THE RESURRECTION OF SRI YUKTESWAR
“Lord Krishna!” The glorious form of the avatar appeared in a
shimmering blaze as I sat in my room at the Regent Hotel in Bombay.
Shining over the roof of a high building across the street, the
ineffable vision had suddenly burst on my sight as I gazed out of
my long open third-story window.
The divine figure waved to me, smiling and nodding in greeting.
When I could not understand the exact message of Lord Krishna, he
departed with a gesture of blessing. Wondrously uplifted, I felt
that some spiritual event was presaged.
[Illustration: KRISHNA, ANCIENT PROPHET OF INDIA, A modern artist’s
conception of the divine teacher whose spiritual counsel in the
Bhagavad Gita has become the Hindu Bible. Krishna is portrayed
in Hindu art with a peacock feather in his hair (symbol of the
Lord’s lila, play or creative sport), and carrying a flute, whose
enrapturing notes awaken the devotees, one by one, from their sleep
of maya or cosmic delusion.—see krishna.jpg]
My Western voyage had, for the time being, been cancelled. I was
scheduled for several public addresses in Bombay before leaving on
a return visit to Bengal.
Sitting on my bed in the Bombay hotel at three o’clock in the
afternoon of June 19, 1936-one week after the vision of Krishna-I
was roused from my meditation by a beatific light. Before my open
and astonished eyes, the whole room was transformed into a strange
world, the sunlight transmuted into supernal splendor.
Waves of rapture engulfed me as I beheld the flesh and blood form
of Sri Yukteswar!
“My son!” Master spoke tenderly, on his face an angel-bewitching
smile.
For the first time in my life I did not kneel at his feet in
greeting but instantly advanced to gather him hungrily in my arms.
Moment of moments! The anguish of past months was toll I counted
weightless against the torrential bliss now descending.
“Master mine, beloved of my heart, why did you leave me?” I was
incoherent in an excess of joy. “Why did you let me go to the KUMBHA
MELA? How bitterly have I blamed myself for leaving you!”
“I did not want to interfere with your happy anticipation of seeing
the pilgrimage spot where first I met Babaji. I left you only for
a little while; am I not with you again?”
“But is it YOU, Master, the same Lion of God? Are you wearing a
body like the one I buried beneath the cruel Puri sands?”
“Yes, my child, I am the same. This is a flesh and blood body.
Though I see it as ethereal, to your sight it is physical. From
the cosmic atoms I created an entirely new body, exactly like that
cosmic-dream physical body which you laid beneath the dream-sands
at Puri in your dream-world. I am in truth resurrected-not on
earth but on an astral planet. Its inhabitants are better able than
earthly humanity to meet my lofty standards. There you and your
exalted loved ones shall someday come to be with me.”
“Deathless guru, tell me more!”
Master gave a quick, mirthful chuckle. “Please, dear one,” he said,
“won’t you relax your hold a little?”
“Only a little!” I had been embracing him with an octopus grip.
I could detect the same faint, fragrant, natural odor which had
been characteristic of his body before. The thrilling touch of his
divine flesh still persists around the inner sides of my arms and
in my palms whenever I recall those glorious hours.
“As prophets are sent on earth to help men work out their physical
karma, so I have been directed by God to serve on an astral planet
as a savior,” Sri Yukteswar explained. “It is called HIRANYALOKA
or ‘Illumined Astral Planet.’ There I am aiding advanced beings
to rid themselves of astral karma and thus attain liberation from
astral rebirths. The dwellers on Hiranyaloka are highly developed
spiritually; all of them had acquired, in their last earth-incarnation,
the meditation-given power of consciously leaving their physical
bodies at death. No one can enter Hiranyaloka unless he has passed
on earth beyond the state of SABIKALPA SAMADHI into the higher
state of NIRBIKALPA SAMADHI. {FN43-1}
“The Hiranyaloka inhabitants have already passed through the
ordinary astral spheres, where nearly all beings from earth must
go at death; there they worked out many seeds of their past actions
in the astral worlds. None but advanced beings can perform such
redemptive work effectually in the astral worlds. Then, in order
to free their souls more fully from the cocoon of karmic traces
lodged in their astral bodies, these higher beings were drawn by
cosmic law to be reborn with new astral bodies on Hiranyaloka, the
astral sun or heaven, where I have resurrected to help them. There
are also highly advanced beings on Hiranyaloka who have come from
the superior, subtler, causal world.”
My mind was now in such perfect attunement with my guru’s that he
was conveying his word-pictures to me partly by speech and partly
by thought-transference. I was thus quickly receiving his idea-tabloids.
