NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

VOLUME ONE

· DAVID GODMAN
NOTHING EVER
HAPPENED

VOLUME ONE

DAVID GODMAN

AVADHUTA FOUNDATION
BOULDER,COLORADO
 NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

© 1998 Avadhuta Foundation, Boulder, Colorado. All rights

reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced with-
out the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews. For further
information, contact Avadhuta Foundation, 2888 Bluff Street,
Suite 390, Boulder, CO 80301, USA.

ISBN 0-9368022-2-4
 CONTENTS

Preface ....................................................... 5

Acknowledgments . . .. . .. . .. .. .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. 9

EARLY LIFE .. ... . .................. . ........ . ............... 15

RAMANA MAHARSHI 98

MINING MANAGER 183

RAM MANDIR .............................................. 271

Sources and Notes 374

Index ...................................... .................... 383

Glossary .. .... ..... .. ... ... ... ... .... ... ... ... ... .. .. .... ... . 399
 PREFACE

Many years ago I began to do research for what I hoped would be

a major new biography of Sri Ramana Maharshi, the incomparable
South Indian sage and saint whose life and teachings have influ-
enced, illumined and transformed countless people in all corners of
the world. The project had barely begun when I realised that the
nature of such a being made it impossible to create a definitive,
objectively accurate account. The true sage is the nameless,
formless Heart of all that is. Though he may appear to have a
personality, a character and a history, his words and his deeds, the
raw material of any biography, are primarily a response to the
minds of the people who come into contact with him. Each person
who approaches a true Master will see and experience something
different, but the experience will always be a reflection of that
person's needs, aspirations and inner maturity. Those who see him
the most clearly are the ones who, through his grace, have a direct
experience of his formlessness. As Sri Ramana himself once wrote
in one of his Tamil poems: 'He alone knows me who knows me as
I really am.'
Knowing this, I shifted the focus of my research to the lives
and experiences of the devotees who had had remarkable awak-
ening experiences in his presence. Over several years I accumu-
lated many long, first-person accounts that revealed what it was
like to live with him, to speak with him and to experience his infec-
tious inner silence. I had intended to devote one long chapter to
each devotee, but in two cases the material was so extensive and so
fascinating, the chapters expanded themselves into full-length
books. The first, Living by the Words of Bhagavan, an account of
Annamalai Swami's many years with Sri Ramana, was published
in 1994. Since then, I have spent most of the last three years
collecting and editing material on the life and teachings of Sri

5
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Hariwansh Lal Poonja, now widely known as 'Papaji', a Punjabi

who was led to Sri Ramana in the 1940s. These first three volumes
of Nothing Ever Happened are my attempt to present his life and
teachings from his earliest childhood up till a point in the 1980s
when he began to attract the attention of large numbers of west-
erners. Later events will, I hope, be covered in subsequent
volumes. I will be happy to receive information and correspon-
dence from anyone who met Papaji during the 1980s and '90s so
that the story of his life can be made as complete as possible.
The narrative of Nothing Ever Happened is primarily a first-
person account by Papaji himself, edited by myself and supple-
mented by stories and interviews I collected from his family and
devotees. My own editorial interpolations, comments and explana-
tions appear at various points in italics. For the sake of conve-
nience and simplicity, I have referred to him throughout the book
as 'Papaji' ('respected father'), even though this name is one that
has only become popular in the last few years. At other periods of
his life he has been given many other names and titles: 'Ram',
'Harbans', 'Harilal', 'Poonjaji', 'Swamiji', 'Maharaj', 'the
Master', and even 'Scorpion Baba'.
Since Papaji was brought up and educated in British-ruled
India, his written English tends to follow British rather than
American usage. I have therefore kept this style, particularly since
Papaji told me several years ago that he didn't like an earlier book
about him because it made him sound 'too American'.
It was a great honour and privilege to live with Papaji and to
work with him on this book. I now offer and dedicate it to Sri
Ramana Maharshi and to all those, including Papaji, who came
into contact with him and who now know him as he really is. I have
spent most of the last fifteen years living and working with such
beings. Writing about them has been, for me, an act of homage and
utmost respect. In chronicling their lives and teachings I have
endeavoured to achieve a standard of factual accuracy and schol-
arliness that takes the texts beyond the realms of mere hagiog-
raphy, but at the same time I will not hide the fact that I regard
these people as manifestations of God on earth. I show my awe at
their accomplishments and my veneration of their exalted state by

6
 PREFACE

collecting whatever information I can about them, and by

presenting it to the general public in the hope that at least a few of
the readers will be inspired to strive for the reality that these beings
so effortlessly manifest. These books are my own personal act of
worship.
I will conclude with a verse from Tukaram, the seventeenth
century Marathi saint, who felt much the same way about his own
writings:

Words are the only

Jewels I possess.
Words are the only
Clothes I wear.
Words are the only food
That sustains my life.
Words are the only wealth
I distribute among people.

Says Tuka [Tukaram],

'Witness the Word.
He is God.
I worship Him
With words.'

David Godman
Lucknow, March, 1997

7
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was a labour-intensive project to which many people

contributed their time, expertise and knowledge. I should like to
thank all of the following people for their contributions and
assistance:

Text and stories: The primary source for this book was Papaji
himself. At the beginning of this project he spent a whole summer
writing out answers to a detailed questionnaire I had given him.
When I later asked him supplementary questions about his life and
teachings, he added another 100 pages to his original 234-page
account. In addition to his written replies, he also answered many
of my questions during his 1995 and 1996 satsangs in Lucknow.
Papaji subsequently went through all the completed chapters and
made occasional corrections. Usually these were minor, such as
changing the spellings of various names. Between February and
October, 1996, he read out about two thirds of the book during his
Lucknow satsangs. Details of the dates can be found in the
'Sources' section at the end of each volume. I should like to thank
Papaji for all his written and verbal contributions, for his active
encouragement at all stages of the project, and for also giving me
permission to collect information from his personal letters, his
notebooks and diaries, and from his relatives and devotees.
I interviewed many of Papaji's devotees during the course of
my research. Afterwards, wherever it was possible, I asked all the
devotees whose stories appear here to check their own accounts to
satisfy themselves that what I had written about them was correct
and acceptable. I should like to thank everyone who contributed to
this process by telling me their stories, by sending me copies of
correspondence, and by checking the veracity of their
contributions. Some of the devotees who had known Papaji for

9
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

twenty years or more also agreed to go through the whole of my

manuscript and make editorial and factual suggestions. This
process resulted in many useful additions and corrections. I should
particularly like to thank Meera Decoux, Raj and Vinayak Prabhu,
Om Prakash Syal, Ravi Bakre and Raman Ellis for their many
critical comments and supplementary anecdotes.

Transcribing and typing: Between 1992 and 1995, while he was

giving satsang in Lucknow, Papaji would often talk about various
incidents from his life. About 800 hours of talks and dialogues
from this period were recorded on audio and video tapes. Many
people listened to these tapes on my behalf and transcribed stories
that pertained to Papaji's life. I should like to thank Reena for coor-
dinating this aspect of the work, Jahnavi and Chandramana for
doing about half of the work themselves, and the following people
for executing the remainder:

Aditi, Alba, Amadan, Amravati, Ana, Angeline, Ann, Aruna,

Asha, Atma, Bob, Brijbala, Caroline, Darrell, Dinesh, Durga,
Gauri, Gomati, Gopal Ram, Gopi Krishna, J aya, J ayant,
Kate, Katia, Kevan, Kirparam, Krishnaprem, Maithreyi, Nirmala,
Nitya, Prasanna, Priya, Radha, Ramba, Rani, Sankalpa, Santosh,
Shambu, Shanti, Shubha, Sitara, Spar, Susan, Triveno, Vajra,
Vasanta, Yogi.

During my research I amassed thousands of pages of raw material

in the form of letters, interviews and stories. Many people helped
with the typing of this material, but I should particularly like to
mention Katia, Kirparam, American Bhagirti and German Bhagirti
since they each devoted several hundred hours of their time to
entering these data on my computer.

Graphics, photos and general design: Most of the photos in this

book came from Papaji's own collection. I should like to thank his
relatives and devotees for supplying the remainder. I should partic-
ularly like to mention Markus Horlacher and Ravi Bakre. The
former toured Karnataka and Goa, collecting all the available

10
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

photos from the 1960s and '70s from devotees who had known him
during this period. Ravi Bakre assisted with this project and took
considerable trouble to identify all the people who appeared in old
group photos. Papaji himself chose the picture that appears on the
front cover. He also checked the black-and-white photos I selected
to accompany the text and modified a few of my captions.
I should like to thank Dharama and Rama for the work they
did on the maps, Carol Watts for executing the cover, Mike
Pocreva, Michele Moore and Rama for improving many of the old
pictures, and Priya for the work she did on the pagemaking and
general design.

Technical and financial assistance: I am indebted to a devotee

who wishes to remain anonymous for donating the funds for the
first printing of this book. Prior to publication, most of the finan-
cial support for the preparation of this book came from Kamal of
the Avadhuta Foundation. I would like to thank him for the funds
and equipment that made the creation of this book possible, and for
never saying 'no' to any of the many requests I sent to him. Thanks
also to Om Prakash for keeping my cranky, rickety computer going
amid the heat and dust of Lucknow. I also wish to acknowledge
and thank Almira for her generous, loving and warm-hearted
support throughout the years it took to prepare this book.

Research, translations, editing and proof-reading: Rama

Bonner-Crowell energetically tracked down many obscure histor-
ical facts for me and helped with the preparation of the glossary.
Thanks to him and to the following people who went through my
manuscript and found many words and passages that needed to be
corrected or improved: Gita, Jaya, Jahnavi, Vasanta, Dev Gogoi,
Swami Ramanananda Giri and Swami Nirvanananda. Swami
Ramanananda Giri also translated the portions of Papaji's diary
that were not in English. Thanks also to Anasuya who translated
some of the 1970s satsang dialogues that had originally been
recorded in French, and to Mira who tracked down one of Papaji's
old devotees in Australia and interviewed him on my behalf.

11
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Though I have accepted suggestions and contributions from

many different quarters, I take full responsibility for the final text
and for any errors that it might contain.

Publishers: I should like to thank the president of Sri

Ramanasramam for giving me permission to include a photo of Sri
Ramana Maharshi; Father James Stuart of the Abhishiktananda
Society, Delhi, for permitting me to quote extensively from Swami
Abhishiktananda's published writings; Carlos Silva for allowing
me to use extracts from his autobiography, The Fourth Movement;
and Penguin Books for permitting me to reprint the verse by
Tukaram from Dilip Chitre's Says Tuka.

12
 CHINA

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13
 EARLY LIFE

At the beginning of the twentieth century the area around Lyalpur,

a town in western Punjab, was very much frontier territory. The
British government, eager to have the land settled, was offering
grants of fifty acres to anyone who would be willing to clear the
forest land and farm there. A new irrigation canal had made agri-
culture a viable commercial proposition, so thousands of people
were migrating from other, more impoverished areas of India. The
town of Lyalpur had been built by the British in the nineteenth
century to serve as a centre for these new developments. It had
been named after one of the senior British administrators and its
central streets resembled the lines on the Union Jack, the British
flag. Most of the long-term residents of Lyalpur District were
Muslims, but a majority of the new arrivals who settled in the town
itself were either Sikhs or Hindus who came to set up businesses
there. When the first wave of settlement was completed, the town of
Lyalpur had a population of about 40,000, out of which about half
were Sikhs and Hindus.
Papaji s family was not part of this migratory wave of
farmers. They belonged to a small brahmin community that had
lived in the area for many generations. One of Papaji s ancestors
had been a pandit (professional scholar) at the court of Maharaj
Ranjit Singh, the last ruler of the Sikh kingdom that had governed
most of the Punjab till the middle of the last century. The group of
brahmins to which Papaji belongs had traditionally been pandits,
but Papaji 'sfather, Parmanand, broke with the family tradition by
taking a job as a stationmaster with the railways. The British
government needed large numbers of literate, educated people to
run their administration, so the brahmin communities, long the
educated elite of India, were finding many new employment oppor-
tunities opening up for them.

15
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Around 1911 Parmanand married a sixteen-year -old girl

called Yamuna Devi. He himself was twenty years old at the time.
Two years later Papaji became the first of their nine children.
Tradition dictated that the baby be delivered in the mothers family
home, a small village called Muraliwali, about fifty miles to the
northeast of Lyalpur.
Previous accounts of Papaji '.slife have given his birth date as
13th October, 1910. However, the evidence I gathered from his
official documentation, from his family, from people who knew him
when he was young, and from the anecdotes Papaji himself has
narrated about his early life, led me to believe that his date of birth
was 13th October, 1913. Though Papaji is aware that his official
papers give this later date, he is of the opinion that the documents
are inaccurate, and that the correct birth date is 1910. In writing
this narrative I have opted for the later date. My reasons for doing
so are elaborated in greater detail in the 'Sources and Notes'.
Because Parmanand was frequently transferred from station
to station, and often worked in remote parts of the country where
there was no accommodation for family members, Papaji did not
initially live with him. His first six years were mostly spent with his
mother in Muraliwali, in the home of his maternal grandparents.
The nearest town was Gujranwalla, a district headquarters located
about six miles away. At the end of this period Parmanand
purchased a house in Guru Nanak Pura, a small brahmin enclave
in the southern part of Lyalpur. Though Parmanand continued to
live and work in different parts of the Punjab and Baluchistan, and
often took his family with him to his new postings, the house in
Lyalpur remained the family '.smain home until India was parti-
tioned in 1947.
Papaji has distant memories of being shunted around from
town to town, although he doesn't remember many of the details.
'I have been travelling all my life, ' he once told me. 'I have
spent my whole life moving from place to place. Until old age
compelled me to settle down in Lucknow in the late 1980s, I have
never spent more than a year or so in one spot. '
In addition to the frequent changes brought about by his
father's profession, Papaji was also taken on many trips. Each

16
 EARLY LIFE

year in the hot summer season the whole family would take at least
a month off and travel to Hardwar, a sacred city on the banks of
the River Ganga. It is here that the Ganga leaves the foothills of
the Himalayas and enters the plains of India. Papaji s lifelong love
of the Ganga, and of Hardwar in particular, can be traced back to
these early years when he spent many weeks each year playing by
the river.

I have been drawn to Hardwar all my life. Even when I was a

small child, I went there with my parents for at least one or two
months every year. My father was working for the railways, so we
received free passes to travel there and back. During our two-
month school summer vacations he would take leave from his job
and come with us to Hardwar. I learned to swim and float in the
Ganga when I was only five years old. At that early age I even
managed to swim from one bank to the other.

Papaji 's parents were both devout, practising Hindus.

Yamuna Devi gave bhajan performances [ the singing of devotional
songs] to the women of her village while Parmanand had an
almost fanatical attraction to doing japa of 'Jai Sitaram '. Japa is
the repetition of God's name. Papaji himself felt a natural attrac-
tion to the spiritual life, but it did not manifest in the usual external
practices. Instead, from the age of three or four on, he would sit
quietly by himself, with his eyes closed, and become absorbed in a
current of silence that was flowing through him. His early spiritual
activities so impressed his parents, they gave him the nickname
'Ram'. Ram, hero of the Ramayana, is held to be an incarnation of
the God Vishnu. In a more general sense, 'Ram' is also a generic
term for God Himself.
Papaji has few memories of his early childhood, but I gleaned
many details from his younger sister Sumitra. Though she was
probably too young to have witnessed some of the events herself,
Papaji 's strange early behaviour became part of the family's
folklore. I spoke to her in her home in Delhi in 1994. In her replies
she always referred to Papaji as 'Bhai Saheb', a Punjabi term that
means 'respected elder brother'.

17
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

David: What are your earliest memories of family life?

Sumitra: I was born in 1918, so I am five years younger than Bhai

Saheb. My earliest memories therefore come from the 1920s. Our
father was a stationmaster in many different places. He wasn't
home very much, and we had to move a lot from town to town.

David: Can you remember any of the different places where he

worked as a stationmaster?

Sumitra: Mostly they were very small places. One place was
called Cheechon Ki Malian. That was on the line from Lyalpur to
Lahore. He also was posted to Gati and Ubas Pur, both of which
are near Lyalpur. There was a station called Dad Patiani near
Harappa, and once he worked in Multan. There were other places,
but I can't remember the names.

David: Did you go with your father whenever he got transferred,

or did the rest of the family stay in one place?

Sumitra: Usually we went with him wherever he went. He would

get a transfer every few years. Wherever we went we would be
given accommodation in the government quarters. In the beginning
the places we were sent to were very small. They were rural places
with few facilities. We would go directly to the farmers' fields to
buy vegetables from them because there was often nowhere else to
get them. We kept buffaloes, which kept us supplied with milk and
cream. All of us were very fond of milk and cream. We could never
get enough.
There were always buffaloes around us when we were young.
Sometimes they would even live with us in the house. Bhai Saheb
and his brother used to take them out for grazing in the nearby
jungles. There were many snakes in those places, so many that they
would crawl over you if you sat anywhere for any length of time.
Bhai Saheb told me that they would sometimes eat the food that he
had taken for his lunch. It was no problem for him because he
never had any fear of snakes. When he was very young he would

18
 EARLY LIFE

pick them up by the neck and swing them around his head. He
liked playing with snakes.

David: How did you entertain yourselves in these remote places?

How did you pass the time?

Sumitra: We had lots of fun playing with the trains. We would

play inside them when they arrived at the station, and we would
jump on and off them while they were moving along the platform.
Bhai Saheb was very mischievous. He used to play a lot of
pranks on shopkeepers. The owners of the shops would often leave
their businesses in the hands of young boys during the hot part of
the day or when there was not much business. Bhai Saheb would
wait till they were not looking and then go down the street
throwing hot water at them. One time he even threw hot ashes at
them.

David: Papaji has told me that his mother used to call him 'Ram'
when he was very small. How did he get this name?

Sumitra: When he was very small he used to smear his body with
mud and do pujapath [ritual devotional practices including puja,
japa and recitation of spiritual texts]. While he was in this condi -
tion he would repeatedly say, 'I am Ram. I am Ram.' Because of
this, his father, as a joke, gave him the nickname 'Ram'. The name
stuck and both parents ended up calling him 'Ram'.

The name 'Ram' was not merely a childhood nickname. I have

come across devotees who were calling him by this name as late as
the mid- l 970s. Papaji s parents, though, usually called him
'Harbans ', a diminutive form of Hariwansh.

David: What other spiritual activities was he engaged in? What do

you remember of his early spiritual life?

Sumitra: He used to go out to visit sadhu ashrams that were

outside our town. He would often stay there till late at night. When

19
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

our mother once scolded him for coming home late after one such
visit, he said, 'Am I a buffalo that I have to be home by six so that
you can milk me?' Sometimes, if he didn't come home, our father
would go looking for him in the sadhu bela [sadhu encampment]
that was located just outside the town. This was when we lived in
Lyalpur. Father always knew where to find him. If Bhai Saheb ever
went missing, he could always be found with the local sadhus.

Sadhus are Hindu monks who often live a peripatetic life,

wandering the countryside and begging for their food. The group
that lived outside Lyalpur were not Hindus; they instead belonged
to a notoriously wild Muslim sect called 'Mast Kalandars' who
were famous for their dancing, their singing and their erratic,
unconventional behaviour. In 1995 Papaji named one of his
devotees 'Mast Kalandar '. The man was unfamiliar with the
tradition, so he asked Papaji for more information.

Mast Kalandar: Can you tell me any stories about the Mast
Kalandars you have met?

Papaji: When I was very young there was a group of these people
who camped outside our town. They always wore black and had
metal bangles on their wrists. When they chanted and sang, they
would beat these bangles with a stick in a very rhythmical way.
They were happy, carefree people who just used to go around
saying, 'Mast Kalandar, Mast Kalandar,' which is how they got
their name. Most people in the Punjab were a little afraid of them.
Everyone thought that these Mast Kalandars were dangerous, and
a little bit mad as well, but I enjoyed their company. When you are
a Mast Kalandar, you don't care about anything. They didn't even
beg for their food. They would sing and dance, bang their bangles,
shout 'Mast Kalandar!' and that alone made people come and give
them food. Every night, from 10 p.m. till 6 a.m., they would have
singing and dancing programmes in their camp. I liked to attend,
but I knew my parents would never give me permission to stay up
all night with them.
Sometimes I would say to my mother, 'I have arranged to stay

20
 EARLY LIFE

with one of my friends so that we can work on our homework

together. I will spend the night there and go on to school from their
house in the morning.'
Then, while my parents thought I was working or sleeping, I
would be out with the Mast Kalandars, watching them dance and
sing. They used to employ the local prostitutes to come and dance
for them. These women, of course, wanted to be paid. The leader
of the Lyalpur Mast Kalandars had some kind of siddhi [supernat-
ural power]. He could materialise rupee coins whenever he wanted
to, so he could always pay for his group's entertainment. In those
days a rupee was a lot of money. Nowadays, one would probably
have to spend a hundred rupees to buy the things that a rupee
would buy then. This man seemed to have a limitless supply of
rupee coins. He would just rub his hand on his knee and a rupee
coin would appear in it. All the girls would be given a rupee coin
each time they danced, which made him very popular with them.
Their normal rate was much lower than that. Nowadays people like
Sathya Sai Baba are materialising vibhuti [sacred ash] for their
devotees, but what can one do with vibhuti? Making money to pay
for one's entertainment is a much more practical accomplishment.

Whenever Papaji went missing, Papaji 'sparents knew that the

most likely place to look for him was the sadhu bela outside the
town.
On one occasion, when his father came to collect him, he said,
'Why have you come to look for me instead of leaving me with
God?'
Parmanand would never allow him to stay with the group.
Though he frequently lectured the sadhus for allowing his son to
spend so much time there, the Mast Kalandars continued to allow
him to watch their performances.
In the Papaji Interviews book I reported another incident from
his early years. This is Papaji 's version:

During my childhood other boys would act out their fantasies

by playing soldiers or pretending they were famous sportsmen or
rulers . I, on the contrary, had an urge to imitate sadhus. I knew

21
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

nothing of the inner life of such people, but I was quite content
merely to mimic the externals. I particularly remember one day
when I decided to play at being a naked sadhu and persuaded my
sister to join in the game. We stripped off, smeared our bodies with
wood ash to imitate vibhuti and sat cross-legged in front of a fire
that we made in our garden. That was as far as we could go because
we didn't know anything about meditation or yoga. One of our
neighbours who happened to look over the common garden wall
was understandably shocked to see a naked girl there, covered with
ash. We were so innocent, it didn't occur to us that it wasn't proper
for young girls to sit outside with no clothes on. The neighbour
summoned our mother and the game came to an abrupt end.

I asked Sumitra about this, thinking that she might have been
the sister in the story.

David: Papaji has told a story about how he once took off all his
clothes, smeared himself with wood ash and sat in his garden,
pretending to be a sadhu. He says he persuaded one of his sisters
to take off all her clothes and join him. Was that sister you?

Sumitra: [laughing] No. It wasn't me. It was the daughter of one

of our neighbours. She was called Sheila. Her mother got very
angry when she saw her with no clothes on, sitting in our garden.
She came and made a complaint to our mother. 'What are they
doing? What are they doing?' She couldn't understand that it was
just two children playing at being sadhus. We knew that he liked
to play at being a sadhu, but we had a hard job convincing the
neighbours that it was just innocent play.

David: So he used to sit like this often?

Sumitra: He would often sit, legs crossed, on the floor. When his
friends came to visit he would also make them sit in the same
position on the floor. This was not a game for Bhai Saheb. He
would often go into a state in which it was easy to see that he had
been transformed in some way. His face would change completely,

22
 EARLY LIFE

Twelfth Street, Guru Nanak Pur, Lyalpur: the street on which

Papaji's family lived till 1947. This is a recent photo. Because
almost fifty years have passed since Papaji last saw this
street, he was unable to identify which house was his.

so much so, he no longer looked like the person we knew. His hair
would also stand on end during these transformations.
Once, when he came out of one of these states, I asked him,
'Where do you go when you look like this?'
He replied, 'This is not like a train journey. It is more like a
flight through the air in an airplane.'

His nights at the sadhu camps and the hours he spent at home,
immersed in meditative states, left him little time for his school
work. This didn't bother him because he had no interest in it
anyway.

I didn't do my homework when I was at school. I preferred to

spend my time playing. I would go to school the next day with
trembling knees, knowing that I would probably be punished for
not doing it, but still I didn't do it. Playing was much more fun.
Sometimes we would get caned for not doing the work, but mostly
the teacher would make us stand all day. I liked standing. It was

23
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

much better than sitting down, trying to solve all the problems the
teacher kept giving us. The teacher couldn't cane us himself; he
could only send us to the head teacher because all the canes were
kept in his room.
I never did much work when I was at school. I liked playing
with my friends, and I liked to go out with the sadhus at night, but
I had no time for schoolwork. I was the goalkeeper in a boys'
soccer team, so I was used to standing around doing nothing for
long periods. The goalkeeper is not often involved in the game.
Most of the time he just stands there, waiting for something to
happen.
My teacher gave up on me. I would arrive in the classroom;
the teacher would ask me for my homework; and when I told him
I hadn't done it, I would be sent off to my place in the corner to
spend the day facing the wall. When these punishments didn't
work, he told me to stand on my desk all day instead. He thought
that eventually I would get tired and would want to sit down, but I
never gave in. My training as a goalkeeper enabled me to stand all
day without feeling uncomfortable.
If I didn't feel like standing on my desk all day, I wouldn't go
to school at all. I would go out and play by myself. Personally, I
think that playing is more beneficial for young children than sitting
at a desk all day and studying books. I think I knew this at the time.
There was always this feeling in me, 'Why should I waste my time
studying books when I can go out and play instead?'

The key event in Papaji 's childhood was a profound experi-

ence he had while his family was visiting relatives in Lahore. Since
he once described it to me as 'my earliest memory', it probably
predates all the stories he has told so far. In fact, I think that it
would be fair to say that all the special experiences of his child-
hood and youth were a consequence of this singular event.

It was 1919. The British, having recently triumphed in the

First World War, had given all schoolchildren a one-month holiday
so that they could join in the victory celebrations. They even gave
us a little badge to wear to commemorate the victory. My mother

24
 EARLY LIFE

decided that this unscheduled vacation would be an ideal time to

go and visit some of our relatives who lived in Lahore. The visit
must have taken place in the summer of that year because I
distinctly remember that mangoes were in season at the time.
One evening, while we were all sitting in my relative's house
in Lahore, someone started to prepare a mango, milk and almond
drink for everyone. It should have been a mouth-watering treat for
a boy of my age, but when a glassful of it was offered to me, I
made no attempt to stretch out my hand to receive it. It was not that
I didn't want to drink it. The truth was, I had just been consumed
and engulfed by an experience that made me so peaceful and
happy, I was unable to respond to the offered glass. My mother
and the other women present were both astonished and alarmed by
my sudden inactivity. They all gathered around me, trying to
decide what had happened and what to do. By this time my eyes
were closed. Though I was unable to respond to their queries, I
could hear the discussion going on around me, and I was fully
aware of all their attempts to bring me back to my usual state. They
shook me; they gently slapped my face; they pinched my cheeks.
Someone even lifted me up in the air, but nothing elicited any kind
of physical response from me. I was not being stubborn. The expe-
rience was so overwhelming, it had effectively paralysed my
ability to respond to any external stimuli. For about an hour they
tried everything they could think of to bring me back to a normal
state of consciousness, but all their attempts failed.
I had not been sick, this had not happened to me before and,
just prior to its commencement, I had not been exhibiting any
strange symptoms. Because of the suddenness of the event,
because it had never happened before, and because no amount of
shaking could wake me, my family came to the conclusion that I
had suddenly and mysteriously been possessed by a malevolent
spirit. In those days there were no psychiatrists to run to. When
something like this happened, the standard response was to take
the victim to the local mosque so that the mulla [Muslim priest]
could perform an exorcism. We even used to take our buffaloes to
him when they got sick or failed to give milk in the hope that his
exorcisms and mantras would somehow remove the affliction.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

So, even though I came from a Hindu family, I was carried to

the local mosque and shown to the mulla. He chanted some words
while simultaneously running some metal tongs over my body.
That was the standard way of performing an exorcism. The mulla,
with his usual optimism, said that I would soon recover, but his
efforts, like those of my family before him, failed to bring me out
of the state I was in. Still paralysed, I was carried home and put to
bed. For two full days I stayed in this peaceful, blissful, happy
state, unable to communicate with anyone, but still fully aware of
the various things that were going on around me.
At the end of this two-day period I opened my eyes again. My
mother, who was an ardent Krishna bhakta [devotee], came up to
me and asked, 'Did you see Krishna?'
Seeing how happy I was, she had abandoned her initial idea
that I had been possessed and had substituted for it a theory that I
had had some kind of mystical experience involving her own
favourite deity.
'No,' I replied, 'all I can say about it is that I was very happy.'
As far as first causes were concerned, I was as much in igno-
rance as my family. I did not know what I had been experiencing
or what had precipitated this sudden immersion into intense and
paralysing happiness.
I told my mother when she pressed me further, 'There was
tremendous happiness, tremendous peace, tremendous beauty.
More than that I cannot say.'
My mother would not give up her theory. She went and
fetched a picture that portrayed Krishna as a child, showed it to me
and asked, 'Did you see anyone like this?'
Again I told her, 'No, I didn't'.
Although it did not tally with my own direct experience, my
mother somehow convinced me that the happiness had been
caused by coming into contact with Krishna. She encouraged me
to become a devotee of Krishna, saying that if I meditated on
Krishna and repeated His name, the experience I had had of Him
would sooner or later return.

This account is, with minor modifications, the one that

26
 EARLY LIFE

appeared in the Papaji Interviews book. In 1995, while a Finnish

journalist called Rishi was interviewing him, Papaji added a few
extra details:

Tears had been falling from my eyes during the experience.

They were tears of happiness. My mother wanted to know why I
had been crying, but I couldn't tell her. I didn't even remember that
I had been crying. My mother was worried about me and for the
next few days she wouldn't let me out of her sight. She even made
me sleep with her.
A few days later we returned to Lyalpur and I went back to
school. But all the time, in my mind, there was this thought, 'What
is it that is giving me this happiness all the time?' This happiness
was constantly pulling me towards itself. It wouldn't let my atten-
tion go anywhere else.
Our house had a big garden with an orange bush in it. Every
day when I came home from school I would sit behind the bush
with a book in my hands. I didn't care about the contents of the
book. It was just there to convince my parents that I was doing my
schoolwork. I cannot describe what was happening inside me
except to say that something was pulling me away from all the
activities of the world.
How did this experience come to me? I don't know. It
happened without any effort on my part. I didn't do anything to get
it, nor had I even heard of experiences like this happening to other
people. No one in my family had mentioned states like this. At that
time we didn't know Hindi or Sanskrit, so we had never been
exposed to the philosophical works in those languages. We learned
Persian and Urdu at school and at home, and we could read some
of the poems of those languages, but these several-hundred-year-
old poems didn't really help me to understand what had happened.

Rishi: What was the effect of this experience in your life?

Papaji: First of all, I wouldn't call it an experience, because to

have an experience there needs to be an experiencer and something
that is experienced. Neither was present. Something was pulling

27
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

me inside, and that thing that pulled me had no form. I don't know
what it was. But you are asking about the effect. That is more easy
to describe. From that moment till now I have always been happy.
The happiness I felt inside when I was paralysed didn't leave me
when my bodily functions returned to normal. That inside happi-
ness stayed, but I still don't know what it is.

A few years ago, in 1994, during one of his regular Lucknow

satsangs, he again stressed the indescribable nature of what had
happened to him:

I didn't see anything. I didn't perceive anything at all, so how

can I possibly describe it? The only phrase that comes near to
describing what I was feeling is 'uncaused happiness'. Whenever I
am asked about what happened that day, I plunge back into that
place of happiness, a place that is completely beyond time. I can't
describe it, but the feeling is still there, even though it happened
many decades ago. I can't call it 'nothingness' and I can't call it
'somethingness'. I was very conscious, but of what I can't say.
Sometimes I call it emptiness, but that is not satisfactory. It doesn't
convey the joy and the unalloyed happiness of the state.

I leave it to Rishi to ask the next, obvious question:

Rishi: Why did you become such an ardent devotee of Lord

Krishna after such a deep experience of the Self?

Papaji: I already told you it was not an experience of any kind

because there was no experiencer. As for it being an experience of
the Self, at that time I did not even know what the term meant.
My mother was a devotee of Krishna, as are millions of other
people all over India. I absorbed the stories and traditions of
Krishna bhakti from my mother until they became part of my life
as well. I fell in love with His form because, to me, He was such a
beautiful person.
I was very innocent at the time, so I didn't have the usual rela -
tionship with Him. Most Krishna bhaktas treat Him as a great

28
 EARLY LIFE

being, as God Himself, and they try to love Him as a devotee loves
a God. God is love itself. He doesn't need love from anyone. In the
beginning I wasn't really His devotee. I was just His friend. I loved
Him as a friend, so He came and played with me in that form. I
didn't treat Him as a God. I just laughed and played with Him in
much the same way that I would do with any other boy my own
age.

Following his mother's advice, Papaji began to perform

traditional bhakti sadhanas [devotional practices]. The results
were immediate:

My mother herself taught me how to perform all the various

rituals and practices associated with the Krishna cult. Once I
began, it did not take me long to develop an intense and passionate
love for the form of Krishna.
I was particularly attracted to one picture of the child Krishna,
the same one that my mother had shown me on the last day of my
experience. To me, the face was so indescribably beautiful, so
magnetically attractive, I had little difficulty in pouring all my love
and devotion into it. It was a foreign print that, somewhat incon-
gruously, had 'Made in Bavaria' written on it.
As a result of this intense bhakti, Krishna began to appear
before me, taking the same form as the picture. He would regularly
appear to me at night, play with me, and even try to sleep in my
bed. I was very innocent at the time. I didn't realise that this mani-
festation was one of the great deities of Hinduism, and that some
of His devotees spent whole lifetimes striving to get a single
glimpse of Him. Naively, I thought that it was quite natural for
Him to appear in my bedroom and play with me.
His physical form was as real as my own - I could feel It and
touch It - but He could also appear to me in a more subtle form. If
I put a blanket over my head, I could still see Him. Even when I
closed my eyes, the image of Him was still there in front of me.
This Krishna was full of playful energy. He always appeared after
I went to bed and His childish and enthusiastic playing kept me
awake and prevented me from going to sleep. When the novelty of

29
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

His initial visits had worn off, I started to feel that His appearances
were becoming a bit of a nuisance because He was preventing me
from sleeping, even when I was very tired. As I was trying to think
up some way of making Him go away, it occurred to me that it
would be a good idea if I sent Him off to see my mother. I knew
that, as an ardent Krishna bhakta, she would be delighted to see
Him too.
'Why don't you go and sleep with my mother?' I asked Him
one night. 'You are not allowing me to go to sleep. Go to my
mother instead.'
Krishna seemed to have no interest in my mother's company.
He never went to see her because He preferred to spend all His
time with me.
One night my mother overheard us talking and asked, 'Who
are you talking to?'
'I am speaking with your Krishna,' I replied, ingenuously. 'He
disturbs me at night and doesn't let me sleep. If I close my eyes I
still see Him, sometimes more clearly than when they are open.
Sometimes I put a blanket over my head, but I still see Him. He
always wants to sleep with me, but I cannot sleep while He is
here.'
She came into the room to investigate, but she didn't see Him.
In all the times that Krishna came to our house, she never saw Him
once.
When He wasn't there I always felt a desire to see Him. I
really did want to see Him and play with Him. The only problem
was that I was often so tired when He came, I felt that He should,
after a decent interval, leave me in peace so that I could lie down
and get some sleep.
He didn't come every night. Sometimes I would see Him and
sometimes I wouldn't. I never doubted His reality; I never had the
idea it was some kind of vision. I even wrote a postcard to Him
once, telling Him how much I loved Him. I posted it and wasn't at
all surprised when I got a reply from Him, properly stamped and
franked and delivered by the postman. He was so real to me, it
seemed quite natural to correspond with Him by post.
From the moment that Krishna first came into my life, I

30
 EARLY LIFE

became even less interested in my schoolwork. I would sit in class,

apparently paying attention, but my mind and heart would be on
the form of Krishna. Sometimes, when waves of bliss would surge
up inside me, I would abandon myself to the experience and lose
contact with the outside world.

Papaji 's mother frequently gave bhajan peiformances in her

home or elsewhere in the neighbourhood. All the local women
would gather and sing songs in praise of Krishna. Papaji remem-
bers attending many of these functions.

When I was a boy of six, and for years afterwards, my mother

would take me to satsangs in the neighbourhood. Some twenty
women would gather in the evenings to sing bhajans. We would
sing and keep time by clapping our hands, by playing drums, and
by shaking a chimtas. This looks like a long pair of tongs with
brass rings on the ends. A sound is produced by striking the two
sides together. Often at night she would take me with her when she
went out to play ras lila. In those days she took me along with her
wherever she went.

In the ras lila performances, some of the women would dress

up as Krishna while the others would play at being His devotees.
Songs would be sung, mostly imploring Krishna to manifest
Himself. I asked Sumitra what she remembered of these neigh-
bourhood gatherings.

Sumitra: The women used to collect in our house because it was

the only one in the neighbourhood that had electricity. Bhai Saheb
would greet the women at the door and direct them to our mother.
When everyone had assembled, one person would play at being
Krishna while all the others would pretend to be His devotees.
There would be a lot of singing and dancing, during which the
women would implore Krishna to appear before them. But He
didn't appear to them. He would appear to Bhai Saheb instead. He
started to get the darshan of Krishna when he was still very young.
Sometimes he would go into samadhi while the singing and
dancing were going on.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

David: Did you ever see him playing with Krishna? He says that
Krishna regularly came and played with him in his bedroom at
night.

Sumitra: All the children used to sleep in one room. Mother and
father would sleep in a different room. Krishna would appear in
our room and Bhai Saheb would play with Him, but no one else
saw Him. I saw Bhai Saheb talking, jumping and playing, but I
couldn't see who he was playing with. Sometimes he would tell
Krishna to go and play with our mother because he knew she
wanted very much to see Him, but He never went. He was only
interested in playing with Bhai Saheb.
One morning I heard Bhai Saheb say to our mother, 'Last
night while I was sleeping in my room I thought that all the lights
in the room had been turned on. When I looked, it wasn't the house
lights, it was Krishna. He filled the whole room with light. I played
with Him during the night, but when I got tired I said to Him, "My
mother is in the next room. Why don't you go and play with her?"
But now He is not here, I am missing Him. If He comes again, I
will not tell Him to go and play with you.'

David: Was he performing any spiritual practices at that time, or

was he just playing with Krishna?

Sumitra: He was always doing pujapath [ritual devotional prac-

tices] and trying to get us to join in with him. Just to please him,
the other brothers and sisters would go through the motions of
joining in, but we never had the same passion for it that he had.
Eventually, though, it began to have some effect on us. We started
having faith in God and began to take the practices more seriously.
I am an old woman now. I am not in good health because I
suffer from high blood sugar, but I have full faith that the Goddess
is looking after me. She brings me my food every day and feeds
me. I also make little books on Ram and Krishna and sell them. I
can trace my faith in God back to those childhood years when Bhai
Saheb made us all do these pujas, and in doing them, transmitted
some of his passion for God to us.

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 EARLY LIFE

Sumitra passed away in 1996. Before her death I wrote to

Leela, Papaji 's other surviving sister, and asked her what she
remembered of Papaji s childhood. She too recollected the ras lilas
and Papaji's participation in them. Her reply took the form of a
letter addressed to her elder brother:

Respected Bhai Saheb Ji,

J ai Sitaram!

Do you remember the incident that occurred at Lyalpur when you

were a young boy? You had the holy vision of Bhagavan [God].
While our dear mother and her lady friends were doing ras lila in
the middle of the night, she said, 'Tonight, during ras lila, we will
have darshan [a vision] of Bhagavan'. She loudly sang a bhajan
that had the following words:

Come, come, 0 my Krishna, come!

Though my heart is fluttering,
nothing is in my control.
The night has become dark.
Black clouds have spread everywhere.
Krishna, save me from this separation from You!
Krishna, please come, come!

Completely losing themselves in singing this song, dear mother

and her lady friends went into a trance and lost their outer
consciousness. After they went into that trance, Radha [Krishna's
consort] and Krishnaji appeared from the other room. You could
not stand the splendour of this dazzling sight.
You said to Him, 'Bhagavan, I have not called You. Dear
mother has called You. Go to her.'
Later on you described His appearance by saying that both
His crown and His clothes were studded with diamonds and pearls.
You also said, 'On seeing His striking appearance I truly
became His own, but His splendour and His decorated dress made
such a glorious sight, I could not stand the sight of this vision for

33
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

very long. That's why I asked Him to go and see our mother.'
Dear mother then regained consciousness, but as she did so,
Sri Bhagavan disappeared. After this unusual and strange incident,
you could not leave your bed for several months.

Throughout his life Papaji has had an ability to experience

words, rather than merely think about them. This unusual faculty
manifested on many occasions, and it partly explains why gods
kept appearing to him. When he heard stories about the life of
Krishna, Krishna would often appear in front of him. Later in his
life, when he heard about the traditions associated with other
deities, these gods also appeared before him. Sometimes he says
that it was his innocence that caused the manifestations. Because
he had no doubts that the gods were real, and because he never
questioned their ability to appear in front of him, they manifested.

I never had doubts about these things at any time during my

childhood. My first teacher was my own mother. Whatever she told
me, instantly it happened to me. She would tell me stories about
the Hindu gods, and as she was telling them, the stories would
unfold before me. The characters would appear in front of me and
re-enact their dramas for me. When things like this happen to you,
how can you have any doubts?
Anyway, these stories about the gods are not just stories.
There is an essence, a truth in them, and the stories are merely the
vehicles for conveying these truths.

In addition to singing Krishna bhajans, Yamuna Devi was also

learning Vedanta, a Hindu philosophy that is derived from the
Upanishads. These are ancient texts that were mostly written more
than two thousand years ago. The Vedanta philosophy that grew
out of them is off ar more recent origin.
Papaji 's mother regularly attended classes that were
conducted by Iswar Chander, a village revenue collector who was
also a tenant in a house that was owned by Papaji's family. He
taught Vedanta philosophy by reading out Vichar Sagar, a book
that had been written by Nischaldas, a nineteenth-century Punjabi

34
 EARLY LIFE

saint. Vichar Sagar is very technical in places, so lswar Chander

would frequently pause to give comments and explanations. In his
spare time this man also gave Yamuna Devi lessons in meditation.
Papaji attended these meetings with his mother, starting when
he was about seven years old. It is doubtful that he absorbed the
full meaning and significance of the text, but he was an eager
student. When Yamuna Devi noticed how interested he was in these
teachings, she began to give him instructions at home. Papaji has
described some of these early lessons:

My mother used to teach me philosophy in very practical

ways. I was still very young when she decided that it was time that
I learned how the five elements - earth, water, fire, air and space -
react with each other, and why they don't always stay together.
'Water moves the earth,' I remember her saying, and she illus-
trated it by showing me how the banks of the river would be
washed away by the swift currents of water. Then, putting her wet
clothes near the fire, she would show me how fire dries up water .
Next she blew out a flame to show me how air conquers fire. Her
demonstrations showed me that when the elements are exposed to
one another, one of them usually eliminates the other.
She had already told me that the body is made up of the five
elements, which made me wonder how they all managed to stay
together in one place without fighting with each other. This query
produced another practical demonstration that was one of my first
lessons in philosophy.
She collected different kinds of beans and cereals and put
them in separate piles on the kitchen floor. There were rice, wheat
and maize grains, chickpeas and beans, all in separate groups. In
the beginning there were five different piles of five each. These
five groups represented the five different elements.
First, she took one grain from the maize pile and added it to
the wheat section. Then, because the wheat section now had six
pieces, she took one grain of wheat and added it to the rice pile. In
this way she moved the cereals and beans around, one by one, until
each of the five piles was a combination of the five different
elements. I suppose the idea of this part of the demonstration was

35
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

to show me that these disparate elements could combine and fuse

together into a meal in which no one component would be fighting
with any of the others. But the demonstration didn't stop there.
Though I was still just a young boy, my mother began to give me
a lecture on the philosophical significance of these combined
elements.
'These twenty-five seeds are the tattvas in the human body.'
Then she listed them all for me.

Samkhya, the Indian philosophy that Yamuna Devi was

explaining in a simplified way to Papaji, has a complex and very
non-western way of explaining the way life functions in the human
body. The twenty-five tattvas are the basic components or elements
that join or react together to manifest the world and the sentient
life that inhabits it. They are the five elements (earth, water, fire,
etc.), the five sense organs (nose, eyes, tongue, etc.), five faculties
of mental functioning (ego, mind, intellect, etc.), five 'organs of
action' that include the parts of the body that are responsible for
holding objects, walking, speaking, etc., and five pranas. Prana can
be loosely defined as the life force that animates and sustains the
body. It is subdivided into different pranas that are responsible for
the functioning of different organs within the body.

A knowledge of these components, and the way they interact

with each other, is essential to understanding some of the systems
of Indian philosophy. My mother, who had been taught these
things by one of her teachers, decided that I was mature enough to
be introduced into these complex systems of thought at a very early
age. Though I grasped the ideas that she was trying to convey, I
cannot say that I ever accepted them as a working model for the
way the universe really functions. There was an instinctive knowl-
edge within me that was aware that these descriptions did not apply
to any fundamental, abiding reality. Rather, they were descriptions
and ideas about the ephemeral body.
After formulating this elaborate scheme of the tattvas and
their relationships to each other, our philosophers go on to say that
it must all be rejected as being 'not me'. Spiritual teachers encour-
ages a systematic rejection of all identification with these tattvas.

36
 EARLY LIFE

'I am not the body. I am not the sense organs. I am not the
elements of knowledge. I am not the bodily organs. All these
belong to the body, and I am beyond all these.'
Identification with these twenty-five components has to be
given up. When this has been done, one can begin the real enquiry
of 'Who am I?' It is this enquiry which ultimately leads to
freedom .
Though my mother was an ardent Krishna bhakta, she had a
strong background in Vedanta. She encouraged me to do the neti-
neti [not this, not this] practice, telling me that I should identify
with Brahman, the Supreme Self, rather than the body and its
component elements.
She would encourage me to repeat the mahavakya [great
upanishadic saying] 'Aham Brahmasmi', 'I am Brahman', and she
would lecture me on what was real and true, and what was unreal
and deserving of rejection.
'You are Brahman,' she would say. 'Nothing else exists in the
whole universe except Brahman, and you are That. Brahman is
beyond everything you can think of. There is a place where the sun
doesn't shine, nor the moon, nor the stars. In that place the
elements of earth, water, fire and air do not exist. That is Brahman,
and that is your supreme and true dwelling place. If you reach that
place and abide there, having transcended this physical world and
all its tattvas, you will not return to this endless samsara of birth
and death.'
This was strong stuff to give to a young boy, but she could see
from my behaviour and my spiritual interests that I was not an
ordinary child. I absorbed this information and this world -view
quite effortlessly, but it was not something that I fully accepted
until many years later.

The paragraph about the place where the sun, the moon and
the stars don't shine is a paraphrase from the Bhagavad Gita,
chapter fifteen, verse six: 'Neither the sun nor the moon nor even
fire can illumine that supreme self-effulgent state, attaining to
which they never return to this world. That is my supreme abode.'
Papaji often made fun of his mothers attempts to transcend

37
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

the body by negating her identification with the tattvas or its other
component parts. This is the account he gave in the Papaji
Interviews book:

He [Iswar Chander] knew many vedantic works and could

lecture on them all with great authority. His favourite was Vichar
Sagar by the Hindu saint Nischaldas. My mother could recite large
portions of it by heart. Many years later, when I became acquainted
with Sri Ramana Maharshi, I found that he too liked it and that he
had even made a Tamil abridged rendering of it under the title
Vichara Mani Mala.
My mother's teacher had made her memorise many vedantic
shlokas which she used to chant at various times during the day.
Traditional vedantic sadhana is done by affirmation and negation.
Either one repeats or contemplates one of the mahavakyas [great
sayings] such as 'I am Brahman' or one tries to reject identification
with the body by saying and feeling, 'I am not the body, I am not
the skin, I am not the blood,' etc. The aim is to get into a frame of
mind in which one convinces oneself that one's real nature is the
Self, and that identification with the body or its constituent parts is
erroneous.
My mother used to chant all these 'I am not...' verses and I
used to find them all very funny .... I couldn't see the point of these
practices which merely listed, in endlessly trivial ways, what one
was not. When my mother had a bath she would chant, 'I am not
the flesh, I am not the blood, I am not the bile, I am not the bones,'
and so on. This was too much for me. I would call out, 'What are
you doing in there? Having a bath or cleaning the toilet?' I
ridiculed her so much, she eventually stopped singing these verses
out loud.

He made fun of his mother's religious activities in other ways.

Sumitra gives the details before going on to describe some other
remarkable incidents from his childhood:

Sumitra: Our mother went to many religious places with us. She
was very fond of Hardwar, so we went there many times.

38
 EARLY LIFE

She liked to sing bhajans and play the drum at the same time.
Because of this she was called 'Yamuna dholki wali' [Yamuna the
drummer]. She used to go into ecstasies when she sang about
Krishna. She would sway from side to side and tears would flow
down her cheeks. Bhai Saheb, though, was not impressed by these
performances. If he ever saw her behaving like this, he would call
out to her and say, 'Mother, who has died? Why are you wailing
like this?'

David: That reminds me of another story. You once told me about

one of your sisters who died, and how Papaji reacted. Can you tell
it again?

Sumitra: Once, when Bhai Saheb and the rest of us were all
asleep, our mother came into our room and woke us all up. She
said, 'You must all get up. Your baby sister has died.' All of us
started crying. Bhai Saheb noticed that our mother was not crying
at all. Instead she was repeating the name 'Ram, Ram'.
Bhai Saheb said to mother, 'Why are you not crying?'
Mother replied, 'Whoever comes into this world must die.
Why should one cry over this?'
When the dead body was taken for burial, Bhai Saheb accom-
panied the funeral party. Before he returned he left a mark on the
grave. Each day he would return there. For several days in succes -
sion he returned to the burial place, but not to mourn the death. He
went there to dig up the grave to see if his dead sister had come
back to life again.

David: What do you remember of your trips to Hardwar with Bhai

Saheb?

Sumitra: All the family used to go for about two months every
year. Father would take leave and we would all go there together.
One time when we were there, Bhai Saheb and one of his
younger brothers found a woman sadhu who was supposed to be
keeping mauna [a vow of silence]. Bhai Saheb was suspicious of
her claim that she never spoke to anyone, so he hid near her hut to

39
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

watch what she did. After some time a man came along with some
food. The two of them talked together for some time, proving that
Bhai Saheb 's suspicions were correct. He got so angry that she had
been lying to everyone, telling them that she was in mauna, he
went up to her hut, set fire to it and burned it to the ground.
Bhai Saheb could not stand people who told lies. He always
got very angry if he ever found people who were trying to cheat or
deceive other people. He was very strict with us in our house. If he
ever caught any of his brothers and sisters telling lies, he would
beat them up. We all learned from experience that it was safer to
tell the truth. He always used to tell us, 'Whatever the facts may
be, you must always tell the truth'.

David: What were his ambitions when he was very young? What
did he want to be when he grew up?

Sumitra: He always wanted to be a sadhu. There was never any

doubt in anyone's mind about that. Once, when someone asked
him why he wanted to be a sadhu when he grew up, he replied, 'I
am already a sadhu. I don't need to wait till I grow up.'

In addition to /swar Chander, Papaji's mother had several

other teachers. There was a man called Gopal Dasji, who was a
well-known singer of bhakti songs. There was another called
Goswami Ganesh Das who was a social worker and the president
of the local branch of a Hindu organisation called 'Sanatan
Dharma '. This man had regular meetings in Papaji 's locality that
were attended by Yamuna Devi and other local women, including
Brahma Devi, the wife of the teacher. Many years later this man
built an ashram in Hardwar and called it 'Sapt Rishi Ashram'.
Papaji often stayed there in the 1970s and '80s, and was always
treated very hospitably because it was known that he was a good
friend of the founder of the ashram.
Yamuna Devi had one other teacher, a Kashmiri called
Avadhuta Shaligram. He read Yoga Vasishta to her and took a keen
interest in Papaji 's spiritual development. Papaji describes his
association with him:

40
 EARLY LIFE

Avadhuta Shaligram liked me very much. He suggested books

for me to read and frequently gave me advice on spiritual matters.
He owned a lot of land, had many cows, and spent half his time in
teaching and the other half in managing his properties and
possess10ns.
One day he made my mother an astounding offer: 'Please give
me your son. I will appoint him my heir and spiritual successor.
When I die everything I have will be his. I will look after his spir-
itual development, but to get all this he must agree to one condi -
tion. He must not marry and he must remain a brahmachari
[celibate student]. If he agrees, and if you agree, I will take full
responsibility for him.'
My mother had great love and respect for this man, but she
was far too attached to me to consider handing me over to someone
else. She turned down his offer. I too had great respect for him. If
my mother had accepted his offer, I would happily have gone with
him.

Papaji once told me, 'When my mother refused his offer, he

uttered what he thought was a kind of curse.
'He said, "If I cannot have him, then you will not have him
either. He will leave his family and become a sannyasin [a renun-
ciate monk]. This boy is not destined to stay at home and lead a
quiet life with his family. "'
Though Papaji never took formal sannyasa, he did make
several attempts in later years to run away from his family and
worldly responsibilities. None was entirely successful.
There were other swamis whom his mother consulted, but
Papaji had no interest in visiting them. This is his description of
one failed attempt to get him to visit one of her new advisors:

She announced that she was going to take me to a new swami

because she wanted me to get some special spiritual instructions
from him. I didn't like the idea and I didn't like the man she chose
for me.
I told her, 'If you take me to this man I will test him to see if
he has really conquered his passions. As soon as I see him I will

41
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

slap him in the face. If he gets angry, I will know that he has no
self-control. If he doesn't get angry, I will listen to him and accept
whatever he has to teach me.'
My mother knew that I was quite capable of carrying out the
threat. Not wishing to be embarrassed by my disrespectful activi-
ties, she dropped her plans to take me to see him.

When he was about ten or eleven, Papaji's fascination with

the mysterious state of happiness, which had been with him since
the day he had ignored the mango drink in Lahore, propelled him
towards a study of the life of the Buddha.

I was just a child, too young to understand what had happened

to me. Something was drawing me in, but nobody could tell me
what it was. It was only later in life that I read the books that talked
about realisation and enlightenment. At that time, even if I had
read them, such words would have been meaningless to me. There
was happiness all the time, but the state itself that was causing the
happiness was beyond that happiness, and beyond all description.
If I bring up a word and try and fit it to that experience, it always
fails in some respect. It wasn't love, for example, because love is
always between two people, two separate things. I was absolutely
alone in that state, no lover, no love and no beloved.
I stopped sleeping at night. The eyes would close, but there
would be no sleep. I was intoxicated by something, without
knowing what it was. Always there was this happiness, happiness,
happiness. It never subsided. I couldn't leave it, and it couldn't
leave me. I would sit behind the bushes in my garden and let this
state take me over, without ever knowing what it was or what was
happening to me. Then, one day, in one of my school books, I read
about the life of the Buddha, how he left home in search of enlight-
enment. The word somehow resonated in me.
I thought, 'Maybe this man can tell me something about this
strange thing that has happened to me'.
I started to look for information about his life in the hope that
it would explain what was happening to me.

42
 EARLY LIFE

Early role model: a

starving Buddha
statue, probably the
one that inspired
Papaji to lose weight.
The original is in a
museum in Lahore.
During Papaji's youth
this image was widely
reproduced in
children's books.

Initially Papaji was attracted to the physical form of the

Buddha. The first picture he came across was a reproduction of a
famous 'starving Buddha' image.

It all started when I saw a picture of the Buddha in a history

book at school. This picture illustrated the period of his life when
he tried to live on only one grain of rice a day. The face was very
beautiful but the body was skeleton -like, all skin and bone. I imme -
diately felt a great attraction to him, even though I didn't then
know anything about his teachings. I simply fell in love with his
beautiful face and decided that I should try to emulate him. In the
picture he was meditating under a tree. I didn't know that at the
time. In fact, I didn't even know what meditation was.
Undeterred, I thought, 'I can do that. I can sit cross -legged
under a tree. I can be like him.'

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

I began to sit in a cross -legged position in our garden under

some rose bushes. Sitting there, I felt happy and content that I was
harmonising my lifestyle with this person I had fallen in love with.
Then, to increase the similarity even more, I decided that I should
try to make my body resemble his skeleton -like frame. At that time
in our house we would collect our food from our mother before
going off to eat it separately. This made it easy for me to throw my
meals away. When no one was looking I would go outside and give
all my food to the dogs in the street. After some time I managed to
stop eating completely. I became so weak and thin, eventually my
bones began to stick out, just like the Buddha's. That made me
very happy, and I became very proud of my new state. My class-
mates at school made my day by nicknaming me 'the Buddha'
because they could see how thin I was getting.
My father worked for the railways. At this particular period of
his life he was working in Baluchistan as a stationmaster. Because
his job was a long way away, we only ever saw him when he came
home on leave. About a month after my fasting began he came
home on one of his regular visits and was shocked to see how thin
I had got during his absence. He took me off to see various doctors
and had them examine me in order to find out what was wrong.
None of them suspected that I was deliberately fasting.
One of them told my father, 'He is growing tall very quickly,
that is why he is getting so thin. Give him good food, lots of milk
and dry fruits.'
My mother followed the advice, adding a bit of her own.
Every day she would say, 'Eat more butter, eat more butter'. The
dogs on the street got very fat and happy because the new diet went
the same way as the old one.
The school history book containing Buddha's picture was a
simple guide for children. The main biographical facts were there,
but the concepts of meditation and enlightenment were not
adequately explained. Presumably, the author did not think that
these very essential points would be of interest to children. So, I
remained ignorant of what he was really doing under that tree and
why his final accomplishment was so great. Nevertheless, I still
felt attracted to him and still felt an urge to imitate him as closely
as possible.

44
 EARLY LIFE

I learnt from this book that the Buddha wore orange robes and
that he begged for his food, going from house to house with a
begging bowl. This was something I could, with a little ingenuity,
copy.
My mother had a white sari that seemed to me to be the ideal
raw material for a robe. I took it when she wasn't looking and dyed
it ochre, the colour of the Buddha's robes. I draped it around
myself in what I took to be the correct way and began to play at
being a mendicant monk. I got hold of a bowl to beg with and
walked up and down the streets of Lyalpur, asking for alms . Before
I went home I would change into my ordinary clothes and wrap up
the orange sari in a paper parcel. I kept the parcel among my school
books, a place I thought no one would bother to look.
One of my friends found out what I was doing and told me,
'You can't get away with this. Somebody will recognise you and
tell your family what you are doing.'
Feeling very confident about my ability to do it secretly, I told
him, 'Your parents know me. I will come to your house in my
robes and ask for food. If I can fool them, I can fool anybody.'
I put on my sari, smeared ashes all over my face to further my
disguise, put a cap on my head and went off to their house with my
begging bowl. It was about 8 p.m., so the darkness also helped my
disguise. I called out 'Bhiksha! Bhiksha!' [Alms! Alms!] because I
had seen sadhus beg for food by calling in this way. Since it did not
occur to me that anyone might recognise my voice, I made no
attempt to disguise it. My friend's mother came to the door,
showed no sign of recognition, and invited me in to eat.
'Swamiji, Babaji, come in and eat something,' she said,
taking me in and offering me food.
I went with her, acting out the role I had assigned myself.
'My child,' I said to her, even though she must have been
about thirty years older than I, 'you will have children and get lots
of money.'
I had heard swamis bless women like this. Since most women
wanted to get rich and have several sons, itinerant swamis would
give these fantasies their blessings in the hope of getting a better
reception and something good to eat.

45
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Then, laughing, she removed my cap and told me that she had
always known who I really was.
'Your appearance is quite good,' she said, 'but I recognised
you from your voice.'
Then her husband came home and she explained to him what
was going on.
Scornfully he said, 'Who will not recognise you if you go out
begging like that? You will soon be detected.'
Now it was my turn to laugh because earlier that day I had
begged at his shop and got a dhela, a half -paisa copper coin from
him. I showed him the coin.
He had to revise his opinion a little. 'I must have been busy
with my customers,' he said. 'I must have given it to you without
looking.'
'No, that's not true,' I responded truthfully. 'You saw me very
clearly. I walked past your shop, begging. You saw me, called me
back and handed me this coin. My disguise is good enough. I can
get away with it so long as I don't talk to people who might recog -
nise my voice.'
These people were amused by my antics, not knowing that I
was doing this sort of thing regularly in a stolen, dyed sari. They
didn't tell my mother, so I was able to carry on with my
impersonation.
My mother only had three saris. One day, fairly soon after I
had taken the white one, she washed the other two and started
looking for the third because she needed to wear it. Of course, she
couldn't find it anywhere. She never asked me about it because,
since I was not a girl, it did not occur to her that I might have had
any possible use for it. She eventually decided that she must have
given it to the dhobi [laundryman], and that he had lost it or
forgotten to return it.
The final phase of my Buddha impersonations came when I
discovered that he used to preach sermons in public places. This
excited me because it was a new facet of his life that I could copy.
I knew absolutely nothing about Buddhism, but the thought that
this might be a handicap when I stood up to preach never occurred
to me.

46
 EARLY LIFE

A recent photo of the

clock tower in the
centre of Lyalpur,
under which Papaji
preached his Buddhist
sermons in his early
teens. A few years
later he also gave
political speeches
there. In Papaji's
youth, the area
around the base of
the tower was a
grassy park.

There was a clock tower in the middle of our town, and near
it was a raised platform where all the local politicians used to give
their speeches. It was very much the centre of Lyalpur because all
the routes to other towns radiated out from it. I put on my usual
disguise, strode confidently up the steps, and began to give my first
public speech. I cannot recollect anything that I said - it couldn't
have been anything about Buddhism because I knew absolutely
nothing about it - but I do remember that I delivered my speech
with great flair and panache. I harangued the passers-by with great
gusto, occasionally raising my arm and wagging my finger to
emphasise the points I was making. I had seen the politicians
gesture like that when they made their speeches.
I felt I had made a successful start to my oratorical career and
had taken a step further towards my goal of imitating the Buddha
in everything he did. I went back to the clock tower on several
occasions and preached many sermons there. Unfortunately,

47
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Lyalpur was not a big city. Sooner or later it was inevitable that
someone who knew me would recognise me. It was not surprising,
therefore, that one day one of my neighbours spotted me and
reported my antics to my mother.
At first she was very sceptical. 'How can it be he?' she asked.
'Where would he get an orange robe from?' Then, remembering
her missing sari, she went to the cupboard where I kept my books
and found the paper parcel. The game was over, for that discovery
effectively ended my brief career as an imitation Buddha.
It was an absurd but very entertaining episode in my life
which, in retrospect, I can see as reflecting my state at the time. I
wasn't being mischievous. I never regarded it as some kind of
childhood prank. Some power was compelling me to do it. Perhaps
some old samskaras [past-life habits] were coming up and making
me behave this way.
My mother did not get very angry with me. We had always
had a good relationship and she could see the humour of the situa-
tion. Because she had been so young when I was born, we behaved
with each other as if we were brother and sister, rather than mother
and son. We played, sang and danced together, and quite often we
even slept in the same bed.

I asked Sumitra if she remembered his Buddha

impersonations:

David: Do you remember the time he was pretending to be a

Buddhist monk? At one time he was fasting because he wanted to
look like an image of a starving Buddha he had seen. Do you
remember this period?

Sumitra: I don't remember him starving himself. He was always

very thin when he was young, so I probably didn't notice how thin
he was getting. But I do remember the time when our mother
discovered the robe he was going out to beg and preach in. She was
not angry with him.

48
 EARLY LIFE

She simply asked, 'When did you get transformed like this?
You are on fire for God? How did you get such a fire?'
Bhai Saheb replied, 'When there is a big fire, it is the kindling,
the very small twigs, that catch fire first. '

In one of his Lucknow satsangs Papaji made the following

remarks about this period of his life: 'Buddha was my first Guru. I
loved him and If allowed his example, imitating him in everything
I did. Eventually, like him, I even ran away from home to look for
God. And eventually, like him, I discovered that one doesn't have
to run away to find Him. The bodhi tree is inside. In no other place
will you find Him. '
In another of his satsangs he reflected further on this period
of his life.

How did all this happen, just from seeing a picture of the
Buddha? How did I fall in love with this man, this meditating
Buddha? I have no answer and no explanation. Some power
compelled me to be like him, to imitate him in as many ways as
possible. The fascination was inexplicable because I knew nothing
about him. In the beginning I didn't know his history, nor did I
know why he was sitting quietly with his eyes closed. I didn't
know that he was trying to attain enlightenment because that was
a concept I had never come across before. I just felt compelled to
follow his example. There was no need for me to beg. I belonged
to a good middle-class family who served me plenty of food at
home. I didn't have to go out and give lectures in the town centre.
Some power just made me go there and do it.
When my 'Buddhist monk' period ended, I imitated him by
sitting quietly with my eyes closed. Whenever I found time, I
would sit down and close my eyes. Even in the classroom at school
I would frequently close my eyes and be drawn into that current
that was flowing through me.
To say 'I was meditating' is not quite correct because I wasn't
doing anything at all. It would be more correct to say that medita -
tion fell in love with this young boy, so much so, it would not let
him do anything else. It wouldn't let him sleep at night, and some

49
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

nights it wouldn't even let him stay in bed.

In the middle of the night, even in winter, this meditation
would whisper in his ear, 'Get up, boy, it's midnight. Leave your
bed, leave the company of your parents, sit down on the ground
and let me engulf you.'
This is real love. This is real meditation. When you sit down
and try to stop your mind from running in ten different directions,
that is not meditation. That's just a mind game.

I asked Papaji about some of the different things that were

happening to him during this period:

David: In your early teens you often used to stay awake all night
meditating. What kind of meditation were you doing?

Papaji: No particular sort. It was just meditation. But it would go

on for many hours of the night. I was not chanting a mantra or
doing any other deliberate practice. There was just a strong feeling
in me that I had to avoid sleeping. I cannot say w~ this feeling
was there. There is nothing harmful in sleeping all night. Maybe it
was just a purva samskara [tendency from a previous life] coming
up.
My parents didn't like to see me meditating all night. They
would say, 'You have to sleep. You have to sleep. Tomorrow you
have to go to school.'
They would force me back into bed and cover me up with a
quilt. I would just lie there with the quilt over my head and let the
meditation continue. They could occasionally force me off the
floor, but they couldn't stop the meditation from taking me over.
I wasn't trying to accomplish anything through this medita-
tion. It was just something that happened to me, often in the middle
of the night.

David: You have also sometimes remarked that in your early teens
you were occasionally surrounded by light, and that even when
you put your head under a blanket and closed your eyes, the light
still remained. Can you talk about these experiences?

50
 EARLY LIFE

Papaji: I often used to see a flood of light, even though my eyes

were closed. This would also happen when I closed my eyes during
the day. Even today, the same thing sometimes happens when I am
sitting in my room.

David: On one occasion you were meditating so deeply, no one

could communicate with you. What happened on that day?

Papaji: This happened one night in the middle of winter. We were

all sleeping together in one room of our house in Lyalpur. I woke
up, sat down on the ground, and started meditating. It wasn't
anything that I had decided to do by myself. My body just got out
of bed and sat on the floor. I don't think I had any choice in the
matter. My parents woke up and tried to encourage me to go back
to bed, but without any success. I was in some kind of trance and
no one could communicate with me or make me do anything.
Several hours later my father gave up trying to get me to
move. He went to fetch Dr Singh, our doctor, because he thought
that I might have suddenly contracted some serious illness. The
doctor lived in town, about a mile away. My father woke him up
and brought him to our house in the doctor's private tonga [a two-
wheeled cart pulled by a horse].
Dr Singh examined me with his stethoscope, tapped my back
in a few places, and then opened my eyes and looked into them. He
couldn't find anything physically wrong with me.
He then told my father, 'Don't worry about him and don't
disturb him. There is nothing physically wrong with him. He is just
meditating very deeply. I have never seen anyone who could
meditate as deeply as this. He must have been a yogi in his
previous life. Some of his old samskaras must have come and
made him sit in this state.'
I sat in that state for two days, without eating or sleeping, just
enjoying the inner peace that had come to me.

David: You also had some sort of death experience when you were
about twelve. Can you describe what happened?

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Papaji: I suddenly felt as if I were dying. I lay down on the floor

and noticed that my breath had stopped. My father found me in this
condition and consulted a railway doctor. This doctor checked me
and then told my father that it might be asthma. He gave some
medicine to take, but it didn't make any difference.
I recovered from this particular bout without any medical
intervention, but I often had the feeling, 'I am going to die.
Tomorrow morning I will be taken to the cremation ground and
burnt.'
It didn't bother me at all. It didn't seem to be something that
I should try to avoid. Instead, I decided to meditate because I had
heard that some yogis die while they are meditating. The medita -
tion overpowered the fear of death, but the feeling that I was about
to die still persisted for some time.

There was one other occasion when Dr Singh had to be called

to the house to attend to the consequences of Papaji 's meditations.
Papaji himself tells the story:

When I was about fifteen I went to a friend's house during the

annual Holi celebrations. His mother offered me some pakoras
[deep-fried savouries] which she had made for the festival. I
happily ate two. Since they were very tasty, I asked for some more.
Surprisingly, she refused. I could see that she had been making
them in large quantities, and that she planned to make a lot more,
so I couldn't understand why she was restricting me to two. The
answer, as I was to discover later, was that she was putting bhang
[cannabis leaves] in them and didn't want me to ingest too large a
dose. In those days it was quite common to put a little bhang in the
food on festival days. At weddings, for example, the bhang would
make the guests very happy and would also increase their
appetites. Weddings were great occasions for overeating. With
appetites stimulated by bhang, the guests would get ravenously
hungry and would perform great feats of gluttony.
I went home and started to attend to my usual household
chores, which included milking our buffaloes. There is a trick to
milking buffaloes. You bring the calf to the mother and put its

52
 EARLY LIFE

mouth on one of the teats. These buffalo mothers are very smart.
When they know the milk is going into the mouth of their calf, it
flows very easily. So, you put the calf's mouth on the teat, wait for
milk to start coming, then take the calf's mouth away and start
milking yourself. Once a good flow has started, the mother cannot
slow it down or stop it.
That evening I put the calf's mouth on the mother's teat and
left it there. I was so unaware of what I was doing, I just sat there
and let it consume nearly all the mother's milk. They were both
very happy, but we didn't have much milk to drink that day. I was
in a dream-like state in which nothing seemed to matter. I just
enjoyed watching the calf drink all its milk.
My mother came out to see what I was doing because the
milking was taking far longer than it usually did. Her appearance
brought me out of my reverie and I suddenly realised that it was
time for dinner and that I was getting very hungry.
I went inside and sat down to my evening meal. My mother
was making chapatis. After consuming all the ones she had
cooked, I asked for some more because I still felt hungry. She
made extra, but even they were not enough to satisfy my hunger. I
ate them as fast as she could prepare them and kept on asking for
more. It was not until I had eaten about twenty that she realised
what had happened to me.
She laughed and exclaimed, 'You've been eating bhang,
haven't you? Who has been feeding you bhang?'
I told her about the pakoras and she laughed again. I was now
beginning to understand why my friend's mother had restricted me
to two. In addition to being extremely hungry, I was also beginning
to feel a little intoxicated.
That night we all slept in the same room. At midnight I got out
of bed, sat in padmasana [full-lotus position] and called out in a
loud voice, 'You are not my father! You are not my mother!' Then
I went into a deep meditation. My parents woke up but they were
not very alarmed by my behaviour. They just assumed that I was
still suffering from the effects of the bhang I had eaten.
At 3 a.m. I was still sitting there with my eyes closed. My
parents woke up because strange and unrecognisable sounds were

53
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

coming out of my mouth. They tried to wake me up but I was in

too deep a meditation to be roused. My mother, thinking that I was
getting delirious, persuaded my father to go out and find a doctor.
He had a hard time persuading one to come because it was the
middle of the night and a festival day. Eventually, though, he found
one and brought him back to the house.
This doctor gave me a thorough examination while my
parents watched anxiously. I was aware of what he was doing and
of my mother's worried comments, but I couldn't bring myself out
of the state or behave in a normal way. The doctor finally
announced his decision.
'Congratulations,' he said, addressing my parents. 'You have
a very fine boy, a very good son. There is nothing physically wrong
with him. He is just immersed in a very deep meditation. When it
is over he will come out of it quite naturally and be perfectly
normal.'
For all of that night and for the whole of the next day I was
immersed in that state. During the day I continued to utter strange
sounds which no one could understand until a local pandit passed
by our house.
He heard what I was saying, recognised it, came in and
announced, 'This boy is chanting portions of the Yajur Veda in
Sanskrit. Where and when did he learn to chant like this?'
The answer, most probably, is that I learned it in some
previous life. At the time I knew Punjabi, my native language,
Urdu, the language of the local Muslims, and a little Persian. I
knew no Sanskrit and had never even heard of the Yajur Veda. The
bhang must have triggered some memories and knowledge left
over from a previous life. As the doctor had predicted, I eventually
returned to normal - with no knowledge of Sanskrit or the Vedas -
and resumed my usual everyday life.

Papaji 's quest for a better understanding of what had

happened to him led him to one of the local libraries. It was
through this institution that he had his first exposure to some of the
classic texts of Hinduism.

54
 ·,:
EARLY LIFE

f
~-:
-~
~

The last surviving structure in the Hindu part of Muraliwali,

the village that was the birthplace of both Papaji and Ram
Tirtha. After Partition all the houses in the village that were
previously occupied by Hindus were completely demolished.
Originally, there were two small villages comprising
Muraliwali.

One of my mother's teachers encouraged me to join a local

lending library that had a good selection of spiritual books. I
started to read books on Vedanta and Hindu saints. It was this
library that introduced me to Yoga Vasishta, a book I have always
enjoyed. One day I tried to borrow a book about Swami Ram
Tirtha, a Hindu saint who went into seclusion in the Himalayas in
his twenties and who died there when he was only thirty-four. I had
a special reason for borrowing this book: he was my mother's elder
brother, so I naturally wanted to find out more about him.
The librarian had watched me borrow all these books with an
increasing sense of alarm. In middle-class Hindu society it is quite
acceptable to show a little interest in spiritual matters, but when the
interest starts to become an obsession, the alarm bells go off. This

55
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

well-meaning librarian prob~bly thought that I was taking my

religion too seriously, and that I might end up like my uncle. Most
families would be very unhappy if one of their members dropped
out at an early age to become a wandering sadhu in the Himalayas.
The librarian, feeling that he was acting for the best, refused to let
me borrow this book about my uncle. Later, he went to my mother
and warned her that I was showing what was, for him, an unhealthy
interest in mysticism. My mother paid no attention. Because her
own life revolved around her sadhana, she was delighted to have a
son who seemed to be displaying a similar inclination.

Papaji was introduced to the writings of Swami Ram Tirtha

and Swami Vivekananda in his early teens. These teachers mixed
writing and lecturing on Vedanta with fiery, nationalist speeches.
Both went to America to take the message of Vedanta to the West,
and both were justifiably famous in India for their spiritual accom-
plishments and their militant political speeches. These swamis
were early role models for Papaji.
While he was still in his early teens he told his mother, 'One
day I also will go to the West to spread the dharma there'.
As the family's most famous member, Ram Tirtha was often
held up as an example for others to follow. Yamuna Devi once
assembled all her children and asked them collectively, 'Who
wants to be like Ram Tirtha when they grow up?'
Papaji stepped forward and announced, 'I will! I will be like
him and do everything that he did.'
This answer must have pleased Yamuna Devi, for before
Papaji 's birth she had regularly prayed to Krishna for a son who
would be like Ram Tirtha.
A devotee who knew both Papaji and Yamuna Devi in the
1970s once heard Papaji remark, 'Before I was born my mother
told her relatives, "If I don't give birth to a saint who will be like
my brother, then I'm just a sow giving birth to piglets". She was a
very strong woman. '
Papaji was fortunate to have parents who had a passion for
the spiritual life themselves, and who could understand and relate

56
 EARLY LIFE

to some of the strange things that were happening to him. I have

already had occasion to mention his mothers bhajans and her ras
lila peiformances. Papaji 'sfather, Parmanand, had his own spiri-
tual obsession: he was very attached to doing japa of the phrase
'Jai Sitaram' ('Glory to Ram and Sita'). Sita is the wife of the God
Ram. These words were always on his lips, even when he was at
work. His habit of peiforming continuous japa at work occasion-
ally got him into trouble, as Sumitra relates:

Father was very fond of the holy name 'Jai Sitaram'. He

would say it before going anywhere, before going to sleep, when
he got up in the morning, and also before he ate any food. He also
used to keep a small picture of Krishna and do puja to it. Father
used to tell us all to repeat the phrase 'Jai Sitaram' and have faith
in it. Even at the end of his life he was still repeating 'Jai Sitaram'.
On one occasion his devotion got him into trouble. He was
doing a puja inside the train station during his official · working
hours. Because he was attending to his puja and not to the trains,
he forgot to change a signal which would have allowed the next
train to enter the station. The train had to stay outside the station
till he finished his puja. His superiors got to hear about this and
suspended him. There was an official enquiry in which father had
to appear and explain his negligence. Father was unrepentant.
When he was asked for an explanation, he replied, 'I was
doing my duty to God while God was looking after my work.'
He was reprimanded, but no further action was taken.

Though this attitude may seem irresponsible, Parmanand had

at least one experience that justified his faith that God was looking
after the railway business. The following anecdote comes from B.
D. Desai, a devotee of Papaji who knew Parmanand in the late
1960s.

I talked to Parmanand once about his working life.

He said: 'God was looking after me while I was working. I did
japa while I worked and God looked after my official business. I
had no doubts about this.

57
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

'One time I didn't remember that I had to give a signal to an

approaching train because my attention was on my japa. I forgot to
let it know that it could come through the station. Without that
signal it would have stayed outside, causing a delay. When I finally
realised that I had forgotten, I rushed out to make the right signal.
Someone on the platform told me that the train had already passed
through the station. The signal must have been given by someone,
but I was the only railway official present. It was a very small place
and I had to do everything myself.
'I thought to myself, "God is looking after my work. I can go
back to my japa."'

Both Yamuna Devi and Parmanand ardently sought a vision

of their chosen deities. Neither succeeded. Parmanand was so
dejected by this failure, he at one time decided to end his life. He
left a suicide note in his office, informing his family that he didn't
want to live any longer because life without a vision of God was
unacceptable to him. He climbed the bridge that spanned the
railway lines with the intention of throwing himself in the path of
a train that was not scheduled to stop at the station. He was saved
by the assistant stationmaster who found the note on Parmanand's
desk. Since the note indicated exactly what Parmanand planned to
do, his assistant was able to race to the bridge and pull him off the
parapet before the next train came through.
In his teens Papaji was sent to attend an Arya Sama} boarding
school. These schools had been founded by a Hindu refarmer
called Swami Dayanand. Feeling that young boys were not being
properly exposed to their own culture and history in the British-run
secondary schools, he started a school of his own. It proved to be
a success and many others were opened. They were all called
'Dayanand Anglo- Vedic Schools'. Most big towns in the Punjab
had one of these institutions. While he was attending this school
Papaji had yet another deep mystical experience.

Every morning we would assemble outside and sit in a semi-

circle while a prayer was chanted. It always ended with the words
'Om shanti, shanti, shanti' [Om, peace, peace, peace]. At the

58
 EARLY LIFE

conclusion of the prayer, a flag would be raised in the school

grounds with an 'Om' printed on it. As the flag was being raised,
we all had to jump up and shout, 'Glory to the Dharma ! Glory to
Mother India! Glory to Swami Dayanand!'
One morning, at the conclusion of the prayer, the chanting of
'Om shanti, shanti, shanti' caused my whole body to go numb. I
became paralysed in much the same way that I had been when, as
a small boy, I had been offered the mango drink in Lahore. I was
aware of everything that was going on around me, and there was a
great feeling of peace and happiness inside, but I couldn't move
any of my muscles or respond to anything. The other boys jumped
up and saluted the flag, leaving me sitting on the floor in my paral-
ysed state.
The teacher who was supervising the prayers saw me sitting
on the floor and just assumed that I was being lazy or disobedient.
He put my name on a list for punishment by the headmaster. This
meant that I had to appear before him the next morning and be
caned. The teacher left the scene without ascertaining the real
cause of my immobility. The other boys, meanwhile, started to
make fun of me. When they realised that I was not capable of
responding to their taunts, they decided to stage a mock funeral.
They picked up my body, stretched me out on their shoulders and
then pretended that they were carrying me off to the cemetery to be
cremated. I had to go along with their game because I was not
capable of complaining or resisting. When they had had their fun,
they carried me home and dumped me on my bed. I remained there
for the rest of the day, paralysed, but absorbed in an inner state of
peace and happiness.
The next morning, fully recovered, I reported to the head -
master for my punishment. He took out his cane, but before he had
a chance to use it I asked him, 'Please, sir, what am I supposed to
have done? What mistake am I supposed to have committed?'
The headmaster had no idea. The teachers had merely given
him a list of boys to be caned because the teachers themselves were
not allowed to administer corporal punishment. He checked with
the teacher who had sent me to him and was told about my act of
'disobedience' the day before.

