The Sleepless Saint, from Autobiography of a Yogi

My other favorite chapter from Autobiography of a Yogi. It induces a very peaceful sleep state, and provides a sense of universal experience while laying still in your own bed or sleep space. Whether or not you hear to the end, your subconscious is listening and learning the powerful teachings. Sweet dreams...

Transcript

Chapter 13 of Autobiography of a Yogi,

The Sleepless Saint.

Please permit me to go to the Himalayas.

I hope in unbroken solitude to achieve continuous divine communion.

I actually once addressed those ungrateful words to my master.

Seized by one of the unpredictable delusions that occasionally assail the devotee,

I felt a growing impatience with hermitage duties and college studies.

A feeble extenuating circumstance is that my proposal was made when I had known Sri Yukteswar for only six months.

Not yet had I fully surveyed his towering stature.

Many hill men live in the Himalayas,

Yet possess no God perception.

My guru's answer came slowly and simply.

Wisdom is better sought from a man of realization than from an inert mountain.

Ignoring master's plain hint that he and not a hill was my teacher,

I repeated my plea.

Sri Yukteswar vouchsafed no reply.

I took his silence for consent,

A precarious but convenient interpretation.

In my Calcutta home that evening I busied myself with travel preparations.

Tying a few articles inside a blanket,

I remembered a similar bundle surreptitiously dropped from my attic window a few years earlier.

I wondered if this were to be another ill-starred flight toward the Himalayas.

The first time my spiritual elation had been high.

Tonight my conscience smote me at the thought of leaving my guru.

The following morning I sought out Bahari Pundit,

My Sanskrit professor at Scottish Church College.

Sir,

You have told me of your friendship with the great disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya.

Please give me his address.

You mean Ram Gopal Momundar.

I call him the sleepless saint.

He is always awake and in ecstatic consciousness.

His home is in Ranjapur near Tarakeswar.

I thanked the pundit and entrained immediately for Tarakeswar.

I hoped to silence my misgivings by getting permission from the sleepless saint to engage myself in lonely meditation in the Himalayas.

Bahari Pundit had told me that Ram Gopal had achieved illumination after many years of Kriya Yoga practice in isolated caves in Bengal.

In Tarakeswar I made my way to a famous shrine.

Hindus regard it with veneration,

Such as Catholics feel for the Lord's Sanctuary in France.

Innumerable healing miracles have occurred in Tarakeswar,

Including one for a member of my family.

I sat in the temple there for a week,

My eldest aunt once told me.

Observing a complete fast,

I prayed for the recovery of your uncle Sarada from a chronic malady.

On the seventh day I found an herb materialized in my hand.

I made a brew from the leaves and gave it to your uncle.

His disease vanished at once and has never reappeared.

I entered the sacred Tarakeswar shrine.

The altar contains nothing but a round stone.

Its circumference,

Beginningless and endless,

Makes it aptly significant of the infinite.

In India,

Cosmic abstractions are understood even by the unlettered peasant.

In fact,

Westerners have sometimes accused him of living on abstractions.

My own mood at the moment was so austere that I felt disinclined to bow before the stone symbol.

God should be sought,

I reflected,

Only within the soul.

I left the temple without genuflection and walked briskly toward the outlying village of Ranbajpur.

I was not sure of my way.

My appeal to a passerby for information caused him to sink into a long cogitation.

When you come to a crossroad,

Turn right and keep going,

He finally pronounced oracularly.

Obeying the directions,

I wended my way alongside the banks of a canal.

Darkness fell.

The outskirts of the jungle village were alive with winking fireflies and the howls of nearby jackals.

The moonlight was too faint to be helpful.

I stumbled on for two hours.

Clang!

Clang!

Welcome clang of a cowbell!

My repeated shouts eventually brought a peasant to my side.

I am looking for Ram Gopal Babu.

No such person lives in our village,

The man's tone was surly.

You are probably a lying detective.

Hoping to allay suspicion in his politically troubled mind,

I touchingly explained my predicament.

He took me to his home and offered a hospitable welcome.

Ranjhbhadpur is far from here,

He remarked.

At the crossroad you should have turned left,

Not right.

My earlier informant,

I thought sadly,

Was a definite menace to travellers.

After a relishable meal of coarse rice,

Lentil dhal and curry of potatoes with raw bananas,

I retired to a small but adjoining courtyard.

A small hut adjoining the courtyard.

In the distance villagers were singing to the loud accompaniment of miradangas and cymbals.

Sleep was inconsiderable that night.

I prayed deeply to be directed to the secluded yogi Ram Gopal.

As the first streaks of dawn penetrated the fissures of my hut,

I set out for Ranjhbhadpur.

Crossing rough paddy fields,

I trudged over sickled stumps of the prickly plant and around mounds of dried clay.

An occasionally met peasant would inform me,

Invariably,

That my destination was,

Only a krosha,

Two miles.

In six hours the sun travelled victoriously from horizon to meridian,

But I began to feel that I would ever be distant from Ranjhbhadpur by one krosha.

At mid-afternoon my world was still an endless paddy field.

Heat pouring from the inescapable sky was bringing me to near collapse.

I saw a man approaching me at a leisurely pace.

I hardly dared uttered my usual question,

Lest it summon the monotonous,

Just a krosha.

The stranger halted beside me.

Short and slight,

He was physically unimpressive,

Save for an extraordinary pair of piercing dark eyes.

