this year’s even happier.
This year we sat enjoying drinks and tidbits as we compared notes over prices and purchasers with Tehmul and a few of his other owners, with Dr. Kulkarni, and with Mr. Tejwani, a refined man who built buildings to bank roll his string of nearly a dozen horses. At our table also sat the jolly Barkat Ali Khan, a man Vimalananda much respected for his knowledge of horse flesh and of music. Barkat Ali had become so disgusted with the discreditable ways and means of trainers that he had had himself declared a private trainer. Now he and his son took care of his horses himself, with some success. Vima lananda had talked of taking such a step himself, but his poor health now precluded him from doing it personally. Nor could his circle of confidants qualify: I being a foreigner would not be permitted to train and Roshni had a full-time job. Mamrabahen would have been overjoyed to nominate her pol troon Jhendu Kumar for the post, but that would have been entirely like hir ing a fox to supervise a henhouse. To call Jhendu Kumar feckless would be an insult to those who show some shreds of feck.
I sat at the table silently munching tri-corner samosas and spinach pakodas, uneasily watching the greasy Subhashbhai banter with Vimalananda in the
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hope of getting him to agree to purchasing a horse in partnership. That there was no chance of that happening I was sure; Vimalananda was neither so naive nor so drunk that he would consider even for a moment entering into a part nership with such a man as Subhashbhai, who left behind him when he walked a slime trail that would put a banana slug to shame. No, I was worried that Vimalananda might try to repeat a stunt of some years previous that he had recalled to mind that very morning. For some reason, back in the days when the British ruled India, he had wanted to get even with Admiral Eric Shipton, so when the Admiral hosted a party Vimalananda came equipped with a sausage. After several drinks he began to feign drunkenness and ex cused himself to visit the loo, where he inserted the dark red meaty cylinder into his open fly. When he emerged and people saw what they thought was his exposed state they began to cough in embarrassment, until Admiral Shipton himself felt it necessary to take him aside and point out his oversight. “Whaaa?” said Vimalananda besottedly. “Oh, that bloody thing? Here, I’ll take care of it… ”Extracting a knife from his pocket he chopped that wurst in two.
Vimalananda claims that there were women who swooned on seeing this feat. Admiral Shipton was, I am sure, not in the least amused. At this auction dinner there were fortunately no sausages among the hors d’oeuvres, but I could not shake the feeling that Vimalananda was plotting something or other. Sure enough, after we finished eating Subhashbhai invited us to come with him to listen to music. Vimalananda accepted readily and asked the dis gusted Barkat Ali, who being a good Muslim refused to drink, to accompany us. When he summarily declined, we departed. I drove, since I had done no more than sip at my whiskey. I knew that Vimalananda could drive perfectly well no matter how drunk he was, for drink did not affect him as it affected other people. Two years before he had safely driven me and Roshni home af ter the auction dinner after he had tippled an entire bottle of whisky. No, I was more worried that driving would just excite him more, as it had on that previous night when he sped up, gnarling, just to show he was still in control after Roshni gently chided him when once or twice he veered slightly onto the center line.
Via a number of ill-lit alleys, Subhashbhai took us to a location where he offered us paan, paan that we later discovered had been secretly laced with an illegal stimulant. Vimalananda was now beginning to become enthusiastic about the prospect of causing some sort of massive loss of face for Subhashb hai and the stimulant only heightened his mental clarity. When we pulled up in front of our destination I saw that we were within the purlieus of Bombay’s sizable red-light district. As we made our way into the warren of rooms I was staggered by the wondrous sight of a mound of onions no less than four feet
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high, attended to by a human gnome who was swiftly peeling each one.
Two women who were evidently prostitutes seated us in a chamber in which sat a harmonium. Subhashbhai began to nod off as the women began their serenade. When they were finished Vimalananda told them, “That was very nice, but I would like to teach you something that I think your patrons will find most enjoyable. Could you please find me a tabla player?” Within five minutes a tabla player arrived and Vimalananda commenced his teach ing concert. Soon all the ladies in the building who were not otherwise en gaged had gathered in that small room, everyone appreciating and enjoying Vimalananda’s thaumaturgy–everyone, that is, except Subhashbhai, who at one point tilted to his feet and headed for the door. When Vimalananda ran out of cigarettes some half an hour or more later and we bid the sorrowing cocottes adieu we found Subhashbhai lying in the gutter near our car, fast asleep, his driver eyeing him watchfully. As I drove us home Vimalananda said, “This will teach that debauchee a good lesson. Does he think that my mind can be led astray by intoxicants, by women, or by money? Ha!”
Subhashbhai gave both of us a wide berth from then on. By unspoken agreement we told no one but Tehmul of the humiliating performance he had put on. The distressing fact was, though, that he had somehow managed the effrontery to attempt to inveigle Vimalananda into participating in his schemes. This suggested that undersirable influences were beginning to ac cumulate in Vimalananda’s environment, perhaps the curse that dogs Bom bay was coming upon him. Another disconcerting reminder of Bombay’s nature was provided to us shortly thereafter when Vimalananda pointed out to me a tall dreadlocked sadhu heatedly discussing the race book with a woman, standing on the grass in front of the First Enclosure at the Bombay racecourse just before a race.
