Autobiography of a Yogi eBook

{FN42-6} Religious MELAS are mentioned in the ancient mahabharata.  The Chinese traveler Hieuen Tsiang has left an account of a vast Kumbha Mela held in A.D. 644 at Allahabad.  The largest Mela is held every twelfth year; the next largest (ARDHA or half) Kumbha occurs every sixth year.  Smaller MELAS convene every third year, attracting about a million devotees.  The four sacred Mela cities are Allahabad, Hardwar, Nasik, and Ujjain.

Early Chinese travelers have left us many striking pictures of Indian society.  The Chinese priest, Fa-Hsien, wrote an account of his eleven years in India during the reign of Chandragupta II (early 4th century).  The Chinese author relates:  “Throughout the country no one kills any living thing, nor drinks wine. . . .  They do not keep pigs or fowl; there are no dealings in cattle, no butchers’ shops or distilleries.  Rooms with beds and mattresses, food and clothes, are provided for resident and traveling priests without fail, and this is the same in all places.  The priests occupy themselves with benevolent ministrations and with chanting liturgies; or they sit in meditation.”  Fa-Hsien tells us the Indian people were happy and honest; capital punishment was unknown.

{FN42-7} I was not present at the deaths of my mother, elder brother Ananta, eldest sister Roma, Master, Father, or of several close disciples.

(Father passed on at Calcutta in 1942, at the age of eighty-nine.)

{FN42-8} The hundreds of thousands of Indian sadhus are controlled by an executive committee of seven leaders, representing seven large sections of India.  The present MAHAMANDALESWAR or president is Joyendra Puri.  This saintly man is extremely reserved, often confining his speech to three words-Truth, Love, and Work.  A sufficient conversation!

{FN42-9} There are many methods, it appears, for outwitting a tiger.  An Australian explorer, Francis Birtles, has recounted that he found the Indian jungles “varied, beautiful, and safe.”  His safety charm was flypaper.  “Every night I spread a quantity of sheets around my camp and was never disturbed,” he explained.  “The reason is psychological.  The tiger is an animal of great conscious dignity.  He prowls around and challenges man until he comes to the flypaper; he then slinks away.  No dignified tiger would dare face a human being after squatting down upon a sticky flypaper!”

{FN42-10} After I returned to America I took off sixty-five pounds.

{FN42-11} Sri Yukteswar passed at this hour-7:00 P.M., March 9, 1936.

{FN42-12} Funeral customs in India require cremation for householders; swamis and monks of other orders are not cremated, but buried. (There are occasional exceptions.) The bodies of monks are symbolically considered to have undergone cremation in the fire of wisdom at the time of taking the monastic vow.

CHAPTER:  43