The Blissful Devotee and His Cosmic Romance
"Little sir, please be seated. I am talking to my Divine Mother." Silently I had entered the room in great awe. The angelic appearance of Master Mahasaya fairly dazzled me. With silky white beard and large lustrous eyes, he seemed an incarnation of purity. His upraised chin and folded hands apprised me that my first visit had disturbed him in the midst of his devotions. His simple words of greeting produced the most violent effect my nature had so far experienced. The bitterness of separation at my mother's death I had thought the measure of all anguish. Now a consciousness of separation from my Divine Mother was an indescribable torture of the spirit. I fell moaning to the floor.
"Little sir, quiet yourself!" The saint was sympathetically distressed. Abandoned in some oceanic desolation, I clutched his feet as the sole raft of my rescue. "Holy sir, thine intercession! Ask Divine Mother if I find any favor in Her sight!" The sacred promise of intercession is one not easily bestowed; the master was constrained to silence. Beyond reach of doubt, I was convinced that Master Mahasaya was in intimate converse with the Universal Mother. It was deep humiliation to realize that my eyes were blind to Her who even at this moment was perceptible to the faultless gaze of the saint. Shamelessly gripping his feet, deaf to his gentle remonstrances, I besought him again and again for his intervening grace.
"I will make your plea to the Beloved." The master's capitulation came with a slow, compassionate smile. What power in those few words, that my being should know release from its stormy exile! "Sir, remember your pledge! I shall return soon for Her message." Joyful anticipation rang in my voice, which only a moment ago had been sobbingly choked with sorrow. Descending the long stairway, I was overwhelmed by memories. This house in Calcutta at 50 Amherst Street, now the residence of Master Mahasaya, had once been my family home, the scene of my mother's death. Here my human heart had broken for the vanished mother; and here today my spirit had been as though crucified by the absence of the Divine Mother. Hallowed walls! silent witness of my grievous hurts and final healing.
My steps were eager as I returned to my home. Seeking the seclusion of my small attic, I remained in meditation until ten o'clock. The darkness of the warm Indian night was suddenly lit with a wondrous vision. Haloed in splendor, the Divine Mother stood before me. Her face, tenderly smiling, was beauty itself. "Always have I loved thee! Ever shall I love thee!" The celestial tones still ringing in the air, She disappeared.
The sun on the following morning had hardly risen to an angle of decorum when I paid my second visit to Master Mahasaya. Climbing the staircase in the house of poignant memories, I reached his fourth-floor room. The knob of the closed door was wrapped around with a cloth; a hint, I felt, that the saint desired privacy. As I stood irresolutely on the landing, the door was opened by the master's welcoming hand. I knelt at his holy feet. In a playful mood, I wore a solemn mask over my face, hiding the divine elation.
"Sir, I have come — very early, I confess! — for your message. Did the Beloved Mother say anything about me?" "Mischievous little sir!" Not another remark would he make. Apparently my assumed gravity was unimpressive. "Why so mysterious, so evasive? Do saints never speak plainly?" Perhaps I was a little provoked. "Must you test me?" His calm eyes were full of understanding. "Might I add a single word this morning to the assurance you received last night at ten o'clock from the Beautiful Mother Herself?"
Master Mahasaya possessed control over the floodgates of my soul: again I plunged prostrate at his feet. But this time my tears welled from a bliss, and not a pain, past bearing. "Think you that your devotion did not touch the Infinite Mercy? The Motherhood of God, which you have worshiped in forms both human and divine, could never fail to answer your forsaken cry." Who was this simple saint, whose least request to the Universal Spirit met with sweet acquiescence? His role in the world was humble, as befitted the greatest man of humility I ever knew. In this Amherst Street house, Master Mahasaya¹ conducted a small high school for boys. No words of chastisement passed his lips; no rule and ferule maintained his discipline. Higher mathematics indeed was taught in these modest classrooms, and a chemistry of love absent from the textbooks.
He spread his wisdom by spiritual contagion rather than by impermeable precept. Consumed by an unsophisticated passion for the Divine Mother, the saint no more demanded the outward forms of respect than a child. "I am not your guru; he shall come a little later," he told me. "Through his guidance, your experiences of the Divine in terms of love and devotion will be translated into his terms of fathomless wisdom." Every late afternoon, I betook myself to Amherst Street. I sought Master Mahasaya's divine cup, so full that its drops daily overflowed on my being. Never before had I bowed in utter reverence; now I felt it an immeasurable privilege even to tread the same ground that Master Mahasaya's footsteps sanctified.