“That’s Shankargiriji,” said Vimalananda. “The Shankargiriji?” said I.
“The very one,” replied Vimalananda. I peered down on the sadhu, as im pressed by his appearance—he was said to be at least 125 years old as I was distressed by his conduct back in 1949 during the Ranu episode. When Vi malananda, then in the jungle with Shankargiriji, saw a vision of the death of his nine-year-old son, Ranu, Shankargiriji repeately pooh-poohed it. Vima lananda insisted on rushing to Bombay anyway and arrived in time to meet Ranu alive once more but too late to save the boy from death. “Shankargiriji doesn’t seem to do much except gamble nowadays,” Vimalananda now mur mured. “When his disciples come to see him he has them sit down and play cards. He’s entitled to do as he pleases, but I don’t like it when sadhus set bad examples for others who are not so advanced as they.” The conversation
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ended there as I had to go downstairs to the Ring to bet, but that evening Vi malananda, as if from out of the blue, told me a story:
“There was once a woman who as a daily personal sadhana would cook a stack of rotis and feed them to her guru, who happened to be Durvasas Rishi. Every day she had to ford the river that separated her house from Durvasas’ hut. One day during the monsoon the river rose so high after she had reached the Rishi with his lunch that she was unable to cross back over. She began to fret about the dinner she needed to cook for her husband until Durvasas said, ‘What are you making such a big noise about? Go to the river and tell her, “Ma, if Durvasas has never eaten even one of my rotis please let me cross, but if he has eaten even one don’t allow me to proceed.”
“The woman wanted to object, for Durvasas had been daily eating a big stack of rotis before her own eyes for weeks and weeks. But Durvasas said, ‘Go!’ Knowing his reputation as a curse-monger she kept her mouth shut, fearing for her destiny. She went back to the river, told the river what she had been told to say—and the water went down enough for her to cross.
“This really disturbed her mind. That evening while she was cooking her husband’s dinner she could think of nothing but the afternoon’s incident. It is never good to cook absent-mindedly, and because she was trying to use her limited brain to figure out what had happened she forgot to add any salt to the food. When her husband got home she served him absent-mindedly, which he noticed, and when he tasted the food he said to her, ‘What is on your mind, goddess?’
“She replied defensively, ‘Nothing; nothing at all!’
“He told her gently, “Then why did you forget to add any salt to the food? You never forget such things.
“Now she was abashed, and told him the whole story, ending with, ‘But how could he do this?’
“Her husband said, ‘Oh, this is truly a minor thing. Let’s make an experi ment. The river is still high, isn’t it? Tomorrow, when you need to cross over to feed the Rishi, tell the river, “Ma, if my husband has never had sex with me, let me cross over; but if he has enjoyed intercourse with me even once don’t let me pass.”
“Now the woman was really fed up. She was the mother of eight strapping sons! How could he claim he had never impregnated her? But her husband refused to listen to her complaints. Next morning when she reached the river it was in spate. When she told it what her husband had bidden her say it dropped enough for her to pass.
“When she reached Durvasas with her pile of rotis she waited watching while he ate them.in peace. When he was done she described to him what had
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happened that morning. When he heard what her husband had said Durva sas told the woman, ‘Don’t come to me anymore. Your husband is advanced enough to take care of you himself?”
Vimalananda fell silent. As I had read a similar story from a book of Indian parrot tales, and I thought he was simply recapitulating it for me. Then Roshni took me aside and said, “Whether or not this happened to Durvasas it did happen to Vimalananda; I was there. That woman with the rotis was Vi malananda’s wife. The river she had to cross was actually Bombay harbor, which she used to cross by ferry to feed Shankargiriji, her guru who then lived in Alibag, on the coast. Both times it looked at first as if the ferry would not be able to go, but it did go-after she talked to the ocean as she had been told to do.”
I had known Vimalananda’s wife for some years by this time and got along with her well enough. But I knew that she had insisted on marrying Vima lananda—in spite of being frightened into illness after a trip to the smashan with him—and that after marriage she had continued to consider her hus band quite the useless loafer for failing to focus his life on money-making. Now I found that even the words of the man she had taken as her guru had failed to shake this opinion. Was there any limit to the depth of rnanu bandhana’s influence in human life, I had to wonder, or to the pain that that influence could produce?
Saturn had moved into Libra in October 1982 to sit atop my Moon (and Roshni’s too), which accelerated the force of our Sade Satis. Events began to cumulate after Roshni’s departure for East Asia on a Bank of America train ing tour. First Vimalananda, who had been complaining of shortness of breath for weeks, was diagnosed with congestive cardiac failure. I played the nurse, dosing him with potions and keeping him all but tied to the bed, and restricted him to one cigarette per day. But I saw that he was losing interest in his physical health and did little to complement this treatment with the well-nigh-miraculous powers of self-healing that I had seen him exercise before on so many occasions. The possibilities worried me, and solutions eluded me.