“You have read in the scriptures,” Master went on, “that God encased
the human soul successively in three bodies-the idea, or causal,
body; the subtle astral body, seat of man’s mental and emotional
natures; and the gross physical body. On earth a man is equipped with
his physical senses. An astral being works with his consciousness
and feelings and a body made of lifetrons. {FN43-2} A causal-bodied
being remains in the blissful realm of ideas. My work is with those
astral beings who are preparing to enter the causal world.”
“Adorable Master, please tell me more about the astral cosmos.”
Though I had slightly relaxed my embrace at Sri Yukteswar’s request,
my arms were still around him. Treasure beyond all treasures, my
guru who had laughed at death to reach me!
“There are many astral planets, teeming with astral beings,” Master
began. “The inhabitants use astral planes, or masses of light,
to travel from one planet to another, faster than electricity and
radioactive energies.
“The astral universe, made of various subtle vibrations of light
and color, is hundreds of times larger than the material cosmos.
The entire physical creation hangs like a little solid basket
under the huge luminous balloon of the astral sphere. Just as many
physical suns and stars roam in space, so there are also countless
astral solar and stellar systems. Their planets have astral suns and
moons, more beautiful than the physical ones. The astral luminaries
resemble the aurora borealis-the sunny astral aurora being more
dazzling than the mild-rayed moon-aurora. The astral day and night
are longer than those of earth.
“The astral world is infinitely beautiful, clean, pure, and
orderly. There are no dead planets or barren lands. The terrestrial
blemishes—weeds, bacteria, insects, snakes-are absent. Unlike
the variable climates and seasons of the earth, the astral planets
maintain the even temperature of an eternal spring, with occasional
luminous white snow and rain of many-colored lights. Astral planets
abound in opal lakes and bright seas and rainbow rivers.
“The ordinary astral universe-not the subtler astral heaven
of Hiranyaloka-is peopled with millions of astral beings who have
come, more or less recently, from the earth, and also with myriads
of fairies, mermaids, fishes, animals, goblins, gnomes, demigods
and spirits, all residing on different astral planets in accordance
with karmic qualifications. Various spheric mansions or vibratory
regions are provided for good and evil spirits. Good ones can travel
freely, but the evil spirits are confined to limited zones. In the
same way that human beings live on the surface of the earth, worms
inside the soil, fish in water, and birds in air, so astral beings
of different grades are assigned to suitable vibratory quarters.
“Among the fallen dark angels expelled from other worlds, friction
and war take place with lifetronic bombs or mental MANTRIC {FN43-3}
vibratory rays. These beings dwell in the gloom-drenched regions
of the lower astral cosmos, working out their evil karma.
“In the vast realms above the dark astral prison, all is shining
and beautiful. The astral cosmos is more naturally attuned than
the earth to the divine will and plan of perfection. Every astral
object is manifested primarily by the will of God, and partially by
the will-call of astral beings. They possess the power of modifying
or enhancing the grace and form of anything already created by the
Lord. He has given His astral children the freedom and privilege
of changing or improving at will the astral cosmos. On earth a
solid must be transformed into liquid or other form through natural
or chemical processes, but astral solids are changed into astral
liquids, gases, or energy solely and instantly by the will of the
inhabitants.
“The earth is dark with warfare and murder in the sea, land,
and air,” my guru continued, “but the astral realms know a happy
harmony and equality. Astral beings dematerialize or materialize
their forms at will. Flowers or fish or animals can metamorphose
themselves, for a time, into astral men. All astral beings are
free to assume any form, and can easily commune together. No fixed,
definite, natural law hems them round-any astral tree, for example,
can be successfully asked to produce an astral mango or other
desired fruit, flower, or indeed any other object. Certain karmic
restrictions are present, but there are no distinctions in the
astral world about desirability of various forms. Everything is
vibrant with God’s creative light.
“No one is born of woman; offspring are materialized by astral beings
through the help of their cosmic will into specially patterned,
astrally condensed forms. The recently physically disembodied being
arrives in an astral family through invitation, drawn by similar
mental and spiritual tendencies.
“The astral body is not subject to cold or heat or other
natural conditions. The anatomy includes an astral brain, or the
thousand-petaled lotus of light, and six awakened centers in the
SUSHUMNA, or astral cerebro-spinal axis. The heart draws cosmic
energy as well as light from the astral brain, and pumps it to
the astral nerves and body cells, or lifetrons. Astral beings can
affect their bodies by lifetronic force or by MANTRIC vibrations.
“The astral body is an exact counterpart of the last physical form.
Astral beings retain the same appearance which they possessed in
youth in their previous earthly sojourn; occasionally an astral
being chooses, like myself, to retain his old age appearance.”
Master, emanating the very essence of youth, chuckled merrily.
