Light of the Spirit Podcast

In a followup to the interview about vegetarianism that Bianca Vlahos (facebook.com/bianca.vlahos) did with Abbot George in late September on the radio station PBA-FM in Adelaide, South Australia, she again interviewed Abbot George last week on October 22nd. The subject was vegetarianism again, as the topic is so vast and important. Below you can listen to the interview.

Click here to listen to Vegetarianism: an Interview of Abbot George on Australian Radio, Part 2  if you do not see the player above. The podcast length is 33:59 minutes.

bout a month ago, Bianca Vlahos of Adelaide, Australia, became a vegan for a multitude of reasons. She researched the topic exhaustively and found several articles about aspects of vegetarianism on our website (See Spiritual Benefits of a Vegetarian Diet and Humans: Are We Carnivores or Vegetarians by Nature?) She is a radio announcer and producer at PBA-FM in Adelaide, and decided to contact Abbot George about doing a radio interview on the subject of the “connection between the Clarification of Morals & Ethics in relation to the food we eat.”

So a few days ago we arose before 3:00 a.m. to prepare for the Australian radio interview which was to be at 6:45 p.m. Australia time. Bianca was an excellent host, having prepared well for the topic, and the interview was a success, going over time because of the interest of the host and listeners. Because of continued interest, there will be a follow-up interview in a couple of weeks. Listen to the interview.

When I was very young there was a television program called The Big Picture. Most people live in The Little Picture with small ideas and small goals, all short term. But some live in The Big Picture, considering their life as a whole extending through many years, realizing that the small aspects will be forgotten, but the overall character of their life will determine their future beyond this world as well as within it.

Having this perspective, I wanted to be a living sacrifice, a living offering to God! I wanted to be able to stand unashamedly before the face of God and truthfully say: “Behold, I have forsaken all and followed Thee.” To be like Christ, not just in glory but in living sacrifice, like him, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” This was my aspiration–the aspiration of monastics throughout the ages.

An undivided heart

Monastic life is a life of undivided loyalty to the One. Jesus Himself warns us that “no man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.” The religious egotist considers himself wiser than Christ, Whose words he tactfully ignores utterly. He knows better! He can certainly please himself and please God. (Ah, but Jesus spoke about serving!)

Those who love cannot run the risk of despising their Beloved and clinging to their own egoic god. How often we hear statements about what God “does not expect” of us and what “does not matter” to God. The problem is, when most people say “God” they really mean their ego “god,” that of course expects and cares about nothing that does not serve its own desires.

An example

There is a very revealing incident in the Gospel of Saint John. It says:

Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.

There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.

Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.

Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him,

Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?

This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.

—John 12

Because spikenard was extremely costly, it was kept in a stone flask with only a tiny hole through which it could be shaken out a drop at a time to avoid using any more than was exactly desired. But like Saint Mary Magdalene, the lovers of God cannot endure to shake out the perfume of their love drop by grudging drop. Rather, they break the stone of egoic “thrift” and pour out their life unreservedly as an offering to him of their soul’s love. The Judases, who through their keeping of “the bag” of material life have come to despise the master of spirit and cling to the lordship of this world, have always raised a fuss about the “waste” of monastic life, accusing its adherents of being extremists, fanatics, and even worse. There is a lot of talk on their part about “helping others” and “doing good to the world” as the opposing ideal, but as Saint John points out, the real motive of their protest is the fact that they steal from God that sacrifice which is their reasonable duty, as well.

Just as the worldings make their choice of service, so also do the monastics. Above all the rationalizing protests of their opponents they raise the song of victory: “I am my Beloved’s and he is mine.”

The first time I wrote to Mother Anandamayi, in her reply she referred to me as “my friend,” which she only did in relation to monastics. Others she called “father” or “mother.” To his disciples who had left everything to follow him, Jesus, too, had said: “I have called you friends.” The relationship of father and mother is not by (conscious) choice. A friend, however, is ours by choice. Everyone was related to Mother by nature, but only the monastics were hers by choice, therefore she called them “friend.”