Then the grooms at the track again went out on strike, in continuation of a spell of labor unrest during the previous Poona season which had deterio rated into violence. The Poona police had had to fire some gunshots to con trol the crowd and of the three grooms who were injured one was literally gelded by a bullet. The police officer who was second in command of that op
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eration was a friend of Tehmul’s and had described the battle scenes for us from his perspective as a maintainer of the public order. He was a gung-ho young man, with an innuendo of a swagger in his stride, who seasoned his conversation with macho observations like, “The real danger, sir, and the real thrill, comes when you have to face an industrial mob. You don’t know what they are like, sir, I tell you, an industrial mob is a real test of a man’s mettle.”
No violence marred this Bombay strike, but as there was a shortage of will ing hands to care for the horses I had to go daily to the stables for a couple of weeks to help Tehmul handle them. I had previously watched some of the lo cal gymkhanas, events in which amateur riders exhibited their skills, and an ticipated being able to do my job at least as well as those teenagers could. Fortunately Fakruddin, the head groom, took pity on me and gave me the aged gelding Onslaught to lead on his walk around the stables. Then for the first time in my life I realized through personal experience what it was like to have control of nearly 1500 pounds of neurotic thoroughbred. Though On slaught liked to nip at everyone he didn’t rear up much, so I kept my distance from his mouth and was not bitten. Only once did Onslaught make as if to rear, just to show me who was boss, but Fakhruddin and Nakhodaji the far rier sped over to help me bring him under control.
“At least,” said Vimalananda to me as I sat next to his bed delivering my re port, this strike is not the communists’ doing.”
“Would the communists be any worse than these people?” I griped.
“The communists? Oh my God! Once the communists in one of the unions at the racecourse decided that they had to have their way, even if it meant harming the horses. So they kept the horses hostage until their de mands were negotiated. What did the horses ever do to them? Injure the owners if you want to, but why the horses? Those bastards knew that they had less to lose if they harmed the horses rather than the owners, so they went for the horses first. Such people do not deserve to be humans! I tell you, as soon as they die they will be born into appropriate wombs so that Nature can teach them some fine lessons. Human justice may slip up, but not divine justice.”
“Why do you hate communism so much? Isn’t it more appropriate to hate the people that the communists are fighting, the people who exploit the labor of others and pay them a miserly pittance?”
“One of the many reasons I hate communism is that communists believe that the end justifies the means—which is ridiculous. They believe this because they are frustrated and want to take their frustrations out on others instead of enduring them themselves. If you are miserable you must have performed some karma at some point to make you miserable. Should you not pay for that
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karma? Some kind-hearted person may assist you by showing you how to pay off the karma with less expenditure on your part. If he is really kind-hearted he might even take away some of your karmas from you and endure them him self. But you can’t just grab hold of someone and force him to share your kar mas; it just doesn’t work that way. That way only creates new karmas.”
“Does the end ever justify the means?”
“How can it? Is there an end? The end cannot possibly justify the means because the end is the means; the means determines the end. Cause is Effect concealed; Effect is Cause revealed. Only an absolutely desirable end could justify any means to attain it. But any end you can envision must be false, be cause a goal however noble is a limitation that you impose on Reality, which is unlimited. All limitations however slight are imperfect, which makes them only relatively, not absolutely, true. There is no end so absolute that it justifies any means, except maybe the end of getting yourself back to God. But if you don’t understand the Law of Karma you will get into trouble even there. You always have to think of all the potential repercussions from what you do.
“One of Narsi Mehta’s songs ends this way: ‘People will beat you with their shoes when you sing these songs, but you will go to Vaikuntha (Vishnu’s heaven). Gandhiji (Mahahtma Gandhi) sang Narsi Mehta’s songs, but he was never beaten with shoes. In fact he was worshipped. Why? Because first, he was devoted mainly to politics, not to God. Second, he had no faith in these songs. If he had had faith in them he would have left politics altogether. Third, and worst, he used Narsi’s songs for political ends–to make people think he was a saint, a mahatma.”
“He wasn’t a mahatma?”
“What does mahatma mean? Atma is the soul, which is realized after many, many lifetimes. (Maha + Atma= Mahatma = “Great Soul.”) That must be re ally something, mustn’t it? Had Gandhi realized even the soul, much less the Great Soul? No, he had not. How can I say that? Well, for one thing, he relied on his intuition to tell him what to do. So many saints do that. But his intu ition was always wrong, and what would happen? He would commit Hima layan blunders, confess them to everyone and then start all over again and repeat the process.”
“Oh, but come on, you have to agree that he did achieve his goal; he did kick the British out of the country.”.
“Yes, Gandhi’s aim was good. But he should not have claimed to be nonvi olent when he was not nonviolent.”