"Sir, please wear this champak garland I have fashioned especially for you." I arrived one evening, holding my chain of flowers. But shyly he drew away, repeatedly refusing the honor. Perceiving my hurt, he finally smiled consent. "Since we are both devotees of the Mother, you may put the garland on this bodily temple, as offering to Her who dwells within." His vast nature lacked space in which any egotistical consideration could gain foothold.
"Let us go tomorrow to Dakshineswar to the Temple of Kali, forever hallowed by my guru." The saint was a disciple of a Christlike master, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa. The four-mile journey on the following morning was taken by boat on the Ganges. We entered the nine-domed Temple of Kali, where the figures of the Divine Mother and Shiva rest on a burnished silver lotus, its thousand petals meticulously chiseled. Master Mahasaya beamed in enchantment. He was engaged in his inexhaustible romance with the Beloved. As he chanted Her name, my enraptured heart seemed shattered, like the lotus, into a thousand pieces.
We strolled later through the sacred precincts, halting in a tamarisk grove. The manna characteristically exuded by this tree was symbolic of the heavenly food Master Mahasaya was bestowing. His divine invocations continued. I sat rigidly motionless on the grass amid the pink feathery tamarisk flowers. Temporarily absent from the body, I soared in a supernal visit. This was the first of many pilgrimages to Dakshineswar with the holy teacher. From him I learned the sweetness of God in the aspect of Mother, or Divine Mercy. The childlike saint found little appeal in the Father aspect, or Divine Justice. Stern, exacting, mathematical judgment was alien to his gentle nature.
"He can serve as an earthly prototype for the very angels of heaven!" I thought fondly, watching him one day at his prayers. Without a breath of censure or criticism, he surveyed the world with eyes long familiar with the Primal Purity. His body, mind, speech, and actions were effortlessly harmonized with his soul's simplicity. "My Master told me so." Shrinking from personal assertion, the saint usually ended his sage counsel with this tribute. So deep was his sense of identity with Sri Ramakrishna that Master Mahasaya no longer considered his thoughts to be his own.
Hand in hand, the saint and I walked one evening on the block of his school. My joy was dimmed by the arrival of a conceited acquaintance. He burdened us with a lengthy discourse. "I see this man doesn't please you." The saint's whisper to me was unheard by the egotist, spellbound by his own monologue. "I have spoken to Divine Mother about it; She realizes our sad predicament. As soon as we get to yonder red house. She has promised to remind him of more urgent business."
My eyes were glued to the site of salvation. Reaching its red gate, the man unaccountably turned and departed, neither finishing his sentence nor saying good-bye. Peace descended on the assaulted air. Another day found me walking alone near the Howrah railway station. I stood for a moment by a temple, silently criticizing a small group of men with drum and cymbals who were violently reciting a chant. "How undevotionally they use the Lord's divine name in mechanical repetition," I reflected. Suddenly I was astonished to see Master Mahasaya rapidly approaching me.
"Sir, how come you here?" The saint, ignoring my question, answered my thought. "Isn't it true, little sir, that the Beloved's name sounds sweet from all lips, ignorant or wise?" He passed his arm around me affectionately; I found myself carried on his magic carpet to the Merciful Presence.
"Would you like to see some bioscopes?" This question one afternoon from the reclusive Master Mahasaya was mystifying to me; the term was then used in India to signify motion pictures. I agreed, glad to be in his company in any circumstances. A brisk walk brought us to the garden fronting Calcutta University. My companion indicated a bench near the goldighi or pond. "Let us sit here for a few minutes. My Master asked me to meditate whenever I saw an expanse of water. Here its placidity reminds us of the vast calmness of God. As all things can be reflected in water, so the whole universe is mirrored in the lake of the Cosmic Mind. So my gurudeva² often said."
Soon we entered a university hall where a lecture was in progress. It proved abysmally dull, though varied occasionally by lantern slide illustrations, equally uninteresting. "So this is the kind of bioscope the master wanted me to see!" My thought was impatient, yet I would not hurt the saint by revealing boredom in my face. But he leaned toward me confidentially. "I see, little sir, that you don't like this bioscope. I have mentioned it to Divine Mother; She is in full sympathy with us both. She tells me that the electric lights will now go out and won't be relit until we have a chance to leave the room."
As his whisper ended, the hall was plunged into darkness. The professor, whose strident voice had been stilled for a moment in astonishment, said, "The electrical system of this hall appears to be defective." By this time Master Mahasaya and I were already across the threshold. Glancing back from the corridor, I saw that the hall was again illuminated. "Little sir, you were disappointed in that bioscope, but I think you will like a different one." The saint and I were standing on the sidewalk in front of the university building. He gently slapped my chest over the heart.