“Unlike the spacial, three-dimensional physical world cognized
only by the five senses, the astral spheres are visible to the
all-inclusive sixth sense-intuition,” Sri Yukteswar went on. “By
sheer intuitional feeling, all astral beings see, hear, smell,
taste, and touch. They possess three eyes, two of which are partly
closed. The third and chief astral eye, vertically placed on
the forehead, is open. Astral beings have all the outer sensory
organs-ears, eyes, nose, tongue, and skin-but they employ the
intuitional sense to experience sensations through any part of the
body; they can see through the ear, or nose, or skin. They are able
to hear through the eyes or tongue, and can taste through the ears
or skin, and so forth. {FN43-4}
“Man’s physical body is exposed to countless dangers, and is easily
hurt or maimed; the ethereal astral body may occasionally be cut
or bruised but is healed at once by mere willing.”
“Gurudeva, are all astral persons beautiful?”
“Beauty in the astral world is known to be a spiritual quality,
and not an outward conformation,” Sri Yukteswar replied. “Astral
beings therefore attach little importance to facial features. They
have the privilege, however, of costuming themselves at will with
new, colorful, astrally materialized bodies. Just as worldly men
don new array for gala events, so astral beings find occasions to
bedeck themselves in specially designed forms.
“Joyous astral festivities on the higher astral planets like
Hiranyaloka take place when a being is liberated from the astral
world through spiritual advancement, and is therefore ready to enter
the heaven of the causal world. On such occasions the Invisible
Heavenly Father, and the saints who are merged in Him, materialize
Themselves into bodies of Their own choice and join the astral
celebration. In order to please His beloved devotee, the Lord takes
any desired form. If the devotee worshiped through devotion, he
sees God as the Divine Mother. To Jesus, the Father-aspect of the
Infinite One was appealing beyond other conceptions. The individuality
with which the Creator has endowed each of His creatures makes every
conceivable and inconceivable demand on the Lord’s versatility!”
My guru and I laughed happily together.
“Friends of other lives easily recognize one another in the astral
world,” Sri Yukteswar went on in his beautiful, flutelike voice.
“Rejoicing at the immortality of friendship, they realize the
indestructibility of love, often doubted at the time of the sad,
delusive partings of earthly life.
“The intuition of astral beings pierces through the veil and
observes human activities on earth, but man cannot view the astral
world unless his sixth sense is somewhat developed. Thousands
of earth-dwellers have momentarily glimpsed an astral being or an
astral world.
“The advanced beings on Hiranyaloka remain mostly awake in ecstasy
during the long astral day and night, helping to work out intricate
problems of cosmic government and the redemption of prodigal
sons, earthbound souls. When the Hiranyaloka beings sleep, they
have occasional dreamlike astral visions. Their minds are usually
engrossed in the conscious state of highest NIRBIKALPA bliss.
“Inhabitants in all parts of the astral worlds are still subject
to mental agonies. The sensitive minds of the higher beings on
planets like Hiranyaloka feel keen pain if any mistake is made in
conduct or perception of truth. These advanced beings endeavor to
attune their every act and thought with the perfection of spiritual
law.
“Communication among the astral inhabitants is held entirely by
astral telepathy and television; there is none of the confusion and
misunderstanding of the written and spoken word which earth-dwellers
must endure. Just as persons on the cinema screen appear to move
and act through a series of light pictures, and do not actually
breathe, so the astral beings walk and work as intelligently guided
and coordinated images of light, without the necessity of drawing
power from oxygen. Man depends upon solids, liquids, gases, and
energy for sustenance; astral beings sustain themselves principally
by cosmic light.”
“Master mine, do astral beings eat anything?” I was drinking in his
marvelous elucidations with the receptivity of all my faculties-mind,
heart, soul. Superconscious perceptions of truth are permanently
real and changeless, while fleeting sense experiences and impressions
are never more than temporarily or relatively true, and soon lose
in memory all their vividness. My guru’s words were so penetratingly
imprinted on the parchment of my being that at any time, by
transferring my mind to the superconscious state, I can clearly
relive the divine experience.
“Luminous raylike vegetables abound in the astral soils,” he answered.
“The astral beings consume vegetables, and drink a nectar flowing
from glorious fountains of light and from astral brooks and rivers.
Just as invisible images of persons on the earth can be dug out of
the ether and made visible by a television apparatus, later being
dismissed again into space, so the God-created, unseen astral
blueprints of vegetables and plants floating in the ether are
precipitated on an astral planet by the will of its inhabitants.
In the same way, from the wildest fancy of these beings, whole
gardens of fragrant flowers are materialized, returning later to
the etheric invisibility. Although dwellers on the heavenly planets
like Hiranyaloka are almost freed from any necessity of eating,
still higher is the unconditioned existence of almost completely
liberated souls in the causal world, who eat nothing save the manna
of bliss.