I was planning to leave Ranjhbhadpur,

But your purpose was so good,

So I awaited you.

He shook his finger in my astounded face.

Aren't you clever to think that,

Unannounced,

You could pounce on me?

That Professor Bahari had no right to give you my address.

Considering that introduction of myself would be mere verbosity in the presence of this master,

I stood speechless,

Somewhat hurt,

In my reception.

His next remark was abruptly put.

Tell me,

Where do you think God is?

Why,

He is within me and everywhere.

I doubtless looked as bewildered as I felt.

All-pervading,

Eh?

" the saint chuckled.

Then why,

Young sir,

Did you fail to bow before the Infinite in the stone symbol at the Tarakeswar Temple yesterday?

Your pride caused you the punishment of being misdirected by the passerby,

Who was not bothered by fine distinctions between left and right.

Today,

Too,

You have had a fairly uncomfortable time of it.

I agreed wholeheartedly.

Wonder struck that an omnipresent eye hid within the unremarkable body before me.

Healing strength emanated from the yogi.

I was instantly refreshed in the scorching field.

The devotee inclines to think his path to God is the only way,

He said.

Yoga,

Through which divinity is found within,

Is doubtless the highest road,

As Lahiri Mahasaya has told us.

But,

Discovering the Lord within,

We soon perceive Him without.

Holy shrines in Tarakeswar and elsewhere are rightly venerated as nuclear centers of spiritual power.

The saint's censorious attitude vanished.

His eyes became compassionately soft.

Sir,

Why don't you grant me a samadhi?

Dear one,

I would be glad to convey the divine contact,

But it is not my place to do so.

The saint looked at me with half-closed eyes.

Your master will bestow that experience on you shortly.

Your body is not tuned just yet.

As a small lamp bulb would be shattered by the excessive electrical voltage,

So your nerves are unready for the cosmic current.

If I gave you the infinite ecstasy right now,

You would burn as though every cell were on fire.

You are asking illumination from me,

The yogi continued musingly.

Well,

I am wondering,

Inconsiderable as I am,

And with the little meditation I have done,

If I have succeeded in pleasing God,

And what worth I may find in His eyes at the final reckoning.

Sir,

Have you not been single-heartedly seeking God for a long time?

I have not done much.

Bahari must have told you something of my life.

For twenty years I occupied a secret grotto,

Meditating eighteen hours a day.

Then I moved to a more inaccessible cave,

And stayed there for twenty-five years,

Remaining in yoga union for twenty hours daily.

I did not need sleep,

For I was ever with God.

My body was more rested by the complete calmness of super-consciousness than it could have been by the imperfect peace of the ordinary subconscious state.

The muscles relax during sleep,

But the heart,

Lungs,

And circulatory system are constantly at work.

They get no rest.

In super-consciousness,

All internal organs remain in a state of suspended animation,

Electrified by the cosmic energy.

By such means I have found it unnecessary to sleep for years.

" He added,

The time will come when you too will dispense with sleep.

My goodness,

You have meditated for so long and are yet unsure of the Lord's favor?

I remarked with astonishment,

Then what about us poor mortals?

Well,

Don't you see,

My dear boy,

That God is eternity itself?

To assume that one may fully know Him by forty-five years of meditation is rather a preposterous expectation.

Babaji assures us,

However,

That even a little meditation saves us from the dire fear of death and of after-death states.

Do not fix your spiritual ideal on small mountains,

But hitch it to the star of unqualified divine attainment.

If you work hard,

You will get there.

Enthralled by the prospect,

I asked him for further enlightening words.

He related a wondrous story of his first meeting with Lahiri Mahasaya's guru,

Babaji.

Around midnight,

Ram Gopal fell into silence,

And I lay down on my blankets.

Closing my eyes,

I saw flashes of lightning.

The vast space within me was a chamber of molten light.

I opened my eyes and observed the same dazzling radiance.

The room became a part of the infinite vault that I was beholding with interior vision.

The yogi said,

Why don't you go to sleep?

Sir,

How can I sleep when lightning is blazing around me,

Whether my eyes are shut or open?

You are blessed to be having this experience.

The spiritual radiations are not easily seen.

The saint added a few words of affection.

At dawn,

Ram Gopal gave me rock candies and said I must depart.

I felt such reluctance to bid him farewell that tears coursed down my cheeks.

I will not let you go empty-handed,

The yogi spoke tenderly.

I will do something for you.

He smiled and looked at me steadfastly.

I became immobile as though rooted to the ground.

Vibrations of peace that emanated from the saint flooded my being.

I was instantaneously healed of a pain in my back that had been troubling me intermittently for years.

Renewed,

Bathed in a sea of luminous joy,

I wept no more.

After touching Ram Gopal's feet,

I entered the jungle.

I made my way through its tropical tangle and over many paddy fields until I reached Tarakeswar.

There I made a second pilgrimage to the famous shrine and prostrated myself fully before the altar.

The round stone enlarged before my inner vision until it became the cosmical spheres,

Ring within ring,

Zone after zone,

All dowered with divinity.

I entrained happily an hour later for Kolkata.

My travels ended not in the lofty mountains,

But in the Himalayan presence of my master.

Reviews

Thank you- I love this book! Beautiful and witty chapter, and how sweet to be read a bedtime story.

Thank you🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

I have not read the book recently but as you read the words came back to me. You did a wonderful reading. Thank you so much. I feel I have prostrated myself at the altar ~