59
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

I said to him, 'I didn't refuse to stand up. I suddenly went

numb all over and couldn't move.' I told him about the experience,
explaining that it had been triggered by hearing the words 'Om
shanti, shanti, shanti' at the end of the morning prayer. This head -
master was a very good man. A supporter of Mahatma Gandhi, he
did the job without taking any salary because he believed that
Hindu boys should be brought up and educated in a Hindu envi-
ronment. In those days, in addition to the secular government
schools, there were also Sikh, Hindu and Christian institutions
available. Since our headmaster was supposed to be inculcating us
with Hindu values and ideals, he recognised the absurdity of
punishing me for having had a mystical experience as a conse-
quence of listening to a Hindu prayer. He let me off and in later
years we became quite good friends.

Throughout his school years Papaji enjoyed playing sports,

particularly those in which he could show off his strength. He is
well above average height for an Indian and has always had a
muscular, well-developed body. In his youth he was able to lift and
carry sick buffaloes that couldn't move by themselves.

David: How good were you at the various sports you played? At
what level did you compete?

Papaji: I played cricket and hockey in my school up to the district

level. I also joined a tug-of-war team which competed at the
district level. In the evenings I often played badminton. At the
same time I used to do a lot of track and field events: high jump,
shot put, javelin and discus were my favourites.
I liked sports in which I could show off my strength. I used to
keep a wooden log, called a mugdar, in front of my house so that
I could practise weight -lifting. These logs are cylindrical, about
two and a half feet long, and have a handle on the top. The weight
varies according to the diameter. Other people who wanted to show
off their strength would come and practise with me. In those days
weight-lifting with mugdars was a common sport in the villages.
For a long time, playing with this mugdar was my main hobby.

60
 EARLY LIFE

Later on I took up wrestling and became very good at it. After

leaving school I had a job that took me to many places in India.
Wherever I went I would seek out the local wrestling arena and
challenge whoever was there to a contest. I usually won.

His immense strength turned out to be a great asset when a

gang of thieves tried to break into his family's house. Papaji was in
his mid-teens when this incident occurred.

Some thieves once tried to break into our family's house in

Lyalpur. About seven of them jumped over our wall and started to
loot the house . They took our sewing machine, one of those old
gramophones with the big speakers, the ones you see on 'His
Master's Voice' records, and many other things. One of them
found me in my room and stood guard over me with a big metal
spear pointing at my face. I knew that he was there, but I pretended
I didn't. I just lay there with my eyes closed, as if I was asleep. The
man who was guarding me was the last person to leave. As he ran
towards the wall to escape, I chased him and caught hold of his
body as he started to climb the wall. He had smeared his body with
oil so he could escape easily if someone grabbed him, but I still
managed to get a good grip on him and prevented him from
climbing the wall. As I was holding on to him, I repeatedly called
for help. Some members of my family heard me and came rushing
in. With their aid I easily overpowered him .
The thief was dragged outside and suspended upside down
from a tree. The other members of my family wanted to beat him
with a stick as he was hanging there, but I persuaded them not to.
'He is my thief,' I said. 'I am the one who caught him. I
grabbed him from behind as he was climbing the wall of our
compound. That was not a very sporting thing to do. Now I will
challenge him to a real competition. Cut him down and give him
ten yards start. If he escapes, he can keep everything he stole. If I
catch him, he must return all the things that he has stolen.'
My father laughed because he thought I was joking. Anyway,
he wasn't worried because he knew that I was a good athlete and
that I could easily overtake the thief.

61
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

The thief conceded defeat before the race even started.

He said, 'You are stronger than I. You will easily win. Also,
you have saved me from a beating, so I must show my gratitude to
you. If you wait here I will bring back everything that was stolen.'
My father didn't want to let him go.
'Don't listen to him!' he shouted. 'He is a thief! Why should
you believe a man like this? He will disappear and we will never
see our property again.'
I said again, 'He is my thief. I caught him. I have decided to
let him go. I trust him to come back.'
We cut him down and let him go. Much to the amazement of
all our family, he returned the same day with all the things his
friends had looted from our house. He also came with an invitation
from his gang.
'You are a very strong man,' he said. 'I thought that no one
could catch me and hold onto me. You are still just a boy, but you
managed to do it. I have never fought with anyone as strong as you.
I have great respect for your strength and for your willingness to
trust me. I have come to invite you to my house for dinner.'
My father didn't want me to be mixing with a gang of thieves,
so he tried to stop me from going.
I told him, 'They have proved that they can be trusted. No
harm will come to me if I go.'
The leader of the gang had sent two horses, one for the
messenger and one for me. I rode back with the messenger and had
a good meal with all his gang. After that they always treated me
well and greeted me in a very friendly way.

I asked Sumitra if she remembered this incident:

David: Papaji sometimes tells a story about a thief he caught when

he was about sixteen years old. He says the thief was so impressed
with his strength, he invited him to dinner with all the other
members of his gang. Do you remember this?

Sumitra: He was always very strong. When he was at school, and

for some time afterwards, he liked to play any sports in which he

62
 EARLY LIFE

could show off his strength. He liked ·weightlifting and wrestling

the most.
I don't remember this particular incident, but he did catch a lot
of thieves at other times. Once he caught a thief who was stealing
melons from a field near our house. Bhai Saheb saw him walking
away from the field with a big heavy bundle.
Thinking that it contained stolen melons, he stopped the man
and asked, 'What have you got in your bundle?'
The man could not give a satisfactory answer so Bhai Saheb
made him open the bundle. Inside were the melons he had stolen.
Bhai Saheb made him put the bundle of melons on his head and
then forced him to run up and down the field several times carrying
this heavy load.
After he had run about two miles with the melons, Bhai Saheb
told him, 'This is your punishment for stealing the melons. You
can go home now and leave the melons here.'
On another occasion a group of thieves was simultaneously
robbing all the houses on our street. Each house had at least one
member of the gang inside. Bhai Saheb woke up and found that our
house was being robbed. As he tried to apprehend the thief, the
man blew a loud whistle. That was a signal to all the other thieves
to run away because one of them had been discovered. They all
fled together, including the one who was in our house.
There is a third incident that I remember. A fifteen-year-old
British girl had been abducted by a group of thieves in our area.
Bhai Saheb spotted one of the gang members as he was buying
tickets at the train station. The man bought three tickets and then
boarded the train by himself. Bhai Saheb thought that this was
suspicious because no one else accompanied him onto the train. He
telephoned to Lyalpur, which was the destination on the three
tickets that the man had bought, and told the stationmaster there
that there was something suspicious about this man. He was
arrested on his arrival, along with a man who was with him. The
girl was later released unharmed.

While he was still at school Papaji became actively involved

in various campaigns whose goal was to terminate British rule in

63
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

India. The Punjab had already witnessed many anti -British move-
ments. In the second half of the nineteenth century the Kuka
Movement, led by Baba Ram Singh, mobilised thousands of
peasants to campaign against British rule. Though it started as a
religious reform movement, it soon graduated to social and polit-
ical activities. Fifty years before Gandhi thought of the idea, the
Kuka Movement organised a non-cooperation movement that
boycotted British government jobs, schools, courts and imports of
foreign cloth. In the 1870s it turned into an armed rebellion that
was suppressed by the British government.
At the beginning of the twentieth century the farmers who had
come to the Lyalpur area engaged in massive campaigns against
the unfair inheritance laws that the British imposed on them. The
government of the day allowed eldest sons to inherit the land that
was granted to the newcomers, but if the eldest son died before his
father, no one else in the family was allowed to inherit. On the
death of the original owner, the land reverted to the British govern-
ment. An organisation called 'Bharat Mata' (Mother India)
mobilised the landowners to campaign against these unjust laws.
The struggle was a long and ugly one in which several people died
in riots in both Lyalpur and Gujranwalla, the towns where Papaji
spent most of his youth. The atmosphere in these towns was
charged with rebellion in the years that Papaji lived in them. The
campaign to change the laws was successful, and it was heralded
as the first major victory for an organised Indian group over the
British administration.
Throughout Papaji 's childhood a few small groups in the
Punjab engaged in acts of violence against selected British targets,
but they were not able to enthuse large numbers of their fellow
Punjabis into taking up a similar course.
One event, more than any other, changed the attitude of
Punjabis towards British rule. In April, 1919, British troops
massacred hundreds of unarmed demonstrators at Jallianwalla
Bagh, Amritsar. A large crowd had assembled to protest peacefully
against a ban on public meetings. General Dyer, the British
commander, made no attempt to arrest any of them, nor did he ask
them to disperse. He simply lined up his troops in front of the

64
 Jammu and Kashmir
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The black lines in Pakistan show the Uttar Pradesh

railway system of that country. Papaji m
spent most of his childhood and youth N ►
living in railway station colonies on the W~E ~
100 km lines between Lahore, Multan and r
Lvalour. ~
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

crowd and ordered them to open fire. There was nowhere for the
demonstrators to go since the meeting had been organised in a
large open space that was surrounded by buildings on all sides.
There was only one exit, and that was guarded by the British
soldiers. The troops fired 1,600 rounds into the unarmed crowd
and only stopped when their ammunition was exhausted. General
Dyer had originally set off with several artillery pieces, but he
could not get them to the site of the massacre because they could
not navigate the narrow lanes in the Jallianwalla Bagh area.
At a subsequent enquiry, when he was asked if he would have
used the artillery pieces if he had managed to get them to where
the crowd was assembled, General Dyer replied, 'Yes, probably I
would. The Indians needed to be taught a lesson. '
The massacre caused a massive wave of outrage in all parts
of India, but its effects were most keenly felt in the Punjab. It moti-
vated many young Punjabis to campaign vigorously against the
presence of the British in India.
At first they channelled their energy through the non-cooper-
ation movement that had recently been started by Mahatma
Gandhi. This was an echo of the Kuka Movement in so far as it
asked all Indians to disassociate themselves from the British rulers
by refusing to cooperate in any way with the administrators of the
country. It was intended to be a peaceful, non-violent protest, but
in 1922 a group of peasants in Gorakhpur District, in what is now
Uttar Pradesh, surrounded a police post at Chauri Chaura and set
fire to it. Twenty-one policemen who were trapped inside burnt to
death. Gandhi was so shocked by this single act of violence, he
called off the non -cooperation movement because he didn't want
the violence to get out of control.
Gandhi s decision left many young men in the Punjab with no
outlet for their anger against the government. Some of them,
Papaji included, decided on a course of armed violence against the
British rulers.
Papaji became interested in these revolutionary groups
because, like many young men of his generation, he felt a burning
anger towards the British for usurping the government of the
country and for treating dissenters in such a violent manner. In a

66
 EARLY LIFE

letter he wrote in 1983 to Raj Prabhu, one of his devotees, Papaji

commented, 'The massacre at Jallianwalla Bagh turned me from
being a pacifist into a murderer of the British'.
Papaji was only six years old when the massacre took place
but the repercussions of that event reverberated throughout
Punjabi society for years to come. Papaji probably became aware
of it in his early teens, since that was the period in his life when he
began to turn towards the militant cause.
There was one other factor that radicalised him and took him
out of the mainstream of Indian politics and into the violent world
of the revolutionaries. It was a piece of legislation called the
Rowlatt Act, which had been enacted to curb sedition in the
country. It equipped the police with wide-ranging powers, such as
detention without trial and random searches of people and
property. Though it was intended to be used only against terrorists,
it was widely abused and resulted in many innocent people being
arrested, searched and tortured. Papaji read about the violent
treatment being meted out to political prisoners in the British jails
and decided that violent reprisals would be the most appropriate
response.

The British rule of India was being challenged in many ways.

There was a feeling in the air that if we organised ourselves
properly and put enough pressure on the government, we could put
an end to the colonial occupation. Gandhi, the most well-known of
the freedom fighters, was espousing a campaign of non-coopera -
tion and non-violence, hoping that if enough Indians refused to
obey the orders of the British, they would accept that the country
was ungovernable and leave us to look after our own affairs. I
didn't accept this theory at all. I was and am a great believer in
direct action and I felt that we should confront the British with a
show of force.
'If some people break into our house,' I reasoned, 'and take it
over so completely that they have us running around obeying their
orders, what should we do?'
The Gandhian answer would be, 'Politely ask them to leave,
and if they say "no", refuse to obey any of their orders'.

67
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

I thought that this approach was being cowardly. In my expe-

rience, squatters who have appropriated someone else's property
don't listen to polite requests. I, therefore, was in favour of picking
up a stick and driving them out by force.

Papaji 's desire to drive out the British by violent means was
tempered by the knowledge that his arrest would have implications
for the whole of his family. If he were to be arrested on a serious
charge, such as the murder of British officials, his father would
most probably lose his job with the British government. If this
happened, there would be no one left to support the family.
Papaji 's parents, who knew about his desire to indulge in violent
revolutionary activities, persuaded him to restrict his activities to
propaganda. They felt that if he were arrested merely for making
anti -British speeches, Parmanand would probably still be able to
keep his job.
Papaji turned out to be a fine propagandist for the revolu-
tionary cause. He was a fiery, talented public orator, even when he
was still a schoolboy. His 'Buddhist' sermons in the town square
had revealed a talent for public speaking that stayed with him for
the rest of his life.
Sumitra has vivid memories of these days when he was
campaigning for the violent overthrow of the British:

David: What about his political activities? What do you remember

of his revolutionary years?

Sumitra: He used to go out with the other young men and shout
anti-British slogans on the streets. He took part in many such
demonstrations. He used to shout, 'Gad dayo larai diyan lal
jhandian!' [Plant the red flag as a symbol of our battle!] and
'Vadho gore te karo meman randian!' [Kill the British soldiers and
inflict widowhood on the white prostitutes!]

David: I have been told that he also made anti-British speeches in

Lyalpur.

68
 EARLY LIFE

Sumitra: Yes, he used to give public talks in the marketplace.

Many people used to come and listen to him. When the British
tried to crack down on activities of this kind, our parents tried to
keep him at home, but he refused to stay. Even when there was a
high risk of being arrested, he still went out and delivered his
speeches.
One day one of his friends came to our house and told our
mother, 'We have to go out today. Hariwansh Lal is giving a
lecture on the stage in town. We all want to attend.'
It was a time when a lot of arrests were being made, so our
mother became very nervous about Bhai Saheb 's safety. She made
him sit inside the house and locked the door so he couldn't go out
and attend the meeting. Bhai Saheb got very angry. He started
shouting and tried to break down the door, but it was too strong for
him. Then he went out into the courtyard that was in the middle of
our house. He found a rope, tied it to the roof, and climbed onto the
top of the house. To get down the other side he used a sari which
he had twisted into a rope.
After making his escape he went to the square in the middle
of the town and made his speech at 4 p.m. Some policemen came
and tried to arrest him, but he ran away and escaped. The police ran
after him, shouting, 'Catch him! Catch him!' but they couldn't find
him. Instead of running out of the square, he hid himself under -
neath the stage until the search party gave up.
He used to give his speeches dressed up as a sadhu. He
changed into his ordinary clothes while he was hiding under the
platform and returned home late at night, when he felt that it would
be safe for him to return. All this happened while he was still at
school, before he got married.

In the mid-twenties many of the Punjabi revolutionaries

belonged to a secret organisation called 'The Revolutionary
Party'. It was so secret an organisation, even the name was not
public knowledge. In 1926 its leaders decided that it should have
a public front through which it could contact potential new
members. The front organisation was named 'Naujawan Bharat
Sabha' (The Indian Youth Assembly). Papaji was a member of both

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

the Revolutionary Party and the Naujawan Bharat Sabha. One of

its founders, Raja Ram Sastri, described its purpose in a book he
wrote about the Punjabi revolutionaries:

For some time the work of propagating revolutionary ideas

among the young through secret extremist literature was carried
on. But soon it was felt that the Revolutionary Party should come
out in the open and acquaint the people with its views. With this
objective the Naujawan Bharat Sabha was set up in 1926. In fact,
it was the open front of the Revolutionary Party.

Many of the leading Punjabi revolutionaries were socialists.

Their aim was to overthrow the British rule of India and replace it
with an indigenous socialist government. Though the Naujawan
Bharat Sabha made no mention of revolutionary or violent activi-
ties, its stated aims were clearly socialist. They were:

l. To set up a United Republic of Indian workers and

peasants.
2. To inculcate patriotism based on nationalism
among the youth.
3. To help and sympathise with such movements in
the economic, social and industrial fields which
are opposed to communalism and would be helpful
in the achievement of an ideal republic state of
workers and peasants.
4. To organise workers and peasants.

I reminded Papaji that most of his fellow revolutionaries had

been socialists or Marxists and asked if he had ever accepted their
political views. Though his sister remembers him marching down
the street at the head of demonstrations chanting 'Plant the red
flag as a symbol of our battle!' Papaji denied that he had ever been
a communist or a socialist. He was, he said, a member of these
various revolutionary groups simply because they comprised the
only people he knew who were committed to expelling the British
by force.

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 EARLY LIFE

The Naujawan Bharat Sabha started branches all over the

Punjab. In schools and colleges they organised meetings and
lectures whose aim was to fan the flames of nationalism among the
young. There were frequent talks on heroes of the past who had
died as martyrs in the struggle for Independence. Members of the
audience who showed an interest in these talks were given
pamphlets on various political and social topics. Those who
appeared to show a strong commitment to direct action against the
British were eventually introduced to one or more of the small
revolutionary groups that used these meetings to recruit new
members.
The largest and most committed revolutionary organisation
was a group that included Bhagat Singh and Sukdev, two of the
leading Punjabi revolutionaries. Their group was originally called
the 'Hindustan Republican Association', though later it added the
word 'Socialist' as the second word of the title. Papaji never
formally belonged to this organisation, although he knew both
Bhagat Singh and Sukdev well. Sukdev, in fact, was a tenant in a
house in Lyalpur that was owned by Papaji's family.
Although Papaji was not directly involved in any of the revo-
lutionary acts perpetrated by the Hindustan Republican
Association, a brief summary of its accomplishments will be useful
because the group's activities were indirectly the cause of one of
Papaji 's own militant actions.
In 1928 the British government appointed a seven -member
body called the Simon Commission to study the possibility of
constitutional reforms in India. All seven members were British.
The members of all the Indian political groups decided to boycott
the proceedings of this body because no Indian had been appointed
to it. Wherever the Simon Commission travelled in India, it was
met with massive anti-British demonstrations. When the commis -
sion arrived in Lahore in October, 1928, they were unable to move
around because demonstrators had blocked all the roads. The
police commander, Superintendent Scott, ordered his men to
charge the crowd and beat the demonstrators with lathis, the long
sticks that are issued to the police. The leader of the demonstration
was a famous Punjabi politician called Punjab Kesri Lala Lajpat

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Rai. He was brutally assaulted by the police and died from his
injuries a few days later. The Hindustan Republican Association,
under Bhagat Singh and Sukdev, decided to avenge the murder by
killing Superintendent Scott, the man who had ordered the lathi
charge. An ambush was arranged, but one of Bhagat Singh 's
group, who was supposed to identify the Superintendent , picked
out the wrong man. Bhagat Singh ended up shooting and killing
Deputy Superintendent Saunders instead. The next day the group
publicly owned up to the crime on posters that were pasted on
many walls all over Lahore. The posters stated that the Hindustan
Socialist Republican Army had committed the murder to avenge
the death of Punjab Kesri Lala Lajpat Rai.
Bhagat Singh then decided that the revolutionary movement
needed more publicity. He announced to his friends that he
intended to throw a small low-power bomb in the government
assembly, and then surrender himself to the police. He did not
intend to kill anyone; he merely wanted to use the subsequent trial
as a platform from which he could preach revolutionary
propaganda.
The throwing of this bomb had massive repercussions. Though
it did not kill anyone, and though Bhagat Singh immediately
surrendered himself to the police, the act galvanised the British
government into action. All the known revolutionaries and their
associates were rounded up and interrogated. Some became police
informers who revealed the location of bomb factories at Lahore
and Saharanpur. When the police raided these places, several
thousand bombs were found. A gun that was found in Bhagat
Singh 's possession when he surrendered himself after throwing the
bomb in the assembly turned out to be the same one that had killed
Deputy Supdt. Saunders. He was charged with murder and several
other offences.
Most of the revolutionaries were arrested and put on trial in a
famous case that became known as 'The Lahore Conspiracy Trial'.
Papaji was not implicated in this case, but many of his friends were
arrested and convicted. I showed him a list of all the people who
were defendants and asked him to tick the names of any who were
personally known to him. The names he identified are given below,
along with the sentences they received:

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 EARLY LIFE

1. Bhagat Singh - hanged.

2. Sukdev - hanged.
3. Shivram Rajguru - hanged.
4. Jaidev Kapoor - life imprisonment.
5. Kishori Lal - life imprisonment.
6. Kundan Lal - seven years hard labour.
7. Jatindranath Das - died on a hunger strike
in prison before being sentenced.

He also ticked the name of Deshraj who was acquitted at the

end of the trial. Twenty-five people were originally charged, but
only sixteen could be produced in court. The seventh person on
Papaji's list, Jatindranath Das, had been brought from Bengal to
teach the Punjabi revolutionaries how to make bombs, and he was
closely associated with the two bomb factories that were discov-
ered at Lahore and Saharanpur. In the Papaji Interviews book
Papaji admitted that he 'was trained how to make bombs' by the
Revolutionary Party.
The Lahore Conspiracy Trial effectively destroyed the revolu -
tionary groups in the Punjab, but the surviving members decided
on one final attack to avenge themselves for the loss of so many of
their members. It was decided to bomb a special train that was
carrying the Viceroy, the British government's chief representative
in India. Papaji was actively involved in the planning of this
mission, although he did not take part in the bombing himself.
When I first asked Papaji who else was involved in this
bombing, he replied, 'My conscience will not allow me to reveal
the details'. More recently he admitted that a man called Hansraj
Wireless was an active participant. This man acquired his name
through being one of the first men in India to demonstrate the
transmission of radio signals. He later used his technical and
scientific knowledge to build remote-controlled bombs for the
revolutionaries.
Papaji 's group succeeded in blowing up the Viceroy's train,
but the Viceroy himself escaped unharmed because the bomb was
not detonated directly under his carriage. This was the last effec-
tive act of the Punjabi revolutionaries because shortly afterwards

73
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Chandrasekhar Azad, the only leader still outside prison, was

killed in a shootout with the police.
Papaji's anti-British activities were not restricted to bomb
making and propaganda speeches. He has spoken about two other
eccentric schemes that were aimed against British officials.

David: You told me once that while you were still at school you
had a plan to summon up spirits in the local graveyard because you
thought that if you could gain control over them, you could use
them to fight against the British.

Papaji: Yes, I told my friends in the Revolutionary Party about this

plan, but they just laughed at me. I went ahead with it anyway. I
had read about this practice in some book. It said that if I chanted
a particular mantra all night every night in a graveyard for twenty-one
days, a powerful spirit would appear that would do my bidding. I
thought I could use one of these spirits in our fight against the
British. I knew my parents wouldn't approve of my sitting in a
graveyard all night for three weeks, so I told them that I would be
spending the night with one of my friends for a few weeks.
'We have to do some studying together,' I said. This kind of
story always pleased my parents because they knew how little
schoolwork I did.
For three weeks I spent the whole night in a graveyard
chanting this mantra. At the end of the twenty-one days a
hideously ugly spirit manifested in front of me and asked me what
I wanted. It had horns, a long sharp nose with a horn on the end and
a mouth in the back of its head that was full of black teeth. I was
terrified. My hair stood on end and I was paralysed with fright.
'What do you want?' repeated the ghost. 'I can give you
whatever you want. I am very pleased with your tapas. Whenever
you call on me, I can give you whatever you want.'

Tapas is a word that denotes severe practices, often involving

bodily mortification. Traditionally they were peiformed to gain
spiritual power or to obtain boons from the gods.

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 EARLY LIFE

I was so afraid I ran away and never went back. I don't know
if the ghost would have been of any use against the British, but he
did come in useful many years later. I was wandering in the high
Himalayas and was feeling very hungry. There were no settlements
around where I could obtain food. I suddenly remembered this
spirit that had appeared to me many years before, promising that
he would give me whatever I wanted if I ever called on him.
I thought, 'Let me see if he can do anything useful'.
I called on him, and much to my surprise he immediately
appeared in front of me. This time I wasn't afraid of him at all.
'I'm hungry,' I announced. 'Do you deliver food to these
remote places?'
The ghost immediately provided me with fresh fruits, fruits
that only grew on the plains. He disappeared and I never used him
again.

David: You had another scheme: to become invisible so that you

could shoot the District Magistrate in the British Club without
being detected. How did that work out?

Papaji: I found a copy of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras in the local

library. There was a section in it about how to attain eight different
siddhis, or supernatural powers. One of the ones mentioned was
invisibility.
I thought to myself, 'This would be a good trick. These British
people have been giving us so much trouble. If I were invisible, I
could really make trouble for the British.'
At this time Bhagat Singh, Sukdev and Rajguru had already
been hanged. I had come to the conclusion that we could not fight
the British through conventional means. Britain at that time was
one of the strongest countries in the world. It had a huge army and
navy - thousands of trained, armed men who could easily suppress
a revolt by a few badly armed and badly trained Indians. After one
little bomb had been thrown in the assembly, they wiped out our
entire revolutionary movement.
So, I thought, let me see if I can make myself invisible. If I
succeed I will walk into the Chenab Club with a revolver and blow

75
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

out the brains of the District Magistrate. There was no other way
to get into this British -run club. In those days people with brown
skin were not allowed in the front door.
I also wanted to take revenge on some of the prison officers
who were treating political prisoners very badly. I had read in the
paper that one jailor in the North West Frontier Province had been
making his prisoners stand all night, neck-deep in the local river. I
knew that area, and I knew the water there was icy cold. Every so
often he would let them come out so that he could interrogate
them. He would ask them for the names of other people who were
engaged in anti-British activities. If they didn't confess and supply
names, they were beaten and pushed back into the river again. I
wanted to kill this man too.
I thought, 'First, I will get rid of the District Magistrate here.
If I get away with it, I will go up to the North West Frontier
Province and take care of this jailor as well.'
It didn't work. Mastering these siddhis is not something that
can be done in an afternoon. It takes years and years of dedicated
practice to accomplish these feats. Many years later I met a man in
Hardwar who could walk on the surface of the Ganga. He had
spent forty years mastering the technique. I was too impatient for
success. I didn't have forty years to spare. When I didn't succeed
after my first few attempts, I gave up.

Apart from the last story, which seems to have taken place
sometime in the early 1930s, virtually all of Papaji's revolutionary
activities took place while he was still at school. He had an
extraordinarily eventful childhood and youth. The visions of
Krishna, the deep mystical experiences, the revolutionary and
sporting activities have already been chronicled. One other facet
of Papaji 's early life needs to be mentioned to complete the picture
of his youth .
While he was still at school he discovered a talent for writing
Urdu poetry. Papaji 's native language is Punjabi, but the educa-
tional system of that time was geared to producing matriculates
who would be qualified to take up clerical positions in British
offices. In order to get such jobs, one had to pass an entrance exam

76
 EARLY LIFE

in Persian and Urdu, so both of these subjects were extensively

taught in schools. Urdu was the official language of the provincial
government, and a knowledge of Persian literature was deemed to
be a social accomplishment for an educated Punjabi of the period,
in much the same way that a familiarity with Latin and Greek was
considered essential for many European gentlemen of the era.

I studied Urdu and Persian at school and developed a strong

interest in the languages. I found people in our area who knew
these languages very well and went to them for extra lessons. I
studied with several good poets and writers who introduced me to
the classics of both languages.
With all this early exposure to good literature, I acquired a
strong interest in poetry. I used to take part in the school competi-
tions that were held on festival days, and I once won a prize when
I read out my poem on Basant Panchmi, 'The Spring Season'. I
probably got some of my interest in poetry from my mother, who
composed several songs in Punjabi. Ours was a very literary
family. Two of my sisters also composed poems in Urdu and
Punjabi. I still like to listen to poets when they read out their
verses, but I no longer have any interest in composing them
myself.

Poetry competitions were a distinctive feature of Punjabi

culture at that time. All the competitors would gather in a single
room and be given a line of an Urdu poem. They would then have
to compose a new poem, fallowing the theme of the given line, and
using the same metre and rhyme. The poems would be judged by
visiting writers or poets, and prizes awarded to the writers of the
best verses. Papaji wrote Urdu poetry under the pen-name
'Kausar ', and for some years he included this pseudonym
whenever he wrote out his full name.
I should mention here that in his childhood both Papaji and
his family used the name 'Sharma', a suffix that all brahmins are
allowed to use. After he left school Papaji preferred to use the
name 'Poonja '. All Hindus belong to a particular sub-group or
category. These categories are called 'gotras', and the name of

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Papaji's gotra is Poonja. His given names, Hariwansh Lal, can be

translated as 'the ruby in the large family of God'.
When Papaji passed his matriculation exam at the age of
sixteen, Parmanand decided that he should start work immediately
because extra funds were needed to support what was already a
very large family. Parmanand also decided that Papaji should get
married. In those days it was quite normal for Punjabi boys to get
married in their mid-teens, and their wives were often girls who
were even younger. Except on very rare occasions, all marriages
were arranged by the parents of the couple.
Papaji had no interest in getting married but he nevertheless
agreed to go along with his father's proposal. Parmanand found a
suitable brahmin girl called Vidyavati in Multan, a large town
where he had been working as a stationmaster. On the day the
marriage took place, Papaji was sixteen and his bride was cele-
brating her fourteenth birthday.
I asked Papaji how he had supported his wife and family
during the early years of his marriage. This was his reply:

After passing my school matriculation exams, my father could

not afford to send me to college in Lahore because my other
brothers and sisters also had to be educated. There was not enough
money for all of us to go to school at the same time. I saw an adver-
tisement in The Tribune that had been inserted by a company that
wanted a representative for its surgical and sports goods. The
company was based in Sialkot. I applied for the job and secured the
position. My work as a salesman entailed extensive travel
throughout the country.
On one of my business trips to Bombay I found a permanent,
better-paying job with a Karachi-based firm. This company also
employed me to do sales work. I brought my wife to Bombay and
we settled down in a Gujarati part of the city. This was a good job.
I earned enough money to support my wife and children and even
had extra money to send home to the rest of my family in Lyalpur.

The two jobs that Papaji secured as a salesman came after a

period of work in Lyalpur in which he started and ran his own

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 EARLY LIFE

business for a while. He opened several shops whose running was

taken over by other members of his family when he took the job
with the Sialkot -based firm. Sumitra gives some of the details:

David: What did Papaji do after he left school?

Sumitra: He got married when he was sixteen, but he didn't stay

at home much. He was always going away, either on business or
on pilgrimages to see saints or holy places. In those days his wife
didn't complain much about his frequent absences.
Bhai Saheb once said, 'The inspiration to go on all these
pilgrimages came from my wife'.
What he meant was, he was able to run off to these places
whenever he felt like it, because in those early years she never
complained much about this side of his life.

David: Why did Papaji move to Bombay after working for a few
years in Lyalpur?

Sumitra: I don't know. I can't remember.

Sumitra was speaking to me in Punjabi and her answers were

being translated by Sivani, Papaji 's daughter. At this point in the
conversation Sivani asked her own question: 'Was it because he
found a girl in Bombay? Did he run off after a girl?'

Sumitra: No, he was never like that. He never used to be involved

with any of the girls. He used to like listening to music, but he
would not allow any music in the house that had lewd or vulgar
lyrics. He would not allow any of his brothers and sisters to listen
to songs that were sexually suggestive.

David: What about work? What was he doing to support his wife?

Sumitra: When father finally retired, we all settled down in

Lyalpur. As the eldest son, Bhai Saheb had to earn money for us.
He started a shop called 'Bombay General Stores' that sold tea and

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

other provisions. Bit by bit the business expanded until our family
controlled five shops, all adjacent to each other, on the same street.
Later on, as the family grew, we converted these shops into houses.
Bhai Saheb also opened a shop that sold women's cosmetics. He
ran that shop himself before he moved to Bombay.
When father retired , he received a lump sum from the
railways. There was no monthly pension in those days. He gave the
whole amount to Bhai Saheb and asked him to look after it. Bhai
Saheb invested it in some plots of land that were taken away from
us after Partition. After father's retirement, Bhai Saheb took full
responsibility for the family's finances.
Father always had great respect for Bhai Saheb. About ten
years before he died he wrote in his diary, 'My son Hariwansh Lal
is my Guru'. I saw that entry myself.

Papaji 's two surviving children, Sivani and Surendra, were

born in the 1930s: Sivani in 1935 and Surendra in 1936. Another
child, a daughter called Ramini, died during infancy. I asked
Papaji for details of her death and his reaction to it.

One of my daughters became sick and was admitted into a

hospital. She was three years old at the time. My wife stayed with
her to look after her. I used to go in the morning to take food for
both of them. After a few days my wife appeared at our house in a
rickshaw. My daughter was with her.
I was surprised to see them. 'Is she better?' I asked.
'No,' said my wife. 'She is dead. I have brought the body
home.'
When my wife appeared, it never occurred to me that my
daughter might be dead because she was not showing any signs of
grief.
I took the body from her and went to the cremation ground. I
buried her there myself with the help of a neighbour. In our
community it is the tradition that children up to the age of five are
buried, not cremated. I did not have any reaction in my mind.

Papaji remained in Bombay with his wife for many years. His

80
 EARLY LIFE

job as a salesman gave him ample opportunities to travel to many

other parts of India. In addition to his business trips, he went on
several pilgrimages to see sacred places or famous swamis. One
trip was to Nasik in Maharashtra to meet a swami called
Satchitananda; another was to Rishikesh to see Swami
Purushottamananda, a famous teacher who lived in a cave a few
miles to the north of the town. Since Papaji was still addicted to the
form of Krishna, he was looking for swamis who could advise him
on how he could make Krishna appear whenever he wanted Him
to. Neither of these swamis was able to help him. Papaji was still
performing a lot of meditation and japa during this period, but his
practices were not producing visionary experiences of Krishna as
often as he desired.
One man who did impress him was Swami Nityananda, the
Guru of Swami Muktananda. In the early years that Papaji worked
in Bombay, Swami Nityananda lived nearby, at Vajreshwari.
Papaji was taken to see him by one of his neighbours.

I met Nityananda for the first time in 1932. My neighbour,

Purushottam, was travelling to Vajreshwari to receive his darshan,
so I decided to accompany him. Since it was about thirty-five miles
away, we went there in his car. Purushottam used to speculate in
the Bombay financial markets. He only went to see Nityananda to
get advice on how to invest his money. Vajreshwari, the place
where Nityananda was living, was also renowned for its hot
sulphur springs. Many people would bathe there to cure skin
diseases or relieve ailments such as arthritis and rheumatism. It is
quite near Ganeshpuri, the place where Swami Muktananda had
his main ashram many years later.
We left Bombay on a Sunday, very early in the morning. On
our arrival, everyone in our group prostrated before the great
swami. My friend, his wife, their daughter and their uncle all pros-
trated reverently at his feet, but when I knelt down, he would not
allow me to touch his feet.
Everyone immediately assumed that he wouldn't allow me to
prostrate because I was a great sinner. They all began wondering
what dreadful deed I had performed to earn such disgrace. Yet the

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

swami said nothing, and neither did I.

When Purushottam told me his theory I said, 'I am an honest
man. I go to my office at 9 a.m. every morning, put in a full day's
work, and go home at 6 p.m. I work hard for my money. You are
just a gambler. You have only come here to find ways to increase
your gambling profits.'
Many people came during the day, prostrated to Nityananda
and left presents for him. At meal times, the people who were there
were allowed to eat with him.
That evening, as our party got up to leave, Nityananda pointed
at me and told me that I must stay.
'But I have to attend the office tomorrow,' I protested.
He wouldn't let me go. In the end I asked my friend to go to
my office the next day and hand in an application for two days'
casual leave.
'This man is a saint,' I said, 'so I cannot disobey him when he
tells me to stay. Tell my boss what has happened to me, and say
that I will be back as soon as I can.'
'But how will you get back?' they asked. 'You have no trans-
port, and this is the middle of the jungle.'
'I will solve that problem tomorrow,' I said. 'This man wants
me to stay, so I am staying.'
Many of the people who visited him at that time were specu-
lators on gold and cotton. Nityananda never spoke to any of them,
but he often made strange gestures with his hands. The speculators
would ask questions about the future price of gold and then inter-
pret his weird hand movements as answers to the question.
We sat together for the whole night, but no words passed
between us. He never told me why he had asked me to stay. We just
spent the whole night sitting together. Neither of us slept. Before I
left he gave me a two-anna coin. That's a very small value coin. In
those days it was an eighth of a rupee. In the morning he asked a
· Parsi businessman called Dinshaw to take me back to the city in his
car.
When I next met Purushottam and his family they were all
very eager to find out what Nityananda had said to me.
'Nothing,' I said. 'He didn't speak, and neither did I.'

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When I showed him the coin I had received from Nityananda,

Purushottam immediately wanted to buy it from me.
'If I have this coin,' he said, 'my business will prosper. How
much do you want for it?'
I refused to part with it. I felt it was prasad from a great saint,
so I didn't want to let it out of my possession.

At this stage of his life Papaji wasn't able to evaluate

Nityananda 's true state, but after a second meeting in the 1950s, he
declared that he was enlightened. He has said on a few occasions
that Nityananda belonged to a group of eccentric Hindu sadhus
who are sometimes called 'aghoris'. It is a term that denotes reli-
gious teachers who act in bizarre and unconventional ways, and
who have usually abandoned all socially accepted norms of
behaviour. This is what Papaji had to say about such people in one
of his recent Lucknow satsangs:

Nityananda was a siddha purusha [a realised being], the sort

who are known as aghoris. The aghoris have no teachings. They
usually wander around without speaking, without washing.
Sometimes they are nude, and sometimes they wear old tom sacks
as clothes.
There was an aghori in my home town in the Punjab. Many
learned people - advocates, teachers, businessmen - went to him.
A few aghoris became quite well known. Neem Karoli Baba was
one. Many years later, when I lived in Lucknow, I used to see him
wandering around near the River Gomti. He spent a lot of time in
a Hanuman temple there. I met another aghori in the 1950s near
Krishnagiri, when I was driving from Tiruvannamalai to
Bangalore.

Papaji 's meeting with the Krishnagiri aghori will be described

in the 'Mining Manager' chapter. The one who lived in his home
town was the sadhu leader who materialised coins to pay for his
dancers.
Papaji 's years in Bombay seem to have been uneventful. I
asked him several times what he was doing there throughout the

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

1930s, but he never remembered any memorable events. Once,

though, he did tell me that he assimilated himself so thoroughly
into the culture of the city, he was able to pass himself off as a
Gujarati. There are two major ethnic and linguistic groups in
Bombay: the Marathis, whose linguistic province extends mostly to
the east and south of the city, and the Gujaratis, who form the main
group in the region to the north. At one time Papaji stayed with a
landlord who only took Gujarati tenants. Papaji spoke the
language so well he was able to convince him that he was a
Gujarati, but only up till the moment a few months later when
Vidyavati, Papaji s wife, made an unexpected visit. She didn't know
the language and didn't dress in the traditional Gujarati way. By
that time Papaji had formed such a good relationship with his
landlord, he was allowed to stay on.
Occasionally, Papaji talks nostalgically about travelling
regularly to see his relatives in Lyalpur on a train that plied
between Bombay and Peshawar.

In those days fares were cheap and the trains were rarely
crowded. I have always liked train rides, but this one was particu -
larly enjoyable. Because I liked talking to people on the journey, I
would sit next to someone and start up a conversation. After a few
minutes, I would make some excuse and leave. On a train, there are
always lots of good excuses if you want to stop a conversation and
go somewhere else. I would often spend the whole journey
wandering up and down the train, striking up conversations with
anyone who looked interesting.

Papaji must have returned to Lyalpur for a fairly long period

in the middle or late 1930s because he sometimes talks about a
period when he was secretary of the Arya Samaj in Lyalpur. The
political activities he undertook on their behalf began in the mid -
thirties and culminated in 1938.
I shall digress here to give a little background on the Arya
Samaj since a knowledge of its beliefs and activities can provide a
window through which one can view Papaji s own state of mind in
the late 1930s, and in particular the political and religious views

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he probably held and espoused.

The Arya Sama} was founded by Swami Dayanand Saraswati
in the second half of the nineteenth century. Though it was based
firmly on vedic Hinduism, it preached a purified form that rejected
most of its popular manifestations. It was opposed to polytheism,
and it particularly opposed the worshipping of idols either in the
home or in temples; it put no faith in the legends and myths of the
Puranas; it opposed the role of brahmin priests as mediators
between man and God; it discouraged almost all ritual practices,
including going on pilgrimages; and it was opposed to 'untoucha-
bility' and the longstanding tradition that Hindu widows could not
remarry. Swami Dayanand outlined his ideas in a book entitled
Satyarth Prakash, a work that subsequently became the bible of the
whole movement.
The Arya Sama} was particularly strong in the Punjab. After
establishing the Sama} in Lahore in 1877, Swami Dayanand
formulated the basic principles of the organisation that all new
members had to subscribe to:

1. The first cause of all knowledge and all that is

known through knowledge is Parameswara [the
Supreme Lord].
2. God is existent, intelligent and blissful. He is
formless, omnipotent, just, merciful, unborn,
endless, unchangeable, beginningless, unequalled,
the support of all, the master of all, omnipresent,
immanent, unaging, immortal, fearless, eternal and
holy, and the maker of all.
3. Vedas are the scriptures of true knowledge. It is the
first duty of the Aryas [members of the Arya Sama}}
to read them, teach them, recite them, and hear them
being read.
4. One should always be ready to accept truth and give
up untruth.
5. Everything should be done according to the dictates
of dharma, that is, after due reflection over right and
wrong.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

6. The primary object of this society is to do good to

the world, that is, to look to its physical, social and
spiritual welfare.
7. One's dealings with all should be regulated by love
and justice, in accordance with the dictates of
dharma.
8. One should promote vidya [knowledge] and dispel
avidya [ignorance].
9. One should not be content with one's welfare alone,
but should look for ones welfare in the welfare of
all.
10. One should consider oneself under restriction to
follow altruistic rulings of society, while in
following rules of individual welfare, one should be
free.

All candidates for membership had to sign a document stating

that they were in agreement with these basic principles. Papaji
must have signed, but it is doubtful that he subscribed to all ten
points. During these years he was still an ardent Krishna bhakta.
The texts on Krishna s life and teachings are not vedic, they are
puranic, a source which the Arya Samaj claimed had no real
authority.
In the decades fallowing the founding of the movement, Arya
Samaj schools were started all over the Punjab. Though they had
to impart a western-style education to their pupils so that they
could qualify for government jobs and higher education, the Arya
Samaj principles were also widely disseminated. Papaji himself
attended an Arya Samaj school in the 1920s and probably became
familiar with its ideals and beliefs during his later years at school.
In the period that Papaji was associated with the organisa-
tion, it was in a stridently militant phase. It was organising
campaigns to bring outcastes back into the mainstream of Hindu
life; it was working for an end to all caste distinctions, and it was
confronting Muslim-led governments that were harassing Hindus
in various parts of the country. Two new institutions were founded
to lead this campaign: the Arya Raksha (The Aryan Defence) and

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 EARLY LIFE

the Arya Vir Dal (The Aryan Army). Papaji must have belonged to
one of these groups because he says that, on behalf of the Arya
Samaj, he recruited and trained hundreds of young Punjab is to go
and fight against the discriminatory policies of the Nizam of
Hyderabad.
Prior to Independence there were many 'princely states' that
were nominally independent. They had their own rulers, usually a
hereditary maharaja, and had a certain degree of independence in
their internal affairs. Hyderabad was the biggest of these states,
and in its heyday the territory it controlled was larger than most
European countries. Its ruler, the Nizam, was reputed to be the
richest man in India. He was also afanatical Muslim . In the 1930s
the Nizam attempted to restrict the activities of the Arya Samaj
within his borders because he felt that it was trying to convert
Muslims to Hinduism. Eventually, he banned the Arya Samaj pros-
elytisers from entering his state.
In response to this attack the Arya Samaj branches in the
Punjab mobilised themselves and sent thousands of Hindus to
demonstrate against him. The Nizam arrested them all and put .
them in jail. At the height of the campaign there were about 8,000
Arya Samaj demonstrators in the Hyderabad jails. Several
hundred of them had been trained and sent there by Papaji. The
Nizam finally backed down, released the Aryas, and allowed them
to resume their business in his state. It was a major and unquali -
fied victory for the Arya Samaj.
After this campaign ended Papaji went back to Bombay and
resumed his work there. He stayed on in the city, working for the
same company, until 1942. At the beginning of that year he made
what appeared to be a perverse career move for a man who was so
violently opposed to British rule in India. He applied for a place
on a course that was training Indians to be officers in the British
army. The application was accepted.
The Second World War was in progress and the army was
recruiting on a massive scale. Previously, officers were given an
extensive three -year course at the Indian Military Academy in
Dehra Dun, in the foothills of the Himalayas, but soon after the
war .broke out, emergency six -month courses were started at the

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

same academy in order to meet the officer requirements of the huge

wartime army.
Papaji had not suddenly become a supporter of British rule.
He intended to use his time in the army to get a proper military
training at the British government's expense.

A few of us [surviving revolutionaries] then decided on a

different approach. The Second World War was in progress and the
British government was actively recruiting Indian soldiers for their
army. We decided that we should join the army as infiltrators, learn
about tactics, strategy and warfare, and then, when the time was
right, we would stage a coup or simply tum our guns on the British.
Some of us also thought that once we had learned the art of
warfare, we could desert and join up with the Indian National
Army that was fighting with the Japanese against the British. I
applied for an officer training course at the Indian Military
Academy and was immediately accepted. The British, fortunately,
seemed to have no record of my guerrilla activities.

Papaji was acutely aware that the Punjabi revolutionaries of

the late 1920s and early 1930s had been badly trained and
equipped. They simply did not have the military expertise to trans -
late their revolutionary fervour into significant attacks on British
rule. The Hindustan Republican Association, the main revolu -
tionary organisation, accomplished very little. Soon after its
founding, many of its members were arrested in a bungled bank
robbery at Kakori that was intended to raise funds for the revolu-
tion. Several founder members were subsequently hanged for their
roles in this affair. The HR.A. 's attempt to assassinate Supdt. Scott
went wrong when one of the members of the gang misidentified
him. When the ½ceroy 's train was bombed, the explosives went off
under the wrong carriage. The Lahore Conspiracy Trial brought
much favourable publicity to the revolutionary movement, but it
cannot be counted as a success because it culminated in the
destruction of the movement itself. The surviving leaders of the
group did not last long. Bhagawaticharan Vohra, one of the intel-
lectual driving forces of the movement, accidentally blew himself

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 EARLY LIFE

up soon afterwards as he was making a bomb, while

Chandrasekhar Azad, the commander of the H.R.A., was killed in
a shoot-out with the police in 1931. With his death, the party
drifted into ineffectual oblivion.
One other event highlights the bungling amateurism that
seemed to pervade the revolutionaries ' campaigns. In 1928,
another bank robbery was planned as a fund-raiser for the
movement. Chandrasekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Sukdev, Rajguru,
Hansraj Vohra and several others made a plan to rob the Punjab
National Bank in Lahore. Since they were too poor to afford their
own vehicles, they rented a taxi to use as a getaway car. The
would-be robbers waited outside the bank, but the taxi never
arrived. After a long delay, one of their members arrived in a hired
tonga, a horse-drawn cart, and announced that no one could get
the taxi to start. The robbery was called off.
Experience had taught Papaji that small, ill-equipped groups
could not fight effectively against British rule. The outbreak of war
therefore provided the surviving militants with a golden opportu-
nity to get proper training and access to sophisticated weapons
and munitions.
Papaji is occasionally asked why, as a Krishna bhakta, he was
so committed to the path of violence. He usually answers such
questions by referring to Krishna's own life and to the advice he
gave to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. This is an answer
he gave to a visitor in 1995 who asked him why he had chosen the
path of violence in his youth:

I fight because I am a devotee of Krishna. Krishna Himself

was a good fighter, and He told His devotee Arjuna that he too had
to fight for what was truly his. In the Mahabharata, as the armies
assembled for battle, Arjuna told Krishna that he didn't want to
engage in battle because the leaders of the opposing army were his
relatives and his former teachers. Krishna compelled him to fight.
He said, in effect, 'The men opposing you are bad men who
have to die for what they have done. It is your job and your duty to
kill them, so don't run away.' What had these people done that was
so bad? They had taken over Arjuna's kingdom by unfair means.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

The British had taken over my country, so why shouldn't I fight to

get it back?
Arjuna still could not bring himself to kill all these people, so
Krishna told him, 'You are not killing these people. I am. I have
decided that all these people must die for what they have done.
Surrender your mind to Me. You are just My instrument. Go out
and destroy your enemies. I will look after you, and when the battle
is over, your kingdom will be restored to you.'
Arjuna fought for the good of his country. He fought to restore
peace to his own land. Ram also had to go out and fight a war when
He was unjustly deprived of His wife. It is not wrong to kill in
circumstances like these. It is wrong to kill innocent people, but
when someone has deprived you of your land and your freedom, it
is your duty to go out and fight to win them back . It's better to die
than to live as a slave.
It's nice to live in peace and harmony, but that's not the way
the world is. Sometimes you have to fight to bring justice and
peace to the world.

In the West moral laws derived from the Judea -Christian reli-
gions are regarded as being universal. That is to say, everyone
must observe the same laws. Hinduism does not adopt this attitude.
There are different rules and obligations for each group of Hindus.
Warriors, for example, have a moral duty to defend the territory of
their rulers and to uphold the rule of law within their respective
kingdoms. A soldier who goes against his dharma, the moral code
of his group, by meditating instead of fighting, is deemed to be
committing a sin. A monk, on the other hand, who fights instead of
meditating, is also committing a sin because he too is violating the
dharma of his particular group. Papaji chose the path of the
warrior and upheld the dharma of his chosen profession by fighting
vigorously for the freedom of his country.
Papaji began his army training in April, 1942. The oldest
surviving photo of him comes from this period. He appears in a
group photo of 'J Company', the name of his training unit. All
earlier pictures, and all the subsequent ones taken before 1947,
were lost in the turmoil that fallowed the partition of India. At that

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 EARLY LIFE

·.1~
The official group photo of J Company, probably
taken in September, 1942. Papaji is circled in white.

time Papaji 's family had their house and property looted and all
their personal papers and photos were lost.
Though the army training was physically hard, Papaji seems
to have enjoyed it. In his younger days he always liked physical
challenges, and he thrived in environments where strength and
stamina were required. Here are a few of his memories of army
life:

In 1942, the year I did my training, the military situation did

not look good for British India. The Japanese were attacking from
the east, while the Germans and Italians were threatening to attack
from the west. The Italians were not much of a threat. Thousands
of their soldiers who had surrendered in a battle in Africa were
interned in a camp near Debra Dun, and at one point I was assigned
to guard them. I discovered that most of them were conscripted
tradesmen who had been given no military training at all. At the
first opportunity they put their hands up and surrendered. They
didn't want to fight and they didn't want to die. They just wanted
to be somewhere safe till the war was over. Some of them made
nice bread in their camp, and they didn't mind sharing it with their
guards.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

The army was much more worried about the Japanese who
were threatening to invade India from the east. They overran
Burma, which was then part of India, and were gearing up for a
full-scale invasion of the rest of India.
The Japanese were supposed to be experts at fighting without
any weapons, so our training sergeant-major, who was called
Sinclair, was assigned to teach us the Japanese techniques of
unarmed combat in which one attacks an enemy with one's fists,
hitting vulnerable parts of the body. During these exercises this
sergeant from Scotland fought every cadet, one by one, so that we
could learn these special techniques. They were violent, brutal
lessons during the course of which several cadets were hospi-
talised, including myself. During one of my fights with him I broke
my right thumb and little finger.
This man didn't like Indians. He was always showering racial
abuse on us and swearing at us. In the army no sentence seems to
be complete without at least two four-letter swear words. Sergeant-
Major Sinclair swore at us all day, constantly taunting us about
what he claimed was our racial inferiority. This made me angry, so
the next time he asked for a volunteer to beat up during one of his
so-called training sessions, I volunteered. We had a very good fight
this time because I used my wrestling skill to keep him close to me.
That way he couldn't use his special blows on me. He tried to
throttle me, but I managed to get out of his grip by biting him in
the balls. No one complained about the violence that was inflicted
on us. We were all training for a war, and we all recognised the
need to be stronger, fitter and tougher.
To fight in a war one needs discipline, one needs to cooperate
with one's fellow soldiers, and one needs to be fearless. These
virtues were instilled in us during our training. If one person in a
platoon misbehaved or made a mistake, everyone in that platoon
was punished. Rules like these taught us to act responsibly in
union. When they started firing live ammunition at us in training
exercises, we learned how to vanquish our fear and move forwards
instead of backwards. Responses and behaviour like this have to be
taught and learned because they are not natural.
We were regularly sent out on twenty -mile runs, and there

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 EARLY LIFE

were frequent route marches in which we would have to walk all

day with rifles and heavy packs. We were taught to shoot 303 rifles
and I soon found I had a natural talent for it. I always got ten out
of ten on the rifle range. There were also tactical exercises in
which we were taught how to move men and equipment around in
battlefield conditions.
One time we were marched up to Yamunotri, the source of the
River Yamuna. It's over ten thousand feet high in that area, and
very beautiful. We were put through our paces there, much to the
amusement of the local farmers. They hadn't heard of Adolf Hitler,
and they didn't even know there was a war on. They would sit on
the rocks and laugh at all these strange men running around with
heavy packs on their backs.
On this trip one of the British officers suggested that we could
all take a break and go for a swim in the river. Even though we
knew it would be freezing cold, we all welcomed the chance of a
break to relax and cool off. Much to my amazement, the British
officers took all their clothes off and jumped naked into the river.
I went in with my underpants on because I was too embarrassed to
appear naked in public. Nobody bathes naked in India, not even
when no one else is around.
One of the officers spotted me and made fun of me.
'What's wrong with you?' he demanded. 'What are you
hiding in your pants that is such a secret? Isn't it the same as
everyone else's?'
The other British officers jumped on me, pulled my pants off
and threw me back in the river.
I have always been shy about appearing naked in public. In
the 1970s I ended up on a nudist beach in France with some friends
of mine. Everyone was naked except me.
One little boy came up to me, pointed at my trunks and asked
his mother, 'What's that strange thing he's got on?'
The other people there made fun of me as well, but since it
wasn't the army, no one forcibly undressed me and threw me in the
water.
The rigorousness and the brutality of the training could not
suppress the inner spiritual fire that was still burning within me. I

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

remember one occasion when I was out marching with my platoon.

There must have been about thirty of us, marching in rows of three.
I was somewhere in the middle. I had a backpack that weighed
about ten kg, a heavy rifle, a gas mask on the left side of my belt,
and a water bottle on the right. As we were walking along, I found
myself in a state of intense ecstasy. The length of the march and the
weight I was carrying were forgotten as I walked the whole day
with no awareness of anything other than an intense inner feeling
of bliss. As I walked into the camp at the end of the day, I suddenly
realised that I had no recollection at all of the events of that day.
The bliss had wiped them all out.

The blissful and happy state that Papaji had first enjoyed as a
child never really left him, nor did his addiction to Krishna sf arm
diminish when he became an adult. They simply formed a backdrop
to all his other activities.

It may sound strange, but my obsession with Krishna, and my

intense love for Him, never diminished during this militant period
of my life. Waves of bliss would still surge up within me whenever
I thought of Him, and I quite often found myself in ecstatic states
in which I had no control over my body. Once, for example, I
casually heard someone mention the name 'Krishna' as I was
walking down a city street. The mere mention of the name sent me
into a kind of rapture during which I had great difficulty in control-
ling myself. As a wave of bhakti swept over me, I nearly went into
a trance in the middle of the road.

When Papaji graduated, he was commissioned with the rank

of Second Lieutenant. His first posting was as a Quartermaster,
the officer responsible for purchasing and maintaining supplies.
When supplies were needed for his unit, he would send a request to
an army supplies base. If the items he ordered were not available
there, a written message would come back, saying, 'Purchase
locally'. This meant that he had to try to buy whatever he needed
from local, officially nominated suppliers. Because the Second
World War had considerably expanded the size of the army in a

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 EARLY LIFE

short space of time, most non-military items were not available

through the official army channels. Quartermasters were therefore
given many opportunities to buy supplies from local agents. Papaji
used this situation to generate extra income for his family. The
shops that Papaji's family owned in Lyalpur were converted into
little factories that supplied the British army. Sumitra remembers
some of the things they manufactured.

In the 1940s, when Bhai Saheb was in the army, he would

place big orders with us. He was a purchase officer, so he could
place huge orders on behalf of the army. During the war our five
shops were turning out large amounts of soap and shoe polish
which Bhai Saheb would then buy from us. These orders made a
lot of money for us.

Papaji must have had an arrangement with one of the local

army contractors to buy supplies from his family. This was an
irregular, illegal arrangement, and had his superior officers found
out what he was doing, he would probably have been court-
martialled.
During this posting Papaji's devotion to the form of Krishna
intensified to the point where it became the focus of his life.

Life in the army meant keeping up an outer front of normality

and military sobriety. Open exhibitions of love for a Hindu god
would have been frowned upon to such an extent that they would
have jeopardised my career. This caused me to lead a dual life. By
day I played the officer-sahib, complete with stiff upper lip. At
night, behind locked doors, I would transform myself into a
Krishna gopi [female devotee]. I would dismiss my orderly, telling
him not to disturb me with the usual 5 a.m. cup of tea. That gave
me the whole night with my beloved Krishna. The British army
officers were very strange: they had servants to do everything for
them. Some of them even made their orderlies put on and pull off
their trousers. I didn't make much use of mine, so no one thought
much of it when I told him that he didn't need to come during the
night or early in the morning.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

I was not content with doing japa of Krishna's name, or with

worshipping an inanimate picture or statue. I wanted Krishna
Himself to appear before me, as He had frequently done when I
was young, so that I could pour out my love to Him directly.
I pretended I was Radha, the consort of Krishna, because I
thought that if I imitated her in every way, Krishna would come
and appear before me. I dressed myself in a sari, decorated my
body with bangles and women's jewellery, and even put make-up
on my face. I used to spend most of my spare cash on women's
jewellery so that I could dress up and please Krishna.
Wearing all these props, I really convinced myself that I was
Radha, pining away for her divine lover. It worked. Krishna would
appear and I would pour out my heart to Him. On the mornings
after Krishna had appeared to me, my face would be lit up with the
happiness of divine love. One of my superior officers mistook my
state for drunkenness and gave orders to the barman in the mess
that I should not be given more than three small drinks a day. He
was told by the barman, quite correctly, that I never drank at all,
but he didn't believe him. He simply couldn't understand how
someone could look so radiantly happy without having had any
alcoholic stimulants.

Papaji had originally joined the army in the hope that he

would find enough like-minded patriots who would be willing to
use their training to fight against the British. He had to abandon
his plans when he discovered that his expectations had been
unrealistic.

I soon discovered that our revolulionary plans were

impractical. There were too few of us to form an effective nucleus
for a coup, and the rigid, hierarchical structure of the army made it
virtually impossible to organise any effective subversive activities.
My interest in revolution declined in the face of these practical
realities.
Though my nationalist ambitions withered and died during
my brief spell in the army, my passion for Krishna increased to the
point where I could think about little else. The army was not a

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 EARLY LIFE

congenial place for a bhakta who only wanted to indulge in his

obsession for Krishna, so I resigned my commission. It was a diffi-
cult thing to do during wartime, but with the assistance of a sympa-
thetic commanding officer, to whom I explained my predicament,
I managed to free myself from my military obligations.
I returned home to face the wrath of my father. Since I had a
wife and family to support, he found it inexcusable that I had given
up a promising career without having anything else to fall back on.
What he said was true - I could have had a glittering career in the
army. All my classmates from the officer's training school who
made the military their career went on to occupy senior positions
in the army in the years that followed Independence in 1947. My
father was particularly upset because my position in the army was
providing a steady income to many of the family members who
worked in our shops in Lyalpur.
His anger didn't really upset me. At that time I wanted God,
and I wanted Him more than anything else in the world. I also
wanted to find a real Guru who could help me in my search.
Knowing that it would be hard to find such a teacher if I stayed in
the army, I left with the intention of touring around India to see if
I could find someone who could help me with my quest.

Papaji in
1942:an
enlargement
from the army
group photo.

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 RAMANA MAHARSHI

Papaji ~ search for a Guru who could show him God had started
long before he left the army. Throughout the 1930s he visited most
of the saints and swamis he heard about, but none impressed him
or gave him any satisfaction. One of the first swamis he went to
was a man called Satchitananda who lived in Nasik, Maharashtra.
Papaji 's paternal grandfather had taken him to Nasik when he was
only five years old, so he may have heard about the swami through
him. He went with great expectations, but was rapidly
disillusioned.

This swami was about eighty-five years old when I met him
around 1930. I approached him very respectfully and asked,
'Swami, I have a great desire to see God. Can you show Him to
me? I have come a long distance to see you only because I want to
see God.'
The swami was not interested in my plea for help because he
had more pressing business.
'I cannot see you today,' he replied. 'I have some important
legal business to attend to. This man sitting next to me is my
lawyer. I am engaged in an important property dispute. Today I
have to devote all my time to it.'
I accepted his explanation and sat quietly while the two of
them discussed the land business. By sitting there and listening I
learned that the swami owned an extensive piece of land that he
wanted to enclose with a wall. He had not been able to complete
the wall because one portion of the land, an area of eight feet by
eight feet, was occupied by another sadhu who was refusing to
vacate. The second sadhu, who was also an elderly man, had lived
for about sixty years on this tiny piece of land. Originally, the small

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 RAMANA MAHARSHI

plot had been unoccupied government land. The old sadhu had
built himself a little hut and had spent most of his life there. Swami
Satchitananda, though, had recently persuaded the government to
grant him a large piece of land that included the sadhu $ plot. The
sadhu, claiming squatter's rights, had refused to vacate, so the
matter had gone to court.
During the course of the discussions I learned that Swami
Satchitananda had been granted ten acres of land, but that obvi-
ously wasn't enough for him. He wanted this extra eight-feet -by-
eight-feet plot, which had been occupied for sixty years by
someone else, and he was prepared to go to court to fight for it.
For the whole of my visit the swami was preoccupied with his
legal discussions. I never managed to have a single conversation
with him about my desire to see God. I returned home, very disap-
pointed. As I became more familiar with ashrams and other reli-
gious institutions, I discovered that fights like this are common
everywhere.

A few years ago I asked Papaji for a list of all the swamis he
went to during his quest for a teacher who could show him God.
He wrote out the following names and included the places where
he met them:

1. Swami Purshottamanandaji, Vasishta Guha, near

Rishikesh.
2. Swami Krishnananda, Devaprayag [ the conflu-
ence of the Ganga and Alaknanda rivers].
3. The Sankaracharya of Joshi Math.
4. The Sankaracharya of Dwarka Peeth.
5. Swami Vidya Tirtha, the Sankaracharya of
Sringeri Math.
6. Satchitananda, Tapovan Ashram, Nasik,
Maharashtra.
7. An unknown saint at Pandharpur, Maharashtra.
8. A Vaishnava saint at Vrindavan.
9. Swami Sivananda, Rishikesh.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Papaji 's visit to Purushottamananda also seems to have taken

place in the early 1930s. He has never talked about their meeting
except to say that he knew this swami because he used to come
from Rishikesh to Papaji 's home town once a year for a function
organised by a group called 'Sanatan Dharma '.
It seems that he met most of the teachers on this list during a
major pilgrimage he undertook after resigning his commission in
the army. When he speaks of this journey, he never gives details.
He merely mentions that he asked each teacher, 'Have you seen
God, and if you have, can you show Him to me?' None was able to
do so.
Only one encounter seems to have stuck in his mind: a visit to
the ashram of Swami Sivananda, sometime between April and
September 1942, when he was still training to be an officer at the
Indian Military Academy.

I went from place to place, teacher to teacher, ashram to

ashram, centre to centre, looking for someone who could show me
God. I covered the whole country, north to south, east to west, but
no one satisfied me. It was a very serious quest, but wherever I
went people would make fun of me.
I would stand in front of the swami at each place and ask,
'Have you seen God? And if you have, can you show Him to me?'
The ones who didn't laugh at me would tell me to sit with
them and do some kind of practice. They would say, 'You can't see
God without meditating on Him for some time. Stay here, join our
group, chant His name and maybe one day He will appear before
you.'
I wasn't satisfied with this answer. I thought, 'God is like the
sun. I don't need any practice to see Him. I just need someone who
can point my head in the right direction, or someone who can
remove the cataract from my eyes so that He immediately becomes
apparent to me. My God is all love, all grace, all majesty. Why
should He hide Himself from me?'
When I was training at the Indian Military Academy in Debra
Dun, I heard about a man in Rishikesh who had many disciples.
His name was Swami Sivananda. The following Sunday, an

100
 RAMANA MAHARSHI

official holiday at the academy, I travelled the forty miles to

Rishikesh to see if this swami was willing to show me God. I had
my army uniform on, which probably didn't make a good impres-
sion on all the swamis I found meditating there. Also, I had some-
thing of a superiority complex in those days. I didn't even take my
boots off when I walked in to see him.
I went up to him and asked him my usual question: 'Have you
seen God, and if you have, can you show Him to me?'
He didn't answer me but my question and my attitude seemed
to upset some of the people who were sitting there.
'How can you walk in here and demand something like this?'
one of them asked. 'Some of us have been sitting here meditating
for forty years. Our beards have gone grey in our constant search
for God. Do you think He will show Himself to someone who
walks in with muddy boots and demands an instant darshan?'
'This is a very simple piece of business,' I replied. 'If I go to
a shop and ask for a bag of rice, the owner gives it to me. I pay for
it and walk out. Then the business is finished. If the shop owner
has the product I want, he does not make me sit on the floor and
meditate for it. If he doesn't have it, he tells me and I go some-
where else.
'Seeing God is very important to me. In fact, it is the most
important thing in my life. I am prepared to pay any price for it. If
your swami can show me God, I will give him my life. He can take
my life, or he can have me serve him till the day he dies. If he has
what I want, he should give it to me. If he doesn't have it, he
should tell me so that I don't waste any more time here. Now, has
your swami seen God, and if he has, is he willing to show Him to
me?'
This speech made them all very angry. There were about five
hundred people there. They pushed me out of the hall and wouldn't
let me back in.

When all his attempts to find a Master who could show him
God had failed, he returned to his family in Lyalpur. Soon after-
wards he received a visit that was to change his life:

101
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Shortly after my return a sadhu appeared at our door, asking

for food. I invited him in, offered him some food and asked him the
question that was uppermost in my mind. 'Can you show me God?
If not, do you know of anyone who can?'
Much to my surprise he gave me a positive answer. 'Yes, I
know a person who can show you God. If you go and see that man,
everything will be all right for you. His name is Ramana
Maharshi.'
Not having heard of him before, I asked where he lived and
was told, 'Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai'. Since I had never
heard of the place either, I asked him for directions to get there.
He gave me detailed instructions: 'Take a train to Madras.
When you get to Madras, go to Egmore station. That is where the
metre gauge trains leave from. Take a train from there to a place
called Villupuram. You have to change trains there. Then catch a
train from there to Tiruvannamalai.'
I wrote all these details down with mixed feelings. I was very
happy to hear that there was at least one man in India who could
show me God, but I also knew that I had no means of getting to see
him. I had spent all the money I had saved from my spell in the
army on my unsuccessful pilgrimage, and I knew that my father
would not give me any assistance. He disapproved of my spiritual
trips, feeling, with some justification, that I should be devoting my
time instead to supporting my family.
When I told my father that I wanted to go to the South to see
yet one more swami, he exploded with anger.
'What about your wife and children?' he demanded. 'Was it
not enough to leave the army that you must now rush to the other
end of India, indulging in your mad search for spiritual
adventures?'
Obviously, no help would be forthcoming from that quarter.
Shortly afterwards I went into town and happened to meet one
of my old friends. He was running a tea stall.
'I haven't seen you for a long time,' he remarked. 'I heard a
story that you resigned your commission in the army.'
'Yes,' I replied, 'I have given it up for good.'
'So what are you doing now?' he enquired.

102
 RAMANA MAHARSHI

Karnataka ', And

I

Bangalore e-~~--
,
'' ,I ,
\

,
.. ' 'I
I
---, , _____ , ,
; ;._ ..,,
Tamil Nadu

South Indian towns and cities

'I mentioned by Papaji, along
I
with their railway connections
100 km

'Nothing,' I answered. 'I am looking for some sort of job.'

'Well, sit down,' he said. 'I will give you some milk to drink.
Since you are not employed at the moment, you don't need to pay.'
I sat down and began to glance through a newspaper that was
lying on one of the tables. Having just been reminded of my unem -
ployed state, I turned to the page that listed all the job advertise -
ments. One vacancy seemed to be tailor -made for me: 'Ex-army
officer required in Madras.' The British army was looking for an
ex -officer to manage all the stores in a canteen that was being run
for British servicemen. I looked for the address to apply to and
found that the contractor who had placed the advertisement was
based in Peshawar, a nearby city. I sent my application there, along
with a photo of myself in army uniform, and was immediately
engaged. Not only that, the contractor gave me money to get to
Madras and told me that I need not report for duty for one month.
I thus got money to go to the Maharshi and an opportunity to spend
time in his presence before I reported for work.
It was 1944 and I was thirty-one years of age.
I followed the sadhu s advice and travelled by train to
Tiruvannamalai. On disembarking there I discovered that the
Maharshi's ashram was about three kilometres away, on the other

103
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

side of the town, so I engaged a bullock cart to take me and my

belongings there. As soon as we reached the ashram, I jumped out
of the cart, put my bags in the men's dormitory, and went off to
look for this man who could show me God. I peeped in through his
window and saw, sitting on a sofa inside, the same man who had
visited my house in the Punjab. I was disgusted.
'This man is a fraud,' I said to myself. 'He appears in my
house in the Punjab, tells me to go to Tiruvannamalai, then hops on
the train so that he can get there before me.'
I was so annoyed with him I decided that I wouldn't even go
into the hall where he was sitting. Mentally adding him to the long
list of frauds I had met on my first pilgrimage around India, I
turned on my heels and went off to collect my bags.
As I was preparing to leave on the same cart that had brought
me to the ashram, one of the residents accosted me and asked,
'Aren't you from the North? You look like a North Indian.'
I found out later that he was called Framji and that he owned
a cinema in Madras.
'Yes, I am,' I replied.
'Haven't you just arrived?' he asked, noting that I was making
preparations to leave. 'Aren't you going to stay here for at least a
couple of days?'
I told him the story of how I had come to be in
Tiruvannamalai, and concluded by saying, 'This man has been
travelling around the country, advertising himself. I don't want to
see him. I came here because he said there was a man here who
could show me God. If this man really does have the capacity to
show me God, why did he not do it in my house in the Punjab when
he came to see me? Why did he make me come all this way? I am
not interested in seeing such a man.'
Framji said, 'No, no, you are mistaken. He has not moved out
of this town in the last forty-eight years. It is either a case of
mistaken identity or somehow, through his power, he managed to
manifest himself in the Punjab while his physical body was still
here. Some girl from America came here once and told a similar
story. These things do happen occasionally. Are you sure that you
have not made a mistake?'

104
 RAMANA MAHARSHI

'No,' I answered, absolutely sure of myself. 'I recognise the

man. I have not made a mistake.'
'In that case,' he responded, 'please stay. I will introduce you
to the manager and he will give you a place to stay.'
I went along with his suggestion merely because my curiosity
had been aroused. Something strange had happened and I wanted
to find out exactly what it was. It was my intention to confront the
Maharshi in private and ask for an explanation of his strange
behaviour.
I soon discovered, though, that he never gave private inter-
views, so I decided instead that I would try to see him when the big
room in which he saw visitors was relatively empty.
I ate lunch in the ashram. At the conclusion of the meal the
Maharshi went back to his room with his attendant. No one else
followed him. I didn't know that there was an unofficial rule that
visitors should not go to see him between 11.30 a.m. and 2.30 p.m.
The manager had decided that the Maharshi needed to rest for a
few hours after lunch, but since the Maharshi would not go along
with a rule which prevented people from coming to see him, a
compromise was reached. His doors would remain open but all
visitors and devotees were actively discouraged from going to see
him during those hours. Not knowing this, I followed the Maharshi
into his room, thinking that this was the best time to have a private
interview.
The Maharshi's attendant, a man called Krishnaswami, tried
to dissuade me. 'Not now,' he said. 'Come back at 2.30.' The
Maharshi overheard the exchange and told Krishnaswami that I
could come in and see him.
I approached him in a belligerent way. 'Are you the man who
came to see me at my house in the Punjab?' I demanded. The
Maharshi remained silent.
I tried again. 'Did you come to my house and tell me to come
here? Are you the man who sent me here?' Again the Maharshi
made no comment.
Since he was unwilling to answer either of these questions, I
moved on to the main purpose of my visit.
'Have you seen God?' I asked. 'And if you have, can you

105
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

enable me to see Him? I am willing to pay any price, even my life,

but your part of the bargain is that you must show me God.'
'No,' he answered, 'I cannot show you God or enable you to
see God because God is not an object that can be seen. God is the
subject. He is the seer. Don't concern yourself with objects that can
be seen. Find out who the seer is.' He also added, 'You alone are
God,' as if to rebuke me for looking for a God who was outside and
apart from me.
His words did not impress me. They seemed to me to be yet
one more excuse to add to the long list of those I had heard from
swamis all over the country. He had promised to show me God, yet
now he was trying to tell me that not only could he not show me
God, no one else could either. I would have dismissed him and his
words without a second thought had it not been for an experience
I had immediately after he had told me to find out who this 'I' was
who wanted to see God. At the conclusion of his words he looked
at me, and as he gazed into my eyes, my whole body began to
tremble and shake. A thrill of nervous energy shot through my
body. My nerve endings felt as if they were dancing and my hair
stood on end. Within me I became aware of the spiritual Heart.
This is not the physical heart. It is, rather, the source and support
of all that exists. Within the Heart I saw or felt something like a
closed bud. It was very shiny and bluish. With the Maharshi
looking at me, and with myself in a state of inner silence, I felt this
bud open and bloom. I use the word 'bud', but this is not an exact
description. It would be more correct to say that something that felt
bud-like opened and bloomed within me in the Heart. And when I
say 'Heart' I don't mean that the flowering was located in a partic-
ular place in the body. This Heart, this Heart of my Heart, was
neither inside the body nor out of it. I can't give a more exact
description of what happened. All I can say is that in the
Maharshi' s presence, and under his gaze, the Heart opened and
bloomed. It was an extraordinary experience, one that I had never
had before. I had not come looking for any kind of experience, so
it totally surprised me when it happened.

I have only heard Papaji speak once about this remarkable

106
 RA.MANA MAHARSHI

experience. It was in response to the following question I asked

him:
'Ramana Maharshi sometimes said that there is a very small
hole in the spiritual Heart. He said that in the sahaja [natural, fully
realisedJ state it is open, but in other states it is closed. Did your
Heart open in this way in Bhagavan's [the Maharshi's] presence?
Bhagavan also once said, in describing the realisation process,
that "the downward-facing Heart becomes upward-facing and
remains as That". Did you have any experience akin to this?'
Papaji continues:

Though I had had an immensely powerful experience in the

presence of the Maharshi, his statement, 'You alone are God,' and
his advice to 'find out who the seer is' did not have a strong appeal
for me. My inclination to seek a God outside me was not dispelled
either by his words or by the experience I had had with him.
I thought to myself, 'It is not good to be chocolate. I want to
taste chocolate.' I wanted to remain separate from God so that I
could enjoy the bliss of union with Him.
When the devotees came in that afternoon, I viewed them all
with the rather prejudiced eye of a fanatical Krishna bhakta. So far
as I could see, they were just sitting quietly, doing nothing. I
thought to myself, 'No one here seems to be chanting the name of
God. Not a single person has a mala [rosary] to do japa with. How
can they consider themselves to be good devotees?' My views on
religious practice were rather limited. All these people may have
been meditating, but so far as I was concerned, they were wasting
their time.
I transferred my critical gaze to the Maharshi and similar
thoughts arose.
'This man should be setting a good example to his followers.
He is sitting silently, not giving any talks about God. He doesn't
appear to be chanting the name of God himself, or focusing his
attention on Him in any way. These disciples are sitting around
being lazy because the Master himself is sitting there doing
nothing. How can this man show me God when he himself shows
no interest in Him?'

107
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

With thoughts like these floating around in my mind, it was

not long before I generated a feeling of disgust for both the
Maharshi and the people who surrounded him. I still had some
time before I had to report for duty in Madras, but I didn't want to
spend it with all these spiritually lazy people in the ashram. I took
off to the other side of Arunachala, a few kilometres away, found
a nice quiet spot in the forest on the northern side of the hill, and
settled down there to do my Krishna japa, alone and undisturbed.
I stayed there for about a week, immersed in my devotional
practices. Krishna would often appear before me, and we spent a
lot of time playing together. At the end of that period I felt that it
was time to go back to Madras to make preparations for my new
job. On my way out of town I paid another visit to the ashram,
partly to say goodbye, and partly to tell the Maharshi that I didn't
need his assistance for seeing God because I had been seeing Him
every day through my own efforts.
When I appeared before him, the Maharshi asked, 'Where
have you been? Where are you living?'
'On the other side of the mountain,' I replied.
'And what were you doing there?' he enquired.
He had given me my cue.
'I was playing with my Krishna,' I said, in a very smug tone
of voice.
I was very proud of my achievement and felt superior to the
Maharshi because I was absolutely convinced that Krishna had not
appeared to him during that period.
'Oh, is that so?' he commented, looking surprised and inter-
ested. 'Very good, very nice. Do you see Him now?'
'No, sir, I do not,' I replied. 'I only see Him when I have
visions.'
I was still feeling very pleased with myself, feeling that I had
been granted these visions, whereas the Maharshi had not.
'So Krishna comes and plays with you and then He disap-
pears,' said the Maharshi. 'What is the use of a God who appears
and disappears? If He is a real God, He must be with you all the
time.'
The Maharshi's lack of interest in my visionary experienc es

108
 RAMANA MAHARSHI

A photo of Sri Ramana Maharshi, taken in the mid-1940s, the

period when Papaji was visiting Sri Ramanasramam. Though
there are hundreds of surviving photos of Ramana Maharshi
and his devotees, none of them includes Papaji. I have not
been able to locate any photos of Papaji that were taken
between 1942 and 1948.

109
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

deflated me a little, but not to the extent that I was willing to listen
to his advice. He was telling me to give up my search for an
external God and instead find the origin and identity of the one
who wanted to see Him. This was too much for me to swallow. A
lifetime of devotion to Krishna had left me incapable of conceiving
the spiritual quest in any other terms than that of a quest for a
personal God.
Though his advice did not appeal to me, there was still some-
thing about the Maharshi that inspired and attracted me. I asked
him to give me a mantra, hoping thereby to get his sanction for my
own form of spirituality. He refused, although later, when I was
back in Madras, he did give me one in a dream . I then asked him
if he would be willing to give me sannyasa since I was not very
keen to take up my new job in Madras. I had only taken it because
it had offered me a way of getting to see the Maharshi. He refused
that request too. Having therefore got, in my own jaundiced
opinion, nothing from the Maharshi except a good experience and
some bad advice, I returned to Madras to take up my new job.
I found a nice house to live in, big enough to accommodate
my family, and began my work. The job itself did not interest me
much but I did it dutifully and to the best of my ability because I
had a wife and children to support. All my spare time and energy
were devoted to communing with Krishna. I made a puja room in
my house, informing my wife that when I was in it, I was never to
be disturbed. At 2.30 each morning I would get up and begin my
reading and chanting. Sometimes I would read the various Krishna
stories or the Upanishads or the Gita, but mostly I would do japa
of the name. I synchronised the japa with my breathing.
Calculating that I breathed about 24,000 times a day, I decided that
I should repeat the name of God at least once for every breath I
took. I cultivated the idea that any breath I took that was not
utilised in uttering the divine name was a wasted one. I found this
a relatively easy target to meet.
Then the thought occurred to me: 'There have been years of
my life when I did not chant the name at all. All those breaths were
wasted. If I increase my recitations to 50,000 a day, I can make up
for all those breaths I wasted when I was young.' I soon achieved

110
 RAMANA MAHARSHI

this new target, managing all the time to synchronise the chanting
with some part of the breath.
I would stay in my puja room, chanting the name, from 2.30
a.m. to 9.30 a.m. and then leave to go to the office because work
started there at ten. I always took my mala to work with me. While
I was walking to the tram stop or sitting inside the tram on the way
to the office, I would carry on with my japa. Even at work I would
secretly be revolving my japa mala if there was nothing else that
demanded my attention. There was a Krishna temple in Royapettah
that was near my house. I would often go there in the mornings and
evenings as I was going to and from the office. At the end of each
working day I would return home, lock myself in my puja room
again, and carry on chanting the name of Krishna until it was time
for me to go to sleep. I also slept in the puja room, thus effectively
cutting myself off from all interaction with my family. I even
stopped speaking with them.