“The earth-liberated astral being meets a multitude of relatives,
fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, and friends, acquired during
different incarnations on earth, {FN43-5} as they appear from time
to time in various parts of the astral realms. He is therefore at
a loss to understand whom to love especially; he learns in this way
to give a divine and equal love to all, as children and individualized
expressions of God. Though the outward appearance of loved ones
may have changed, more or less according to the development of new
qualities in the latest life of any particular soul, the astral
being employs his unerring intuition to recognize all those once dear
to him in other planes of existence, and to welcome them to their
new astral home. Because every atom in creation is inextinguishably
dowered with individuality, {FN43-6} an astral friend will be
recognized no matter what costume he may don, even as on earth an
actor’s identity is discoverable by close observation despite any
disguise.
“The span of life in the astral world is much longer than on earth.
A normal advanced astral being’s average life period is from five
hundred to one thousand years, measured in accordance with earthly
standards of time. As certain redwood trees outlive most trees by
millenniums, or as some yogis live several hundred years though
most men die before the age of sixty, so some astral beings live
much longer than the usual span of astral existence. Visitors
to the astral world dwell there for a longer or shorter period in
accordance with the weight of their physical karma, which draws
them back to earth within a specified time.
“The astral being does not have to contend painfully with death
at the time of shedding his luminous body. Many of these beings
nevertheless feel slightly nervous at the thought of dropping their
astral form for the subtler causal one. The astral world is free
from unwilling death, disease, and old age. These three dreads
are the curse of earth, where man has allowed his consciousness to
identify itself almost wholly with a frail physical body requiring
constant aid from air, food, and sleep in order to exist at all.
“Physical death is attended by the disappearance of breath and
the disintegration of fleshly cells. Astral death consists of the
dispersement of lifetrons, those manifest units of energy which
constitute the life of astral beings. At physical death a being
loses his consciousness of flesh and becomes aware of his subtle
body in the astral world. Experiencing astral death in due time, a
being thus passes from the consciousness of astral birth and death
to that of physical birth and death. These recurrent cycles of
astral and physical encasement are the ineluctable destiny of all
unenlightened beings. Scriptural definitions of heaven and hell
sometimes stir man’s deeper-than-subconscious memories of his long
series of experiences in the blithesome astral and disappointing
terrestrial worlds.”
“Beloved Master,” I asked, “will you please describe more in detail
the difference between rebirth on the earth and in the astral and
causal spheres?”
“Man as an individualized soul is essentially causal-bodied,” my
guru explained. “That body is a matrix of the thirty-five IDEAS
required by God as the basic or causal thought forces from which
He later formed the subtle astral body of nineteen elements and
the gross physical body of sixteen elements.
“The nineteen elements of the astral body are mental, emotional,
and lifetronic. The nineteen components are intelligence; ego;
feeling; mind (sense-consciousness); five instruments of KNOWLEDGE,
the subtle counterparts of the senses of sight, hearing, smell,
taste, touch; five instruments of ACTION, the mental correspondence
for the executive abilities to procreate, excrete, talk, walk, and
exercise manual skill; and five instruments of LIFE FORCE, those
empowered to perform the crystallizing, assimilating, eliminating,
metabolizing, and circulating functions of the body. This subtle
astral encasement of nineteen elements survives the death of the
physical body, which is made of sixteen gross metallic and nonmetallic
elements.
“God thought out different ideas within Himself and projected them
into dreams. Lady Cosmic Dream thus sprang out decorated in all
her colossal endless ornaments of relativity.
“In thirty-five thought categories of the causal body, God elaborated
all the complexities of man’s nineteen astral and sixteen physical
counterparts. By condensation of vibratory forces, first subtle,
then gross, He produced man’s astral body and finally his physical
form. According to the law of relativity, by which the Prime
Simplicity has become the bewildering manifold, the causal cosmos
and causal body are different from the astral cosmos and astral body;
the physical cosmos and physical body are likewise characteristically
at variance with the other forms of creation.
“The fleshly body is made of the fixed, objectified dreams of the
Creator. The dualities are ever-present on earth: disease and health,
pain and pleasure, loss and gain. Human beings find limitation and
resistance in three-dimensional matter. When man’s desire to live
is severely shaken by disease or other causes, death arrives; the
heavy overcoat of the flesh is temporarily shed. The soul, however,
remains encased in the astral and causal bodies. {FN43-7} The adhesive
force by which all three bodies are held together is desire. The
power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all man’s slavery.
“Physical desires are rooted in egotism and sense pleasures. The
compulsion or temptation of sensory experience is more powerful
than the desire-force connected with astral attachments or causal
perceptions.