The most striking evidence of Mother’s attitude toward secular life was her absolute refusal to enter the home of any married persons–including those of her married devotees. Once my friend, Durgaprasad Sahai, asked Ma to visit his home. She explained that she never entered the homes of married people. So he asked if she would come up onto the veranda of his house? She told him No. She would go into a rented pandal, but not into the house or veranda of grihastas.

How could a person deliberately take up a way of life that would bar Mataji from any part of their life? It was obvious to me that her behavior was related to something far more significant than a mere building. The objectionable thing was what it represented. It was the “thought form” that repelled her. In actuality, it was not that Mother refused to enter, but that the very nature of the structure closed her out. Physically Mother could enter the house, but spiritually she could not enter into the way of life conducted there. In English the Sanskrit term for married persons, grihasta, is usually translated “householder.” What an image that evokes! Whenever I hear it I “see” an adult clutching a little toy house and pressing it to himself in frantic fear of losing it, like a child infatuated with a toy. Poor man, he does not realize that though he may possess it, he cannot really live in it.

There were married devotees who would ask Mother to come and stay in their newly-built houses before they moved in themselves, and she would do so. But this even more dramatically demonstrated that by their way of life they were turning Mother from their door–an act that could only be regarded as spiritually insane. Mataji was agreeing to stay in their new houses to get the message across to those who would heed.

Only one did. Doctor Ghosh was a devotee of Mother in Ranchi. Upon pressure from his family he agreed to be married, and they made the arrangements, including the choice of the bride, as is traditional. At the juncture of two main streets, not far from his office, he built a veritable mansion for himself and his bride. Naturally he invited Mataji to come spend a week in the house prior to the marriage. Before the week was out he came to the realization of what he really was doing. After a token hospitality to Mother he was then going to ban her from his house forever! Then what about his life? Would that, too, be closed to her? Hastening to Mother, Doctor Ghosh begged her to accept the house as hers. When she asked if he would build another one for himself he told her that he would never build or live in a house where she could not come. But how could this be, Mother wanted to know, since after his marriage she would not come into any house in which he lived. That was just it, he countered, he would never marry so that wherever he might be Mataji could also enter there. And so it was. His house became the Anandamayi Ashram of Ranchi and the home of Goddess Kali.

There is a footnote to this story that is not insignificant. Wherever Mother stayed in the various Anandamayi ashrams, those rooms were kept exclusively for her. They would be always locked in her absence. No bed or chair upon which she sat was ever used by another. Yet at Mother’s order, whenever Doctor Ghosh came to an ashram he stayed in her room and slept on her bed. Having given his house to Mother, all her houses became his.

I would like to share with you my reflections on monastic life as I approach the fifty-second anniversary of my taking sannyas.

How does one know if he should lead the monastic life? The great twentieth-century Indian sage, Sri Ramana Maharshi, had left home at the age of seventeen. After years of solitary life, he became the most renowned spiritual figure of India, his fame spreading widely into Europe and America, as well. One day a young man came to speak with him. “Should I leave home and become a monk?” the young man asked. “No!” was the Mararshi’s immediate answer. “Why not?…You did!” demanded the youth with more than a tinge of indignation. “Yes,” agreed the Maharshi quietly, “but I did not have to ask anyone if I should.”

Sri Sarada Devi, the virgin wife of Sri Ramakrishna, who is worshipped as an incarnation of the Divine Mother, said the following:

“Whether one calls on God or not, one is already half free if one does not marry. And one will rush ahead with great speed once one’s mind turns to God.”

There is a qualification here, though, a very important element that can be found in the Bhagavad Gita That element is swadharma, which means someone’s own inherent disposition, fundamental nature, or potentiality; inherent state of mind; state of inner being.

