Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012. )

55. A lady from South Africa came and prostrated. The Master enquired about her welfare. She started weeping. She had lost her son in an accident. "Do not weep. All here are your sons and daughters," assured the Master. The lady felt comforted. A young woman, out to commit suicide, came and wept. Unmarried, she was yet carrying a baby. The Master did not gave her a sermon on ethics, but gave her a room in the Ashram, deputing an elderly woman, an inmate, to attend to her needs. When in due course the unwanted baby arrived, the Master thoughtfully passed it on to an issueless couple who had long been in correspondence with him over their singular misfortune. Sri N. Ananthanarayanan  To be continued ...

54. At a meeting that he addressed during his Indo-Sri Lanka tour, the Master repeatedly drew the attention of listeners to the magnitude of human suffering. This thought about suffering, and the need to alleviate that suffering, engaged his attention all the time. His special concern, of course, was his own disciples, within sight and out of sight, who looked to him for support and sustenance. They were a large number with varied problems of their own. Someone was seeking employment. Another desired to get his daughter married. A third had failed in his examination and was feeling miserable. A fourth was to undergo a major operation, and wished that the Master would pray for him. A fifth wanted success in a prolonged legal battle over a large estate. One had lost his only child and was about to go mad with sorrow. Death, disease, misery, psychological torture—a suffering, seething, strife—torn humanity turned to the Master, ever calm and serene, an ocean of compassion and love, of...

53. The Master fed ants with sugar, birds with rice, monkeys with gram, fish with bread. He kept water in pots for birds. "This will develop mercy and cosmic love," he said. "It will soften the stony heart and instil the sense of oneness or Adwaita. No one can hope to attain oneness without doing such service. Mere study of Vedantic books without practice is absolutely useless." It was a hot day in 1955. "Let it drink," the Master’s voice suddenly rang out, as an Ashram monk tried to frighten away a monkey which wanted to drink water from a mud-pot kept near the office for drinking purposes. The man who ran with a stone halted; the monkey had its fill. "You cannot judge a man’s heart from the big charity that he does, and the huge hospital that he builds," commented the Master. "Watch for such little incidents. When you have brought water from the Ganges and a monkey spoils it, how do you react during the first split-second? What is...

52. In 1949, opening a cupboard, the Master’s attendant found a bedsheet bitten by a rat, and inside the sheet were four of its newborns. They had hardly opened their eyes. He took them to the Master. When the Master saw the baby rats, his heart was flooded with compassion. He felt greatly pained that they should have been disturbed. He asked the attendant to put them back immediately in the same place and condition, lest their mother should miss them. This was done. But in a day or two, the mother rat got killed by a cat. Soon after, the little ones also died. When the Master saw the dead rats, he felt sad and did Maha Mantra Kirtan for a pretty long time for the peace of the departed souls. His attendant also joined him in the Kirtan. Sri N. Ananthanarayanan  To be continued ...

51. It was October 4, 1948. "What a nice cottage! Is it for meditation purposes?" wondered a visitor, gazing as he was in the direction of the Master’s dwelling, beyond which on the river bank stood a small shed. "No, no, it is not a cottage in the sense that you take it to be. I shall explain it to you," said the Master, and took the visitor along. And what was there inside? An old, emaciated bull in a dying condition. "My God!" exclaimed the visitor. "Yes, you have just said it," put in the Master. "It is your own God. Don’t you see your God in this bull, too?" Two Ashramites were there tending to the bull. In the evening the poor creature died, despite all attention, and under the Master’s instructions was consigned to Mother Ganges with Maha Mantra Kirtan. A bull in a dying condition, a dog with an ulcer on its head, a crow mauled by a monkey—they all found a ready helper and sympathiser in the Master. No creature ...

50. In the summer months the Ashram is full of flies. A sanitary inspector suggested an insecticide. "Swamiji, it will kill the flies." The Master looked at him in studied silence. The inspector repeated his promise with great solicitude. This time the Master returned a mystic smile and said, "Inspector Saheb, it should prevent flies from coming, not kill them." As the Master was returning to his room one day from the office, he noticed crowds of large, black ants cutting across his path. He tried to proceed without hurting them. It was impossible, so he retraced his steps and went to his room by a circuitous way. During Kirtan time one night the Master saw a visitor suddenly crush a scorpion with the butt of his torch. After Kirtan he asked the person why he killed the creature. "It stings people," replied the visitor. The Master retorted, "By killing one scorpion are you able to save people from the stings of scorpions of which there are...

49. "First, I bow to the Ganges through the window, then I salute the Himalayas. I salute the door, the window, the commode," he told a stunned Swami Krishnananda, then general secretary of the Ashram. The Master then went on to recite stanza after stanza of Sanskrit verses in praise of the numerous Deities beloved of the devout Hindu, saying that all these hymns he recited while in the toilet. A direct result of this habit of seeing the Divine in everything was that the Master could not suffer to see even an insect injured. While he was bathing in the Ganges, if an insect came floating by struggling for life, he would at once take it into his palm and leave it on the bank. He revealed to his disciples, without the least trace of repugnance on his face, "If a worm or an insect were struggling for life in faecal matter, I would remove and protect it." Sri N. Ananthanarayanan  To be continued ...