“What are you talking about?” “He may have rejected physical violence, but what about his non-physical violence? What about all the time he spent coercing people to do what he
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wanted them to do by threatening to kill himself through fasting? Where’s the non-violence in that? And don’t ever forget the Law of Karma. You see what Gandhi did, and now look what has happened! Our politicians still use indef inite fasts and demonstrations and general strikes to manipulate people, but now they manipulate them into voting en masse for whichever candidate shares their caste or their religion. Gandhiji may have used his means for a noble end, but today his means has become the end. Today’s politicians can think of nothing more than their own terms of offices, and they are willing to do anything in order to succeed. Why should I support them in inflaming re ligious and ethnic sentiments? Do you think I want to encourage bigotry of any sort? Never!
“Unfortunately, the vast majority of human beings are sheep. Long ago I too used to be in that flock of sheep. But then I ran away, and now that I have dedicated my life to staying away from that flock of sheep why would I want to return to it? Why do you think I refuse to vote?”
“Would participating in the democratic process ship you back to the flock?”
“What democratic process? If we had informed voters voting that would be one thing. But the majority of our voters are illiterate and, as in most de mocracies, they vote for whomever promises them the most. I’m sorry, but we got our independence very cheaply. If we had had to fight for it, like the Vietnamese did, I think we would value it much more.
“Do you mean that maybe it would be better for Nature not to continue to help India intercept enemy tanks, planes and submarines, just to teach your fellow countrymen to value their freedom?”
“No, not at all. Our brave soldiers and sailors and airmen fully deserve Na ture’s help. No, it will be better for the politicians to suffer. To be a politician you have to put your conscience on the shelf. Why should I support people who have no conscience, even if I only support them by stating my prefer ence for them?
“I do try to support those politicians who are decent people, but decent politicians will never get very far, because they are not willing to stab their grandmothers in the back. And how many decent politicians are there, espe cially today? Look at our current crop of Indian politicians! All that they know how to do is to try to extort support from others by courting arrest. And where did they learn this tactic from? From Gandhi! By creating things like the ‘Fill the Jail’ agitation Gandhiji encouraged ambitious people to think that the only qualification to hold public office that they really require is to have been a jailbird.”
“So what was Gandhiji’s potentially justifiable means has become an un justifiable political end.” I reflected. “How well this supports your thesis.”
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“In my life I have found two touchstones. One was Ramakrishna Parama hamsa and the second was Gandhiji. Everyone who came in contact with Ra makrishna Paramahamsa became truly spiritual, and everyone who came in contact with Gandhiji became truly materialistic, greedy for fame or money or both. And still people worship Gandhiji as a saint! It’s amazing. I once knew an old Muslim fakir who used to say, Gandhi teri aandhi duniya ko paye mal, magar teri bhut pujayegi.”
“I don’t quite follow that.” He was exaggerating for emphasis, as Indians tend to do, but the karmic implications intrigued me.
“Gandhi, your storm will wreak havoc on the world, but your statues will be worshipped. And they are. India is a most unique country."
“You will at least admit that Gandhiji was brave.”
“Yes, I’ll grant you that. He stood up to the British and wouldn’t give up until he got his way. But he was also very lucky that he was fighting the Brit ish, who at least showed some decency. If the Germans or the Japanese had been ruling India then how long do you think Gandhi would have lasted? Not very long! As soon as he stood up and made some noise they would have simply shot him dead.”
“So India’s independence is partly due to the British?”
“Think about this for a moment: Suppose the minds of some key British ers became perverted and they decided that the best course of action was to give India its freedom without resisting much. Then Gandhi looks less like the man who caused it all and more like the instrument through which someone else caused it.”
“Hmm.”
“I tell you one thing today: this is exactly what will happen to communism. One of these days, and it will be sooner than you think, the minds of the top communists are going to be perverted. Without anyone else’s help they themselves will destroy everything that their commissars have built atop all those mountains of corpses. And that will make me very, very happy.”
I thought this prediction daft then, but of course it was merely prescient. Within a few short years of his death communism had begun its inevitable collapse.
Here Vimalananda stubbed out his cigarette and paused before continu ing: “No matter how pure your motives are your ass can still be fired even if you keep your nose clean.” While the Hindi phrase “to fire someone’s ass” lit erally means to violate that person anally, in Bombay argot it suggests giving that someone a very hard time.
“You know, Chotu used to spend plenty of time with a sadhu named Chait anyananda. Chaitanyananda was a good man, with a good knowledge of
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Ayurveda. People would come to him all the time for treatment because he could cure many serious diseases, including the first stage of cancer. He would make whoever came to him stay for about a month. The first day he would tend to that person carefully to create a false sense of security. Then he would go out into the jungle and collect a certain plant. He would extract its juice, which he called Ram-rasam (“Rama’s Juice’), and then administer it to the pa tient. Anyone who took Ram-rasam would purge and vomit. My God, how they would purge and vomit! Go on, purging and vomiting! Once the patient’s insides were cleaned out Chaitanyananda would serve him khichadi (rice and split mung beans cooked together) into which a little bhasma (Ayurvedic me tallic oxide medicine) had been added. Chaitanyananda would vary the type of bhasma according to the nature of the disease. The poor fellow would take this diet alone for two weeks or a month or whatever, and would leave cured.”