“Astral desires center around enjoyment in terms of vibration. Astral
beings enjoy the ethereal music of the spheres and are entranced
by the sight of all creation as exhaustless expressions of changing
light. The astral beings also smell, taste, and touch light.
Astral desires are thus connected with an astral being’s power to
precipitate all objects and experiences as forms of light or as
condensed thoughts or dreams.
“Causal desires are fulfilled by perception only. The nearly-free
beings who are encased only in the causal body see the whole universe
as realizations of the dream-ideas of God; they can materialize
anything and everything in sheer thought. Causal beings therefore
consider the enjoyment of physical sensations or astral delights
as gross and suffocating to the soul’s fine sensibilities. Causal
beings work out their desires by materializing them instantly.
{FN43-8} Those who find themselves covered only by the delicate veil
of the causal body can bring universes into manifestation even as
the Creator. Because all creation is made of the cosmic dream-texture,
the soul thinly clothed in the causal has vast realizations of
power.
“A soul, being invisible by nature, can be distinguished only by
the presence of its body or bodies. The mere presence of a body
signifies that its existence is made possible by unfulfilled desires.
{FN43-9}
“So long as the soul of man is encased in one, two, or three
body-containers, sealed tightly with the corks of ignorance and
desires, he cannot merge with the sea of Spirit. When the gross
physical receptacle is destroyed by the hammer of death, the other
two coverings-astral and causal-still remain to prevent the soul
from consciously joining the Omnipresent Life. When desirelessness
is attained through wisdom, its power disintegrates the two remaining
vessels. The tiny human soul emerges, free at last; it is one with
the Measureless Amplitude.”
I asked my divine guru to shed further light on the high and
mysterious causal world.
“The causal world is indescribably subtle,” he replied. “In order
to understand it, one would have to possess such tremendous powers
of concentration that he could close his eyes and visualize the
astral cosmos and the physical cosmos in all their vastness-the
luminous balloon with the solid basket-as existing in ideas only.
If by this superhuman concentration one succeeded in converting or
resolving the two cosmoses with all their complexities into sheer
ideas, he would then reach the causal world and stand on the
borderline of fusion between mind and matter. There one perceives
all created things—solids, liquids, gases, electricity, energy,
all beings, gods, men, animals, plants, bacteria-as forms of
consciousness, just as a man can close his eyes and realize that
he exists, even though his body is invisible to his physical eyes
and is present only as an idea.
“Whatever a human being can do in fancy, a causal being can do in
reality. The most colossal imaginative human intelligence is able,
in mind only, to range from one extreme of thought to another,
to skip mentally from planet to planet, or tumble endlessly down
a pit of eternity, or soar rocketlike into the galaxied canopy,
or scintillate like a searchlight over milky ways and the starry
spaces. But beings in the causal world have a much greater freedom,
and can effortlessly manifest their thoughts into instant objectivity,
without any material or astral obstruction or karmic limitation.
“Causal beings realize that the physical cosmos is not primarily
constructed of electrons, nor is the astral cosmos basically
composed of lifetrons-both in reality are created from the minutest
particles of God-thought, chopped and divided by MAYA, the law of
relativity which intervenes to apparently separate the Noumenon
from His phenomena.
“Souls in the causal world recognize one another as individualized
points of joyous Spirit; their thought-things are the only objects
which surround them. Causal beings see the difference between
their bodies and thoughts to be merely ideas. As a man, closing his
eyes, can visualize a dazzling white light or a faint blue haze, so
causal beings by thought alone are able to see, hear, feel, taste,
and touch; they create anything, or dissolve it, by the power of
cosmic mind.
“Both death and rebirth in the causal world are in thought.
Causal-bodied beings feast only on the ambrosia of eternally
new knowledge. They drink from the springs of peace, roam on the
trackless soil of perceptions, swim in the ocean-endlessness of
bliss. Lo! see their bright thought-bodies zoom past trillions of
Spirit-created planets, fresh bubbles of universes, wisdom-stars,
spectral dreams of golden nebulae, all over the skiey blue bosom
of Infinity!
“Many beings remain for thousands of years in the causal cosmos.
By deeper ecstasies the freed soul then withdraws itself from the
little causal body and puts on the vastness of the causal cosmos.
All the separate eddies of ideas, particularized waves of power,
love, will, joy, peace, intuition, calmness, self-control, and
concentration melt into the ever-joyous Sea of Bliss. No longer
does the soul have to experience its joy as an individualized wave
of consciousness, but is merged in the One Cosmic Ocean, with all
its waves-eternal laughter, thrills, throbs.
