The mysterious causal world
Table of Contents
Angelic guru, your body looks exactly as it did when last I wept over it in the Puri ashram.
O yes, my new body is a perfect copy of the old one. I materialize or dematerialize this form any time at will, much more frequently than I did while on earth. By quick dematerialization, I now travel instantly by light express from planet to planet or, indeed, from astral to causal or to physical cosmos. Though you move about so fast these days, I had no difficulty in finding you at Bombay!
O Master, I was grieving so deeply about your death!
Ah, where did I die? Isn’t there some contradiction?
You were only dreaming on earth; on that earth you saw my dream- body. Later you buried that dream-image.
Now my finer fleshly body-which you behold and are even now embracing rather closely!-is resurrected on another finer dream-planet of God.
Someday that finer dream-body and finer dream-planet will pass away; they too are not forever. All dream-bubbles must eventually burst at a final wakeful touch. Differentiate, my son Yogananda, between dreams and Reality!
This idea of Vedantic resurrection struck me with wonder.
I was ashamed that I had pitied Master when I had seen his lifeless body at Puri. I comprehended at last that my guru had always been fully awake in God, perceiving his own life and passing on earth, and his present resurrection, as nothing more than relativities of divine ideas in the cosmic dream.
I have now told you, Yogananda, the truths of my life, death, and resurrection. Grieve not for me; rather broadcast everywhere the story of my resurrection from the God-dreamed earth of men to another God- dreamed planet of astrally garbed souls! New hope will be infused into the hearts of misery-mad, death-fearing dreamers of the world.
“Yes, Master!” How willingly would I share with others my joy at his resurrection!
“On earth my standards were uncomfortably high, unsuited to the natures of most men. Often I scolded you more than I should have. You passed my test; your love shone through the clouds of all reprimands.
I have also come today to tell you: Never again shall I wear the stern gaze of censure. I shall scold you no more.
How much I had missed the chastisements of my great guru! Each one had been a guardian angel of protection.
Dearest Master! Rebuke me a million times-do scold me now!
[serious but in a laughing tone] I shall chide you no more. You and I shall smile together, so long as our two forms appear different in the maya-dream of God. Finally we shall merge as one in the Cosmic Beloved; our smiles shall be His smile, our unified song of joy vibrating throughout eternity to be broadcast to God-tuned souls!
Sri Yukteswar gave me light on certain matters which I cannot reveal here.
During the 2 hours that he spent with me in the Bombay hotel room he answered my every question. A number of world prophecies uttered by him that June day in 1936 have already come to pass.
“I leave you now, beloved one!” At these words I felt Master melting away within my encircling arms.
“My child,” his voice rang out, vibrating into my very soul-firmament, “whenever you enter the door of nirbikalpa samadhi and call on me, I shall come to you in flesh and blood, even as today.”
With this celestial promise Sri Yukteswar vanished from my sight. A cloud-voice repeated in musical thunder:
“Tell all! Whosoever knows by nirbikalpa realization that your earth is a dream of God can come to the finer dream-created planet of Hiranyaloka, and there find me resurrected in a body exactly like my earthly one. Yogananda, tell all!”
Gone was the sorrow of parting. The pity and grief for his death, long robber of my peace, now fled in stark shame. Bliss poured forth like a fountain through endless, newly opened soul-pores. Anciently clogged with disuse, they now widened in purity at the driving flood of ecstasy. Subconscious thoughts and feelings of my past incarnations shed their karmic taints, lustrously renewed by Sri Yukteswar’s divine visit.
In this chapter of my autobiography I have obeyed my guru’s behest and spread the glad tiding, though it confound once more an incurious generation. Groveling, man knows well; despair is seldom alien; yet these are perversities, no part of man’s true lot. The day he wills, he is set on the path to freedom. Too long has he hearkened to the dank pessimism of his “dust-thou-art” counselors, heedless of the unconquerable soul.
I was not the only one privileged to behold the Resurrected Guru.
One of Sri Yukteswar’s chelas was an aged woman, affectionately known as Ma (Mother), whose home was close to the Puri hermitage. Master had often stopped to chat with her during his morning walk. On the evening of March 16, 1936, Ma arrived at the ashram and asked to see her guru.
“Why, Master died a week ago!” Swami Sebananda, now in charge of the Puri hermitage, looked at her sadly.
“That’s impossible!” She smiled a little. “Perhaps you are just trying to protect the guru from insistent visitors?”
“No.” Sebananda recounted details of the burial. “Come,” he said, “I will take you to the front garden to Sri Yukteswarji’s grave.”
Ma shook her head. “There is no grave for him! This morning at ten o’clock he passed in his usual walk before my door! I talked to him for several minutes in the bright outdoors.
“‘Come this evening to the ashram,’ he said.
“I am here! Blessings pour on this old gray head! The deathless guru wanted me to understand in what transcendent body he had visited me this morning!”
The astounded Sebananda knelt before her.
“Ma,” he said, “what a weight of grief you lift from my heart! He is risen!”