My Guru & His Disciple Read Online Free PDF Page B

down to touch her feet in reverence, she said, “Son, haven’t I seen you before?”
    When Abanindra was eighteen and a student in Calcutta, he visited the Belur Math, the chief monastery of the Ramakrishna Order, which is beside the Ganges, on the outskirts of the city. He wanted to see the room in which Vivekananda used to stay; since his death in 1902, it had been maintained as a public shrine. When Abanindra left the Vivekananda Room, he found himself for the first time face to face with Brahmananda. And Brahmananda said to him, “Haven’t I seen you before?”
    The effect of this encounter upon Abanindra was far too powerful and subtle to be described in a few words. I shall keep referring to it throughout this book. All I need say here is that Abanindra longed to meet Brahmananda again. So, a few months later, he impulsively spent the money he had been given for tuition fees on a ticket to Hardwar, because he knew that Brahmananda was visiting a monastery there. He arrived in the middle of the night, unannounced, but Brahmananda didn’t seem at all surprised to see him. He allowed Abanindra to stay a month, accepted him formally as his disciple, and then sent him back to Calcutta to continue his education.
    Although Abanindra felt such devotion to Brahmananda, he wasn’t yet intending to become a monk. At college he came under another strong influence. Organized militant opposition to British rule was now growing, and many students were involved. Abanindra decided that his first duty was patriotic. He must devote himself to the cause of India’s freedom; in order to be able to do this single-mindedly, he vowed not to marry until it was won. He joined a revolutionary organization and wrote pamphlets for it, which were secretly distributed. Because he looked so boyish and innocent, his comrades entrusted him with some revolvers which had been stolen from a British storehouse; he hid them in his room. These young men were mostly untrained—Abanindra wasn’t even sure how to use his revolver—but they were risking their lives just as much as the veterans of the movement. One of them threw a bomb at the Viceroy and had to escape from the country. Another, who was Abanindra’s close friend, was arrested and died in prison, probably as the result of being tortured. The authorities called it suicide.
    Abanindra was now studying philosophy. He began coming regularly to the Belur Math because one of the swamis there could instruct him in the teachings of Shankara. His instructor kept urging him to become a monk, but Abanindra would argue with him, saying that the monastic life is escapist, a refusal to accept one’s political responsibilities.
    During the Christmas vacation, Abanindra stayed at the Math (monastery) for a few days. It was then that another extraordinary incident took place. Here is Abanindra’s account of it, written many years later. (“Maharaj” was the name by which Brahmananda was known familiarly in the Order; its approximate meaning is “Master.”)
    One morning, as usual, I went to prostrate before Maharaj. An old man was also in the room. Suddenly he asked Maharaj, “When is this boy going to become a monk?” Maharaj looked me up and down, and his eyes had an unforgettable sweetness as he answered quietly, “When the Lord wills.” That was the end of my political plans and ambitions. I remained at the monastery.
    During the years which followed, Abanindra was at the Ramakrishna monastery in Madras. He attended Brahmananda whenever he was allowed to, which was not often, because Brahmananda had to travel from one monastery to another in the course of his duties as Head of the Order. However, Brahmananda was present when, in the autumn of 1921, Abanindra took his final vows ( sannyas ) and became Swami Prabhavananda. ( Prabhavananda means “one who finds bliss within the Source of all creation”; ananda, meaning