“When a soul is out of the cocoon of the three bodies it escapes
forever from the law of relativity and becomes the ineffable
Ever-Existent. {FN43-10} Behold the butterfly of Omnipresence, its
wings etched with stars and moons and suns! The soul expanded into
Spirit remains alone in the region of lightless light, darkless
dark, thoughtless thought, intoxicated with its ecstasy of joy in
God’s dream of cosmic creation.”
“A free soul!” I ejaculated in awe.
“When a soul finally gets out of the three jars of bodily delusions,”
Master continued, “it becomes one with the Infinite without any
loss of individuality. Christ had won this final freedom even before
he was born as Jesus. In three stages of his past, symbolized in
his earth-life as the three days of his experience of death and
resurrection, he had attained the power to fully arise in Spirit.
“The undeveloped man must undergo countless earthly and astral
and causal incarnations in order to emerge from his three bodies.
A master who achieves this final freedom may elect to return
to earth as a prophet to bring other human beings back to God, or
like myself he may choose to reside in the astral cosmos. There a
savior assumes some of the burden of the inhabitants’ karma {FN43-11}
and thus helps them to terminate their cycle of reincarnation in
the astral cosmos and go on permanently to the causal spheres. Or
a freed soul may enter the causal world to aid its beings to shorten
their span in the causal body and thus attain the Absolute Freedom.”
“Resurrected One, I want to know more about the karma which forces
souls to return to the three worlds.” I could listen forever,
I thought, to my omniscient Master. Never in his earth-life had I
been able at one time to assimilate so much of his wisdom. Now for
the first time I was receiving a clear, definite insight into the
enigmatic interspaces on the checkerboard of life and death.
“The physical karma or desires of man must be completely worked
out before his permanent stay in astral worlds becomes possible,”
my guru elucidated in his thrilling voice. “Two kinds of beings
live in the astral spheres. Those who still have earthly karma to
dispose of and who must therefore reinhabit a gross physical body
in order to pay their karmic debts could be classified, after
physical death, as temporary visitors to the astral world rather
than as permanent residents.
“Beings with unredeemed earthly karma are not permitted after
astral death to go to the high causal sphere of cosmic ideas, but
must shuttle to and fro from the physical and astral worlds only,
conscious successively of their physical body of sixteen gross
elements, and of their astral body of nineteen subtle elements.
After each loss of his physical body, however, an undeveloped being
from the earth remains for the most part in the deep stupor of the
death-sleep and is hardly conscious of the beautiful astral sphere.
After the astral rest, such a man returns to the material plane for
further lessons, gradually accustoming himself, through repeated
journeys, to the worlds of subtle astral texture.
“Normal or long-established residents of the astral universe,
on the other hand, are those who, freed forever from all material
longings, need return no more to the gross vibrations of earth.
Such beings have only astral and causal karma to work out. At astral
death these beings pass to the infinitely finer and more delicate
causal world. Shedding the thought-form of the causal body at the
end of a certain span, determined by cosmic law, these advanced
beings then return to Hiranyaloka or a similar high astral planet,
reborn in a new astral body to work out their unredeemed astral
karma.
“My son, you may now comprehend more fully that I am resurrected by
divine decree,” Sri Yukteswar continued, “as a savior of astrally
reincarnating souls coming back from the causal sphere, in
particular, rather than of those astral beings who are coming up
from the earth. Those from the earth, if they still retain vestiges
of material karma, do not rise to the very high astral planets like
Hiranyaloka.
“Just as most people on earth have not learned through meditation-acquired
vision to appreciate the superior joys and advantages of astral life
and thus, after death, desire to return to the limited, imperfect
pleasures of earth, so many astral beings, during the normal
disintegration of their astral bodies, fail to picture the advanced
state of spiritual joy in the causal world and, dwelling on thoughts
of the more gross and gaudy astral happiness, yearn to revisit the
astral paradise. Heavy astral karma must be redeemed by such beings
before they can achieve after astral death a permanent stay in the
causal thought-world, so thinly partitioned from the Creator.
“Only when a being has no further desires for experiences in the
pleasing-to-the-eye astral cosmos, and cannot be tempted to go
back there, does he remain in the causal world. Completing there
the work of redeeming all causal karma or seeds of past desires, the
confined soul thrusts out the last of the three corks of ignorance
and, emerging from the final jar of the causal body, commingles
with the Eternal.
“Now do you understand?” Master smiled so enchantingly!
“Yes, through your grace. I am speechless with joy and gratitude.”
Never from song or story had I ever received such inspiring knowledge.
Though the Hindu scriptures refer to the causal and astral worlds
and to man’s three bodies, how remote and meaningless those pages
compared with the warm authenticity of my resurrected Master! For
him indeed existed not a single “undiscover’d country from whose
bourn no traveller returns”!