After some time in Madras Papaji had a vision that forced him
to re-evaluate his previous, prejudiced conclusions about the
Maharshi:

From my childhood on, from about the age of six, I had been
in love with Krishna. I knew about Krishna bhaktas and how they
behaved, but I had never heard of saints who just sat quietly. In the
Punjab people showed their devotion by singing bhajans, not by
sitting quietly. With this background I didn't appreciate what I saw
when I first encountered the Maharshi.
On my first visit I had some good experiences and I felt
attracted to the Maharshi in some way, but I didn't have much love
for him. Nor did I trust him.
One day, though, all this changed. The Maharshi himself
appeared before me in Madras and said, 'Krishna bhakti alone is
true. Krishna bhakti alone is true.' By this time I knew that he
never left Tiruvannamalai for any reason, so I had to assume that
it was some kind of vision.
I went back to Tiruvannamalai to get confirmation of this
manifestation. I wanted to ask him if he really had appeared before

111
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

me and said these things about Krishna bhakti. I had had some
disagreement with him on my first visit and this disagreement had
somehow stuck in my mind. If someone always agrees with you,
you don't think much about him. But if you have had a quarrel with
someone, that person and the quarrel you have had are always
surfacing in your mind. That was what was happening to me in
Madras. Thoughts of the Maharshi would often come to me
because I didn't agree with his views on God.
I went back to Ramanasramam and asked the Maharshi, 'Are
you the person who appeared to me in Madras and told me,
"Krishna bhakti alone is true"?' He heard my question but he
didn't give me a reply.
While I was waiting for an answer, a group of devotees came
from Vrindavan. They were on a tour of pilgrimage places in the
South. On their visit to Tirupati they had heard that there was a
swami in Tiruvannamalai who was worth visiting. So, they all
came along to have darshan. The leader of the group presented the
Maharshi with a picture of Krishna playing the flute for Radha. It
was a beautiful picture. As the Maharshi was looking at the picture,
tears started trickling down his cheeks. When you have intense
devotion for Krishna, you can easily pick out other devotees who
have that same passion. I could see that these were real tears of
devotion and that they came from the heart and not from the mind.
As I watched the tears trickling down his cheeks, I felt them trick-
ling into my own Heart. It was a divine shower that filled my own
Heart with love. He was so happy looking at that picture, and I felt
so happy looking at him appreciate it.
I thought to myself, 'This man has been hiding his devotion
from me. He doesn't like to show it publicly, but now I have found
out his secret. He is just as much a bhakta as I am.'
A bird cannot fly without two wings. After this revelation I
saw that the Maharshi was soaring on the twin wings of bhakti and
jnana [devotion and transcendental knowledge]. From that
moment on, my doubts evaporated and I had immense faith in him.

On his return to Madras Papaji resumed his intensive japa,

convinced now that he was on the right path. Soon afterwards he
had an extraordinary vision:

112
 RAMANA MAHARSHI

One morning, around 2.00 a.m., I heard voices outside my

door. I knew it could not be my wife because I had given her strict
instructions that I was not to be disturbed while I was inside my
puja room. It then occurred to me that it might be some of my rela -
tives from the Punjab who had come to visit us. The train from the
Punjab usually arrived at Madras in the evening, but it seemed
quite possible to me that the train had arrived several hours late and
that the passengers had only just managed to reach our house. My
curiosity piqued, I decided to open the door to find out who they
were. Imagine my astonishment, on opening the door, when I saw
not a group of relatives but the shining forms of Ram, Sita,
Lakshman and Hanuman standing outside. I couldn't understand
what they were doing there. I had spent most of my life calling on
Krishna, never feeling much attraction to Ram, or any interest in
Him. Nevertheless, I prostrated to them all with great awe and
reverence.
I rushed off to wake my wife who was sleeping in the next
room. 'Wake up! Wake up!' I shouted, shaking her very vigor -
ously. 'Ram, Sita and Lakshman have come to visit us. Go to the
kitchen and make them something to eat and drink. I will look after
them in the puja room.'
She looked at me as if I were mad. 'You are just having a
dream,' she said. 'Go back to bed and get some sleep. You have to
go to work in the morning.'
'No! No!' I insisted, pulling her out of bed. 'They are really
there. Come and see for yourself if you don't believe me.'
I took her into the puja room but she couldn't see any of them.
I could see them very clearly, but to my wife they were invisible.
She went back to bed, complaining about my fantasies and hallu -
cinations as she went.
When I was alone with the gods again, Sita raised her right
hand in a gesture of benediction and began to speak .
'We have come from Ayodhya to visit you because Hanuman
told us that there was a very great Krishna bhakta here in Madras.'
I looked at her raised hand, casually noting all the lines that
were on the palm. That image must have imprinted itself perma -
nently on my memory because every time I recall that vision, I

113
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

clearly see all the lines on that hand just as they were on the day
she appeared before me. Their bodies were not, so far as I could
ascertain, normal human bodies because I could see through them
and dimly take in what was behind them, but they were all exquis -
itely beautiful. After some time I noticed that Garuda, the giant
eagle who serves as the vehicle of Vishnu, was standing outside on
my veranda, attached to a chariot. The Gods took their seats in the
chariot, which then began to fly away. I watched as it moved across
the sky, getting smaller and smaller as it travelled further and
further away. There was no perception of time while all this was
going on, but I assumed that the visit had lasted for just a few
minutes.
I was therefore surprised to hear my wife banging on the door
and saying, 'Hurry up, it's late! If you don't leave soon you will be
late for work.'
I checked the time and found that it was almost 9.30. The
vision must have lasted about seven hours. I left for work with the
divine images of my nighttime visitors still revolving in my mind.
I did not mention the night's events to anyone in the office because
I had got into the habit of keeping my conversations there to a
minimum. I would speak when there was business to be transacted.
At other times I would keep quiet.
I felt a profound sense of gratitude towards Hanuman for
bringing Ram and Sita to my house. A few days later I decided to
show my gratitude in a tangible way by making a pilgrimage to
Chitrakoot, the place where Ram and Sita spent their years of exile
from Ayodhya.
I took leave from my job soon afterwards and made the long
journey to Chitrakoot. On my arrival I stayed at the Calcutta
Dharamsala, near the Mandakini River. I hadn't been there before
so I didn't know what to do or where to go. On my first day I just
went out for a walk with the intention of having a bath in the river.
As I was coming out of the river, I noticed a man standing on
the banks, wearing an old tom dhoti and a kurta. He asked me very
politely if he could take me on the Kamad Giri parikrama [the
circuit of Kamad Hill].
I did not reply because I had already decided in advance that

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I would not speak during my stay at Chitrakoot. I had promised

myself that I would only sing the name of Ram. I had also decided
to fast for the whole time that I was there. I gestured to the intruder
that he should go away. By various gestures and signals I indicated
to him that I wanted to be left alone, that I wasn't speaking, and
that I didn't want his assistance when I did parikrama.
Undeterred by my refusal, he offered to read the Ramayana to
me as we did parikrama. This aroused my curiosity as I had never
heard the Ramayana being chanted before. I had done most of my
spiritual reading in the Punjab when I was young. The Ramayana
was not available there in any of the languages I could read well,
so I had never taken the trouble to go through the book. Most of
the books I had seen in the Punjab were printed in Urdu, the court
language of the state. I knew Urdu well, but at that time I had not
studied Hindi or Sanskrit well enough to go through the work in
these languages.
I broke my vow of silence because I thought that it would be
a good idea to see all the holy places with this man chanting the
Ramayana. I told him that I would happily listen to his chanting if
he would agree to several conditions that I would lay down. First,
I said, he should not take me to any of the temples. I still thought
that he was a tourist guide who would receive a commission from
the priests of the various temples he took me to. Major pilgrimage
places are full of people like this. The second condition was that he
was not to speak to me at all. He could chant the Ramayana, but
otherwise he had to stay quiet. He agreed to both my conditions.
We began our walk. I asked him to walk a few steps ahead of
me because I didn't want to be disturbed in any way. He began his
recitation in a sweet melodic voice. I still believed that he was out
to make money from me, but I was very impressed with the way
he read the text. Each word he spoke seemed to sink into my heart
and stay there. I increased my speed to catch up with him because
I wanted to see from which portion of the book he was reciting. To
my surprise I saw that a constant stream of tears was pouring down
his cheeks. He was so moyed by the words, he was in a state of
rapture.
The words penetrating my heart and the intense emotion with

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which they were being spoken affected me in the same way. My

hair began to stand on end, my body began to tremble, and I began
to choke on my own tears.
After a few miles he stopped by an old well and told me to
drink some water. I didn't want to take any.
I explained to him, 'I never drink water or eat food while I am
doing parikrama. It is not the custom.'
'This is very sacred water,' said my guide. 'This place is
called Bharat Koop. Bharat himself drank water here. You must
take some.'
I gave in and took a drink. Somehow, in his presence, my
vows not to eat, drink or speak didn't seem so important.
I was doing the walk with bare feet. The footpath was covered
with thorns and though I tried carefully to avoid them, eventually
I trod on a big one which embedded itself in the sole of my foot. I
called out to my guide that I had to stop for a few minutes to take
the thorn out.
I sat down while he drew some water from a nearby well. He
drank from a small lota [pot] that he was carrying with him. After
this brief refreshment, he carried on with his melodious chanting.
I, meanwhile, was having trouble with my thorn. I couldn't get it
out of my foot. When my guide saw that I was not having much
success, he took another thorn from the ground, held my foot in his
hand and gently prised out the thorn.
Then he took out two enormous laddus [spherical sweets]
from his towel. They must have weighed about 1 kg each. The
sight of them stirred a few sensations in my stomach. Though I had
promised myself that I would not eat during my trip, the prospect
of eating these laddus made me change my mind.
I started to eat but the laddu was much too big for me. I don't
think I finished more than half of it. I wrapped the remainder in his
towel and gave it back to him. We stood up and continued our
walk. It took us eight hours to complete the parikrama and return
to the place we had started from earlier that morning.
After our journey had been completed, I noticed a sweet shop
near the bank of the river. I wanted to give something to the pandit
because I had been very happy with both his company and his

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devout chanting. I asked him to wait for a few minutes while I went
to the shop and bought a few things. I bought 2 kg of sweets in a
box and tucked Rs 51 under the string that was around it. Placing
the offering in front of him, I prostrated and expressed my grati-
tude to him. Much to my surprise, he refused to accept it. Because
I had been assuming all along that he had been guiding me round
the holy sites in the expectation of a fee, I just assumed that he
wanted more money. The amount I had offered was a very liberal
donation for those days, so I refused to add any more.
'I am not going to give you any more,' I said. 'What I have
offered is more than enough for the services you have rendered
me.'
I was a little disappointed that he was not accepting my offer
because I had formed a good opinion of him.
He shook his head. 'I never accept money from people whom
I escort around this hill. I am not a tourist guide. I am here to assist
any good Ram bhaktas that I find here. I do it out of love for Ram,
not for money.'
'Well,' I said, 'at least take the money for your family. If you
will not accept it as a personal gift, you can at least take it home
and give it to your family.'
He again refused, saying that he never took money from Ram
bhaktas for his services.
His refusal made me take a long, hard look at him. I couldn't
work out what he was doing in such a place. For the first time I
noticed that his eyes were an unusual shape. Human eyes are
almond-shaped. His looked more circular. I had never seen eyes
this shape before.
Then the thought occurred to me, 'These are the eyes of a
monkey, not a human being. No normal person looks like this.'
I didn't tell him this. It is not polite to tell somebody one has
just spent several pleasant hours with that he looks like a monkey.
I carried on studying his face until I suddenly realised that there
was something familiar about it.
'This looks like the man who visited me in Madras, when he
brought Ram and Sita to my house. Could this be Hanuman
himself? Did Hanuman come to me and take me round this holy
place?'

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

I didn't speak this out loud; it was just a thought that passed
through my mind.
Immediately my guide exclaimed, laughingly, 'Do you think
I am Hanuman?'
Then he clapped his hands with a kind of childish glee and
disappeared into thin air. At that moment I knew for certain that I
had spent the day with Hanuman and that it was he who had
chanted the Ramayana to me and escorted me around this sacred
place. My first thought was one of regret, rather than happiness. I
wished I had known it while we were walking, and I wished that I
had retained some of the laddu he had given me, instead of
returning it to him.
I sat there for the whole night, unable to sleep. I was just too
excited to do anything except recollect with amazement the events
of the previous day.
I stayed in Chitrakoot for another seven days, but I never
encountered Hanuman again. I had been given twenty days' leave
by my office in Madras, so there was no need to hurry back. On the
other days I visited other famous sites in the area: Anasuya Atreya
Ashram, Gupt Godavari cave temple, Hanuman Dhara and Sita
Rasoi at Sila. I also stayed at the Tulsi Ghat for a few hours. This
was the place where Swami Tulsidas wrote Ramcharitmanas. It is
said that he used to sing the Ramayana with such devotional
fervour, Ram himself would come to listen to it. There is a saying
which arose out of this incident:

Chitrakoot ke ghat par bhai santan ki bhir,

Tulsidas chandan ghise tilak deit Raghubir

It means: 'At the ghat of Chitrakoot, the saints are collected

to listen to the discourse. Tulsidas is making sandal paste while
Ram is applying tilak to the foreheads of the devotees.'
On one of the days of my visit I took a bath in the waterfall
that is near Hanuman Dhara. As I was leaving and walking down
the trail, some of the pilgrims I met told me that I should accom-
pany them to the Sita Rasoi. This is Sita's kitchen, where she had
once taken food. I went there with them and was immediately

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attracted to a tulsi plant that was growing there. As I walked up to

it to have a closer look, I saw Sita herself materialise and offer
water to the plant. She walked round it, performing parikrama, and
then vanished just as mysteriously as she had appeared.
I returned to Madras in a happy state of mind. It had been a
very successful trip for me.

Though the visions of Ram, Sita and Hanuman had been

blissful and awe-inspiring, they produced an unusual side effect:
Papaji found that he could no longer chant the name of God.

When I tried to resume my chanting, I found that I could not

repeat the name of Krishna any more. Somehow, my mind refused
to cooperate. I couldn't read any of my spiritual books either. My
mind, thought-free and quiet,. refused to concentrate on or pay
attention to any of the spiritual objects I tried to put in front of it.
It was all very mystifying. For a quarter of a century the divine
name had been flowing effortlessly through my mind; now I
couldn't even utter it once.
I went to see Swami Kailasananda, the head of the
Ramakrishna Mission in Madras, and told him that I could no
longer repeat the name. I explained that I had been chanting the
name of God for years and that I had also been reading many spir-
itual books. Now, I told him, no matter how hard I tried, my mind
would not focus on anything to do with God.
Swami Kailasananda responded by telling me that this was
what Christian mystics call 'the dark night of the soul'. It is a stage
in sadhana, he said, in which the practitioner finds, after years of
effort, that practice suddenly becomes very hard or unrewarding.
After asking me not to give up trying, he told me to come and
attend the regular satsangs which were being held at the Mission
because he felt that in such an atmosphere I might find it easier to
resume my thoughts of God. I didn't find his advice very satisfac -
tory. I never went back, nor did I ever attend any meetings. I went
to several other well-known swamis in Madras, but they all told me
more or less the same thing: 'Don't give up trying, attend our
satsangs, and we are sure that the problem will soon go away.'

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

I never attended any of these meetings, partly because I didn't

think much of the advice, and partly because I didn't think that
these people were qualified to advise me. Though I could see that
they were quite good sadhaks [spiritual practitioners], I also felt
that they had not had a direct experience of God, an experience that
would, in my opinion, have made them more qualified to pass
judgement on my case.

Papaji also approached a Swami Vimalananda in Mylapore

and Swami Nityananda, who was then president of the Gaudiya
Math in Madras, and talked to them about his problem. Both
meetings were unsatisfactory.

My thoughts turned once more to the Maharshi in

Tiruvannamalai.
'This man,' I thought, 'came all the way to the Punjab in some
form, appeared at my door and directed me to come and see him at
Tiruvannamalai. I went there and got a very good experience when
I sat with him. This man must be qualified to advise me. He also
appeared to me in Madras. There must be a strong connection
between us for him to appear twice like this. I will go there and see
what he has to say.'
The following weekend I was scheduled to have a half-day
holiday on Saturday afternoon. Sunday, of course, was a holiday
every week. I took the train on Saturday and made my way once
more to the hall where the Maharshi sat. As on my first visit, I felt
that my business was private, so I looked for another opportunity
to talk to him when no one else was around. Resorting to the same
ruse I had used on my first visit to the Maharshi, I went to see him
after lunch. I knew the hall would be empty then. As on my earlier
trip, the attendant tried to persuade me to come back later, but
again the Maharshi intervened and gave me permission to enter
and speak to him.
I sat in front of the Maharshi and began to tell him my story.
'For twenty-five years I have been repeating the name of
Krishna. Up till fairly recently I was managing 50,000 repetitions
a day. I also used to read a lot of spiritual literature. Then Ram,

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Sita, Lakshman and Hanuman appeared before me. After they left,
I couldn't carry on with my practice. I can't repeat the name any
more. I can't read my books. I can't meditate. I feel very quiet
inside but there is no longer any desire in me to put my attention
on God. In fact, I can't do it even if I try. My mind refuses to
engage itself in thoughts of God. What has happened to me and
what should I do?'
The Maharshi looked at me and asked, 'How did you come
here from Madras?'
I didn't see the point of his question but I politely told him the
answer: 'By train.'
'And what happened when you got to the station at
Tiruvannamalai ?' he enquired.
'Well, I got off the train, handed in my ticket and engaged a
bullock cart to take me to the ashram.'
'And when you reached the ashram and paid off the driver of
the cart, what happened to the cart?'
'It went away, presumably back to town,' I said, still not clear
as to where this line of questioning was leading.
The Maharshi then explained what he was driving at.
'The train brought you to your destination. You got off it
because you didn't need it any more. It had brought you to the
place you wanted to reach. Likewise with the bullock cart. You got
off it when it had brought you to Ramanasramam. You don't need
either the train or the cart any more. They were the means for
bringing you here. Now you are here, they are of no use to you.
'That is what has happened with your chanting. Your japa,
your reading and your meditation have brought you to your spiri-
tual destination. You don't need them any more. You yourself did
not give up your practices; they left you of their own accord
because they had served their purpose. You have arrived.'
Then he looked at me intently. I could feel that my whole
body and mind were being washed with waves of purity. They
were being purified by his silent gaze. I could feel him looking
intently into my Heart. Under that spellbinding gaze I felt every
atom of my body being purified. It was as if a new body was being
created for me. A process of transformation was going on - the old

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body was dying, atom by atom, and a new body was being created
in its place. Then, suddenly, I understood. I knew that this man
who had spoken to me was, in reality, what I already was, what I
had always been. There was a sudden impact of recognition as I
became aware of the Self. I use the word 'recognition' deliberately,
because as soon as the experience was revealed to me, I knew,
unerringly, that this was the same state of peace and happiness that
I had been immersed in as a six-year-old boy in Lahore, on the
occasion when I had refused to accept the mango drink. The silent
gaze of the Maharshi re-established me in that primal state. The
desire to search for an external God perished in the direct knowl-
edge and experience of the Self which the Maharshi revealed to
me. I cannot describe exactly what the experience was or is
because the books are right when they say that words cannot
convey it. I can only talk about peripheral things. I can say that
every cell, every atom in my body leapt to attention as they all
recognised and experienced the Self that animated and supported
them, but the experience itself I cannot describe. I knew that my
spiritual quest had definitely ended, but the source of that knowl-
edge will always remain indescribable.
I got up and prostrated to the Maharshi in gratitude. I had
finally understood what his teachings were and are. He had told me
not to be attached to any personal god, because all forms are
perishable. He could see that my chief impediments were god's
beautiful form and the love I felt towards him. He had advised me
to ignore the appearances of these ephemeral gods and to enquire
instead into the nature and source of the one who wanted to see
them. He had tried to point me towards what was real and perma-
nent, but stupidly and arrogantly I had paid no attention to his
advice.
With hindsight I could now see that the question 'Who am I?'
was the one question which I should have asked myself years
before. I had had a direct experience of the Self when I was six but
had not appreciated it or valued it. My mother had convinced me
that it was an experience of Krishna and had somehow brain-
washed me into undertaking a quest for an external god whom she
said could supply me with that one experience that I desired so

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much. In a lifetime of spiritual seeking I had met hundreds of

sadhus, swamis and gurus, but none of them had told me the
simple truth the way the Maharshi had done.
None of them had said, 'God is within you. He is not apart
from you. You alone are God. If you find the source of the mind by
asking yourself "Who am I?" you will experience Him in your
Heart as the Self.'
If I had met the Maharshi earlier in my life, listened to his
teachings and put them into practice, I would probably have saved
myself years of fruitless external searching.
I must make one other comment about the greatness of the
Maharshi. In the days that followed my vision of Ram, Sita and
Hanuman, I went all over Madras, looking for advice on how to
start my chanting again. The swamis I saw there gave me pious
platitudes because they could not see into my Heart and mind the
way the Maharshi could. Several days later, when I came and sat
in front of the Maharshi, he didn't tell me to keep on trying because
he could see that I had reached a state in which my intense
chanting could never be resumed again. 'You have arrived,' he
said. He knew what state I was in even if I didn't appreciate it
myself. He directed his divine look at me and through that single
glance of grace he showed me and made me appreciate what I
already was.
The real Master looks into your mind and Heart, sees what
state you are in, and gives out advice that is always appropriate and
relevant. Other people, who are not established in the Self, can
only give out advice that is based on either their own limited expe -
rience or on what they have heard or read. This advice is often
foolish. The true teacher will never mislead you with bad advice
because he always knows what you need, and he always knows
what state you are in.
The Maharshi had taught me that I should not run after the
forms of gods such as Krishna because they are ephemeral.
Though I have followed his advice since he showed me who I am,
nonetheless, images of gods still continue to appear to me. Even
now, decades after my spiritual search ended, Krishna still regu -
larly appears to me. I still feel a great love for Him whenever He

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appears, but He no longer has the power to make me look for

anything outside my own Self.
Let me explain. When I was a young boy I thought that the
body of Krishna was real because I could touch it. I now know that
this is not the true criterion of reality. Reality is that which always
exists and never changes, and only the formless Self meets that
definition. With hindsight I can therefore say that, when I was a
boy, the appearance of Krishna in my bedroom was a transient,
unreal phenomenon which arose in consciousness, the one reality.
All the other appearances of Krishna in my life can be classified in
the same way. Now, abiding as the Self, I cannot be tricked or
deluded by the majesty of the gods, even the ones that manifest
right in front of me, because I know that whatever power or beauty
they may appear to have is illusory. All power and beauty are
within me as my own Self. I no longer need to look for them
anywhere else.

The sequence of events I have just outlined is primarily

derived from the account that was published in the Papaji
Interviews book. I submitted it to Papaji prior to its publication
and received a reply that said, 'I have gone through the draft of the
story sent by you .... I don't find anything to change. Thank you. '
Although I received his imprimatur on the text, and although
it was published in this form, I have to admit that I was never
entirely certain I had properly described his various meetings with
Ramana Maharshi. I had several versions of his life available to
me, some of which contradicted the others. The manuscript I sub-
mitted was, I thought, a preliminary draft. I simply assembled the
material in the order that seemed to make the most sense to me and
submitted it to him for an opinion. However, he enjoyed it so much,
he had it published without changing anything at all. I did not have
to address the inconsistencies again until I began work on this
book.
The main problem so far as I was concerned was, 'When did
Papaji actually get enlightened?' On many occasions when he has
spoken about his life and his association with Ramana Maharshi,
Papaji has said that his final experience with his Master came on

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his first visit, after the Maharshi said to him, 'What appears and
disappears is not real'. This was, infact, the version he gave to me
when I interviewed him in the Botanical Gardens in Lucknow in
1993. This account, also published in the Papaji Interviews book,
is the version he most frequently narrates when he is asked to
describe the moment of his enlightenment. When he told the story
to me it was in response to my question, 'Can you describe what
happened on the day you finally got it? How did it happen?'
I could not see how this could be the climax of the story since
he has said on several occasions that he left the Maharshi to go
back to Madras because he was not satisfied with either the man
or his teachings. Also, on his return to Madras he began an inten-
sive practice of Krishna japa, a course of action that would seem
to be inexplicable if it came after a definitive experience of enlight-
enment. However, in an interview he gave early in 1995, he didn't
seem to think that this was a problem:

Question: What made you continue your meditation on Lord

Krishna after your first major experience with the Maharshi?

Answer: Meditation is always beneficial, even after enlighten-

ment. What else can you do then? Meditation means that you don't
attach yourself to anything that is not everlasting.

Question: But eventually you couldn't do that meditation any

longer. After Ram and Sita came to visit you, you couldn't medi-
tate on Krishna again.

Answer: If I am no longer meditating on Krishna, it is only

because I now feel that I am He. For that reason I need not be His
devotee, nor He be my Lord. We are the same.

When Papaji speaks about the meetings he has had with

various Hindu gods, his tone is reverential and respectful. This
attitude is particularly marked when he speaks of encounters with
Ram, Krishna and Siva. The visions he has had of them apparently
gave him intensely peaceful and blissful experiences. On the other

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

hand, he will also occasionally say that these gods are not enlight-
ened beings, even though they have an immense power and
presence. This attitude is interesting since it gives a different
perspective on the many divine visions he has had. These gods, he
says, did not appear before him to bless him with their darshan. On
the contrary, they wanted his darshan because they knew that
Papaji was in a higher state.
Papaji elaborated on this theme in the same interview from
which the previous questions and answers have been taken.

Question: Why did the gods come to visit you while you were
intensively chanting Krishna's name? I am referring to the time in
Madras when Ram, Sita and Lakshman appeared before you.

Answer: A man who is realised is higher than the gods. Why?

Because the gods still have unfulfilled desires. Look at the stories
of all the Hindu gods. They are all attached to beautiful women.
Krishna is attached to Radha, Ram to Sita, Siva to Parvati, and so
on. These gods are not enlightened because they have not given up
their attachments. To remove their attachments, they come to see
the people who are realised.
I often tell a story about a realised sage who fell asleep under
a tree. When he woke up he found that he was surrounded by gods
from the heavens. He asked why they had come to see him, and
this is what one of them said.
'We have come for your satsang. There is no satsang like this
available in the heavens. Nobody there is enlightened.'
'But I was asleep,' said the sage. 'I was just minding my own
business, sleeping under a tree.'
'We know,' said the god. 'But even when you sleep we expe-
rience a peace with you that we cannot find anywhere in the
heavens.'
This is how it is. The gods may have great powers and long
lives, but they haven't found the permanent peace of enlighten-
ment. Enlightenment is not available in the heavens. To get it, the
gods have to come back to earth and be reborn here.
There are different planes or worlds, each of which has a

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different set of beings. There are god-like beings in the so-called

higher realms, and demonic, animal-like creatures in the lower
worlds. I have visited these realms and have seen for myself what
goes on there. The higher realms are beautiful places. The bodies
of the beings who live there are translucent and handsome. The
lower worlds seem to be full of strange, deformed creatures. I saw
some with ugly, mutilated bodies: one eye, one nose and strangely-
shaped trunks. Some of them were cannibals who seemed to live
by eating each other. It was a horrible place, so I didn't stay there
very long.
After death one can get reborn in any of these worlds, but
freedom, moksha, is only available in this realm. The gods can
enjoy themselves in their heavenly realms for thousands of years,
but eventually they will have to be reborn again.
Your question was, 'Why did these gods appear before me?'
The answer is: 'They wanted final emancipation and they knew
they couldn't get it in the heavens.'

One would think that the question of when Papaji got enlight-
ened is one that could easily be resolved by asking him directly.
Unfortunately, he usually refuses to accept that it was an event that
happened at a particular time.
'Enlightenment,' he says, 'is not something that happens in
time, or at a particular time. It is the understanding that time is not
real. It is an understanding that transcends time completely.
Enlightenment and bondage are both concepts that exist only as
long as time exists. When time goes, these concepts also go. '
Questions about whether certain events in his life happened
before or after his enlightenment - one possible way of deter-
mining when it happened - also tend to be dismissed as irrelevant,
as the same interviewer discovered when he attempted to sort out
what exactly happened on Papaji 's various visits to
Ramanasramam.

Question: Did this happen before or after your realisation?

Answer: There is no before and no after because it is not

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

something that depends on time. Nor can I even say, 'I am

realised'. I never say that because it's just another concept to be
attached to. To say, 'I am enlightened' means that one accepts that
there is another state called 'bondage' or 'ignorance', and that one
can move from one to the other. That is also a concept. I don't
accept concepts like this any more.

I have not made any attempt myself to pin Papaji down on this
subject since the resolution of this problem does not depend merely
on ascertaining what exactly happened on his first few visits to the
Maharshi. The truth, extraordinary though it may seem, appears to
be that Papaji 'woke up' to his real nature around the age of six on
the occasion he ignored the mango drink in Lahore. From that
moment on, he says, the experience was always with him. He did
not lose it and get it back later in the presence of the Maharshi; the
Maharshi merely showed him the value of what he already had and
demonstrated to him that it was far more valuable and abiding
than the darshan of transient gods. I questioned him about this
radically different version of his life in June, 1995, during one of
his satsangs in Lucknow. It began with my asking questions about
an answer he had written for me the previous year. The indented
text is my original question and Papaji 's 1994 response to it. The
material that is flush with the margin comes from the June, 1995,
discussion of his earlier written remarks:

David: This is your answer to a question I asked you last

December. I would like to ask you some more questions about it:

Question: You have consistently said that it is not

possible to have a temporary experience of the Self.
You say, 'If an experience comes and goes, it is not
an experience of the Self because the Self never
comes and goes. If an experience comes and goes, it
must be an experience of the mind.'
However, when you talk about the experience you
had when you were a boy in Lahore, you often say
that it was a direct experience of the Self that later

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left you. You spent twenty-five years trying to get it

back, and when you had your final experience in
Maharshi's presence, you say that you immediately
recognised it as the same state you had been in when
you were six years old. Do not the events in your own
life demonstrate that one can have a temporary expe-
rience of the Self?

Before reading his reply Papaji questioned some of the

assumptions in the question:

Papaji: In your question you say, 'the experience you had when
you were a boy in Lahore ... ' was a 'direct experience of the Self
which later left you'. I didn't think of it in those terms at all. First
of all, I didn't know if it was an experience at all. Never mind
whether it was direct or indirect. So far as I was concerned, I could
not say that it was an experience at all.
I didn't know anything about the Self; I didn't know whether
the Self was there or not, and I certainly knew nothing about the
experience of it. I had never heard words like moksha, knowledge,
emancipation, and freedom, and if I had heard them, they wouldn't
have meant anything to me.
Next you say, 'You spent twenty-five years trying to get it
back, and when you had your final experience in Maharshi's
presence, you say that you immediately recognised it as the same
state you had been in when you were six years old'.
When I went to Maharshi, I saw many people from all over
the world, not just from India. They were sitting with him, talking
with him and enjoying his company. Why were we all there? It was
because we all recognised something special in this old man,
something which we could not find in any other person. At first I
didn't recognise it myself, but he soon showed me who he was and
compelled me to recognise and acknowledge his greatness.
There was something in him that attracted me. I soon became
aware that this 'something' resembled the experience I had had
when I was six years old. But when I was six, I didn't appreciate
its value. I didn't know that this experience, this freedom, is

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something very rare, and that it only comes to a very small number
of people in the world. It came to me unasked and I failed to
appreciate its true worth.
If you offer a very small child a choice between a hundred
dollar bill and a lollipop, it will choose the lollipop and not the
money because it doesn't know the value of money. It doesn't
know that it could buy a thousand lollipops with that piece of
paper.
When I was six I had no means of evaluating the experience.
The proper evaluation was only given to me later by the Maharshi.
When I sat in front of him, I finally understood that this early expe-
rience which came to me without any effort was a precious jewel
whose value I had never known before.
Now I will read the answer I gave you a few months ago and
see if it is the same:

Answer: At the time I had this experience at the age

of six, I did not attach any special value to it. I
thought that everyone had this natural state of peace,
happiness and innocence from birth onwards. As a
child I was happy and believed that all children had
the same happiness that I had. During my youth I
went to see several saints in the Punjab and other
parts of the country. It was only then that I discovered
that the state I was in was very different from the
states that other people were in. The others were
speaking and quoting from books, but they had no
experience of their own.

This is what happens when you go to any ashram. Some

important-looking swami will read some holy book, but the words
he reads will not be his own experience. Wherever you go -
Rishikesh, Hardwar, Tapovan - you will find swamis reading and
lecturing on texts about which they have no direct experience.
You can find people like this in every ashram in India. They
can give beautiful lectures, but the words they speak come from
the books they have read, not from their own experience.

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When I went to Ramanasramam and met my

Master, I found that this man was quite different
from the other saints I had seen. When I met him I
discovered that the experience I had had at the age of
six was the same that the Maharshi himself was in.
But when I was six I didn't value it or realise how
rare it was. When I was six, it just came to me by
itself. After meeting the Maharshi I understood its
value. I realised that it was a very rare experience
which few people have.
You say in your question that I spent twenty -five
years trying to get it back. It would be more correct
to say that I simply could not describe what I was
experiencing. The reason was, it cannot be described.
Because whatever is described has to be an object of
sight, sound, touch. The peace and happiness that I
experienced could not be described or had by any
activity of the mind. What can be described in time
has to be an object of the past not the present.
The experience I had at the age of six is constant.
It is the present and I always live in it.

Only experiences of objects can be described. A mental expe-

rience can be described because such an experience is an object
which is experienced by a subject. All mental experiences are like
this. But this is beyond mind, so how can it be described? How can
you describe something when there is no experiencer?
This experience has never been described. It has never been
told, never been revealed, never before been described in the scrip-
tures. Whatever you read in the scriptures is not this truth, not this
experience. The Upanishads and the Vedas are full of wonderful
stories and philosophies, but the author Vyasa has to admit finally
that he has not described truth itself. All he can say of this final
truth, this final experience, is 'neti-neti ', 'not this, not this'.
If you see a mother kissing her child and enjoying it, how can
you experience that feeling of kissing, and the joy that follows, if
you have never kissed anyone before? What will this woman say if

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you ask her what the experience of kissing her own child is like? I
think that the only honest answer she can give you is, 'Have your
own child and then you will know yourself what it is like'. This is
what I mean by 'direct experience'.
What about this experience which is beyond all concepts of
the mind? It has one special quality. If you go near a person who
has this direct experience of truth, you have the feeling, 'There is
something in this person's proximity that gives me peace. I cannot
describe what it is, but it is definitely there. '
This power, this energy, this experience will attract you and
make you want to experience it more and more. Maharshi had this
power, but even he couldn't describe it. He just sat quietly. He did
not even reply to most of the questions that were put to him. For
long periods he would ignore everyone and everything, just sitting
quietly with his eyes open, but not seeing anything . But the people
who sat there knew that peace could be found by sitting in his
presence. That is why people collected around him from all over
the world.

David: You seem to be saying that the experience of peace you had
at the age of six never left you. If that is so, why were you not satis-
fied with it? Why, afterwards, were you still looking for a God
outside you, and why did you run around India looking for a Guru
who could show Him to you?

Papaji: It was because of my innocence. In my childhood I had

been told that I could see God with my own eyes. I had no reason
to disbelieve such statements because Krishna Himself often
appeared in front of me and played with me .
The talks my mother gave me convinced me that these visions
were a normal part of spiritual life.
She would say, 'Narasimha saw Krishna and spoke to Him.
Tulsidas spoke directly to Ram, and Ram manifested before him.
Mirabai spoke to Krishna, danced with Him, sang to Him, played
with Him.'
Stories like this were quite acceptable to me because I had my
own experience of Krishna appearing and playing with me.

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Playing with the gods and loving them more and more is very
addictive. The more I did it, the more I wanted them to appear and
play with me. I became addicted to Krishna's darshan, so much so,
my whole life revolved around finding ways to make Him appear
to me.
This desire to have God appear to me whenever I wanted was
never fully fulfilled, so I started to look for a teacher or a Guru who
had seen Krishna Himself and who could show Him to me. I
wanted to learn from such a teacher how to make Krishna appear
whenever I wanted Him to. I travelled the length and breadth of
India looking for such a man, but no one could satisfy me.
My desire to see God took me to many places. At each place
I asked the same question: 'Can you show me God?' Either people
would get angry with me or they would laugh at my request.
But when I went to see the Maharshi, I got a completely
different response. When I asked him, 'Have you seen God? Can
you show him to me?' he just kept quiet. He refused to answer me.
I was not satisfied with his silence. If I ask a question like this, the
answer should be either yes or no. I was angry and disgusted that
he had completely ignored what was for me the most important
question in the world.
I went to the other side of Arunachala and stayed there for a
few days because I didn't want to spend any more time with the
Maharshi and his disciples. At the end of that time I stopped in at
the ashram to tell the Maharshi that I was leaving town to take up
a new job in Madras. His attendant tried to stop me from entering
because it was the wrong time of day, but the Maharshi waved him
away and let me enter his hall.
Again I asked him this question: 'Have you seen God and can
you show him to me?'
This time he gave me an answer.
'Anything that you see cannot be God. Whatever you see
must be an object of your senses. God is not an object of your
senses. God is the one through whom all things are seen, tasted,
touched, etc., but He Himself cannot be seen because He is the
seer, not an object of sight.'
This was something very new for me. I didn't just think about

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it; I immediately experienced what he was saying. I knew, 'I am

the seer, not the objects that I perceive'.
This experience I had was the same one I had had when I was
a young boy in Lahore. On that occasion also it did not happen
through meditation. We were just sitting in the evening, having a
cold drink. I was so paralysed by this revelation of inner happiness,
I couldn't move for two days.
When I was finally able to function again in a normal way, I
couldn't describe what had happened to me. My family wanted to
know what I had been experiencing but I couldn't tell them
because what had happened cannot be described by anyone. I
wanted to know what had happened to me. I wanted to know
'What is this experience?' But nobody around me seemed to know
anything about it. Therefore, when I was old enough, I started
running from place to place, looking for someone who knew what
it meant, someone who had had it himself, someone who could
prove it by showing it to me. When I met the Maharshi, for the first
time in my life I had the feeling, 'This man has seen the same thing
that I have seen. He cannot describe it and neither can I.' When I
met the Maharshi, I was satisfied because I knew that I had finally
found a man who knew directly what this inexplicable experience
was.

David: You often say that if a devotee has an experience, he should

take it to his teacher and have it evaluated. Is this what happened
when you met the Maharshi?

Papaji: Yes, something like this happened. I could not evaluate it

myself because I was not qualified. I spoke earlier about children
who choose a chocolate instead of a hundred dollar bill because
they don't know the true value of the paper money. I was like this.
I had visions and ecstasies. Gods danced before me and played
with me. These were my chocolates. It was the Maharshi who
showed me directly that the hundred dollar bill I had been carrying
with me all the time was more valuable than all the lollipops put
together. He evaluated it for me, but not in a way that he or I could
describe.

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David: All your life you have had the ability to experience the real
meaning of words, rather than merely think about them. In your
childhood, when you thought about Krishna, Krishna appeared.
When you read about kundalini in John Woodroffe's book, The
Serpent Power, you had an experience of kundalini. When you met
the Maharshi and he told you to find out who the seer was, you
immediately experienced the seer. With this special talent of expe-
riencing words, you just needed someone to tell you to look at the
'I' so that you could experience its real nature. Is that a fair
description of what happened?

Papaji: This, of course, is very true. Whenever I hear a word, I

immediately understand what the word signifies. I experience the
word, rather than merely think about it. Just now I was speaking
about chocolate. When you hear the word 'chocolate', it's just a
word, a noise travelling through the air. But if you have tasted
chocolate before, it can evoke in you a taste, a flavour in your
mouth. If I say 'sour lime' you might get this bitter, tickling sensa-
tion in your mouth or your throat. But when I speak words like
God, Krishna, Jesus, Allah or Jehovah, nothing happens inside you
because you have never before had the taste of what they really
are. These words are just a symbol of something that cannot be
talked about, and if you have never had the experience I am
pointing to, the words themselves will not give that tingling, that
flavour of what is real and true.
I read The Serpent Power for the first time while I was
working in the mines [in the 1950s]. The uncle of a man who was
in charge of our automobile shop had a copy, but he didn't under-
stand it. He brought it to me and asked me to explain some of the
things he didn't understand.
I told him, 'I haven't read it, but if you leave it here I will go
through it. When you come again I will be in a better position to
answer your questions.'
I went through the book and immediately experienced the
kundalini in my own body. I read the words, I looked at the
diagrams and immediately I experienced what they were pointing
to. I didn't need to practise any of the exercises that were described

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there. Just reading the words was enough. I cannot say how it
happened. All I can say is that the words became my experience.
You are asking whether I experienced the seer simply because
I had my attention directed to it by the Maharshi. The answer is
'Yes'.
When I talk about a lemon, you know what I am talking about.
You have seen a lemon as an object in front of you, so you can tell
me what it looks like, and you can even attempt to describe what it
tastes like. But the word 'I' is different. No one has ever seen it.
You can search your whole body from head to toe, but you won't
find it. You can look everywhere inside you: in the feet, the nose,
the legs, the hands, the head, etc., but you can never find it because
the 'I' is not an object. It is not something that belongs to you. It is
you yourself, and you never find your own self by looking through
the things that belong to that self.
Who is the owner of all these things that you look at while you
are conducting this search? That owner cannot be described. But
you don't need any description to know who you are. You know it
directly. You say to yourself 'I am', and you know immediately
that this is the truth of who you are. You don't have to look for it
anywhere because it is your own direct experience. Do you have to
ask your own Self who you are? You are David Godman. Next to
you is Bharat Mitra. Will you ask 'Where is Bharat Mitra?' if he is
sitting next to you? You are even closer to your own Self than you
are to Bharat Mitra. Will you ask, 'Where is David Godman?'
What I am trying to say is this: It is stupid to ask 'Where is
God?' because you are God Himself. You are That. Know it and
say 'I am that I am'. You need not ask and it cannot be shown to
you.

David: When I first met you, you told me, 'If I had asked myself
"Who am I?" when I was six years old, my work would have been
over there and then. But no one ever told me to look at the "I" till
I met Maharshi twenty -five years later.'

Papaji: Yes, that is very true. Nobody ever told me, 'Look at your
"I". Look at the source of your thought.'

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If you look for spiritual advice in this country, somebody will

tell you, 'Go to the Hanuman temple and tell Him what you want.
If you make Him a nice offering, He may fulfil your desire.'
This is how people think they have to deal with God. Nobody
ever speaks about the 'I'. Nobody tells you about the source of the
'I'. In this century it was the Maharshi alone who proclaimed this
message. He said, 'Look at your own Self and have the direct expe-
rience of who you really are'. That is why so many people went to
see him.
Other teachers were saying, 'Shun your household life.
Become a yogi. Go to the Himalayas. Change the colour of your
clothes, sit in a cave and perform some arduous tapas for a few
years.'
Maharshi on the other hand, said, 'Carry on with your usual
occupation because giving it up and going to a cave will not help
you. If you want to accomplish something spiritual, ask yourself
"Who am I?" Find out who you are by finding out where this "I"
you think you are comes from.'
I was a soldier in the army. Most people think that this is not
a very spiritual occupation but I was in ecstasy for most of the time
I was in the army. My mind was on God so it didn't matter what
duties my body was performing. If you have the right attitude, your
job will never be an impediment. Because I was focussed on God,
even the mundane military activities had spiritual significance for
me.
In the beginning, when I entered the Military Academy at
Debra Dun, I was taught to stand at attention. Whenever I heard
this word I would be attentive to whatever was going on inside me.
The next order would be 'Stand easy!' Whenever I heard that
particular command, I would take it as an instruction to relax the
mind and free it of all thoughts. Whenever I heard that command,
I would simply drop all thoughts and relax into inner silence.
Later, they took us to the rifle range and taught us how to
shoot a 303. We had to look through the back sight in such a way
that the sight at the front and the target being aimed at were in the
centre of it. And then we were told, 'Hold your breath while you
fire, because if you are breathing your body will be moving and

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you will not keep your aim steady'.

From this I instantly learned that to keep a proper aim and
score a bull's eye one must be absolutely still and unmoving inside.
While shooting I would concentrate on the correct positioning of
the sights, be absolutely still physically and mentally, and then
squeeze the trigger. I was a very good shot. Every time I shot I got
ten out of ten bull's eyes. There were some people in my company
who couldn't even hit the target at all because they hadn't under -
stood the true significance of the instructions.

David: Could you really have had the final experience when you
were six, without the physical presence of the Guru?

Papaji: Yes. I had the same experience even without the physical
presence of the Guru. Everybody has this experience without the
physical presence of the Guru. The Guru just gives you guidance
on how to find this out for yourself.
A new moon in the sky may be hard to see. But someone who
has seen it himself can say to those who haven't, 'Look, there is a
crow sitting on the branch of that tree. Look where my finger is
pointing. Behind the head of the crow you can see the moon.'
If you follow the advice you will see the moon, but if you
keep your attention on the pointing finger or the crow or the branch
of the tree, you will miss the point of the directions that are being
given to you. The books that have been left by the founders of
various religions and the teachers who expound on them are the
fingers that point. People end up focussing on these fingers and not
following the line of sight to see what they are pointing at. No
book, no person, no word reveals the truth. You have to look and
see it for yourself. It has to be your own experience, not something
you have picked up from someone else.

David: Did you not need those twenty-five years of intense

Krishna bhakti to bum away all your pending desires?

Papaji: This was my desire: to see Krishna with my own eyes.

This desire came not from this life, but from a previous one. I had

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been trying to see Krishna even in my last life. In this present life
I have been to the place where I lived in my last life. I saw the
temple that I constructed there and the idol of Krishna that I
installed in the temple, but my old samadhi had been washed away
by the Tungabhadra River. This desire was not finished so I needed
another birth to finish it off. Anyone who has an unfulfilled desire
at the time of his death will have to come back again in another
body which will again try to fulfil that desire. This will carry on
happening till there are no more desires left. And when there is no
desire, this is called freedom, liberation, emancipation. This is the
end of the cycle of birth and death.

David: Were you destined to meet the Maharshi in 1944 and have
your final experience with him, or could it have happened earlier?

Papaji: If you read my life you will understand that it had to

happen, that I was destined to meet with him. I was scheduled to
meet him. But at the same time I can say that I don't believe in
destiny, because for most people destiny means a kind of resigned
fatalism. People with weak minds blame destiny for everything
that happens to them. My mind was never weak. I never accepted
that my life had to follow a particular pattern. I knew what I
wanted and I went out to fight for it.
There is no need to blame destiny for all the things that
happen to you. If you want to be free, why think about whether it
is destined or not? Just make a decision, 'I want to be free today. I
want to be free right now. I refuse to put it off.' That experience
will come when you refuse to accept any excuse or reason for
delaying it.
It is your great luck to be here in Lucknow. That experience is
available now, and it is available here, in Lucknow itself. How can
you say that 'now' is not here? Now is always here. Not in the next
moment, not in the last moment, not tomorrow, not yesterday. In
between the next moment and the last moment is something that
not everybody can see. Why? Because you have to be it, not see it.
That's how you find the gap and stay there. That being is available
at all times to everyone, but you have to be serious if you want to

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be one with it. You have to make a decision that you are not going
to postpone. You are in very good circumstances now. Don't miss
out on this chance you have been given. Out of six billion people
in the world today, only a hundred or so are here. Such great luck
you have! I am not going to discourage you. It will come to you
because it is already here. You don't need to try. It is the trying that
gives you trouble. Don't try and don't even think. Thinking also
needs some use of your head. Don't think and don't make effort.
And then you will see what results.

When I first put together an account of Papaji 's life, the one
that subsequently appeared in the Papaji Interviews book, I was
working on the assumption that his spiritual career had a begin -
ning, a middle and an end, and that the climax came during one of
his early meetings with the Maharshi. I arranged the facts to fit
this assumption, not knowing at the time that he himself had a
totally different perspective on the events of his life. In October,
1995, in answer to another question I put to him in satsang, he
confirmed just as emphatically that his final experience came when
he was a boy in Lahore.

I had a direct experience [when that mango drink was offered

to me], but no one there was able to tell me, 'This is the truth. You
don't need anything else.'
Instead, everyone told me, 'The peace you enjoyed in that
state came because of Krishna. If you start worshipping Him, He
will appear before you and make you happy.'
I was already happy but somehow, these uninformed people
made me do sadhana because they thought that I needed new expe-
riences. Because I had no one who could say with authority, 'You
need nothing else. Stay as you are,' I ended up spending years
looking for external gods.
There has been no change in my understanding, my experi-
ence and my conviction since I was six years old. From the age of
six till now, when I am over eighty years old, there has been no
change, but this truth, this understanding, was not fully revealed to
me till I met the Maharshi. That is the role of the true teacher: to

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show you and tell you that you are already That, and to do it in
such an authoritative way, you never doubt his words.

The full text of this conversation will appear in a later

chapter, 'Guru and Disciple'. Meanwhile, I will return to Papaji's
life story. When I broke off the narrative to begin this long digres-
sion on the exact date of Papaji 's enlightenment, he was at
Ramanasramam, describing what happened on the day he went to
tell the Maharshi that he could no longer carry on with his japa.
After this momentous visit he went back to work for the British
army in Madras.

After this experience in the Maharshi's presence, my outer life

went on much as before. I went back to Madras, carried on with my
job, and supported my family to the best of my ability. At
weekends, or when I had accumulated enough leave, I would go
back to Tiruvannamalai, sit at the feet of my Master and bask in his
radiant presence. The cynical, sceptical seeker who had aggres-
sively confronted the Maharshi on his first visit had gone for good.
All that remained was love for him.
In the first few months after this visit, I didn't have a single
thought. I could go to the office and perform all my duties without
ever having a thought in my head. It was the same when I went to
Tiruvannamalai. Whether I was sitting in the hall with the
Maharshi, walking around the mountain or shopping in town,
everything I did was performed without any mental activity at all.
There was an ocean of inner silence that never gave rise to even a
ripple of thought. It did not take me long to realise that a mind and
thoughts are not necessary to function in the world. When one
abides as the Self, some divine power takes charge of one's life.
All actions then take place spontaneously, and are performed very
efficiently, without any mental effort or activity.
I often brought my family and business colleagues to the
ashram at weekends. Out of all the people I brought, the Maharshi
seemed to be particularly fond of my daughter. She had learned
Tamil quite well during her time in Madras, so she could converse
with him in his native language. They used to laugh and play

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together whenever we visited.

On one of my visits she sat in front of the Maharshi and went
into what appeared to be a deep meditative trance. When the bell
for lunch went, I was unable to rouse her. The Maharshi advised
me to leave her in peace, so we went off to eat without her. When
we came back she was still in the same place in the same state. She
spent several more hours in this condition before returning to her
normal waking state.
Major Chadwick had been watching all this with great
interest. After her experience ended, he approached the Maharshi
and said, 'I have been here for ten years, but I have never had an
experience like this. This seven-year-old girl seems to have had
this experience without making any effort at all. How can this be?'
The Maharshi merely smiled and said, 'How do you know
that she is not older than you?'
After this intense experience my daughter fell in love with the
Maharshi and became very attached to his form. Before we left she
told him, 'You are my father. I am not going back to Madras. I will
stay here with you.'
The Maharshi smiled and said, 'No, you cannot stay here. You
must go back with your real father. Go to school, finish your
education, and then you can come back if you want to.'
The experience had a profound impact on her life. Just a few
weeks ago [September, 1992] I overheard her telling someone in
our kitchen that not a day has passed since then without some
memory of that event. But if you ask her about it, she can't give
any kind of answer. If anyone asks her, 'What happened that day
when you were in a trance in front of the Maharshi?' her response
is always the same. She just starts crying. She has never been able
to describe or explain, even to me, what exactly happened.
On my visits to Sri Ramanasramam I would sit in the hall with
the Maharshi, listening to him deal with all the questions and
doubts that devotees brought to him. Occasionally, if some answer
was not clear, or if it did not tally with my own experience, I would
ask a question myself. My army training had taught me that I
should keep on questioning until I fully understood what was being
explained to me. I applied the same principles to the Maharshi's

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philosophical teachings.
On one occasion, for example, I heard him tell a visitor that
the spiritual Heart -centre was located on the right side of the chest,
and that the 'I' -thought arose from that place and subsided there.
This did not tally with my own experience of the Heart. On my first
visit to the Maharshi, when my Heart opened and flowered, I knew
that it was neither inside nor outside the body. Based on my own
experience of the Self, I knew that it was not possible to say that
the Heart could be limited to or located in the body.
So I joined in the conversation and asked, 'Why do you place
the spiritual Heart on the right side of the chest and limit it to that
location? There can be no right or left for the Heart because it does
not abide inside or outside the body. Why not say it is everywhere?
How can you limit the truth to a location inside the body? Would
it not be more correct to say that the body is situated in the Heart,
rather than the Heart in the body?'
I was quite vigorous and fearless in my questioning because
that was the method I had been taught in the army.
The Maharshi gave me an answer which fully satisfied me.
Turning to me, he explained that he only spoke in this way to
people who still identified themselves with their bodies.
'When I speak of the "I" rising from the right side of the body,
from a location on the right side of the chest, the information is for
those people who still think that they are the body. To these people
I say that the Heart is located there. But it is really not quite correct
to say that the "I" rises from and merges in the Heart on the right
side of the chest. The Heart is another name for the Reality and it
is neither inside nor outside the body; there can be no in or out for
it, since it alone is. I do not mean by "Heart" any physiological
organ or any plexus or anything like that, but so long as one iden -
tifies oneself with the body and thinks that one is the body, one is
advised to see where in the body the "I" -thought rises and merges
again. It must be the Heart at the right side of the chest since every
man, of whatever race and religion, and in whatever language he
may be saying "I", points to the right side of the chest to indicate
himself. This is so all over the world, so that must be the place.
And by keenly watching the daily emergence of the "I" -thought on

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waking, and its subsidence in sleep, one can see that it is in this
Heart on the right side.'
I liked to talk to the Maharshi when he was alone or when
there were very few people around, but this was not often possible.
For most of the day he was surrounded by people. Even when I did
approach him with a question, I had to have an interpreter on hand
because my Tamil wasn't good enough to sustain a philosophical
conversation.
The summer months were the best time to catch him in a quiet
environment. The climate was so unpleasant at that time, few
visitors came. One time in May, at the height of the summer, there
were only about five of us with the Maharshi. Chadwick, one of the
five, made a joke about it: 'We are your poor devotees, Bhagavan.
Everyone who can afford to go to the hills to cool off has left. Only
we paupers have been left behind.'
The Maharshi laughed and replied, 'Yes, staying here in
summer, without running away, is the real tapas'.

To do tapas is to undergo some severe form of spiritual disci-

pline in order to make spiritual progress. Since the word tapas is
derived from a Sanskrit word meaning 'heat', Bhagavan was
probably making an intentional pun.
Papaji continues:

I would sometimes accompany the Maharshi on his walks

around the ashram. This enabled me to talk privately with him and
to observe firsthand how he dealt with devotees and ashram
workers. I watched him supervise the sharing out of the food,
making sure everyone received equal portions; I watched him
remonstrate with workers who wanted to prostrate to him rather
than carry on with their work. Everything he did contained a lesson
for us. Every step he took was a teaching in itself.
The Maharshi preferred to work in a low-key, unspectacular
way with the people around him. There were no great demonstra-
tions of his power, just a continuous subtle emanation of grace that
inexorably seeped into the hearts of all those who came into
contact with him.

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 RAMANA MAHARSHI

One incident I witnessed illustrates very well the subtle and

indirect way that he worked with us. A woman brought her dead
son to the Maharshi, placing the corpse before the couch. The boy
had apparently died from a snake bite. The woman begged the
Maharshi to bring him back to life, but he deliberately ignored her
and her repeated requests. After a few hours the ashram manager
made her take the body away. As she was leaving the ashram she
met some kind of snake charmer who claimed he could cure her
son. The man did something to the boy's hand, the place where he
had been bitten, and the boy immediately revived, even though he
had been dead for several hours.
The devotees in the ashram attributed the miraculous cure to
the Maharshi, saying, 'When a problem is brought to the attention
of a jnani, some "automatic divine activity" brings about a
solution'.
According to this theory, the Maharshi had done nothing
consciously to help the boy, but at a deeper, unconscious level, his
awareness of the problem had caused the right man to appear at the
right place. The Maharshi, of course, disclaimed all responsibility
for the miraculous cure. 'Is that so?' was his only response when
told about the boy's dramatic recovery. This was typical of the
Maharshi. He never performed any miracles and never even
accepted any responsibility for those that seemed to happen either
in his presence or on account of a devotee's faith in him. The only
'miracles' he indulged in were those of inner transformation. By a
word, a look, a gesture, or merely by remaining in silence, he
quietened the minds of people around him, enabling them to
become aware of who they really were. There is no greater miracle
than this.

Around this time Papaji met another great saint, a Muslim pir
from Baghdad. He was told about him by a professor from
Allahabad whom he had met at Ramanasramam:

While I was working in Madras I received a telegram from Dr

Syed in Allahabad, asking me to find out if there was a Muslim pir
living on Lingi Chetty Street, Madras. Dr Syed was a friend of

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mine I had met at Ramanasramam. He was both a Muslim and a

Krishna bhakta, a very unusual combination. The telegram
informed me that I should make enquiries at the house of Khan
Bahadur Abdul Rashid, an army contractor who did work for the
Cheshire Regiment which was then based at Avadi. I found out
later that Dr Syed had heard about this man from a Sufi he knew
in Peshawar. When his Sufi friend told him that this pir was a
mystic of the highest order, he felt an immediate strong desire to
see him.
Since I was working for the army myself, I knew about this
Khan Bahadur, the man from whom information about the pir
could be obtained. He owned a factory and had a contract with the
Renigunta army base.
I went to see him at his place of business and listened while
he told me the fascinating story of how he had met this pir.
'I was travelling in a van when I noticed a fakir walking along
the road. I offered him a ride and eventually brought him home to
my house in Lingi Chetty Street. He didn't seem to have anywhere
to stay so I told him he could make himself at home in my house.
I thought I was doing him a favour, but he refused, saying that he
never stayed with anyone. It seems that he likes to stay absolutely
alone in places where there is no chance of meeting anyone else. I
have another house adjacent to the one where I live. Some of the
tailors who do work for my factory were there, but apart from
them, the house was unoccupied. I explained to the fakir that I
could arrange for these tailors to do their work somewhere else,
and that once they were gone, he could have the whole house to
himself. He accepted on condition that no one be allowed to enter
this house except himself. Even I would not be allowed to go in
once he had moved there. It was a strange request, but I accepted
it. I somehow felt attracted to this man and wanted to serve him.
Every day I leave food outside his door. He accepts it but I haven't
actually seen him since the day he moved in. He only comes out to
take the food when no one else is around.'
I explained the purpose of my visit. 'A friend of mine in
Allahabad asked me to make enquiries because he wants to come
and see him. Does he see people at all? Should I write to him and

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tell him to come?'

'I cannot say,' replied Khan Bahadur. 'If he is lucky, the fakir
may open his door to him. He accepted a ride in my van and agreed
to live in one of my houses. I consider that to be my good luck. But
so far he has not agreed to see anyone. He has not even allowed me
to come and visit him.
'A few weeks ago I was invited to a special Christmas dinner
that was hosted by the Governor of the Madras Presidency, Sir
Malcolm Nye. During the function his wife asked me if there were
any saints in the city she could visit. I told her about the pir living
in this house, but warned her that he would probably not be willing
to see her since he never opened his door to anyone. She still
wanted to try so we fixed a time to call on the fakir together.
'On the appointed day we went up to his door together. I
knocked, explained who I was and informed him that the wife of
the Governor of the Madras Presidency would like to see him for
a few minutes to have his darshan. There was no reply. I apolo-
gised to Lady Nye, saying that some fakirs are like this. It is up to
them to decide whom they will see and whom they will avoid.
'You can write to your friend in Allahabad and tell him all
this. If he still wants to come, he will know what to expect when
he knocks on the door.'
I wrote a letter to Dr Syed, telling him the whole story. I
thought that my report would discourage him from coming.
However, he didn't wait for my letter to arrive. He had confirmed
independently that the pir was in this house and had left Allahabad
even before my letter reached him. He arrived at my door early the
next day, eager to accompany me to the pir. I was not there when
he arrived, so my wife served him breakfast. She told him that I
was due back from my office at 1 p.m. but he didn't want to wait
that long. He turned up at my office and asked me to take him
immediately to see the pir.
How could I walk out of the office in the middle of the
morning on a trip like this? I told him that my director would not
allow such an expedition during working hours. Undeterred, Dr
Syed went off to see my boss and somehow persuaded him to let
me off for a few hours.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

I went to the office of Khan Bahadur and introduced Dr Syed

as the professor from Allahabad University who had come all the
way to Madras to meet this pir. He was not optimistic about our
chances of getting in. He repeated the story of the Governor's wife
since Dr Syed didn't yet know about that episode, and added that
it was very unlikely that the man would open the door to us.
Khan Bahadur took us to the door and left us there. Dr Syed
knocked and introduced himself in Persian since he thought that
this would establish his credentials. He taught oriental languages in
Allahabad and was an acknowledged expert on Islam. No reply
came from inside.
'Let's wait for a while,' he said. 'It's the hour for namaz. He
may be saying his prayers.'
Twenty minutes later he knocked again. This time the pir
acknowledged him by shouting from inside that he should go
away.
Dr Syed was not happy when he heard this. He had made a
long trip especially to meet this man, but he couldn't even get past
the front door.
'This man is not like the Maharshi,' he complained. 'The
Maharshi makes himself available to everyone who wants to see
him. This man doesn't even let a single person in to see him. How
can we benefit from these saints if they don't even allow us into
their presence? Let's go back to your house. We are wasting our
time here.'
I didn't want to leave without seeing this pir.
'Go back to my house and have lunch with my wife. Tell her
what I am doing. I have come to see this man and I am not leaving
till I see him.'
I had a feeling that a man who was so determined to avoid
company of all kinds must be someone worth meeting.
Dr Syed had not travelled more than a few yards down the
street when the pir opened the door for me. I pointed to the
retreating figure of the professor and explained that he had come
especially from Allahabad to see him.
'Should I call him back?' I asked.
'No,' said the pir, very firmly. 'He has not come here with a

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good motive. He wants me to help him resolve a property dispute

in his favour. I am not interested in meeting people like that. You,
on the other hand, are a pir of India. I am happy to see people like
you.'
He invited me in and asked me to sit on his sazenamaz, his
personal prayer mat. We sat there together in silence for some time.
A little later there was another knock at the door.
'That's my lunch,' announced the pir. 'Khan Bahadur's
servant puts it on my doorstep every day at noon. You must eat
with me.'
We sat together and shared his lunch. During the meal he told
me the story of his life. He had originally been a professor from
Baghdad but at some point he had felt an urge to come to India to
meet some of India's living Masters.
'I know about people like Shams Tabriz of Multan, Kabir and
other great Masters of the past,' he said. 'I felt an urge to come here
to see if India was still producing such great Masters today.'
I told him about Ramana Maharshi and I also mentioned a
Sufi I had met in my home town in the Punjab. He was very inter-
ested in what I had to say about the Maharshi, particularly since he
lived so near Madras.
At about 3 p.m. I told him that I should go home because my
friend from Allahabad would be waiting for me there. I asked the
pir if I could come to see him again but he was noncommittal.
'You need not come,' he said. 'I will be with you whenever
you want to see me.'
When I arrived home my wife told me that Dr Syed had
already left for the train station.
'He only took three days leave from his university,' she said.
'He had a ticket back on the afternoon train. He couldn't wait to
see you because that would have meant missing his work in
Allahabad.'
I wrote to him, telling him what had happened after he had left
me at the pir 's door. He wrote back and informed me that what the
pir had said about him was true. He was involved in a property
dispute in Allahabad. For several years he had had a job teaching
at a university in England. During his absence some of his relatives

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had occupied his house. On his return they had refused to vacate,
even though they had initially agreed that they would only occupy
the house during his absence in England. He wanted the pir 's bless-
ings to get his house back, which is why the pir refused to meet
him.
Dr Syed wrote that he was disappointed that he had not been
able to meet the pir, but he added a few lines saying how happy he
was that I had managed to meet another great saint.
Though the pir had not encouraged me to come again, I
persuaded him to come with me to meet the Maharshi on one of my
weekend visits. In Tiruvannamalai we sat in the hall together for
some time, looking at the Maharshi. After only a few minutes, the
pir got up, saluted him and walked out.
When I caught up with him and asked him why he had left so
suddenly, he said, 'I have smelled this one flower in the garden of
Hinduism. I don't need to smell any of the others. Now I am satis-
fied and can go back to Baghdad.'
This man was a jnani, a true knower of reality. Such beings
are very rare. In those few minutes with the Maharshi he was able
to satisfy himself that the flowering of jnana in Hindus was no
different from the highest experience attained by Islamic saints.

On his frequent visits to Ramanasramam Papaji struck up a

friendship with the Maharshi 's younger brother, who often visited
him when he came to Madras on business. Papaji s house also
became a centre for devotees who were travelling to and from
Ramanasramam.

Niranjanananda Swami, known by his nickname

Chinnaswami, was the younger brother of the Maharshi and the
manager of the ashram. He loved me very much. Whenever he
came to Madras to transact any business on behalf of the ashram,
he would always pay me a short visit at my apartment on Lloyds
Road. Mostly he came to do printing work for the ashram, but he
would also come to do other minor errands such as buying new
tyres for the ashram's bullock carts. I always asked him to have
lunch with me, but he usually excused himself on the grounds that

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he had to return to the ashram by the afternoon train. When it was

time for him to return, I would generally accompany him as far as
Mylapore. On one of these trips, as I was seeing him off, he told
me that the Maharshi had given his full blessings only to me, and
not even to his younger brother.
I used to go to the ashram twice a month. Saturday and
Sunday were holidays in the army stores where I was working, so
I usually went at weekends. I would take the train on Saturday
afternoon and come back Sunday evening. That gave me a night
and a day in the ashram.
I once went to the ashram with an old friend of mine from
Bangalore who used to come to Madras to see me. He knew about
my financial position because my wife used to complain to him
that I spent half my salary not just on travelling twice a month to
Tiruvannamalai, but also on sadhus and guests from Sri
Ramanasramam whom I would invite into our home. Many of
them would stay overnight with me while they were waiting to
catch trains to Bombay, Delhi and other places.
On one occasion, on pay day, I went off to Sri Ramanasramam
without first giving some money to my wife for the rent of the
apartment, for the school fees of the children, and for other
domestic expenses. I had all this money in my pocket, but I forgot
to give her any before I left. I only realised my mistake at the
railway station when I took out my money to buy my ticket and
saw that my wife's portion was still with me. I mentioned this to
my friend from Bangalore who was travelling with me.
I spent the weekend at the ashram. As I was about to leave for
Madras on Sunday afternoon, I thought to myself, 'Why should I
take back all the money with me?' Instead, I gave it to
Chinnaswami as a donation for the ashram.
My friend, who was leaving at the same time, gave a Rs 10
donation. When he saw me hand over my money, he knew that I
was giving my entire salary to the ashram, and that the money was
supposed to be used for all my household expenditures in Madras.
He told this fact to Niranjanananda Swami, who then refused to
accept my donation. Chinnaswami said that he would only accept
Rs 10 from me, the same amount that my friend had given. As he

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was returning the balance to me, he mentioned that the ashram did
not have many expenses at that time.
'We are only cooking for about twenty people at the moment,'
he said. 'Our daily expenses are not very high. We are only
spending about Rs 80 per day, so we don't need your money.'
A lot of people had problems with Chinnaswami, but I always
got on very well with him. His son, Sri T. N. Venkataraman, who
was President of the Board of Trustees at Ramanasramam for
many years, used to tell me, whenever I visited the ashram, that I
was the only disciple of his father. I had very good relations with
all the trustees of the ashram.

Papaji 's wife had other reasons to be irked by his seemingly

cavalier attitude towards money:

On Saturday nights, if I was not visiting the Maharshi for the

weekend, I would go to Marina Beach in Madras and meditate for
the whole night. Around this time, 1945 I think it was, I read a
story about Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the great saint from
Bengal.
He used to sit by the side of the Ganga in Calcutta with a pile
of stones on one side and a pile of coins on the other. He would
alternately throw coins and stones into the river in an attempt to
find out if there was any difference between the two. Finally, he
came to the conclusion that there was no difference between them
and threw all his remaining money in the water. I liked his spirit of
renunciation and his utter disregard for money so much, I decided
to emulate him on my trips to the beach. Whenever I went there I
would always throw whatever I had in my pockets into the sea, not
even keeping enough for my tram fare home. In the early morning
I would have a long walk home.
One Saturday evening my wife and children decided to come
with me to the beach. On our arrival I told her, 'Whenever I come
here I am struck by this great spirit of renunciation. I throw every-
thing I have into the sea and walk home with nothing. Since you
have accompanied me this week, you must do the same. Take off
all your jewellery - your rings, your bracelets, your earrings, your

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bangles - and throw them in the sea.'

My wife thought I was mad and told me so in no uncertain
terms. She didn't keep her jewellery for very long though. About a
week later there was a robbery in our house during which the
jewellery she had refused to relinquish on the beach was stolen.
At that time we were renting our apartment from a school-
teacher who lived on the floor below us. He had six daughters and
a boy with polio who couldn't walk. For an Indian family, this was
an unimaginable disaster: the boy would never work or find a wife
and the father, a poorly paid man, would have to find six large
dowries in order to get all his daughters married off.
One evening we were walking home from a temple where we
had been attending a Krishna Janmastami celebration. As we
approached our house we noticed the schoolteacher climbing down
a ladder from our balcony onto his floor. We went inside and
discovered that my wife's jewellery had been stolen along with
some of her saris.
I thought to myself, 'We were destined to lose this jewellery.
She wouldn't throw it in the sea so a thief came and took it from
her.'
I felt sorry for this man downstairs. He had so much trouble
in his life, so many daughters to raise and find husbands for, and a
sick son to look after as well.
'Let him keep the money he gets from the jewels,' I thought.
'He needs it to look after his family.'
A few days later I received a threatening letter from the
landlord's lawyer which stated that if I didn't pay the rent I owed
on the house, I would be evicted. He was claiming that I owed
twelve months rent, whereas I knew that I had paid all my rent,
including the next three months in advance. I looked for the
receipts and found that they too had been stolen. Without these
papers, I couldn't prove that I had paid any rent at all.
Since I refused to pay any money, the landlord eventually
took me to court. I explained to the magistrate what had happened,
that I had actually seen the landlord climbing out of my apartment
on the day that the receipts went missing.
'Did you file a complaint with the police?' he asked.

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'No,' I replied. 'He is a poor man in bad circumstances. I

didn't want to cause him any more trouble. He needs money to
marry off his daughters, so I didn't make a complaint.'
The magistrate believed my story and dismissed the case, but
before he let me go he warned me by saying, 'Mr Poonja, take care.
This kind of honesty will not help you. It will only cause you more
trouble.'
I found out later from our neighbours that this was not the first
time that the teacher had tried this trick on one of his tenants. Since
we couldn't stay there any more after what had happened, we
moved out as soon as possible. Seven days after the case had been
dismissed, the only son of the teacher died. Not long after that the
teacher himself died at the age of fifty after being bitten by a snake.
If you cheat someone, nature is not going to leave you alone. You
will experience the consequences.
I asked his wife and children if it had ever occurred to them
that the family misfortunes might be a result of the dishonest life
they were leading. His wife acted as if she didn't know what I was
talking about. I reminded her about the jewellery that had been
stolen from our apartment. On the night it happened she was
holding the ladder for her husband, so she must have known what
he was doing. She denied everything. I had tried to help them by
not registering a complaint but they had sued me and taken me to
court. Afterwards, when their case had been dismissed, they were
still lying about it. Such is the way of the world.
This world is a big samsara. Everyone is caught in it, the
honest and the dishonest alike. Very few realise it and successfully
make an effort to escape. This was brought home to me when I
used to sit on the beach and watch the fishermen net the fish and
bring them ashore. Two boats with a long net between them would
slowly move towards the shore. The fish get surrounded but they
don't worry. There is still plenty of water for them to move around
in. This is the situation of everyone in the world. We have been
encircled by the net of death. If we don't do something about it, we
are doomed to die, but who cares, who tries to escape? Virtually no
one.
The Ramakrishna book I was reading had a story about the

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 RA.MANA MAHARSHI

different reactions of the fish who find themselves caught in a net.

As I watched the fishermen round up their catch, I realised the
accuracy and appropriateness of his words.
There are some fish who are so suspicious, they will never go
near the net at all. They have an instinctive distrust of it. There are
saints who have been like this. From childhood on they have
refused to let the world touch them at all. They recognise the
danger of things that are impermanent and leave them alone. 'The
net was not here yesterday. It is a transient thing. I will avoid it.'
Sukadev was someone who never let the world touch him.
The rest only recognise the danger when the net begins to
close around them. In the beginning escape is relatively easy.
Before the ends of the net join together one can swim out of danger
by leaving the area that the nets are going to enclose. As soon as
you feel the push of the net, you have to race for freedom, other-
wise it will be too late. Those who feel the net of samsara closing
in on them early enough in life are the ones who swim away
quickly and escape. Ram Tirtha belongs to this category. He was
married and had a job as a professor of maths, but he felt the net
closing on him and swam to safety before it caught him.
Those who delay their bid for freedom for any reason are
likely to find themselves on someone else's dinner table. As the net
closes and tightens, some fish hold on to the net for security.
Holding on to anything within samsara is not going to help you.
Attachments to family, friends, or religious ideas will not help you.
They just make it easier for death to catch you. Some fish only
realise the great danger they are in when the net closes. They make
a late bid for freedom by trying to jump the net. Most of them don't
make it. Either the fishermen catch them as they jump or the birds
of prey catch them in mid-air. Very few make it over the net. These
are the people who wake up to the dangers of samsara after
becoming entangled for decades in their family, their work, their
responsibilities, etc. In their forties, fifties and sixties a few realise
their predicament and struggle valiantly to escape. A few manage
it, but most of them don't. The rest, the vast majority, do nothing
till the last possible minute. They only start struggling in the last
few seconds before they are pulled out of the water. These are the

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people who put it off till long after they retire, thinking they will
attend to all their worldly business first. Childhood and youth are
the easiest times to escape. After that it gets progressively harder
and harder.
One night I saw a fisherman bring his catch ashore. He stood
on the beach and put one or two live fish back in the sea. His wife
was helping him. I couldn't understand what he was doing so I
went up to him and asked why he was putting the fish back in the
sea.
'To show our gratitude to the sea for providing us with our
meal,' he replied.
Some people wait for a last-minute miracle to save them. It
may happen, but it probably won't. It is better to get out through
your own efforts while you still have the strength, the youth and
the inclination to do it.

Papaji had no plans to return to Lyalpur to see his parents

again, but in the middle of 1947 political developments in India
compelled him to leave Ramanasramam. He himself gives the
background to his departure before describing his dramatic trip
home.

In 1947 the British government, under pressure from the

Muslims, decided that after Independence India would be parti-
tioned. The areas with a Muslim majority would form the new state
of Pakistan; the leftover territory would be the new, independent
India. In the northwest, the border ran roughly north-south and was
located to the east of Lahore. This meant that my family would
find themselves in Pakistan after Independence, which was sched-
uled to occur in August. In the months preceding Independence
many Muslims from India migrated to the embryonic state of
Pakistan. At the same time, many Hindus who were living in areas
that would be in Pakistan left to live in India. Feelings ran high in
both communities. Hindus trying to leave Pakistan were attacked,
robbed and even killed by Muslims, while Muslims trying to leave
India were subjected to the same treatment by Hindus. The
violence escalated to the point where whole trainloads of Hindus

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leaving Pakistan were hijacked and gunned down by Muslims,

while, in the other direction, Hindus were attacking trains of
fleeing Muslims and murdering all the occupants. I knew nothing
about all this because I never bothered to read newspapers or listen
to the radio.
In July, 1947, a month before Independence, Devaraja
Mudaliar, the compiler of Day by Day with Bhagavan, approached
me and asked me which part of the Punjab I came from. When I
told him that I came from a town many miles to the west of Lahore,
he informed me about the forthcoming Partition, stressing that my
family and my father's house were going to end up in Pakistan.
'Where are all the members of your family at the moment?'
he asked.
'So far as I know,' I answered, for I didn't have much contact
with them, 'they are all still in my home town. None of them is
living in a place that will be in India.'
'Then why don't you go and fetch them?' he asked. 'It is not
safe for them to stay there.' He told me about the massacres that
were going on and insisted that it was my duty to look after my
family by taking them to a safe place. He even suggested that I
bring them to Tiruvannamalai.
'I'm not going,' I told him. 'I cannot leave the company of the
Maharshi.'
This was not an excuse; I felt it was quite literally true. I had
reached a stage in my relationship with the Maharshi where I loved
him so much, I couldn't take my eyes off him or contemplate the
thought of going to the other end of the country for an indefinite
period.

The extent of Papaji s attachment can be gauged from a story

he told me in 1994.

For most of the Maharshi's life access to him was unre-

stricted. Devotees could walk in and see him at any time. But
towards the end of his life, when large crowds were coming to the
ashram every day, he was given several rest periods during which
no one was allowed in the hall with him. I found it hard to be away

157
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

from his presence, so when the doors to the hall were locked, I
used to sit outside the window and stare inside. The Maharshi's
couch was positioned in such a way that it wasn't visible from the
window, but when he moved a little or stretched out it was some-
times possible to catch a glimpse of a foot or an elbow. The
prospect of such a glimpse kept me glued to the window for hours
at a time. Usually I would see nothing, but occasionally I would be
rewarded by a brief sight of one of his limbs moving. The prospect
of getting such a darshan was enough to keep me by the window
all day. I even slept there at night. I was so in love with his form, I
didn't want to miss the slightest chance of viewing even a small
part of it.
When I was allowed in the hall, my attention would always be
on his face. I couldn't look at anything else. Sometimes his eyes
would be half-open, but most of the time they would be wide-open
and empty. I have never seen eyes like his in any other living
being. On only one occasion during this period did he look directly
back at me. He looked straight into my eyes, eye meeting eye, like
a lover looking into the eyes of his beloved. My whole body shook
and vibrated. I did not feel the presence of the body at all. Tears
were falling from my eyes, and my throat was choked. For hours I
could not speak to anyone.

Having failed to convince Papaji to leave, Devaraja Mudaliar

took the matter to the Maharshi.

That day, as we accompanied the Maharshi on his evening

walk outside the ashram, Devaraja Mudaliar turned to him and
said, 'Poonja's family seems to be stranded in western Punjab. He
doesn't want to go there. Nor does he seem interested in trying to
get them out. Independence is less than a month away. If he does
not go now, it may be too late.'
The Maharshi agreed with him that my place was with my
family. He told me, 'There will be a lot of trouble in the area you
come from. Why don't you go there at once? Why don't you go
and bring your family out?'
Though this amounted to an order, I was still hesitant. Ever

158
 RAMANA MAHARSHI

since the day the Maharshi had shown me who I am, I had felt great
love for him and great attachment to him. I genuinely felt that I
didn't have any relationship in the world other than the one I had
with him. I attempted to explain my position to the Maharshi.
'That old life was only a dream,' I said. 'I dreamed I had a
wife and a family. When I met you, you ended my dream. I have
no family any more. I only have you.'
The Maharshi countered by saying, 'But if you know that
your family is a dream, what difference does it make if you remain
in that dream and do your duty? Why are you afraid of going if it
is only a dream?'
I then explained the main reason for my reluctance to go. 'I
am far too attached to your physical form. I cannot leave you. I
love you so much I cannot take my eyes off you. How can I leave?'
'I am with you wherever you are,' was his answer.
From the way he spoke to me I could see that he was deter-
mined that I should go. His last statement was, in effect, a bene-
diction for my forthcoming trip and for my future life in general.
I immediately understood the deep significance of his remark.
The 'I' which was my Master's real nature was also my own inner
reality. How could I ever be away from that 'I'? It was my own
Self, and both my Master and I knew that nothing else exists.
I accepted his decision. I prostrated before him and for the
first and only time in my life I touched his feet as an act of vener-
ation, love and respect. He didn't normally let anyone touch his
feet, but this was a special occasion and he made no objection.
Before I rose I collected some of the dust from beneath his feet and
put it in my pocket to keep as a sacred memento. I also asked for
his blessings because I had an intuition that this was our final
parting. I somehow knew I would never see him again.
I left the ashram and made my way to Lahore. The atmos-
phere there was every bit as bad as I had been led to expect. Angry
Muslims were running around shouting, 'Kill the Hindus! Kill the
Hindus!' Others were shouting, 'We got Pakistan so easily, let us
now invade India and conquer it! Let us take it by the sword!'
Some of them actually had swords in their hands which they waved
in the air as they chanted their slogans.