“So he really fired their asses, literally, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but it was for their own good. They were so ill that their bodies re quired that kind of severe discipline to be cured. Chaitanyananda was a very disciplined man. Every morning he would get up and tend to his patients. Then he would sit down in the lotus position and go into a samadhi during which he would not move all day long. This kind of samadhi is really not all that useful, though; it is just like being dead. Your mind is so concentrated on one object that it does not move, but it cannot go anywhere else either.
“Chaitanyananda had a good life, but when it came time for him to die Death told him, ‘So, you have made so many people purge? Then you too will purge!’ And he did purge, for days together, before getting release. And why? Because of the Law of Karma. Even though he cured many people his method of cure produced karma for him because he self-identified with it.”
“Even his samadhi didn’t save him from those karmas.”
“Not at all! Some people to whom I tell this story complain to me that this does not seem fair. They say that the end that this old man was pursu ing—the end of healing the sick-should justify the means he was using to obtain it. But I tell you again, there is no end so desirable that it will exempt you from enjoying the effects of the karmas you performed to achieve it. I am a perfect example of this. For years on end I have performed basti with hot water.”
Basti, which means “enema,” is performed by different means in Ayurveda and in Hatha Yoga. Vimalananda used the yogic method, using his abdomi nal muscles to suck water into his colon and swirl it around there before ex pelling it.
“One reason I do basti is to keep my insides clean. It is my internal bath, which helps to keep my awareness clear. Another reason I do basti is to pre
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vent my food from going to form prostate fluid or sperms. Basti with hot wa ter helps to send the food’s juices to form ojas without any delay. The brain is a truly marvelous structure; it is a lake, a lake that is jellylike and full of ojas. In fact, the brain is your own personal Lake Manasarovara. Every brain cell is itself a lake of Amrita, with a mountain of knowledge—a Mount Kailash contained within it.”
“Right,” I said. By combining basti with other spiritual practices he was able to obtain a maximum of ojas from a minimum of semen. Just as in the outer world Lord Shiva lives on Mount Kailash, which sits in Tibet just near Lake Manasarovara, even so in the inner world your personal Shiva—your consciousness-inhabits the mountain of knowledge within the lake of the brain’s juices.
“I have done lots of basti, Vimalananda went on,“to keep my insides pure and to nourish my brain, and what is the result? The hot water has so thor oughly burned the lining of my intestine that it interferes with the assimila tion of my food. So now when I really need good assimilation to regain my strength I find that my own purificatory practice is firing my ass.”
“Hahaha,” I responded—a good pun deserves a little compassionate laughter even when it hits close to home. I should have stayed silent, though, for it was my own ass which was next fired, thanks to my first interview on Indian TV. The interview, which was the outgrowth of a conference held in Bombay by the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine, was held in Marathi, a language that I understand adequately but speak haltingly. I took the precaution, as I did for my second Marathi TV in terview five years later, to have a script created and translated into grammati cal Marathi. I then memorized it and delivered it with verve in a decent accent. The result was sufficiently successful that people still stop me on the street in Maharashtra to ask me if they have seen me on TV. When I admit that it was I they saw they then expect me to speak with them in fluent collo quial Marathi. There is no escape from the Law of Karma.
When the first interview was first screened I sat to watch it with Vima lananda and a couple of his children. After the opening credits had rolled the interviewer asked me about the people who had most influenced my Ayurvedic studies. I responded by mentioning K. Narayana Baba of Hydera bad, who was instrumental in getting me admitted into the college; Dr. Vas ant Lad, who helped me survive the college; and Vaidya B.P. Nanal, Poona’s doyen of Ayurveda. When Vimalananda did not hear his name he asked me sharply, “Have you forgotten me?”
“Not at all,” I shot back boldly. “But I don’t want any new people coming to bother you with questions or ask for favors when you are not well.”
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“So what! Your acknowledgements were incomplete. This show does not deserve to be seen!” Then, without any warning, the TV’s screen went blank. At first I thought he had vandalized our set, but the next day’s Times of India reported that at the precise moment of Vimalananda’s comment the power supply to Bombay TV’s transmitter was mysteriously, inexplicably lost, in terrupting broadcasts to the whole of Bombay for the rest of the evening. Af ter Vimalananda read that story he exultantly had me read it myself, and taunted me with, “Now you see what happens when you fail to acknowledge your mentor!”
“All I wanted to do was to keep you from having any more trouble!" I re torted with cautious exasperation. “In the future I will always acknowledge you, if that’s the way you want it, and you can go right ahead and live with the consequences. But there’s nothing I can do about this interview. It’s al ready in the can, and I don’t quite know how I would explain to the producer that if he doesn’t tape one more acknowledgement my mentor will continue to fire the ass of the TV station’s power supply so that our program will never be seen!”
Vimalananda now began to laugh, and replied, “All right, my boy, all right, I won’t interfere again—but don’t forget the next time …“One month later we watched the interview in its entirety. Since that day I have never neglected to give him credit where credit is due him.
