We Do Not Visit Kashmir

"F"Father, I want to invite Master and four friends to accompany me to the Himalayan foothills during my summer vacation. May I have six railway passes to Kashmir and enough money to cover our travel expenses?" As I had expected, Father laughed heartily. "This is the third time you have given me the same cock-and-bull story. Didn't you make a similar request last summer, and the year before that? At the last moment, Sri Yukteswarji refuses to go."

"It is true, Father; I don't know why my guru will not give me his definite word about Kashmir.¹ But if I tell him that I have already secured the passes from you, somehow I think that this time he will consent to make the journey." Father was unconvinced at the moment, but the following day, after some good-humored gibes, he handed me six passes and a roll of ten-rupee bills. "I hardly think your theoretical trip needs such practical props," he remarked, "but here they are."

That afternoon I exhibited my booty to Sri Yukteswar. Though he smiled at my enthusiasm, his words were noncommittal: "I would like to go; we shall see." He made no comment when I asked his little hermitage disciple, Kanai, to accompany us. I also invited three other friends — Rajendra Nath Mitra, Jotin Auddy, and one other boy. Our date of departure was set for the following Monday. On Saturday and Sunday I stayed in Calcutta, where marriage rites for a cousin were being celebrated at my family home. I arrived in Serampore with my luggage early Monday morning. Rajendra met me at the hermitage door.

"Master is out, walking. He has refused to go." I was equally grieved and obdurate. "I will not give Father a third chance to ridicule my chimerical plans for Kashmir. The rest of us should go." Rajendra agreed; I left the ashram to find a servant. Kanai, I knew, would not take the trip without Master, and someone was needed to look after the luggage. I bethought myself of Behari, previously a servant in my family home, who was now employed by a Serampore schoolmaster. As I walked along briskly, I met my guru in front of the Christian church near Serampore Courthouse.

"Where are you going?" Sri Yukteswar's face was unsmiling. "Sir, I hear that you and Kanai will not take the trip we have been planning. I am seeking Behari. You will recall that last year he was so desirous of seeing Kashmir that he even offered to serve without pay." "I remember. Nevertheless, I don't think Behari will be willing to go." I was exasperated. "He is just eagerly waiting for this opportunity!" My guru silently resumed his walk; I soon reached the schoolmaster's house. Behari, in the courtyard, greeted me with a friendly warmth that abruptly vanished as soon as I mentioned Kashmir. With a murmured word of apology, the servant left me and entered his employer's house. I waited half an hour, nervously assuring myself that Behari's delay was being caused by preparations for his trip. Finally I knocked at the front door.

"Behari left by the back stairs about thirty minutes ago," a man informed me. A slight smile hovered about his lips. I departed sadly, wondering whether my invitation had been too coercive or whether Master's unseen influence were at work. Passing the Christian church, again I saw my guru walking slowly toward me. Without waiting to hear my report, he exclaimed: "So Behari would not go! Now, what are your plans?" I felt like a recalcitrant child who is determined to defy his masterful father. "Sir, I am going to ask my uncle to lend me his servant, Lal Dhari."

"See your uncle if you want to," Sri Yukteswar replied with a chuckle. "But I hardly think you will enjoy the visit." Apprehensive but rebellious, I left my guru and entered Serampore Courthouse. My paternal uncle, Sarada Ghosh, a government attorney, welcomed me affectionately. "I am leaving today with some friends for Kashmir," I told him. "For years I have been looking forward to this Himalayan trip." "I am happy for you, Mukunda. Is there anything I can do to make your journey more comfortable?"

These kind words gave me a lift of encouragement. "Dear Uncle," I said, "could you possibly spare me your servant, Lal Dhari?" My simple request had the effect of an earthquake. Uncle jumped so violently that his chair overturned, the papers on the desk flew in every direction, and his pipe, a long, coconut-stemmed hubble-bubble, fell to the floor with a great clatter. "You selfish young man," he shouted, quivering with wrath, "what a preposterous idea! Who will look after me, if you take my servant on one of your pleasure jaunts?"

I concealed my surprise, reflecting that my amiable uncle's sudden change of front was only one more enigma in a day fully devoted to incomprehensibility. My retreat from the courthouse office was more alacritous than dignified. I returned to the hermitage, where my friends were expectantly gathered. A conviction was growing in me that some sufficient, if exceedingly recondite, motive was behind Master's attitude. Remorse seized me for having tried to thwart my guru's will.

"Mukunda, wouldn't you like to stay a while longer with me?" Sri Yukteswar inquired. "Rajendra and the others may go ahead now, and wait for you in Calcutta. There will be plenty of time to catch the last evening train leaving Calcutta for Kashmir." "Sir, I don't care to go without you," I said mournfully. My friends paid not the slightest attention to my remark. They summoned a hackney carriage and departed with all the luggage. Kanai and I sat quietly at our guru's feet. After a half hour of silence, Master rose and walked toward the second-floor dining balcony.