159
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

I went to the station and bought a ticket for my home town. I

found a seat in a nearly empty carriage, put my bags there and went
outside to have a drink at the platform tea stall.
Surprised at finding the train so empty, I asked one of the
passers-by, 'What's going on? Why is the train so empty?'
He gave me the reason. 'The Hindus are not travelling any
more. They are afraid to go anywhere by train because they are in
the minority here. So many train passengers are being murdered,
no one wants to travel that way any more.'
In those violent days Hindus and Muslims were travelling in
separate carriages so they could protect each other in case there
was any trouble. The nearly empty carriages I was looking at were
those occupied by Hindus.
And then an inner voice, the voice of my Master, said to me,
'Go and sit with the Muslims in their compartment. Nothing will
happen to you there.'
Superficially it seemed like a good idea, but I had doubts
about my ability to fool my Muslim fellow-passengers into
believing that I was one of them. In addition to being dressed very
differently, my ears had been pierced, something Muslims don't
do. I also had a highly visible 'Om' tattooed on the back of one of
my hands. I came from a community of brahmin Hindus which
thought that all Muslims were polluted and impure because they
ate beef. Anyone who wanted to come into our house had to show
the back of his hand first. All the local Hindus had an 'Om'
tattooed there; the Muslims did not. The Hindus were allowed in;
the Muslims were excluded.
I listened to the voice and took my seat with the Muslims. No
one objected or questioned my right to be there. We chatted with
each other about mundane things and when they occasionally
broke out with chants of 'Kill the Hindus! Kill the Hindus!' I
joined in. Somewhere in the countryside the train was stopped by
Muslims and all the passengers in the Hindu carriages were gunned
down. No one paid any attention to me, even though, to my own
eyes at least, I was clearly a Hindu.
I disembarked from the train when it reached Lyalpur and
took a tonga from the station, but when I discovered that the driver

160
 RAMANA MAHARSHI

was a Muslim, I didn't dare tell him where I lived. Instead of

asking him to take me to Guru Nanak Pura, the place where my
parents lived, I told him to drop me at Islam Pura. I walked the last
mile to my house through deserted streets. When I reached my
home it was locked and barred, like all the other houses in the area.
I knocked loudly but nobody answered. Eventually my father
appeared on the roof, demanding to know who I was.
'It's your son, Harbans !' I called back. 'Can't you see? Don't
you recognise my voice?' [Harbans is the name by which Papaji's
parents used to address him.]
He identified me and showed his astonishment at my return.
He knew that my family obligations had never rated highly in my
priorities.
'What have you come back for?' he asked, somewhat incred-
ulously. 'The Punjab is burning. Hindus are being murdered every-
where. Anyway, how did you get here? Are the trains still
running?'
'Yes,' I called back, 'the trains are still running. That's how I
got here.'
My father thought for a while before coming to a major
decision.
'In that case,' he said, 'you must take the family out of the
Punjab and get them settled somewhere in India. If the trains are
still running, I can get railway passes for you all.'
During the discussions that followed, my father mentioned
that the Deputy Commissioner of the district was an old army
friend of mine. Since we both thought that he might be able to help
us in some way, we went to see him the next day. I introduced my
father to him and told him about our situation and our plans. He
agreed to post a police guard outside our house to protect us from
the looting gangs that were roaming the neighbourhood. As
brahmin Hindus, we would be prime targets of gangs like these.
The following day, equipped with the relevant passes, I took
thirty-four members of my family, virtually all of them women, out
of western Punjab into India. During our trip we witnessed many
killings. Up to Lahore, it was the Hindus who were being killed.
After Lahore, it was the Sikhs who were killing the Muslims.

161
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

There were horrible scenes everywhere.

The Maharshi had sent me to the Punjab to do my duty. That
was typical of him because he never permitted his devotees to
abandon their family responsibilities.
Telling me, 'I am with you wherever you are,' he sent me off
to fulfil my obligations.
When I first heard this remark, I only appreciated its philo-
sophical significance. It did not occur to me that physically I would
also be under his care and protection. Yet this was manifestly the
case. He had told me where to sit on the train. For many hours after
the massacre I had sat unrecognised in a Muslim carriage, despite
having marks that identified me as a Hindu. In an environment of
utter anarchy I had secured seats for a vast contingent of my family
and got them out of danger on the last train that ever left Lahore
for India. After Independence the cross-border railway lines were
pulled up and the border itself was closed. The grace of the Master
protected us and kept us all safe from harm.
I took my family to Lucknow because I had a friend there
from my time in the army whom I knew I could rely on for help.
For the first month we stayed with him in Naka Hindola, which is
near Charbagh station, but it was much too crowded for both our
families, so in September, 1947, I took all my relatives to a new
house in N arhi. Even there it was very crowded: over thirty of us
had to live in four rooms. This house was my permanent home for
many years. One by one my relatives moved out to other houses
and other towns, but I remained there with my family till 1990.
My parents stayed on in Pakistan until after Partition, but life
there soon became intolerable. Our family had owned several
adjacent houses on a street in Guru Nanak Pura, but these were
soon taken over by Muslim refugees. My parents were allowed to
keep one room in one house. When they protested, they were told
that one room was enough space for two people to live in. The
squatters who moved in knew that no Muslim government would
ever evict them. Eventually my parents sought the help of the
Deputy Commissioner who had offered them protection during my
brief visit, and he arranged to have them flown out to India. Before
they boarded the plane all their possessions were stolen by the

162
 RAMANA MAHARSHI

Pakistani officials who refused to let them take anything with

them. Even my mother's personal jewellery was stolen. They
arrived in Lucknow with only the clothes they were wearing. I
hadn't managed to communicate with them since my departure
from Lyalpur, so they had no idea where I was. They didn't even
know if the rest of their family was alive or dead. Eventually they
tracked us down by enquiring at the government office where
immigrant refugees could leave their names and addresses. I had
left my Narhi address there in case they showed up at the office
looking for us. Initially, they moved into the Narhi house with us,
but because it was so crowded there I soon found them a separate
house on Butler Road, a little out of town on the banks of the River
Gomti.
After two years the family began to split up and go off in
different directions. My sisters, their in-laws and several other
members of the family moved to other cities in North India. My
wife and children, my parents and my two brothers continued to
stay with me in Lucknow. My two brothers started college in
Lucknow and decided to remain there till they graduated.
There was no question of returning to the Maharshi because I
was the only member of the family who had had any experience of
working in India. I assumed responsibility for the family's affairs
and undertook to feed, clothe and support this vast group of desti-
tute refugees. Having listened to the Maharshi for several years, I
knew by heart the advice he always gave to householders: 'Abide
as the Self and do your duties in the world without being attached
to them in any way.' For the next few years I had ample opportu-
nity to live this philosophy.
I had to work night and day to keep the family going. I have
always been a big, strong man, but even so I had a gruelling,
arduous time trying to keep up with all the needs and expectations
of thirty -four dependents, all of us stranded in a strange land. It did
not help matters that my family did not feel any need to economise.
On the rare occasions I came home, I would find a house full of
women, drinking cups of tea and frying mountains of pakoras [a
deep -fried savoury]. I remember buying an 18-kg tin of cooking oil
for them almost every week.

163
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

One of Papaji 's early jobs was as a salesman in a sports

goods shop located in Hazrat Ganj, the main shopping centre in
Lucknow. Later, though, he got a better job demonstrating and
selling agricultural machinery for a foreign company called Allis
Chalmers. This job took him all over the state of Uttar Pradesh,
although he was primarily based in Basti, a district headquarters
located to the east of Lucknow. He had to take his company's
machines and equipment to villages in his district and demonstrate
their usefulness to the local farmers. It was an easy job for him
because he had obtained an extensive knowledge of heavy
machinery during his time in the British army.
On one of his business trips he had an extraordinary
encounter with a complete stranger who came to him, looking for
a vision of God:

I was posted in Basti, demonstrating ploughs, tractors and

other earth-moving machines. The company I worked for was
trying to sell them to cane growers. One day, I was called by my
director to attend a conference in Lucknow. My journey there took
me through Ayodhya, the birthplace of Lord Ram. The River Saryu
flows through this town, but in those days there was no bridge.
Travellers had to cross the river in a boat. As I was disembarking
on the other shore, I saw a young man standing on the bank of the
river. He approached me and said that he had been waiting there
for me all day and was very happy that I had finally come . I looked
at him, but he didn't look like anyone whom I had seen before. He
introduced himself as a doctor from Gujarat.
'I am a Ram bhakta,' he began. 'I was told by an astrologer in
Surat that anyone who goes to Ayodhya and spends a month
continually chanting Ram mantras every year for six years will
meet Ram in human form.'
He took me aside and asked me to sit on a wooden bench.
These were the benches that the priests used when they went to the
river bank to perform religious ceremonies.
'This is the last day of the last month,' he said. 'For six years
I have been coming here and chanting the Ram mantra. Today I
must see Ram. If I don't, there will be nothing left for me to do but

164
 RAMANA MAHARSHI

offer this body to the river. I have taken a decision that if Ram does
not appear to me today, I will drown myself in this river.'
I couldn't see what this had to do with me, so I told him, 'I am
just a mechanic, working for a firm in Basti. I have been called to
attend a meeting in Lucknow. I can't help you. I don't know
anything about Ram. This is not my business. I can't demand that
Ram appear in front of you. There are many saints and swamis
here in Ayodhya. It is a big pilgrimage centre. Perhaps you should
go and look for one who can help you.'
I even offered him a few names and addresses, but he refused
to be put off by my claim to be ignorant about spiritual matters.
'I was told by a voice in my heart that there would be
someone on this motor launch who could show me Ram. This
voice said that he would be dressed in khaki and that he would be
riding a motorcycle. You are the only person who answers this
description. The voice told me that I must wait for this person,
because he would be the one who would show me Ram.'
I started to get up and go, explaining to him as I walked that I
had to leave before it became dark. When he saw me leaving, he
jumped into the river and walked out until the water was over his
head. He started flailing around and I could see that he would
probably drown himself if I didn't do something to help him. I
jumped into the river with all my clothes on and swam out to him.
There hadn't been time to undress because his head had already
disappeared under the water once. I caught hold of him and tried to
bring him back to the bank, but he didn't want to be saved.
He struggled to free himself from my grip and shouted out to
me, 'You must show me Ram! You must promise to show me Ram!
If you don't, I will never return to the bank of the river! You are
the last person I will see in this world! If you can't show me Ram,
I will drown myself and see Him in Vaikunta! [the Hindu heaven
where Ram lives]. I can't carry on living without seeing Him!'
'This is suicide,' I said. 'If you die like this, you will not go
to Vaikunta. You will get a very bad rebirth if you carry out your
threat.'
'I don't care!' he shouted. 'Today is the day! If I don't see
Ram in the next few minutes, I will drown myself! You are the

165
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

only person who can help me. Show me Ram or let me die!'
I accepted his demand because there was no other way to get
him out of the river.
A few minutes later we were back on the bank, dripping wet
and trying to catch our breath. He turned to me and said, 'Now you
have to fulfil your promise. If you won't do it, or can't do it, I am
going back into the river to drown myself.'
Faced with this very real ultimatum, I knew that I had to try
and help him to see Lord Ram. I asked him to sit down. When he
had settled himself, I looked at him and said: 'Ram Himself is
standing in front of you. Can't you see for yourself that He is
there?'
Suddenly he saw Him. His face was transformed, being lit up
by some visionary experience. He threw himself on the ground and
repeatedly prostrated both to me and to the vision of Ram that he
was seeing. When he finally got up, he announced that he wanted
to spend the rest of his life serving me. He told me that his lifelong
ambition had been fulfilled, and that as an expression of his grati-
tude he wanted to devote the rest of his life to serving me.
I didn't want his service, and I didn't want someone following
me around for the rest of my life. I proposed instead that he
perform a little ceremony to show his gratitude, after which we
would go our separate ways.
He had one small bag, a cooking pot and a Ramayana with
him. When I asked him where he was staying in Ayodhya, he
showed me a deserted temple near an unused bathing ghat. The
river had slightly changed its course, leaving this ghat high and
dry.
I allowed him to do a Guru puja with water he had brought
from the Saryu. He prostrated three times at the end of the
ceremony, after which he again asked me if he could accompany
me and serve me. I refused again.
'I cannot take you with me,' I said. 'Stay here and celebrate.
Your long-standing desire has finally been fulfilled. Call some
brahmins and poor people and feed them to show your gratitude.
Stay here for a few more days, worshipping Ram in this temple.
Then go back to your family and tell them how Ram appeared to

166
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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

you here in Ayodhya.'

I prepared to leave but the man caught hold of me and said,
plaintively , 'But I don't even know who you are. Where do you
live? How can I find you again?'
I didn't want this man following me around for the rest of my
life, so I told him, 'I never give my address to anyone. If you want
to serve anyone, serve Ram.'
I left him there, collected my motorbike and carried on with
my journey to Lucknow.

Strange encounters such as this one were to become a feature

of Papaji's teaching career in the succeeding years. Seekers would
find themselves directed towards him and in his presence they
would have extraordinary experiences. Those who wanted to see
God in a particular form would find Him appearing in a vision,
while those who had a strong desire for spiritual freedom would
often have a direct experience of the Self. In neither case would
Papaji give any sadhana or practice. These remarkable experi -
ences would simply happen because the devotee was in his
presence.
Since this encounter in Ayodhya is the earliest one of this type
I have managed to record, I asked Papaji when he began his career
as a Guru, expecting him to give some date in the 1940s. His
answer was very surprising:

My career as a Guru started even when · I was a boy of

fourteen. One woman who was our neighbour asked my mother,
'Why is your son's face shining and glowing like that of a yogi?'
Even in those days other people could see that I was not having an
ordinary childhood. This woman was intelligent enough to divine
the reason for my different appearance. She would ask me whether
I was doing some kind of japa and whether my face was glowing
as a result. If you do yoga practices, your face will begin to shine.
After some time, you can't hide it from other people.
The headmaster of my school once came to my house. He was
collecting donations from the parents of all the students who were
attending his school. While he was sitting in our house, he was

168
 RAMANA MAHARSHI

Papaji: the photo was probably taken in Lucknow around 1950.

studying me intently. He also said that I looked like a yogi and he

wanted to know what exercises I was doing.
After Partition this man also came and settled in Lucknow. I
met him as I was walking down Hazrat Ganj a few years later. I
prostrated to him in the street because that is the way we show
respect to our old teachers. He was very surprised by my behav-
iour, particularly since he had heard that I had become a great yogi.
He told me, 'When I talk to my friends about the students I
have taught, they want to know how many of them have had
successful careers. I tell them, "Some of them have become magis -
trates and two of them have become ambassadors, but I am also
proud that I have produced one great yogi". Then I tell them about
you.'
This was the same man who had refused to cane me after I had
had the deep experience at school after hearing 'Om shanti, shanti,

169
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

shanti' being chanted during morning prayers.

In Dayananda Anglo -Vedic schools it is traditional for

studentsto greet their teacherseach morning by touching their feet
as a mark of respect. Papaji was merely greeting his old teacher in
the way that he had always done in the past.
I spoke to Sivani, Papaji 's daughter, about his statement that
he began his career as a Guru while he was still in his early teens.
'My earliest memories of him, ' she replied, 'go back to 1940,
when I was about five. Even then, there was a constant stream of
people coming to see him for spiritual advice or satsang. Wherever
we lived, people were always pouring into the house at all hours of
the day and night. His whole life has been like this. '
Papaji confirmed that his teaching career began at a very
early age in an answer he gave to Rishi, a Finnish TV journalist
who interviewed him in February 1995:

Rishi: After your realisation you seemed to carry on with your

normal life. Why didn't you immediately begin helping others who
were still suffering?

Papaji: I continued my usual life, but there was a different attitude

towards it. I knew that everything I was doing was being done
automatically, that it was not being done by me with any result in
mind. When actions are performed without any idea of a future
reward, there is a compassion and a light that communicates itself
to everyone around. The bliss and peace such a person feels auto-
matically communicate themselves to other people. One does not
have to go out with the idea, 'I will do this or that to help other
people who are suffering'. That is action with the idea of a reward,
and it doesn't help anyone.
You say, 'Why didn't I immediately start helping other people
who were suffering?' I started even when I was a young boy, when
the women of my village used to come to our house to sing their
Krishna bhajans. You don't have to dress up in orange and grow a
long beard in order to help. It can be done very discreetly. My
ordinary clothes and my normal jobs have been a good disguise for

170
 RAMANA MAHARSHI

me. They kept many people away and allowed me to work

unobtrusively.

Papaji was giving spiritual lectures in his early teens, which

may be one reason why he dates his teaching career back to this
age, but, except for his father, he does not seem to have had
devotees who regarded him as a Guru till the 1940s. The earliest I
have come across was the Muslim professor, Dr Hafiz Syed, whom
Papaji met at Ramanasramam in the mid-1940s. This is the same
man who wanted Papaji to take him to see the pir in Madras. The
relationship began with an extraordinary, predestined meeting:

I was staying in Sri Ramanasramam with my wife and

children. My children were playing outside the hall where the
Maharshi sat when Dr Syed came out and saw them.
He asked them, 'Where is your father?'
They answered, 'He has gone to the house we rented in the
fields'.
'Can you take me to him?' asked Dr Syed. 'I don't know
where it is. I want to meet him.'
He walked into my house a few minutes later. I offered him
some tea and invited him to come to lunch later, but he didn't
accept. He said that his cook had already prepared food for him at
his own cottage, and that he had to get back in time to eat it.
'But you can come for tea with me this afternoon,' he said.
'Come at five o'clock because there is something interesting that I
want to discuss with you.'
I accepted the invitation and several hours later took my
whole family along to the professor's house.
After the tea was over, Dr Syed moved on to the main
business of the meeting. 'Do you believe in astrology?' he asked.
I replied, 'No, I don't'.
He went on to tell me that Muslims were not supposed to
believe in it either, but something had happened recently which
had caused him to revise his views.
'Now, I am not so sure,' he began. 'Perhaps I believe in it to
some extent, but I am not completely convinced.'

171
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

He showed me a horoscope that had been prepared for him in

Sanskrit. It had been translated into English by Dr Radhakrishnan,
the eminent philosopher and teacher who later went on to become
President of India. Dr Syed had known Dr Radhakrishnan when
they had been working together at a university in England. Dr Syed
was a Persian specialist whereas Dr Radhakrishnan had taught
comparative religion. The horoscope had come from a Brihat Nadi
collection. This is a very mysterious and ancient school of
astrology.
Many centuries ago some Indian sages, reputedly led by the
rishi Brihat, wrote down thousands of personal horoscopes for
people who would be born in the distant future. They were all
written on palm-leaf manuscripts. There are several places in India
which claim to have copies of all these predictions. One can go to
them and see if one's own horoscope is stored there. There is a
reliable place in Hoshiarpur in the Punjab, and there are other
centres that have copies, but many of the places that advertise these
leaves nowadays are fraudulent. Dr Syed must have found one of
the rare genuine collections because the prediction he showed me
on that day was astonishingly accurate.
The prediction began by saying that Dr Syed had been a
Hindu in his last life, and that he had been a disciple of a famous
ancient Guru. He had committed some act which had made this
Guru very angry.
The Guru cursed him, saying, 'In your next life you will be
born as a Muslim, but your love of Hinduism and your love of
Krishna will remain with you.'
This explained the strange mixture of beliefs that Dr Syed
had. Though he was a Muslim by birth, and though he had a great
liking for all things connected with the Islamic tradition, he was
also a Krishna bhakta who carried a small edition of the Bhagavad
Gita around in his breast pocket. He had also become a disciple of
Ramana Maharshi, something that no orthodox Muslim would do.
This horoscope said that in his current life he would go to
Vrindavan and be initiated by a swami called Baba Haridas. This
Haridas had, according to the horoscope, been a fellow disciple of
Syed's Guru in his last life. When Dr Syed was given this

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prediction, he had already gone to Vrindavan and received

initiation from this swami. There was one other connection from
his past life. The horoscope said that another of his Guru-bhais
[fellow disciples] would be born as a contemporary of Dr Syed,
that he would be called Nixon, and that he would change his name
to Krishna Prem. At that time there was an Englishman called
Nixon who was a great Krishna bhakta. He had come to India,
settled in Almora, and become a teacher after changing his name
to Krishna Prem. Dr Syed also knew this man because they had, for
some time, attended the same university.
The accurate predictions did not end there. Further down the
horoscope it was stated that in 1932 Dr Syed would meet Ramana
Maharshi and would accept him as his Guru. This was the year in
which Dr Syed first met the Maharshi. There was one more predic -
tion that had yet to come true. It was stated on the leaf that in 1944
Dr Syed would meet a man called 'Hariwanshlal' who would even -
tually become his final Guru. Dr Syed was a little mystified by this
prediction. The year in which he showed it to me was 1944, but he
had no idea who Hariwanshlal was, or where he could be found.
Also, he was not looking for a new Guru. He was quite happy with
the Maharshi.
When I saw my name 'Hariwanshlal' written on the page, I
kept quiet. I didn't tell him that this was my own name. In those
days the people at the ashram only knew me as Mr Poonja from the
Punjab. I had never told anyone there that my given name was
Hari wanshlal.
This prediction also came true. Dr Syed got very attached to
me and ended up becoming my devotee. After the Maharshi's
death in 1950, he often visited me in the forests of Kamataka, and
I frequently visited him at his house in Allahabad. He lived at
No. 2, Civil Lines, Allahabad, an address that was quite close to
another devotee of mine. This other devotee was a P.C.S. [provin-
cial civil service] officer who at that time was posted in Jhansi as
a magistrate. When he was in Allahabad he stayed in a colony
called Allen Ganj.
In the 1950s I was working in various parts of Kamataka.
Every six months Dr Syed would come to Bangalore and ask the

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director of my firm where I was. Dr Syed was considered to be

something of a VIP because he knew many important people in
India, so the director of my company would always give him a car
and have him driven to whichever part of the forest I was working
in. He would even send a cook and some food so that I could enter -
tain my guest properly. Dr Syed would usually spend about a
month with me and then go back to his teaching job in Allahabad
University.
Dr Syed had declared that I was his Guru even while the
Maharshi was still alive. Many of the people at Ramanasramam
didn't like this. One of them, a Mr Bose from Bengal, was partic-
ularly critical. Dr Syed usually responded by quoting a Persian
proverb:

Tifale maryam hua kare koi, mere marz ki dwa kare koi

This means, 'Let him be Jesus, the son of the Virgin Mary. If
he has not helped me personally, what use is it to me?'
Many other old devotees of Bhagavan visited me either in
Lucknow or in the forests of Kamataka: S.S. Cohen, Dilip Kumar
Roy, B. M. S. Naidu and a few others. But Dr Syed was the one
who had the strongest connection.
When I arrived in Lucknow from Lyalpur I wrote to Dr Syed
to tell him where I was. He came immediately, bringing with him
Sarojini Naidu, one oflndia's most famous poets. At that time she
was the Governor of United Provinces, the state that was later
renamed as Uttar Pradesh. In the following years Dr Syed visited
me regularly in Lucknow, and I made a point of going to see him
whenever I visited Allahabad.

Papaji began to give regular satsangs in the late 1940s and

soon acquired a reputation for being a dynamic teacher who
produced instant results. Some of the local people in Lucknow
started coming to see him regularly, and even a few foreigners
found their way to his door.

Foreigners first started coming to see me in the late 1940s, but

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some of the first ones who came didn't know much English, or any
Indian language that I knew. I remember a Dutchman who arrived
in 1948 knowing no English at all. An Austrian woman translated
his questions by speaking German to him, but he didn't even know
German very well. It was hard work trying to find out what he
wanted.
A Spanish boy came around 1950. He too didn't know any
English. I used to collect dictionaries in those days because I had
to learn a lot of languages during my working days. I found a
Spanish -English dictionary in my collection and gave it to him.
With the help of this book he managed to express himself very
slowly and very badly.
When I was not in the room, one of my Indian devotees asked
him, 'How can you speak to the Master and get anything from him
if you don't have a common language?'
He apparently replied in his usual laborious way, 'Even if I
knew his language and he knew mine, he could not convey to me
what I need to know through words. I have come here for a
different kind of transmission. I have come to feel his peace and
love. We don't need a common language for this. I can feel these
things even though we can't speak to each other very well.'
The devotees were astonished by the understanding shown in
his reply. The Spanish man stayed on and within about a month he
was able to speak English well enough to make himself
understood.

One of the first foreigners to find him was a German woman

called Tony who was the first of a long series of women who have
tried to attach themselves to Papaji.

After the partition of India in 1947, I left Lyalpur for

Lucknow with a large contingent of my family. Not all of us came.
Some of the women and my parents stayed behind in Pakistan. By
the fifteenth of September they were able to join me because I had
obtained a job and prepared a place for them to stay. In those days
all the refugees from Pakistan were given first preference for jobs
and special quotas of cloth, sugar and other commodities. My

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father was fortunate enough to be given a temporary job in the

Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. There was a general
store next to his office whose proprietor had a very interesting life
story.
His parents had sent him to Berlin for law studies, but at the
time he graduated, he realised that he did not feel inspired to
follow this profession, even though it would have been a very pres-
tigious one. While he was training in Berlin, he had fallen in love
with a girl named Antoinette, whom he referred to as Tony.
My father met Tony during one of his visits to her husband's
shop. He spoke to her about me, explaining that I was a student of
Ramana Maharshi, a South Indian Guru. Tony was curious to meet
me so she asked my father to take her to my house in N arhi.
She came to our house and sat down on one of the sofas in the
front room. My father left us alone because he had to go and attend
to his work. As we began to speak, it soon became obvious that she
spoke very fluent English. She asked my permission to smoke a
cigarette. I didn't refuse, even though we had a house rule that no
one was supposed to smoke in the room. After some preliminary
conversation she asked if she could put a question to me. She came
very close to me and placed her hand on my knee. I was quite
surprised because in those days I hadn't had much experience of
how foreign women behave. Instead of asking me a question, she
showed me a copy of a book called Perennial Philosophy that had
been edited by Aldous Huxley.
I opened the book and read some statements by Meister
Eckhart, a German saint and mystic who lived several hundred
years ago. I had never come across his name before, but I could
tell, just by reading a few lines, that his outlook on the world and
himself was Indian, not western.
I looked up from my reading and told her, with some surprise,
'What he writes is from the Upanishads'.
I could see that she was a serious student of philosophy, so I
promised to give her some other books to read.
At one point she said, 'I came to India with my husband, not
because of our marriage relationship, but in order to meet a saint.
My husband is not at all interested in realising the truth, but for me

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 RAMANA MAHARSHI

it is the most important thing in my life.'

Then she shocked me by saying that she was in love with me.
I told her, 'You can love me as a brother, or as a teacher, or
simply as your own Self'.
This wasn't what she had in mind. She looked at me sugges-
tively, smiled, and said, 'No. I want to love you as a wife loves her
husband'.
I felt that I had to be strict and stem with her before things got
out of control.
'I have a wife downstairs and children to look after. I am not
interested in having a relationship with anyone else.'
She didn't seem to be put off by my point-blank refusal.
Instead, she tried a different approach.
'I know that Indian people are very poorly paid,' she said.
'My government has a scheme to help its citizens in India. If a
German woman marries an Indian man, she is entitled to a pension
from the German government so that she can keep up her standard
of living in India.'
She seemed to be implying that if I married her, the German
government would look after me for the rest of my life. I don't
know if this scheme really existed, but this is what she told me.
Then she went on to say: 'When my husband took me to his
village, his parents were not happy. They did not want to accept me
as their daughter-in-law. My husband had decided to open a
business in that town. I had been given plenty of money by my
parents in case we wanted to start some business like this, so I gave
it to him.'
Suddenly she started laughing and said, 'I'd like to make
some doughnuts for you, but Indians don't like the taste of this
food'.
After this abrupt change of subject, she went back to her
financial inducements. 'I have enough money to give Rs 2,000 to
your wife,' she said. She seemed to think that this would be enough
to pay her off and get rid of her.
'If you have an affair with me,' she continued, 'I will look
after all your household expenses, including the schooling of your
children.'

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Thinking that she had persuaded me with these monetary

offers, she moved towards me and asked me if she could kiss me.
I rejected her advances very firmly. 'You came here for
guidance in your search,' I told her. 'But you are not asking for
this. You are trying to disrupt my family. Go away!'
She seemed very disappointed by my refusal. She left, looking
very dejected, and took a cycle rickshaw back to her house.
Her husband was out working in his shop. When she reached
her house, only her servant was there. After being in the house for
only a few minutes, Tony suddenly started dancing and crying in a
mad, frenetic manner. Her servant was so frightened by her behav-
iour, she ran off to fetch Tony's husband. He came at once, but he
could do nothing to calm her down. She just carried on dancing
and crying.
Eventually, the husband contacted my father, who went to see
them in the middle of the night. When he appeared, she called out,
'I don't want you. Go and fetch your son. I only want to see him.'
My father came to my house and told me, 'It looks like she
has gone completely crazy. You should go there at once. There is a
car outside waiting to take you there.'
At first I refused the invitation, without giving any reason.
'But you have to go,' he said. 'Something happened during
her meeting with you. Something has been kindled in her heart that
wasn't there before. She is dancing like Mirabai and chanting your
name. It is your dharma to help serious seekers like this.'
My father looked puzzled. He couldn't understand why I was
refusing to help someone who so obviously needed urgent atten-
tion. He knew that our meeting had somehow precipitated her wild
experiences, and he thought that, as the instigator of them, I had
some special responsibility. Finally, when he asked me directly
why I was refusing to go, I told him what had happened earlier that
day.
'When you left her alone in my room earlier today, she told
me that she wanted to be my wife. She tried to bribe me into
accepting, and then, when I refused, she tried to kiss me. How can
I go to the house of a woman like that? If I go there, she will just
try to trap me again.'

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 RAMANA MAHARSHI

My father immediately understood and agreed with my

decision. 'Oh, I see. I should not have brought her to you. I didn't
realise that this was what she really wanted. It is my fault, but how
could I have known that she would behave in such a stupid way?'
My father left, told the whole story to Tony's husband, and
said that under the circumstances he entirely agreed with my
decision to stay away from his wife.
For the next two days she neither ate nor slept. She kept up her
ecstatic dancing around the clock. Finally, her husband got
disgusted with her, threw out all her possessions, sold his shop and
disappeared to an unknown place. He seemed to be as happy to get
rid of her as I was.
I did not see her again for a long time. Many years later, when
I was travelling in the Himalayas with some foreign boys and girls,
I found out that she had reunited with her husband, and that they
were now living in an ashram near Hardwar. We met under the
following circumstances.
The ashram I had been staying in had refused to accommodate
the foreign girls who were travelling with me. The manager told
me, 'This is a place for sannyasins to stay. We don't allow women
to sleep here.'
He said that the men could stay, but the women would have to
find accommodation elsewhere. He suggested that we try a newly
built ashram nearby which had women-only quarters.
I went to the place he described. When I asked for the
manager, he turned out to be the husband of Tony. It looked as if
they had got back together again because she was also there at the
time.
Tony saw me from the upstairs veranda and immediately
came running down to greet me. She had become some kind of
guru in her own right and had several devotees of her own. Though
she was wearing the saffron robes of a renunciate, she came up to
me and started hugging and kissing me. In between the hugs and
the kisses she told me that she had taken sannyasa from Ananda
Mayi Ma.
She invited us all to stay in the ashram, which seemed to be
doing very well. It was well built, had thirty rooms and a nice

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temple inside. I thanked her for her offer, telling her that we had all
arranged for accommodation elsewhere. I didn't want to get mixed
up in her affairs again. I rounded up my group and we all shifted
to the Sapt Rishi Ashram, which was as far away from her place as
we could go without leaving town.

As he had fore seen when he left Ramanasramam in August

1947, Papaji never managed to see Ramana Maharshi again. His
family obligations kept him confined to Uttar Pradesh. He was
aware that the Maharshi was not in good health because the story
of his sickness had been widely reported in the newspapers, but his
death in 1950 came as something of a surprise to him:

At 8.45, on the evening of April 14th, 1950, I was walking

down a street in Lucknow. I suddenly felt an enormous spasm in
my chest that nearly knocked me to the ground. I thought it must
be some sort of heart attack. A few seconds later I saw a few
people pointing up to a large meteor which was trailing across the
sky. This was the meteor that thousands of people all over India
saw in the first few seconds after the Maharshi's death. Many
people have said that they knew instinctively that the appearance
of the meteor signified that the Maharshi was dead. This never
occurred to me at the time. I only found out about his death when
I listened to the news on the radio the following day.

Papaji continued to workfor Allis Chalmers until 1952. In his

spare time he gave satsangs in Lucknow and visited some of his
new devotees in various parts of Uttar Pradesh. He began to
acquire a reputation as a teacher, so much so that articles began
to appear in the local newspapers. When crowds of new visitors
began to descend on him, he decided to quit his job and go back to
South India:

So many people started running to me and articles in newspa-

pers were published. When the number of people reached forty or
fifty, I had no choice but to run away to the south where I had lived
before.

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 RAMANA MAHARSHI

The 1995 Guru Purnima celebration at Satsang Bhavan,

Lucknow. Papaji began to give satsang in this hall in 1992.
The large photo of Sri Ramana Maharshi was installed
there in 1993.
Papaji made obeisance to this photo of his Guru before
beginning his satsangs. He then conducted them from a
seat located directly under the picture.

Papaji thought that he would go back to Ramanasramam and

live a solitary life there, but destiny had other plans for him. The
account of his failed attempt to give up his worldly responsibilities
will be narrated in the next chapter.
Before I conclude this chapter on Papaji 's physical
association with his Master, I should like to add one brief story that
demonstrates the reverence and the gratitude that he still feels
towards Sri Ramana Maharshi.
I was sitting with him in 1992, having just finished inter-
viewing him on the subject of the events that happened when he
was at Ramanasramam in the 1940s.
'You've told me all the facts,' I said. 'As a conclusion would

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

you like to make a few remarks about how you feel towards the
Maharshi today? It would make a nice ending if you could just say
a few words of gratitude or appreciation, summarising what the
Maharshi did for you. '
He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. After
two or three seconds tears started to flow down his cheeks.
He turned his head to hide his tears. 'I can't answer that
question,' he said. 'I can't speak about it. No words can ever
express it. '
Though I found in subsequent years that Papaji rarely speaks
about the gratitude he feels towards Sri Ramana Maharshi, I did
find the following revealing comments in a letter Papaji wrote to
one of his own devotees in 1982:

My Master spoke in silence.

My Master spoke through his eyes.
My Master spoke through words.
All the three languages I have heard.
Krishna sings through His flute:
that I heard.
Rama with His arrow shoots at a target:
that I learnt.
The Enlightened ONE does not accept what is written, seen,
perceived or heard:
That Prajna [transcendental awareness] accepted ME.

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Papaji had dutifully looked after his family in Lucknow for several
years. The decision to leave to go south was made for two reasons:
firstly, he didn't want to be surrounded by a large group of
devotees, and secondly, he no longer felt that his family was his
own responsibility.

By 1952, most of my family had left our original Lucknow

home in N arhi and had settled in various parts of North India.
Some went to Delhi, some to Kanpur, and some to Varanasi. I had
supported the family on my own for several years and had helped
them to find new places to live. With everyone happily settled, I
felt that I had fulfilled my outstanding obligations to my family. I
resigned from my job and left for South India with the intention of
going back to Sri Ramanasramam again.
I decided to go back to Sri Ramanasramam because I discov-
ered that there is no end to worldly activities. A whole lifetime is
not enough to resolve them. Samsara has to be left alone. One
should not waste one's life looking after other people. They have
brought their own prarabdha [destiny] to this world.
I thought, 'The God who has created them will look after
them. They are not my responsibility any longer.'
With this understanding I abruptly left my job and my home
and went back to South India. It was my intention to stay perma-
nently at Ramanasramam, even though the Maharshi had left his
body.
On the way there I stayed overnight in Madras with an old
devotee of mine who worked in the government mint. After dinner
he gave me a room and asked me if I would be willing to stay with
him for a few more days. He reminded me that I had not been to
Madras since 1947, and fondly recalled how we used to visit the
ashram together.
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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

This man's sister was married to a forest contractor from

Wardha, Maharashtra. Their daughter, who was studying in the
tenth class at school, was staying with us in the house because she
had come to Madras to spend some time with her uncle. She was
about seventeen years old and spoke very good English.
During the night she came into my room and announced that
she wanted to sleep with me. I was quite shocked by her behaviour.
Pretending not to understand why she was there, I demanded to
know what she was doing in my room at such a strange time.
When she repeated her request I said, 'Your uncle and aunt
and their two daughters will wonder where you are and start
searching for you'.
I was trying to make her realise that what she was contem -
plating was not possible in a small household. Appealing to her
sense of morality would probably not have made her leave the
room. From what she had just told me, it didn't seem that she had
a very strong sense of ethics. I went on to say that she could not
possibly stay in my room for any length of time without arousing
suspicion and concern in the rest of the house. This approach didn't
seem to work either.
'That is my personal affair,' she said. 'I have just fallen in
love with you. Tonight at the dinner table you looked at me in a
very special way, and from the way you looked at me, I am sure
you also have love for me.'
I couldn't let this go on any longer. She was a seventeen -year -
old girl, a relative of my host, and she was alone in my bedroom in
the middle of the night, trying to start an affair with me .
I told her, 'I am not interested in your proposal. I am on my
way to Tiruvannamalai. I only came to this house to spend some
time with your uncle because we knew each other very well a few
years ago.'
By telling her that I was leaving, I had hoped to convince her
that I was just a temporary visitor who would soon be going out of
her life, but the news didn't seem to upset her.
'I will also come with you,' she replied.
This was something I definitely couldn't allow. I refused to
take her along with me. However, to ensure that she didn't follow

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 MINING MANAGER

me, I told her, 'I will return later and stay with you and your family
again.'
I left for Tiruvannamalai soon afterwards, thinking that I had
escaped from her, but she was a determined girl. A few years later
she tracked me down and tried once more to start an affair with me.

Details of his subsequent encounters with this girl will appear

towards the end of this chapter.
Papaji found a room near Ramanasramam and settled down
there. A few weeks later, when he was wandering around on the
slopes of Arunachala, he met a Frenchman who was living in one
of the caves. This is Papaji 's account of the meeting and the subse-
quent conversation:

I was walking up the hill in the direction of Skandashram. I

had been told that there was a schoolteacher from Kerala living
nearby. I wanted to go and meet her but when I arrived at her place
she was meditating and didn't want to be disturbed.
A passing shepherd who was looking after some grazing goats
called out, 'There is a foreign man living in a cave near here. Why
don't you go and meet him?'
I took his advice, followed his instructions and went looking
for this man. I wanted to find out why a foreigner would be living
in a cave on Arunachala. The directions were accurate and I found
him a few minutes later. As I walked in through the entrance I saw
a man squatting on the floor, making preparations to cook a meal.
'How long have you been living here?' I asked.
He didn't answer me. Instead, he covered his face with his
palm. When it became clear to him that I didn't understand the
meaning and significance of his gesture, he went to a different part
of the cave, found a piece of paper, wrote on it and then handed it
to me. It said that he was observing mauna [silence] and didn't
want to speak to anyone.
He was wearing the orange robes of a sannyasin and was
doing his best to follow the traditional rules. Though he was
cooking his food on the day I arrived, I found out later that he often
went begging for his lunch in the streets of Tiruvannamalai. He

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

managed to observe his vow of silence even during his begging

trips. Usually, sannyasins stand in front of a house and call out for
food. Sometimes they will sing bhajans to attract the attention of
the people inside. This man just stood outside and waited for a
food offering to come. If nothing was given to him, he would
silently move on to another house.
I wasn't impressed by his forced silence. I told him, 'You have
gone through so much activity just to tell me that you are observing
mauna. You put your hand on your mouth; you went off for a piece
of paper and a pen; you wrote me a message and gave it to me.
Wouldn't it be simpler for you just to move your tongue a little bit
and speak to me? You think that you are keeping silence, but it is
only vocal silence. Your mind is still working. You had to use your
mind to look for the paper and pen, and you had to use your mind
to write that you are keeping silence. Real silence is when you
have a silent mind, even when you are speaking.'
He gave up his silence and began to ask me many questions.
He wanted to know who I was, how long I was staying in the
ashram, and what I thought of the Maharshi. He asked me many
questions about the Maharshi and expressed his happiness that I
had so much faith in him. He also asked me some questions about
Christianity and wanted to know whether or not I had read the
Bible. At some point he told me that his name was Swami
Abhishiktananda.
During the course of his introductory remarks he mentioned
that he had spent some time in North India, on the banks of the
Ganga. 'But nowadays,' he added, 'I am spending a lot of time in
Kulitalai at a place called Shantivanam Ashram.'
I asked him if he had ever visited the samadhi of a naked saint
who had been famous in that area. He hadn't heard of him, so I
passed on the story, as it had been told to me.
One day this saint went to take a bath in the River Kaveri. He
disappeared and was not seen again for several months. Six months
later some coolies who were digging up sand from the dry river
bed found him there, buried alive. He had probably been caught in
a flood when he went for his bath. The man was still alive, even
though he had been buried under the ground for six months. He

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 MINING MANAGER

must have used his yogic training to somehow keep his prana [life
force] in the body while it was under the ground. When the saint
was dug up, he just walked to the river bank, sat down, and
resumed his meditation. After his death a few years later, a
samadhi was erected over his body and many people came to visit
it to seek blessings from the saint. Swami Abhishiktananda said
that he had never visited the samadhi shrine, but he promised me
that he would make a point of doing so on his next visit to the area.
We became quite good friends and in the years that followed
he used to visit me in many of the places that I had been posted to
in Kamataka. After I retired, he also came to see me in Delhi and
Lucknow. Though he was wearing the garb of a sannyasin, and
though he was trying to keep an inner and outer silence, he was a
very active man. When I looked into his eyes, he did not seem to
be a man who had found peace of mind. I got the distinct feeling
that he was trying to hide something from me.

Earlier in his life Swami Abhishiktananda had been a clois-

tered Benedictine monk called Father Henri Le Saux. He had
received permission from his order in France to come to India to
experiment with different forms of monastic living. In so far as his
principal aim was to make Christianity more palatable to Hindus,
he was very much a missionary. He wanted India to become a
Christian country and to achieve that aim he wanted to find new
ways of making Hindus accept the teachings of the Church. He felt
that if Christian priests adopted the garb of sannyasins and lived
like sadhus, they would be more likely to find acceptance in India.
That was why he was wearing orange robes and living in a cave.
Though he discussed Christianity at his first meeting with Papaji,
he didn't disclose that he was still an ordained priest, nor did he
reveal the missionary agenda that had brought him to India in the
first place. This may account for Papaji 's feeling that he was
hiding something.
For a Catholic priest, Swami Abhishiktananda was remark-
ably sympathetic to the Hindu tradition. He studied the Hindu
scriptures and experimented with the devotional and meditative
practices they recommend. Though he thought that Christianity

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

could learn many things from Hinduism, for most of his life he
could never concede that true salvation could be found through it.
Swami Abhishiktananda never became a devotee of Papaji,
but they kept in contact with each other for about twenty years. The
swami was the first person to publish an account of Papaji s
meeting with Ramana Maharshi in his French book, Souvenirs
d' Arunachala, which later appeared in English as The Secret of
Arunachala . The book also contains a long account of their first
meeting. I reproduce it here in full since it is the earliest recorded
teaching dialogue between Papaji and a seeker of truth.
The extract begins with Swami Abhishiktananda asking
Papaji how he managed to locate him.

'How did you manage to get here? Who can have told you
about me? Who directed you to my cave?'
' You called me,' he [Papaji] replied, looking me straight in the
eye; 'and here I am.'
At this I gave a rather sceptical smile, but he continued in all
seriousness:
'Let me say it again: it was You who called me. The Self
attracts the Self. What else do you expect?'
We spoke about the Maharshi, his teaching and his disciples,
with all of which he was perfectly familiar.
Near me lay some books, including the Bhagavad Gita and
the Upanishads, from which I liked to quote to my visitors. This
was because of my experience in the previous year of a brahmin
pedant from Tanjore who only abandoned his lofty airs after I had
recited in one breath the names of the principal Upanishads ....
As our conversation passed from the subject of the Maharshi
to that of the scriptures, I picked up one of my books to quote a text
from it, for I did not possess an Indian's memory which enables
him to learn everything by heart. I added that I had begun to learn
a little Sanskrit, so as to be better able to understand these texts.
'And what is the use of all that?' asked Harilal [Papaji]
bluntly. 'All your books, all the time lost in learning different
languages! Which language do you use to converse with the
atman? [Self] '

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 MINING MANAGER

As I attempted to defend my point of view, he cut in again:

'Forget about it! In fact, apart from the atman, what else is there?
So your English, Sanskrit and the rest, how do they benefit you?
Are they any use for conversing with the atman, with the Self, for
speaking to yourself? None of that leads anywhere useful. The
atman has nothing to do either with books, or with languages or
with any scripture whatever. It is - and that's all!
'I also,' he continued, 'was mad about reading once; but I
never learnt anything from it. Now I read nothing, or so little as
makes no difference. Not even the Gita, whose words in the old
days were all the time ringing like music in my heart. I don't
meditate any more either - the atman is nothing to do with medi-
tation. It is the same withjapa, the repetition of divine names, with
mantras, litanies, bhajans, every kind of devout prayer and lyric.
At one time I quite naturally made use of all these - with great
fervour! Of course, I used them with my children, and still do on
occasion; but only for their sake, because at their age they need
such things. It is rather like the way I join in their games; after all,
is it not all just play, the lila [divine play] of the atman, the Self?'
I had certainly never before met an advaitin who was so
sincere and authentic. There are indeed crowds of people in India
who talk learnedly about advaita [non-duality], especially in the
South and in ashram circles; but they are generally the first to run
to the temples to offer pujas for the success of their ventures on the
stock exchange or to obtain some promotion; not to mention the
terrible ego-centredness which so often accompanies the intellec-
tual profession of Vedanta. Even so, surely Harilal was going too
far? Ought one not to take account of individual weaknesses; and
so long as one has not yet realised the Self, it is unreasonable to act
as if one had. I had discussed this one day with a well-known
professor of philosophy at Madras, Dr. T. M. P. Mahadevan,
himself a faithful disciple of the Maharshi, a man who was
absolutely convinced at the rational level of the truth of advaita,
and moreover one who had remained completely faithful to his
ceremonial duties, often visited temples and offered in them the
customary pujas. In his view one should not give up these outward
rites until one has ceased to be aware of duality (between oneself

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

and the Self). When I expressed surprise at this, and reminded him
of the teaching of Sri Ramana, he was willing to go so far as to say
that as the time of the 'crossing over' approached, when worship
and prayer become somewhat artificial, and even unnatural, then -
with the guru's approval, of course - one might abstain. I therefore
reacted pretty vigorously to Harilal's remarks.
'Who realises, or has realised the Self?' he replied. 'That is all
a matter of words. The atman cannot be reached. Apart from the
Self, what else is there? Who reaches the Self, except the Self?
"Non-realisation" is simply an excuse that one gives for trying to
escape from the Real and continuing to lead with a clear
conscience a stunted life of prayers, devotions and even asceti-
cism, all no doubt very satisfying to the little ego but in fact utterly
useless. Has the sun really set, merely because I have closed the
shutters? The fundamental obstacle to realisation is precisely the
notion that this realisation is still awaited.
'Of course,' he conceded, 'reading is not to be entirely
rejected. It is better to read than to day-dream or gossip. And medi-
tation is better than reading. However it is only in the ultimate
silence that the atman is revealed, if one may so speak. But once
again, we have to guard carefully against supposing that this
silence has anything to do with either thinking about it or not
thinking about it. For the atman cannot be reduced to anything
capable of being said, thought or taught, or equally to the negation
or absence of thought.'
Then I said: 'What about all these peddlers of advaita who
haunt the streets and public places of our country, and flood the
libraries with their publications? They protest as loudly as possible
against those who propagate Western religions, and yet they them-
selves are more narrow-minded than any of their opponents. They
"possess" the truth, and anyone who does not accept their suppos-
edly all-inclusive vedantic viewpoint is in their eyes merely a fool
or fanatic.'
'You are perfectly right,' replied Harilal. 'As soon as advaita
is presented as a religion, it ceases to be advaita. The Truth has no
"Church". The Truth is the Truth, and it cannot be passed onto
others by anyone at all. The Truth shines with its own light. He

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 MINING MANAGER

who claims to possess the Truth, or else says that he has received
it or that he can hand it on, is either stupid or a charlatan.'
He went on questioning me about myself, my way of living,
and how I understood the spiritual life ....
[He said,] 'There is only one thing you need, and that is to
break the last bonds that are holding you back. You are quite ready
for it. Leave off your prayers, your worship, your contemplation of
this or that. Realise that you are. Tat tvam asi - you are That!
'You call yourself a Christian; but that is meaningless at the
stage you have reached. Look here, listen to this - It is I who am
the Christian, and you are the Hindu. For anyone who has seen the
Real, there is neither Christian, Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim. There
is only the atman, and nothing can either bind or limit or qualify
the atman .
'Now tell me about your spiritual experience.'
Once again I attempted a smile to hide my emotion, as I
asked: 'How do you want me to tell you this?'
But he was not smiling: 'At all costs I must know. Tell me
how you like, with words or without, but you must tell me.'
We were sitting on the stone seat with legs crossed, facing
each other. I made no reply. As the silence deepened, I closed my
eyes, as he also did, and we remained like that for a long time.
Then again I opened my eyes and he opened his, and for some
seconds we gazed at each other. Once more our eyes closed, and
when finally I looked again, I saw that his eyes were wide open,
but as if unseeing.
'You are a lover of silence,' he said.
'It was you who suggested my using it for answering your
question. That is why I did.'
'You have done so remarkably well. Now I understand every-
thing. You are quite ready. What are you waiting for?'
'Ready for what? Alas, I feel myself so feeble when before
God I recall what I ought to be.'
'Enough of this nonsense! Stop talking about differences.
There are no differences anywhere. There is only the atman. God
is the atman, the Self of all that is. I am the atman. You are the
atman. Only the Self exists, in itself and in all.'

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

'But how do you know that I am ready?'

'When a woman is ready to give birth, of course she is aware
of it. And every woman who has already been a mother knows the
signs without a shadow of doubt. It is the same with those who are
near to the awakening, or rather, whose "I" is on the point of disap-
pearing in the light of the essential and unique I. I saw it in your
eyes this morning when we passed each other in the bazaar without
noticing; that is when you called me.'
'You are speaking as if you have been sent here expressly to
give me this news.'
'Whether I was sent or not, I had to say this to you. Now it is
done. If you do not believe me, that's your affair. But you can't get
out of it. If necessary, we shall meet again for the final decision. Or
perhaps someone else will intervene, someone you will be unable
to resist.'
'But if, as you say, I am so near to the awakening, why do you
not go ahead and awaken me?'
'There is no question of awakening anyone at all. Who indeed
is the sleeper? How could one awaken that which does not sleep
and has never fallen asleep? Sleeping, dreaming, being awoken, all
that is a matter of the body and senses which are located in the
body, including, of course, thoughts, desires and will. Are you this
body? Are you this thought which you have of being or existing
within the limits of this body? When you are in deep sleep, do you
still have any thought or awareness that you are? But still, even
then, you exist, you are . You are in truth neither this body which
sleeps or alternatively keeps awake, nor this thinking mind, some-
times clear and sometimes confused, which wanders about,
constantly picking up impressions on every side, nor are you even
the awareness which vanishes in deep sleep, in coma and at the
dissolution of the body.
'It is through you that that is seen and heard, that it is thought
and willed. You are what remains when nothing is any more seen
or thought, willed or heard. That is the atman, the Self; it is what
you are yourself in reality and beyond all outward appearances
which change and pass away. Tat tvam asi - You are That! What
prevents you from realising this?

192
 MINING MANAGER

'Can you remember the time when you were born? Can you
discover in your memory some moment which would have been
the first moment of your existence? Have you any awareness of
beginning to exist? Did you not exist already, well before the time
when you can remember that you existed? If your being is tied to
the memory that you have of it, then what happened to you in the
times of which you have no recollection? What happens to you at
the moment when consciousness goes to sleep?
'Let me tell you again, there is only one thing that you lack.
Enter into the guha, the cave of your heart, and there realise that
you are!'
'The cave of my heart!' I cried. 'I indeed try to remain there
as much as I can. And to be living in a cave on this Mountain is for
me a most valuable help in that attempt. In this cave where I am
living - and still more, in the further cave where there is no light
at all, where I withdraw for meditation - I have been given an inde-
scribable peace and joy.'
'Your rock cave is a dead thing. How can it give you peace
and happiness? It has nothing to do with the joy which you say that
you feel when you withdraw into it. Rather it is you, you in your
own depths, who are the supreme peace and joy. It is you who fill
your cave with that peace and joy which you yourself essentially
are, in the cave of your heart. The bliss, ananda, of which you
experience a kind of echo - are you really so simple-minded as to
think that it is the rock that bestows it so generously upon you?
How can you indulge in such dreams and refuse to see? In fact, you
neither give nor receive anything whatever, least of all this peace
(shanti) and this joy (ananda). You are ananda, pure ananda; and
this ananda cannot even be called ananda any longer, for it cannot
either be seen, or conceived, or named. It simply is.'
As I led Harilal towards the path which led down from the
Mountain, I pointed out to him the magnificent landscape which
was spread out before us - near at hand, the town of
Tiruvannamalai with its Temple; and in the distance, the country-
side with rocky hillocks jutting up among the fields and stretches
of moorland. Just at that moment the sun was setting. I was telling
him something about the splendour of its rising each morning,

193
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

immediately facing my cave.

'I have no doubt that it is a glorious sight,' he replied, 'but can
it be compared to the dawn of the Self, to the rising of Being?'
Later on I often met Harilal. We understood each other so well
and were so deeply in agreement that we could not fail to use every
occasion that was offered of being together and speaking of those
things which were central in our lives, especially as we both found
that there were so few people with whom we were able to discuss
them.
Even so, Harilal found it very difficult to understand why I
should still feel myself bound by the ritual and other obligations of
my Christian faith. 'The atman, the Self, is bound by nothing,' he
often said.

This advice given out by Papaji more than forty years ago,
and the manner in which it was given, indicate that his basic
message and his teaching style have not changed or evolved over
the years. Both then and now, when he deals with seekers, he is
direct, challenging and confrontational in his approach. He will
tell everyone who is willing to listen that no practice is necessary
to understand or know what one already is, and that any effort to
find the Self is counterproductive since it takes attention away from
what one already is.
Papaji did not spend much time at Ramanasramam. A few
weeks after his arrival he was taken off to Bangalore to begin a
new phase of his life.

When I returned to Ramanasramam after spending several

years in North India, it was my intention to stay there permanently,
but this was not to be. Shortly after my arrival, some old friends of
mine came to the ashram for the Ramana Jayanti [birthday] cele-
brations of that year. They were quite surprised to see me because
they thought that I was still living and working in North India.
After the celebrations were over, they invited me to come to
Wilson Gardens, Bangalore, with them to meet other friends and
relatives I had not seen for many years. I told them that I didn't
want to leave the ashram, but they refused to listen to any of my

194
 MINING MANAGER

objections. They forcibly put me in their car and took me off to

Bangalore.
When we reached Bangalore, which is about a five-hour drive
from Tiruvannamalai, they put me up in Basavanagudi at the house
of my old friend, B. M. S. Naidu. I had known him when I was
working in Madras in the mid-1940s.
The next morning he suggested that we go for a walk in
Lalbagh, the famous gardens in the centre of Bangalore. Since they
were within walking distance of his house, we went there on foot.
We strolled through the gardens, occasionally stopping to enjoy the
flowers that were on display. Later on, as we were going through
the glass house, a large structure in the centre of the gardens, we
met a man who was known to Mr Naidu. He was called Krishna
Lal Poddar and he was introduced to me as a prominent industri-
alist who had extensive business interests in Assam, Bengal and
Bihar. We stopped to chat for a while.
As we were talking he said, 'I have a mica mine in Girdi,
Bihar. I have come to Bangalore because I recently got permission
to mine for manganese and iron in some of the forests near here.'
Then he went on to ask me all the usual questions - where I
was from, what I was doing in Bangalore, whether I was married,
where was my family, and so on.
'I am an ex-army man,' I said. 'I have a family in Lucknow
and I used to have a job in North India. But a few weeks ago I
decided to give up my career there and come to the south. My
Guru's ashram is in Tiruvannamalai. Normally, I live there. I have
only come to Bangalore because some friends of mine whom I
have not seen for many years insisted that I had to come here to
meet some of their friends and relatives. When I have finished my
business here, I will go back to Tiruvannamalai.'
'What financial arrangements have you made for your
family?' he enquired. 'Who is looking after them while you spend
your days in an ashram?'
'God is looking after them,' I replied.
I didn't feel that I was being irresponsible. I really did have
the conviction and the faith that it was God's job to look after the
world, including all the members of my family whom I was
formerly supporting.

195
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Mr Poddar didn't see it that way. 'You can't sit around doing
nothing and expect God to look after your family. You have a wife
and children to support. I can offer you a very good job. It will pay
you more than enough to support your family. I want you to take
charge of all the workers in my new mines. I have already recruited
mining engineers, geologists, surveyors, and so on. What I am
looking for is someone who can coordinate all the work. If you
accept this job, you will be responsible for supervising all the
workers. You will be paying the wages, supervising the transporta-
tion of the ore from the minehead to the ports and buying all the
necessary equipment to set up the mines and keep them running. I
want a man from North India to look after all this work for me. I
will provide you with everything you need, including a cook from
North India so you won't have to eat strange food.'
This was an extraordinary offer for a man to make to a
complete stranger, particularly one who had just expressed no
interest in working any more. I only found out much later what had
prompted him to make the offer.
He had thought, 'This man was an officer in the army, so he
knows how to supervise, give orders and maintain discipline. He
now lives in an ashram, so that probably means that he is honest
and spiritually inclined. He is just the man I am looking for. I need
someone I can trust with large sums of money, someone who can
work efficiently on his own, someone who can supervise a large
number of workers in a jungle camp and get lots of work out of
them.'
We went to his house on Krishna Road and discussed the job
in more detail. He wanted me to take charge immediately, without
even going back to Ramanasramam. It was an intriguing offer, but
I couldn't see how I could accept it at such short notice. I only had
one dhoti and one banian with me. How could I suddenly take off
for the jungle and live there for an indefinite period?
He didn't seem to think that this was a problem. In fact he
insisted that I should accompany him on his trip to the mines the
following morning.
'I will pick you up at 8 a.m. from Mr Naidu's house,' he said,
brushing aside all my practical objections. 'You will really like the

196
 MINING MANAGER

forest. There are high mountains and lots of wild animals.'

I must admit that this was a major plus point in the job offer.
I have always liked solitude, and the chance of having a job in a
wild, remote forest area was one that appealed to me very much.
The next morning we left by car for the mines. Our destina -
tion was about a six-hour ride away from Bangalore. On our
arrival, he took me round the camp, which was still under construc -
tion . It was very much a frontier settlement. A bulldozer was still
there clearing the forest, and on the land which had already been
cleared, huts were being built for the workers. There was a truck,
a jeep, a bulldozer, and lots of people running around, trying to
organise the new settlement.
After we had had lunch together, he asked me what I thought
of the place and the job he was offering me. I admitted that I liked
the place very much. There was dense forest all around and in one
place, near the officers' huts, there was a river which mysteriously
disappeared into the ground and didn't seem to appear again.
During our brief tour I was also shown a small temple in which it
was said that Vidyaranya Swami had composed his famous work,
Panchadasi. The whole forest, in fact, was called the Vidyaranya
State Forest. In addition to being a famous teacher, Vidyaranya
was the prime minister of Vijayanagar, an empire which flourished
in that area several hundred years ago.
I accepted the job without much hesitation. It seemed the right
thing to do. I liked the idea of spending my days in such a
wilderness.
We returned to Bangalore the same day. Mr Poddar gave me
Rs 100,000 to cover some payments that were due the following
day and told me that I should start work immediately, without
going back to Tiruvannamalai to collect my possessions . He
himself said that he would arrange for all my things to be
forwarded to me. The next day I went back to the mines with the
money and some food which Mr Poddar had given me. A day later
my Tiruvannamalai clothes appeared, along with a North Indian
cook who had been allocated to me to prepare all my meals. A new
era in my life was beginning.
Mr Poddar took the address of my wife in Lucknow. Without

197
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

telling me, he began to send her Rs 500 a month so that she could
look after all my family's expenses. I had told him that God was
looking after my family. Mr Poddar didn't believe me, but unwit-
tingly he became God's agent.
I settled down in the forest and began my work. Once a week
I would drive back to Bangalore to collect enough money to pay
all the bills, but I spent the rest of my time in the forest, supervising
all the work that was going on there. I stayed in Karnataka and the
neighbouring state of Goa for the next thirteen years, working in
this and other mining camps as an administrative manager.

When I asked Papaji for more details of the work he did, he

wrote out the following list for me:

I had many jobs in the mining company:

1. Raising ore at the minehead, loading it into the trucks

and transporting it to the railhead.
2. Transporting ore to Mangalore, Madras and Karwar,
and making arrangements for off-shore shipments.
3. Labour payments and staff salaries.
4. Purchases of equipment and supplies.
5. Looking after the automobile workshop.
6. Laying roads to work spots.
7. Arranging labour to bring water from the nearest
water source.
8. Labour welfare.

Life in the jungle was harsh and pnmztzve. Swami

Abhishiktananda, a regular visitor to the camps Papaji managed,
recorded his impressions of Papaji 's lifestyle in The Secret of
Arunachala.

I particularly enjoyed meeting him in the jungles of Mysore

when he was working there. Each time I passed through that part
of the world, for example on my way to Pune or Bombay, I always
broke my journey for a few days at least, so as to see him .... He

198
 MINING MANAGER

,,
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Goa , Karnataka \ Andhra

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Bangalore : ..
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often told me how joyfully he would quit working once his son was
Nadu)
Tanjore

married and settled in his tum ....

He was in charge of some iron and manganese mines deep in
the jungle and far away from towns, which could only be reached
by appalling roads. He lived in a hut made of straw, close to his
workers. It was certainly a marvellous solitude for anyone who
could do without human society, but it was one that his other
colleagues had little liking for, as they did not know the secret of
living in the depths of their being ....
Since hearing those simple words from Ramana which had
changed his life, he had found that all his desires had completely
died away. Nevertheless he applied himself to his work with
complete efficiency, and spared no trouble to make his mines as
productive as possible and also to discover new and even better
deposits of ore. Anyone seeing him striding around in his long
boots as he surveyed his mines, or else taking the wheel of a jeep
or a truck, could with difficulty have guessed the secret of his deep

199
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

inner life. He especially liked describing the surprise of a young

German girl who had heard about him and came looking for a
sadhu whom she expected to find either naked or dressed in rags,
seated motionless in some cave or else hidden in some jungle
thicket.

Papaji rarely talks about the rigours of the work, but he does
sometimes speak about the beauty of the jungle and of the many
wild animals that lived there.

I liked the solitude of the jungle, the natural beauty of the

place, but the animals could sometimes be a problem. In one place
I worked there was no water in the neighbourhood, so I had to
import it by truck from a place fifty miles away. The local bears
soon discovered that our camp was a good place to come for a
drink. Raiding our camp at night saved them a long walk.
In the beginning we used to keep our water outside in buckets,
but that system didn't last long because the bears would come and
drink it all at night. When I told all the workers to keep their water
inside, the bears started coming into our huts to take the water.
Many of our people lived in flimsy grass huts. A determined bear
could walk right through the wall if it smelled water inside.
At one time I was sharing a thatched hut with a man from
Kerala. He was one of the supervisors who looked after some of
our workers. We divided our hut with a woven bamboo partition.
One night a bear came into his half of the hut and started sniffing
around. It was a female. She put her nose under his sheet and was
sniffing around between his legs when he woke up. He screamed,
jumped out of bed, came running into my half of the hut and
jumped into bed with me. He must have thought that this was the
safest place to be. The bear followed him and also tried to get into
bed with us. It was a cold night. Maybe she wanted somewhere
warm to sleep. I had to chase her away before I could go back to
bed.
There were tigers in the forest as well, but they left us alone.
They seemed to have their own food and water supplies, so they
didn't need to raid our camp. Since they were not hunted in our

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 MINING MANAGER

area, they were not afraid of showing themselves occasionally. I

was once being driven down one of the dirt roads near the camp
when my driver stopped and shouted, 'Tiger! Tiger!' He was so
afraid, he climbed into the back with me because in our jeeps there
were no doors next to the front seats. A mother tiger was sitting on
the road, playing with one of her cubs. She must have heard the
jeep approach, but she made no attempt to get out of the way. It
was just beginning to get dark so I switched on the headlights to
warn the tiger in a gentle way that a vehicle was approaching. She
looked in our direction, but made no attempt to move. After
enjoying their play for some time I started the engine and drove
slowly towards her. As we drew near she collected her cub and
took it off the road to safety. This was very unusual behaviour for
a wild tiger, especially one which was guarding a young cub.
There were also lots of snakes in the neighbourhood of the
camp, but they didn't cause us so much trouble.
I was once driving from Bangalore to our mining camp in the
forest. I stopped by a lake on the way because I needed to put some
water in the radiator of my jeep. As I was walking down to the
shoreline I saw an unusual sight: a snake, its rear portion immersed
in a hole, had a frog in its mouth. The front half of the frog was still
visible. It was alive, and it was still trying to catch flies to eat. It
didn't seem to be struggling; it was just carrying on with its usual
business of catching flies and eating them. The snake was eating
the frog and the frog was eating the flies.
My first thought was, 'I should rescue this frog because it is
still alive,' but then another thought occurred to me. 'This snake
also needs to live. If I deprive it of its food, what will it do? And
what about the flies? Don't they also deserve to be saved? They are
also being eaten. But if I save the flies by waving them away, the
frog will get angry with me.'
I watched this little drama for a few moments before coming
to a conclusion: 'Leave them alone. None of this is your business.
Don't try to interfere in matters that don't concern you. If you get
involved with the affairs of the world, you always cause trouble to
someone. It's better to leave the world alone and let it take care of
itself.'

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Then another thought came: 'This is how samsara works.

Everyone is already in the jaws of death. No escape is possible, but
who struggles? Who cares? No one. Everyone carries on eating as
if nothing has happened.'
There is something inside us that death cannot reach. Snakes
cannot bite it and swallow it. Once you know who you really are,
death can never touch you again. The body can be eaten up, but
once you have the knowledge that you are not the body, how can
death affect you? When you reject your identity with the body and
instead identify with what is real and permanent, the body will go
on functioning, but its final disappearance will not trouble or affect
you. Discarding an old shirt does not affect who you are because
you know you are not the shirt. Once you stop believing that you
are the body, you can let it die with the knowledge that your real
nature is not going to be changed in any way. Don't become
attached to anything that is not permanent - that is the secret of
eternal life. Discard everything that appears and disappears within
time and hold on only to that which is timeless.
Since we are talking about animals from the forest, I can tell
you the story of a python I saw while I was working in the jungle.
These are very long, thick snakes. I was driving along one of the
forest roads near the place where I was working when I saw a huge
python occupying the full width of the road. It was so long, the
head and the tail were both off the road; only the middle was
blocking my way. I didn't want to run over it so I tried to make it
move off the road. It seemed to be asleep or resting. After a big
meal these snakes can go into a kind of hibernation for days at a
time. I picked up the tail and tried to drag it to one side so that I
could make a wide enough space for my jeep to drive through, but
it was much too heavy for me. I gave up, sat down and waited for
the next driver to come along. A few minutes later a truck drove
down the road. The driver at first wanted to run over the snake and
kill it, but I somehow persuaded him that we should just pull it to
one side of the road so that it would not block the traffic. Pulling a
live, twenty -feet-long snake off a road is not a job that everyone is
eager to volunteer for, so I was lucky to find someone who was at
least willing to try. We both grabbed hold of the tail, but it was still

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too heavy to move. More trucks appeared on the scene. The new
drivers wanted to capture the snake and take it away with them.
'No,' I said. 'This part of the forest is under my control. This
snake belongs to me. I will not allow anyone to kill it or take it
away. You can take wood from this forest, but you cannot take
away any of the living animals.'
This wasn't true at all. My company merely had the right to
excavate in the forest, but the bluff worked. Some of the drivers
who had stopped recognised me. They knew I represented the
mining company that was excavating nearby and they were
prepared to believe that my company had these additional forest
rights. With the help of five other drivers I pulled the snake off the
road and put it under the shade of the adjoining trees.
I later told this story to several people. One of them remarked,
'There is a tradition that pythons do not have to go looking for
food. They are supposed to have a magnetic power in their eyes
that attracts prey towards them. They use this power on passing
animals such as rabbits. They lie silent and unmoving in the forest,
just looking at animals that come near. These animals somehow get
mesmerised by the python's look and walk right into its mouth.'
I don't know if this is true, but I liked the story because this is
how the power of the Guru works. He sits silently, not stirring a
single thought. Those he looks at get mesmerised and become his
prey. The motionless, silent Gurus are great predators. They don't
have to go out looking for food. Devotees appear before them and
walk right into their mouths. This is the magnetic power of silence.
Dattatreya was like this; Suka was like this, and so was my own
Master. He didn't speak or move, yet people from all over the
world were attracted to him.

Whenever Papaji accumulated leave, he would take a few

days off and go to Ramanasramam. On one of these trips he had a
brief and unexpected meeting with a mysterious saint who lived in
the forests near Krishnagiri, about halfway between
Tiruvannamalai and Bangalore.

As I was waiting for a bus in an isolated location near

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Krishnagiri, an extremely disreputable -looking man approached

me. He wore tattered, filthy clothes and had open wounds on his
legs that he had neglected so badly, they were infested with
maggots. We talked for a while and I offered to remove the
maggots from his leg and give him some medicine which would
help his wounds to heal. He wasn't interested in having any assis-
tance from me.
'Leave the maggots where they are,' he said. 'They are
enjoying their lunch.'
Feeling that I couldn't leave him in such a miserable condi -
tion, I tore a strip off the shawl I was wearing and tied it round his
leg so that at least he could have a clean bandage. We said 'good-
bye' and he walked off into the nearby forest.
I had recognised this man to be a jnani and was idly specu-
lating on what strange karma had led him to neglect his body in
such a way, when a woman approached me. She had been selling
iddlies and dosas at a nearby roadside stall.
'You are a very lucky man,' she said. 'That was a mahatma
[great soul]. He lives in this forest but he almost never shows
himself. People come from Bangalore to have his darshan, but he
never allows anyone to find him unless he himself wants to meet
them. I myself sit here all day, but this is the first time I have seen
him in more than a year. This is the first time I have seen him
approach a complete stranger and start talking to him.'

On one other occasion Papaji described a very eccentric saint

who lived in this area. It may well have been the same man.

I was travelling from Ramanasramam to Bangalore by car. As

we were travelling through a deserted forest area I asked my driver
to stop because I wanted to sit quietly for a while by myself. After
a few minutes I told him that he could go because I felt an urge to
stay for some time by myself.
He said, 'It's night time and there is no one around. I cannot
leave you here by yourself. A little further down the road there is
a nice temple on top of a hill. Why don't you go there instead?
There is a priest who looks after it. Many people go there because

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a great saint also lives in this area. He hides in the forest and hardly
ever comes out, but this temple is one of the few places he seems
to visit regularly. He is so famous, people come all the way from
Bombay and Calcutta to have his darshan and to seek his bless-
ings. He is a very strange man, but he has a lot of power. If people
are lucky enough to find him, they let him piss on their palms. If
they then lick their palm once, they will be blessed with a son, but
if he licks his own palm, that means the person will have a
daughter. This man is always right.'

Papaji never met this man so he never found out if he was the
same person who was allowing the maggots to eat his leg.
In the Papaji Interviews book Papaji described his meetings
with Ramana Maharshi, the Muslim pir in Madras and this sadhu
near Krishnagiri. All three of them, he said, were jnanis, but their
behaviour and their attitude to devotees were very different.

Out of these three people, it was the Maharshi alone who

made himself available, twenty-four hours a day, to anyone who
wanted to see him. The Krishnagiri sadhu hid in his forest; the
Muslim pir, when he stayed at Khan Bahadur's house in Madras,
kept himself locked up and refused to see visitors who wanted to
see him. Of these three, the Maharshi alone was easy to find and
easy to approach. My own early visits demonstrate the point. He
could have kept quiet on my after-lunch visits and allowed his
attendant to send me away. Instead, sensing that I had an urgent
problem, he allowed me to come in and talk about the things that
were bothering me. No one was ever denied access to him because
they were immature or unsuitable . Visitors and devotees could sit
in his presence for as long as they wanted, all of them absorbing as
much grace as they could assimilate. Through his jnana alone, the
Maharshi was a towering spiritual giant. By making himself
continuously available, the lustre of his greatness shone even
more.

Though Papaji was a good organiser and an efficient

manager, he was initially insufficiently qualified to take charge of

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some of his responsibilities in the mining camp. He found himself

running a fleet of about a hundred trucks, without having the
requisite expertise to maintain and run them properly. His
company therefore sent him off to Madurai, in the extreme south of
India, to learn how to manage this side of the business.

My company sent me to Madurai to learn how to manage

large numbers of trucks. There was a trucking company there
called TVS which delivered freight all over South India. I had been
operating about a hundred trucks in Kamataka, transporting ore to
the west coast port of Mangalore. We had no trained mechanics,
and even the drivers were not properly qualified. Few people
wanted to work in the jungle, so we just picked up people wherever
we could. The result can easily be imagined. There had been a lot
of unnecessary wear and tear on the trucks because the fleet had
not been professionally managed.
My director had met the head of the TVS trucking company
while he was on holiday in Kashmir. When he mentioned the
problems he was having in the jungle with so many unqualified
people, the TVS head offered to help.
'Send one of your men down to my headquarters in Madurai
for an intensive one-month course. We will show him how we
manage our own fleet of trucks, and how we get the best use out of
our vehicles, drivers and mechanics.'
I was selected for the job since I had overall responsibility for
the transport of ore to the ports.
During my stay there I went to see the famous Meenakshi
Temple which lies in the centre of the town. Meenakshi is the local
name for Parvati, the consort of Siva. I went on a sudden impulse,
so I didn't have time to take any offering of fruits with me. I felt a
little guilty that I had come empty-handed, but Meenakshi, the
goddess of the temple, didn't seem to mind. As I walked in through
the main gate, she manifested in front of me, smiled, and offered
to give me a personal tour of the temple. I accepted and was taken
by her to see all the major shrines and aspects of the temple.
Afterwards, she escorted me to the main gate, bade me farewell,
and disappeared.

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This was not Papaji 's only encounter with manifestations of

temple goddesses. One of his old devotees wrote to me, saying that
he remembered Papaji talking about several such encounters in
South India in the 1950s. Unfortunately neither he nor Papaji
could remember the details.
In 1954 Papaji had another extraordinary vision of a female
deity. It is a long story that began with Papaji reading about a
major festival that was about to occur in North India.

I was working in South India in 1954 when I read in a news-

paper that a Maha Kumbha Mela was due to be held in Allahabad
that year. Kumbha Melas are held every twelve years at the conflu-
ence of three rivers: the Ganga, the Yamuna and the Saraswati. The
Saraswati does not exist in a physical form that can be seen. It is
held to be an invisible river which joins the other two at Allahabad
under the ground.
After twelve cycles of Kumbha Melas have been held, there is
a Maha Kumbha Mela, or 'Great Kumbha Mela', which is held
every 144 years. This is the festival that was announced in the
newspaper. I have always loved the Ganga and this was a once-in-
a-lifetime opportunity to go there and have a bath during a Maha
Kumbha Mela. Millions of pilgrims come from all over India to
attend these melas, primarily to have a bath in the holy Ganga, but
also to see and meet the thousands of sadhus and yogis who
congregate there during the festival.
I took some leave from my work and went north to attend the
festival. During my visit I stayed with the Commissioner of
Allahabad, who was an old devotee of mine. As the senior civil
servant in the city, he played a major role in the organising of the
mela. It was an enormous undertaking to organise and be respon-
sible for. About eight million people attended, and all of them had
to be provided with food and accommodation. Ancillary services
such as sanitation, transport and health care also had to be provided
for this enormous multitude.
Shortly after my arrival, the Commissioner, Mr Rameshwar
Mishra, asked me to help him by acting as a translator for a foreign
journalist who had come to cover the festival for his newspaper. He

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wanted to talk to the nagas, the naked sadhus who spend most of
their time roaming the Himalayas. These people rarely come down
to the plains in large numbers except at the times of the Kumbha
Melas. I found a particularly impressive specimen for him to inter-
view: a naked, ash-smeared man with matted hair who looked to
me as if he was about seven feet tall.

Rameshwar Mishra and his family had been close devotees of

Papaji for many years. He had first met them in 1948 in Lucknow
when Mr Mishra was posted there. He soon became a devotee of
Papaji and visited him frequently, even when he was posted in
other cities in Uttar Pradesh. During the early 1950s Papaji was
a regular visitor to his house in Allen Ganj, Allahabad.
I collected the following details of Mr Mishra 's association
with Papaji from Professor 0. P. Sayal, one of Papaji 's Lucknow
devotees.

I saw Rameshwar Mishra many times, both in Lucknow and

in Allahabad. Though he was a civil servant who held many senior
posts in U.P., he was also an ardent and proficient chanter of the
Vedas. I have heard many professional priests and pandits chant the
Vedas, but I have never met anyone except Mishra who could
charge up the atmosphere around him with the power of his
chanting. When he did his chanting, the space around him would
become luminous with a divine light.
He was a great devotee of Papaji and had absolute faith in
him. Whenever he heard that Papaji was in town, he would just
take leave from his job and not return to it until Papaji had left. If
Papaji told him that he was coming to visit him in Allahabad,
Mishra would go to the station, clothed only in a kaupina [loin-
cloth], and carry Papaji's box on his head, just like a coolie. He felt
that he should go to his Guru as naked as possible. In those days,
whenever Papaji travelled anywhere, he would take all his posses-
sions in a big metal box. Though he was a high-ranking civil
servant, Mishra loved to debase himself in front of Papaji by
behaving as if he was just a lowly coolie.
He had read Ramakrishna Paramahamsa's books and from

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Papaji (left) with Rameshwar Mishra. This photo, taken

around 1948, is the second oldest surviving picture of Papaji.

them he had adopted the idea that he should treat his wife as if she
were the Di vine Mother. In an attempt to control his carnal
instincts, he decided to start worshipping her as a goddess. Every
morning when he got out of bed, he would prostrate full length on
the floor in front of his wife and chant ten shlokas in praise of the
goddess. I don't think it ever worked. Papaji once told me that he
would chant the shlokas in the morning, but the next night he
would be back in bed having sex with her again.
I remember one conversation which he had with Papaji in
Lucknow. He was challenging Papaji's statement that no effort is
necessary to realise the Self.
'You say that no effort is necessary to realise the Self, but for
any accomplishment some effort is necessary. If I am on the banks

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of the Ganga and I want a pot of water to drink, I have to dip my

pot in the river, lift it to my lips, drink the water and then swallow
it. The water will not jump into my mouth by itself. Similarly, I
cannot expect enlightenment to descend on me suddenly, without
any preparation on my behalf. If I don't make some effort, it will
not come to me.'
Papaji immediately answered, 'For the Ganga to be the
Ganga, it must be enclosed by two banks. Now, if you throw away
the banks, where is the Ganga?'
This answer, and the intense gaze that accompanied it,
destroyed all Mishra's concepts about enlightenment, and how it
could be attained. He just stared at Papaji with tears streaming
down his cheeks. He was incapable of giving any other kind of
response. With that one answer Papaji had shown him the state that
he thought he had to work so hard to attain.
Mishra also suffered from intense migraine attacks, but he
often said that in Papaji's presence they would just go away. I
remember seeing him once in Lucknow, lying down in Papaji's
house in Narhi. He told me how happy he was to relax in Papaji's
presence because that was the only place in the world where he
never experienced any headaches.
Mishra took early retirement, partly because he had no
interest in the affairs of the world and partly because he wanted to
be by himself. He didn't have a very happy retirement though.
Towards the end of his life he lost most of his money, and in his
final years he had no one to look after him. Eventually, Sivani,
Papaji's daughter, took him in and looked after him in Delhi. I
think that he died there sometime in the early 1980s.

In 1995, while I was still collecting and editing material for

this chapter, Rameshwar Mishra 's mother died in Lucknow at the
age of ninety-six. Papaji attended her funeral and met several
members of the family he had not seen for many years. The
following day they all visited Papaji at his Indira Nagar home.
When he saw Kailash, Rameshwar Mishra 's brother, he was
reminded of another remarkable incident that took place in 1954,
the year of the Kumbha Mela. After the visitors had gone, he told
the story to the devotees who were with him in the house.

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1 km

Mahan agar

Lucknow
The black lines on the map show the railway lines that pass
through the city. The parallel lines show the main streets.

