Part 16 (1/2)

”Swamiji, {FN10-5} I don't understand what is required ofdirect perception of God Without Him, I cannot be satisfied with affiliation or creed or perforavea mock rebuke, he admonished a few near-by disciples ”Don't bother Mukunda He will learn our ways”

I politely concealed my doubt The students left the room, not overly bent with their chastisement Dyananda had further words foryou money Please return it to him; you require none here A second injunction for your discipline concerns food Even when you feel hunger, don't leary, I knew only too well The invariable hour for the first here meal elve noon I had been accustoe breakfast at nine o'clock

The three-hour gap became daily more interminable Gone were the Calcutta years when I could rebuke the cook for a ten-minute delay

Now I tried to control my appetite; one day I undertook a twenty-four hour fast With double zest I awaited the followingto eat until he arrives” Jitendra brought esture of welcome to the swami, who had been absent for teeks,aro, what else could be sed except pride over yesterday's achievement of a fast?

”Lord hasten the train!” The Heavenly Provider, I thought, was hardly included in the interdiction hich Dyananda had silenced me

Divine Attention was elsewhere, however; the plodding clock covered the hours Darkness was descending as our leader entered the door

My greeting was one of unfeigned joy

”Dyanandaji will bathe and meditate before we can serve food”

Jitendra approached ain as a bird of ill o stoor Pictures I had seen of famine victims passed wraithlike before me

”The next Benares death froht I doom averted at nine o'clock

Ambrosial summons! In memory that meal is vivid as one of life's perfect hours

Intense absorption yet permitted me to observe that Dyananda ate absent-ross pleasures

”Swary?” Happily surfeited, I was alone with the leader in his study

”O yes! I have spent the last four days without food or drink

I never eat on trains, filled with the heterogenous vibrations of worldly people Strictly I observe the SHASTRIC {FN10-6} rules for monks of anizational work lie on lected my dinner What's the hurry? Tohed merrily

Shame spread within me like a suffocation But the past day of otten; I ventured a further re your instruction, suppose I never asked for food, and nobody gives me any I should starve to death”

”Die then!” This alar counsel split the air ”Die if you must Mukunda! Never admit that you live by the power of food and not by the power of God! He who has created every form of nourishment, He who has bestowed appetite, will certainly see that His devotee is sustained! Do not iine that rice maintains you, or that money or men support you! Could they aid if the Lord withdraws your life-breath? They are His indirect instruests in your stomach? Use the sword of your discriency and perceive the Single Cause!”

I found his incisive words entering soe-old delusion by which bodily imperatives outwit the soul

There and then I tasted the Spirit's all-sufficiency In how e cities, in my later life of ceaseless travel, did occasion arise to prove the serviceability of this lesson in a Benares here!

The sole treasure which had accompanied me from Calcutta was the SADHU'S silver a it for years, I now had it carefully hidden in my ashram roo I opened the locked box The sealed covering untouched, lo! the aone

Mournfully I tore open its envelope and made unmistakably sure It had vanished, in accordance with the SADHU'S prediction, into the ether whence he had summoned it