The Gita says:

Better one’s own swadharma though deficient than the dharma of another well performed. Better is death in one’s own swadharma; the dharma of another invites danger. (Bhagavad Gita 3:35)

Better one’s own swadharma, though imperfect, than the dharma of another well performed; performing the duty prescribed by one’s own swadharma, one does not incur evil. (Bhagavad Gita 18:47)

There are people who are miserable because they are not monastics and there are monastics who are miserable because they are. Why is this? Unfulfilment of swadharma. Just being able to fit in and endure either secular or monastic life means nothing. More than once I have had to point out to people that they did not have the swadharma of a monk and should not live the monastic life. Otherwise they would end up old and embittered, feeling life had passed them by. And it would have, though it would be more correct to say that they had turned away from the life they should have led. It is also a fact that I have seen people who were miserable and struggling in frustration because they had the swadharma of a monastic but were leading another kind of life.

How does a person determine their swadharma? I would like to tell you about how I knew my swadharma and began to follow it. I have two motives in doing this: helping those who should lead the monastic life and those who should not, but who might want to know what motivates a monk.

The next treasure I want to tell you about lived right in the midst of the bustle of Delhi, but beyond it all.

One morning my friend Shyam Lal Sharma said he wanted me to meet a special person, a woman named Jugavati who was the sister of a famous Vaishnava guru of Brindaban. So off we went. Sharmaji was a man of very modest means, with whose family I always stayed when in Delhi, always sleeping in the living room. So I was surprised when we arrived at a three-story mansion in a new and prosperous neighborhood.

The surprises were not ended. As we went up the two flights of stairs to the third floor, Sharmaji explained to me that Jugavati had been a very wealthy woman, but several years before had given everything she had to her daughter with the understanding that a house was to be built with a temple of Radha-Krishna on the top floor and that full temple worship should be offered there daily by a priest. All she asked for was a place to live in the temple room itself so she could see Sri Radha and Krishna all the rest of her life.

The temple room was nothing less than opulent, though it very good and expensive taste. We saluted the deities who were being attended by the priest, and then turned to the left side of the room where Jugavati was sitting on a folding canvas cot of the type that soldiers and campers had been using for a century or more. A few things were under the cot–all that Jugavati possessed.

I wish I could have photographs of all the saints I tell about in these podcasts, but my attempts at description will have to suffice. So let me try to tell you about the appearance of Jugavati.

She did not look at all like her famous brother (I had seen his photo), but did look very much like Sri Ramakrishna’s great disciple Swami Shivananda also known as Mahapurusha who was the third head of the Ramakrishna Mission. Her face was strikingly noble, and her skin was golden in color and literally glowed with subtle light. (I had only seen this twice before.)

We sat and she began speaking to us about the supremacy of spiritual practice and aspiration. Reaching into a small bag she brought out a japa mala. It was her brother’s mala. He had given it to her just before he left the body and told her to use two malas for her sadhana, that she should hold onto one bead and with the other use a second mala to count off one hundred thousand repetitions of her mantra before moving on to the next bead in his mala. When she completed his mala she had done ten million eight hundred thousand repetitions of her mantra. Well, it had worked. She was living proof. Sitting there was a visit to God dwelling in an illumined heart. I went away breathing blessing.

In just a few weeks she left her body, frequently speaking about me and wishing we could meet once more. Surely God will grant her wish in a much higher world than this.

Also on this podcast is the story of the Vishnupur train platform Swami.

Click here to listen to Swami Rama of Hardwar (Ram Kunj) if you do not see the player above. The podcast length is 11:06 minutes.

Late one afternoon when I was staying for a while with Srimati Rani Bhan and her family in Delhi she told me that we (Rani, her son and I) would be going to see a Kashmiri saint in a nearby neighborhood. The length of the walk belied the description of “nearby” but I trusted Raniji’s respect for the saint who was simply named Swami Rama.