One evening during the fortnight of my life as a groom I was walking slowly toward the ocean pondering a death under hooves when Param Singh drove by and offered me a lift as far as the Opera House. I thought that he must have some ulterior motive, but he only wanted to chat and to find out how Vima lananda was doing. I satisfied him by briefly outlining Vimalananda’s physical condition. How could I explain to Param Singh, or to anyone else at the race course, that Vimalananda was growing more and more aloofly philosophical about life under the combined influences of two Sade Satis, multiple devotee shenanigans, and his Junior Guru Maharaj’s whimsies?
Mamrabahen was also doing her best to make Vimalananda’s life hell and it was beginning to show. “Mamrabahen is goading me to kill her,” he would say, “but I’m not going to do so. She can kill me, if necessary, or be the cause of my death, but this curse is going to end this time around.” When one day I cavilled about having to endure Mamrabahen’s venom as well he retorted, “Don’t you think you must be tangled up in this curse too, somehow? Otherwise why would she hate you so much? She hated you as soon as you two met.”
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Aghora III: The Law of Karma
“I keep asking you what I should do about this, and you never tell me to do anything."
“What you should do is to continue trying to remain calm. Eventually, if you are patient enough, your portion of the curse will dwindle. You may even be able to turn it into a blessing."
“What?”
“Why shouldn’t it be possible to change a curse into a blessing? After all, both are forms of shakti. In fact, you can turn almost any curse into a bless ing; the only question is how to do it."
“Well?”
“You can use one of the specific methods, if you know them. If you don’t then the best thing to do is to find out who cursed you and patiently serve that individual. Do good service in a spirit of devotion. Don’t even think about how long it might take. Just resolve to continue to serve for as long as neces sary. There will come a time when the heart of your ill-wisher will be so over come with love that it will melt. In that moment the change can be made.”
“How am I going to find out who gave me this curse?” “If you need to know you’ll find it out.”
In May of 1983 Vimalananda was feeling well enough to go to Poona to visit his horses. This time we carried with us Cawas Bilimoria, our long-time heart-patient friend from Bombay. After spending a couple of days at the sta bles Vimalananda and I drove out of Poona with Arzoo and Cawas to pay a social call on Mr. Chabbu Ranbuke, who had been Vimalananda’s wrestling protegé toward the end of Vimalananda’s career as a professional wrestler. Chabbu welcomed Vimalananda like a long-lost father and fed us the best mango juice that I have feasted on until today. After lunch we went on to a nearby town where lived an aged Muslim fakir whose skin had become so thin that the blood could be seen flowing through his vessels. Though the verbal conversation between Vimalananda and this holy man was unremark able a diffuse sense of disturbance began to swirl within me as we departed. We drove past a favorite Ganesha shrine without stopping. When I turned to suggest that we halt there briefly Vimalananda pulled me up sharply and told me to keep my opinions to myself.
This was not like him at all, which further magnified my unrest. As we continued towards home my disquiet began to crystallize around the driving skills of the boy who sat behind the wheel of the car. Farokh, the 16-year-old son of Pesi and Fanny Sodabottliwala, was driving their car forward while turning his head backward to speak with Vimalananda. It was twilight. Forty-two kilometers from Poona, and five minutes after I reminded Farokh that most automobile accidents happen at twilight, he rammed us into the
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back end of a parked truck. So stunned that for a moment I could not speak, I pulled myself together sufficiently to turn and look at Vimalananda and Ar zoo in the back seat. Great pain creased Vimalananda’s face. Suddenly Cawas, who had been sitting next to me in the front seat, emerged from the wreck and lay down on the ground. Around him gathered a crowd of curious villag ers, who started to shout, “He’s dead! He’s dead!”
“Go see if it’s true!” commanded Vimalananda from behind me. “I prom ised his parents that I would take good care of him. What face will I have to show them if I have to tell them that he died because some young idiot was not watching the road in front of him?”
I would have loved to investigate Cawas’s condition, but I was too firmly wedged into the front seat by the collapsed dashboard. I slowly dislodged myself, only to find that extensive bruises to my knees made it almost impos sible to move. By the time I could could clamber out of the car Cawas was on his feet again and was shuffling back to see what had happened to the rest of us. We were all alive, though shaken and bruised. Vimalananda was worst off, with a couple of cracked bones and a severely strained heart, which, he said “felt as though it were about to explode.” We flagged down a couple of cars to take us to Poona, and fell exhausted into bed on arrival.
Some days later when we were alone Vimalananda told me: “I was not too keen on going out that morning. Something just seemed wrong about the day. After Farokh showed up with the car, I realized that the force of our mu tual karmas had gained too much momentum to easily stop. What to do? I decided that the best thing to do would be to go along with the ride that fate had prepared for us. Do you remember what I’ve always told you, Robby, about my attitude toward my fate?"
“You’ve always said that if you knew that you were fated to fall into a ditch one day and break your leg you would not wait for that day to come but would go out and find the ditch and jump into it straightaway to get the karma over with. Are you trying to tell me that you did that on this occasion, the only dif ference being that instead of jumping into a ditch you rammed a truck?”