1 Charbagh (Lucknow train station).

2 Narhi, the bazaar in which Papaji lived for many years.
3 Lucknow Zoo.
4 Kukrej Sports Shop, where Papaji worked briefly in 1947.
5 GPO (General Post Office), Lucknow's main post office.
6 The Residency, site of a famous siege during the Indian
Mutiny of 1857.
7 The Butler Road home of Papaji's parents.
8 Clarks Hotel.
9 20/144A, Indira Nagar: Papaji's home from 1990-97.
10 Satsang Bhavan (A-306, Indira Nagar), where Papaji gave
satsang from 1992-97.
11 Bhutnath Temple.
12 Hanuman Temple, Aminabad.
13 Carlton Hotel.

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Kailash Mishra used to be an officer in the Navy. All his

family had good jobs and good positions. In 1954 he met a Parsi
girl and wanted to marry her, but his family initially didn't want to
accept the girl. They were brahmins and they all wanted him to
marry a brahmin girl. Finally, he overcame their resistance and
persuaded them to give their consent to the marriage. He took ten
days' leave and came to Lucknow for the wedding. I was invited
to attend because several members of the family were my
devotees. On the day of the wedding I was sitting in their house
with Rameshwar Mishra, his sister, his mother and a few other
devotees. We were having a little satsang while the last-minute
preparations were going on. Kailash came into the room to collect
a walking-talking doll that someone had given him as a present.
When he saw the other members of his family sitting there instead
of working, an angry expression appeared on his face. Sensing that
I was the cause of his family's inactivity, he directed an angry look
at me as he was walking out of the room. Our eyes met and I
returned his angry glare. In circumstances like these I become a
mirror of the emotions of the person in front of me. Kailash
stopped with one foot inside the room and one foot outside. His
eyes continued to stare at mine, but his whole body, including the
face, was suddenly immobilised. We glared at each other for a few
seconds before I realised that he was no longer angry. He was just
paralysed by an experience he was having. For about five minutes
he remained rooted to the spot, with one foot inside the room and
one foot outside.
Eventually I got up and went to see what was the matter with
him. His continued immobility was beginning to alarm me. I tried
to shake him out of his state, but I couldn't bring him back to
normal. When it became clear to all of us that he wasn't able to
respond, we picked him up, carried him across the room and placed
him on a bed. As I sat down next to him, he lifted his head, placed
it on my lap and gazed lovingly into my eyes. All his antagonism
was gone.
Meanwhile, the appointed hour for the wedding was drawing
near. Several members of the family came to him to try to persuade
him to get up and get ready, but it was only with great reluctance

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that he finally rose and went ahead with the ceremony. As soon as
it was over he was back in my lap again.
That night, instead of consummating the marriage with his
wife, he insisted on sleeping with me. He refused to let go of me
and spent the whole night lying on my bed, clinging tightly to my
body. His new wife, naturally, was very upset. She made a few
futile attempts to get her husband to come to bed with her, but he
refused to pay her any attention. She spent most of her wedding
night sitting on the floor, crying.
The next day Kailash had to go back to Bombay. I accompa-
nied him to the station to see him and his wife off. Though he was
wearing the white uniform of a Navy officer, he prostrated full-
length on the dirty platform and held on to my feet for several
minutes. We only managed to get him on to the train a few seconds
before it left.

Papaji now continues his account of his trip to Allahabad in

1954:

I had managed to get a twenty-day leave from my job because

I had accumulated holidays from the previous Easter and
Christmas. That gave me plenty of time to take in all the sights. As
I wandered around I could see that all the big ashrams and swamis
had representatives there. They had all set up little camps and they
were trying to entice the visitors to buy their books or listen to their
teachings. Some of the camps were having satsangs that were
going on twenty-four hours a day.
On one of the days of the mela I walked about five kilometres
downstream along the banks of the Ganga because I wanted to be
alone for a while. I finally reached a spot where I thought I could
rest for some time in solitude. Suddenly, though, out of nowhere a
girl appeared in front of me and fell prostrate at my feet. When she
did not get up, I gently pulled her shoulders and looked around to
see if her parents or her friends were anywhere in the vicinity
because she didn't look old enough to be out by herself. She looked
about seventeen years old, and Indian girls of that age don't go to
lonely places by themselves. I couldn't see anyone else in the

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neighbourhood. Eventually she stood up. Though I could see that

she was a very beautiful girl, I also noticed that her eyes were set
very wide apart. They were black and shining, but they didn't look
like human eyes. They looked more fish-like than human.
I asked her where her parents were and she replied that she
didn't have any.
I then asked, 'Why are you walking here alone? Why don't
you go to the mela where all the other people are?'
She replied, 'I am Ganga. I remove the sins of all those who
come to bathe in my waters. I descended from heaven on account
of the severe penance performed by the rishi Bhagirath, which he
did for the benefit of all human beings. During this Kumbha Mela
eight million people have bathed in my waters and have washed off
all their sins. What can I do with all these sins? I have been
searching for a true sage at whose feet I can lay all these sins, but
so far I have found none here except you.
'Every day thousands of people immerse themselves in my
waters to free themselves of their sins. And I accept them because
I have taken a vow that I will take on the sins of all those who bathe
in me. But I cannot accumulate them indefinitely. I have to find
someone I can give them to. I have been searching for the last
seven days for a realised sage to give all these sins to, and finally
I have found you. I touched your feet to hand them all over to you.'
I looked into her eyes to see what sort of being she really was.
They were beautiful eyes, but as I have said before, they were defi-
nitely not human. As I was studying her, I found that I could see
right through her. She was translucent enough for me to see what
was immediately behind her.
She turned around and began to walk back towards the river.
At the river bank she kept on walking, not into the water, but across
the surface of it. After taking a few steps along the surface she
slowly subsided into the river and became one with its waters
again.
I stood for many hours staring at the river, wondering what
had happened. I felt that I had been given a great blessing. How
many other people had seen her in her real form? She was a
goddess who had descended from the heavens to purify the sins of

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the mortals who bathed in her waters, and she had appeared to me
as a person, not merely as the form of the river.

The first time that Papaji told me this story I asked him, 'Can
a jnani really take away the sins of other people? Did you really
take the sins of all these people?'
He didn't answer the second part of the question but he
replied to the first query by saying, 'Of course he can. This is what
happened in the case of Ramana Maharshi. That is why he got so
sick towards the end of his life. He was taking on the karma of the
people around him and experiencing it as physical diseases.
'Shortly before he died one of his women devotees went up to
him and said, "Bhagavan, you always share everything that comes
to you. Why don't you share this suffering with us? If you give us
all a little piece of it, it will not affect you so much. "
'Bhagavan laughed and replied, "Whom do you think gave me
this suffering in the first place?"'
I was not asking the question out of idle curiosity. A few
months before I had had a dream in which Papaji had appeared to
me, looked at me and said, 'Your sins are forgiven'.
I told him about this after he had given me the answer about
Ramana Maharshi suffering as a result of taking on devotees'
karma.
I asked, 'Did you really take my sins?'
'Yes,' he said. 'I took them all. '
In 1994 Papaji gave a formal interview to an American jour-
nalist who was making a film about 'The Divine Mother in the
world's spiritual traditions'. One of his answers was particularly
significant:

Question: For the Hindu the Mother takes many forms. Do you
have any favourite that you could speak about? Please tell a story
about her in this cherished form.

Papaji: There are many different mothers, but from the beginning
my mother has been the Ganga. For me she is not just a river, she
is the Divine Mother. Out of compassion, she has taken the form of

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a river. I have walked along her banks from the place of her
discharge in the Bay of Bengal up to Uttarkashi, a town near the
source. I have also seen her in a human physical form during the
Kumbha Mela of 1954.

Papaji then proceeded to give a detailed account of the story

I have just told. During the same interview Papaji answered
several other questions about the role and significance of the
Divine Mother. Here are three of his other answers:

Question: What is the best way to honour and show our devotion
to the Divine Mother?

Papaji: The best way to honour or have devotion for the Divine
Mother is to become her divine son. This is the best way.

Question: How can the Mother's grace help us to realise the Self?

Papaji: You need the grace of the Mother, or the grace of your
teacher. If you have received this grace, you have received a great
blessing. When the Divine Mother blesses you, from within you
there will arise the desire, 'I want to be free!' You will not get this
desire from your biological mother, you will only get it from the
Divine Mother who lives within you. This shakti, this Divine
Mother, gives you the urge to look within to find out who she is,
what she is, and where she comes from. She only blesses a few
people in this way. There are six billion people in this world today,
but only a few of them have been picked out by the Mother.

Question: Christianity tells us that Mary, the mother of Jesus

Christ, was the Mother of God. In recent years people around the
world have had visions of Mother Mary. An example of this
occurred in Bosnia during the brutal war. From where do these
visions come and what is the teaching behind them?

Papaji: These things can happen. Visions of the gods can appear
to pure-minded people. I have seen Mary in a visionary form

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several times. I also saw Jesus once when I was staying in

Rishikesh. In those days some foreign missionaries were regularly
coming to see me. I told them about my visions and they were very
surprised that Jesus and Mary had chosen to reveal themselves to
me. One of them even wrote about this in one of his books. These
visions can appear to anyone who has a pure and holy mind and
who seeks or worships God in a particular form.

Papaji continued to visit Mr Mishra, his host at the Kumbha

Mela, whenever he travelled to North India. In the following story
Papaji speaks about another equally remarkable member of his
family.

Mr Mishra was a very old and very dear devotee of mine. I

met him first in 1948 when he was posted in the Churk Cement
Factory as a sales officer. In the succeeding years he was trans-
ferred to different jobs all over the state. Whenever I was in U.P.,
I made a point of visiting him, wherever he was.
At the time of this story I was working in Kamataka. Mr
Mishra was a magistrate in Shahjahanpur. I had some leave due to
me so I came back to Lucknow with the intention of visiting my
family. However, on my arrival in Lucknow, I didn't go straight to
my house in Narhi because I suddenly felt a strong urge to visit Mr
Mishra instead.
I went straight to see him and ended up staying with him
because both he and his wife had a lot of questions that they
wanted me to answer.
One day, while I was speaking to them in their living room
about various spiritual matters, their eight-year-old daughter
approached me with an interesting request.
'You are always speaking to my parents about Krishna. Today
I want to stay with you so that I too can see Krishna. I want to see
him because I love him very much. '
The driver who was going to take her to school came to the
gate to collect her . She was already a little late for school. The girl
refused to leave when the driver asked her to get into the car, so her
mother began to get angry with her. I intervened and asked her to
go to school.

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I said, 'Today you have to go to school. Tomorrow I will show

you Krishna.'
She was happy with my promise and went off to school. The
next day she again asked me to show her Krishna at the time she
was due to go to school, and again I told her that she had to leave.
I told her that she couldn't miss school, and that I would show her
Krishna some other time. This time she got angry with me.
'Every day you tell me, "Tomorrow, tomorrow". But when
tomorrow comes you don't keep your promise.'
This time I said, 'I will definitely show you tomorrow. I
promise you that if you go to school now, I will definitely show
Him to you tomorrow.'
The next day the girl absolutely refused to go to school unless
I showed her Krishna. I could see and feel her excitement. She
really felt that she was close to having a vision of Krishna, and she
really believed that if I would only agree to help her, Krishna
would appear in front of her.
Her father had already left for his office and her mother was
working in the kitchen. I told her to come into my room and close
the door behind her.
'Now,' she said, 'show me Krishna.'
I told her, 'Krishna is standing in front of you right now. Can't
you see Him?'
'No,' she complained, 'I don't see Him. Where is He? You
promised to show Him to me, but I can't see Him anywhere.'
I tried a different approach. 'Krishna is hungry,' I said. 'He
needs something to eat. What have you got to offer Him?'
She thought for a while and then answered, 'I have some
chocolates in my school bag. My mother gave them to me to eat at
school.'
She ran to her room and brought back a bar of chocolate that
her mother had given her.
When she showed me the bar, I said, 'Now give it to Krishna'.
'But where is he?' she asked. 'How can I give it to Him if I
can't see Him?'
I told her that she had to offer it first, and that if she held it out
as an offering, Krishna would appear before her and accept it.

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She put the chocolate on the palm of her hand and extended it
as far as it would go.
Suddenly she cried out, very loudly, 'Krishna! You can't eat
all of it! I want some of it as well!' Then she swung her arm with
a wild gesture which looked to me as if she was trying to slap
someone on the chest.
'Give it back to me!' she shouted. 'I want half of it!'
The mother heard the shout and came running into my room
to see what had happened.
'Baby, what has happened?' she asked, looking very worried.
Her daughter replied, 'Look! Krishna is eating my chocolate.
He took the whole bar, so I slapped Him. After I hit Him, He gave
me half back. Look mummy! Now He is embracing me. He is
entwining his legs with mine. He doesn't want to leave me!'
Her mother was not impressed. 'You're lying. I don't see
anyone near you except the Master.'
'But mummy, why can't you see Him? I can see him so
clearly. He's right in front of me!'
When her mother again expressed her scepticism, the girl
said, 'Well, if you can't see Him, I will draw you a picture so you
can see what He looks like.'
She brought some paper and a box of coloured pencils, sat
down and drew a beautiful drawing of Krishna. I have seen many
pictures and images of Krishna all over India, but I had never seen
a picture that looked like the one this girl drew. It couldn't have
been drawn from memory because there were no other pictures that
looked like hers. It was a picture of two bodies so beautifully inter-
twined, it was impossible to see where one body ended and the
other began.

Papaji has told this story several times in his Lucknow

satsangs.
In February, 1994, a visitor wrote him a letter that simply
said, 'Can you show me God?'
Papaji called him up to the front and told this story of how he
had shown God to this little girl.
At the end of the story he said, 'Do you know why this little

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girl was able to see God? It was because she was innocent. She
had an unshakable conviction that God would appear in front of
her if I told Him to. When you have this belief that God is really
standing in front of you, then He physically appears before you. It
is only your disbelief that prevents you from seeing Him.
'You asked me if I could show you God. I am telling you that,
right now, he is standing in front of you. If you really believe that
he is there, you will see him. Now, can you see him?'
The man paused for a while before saying, 'No, I can't see
Him'.
'Look again, ' said Papaji. 'If you have that innocence, if you
have that faith that He is there, you will see Him. Can you see Him
now?'
A few seconds later the man's face lit up and he exclaimed, 'I
can see Him!'
He fell on Papaji 'sfeet laughing and saying, 'It's so easy. It's
so easy.'
Papaji was so amused by the incident, he broke into uncon-
trollable laughter. He made several attempts to start the satsang
again, but failed each time because he couldn't stop laughing.
After about ten minutes of laughter, in which everyone joined in,
Papaji gave up, ended the satsang and went home.
Later that day Papaji remarked, 'I saw the innocence in his
face. I knew he would see something if I just told him that God was
in front of him. '
Something very similar had happened when Papaji had
visited Vrindavan about a month before this incident.

In January, 1994, I travelled to Delhi from Lucknow with six

devotees. On our way back we went to Vrindavan and spent
several days there in one of the ashrams. During our first morning
there, we all went to a restaurant for breakfast.
There was a Russian boy there who asked someone, 'Who is
that man sitting in the car?'
They told him my name and he came up to me to speak. He
introduced himself, saying that he had come to Vrindavan from
Moscow in order to look for Radha [Krishna's consort].

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After breakfast he told me his story.

'I went to ISKCON [International Society for Krishna
Consciousness] in Moscow and asked them, "Where does Radha
live?"
'They showed me the statue of Radha in their temple and said,
"This is Radha".
'I didn't believe them. For me, Radha is a real person, not a
stone statue.
'I said to them, "She doesn't speak to me. I want to see the
real Radha, the one who will speak to me."
'They thought I was mad. They told me, "She doesn't speak
to anyone. This is just an image of Radha."
'I wasn't satisfied with an image. I wanted the real thing.
Eventually, someone suggested that I should come to Vrindavan
because sometimes she appears to her devotees here. I have made
this journey with the sole purpose of seeing Radha in person. I
have been all over Vrindavan, and everywhere I go I ask people,
"Where is Radha? I want to see Radha. Where is she?" People here
keep telling me to go and see her in the temples here, but I don't
want to see a statue. I want to see Radha herself. The people here
are no different from the ones in Moscow. They think that Radha
is just a statue who lives in a temple.
'Then someone pointed you out on the street and said that you
were someone who had seen Radha. Have you really seen Radha?'
'Yes,' I told him. 'I have seen her many times.'
'What is your relationship with her?' he asked.
It was a good question. I looked at him and replied, 'She is my
wife'.
This answer made him very happy. He jumped up and
exclaimed, 'Yes! Yes! You are someone who really understands.
That is also my relationship with her. I want to see my wife, not
some stone statue in a temple. I want to hug the living flesh and
blood of my wife!'
Then he looked at me with pleading eyes. 'Can you show me
Radha? I don't want anything else in this world. I only want to see
Radha.'
I was about to leave, so I invited him to come with us.

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I told him, 'We can't speak about things like this in the middle
of the road. Come with me to the ashram where we are all staying.'
Once we had reached my room, he started bombarding me
with questions.I stayedup very late talkingto him. Our conversa-
tion lasted until well after midnight.
When it was time for us all to go to bed he told me, 'I am not
going to go away. Can I sleep with you in your room? You are the
only person who really understands about Radha. I am going to
stay with you and not leave.'
Then he started expressing his love for Radha. 'Without her I
can neither eat nor drink. Without her I cannot sleep or move.
Radha ! Radha ! Radha ! Please come to me!'
I interrupted him to say, 'Whose name are you chanting? If
someone is standing right in front of you, you do not need to call
out to him. You speak directly to him. Radha is right in front of
you. Why don't you see her and speak to her?'
And then he saw her for the first time.
Suddenly he jumped up and exclaimed, 'I can see you! I can
see you!' He fell on my body and started hugging and kissing me.
He was fondling and kissing me the way he would his wife.
Finally, he calmed down and began sobbing and shaking. He put
his head on my lap and stayed with me till morning.
The next day some people came to invite me to the Neem
Karoli Baba Ashram. It was a festival day and they wanted me to
come there and eat. I invited him to accompany us and we had a
good time together.
At the end of the day he turned to me and said, 'My mission
is accomplished. I have done what I came here to do. There is
nothing more for me here. Tomorrow I will go back to Moscow
and tell everyone there the story of how I met Radha in her real
physical form here in Vrindavan.'

Not everyone who came to see Papaji with a request to see

God had his request granted. Papaji occasionally tells the story of
a judge who came to see him with the fallowing request:
'Janaka got enlightenment from Ashtavakra in the time it took
the former to swing his leg over his horse. I have been told that you

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have this power. Can you give me enlightenment in an instant?'

'Yes, ' replied Papaji. 'But first you must go to Hazrat Ganj
[the principal road in the centre of Lucknow J and prostrate full
length on the ground in front of the policeman who is directing the
traffic there. If you do this, I guarantee that you will gain
enlightenment. '
The judge refused. He was too proud to demean himself before
a lowly traffic policeman.
Papaji sometimes speaks of two other occasions in the 1950s
and '60s when he refused similar requests because the applicants
were not serious enough. In the following version he is addressing
an American man who said that he wanted enlightenment, but only
had three days in which to get it because he hadn't been able to
take more time off work.

I remember another man like you who came to see me many

years ago. He was a doctor. We had never met but he had somehow
heard of me. This man had some business in a bank that was quite
near to my house. One of my devotees had told him that there was
a man in Narhi called Poonjaji who could show him God, so he
thought he would come along and check me out.
In Indian banks there is always a big queue to get money. First
you fill in a withdrawal slip and give it to one of the clerks. The
clerk will then give you a brass token with a number on it that indi-
cates where you are in the queue.
This doctor knocked on my door and said that he had come to
find out if I could really show him God. I invited him in, but he
didn't accept because he said that he didn't have much time.
He showed me his token and said, 'I have just come from the
bank. They are processing my papers there now. I am number
thirteen in the queue. I can only stay here for as long as it takes
twelve other people to collect their money.'
I said to him, 'Can't you come back after you have collected
your money? I can't show you God if you spend all your time
wondering about what is happening in the bank.'
'No,' he replied, 'I can't come later. I have been invited by the
Governor of the state to sing some bhajans at his house.'

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I sent him away, saying, 'I am also a busy man. I don't have
time to show you God if you don't have time to stay here.'
This was not an isolated case. Other people have come,
wanting instant results, at a time of their own choosing.
One boy I knew was studying medicine here in Lucknow. He
was a third-year student on an M.B.B.S. course. He had told me
several times that he wanted to see God.
I told him, 'First finish your education. Afterwards, when you
no longer have exams to study for, I will show you God.'
I didn't want him to become too obsessed with spiritual
matters while he was still at college because I knew it might
adversely affect his career.
Then I thought, 'After he qualifies he will be busy with his
patients, his parents. Why delay?'
So I said to him, 'I will show you Ram. I will show you God,
and I will do it tomorrow. Come in the morning at 6 a.m. and I
promise that I will show you God.'
The following morning he arrived at the correct time. I asked
him to come in and close the door behind him because I didn't
want anyone to disturb us. As he was closing the door, someone on
the street called his name.
This boy said, 'That sounds like my brother. It must be some-
thing important for him to follow me here. I have to go out and find
out what he wants.'
I heard the conversation that ensued.
'Some people from out of town have come to see us about a
marriage proposal. They are waiting at our house. You have to be
there because we want you to be involved in the discussions. You
cannot stay here. We are all waiting for you so that we can start the
negotiations.'
Here in India the family of a bride will go to the family of the
groom to begin discussions about a marriage. The bride herself
will not come. The parents come and negotiate on her behalf. If the
discussions are fruitful, the bridegroom's family will make an
appointment to go and inspect the bride.
The boy said to me, 'I have to go now. This is important
family business that cannot start without me. I will come back as
soon as I can.'

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I waited the whole morning for him but he didn't come back
till after lunch.
'I'm sorry I'm late,' he said, 'but the people stayed all
morning. Then, because it was midday, we had to give them lunch.
Now they have gone, we can carry on with our business.'
I refused to let him in. I stood in the doorway and said, 'One
chance was given to you. You will not get another. You could have
postponed your discussions for a few hours if you were really
serious about seeing God. And even if they had left without seeing
you, there are plenty of other brides looking for husbands. I offered
you your chance at 6 a.m. this morning, but you rejected it because
you thought that your family affairs were more important than
seeing God. You will not get another chance.'
When your one chance comes, you have to take it, whatever
the cost may be. You may not get another chance.

Earlier in this chapter I began a sequence of Krishna stories

with an account of how Papaji made Rameshwar Mishra 's
daughter see God in his bedroom. I will continue with some other
stories about her that demonstrate the intense bhakti she had
towards Papaji:

I was in the South, working, when I received a message from

Rameshwar Mishra, saying that he had got a month's leave, and
that he wanted to spend some time with me in Varanasi. I also took
some leave and went to see him.
After spending a few days with him and his family, I said,
'Since I am in the North, I should go to Lucknow to see my wife
and children. Please excuse me, but I cannot spend all my time
here.'
Mr Mishra persuaded me to stay a little longer by saying,
'Next Sunday we are all going back to Allahabad. That is on the
way to Lucknow. If you come with us, you can stay at our house
and then go to Lucknow later.'
I agreed and we spent a few extra days together in Allahabad.
By that time Mr Mishra's daughter had become so attached to me,
she insisted on sleeping in my room. When she heard that I was

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planning to travel to Lucknow without her, she found a rope and

tied my feet to the bed so that I wouldn't be able to leave. On
another occasion, when I was carrying her on my shoulders, she bit
me and laughed.
Her family was shocked and tried to punish her, but she said,
'You don't understand. I love him so much I sometimes need to
taste him. When the urge comes, I can't stop myself. I have to bite
him.'
Every morning during my stay there I took her to the Triveni,
the confluence of the Ganga, the Yamuna and the Saraswati rivers.
After taking a bath there, she would smear mud all over her body
and sit in meditation for hours at a time. At 1 p.m. I would have to
remind her about lunch and take her back to the house. Had I not
done so, she would have sat there all day.

This next incident took place a little before the one Papaji has
just mentioned:

During one of my stays with Ramesh war Mishra, he asked me

if I would be willing to meet some academics from Allahabad
University. Mr Mishra himself was a graduate of this university
and he wanted to introduce me to some of the people he still knew
there. I agreed and a meeting was fixed for the following Sunday.
The main guest was to be Professor Roy, the head of the philos-
ophy department. He had intimated to us in advance that he would
be bringing about ten of his research students with him. They all
arrived at about 5 p.m. and arrangements were made for them to be
seated and offered drinks.
Whenever I visited this house Mr Mishra's eight-year-old
daughter always wanted to be by my side, so she sat near me
during the meeting. The professor began asking me questions,
prefacing them with the remark that he had not received satisfac-
tory answers to any of these queries when he had taken them to an
ashram in Allahabad where the Sankaracharya was staying.
I wanted to answer him in English because he did not speak
Hindi very well, but this girl ordered me to speak in Hindi because
she didn't understand English at all. The professor asked her father

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to send her out of the room because she was disturbing him and
preventing him from talking to me, but she insisted on staying near
me, declaring that under no circumstances would she leave.
I didn't want either the girl or the professor to be upset, so I
told Professor Roy, 'This girl will answer your questions once I
have spoken them in Hindi.'
She looked at me and protested: 'But I don't speak English!'
I looked at her and said authoritatively, 'When you speak, you
will speak English'.
Professor Roy began to ask his questions in English. I
answered in Hindi to keep the girl happy. Then, much to
everyone's amazement, she began to translate them into perfect
English. She was articulate, eloquent, and well-spoken. Professor
Roy was frequently using the word 'knowledge' to describe a
particular mental function. The girl in her answers was using the
word 'learning' when she spoke about the same phenomenon. The
professor objected to her use of this word, saying that his word was
more appropriate for the idea he was trying to express. Eventually,
the Oxford Dictionary was consulted and her usage found to be
more accurate.
News of her ability soon spread throughout the town. People
started coming to her because it was said that she could give an
answer to any question.
One sannyasin came to see her and asked, 'Who speaks when
you reply to these questions?'
'My Guruji,' she replied.
'And where does your Guruji abide?' asked the sannyasin.
'In the Heart,' she replied.
'And where is your Heart?' he enquired.
She pointed to my chest and said, 'My Heart is the Heart of
Guruji. When I speak, it is his Heart speaking.'
The sannyasin prostrated before her and said, 'Now I under-
stand what this phenomenon is'.
This girl, knowing nothing of philosophy or English, had
given the learned professor and this sannyasin a practical lesson on
the power of Guru bhakti.
After staying for some time with the Mishras, I left because I
had to go back to Lucknow to see my wife and children.

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Throughout the 1950s Papaji periodically went back to North

India to see his f amity and his old devotees. Because the living
conditions in the mining camps were very primitive, Papaji felt that
his f amity would be better off staying in Lucknow. His children
finished their schooling there, and both later attended Lucknow
University.
Papaji resumed his satsangs on these visits. One, recorded by
Swami Abhishiktananda in the late 1950s and printed in The
Secret of Arunachala, gives a glimpse of his direct, no-nonsense
style of functioning.

He went almost every year to Lucknow to see his family and

also the numerous friends who looked forward to his coming. His
small room was practically always crowded ....
He never indulged his visitors .... He was hardest of all on
those who in his view were misleading people by letting them halt
at the outward practices of religion, though these may be as
comforting for the disciple as they are often profitable for the so-
called guru.
One evening a well-known doctor stopped his car in the
narrow lane that ran past his house.
'They tell me, sir, that you are the possessor of siddhis [spiri-
tual powers]. Is this so? I desire to see God; can you help me to do
this?'
'Why not?' replied Harilal calmly.
'Then ... ?'
'Then, if you have honestly made up your mind, we can see
about it. But I shall request you to think about it first very seri-
ously. This is not a trifling matter, and it may lead you much
further than you suppose.'
'No matter. You need not worry.' Then, with a knowing smile
he added, 'I am quite able to pay for it, you know.'
'Really?' said Harilal. 'In that case, let us put our cards on the
table and talk business.'
'How much do you want?' And as he said this, the visitor took
his cheque book out of his pocket and laid it on the table.
'How much are you ready to pay?' was Harilal's frigid reply.

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'If you were to ask me for one lakh [one hundred thousand],
then I would immediately write you a cheque for it.'
'You could really spend one lakh on this business? Would not
that put you into difficulty? Give the matter a little further thought
before deciding. In round figures, how in fact are you placed?'
The gentleman began to do some sums. Property, house, secu-
rities, bank balances; all together he had at his disposal between
sixty-five and seventy lakhs.
'I see.' said Harilal grimly. 'Are you by chance pulling my
leg? You say that you wish to see God, that this is your supreme
desire, etc. And you are only prepared to give up for this object the
sixty-fifth part of your possessions. You cannot trifle like that with
God! You have made me waste your time and also mine. There is
no point in staying a moment longer. Good night!'

Papaji's job in the Vidyaranya State Forest came to an end

after a couple of years. Having become something of an expert in
setting up and running mining camps in remote places, his
company sent him off to other locations in Karnataka to do similar
work. When I asked Papaji for a list of all the places he had
worked at in the 1950s and '60s, he wrote out the following list for
me:

I had to work at many places for the mining corporation:

at M. G. Camp for iron ore;
at Habegegudda for manganese ore, both in Tumkur
District;
at Chitradurga for manganese and iron ore;
at Haliyal for manganese ore;
at Vajra mines for manganese ore;
at Sringeri for cyanite ore;
at Anmod, Goa, for iron ore;
at Castle Rock, for manganese ore;
at Dharmasthala;
at Kudremukh for iron ore.
The period of work was from 1953 to 1966.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Most of these places are in the northern or western part of

Karnataka.
After Papaji gained more experience in the mining business,
his company put him in charge of several camps. He would travel
from one to the other to supervise the work in each place, and
occasionally check out new areas where his employers were inter-
ested in prospecting or mining. Throughout these years he was
based at Chikmagalur, a small town in western Karnataka. He had
an office there, but spent most of his time on the road, inspecting
mines or arranging ore shipments in the nearby west-coast port of
Mangalore. For some time he was staying with a local family
there, one of whose members, Sri M. Pani, has fond memories of
Papaji 's visits.

Sri Poonjaji stayed for many years as a member of our family

in Chikmagalur. As I was a representative of TVS for their parcel
service, I spent most of the time in their warehouse. I only had the
opportunity to be in Sri Poonjaji's company when we had our
meals together. My wife and my sister-in-law took great delight in
preparing North Indian dishes under Sri Poonjaji's guidance. It was
such good fun, cooking became an entertainment, rather than a
daily chore. We still prepare those dishes even now, and when we
do, we remember the times when they were first prepared by Sri
Poonjaji. He enjoyed the company of my brother's children, all of
whom were under twelve years of age. In his presence none of us
was ever aware of the passage of time.
Visitors would often come to see Sri Poonjaji. Generally they
would sit silently in front of him for hours at a time. He would
rarely speak. Sometimes, if he had no work to do and no one was
visiting, he would go for a long walk on the outskirts of town.
We became so attached to his presence and his company, we
would get bored when he had to go off to Mangalore for days at a
time to arrange ore shipments. He used to send messages back to
us via our lorry drivers who had business there. There would be
great excitement in the house when we would finally get the
message that he was about to return home.
Sometime during this period we decided to look for a new

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house. We were sharing the one we lived in, and we all felt that it
was time to move into a place of our own. During the day we
would look at all the various houses that had come to our attention.
If any of them looked suitable, we would tell Sri Poonjaji in the
evening.
Invariably he would say, 'Show me the house,' and we would
take him off to see it.
Initially, he was very discouraging. He would inspect the
house, but not in the usual way. Instead, he would somehow tune
into the vibrations that had accumulated there from the previous
owners.
'Don't take this one,' he would say. 'The bricks are weeping.
Bad things have happened here. This will not be a good house to
live in.'
He made similar comments outside all of the first few houses
that we took him to. Finally, we found one that met with his
approval.
'This is the place for you!' he called out. 'It's a very good
house. The bricks here are singing "Ram! Ram!" Many homas
[vedic rituals] and bhajans have taken place here. Move into this
house. It has a very good atmosphere.'
One of his jobs was labour welfare. He supervised the living
and working conditions in the mines and went to extraordinary
lengths to ensure that his workers were looked after properly.
Once, on pay day, he walked many miles to the Bababuddin hills
to pay some coolies who were doing some work for him there. He
could have gone the next day, when the rains would have abated,
but that would have meant making the workers wait for their
money. On his return he was suffering from a heavy cold, which
was not surprising. He had spent the whole day walking in the rain.
After a few minutes in our home the cold disappeared and he
became quite normal again.
When I asked him how he had managed to make such a
speedy recovery, he laughed and replied, 'Lord Siva appeared and
smeared vibhuti on my forehead. The moment he touched me, my
cold disappeared.'
Sometimes he seemed to be unmindful of his body and what

231
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

it was doing. I once watched him stuff handfuls of chillies into his
mouth and chew them in an absent-minded way. I marvelled at his
ability to eat like this without burning his mouth. When I
mentioned this to him, he suddenly became aware of what he had
been doing. He spat out the remaining chillies and called for water
to quench the fire in his mouth. Until I reminded him of what he
was doing, he was completely unaware of his body and the burning
sensations that his mouth must have been registering.
It was always fun to be around him. He rarely took anything
seriously, and was always making jokes, but his jokes would often
have a serious message concealed in them. My brother's son, for
example, who was then about five years old, had been hearing the
call to prayer from the local mosque. He picked up the words and
started singing them in the house.
Poonjaji overheard him and said, jokingly, 'You are calling on
the Muslim God, but if he appears, there is going to be trouble.
Your puja room is full of Hindu Gods. If this God you are calling
on suddenly appears in your puja room, a big fight will break out
there. If you want peace in your house, it will be better to stick to
the Gods you already have.'
The Gods were very real to him; they were not just pictures or
idols in a puja room. They would often appear in front of him and
speak. I remember sitting with him one day as he described his
experiences in the Mahalakshmi Temple in Goa and the Mangala
Devi Temple in Mangalore. In each place the Goddess appeared
before him and spoke for several hours.

As Papaji was returning from Mangalore on one of his

regular trips, he had an extraordinary escape from disaster.

I had gone to load a ship at Mangalore harbour. All day long

I was supervising the loading of the ore into the hatches. I had to
be there to make sure that all the ore was loaded and the paperwork
done properly. After the loading of the ship, my company would
receive ninety per cent of the value of the ore in cash. The other ten
per cent would be sent to our bank after an analysis of the ore. I
had to stay behind on that particular day because my director had

232
 MINING MANAGER

specifically asked me to remain there so that I could get the draft

for ninety per cent of the ore as soon as the ship was loaded. He
wanted me to bring the money to him in Bangalore the next day.
The work did not finish till 9 p.m. I had had a long, tiring day
without any rest and without any food. The captain of the ship had
offered me some food but I had refused because it contained meat.
I knew that if I was to get to Bangalore on time, I had to leave
Mangalore at once and drive all night. It was not a job I particu-
larly relished. I was hungry and tired, but I would not be able to eat
or sleep till I had driven several hundred miles through the night.
The road over the Western Ghats rises about 5,000 feet above
sea level. It was a hard road to drive on even during the day
because there were twelve difficult hairpin bends to negotiate. In
those days there was also a danger from the wild elephants that still
roamed the forests. On several occasions these elephants had been
known to attack passing trucks and push them off the road into the
valley below. It was a road on which one had to be especially alert
and attentive.
My immediate goal was an all-night hotel on the far side of
the mountains. I felt that if I could get that far during the night, I
could rest, eat and sleep there for a few hours before carrying on to
Bangalore in the morning.
Soon after I had begun the drive I must have fallen asleep
because the next thing I remember was waking up with my head
on the steering wheel. I felt completely awake, as if I had just had
several hours of good sleep. I looked around to see where I was and
found to my amazement that I was already on the far side of the
mountains. I must have driven all night while I was asleep. I had
negotiated all the twelve hairpin bends without even being aware
that I was driving. When I searched my memory, I could only
remember driving the first few miles from Mangalore.
The hotel I was aiming for was quite close. I went there, had
a couple of cups of coffee and then drove the remaining 100 miles
to Bangalore to deliver the draft to my director. Afterwards, I went
to a hotel, had a shower and tried to go to sleep, but my body didn't
need it. It had had all the sleep it needed during my drive through
the mountains.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Who had driven the jeep? Who had manoeuvered the car
around the hairpin bends? Even in the daytime these were difficult
roads on which to drive. On one side there were mountains; on the
other, deep valleys. And the road itself was only about twenty feet
wide . Today, when I remember this incident, my hair stands on
end. If I had really been asleep, I would have surely died. So who
was driving the jeep?
I have thought about this incident many times. The only
answer I can think of is that I survived through grace. Some power
looked after me that night because I was destined to live. I was
destined to be an agent of that power, so I was not allowed to die.
I survived because that power needed this body to do its work.

Another incident, in which Papaji s car actually did have an

accident, caused him far more trouble.

Once I was travelling in my jeep from the Vajra Mine to

Chikmagalur when a girl of about thirteen suddenly ran across the
road. There was no time to take evasive action. My driver ran
straight into her and killed her. The local villagers came running
towards us with clubs in their hands. It looked as if they wanted to
kill my driver, so I told him to drive on to avoid the mob. At the
next town we came to I reported the accident to the local police.
The dead girl's family also came to the police station and said that
my driver had deliberately run their daughter down. The police
believed their version, arrested my driver and locked him up in the
local jail. All the villagers came to the jail to wail over the dead girl
and to add their complaints to all the ones the police had already
received. The police took me back to the site of the accident and
wrote down everyone's testimony. On the basis of these reports an
F.I.R. [first information report] was lodged. The police officer in
charge confiscated my jeep and told me that he would keep my
driver in custody until the case came to court.
I knew my driver was not to blame, so at the first opportunity
I signed a Rs 15,000 bail bond to get him out of jail. I also had to
give an undertaking that I would produce him in court on the day
of the trial or pay Rs 15,000.

234
 MINING MANAGER

I ._ I

, .,,, ..l I
Andhra
Karnataka I
Pradesh
,... The Habegegudda
I
.~e'<.
and M.G. mines
~ I mentioned on page
Castle Rock s-0- 229 were in Tumkur
Goa e • ?>-'O~ro: District. The Vajra
Haliyal ~'V~ mine was in Chitradurga
District. None of these
, places had nearby towns
Chitradurga, .. , ,, that are big enough to
District ; • .. ' ,... appear on a map.
N S . . Tumkur, .. ..,
W❖E r~1gen
./
District
e chikmagalur
',
, ..
Bangalore•
• Kudremukh • , ' , - - - _(Madras
Mangalore 1 • Dharmasthala , ,'''<" , _ .,,,'
.
: Tiruvannamalai
', .. , Mysoree ".. , •
~ ' -,, ,, I Tirukoilur •
yf&_ ,.. ,- - - -
100 km
~Q)i
: : ' ..., Tamil Nadu

The driver, who was afraid that he might be sent to jail for
years if he were convicted, ran off to his family in Kerala and
didn't appear on the scheduled day of the court case. I had engaged
a lawyer called Ramdas Iyengar who persuaded the judge to give
me time to bring the driver to court. The judge gave me seven days
to produce the absconding defendant.
I immediately sent a man to his house in Kerala to bring him
back for the court case, but he couldn't be found. His wife claimed
t?at she had not seen him for more than a year. The man was
probably hiding down there, afraid to come back and face the
possibility of going to jail.
I applied for another seven days' extension in order to insti-
tute a more thorough search, and the magistrate was kind enough
to grant it to me. However, he warned me that this was the final
extension.
'If you cannot produce the driver at the next appointed
hearing,' he told me, 'you will have to pay Rs 15,000 to the court.'

235
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

When my second search also failed, I resigned myself to

going back to court and asking for permission to pay off my debt
in installments. My salary at that time was not very high. I hoped
that I would be able to persuade the magistrate to let me pay off my
debt at the rate of not more than Rs 200 per month. As I had a wife
and children to support, I didn't think that I could spare more than
that every month. Even at that rate it would take me years to pay
off the debt.
Ramdas Iyengar told me that he couldn't appear personally
for me on the day of the hearing because he had an appointment
elsewhere, but he handed over the case to someone he said was a
reliable friend of his. He assured me that this man would be able to
persuade the judge to give me an easy installment plan on the debt.
I went to the court on the appointed date but couldn't find my
lawyer anywhere. I searched the building but he wasn't there. I
eventually found out that he had been forced to attend another case
in a different court, and that he hadn't had time to inform me. This
was very annoying. I didn't want to get the judge in a bad mood
because I needed to persuade him to be lenient with me.
Just before my case was due to be heard I encountered another
lawyer who was known to me. He had once called on me in my
house to talk about the difference between bhakti and jnana. I had
cleared up his doubts on that occasion, so I thought that he might
be willing to help me with my problem. I raced up to him and
explained that I urgently needed a lawyer who could persuade the
magistrate to let me pay off my debts in easy installments. My
friend, who was called T. Sitaramaya, agreed to take the case for
Rs 100. I agreed and paid him the amount in advance. I had
brought some money with me because I knew that, whatever
happened, the court would demand some cash from me. I gave Mr
Sitaramaya a hurried synopsis of the case as we went into the court
for the hearing.
When my name was called my lawyer explained to the magis-
trate that he had only been retained a few minutes before and that
he would need a few hours to study the papers. He explained that
the other lawyer I had engaged had failed to appear because he had
been called to attend another case in Mysore. The magistrate

236
 MINING MANAGER

granted his request and the hearing was postponed until later that
day.
During the postponement I told Mr Sitaramaya, 'You must be
very polite to the magistrate. I am not a rich man. Try to convince
him that I can only afford to pay Rs 50 a month. Be very apologetic
because he can fix the rate at any level he likes.'
The lawyer had a brief look at the papers and said that he
could manage the case very successfully.
A few hours later when my name was called, Mr Sitaramaya
stood up to speak, but instead of asking for leniency, he began to
attack the court and the magistrate.
'My client is going to sue you,' he began. 'You have been
unnecessarily harassing him. On several occasions you have forced
him to attend this court. You have no right to summon him here.
You have been wasting his time, so I have advised him to take legal
action against you.'
My spirits sank. With a lawyer like this, I should be lucky if I
ended the day out of jail. Mr Sitaramaya was well-known for his
eccentric behaviour in court, but I never thought that he would
deliberately sabotage a case like this.
He continued: 'I have here the bond which my client signed.
It says that my client will pay Rs 15,000 to the Government of the
Maharaja of Mysore if he fails to produce his driver in court. This
court transacts the business of the Government of India, not the
cases of the Maharaja of Mysore. You have no authority to
summon this man here and no authority to make him pay even a
single pie [one hundredth of a rupee].'
Mr Sitaramaya showed the bond papers to the magistrate and
to the public prosecutor. There was some discussion but at the end
of it they had to agree with him. What had happened was this:
before Independence the district I was in belonged to the Maharaja
of Mysore and was ruled by him. After Independence the state of
Mysore was merged into the newly-independent country of India
and the Maharaja ceased to have any authority there. However,
there was a transitional period during which the new state govern-
ment used the legal stationary of Mysore State because they hadn't
obtained any of their own. During this period the court official

237
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

would cross out 'Maharaj a of Mysore' from the top of the page and
replace it with 'Government of India'. The clerk who had prepared
my bond had forgotten to do it, so my financial undertaking was to
the defunct Mysore State, not to the Government of India.
Because the Mysore State no longer existed, both the magis-
trate and the prosecutor finally agreed that I couldn't be made to
pay the money to anyone. The case was dismissed.
When Ramdas, my original lawyer, returned from Mysore, I
told him what had happened. He apologised for not spotting the
same thing himself. If he had appeared in court on my behalf I
would have spent the rest of my working life trying to pay off this
debt.

During his working career in South India Papaji met a few

people who were regarded as great saints. His meeting with the
sadhu near Krishnagiri has already been described. He also had a
brief meeting with Swami Nityananda, whom he had previously
met when he was working in Bombay in the early 1930s. In the
1950s Swami Nityananda was living in northern Kera/a. After one
of his business trips to Mangalore, Papaji went down to northern
Kera/a to see Nityananda again. I have not heard him give an
account of this second meeting, but he has occasionally said that
the swami was highly revered in Kera/a and South Karnataka at
that time, and that many people had his portrait in their homes.
Several people told Papaji that they had become very rich as a
result of receiving the swami's blessings.
Papaji has been more forthcoming about some of the other
meetings he had during this period.

Swami Abhishiktananda had told me about this swami called

Gnanananda who lived in Tirukoilur. That's a town a few miles
away from Tiruvannamalai. Abhishiktananda thought quite highly
of him and even wrote a book about him. On one of our meetings
he suggested that I might be interested in seeing him. Gnanananda
was supposed to be 150 years old, and people who had known him
for fifty or sixty years said that he had not aged at all during that
period. I went to see him and found him to be a fat, jolly, old man,

238
 MINING MANAGER

full of energy and good humour.

'What do you want?' he asked, when I approached him.
'Nothing,' I said. 'I have just come for your darshan. I came
to see you because a friend of mine suggested that I might enjoy
visiting you.'
'Very good,' he said. 'I like people who want nothing. Come
and sit next to me.'
The next person to arrive was a diamond merchant from
Hyderabad, accompanied by his wife. His wife had jewels
dangling from all parts of her body.
'And what do you want?' he enquired.
'We want a son,' he said. 'Can you help us?'
'Of course!' said Gnanananda. He called to his assistant and
said. 'Check the storeroom and see if we have any sons in stock. If
we have any to spare, give one to this couple.'
He was a nice old man who made jokes with everyone. I liked
him very much.
A few years later I met another person who had a reputation
for being a great saint. I was on my way to Bombay to attend to
some shipping business there. Subramania Iyer, a friend of mine
who worked as a Commissioner in the Excise Department in
Bombay, had suggested that I stop off in Pune on the way to meet
his Guru, who was a woman called Amadu Amma. He had told me
some interesting things about her, so I took the address and went
looking for her in Pune. I found her giving satsang in a big upstairs
community hall. Hundreds of people were there. I didn't want to
speak to her; I just wanted to watch what was happening from the
back of the hall.
Subramania had told me that she was a devotee of Shirdi Sai
Baba and that she was somehow a channel for his power and grace.
Judging by the number of people who had come to see her, she was
certainly very popular.
After a few minutes a man came up to me and said, 'Amma
wants to see you. She wants to meet you.'
'I don't think she wants me,' I said. 'I am not one of her
devotees. I am on my way to Bombay to attend to some shipping
business. She must be looking for someone else.'

239
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

'No,' he said. 'She gave a very accurate description of you

and told me where you would be standing. No one else fits the
description.'
I took off my shoes and went up to meet her. She was sitting
on a bench at the front of the hall, greeting people one by one as
they approached her. There was a big picture of Sai Baba on the
wall behind her. She welcomed me and made me sit down on the
bench next to her.
She told one of her attendants, 'This man has the same kind
of power that I do, but even more. I felt it as soon as he walked in
the hall. He must be a great man. Today, everyone can salute him
instead of me.'
I didn't want to sit there and be the centre of attention, but
they forced me to stay. She made all the devotees who approached
her prostrate to me, saying that I was a great soul who had come to
bless her satsang. There didn't seem to be any end to the queue of
people who were waiting to offer their salutations.
After some time I said, 'One of your devotees, Subramania
Iyer, told me about you. I didn't come here with the intention of
staying for a long time. My driver is outside and I have business in
Bombay. I cannot stay here all evening.'
She wouldn't listen to me. I had to greet everyone in her
satsang, one by one. Afterwards she insisted that I have dinner with
her. By the time the meal was over it was almost 1 a.m.
'You can't leave now,' she said. 'It's the middle of the night.
'Sleep here and go on to Bombay tomorrow morning.'
I ended up spending the night at her centre. The following
morning I escaped by telling her that I would come and see her
again after I had finished my shipping business in Bombay. I kept
my promise. On the return journey I picked her up and took her on
a trip to the South. She had been very hospitable to me, so I took a
few days off and showed her Madras and Ramanasramam.
A few years later I asked Subramania what had happened to
her since I had received no news for a long time. He told me that
she had mysteriously disappeared. She had walked into a temple
on the Krishna River and simply vanished. No one ever saw her
again.

240
 MINING MANAGER

In the late 1950s, when I was based in Chikmagalur, I met

another devotee of this woman. He was called Sai Narayan and he
had at one time been her cook. I found him because a friend of
mine had been looking for a miraculous cure for his only son. This
friend, who was a doctor himself, had a son who had a medically
incurable brain problem. The boy was about sixteen years old, but
he was severely retarded. His brain had never really developed. He
only had the intellectual abilities of a small child.
My friend heard about Sai Narayan because he was famous
for being able to materialise objects, in much the same way that
Sathya Sai Baba is supposed to do nowadays. His favourite trick
was to materialise little statues of whatever Hindu god his devotees
worshipped. I went along with my friend, the doctor, to see what
this man was doing.
As we approached him, Sai Narayan said, 'Who is your
favourite god? Who would you like me to produce?'
The people before us had been asking for statues of Ram,
Krishna and Siva, and all of them had been granted their wish. I
wasn't close enough to see if he was cheating or not, but the
devotees who were right in front of him definitely thought that he
was materialising the statues, rather than producing them by a
conjuring trick.
I couldn't see how he was doing it, so I thought I would test
him by asking for a very obscure form of Kali. In that part of the
world, no one worshipped Kali.
He didn't even try to produce it. Instead he asked, 'Wouldn't
you like some other form of god? This is not an auspicious form to
worship.'
I knew then that he must have a secret store somewhere of all
the most popular deities, and that he was producing them one by
one when they were requested.
The doctor introduced me as a spiritual teacher from
Chikmagalur. Sai Narayan invited us to sit with him for a while
because he wanted to tell us about his own teacher.
'She was called Amadu Amma,' he began, 'and she originally
came from Rajamundri in Andhra Pradesh. She used to get taken
over by Shirdi Sai Baba. Whenever she was in that state of being

241
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

possessed by him, she could answer any question that was put to
her. I can show you some photos of her.'
He pulled out a photo album and turned the pages one by one.
One picture caught my attention.
'Who is the man in this picture?' I asked.
'Nobody knows,' he said. 'He was a mysterious visitor to one
of Amma's satsangs in Pune. She recognised him as a great saint
and said he had even more power than she did. She made him sit
next to her and asked all her devotees to prostrate to him.
Afterwards, he disappeared and no one ever saw him again. I heard
a rumour that he used to be in the army, but apart from that I don't
know anything about him.'
'Doesn't the picture remind you of anyone?' I asked,
laughing. 'Perhaps someone you have seen recently.'
Suddenly he realised who I was. He prostrated to me and
apologised for not greeting me properly before.
My friend, meanwhile, was anxious to find out if this swami
could cure his son. Sai Narayan replied very honestly that he had
no healing powers at all, and that he could only manifest statues. I
had my doubts about that particular power as well, but I kept quiet
since we were his guests at the time.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Papaji was giving satsang
to small groups in Chikmagalur. Most of his devotees and friends
there were members of the local business community. One year, on
a festival day, each of them wanted him in his own house at the
same time.

It was the New Year in South India. Not January 1st, as in the
West. In South India, the year starts on a different date. A couple
of days before, I was sitting in my office in Chikmagalur. A coffee
planter, who was a good friend of mine, walked in and invited me
to come to eat with him on New Year's Day. He lived about fifty
miles from my office .
'You have to come,' he said. 'I have invited all my friends. All
the neighbouring planters will be there, along with many of my
relatives. We will expect you at noon. You must promise to come

242
 MINING MANAGER

Loading ore onto a ship in Madras sometime in the

1950s. Papaji is fourth from the left. This is the only photo
I have found of Papaji at work in South India.

to eat with us because we are not going to start eating until you
arrive.'
That is one of the traditions in India. If your Guru is eating a
meal with you, you can't start before he starts. I accepted because
I didn't want to disappoint him.
A little later one of the local college teachers came and invited
me to his house at the same time on the same day.
'We will show you how we do it here in the South,' he said.
'It is not like the celebrations you have in the North. My family
will all be there, along with some of the teachers from the college.
Come at noon. We will all be expecting you.'
I nodded my head. I didn't want to say 'yes' and I didn 't want
to say 'no'. I hoped my nod was sufficiently non-committal, but
my friend took it as a definite 'yes'.
The next to arrive was a friend of mine who owned a fleet of
buses.

243
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

'My wife has sent me to invite you to lunch on New Year's

Day,' he said. 'I am giving a big dinner for all my employees. You
have to come. The meal starts at midday.'
I nodded, and again my nod was interpreted as an acceptance.
Shortly afterwards I had a similar conversation with a man
who owned one of the local hotels. It seemed as if everyone I knew
wanted me in his own home on that day. I didn't like to refuse any
of them, but I knew there would be a problem because all the meals
were scheduled at the same time, and none of the people would
want to eat until I arrived. Although some of the houses were not
close to each other, I thought that I could probably satisfy everyone
by spending a few minutes at each of the four houses.
When the big day came, I found that I couldn't attend any of
the lunches. I was called to Mangalore on urgent business and
spent the day there sorting out some cargo · problems. I had not
expected to be detained in Mangalore so I didn't have a chance to
cancel any of the lunch invitations I had accepted.
On my return I didn't receive any complaints about my
absence so I assumed that somehow news of my sudden departure
for Mangalore had reached all the four people in time. This unex-
pected piece of business seemed to provide me with an acceptable
excuse for not attending any of the celebrations.
A few days later all the four people met at the bank. It was a
small place and the businessmen of the town were always bumping
into each other. The bus owner opened the conversation by saying
Mr Poonja had come for lunch with him on New Year's Day, and
had eaten an enormous meal. This surprised the other three. They
all said that I had turned up at their houses for lunch and eaten with
them.
One of them said, 'My wife fed him a full meal, along with
payasam, fruits and paan'.
Another said, 'The same thing happened at my house. He
must have eaten ten helpings of payasam [a sweet, sticky,
porridge-like dessert].'
This naturally led to a discussion of timing. Each of them
wanted to know what time I had been at the others' houses. They
were all of the opinion that I had visited them at around twelve
noon.

244
 MINING MANAGER

Then one of them said, 'Maybe our memory of the time is

wrong, but how could he eat so much food in the middle of the
day? On a festival day the food is always very heavy, so heavy no
one wants to eat again in the evening. How could he eat four
enormous meals in quick succession in the middle of the day? It is
not possible.'
The coffee planter, Mr Subba Rao, suggested that I might
have been eating in all four places simultaneously.
'Such miracles are possible,' he said. 'I have seen many
unusual things happen around him.'
They all had to accept this theory because there was no other
explanation available. Their houses were some distance apart, and
they were all fairly sure that I had been eating all my meals at
around twelve noon. They asked me how I had done it, but I kept
quiet. I didn't tell them that I had spent the whole day in a different
town, attending to some emergency work.

Papaji himself has no idea how he did it, since he was

unaware of attending any of these functions. Once, though, he did
offer a possible explanation by referring to a similar incident that
had happened several hundred years ago.

There was once a barber who was serving the local king. In
those days barbers used to do massages as well as shaves and
haircuts. The king had had arthritis for many years and it was the
barber's job to go to the palace every morning to shave the king
and massage his knees.
One day, the barber received an unexpected visit from his
Guru. He thought to himself, 'This Guru is my God. I have to stay
at home to serve him. The king may punish me and I may even lose
my job, but today I have to stay at home to serve my Master.'
Later that day, when his Guru had left, the barber went to the
palace to apologise to the king for his absence. He approached the
gates in a state of great agitation because he knew that the king had
the power of life and death over him.
The palace guard said to him, 'Why have you come back? Did
the king send for you again?'

245
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

The barber couldn't understand. He just thought that the guard

was making fun of him. News of the barber's unexpected visit
spread quickly and soon reached the room where the king was
staying.He rushed out to greet the barber and embraced him with
great joy.
'After your visit this morning,' said the king, 'my arthritis has
completely gone. That was the best massage I have ever had. I
wanted to thank you but you slipped away before I had a chance. I
am glad you came back because I want to give you a reward.'
He gave him a bag of gold and said, 'You don't need to come
here again. I don't need any more massages. You can retire and
enjoy the money I am giving you.'
Now, what happened in this case? The barber showed his
loyalty to his Guru by serving him first. In doing so, he knew he
was jeopardising his job and maybe even his life. He didn't care
because serving his Guru was more important than saving his life.
When you have that degree of faith and commitment, miracles can
easily happen. His Guru did nothing, but the barber's faith in his
Master invoked a power that manifested in the king's presence and
cured the latter's painful joints.
These things can happen around a Master, even if he is not
aware of them. I accepted these New Year's Day invitations in
good faith, but circumstances took me elsewhere. The Self mani-
fested as Poonjaji and carried out his obligations in four different
places. But don't ask me how I did it. It had nothing to do with me.

Though Papaji was virtually unknown outside the circle in

which he moved, he did occasionally receive new visitors who had
travelled long distances to see him. One such meeting was with a
Dr James from London. Although Papaji doesn't seem to know
specifically what happened to Dr James during this very brief
encounter, it must have been something remarkable, for the doctor
gave up an obsessive quest and went away happy and contented.
Papaji himself has sometimes said that the major spiritual awak-
enings he has witnessed are the events that make the strongest and
longest -lasting impact on his memory. If this is so, something very
special must have happened to Dr James because this is one of the
stories that Papaji tells very frequently.

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I was visiting the house of a friend of mine who lived just

outside Chikmagalur. He was one of the local coffee planters. A
few of our other friends were sitting with us. As we were talking,
I noticed a taxi draw up in front of the house. A foreign man got
out and came in to join us. He looked about fifty years old.
He introduced himself in the following way: 'My name is
James and I come from London. I was recently in Tokyo where I
was attending an international religious conference. A devotee of a
man called Poonjaji was also there. He told me about this man, and
what I heard from him made me decide that I had to come and meet
him. I have been driving all over South India, looking for him. I
have been to Bangalore, Mysore, Belur and now, finally,
Chikmagalur. Is Mr Poonja here? I wish to speak to him.'
I identified myself and invited him to join us.
Immediately he said, 'May I speak to you and ask a question?'
I told him, 'You have just come a long distance. You are
probably very tired. Why don't you first have a wash? Then you
can come and have a cup of coffee with us.'
A few minutes later he rejoined us and began to tell his story.
'I have been travelling all over the world for the last ten years,
visiting spiritual teachers and asking them questions. I have not
been satisfied with any of the answers that I have been given.
There is one particular question that has been bothering me. I want
to know how an enlightened man behaves. I want to know how he
acts in the world.'
I gave him the answer that I always give when I am asked this
question.
'This question can only arise in the minds of those people who
think that they are unenlightened. For an enlightened man, such a
question will never arise.
'An enlightened man does not follow any code of conduct.
There are no rules and regulations that he has to follow or observe.
His behaviour is determined by the circumstances that he finds
himself in. He reacts like a mirror to the events and the people that
are around him. After enlightenment, there is no person left who
decides that he will or will not abide by any set of rules and regu -
lations. His actions are spontaneous responses to whatever is going

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on around him. He cannot choose to obey or disobey rules, because

that person who does the choosing has ceased to exist. The enlight-
ened man acts without thinking. There are no reasons for anything
he does. His actions are all a response to things that are happening
around him.
'You can also say that he is like an electric light in a room.
The activities in that room all take place in that light, but the light
itself plays no role. The enlightened man is a light that simply
shines. He does not do anything else. He witnesses all the things
that are illumined by the light, but he takes no part in them.'
Mr James was very happy with the reply. He put his palms
together in a gesture of farewell and said that his search for an
answer was over.
'You have given me everything I came to you for,' he said. 'I
don't need to stay any longer. I am now going back to London. I
am completely satisfied with what has happened here today. Thank
you for what you have done for me. I will write down everything
that I experienced in the last ten minutes and post it to you from
Bangalore.'
In those few minutes something very special had obviously
happened to him. There was a happiness in him that had no
connection with getting an answer to his question. He had found
something else. He had spent days travelling all over South India,
looking for me, but after ten minutes in my company he was
willing to leave and go straight back to London. Why? He had
found happiness, a happiness that was not dependent on anything
or anyone. That was why he was able to get up and leave after only
a few minutes in my company. He said he would write and tell me
what had happened, but I never saw him or heard from him again.

A few other foreigners found their way to Papaji during this

period. Since most of them were sent by Swami Abhishiktananda,
the French monk, they tended to be liberal Catholics who were
investigating what Hinduism had to offer. Only one, Enrique
Aguilar, stayed for any length of time.

This man had at one time been a monk in Montserrat, a

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famous Spanish monastery near Barcelona. When I first met him,

he was still wearing the robes of his order. That didn't last long
though. He had been having a lot of problems with his Christian
beliefs and with the policies and doctrines of the church, so he
gave up being a monk. He became very interested in Hinduism,
learned Sanskrit and studied many branches of Indian philosophy.
He came to see me regularly over a period of three years in the
early and mid-1960s.
After a long stay with me in India, the Indian government
wanted him to leave. He couldn't get any more extensions to his
visa. I suggested that he go to Sri Lanka and join a monastery there
because he wanted to meditate in a quiet place. Foreigners who go
to Sri Lanka and become Buddhist monks have no trouble with
food or visas. The government lets them stay for as long as they
like, while the monasteries provide them with free food and
accommodation. It is a very nice arrangement for people who want
to sit and meditate all day. So, he went to Sri Lanka, took a
Buddhist name, joined a monastery, and lived the life of a Buddhist
monk .
Several months later he came back to India on a twenty -day
visa in order to consult me about a personal problem.
'I used to go out begging with the other monks,' he said, 'and
while we were on our rounds I met a Malaysian Muslim girl and
fell in love with her. I want to marry her, but her father will not
give his permission unless I convert to Islam. He will not allow his
daughter to marry anyone who is not a Muslim. The father is an
inspector in the police there. The girl will not do anything without
his consent.'
I knew that he was not really a committed Buddhist. He had
just gone to Sri Lanka to meditate in a quiet place.
'If you are really in love,' I said, 'then marry her. There is no
religion in love. Give up your robes, convert, if that is what you
have to do, marry her and take her back to Spain with you. You can
start a new life there with her. Don't pretend to be a celibate monk
if you are keeping all these desires inside you.'
He didn't like the idea of abandoning the monastic life. He
had been a monk of one sort or another for many years and he was

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quite attached to the lifestyle. However, his love for the girl finally
conquered his desire to dress up in robes and look religious. He
disrobed in a brief ceremony in Sri Lanka, took his wife back to
Spain and made a new life for himself there. Several years later I
went to Spain at his invitation. We went back to his old monastery
and handed back his robes. He went from being a Christian monk
to a Hindu sadhak [spiritual practitioner]; from a Hindu sadhak to
a Buddhist monk; from a Buddhist monk to being a nominal
Muslim with the new name of Mohammad Ali. None of these reli-
gions gave him any real happiness or satisfaction. Nowadays he
lives in Spain and looks after a farm.

At some point in the late 1950s Papaji was driving from a

mine he ran in Shimoga District to Mangalore. On the way he
stopped off at the house of Venkatasubba Rao, which was near
Chikmagalur, to have lunch. Papaji had been driving all morning,
so he decided to have a short nap before he ate since he had to
continue his journey later that day. While he was asleep he had an
extraordinary dream of his last life.

Whenever I had to drive the 200 km journey from Shimoga

District to Mangalore, I would stop in Chikmagalur and have
lunch.
On this particular day Venkatasubba Rao said to me, 'Today
is the thread ceremony of my son. I will wait for the friends and
priests to arrive. In the meantime, please rest. I will inform you
when everything is ready.'
I went to sleep and immediately had a dream about my
previous life. I discovered that I had been a yogi who lived on the
banks of the Tunga River a few miles away from Sringeri. That
place is quite close to Chikmagalur. I must have been quite famous
in that life because I had a big ashram and many devotees. I had
constructed a temple in my ashram in which I had installed a black
stone image of Krishna. My name in that life was Gopala Swami
and the ashram I had built was named after me.
In addition to being a Krishna bhakta, I was an accomplished
yogi. I had mastered the art of nirvikalpa samadhi and could spend

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days immersed in this state. My desire to be in this state as much

as possible eventually brought about my death. I went into
samadhi and stayed in that state for many days. My devotees were
unable to bring me back to my normal waking state. In fact, they
couldn't make me respond in any way. Eventually, they came to
the conclusion that I might have died. One of the local villagers,
who was supposed to be an expert in these matters, announced that
he would make a hole in the top of my head to see if the pranas
had left the body. He took a machete that was used for cutting the
tops off coconuts and broke open my skull. Peering into the hole,
he announced to everyone that I was definitely dead and that I
should be buried. The bodies of saints are buried and not cremated.
I was aware of all this happening, but I couldn't do anything to
prevent it. I was conscious of my surroundings in a distant sort of
way, but I wasn't able to speak or move. The experience I was
having had somehow paralysed my nervous system and all my
sense faculties, making me unable to object to anything they were
doing. I was even aware of these people putting my body into a
samadhi pit and covering me up. When they filled in the hole, I
asphyxiated and died.
This state was similar to the ones I experienced as a child in
this life. After I ignored the mango drink in Lahore, and after I
heard the 'Om shanti' being chanted at my boarding school, I went
into a deep trance-like state in which I could not respond to people
around me, even though I was dimly aware of their presence.
These states may have come to me because I had a strong desire to
enjoy them in my last life. My devotion to Krishna in my last life
also explains why I was so intent on having His darshan in my
present life. As Gopala Swami, I had a great desire to see Krishna.
When I was reborn as Poonjaji that desire came back and
compelled me to spend years looking for an external God. This is
what happens with these old, unfulfilled desires. If they are still
there when you die, you have to be reborn again in a form in which
they can be fulfilled.
There was one other unfulfilled desire that was carried
forward into my present life. Near my ashram there lived a family
who looked after all my coconut trees on contract. They trimmed

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the trees and kept one out of every twenty nuts that they picked.
When I lived in South India in the 1950s I discovered that this
same system was still in operation. The daughter of this family was
a beautiful young girl, about twenty years old. I used to give her
and her family food, saris and money in addition to the coconuts
they earned because I had a strong sexual desire for this girl. I was
an old man at the time, but that didn't stop me having these desires.
These desires continue long after the body can do anything about
them. I didn't act on these impulses because I didn't want to lose
my reputation. I was a famous yogi, and this girl was just a low-
caste worker in my ashram. This girl was reborn in the Punjab and
she eventually became my wife in this life. The desire was there
and it had to be fulfilled.
I first realised who she was when we were living together in
Madras in the 1940s, although at that time I didn't know about the
big ashram I had had in Kamataka. I was initially so shocked by
the discovery that I was living with this low-caste girl from my
past life, I couldn't bring myself to touch her. I didn't even want to
touch her clothes. I had been brought up as an orthodox brahmin
and had been conditioned to avoid contact with outcastes and
lower-caste people. Until the shock wore off, I insisted on having
separate clothes lines for our laundry, and if I accidentally touched
her drying clothes, I would go off and have a bath. I couldn't
explain my strange behaviour to my wife. She was, after all, a
brahmin herself in her present life and she would have been very
upset if I had told her that I was suddenly seeing her as a low-caste
girl from another life. I did tell her years later, but she didn't
believe me.
When I woke up from the dream in Venkatasubba Rao's
house, I called out to him, 'Get a pen and paper quickly. I want to
write down some information. I have just dreamt about my past life
in an ashram near here. I want to write down the details of how to
get there before I forget. I have enough information to find the
place if I ever want to go.'
I told the whole story to Venkatasubba Rao. He was quite
excited by it and wanted to make a trip to this place to see if any
part of my old ashram still remained. We couldn't go that day

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because we both had commitments, but we arranged to go in my

jeep on my next free day.
Several days later we went off to the river to see what we
could find. I knew that I would recognise the ashram if I came
across it, but I was not so sure about the precise way to get there.
I parked the jeep by the bank of the river in the area that I remem-
bered from my dream. We started asking all the people we met if
there were any Krishna temples in the neighbourhood since we
thought that this would be the best way of tracking down the site.
Krishna temples are not common in that part of Karnataka because
most of the people there are Saivites.
Eventually we found a man who said, 'Yes, there is Krishna
temple near here called Gopala Swami Devasthanam. It was aban-
doned long ago. Hardly anyone goes there nowadays.'
We had to cross the river on a raft, propelled by a pole,
because there was no bridge. Then we walked to the place the
farmer had directed us to. As soon as I saw it, I recognised the
temple I had built several hundred years before. Inside was the
same Krishna statue I had installed. There was no other sign of my
old ashram. My samadhi had been washed away by the river and
the coconut trees that I remembered had all disappeared.

Papaji later had visions of other lives he had had. These will
be related in subsequent chapters. Prior to being a yogi in South
India, he had two lives in Europe as a Christian priest. Both of
them were several hundred years ago. His occasional stories about
these past incarnations prompted me to ask him the following
questions.

David: How many lives have you spent actively seeking God or
freedom? What took so long? Did you make any serious mistakes
that held you up?

Papaji: I have seen many past lives. I had one vision by the banks
of the Ganga in which I saw them all, thousands and thousands of
them, from the most primitive creature through to my human
births. But most of those details didn't stay with me when the

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vision ended. However, I still have memories of the last three lives,
and I know what mistakes I committed in each one. I have told you
about my past life in which I had a strong desire for a woman who
lived in my ashram. That desire caused me to be reborn again.

A few years ago Papaji spoke about his last life as a yogi in
South India to a small group of devotees in his house in Indira
Nagar, Lucknow.
Someone then asked, 'After all that tapas in your last life, why
did you need to be reborn again?'
He laughed and said, 'Sex! I went three lifetimes and 700
years without sex. That's far too long for anyone to wait. But even
with all those brahmachari lives, I didn't extinguish the desire. I
was just keeping it repressed. I had to be born as a householder in
my last life to experience it and transcend it. '
Papaji continues with his previous answer:

Many years ago I read a book about the life of the Buddha. He
was travelling in a forest when he was suddenly struck by a severe
headache.
His attendant, Ananda, asked him, 'May I get something from
a nearby village to alleviate your pain?'
The Buddha replied, 'No, Ananda, there is a reason for this
headache. Hundreds of lifetimes ago I was living in a small forest
village. There had been no monsoons for three years. The village
pond had almost dried up. The fish that lived there were flapping
around, gasping for water. Many of them had already died. Some
of the young boys from the village were throwing stones at the
dying fishes and laughing. I was also there, and I too stoned a
dying fish.
'That is why I am now experiencing this headache. The blow
I gave to that fish has come back to me thousands of years later.
Let me experience it. I have to pay this debt.'
This is what happens. In every lifetime we all commit many
mistakes like this, but there is no escaping their consequences.
Sooner or later retribution will come.

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David: What about your lives as a priest? What sadhana were you
doing then?

Papaji: I did not practice any sadhana when I was a Catholic

priest. Sadhana is not prescribed in the Bible. I just went to church
and did what the church authorities told me to do.

David: Did you have any past-life connection with your Master,
Ramana Maharshi?

Papaji: I must have had a very intimate connection with him,

otherwise why did he visit my home town in the Punjab and give
me his address? But I don't know where that connection was made.
It wasn't in those lives that I remember well.
When I was young I fell in love with the Buddha. He became
my first Guru. I adopted the garb of a Buddhist monk, begged for
my food in the streets and even tried to give discourses on
Buddhism in the main square of the town. There must have been
strong Buddhist samskaras for this kind of behaviour to manifest
in a young Hindu boy, but I don't know where they came from. I
don't remember any lives as a Buddhist.

Papaji told the story of his last life as a Krishna bhakta to a

group of devotees in South India in 1987. Afterwards he
commented that most of the devotees who were coming to him in
this life were people who were associated with him in his previous
lives as a yogi and a priest. Of the remainder, some are people
whom he knew decades ago in his present life. I have heard him say
that some of the people in his 1990s Lucknow satsangs were known
to him in their previous lives at Ramanasramam in the 1940s. He
rarely gives details, but he has told a few people what their past-
life relationship with him was.
I asked him about these connections from other lives.

David: You have told several people that you were with them in a
previous life. Do you have past life connections with many of the
people who come to see you, or just a few? Are these connections
easy to see? How do they reveal themselves to you?

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Papaji: Sometimes I see people in visions or dreams and recognise

in which other bodies we have known each other. These visions
can happen anytime. Sometimes information will just appear in my
head that a particular person I have known in some other life is
about to arrive. Soon afterwards they tum up at my door. A new
visitor might walk into my house, but he will not feel like a new
person to me. Though the face may not be familiar, there will be an
inner knowledge that one of my old friends, devotees or associates
has come back to be with me again. My visitors sometimes say that
they have had dreams about me, and they too feel, on their first
visit, that they are in the presence of someone they have known for
a long time.
Once, soon after I had entered the Doon Express to come back
to Lucknow from Hardwar, a person came up to me and prostrated
to me very reverently. I had never seen the man before, but he
seemed to know who I was.
'Have we met before?' I asked .
'No,' he said, 'but I have the strong feeling that you were once
my teacher, that I knew you well in some other life. The feeling is
so strong, I have to prostrate to you.'
As I looked at him, I too felt that I had known him in some
other form, but I couldn't remember where or when it was. He
didn't stay. He got off the train and walked down the platform. I
never saw him again.
If you know how to do it, it is possible to see past lives by
looking deeply into another person's eyes. To me eyes can be very
revealing. They are a filing cabinet, full of information about a
person. If you open a filing cabinet drawer, you see files stacked
one behind the other. If you need information from one of them,
you pull it out and read it. An expert can read the eyes the same
way. There are many layers of information there. You choose the
layer you want, focus on it, and the information is revealed. There
is one layer that contains the information about past lives. If I
really want to know about some past connection, I can look at that
layer and find out, but I do it very rarely because it's like reading
other people's letters without their permission.
A few years ago a girl appeared at my gate in the middle of

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the night and started telling me about my own past lives. She was
in a very hysterical state, but some of the things she said were
remarkably accurate.
She had been staying in the Carlton Hotel in town. At that
time, many of my devotees stayed there when they came to
Lucknow. During the evening she had been smoking ganja, which
put her into a very strange state. In the middle of the night she
became convinced that she was about to die.
She started to scream out, 'I'm dying! I'm dying! Help! Help!
I'm dying!'
Two of my other devotees came to see what was the matter
with her. She was hysterical and kept insisting that she was about
to die. Her limbs felt very cold, so one of them thought that there
might be something to her strange claim. Though it was the middle
of the night, the other two devotees decided to bring her to my
house because they didn't know what else to do with her. There
were no taxis or tempos running at that hour, so they tried to flag
down passing cars. While they were trying to get a lift, the girl
tried to commit suicide by jumping under passing trucks. Each
time she tried, the two boys had to pull her off the road. Eventually,
they found someone who was willing to bring them all the way to
my house, which was about three miles away. They turned up at
my house at about 11.30 p.m. and rattled the latch on my gate.
Shaila, a girl who was staying in my house, went out to see
who it was and what they wanted. She came back and told me that
there was a screaming, hysterical woman at the gate who was
convinced that she was about to die. I got up to see what could be
done with her. I invited her in and tried to calm her down but for a
long time she did nothing except shout and scream. She was quite
abusive at times, but occasionally she would say the most extraor-
dinary things. In one outburst she told me about my past lives, and
what she said was quite correct. She described my last life as a
Krishna bhakta and yogi very well. Sometimes she would cry and
talk about her own past lives. She seemed to have seen many of
them for the first time.
There was a German boy there called Patrick. She told him
about his past lives too, and what she said about him was also

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correct. The ganja she had smoked must have triggered off some-
thing in her brain. For an hour or two she had access to all kinds of
information that is usually well hidden. When the effects of the
drug wore off, I found a tempo for them and sent them back to their
hotel in town.
She didn't appear for a couple of days. I think she was embar-
rassed by what had happened. When she reappeared I welcomed
her back and gave her the name 'Paravani' which means 'supreme
speech'.

As I was going through one of Papaji sold notebooks I discov-

ered that he had made her write a few words about her experience.
This is what she wrote:
2nd September, 1991

I had been pretending that I wanted to be free. The desire was

always here - this desire carried me all through these lives. Enough
is enough. I don't know how I came here. In the evening I was
standing in front of the mirror. I saw my body separated from ME.
The body had different lives. I saw them all and cried. Then I slept
and found my body was very weak. The body got very weak. But
there was NO attachment to the body. NO Mind. NO ego. I am just
seeing what is. This IS.
Everything totally beautiful.
I am grateful to you Papaji.
Paravani

In the previous chapter I briefly mentioned an incident in

which Papaji had a kundalini experience. This is an appropriate
place to tell the full story since it led him to a man who also told
him about his last life.

I read John Woodroffe's book, The Serpent Power, when I

was based in Chikmagalur. One of my workers had a copy, but he
couldn't understand it. I offered to read it so that I could explain
the difficult portions to him. As I was going through it, I had the
experience of a snake being at the base of the spine, at the

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muladhara chakra. I actually heard it hissing there. Then I felt

some energy going up my spine, through all the various chakras. It
went up through the swadishtana, manipura, anahata, vishuddhi
and ajna chakras, and finally on to the sahasrara at the top of the
skull. When it reached the sahasrara, I noticed that my body felt
very light. It felt so light, I had the feeling that my feet were not
touching the ground. This peculiar feeling of not being in contact
with the ground persisted for some time.
Around this time I had been hearing rumours of a strange
healer who had a practice in Mangalore. I came across him when a
friend of mine was diagnosed as having cancer. He went to this
healer, who told him that he should inject some lethal poison into
his arm. The amount he prescribed was more than enough to kill a
patient, but my friend had faith and went ahead with the treatment.
The cancer went away shortly afterwards. Other people had told
me about this man, and each of them had an equally weird story to
relate. The doctor was called Vaidya Padmanabhan, although he
was also known locally as 'the mad siddha'. Siddha is one of the
indigenous forms of South Indian medicine.
I made some enquiries and found out that he only took ten
patients a day. There were ten chairs in his clinic that were
arranged in a line, side by side. During his examinations he would
sit in front of his patients and study them intently. He never asked
them what was wrong, nor did he ever examine their bodies. After
some time he would tell his assistant what medicine to prepare for
each patient. Each patient was given ten doses and was told to take
one dose per day for ten days.
The assistant would say, 'If the medicine works after two or
three days, stop taking it. Throw the rest in the river.'
Though his diagnostic procedures and treatments were
unorthodox, he had a very high success rate. I decided to go and
check him out because I thought that he might be able to do some-
thing about this peculiar weightless feeling that I had. I took my
place on the row of chairs and waited to see what he would
prescribe for me. He looked at me several times but he didn't pass
on any prescription to his assistant. All the other people were dealt
with one by one and sent away. Finally, I was the only person left

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there. He circled me several times with a puzzled look on his face.

Eventually he broke his rule of silence by saying to me, 'I
don't know what you're doing in my clinic. You look like a dead
man. What's a dead man doing in my clinic?'
I made no answer.
Then he said, 'What have you come here for? What's wrong
with you?'
Again I made no reply. Whenever I visit people who claim to
have some kind of psychic power, I never volunteer any informa-
tion at all. I like to see what they can find out themselves, without
receiving any clues or cues from me.
He carried on looking at me intently and after a few more
seconds his puzzled expression slowly faded away and was
replaced by a look of satisfaction.
'You know what your problem is, don't you?' he said.
'No,' I replied, 'You tell me. That's why I came here.'
'You were a yogi in your last life,' he said. 'You used to sit for
many days in meditation. You did a lot of pranayama and you
developed a jvalana, a prana fire in your stomach that burned up
all the food that you didn't digest. You never had to go to the toilet
because this prana fire was burning up all your wastes. This fire
has come back again. You don't go to the bathroom much, do
you?'
I had to admit that he was right. My toilet habits had become
something of a joke in the forest camps where I worked. I could eat
three good meals a day, but weeks could go by before anything
came out of the other end. I was never sick or constipated, I just
never felt an urge to go to the toilet.
We had no flush toilets in the forest. Every morning a bucket
of water would be left outside my hut. I was supposed to take it to
the forest, defecate, clean myself, and then bring back the empty
bucket. But my water bucket would stand untouched for days or
weeks at a time. Some of the workers noticed that I very rarely
used my allocation of water. They saw me eat and refused to
believe that I never needed to eliminate any of the food I ate. Some
of them even used to spy on me in the early morning to see if I was
making secret trips to the forest, but they never caught me because
I never went.

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I had often wondered why my body was like this. It had never
occurred to me that this too might be something that had been
carried forward from another life.
Vaidya Padmanabhan told me, 'Right now, most of your
body's problems are a result of this yogic energy that you created
in your last life, but they will not be permanent. Because you are
not doing these pranayama exercises any more, the unusual side
effects will eventually wear off. After a few years you will go to
the bathroom just as often as everyone else.'
His prediction turned out to be correct. Several years later I
found myself going more and more frequently, and by the 1970s
my body was functioning in the same way as everyone else's.
Vaidya Padmanabhan had not spotted the feeling of weightlessness
that I had originally gone there for, but that too was probably a
yogic side effect. After a few years that problem also went away.

In the 1960s Papaji met another psychic who impressed him.