He was not a Shankara swami but one who had taken what Ma Anandamayi in a conversation with me called “shukla sannyas,” white sannyas. In such a sannyas there are no formal rites of any kind. Rather, from deep within the impulse to declare oneself a sannyasi arises and the person does so spontaneously, adopting a name and henceforth leading the sadhu life. Some, such as Swami Paramananda the chief sannyasi of the Anandamayi Ashram, wore gerua clothing and others dressed in white. It all depended on their intuition. Rani had not told me which Swami Rama was.

The swami was staying in a fairly large house, but it was filled with people. Because of the universal respect Rani had in Delhi both for her personal spiritual character and the fact that Prime Minister Nehru was her cousin, we were taken to the front row of the room where the swami would be when he appeared. It was a good bit of a wait, so I meditated until Rani touched my shoulder and said, “He is coming.”

A fiery swami

I stood up and turned around and knew that the radiant man in simple white with no trappings of religion whatsoever coming toward us was The One. He brought with him an atmosphere of inner spiritual fire. He smoldered. Looking at him I thought: “The Pope has to be dressed in great finery and carried into Saint Peter’s on a throne to let people know who he is, but this man needs none of that.” I was impressed and meant no disrespect to the Pope. But I was glad I was there instead of in Saint Peter’s.

Swamiji spoke in Hindi, of which I knew little, but I can tell you from later conversations that he always spoke directly and simply yet profoundly. People came from all over India to spend time in spiritual study with him. The last time we met there were some pandits from Maharashtra staying with him in Hardwar for several weeks. Yet he adamantly refused to play the guru game. He gladly taught yoga of various sorts to aspirants, but would not pretend to empower them with some kind of initiation. Instead he assured them that by drawing on their own inner resources they could gain realization.

There was personal motivation, too. “If I allow you to claim you are my disciples you will not do what I tell you, but you will tell people that I teach what I do not teach, and deny that I teach what I do teach. And you will try to control me at the same time.” Buddha said much the same.

Swami Rama’s teacher

Whether Swami Rama considered he had a guru, I do not know, but he definitely had a teacher. When he was only nine years old, playing in the streets of his village in Kashmir, an old yogi came walking through and said to him: “Boy! Come with me.” So he followed him out of the village. When they were out of anyone’s sight, the yogi taught him the japa and meditation of a mantra, telling him to say the mantra always. Then the sadhu walked on and disappeared. That was it. He had not even told the boy his name.

Many years later in the Himalayas Swamiji was in great danger. The yogi suddenly appeared, saved his life and disappeared. These two times were his only contact with him. But I can tell you that the sadhana given him by the yogi certainly worked. Swami Rama was one of the greatest yogis I have met. When he quietly intoned Om everyone’s hair would stand on end.

Sadhu: a seeker for truth (sat); and a person who is practicing spiritual disciplines. Usually this term is applied to monastics.

In this podcast, Abbot George relates his experiences with four monks he met in India that were definitely of the first class. These were:

• The Ganges island swami

• My friend in black

• The Swami who would not be a pet, and his guru who laughed.

Below is a transcription of his encounter with the first sadhu:

The Ganges Island Swami and His Sandy Mansion

At the beginning of 1963, Sri Anandamayi Ma instructed me to find a kutir in either Hardwar or Rishikesh where I could do sadhana. Thanks to Brahmacharini Atmananda, who was known to many pilgrims to India as translator, counselor, friend and smoother of the way, I was put in touch with an ideal devotee, Rai Bahadur Narayan Das who was the chief director and patron of the Sapta Rishi Ashram which I have already mentioned. The ashram was not a single large building as is usual, but rather was a kind of small sadhu village consisting of kutirs in which single sadhus would remain for a while and do tapasya. One I met lived there for many years.

