13 – Forty-Eight Hours in Eternity
Seven and eight hours at a time though Mukunda often meditated, he would nevertheless tell himself that some day he would have a really long meditation. What indeed were seven or eight hours of a twenty-four-hour day? Didn’t men work that long daily merely to supply their material needs?
One morning as Mukunda awoke he thought, “A whole year has passed! Think, all this time I have been promising myself a long meditation. Will it always be ‘tomorrow’?” Resolution leaped into his eyes. Schoolwork, the little errands and assignments of daily life, things he had planned to do – all these flitted before his mind’s eye to divert him and to weaken his spiritual purpose. He banished them. “Why not today?” he asked himself, “this very morning?”
Inflexible in this determination, he climbed the stairs to his little attic room. There he seated himself in the lotus posture. He practiced Kriya Yoga, then called the Lord’s name repeatedly in an inward chant that rose from the depths of his heart. A shining memory suddenly dawned on the inner kingdom of his soul – a clear realization that he was an ever expanding ray of God’s eternal light! A prodigal son no longer, he found the heavenly glory that is man’s inalienable heritage.
Two days and two nights passed: forty-eight hours. To Mukunda they seemed scarcely forty-eight minutes. During the ecstatic period, his body, rendered weightless by Infinity, had risen from the floor in levitation. (On many later occasions in Mukunda’s life his soul was so lifted up in God that his very body defied the laws of gravitation.) It was even thus, centuries ago in Spain, that the elevated figure of St. Teresa of Avila had been observed by astounded bystanders.
It was a reluctant boy who left the attic room and the divine silence to return to the pandemonium of man’s bustling world. The sound of servants at their household chores, the voices of the family in rooms below, the hubbub of people and traffic in the streets outside – all struck discordantly on his hear, yet were powerless to disturb his seraphic inner peace.
As he descended the stairs his body was still so light that his feet hardly touched the steps. In the hall he met the cook, who had been suffering for many years with a pain in the spine. Mukunda touched him. The man was instantly healed. Incoherent with joy, he ejaculated words of gratitude.
It was lunch time. Mukunda joined his relatives, who, in the Indian fashion, had seated themselves on mats on the dining-patio floor. The family[1] had not paid much attention to his two-day absence; on previous occasions, also, he had disappeared from their sight one or two days. They knew that he was in the habit of going for yoga practice to the eerie crematory grounds adjoining the Calcutta bathing ghats.
As Mukunda ate his meal he was conscious of a transcendent detachment. His vibrant body, the forms of the people in the room – what more were these than fleeting dream-pictures in the inexhaustible mind of God? How could he ever have considered them to be enduring realities?
Looking up, Mukunda noticed that his sister-in-law was watching him with curiosity. “I’ll have a little fun with the family,” he decided.
Centering his consciousness in the omniscient spiritual eye, and then employing an advanced technique, Mukunda passed into a certain yogic state, one that brings to a standstill in the human body all automatic activities – heartbeat, circulation of the blood, and son on – but that does not render the yogi insensible of the external world.
Instantly Mukunda’s body fell backward to the floor. His sister-in-law, whose eyes had remained fixed on him, and who was nearby, uttered a frightened cry. Quickly she felt for his pulse. It had stopped. In terror the rest of the family surrounded the boy’s inert form. One of them gasped, “This is what comes of practicing yoga!”
A doctor, frantically summoned, ordered that Mukunda’s body be carried to a couch. After a long and painstaking examination, the physician solemnly pronounced the boy dead.
What woe invaded that household! With sobs each relative spoke praise of the boy who they believed had forever fled this earth.
In the room was a maidservant, one who used to complain about extra work whenever Mukunda would bring home his young friends. She would insult them to their faces. Afterward she would engage in hot arguments with Mukunda over what she considered his disarrangement of the daily routine of the household. Nevertheless there was love between them. Mukunda always called her “Maid-Ma,” as she had devotedly served the family after the mother’s death.
Maid-Ma now said, “He was so mischievous! But in spite of that he was a good boy.” After a few moments she moaned disconsolately, “O dear God! I won’t have anyone to fight with anymore!”
The youngster could contain himself no longer. Convulsed with merriment, he cried, “O yes, you will!”
“You!” shouted Maid-Ma. “I knew you were only playing!” She seized a stick and threw it violently in his direction.
The doctor’s face was a study in amazement. This “resurrection” was a matter hopelessly beyond his professional comprehension.
The family scolded their little prankster. It was with mock severity, however; they were too deeply relieved to be really vexed.
To paraphrase Maid-Ma, Mukunda was indeed good – be he did take pleasure in occasional mischief!
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[1] Mukunda’s mother had died in 1904, when he was eleven. This beautiful incident of forty-eight hours in eternity occurred during Mukunda’s high-school years.