His son, Surendra, had recently come from Lucknow to
Chikmagalur because Papaji wanted to get him a job in the mining
industry. One Sunday they went together to the Chikmagalur
bazaar to buy vegetables because on that day there was a special
market in which unusual or hard-to-find vegetables could some-
times be bought.

As we were walking towards the market we saw a man on the

footpath. In front of him there was a sign with a painted palm on
it. This indicated that he was a palm reader who was looking for
customers. Underneath the painted hand there was a sign that said,
'Palm -reading , 50 paisa'.
I had a little interest in palmistry so I decided to see how good
he was.
I told Surendra, 'Let's have some fun with this man. You keep
quiet and let me do the talking.'
We went up to the man and asked for a reading.
I told him, 'This boy is an orphan. He has lost his father and
he has no job. He has been very upset by the death of his father.
Now he is by himself, he needs to find a job to support himself.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

When will he be able to get a job, and what kind of work will he
be doing?'
Surendra already had a job in the mining industry, supplying
iron ore to the government. He was quite happy where he was. I
spoke like this just to test the palm reader. I wanted to know if he
really knew how to do his job. Most people like this just listen to
what you say and then embroider likely stories and scenarios
around it. I knew it would take a real expert to discover that every -
thing I had said was wrong.
The man studied Surendra's palm for some time before
announcing, 'This boy's father is not dead. He is ajivanmukta [an
enlightened man] and he has come to the market today to buy
vegetables. He will find him here today. This boy's father is defi-
nitely alive, and he will remain alive until this boy is seventy years
old.'

Whenever Papaji talks about this event, everyone, of course,

wants to know how old Surendra is. He was sixty in December
1996. Papaji has had a lot of fun with this story, telling different
versions to different people. The ages he has given out have varied
from fifty-seven to seventy. For many years fifty-seven was the
favourite number, but as Surendra 's fifty-seventh birthday
approached, the predicted age began to rise until it reached its
current level of seventy. That was the age he selected when he last
told me the story about a year ago.
I asked Surendra if he remembered what the palmist had said
and he replied, 'Of course. I remember every word.'
'So what age did he say?' I enquired.
'I don't want to repeat it,' he replied, 'because I don't want
everyone to have a date like this in his mind.'
'That means it must still be in the future, ' I guessed.
'Yes, ' confirmed Surendra. 'It wasn't a specific date. It was a
period of time, and there is still some time left in the period he
predicted. More than that I'm not going to say. '
Papaji continues with his account:

This was an astonishingly accurate reading, considering the

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fact that I had deliberately misled him into believing that I was
dead. I looked at his eyes. He was not an enlightened man himself,
so he couldn't see what state I was in just by looking at me. He
must have had some siddhi, some psychic power to divine the
truth. I don't think that he suspected that I was Surendra 's father.
The correct words just came to him and he automatically spoke
them.
I was very impressed by the reading. I told Surendra that since
the man had read his palm very well, I wanted to pay him more
than the usual fee. I ended up giving him Rs 10, which was all the
money I had with me at the time. We went home without any
vegetables.
Surendra had his horoscope made by a another pandit. That
man also said that the chart indicated that the boy's father was a
jnani, an enlightened man.
I have met one other palmist who impressed me. I saw him
sitting outside the GPO [General Post Office] in Lucknow in the
1950s. I was walking past the building when I saw him advertising
his services as a palm reader. I had recently come across western
palmistry books by Cheiro and St Germain so I decided to watch
this man for a while to see how he functioned. I wanted to see if he
was capable of making detailed predictions, or whether he would
just give out general advice. I found a spot a few yards away from
him and waited there to see what would happen.
The first man who approached him seemed to be about forty
years of age. He had a briefcase and seemed very well dressed. I
guessed that he was some kind of local businessman.
'How old am I going to be on the day I die?' asked the man,
showing his palm.
When a young and healthy-looking customer comes along
with a query like this, most palmists will study the palm lines and
then say 'seventy' or 'eighty'. Customers like to hear good news.
This palmist surprised me by saying, very confidently, 'You
will die when you are forty -five'.
'You are not correct,' said the customer, 'but it is still a good
reading. I will give you Rs 100 for it instead of the 25 paisa that
you usually take.'

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He paid the money and began to walk down the street. This
was a very mystifying encounter. I had given the Chikmagalur
palmist a big bonus because he had astounded me with his accurate
reading. This man, on the other hand, was giving a big bonus for
what he said was a faulty reading. I was intrigued enough to walk
after him to see what sort of man he was.
I caught up with him and asked him why he had paid so much
for a wrong reading.
'I am destined to die today,' said the man. 'Though I am still
young and fit and healthy, I know that today is the last day of my
life. I am actually thirty-seven years old, but I may have looked
about forty-five to that palmist. He also could see that I had very
little time to live, so in that sense his reading was correct. I gave
him the extra money because he also knew that my time had almost
run out.'
'Why are you so certain?' I asked.
'I was told by an astrologer in Kanpur that today would be the
last day of my life. He said that if I "crossed the river" I might be
able to avoid this fate, so I came to Lucknow for the day to see if
I could avoid my destined death. [The River Ganga flows between
Kanpur and Lucknow.] I don't think it's going to work, though. I
also feel that today is the last day of my life.'
'Where are you staying in Lucknow?' I asked.
'I checked into the Central Hotel in Aminabad last night,' he
replied, 'but I don't want to give the management any trouble. The
door is open, my bag is packed and there is a note attached to it,
saying that all my belongings should be forwarded to my family in
Kanpur if I don 't return to the room. '
He didn 't seem suicidal or depressed. He just had an unshak-
able conviction that the hour of his death had come. We parted
company and I went back to my house in N arhi.
The following day I went to see someone in Aminabad, which
is a Muslim district in old Lucknow. On the way I went to the
Hanuman Temple there because the priest was an old friend of
mine. After we had given each other the usual greetings, he began
to tell me about a visitor he had had the day before .
'Something very strange happened here yesterday,' he began.

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 MINING MANAGER

'A man brought 500 laddus as an offering for Hanuman. I was

surprised because most people only bring ten or fifteen. He asked
me to distribute the laddus as prasad to devotees who came to the
temple that day. He sat on the floor here and watched me give away
the first few laddus. Suddenly, he fell over and collapsed. We went
to get a doctor, but by the time he came the man was dead. He had
seemed perfectly healthy when he walked in, yet within a few
minutes of his arrival he was lying dead on the floor. We didn't
know who he was, so we opened his briefcase to see if he was
carrying any identification with him. Inside were a letter to his
wife, some money and a note addressed to the manager of the
Central Hotel, requesting him to forward all his bags to his wife in
Kanpur.'
When the Central Hotel was mentioned, it occurred to me that
this might be the man I had seen outside the GPO. I described his
clothes and his appearance and the priest agreed that this was the
man who had collapsed and died in his temple the day before.
So, what to say about events like these? There are a few gifted
palmists and astrologers in the world who have some psychic
ability to foresee the future very clearly and accurately. The rest
make a living making educated guesses, based on what they have
learned and read, not what they intuitively see.

At the beginning of this chapter Papaji described the trouble

he had had with a seventeen-year-old girl in Madras. She never
forgot him. In the early 1960s, at a time when her marriage was
failing, she decided to try to track him down to seek his help.

She wrote to Ramanasramam to see if they had a forwarding

address for me. Someone in the office there gave her the address of
my company's headquarters in Bangalore. She left home, paid a
personal visit to my director in his office, and asked him for my
address. He tried to discourage her by telling her that I was staying
in a very inaccessible part of the forest in Kamataka, and that it
would be very difficult to reach me there because there was no
public transport in such a remote place. He also told her that there
were no facilities for single women to stay in the forest. At the time

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

I was working in a very primitive camp in Shimoga District.

When she said that she didn't care how inaccessible it was, or
what facilities there were, he gave her the address and some
general advice on how to get there. She came to see me at once,
managing to find me without too much difficulty. I was very
surprised to discover how determined she had been in her attempt
to find me. She said that she wanted to spend time with me,
because she had a big personal problem, but I had nowhere to
accommodate her in the camp. I eventually found a space for her
in the Haliyal Tourist Bungalow. I offered her some food from our
camp and told her that I would come to visit her in the Tourist
Bungalow sometime after 5 p.m.
This was a dangerous promise to make because I knew that I
was supposed to be on duty at the camp throughout the night. I had
to supervise the workers to ensure that they were working safely. I
knew from other cases I had read in the paper that if there was an
accident during my absence, I could be held responsible. As
manager of the mine, I was solely responsib)e for its safety. If it
could be proved that I had committed an act of criminal negli-
gence, I could have been arrested. I knew that there was a serious
penalty for this offence: a fine of up to Rs 1,000 or imprisonment
for up to five years, depending on the severity of the offence.
She stayed with me for several days. In our first long conver-
sation I discovered that she had run away from her family. She
wanted to move in with me, but I told her that I couldn't start that
kind of relationship with her. I tried to persuade her to go home,
telling her that her continued presence near me would cause a
scandal, as a result of which the company I worked for might
terminate my services. It seemed at first that she was willing to go
because she started to talk about visiting Sri Ramanasramam. She
mentioned that she wanted to take her uncle to the ashram and
show him around. I heaved a sigh of relief when I heard her say
this, but the plan never materialised. A few days later the impasse
was resolved when her uncle tracked her down by enquiring after
her at Sri Ramanasramam. Following the same route that she had
done, he turned up at the minehead a few days after she did. Much
to my relief, he didn't blame me for what had happened. He knew

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the wayward ways of his niece, and also knew that she was the one
who had been running around South India, trying to track me
down. I requested him to take her back, which he was happy to do.
That was the reason he had followed her.
Very reluctantly, she went off with her uncle, but when they
arrived in Madras she decided that she didn't want to stay with him
anymore. Instead, she took off to Hyderabad and within a month
she was pursuing me again. I had by then moved to Mangalore on
the west coast, but she was a very determined young girl and she
had no difficulty in tracking me down. She came by car and
brought with her all her personal jewellery and a large amount of
money.
On her arrival she told me, 'The jewellery, the money and the
car were all given to me at the time of my marriage, so they are
mine to do with as I please. My husband is the manager of a bank
and the son of a judge in Andhra Pradesh. I cannot live with him
any longer. He is having an affair with a woman who is married to
his childhood friend.'
She went on to tell me details of her husband's sexual activi-
ties and proclivities. From what she said, it seemed that his sex life
was even more unorthodox than hers.
'Once we were on a picnic near the Nizam Sagar dam,' she
began. 'There were four of us - my husband, his friend, the
friend's wife and myself. In the evening we all went to a local
restaurant for a meal. The others were drinking whisky, but I didn't
want to join them. Later on, we all went back to our rooms. As I
was walking into my room, someone told me to switch off the
lights and go to sleep. I went into the room and found my
husband's friend lying in my bed.
"'What has happened to my husband?" I asked. I just thought
that there had been some mistake about which room we were
supposed to be in.
'My husband's friend soon disabused me of that particular
notion.
"'He is going to sleep with my wife tonight," he said. "We
have been friends since childhood, and we have just agreed to
spend a night with each other's wife, just for a change."

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

'I knew that they were drunk, but that was still no excuse for
this kind of behaviour. This incident was the last straw. I had not
been happy with this man even before this happened. I have now
decided to leave him. I have already applied for a divorce, but I
must live for six months separately from him before the divorce
can be legally registered by the court. I have decided that from now
on I am going to stay with you permanently. I never want to leave
you. I am going to stay with you for the rest of my life.'
After hearing her story I was even less inclined to get
involved in her affairs than I had been before. I knew that if I took
her in, I would soon have to face the wrath of her husband and his
relations. There wasn't much point in just telling her to go away
because I knew she wouldn't leave me of her own accord and go
back to her family. So, I decided to take her back in person. I took
time off from my job and then told her that I was going to take her
back to her own family. Her father was a rich man who was well
known in Wardha. I thought that he would be the best person to
look after her. I wanted to tell him privately how much his
daughter was troubling me, and ask him to do his best to keep her
away from me in future.

Papaji didn't have much work to do at this time. He had virtu-

ally retired from his job with Poddar and was only staying on in
the South to help Surendra with his work. Since his presence was
not required in the mines any longer, he was able to take a lot of
time off to deal with this problem. More details of this period will
be found at the beginning of the next chapter.

We travelled to his place, but we were not well received there.

Her husband was already there when we arrived because when she
went missing, he at first thought that she might have gone back to
her parents. We walked straight into a big family row.
Her father was shouting at him, demanding to know why he
couldn't keep his wife under control. Since her father didn't want
her back, and since she refused to go back to her husband, a
decision I fully agreed with when I found out what sort of man he
was, we both left Hyderabad and went to Secunderabad. On our

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arrival, I booked her into a hotel room there. I had decided to leave
secretly while she was asleep, travel to Kazipet by bus or by taxi,
and then catch the morning train, the Grand Trunk Express, to
Lucknow.
I executed my plan perfectly, but I didn't manage to shake her
off. Four days later she turned up at my house in Lucknow and sat
outside the door. I wasn't there at the time.
My wife asked her who she was because she hadn't seen her
before, and she replied, 'I am the wife of Poonjaji'. Then she sat
by herself on the road and started to read the Bhagavad Gita.
When I arrived home my wife and family naturally wanted to
know who this strange woman was who was claiming to be my
wife. I told them all about her background, and how she had chased
me all over India. I didn't feel like running away again, nor did I
think that I would be able to send her away, so I asked my wife if
she could stay temporarily with us in the house while I decided
what to do with her.
My wife didn't want her in the house, which was quite under-
standable. When I asked her, 'Where is she going to stay and eat if
we don't look after her?' she replied that this wasn't our business.
My wife said, 'According to you, she still has the money
which she received as a wedding present. If she doesn't want to
support herself on that, she can always go back to her family. It is
not our business to look after her.'
The girl was determined that she was going to spend the rest
of her life with me. Having been denied admittance to my home,
instead of giving up, she sat all day in front of my door. Many of
our neighbours sympathised with her predicament, and several of
them offered her a place in their homes, but she refused all their
offers. She carried on sitting in front of my house, and when people
came to attend my satsangs in the mornings and evenings, she
would stop them before they entered and say, 'If you want
freedom, you have to sacrifice everything to stay with the Guru'.
If they were interested in her story, she would tell them: 'I
have left my husband, my six-month -old son, my house and my
relatives in order to be with my Guru. I have come here to be in the
presence of my Guru. Even if he doesn't speak to me, I don't care.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

I only need to see him. That is enough for me. If I can just catch a
glimpse of him occasionally, I am satisfied.'
Her husband eventually came to know that she was staying in
Lucknow. He had a connection with Justice Srivastava Patel, one
of our Lucknow judges. His uncle, Justice Naidu, had worked with
him at the Allahabad High Court. After her husband had made a
call to Justice Srivastava Patel, an inspector of police came to my
house.
'We have received information,' he said, 'that a lady from
Hyderabad is staying with you. We want to speak with her. Where
is she?'
We went looking for her and found her in her usual place out
on the street.
The inspector told her, 'I have been asked by the
Superintendent of Police to take you into custody. We are going to
take you back to Hyderabad.'
The woman refused to go. She showed the court divorce
papers and said, 'I am not the property of that man any more . I
divorced him a long time ago. He has no claim on me. I can go
where I like and do what I like. And what I like is to stay here with
my Guru.'
The policeman examined her papers and satisfied himself that
what she had told him was true. He went back to his superinten -
dent and told him that she was staying near me of her own free will
and that as a divorcee, her ex-husband and his family had no right
to tell her what she could or could not do.
Soon after this, we had a long talk. She couldn't stay on the
street forever, and I wanted to go off travelling to the Himalayas
without having to spend my time avoiding her. I encouraged her to
go to Sri Ramanasramam and spend her time there in search of
truth. Rather surprisingly, she accepted my advice and shortly
afterwards left to go south. When I had satisfied myself that she
had really left, and that she was not hiding somewhere, waiting to
follow me, I left for Rishikesh.
I heard later that she had taken sannyasa and that after a short
spell at Sri Ramanasramam she had moved on to other places. She
wrote to me several times, telling me where she was and what she
was doing, but I never saw her again.

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 RAMMANDIR

From 1953 to 1964 Papaji worked continuously for Poddar-

Martin Mining and Minerals, the company that had originally
engaged him in Bangalore in 1952. In 1964 Papaji's son Surendra,
by then an M.A. graduate of Lucknow University, came south to
Chikmagalur to learn the mining business from his father. Papaji
managed to get him a job in the Ganesh Mining Company, a rival
enterprise that was very much in competition with Papaji s own
firm. As Papaji began to teach his son the rudiments of the
business, he realised that he was involved in a conflict of interest.
Since he was near to the usual retiring age of fiftyjive, Papaji
decided that he would give up his job with Poddar-Martin so that
he could give advice to Surendra. Poddar-Martin was unwilling to
let him go, so they kept him on in an advisory capacity. Papaji
explained his position in a letter he wrote to Swami
Abhishiktananda in early 1965:

Chikmagalur

Dearest Friend,
Many thanks for your letter dated 16th February, 1965.
I resigned from my job last year. I have arranged for my son to
work with another firm which is new to this line. Therefore I had
to stay here to train up my son in the mining business. My son
Surendra is staying in Mangalore.
As a matter of fact I have no work to do these days.
Once in a week I have to go to the mines and advise the owner
about any useful suggestions that should be carried out there.

Later that year the directors of Poddar-Martin tried to

persuade Papaji that he could work for them in a different part of

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

the country in a place where they were not in competition with the
Ganesh Mining Company. Papaji accepted their proposal and was
posted to one of their divisions which had its headquarters in Goa.
Though he had his office there, Papaji spent a lot of time driving
around northern Karnataka, checking on the mines that his
company ran and looking for new places to begin mining opera-
tions. On one of these trips an extraordinary sequence of events
occurred that opened a new chapter in his life.

I was working for a mining corporation that had posted me to

Panaji in Goa. The company I worked for had received licenses to
prospect for manganese ore in various parts of Karnataka state. It
was one of my jobs to visit these areas. I had to check up on the
prospecting work to see whether it would be commercially viable
to start mines in these areas. On my way back to Panaji after one
of these trips, I saw a signpost at one of the crossroads which read,
'Londa 5 km'. I had never been there before but I suddenly remem-
bered that I had to check out this area for my director to see if there
was a possibility of mining manganese commercially there. My
director wanted a detailed report before he went to the trouble of
officially applying for permission to open a mine there.
I drove there in my jeep and immediately looked for a post
office because I had a letter that I had to write and post urgently. It
was raining very heavily and water was coming in through the roof
of my jeep. I found a post office there, but it was so small it did not
have a place that was protected from the rain where I could write
my letter. I went further along the street until I came to a house that
had a sign advertising a doctor's clinic. There was a board outside
saying 'Narayan Clinic'.
I thought to myself, 'This will be a good place. There will be
a waiting room where I can sit down and write my letter.'
There were no patients inside, so the doctor appeared soon
after I had walked in and sat down. I apologised for my intrusion
and explained that I merely wanted to sit in a dry place because I
had an urgent letter to write. The doctor, who was quite young,
didn't mind my presence there. In fact he even brought me a few
sheets of paper and a pen so I could write my letter.

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 RAMMANDIR

A few minutes later his father came in, looking rather worried.
He told his son, 'Guruji did not arrive at the train station. I
went to meet the Pune Express with twenty other people, but he
wasn't on the train. We all had garlands, but he didn't show up.'
The father's name was Dattatreya Bakre, and he told me he
was the resident doctor in charge of a hospital in Londa. He invited
me to come and eat with them but I felt a little embarrassed to
accept. He and the other devotees were all wearing very fancy silk
dhotis, the kind brahmins wear, whereas I had my mining clothes
on: gum boots, a safety hat and a raincoat. And having just spent a
lot of time outside in the rain, I was also covered with mud and
water. I could see that the doctor was trying to work out who I was,
or rather to which community I belonged. Christians are in the
majority in some parts of Goa and I had intruded on what was
obviously going to be a traditional brahmin ceremony.
To put them more at ease, I explained my dirty and dishev-
elled appearance by saying that I was a brahmin who worked in the
nearby forests for a mining company, and that I had been out in the
rain all day. Dr Bakre said I could take a bath before eating. He
even offered me a clean dhoti to change into.
I accepted his invitation but also told him I could not stay long
as I was expected back at my mining camp at Castle Rock. I had a
2 p.m. appointment there with some of my colleagues.
'That's all right,' he said. 'Just wash your hands and come for
lunch.'
Thinking that he was just offering me lunch to be polite to a
passing stranger, I said, 'You don't have to serve me lunch. If you
just give me some prasad from your puja, that will be enough.'
This was not a possible alternative for him. 'I can't do that,'
he replied. 'I can only give out the prasad after the brahmins have
eaten.'
He and all the other brahmins were wearing sacred threads
over their shoulders; they were bare -chested and had vibhuti
smeared all over their foreheads. I could see that I had stumbled
into a very orthodox gathering, which made me a little self-
conscious. I had declared myself to be a brahmin, but I wasn't
wearing my sacred thread. This might have upset them,

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

particularly since it was a special religious day for them. Since I

wasn't interested in perpetuating traditions of this kind, I had
stopped wearing my own thread a long time before. However, not
wanting to show a lack of respect for their traditional values, I told
Dr Bakre that I would prefer to eat with my shirt on. I didn't want
him to see that I no longer wore a thread.
I entered the hall that had been decorated to receive the guru
who had failed to appear. There was a stage decorated with
buntings of flowers and in front of it the ground had been covered
with intricate coloured patterns. Up till that moment I had been
assuming that I was just going to be an extra guest at their lunch,
but when we reached the central platform, the doctor invited me to
sit on the tiger skin that had been put there for their guru to sit on.
I was astonished. The only thing they knew about me was that I
was a muddied, brahmin miner from a nearby forest, and yet they
wanted me to sit in the place of honour, the place that had been
specially reserved and decorated for their own teacher.
I refused, saying that I was not their teacher and that it would
be disrespectful for me to sit in the place that had been specially
reserved for him. The others backed up the doctor's request. They
all wanted me to sit on the tiger skin.
Eventually, I sat down just to please them, still wondering
why they wanted to show me such deference and respect. I was
expecting a meal to be served to me, but instead of being given
food, a group of about eight women approached me and asked if
they could do pada puja to me. I finally understood why they had
insisted that I sit on the tiger skin: they wanted to adopt me as their
Guru. Included among the women were the wife and daughters of
the doctor. They approached me with a big silver plate and all the
paraphernalia needed for performing an elaborate puja. I didn't
want them to do pada puja to me, not least because I knew my feet
were very dirty on account of all the work I had been doing in the
previous few hours. I told them that I didn't want them to do any
kind of puja to me, but they wouldn't listen to any of my
objections.
I couldn't understand how or why they had elected me to be
their Guru. I had never visited the town before, and no one there

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was known to me in any way. I was not conducting satsangs in the

forest, so there was no way they could have heard that there was a
spiritual teacher working in the mines.
Suddenly a thought appeared in my mind: 'Let me sit quietly
and allow them to do whatever they want to do. Who am I to accept
or reject? I am not my body. Let them carry on. They will be happy
if I just sit here quietly and allow them to perform their puja.'
They went ahead and did their pada puja with great devotion.
When it was over, the women collected the water with which they
had washed my dirty feet and drank it. I was astonished yet again.
Even I would not drink water that had washed my own feet, but
these women were doing it to a complete stranger.
At the end of the ceremony I said my farewells and went out
to my jeep. I didn't want to prolong my stay among these strange
people because I had a meeting to attend in the forest. I sat down
in my jeep and asked my driver to take me back to my camp.
My driver asked, 'What about the other passenger? Where
does he want to go?'
I had not noticed anyone when I got in the jeep, but when I
looked behind me, I saw that the doctor was sitting in the back seat.
He must have got in while I was talking to some of the women.
I thought, 'Maybe he wants a lift to see a patient, or to go to
one of his hospitals'.
He didn't ask me if I could drop him anywhere; he just sat
quietly in the back seat. I told the driver to head back towards the
camp, assuming that the doctor would tell me where he wanted to
get off, or where he wanted to go. He never moved and he never
said anything. Finally, we reached a point where the only possible
destination was the mining camp I was returning to.
I turned to him and said, 'There is nothing ahead of us now
except the mining camp. Where do you want to go? Before I return
I can get my driver to drop you wherever you need to be.'
The doctor replied, 'I am coming with you to your camp. I
want to see where you are living. I need to know where you live
and eat so that I can send food to you. You are our Guru now so we
have to serve you. I know several people who work in the mines
and they all tell me that most of the people who work there are

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

non -vegetarian. You are probably having some trouble getting

vegetarian food. Since I want to send you good vegetarian food
every day, I need to know where to have it delivered.'
At that time I was working in Castle Rock. When we arrived
at my camp I took a bath and asked my cook to set the table for all
the officers who were going to eat there. Then I told him that I
would not be eating with them because I had already eaten in
Londa. Afterwards, I asked the cook to bring some fruits for me
and the doctor to share in the office.
The doctor still wanted to feed me on a regular basis. He
asked me what time he should bring food for me the next day, and
what I would like to eat. I told him again that it wasn't necessary.
'I have my own cook, and he knows how to make good vege-
tarian food. I don't need anyone else to bring me meals. Everything
I need is either here or can be purchased locally.'
The doctor said that his wife and daughters had sent him with
me in the jeep because they wanted to know where I was living.
They had already decided, he said, to send food to me every day
because they wanted to eat the leftovers as prasad.
I couldn't dissuade him because, prior to his tiip with me, his
family had already decided they were going to send me food every
day.
The next day the first offering of food came. It was no small
thing for them to arrange this delivery. My camp was thirty miles
from Londa, so someone had to bring me the food that distance and
then take the remains back for the family to eat. This went on for
a few days. When I saw that the family was determined to keep up
with this unnecessary feeding ritual, I suggested an alternative plan
to them.
'Why don't you find me four or five houses in Londa itself.
The company can pay the rent. I will stay in one of them and my
other staff can use the others. If we are based in Londa itself, it will
not be inconvenient for you to supply me with food like this.'
Dr Bakre arranged all this over the course of the next few
days. I explained my move to my director by saying that if I lived
in Londa I could use the train station there for the ore shipments. I
justified the move by saying that using the railways would be

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cheaper than moving the ore by truck. Within a week we were all
living and working in Londa.
Starting from the day I moved in, the doctor invited me to eat
my evening meal with him every day. In the morning he would
bring me breakfast to my house and leave it there. Sometime later
he constructed a new house some distance from the town and asked
me to move into it and bless it for him. I accepted his invitation and
called the new place 'Ram Mandir'.

From that time onwards Papaji gave satsang regularly in the

Ram Mandir. His reputation was established by word of mouth and
within a short time a new group of devotees had gathered around
him. The fallowing account is by Dr Dattatreya Bak re's nephew,
Subash Tengse. I have included it here because it gives an inter-
esting and detailed picture of daily life around Papaji during this
period.

I first met Sri Poonjaji in 1967. At that time I was only about
seventeen years old. My route to him was a tortuous one which
first took me to the ashram of Sathya Sai Baba. In that year Sai
Baba visited Karwar, my native place, and blessed four people out
of the 5,000 who came to see him by putting his hands on their
heads. I was one of the lucky four. Soon afterwards I decided to run
away from home and go to his ashram at Puttaparthi. I thought that
I would be looked after there if I did some work for them. I got
Rs 50 by selling some cloth that my father had given to me to make
a shirt, and with this amount I left home and set off for his ashram.
Sai Baba was not there when I arrived and no one was willing to
support me in return for work. I soon ran out of money and was
forced to leave. Because I didn't want to go home, I decided
instead to go to Londa, a village in Belgaum District where I had
some other relatives. I had saved no money for my return ticket, so
I had to run the risk of travelling ticketless on my return journey.
At Hubli station I was caught by the ticket inspector. He took me
to his cabin and asked me many questions about my personal life.
When he had ascertained that I had run away from home, he told
me that he would look after me, feed me and give me work on the

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

train. All I had to do was obey his instructions implicitly. He

ordered coffee and iddlies for me and then tried to make me sit on
his lap. I suddenly realised that he was probably a homosexual. I
fled in terror, jumped off the train and immediately boarded
another train that was already moving out of the station. When I
had calmed down a little, I asked someone where it was going and
was delighted to find that I had boarded a train that was going
directly to Londa.
My uncle, Dr Dattatreya Bakre, his son, Dr Narayan Bakre,
my elder sister Sumati and many of my other relatives lived in
Londa. I went straight to their house and was warmly welcomed.
That evening I went with Dr Bakre to the newly-built bungalow
that he had called 'Ram Mandir'. It was there that I encountered
Poonjaji for the first time. In a small room filled with incense
smoke there were several people facing a large man who was
wearing a white kurta and a lungi. No one was speaking and
everyone appeared relaxed. I felt something in the air that I
couldn't immediately recognise. When I finally realised what it
was, I had a sudden shock: it was a tangible feeling of peace, fulfil-
ment and joy. Occasionally questions would be asked and he
would answer them. His moods seemed to change from moment to
moment. Sometimes he would be laughing innocently like a small
child. Then he would suddenly switch to being fierce and aggres-
sive. Nobody was arguing with him. People just listened to his
words and accepted them.
I was dumbfounded by his personality and by the presence in
the room. Something inside me felt, 'This is a complete and perfect
man. I can see no defect in him at all.' His presence was over-
whelming, and everyone there seemed to be in awe of him.
In the days that followed I found out a little about him from
the people who lived nearby. Dr Bakre's elder son, Narayan, told
me that Poonjaji was a disciple of Ramana Maharshi, that he had
recently retired from the mining business, that he had once been in
the army, and so on. But none of the facts I discovered seemed as
impressive as the feeling I got whenever I looked at him or sat in
his presence.
Some of the people around him - Babu Murgod, Indru Baba

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 RAMMANDIR

A recent photo of Ram Mandir, Londa. The two coconut trees

in front of the house were planted by Papaji in the 1960s.

and Keshav Dhume - had formed a company to buy and sell forest
products. The profits were either given to Poonjaji or were spent
on whatever project he recommended.
There were three other boys who seemed to be about my age:
Arvind Tengse, Suresh Dhume and Ajit Tanshikar. We ended up
doing most of the daily chores in and around the Ram Mandir.
Every day we had to pull up water from a well that was about
seventy feet deep. We also had to clean the house and all the
kitchen utensils. In those days Poonjaji would get up at about
5 a.m. and go alone into the jungle. He would not return till about
9 or 10 a.m. At that hour my sister or Mai, Dr Dattatreya Bakre's
wife, would prepare breakfast for him. Sometimes other devotees
would bring food for him to eat. He would take a small portion and
then distribute the rest as prasad. We all felt like children being fed
by a loving father.
By nature I am a lazy person, but when we were in and around
Ram Mandir, we all had to keep busy. Poonjaji wanted us to work
hard, so we all worked hard, partly out of love and respect, and

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

partly, I suspect, because we all feared him a little. Throughout the

day people would come and tell him their stories, and not just local
people. They would come from Karwar, Dharwar, Belgaum and
other places in the neighbouring districts. Sometimes the visitors
would come with domestic problems, sometimes spiritual ones.
Many people came with descriptions of their dreams, their visions
and their profound experiences. Strange and wonderful things
seemed to be happening around him all the time, and there was
always someone waiting to talk about some new experience he or
she had had.
I must confess that after some time I began to be a little
jealous of Poonjaji's lifestyle. He seemed to spend most of the day
relaxing, doing nothing, while everyone else ran around, doing
things for him. I began to resent the work I had to do, thinking that
I was being exploited as an unpaid servant. I thought that my
thoughts and feelings were not being noticed, but nowadays I
realise that Poonjaji was silently watching and checking on us all.
The crooked thoughts in my mind kept me away from him because
I suddenly became aware that I couldn't face him any more. I
actually started avoiding him. My thoughts about him made me
feel guilty, and my guilty conscience kept me away from him.
However, this period didn't last long. Either by Poonjaji's
grace or by his will, the ugly caterpillar that was crawling around
in the dirt at his feet suddenly and instantaneously metamorphosed
into a beautiful butterfly that spread its wings and flew into
freedom. It was like a sudden and unexpected stroke of lightning.
Recalling that moment as I write this twenty -seven years later, my
body starts to tingle.
What happened was something like this . It was an August
evening, about 8.30 p.m. In Londa at that time we all went to bed
between 8.30 and 9 p.m. There were no sounds to be heard, only
the chirping of crickets and a few other night insects. Far away I
heard a train whistling. Poonjaji was sitting in a chair. Arvind, Dr
Narayan's cousin, was seated at his feet, massaging his right ankle.
A small bulb was burning in the ceiling and Poonjaji was sitting
under it in a calm and quiet way. After some time he had a brief
conversation with Arvind. I was about to leave the room when

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Arvind called me and asked me to massage Poonjaji's other foot.

In those days I had the strange idea that massaging Poonjaji was a
very low-grade, menial job, and I resented being asked to do it. I
began in a bored and disinterested way by encircling his ankle with
my hands. My first thought was, 'What a big body he has! Even
with two hands, I cannot completely encircle his leg.' I carried on
with my work with these and other similar worldly thoughts
passing through my mind.
What happened next is beyond anything I can speak about or
even imagine. I can't explain that experience to anyone. In one
moment I was massaging him, but in the next moment I was no
longer aware of either Arvind or Poonjaji, although my mind could
still feel the latter's presence in some way. There was a tingling
sensation in my spine followed by waves and waves of pure joy. A
radiant energy engulfed me and I was floating on an ocean of pure
energy.
Suddenly, there was no more Subash and no more Poonjaji.
Nothing existed except pure happiness and an unbelievably real
feeling of total fulfilment.
In that moment of fulfilment somehow there was the knowl -
edge that this was what my mind had been seeking unsuccessfully
for eons and eons. The impact of this experience on me was so
powerful that even today, whenever I remember it, I instantly drop
into a state of thoughtlessness. No one before or since has given
me a happiness like this, a happiness that was dependent on
nothing material. I didn't have to do anything; I didn't have to
perform anything. This moment of fulfilment arrived by itself,
unasked, and was dependent on nothing and no one.
The period of being unaware of anything except this happi-
ness probably lasted about five minutes. Later on, when I had had
more experience of Poonjaji, I saw other people become immersed
in states like this for hours at a time. But whether it is hours or
minutes is immaterial. What is important is going beyond all expe-
riences, even for a second. Once that has happened , one can never
be the same again.
Though people had been coming to Londa and talking about
their wonderful experiences, it didn't really occur to me that

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

something similar was possible for me. I wasn't looking for an

experience, nor was I doing anything to try and get one. I want to
emphasise that no one needs to do anything to obtain Poonjaji's
grace except come into his presence. There is a palpable radiation
around him that causes those who are exposed to it to drop all their
thoughts and ideas and discover what underlies them. Perhaps a
better analogy would be that he is a tiger who eats the thoughts and
minds of those who come near. One cannot hide, run away or climb
a tree. One can only stand paralysed in his presence until the
moment comes when he pounces and eats you.
After this experience I now see Poonjaji from an entirely
different angle. It is rather like seeing the whole instead of just
some of its parts . I no longer recognise him as a body; instead I see
him as a form of pure love. I am no longer afraid of him; there is
just love, respect and awe.
Poonjaji looked after my material well-being as well as my
spiritual welfare. He noticed that I had a talent for drawing and
suggested to my father that I be sent to a fine arts or commercial
arts school where my talents could be developed. My father had
wanted me to go to medical college, but I disappointed him by
failing my S.S.L.C. [secondary school leaving certificate] exams.
He didn't want to send me to an art school; he wanted me to retake
my exams and pass them with enough marks either to enter a
medical or an engineering college.
When he refused to pay for my education at an art school,
Poonjaji intervened and told him, 'If you don't send him to an art
college yourself, I will take him back to Lucknow with me and
have him admitted to an art school there, even if I have to pay all
his expenses myself' .
My father relented and allowed me to study art, first in
Dharwar and later in Bombay. Nowadays, I am a successful
commercial artist, working in Bombay.
I take no credit for anything I have accomplished in this life.
Whatever has happened to me and whatever I have accomplished
only occurred because of Poonjaji's grace.

Papaji finally retired from Poddar-Martin at the beginning of

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1966. From that time on, he was able to devote all his time to his
new group of devotees in Londa. At about the same time, Dr
Dattatreya Bakre also decided to give up his practice and retire.
The account of what happened next comes from Papaji:

One day I saw some patients standing in front of the Ram

Mandir. It didn't look as if anyone was there to look after them.
I asked Dr Narayan, his son, 'Why hasn't your father come
today to look after these patients? They are all waiting for him.'
'My father has resigned his job,' said Dr Narayan. 'He has
handed over all his duties to his assistant. The assistant will have
to look after all these people now.'
This was a very strange tum of events. I couldn't understand
why he had suddenly chosen to resign. He had no other means of
supporting himself, and the job was not one that gave him a
pension. In none of our conversations had he mentioned that he
was considering retiring.
When I found the doctor later that day, he told me he didn't
want to work any more because he wanted to spend more time with
me. I think that he was expecting that I would stay permanently
with him for the rest of our lives. I also had had a thought that after
my retirement I would stay permanently in Londa.
I had another devotee in the area called Mr Neginhal. He was
one of the local forest officers. Around the time the doctor
resigned, he offered me ten acres of land on the banks of the Kali
River. I accepted the donation, but not for myself. I handed over
the land to the doctor's wife and asked Dr Dattatreya Bakre to
cultivate the land to generate some more income for the family.
Later, I asked the doctor to build a small hut for me on this land
where I could live alone in the forest.
The doctor soon became an enthusiastic farmer. He ploughed
the land, planted coconut trees and cultivated a crop of sugar cane
because there was a sugar mill quite close to his farm.
Before I could move into the hut on Dr Bakre's land I had to
finish up some family business.
I told the doctor, 'I will go back to Lucknow for some time. I
have to arrange the marriages of my son and daughter and make

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

some financial arrangements for my wife. When all this has been
settled, I will be able to leave that household forever. I will have
no more obligations towards them.'

Papaji has mentioned several times in this account that he

occasionally abandoned his family, leaving their welfare to divine
providence. Even though most of his attempts to run away failed,
one should not necessarily jump to the conclusion that he
neglected his children and their development. I have spoken to
both Surendra and Sivani, his two surviving children, and they
both remember him as a kind, loving father who went out of his
way to keep them entertained, provided for, and happy. When they
all lived together in Madras, Papaji would take the whole family to
the beach or to the forest on weekends and holidays. He also occa-
sionally took his children to Ramanasramam so that they could
enjoy the darshan of the Maharshi.
Papaji continued to live with and look after his children in the
five years that he worked in Uttar Pradesh (1947-1952), but when
he went to South India and got a job in the mining industry, his wife
and family stayed in Lucknow because there were no facilities for
families in the forest. Papaji s employer sent Rs 500 to Lucknow
every month from Bangalore, and Papaji himself often made trips
to the north to visit his family and check up on their welfare.
Though Papaji himself was forced to leave school at the age
of sixteen, he worked hard to ensure that his children were well
educated. They were initially handicapped by Papaji 's frequent
changes of address. They began their schooling in Madras where
the teaching language was Tamil. Later, they were sent to school in
Bangalore where the teachers taught in Kannada. Sivani and
Surendra were demoted a class because they had no knowledge of
that language. Papaji later sent them back to Lyalpur with his wife,
but they had more problems with their schooling there. The
medium of instruction in the Punjab was Urdu, and they were
demoted yet again. After Partition they attended school in
Lucknow where the predominant language is Hindi. Despite these
early handicaps, Sivani and Surendra worked hard and both grad-
uated with M.A.s.

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 RAMMANDIR

Right to left, standing: S. G. Neginhal, Baburao Murgod,

I. J. Kamlani, and the brother of S . G. Neginhal.

When Surendra graduated, Papaji brought him to South India

to teach him the rudiments of the mining business. Papaji had
always worked as an employee of a mining company, but Surendra
preferred to work as a private contractor. For four years he did
mining work on contract, only leaving when the price of ore
became unremunerative. In those days the government had a
monopoly on the purchase of ore. Since the government fixed the
price for the ore, and since it controlled all exports, the private
contractors were at the mercy of the civil servants who fixed the
prices. When there was no longer any money to be made in mining,
Surendra came back to Lucknow and, fallowing the footsteps of his
father, became a travelling representative of a company that sold
electrical goods. For many years he travelled extensively all over
Uttar Pradesh, promoting its products. He took early retirement
and recently moved to a newly-constructed house on the outskirts
of Lucknow.
It is the duty of every Hindu father to educate his children and
to marry them off to someone appropriate. In the mid- l 960s Papaji

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

took time off from his work to look for suitable life-partners for his
children. He soon found a groom for Sivani, but the boys parents
were not enthusiastic about the match.
The boy'sfather told Papaji, 'Yourdaughter has an M.A. She
is much too qualified for our family. Because of her educational
background, she will not fit in well with our family. I don't think
that she will be happy with us. '
Papaji had already decided that this was the family he wanted
to marry his daughter into.
He told the man, 'I know that this match is right, and I know
that she will get along very well with all the members of your
family. I am prepared to demonstrate my conviction in a practical
way. Sivani will come and live with you for six months, not as the
wife of your son, but as member of your household. She will do all
the domestic jobs that you would expect your daughter-in-law to
do. If you are not satisfied at the end of this period, you are under
no obligation to go ahead with the marriage. '
The boys father was astounded by this offer. 'No one ever
makes an off er like this. I have never heard of anyone offering their
daughter on these terms. Nobody would ever permit his daughter
to live in another mans house without her first getting married. '
The outrageous offer endeared Papaji to the boy's father.
He continued: 'You are a very unusual man, but I like your
honest, straightforward approach to this business. You must have
broughtup your daughterin a very good way. WhenI first met you,
I was not inclined to consider your off er, but now I have talked to
you and listened to your proposal, I want our family to be joined
to yours. You don't need to send your daughter for a six-month
trial. I will compel my son to marry her. '
The marriage went ahead and the couple settled down in New
Delhi. For many years they ran a photo studio in the southern part
of the city. Sivani 's husband died in 1994, ending a marriage that
had lasted twenty-seven years. On one of her recent visits to
Papaji s house in Lucknow she announced that she had never had
a single quarrel with her husband in all that time.
I will return now to the events of 1966. Before Papaji went to
Lucknow to look for suitable partners for his children, he and Dr

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Papaji with Sivani,

his daughter, at
the Lucknow zoo
in 1957. Sivani
was twenty-two at
the time.

Dattatreya Bakre went on a trip to the Himalayas. Dr Bakre

wanted to go to Devaprayag to perform the shraddha ceremony for
his ancestors, and Papaji agreed to accompany him. The story of
this particular expedition will be told in a later chapter.
Afterwards, Papaji went on to Lucknow and arranged for Surendra
to marry a girl whose family came from Agra. The wedding was
scheduled for the following January. A few days later Dr Bakre,
who had meanwhile returned to Londa, received the following
letter from Papaji:
Lucknow
1st February, 1966

I returned from Prayag today and found your letter .... I have no
plans to take up any job anywhere. I don't know what I have to do
or what I have not to do. I have discharged my body in the winds.
Let the winds take it to the north, south, east and west. I have no
concern whatsoever.
I like some friends like you and others, but only for one reason - I
know that they and I are one. The oneness is playing in all this

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

universe. You, me and the rest - there is nothing separate from

anything else.

Before returning to Londa, Papaji made a brief visit to

Chitrakoot, the place where Ram and Sita spent their years of
exile. A letter he wrote from there at the end of March to Dr
Dattatreya Bakre indicates the esteem he felt for him and his
family:

My dear friend,
I have just arrived from Narhi today. I will spend a week here and
then go on to Ayodhya. I have spoken to Lord Ram and the Mother
of the universe about the devotion you, your son and your wife are
having for Him. He gave a very sweet smile when He heard it.

After his brief pilgrimage, Papaji returned to Londa. Though

he had thought that he would be spending most of his time there,
and had even had a plan to retire in solitude to a little hut on Dr
Dattatreya Bakre 's land, that was not what eventually happened.
He began to make trips and pilgrimages with his devotees and
rarely stayed anywhere, including Londa, for more than a few
weeks at a time. In one of his letters to Dr Dattatreya Bakre (24th
January, 1969) he wrote:

The Divine force is tremendous. It moves me from place to

place, and as a matter of fact I don't like to stay at one place. It is
better if I say that I can't stay at one place for over a month or so.
This is the will of my Lord. I must agree to it. I am not attached to
Lucknow in any way, nor do I have a fascination for any other
place.

In the years that immediately followed his retirement he trav-

elled extensively all over India. Going through his correspondence
for this period I found mentions of visits to Chikmagalur,
Mangalore, Bangalore, Sri Ramanasramam, Pune, Pandharpur,
Dharwar, Bombay, Rishikesh, Badrinath, Chitrakoot, Ayodhya,
Varanasi, Puri, Dakshineshwar, Alandi and Agra. Some of the

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places were visited several times.

The next account is from one of the devotees who travelled
with Papaji during this period. Though he prefers to remain
anonymous, I can say that he is one of the many people who were
attracted to Papaji during the time he was staying in Ram Mandir.

I have met many saints and holy persons in my life, but I have
not met anybody like Master Poonja. I don't think there is anyone
else like him, someone who has this power to awaken others
instantly and show them who they are.
I first met him accidentally, far away from my permanent
address. It was a good time of the year, and I was on a pleasure trip.
The day I met him was the best day of my life. After meeting him,
my entire life, which up till that moment had not been attractive,
was changed into a glorious one through his holy company. I am
now living a life of a free, enlightened man. Many, many thanks to
Masterji.
When I met him on that memorable day, he accepted me as his
devotee. From that time on I stayed at his feet on many occasions.
We travelled together to a lot of places, along with his other
devotees. In those days, there were not many of us around him. We
travelled to the East, the West, the North and the South. Sometimes
we would go to the mountains, sometimes to holy rivers and some-
times to the seashore. Each moment in his company was a divine
experience for me. We laughed wholeheartedly and had a lot of fun
wherever we went. When Masterji laughs, his face looks like a
full-bloomed lotus. He taught us how to laugh and how to maintain
the laughter all the time.
We spent a lot of our time going for long walks and taking
baths in any river that we came across. We even did this when it
was raining heavily. Sometimes we would stay in the jungle, some-
times with rich people and sometimes with people who were very
poor. At all times and in all places there was the same pleasure and
charm in his holy company. Though we stayed in many kinds of
places and with all kinds of social classes, I noticed that he seemed
to be more comfortable and relaxed with simple people. He
himself seemed to prefer an unostentatious and simple lifestyle.

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He never made us feel that he was different from us in any

way, nor did he demand any special treatment. It seemed to me that
he loved and respected his devotees more than his own children
and family members. He loved to stay with us in simple, out-of -
the-way ashrams. Sometimes we lived in wild, forbidding places
that were a good lesson in developing fearlessness.
Sometimes he would pick up a new devotee from the street,
without knowing anything of his background. He or she would
immediately be accorded the same respect and treatment that all
the rest of us were receiving. However, if a new devotee came to
him for grace, he would immediately take steps to strip him of his
position, his qualifications and all his ideas about religion. He
would do this in such a skilful way, the person concerned would
never feel hurt.
He would feed us the most delicious food and always show us
love and respect. We didn't just get spiritual instructions from him .
By following his example, we learned how to live well and how to
keep a sense of humour. Even when he discussed serious spiritual
matters, he would do so in a relaxed, humorous way, without
putting any pressure on the devotees. There was always a feeling
of relaxation and peace around him.
Formal satsangs were irregular and might happen at any time
of the day. They might suddenly happen while we were out
walking, or after tea in the afternoon, or while we were taking a
bath in the Ganga, or even while we were travelling on a bus. The
spontaneity of these satsangs was their best feature. Sometimes he
even gave us satsang while we slept, for he would often appear in
our dreams and give us instructions or advice. If we ever asked
about it the next day, he would confirm that the advice was correct.
Experiences of the divine would also come irregularly and at
the strangest times. Some devotees would get them while walking,
some while bathing, others while eating, and so on. We all experi-
enced great pleasure and happiness in these moments. When
Masterji saw that one of us was having or had had a direct experi-
ence, his face would light up with joy.
Once Masterji had taken someone under his wing, he would
assume full responsibility for him or her. During my many stays

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with him I cannot recollect a single accident or mishap. Even in the

most extreme climatic conditions - heavy rain or extremes of heat
and cold - no one ever got sick. Somehow, he always used to smell
any difficulties in advance and would change his programme
accordingly to avoid them.
It is my experience that he never imposed anything on his
devotees. He never made them live a particular way or practise any
particular sadhana. On the contrary, he took our burdens away,
relieving us of all the impediments that stood in the way of our
enlightenment. He freed us from all our worries and showed us the
truth of who we are.
Some people would come not for freedom but to be relieved
of their heavy burden of suffering. I have seen him talk to people
who were contemplating suicide and within a few minutes he
would be able to make them happy and carefree. I knew some of
these people personally and I can attest that even now they are still
happy and living normal lives.
What else can I say? Like the philosopher's stone that touches
iron and turns it into gold, Master Poonjaji turned everything
around him into gold until it shone with its own lustre. He removed
the doubts and the dualities from the minds of those who came to
see him and bestowed enlightenment on many. Darkness cannot
exist in the presence of the sun. Similarly, a devotee's ignorance
and his ego would vanish in the company of the Master. The
devotees would then be lit up with their own divine light and
would shine in the world as free men. I know of no other Master
who can bestow this gift on so many people, irrespective of their
background. I consider myself most fortunate to have met him in
this life. I thank him again and again for bestowing his divine grace
onme.

The next account is by Sri B. D. Desai, a resident of Bombay

who worked in the accounts department of the Taj Hotel.

Right from my childhood I always had the faith that all my

actions were being performed by the divine. As my life progressed,
that conviction grew firmer and firmer. I practised all the

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traditional forms of worship to the gods, and I had a particular

passion for the native saints of Maharashtra. I read everything I
could about them.
In the 1960s I had some kind of a dream in which I saw a tall
figure, dressed in saffron clothes, standing by the side of a river. He
looked at me and said, 'I am your benefactor'. The dream stuck in
my mind, although I didn't understand what it was all about.
In the late 1960s I was visiting my brother-in-law in Londa.
He worked as a forest contractor there.
He said, 'One saint has just come to our town. Do you want
to go and visit him?'
'Of course I do,' I replied. 'Let us go straight away.'
We walked about 200 yards down the road and entered the
satsang that Sri Poonjaji was conducting. About five or six people
were sitting in front of him. I remember that Poonjaji had his eyes
closed when I entered. As I sat before him, he opened his eyes and
welcomed me. I studied him carefully and suddenly remembered
that this was the man I had seen in my dream a few years before. I
told him about my dream and added, 'I am sure that you are the
same person'.
He asked me to close my eyes and describe what I saw. I
followed his instructions and reported, 'I am seeing the jungle and
nothing else'. It was a strange answer but it seemed to satisfy him.
'Very good,' he said. 'Very good.' I got the feeling that I had
been accepted by him.
Some of the visitors would occasionally ask questions but I
cannot say that I understood his answers. I couldn't work out what
was being taught, but I knew that it wasn't the traditional form of
Hinduism I had been brought up in. I may add that this was a
common reaction from new people in those days. Poonjaji would
make few concessions to people's background. He would speak
from the absolute point of view, and if people didn't understand
him, that was their problem, not his.
Though I didn't really understand what he was talking about,
I felt an urge to go back again and again. Within a few days I was
spending all my time there. I started doing some personal service
to him and felt my connection growing stronger and stronger.

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When I could postpone my departure no longer, I invited him to

stay in my house whenever he came to Bombay. Much to my
surprise and delight, he accepted my invitation. From then on, for
the next few years, he would always stay at my house for some
time whenever he passed through Bombay.
I started going on trips with him. He liked to travel and
seemed to enjoy my company. I went with him several times to
Rishikesh and Hardwar, and took other trips with him to
Pandharpur, Vaishno Devi Temple in Kashmir, Varanasi and
Chitrakoot. Wherever we were, we would live simply and happily.
He had a habit of going on very long walks almost every day.
It was not uncommon for us to cover twenty or thirty kilometres in
a single walk. One day, when I was accompanied by my eleven-
year -old daughter, we walked for seven hours in almost incessant
rain because Poonjaji wanted to see a place that was associated
with Ram Tirtha, his maternal uncle. None of us got tired, nor did
we catch a cold or suffer in any other way. We could do anything
in his company because we all knew he was protecting us and
looking after us. I must mention one habit of his. Whenever we
encountered running water on our walks, he would always stop for
a bath. He didn't seem able to resist any rivers or streams that came
his way.
One time, when I was staying in Rishikesh with him, I had a
sudden feeling of spiritual inadequacy. I knew very little philos -
ophy and I was not doing any sadhana because he had not told me
to do any. Feeling that I was not trying hard enough, I went out,
bought a copy of Yoga Vasishta and resolved to study it because I
had heard Poonjaji praise it very highly. I showed him the book,
thinking that he would be happy to know that I had decided to read
and study it. Instead, he angrily took it out of my hands, tore it into
pieces and threw it into the Ganga. He initially gave no reason, but
I had the feeling that he was telling me that I didn't need to study
books while I had his company. He confirmed this later when I
took my problem directly to him.
'I don't feel that I am trying hard enough,' I said. 'I have this
feeling that I ought to be doing something, not just sitting around
all day, enjoying your company.'

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'In the presence of the Guru,' he said, 'one doesn't need to do

anything. The presence alone is enough.'
Eventually, I found this to be true. As I spent more and more
time with him, the intellectual understanding I felt I lacked
suddenly became unimportant. My questions and doubts withered
away, being replaced by an effortless peace. I learned to enjoy the
peace that always came in his proximity instead of worrying about
what I should be doing, or whether I was making progress. He
blessed me with thought-free states that are filled with light. They
are now there whether I am with him physically or hundreds of
miles away in Bombay. His divine presence took away my
thoughts, my doubts, my worries and my problems, and I can now
find peace and stillness at will, whenever I close my eyes.
I am eternally grateful for what he has done for me and to me.
He has shown me God and given me peace. What more could I
ever ask for?

Papaji has devotees all over the world, many of whom rarely
get a chance to see him. During the years that he was regularly
travelling the length and breadth of the country, Papaji kept in
touch with many of his devotees by post. He would tell them about
his travels and his meetings, reply to their spiritual queries, ask
about their physical and spiritual welfare, exhort them to greater
spiritual heights and generally offer advice and encouragement in
all areas of their lives. Sri Desai received about 150 letters from
him, mostly in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I include a sequence
of them here because it vividly illustrates the way Papaji dispensed
advice and teachings by post. Some of the older letters are espe -
cially valuable since they contain traditional Hindu teaching
instructions that he rarely recommends nowadays.

22nd December, 1968

Lucknow

Dear Di vine Child,

I have got your letter. It is full of Love, with devotion oozing out
from each word and thought. I have a great trust in you. You have

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Sri B. D. Desai with Papaji, taken in the early 1970s.

all the requirements of a real seeker after Truth. I had to leave

Bombay all of a sudden. In one way it was good because some
young seekers had already arrived from Spain and were waiting for
me. I will camp at Kashi, Chitrakoot and Rishikesh and then go
towards the South. You will be kept informed. But for the present
you are advised to remain in the house and practise for some time
more. The Truth is seated in the Heart of all Beings. Realise this
first in the Heart of your near ones - your wife, your daughter and
your friends. On this path you need the blessings of everyone,
including your wife. If there still remains a trace of misunder-
standing, remove it, because you need your whole mind to be pure,
like clarified butter, so that it can be offered to the Lord. You have
a good wife and a sweet child. Live like a true rishi in the house. I
don't encourage people to give up their positions in life and instead
go off into the jungles. If your seeking is keen, you will have
mahatmas [great beings] at your door. This is the Divine Law. If
there is heat, the fresh breeze comes by itself. Obliterate the

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incoming thoughts and keep still. Witness the Self realising the
SELF. You will feel a bliss you have never felt in all these lives ....

The next letter is a rare example of Papaji giving explicit

instructions on traditional meditation practices. The references to
Narayana, God in the form of Vishnu, are there because all the
people in Sri Desai 's home village were worshippers of this deity.

6th January, 1969

Lucknow

Dear Di vine Child,

I have today received your letter dt. 3rd January, 1969. I am very
happy to read that you are taking up practical aids to reach the
Absolute Narayana. Narayana is seated in all Hearts of all beings.
This Heart is not the one that the English word signifies, the one
that lies on the left and propels blood. The Heart I mean is
'H ridayam '. It is the very being of your body that moves the
physical heart. It is on the right side, two inches to the right of the
median [the breastbone]. With some practice you can visualise it
most clearly. If you can do this even for a quarter of a second, you
will get very happy. Only deep introversion is required. You may
use the name of Narayana while diving into the ocean where
NARAYANA is comfortably resting in a great peace, a great
shanti. You should fix your entire concentration on the Heart and
stay still. You need not repeat vocal chanting because this is
superior. But if you like, you can repeat the name of Narayana with
the tongue, the breath or the mind, even while you are busy with
your work. The navel is not a good centre to focus on. It stirs the
lower instincts and gives agitation of mind. If you can keep still in
your own being, none of the rest is needed. You may write to me
whenever you have to ask anything. I find a practical seeker in you
and wish that you attain the highest attainment in this incarnation
itself.. ..
More Love to you.

Yours in the Self

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18th January, 1969

Lucknow

Dear Divine Child,

I am glad to have your letter.
The target to reach is stillness of mind. When the mind is still, the
enquiries you are making, such as, 'How am I to know that I am
still?' drop away. Where is the 'You' left to feel the stillness? You
feel only subjective happiness and existence - nothing objective.
As long as you remain there, you won't have any idea of time and
the body. It is only when you descend to body consciousness that
you know 'so much time has gone'. It is in body consciousness that
these other queries arise.

Accept my Love
Yours in Self

14th March, 1969

Londa

Beloved Desai Jee,

.. .I am sure you are steadily heading towards the Ideal. You have
the substance to face the Truth and you shall face Him. It is the
coward who flees from God. Make up your mind to see Him in this
very life. There is no greater good nor merit than His attainment,
attaining which everything is attained.
Give more and more attention to your own Self. At critical times
He will not deceive you and run away like others do and have
done. Make him your only friend ....

13th September, 1969

Lucknow

My Beloved Child,
I am extremely overjoyed to go through your letter. As I was
reading, I felt the emotions that were dancing within your heart
while you were writing the letter. I feel repeated happiness each

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time I read that you went to meet Sri Jnaneshwar at Alandi, and
that he blessed you and even gave you his photo. What more do
you require? Did you not hear people shouting in chorus on the
way to Durga Mata Temple, 'She Herself invites devotees to her
place by writing to them'. Similarly, all the saints call their loving
devotees in order to bless them. I am very glad to find the flame of
devotion ablaze in you, even from the time of our first meeting at
Londa. Your recent pilgrimage has surely cleansed your dormant
vasanas, even though you may not be aware of it. If you plant a
seed in the ground and dig it out the following morning, no visible
change can be seen. But even so, inside it tremendous changes are
taking place, changes that will cause the seed to sprout within a
day or two. The company of the saints works in the same way.
Changes may not be apparent, but inside they are taking place.
Sooner or later the company of a saint will cause the ego to be
rooted out. Whether it is sooner or later depends on the eagerness
of the seeker. Mind is neither crooked nor straight, though you say
that it is the former in your letter. But have you seen its crooked-
ness at any time? This is the habit of a man who blames someone
else for his faults. Is it not the same mind which has taken you to
good places and made you associate with good men? Make friends
with it. Regarding Bombay. All places are alike. The idea that
there are good and bad places belongs to the mind ....

Jnaneshwar, the saint mentioned by Papaji in his letter, lived

and taught several hundred years ago in Maharashtra. He started
teaching while he was still a child and wrote a famous commentary
on the Bhagavad Gita that is now known as Jnaneshwari. At the
age of sixteen, when he felt that his teaching mission had been
completed, he had himself walled up in a cave in Alandi, the
village mentioned by Papaji. His devotees claim that he is still
alive there, absorbed in a deep samadhi. During the period of his
life when he was working in Goa, Papaji visited this cave to pay
his respects to Jnaneshwar. This is his report of what happened:

I once went to Alandi in Maharashtra to visit the maha-

samadhi of Jnaneshwar. It is said that he was only sixteen years old

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when he told his two brothers, Nivritinath and Supandeva, and his
sister, Muktabai, that his mission in life was over. He told them that
he was going to enter a cave and remain permanently there. His
sister begged her brother not to end his life this way, but
Jnaneshwar was determined to go ahead with his plan. So, the
cave's entrance was closed forever.
I went to the same cave, wondering if Jnaneshwar could still
be meditating there. As I stood before the sealed entrance I
suddenly had the experience of being inside the cave along with
Jnaneshwar. I saw him sitting there, absorbed in a deep meditative
state. His eyes were closed and his face was radiantly lit up.
I can speak Marathi well, so I can read Jnaneshwari without
needing a translation. On my visit to Alandi I met two scholars, a
Mama Dandekar and a Mr Joshi, who were doing research on the
Jnaneshwari. Some Germans were also with them. They had come
to consult these experts because they were engaged in a German
translation of the book.
Mama Dandekar told me that a few people from Alandi had
reported seeing Jnaneshwar taking a bath in the Indrayani River. I
could believe this. Any person with a pure mind can see, and even
become, whatever he is thinking about. Whatever thoughts he has,
they manifest in front of him.

22nd September, 1969

Lucknow

My beloved Child [Desai],

I am very happy to find that you have an absolutely clear grasp of
the truth. The explanations in your letter of the 19th September
come from the innocent tongue of a child. So, I address you in the
same way. The learned ones who have knowledge of the four
Vedas and other sciences do not qualify themselves to win the
Divine Grace. The Divine wants your child-like Love and your
surrender at his feet. Nothing else. Tukaram was neither learned
nor a good musician, but see how fearlessly he spoke to Lord
Vitthal. In the same way, speak to him as your father. Ask him for
everything that you need and you will be granted not only the three

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universes, but that which is beyond them - liberation from the

cycle of rebirth. Always look at the mind and its acrobatic habits.
If you can do it, you will have freedom now....

The next series of letters begins three years later. By that time
Sri Desai had become an ardent devotee of the Krishna who is
associated with the famous Pandharpur Temple in Maharashtra.
Known as Lord Vitthal, or Lord Panduranga, he is one of the most
widely worshipped forms of Krishna. Sri Desai was ardently
seeking a physical darshan of this deity, a goal which Papaji
encouraged and approved of During this period Papaji usually
began all his letters to Sri Desai with the exclamation, 'Jaya Jaya
Vitthal Panduranga', meaning 'Glory' or 'Victory to Vitthal
Panduranga!'
In the 1990s, when foreigners began to predominate in his
satsangs, Papaji stopped speaking about the path of devotion.
Though he still considers it to be a valid form of sadhana, he has
gone on record as saying that Westerners are not qualified to
follow the traditional path of bhakti because their hearts
have been contaminated by too many worldly desires. In Papaji
Interviews, page 221, he said:

Westerners have already sold their minds and their bodies to

somebody else. In Hinduism, we only offer to God flowers which
have never been smelt. Who has got a heart to offer to God which
has not been smelt by somebody else? How can you offer such a
flower or such a heart to God?

Since Papaji is nowadays reluctant to talk about bhakti and

name-and-form meditation in his public satsangs, these letters are
some of the rare surviving examples of an approach to God that he
was often recommending during the early years of his teaching
career.
In the first letter Papaji is congratulating Sri Desai on having
had a direct experience of Krishna. In most of the others he is
advising him on how to make Krishna appear before him.

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10th August, 1972

Lucknow
Jaya Jaya Vitthal Panduranga
0 my darling,
How much you have pleased me this time. When I watched you at
Vitthal Ashram [Rishikesh] I knew this marvellous day would
soon come. And so has it happened. I loved you even when we first
met each other at Londa. I write all this because I am happy. My
own happiness is making me write. And what else apart from this
could give me happiness? Jaya Jaya Vitthal Panduranga is not a
mantra to be repeated. It has been planted in your Heart's Cavity
by Vitthal himself. You can hear it there yourself, without having
to repeat it. Everything that occurred happened suddenly at the
right time by the grace of Pandharinath [the Lord of Pandharpur].
Now you can see Him staring at you with his hands held on his
hips, with a bewitching yet mischievous soft smile on his face. 0
my dear son, I was very happy to see you, sitting before me,
talking, walking, looking outwards while really remaining intro -
verted, and displaying all the ashta sattva bhavas [eight physical
signs of great devotion such as horripilation, ecstatic tears, etc.]
that appear on the physical body of those who are beloved of
Panduranga. Many people who visit me are talking about you. I
feel happy when I hear people praise you so much. I still feel you
are with me, even physically. Because of my ill health I cannot
properly serve you in a way that satisfies my heart ....

30th October, 1972

Lucknow
Jaya Jaya Vitthal Panduranga
My Beloved Son,
I am very happy to have received the Diwali greetings from you in
your letter of the 28th. Let each one bum a lamp in his Heart to see
the Lord who is waiting there for bhaktas to go near him. It gives
me the greatest happiness to find a man repeating the Divine
Name, and even more bliss do I get when I find a man who can
maintain it, as you say you are doing. I myself feel like becoming
the dust under the shoes of any devotee who says the name of the

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Lord. Vinayak [Prabhu] has a beautiful and simple way of

describing the experience of the Name. He told me, 'The experi-
encing of the Name is the NAME itself'. Don't worry about doing
your work or not doing your work. Both mean the same thing.
Neither 'I am doing' nor 'I am not doing' has any relationship with
I AM. It neither does nor does not do. Don't bother about the
circumstances the Lord has placed you in. Your business is to keep
immersed in His Name and also do the job that has fallen to your
lot. I like the mental dejection you feel while you work. These
thoughts give you more time to remain with the Lord. Remaining
with the Lord is better than wasting one's whole life in useless
work. The Lord seated in your own Heart will guide you. Don't
worry. Love from Mukti, Meera and myself.

13th November, 1972

Jaya Jaya Vitthal Panduranga
My own Indweller,
I am most happy to find you fixed up at the feet of the Lord. Do
not think this way or that way. Allow Lord Pandharinath to
embrace you now. It is His tum now. Do you follow what I mean
or what I say? I ask because I don't find the words to tell you what
I mean. Open your Heart and hear me say,

Look within,
Talk within,
Hear within,
all at the same time, and tell me what it IS.

2nd December, 1972

Lucknow
J aya J aya Vitthal
My noble Son,
I got the money order today and also read about your experiences.
You don't see the Lord because he is too near to you! Who is the
ONE who doesn't see? Everyone is THAT itself, for there is
nothing apart from him to see. It will become clear to you by itself,
of itself. Vinayak always writes very highly of you. He is a very

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wise son of my Lord. On that account I have loved him from the
beginning. He says, 'Desaiji has a great push towards renuncia-
tion'. I am glad that the time has not yet come. Carry on. Don't
take any immediate decision. Renunciation is not the goal. What is
there to renounce? And after you have renounced something, it
will still remain in the world. The things you renounce are not
destroyed. Why worry about the things that are there? When we
look at the face of Panduranga, all else looks as if it is Panduranga.
Desai jee, I am proud of your dashing devotion. Every breath that
comes in and that goes out must sing the name of 'Vitthal! Vitthal!'
Janabai's name just now came into my mind. What did she
renounce? Yet even the cow-dung cakes she made spoke the name
of Vitthal, for everything she touched was Vitthal. The office, the
home and the market should all become the temple of Panduranga.
I hear your pores sing and your hairs stand on end at the sound of
the name, 'Vitthal, Vitthal'. Jaya Jaya Vitthal Panduranga!

3rd December, 1972

Lucknow
Vitthal-Panduranga

'When I see inside, I have not seen him. But at the same time, I do
not see anything else.' 0 my dear friend, I am happy you have
beautifully defined this exalted experience. Now, Who is it that
does not see any thing else? Tum your face still more inside, within
the Inside. Look at and grip HIM tightly, He who is not seeing
anything else. What else is there to see except to see the seer, who
is none other than Panduranga? He is looking at you. You are not
looking at Him. That is why you say that you don't see Him. Now
it is His tum to see you. Keep Quiet. See what happens next. Keep
alert. Look Inside of the Inside.

16th December, 1972

Hardwar
My Dear Son,
On the night between the 14th and 15th, in the early hours, before
I woke up, I saw you, with half-open eyes, standing knee-deep in

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the waters of the Bhima River. Your body was half -bent, was
shining with a copper -red colour, and you were facing the Lord of
Pandhari, who was only smiling and smiling, without saying
anything. Can you now doubt your position? For a long time I saw
you both until I finally shifted to the waking state. The vision was
so clear I had to write to you. But is it a vision, or a fact, or both,
or Beyond? Anyway, it is auspicious ....

2nd October, 1973

Londa

My Beloved Darling of Panduranga,

I am most happy and most fortunate to have you within my Heart.
You have taken a step, that only a rare ONE could take in a
thousand years. It is the sure GRACE of the Lord and the Grace of
all the sages and saints of the past and present. You need not have
too much contact now with persons who have differing views from
yours, nor need you have any correspondence with them. Keep the
Name on the tongue, in the mind and in silence while looking for
the Lord's arrival....

1st December, 1976

Paris
Jaya Jaya Desai Jee

Your letter dated 4th November, addressed to me in Venezuela, has

been redirected to me here in France. You spoke the TRUTH when
you said, 'Master jee, when I looked at my photo in the snap, it
looked like Vitthal'. All along you have been looking at faces that
were not your own face. This is your face. You have done the job.
I am most happy today.
You are free from all fetters. Do not entertain any doubt. Do not
look behind. The Vitthal of Pandharpur has blessed you. HE
entered your Body. This body is Pandharpur and Vitthal Himself is
living in it. There is no more Desai jee. Let Vitthal constantly abide
in His own ABODE. Do not read, write or speak. LET IT
HAPPEN. My dear boy, YOU HAVE DONE THE JOB ....

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14th December, 1977

Hardwar
Jai Jai Vitthal Panduranga
0 my Beloved,
...You sing the name of Lord Panduranga on each breath. What else
is needed? The Name of the Lord and the Lord are inseparable, like
sweetness and sugar candy. The Name is the ship that takes you
safely to the other shore where the Lord abides and eagerly awaits
you with his four hands extended towards you ....

Sri Desai 's young daughter Bharati was also a Krishna

bhakta who wanted to have a direct vision of Him. Papaji encour-
aged her in her endeavours. In an early letter to her father (18th
January, 1969) Papaji wrote:

Yes, I will be happy if dear Bharati writes often about her

experiences in her own hand - no dictation. She is a sweet child. A
girl of her age who wanted to see Krishna came into contact with
me in January, 1968, and in a month's time she could play with
Krishna, eat with Krishna, talk with Krishna as if He were one of
her other playmates. Children have no ego barriers, therefore they
get at their Divine Friend almost immediately ....

The following three letters were addressed to Sri Desai 's

daughter:

5th January, 1969

Lucknow

My dear Divine Child,

I am very happy to have received your letter dt. 1st Jan. You love
Krishna, therefore I love you. Krishna is always living near you,
but as you know He is a mischievous boy. He likes to play hide and
seek with his gopikas [female devotees of Krishna]. ... The Divine
is already looking after you. He is pushing you to love Him. Next
time when I go to Bombay, I will see you ....

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Lucknow
26th June, 1971

Dear Daughter,
I was very happy to read your letter. It is good that you remember
me and Meera and Ganga, with whom you have spent about
twenty -two days. Yes, surely Krishna will come to your room and
talk to you and eat with you and play table tennis with you. He is
hiding within your heart, waiting for you to call him. If you are
always calling on him, he will come. He is very naughty, just like
you. You will love him the most. Meera is seeing him always, and
so can you ....

Meera, who has been mentioned several times in these letters,

was a Belgian devotee. Her story will appear in later chapters.

3rd May, 1973

Dear Bharati,
Jaya Sita Ram. I am very happy to have received your letter, for it
gives me such a vibration of bhakti. It fills my Heart with the
nectar of devotion. Surely, my dear sweet child, the Lord has
blessed you, therefore you have love for Him. The Lord stands just
behind you, playing hide and seek with you. Look at Him. Again
look at Him and you shall find Him. Then look again. Now He
stands in front of you. Open your eyes and see Him. Close your
eyes and see Him. My dear child, have no doubt that He is there ....
When we meet again we will play with Him together. Your father
is already playing with the Lord. You have to keep his company.
You are very lucky to have become his daughter.
Chant His name when you are waking and when you are
sleeping. Hear the melody of His flute. Look at His beautiful face.
Touch His feet and smell the perfume of His garlands. Always
keep busy with thoughts of Him. When you are eating, think that
He is eating. When you talk, think that He is talking. When you
walk, think that He is walking. When you sleep, think that He is
sleeping.

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Bathing in the Ganga at Rishikesh or Hardwar in the early

1970s. Right to left: B. D. Desai; Bharati, his daughter;
Papaji; Anakutty, a devotee from Kerala; and Meera, a
devotee from Belgium .

Sri Desai 's quest for a vision or darshan of Lord Panduranga

was a long and arduous one. However, when Papaji visited
Pandharpur with the intention of having darshan in the main
temple there, he had an immediate encounter with him. This is
Papaji s account of what happened:

I was working in Goa at the time. Many people were going to

Pandharpur on the Asadhi Ekadasi festival, walking the hundred
miles from Alandi to Pandharpur or travelling by bullock cart with
their luggage. I travelled by train from Miraj to Pandharpur. At the
bus stand I asked a porter to take me to any nearby dharamsala
[guest house]. The manager of the first dharamsala I was taken to
explained that there were no rooms available anywhere on account
of the festival, but he did offer to give me a box to keep my
luggage in. I locked the box and went out to look for the temple.
I wanted to have darshan of the deity, but one of the priests of

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the temple told me that there was an enormous serpentine queue of

devotees waiting to get in. It was so long, some people had been
standing in it for four days. It was not normally that long. These
big queues only materialised on big festival days.
I didn't have time to wait because I was only paying a brief
visit to the town. I told the priest that I couldn't wait in line because
I didn't have enough time.
'Well,' he said, 'if you can't wait today, you will have to come
back on another day when you have more time.'
I decided instead to go and have a look at the rest of the
temple. First, though, I thought that I should have a bath in the
River Bhima. I made my way down to its banks and found thou -
sands of people bathing there. There were so many people, I
couldn't even push myself through the crowd to reach the edge of
the water. From the place I was standing, the water looked dirty
and muddy. I changed my mind about attempting to have a bath
there and instead sat on a gravestone that was situated some way
back from the crowds.
A man who looked like a brahmin approached me and asked
if I had gone to the temple to have the darshan of Pandharinath
Vitthal.
I replied, 'I don't have enough time. The queue is very long.
I am only here for a short time. I will come back and see Vitthal
another time when there are fewer people.'
The brahmin said, 'I am a priest in the temple. I can arrange
for you to have darshan without standing in the line. There is
another entrance to the temple which we use on special occasions.
I can take you in through that gateway.'
I followed him back to the temple. We went to the rear of the
compound and he took me in through an entrance that I had not
seen before. From there he brought me into the inner sanctum and
allowed me to stand in front of the idols of Vitthal and Rukmini for
a period of about five minutes. He also gave me prasad. While I
was staring at the idols, the priest disappeared. On my way out I
looked for him because I wanted to thank him for letting me in, but
I couldn't see him anywhere. I also wanted to give him dakshina
[a monetary offering for the services he had rendered].

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I went back to the dharamsala where I had left my bags.

While I was there I met another man who said he was a priest of
the temple. I told him that I had come to the town for a brief visit
just to have darshan of the deities.
The priest said, 'If that is all the time you have, you won't be
able to get in. Some people have been waiting in the queue for
days.'
'I know,' I replied. 'I found that out for myself this morning.
But after I had given up any hope of getting in, I met another priest
from the temple who was kind enough to take me in through the
back door. I have already had darshan and received prasad. '
'That's not possible,' said the priest. 'He must have taken you
to a different temple. There are many temples in this town. Was the
entrance on the river side? Was there a long line of devotees
waiting to go in?'
'Yes,' I said, 'it was the same temple, but I didn't go in the
front entrance. The priest took me in through the back door. It was
the main temple, the one where everyone is queueing up.'
The priest still refused to accept that I had somehow got in
ahead of everyone else.
'It cannot be the same temple,' he said, 'because there is no
rear entrance to this temple. You must have been taken to another
one. At the back of this temple there is a continuous row of shops
selling coconuts, fruits and flowers. Nothing else.'
I offered to show him the door through which I had entered
the temple. We went back to the temple together and I found that
the layout was as he had indicated: there was a row of shops, which
I hadn't noticed before, with no gateway or entrance in sight.
I wasn't prepared to give up my claim. 'I definitely saw the
deities in this temple,' I said. 'Less than an hour ago I was standing
in front of them.'
'What did they look like?' asked the priest. He thought that if
I gave a description, he would be able to tell me which of the other
temples I had been to.
I described what I had seen and told him that I had been
standing in front of the statues by myself for a period of about five
minutes.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

My description corresponded to the statues of Lord

Panduranga and Rukmini that were in the temple. The priest had to
accept that I had seen them, but he couldn't understand how I had
been able to stand there by myself for five minutes.
'There is a continuous line of pilgrims moving through the
shrine,' he said. 'No one can stand in front of them for five minutes
by himself. It is just not possible. If anyone tries to stay there, the
temple guards move him along. On big festival days like today, the
darshan is a walking one. No one is allowed even to stop, much
less be there by himself for five minutes.'
I told him the whole story of what had happened to me that
day. When I got to the part about being givenprasad, he asked me
what I had done with it. I still had some left, so I showed it to him.
It was this prasad that finally convinced him that my story was
genuine. It was a special kind of prasad that was only being given
out in the temple on that particular day. The priest recognised it and
finally had to admit that I had indeed had a private darshan in the
temple.
We returned to the dharamsala because my bags were still
there. I offered him some money because he had gone out of his
way to take me to the temple, but he refused to accept it.
'I won't take any money from you,' he said, 'because today
the Lord himself has shown you his own temple. A miracle has
happened here today. I cannot accept any money from you after
what has happened. This is not the first time that something like
this has happened. There is a similar story which I can tell you.
'A long time ago there used to be woman saint here called
Janabai. Lord Vitthal went to her house because he wanted to bring
her to the temple. She couldn't come herself, even though she
wanted to, because her mother-in -law would not give her
permission.
'One day she begged her mother -in-law, "Today is the festival
of Asadhi Ekadasi. Please let me go to the temple just for a little
while. I will come back as quickly as I can."
'Her mother -in-law responded by locking her in her room .
'The Lord knew of her burn ing desire to visit the temple, so
he came himself to her house. He opened the lock and released

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Janabai. As they were leaving, Lord Panduranga asked her to lock

the door from the outside so it would look as if she were still in her
room.
'Janabai went to the temple with some other girls from the
neighbourhood who had wanted her to come with them. When the
darshan was over, these girls went and thanked the mother-in-law
for allowing Janabai to accompany them. They didn't know that
she had been banned from visiting the temple.
'The mother -in-law was furious. "I did not allow her to go
out," she said angrily. "She has been locked in her room all day. I
will show you."
'She took them to Janabai's room to demonstrate to the girls
that Janabai was locked inside. As they approached it, the door was
open and the key was in Janabai's hands. Janabai was walking in
and Lord Vitthal was walking out. Lord Vitthal locked the door and
disappeared. The mother-in-law didn't know what had been
happening, but the other girls knew that it was the Lord who had
unlocked the room and subsequently allowed Janabai to visit him
in the temple.'
On my return to Goa I told many people about my miraculous
visit to the temple. They all had to believe me because they
themselves had all had the direct experience of having to wait in
the queue for three or four days. They knew that I could not
possibly have got in and had a private darshan without some
divine intervention.

In 1973, Papaji was planning to travel from northern

Karnataka to the extreme south of India. However, he had to
change his plans when one of his devotees, Ravi Bakre, had a
dramatic experience. The Bakre family was the one that adopted
Papaji as their Guru on his first visit to Londa, and later built the
Ram Mandir for him to live in. Papaji himself described what
happened to Ravi in a letter he wrote to Sri Desai:

4th October, 1973

Camp Karwar
Jaya Jaya Vitthal Panduranga
My Saint Son,
I had intended to go to Bangalore to see Vinayak jee, and from

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

there we were going on to Kanyakumari together, but yesterday I

saw a letter from Ravi addressed to his father [Dr Dattatreya
Bakre]. He says that he has closed his bank account and sent all his
money to me for my own use. He also says that he can no longer
serve in his government job after having a clear glimpse of the
truth through the grace of his Master. He states that he has decided
to resign his job so that he can always accompany his Guruji and
serve him. Dr Bakre and I took the first bus to Goa and arrived last
night. The trip took ten hours. When we knocked on his door at
10 p.m., he was seated before the picture of his Guru and was
shedding divine light all around. He lay prostrate at my feet and
was clearly very happy. I am glad this boy has attained such
heights after a short stay of only twenty-eight days with me. His
father is also very happy. Dr Bakre was not at all worried when he
read the letter with its details of his son's renunciation.
I have asked him to continue with his job and leave the rest to
me.