Sapta Rishi ashram was a perfect place for meditation and study–at first. But then pilgrim season began when hundreds of thousands would traverse the Himalayas to visit the great pilgrimage centers of Gangotri and Badrinath. Then all day long people streamed into the ashram and knocked on the doors of all the kutirs in hope of meeting a mahatma, a great soul. To compound the problem, the doctor who ran a free medical dispensary at the ashram began bringing crowds of people to look at the American yogi, a rarity indeed. I had someone make me a sign in Hindi asking that I not be disturbed, but that just meant that it was discussed for a while and then the banging began on the door beneath the sign. “All I want is darshan” (in Hindi, of course) was the common preamble for the racket.

The only solution was the very unsatisfactory one of spending the whole day on an island in the Ganges where two or three sadhus were living and completely left alone at all times. I have no idea why. Anyway I went there every day and starved until it was safe to go back to my kutir and cook something (usually Anandamayi Kitchuri, a recipe formulated by Anandamayi Ma for sadhus living under her supervision and taught to me by Atmanandaji).

This went on much too long, but did have one good result. Each day when I was sneaking back to the ashram, I would meet two sadhus coming to the island for the night. Both were perfect examples of the sadhus I have already described: first class. They would pranam and smile, but never speak.

One day when I came over to the island I saw one of the sadhus sitting on a tiny bit of sand not even ten feet long and five feet wide. The only thing there but the sadhu was a very big rounded rock. As I was passing by, the sadhu motioned for me to halt. Then he indicated to me that this was where he lived. First he pushed the rock out a way into the river and made the motions of washing his clothes on the rock. That was his laundry room. Then he pushed the rock back onto the sand over a bit and made the motions of making a fire. That was his kitchen. Then he moved it to another spot and sat down on the rock in great dignity. That was his living room. Then he moved it to the far end, laid down and put his head on it. That was his bedroom and his pillow. In this way he showed me that he had a complete house right there and everything he needed. And throughout the entire pantomime he was smiling and radiating the joy of freedom from possessions. He was living in the luxury India provided for him so easily. Then he made signs that I knew were his question: Did I understand? I did. And I never forgot the lesson.

It might seem strange that I am writing about Neem Karoli Baba because I have no stories about him. But I did see him, and since it was one of the most memorable events of my life, I want to add my voice to those who speak of his greatness. (If you do not know about his life, please read some of the books about him. They are a great inspiration.)

I was in Brindaban with some of the members of our ashram for the Samyam Sapta with Anandamayi Ma. After a few days quite a number of Americans and Europeans began showing up for Ma’s darshan, which was a sign that Neem Karoli Baba must be in town. We knew where his ashram was, so one morning we went to see him. And that was all we did: see.

I have no idea why, but for decades the police in that area had been paranoid about American and European tourists and really made a nuisance of themselves. A few months before my first trip to India one of my close friends went to travel with Ma Anandamayi, and every single day she was in Brindaban officious fools came and pestered her, acting as though she was a spy or mad bomber. Over the years I heard about these antics, though I never experienced any myself.

But they apparently had decided after so many years that Anandamayi Ma’s devotees were not spies and had shifted their suspicion to the devotees of Neem Karoli Baba. As a consequence when we got to the ashram we found the gate was locked. A man who saw us came and explained that the police had been especially troublesome to all foreigners, so Neem Karoli Baba had asked them to all leave the district and wait until he went to one of his ashrams in a more sensible area.

However, there sitting at some distance was Neem Karoli Baba all alone. So though outside the wall we went opposite to where he was sitting and bowed to him, then got out our movie camera with a telephoto lens and took turns looking at him through it. For the one with the camera it was like standing hardly a foot away from him. But the real benefit was how we felt all the time. Every one of us was filled with intense joy. It is no exaggeration that we were drunk with the bliss (ananda) that poured from him. We stood there a long time not wanting to leave the source of such a heavenly condition. Eventually we had to go, but the memory was permanently etched in our minds.

