Kedar Nath Babu walked by my side in the gathering
darkness. I delivered Father’s letter,
which my companion read under a street lamp.
“Your father suggests that I take a position
in the Calcutta office of his railroad company.
How pleasant to look forward to at least one of the
pensions that Swami Pranabananda enjoys! But it
is impossible; I cannot leave Benares. Alas,
two bodies are not yet for me!”
{FN3-1} CHOTO Mahasaya is the term by which a
number of Indian saints addressed me. It translates
“little sir.”.
{FN3-2} In its own way, physical science is affirming
the validity of laws discovered by yogis through mental
science. For example, a demonstration that man
has televisional powers was given on Nov. 26, 1934
at the Royal University of Rome. “Dr. Giuseppe
Calligaris, professor of neuro-psychology, pressed
certain points of a subject’s body and the subject
responded with minute descriptions of other persons
and objects on the opposite side of a wall. Dr.
Calligaris told the other professors that if certain
areas on the skin are agitated, the subject is given
super-sensorial impressions enabling him to see objects
that he could not otherwise perceive. To enable
his subject to discern things on the other side of
a wall, Professor Calligaris pressed on a spot to
the right of the thorax for fifteen minutes.
Dr. Calligaris said that if other spots of the body
were agitated, the subjects could see objects at any
distance, regardless of whether they had ever before
seen those objects.”.
{FN3-3} God in His aspect of Creator; from Sanskrit
root BRIH, to expand. When Emerson’s poem
brahma appeared in the Atlantic monthly
in 1857, most the readers were bewildered. Emerson
chuckled. “Tell them,” he said, “to
say ‘Jehovah’ instead of ‘Brahma’
and they will not feel any perplexity.”
{FN3-4} In deep meditation, the first experience of
Spirit is on the altar of the spine, and then in the
brain. The torrential bliss is overwhelming,
but the yogi learns to control its outward manifestations.
{FN3-5} After his retirement, Pranabananda wrote one
of the most profound commentaries on the Bhagavad
Gita, available in Bengali and Hindi.
{FN3-6} See chapter 27.
MY INTERRUPTED FLIGHT TOWARD THE HIMALAYAS
“Leave your classroom on some trifling pretext,
and engage a hackney carriage. Stop in the lane
where no one in my house can see you.”
These were my final instructions to Amar Mitter, a
high school friend who planned to accompany me to
the Himalayas. We had chosen the following day
for our flight. Precautions were necessary, as
Ananta exercised a vigilant eye. He was determined
to foil the plans of escape which he suspected were
uppermost in my mind. The amulet, like a spiritual
yeast, was silently at work within me. Amidst
the Himalayan snows, I hoped to find the master whose
face often appeared to me in visions.