Papaji wrote many letters to Ravi Bakre in the succeeding

years. Extracts from some of the others will appear in the 'Abroad
Again' chapter. The fallowing extracts come from three other
letters Papaji wrote to him while he was travelling in Europe in the
mid-1970s.

Dear Ravi,
Yes, it is most important to observe the quietness during work. It is
this that enables you to work, talk, walk, look, eat, or whatever it
may be. It is important to know what you are not doing while you
do what you do. Whether you understand or don't understand is
beside the point. Both activities are doing. Just keep QUIET!
May I express the great happiness I felt on reading your letter.
Now that it is no more a secret, I can confirm your guess that I was
working on you while talking about food and going for long walks.
While all this was going on, I was trying to make you understand
the TRUTH that is beyond all understanding.
Do not waste your time on spiritual gossip, reading books and
the various gymnastic exercises that are called rituals and

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devotional practices. All these are constructs of your mind. You

have wonderfully expressed your high status by 'not expressing',
but at the same time you are pointing at something that is beyond
words. That is why you don't remember the words of Me because
those words went beyond the bottleneck in the memory ....
I have received many letters from India but they contain
nothing original. Some people say they have had good rains, some
have completed their books, some say they have safely returned
home from their pilgrimages. Others talk about their wives, their
sons, their professions, their incomes, the forthcoming marriages
of their children, and a few about their dreams of God ....
YES! You are out of the danger zone of ignorance! I am glad
to have one such boy in India, someone I could really teach and not
merely preach what has been beaten on the drums for thousands of
years by preachers who merely want to hypnotise people. What
you are speaking is not from the scriptures. You have not copied it
from anyone. You are not quoting it from lectures you have heard.
You are speaking about something that belongs to no one. It does
not even come from your memory because you have not stored
anything there that you have heard from Me. You are not repro -
ducing your words. As you say in your letter, the true words can
only come from the heights of the effortless state. You say in your
letter that you will keep on contemplating to reach those heights!
Maybe this is an unending journey?
My dear boy! Write to me from this unending journey.
Now let us enter into a new realm! This REALM is not one of
the realms spoken about by any being. You will enter this Realm
only when your mind will not construct it, and when your intellect
will not support it.
Look at it by not looking at IT....

Ravi wrote to me and supplied me with a few details of the key

meeting he had with Papaji:

I have known Sri Poonjaji since June, 1966. There have been
many moments of ecstasy in his presence, but the incident that I
would describe as the turning point of my life happened during an

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

informal satsang. Sri Poonjaji had mentioned, in response to

someone's question, that the concepts of bondage and liberation
were both equally false.
'Though one is neither bound nor liberated,' he said, 'it is
better to have the concept "I am free", "I am liberated", because
thinking "I am bound" merely causes suffering and unhappiness . If
you are pretending to eat something, why not pretend to eat some-
thing tasty, such as almonds, instead of pretending to eat horse
gram? Don't think you are a beggar who needs help. Instead , have
the conviction, "I am the King of Kings!"'
Though the comments were not directed at me, they had an
immediate impact. They set in motion a process of transformation
which ultimately changed the way I view myself and the world
around me. This process continues. It is still going on. In those
days I was a gloomy pessimist. Sri Poonjaji's words were a ray of
light that lit up my life and my world, completely changing the
way I view myself and the things around me.

Among the many new people who were attracted to Papaji

during his early years in Londa were all the members of the
Prabhu family, who were then living in Ankola, a nearby town.
Vinayak Prabhu describes how his f amity came into contact with
Papaji before going on to relate his own personal experiences of
living and travelling with Papaji.

Before Sri Poonjaji entered our lives, my family was living in

a state of confusion. We felt that we needed spiritual guidance
because we were seriously interested in the religious life, but
nothing we tried gave us any satisfaction. We had visited many
sadhus and swamis but the advice they had given us had merely
increased our state of confusion. They advised us to perform
various rituals, to chant mantras and to go on pilgrimages. All this
we did very dutifully, but it made no difference to our lives. It had
no enduring effect on us, nor did it give us any satisfaction. I think
we knew that these were pointless exercises, and this knowledge
just added to our general state of dissatisfaction.
We were spiritually well educated, having perused the lives

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and writings of hundreds of saints. The only point we all agreed

upon was that we needed the guidance of a realised Master, but
none of the holy men we had so far encountered had satisfied us.
Some of us were actually beginning to enter a state of acute despair
because we were slowly coming to the conclusion that there were
no more enlightened beings left in the world. I remember thinking
to myself that the great Masters of the recent past such as Shirdi
Sai Baba, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Ramana Maharshi had
all passed away without leaving anyone of equal stature to carry on
their work.
My mother was not so despondent because she had immense
faith that we were destined to meet such a great person. She had
been told by her father, shortly before he passed away, that there
were jnanis still living in the world, appearing as ordinary men and
women, who silently spread their message through satsang with
selected small groups of devotees. Her father had died without ever
having the darshan of such a being, but my mother had implicit
trust that his words were true.
'Just wait and see,' she would say. 'I know that one day our
whole family will be blessed by a visit from a Self-realised man
such as Ram Tirtha.'
My mother was very fond of Ram Tirtha. She had even
chosen him as the subject of her dissertation while she was
studying at college.
Around 1965 my father took up a contract to manufacture
railway sleepers from forest wood cut near Londa. It was there that
he first encountered Poonjaji. On his return to Ankola, the town
where our family home was located, he gave us a very positive
report of this new teacher he had met. Though we had been very
disappointed with all our previous meetings with swamis and
sadhus, we all wanted to meet this man who had impressed my
father so much. When our father revealed to us that Poonjaji trav-
elled extensively in northern Kamataka, and that he often visited
devotees and stayed with them for a few days, we all encouraged
him to invite him to our home for a few days.
Over the next few weeks my father visited Poonjaji regularly.
It was very easy for father to go to Ram Mandir because he had

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

work just outside the village. Each time he returned home we

would all eagerly ask him if he had invited Poonjaji, but on every
occasion he had to confess that he had been too shy to approach
him with such a request. Eventually Poonjaji invited himself to our
home as a result of an extraordinary vision he had in Londa. In this
vision Poonjaji saw my mother standing in front of the door of our
Ankola house, with her hands folded in a gesture of welcome.
She had said to him, 'Please come and bless our home. We are
all eager to have your darshan.'
In the vision my mother had identified herself as the wife of
Ramachandra Prabhu, my father. So, when my father made his
next visit to Ram Mandir, Poonjaji told him about the vision he had
recently had. He described the front of our house in great detail,
and everything he said about it was correct.
My father immediately invited him to come to stay with us for
a few days. In those days my brother Raj and I were attending
college in Hubli, a nearby town. My father wrote to us there,
encouraging us to come home to meet Poonjaji on the day he had
been invited.
On the appointed day my father brought him to our home. We
all prostrated before him with great reverence. Though we had
never met him before, we all felt an instant connection. When the
introductions were over, he gave us a reassuring and benevolent
smile. Each one of us knew in that moment that we had found the
Master we had all been seeking for so long. It was an extraordi-
nary, collective surrender. Though we had been severely disillu -
sioned by our meetings with swamis before, we felt no hesitation
in surrendering to this man in the moment he first smiled at us.
Decades have passed since the day he walked into our lives, but the
people who were present on that occasion - my sister Sudha, my
brother Raj, my parents and I - have all remained his devotees.
I am not claiming that this is particularly remarkable. In the
succeeding years of our association with Poonjaji, I saw many
other people accept him as their Master within a few seconds of
meeting him. One glance from Poonjaji is often enough to show
even cynical and sceptical devotees that their long search for a
Guru is over.

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Up till the time we met Poonjaji, we used to argue a lot about

spiritual matters. Each of us was following his or her own path, and
each thought that he or she was right and that the others were
wrong. Poonjaji gently but persuasively showed us that we were all
wrong, revealing to us that all our paths and beliefs were futile
dead ends. One by one we surrendered our precious beliefs and
practices and let him take charge of our lives.
Prior to my first meeting with Poonjaji I used to uphold the
virtues of karma yoga in the endless spiritual discussions and argu-
ments that went on in our household. I had adopted this position
because I had been greatly influenced by Na yak Master, a veteran
freedom fighter who was then living in Ankola. He had spent his
whole life serving the poor and downtrodden in our area, so much
so, he was known as the Gandhi of North Kamataka. He seemed to
me to be a humble, egoless human being. My mother, however,
never accepted my assessment of him.
She would say, 'You cannot tell if a man is egoless simply by
looking at what he does or by listening to what he says'.
I asked Poonjaji about this at our very first meeting, and he
surprised me by taking my mother's side.
'The ego manifests subtly in all beings,' he said. 'Behaviour
is not a reliable indicator of egolessness or enlightenment.'
I accepted his statement without querying it in any way. That
was one of the curious consequences of letting Poonjaji into our
lives. We could quarrel endlessly among ourselves about spiritual
matters, but if we took the matter to him, one word or one sentence
from him would end our doubts and demolish convictions that had
been passionately held for years. Surrender was not just a mere
word for us. We found ourselves accepting, without question,
everything he said.
I eventually brought Nayak Master to see Poonjaji because I
wanted the two of them to meet. Nayak Master immediately recog -
nised Poonjaji's greatness, and he too became one of his devotees.
Before we met Poonjaji we had our own family guru.
Traditionally, our caste had its own gurus, and at birth we auto-
matically became their devotees. We took Poonjaji along to see
ours soon after we had accepted him as our Master. He surprised

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

us all by taking off his shirt and prostrating before the swami. He
even touched his feet while he was lying on the floor. We had not
formed a particularly high opinion of this man, so we were
surprised by Poonjaji's show of respect. The swami gave him a
coconut, which he accepted as prasad. On the way home he
explained his behaviour.
'I am a householder. This man is a sannyasin. It is right and
proper that I should show my respect to him by touching his feet.
That is the tradition in this country. I was not showing respect to
his inner state. I was giving him respect because he is a swami.
Actually, I could see that he is a very tamasic man. He has neither
sattva nor raj as in him.'
In later years I saw him treat other swamis in the same way.
He would show great outward respect to the wearers of orange
robes, particularly if they were the heads of ashrams or maths . I
heard from other people that Poonjaji was on friendly terms with
all the heads of the ashrams in Rishikesh and Hardwar. These men
reciprocated his respect and friendship by occasionally sending
him devotees. This happened in other places too. When Poonjaji
was in Chikmagalur, the Sankaracharya of Sringeri Math formed a
very high opinion of him. If people came to the Sankaracharya
seeking freedom, he would often discreetly refer them to Poonjaji
because he knew that this was something the latter specialised in.
I have met four people who have told me separately that they were
sent to Poonjaji by this Sankaracharya. These big swamis couldn't
publicly show their respect for Poonjaji without losing prestige
amongst their followers, but secretly they all held him in great
esteem.
As we got to know Poonjaji better, he started to give my
family advice about all aspects of our lives. He began to manage
our household for us, teaching us many practical things that we had
never learned before. My mother and my sister learned cookery
from him. He would discuss forest business with my father, and
when he talked to my brother and me, he would give us advice on
how to stay healthy and chat with us about the latest sports results
in the paper. He seemed to have a bountiful supply of expert
knowledge on everything that affected our lives. Leading by

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example, he taught us how to make the most of our lives, both spir-
itually and materially. When he was not giving us advice, he would
regale us with stories about his past or about his travels in India.
He seemed to have visited every corner of the country and appar-
ently had a working knowledge of most Indian languages. Prior to
his first visit we were expecting to speak to him in Hindi, since we
knew he was a Punjabi. He astonished us, though, by conversing
with us in chaste Kannada.
Whenever he visited us, we always wanted to treat him in a
God-like way, but he preferred to be regarded as just another
member of the family. One day, for example, early in the morning,
he wanted to take a bath but found that our bathroom was
occupied. He just went outside, took his clothes off and stood in
the rain. It was the monsoon season, so the flow of water from the
sky was just as heavy as the flow in the bathroom. We all felt guilty
that we had inconvenienced him in this way, but when we told him
that we would always give him priority if he wanted a bath, he just
laughed and said he preferred to stand out in the rain. From then
on, we left a towel and some soap on our veranda in case he
suddenly decided to go outside to enjoy a heavenly shower.
Poonjaji had an extraordinary knack of being able to make
people drop their erroneous religious beliefs. Most people are very
attached to their ideas about God, sadhana and enlightenment, and
they will usually quarrel vociferously if anyone dares to disagree
with them. In Londa many people like this would come to see
Poonjaji just to quarrel with him. They were probably hoping to
convert him to their own sectarian point of view. In many cases he
would bring these quarrelsome visitors to a state of silence in
which they understood directly the uselessness of all beliefs. Some
of the people who came to challenge stayed on and became his best
devotees. Poonjaji was so good at this, my father and Dr Bakre
used to go out to the bazaar to look for new people to bring to
satsang. Poonjaji was so great, they reasoned, everyone should
have a chance to sit in front of him. Thirty years later some of the
people they collected off the streets are still his devotees.
In the 1960s Poonjaji had such a good reputation for being
able to silence argumentative visitors, the managers of Sri

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Ramanasramam would send him devotees who could not get any
satisfaction by talking to the ashram residents. Poonjaji would
occasionally return the compliment by sending to Ramanasramam
any people who were causing him too much trouble in Londa.
'Go to Ramanasramam and be quiet for a few weeks,' he
would say. 'Then come back and talk to me again.'
Poonjaji surprised many of the visitors who came to see him
by refusing to give out any form of sadhana. People who go to a
swami for help or advice in India are always told to do some kind
of meditation or practice. Poonjaji, on the contrary, told his visitors
to drop all their practices. This was something they usually found
very hard to accept because almost everyone thinks that some form
of meditation is necessary to make spiritual progress. When I first
met Poonjaji, for example, I was trying to attain a state of samadhi
by concentrating on a representation of the holy syllable 'Om' that
I had written on my wall. I thought that if I tried hard enough and
long enough I would succeed. Poonjaji showed me the futility of
such practices and encouraged me instead to take up self-enquiry.
This was the only practice that he recommended, but even then, he
didn't want people to take it up as a form of meditation.
'Do it once and do it properly,' he would say, 'and your spir-
itual quest will be over instantly.'
I have watched him teach people for thirty years and in all that
time his basic message has never varied: give up concentrating on
objects and find instead the source from where all thoughts arise.
Satsangs in Londa were informal affairs. There was no partic-
ular time, and no special format. Sometimes Poonjaji would tell
stories or just relate some of his own experiences. He would
answer questions if anyone had any, but most of the time the
devotees there seemed content to sit silently in his presence. One
time when we visited, he was reading Kabir's dohas [couplets] out
loud and commenting on them. Every day he would pick out one
or two key verses and give a discourse on them in Hindi. Most of
the satsangs were in Hindi in Londa because some of the people
there didn't know good English or Kannada. These lectures on
Kabir were a revelation to me. We had had to study Kabir at school
as part of our Hindi course, but our teacher had just given us a

320
 RAMMANDIR

Left to right: Vinayak Prabhu, Enrique Aguilar and Papaji

bathing in the Kali River, near Londa, in the late 1960s.

literal translation of the verses. No attempt was made to convey the

essence of his teachings. When Poonjaji dealt with the same
material, we had the privilege of seeing and hearing one jnani
explaining the mind and heart of another jnani to us. His commen -
taries were a wonderful fusion of bhakti and jnana, illustrated by
events from Kabir's life and lines from his poems. These inspired
talks would begin after lunch and would often continue until well
after sunset. Some of the things Poonjaji said were so moving, I
would find myself crying for minutes at a time. So many
wonderful talks in those days were lost to posterity because no one
ever bothered to write them down or record them.
On one occasion Poonjaji himself was moved to tears, so
much so he couldn't continue with his talk. I can't remember the
exact words of the verse he was commenting on, but it is the one
in which Kabir says, 'I start chanting Ram's name, but after some
time Ram Himself starts chanting "Kabir! Kabir!"' In the middle
of his explanation Poonjaji went into such an ecstasy of devotion,
he couldn't continue. His voice became choked and tears started to

321
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

trickle down his face. He had mostly shown us his jnana side in the
Ram Mandir, but on that day I realised what a great bhakta he was.
For about half an hour he sat silently weeping. At the end of that
period he looked up and said, 'Let's go for a walk. We all need to
go for a walk.' It took him hours to recover his usual outgoing
state. I don't think he was fully back to normal until the following
day.
There was one unexpected side effect from these Kabir
satsangs. Kabir repeatedly says in his verses that one needs a Guru
and that one needs to serve him properly. I asked Poonjaji about
this and he agreed most emphatically.
'You must serve the Guru faithfully and wholeheartedly for
twelve years,' he said. 'This is the tradition in this country. If you
are not willing to serve the Master, what right do you have to
expect him to give you anything? You must show your willingness
and your commitment by working for him.'
At that time Ram Mandir was still under construction. We
volunteered our services and were given a job carrying wheelbar-
rows full of soil in the garden. Ram Mandir was on a slope and we
were asked to level the ground by hand. We were not used to doing
heavy manual labour, but we stuck to the job in a spirit of service
to the Master. My brother Raj had never been in good health. He
had a weak heart brought on by a bout of rheumatic fever when he
was a child. Dr Bakre tried to tell Poonjaji that this kind of work
might damage a weak boy like Raj, but Poonjaji disagreed with
him.
'This boy needs exercise,' he said. 'He's weak because you
don't allow him to do any hard work. Let him carry mud for a few
weeks. It will build up his body and make him fit, strong and
healthy .'
Poonjaji thought we were both weaklings who needed more
exercise. In retrospect I can say that we were typically lazy
teenagers. Neither of us played any sports or did any kind of
exercise, so Poonjaji was determined to build us up, both physi-
cally and mentally . Our health and strength certainly improved in
the weeks that followed.
Before I met Poonjaji I used to attend lectures given by

322
 RAMMANDIR

well-known teachers. Around that time Swami Chinmayananda

and Acharya Rajneesh were both giving talks on the Bhagavad
Gita and other famous scriptures. I had grown accustomed to the
usual format of such lectures: a quote from the scriptures would be
commented on or explained by referring to similar ideas and
passages in other texts. If they had any opinions of their own to
express, the lecturers would back up their statements by referring
to other people or other books that agreed with them. Poonjaji's
lectures were entirely different. Though he would start in the
traditional way by quoting a verse and explaining its meaning, he
would never attempt to back up his statements by referring to any
authority other than his own direct experience of the Self.
He might say, 'I have also had this experience,' or 'I have not
had this experience,' but he would never say, for example, 'This
must be true because Sankara also made the same statement'.
There was one exception to this rule. Apart from his own
direct experience, the only authority he would accept was that of
his own Master. He would frequently quote from his books, and if
he said, 'My Master said this,' that would be an indication that he
accepted these words as the final judgement on whatever matter we
were discussing.
One day he was explaining to us the views of a particular sect
that had virtually turned Kabir into some kind of God. This group
postulated seven levels of enlightenment. According to their
philosophy, Kabir was the only one to make it to the highest or
seventh level. Other great saints such as Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa and Ramana Maharshi were relegated to lower posi-
tions in the hierarchy. Poonjaji summarised their ideas one day and
then commented, 'There are no levels of enlightenment. The expe-
rience of enlightenment is the same for everyone.' His explana-
tions were simple and lucid. He never made enlightenment sound
mysterious or complicated. I think a ten-year-old child could have
understood most of what he had to say.
It was an awesome experience listening to him going through
Kabir line by line. During the course of his talks Poonjaji would
reveal his own innermost experiences to us and speculate whether
or not Kabir was trying to express the same feelings. In those days

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

I think Poonjaji was looking for someone like himself with whom
he could share his thoughts about enlightenment. Because he
couldn't find anyone, he was communing with Kabir through these
verses. Sometimes I felt that we were eavesdropping on an
intimate conversation between these two great Masters.
I mentioned earlier that Poonjaji never supported any of his
statements with scriptural quotes. In his early days at Londa he
could not have quoted from the scriptures even if he had wanted to
because he hadn't read most of them. There were many spiritual
books in the Ram Mandir, and we also had a good collection in our
house at Ankola. Poonjaji only started to read these books because
so many people were quoting from them when they came to his
satsangs. On his visits to our house, while we were doing our
homework, he would go to our library, pick out a book and read it.
He started off with Ashtavakra Gita and then moved on to Yoga
Vasishta. Later on he went through the advaitic texts put out by
Ramanasramam: Tripura Rahasya, Advaita Bodha Deepika and
Kaivalya Navanita. He was surprised to find in these books expres-
sions of his own experience. Sometimes he would get excited and
call out to us, 'Listen to what this man says! This is exactly what
is happening to me!' Then he would read out the verse or the para-
graph that had caught his attention.
I asked him one day why he had never bothered to read most
of these books before.
He replied, 'I had heard of all these titles, but somehow I
never found time to read them. For the last fourteen years I have
been working in mining camps. There were always problems that
needed my attention, even during the night. Before my retirement
I never had the time to go through any of these books.'
When we visited Ram Mandir we would often find him
immersed in Narayan Bakre's books. Dr Narayan was a great
reader himself. In those days he used to walk to all the neigh-
bouring villages when he did his medical rounds. Sometimes he
would walk eight to ten kilometres just to visit a single patient. To
pass the time while he was walking, he would read either from the
Gita or from Jnaneshwar's Jnaneshwari.
When we saw how much Poonjaji was enjoying these books,

324
 RAMMANDIR

we started buying new ones for him. Many of the big ashrams of
India bring out cheap editions of classic texts. We sent off for these
books and added them to the collection in the Ram Mandir. Giving
him new books was a good way to get him to talk to us about his
own experiences. He would go through whatever we gave him,
explain the difficult portions to us and then say which sections
tallied with his own experience. He never advised us to read any of
these books ourselves. 'Books will not help you to wake up,' he
would say. However, he did enjoy reading what the great books of
the past had to say about enlightenment. If visitors asked him to
recommend a good book to read, he would usually suggest Tripura
Rahasya or one of the books about Ramana Maharshi. Though he
had told us that we didn't need to read religious books, he did at
one time suggest that we read In The Woods Of God Realisation by
his uncle, Ram Tirtha. He had read that book himself when he was
in his teens. When we told him that our mother had read it to us
when we were children, his face lit up with a beaming smile. I
should mention here that we never had any novels or comics in our
house when I was a boy. All the books were spiritual. My mother
would read out the lives of famous saints to us and she would also
encourage us to read such books ourselves in our spare time. In
retrospect, I can say that it was a wonderful upbringing. Her piety
and her strong desire for a living Master were the main formative
influences on our early lives.
I must mention here that my mother was also transformed by
Poonjaji. Normally, she was quite a talkative woman but whenever
Poonjaji came to visit us, a great silence would descend on her. She
would sit quietly in his presence with tears in her eyes . After
Poonjaji came into our lives, she encouraged us to spend as much
time with him as possible. When we first met him, we were
attending college in a neighbouring town. We lived there and only
went home on holidays or at weekends. On our first summer
vacation after meeting Poonjaji, we went home, expecting to spend
our time there. Our mother had other ideas.
'How can you think of staying here?' she asked. 'Go to Londa
and spend time with Poonjaji. Now that college has finished, you
have a wonderful opportunity to spend time in his presence. Go

325
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

there at once and stay as long as you can. Tell him he is always
welcome to come here if he wants to, but don't leave so long as he
is there.'
We went to Londa and told Poonjaji what our mother had said.
He was delighted with her attitude.
'How many mothers send their children off to a teacher for
their holidays?' he exclaimed. 'She hardly ever sees you anymore,
but as soon as you get a long holiday, she sends you off here
instead of keeping you at home. I have not come across any other
mother in India who behaves like this.'
Our mother's attitude enabled us to spend all our long
holidays in Poonjaji's company at Londa.
In those days everyone coming to see Poonjaji in Londa came
by train because few people had cars and the bus service was not
very good. So, the railway station in Londa became a kind of
welcoming gate for all the devotees who came for Poonjaji's
darshan. New people were given a good welcome there because all
the railway employees at the station were devotees themselves.
The stationmaster was a devotee, as were the canteen contractor
and a few others. Ram Mandir was only a few minutes' walk from
the station. When Poonjaji went for a walk with us, we would often
stop at the station and have a little satsang there with our friends.
Londa was a sleepy little town in those days. Actually, it would be
more correct to call it a large village. Few trains stopped there so
it was easy for the railway employees to take time off to sit with
us.
When Poonjaji himself went travelling, the station would
suddenly wake up and put on a festive air. Many people would
come to see him off and there would be a big farewell party on the
platform. Kamlani, the station canteen contractor, whom we also
called lndru Baba, would make plenty of food for those on the
platform and also for those who were lucky enough to be accom-
panying Poonjaji on his journey. Kamlani never charged for the
food he served at these going-away parties.
Poonjaji always travelled in great style. His ticket may have
been second class, but his stately progress across northern
Karnataka resembled that of a maharaja on a royal tour of his

326
 RAMMANDIR

empire. First he would sweep and dust his immediate environment

to make it as clean as possible. Then sheets would be put on the
benches and mats on the floor. When everything was satisfactory,
he would allow people in to see him and a satsang would immedi -
ately start. Several days before a trip started he would write to all
the devotees who lived in towns along the line, informing them
which train he was travelling on. At each station a new group of
people would be waiting for him. He would let them onto the train
and talk to them for the few minutes that the train was at their
station. Every train he was on became a mobile Ram Mandir for as
long as he was a passenger on it. This travelling show always
attracted a crowd of curious onlookers, but Poonjaji would ignore
them completely. He would have a kind of regal disdain towards
all the passengers and railway officials who were not part of his
entourage.
Sometimes people would accompany him to the next station.
There was a kind of unofficial rule that devotees could travel with
him from their own town to the next station if they wanted to. At
the next stop they had to get off to make way for the new people
who wanted to meet him. The ticket collectors were also his
devotees, so they would allow any number of people to travel with
him, even if they didn't have tickets. One or two people would
usually accompany him for the whole journey. Sometimes he
would travel with Sri Desai from Bombay. At other times my
brother or I would have the privilege.
It was a metre gauge railway, and in those days the trains were
very slow. Often, hours would be required even to travel appar-
ently short distances. Poonjaji taught us to enjoy these trips to the
full. For him travelling was not a temporary and boring inconve-
nience, it was an opportunity to enjoy himself. We learned from
him how to make a little paradise for ourselves amid the dirt, noise
and chaos of the railway system.
'You Mysore gouds [the name of Vinayak's caste] don't know
how to travel properly,' he once said to me. 'You crouch on your
seat in the most uncomfortable position and then wait miserably
for the train to arrive at its destination. This journey is life itself!
Enjoy it to the full!'

327
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

He loved the railways and seemed to know every station in the

country. If people came to him to tell him their travel plans, he
would review their route and give detailed instructions on where to
eat along the way. He would say things like, 'The coffee at such
and such a station is no good. Wait for the next one.' Or, 'When the
train stops at this station, it will stay there for twenty minutes. You
can get a nice omelette in the station canteen while you wait. Give
my regards to so-and -so if you see him there.' He seemed to carry
a personal encyclopaedia of the railway system in his head and he
was constantly astonishing us with his knowledge of people and
facilities in out -of-the -way places.
When I first knew him, Poonjaji seemed to live and travel
with virtually no money at all. I used to pack his bags and look
after his clothes, so I can testify that he never had any money
except for a few rupees that he would keep in his shirt pocket for
cups of tea and so on. His train tickets would be paid for by the
devotees who were inviting him to a particular town. On his arrival
they would look after all his food and accommodation before
handing him on to the next group who wanted to see him. I
marvelled at the confident manner in which he travelled the length
and breadth of the country without having any money at all.
Sometimes he would take off and spend a few months by himself
in the Himalayas. I have not the slightest idea how he managed for
funds on these trips.
My grandfather, who was not a devotee, once asked Poonjaji,
'What is the profit in Self-realisation?' We were a little embar -
rassed by his question because we all thought it was disrespectful.
Poonjaji just laughed and replied, 'Everywhere I go people
buy me food and train tickets. I am constantly travelling. My
devotees probably spend about two lakh rupees a year on main-
taining me wherever I go. I have no income at all of my own, yet
these people shower me with money, tickets and gifts wherever I
go. Doesn't this indicate that there is a good profit to be made out
of enlightenment?'
My grandfather, who was very materialistic, had to agree with
him. Though he was proud of being a financial success, my grand-
father's income was far less than the amount that we devotees were

328
 RAM MANDIR

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Tamil Nadu

329
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

spending on Poonjaji. He never became a devotee, but he did come

to admire what Poonjaji was doing and what he had accomplished.
When my brother and I were studying at college in Hubli,
Poonjaji would catch a train at least once a week and come to visit
us. Usually he would come at weekends and stay overnight in a
local hotel because we had nowhere to put him up. I remember that
we used to pay Rs 8 a night to put him in the U dipi Sri Krishna
Bhavan, which was near the railway station. He did not come to
Hubli just to see us. There were four or five other families there
who were also his devotees. He would spend the day with these
other people, but the evenings were reserved for us. If he visited us
on weekdays he would never allow us to miss college to spend
time with him. He did, though, always allow us to travel back to
Londa with him on the train. We would make the return trip just to
keep him company on the homeward leg of his journey .
For some reason he liked to do all his laundry in Hubli. He
used to joke with us by saying, 'Londa is so humid, I need to come
here every week to dry my clothes'. Whenever we visited him in
his hotel, there would always be a line of washed clothes drying in
his room.
In those days he seemed to be travelling almost all the time.
He would rarely spend more than a few days in one place because
there were ·always people who wanted to see him in different parts
of India. Each time he returned to Ram Mandir he would open his
mail and find invitations to all parts of the country. We never knew
which ones he would accept and which ones he would reject.
Sometimes he would plan a trip days in advance and then
cancel it at the last minute, without giving any reasons. At other
times there was no planning at all. He would walk out of the house,
saying that he was going on a trip and that he would probably be
away for a few days.
I remember one visit we made to Londa. As we were leaving,
Poonjaji said he would come with us to the station.
On the platform one of us jokingly said, 'Come on, Poonjaji,
why don't you come with us?'
'That's a good idea,' he replied.
We bought him a ticket, not really knowing whether he was

330
 RAMMANDIR

serious or not. When the train arrived he accompanied us to Hubli

and spent a few days there.

Papaji himself has one interesting train story from this

period:

Once, while I was working in the forest, I went to Bangalore

to draw money from the bank. I needed it to make payments to my
workers. I then bought a ticket for Londa on the Bangalore-Pune
Express. After arriving at Londa station, I went straight to Ram
Mandir, which is about one mile from the railway station. Dr
Dattatreya was waiting for me with all the mail that had been
forwarded to me. As I was glancing through it, I noticed a postcard
from Swami Abhishiktananda that said that he would be arriving
on that same day on the Pune Express. I realised that he must have
been on the same train I had arrived on.
I said to the doctor, 'Let us go back to the station. Swami
Abhishiktananda is breaking his journey in order to see me here.'
The doctor didn't think that he had been on the train. 'This is
a very small station. If he had got off the train, you would have
seen him. Not many people get off here. There is no point in going
back.'
I insisted that we return to see if he was still there. On our
arrival we found Swami Abhishiktananda standing outside his
compartment. The train should have left about half an hour before,
but it was still waiting at the station.
When I had not met him at the station, the swami assumed that
I was not in Londa. He quickly bought another ticket from Londa
to Pune and got back on the train. He persuaded the conductor to
let him have the same seat that he had been occupying before.
However, the train didn't move so he got out again to stretch his
legs on the platform.
When he saw us approaching, Swami Abhishiktananda took
his bags from the compartment and came forward to greet me. As
he was walking towards me, the train began to pull out of the
station.
After we had exchanged the usual greetings, I told him that I

331
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

had been on the same train and that I had only read his postcard
when I arrived at the Ram Mandir. First we went to the ticket office
and got his ticket refunded. Then he told me what had happened to
the train.
'This train is only supposed to stop here for ten minutes. I was
actually asleep when the train arrived here, which is why you
didn't see me on the platform. Someone who knew I was due to get
off here woke me up and told me where I was.
'When the ten minutes were up, the engineer gave the whistle
and the guard waved his flag, but nothing happened. The train
would not move. This train has been stuck here for nearly an hour.
No one has been able to make it move. When I saw you walking
down the platform, I went inside and removed my bags. As soon
as I took my luggage off the train, it began to pull out of the station.
'Now I know why the trains are so often late in India. No one
knows that there is a superior power that can stop the train, even if
the engine is in perfect order!'
He stayed with me at Londa for some time and then we went
off to Goa together. Afterwards, he left for Pune by himself.

In the early 1990s, during one of his Lucknow satsangs,

Papaji casually remarked, 'I used to have siddhis [supernatural
powers J but I gave them up. I didn't want to keep them any more. '
When one of his devotees asked him what he had been able to
do, Papaji told this story of the train being stuck in Londa station
and admitted that he had somehow used his will to make sure that
the train would still be there when he reached the station.
Vinayak continues with his reminiscences about Papaji 's time
in Karnataka:

Most of his trips would be to nearby towns or areas that were

relatively easy to reach: Belgaum, Goa, Hubli, Ankola, Dharwar,
Miraj, Khanapur and Dandeli, which was a place deep in the forest
where my father occasionally went to do business. More rarely he
would go to more distant places such as Bombay or North India.
My father once took him to Dandeli to meet some devotees and
while he was there he even managed to persuade Poonjaji to have

332
 RAM MANDIR

his photo taken. This was a major accomplishment because in

those days he usually refused all requests for pictures.
When our family became Poonjaji's devotees, we naturally
wanted to have a picture of him for our puja room. At that time we
had pictures of Sathya Sai Baba, Ramana Maharshi and
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa on display, but we didn't have a photo
of Poonjaji. I approached Narayan Bakre and asked if he could let
us have a good one that we could install in our puja room, but he
wasn't very helpful.
'Don't ever mention it to Poonjaji,' he advised. 'He doesn't
allow photos to be taken. If people ask, he usually gets angry with
them. Look, I can show you the only ones that I have.'
He pointed out two photos that were hanging on his wall.
They were of very poor quality.
'These were taken by Kulkarni,' he said. 'He wanted a close -
up, so he hid behind a bush and took a picture between the leaves
as Poonjaji was walking past. Because he was nervous, the picture
came out very blurred. I think his hands must have been shaking
when he took it.'
Other people had even less luck when they tried to take his
photo. One man I knew took several pictures without Poonjaji's
knowledge or consent, but when he tried to develop them, the
whole roll of film turned out to be blank. Some of the devotees
who heard about this attributed it to Poonjaji's power: though he
hadn't done anything deliberately, they thought his dislike of
photos had somehow caused the film to be damaged.
Our family fared a little better. My father managed to get a
photo at Dandeli and even I managed to get one without resorting
to any devious means. On Poonjaji's second visit to our family
house in Ankola my father went out with him for a walk. I wanted
to go with them but Poonjaji refused to let me accompany them.
As they were walking back towards us I approached him with
an old box camera in my hands and said, 'Many people would like
a photo of you to put in their puja rooms, but so far you have not
given anyone permission. May I take a photo now and distribute it
to devotees who want a copy?'
Much to our amazement he smiled and said, 'Of course! Go
ahead.'

333
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

There were two people with him: my father and Na yak

Master , the Gandhian whose activities I had discussed in my first
meeting with Poonjaji. The three of them stood under a mango tree
and posed for the picture. This was one of the first authorised
photos , and when it came out, the leaves and branches of the tree
were clearly shaped like an ' Om'. Everyone, of course, wanted
copies. When Poonjaji gave his approval to a scheme, it would
always go well, but if he didn't , it would often turn out badly. The
illicit photos were blurred or damaged; the authorised ones came
out beautifully. After a year or so he became more relaxed about
having his photo taken. He even let us make copies from some old
negatives that he had. I remember one that was taken when he was
about forty years old. He was very young and robust-looking, with
a heavy muscular body. Someone who had never met him might
think, from looking at this picture, that he was a professional
wrestler or a weightlifter.
One of the more interesting visitors in those days was a Sufi
called Abdul Gaffar. He was a teacher himself and had many disci-
ples of his own. Having had many mystical experiences himself,
Abdul Gaffar was able to recognise Poonjaji's greatness, even
though the latter did not belong to the Sufi tradition. Abdul Gaffar
would make regular visits to Londa, accompanied by many of his
devotees. I think he had his own centre in Belgaum, which was
about fifty kilometres away. Sometimes groups of up to a hundred
would come. The satsangs would begin with Abdul Gaffar singing
devotional songs in Arabic, occasionally accompanied by his
followers. Afterwards he and Poonjaji would discuss, with great
enthusiasm, various aspects of Sufism. Poonjaji could speak
Persian and Urdu well, and he was very familiar with the Sufi liter -
ature in both of these languages. He seemed to enjoy Abdul
Gaffar's company very much. Whenever he visited us, Poonjaji
would always appear to be in very high spirits.
Virtually all the devotees who came to the Ram Mandir in
Londa were on some kind of spiritual path when they first encoun -
tered Poonjaji. To all of them he gave the same advice: 'Give up
your practices. They are not necessary.' Most of the people who
came to him, even the ones who considered themselves to be his

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 RAMMANDIR

The 'Om in the tree' photo with, left to right,

Nayak Master, Vinayak, Papaji, Dr Dattatreya
Bakre, and Raj. The Sanskrit letter that denotes
'Om' is shown on the left.

devotees, could not accept this advice. They would carry on with
their sadhanas and their pujas when Poonjaji was not there, and
some of them would even run off to other gurus whenever he was
away on one of his trips. They tried to hide their activities from
Poonjaji by not telling him about them, but he knew what was
going on. Though he was fully aware of what was happening, he
never complained or criticised. That was one of the things that
endeared him to us. He never compelled his devotees to behave in
a particular way. He would give advice if he was asked for it, but
he would never force his teachings on people if they were
unwilling to accept them.
Our family was one of the few that fully accepted his advice,
and I think that was one of the reasons he liked visiting us. He had
told us, individually and collectively, 'You don't need to do
anything. You have surrendered to me. From now on your spiritual
welfare is my business, not yours. Leave everything to me.' All of

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

us believed him and accepted his advice. We gave up all our

rituals, all our beliefs, all our previous practices. We even got rid
of all the other photos in our puja room, except for Ramana
Maharshi's and Poonjaji's. In effect, we made him the head of our
family. We took all our problems to him, both spiritual and
temporal, and accepted his advice in all areas of our lives.
There was one other man who managed to drop all his
previous beliefs and rituals. When Poonjaji first arrived in Londa,
Dr Dattatreya Bakre used to spend most of his time performing
pujas to the gods. For two to three hours every day he would
ritually worship all the statues in his puja room. These ceremonies
were the most important part of his life. His patients might be lying
on their death beds, but if Dr Bakre had not finished his morning
pujas, they would not get a visit from him. He never saw any of his
patients until all of the hundred or more idols had been ceremoni-
ally worshipped, one by one. If God had ever forgotten all the
different forms He had manifested in, He could have gone to Dr
Bakre's puja room for a refresher course. Dr Bakre would not be
satisfied, for example, with one statue of Ganesh. Because there
were eight different forms of Ganesh, Dr Bakre had to have eight
separate statues, each slightly different from the others. All the
other gods were there in their multiple manifestations. Each statue
received a few minutes of his attention every morning. First he
would wash and wipe the statue; then he would do a brief puja to
it, chanting mantras that were appropriate for that particular deity.
Poonjaji knew that Dr Bakre's spiritual life revolved around
his morning rituals. He never directly asked him to stop, but after
some time Dr Bakre himself realised that these practices were no
longer necessary. In the late 1960s he accompanied Poonjaji on a
pilgrimage to Hardwar, carrying all his idols with him in a big
metal trunk. At the train station he needed two or three coolies to
carry the trunk because it weighed over 100 kg. On his arrival in
Hardwar he took the trunk to a bridge over the Ganga and had the
coolies throw it into the river. That's the way we dispose of
unwanted gods in India. We immerse them in a sacred river.
Having seen Dr Bakre's puja room, I knew that many of his statues
were made out of precious metals. The gods he threw into the river

336
 RAMMANDIR

The photo
arranged by
Vinayak's
father and
taken at
Dandeli in
1966.

that day were probably worth several years of his salary. On my

next visit to Londa I looked into his puja room and was surprised
to see only two photos: one of Poonjaji and one of Ramana
Maharshi. I asked him what had happened but he couldn't talk
about it. He started to describe some transformation that had taken
place within him, but after a few sentences he just gave up and
started crying. I never asked again because it seemed to be some-
thing that he didn't want to talk about.
I don't know what happened inside him, but I can vouch for
the fact that his character and personality underwent a dramatic
change for the better. While he was still performing his pujas, he
was respected and feared by everyone in the village. He was an
authoritarian figure who used to bully his patients in a very angry
tone of voice. Though he was a good doctor, his bedside manner
was very intimidating. I was told that he had such a fearsome

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

reputation, the local children would run away when they saw him
walking down the street. However, after his return from Hardwar
he became quiet and docile and spent a lot of time doing menial
chores in the Ram Mandir. Sometimes I would walk in and find
him on his hands and knees, scrubbing the floor. He would cook
Poonjaji's meals for him and then personally serve him. As
Poonjaji ate his food, he would stand quietly behind him with tears
in his eyes and his hands folded together in gratitude.
The two doctor Bakres looked after the medical needs of
Londa and all the surrounding villages. Poonjaji would occasion-
ally ask about people he knew who were sick, but otherwise he
rarely interfered in what they were doing. Once, though, he took
over a case himself. Dr Narayan Bakre had been treating a case of
jaundice and had given up hope for the patient. It was such a severe
case, he expected the man to die within a few days. On his next
visit to the Ram Mandir he mentioned the case to Poonjaji,
predicting that the man would probably die after a few more days.
'Nonsense!' retorted Poonjaji. 'There is a very simple cure for
jaundice. Let's go and see him.'
On his arrival at the patient's house Poonjaji gave him an
unripe banana with some lime paste smeared on it. This lime paste
is the same substance that paan makers put on their leaves. The
next day the patient was much better and on the day after that, he
was well on the way to recovery. Dr Narayan thought that this was
a new natural cure for jaundice. He subsequently tried it out on all
the new cases that came to his attention, but none of them got
cured. Eventually he had to come to the conclusion that it was
Poonjaji himself who had effected the cure and that the lime-and -
banana medicine had had nothing to do with it.
When Poonjaji began to travel widely from the mid-1960s
onwards, he would pick up new devotees wherever he went. In
order to keep in touch with them he would use Ram Mandir as his
postal address. Raj and I used to bring inland letters and aero-
grammes for him every time we came from Hubli because we
knew what a voluminous correspondence he had. Every time he
returned to Londa there would be a big pile of letters waiting for
him. He would go through them in the days following his return

338
 RAM MANDIR

Dr Dattatreya Bakre, with his grandson on his knee, in his

puja room, after he had thrown away all his statues and
replaced them with photos of Ramana Maharshi and Papaji.
When I showed this photo and its caption to Papaji, he
wrote a note underneath that said: 'It was a young girl who
was accompanying me who initially started throwing them
away. She was so small, she could barely walk. When
Dr Bakre saw what she had done, he prostrated to her and
never brought them back into the room.'
I made some enquiries and eventually found a devotee
in Bombay who remembered this girl dragging out the
statues, some of which were almost as big as she was.

and answer virtually all of them.

On our visits we would also bring other items that we thought
might be useful. The people who lived in Londa would marvel at
the things we brought because they would always be items that
were in short supply. Poonjaji would casually remark that some
particular object was needed and within a few days Raj or I would
bring it from Hubli. We would have no idea how he got the
message to us. We would just decide to go to see him and would
buy something on the way. Usually the things we decided to buy

339
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

would be the objects he had said he needed a day or so before.

When Poonjaji was travelling, we also used to write to him
regularly, and not a week would pass without a letter from him in
reply. I was full of devotional fervour in those days and this
exuberance came out in many of the letters I wrote. Poonjaji
enjoyed them very much. In his replies to me he would often say
that he had read out my letters to devotees in other parts of the
country. Poonjaji would also send us copies of letters that other
devotees had written to him. If he received letters that contained
accounts of good experiences, he liked to share his own joy, and
the joy of the letter-writer, by distributing xeroxed copies of the
letter to devotees in different parts of the country.
During our correspondence we noticed that Poonjaji was tele-
pathic. We would write him a letter, telling him about some partic-
ular problem that had come up. Often, his answer would come by
post before our letter had reached him. We came to the conclusion
that if we wrote a letter to him and posted it, he would immediately
be aware of what we wanted. He didn't need to wait for the letter
to reach him. He would send us an answer within a few hours of
the letter being posted to him.

In 1974 Vinayak watched a film about the life of Tukaram, the

medieval Marathi saint, and was suddenly filled with a great desire
to renounce the world to go and live as a sadhu. This was Papaji 's
response:
26th March, 1974
Delhi

You saw the film 'Tuka Zalase Kalasa' on TV and reacted

strongly, thinking that you would renounce the world and run off
to Pandharpur. Your letter compels me to take you to the battlefield
of Kurukshetra. Look at what Arjuna said. 'I shall not fight. How
can I kill the elderly and revered persons of my family: my own
acharya [teacher], my father-in-law, my brothers-in-law? Rather
than kill others to win back my kingdom, I shall retire to a solitary
pilgrim place and beg my food.' Krishna would not let him run
away. Nor will I let you run away. You are also in the midst of a

340
 RAMMANDIR

battlefield. How can I allow you to turn your back on it and run
away to Pandharpur? Your Poonjaji will bring Pandharpur into
your HEART. Worry not. Your liberation is guaranteed. Have trust
in ME. I shall never lose hold of YOU, nor will you ever lose hold
of ME. The fact that you have such thoughts satisfies me that the
soil is fertile and that the rains will come in time. Now stay quiet
for the bumper crop .... Rest assured, I am in love with you ....

Vinayak stayed quiet for a long time, waiting for his bumper
crop. I say this because I spoke to him in the middle of 1996 when
he came to attend the Guru Purnima celebrations in Lucknow. I
showed him my manuscript and asked him to go through it to check
the stories he had first -hand knowledge of, and to add any of his
own that had not already been included. He went through it and
made several useful suggestions and corrections. About a month
later he sent the following letter to a friend of mine in America
whom he had known for several years:

I am so happy to be writing to you. It is like reviving some

very old relationship. Surely, we were all together in one family
with our beloved Papaji in previous lives and got separated after
these lives due to past pending desires, achievements, aspirations,
etc., which would have conferred different future assignments on
each of us. We are lucky that dear Papaji called us back in time. He
has assured all of us individually that we are now in safe hands.
It does not matter that some years were lost in the process.
Many millions have been spent earlier, and by the grace of our
beloved Sadguru, we are now close to the end of the cycle .
Decades of separation are meagre in eons of togetherness.
After my recent visit to Lucknow, I was sad to be away from
him. I also had a deep remorseful feeling that I had not progressed
much, despite thirty years contact with his feet. This feeling
became especially strong while I was travelling on the local train
from the centre of Madras to Tambaram to visit a client. I remem -
bered that I had not had a single experience comparable to those
that many devotees have had. Many have seen light in front of their
closed eyes, some have heard the divine flute in the dead silence of

341
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

within. Some blessed souls have experienced clouds of bliss

descending on them and innumerable other blessed visions. Others
have even experienced oneness with other life-forms, which is a
very noble experience on the path of Self-knowledge. But I have
had nothing.
'Except that I lived with Master, close to his feet, shared food
and shelter with him, ate from his hands and listened to his peren-
nial jokes, I have been deprived of all the other experiences in my
thirty long years of satsang.'
When these thoughts became very strong during that journey,
a sudden experience of peace was felt. I felt that I had had this
supreme peace all the time, during the past thirty years and even
earlier. Some assurance came very strongly from within: 'This
peace is all that there is. Other experiences do not matter.'
I began to cry and my fellow passengers thought that I was
mad.
I am still abiding in that happiness and I would not sacrifice it
even for the seat of Brahma. As you said rightly the other day, dear
Papaji's special blessing on our family is that we never for a
moment fell away from His feet. Our association with Him was not
thirty years. It has been beginningless.
I had a funny experience a couple of days ago. While I was
feeling that the peace felt by me was superior to any other experi-
ence, I suddenly started smelling a strong perfume around me for
a whole day. It lasted twenty-four hours and then disappeared on
its own, but during its presence it was a very strong, powerful and
rare perfume. I altered everything around me to see if it would go
away, but it did not budge. Finally, I had to pray to Master to ward
it off, since it proved to be distracting. I now do not envy the
devotees who experience perfume or other experiences. This is
how dear Papaji teaches us by his lilas.

As Vinayak related at the beginning of his account, the first

member of his family to meet Papaji was his father, Sri
Ramachandra Prabhu. This is an extract from an article he
submitted in the 1960s to The Mountain Path, a journal published
by Sri Ramanasramam.

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 RAMMANDIR

Ramachandra
Prabhu and his wife,
Sunanda.

I played an important role in the 1942 freedom struggle. I had

read the works of saints such as Ram Tirtha, Chaitanya
Mahaprabhu, Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa, but my idea of sadhana in those days was to fight
for freedom and to serve the poor and the downtrodden. After
Independence, when I realised that the poor were not deriving any
economic benefits from our freedom, I became a Marxist. Later, I
joined the Congress party and became an M.L.A. [member of the
state legislative assembly]. Eventually, I became disenchanted
with politics and became a businessman instead, but my business
partners cheated me and I lost a lot of money.
In 1965 my work as a forest contractor took me to Londa, the
place where Sri Poonja was living and working. In those days he
still had a job in the mining business. I met him there in Ram
Mandir, the small ashram that had been built for him. The magnif-
icent personality of Master Poonjaji, his perpetual, enormously
benevolent, reassuring smile and his detached love for his devotees

343
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

melted my ego, and for the first time in my life I surrendered. I

took him as my Guru and prostrated before him. Sri Poonjaji lifted
me up, looked at me reassuringly and then embraced me with great
affection as if he had been anxiously awaiting my arrival.

Papaji corresponded with him extensively in the 1970s and

'80s on a wide variety of topics.

15th December, 1978

Lucknow
Dear Prabhu Jee,
I am pleased to go through the contents of your letter of 11th Dec.
wherein you state, 'May we flourish in our attachment to the
Master'. This is the secret of secrets, known only to a few Blessed
Ones , though it is as old as time itself. In ancient times Girija
[Parvati], daughter of the Himalayan king Daksha, was so
immensely devoted to her Master, no one could break her from this
attachment. Not her father, not the rishis, and not the gods. She was
accepted by the great Teacher [Siva] who lives in the cremation
grounds. One day she had the following conversation with her
Master:

Parvati: 0 Lord, how to enter into nirvikalpa samadhi?

Siva: Look at ME. Whom do you see?
Parvati: I behold the Lord Siva.
Siva: Transcend this vision! What do you see?
Parvati: I see LIGHT.
Siva: Transcend this Light! What do you see?

Parvati Keeps QUIET

and merges into the SELF.

My recent trip has been good. I came across some good people. A
young engineer of Hoshangabad called Sharad; one lady of
Baroda, Suhas Ben, whom Smt Shashikala had seen in Bombay,
and Smt Shashikala herself [R. M. Prabhu's sister-in-law]. She
came one day, sat before me and asked, 'Master Jee, what do I have

344
 RAMMANDIR

to do?' She had not asked me a question for several years, though
I had always liked her service to me. I looked at her and I said,
'You have to DO Nothing!' That was all, but she suddenly
changed . She looked to be in great Peace and her face showed a
radiating Light. I am happy about it.
With Love to you, Mrs Prabhu and Chi Vinayak.

Yours aftly [affectionately]

4th August, 1981

Londa
Dear Prabhu Jee,
...The Master work is being done and I am happy with this job that
has been entrusted to me. I shall not rest till everybody is in Peace
and Bliss ....

15th October, 1981

Arya Niwas
Hardwar
Dear Prabhu Jee,
.. .I am glad to read about your experience. Call it a vision or a
glimpse or whatever you like. It shows the clear state of your pure
mind and aspirations. Peep through your Being all the time or even
occasionally. There can not be any problem in being aware of your
fundamental Self nature. That is what one really is endowed with
- an inner potentiality to absorb it. Disentangled mind can do it in
a finger snap ....

13th February, 1983

Lucknow
Dear Prabhu Jee,
.. .in your letter of 10th January, sent from Muscat, I am sorry to say
that I do not have a clear understanding of what you write:
'MASTER'S RELATIONSHIP WITH VENKATESH [Prabhu
Jee's son] IS DIFFERENT FROM HIS PARENTS' RELATION -
SHIP. WHEN I LOOK AT VENKATESH WITH THE ATTEN -
TION OF A FATHER, I DEVELOP ATTACHMENT AND SELF -

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

INTEREST IN HIS ACTIVITY. BUT WHEN I LOOK AT HIM

WITH THE EYES OF MASTER, I SEE HIS INNOCENCE AND
PURE DEVOTION AND LOVE TO MASTER AND HIS
MOTHER.'
This is the disease the entire universe is suffering from:
double personality, split mind, schizophrenia, paranoia. One
should have just one kind of look to see things. One should not
discriminate between attachment and detachment, father and
Master, Master and student, friend and foe, good and bad. JUST
LOOK AND DO NOT DISCRIMINATE. This is the key to
Nirvana-Peace-Bliss.
Did not the great world Teacher [Krishna] teach Arjuna in the
battlefield, 'I give you my look. Look as I look. Do your duty.
Fight....'?

1st March, 1983

Lucknow
Respected Prabhu Jee,
...In India too the country is nude and polluted due to deforestation.
You are or were in the same trade, so you know more than I how
much havoc has been done even in Karwar and Dharwar districts.
Millions of trees have been felled because of the Kalinadi Dam. I
saw that even the Londa ghats have been denuded of tree wealth,
but we can't help.
I was at Hardwar and Rishikesh. Daily I saw about 2,000 men,
women and children cutting trees and crossing the Ganga with
head-loads of firewood. This has been going on for ages. There is
a reason for this. Each man will get Rs 8 per head-load and the
citizens have no fuel for the kitchen except wood. Gas is not avail-
able for the entire country. I cannot see any way out. Every day on
my evening walks I saw scores of people striking their axes on the
tender branches of the young or baby trees. Each stroke was a hit
on my arms. I have no remedy except to go to the battlefield of
Kurukshetra and overhear the dialogue between the student and his
wise teacher when the armies were facing each other, chest to
chest.
'But I cannot fight, Sire,' said Arjuna. 'They are my cousins,

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 RAM MANDIR

in-laws and my teacher of archery.' He flung his bow on the

ground, kneeled, head down, his body quivering, his face pale with
fear and his lips tightly pressed together.
Here started the Gita. The wisdom of the universe spoken by
the Lord Himself. We can speak at Bombay about what happened
next. You have provoked me into saying this because in your last
letter you quoted profusely from the Gita. I withhold my
comments now because when I speak it will be a very true and
never-ending dialogue. Even Krishna stopped at the end of the
eighteenth chapter, after 700 shlokas, but in speaking about what
Krishna said to his beloved disciple and friend, I can never end.
Neither time nor language can encompass what I have to say.
I started with the subject of pollution and later drifted towards
the Gita, Arjuna and Krishna because Krishna dealt with the basic
pollution, the original pollution of human minds which started with
Adam and Eve and still continues. Our minds are polluted. One
religion is against another, there are Jews against Arabs, Arabs
against Iranians, capitalists versus socialists, caste against caste,
family against family, brother against brother, husband against
wife. This is the mental pollution. If this is wiped out of our minds
we can live like gods in the heavens. I may be dreaming but I want
it to happen.
I meet young boys, girls and children and I teach them how to
live in love with all beings, all species. All gods, men, animals,
birds, trees, marine life, and even the stones and the sand point
towards that one origin that has become all - including past,
present and future - without disturbing the oneness of Itself ....

I will tell you the rest in person. Thank you.

29th July, 1984

Dear Prabhu Jee,

...Another young man from Sankhli came with me in a jeep to
Ponda and spent a night with me on my bed massaging my legs. In
the morning he thanked me by saying, 'I am enlightened'. I am
sending you a copy of the note he left me.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Dear Pujya Punjaji,

I am leaving this place with great satisfaction. I got
everything I wanted and do not seek anything more.
I am free, happy, fulfilled, enlightened and liberated
due to the grace of the Master, the Guru, the Self
which is you. Thanks.
Sincerely yours,
Patil....

27th July, 1985

Lucknow
Dear Prabhu Jee,
I have suffered a deep mental agony to read about the deaths
of 329 innocent people aboard the Kaniksha Air India flight 182 on
23rd of June '85, in which children yet to be born , and women and
men of all ages died in mid -air for no reason. This is the biggest air
disaster since the 'Emperor Ashoka ' aircraft exploded in the
Arabian Ocean, minutes after take-off from Santa Cruz.
For many days in my dreams and visions I have been diving
into the Atlantic Ocean meeting the dead bodies and searching for
the black box [the flight recorder that might indicate the cause of
the crash]. I cannot return to my normal state ....
This is what the religions teach to their followers: to kill
people not belonging to their own herd.
I give my sympathies to the next of kin of the dead so that
they will keep up their courage to face the loss of their dear ones.
I pray for the shanti of the souls of the unfortunate departed
people. Particularly the children who carried their dolls in their
arms at the time of disaster.
Hari aum.

13th April, 1987

Lucknow

Dear Prabhu Jee,

.. .I am satisfied with my mission, which keeps me going all the
way through. I prostrate before the Lord Ramana who is using this

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 RAM MANDIR

instrument for his own work and his own will to exploit the
unimaginable, untamable, unknown Light present in every man
and woman, and in all beings ....

As I was collecting material for this book I would show Papaji

any interesting stories, letters or accounts that came in from his
old devotees. He would read them with interest, but with one
exception he never took the initiative by asking me to contact
specific people who might have stories to tell.
One day, though, he suddenly looked at me and said, 'Has
Gabri written to you yet?'
Sri Gabri had been the postmaster at Londa at a time when
Papaji was regularly giving satsangs there. I had already
contacted him and he had replied by sending me a brief note,
saying that he preferred not to talk about his experiences since he
didn't think they would be of interest to anyone. I had not shown
the letter to Papaji because it had not contained anything of
interest, but when he suddenly asked the question, I retrieved it
from my files and showed it to him.
Papaji read it and then said, .'Write to him again and tell him
that I am asking him to write out his story. I want to know what
happened to him. '
Papaji then gave a few details to whet my appetite.
'Londa was a small place. Everyone knew everybody else.
Gabri was the local postmaster. He was a communist and an
atheist, and he seemed to resent the fact that big satsangs were
going on in his village. He used to greet everyone in the village in
a very friendly way, but whenever he would encounter me, he
would give me a hostile stare or ignore me completely. Then there
was a sudden and dramatic transformation. I remember his wife
bursting into my satsang one morning with a look of complete
disbelief on her face. "My husband is sitting in my puja room,
meditating! What have you done to him?"
'/ still don't know what I was supposed to have done, but
something definitely happened to him. Write again and tell him
that I want to know. '
I wrote to Sri Gabri, mentioning what Papaji had said about
him. This time I received a long and informative reply.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

I refrained from writing a detailed reply to your first letter

because I consider myself to be an ordinary man, not worthy
enough to be mentioned in a biography of a world -renowned
teacher of Sri Poonjaji's stature. I still feel that my contribution
will be of little value, coming as it does from a villager who is little
known even in his own village.
Poonjaji may have thought I was a communist, but I never
accepted their ideas, even though I had read many books on
socialism. I think it would be more correct to say that I was a ratio -
nalist. I was someone who was willing to accept new ideas, but
only those that could be demonstrated to be valid or useful.
My memory is not so good nowadays, so the account that
follows is mostly taken from a diary that I wrote at the time.
Poonjaji encouraged me to write this diary since he said that it
would keep me out of the reverie that was preventing me from
performing my official duties properly.
When I was working as the sub-postmaster of Londa, I occa -
sionally paid visits to the dispensary of Dr Narayan Bakre, not for
medical reasons but to have discussions on politics and religion. I
had no faith in God and I spoke out vigorously against all religious
beliefs and practices. I was then under the influence of Bertrand
Russel and other modern thinkers. I was an avid reader of anti-reli-
gious books and liked to pass on their sentiments to anyone who
would listen to me.
I was in Dr Bakre's dispensary in early November, 1979,
when I overheard him saying to someone, 'He arrived yesterday'.
No name was mentioned and I got the feeling that he didn't want
me to know about this event. I found out later that they wanted to
conceal the arrival of Sri Poonja from me in case I decided to
disrupt their satsang with one of my anti-religious speeches. At
that time I didn't know much about Sri Poonjaji, except that he was
a spiritual teacher who was held in high esteem by both Dr
Narayan Bakre and his father, Dr Dattatreya Bakre. I knew that
they kept a house for him in the village that was never occupied
unless he was there.
Dr Narayan Bakre had once told me, 'Ram Mandir was not
originally built for Poonjaji . It was under construction when he

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first came here, and we were planning to move into it ourselves.

When Poonjaji first witnessed the construction he exclaimed,
"Every brick of this building is uttering 'Ram! Ram!"' After
hearing this we decided to reserve the building for Sri Poonjaji's
exclusive use. When he is not here, we lock it up. No one else is
allowed to stay there.'
I was curious to see and meet this man whom so many people
in the village were flocking to see. I didn't want to disrupt the
proceedings, but I was quite willing to defend my atheism if I was
challenged about it.
On that first visit I heard Sri Poonjaji narrate a long story
about some swami who had come to see him in his hotel room.
This swami had said to him that he had read all the scriptures and
had done a lot of tapas, but none of it had brought him enlighten-
ment or peace of mind. Sri Poonjaji added that this man was a guru
in his own right and that he was on his way to the Himalayas with
some of his devotees. Poonjaji said that he told him to go outside
and leave all the garbage of the past outside the room, and then
come in again without it. The swami was insulted, but did as he
was told. A few seconds later he came rushing in, prostrated to Sri
Poonjaji and said that he was enlightened. There were a lot of other
details, but that was the gist of the story.
I wasn't impressed. I thought to myself, 'This man is just
boasting'. I left the room without greeting or acknowledging Sri
Poonja in any way.
The following day I went back to have another look. As I
walked in I could hear them talking about me.
When he saw me walk in, Dr Narayan Bakre announced,
'Here he is: Sri Gabri.'
Poonjaji turned his attention to me and said, 'So you don't
believe in God?'
'No,' I said, 'I don't. God is a creation of a conditioned mind.'
'Then uncondition it,' suggested Sri Poonjaji.
'It can't be done,' I replied. 'It is not possible.'
'Can you give me one second of your time?' he asked. 'Would
you like me to show you how the mind can be deconditioned?'
Mental conditioning was one of my pet theories at this time,

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so I was interested to try any method or system that promised a

removal of this problem.
'Yes,' I said. 'I am willing to give you a second if you can
demonstrate how this can be done.'
He made me sit in front of him. I looked straight into his eyes,
and he looked back into mine. We kept silent.
Eventually I had to say, 'No matter how hard I try, I cannot
give you one second of my time.'
I left with my convictions intact but over the next day or so I
began to be aware that this man had touched me and attracted me
in some way.
One part of me was saying, 'I am not going to yield to this
swami,' but another part of me was beginning to feel that I was an
egotistic person who needed help, and that this help might come in
the satsangs that Sri Poonjaji was conducting.
I attended a few more of the satsangs in the evenings, after I
had finished work, but took no part in any of the discussions. The
satsangs gave me no peace. On the contrary, I got the feeling that
they were causing mental disturbances in me. I had a theory that
Sri Poonjaji was trying to do something to my mind to attract me
and make me one of his devotees. That, I felt, was why I w:;i.sexpe-
riencing these strange mental states. Despite the unusual sensa-
tions, I still felt that the situation was under control. I made a reso-
lution: 'I am not going to yield to this swami, and I am not going
to run away from him. I am not going to let him control my
decision-making.'
In the days that I sat silently at the back, the conversation
often turned to Sri Ramana Maharshi and his teachings. I had seen
a big picture of the Maharshi on a table in Dr Narayan Bakre's
house, but I had paid no attention to it. Now, knowing that this man
was Poonjaji's own Master, I slowly became more and more inter-
ested in the stories that Poonjaji told about him.
After a few days, during which I silently witnessed the
satsangs, Dr Bakre gave me his copy of Talks with Sri Ramana
Maharshi to read. By then I was curious enough to go through it to
see what he had to say. I was immediately struck by the method of
self-enquiry the Maharshi recommended. I had earlier told Sri

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Poonjaji that I did not think it was possible to decondition the

mind, but when I read about the Maharshi's technique, it occurred
to me that this was a simple, rational and even scientific way of
finding out what was at the source of the mind. It seemed to
demand no belief -structure at all; it was just a way of determining
the nature of the mind, the way it came into existence, and the
possible place of its origin. I decided to pursue the technique as a
rational enquiry into the nature of 'I'.
That night I woke up at about 2.30 a.m. and felt a strong desire
to concentrate deeply on the feeling of 'I'. I tried to do it, but
nothing happened. Over the next few days the urge to find out what
'I' really am grew stronger and stronger. My self-enquiry became
obsessive and I found myself spending longer and longer periods
in a deep contemplation on the nature of the 'I' -thought.
Though I didn't have much success, the enquiry took hold of
me in such a way that I couldn't drop it. I must have been
exhibiting strange symptoms by this time because when Sri
Poonjaji left for Bombay for a few days, he asked Dr Bakre to keep
an eye on me because he suspected there was a possibility that I
might go mad! I was not discouraged by this. Though I had not
satisfactorily solved the problem of 'Who am I?', I did find that my
life was beginning to change. I developed a distaste for the day-to-
day workings of both my office and my household, and I even
started to feel a distance from my wife and children and an
aversion to associating with them.
When Poonjaji returned a few days later, I started attending
his satsangs again. I didn't understand what was going on there,
but somehow that didn't seem important. I was still reading Talks
in my spare time and was pleasurably surprised to find that I could
open the book at any page and find there an answer to my ques -
tions on self-enquiry. At this stage, I was not consulting Poonjaji
about my enquiry; I preferred to get my answers from this book.
I found Sri Poonjaji's personality and ways to be a little intim-
idating and was nervous about approaching him. I told Dr
Dattatreya Bakre about this and he just laughed.
'To me,' he said, 'he is just like a small child. I deal with him
and love him in the same way that I love my own family. I treat

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him as if he were a young member of my own family.'

I watched him and found out that this was true. He would sit
next to him, cajoling him like a small baby. If he wanted him to eat
something special, he would entreat him in the same way that he
would a child. It seemed to work for him, but I didn't have that
kind of relationship with Sri Poonjaji. To me he was still a very
distant and austere figure.
I soon realised that I was addicted to Sri Poonjaji's presence.
I couldn't stay away from him.
My self -enquiry got more and more intensive. In the middle
of the night I would find myself trying to reject and expel my mind
so forcefully, groaning-like sounds would come out of my mouth
while I was making the effort. I finally approached Poonjaji about
this and he remarked, 'Keep it up. You are making good progress.'
The next day I felt I had pushed my mind to the edge of some -
thing. Beyond that edge there seemed to be a very large, dark
passage. When I told Poonjaji about this, he merely remarked, 'Go
beyond the dark passage'.
And then finally something happened. In the middle of the
night, at about 1.30 a.m., I woke up. I was lying on a cot, but I
knew immediately that I was not in my usual state. As I sat up,
there was an awareness of all the things that were in my physical
vicinity: the house, the road outside and the nearby railway track,
but they were no longer outside and apart from me. I knew and
experienced that they were all inside me. I had a distinct feeling of
enveloping everything. The whole universe was within me. A train
passed by on the railway track and I knew it was passing through
me, not past me.
I pinched my thigh to ascertain I was not dreaming and satis-
fied myself that I really was awake. I wanted to go to the toilet, but
I was afraid to move. I felt that if I moved, the whole world would
somehow move along with me. Eventually, when I could wait no
longer, I decided to risk it. I got up and headed straight for the wall.
I felt that since the wall was within me, and not something outside
and apart from me, it would not impede my progress to the
bathroom. I hit the wall with a thud and realised that though the
world might be inside me, it was still just as solid as it used to be.

354
 RAMMANDIR

I also learned that I still needed to use doors.

After my trip to the bathroom I came back, sat on the cot, and
enjoyed this strange new state with a sense of awe and wonder.
Eventually I fell asleep again for a couple of hours. When I awoke
again at around 6.30, I felt child-like, happy, buoyant, and in a very
good humour. I went off to work and did all my duties in the usual
way.
That evening I went to satsang with Sri Poonjaji, presented
him with a bunch of bananas, prostrated and announced, 'I have
realised'.
He roared with laughter and said, 'Nobody has ever come
before me with such confidence and made such a proclamation!'
He didn't contradict me at the time, and I don't know why I
suddenly felt that this experience was the real thing.
The experience of having everything inside me happened
several times, usually in the middle of the night. I would suddenly
have the feeling, 'I am beyond and above everything', and then I
would actually feel that I was everywhere, above and beyond the
clouds, the moon, the sky, etc.
One morning, when I was sitting on the outside veranda, I had
a sudden experience of this cosmic Self that was accompanied by
strange sensations in the body. I felt split in two halves vertically.
I felt that my left half was normal while the right half was in a state
of abnormality. From then on I began to find myself in strange
states more and more frequently. Sometimes I would look at my
limbs and find that I was unable to move them; sometimes I felt
that I was about to die; sometimes I would feel that my ego had
completely disappeared. But all these states would pass and I
would eventually end up in my usual everyday state. With hind-
sight, I think it was some kind of breakdown of the nervous
system. I had no doubt that these strange and unnerving states had
been precipitated by my association with Sri Poonjaji.
Towards the end of November, 1979, I would wake up in the
middle of the night, usually around 2.30 a.m. and hear lectures
being delivered inside me. They were all on advaitic subjects such
as stitha prajna, the nature of reality, and Brahman being one
without a second. These lectures went on every night for about a

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

week. As I listened to them, I had the feeling that I was being

prepared for something. I mentioned this phenomenon to Dr Bakre
who immediately wanted to know more details: where did I think
the voices came from? What did they sound like? And so on. I
couldn't answer his questions. In fact, when he asked, I couldn't
even say what language the lectures were in. There was just this
feeling of knowledge being transmitted, but not in a normal way. I
remember thinking, 'This is how the Vedas and the Upanishads are
immortal. They must be repeating themselves endlessly in some
subtle way, and occasionally people who are in a pure state can
tune into them .'
The weird experiences continued, but with them came a better
understanding of what was behind and beyond them. Looking at
my diary, I find the following entry for 29th November, 1979:

I is everything. I is zero. Realise that realisation is

not necessary. Don't try to change yourself into
anything. You are fit where you are; you are doing
the right thing. Nothing is wrong. Still realise. Treat
everything as I, and see that I is beyond mental
conception.
Since I met Master I have tried to change myself
in character, behaviour, etc. Now it seems that it is
not necessary.
If everything is all right and as it ought to be,
who will change? Whom to change? Why to
change?
Realise absolute satya [Truth]. Know that satya
is all-absorbing. Don't try to mean it. Be it.

From this day on I assumed that everything and everyone was

my guru. I felt that there was some truth to be learned from
everyone and everything, and found potential gurus in everything
I saw around me.
During the days that followed I experienced an intense silence
all the time. Sometimes I would walk alone towards Ramnagar [a
new township near Londa] or Watregate [a railway crossing

356
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outside Londa] deeply engrossed in myself, enjoying the deep

silence inside. The silence was solid. I termed it absolute existence,
because that is what it felt like. It persisted for several months. It
was truth; it was silence; it was unbelievably solid and immovable;
nothing was imposed on it, and nothing could be imposed on it. I
tried to understand it but failed because it couldn't be understood.
There is a famous Kannada saint called Allama Prabhu. His
sayings, which speak of the direct experience of reality, began to
repeat themselves inside me. As they unfolded, I knew that they
were also describing my own state. I understood them by having
the same experience and by being in the same state as Allama
Prabhu.
As I look through my old diaries I find many entries in which
I was struggling to discover the nature of this experience. I would
compare it to things Sankara and other sages had said, and I would
try to examine it myself, but without much success. There are also
many entries in which I am profusely praising Sri Poonjaji for
bestowing his grace on me and for opening me up so that I could
experience this wonderful state. One note says, 'Finally, I
surrender to my Gurudev'.
I was in a highly-charged state for two to three years after
these initial experiences. The feeling of having everything inside
me, and of being not different from anyone or anything, reasserted
itself again. If I was on a train, I would know that I was absolutely
still and motionless. I did not move through the world; the world
moved through me. Sometimes I would look at people and find it
hard to separate them into individual entities. I remember seeing a
line of beggars once at a festival in Balakundri. I couldn't divide
them into different beings. Seeing them looked like seeing
different faces of one soul. Sometimes even little things caused me
problems. Once I stared at the rice on my plate and hesitated to eat
it because I could not separate myself from it. It was so much a part
of me, I didn't want to injure it by biting into it. I have to admit that
for many years I behaved very strangely. Some people thought that
I was a little mad.
For many years my only topic of conversation was Self-reali-
sation, Ramana Maharshi 's teachings and the experiences I had

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had with Sri Poonjaji. I held weekly satsangs in which I would talk
enthusiastically about these things and in which I would encourage
everyone who came to go to Sri Poonjaji to experience his grace.
After a few years the state began to wear off and after about
nine years it disappeared completely. Though the effortless and
continuous awareness of the Self is no longer there, the reverence
and esteem for my Guru, Sri Poonjaji, still remain. Likewise my
regard for Sri Ramana Maharshi, my Paramaguru. Through them
I have been shown a beauty that I never even suspected existed. In
fact, before I met Sri Poonjaji, I was self-indulgently trying to
convince other people that such states and experiences didn't even
exist.
The respect and reverence I feel towards Sri Poonja is now
that of a son towards his loving father. I have had, through his
grace, a glimpse of his own exalted state, and for that I will always
love and honour him. But I also love him for his ordinariness. He
eats, talks and drinks with us like any other member of the family.
He remembers us all and makes loving enquiries about all our
children, grandchildren, and so on. He is an incomparable yogi, but
he is also one of the most lovable men I have ever met.

Papaji continued to visit Londa regularly throughout the

1970s and '80s to keep in touch with his many devotees who lived
in and around the town. As his reputation spread in the
surrounding areas, more and more people came to have his
darshan and receive his teachings. One such person was B. V.
Hukeri, an engineer who lived in the nearby town of Belgaum.
The account which follows is interesting for two reasons.
Firstly, it contains rare teaching dialogues from this period. None
of Papaji 's satsangs were taped in those days, but Sri Hukeri made
notes in his diary, recording key conversations he had with Papaji.
Secondly, Papaji gives detailed advice on kundalini. Nowadays,
Papaji never recommends yogic practices which might produce
kundalini experiences because, he says, conditions in the world at
the moment are not suitable for such practices.
When he is asked about classical yoga methods, and in partic -
ular kundalini practices, he usually replies, 'They need absolutely

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clean air, a very pure diet and constant supervision. Nowadays,

these conditions cannot be found even in the mountains. There is
too much pollution for these techniques to be effective. Even the
food we eat is all contaminated. I have done these techniques
myself, so I know what works and what doesn't.'

In 1980 I was working as a P.W.D. [public works department]

engineer on a dam about thirty miles from Belgaum. I was respon-
sible for rehabilitating the villagers whose lands were about to be
submerged. On the ninth of March I was having a spiritual discus-
sion with one of my friends when Sri Gabri, the sub-postmaster of
Londa, walked in and joined us. He was a close friend of the
person I was talking to.
When he found that I was interested in spiritual matters, he
said, 'Why don't you come to Londa? There is a great sage living
there called Poonjaji Maharaj who will dispel all your doubts.'
As soon I heard his name, my heart immediately felt attracted
towards him.
A few days later I took the bus to Londa and was introduced
to Poonjaji by Sri Gabri. I had long felt a desire for Self-realisation,
so when an opportunity arose I began to ask him some questions
about it. Before I begin to relate this first conversation I should say
that nowadays I call Sri Poonjaji 'Gurudeo' since for me he is both
Guru and God. I shall call him by this name throughout my
account.

Question: I have read Bhagavad Gita, Jnaneshwari and other

works. After reading them my mind accepts that I am not the mind
but the Self. I have a desire to study philosophy. Please advise me
what sadhana I should follow to realise myself.

Gurudeo: There is no process. I do not teach any sadhana.

Question: Then what should I do?

Gurudeo: Why don't you get yourself realised here and now?
Why not finish it off now? I do not deceive people by asking them
to do this or that. I am not going to ask you to waste your time.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Question: How much time will it take to finish?

Gurudeo: Just give me one minute.

Question: If I am realised, will I be able to go back home and

perform all my duties? Or will I have to leave my job? My children
are being educated. I want to get them properly married and
continue with my work. What will happen after realisation?

Gurudeo: What do you want to do? Who are you?

Question: I am the Self, the Atman, but I want to see it.

Gurudeo: I cannot show you because you are already that. Only
ignorance has to be removed. If this is done, you will be free. You
will remain as the witness for everything that happens thereafter.
Since you are not the doer, why should you worry about the
children?

Question: My mind is not yet ready. Please give me some time.

Gurudeo: There is nothing to fear. After you have seen a cinema

show, don't you like to see the best bits again and again?

Question: Yes.

Gurudeo: As soon as a wedding is over, the bride and the groom

like to spend all their time with each other. They never feel like
parting. This is the state of the realised man. He always wants to
remain with the bliss of the Self, and will constantly revert back to
it. If you postpone, you will just have future births. Why not finish
your business now? Once you know who you are, you are aware of
your own consciousness. With that awareness your work will be
done better than before. You can see the same consciousness that
is in you in your wife, your children and in all others.

Question: Though my intellect accepts that I am consciousness, I

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still feel that my mind is not yet ready.

Gurudeo stopped trying to convince me and instead gazed

steadily at me for a few seconds. I found his eyes to be so bright
and piercing, I could not hold his gaze. I lowered my eyes and then
closed them.
I kept them closed for a period of about fifteen minutes.
During that period I was told that Gurudeo looked at me steadily
and continuously. As I sat there I felt as if some kind of electricity
was flowing up my spinal chord to the region of the heart. The
mind was calm and the whole body was filled with bliss.
When I opened my eyes Gurudeo asked Sri Gabri to take me
for lunch and bring me back in the evening. Throughout that day
the fire he had ignited in me burned strongly. I saw him again in
the evening and sat with him in a state of bliss and peace.
Eventually he had to remind me that I had to leave and catch my
train home.
I went back to him again a few days later and sat silently with
him for a whole day. He asked me if I had brought any more doubts
with me and I replied, 'No, Swamiji, I have no doubts because I
feel that I have now established you in my heart'.
He left Londa soon afterwards, so I didn't have a chance to
see him again till the following year. Though he had not given me
any practice to do, I still felt inclined to meditate for two to three
hours every day. Dr Bakre had given me Talks with Sri Ramana
Maharshi and from that book I learned the technique of self-
enquiry, as taught by Gurudeo's Master. I asked him about this on
our next meeting:

Question: I am trying to meditate for half an hour to an hour in the

morning, trying to investigate 'Who am I?' Though I feel better for
it, my mind is mostly blank. Whenever I am free I try to read philo-
sophical books and take the name of God to keep me in touch with
myself. Though you gave me directions last time, I don't under-
stand them. What should I do?

Gurudeo: My way of teaching does not include the reading of

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

books. Meditation of half an hour to one hour is not enough. Even

three hours is not enough. You can meditate till you are eighty
years old, but it will not serve any purpose. You will still have
continuous thoughts. Try to be without thoughts for one minute
every day. That is sufficient. Our method is to remain thoughtless.
Your real nature is meditation. Remain thoughtless all the time.

Question: There is still a fear of realisation, but I don't know why.

Gurudeo: There should be no fear. Why should you fear getting

yourself released from the cage of bondage?

Question: I ask for your grace.

Gurudeo: Grace is always there, otherwise you would not have

come over to me.

His answers somehow satisfied me. I prostrated and went

back to Belgaum. The following year I began a correspondence
with him since I felt that I needed advice on several points. I found
that he was always happy to answer letters from his devotees.
What is more, he would express extreme joy and happiness if we
reported good experiences to him. The following lines are extracts
from letters he wrote to me in July and August, 1982:

Try to keep away from thoughts. Look to see where

thought arises from and stay there. Perhaps this could
be your true nature .... Sit down in meditation. Watch
the working of the mind. How it rises, how it stays,
and how it disappears .... The main hurdle is too much
attachment to things that are not abiding in nature.
One day we have to abandon them and return home
alone, which is the way we came .... Let us remember
the Sat Purusha [perfect man], complete our work
soon and get ready for our departure.

In October of that year I received the following letter, m

response to one of my own:

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 RAMMANDIR

Your letter is a true expression of your inner trust,

love and sincerity. You have a date with your own
beloved whom you have been ignoring for fifty-odd
years by pursuing happiness in sense objects that
were not permanent, stable and abiding by nature.
How can one have peace of mind in dealing with
transitory things?
Take an hour out of your daily routine and sit
quietly. Watch the outgoing tendency of your mind
that has caused you to incarnate a million times.