Later it occurred to us that since no one was around he was sitting there just for us to have his darshan, even if from a distance and through a lens.

Listen to this podcast (The Healer, the Raja, Neem Karoli Baba, and the Unnamed Master) to hear this and about:

• how I was healed without asking by Swami Krishnananda, a disciple of Holy Mother Sarada Devi,

• my acquaintance with HRH Durga Singh, the Raja of Solan (Yogi chai), the saintly devotee of Anandamayi Ma

• the Unnamed Master, the yoga adept who hid his abilities behind the mask of ordinariness.

Swami Sivananda-Hridayananda

The next heart-treasure I want to tell you about is Swami Sivananda-Hridayananda of Sivananda Ashram. Her name means Bliss of Sivananda’s Heart, and it was very appropriate. In the ashram she was simply known as Doctor Mother because she was an eye surgeon and presided over the free eye hospital Swami Sivananda had established in the ashram.

Doctor Mother had been born in Madras State (Tamilnadu) as had Swami Sivananda. She told me that when she first learned to speak her grandmother taught her that the moment she awakened in the morning she should say: “O Lord, I am thy dear one; be with me this day.” And so she always did. She was born loving temples and worship of God. Being outstandingly intelligent and having a heart embracing others, she became a very successful eye surgeon in a clinic of her own. She was married to an equally dedicated and spiritually devoted man and had two daughters.

Listen to the rest of the podcast to hear about: 

• How she discovered Swami Sivananda through his books, began corresponding with him, and eventually met him at Sivanandashram, in time  becoming Swami Sivananda-Hridayananda.

• How she inspired others by her regal yet inward appearance and her devotion to Swami Sivananda.

• How we became acquainted, and how she eventually visited our ashram in America.

The King’s Daughter in Bengal

The story of a saintly woman hiding behind the persona of a mad woman in the plains of Bengal.

Swami Vidyananda Giri

I had been told about Swami Vidyananda who for many years was the director of the Yogoda Satsanga school which Yogananda had founded before coming to America. Two of the residents of the school had urged me to meet with him. When I asked Kalachan-da, the head of the Ranchi Anandamayi Ashram where I was staying, he also recommended that I visit Swamiji at his ashram on the plains of Bengal eastward. “When you see him you will see a perfect sadhu. I cannot say that about anyone else; but he is truly an ideal sadhu.”

I went by bus to the village of Lakhanpur in the Purulia district where he lived. When I met him he took hold of my hands I felt as though I was being touched by spirit, not flesh. He greeted me lovingly and quietly. And from then on I, too, knew a perfect sadhu.

Swami Vidyanandaji lived in a small room off the temple which was furnished with one wood platform bed, a small wood table/desk and two simple wood chairs. He had two changes of clothes and a chaddar. That was all.

Vidyanandaji actually lived between three rooms: his personal room, the guru mandir dedicated to Paramhansa Yogananda and a small Shiva temple. About ten o’clock at night Swamiji would come out of his room and go to the Shiva temple, shut the door and remain there in meditation until after dawn.

Swami Vidyananda had been given sannyas by Jagadguru Bharati Krishna Tirtha, Shankaracharys of the Govardhan Math in Puri, one of the four great monasteries founded by Shankara himself. It is the rule that a Shankaracharya gives sannyas only in his math, but the Shankaracharya had such regard and affection for Vidyananda that he came to the Puri ashram of Sri Yuketswar and in the samadhi temple conferred sannyas on Swamiji. He also broke another rule for Swamiji. A Shiva linga cannot be consecrated until it has been permanently affixed on a foundation. But the Shankaracharya consecrated a Shiva linga of sparkling white stone and gave it to Swamiji to permanently install back in the Lakhanpur ashram. From then on he spent every night meditating before that linga.

Listen to the full podcast to hear how: 

• Swami Vidyananda ran his school on a dollar a day.

• He was initiated by Paramhansa Yogananda in a ruined shack in 1935.