My Guru & His Disciple Read Online Free PDF

reminds me that even my first, pre-Swami sits had been made cross-legged on the floor. This wasn’t in imitation of Gerald, who preferred to sit on a chair. I think I preferred the floor because I wanted to set my meditation in some way apart from my normal experience of life. Seen from floor level, even a familiar room looks different; it was as if I had put myself into another dimension.
    All that the Swami required was that one should take a position in which the spine was held straight. I could meditate on a chair, provided I sat upright. It wasn’t important to cross your legs, he said. Hindus only did it because they were accustomed from childhood to sit that way.
    I never achieved the classic lotus posture, in which both legs are crossed over the thighs; my legs were too stiff. But I did find that I could make myself quite comfortable cross-legged if I eased the tension by putting a pillow under my coccyx. Before long I could hold this position for at least an hour, keeping a straight back. I even began sitting on the floor like this at parties—thereby getting a reputation, no doubt, as a show-off.
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    I have already shown how Gerald not only introduced me to the Swami but first prepared my mind to receive the Swami’s teaching. Without his help, I would surely never have found my way to 1946 Ivar Avenue. For this, I shall be grateful to him as long as I live. I shall also be grateful to him that he never tried to make me his own disciple; that would have ended in absurdity. Gerald and I belonged to the same social class, both of us were ex-Londoners with many mutual friends, we were sensitive to every nuance of each other’s phraseology and humor. Although Gerald was a strict celibate, he viewed my sexual life with tolerance. Despite differences in our temperaments, we were entirely at ease together. For these very reasons, we could never have entered into a satisfactory teacher-pupil relationship. Neither of us could have taken his role seriously.
    What I did take most seriously, however, was Gerald’s judgment of other people. Those mild blue eyes of his had shrewdly weighed the claims of so many pretenders to spiritual knowledge; that long, sensitive nose had sniffed out so many fakes. It was Gerald’s acceptance of Prabhavananda which made me willing to accept him, at any rate until I was able to form an opinion of my own.
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    I can’t remember now by what degrees and through whom I found out the facts about Prabhavananda’s past life and background. This anyhow seems the right place to tell what is essential.
    He was born on December 26, 1893, at Surmanagar, a village in Bengal near the town of Bankura, northwest of Calcutta. His name, during the first twenty years of his life, was Abanindra Nath Ghosh.
    Abanindra’s parents were normally devout Hindus. He accepted their religious beliefs, but he wasn’t a deeply meditative or reclusive boy. He liked playing football and other games, and had plenty of friends.
    However, by the time he was fourteen, he had read about Ramakrishna, the holy man already regarded by some as an avatar. Ramakrishna had been born in a village not very far away, and had spent his adult life at a temple just outside Calcutta. Abanindra had also read about Ramakrishna’s chief disciples, Vivekananda and Brahmananda, who had founded the Ramakrishna Order of monks after Ramakrishna’s death in 1886. He felt a mysterious power of attraction in their names.
    Then one day, by seeming chance, Abanindra met Sarada Devi. She had been Ramakrishna’s wife and was now regarded by his disciples as their spiritual mother—“Holy Mother,” they called her. One of her attendants told Abanindra who she was; otherwise, he would have taken her for an ordinary countrywoman, sitting barefoot, without the slightest air of self-importance, outside a village inn. When he approached and bowed