“The interpenetration of man’s three bodies is expressed in many
ways through his threefold nature,” my great guru went on. “In
the wakeful state on earth a human being is conscious more or less
of his three vehicles. When he is sensuously intent on tasting,
smelling, touching, listening, or seeing, he is working principally
through his physical body. Visualizing or willing, he is working
mainly through his astral body. His causal medium finds expression
when man is thinking or diving deep in introspection or meditation;
the cosmical thoughts of genius come to the man who habitually
contacts his causal body. In this sense an individual may be
classified broadly as ‘a material man,’ ‘an energetic man,’ or ‘an
intellectual man.’
“A man identifies himself about sixteen hours daily with his
physical vehicle. Then he sleeps; if he dreams, he remains in his
astral body, effortlessly creating any object even as do the astral
beings. If man’s sleep be deep and dreamless, for several hours he
is able to transfer his consciousness, or sense of I-ness, to the
causal body; such sleep is revivifying. A dreamer is contacting
his astral and not his causal body; his sleep is not fully refreshing.”
I had been lovingly observing Sri Yukteswar while he gave his
wondrous exposition.
“Angelic guru,” I said, “your body looks exactly as it did when
last I wept over it in the Puri ashram.”
“O yes, my new body is a perfect copy of the old one. I materialize
or dematerialize this form any time at will, much more frequently
than I did while on earth. By quick dematerialization, I now travel
instantly by light express from planet to planet or, indeed, from
astral to causal or to physical cosmos.” My divine guru smiled.
“Though you move about so fast these days, I had no difficulty in
finding you at Bombay!”
“O Master, I was grieving so deeply about your death!”
“Ah, wherein did I die? Isn’t there some contradiction?” Sri
Yukteswar’s eyes were twinkling with love and amusement.
“You were only dreaming on earth; on that earth you saw my
dream-body,” he went on. “Later you buried that dream-image. Now
my finer fleshly body-which you behold and are even now embracing
rather closely!-is resurrected on another finer dream-planet of
God. Someday that finer dream-body and finer dream-planet will pass
away; they too are not forever. All dream-bubbles must eventually
burst at a final wakeful touch. Differentiate, my son Yogananda,
between dreams and Reality!”
This idea of VEDANTIC {FN43-12} resurrection struck me with wonder.
I was ashamed that I had pitied Master when I had seen his lifeless
body at Puri. I comprehended at last that my guru had always been
fully awake in God, perceiving his own life and passing on earth,
and his present resurrection, as nothing more than relativities of
divine ideas in the cosmic dream.
“I have now told you, Yogananda, the truths of my life, death,
and resurrection. Grieve not for me; rather broadcast everywhere
the story of my resurrection from the God-dreamed earth of men to
another God-dreamed planet of astrally garbed souls! New hope will
be infused into the hearts of misery-mad, death-fearing dreamers
of the world.”
“Yes, Master!” How willingly would I share with others my joy at
his resurrection!
“On earth my standards were uncomfortably high, unsuited to the
natures of most men. Often I scolded you more than I should have.
You passed my test; your love shone through the clouds of all
reprimands.” He added tenderly, “I have also come today to tell
you: Never again shall I wear the stern gaze of censure. I shall
scold you no more.”
How much I had missed the chastisements of my great guru! Each one
had been a guardian angel of protection.
“Dearest Master! Rebuke me a million times-do scold me now!”
“I shall chide you no more.” His divine voice was grave, yet with
an undercurrent of laughter. “You and I shall smile together, so
long as our two forms appear different in the MAYA-dream of God.
Finally we shall merge as one in the Cosmic Beloved; our smiles
shall be His smile, our unified song of joy vibrating throughout
eternity to be broadcast to God-tuned souls!”
Sri Yukteswar gave me light on certain matters which I cannot reveal
here. During the two hours that he spent with me in the Bombay hotel
room he answered my every question. A number of world prophecies
uttered by him that June day in 1936 have already come to pass.
“I leave you now, beloved one!” At these words I felt Master melting
away within my encircling arms.
“My child,” his voice rang out, vibrating into my very soul-firmament,
“whenever you enter the door of NIRBIKALPA SAMADHI and call on me,
I shall come to you in flesh and blood, even as today.”
With this celestial promise Sri Yukteswar vanished from my sight.
A cloud-voice repeated in musical thunder: “Tell all! Whosoever
knows by NIRBIKALPA realization that your earth is a dream of God
can come to the finer dream-created planet of Hiranyaloka, and
there find me resurrected in a body exactly like my earthly one.
Yogananda, tell all!”
Gone was the sorrow of parting. The pity and grief for his death,
long robber of my peace, now fled in stark shame. Bliss poured
forth like a fountain through endless, newly opened soul-pores.