A transforming silence ensued. Just as the modern "talkies" become inaudible motion pictures when the sound apparatus goes out of order, so the Divine Hand, by some strange miracle, stifled the earthly bustle. Pedestrians as well as the passing trolley cars, automobiles, bullock carts, and iron-wheeled hackney carriages were all in noiseless transit. As though possessing an omnipresent eye, I beheld the scenes that were behind me, and to each side, as easily as those in front. The whole spectacle of activity in that small section of Calcutta passed before me without a sound. Like a glow of fire dimly seen beneath a thin coat of ashes, a mellow luminescence permeated the panoramic view.
My own body seemed nothing more than one of the many shadows; though it was motionless, while the others flitted mutely to and fro. Several boys, friends of mine, approached and passed on; though they had looked directly at me, it was without recognition. The unique pantomime brought me an inexpressible ecstasy. I drank deep from some blissful fount. Suddenly my chest received another soft blow from Master Mahasaya. The pandemonium of the world burst upon my unwilling ears. I staggered, as though harshly awakened from a gossamer dream. The transcendental wine was removed beyond my reach.
"Little sir, I see you found the second bioscope² to your liking." The saint was smiling. I started to kneel in gratitude on the ground before him. "You can't do that to me now," he said. "You know God is in your temple also! I won't let Divine Mother touch my feet through your hands!" If anyone observed the unpretentious master and me as we slowly walked away from the crowded pavement, the onlooker surely suspected us of intoxication. I felt that the falling shades of evening were sympathetically drunk with God.
Trying with poor words to do justice to his benignity, I wonder if Master Mahasaya, and others among the saints whose paths crossed mine, knew that years later, in a Western land, I would be writing about their lives as divine devotees. Their foreknowledge would not surprise me, nor, I hope, my readers, who have come thus far with me. Saints of all religions have attained God-realization through the simple concept of the Cosmic Beloved. Because the Absolute is nirguna, "without qualities," and acintya, "inconceivable," human thought and yearning have ever personalized It as the Universal Mother. A combination of personal theism and the philosophy of the Absolute is an ancient achievement of Hindu thought, expounded in the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita. This "reconciliation of opposites" satisfies heart and head; bhakti (devotion) and jnana (wisdom) are essentially one. Prapatti, "taking refuge" in God, and sharanagati, "flinging oneself on the Divine Compassion," are really paths of the highest knowledge.
The humility of Master Mahasaya and of all other saints springs from a recognition of their total dependence (seshatva) on the Lord as the sole Life and Judge. Because the very nature of God is Bliss, the man in attunement with Him experiences a native boundless joy. "The first of the passions of the soul and the will is joy."4 Devotees of all the ages, approaching the Mother in a childlike spirit, testify that they find Her ever at play with them. In Master Mahasaya's life the manifestations of divine play occurred on occasions important and unimportant. In God's eyes nothing is large or small. Were it not for His perfect nicety in constructing the tiny atom, could the skies wear the proud structures of Vega, Arcturus? Distinctions of "important" and "unimportant" are surely unknown to the Lord, lest, for want of a pin, the cosmos collapse!
The Divine Mother is that aspect of God which is active in creation: the shakti, or power, of the transcendent Lord. She is known by many names, according to the qualities She expresses. Here Her upraised hand signifies universal blessing; the others hold, symbolically, prayer beads (devotion), pages of scripture (learning and wisdom), and a jar of holy water (purification).
1 These are respectful titles by which he was customarily addressed. His name was Mahendra Nath Gupta; he signed his literary works simply "M." 2 "Divine teacher," the customary Sanskrit term for one's spiritual preceptor. Deva ("god") combined with guru ("illumined teacher") indicates profound reverence and respect. I have rendered it in English as simply "Master." 3 Webster's New International Dictionary (1934) gives, as rare, this definition: "A view of life; that which gives such a view." Master Mahasaya's choice of a word was, then, peculiarly justified.
4 St. John of the Cross, The body of this lovable Christian saint, who died in 1591, was exhumed in 1859 and found to be in a state of incorruptibility. Sir Francis Younghusband (Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1936) told of his own experience of cosmic joy: "There came upon me what was far more than elation or exhilaration; I was beside myself with an intensity of joy, and with this indescribable and almost unbearable joy came a revelation of the essential goodness of the world. I was convinced past all refutation that men at heart were good, that the evil in them was the superficial."