“At first, when we met Chabbu, I thought that we’d be able to avoid trou ble. But after we met that fakir I knew something bad was going to happen. I could tell that he had some shakti, and that he was going to interfere with our
plans.”
“Do you mean he cursed us? Or that his words or thoughts had the effect of a curse whether he wanted them to or not?”
Vimalananda shrugged his shoulders in assent. “What if he did? If he did it deliberately he’ll have to pay for it, eventually. But how will that help us
now?”
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A meteor of annoyance flashed through the vault of my mind: “Did he do this to us because you challenged him somehow, like you usually do? Was that necessary?” I was all at once so agitated that I began to feel like relin quishing my power of speech.
“What did you expect me to do? Lie down and ask him to walk all over me?”
“But you didn’t have to irritate him!” I sighed to myself, deeply. “Anyway, why did you refuse us a stop at the Ganesha temple?”
“By then I knew an accident was inevitable and didn’t want poor Ganesha to be blamed. Have you forgotten that Arzoo, Cawas, and Farokh are all Par sis? Fine, all three of them have faith in our Indian deities. But what about their Parsi relatives? Few people are more bigoted than a bigoted Parsi. If we had had our accident just after we stopped at a temple some of these Parsi bigots would have been able to make a lot of noise about how impotent the Hindu gods are. They would have said that our gods couldn’t even protect us after we asked them to. I didn’t want that.”
“So what was this whole drama? Was it just a matter of karmic abatement for all of us?”
“Let me be blunt: Farokh was destined to have died in an accident right about this time. When his parents have done so much for me shouldn’t I do a little something for them? Do you have any idea of the pain of losing a child? I do; I’ve lost a son. For six months after my Ranu’s death I was mad with grief, I tell you, off my head entirely. Farokh should have died, and I simply couldn’t have that. I had been trying to whittle away at his karmas little by lit tle so that the accident itself could be evaded. But his karmas were too strong and kept propelling him along. Then I decided to go along with his fate. By accompanying him I was able to manipulate some of his karmas, and some of yours too, and Cawas’s and Arzoo’s. It so happened that the fakir wanted to act as fate’s instrument, which is fine with me. Let him deal with the majority of the karmas; why not? The main thing is that we were going to have the ac cident—and we did but we all survived it. Isn’t that good news for us all? The danger has passed for Farokh, for now, and he’s been given such a good scare that he’ll drive like a normal human being again for quite a while.”
“But, dammit, you almost killed yourself!” “I can’t help that. What mother will not sacrifice herself for her children?”
The very next day came a phone call from Vimalananda’s daughter an nouncing her impending marriage. After hanging up the phone Vimalan anda turned to me and said, “I have seen this coming for months now. There is a peculiar astrological period going on right at the moment that I knew would make her fall in love and decide to marry. Look at her fate–she’s only known this fellow for a week! She’s going to get married; I can’t avert it. But
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the marriage is not going to last.” We made it back to Bombay in time for his daughter to call again to tell him it would be a closed wedding, for family only, and that I was not invited. I was happy not to go, but Vimalananda’s physical condition would not permit him to travel alone in a taxi the twenty miles to the wedding’s venue in North Bombay. He told her to either send a car for him or to have someone come down to South Bombay and bring him north in a taxi. It seemed to me an eminently reasonable request, but she hung up without comment. We did not hear from her again until the evening after the marriage, when she arrived unwillingly with her groom to request her father’s blessings. After they left I asked Vimalananda suspiciously, “You didn’t just create this accident to prevent yourself from being able to attend the ceremony, did you?”
He was silent for a moment before he said, “Well, not exactly, but it did give me a good excuse.”
“Not exactly! Are you crazy!? I know you better than that. What was the big deal that made you break your bones just so you wouldn’t have to attend her wedding?”
“I told you before, I saw this coming. We have just met this man for the first time and he looks very noble and refined, doesn’t he?” I had to agree. “But I have known for a long time that my daughter is doomed to marry someone who will mistreat her. I want her to be able to escape that marriage whenever she needs to do so. When I go to weddings I always bring a coconut and have the bride and groom hold it together while I recite a mantra. After that procedure that marriage cannot be broken no matter how hard you may try to break it. What kind of father would I be if I did that for her and impris oned her in an life of abuse? Would you have wanted that for her?”
No, certainly not; I recalled how effectively that mantra had worked for Sher naz and Behram. Indeed, Vimalananda’s daughter left with her husband for his home on her wedding day. Eight months later—one month after Vima lananda’s death—she hurried back home where she has remained ever since. Her husband, who had seemed so sweet on his surface, had begun to beat her al most as soon as the honeymoon ended and continued to beat her until she fled.
The combination of the physical trauma of the accident and the mental trauma of the wedding caused Vimalananda’s health to take a pronounced downward turn, and in early June 1983 he was hospitalized for a month, to force him to rest. He was a great hit with doctors and fellow patients, all of whom were sorry to see him go when Roshni (now back from abroad) trans ported him back home.