Anciently clogged with disuse, they now widened in purity at the
driving flood of ecstasy. Subconscious thoughts and feelings of my
past incarnations shed their karmic taints, lustrously renewed by
Sri Yukteswar’s divine visit.
In this chapter of my autobiography I have obeyed my guru’s behest
and spread the glad tiding, though it confound once more an incurious
generation. Groveling, man knows well; despair is seldom alien;
yet these are perversities, no part of man’s true lot. The day he
wills, he is set on the path to freedom. Too long has he hearkened
to the dank pessimism of his “dust-thou-art” counselors, heedless
of the unconquerable soul.
I was not the only one privileged to behold the Resurrected Guru.
One of Sri Yukteswar’s chelas was an aged woman, affectionately
known as MA (Mother), whose home was close to the Puri hermitage.
Master had often stopped to chat with her during his morning walk.
On the evening of March 16, 1936, Ma arrived at the ashram and
asked to see her guru.
“Why, Master died a week ago!” Swami Sebananda, now in charge of
the Puri hermitage, looked at her sadly.
“That’s impossible!” She smiled a little. “Perhaps you are just
trying to protect the guru from insistent visitors?”
“No.” Sebananda recounted details of the burial. “Come,” he said,
“I will take you to the front garden to Sri Yukteswarji’s grave.”
Ma shook her head. “There is no grave for him! This morning at ten
o’clock he passed in his usual walk before my door! I talked to
him for several minutes in the bright outdoors.
“‘Come this evening to the ashram,’ he said.
“I am here! Blessings pour on this old gray head! The deathless guru
wanted me to understand in what transcendent body he had visited
me this morning!”
The astounded Sebananda knelt before her.
“Ma,” he said, “what a weight of grief you lift from my heart! He
is risen!”
{FN43-1} In SABIKALPA SAMADHI the devotee has spiritually progressed
to a state of inward divine union, but cannot maintain his cosmic
consciousness except in the immobile trance-state. By continuous
meditation, he reaches the superior state of NIRBIKALPA SAMADHI,
where he moves freely in the world and performs his outward duties
without any loss of God-realization.
{FN43-2} Sri Yukteswar used the word PRANA; I have translated it as
lifetrons. The Hindu scriptures refer not only to the ANU, “atom,”
and to the PARAMANU, “beyond the atom,” finer electronic energies;
but also to PRANA, “creative lifetronic force.” Atoms and electrons
are blind forces; PRANA is inherently intelligent. The pranic
lifetrons in the spermatozoa and ova, for instance, guide the
embryonic development according to a karmic design.
{FN43-3} Adjective of MANTRA, chanted seed-sounds discharged by
the mental gun of concentration. The PURANAS (ancient SHASTRAS or
treatises) describe these MANTRIC wars between DEVAS and ASURAS
(gods and demons). An ASURA once tried to slay a DEVA with a potent
chant. But due to mispronunciation the mental bomb acted as a
boomerang and killed the demon.
{FN43-4} Examples of such powers are not wanting even on earth, as
in the case of Helen Keller and other rare beings.
{FN43-5} Lord Buddha was once asked why a man should love all
persons equally. “Because,” the great teacher replied, “in the
very numerous and varied lifespans of each man, every other being
has at one time or another been dear to him.”
{FN43-6} The eight elemental qualities which enter into all created
life, from atom to man, are earth, water, fire, air, ether, motion,
mind, and individuality. (BHAGAVAD GITA: VII:4.)
{FN43-7} Body signifies any soul-encasement, whether gross or
subtle. The three bodies are cages for the Bird of Paradise.
{FN43-8} Even as Babaji helped Lahiri Mahasaya to rid himself of a
subconscious desire from some past life for a palace, as described
in chapter 34.
{FN43-9} “And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither
will the eagles be gathered together.”-LUKE 17:37. Wherever the
soul is encased in the physical body or in the astral body or in
the causal body, there the eagles of desires-which prey on human
sense weaknesses, or on astral and causal attachments-will also
gather to keep the soul a prisoner.
{FN43-10} “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple
of my God, and he shall go no more out (i.e., shall reincarnate
no more). . . . To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with
me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my
Father in his throne.”-REVELATION 3:12, 21.
{FN43-11} Sri Yukteswar was signifying that, even as in his earthly
incarnation he had occasionally assumed the weight of disease to
lighten his disciples’ karma, so in the astral world his mission
as a savior enabled him to take on certain astral karma of dwellers
on Hiranyaloka, and thus hasten their evolution into the higher
causal world.
{FN43-12} Life and death as relativities of thought only. VEDANTA
points out that God is the only Reality; all creation or separate
existence is MAYA or illusion. This philosophy of monism received
its highest expression in the UPANISHAD commentaries of Shankara.