0:00 CHAPTER XIII. THE SLEEPLESS SAINT. parahamsa yogananda chapter thirteen the sleepless saint ramgopal musumdar please permit me to go to
0:32 the himalayas i hope in unbroken solitude to achieve continuous divine communion i actually
0:39 once addressed these ungrateful words to my master seized by one of the unpredictable delusions which occasionally assail the devotee i felt a growing impatience with hermitage duties and college studies proposal was made when I had been only six months with Sri Yukteswar. Not yet had I fully surveyed
1:09 his towering stature. Many hillmen live in the Himalayas, yet possess no God-perception.
1:17 My guru's answer came slowly and simply, Wisdom is better sought from a man of realization than from an inert mountain ignoring my master's plain hint that he and not a hill was my teacher i repeated my plea silence for consent, a precarious interpretation readily accepted at one's convenience.
1:49 In my Calcutta home that evening I busied myself with travel preparations. Tying a few
1:55 articles inside a blanket, I remembered a similar bundle surreptitiously dropped from
2:02 my attic window a few years earlier. I wondered if this were to be another ill-starred flight toward the himalayas leaving my guru. The following morning I sought out Behari Pandit, my Sanskrit professor at
2:28 Scottish Church College. Sir, you have told me of your friendship with a great disciple of Lahiri,
2:37 Mahasaya. Please, give me his address. You mean Ram Gopal Musundar. I call him the sleepless saint. He is always awake in an
2:49 ecstatic consciousness. His home is at Ranbajpur, near Tarakeshwar. I thanked the pundit,
2:58 and entrained immediately for Tarakeshwar. I hoped to silence my misgivings by wringing a sanction from the sleepless saint
3:08 to engage myself in lonely Himalayan meditation. Bihari's friend, I heard, had received illumination
3:17 after many years of Kriya Yoga practice in isolated caves. Atakeshwar i approached a famous shrine hindus regard it with the same veneration that catholics give to the lord's sanctuary in france innumerable healing miracles have occurred at tarakeshwar member of my family. I sat in the temple there for a week, my eldest aunt once told me.
3:48 Observing a complete fast, I prayed for the recovery of your Uncle Sarada from a chronic
3:54 malady. On the seventh day I found a herb materialized in my hand. I made a brew from
4:02 the leaves and gave it to your uncle. His disease vanished at once,
4:08 and has never reappeared. I entered the sacred Tarakashwa shrine. The altar contains nothing
4:15 but a round stone. Its circumference, beginningless and endless, makes it aptly significant of the infinite cosmic abstractions are not alien even to the humblest indian peasant he has been accused by westerners in fact of living on abstractions so austere that I felt disinclined to bow before the stone symbol. God should be sought, I reflected,
4:48 only within the soul. I left the temple without genuflection, and walked briskly towards the
4:56 outlying village of Ranbajpur. My appeal to a passer-by for guidance caused him to sink into long cogitation.
5:06 "'When you come to a cross-road, turn right and keep going,' he finally pronounced, ocularly.
5:14 Obeying the directions, I wended my way alongside the banks of a canal. Darkness fell,
5:22 the outskirts of the jungle village were alive with winking fireflies and the howls of nearby jackals
5:30 the moonlight was too faint to supply any reassurance i stumbled on for two hours welcome clang of a cow-bell my repeated shouts eventually brought a peasant to my side i am looking for ram gopal babu no such is far from here he remarked at the cross-road you should have turned left not right my earlier informant i thought sadly was a distinct menace to travellers after a relishable meal of coarse rice lentil dal and curry of potatoes with raw bananas i retired to a small hut adjoining the courtyard Villagers were singing to the loud accompaniment of mridangas and cymbals.
6:47 Sleep was inconsiderable that night.
6:51 I prayed deeply to be directed to the secret yogi Ram Gopal.
6:57 As the first streaks of dawn penetrated the fissures of my dark room,
7:03 I set out for ranbajpur crossing rough paddy fields i trudged over sickled stumps of the prickly plant and mounds of dried clay that my destination was only a crozier two miles. In six hours the sun travelled victoriously from
7:28 horizon to meridian, but I began to feel that I would ever be distant from Ranbajpur by one
7:37 crozier. At mid-afternoon my world was still an endless paddy-field. Heat pouring from the avoidless sky was bringing me to near
7:48 collapse. As a man approached at leisurely pace, I hardly dared utter my usual question,
7:56 lest it summoned the monotonous, just a crochet. The stranger halted beside me. Short and slight, he was physically unannounced, you could pounce on me?
8:29 That Professor Beharie had no right to give you my address.
8:34 Considering that introduction of myself would be mere verbosity in the presence of this master,
8:42 I stood speechless.
8:44 Somewhat hurt at my reception, his next remark was abruptly put tell me where do you think god is as I felt. All pervading, eh? the saint chuckled. Then why, young sir, did you fail to bow before
9:10 the Infinite in the stone symbol at Tarakashwa temple yesterday? Your pride caused you the
9:18 punishment of being misdirected by the passer-by who was not bothered by fine distinctions of left and right to-day too you have had a fairly uncomfortable time of it i agreed whole-heartedly body before me healing strength emanated from the yogi i was instantly refreshed in the scorching field the devotee Mahasaya has told us. But discovering the Lord
10:09 within, we soon perceive him without. Holy shrines at Tarakashwa and elsewhere are highly venerated
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