By August he was healthy enough to make brief jaunts to Poona. In Sep tember 1983, as we stood near the northern end of the Poona racecourse in
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the brilliant afternoon sun, Vimalananda predicted his death by the end of the year. Facing southeast, toward the temple of Rama on the nearby Ramtekdi hill, he spoke clearly and firmly without any trace of dread or self pity: “Immense changes are in store for the world. Lots of things that we take for granted will simply cease to exist and lots of things I have no interest in witnessing are heading our way. For example, now we have a new scourge in the world, the scourge of AIDS. Do you realize that AIDS has created thou sands of Visha Kanyas, male and female, all over the world? Everyone who has AIDS is a Visha Kanya. Have unprotected sex with such a person, even once, and you may be doomed. Quite a strange fate, don’t you think? Once only a few Visha Kanyas existed in the world, but now the world is going to be flooded with them.
“And this is just the beginning. Isn’t it interesting that all religions have a time limit, and that the ending points of least three of these are approaching at about the same time, which happens to be now? Vallabhacharya said that his sect, which worships Lallu, the Baby Krishna, would last four hundred years; it is written that Islam will exist for only fourteen hundred years, which have just passed; and if Nostradamus’ prophecies are to be believed, Chris tianity will be finished after two thousand years. And Buddhism and Jainism won’t be spared this winnowing process either.”
“Do you really pay that much attention to such prophecies?”
“No, and neither should you. In fact, you even have to be careful not to em power these prophecies when you repeat them, because that’s a karma too. My point is that these prophecies agree that the world in general is deteriorat ing. Our job is to avoid deteriorating along with it, without making things worse in the world in general. All these people who fret about the end of the world are actually bringing the end nearer with their fretting! They would be do a lot better, for themselves and for the world, if they would spend their time remembering God instead. And they could best do that by focusing on the inevitable end of their own individual worlds: their own deaths.
“Everything has a natural time limit, including people. A human being is made of rnanubandhanas; they create our lives, and also bring them to a close. I have to be concerned about my own time limit because if I outlive my rnanubandhanas I will start creating new karmas, which will ruin me. Outliv ing my rnanubandhanas will force me to continue living in this body, which happens to be falling apart. I could do some rejuvenation on myself, but why? What do I have left here? One of the few things I used to look forward to was to spend some time each day with my little dog, and now she is gone.”
I must have looked hurt, for he added, “I know that you love me sincerely; so does Roshni, and a few of the others. But no one has loved me like my ani
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mals have. I’m afraid that my two-legged friends have never been as loving and reliable as my four-legged friends have been. There is really nothing left for me here—and there are so many other places to play. It so happens that I already have another physical body, on this very planet; one that my mentors never wanted me to find. But I found it anyway, and I know that whenever I leave this one I will simply return to that one. It’s that simple. I really have seen enough of this sort of life, and now that I am nearing the end of the set of karmas that I had to deal with when I was born it is time for me to die. I do not expect to see the beginning of 1984.
“I want you to remember one very, very important thing, Robby: Any time you try to impose your will on the universe you run the risk of creating a new karma whose repercussions may follow you for years, or for lifetimes. When you fail to live with reality, reality inevitably comes to live with you. I got back into racing just to indulge Mamrabahen. Little by little I became more in volved in it. When I bred Redstone I thought that I had a Classic winner. I tried to help him along, and you saw the result. My mind was perverted when I asked that my Ranu die, and my mind was also perverted when I asked that my Redstone win.”
He fell silent. I knew well that when Vimalananda’s son Ranu lay dying of polio in Bombay Vimalananda had actually prayed that Ranu die, for he didn’t want his sports-loving young son to live the cheerless life of a cripple. But this was the first time I was hearing that he had “helped” Redstone to win his Big Race. Now I really had no idea of what to say. When the wordlessness became too oppressive I threw out, “Maybe that race really is a hoodoo race.”
“Maybe it is, and that is my point. If my mind had been perverted I would have believed that running my horse in a hoodoo race would be the best thing for him. It was just the slightest request – I’m telling you today, Robby—Redstone had just the slightest extra ethereal push, to guarantee his victory.–and then everything went wrong with him because he had paid me back what he owed me before he was due to. I knew what could happen had I not seen it with my buffaloes? But a tiny drop of preference just leaked out, and you saw the result. Let this be a lesson to you too: Never make the mistake of telling Nature what you want from Her. Let Her give you what is best from you, out of the endless bounty of Her unfathomable love.”
“I will remember this. But I want to know if your mind was perverted on its own, or whether it had some help.”
“All I can tell you is that Guru Maharaj doesn’t want me in racing. He doesn’t want me to be interested in anything except spirituality, which is as it should be, since he is my guru. But what he doesn’t realize is that without something to attract my interest I am not going to be able to stay in this body.
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I have other worlds to play about on, and I’ll go there. But believe me, when I am gone, Guru Maharaj is going to regret it. He’ll realize then what kind of toy he’s lost. Mark my words, I’m going to make him cry.”
On December 12, 1983, Vimalananda made us all cry.
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