"Kanai, please serve Mukunda's food. His train leaves soon." Getting up from my blanket seat, I staggered suddenly with nausea and a ghastly churning sensation in my stomach. The stabbing pain was so intense that I felt I had been abruptly hurled into some violent hell. Groping blindly toward my guru, I collapsed before him, exhibiting all symptoms of the dread Asiatic cholera. Sri Yukteswar and Kanai carried me to the sitting room. I cried in agony: "Master, I surrender my life to you"; for I believed it was indeed fast ebbing from the shores of my body.

Sri Yukteswar put my head on his lap, stroking my forehead with angelic tenderness. "You see now what would have happened if you were at the station with your friends," he said. "I had to look after you in this strange way, because you chose to doubt my judgment about taking the trip at this particular time." I understood at last. As great masters seldom see fit to display their powers openly, a casual observer of the day's events would have considered them quite natural. My guru's intervention had been too subtle to be detected. He had inconspicuously worked his will through Behari and my uncle and Rajendra and the others. Probably everyone but me had thought the situations logical and normal.

As Sri Yukteswar never failed to observe his social obligations, he instructed Kanai to summon a physician and to notify my uncle. "Master," I protested, "only you can heal me. I am too far gone for any doctor." "Child, you are protected by the Divine Mercy. Don't worry about the doctor; he will not find you in this state. You are already healed." With my guru's words, the excruciating suffering left me. I sat up feebly. A doctor soon arrived and examined me carefully.

"You appear to have passed through the worst," he said. "I will take some specimens with me for laboratory tests." The following morning the physician arrived hurriedly. I was sitting up, in good spirits. "Well, well, here you are, smiling and chatting as though you had had no close call with death." He patted my hand gently. "I hardly expected to find you alive, after I had discovered from the specimens that your disease was Asiatic cholera. You are fortunate, young man, to have a guru with divine healing powers! I am convinced of it!"

I agreed wholeheartedly. As the doctor was preparing to leave, Rajendra and Auddy appeared at the door. The resentment in their faces changed into sympathy as they glanced at the physician and then at my somewhat wan countenance. "We were angry when you didn't turn up as agreed at the Calcutta train. You have been sick?" "Yes." I could not help laughing as my friends placed the luggage in the same corner it had occupied yesterday. I paraphrased:

"There was a ship that sailed for Spain; before it arrived, it was back again!" Master entered the room. I permitted myself a convalescent's liberty, and captured his hand lovingly. "Guruji," I said, "from my twelfth year on, I have made many unsuccessful attempts to reach the Himalayas. I am finally convinced that without your blessings the Goddess Parvatī² will not receive me!"

Embodiment of the spirit of asceticism, Lord Shiva represents the Destroyer-Renovator aspect of the triune nature of God (Creator, Preserver, Destroyer). Symbolic of his transcendent nature, Shiva is depicted in samadhi bliss in the Himalayas. His serpent collar (naga kundala) and armlets indicate his mastery over delusion and his creative force. certain peak on the Tibetan border. Astonished travelers, passing below that inaccessible peak, view afar a vast snow formation resembling a palace, with icy domes and turrets.

Parvati, Kali, Durga, Uma, and other goddesses are aspects of Jaganmatri, "Divine Mother of the World," variously named to signalize particular functions. God or Shiva in His para or transcendental aspect is inactive in creation; His shakti (energy, activating force) is relegated to His "consorts," the productive "female" powers that make possible the infinite unfoldments in the cosmos. Mythological tales in the Puranas give the Himalayas as the abode of Shiva. The Goddess Ganga came down from the sky to be the presiding deity of the Himalayan-sourced river; the Ganges is therefore poetically said to flow from heaven to earth through the hair of Shiva, "King of Yogis" and the Destroyer-Renovator of the Trinity. Kalidasa, the "Indian Shakespeare," described the Himalayas as "the massed laughter of Shiva." "The reader may manage to imagine that stretch of great white teeth," writes F. W. Thomas in The Legacy of India (Oxford), "but the full idea may still escape him, unless he has realized the figure of the grand Ascete, eternally enthroned in the towering mountain world, where the Ganges in her descent from heaven passes through his matted locks, with the moon their crest-jewel."

In Hindu art Shiva is often shown wearing an antelope skin of velvet blackness, symbolizing the darkness and mystery of Night — the sole garment of Him who is digambara, "sky-clad." Certain Shiva sects wear no clothing in honor of the Lord who owns nothing — and everything. One of the patron saints of Kashmir, the 14th-century Lalla Yogiswari ("Supreme Mistress of Yoga") was a "sky-clad" Shiva devotee. A scandalized contemporary asked the saint why she observed nudity. "Why not?" Lalla replied tartly. "I see no men about." To Lalla's somewhat drastic way of thinking, he who lacked God-realization did not deserve the name of "man."

She practiced a technique, closely allied to Kriya Yoga, whose liberating efficacy she celebrated in numerous quatrains. I translate one of them here:

Undergoing no mortal death, the saint dematerialized herself in fire. Later she appeared before her grieving townspeople, a living form enwrapped in golden robes — fully clad at last!