I followed his advice, and at the beginning of 1983 I began to

have what seemed like kundalini experiences. When I meditated,
the back of the body would get hot, there would be a rising of
energy in the spine, my limbs would start to vibrate, my head
would shake, and occasionally strange sounds would come into my
right ear. I wrote to Gurudeo about this and he replied:

Let your sadhana be as natural as breathing. The

movement on the top of your head is due to the effort
to concentrate. Let it be effortless meditation. All the
vibrations show the rise of the kundalini. Keep it up.
Devote yourself more seriously to this shakti. Do not
entertain any fear. The fear you describe is due to
your going upstream in an uncommon way of life.
The mind does not like its killer. Hence there is fear.

The kundalini experiences continued throughout 1983 and

1984. Hot waves would rise up my spine and warm, pleasant
sensations would percolate and fill my entire body. The current
seemed to rise as far as the neck. There would also be involuntary
movements of the head. I reported all these experiences to
Gurudeo on his next visit to Londa. He was very happy to hear
about them. He said that such experiences burn past karmas. He
also told me, 'No further effort is necessary. If the power has risen
up to the neck, what happens next is the responsibility of the Guru.
He will take you up to the sahasrara chakra and free you from all

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

further births and bondages.'

He also told me that more experiences would come, and that
these would be manifestations of the grace of the Guru.
'Remember this state throughout the day,' he said, 'and no other
sadhana will be necessary.'
I had Gurudeo's darshan many times during his visits to
Londa in 1984. I also met him at Sri Baburao Murgod's house in
Tilakwadi, a suburb of Belgaum. Gurudeo pointed out Sri Murgod
to me as an example of someone who realised the truth without any
effort or practice.
'He did Guru seva [service] with faith and asked for nothing,'
remarked Gurudeo. 'He read nothing, worshipped no gods and
went on no pilgrimages.'
I asked Sri Murgod about his experience and he replied, 'I am
consciousness only. The three states pass over it. I am not aware of
the body or the actions it performs.'
I received confirmation of this when he was driving us in his
jeep. Gurudeo asked, 'Babu, who is driving the vehicle?' and he
replied, 'I don't know. I was also wondering. How can a dead body
drive a car?'
That year Gurudeo also graced my home, which is about fifty
kilometres from Londa. I introduced him to a Muslim friend of
mine, Sri B. M. Inamdar, with whom he had an animated discus-
sion on Sufism. Sri Inamdar embraced Gurudeo, and as he did so,
he said that he felt his third eye being opened. Whatever path a
person was on, Gurudeo could supply the necessary grace and
advice to take the seeker further.
As Gurudeo predicted, I had many more kundalini experi-
ences over the next few years. Sometimes they would be intensely
blissful; at other times they would induce fear and pain. I reported
my experiences to Sri Gurudeo either in person or by letter. These
are some of the replies he sent to me:

I have received your letter and read it. I understand

what is going on inside your body. I observed your
face when you were at Londa and I observed the heat
and horripilation. You have to be a little more

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 RAMMANDIR

serious .... Observe the activity of the mind ....

There are at least four people who have
described similar experiences to me recently. Keep
up your sadhana very seriously. Success depends on
your Guru bhakti and your seriousness. Devote more
and more time to it.. ..
You came and sat down in front of me with eyes
half closed and moist with trickling tears of bliss and
began to narrate the story of the rise of your
kundalini up to the anahata chakra. You were full of
ecstasy.... Keep still and watch the rise of the
kundalini. Do not divert your mind to other things,
and keep the satsangs of some holy people such as
Sri Gabri ....
Don't falter. Don't look around. The eternal Shakti
Ma is standing with extended arms, waiting to give
you a kiss. A KISS! The taste of which you have
never tasted, my dear child. Devote more time to it in
silence, love and seclusion ....
Just now, at the time I am writing this letter, you
sat in front of me. My pen faltered in its writing and I
started to talk to you about the embrace. I hope you
follow what I mean. Please understand that this is not
uncommon with my good students when I write to
them ....
Enter the gate all alone. Stand face to face with the
beauty of your own Face, something you have never
witnessed before. When the mind is deluded, no man
can awaken to his own nature. One has to seek out an
expert teacher in order to know how to enter the realm
of one's father. It is never found in arguments, reading
scriptures, rituals or incantations. Keep your mind in
good shape. That is all you need to do.
So easy, is it not?

In 1986 I went to Hardwar to see him with Sri Datta Ginde,

another devotee who had met him in Londa. He greeted us very

365
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

lovingly. He encouraged us to have a bath in the Ganga and to visit

all the places of interest in and around the town. He also took us to
the Ganga arti [puja], and even paid for all the flowers that we
offered to the river. That evening we had satsang with him in the
Dullichand Bhatia Bhavan, the place where he was staying. A
Spanish sannyasin called Swami Satyananda was there. I recorded
the following exchange between them:

Question: India is said to be the place of moksha. How is this so?

Gurudeo: Yes, it is so. [a long pause] Foreign countries are inter-

ested in bhoga [enjoyments] whereas India is known for tyaga
[sacrifice]. Foreigners have sex attachments even at an early age.
The environment is not favourable in foreign countries because the
atmosphere of sex is everywhere. There are no places and no times
that are favourable for meditation .
Many foreigners were born in India in their previous births,
but now they are taking birth there for the sake of bhoga. They are
bound to come back to India again when they know the result of
bhoga - having no peace of mind. India is the only country that is
favourable for spiritual advancement. It is the one place where one
can attain moksha [liberation].

As I watched Sri Gurudeo deal with all the people who came
to him, I was struck by how much love he showed towards all his
devotees. I told him what I was feeling and as I said the words, my
own heart filled with love. I immediately burst into tears and began
crying and weeping. The joy I felt was uncontrollable. It was like
the opening of the gate of a big reservoir, except that the flow was
bliss, not water. I felt it was pouring out of the heart on the right
side that Sri Gurudeo and his Master occasionally speak about.
Mind was not there at all. This went on for about fifteen minutes,
during which time I had my head on Gurudeo's thighs. He too was
happy for I could see him shedding tears of joy.
When the sobbing had subsided a little, he asked me, 'Have
you ever, even once, enjoyed a bliss like this before?'
I had to say 'No'.

366
 RAMMANDIR

Then Gurudeo said, 'Man can never get a bliss like this from
the enjoyment of any material object. The enjoyment of such
things is imaginary and not real. You have fulfilled the purpose of
your journey here.'
The following day his grace overpowered me again and once
more I found myself crying continuously for about ten minutes.
Gurudeo commented, 'You came here for instructions and now you
have got them. I am very happy.'
For the first time in my life I found out what true bliss is. The
Master's hands are always giving, but if we don't take, whose fault
is it?

During the course of his narrative (page 364) Sri Hukeri

mentioned that a fellow -devotee, Baburao Murgod, had had a
profound experience of Papaji's grace. This is what he wrote:
'Gurudeo pointed out Sri Murgod to me as an example of
someone who realised the truth without any effort or practice.
'"He did Guru seva with faith and asked for nothing,"
remarked Gurudeo. "He read nothing, worshipped no gods and
went on no pilgrimages. "'
Baburao Murgod had known Papaji since the latter's earliest
days at the Ram Mandir in Londa, but the culminating experience
of their relationship did not occur until almost twenty years later,
in 1984. A few days after the event Baburao Murgod wrote a brief
description of what had happened to him:

On the eighteenth of August, 1984, Bhagavan [Papaji] and I

had lunch together. Afterwards we were joined by Sri Betagiri.
Both of us were sitting in front of Bhagavan, chatting with him.
Suddenly, without apparent reason or cause, I lost outer
consciousness and had an inner experience of indescribable bliss.
Words always fail me when I try to explain what happened, or what
I was experiencing.
The following day, the nineteenth, we were again sitting in
satsang with Bhagavan. It was around 5 p.m. and Bhagavan
appeared to me to be in some kind of samadhi state. As I was
watching him, I suddenly beheld a bright blue chakra spinning

367
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

behind him. It looked like Sri Krishna's sudarshan chakra [the

discus that is Krishna's most powerful weapon]. This vision lasted
about three or four hours.
At some point during this period Bhagavan opened his eyes
and looked at me, but no words passed between us. At around 9 or
10 p.m. Bhagavan broke the silence by suggesting that we all go
out. Bhagavan must have wanted me to engage in some activity
because he told me that he wanted me to take him for a drive. We
took a jeep and drove to Sri Gabri's residence at Kakati.
Throughout the drive I was totally unconscious. It felt as if a dead
body was driving the jeep. On our return we went for a walk.
Though the body walked, it was not conscious of its surroundings.
Later on, Bhagavan asked me to write down something about
my experience. All I could write was, 'I am forever free'.
There was a feeling of total surrender. I had totally surren-
dered to my Sadguru, and there was no feeling left in me other than
a feeling of oneness with him.
The great advaitic saint of Karnataka, Allama Prabhu, once
wrote about this experience, describing it as 'sitting on the
simhasana of emptiness'. [Simhasana is the emperor's throne.] If
I had to describe my state, I would say it was the same.
After this experience in his presence I am permanently with
the Master, and he is always inside me. I shall never come out of
this situation or this state. This was Bhagavan's promise to me. He
further blessed me by saying, 'This is moksha'.
I write these words because Bhagavan has asked me to narrate
this incident for the benefit of other devotees.

In the early 1980s a decision was made to rename the Ram

Mandir 'Datta Nivas '. Since 'mandir' means 'temple', the old sign
encouraged many itinerant sadhus to believe that they could
receive free food and accommodation there. This was never the
function of the Ram Mandir. It was merely a house that was
reserved for Papaji's exclusive use whenever he was in Londa. The
new name, meaning 'Datta 's home', was intended to be a better
reflection of its true function.
While B. V. Hukeri, the engineer from Belgaum, was narrating

368
 RAM MANDIR

the story of his association with Papaji, he mentioned that he went

to Hardwar with a fellow-devotee called Datta Ginde. Sri Ginde,
who came from the same town as Sri Hukeri, met Papaji in Londa
for the first time in the mid- l 980s. This is Sri Ginde s account of
some of the many meetings he had with Papaji:

I met Sri Poonjaji for the first time at Datta Nivas, Londa, on
20th July, 1984, and introduced myself. Somehow he too was
pleased and said, 'I was pulling you and wondering how you have
not come yet'. He asked me what I wanted. I replied, 'Peace of
mind,' because at that time I didn't know anything about enlight-
enment or realisation. He summoned me and I bowed down. For
two or three seconds he touched my cheeks and then said, 'It's
already in you. Now develop it.' The trunk of my body started
revolving in an ecstatic bliss, a state I enjoyed for more than three
hours.
Master asked me to enquire of nature in all humbleness,
'Where have you come from? Where are you going?' I was doing
this about a month later when I was flooded with light, and in that
light I saw distinctly the place of my origin. It was followed by an
ecstasy which lasted a week. During that time I laughed so much,
the muscles in my face began to ache. Throughout this time I had
the peculiar feeling that I could swallow the whole universe. I
remember looking at the sun and thinking that I could just open my
mouth and swallow it. The joy and the ecstasy were overpowering.

After Papaji left Londa, Sri Ginde wrote several letters to him,
asking for advice and guidance with his meditation. Here are three
of Papaji's replies:

25th December, 1984

Lucknow

Dear Datta Ginde,

Read your letter of 17th Dec. You have written this letter with the
tears of JOY and complete ecstasy, the vibrations of which have
become the words and contents of this so-called letter, otherwise I

369
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

would call it a Bhagavatam being recited by none other than Suka

himself. It gives me happiness to read it again and again. Perhaps
you may not know what you have written in this ecstatic trance.
Keep up, you are near HOME. Don't entertain worries of the
family. They are just like waves of the ocean: they rise, travel,
make noise and subside. This process will continue if you dive
deep. Under the current there is no wave. Practise this. Dive under
the stormy waves of the samsara sagar [the ocean of samsara] and
be FREE.

5th February, 1985

Lucknow

Dear Datta Ginde,

Read your Regd. letter with enclosure intact. Ashirvads[blessings].
This particular letter expresses your deep, established state. You
have gone into the realms of the domain of True Being. Your state-
ment that your meditation has turned to sahaja sthiti gives me
utmost joy. You have worked well and got through in a short span
of time. Now then, concentrate on your own ecstasy rather than
repeating any mantra. And stay Quiet and Still. Don't falter. Now
is the time to strike. as you say in your letter.
Bliss is the True State and is your own Being. Who meditates
upon whom? You are free from the beginning, my dear beloved
child. Freedom cannot be attained. It's already there on the palm of
the hand. Do not give rise to a single thought.
Remain as you are.

7th March, 1985

Lucknow

Dear Ginde Jee,

I have read your letters of 18th, 19th, 22nd February, 1985, one
after the other.

18th If you cannot sit for long and feel discomfort in the legs, you
can have several short sittings in the day. Whenever you have a

370
 RAM MANDIR

peaceful time, settle down in your heart. Do not allow the mind to
go blank. Do not concentrate on the physical heart. Avoid heavi-
ness in the head. Do not concentrate between the eyebrows.
Ecstasy is a good sign to continue.

19th Do not concentrate on the heart. Trust. Relax. Sit and watch
nowhere.

22nd Have full faith in your Master and all will go well. Don't
worry, you are on the right pathless path.

On the 1986 trip to Hardwar that was mentioned by Sri

Hukeri, Sri Ginde found himself experiencing repeated ecstasies in
Papaji 's presence. Sri Hukeri noted in his diary that a spontaneous
internal japa was going on inside Sri Ginde and that his body was
involuntarily moving itself into different asanas, something that
had never happened before. Though the constant movements
prevented him from lying down and sleeping at night, there was a
joyous light on his face that was noticed by both Papaji and Sri
Hukeri. Here is a description of one such experience, followed by
an account of a deeper and longer-lasting experience that followed
it:

I was sitting with Master in Hardwar when all my limbs

started shaking. I spontaneously found myself in the posture of
Lord Nataraja and saw Lord Krishna's sudarshan chakra whirling
in front of me. The vision kept me in ecstasy till the following
morning . The next day the Master put his hands on my head and
said, 'You have done your job. Leave the rest to me.'
Strange visions continued to appear even years after this
event, but the key event happened a few months later in December,
1986, at Hardwar. In the middle of the night Master revealed to me
the meaning of existence /non -existence, form/formless, with
attributes /without attributes, finite/infinite. I dissolved in tears of
ecstasy, crying out, 'Mast er, Aum, Aum! How kind you are! How
lovable you are!'
In Sadguru 's presence there is motherly love, peace of mind

371
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

and valuable instructions that totally dispel all doubts. He would

make us laugh and forget everything in the world except himself.
Those who could open their heart and be receptive to him would
dissolve into nothingness and realise the truth of themselves.

Accounts by other devotees who met Papaji during this period

will appear later in subsequent chapters. However, before finishing
this section on the events at Ram Mandir and the devotees who met
Papaji there, I will give one final experience. It was recorded by
Sri Kamlani, a devotee from Londa who ran the canteen at the
local railway station. Sri Kamlani passed away before I began
researching this book, so I was not able to record any of his expe-
riences directly. However, I did find a brief account by him in one
of Papaji 's notebooks. In the 1980s, if devotees had spectacular
experiences in his presence, Papaji would often ask them to write
a description of the event in a notebook he always carried with him
when he travelled.
It has always been Papaji 's policy to ask devotees who have
had waking-up experiences in his presence to attempt to describe
them in some way. Though most admit that they are unable to do
so, he still encourages them to try.

Londa
14th August, 1984

Sitting before my Guru, I went into a trance and dived deeper and
deeper into myself. Within a short time all the outside environment
disappeared. I could still hear external voices, but they all sounded
as if they were coming from a long distance away. I heard the loud
sound of my heart beating and for a while I felt as if my heart was
dense and heavy, and was being struck by a hammer. After a while
light shone forth and I felt I was seeing a wall, a heavy wall that
seemed to be composed of something like sunshine, except it was
brighter than the sun. I experienced this light for a long time.
Reluctantly, I slowly opened my eyes and saw in front of me my
Guru smiling at me. A brilliant dazzling light was coming from his
eyes. It felt as if the sun itself was shining in my eyes. The more I

372
 RAMMANDIR

looked at the Master, the more he shone. It was so intense, tears

were trickling from my eyes. It was an unforgettable experience,
something one cannot see in a million lifetimes. How blessed I was
to receive that gracious smile of light from my Master! It pene -
trated into the Heart, the source of creation, and destroyed my
mind there. How blessed am I! This deep diving into the Heart has
destroyed everything. Everything has fallen apart. Now I know
that there is only one universal Heart which is everywhere.
Wherever I tum my eyes, there is only the Heart. Ah, the wonder
of it all! May the Master keep me always in this holy state. May
his blessings rain on me forever.

I. J. Kamlani

373
 SOURCES AND NOTES

The stories that Papaji tells in this book can rarely be attributed to a single source .
During the course of my research I collated all the available versions of each story
and ended up producing composites that included all the details I could collect. I
have not bothered to attribute historical information that can be easily found in
standard works on modern Indian history.
The following abbreviations indicate some of the sources I have used:

AI ('author's interviews') - most of the information that appears as first-person

accounts by devotees was written by me after conducting interviews with the
people concerned.
DM ('devotee's manuscript') - written accounts submitted by devotees.
DN ('diaries and notebooks') - I have occasionally cited entries from diaries
Papaji kept during the 1980s.
FIN - on 16th and 21st February, 1995, a Finnish TV journalist called Rishi inter-
viewed Papaji for several hours about his life. No film was ever made, though .
L ('letters') - when the date and the recipient of the letters have been given in the
text, I have not duplicated the information here. With very few exceptions, the
originals of all the letters written by Papaji are in the possession of the devotees
they were addressed to.
PI ('Papaji Interviews') - extracts from Papaji Interviews, published by
Avadhuta Foundation, 1993. The numbers in PI, PMS and TTI entries are page
numbers.
PMS ('Papaji manuscript') - in 1994 I submitted a sixteen-page questionnaire to
Papaji about all aspects of his life. He responded by writing out 234 pages of
answers in three foolscap notebooks.
POL - a series of written replies Papaji gave me in response to a questionnaire
I gave him on 18th June, 1995. The topic was his political and revolutionary
activities.
SAT ('satsang audio tape') - from 1991 onwards, Lucknow satsangs were
recorded on ninety -minute audio tapes. In my attributions I have given the tape
number, rather than the date, since satsangs from different days often appear on
the same tape. Copies of these tapes can be ordered from Poonjaji Tapes, Boulder,
Colorado, USA.
SUM - a December , 1994, interview with Sumitra, Papaji's younger sister, in her
home in Delhi .
TTI ( 'The Truth Is ') - though this is primarily a collection of teaching dialogues,
Papaji includes many personal stories in his answers.

374
 SOURCES AND NOTES

UT ('unrecorded talks') - many supplementary details came from comments

Papaji made in his house, or on other occasions when there were no facilities for
recording what he said.

The attributions have the following format:

1. Page number or numbers.
2. The first three and last three words of the material that is being cited. For ease
of reference, the three quoted words come either from the beginning or the end
of a paragraph.
3. Sources of the material.
4 . I have occasionally added supplementary notes.

Papaji read out about two thirds of my completed manuscript during his 1996
Lucknow satsangs . The other third he read and checked privately. Before the
page-number attributions for each chapter begin, I have given the SAT numbers
for the days Papaji read out all or part of that chapter.

EARLY LIFE
SAT 944, 945, 946

15 Papaji'sfamily was ... up for them. DN 27th February, 1981. Papaji wrote the
following list of six generations of his ancestors on his father's side: Ramdyal,
Mehr Chand, Gurudattamal , Dasmal , Parmanand, Hariwansh Lal Poonja .
Gurudattamal was the pandit who worked for Maharaj Ranjit Singh.
16 Previous accounts of ... this later date. I have chosen 13th October, 1913, as
Papaji's probable date of birth for various reasons, the chief of which is his
school matriculation certificate, a copy of which is featured on the following
page . The issuing date of 1942 indicates that Papaji probably ordered this
duplicate copy when he was required to prove his age and educational qualifi-
cations prior to his admission to the Indian Military Academy in April, 1942.
Since school exams took place in March, Papaji would have been sixteen and
a half when he matriculated in March 1930. These school-leaving certificates
are used as identity documents in India, so much so that passports can be
issued, even in the absence of a birth certificate, so long as this matriculation
certificate can be produced . Papaji is aware that all his official documentation,
including his passport , shows his birth date to be 1913, but he still feels that
the correct date was 1910. However, the later date is supported by other
evidence, some of which comes from Papaji himself:
1. An entry in Papaji's 1983 diary (20th April, 1983) speaks of a
dream he had that year in which he saw one of his old classmates.
Writing about the dream the following day, Papaji remarked ,
'During the nap I had seen an old friend of mine who passed his
final exams with me, and since then we never met each other for
fifty-three years'. Since Papaji accepts that he left school when he
was sixteen, this also points to a 1913 birthdate.

375
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

DUPLICATE. Roll No. _12456•

The Matriculation and School Leaving Certificate Examination.

SESSION 1930 .
~bi.sis to tertif!' that Lall Kawsa.f
Harl Y'e.natb
$Onof B. Pa.rmAil8JldShana
of the Dhanpa.t Ual A.s. Higb School, Lyallpir pa-1 in
the Secol'ld Divi,ion,the .:fflatriculation
anb '1,tbooll.eabing
Ctrtificatt €xaminattott of the PaniabUnivmity heldin March, 19~
P"""'1al,om One &lbbitional ~nbj,d.

13th October, 1913.

Dolu/ Birt/, /2/~ ~ J i
{Thirteenth October, one 'lbouaand Aslrr'r.Cl Regi.etrar,
3i;~~o~~u,Nine Hundredand 1'hirteen) • Fon fe t § Registrar,
Ullit!enllJ!
of ti,, Paro'ol,.
e 3rd Jamary • 1942.
" I~
Kausar was Papaji's pen name while he was at school. His
second-division pass would have placed him in the middle of
the school rankings among those who passed the exam.

2. When I spoke to Sumitra, Papaji's younger sister, she began her

account by saying, 'I was born in 1918, so I am five years younger
than Bhai Saheb'.
3. Everyone in Papaji's family, including Papaji himself, agrees that
Papaji got married when he was sixteen. Vidyavati, Papaji's wife,
told one of his Lucknow devotees that she married Papaji 'around
1930'. Papaji himself once told me, 'I got married when I was
sixteen and my first child was born about four years later'.
According to his official papers, Papaji's sixteenth birthday fell
on 13th October, 1929. Surendra, Papaji's surviving son,
informed me that Nirmala, Papaji's first child, was born in 1933.
4. I spoke to Baldev Raj, a Lucknow devotee whose stories feature
in the 'Hardwar, Rishikesh' chapter in volume two . He knew
Papaji's family when they lived in Lyalpur in the 1920s. When I
asked him about Papaji's age, he laughed and replied, 'When we
were boys, I was two years older than him. Now he appears to be
two years older than me.'

376
 SOURCES AND NOTES

Since the anecdotal evidence tallies with the official date, I am inclined to
accept it as the genuine one. Though Papaji still feels that he was born in 1910,
I have taken the liberty of changing some of the numbers in his narratives to
make them conform to this later date. For example, when Papaji says that his
1919 Lahore experience happened when he was eight or nine, I have changed
the age to six.
16 Around 1911 Parmanand ... northeast of Lyalpur. PMS 138-43.
17 I have been ... to the other. PMS 88-95.
18-20 David: What are ... the local sadhus. SUM; I have been unable to deter-
mine the dates that Papaji resided at the many places mentioned by his sister
on page eighteen, except that Papaji did once mention to me that he lived in
Harappa in 1924.
20-1 Mast Kalandar: Can ... more practical accomplishment. SAT 811.
21-2 During my childhood ... an abrupt end. PI 9.
22-3 David: Papaji has ... in an airplane.' SUM.
23-4 I didn't do ... and play instead?' SAT 333.
24 The key event ... this singular event. PI 3.
24-6 It was 1919.... or later return . PI 3-6.
27-8 Tears had been ... what it is. FIN.
28 I didn't see ... of the state. SAT 163.
28-9 Rishi: Why did ... my own age. FIN.
29-31 My mother herself ... the outside world. PI 6-8; PMS 156.
31 When I was ... wherever she went. PMS 138-43.
31-2 Sumitra: The women ... God to us. SUM.
33-4 Respected Bhai Saheb ... for several months. L from Leela to Papaji,
undated, but written sometime in 1995.
34 I never had ... conveying these truths. SAT 219.
34-5 Papaji's mother regularly ... lessons in meditation. PMS 151.
35-7 My mother used ... many years later. PMS 138-43; SAT 332.
38 He [Iswar Chander] ... verses out loud. PI 15-6.
38-40 Sumitra: Our mother ... I grow up.' SUM.
40 In addition to ... association with him. PMS 151.
41 Avadhuta Shaligram liked ... gone with him. PI 16-7; PMS 44; in PI p. 64 I
included a note which stated that Papaji had informed me that his mother's
teacher (Avadhuta Shaligram) was a jnani . However, in PMS 151 Papaji
wrote: 'He [Avadhuta Shaligram] used to read Yoga Vasishta to her [Papaji's
mother] but he did not have any experience of enlightenment.'
41 Papaji once told ... with his family."' UT.
41-2 She announced that ... to see him. PI 17.
42 I was just ... happening to me. SAT 209.
43-8 It all started ... the same bed. SAT 163, 253, 440, 557; PI 9-15; TTI 492.
48-9 David: Do you ... catch fire first.' SUM.
49 In one of ... of his life. SAT 397.
49-50 How did all ... a mind game. SAT 209; TTI 395.
50-2 David: In your ... for some time. PMS 156-7.

377
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

52-4 When I was ... usual everyday life. PI 17-9; SAT 552.
55-6 One of my ... a similar inclination. PI 16.
56 While he was ... very strong woman.' UT.
57 Father was very ... action was taken. SUM.
57-8 I talked to ... to my japa."' AI; interview with B. D. Desai, December, 1994.
58 Both Yamuna Devi ... train came through. AI; this story came to me via Om
Prakash Syal, who heard it directly from Parmanand himself in the late 1960s.
58-60 Every morning we ... quite good friends. PI 19-21; SAT 202, 265.
60-1 David: How good ... I usually won. PMS 149; UT.
61-2 Some thieves once ... very friendly way. UT.
62-3 David: Papaji sometimes ... later released unharmed. SUM.
67-8 The British rule ... out by force. PI 22.
68 Papaji 's desire to ... keep his job. POL.
68-9 David: What about ... he got married. SUM.
70 For some time ... the Revolutionary Party. Taken from Amar Shaheedon Ke
Sansmaran, a Hindi work on the Punjabi revolutionaries.
70 I reminded Papaji ... British by force. POL.
72-3 Most of the ... the Revolutionary Party. POL; PI 23.
73 When I first ... for the revolutionaries. UT; POL; none of the history books I
have consulted gave a definite picture of exactly who was involved in the
planning or execution of the bombing of the Viceroy's train.
74-6 David : You told ... I gave up. UT; SAT 626, 696; POL.
77 I studied Urdu ... composing them myself. PMS 159.
78 Papaji had no ... her fourteenth birthday. UT.
78 After passing my ... family in Lyalpur. PMS 160.
79-80 David: What did ... that entry myself. SUM.
80 Papaji's two surviving ... reaction to it. Papaji and Vidyavati had five children.
Nirmala was born in 1933 and died around 1963 during childbirth; Vijay, a
son who lived from 1934-7; Sivani, born in 1935, is still alive; Surendra, born
in 1936, is also still alive; Ramini, the final daughter, died in Lucknow around
1948, after living for about eighteen months.
80 One of my ... in my mind. PMS 150-1.
80-1 Papaji remained in ... as he desired. PMS 104; SAT 438; L to R. M. Prabhu
dated 13th June, 1984; L to B. D. Desai dated 14th December, 1977. In both
letters Papaji mentioned that his visit to Nasik took place in 1930.
81-3 I met Nityananda ... Tiruvannamalai to Bangalore. PMS 107-8; SAT 681.
83-4 Papaji's years in ... who looked interesting. UT; I have to confess that I was
able to find out virtually nothing about the eleven years (1931-42) Papaji
apparently spent working in Bombay. I have never heard him speak about
these years, nor have I found any family member or devotee who could
provide me with information about these missing years.
84 Papaji must have ... culminated in 1938. SAT 633.
87 In response to ... the Arya Samaj. POL; SAT 633.
88 A few of ... my guerrilla activities. PI 23-4 .

378
 SOURCES AND NOTES

89-90 I fight because ... to the world. FIN.

91-4 In 1942, the ... them all out. FIN; SAT 158, 214, 331, 615 ; PI 23-5; PMS
160-1.
94 It may sound ... of the road . PI 24 .
95 In the 1940s ... money for us. SUM.
95-7 Life in the ... with my quest. PI 24-6; SAT 638 .

RAMANA MAHARSHI
SAT 873, 874, 875

98 Papaji 's search for ... was rapidly disillusion ed. UT; I have only once heard
Papaji make a passing mention of the trip he made to Nasik when he was five .
98-9 This swami was ... are common everywhere . SAT 438 .
99 A few years ... Swami Sivananda , Rishikesh. L to David Godman , 15th
November , 1992.
100 Papaji 's visit to ... called 'Sanatan Dharma'. PMS 104.
100-1 / went from .. . me back in. SAT 126, 240, 429, 438, 648; FIN; PI
26-7.
102-6 Shortly after my ... when it happened. PI 27-32; FIN; SAT 126, 429 , 648 ;
The Secret of Arunachala, Swami Abhishiktananda, ISPCK, 1979, pp . 87-92;
'How I came to the Maharshi', by H. W. L. Poonja, published in The Mountain
Path, 1965, pp. 155-6. This is the only published account of his life that Papaji
ever wrote. He was not, however , happy about the way it was edited. See PI
64.
106-7 / have only ... akin to this? For Ramana Maharshi's original statement see
'Bhagavan's Letter to Ganapati Muni', by Michael Spenser, The Mountain
Path , April, 1982.
107-11 Though I had ... speaking with them. PI 32-6; FIN.
111-2 From my childhood ... faith in him. FIN; SAT 813; TTI 261.
113-9 One morning, around ... trip for me. PI 36-7; FIN; PMS 123-7; SAT 241;
TTI 395-7.
119-20 When I tried ... meetings were unsatisfactory. L to David Godman, 15th
November, 1992; PI 37-8.
120-4 My thoughts turned ... them anywhere else. PI 38-42.
124 The sequence of ... change. Thank you. ' (1) L to David Godman 15th
November, 1992.
125 Question: What made ... are the same . FIN.
126-8 Question: Why did ... this any more. FIN.
128-40 David: This is ... see what results. SAT 740; the indented quotes are not
from PMS, they are from another series of written answers Papaji gave me in
1994.
140-1 I had a ... doubt his words. SAT 813.
141-5 After this experience ... miracle than this. PI 46-54; Day by Day with
Bhagavan, by Devaraja Mudaliar, published by Sri Ramanasramam , entry
dated 23rd May, 1946; SAT 267, 566; PMS 167.

379
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

145-50 While I was ... by Islamic saints. PMS 118-22; UT; PI 48.
150-2 Niranjanananda Swami, known ... of the ashram. PMS 162-4.
152-6 On Saturday nights, ... to do it. SAT 222,231,263, 326,336,626; TTI 84,
450.
156-7 In 1947 the ... an indefinite period. PI 54-5; SAT 691.
157-8 For most of ... speak to anyone. PMS 161-2; UT.
158-63 That day, as ... almost every week. PI 55-60 ; PMS 147-50, 167-8; FIN;
SAT 616; TTI 286-7.
164-8 I was posted ... journey to Lucknow. PMS 35-6; SAT 203.
168-71 My career as ... to work unobtrusively. PMS 179-82; FIN; UT.
171-4 I was staying ... I visited Allahabad. SAT 450; PMS 183-5.
174-5 Foreigners first started ... make himself understood. SAT 560, 666.
175-80 After the partition ... without leaving town. PMS 15-9.
180 At 8.45, on ... the following day. PI 60.
180 So many people ... had lived before. TTI 251.
182 My Master spoke ... awareness] accepted me. L to R. M. Prabhu, 6th March,
1982.

MINING MANAGER
SAT 883, 884, 885, 886, 888, 889, 890, 891

183-5 By 1952, most ... affair with me. PMS 19-24, 151-2.
185-7 I was walking ... something from me. PMS 188-91; L Papaji to Gabri, 18th
March, 1985; SAT 484.
188-94 'How did you ... he often said. The Secret of Arunachala, Swami
Abhishiktananda, pp. 80-6. Abhishiktananda wrote (p. 80) that the meeting
took place on March 13th, 1952.
194-8 When I returned ... 8. Labour welfare. PMS 152-6. Papaji could not
remember exactly where this mining camp was, except that it was a five-hour
drive by car from Bangalore and had a temple associated with Vidyaranya
nearby. It was probably one of the two mines that Papaji listed as being in
Tumkur District (see page 229) since these would have been the requisite
distance from Bangalore. In Swami Abhishiktananda's biography (Swami
Abhishiktananda, his life told through his letters, by James Stuart, published
by ISPCK, Delhi, p. 130) Abhishiktananda speaks of a visit to Papaji in 1958
that entailed a seven-hour bus ride to a manganese mine. That would probably
have been one of his later jobs in Chitradurga District. See the map on page
235.
198-200 I particularly enjoyed ... some jungle thicket. The Secret of Arunachala,
pp. 92-3.
200-3 I liked the ... attracted to him. SAT 111,2 73, 736; UT; after Papaji had read
out in one of his satsangs my account of his meetings with the python, the
bears, the snake and the frog, he was reminded of the tiger story (which I had
never heard before) and later asked me why I had not included it.
203-5 As I was ... shone even more. PI 49-50; SAT 681.

380
 SOURCES AND NOTES

206 My company sent ... farewell, and disappeared. PMS 134.

207-8 I was working ... seven feet tall. SAT 476; PMS 88-98, 133-4.
208-10 I saw Rameshwar ... the early 1980s. AI with Om Prakash, December,
1994.
212-3 Kailash Mishra used ... before it left. UT; I spoke to Kailash Mishra the
following day and he confirmed all the details that Papaji had narrated.
213-5 I had managed ... of the river. PMS 88-98, 133-4; TTI 272.
215-7 Question: For the ... a particular form. SAT 638.
217-9 Mr Mishra was ... the other began. PMS 37, 229-31; SAT 206, 260; TTI
127.
219-20 Papaji has told ... front of him. ' SAT 514; UT.
220-2 In January, 1994, ... here in Vrindavan.' PMS 8-9; UT.
222-3 Not everyone who ... lowly traffic policeman. UT .
223-5 I remember another ... get another chance. SAT 733.
225-7 I was in ... wife and children. PMS 2-7, 229-31.
228 -9 He went almost ... longer. Good night! The Secret of Arunachala ,
pp. 94 -5.
229 I had to ... 1953 to 1966. PMS 203.
230-2 Sri Poonjaji stayed ... for several hours . L from Pani to David Godman,
undated, but received early in 1995.
232-4 I had gone ... do its work. PMS 193-5; SAT 115.
234-8 Once I was ... during this period. PMS 197-200; UT.
238-42 During his working ... at the time. PMS 134; SAT 220. These two refer-
ences are for the meetings with Nityananda and Gnanananda. I have a detailed
SAT transcript on Papaji's meetings with Amadu Amma and Sai Narayan, but
there are no dates or tape numbers available.
242-6 It was the ... do with me. PMS 191-3; UT.
24 7-8 I was visiting .. . from him again . SAT 204, 240, 255, 429; PMS
185- 7.
249-50 This man had ... after a farm. PMS 37-40; SAT 657.
250-3 Whenever I drove ... had all disappeared. PMS 40 -3; L Papaji to Raj
Prabhu, 9th January, 1987; PI 44-5.
253-8 David: How many ... means 'supreme speech'. PMS 40-3; TTI 330; UT;
AI; I reconstructed the story of Paravani by joining Papaji's version to the
accounts of two other devotees who were eye witnesses.
258-61 I read John ... also went away. PMS 157-8; UT .
261-5 As we were ... they intuitively see. PMS 201; SAT 682, 692; UT.
265-70 She wrote to ... saw her again. PMS 19-24.

RAMMANDIR
SAT 881,882

271 From 1953 to ... in early 1965. AI; interview with Surendra, Papaji's son, in
1995.
271 Many thanks for ... carried out there. L dated 18th February; copies of all

381
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

letters to Swami Abhishiktananda were obtained from Father James Stuart of

the Abhishiktananda Society, Delhi .
272-7 I was working ... place 'Ram Mandir ' . PMS 169-78.
277-82 I first met ... of Poonjaji's grace. DM, submitted by Subash Tengse.
283-4 One day I ... obligations towards them. PMS 169-78, 202-3.
284-6 Papaji has mentioned ... all that time. UT; Papaji told me the story of how
he arranged Sivani's marriage. The other information in this section comes
from my conversations with Surendra and Sivani.
288 My dear friend ... He heard it. L undated, but postmarked 31st March, 1966.
289-91 I have met ... grace on me. DM; I have been unable to ascertain the
identity of this contributor . Even Papaji could not guess who it might be. I have
shown it to several people who knew Papaji in the late 1960s. No one knew
for certain who it was, but they all agreed that it sounded authentic.
291-4 Right from my ... ever ask for? AI with B. D. Desai, December, 1994.
294 Papaji has devotees ... rarely recommends nowadays. Papaji signed most of
his letters 'H. W. L. Poonja'. To save space and to avoid needless repetition I
have only included a signature if he wrote something else, such as
'Hariwansh'.
298-9 I once went ... front of him. PMS 113-4.
307- 11 I was working ... some divine intervention. PMS 113-4.
312-3 Yes, it is ... looking at IT. L, 7th February, 1976; L, 22nd April, 1976; L,
14th July, 1974.
313-4 I have known ... things around me. DM, submitted by Ravi Bakre .
314-31 Before Sri Poonjaji ... few days there . DM; AI; Vinayak submitted a six-
page manuscript to me. A subsequent interview elaborated on many of his
written stories, besides covering much new ground.
331-2 Once, while I ... reached the station . PMS 188-91; Papaji's comments about
his siddhis were passed on to me by Swami Ramanananda Giri who heard
these remarks at an unrecorded satsang in the early 1990s.
332-40 Most of his ... posted to him. DM; AI; see the note for pp. 314-31.
341-2 I am so ... by his lilas. L Vinayak to Kamal, mid-1996.
343-4 I played an ... awaiting my arrival. DM; this article was never published in
The Mountain Path . I obtained this information from a xeroxed copy of the
typesc~ipt that the author sent to Papaji.
350-8 I refrained from ... have ever met. DM, submitted by S. R. Gabri, dated 9th
February, 1995.
359-67 In 1980 I ... fault is it? DM; condensed from an eighty -page typescript
submitted by B. V. Hukeri in 1995.
367-8 On the eighteenth ... of other devotees. DN, 20th August, 1984; originally
written in Kannada, it was translated for me by Vinayak Prabhu.
368 In the early ... its true function. Conversation with Ravi Bakre, 1997.
369 I met Sri ... ecstasy were overpowering. DM, submitted by Datta Ginde .
37 1-2 I was sitting ... truth of themselves. DM, submitted by Datta Ginde.
372-3 Sitting before my ... I. J. Kamlani. DN, 14th August, 1984.

382
 INDEX

The index is in two parts. In the first section, which I have entitled 'Papaji
Stories', all the events that Papaji was personally involved in are listed in the
order in which they appear in the book. The initial number or numbers identify
the page or pages where the story can be found. The second part of the index is
an alphabetical listing of proper nouns, technical terms and other key words by
which stories and events can be identified. If a page number following a person's
name in the alphabetical listing appears in bold, it indicates that a photo of him
or her can be found on that particular page. If the page number of a place name
appears in this way, it shows that a map featuring this place can be found on that
page.

PAPAJI STORIES

EARLY LIFE 31-3 ras lilas

34 seeing gods
15 ancestry 34 Vedanta lessons
16 parents' marriage 35-8 mother's philosophy lessons
16 Papaji's birth 38-40 visiting Hardwar with parents
16 living at Gujranwalla 39 digs up baby sister
16-7 travelling during childhood 40 bums sadhu 's hut
17 visiting Hardwar as a boy 41 attempted adoption by Avadhuta
17 gets Ram as a nickname Shaligram
18 grazing family's buffaloes 42 reads about Buddhism
19 playing with trains 43-8 imitates Buddha
19 doing pujas 45-9 imitates Buddhist monk
19 visiting sadhus 46-8 preaches Buddhist sermons
20 visits Mast Kalandars 49-50 gets taken over by meditation
21 plays at being a sadhu 51-2 death experience
22 sitting naked with Sheila 52-4 eats bhang at Holi
22-3 deep meditations 54-6 reads Hindu texts
23 not doing homework 56 imitates Ram Tirtha
24-8 experience after refusing mango 58 attends Arya Samaj school
drink 58-60 trance after hearing 'Om
25 getting exorcised in Lahore shanti'
26 beginning Krishna bhakti 60-1 sports activities
27 sitting under orange bush 61-3 thief stories
28-32 Krishna appears 63 begins political activities

383
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

66-7 joins revolutionary group 110-1 japa in Madras

67 disagrees with Gandhi 111 Sri Ramana appears in a vision
68-9 makes political speeches 112 returns to Ramanasramam
73 bombing of Viceroy's train 112 sees Sri Ramana 's bhakti
74-5 summons up ghost 113-4 vision of Ram, Sita, Hanuman
75 tries to become invisible 114-8 pilgrimage to Chitrakoot
76-7 writes Urdu poetry 118 meets Hanuman at Chitrakoot
77-8 meaning of Papaji's names 119 spiritual practices stop; consults
78 gets married, moves to Bombay swamis in Madras
78 starts work as a salesman 120 returns to Ramanasramam
79 runs his own shops 121-2 experiences Self in Sri
80 daughter dies Ramana's presence
81-3 meets Nityananda 122-41 date of enlightenment and the
83 meets aghoris role Sri Ramana played in his life
83-4 lives in Bombay 137-8 army training stories
84 Arya Samaj work 141-2 visits Sri Ramana with Sivani
87 campaigns against Nizam 142-3 questions Sri Ramana on the
87-8 joins army Heart
89 explains militant activities 144 stays with Sri Ramana all
91-2 army training summer
93, 95-6 Krishna bhakti in the army 145 dead boy revived after snake bite
94 Quartermaster job 145-50 visits pir in Madras
95 supplies army with family's 150- 1 relationship with Chinnaswami
products 152 Madras beach stories
96 abandons militant plans 153-4 gets robbed in Madras
97 leaves army to find Guru 154-6 Ramakrishna fish stories
156-62 returns to Lyalpur
RAMANA MAHARSHI 157 leaves Sri Ramana
162 moves family to Lucknow
98-9 visits Satchitananda 163 supports family in Lucknow
99 lists swamis met prior to Sri 164-6 shows Ram to Gujarati doctor
Ramana 168-71 begins career as a Guru
100-1 visits Sivananda Ashram 17 1-4 Dr Syed's horoscope
102 Sri Ramana visits him in the 174 first foreign visitors
Punjab 175-80 experiences with Toni
103 travels to Ramanasramam 181-2 appreciation of Sri Ramana
104 arrives at Ramanasramam
105 first meeting with Sri Ramana MINING MANAGER
106 Heart opens in Sri Ramana's
presence 183 leaves Lucknow for
107 criticises devotees and Sri Ramanasramam
Ramana 184-5 girl in Madras tries to sleep
108 Krishna visions at Arunachala with him
108-9 second visit to Sri Ramana 185-7 meets Swami Abhishiktananda
110 leaves for Madras 188-94 Abhishiktananda's account of

384
 INDEX

their meeting 258-61 kundalini experience and visit

194-8 gets taken to Bangalore and to Vaidya Padmanabhan
offered a job 261-4 palmist stories in Chikmagalur
198 starts work in the jungle and Lucknow
200-3 encounters with bear, tiger and 264-70 woman from Madras tries to
python attach herself to Papaji
203-4 meets sadhu at Krishnagiri
207 attends Kumbha Mela at RAMMANDIR
Allahabad
209- 10 meeting with Ramesh war 271 retires from his job for the first
Mishra time
212-3 meeting with Kailash Mishra 272-7 gets accepted as a Guru in
213-5 meets goddess Ganga Londa and moves there
215-7 speaks of the Divine Mother 283 retires and gives land to Dr Bakre
217-9 shows God to Mishra's 284-7 arranges children's marriages
daughter 288 begins travelling all over India
220-2 Russian boy sees Radha in 289-91 travels with anonymous
Vrindavan devotee
222-5 refuses to show God to three 291-4 meets B. D. Desai
people 294-8 letters to Desai
225-7 with Mishra's daughter in 298-9 visits Jnaneshwar's samadhi
Varanasi and Allahabad 299-306 letters to Desai and daughter,
227 Mishra's daughter answers in and advice on Krishna bhakti
English 307-11 has darshan of Vitthal at
228 man tries to pay to see God Pandharpur
229 lists working locations in South 311-4 experiences of Ravi Bakre with
India Papaji
230-2 Sri Pani's memories of Papaji 314-42 meetings with Prabhu family,
232-3 driving while sleeping especially Vinayak
234-8 Mysore court case 320-4 talks about Kabir
238-9 meets Gnanananda and 324 reads scriptural texts
Nityananda 326-32 travels by train in Karnataka
239-40 meets Amadu Amma 331-2 stops Abhishiktananda's train
241-2 meets Sai Narayan 332-4 official and unofficial photos
242-5 multi -location on New Year's 334 meets Sufi, Abdul Gaffar
Day 336-8 transforms Dr Bakre who then
245-6 tells barber and king story throws away his statues
246-8 meets Dr James from England 338 cures dying man of jaundice
248-50 tells the story of Enrique 340 exhibits telepathy in answering
Aguilar letters
250-1 sees past life vision and visits 344-9 letters to R. M. Prabhu
old ashram 349-58 meetings with postmaster
251-6 answers questions on past lives Gabri
257-8 intoxicated woman sees his 358-67 dialogues with B. V. Hukeri
past life and advice on kundalini

385
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

367-8 experience of Baburao Murgod 369-72 experiences of Datta Ginde

368 Ram Mandir renamed 372-3 experience of Karnlani

ALPHABETICAL LISTING OF PEOPLE, PLACES, TECHNICAL TERMS

AND OTHER KEY WORDS

A Antoinette 176
Arabian Ocean 348
Abhishiktananda, Swami 186-8, 198, Arabic 334
228,238,248,271,331 Arabs 347
acharya 340 Arjuna 89-90, 340, 346-7
Adam and Eve 347 Arunachala 108, 133, 185
advaita 189-90 Arya Raksha 86
Advaita Bodha Deepika 324 Arya Samaj 58, 84-7
advaitin 189 Arya Vir Dal 87
Africa 91 Asadhi Ekadasi 307-10
aghoris 83 asanas 371
Agra 167, 287-8 ashirvads 370
Aguilar, Enrique 248, 321 Ashok Marg 211
aham Brahmasmi 37 ashta sattva bhavas 301
Air India 348 Ashtavakra 222
ajna chakra 259 Ashtavakra Gita 324
Alaknanda River 99 Assam 195
Alandi 288, 298-9, 307, 329 astrology 171
Ali, Mohammad 250 Atlantic Ocean 348
Allah 135 Atman 188, 191, 194, 360
Allahabad 145-149, 167, 173-4, 208, Aum 371
213,225 Avadhuta Shaligram 40-1
Allahabad High Court 270 Avadi 146
Allahabad University 148,174,226 avidya 86
Allen Ganj 173, 208 awareness 354, 356, 360
Allis Chalmers 164, 180 Ayodhya 113-4, 164-6, 167-8, 288
Amadu Arnrna 239-42
Aminabad 211, 264 B
Amritsar 64-5
anahata chakra 259 Baba Ram Singh 64
Anakutty 307 Bababuddin Hills 231
ananda 193 badminton 60
Ananda 254 Badrinath 288
Ananda Mayi Ma 179 Baghdad 145, 149-50
Anasuya Atreya 118 Bakre, Dr Dattatreya 273-9, 283, 287-8,
Andhra Pradesh 13, 199, 235, 241, 312,319,322, 331,335-8,339,
267,329 353-4, 361, 368
Ankola 314, 317,324,329, 332-3 Bakre, Dr Narayan 278-9, 283, 324,
anna 82 333, 338, 350-2

386
 INDEX

Bakre, Ravi 311-3 Bhima River 304, 308

Balakundri 357 bhoga 366
Baluchistan 13, 16, 44 Bhutnath Temple 211
Bangalore 83, 103, 151, 173, 194-5, Bible 186, 255
197-9, 202,204,233,235, 247-8, Bihar 13, 167, 195
265,271,284,288,311,329,331 Bithoor 167
Bangalore-Pune Express 331 bodhi tree 49
banian 196 Bombay 13, 78-81, 83-4, 151, 198,
barber and king story 245-6 205,213, 238-40, 282,288,291,
Barcelona 249 293-5, 298,329,332,344,347,
Baroda 329, 344 353
Basant Panchmi 77 Bombay General Stores 79
Basavanagudi 195 bondage 127-8, 314, 362
Basti 164-5, 167 Bose 174
Bavaria 29 Bosnia 216
Bay of Bengal 216 Botanical Gardens 125
bears 200 Brahma 342
Belgaum 277,280,329, 332, 334, Brahma Devi 40
358-9, 362, 368 brahmachari 41, 254
Belur 247 Brahman 37-8, 355
Ben, Subhas 344 brahmin 15-6, 77, 85, 160-1, 166,
Benares 167 188,212,252, 273-4, 308
Benedictine monk 187 brass token 223
Bengal 13, 73,152,1 74,195 Brihat Nadi 172
Berlin 176 British army 87-8, 90, 92, 94-8, 100,
Betagiri 367 102-3, 137, 143, 164, 196
Bhagat Singh 71-3, 75, 89 British Club 75
Bhagavad Gita 37, 110, 172, 188-9, British girl kidnapped 63
269,298,323 -4, 347,359 British Government 15, 24, 156
Bhagavan 33-4, 107, 215, 367-8 British rule 63-4, 66-74, 76, 88-90
Bhagavatam 370 Buddha 42-9, 254-5
Bhagawaticharan Vohra 88 Buddhism 47, 255
Bhagirath 214 Buddhist 191, 249
Bhai Saheb 17-20, 22, 31-3, 39-40, Buddhist monks 249-50, 255
49, 63, 69, 79-80 Buddhist sermons 68
bhajan 17, 31, 33-4, 39, 57, 111, 186, buffaloes 18, 20, 25, 52-3, 60
189,223,231 bullock cart 121
bhakta 26, 86, 111-2, 322 Burma 92
bhakti28,40,94, 225,300,306,321 Butler Road 163, 211
bhakti sadhanas 27
bhang 52-4 C
Bharat Koop 116
Bharat Mata 64 Calcutta 13, 152, 205
Bharati Devi 305-7 Calcutta Dharamsala 114
bhiksha 45 Carlton Hotel 211, 257

387
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Castle Rock 229, 235, 273, 276 dakshina 308

Catholic 248 Dakshineshwar 288
Catholic priest 255 Dandekar, Mama 299
Central Hotel 264-5 Dandeli 329, 332-3, 337
Chadwick, Major 142, 144 dark night of the soul 119
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu 343 darshan 31, 33, 101, 112, 126, 128,
chakras 259, 367 147,158,205,239,251,284,300,
Chandrasekhar Azad 74, 89 307-11,315, 326,358
chapatis 53 Datta Nivas 368
Charbagh 162, 211 Dattatreya 203
Chauri Chaura 66 David 18-9, 22, 32, 39-40, 48, 50-1,
Cheechon Ki Malian 18 60, 62,68, 74-5, 79,128,132,
Cheiro 263 134-6, 138-9, 253
Chenab Club 75 Day by Day with Bhagavan 157
Cheshire Regiment 146 Dayanand Anglo-Vedic schools 58,
Chikmagalur 230, 234-5, 241-2, 247, 170
250,261,264,271,288,318,329 Dayanand, Swami 58-9, 85
chillies 232 Debra Dun 65, a7, 91, 100, 137
chimtas 31 Delhi 13, 17, 65, 151, 183, 187, 211,
China 65 220,286
Chinmayananda Swami 323 Deputy Commissioner 161
Chinnaswami 150-2 Desai, B. D. 57, 291-5, 296-307, 311,
Chitradurga District 229, 235 327
Chitrakoot 114-5, 118, 167, 288, 293, Deshraj 73
295 Devaprayag 99, 287
chocolate 107, 134-5, 218-9 dharamsala 307, 309-10
Christian 60, 187, 191, 194, 249, 273 dharma 56, 59, 85-6, 90, 178
Christian mystics 119 Dharmasthala 229, 235
Christian priest 253 Dharwar 280, 282, 288, 329, 332, 346
Christianity 186-7, 216 dhela 46
Christmas 213 dhobi46
Church 187, 190 dhoti 114, 196, 273
Churk cement factory 217 Dhume, Keshav 279
Clarks Hotel 211 Dhume, Suresh 279
Cohen, S. S. 174 diamond merchant 239
Congress Party 343 Dinshaw 82
consciousness 360 District Magistrate 75-76
cosmetics salesman 80 Divine Mother 209, 215-6
cow dung 303 Diwali 301
cricket 60 dohas 320
cyanite 229 Doon Express 256
D dosa 204
doughnuts 177
Dad Patiani 18 Durga Mata Temple 298
Daksha 344 Dutchman 175

388
 INDEX

Dyer 64, 66 Ginde, Datta 365, 369, 37 1

Girdi 195
E Girija 344
Gita, see Bhagavad Gita
Easter 213 Gnanananda Swami 238-9
Eckhardt, Meister 176 Goa 198-9, 229, 232, 235, 272-3, 298,
ecstasy 369, 37 1 307, 311-2,329, 332
Egmore 102 goalkeeper 24
Emperor Ashoka 348 God 29, 32, 49, 57-8, 78, 98- 102,
enlightenment 42, 44, 126-8, 210, 104-7, 110, 112, 119-23, 132-3,
247,319,323,325 135-7, 164, 168, 183, 191, 195-6,
exorcism 25-6 198, 217, 219-20, 223-5, 228-9,
232,245,251, 253,294,296 -7,
F 300,313,319,323,336, 350-1,
361
fakir 146-7 goddess 32, 209, 215, 232
Finnish interviewer 27 gods 34, 113, 123-7, 133-4, 140, 241,
FIR 234 336,344,34 7,36 7
First World War 24 Gomti River 163, 211
fish 155-6 Gopal Dasji 40
fishermen 156 Gopala Swami 250-1
Framji 104 Gopala Swami Devasthnams 253
France 93, 304 gopikas 305
Gorakhpur 66
G Goswami Ganesh Das 40
gotras 77-8
Gabri 349-59, 365, 368 Government of India 238
Gaffar, Abdul 334 Governor 148, 223
Gandhi, Mahatma 60, 64, 66-7 Governor of U.P. 174
Ganesh 336 GPO 211, 263, 265
Ganesh Mining Company 271-2 grace 304, 362, 367
Ganeshpuri 81, 329 Grand Trunk Express 269
Ganga 17, 65, 76, 99, 152, 167, 186, graveyard 74
210,213 -5, 226,253,264,290, Greek 77
293, 306-7, 336,346,366 guha 193
Ganga arti 366 Gujarat 13, 164, 329
Ganga goddess 207 Gujarati 78, 84
Gangotri 65 Gujarati Swami 351
ganja 257-8 Gujranwalla 16, 64-5
Garuda 114 Gupt Godavari 118
Gati 18 Guru 49, 81, 98, 132-3, 138, 166,
Gaudiya Math 120 168, 170-5, 181,195,204,209,
German army 91 239, 243, 245-6, 255, 269-70,
German government 177 274-5,294,311 -2,316, 322,344,
ghat 118, 166 348,358, 363-4, 372

389
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Guru bhais 173 156-7, 159-61, 187

Guru bhakti 227, 365 Hindustan Republican Association
Guru Nanak Pura 16, 23, 161-2 71-2, 88-9
Guru puja 166 Hitler, Adolf 93
Guru Purnima 181, 341 hockey 60
Guru seva 367 Holi 52
Gurudeo 359-64, 366-7 homas 231
homework 23
H horoscope 172
Hoshangabad 344
Habegegudda 229, 235 Hoshiarpur 172
Haliyal 229, 235, 266 hridayam 296
Hansraj Vohra 89 Hubli 277, 316, 329-32, 338-9
Hansraj Wireless 73 Hukeri, B. V. 358-68, 371
Hanuman 113-4, 117-9, 121, 123, Huxley, Aldous 176
137,265 Hyderabad 13, 87, 199, 239, 267-8,
Hanuman Dhara 118
270
Hanuman Temple 83, 211, 264
happiness 42
I
Harappa 18, 65
Harbans 19, 161
I 136-7, 143, 159, 192, 353, 356
Harda 329
I am 136
Hardwar 17, 38-40, 65, 76, 130, 179,
'!'-thought 143
256,293,303,305,307,318,336,
338,365,371 iddlies 204, 278
HariAum 348 idols 336
Haridas, Baba 172 In the Woods of God Realisation 325
Harilal 188-90, 193-4, 228-9 Inamdar, B. M. 364
Hariwansh 19 Independence 71, 87, 156-7, 237, 343
Hariwansh Lal 69, 78, 80, 173 Indian Military Academy 87-8, 100-1,
Haryana 13, 167 137
Hazrat Ganj 164, 169, 211, 223 Indian Mutiny 211
Heart 106-7, 112, 121, 123, 143, 165, Indian National Army 88
227, 295-6, 301-2, 304, 306, 341, Indian Youth Assembly 69
373 Indira Nagar 210-1, 254
Heart-centre 143 Indra Babu 278, 326
Himachal Pradesh 13, 65 Indrayani River 299
Himalayas 17, 56, 137,179,270,287, Iranians 347
328 iron 195, 199, 229, 262
Hindi 27, 115, 226-7, 284, 319-20 ISKCON 221
Hindu 125-6, 172, 191, 215, 232, 241, Islam 148, 150
250,255,285 Islam Pura 161
Hinduism 29, 54, 85, 87, 90, 188, Iswar Chander 34-5, 38, 40
248-9, 300 Italian army 91
Hindus 15,26, 34,40,60, 77,150, Iyengar, Ramdas 235-6, 238

390
 INDEX

J Kannada 319-20, 357

Kanpur 167, 183, 264-5
J Company 91 Kanyakumari 312
Jai Sitaram 17, 33, 57 Kapoor, Jaidev 73
Jallianwalla Bagh 64, 66-7 Karachi 78
James, Dr 246-8 karma 204, 215, 363
Jammu and Kashmir 13, 65 karma yoga 317
Janabai 303, 310 Karnataka 13, 103, 173-4, 187, 198-9,
Janaka 222 217, 229-30, 235, 252-3, 265,
japa 17, 19, 57-8, 81, 96, 107-8, 111-2, 272,311,315,317,326,329,332,
125, 168, 189 368
Japanese 88, 92 Karnataka goddess 206
J atindranath Das 73 Karwar 198-9, 277, 280, 311, 329,
jaundice 338 346
Jaya jaya Vitthal Panduranga 300-3, Kashi 295
305, 311 Kashmir 65,206
Jehovah 135 Kashmiri 40
Jesus 135, 216-7 kaupina 208
jewellery 152-3 Kausar 77
Jews 347 Kaveri River 186, 199
Jhansi 167 Kazipet 269
jivanmukta 262 Kerala 103, 185, 199-200, 207, 235
jnana 150, 205, 321-2 Khanapur 329, 332
Jnaneshwar 298-9, 324 Kishori Lal 73
Jnaneshwari 298-9, 324, 359 Krishna's darshan 133
jnani 145, 204-5,216, 236,263,315, Krishna 26, 29, 31-2, 34, 39, 56-7, 81,
321 86, 89-90, 108, 110-3, 119-20,
Joshi 299 122-6, 132-3, 135, 138-40, 172,
Joshi Math 99 182, 217-9, 225,241, 250-1, 253,
Judeo -Christian religions 90 300, 305-6, 340,346-7, 368,371
jvalana 260 Krishna bhajans 170
Krishna bhakta 30, 89, 107, 113, 146,
K 172-3,250, 255,257,305
Krishna bhakti 29, 111-2, 138
Kabir 149, 320-4 Krishna Janmasthami 153
Kailasananda 119 Krishna River 240
Kaivalya Navanita 324 Krishna Road 196
Kakati 368 Krishna statue 253
Kakori 88 Krishna temple 253
Kali 241 Krishnagiri 83, 199, 203-5, 238
Kali River 283, 321 Krishnananda 99
Kalinadi dam 346 Krishnaswami 105
Kamad Giri 114 Kudremukh 229,235
Kamlani, I. J. 285, 326, 372-3 Kuka Movement 64, 66
Kaniksha 348 Kukrej Sports Shop 211

391
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Kulitalai 186, 199 Lucknow Zoo 211, 287

Kulkarni 333 lungi 278
Kumbha Mela 208, 210, 214, 216-7 Lyalpur 15-6, 18, 20-1, 23, 27, 33, 45,
kundalini 135, 258, 358, 364-5 47-8, 51, 61, 63-65, 68, 71, 78-9,
kurta 114, 278 84, 86, 101, 156, 160, 163, 174-5,
Kurukshetra 89, 340, 346 284

L M

laddus 116, 118, 265 M.G . Mines 229, 235

Lahore 13, 18, 24-5, 42-3, 59, 65, 71-3, Madhya Pradesh 13,167,329
78, 85, 89,122,128,134, 156-7, Madras 13, 102-3, 104, 108, 110-3,
159, 161-2 117-21, 123, 125-6, 141-2, 145,
Lahore Conspiracy Trial 72-3, 88 148-52, 17 1, 183-4, 189, 195,
lakh 229, 328 198-9, 205,240,243,252,265,
Lakshman 113, 121, 126 267,284,341
Lalbagh 195 Madras Presidency 147
lathis 71-72 Madurai 199, 206
Latin 77 maggots 204-5
Le Saux, Fr Henri 187 magistrate 153-4, 235-7
Leela 33 Maha Kumbha Mela 207
liberation 314, 341 Mahabaleshwar 329
Lila 189, 342 Mahadevan, Dr T. M. P. 189
Lingi Chetty Street 145-6 Mahalakshmi Temple 232
Lloyd's Road 150 Mahanagar 211
Londa 272-3, 276-81, 283, 288, 292, maharaja 87, 326
297- 8, 301, 304, 311, 314-6, Maharashtra 13, 81, 98-9, 199, 292,
319-21, 324-6, 329-32, 334, 336-7, 298,300,329
339,343,345,349-50,356,358 -9, Maharshi, see Ramana Maharshi
361, 363-5, 367,369 mahatma 204, 295
Londa Ghats 346 mahavakyas 37-8
London 246-8 Mai2 79
Lord 299, 301-2, 304, 306-7, 310, 347 mala 111
lota 116 Malaysian girl 249
love 42 Mandakini River 114
Lucknow 13, 16, 83, 125, 139, 163-5, Mangala Devi Temple 232
167-9, 174-5, 180-1, 183, 187, Mangalore 198-9, 206, 230, 232-3,
195,19 7, 208,210 -1,212, 217, 235,238,244,250,259,2 7 1,288,
220, 224-5, 227-8, 254, 256-7, 329
261, 263-4, 269-70, 283-7, 294, manganese 195, 199, 229, 272-3
296-7,299, 301,303,306,341, mangoes 25, 42
344-6, 348 manipura chakra 259
Lucknow satsangs 28, 49, 83, 128, mantras 25, 50, 74, 110, 164, 314,
181,219 -20, 255,332 336
Lucknow University 228, 27 1 Marathi 84, 299, 340

392
 INDEX

Marine Beach 152 Murgod, Baburao 278, 285, 364, 367

Marxist 343 Muscat 345
Mary, Virgin 174, 216-7 Muslim 146, 156, 159-62, 171-2, 191,
Mast Kalandars 20-1 205,232, 249-50, 264,364
Master 123-4, 131, 141, 159-60, 162, Muslims 15, 54, 86-7, 157
181-2, 203,219 , 245, 255,291 , Mylapore 120, 151
312, 315-7, 322-5, 342, 344-5, Mysore 198-9, 235 -6, 238, 247
348, 352,356,361 , 366-8, 371, Mysore gouds 327
373 Mysore State 237-8
Masterji 289-90 Mysore, Maharaja of 237
maths 318
Mathura 167 N
matriculation 78
mauna 39-40, 185-6 nagas 208
meditation 22, 35, 44, 50, 52, 107, Naidu , B. M. S. 174, 195-6
125, 190,320, 362-3, 366 Naidu , Justice 270
Meenakshi 206 Naidu, Sarojini 174
Meenakshi Temple 206 N aka Hin do la 162, 211
Meera 302, 306-7 namaz 148
melas 207, 213 Name of God 301-2, 305
melons 63 Narasimha 132
Ministry of Information and Narayan Clinic 272
Broadcasting 176 Narayan, Sai 241-2
Mirabai 132, 178 Narayana 296
Miraj 307,329, 332 Narhi 162-3, 183, 211, 217, 223, 264,
Mishra's daughter 217-20, 225-7 288
Mishra, Kailash 212-3 Nasik 81, 98-9, 329
Mishra, Ramesh war 207-8, 209-10, Nataraja 371
212, 217, 225-6 Naujawan Bharat Sabha 69-71
Mitra, Bharat 136 Nayak Master 317, 334-5
MLA 343 Neem Karoli Baba 83
moksha 127, 129, 366, 368 Neem Karoli Baba Ashram 222
Montserrat 248 Neginhal, S. G. 283, 285
Moscow 220-1 Nemisharanya 167
mosque 25 Nepal 13, 167
Mountain Path, The 342 neti-neti 37, 131
Mudaliar, Devaraja 157-8 New Year's Day 242, 244
mugdar 60 Niranjanananda Swami 150- 1
Muktabai 299 nirvana 346
Muktananda, Swami 81 nirvikalpa samadhi 250
Mukti 302 Nischaldas 34, 38
muladhara chakra 259 Nityananda (Madras) 120
mulla 25 Nityananda, Swami 81-3, 238
Multan 18, 65, 78 Nivritinath 299
Muraliwali 16, 55, 65 Nixon 173

393
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Nizam of Hyderabad 87 Partition 80, 157, 162, 175

Nizam Sagar Dam 267 Parvati 126, 206, 344
non-cooperation movement 66-7 Patanjali 75
North West Frontier Province 13, 76 Patel, Justice Srivastava 270
Nye, Lady 147 Patil 348
Nye, Malcolm 147 Patrick 257
payasam 244
0 PCS 173
Perennial Philosophy 176
Om 59, 160, 334-5 Persian 27, 54, 77, 148, 172, 174, 334
Om, shanti, shanti, shanti 58-60 , 169, Peshawar 65, 84, 103, 146
251 pir 145-50, 171, 205
Orissa 13 Poddar, Krishna Lal 195-8, 268
Oxford Dictionary 227 Poddar -Martin 271, 282
poetry competitions 77
p Ponda 347
Pondicherry 103
paan 244, 338 Poonja 77-8, 158, 173, 244, 247, 289,
pada puja 274-5 343, 350-1, 358
Padmanabhan, Vaidya 259-61 Poonjaji 223, 230-2 , 246-7, 251, 269,
padmasana 53 277-9, 280-2, 291-2, 313-28, 330,
paisa 46, 261, 263 333-7, 340-4, 350-5, 357-9
Pakistan 13, 65, 156-7, 159, 162-3, Prabhu, Allama 357, 368
175 Prabhu, grandfather 328, 330
pakoras 52, 163 Prabhu, R. M. 182, 319, 334, 337,
palm reader 261-3 , 265 342-3
Panaji 272, 329 Prabhu, Raj 67, 316, 322, 338-9, 345
Panchadasi 197 Prabhu, Sunanda 325-6, 343, 345
Pandhari 304 Prabhu, Vinayak 302, 311,314,321,
Pandharinath 301-2, 308 332,335,345
Pandharpur 99, 288, 293, 300- 1, 304, prana 187, 251, 260
307,329, 340-1 pranas 36
pandit 15, 54, 116, 208 pranayama 260-1
Panduranga 300, 303-5, 310-1 prarabdha 183
Pani, M. 230 prasad 83, 265, 273, 276, 308-10, 318
Papaji Interviews 21, 27, 38, 73, 124-5, Prayag 287
140, 205, 300 Prem, Krishna 173
Paramaguru 358 princely states 87
Parameswara 85 puja 19, 32, 57, 110-1, 113, 189, 232,
Paravani 258 273-5, 333, 335-7, 349
parikrama 115-6, 119 pujapath 19, 32
Paris 304 Pune 198-9, 239 , 242, 273, 288, 329,
Parmanand 16-7, 44, 57-8, 61-2, 68, 331-2
78, 102, 161, 171, 175, 178 Punjab 13, 15-6, 58, 64-5, 66, 71, 73,
Parsi 82, 212 85, 104-5, 111, 113, 115, 120,

394
 IND EX

130, 149, 157-8, 161-2, 172, 255, Ramana Maharshi 38, 102-3, 105-9,
284 110-2, 120-4, 128-37, 139-45,
Punjab National Bank 89 148-9, 151-2, 157-9, 162-3, 172-3,
Punjabi 34, 54, 76-9, 319 176, 180-1, 182-3, 186, 188-90,
Punjabi Kesri Lala Rajput Rai 72 199,205,215,255,2 78,284,315,
Punjabi revolutionaries 69, 71, 73, 88 323,325,333, 336-7, 339,348,
Punjabis 64, 66, 87 352-3, 357-8
Punjaji, Punya 348 Ramanasramam, Sri 102, 109, 112,
Puranas 85-6 121, 127, 131, 141-2, 144, 146,
Puri 288 150-2, 156,171,1 74, 180-1, 183-4,
Purushottam 81-3 194,196, 203-4,240,255, 265-6,
Purushottamananda 81, 99-100 270,284,288,320,324
purva samskara 50 Ramayana 17, 115, 118, 166
Puttaparthi 277, 329 Ramcharitmanas 118
PWD 359 Ramnagar 356
python 202-3 ras lila 31, 33, 57
rasam 446
Q Rashid, Khan Bahadur Abdul 146-9,
205
Quartermaster 94 realisation 42, 127
Renigunta 103, 146
R Residency 211
Revolutionary Party 69-70, 73-4
Radha 33,126, 220-1 rishi 17~214,295, 344
Radhakrishnan 172 Rishi 27-8
Raja Ram Sastri 70 Rishikesh 81, 99-101, 130,217, 270,
Rajamundri 241 288,293,295,301,30 7,318,346
rajas 318 Rowlatt Act 67
Rajasthan 13, 167 Roy, Dilip Kumar 174
Rajguru, Shivram 73, 75, 89 Roy, Professor 226-7
Rajneesh, Acharya 323 Royapettah 111
Ram 17, 19, 32, 39, 57, 90, 113-5, Rukmini 308-10
117-20, 123, 125-6, 132, 164-6, Russian boy 220
168,182,224,231,241,288,321,
351 s
Ram bhaktas 117, 164
Ram Mandir 277-9, 283, 289, 311, Sadguru 341, 368, 371
315-6, 322, 324-7, 330-1, 334, sadhaks 120, 250
338,343, 350,36 7-8, 372 sadhana 38, 56, 119, 140, 168, 255,
Ram Tirtha 56, 155, 293, 315, 325, 291,293,300,319,343,359,363 -5
343 sadhu 19, 21-4, 39-40, 45, 56, 69, 83,
Ramakrishna Mission 119 98-9, 102-3, 123, 151, 187, 200,
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa 152, 154, 205, 20 7- 8, 238, 314 -5, 340,
208,315,323,333,343 368
Ramana Jayanti 194 sadhu bela 20-1

395
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

sahaja 107 323, 344-5,348, 355, 358-60

sahaja stithi 370 self-enquiry 320, 352-4, 361
Saharanpur 65, 72-3 Self-knowledge 342
sahasrara chakra 259, 363 Self-realisation 328, 357
Sai Baba, Sathya 21, 241, 277, 333 Serpent Power, The 136, 258
Sai Baba, Shirdi 239-41, 315 Shahjahanpur 167, 217
Saivites 253 Shaila 257
samadhi 31, 186-7, 251, 253, 298, shakti 216, 363
320,36 7 Shakti Ma 365
samsara 37, 154, 183, 202 Shams Tabriz of Multa\n 149
Samsara Sagar 370 shanti 296, 348
samskaras 48, 51, 255 Shantivanam Ashram 186
Sanatan Dharma 40, 100 Sharma 77
Sankara 323, 357 Shashikala 344
Sankaracharya 99, 226 Sheila 22
Sankaracharya, Sringeri Math 318 Shimoga District 235, 250, 266
Sankhli 347 Shirdi 329
sannyasa 41, 110, 270 shlokas 38, 209, 347
sannyasin 41, 179, 185-7, 227, 318 shraddha 287
Sanskrit27 , 54, 115,189,249 Sialkot 65, 78-9
Santa Cruz 348 siddha 259
Sapt Rishi Ashram 40, 180 Siddha Purusha 83
Saraswati River 207, 226 siddhi 21, 75-6, 228, 263, 332
sari 45-6, 48, 153 Sikhs 15, 60, 162
Saryu River 164, 166 simhasana 368
Sat Purusha 362 Simon Commission 71
Satchitananda, Swami 81, 98-9 Sinclair, Sergeant-Major 92
Satsang Bhavan 181, 211 Sind 13
satsangs 31, 119, 126, 212-3, 239, Singh, Dr 51
242,274,2 77,290,300,314,320, Singh, Maharaj Ranjit 15
324,334,342, 350,352-3, 358 Sita 113-4, 117-9, 123, 125-6, 288
sattva 318 Sita Rasoi 118
satya 356 Sitapur 167
Satyananda, Swami 366 Sitaram 306
Satyarth Prakash 85 Sitaramaya, T. 236-7
Saunders, Deputy Superintendent 72 Siva 125, 206, 231, 241, 344
sazenamaz 149 Sivananda, Swami 99-100
Scott, Superintendent 7 1-2, 88 Sivani 79-80, 141-2, 170, 210, 284,
Second World War 87-8, 94 286-7
Secret of Arunachala, The 188, 198, Skandashram 185
228 snakes 18-9
Secunderabad 268 socialists 70-1
Self 28, 37-8, 122-4, 128-9, 136-7, Souvenirs d'Arunachala 188
141, 143, 159, 163, 168, 177 , Spain 249-50, 295
188-90, 192, 194,209,216,296-7, spirit (ghost) 75

396
 INDEX

Sri Lanka 13, 249-50 thieves 61-2

Sringeri 229, 235, 250, 329 tiger skin 274
Sringeri Math 99 tigers 200-1
St Germain 263 tilak 118
starving Buddha 43, 48 Tilakwadi 364
stithi prajna 355 Tirtha, Vidya 99
Subramania Iyer 239-40 Tirukoilur 235, 238
sudarshan chakra 368, 371 Tirupati 103, 112
Sudha 316 Tiruvannamalai 83, 102-3, 104, 111-2,
Sufi 146, 334 120-1, 141, 150-1, 157, 184-5,
Sufism 334, 364 193,195 , 197, 199,203 , 238
Suhas Ben 344 Tiwari, Sharad 344
Sukdev 71-3, 75, 89, 155, 203 Tokyo 247
Sumati 278 tonga 51, 89, 160
Sumitra 17-9, 22, 31, 38-40, 48, 57, Tony 175-80
62, 68-9, 79 Tourist Bungalow 266
Supandeva 299 train stories 326-32
Surat 164, 329 Tribune, The 78
Surendra 80, 261-3 , 268, 271, 284-5,
Tripura Rahasya 324-5
287
Triveni 226
swadishtana chakra 259
trucks 206
Swamiji 361
tug-of-war 60
swamis 41, 101-2, 106, 123, 130, 173,
Tuka Zalasi Kalasa 340
318
Tukaram 299, 340
Syal, Om Prakash 208
tulsi 119
Syed, Dr Hafiz 145-50, 171-4
Tulsi Ghat 118
Tulsidas 118, 132
T
Turnkur District 229, 235
Taj Hotel 291 Tunga River 250
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi 352, Tungabhadra River 139, 235
361 TVS 206, 231
tamasic 318 tyaga 366
Tambaram 341
Tamil 38,141,144 , 284 u
Tamil Nadu 13, 103, 235
Tanjore 188, 199 Ubas Pur 18
Tanshikar, Ajit 279 Udipi Sri Krishna Bhavan 330
tapas 137, 144, 254, 351 Union Jack 15
Tapovan 130 Upanishads 34, 110, 131, 176, 188,
Tapovan Ashram 99 356
tat tvam asi 191-2 Urdu 27, 54, 77, 115, 284, 334
tattvas 36-8 Urdu poetry 76
Tengse, Arvind 279-81 Uttar Pradesh 13, 65, 164, 167, 180,
Tengse, Subash 277-82 208, 217, 284-5

397
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Uttarkashi 216 Woodroffe, John 135, 258

wrestling 61
y
V

Vaikunta 165 Yajur Veda 54

Vaishno Devi Temple 293 Yamuna Devi 16-7, 24, 30-5, 37-41,
44,48,56,58,68, 122
Vajra Mine 229, 234-5
Yamuna River 65, 93, 167, 207, 226
Vajreshwari 81
Yamunotri 65, 93
Varanasi 167, 183, 225, 288, 293
yoga 22, 168
vasanas 298
Yoga Sutras 75
Vasishta Guha 99
Yoga Vasishta 40, 293, 324
Vedanta 34, 37, 56, 189
yogi 51-2, 137, 168-9, 207, 250, 253,
Vedas 54, 85-6, 131, 208, 299, 356
260,358
Venkataraman, T. N. 152
Venkatasubba Rao 250, 252
vibhuti 21-2, 231, 273
Viceroy's train 88
Viceroy 73
Vichar Sagar 34-5, 38
Vichara Mani Malai 38
vidya 86
Vidyaranya State Forest 197, 229
Vidyaranya Swami 197
Vidyavati 78, 80, 113-4, 177, 252,
269
Vijayanagar 197
Villupuram 102-3
Vimalananda 120
Vishnu 17,114,296
vishuddhi chakra 259
Vitthal 299-304, 308, 310-1
Vitthal Ashram 301
Vivekananda, Swami 56, 343
Vrindavan 167, 172-3, 220-2
Vyasa 131

Wardha 184, 268

Watregate 356
weightlifting 60-1, 63
Western Ghats 233
Who am I? 122-3, 136-7, 361
Wilson Gardens 194

398
 GLOSSARY

The definitions of technical philosophical terms given here are not exhaustive .
They merely indicate how the terms have been used in this book. Words followed
by an asterisk (*) are defined elsewhere in the glossary. If a letter is bracketed
within a word, e.g. linga(m), it shows that the word can be spelt either with or
without the bracketed letter. Indian languages terminate the same word in differ-
ent ways. In the above example, ling would be Hindi, linga, Sanskrit, and lingam,
Tamil.

acharya - a teacher; a spiritual preceptor.

Adi-Sankara - see Sankara.
advaita - literally 'not -two'; non-duality or absolute unity; pure monism. A
school of Vedanta*, one of the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy;
specifically the non-dualistic, non-theistic interpretation of the Upanishads*
and Brahma Sutras given by Sankara* (788-820 AD). Its central teaching is
the identity of the individual soul with Brahman*. It affirms that what is, is
only Brahman, the Ultimate Reality. It also affirms the unreality of the world
and the empirical self.
advaitin - a follower or practitioner of advaita .
aghori - an extreme sect of sadhus*, reputedly founded by Gorakhnath, whose
members are notorious for indulging in bizarre acts such as drinking human
blood, eating the flesh of dead bodies, wearing necklaces of human bones,
and using human skulls as vessels. Papaji seems to use the term aghori to
refer to any sadhu who exhibits socially disreputable behaviour.
aham Brahmasmi - 'I am Brahman*.' Located in the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad*, this famous dictum is one of four such 'great sayings'
(mahavakyas*) from the Upanishads*, each of which asserts the identity
between the individual (jiva*) and the supreme (Brahman).
ajna - see kundalini.
anahata - see kundalini .
ananda - bliss.
Ananda Mayi Ma (1896-1982 AD) - literally, 'bliss -permeated mother'; a cele-
brated Bengali saint who had many ashrams, including one in Kankhal,
Hardwar.
anna - a predecimal unit of Indian currency equal to one sixteenth of a rupee .
Arjuna - one of the five Pandava brothers married to Draupadi and the greatest
archer of ancient India. Lord Krishna* acted as his charioteer in the
Pandavas' war with the Kauravas, which forms the subject matter of the

399
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Mahabharata*. Krishna transmitted the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita* to

Arjuna on the Kurukshetra* battlefield just prior to the climactic battle.
Arunachala - literally, 'red mountain'; a sacred mountain in Tamil Nadu, South
India; considered to be a manifestation of Lord Siva* in the form of a natural
lingam. At its foot lies Tiruvannamalai and the ashram founded by Sri
Ramana Maharshi *, who regarded it as his Guru*. In many of his poems and
verbal replies Sri Ramana stated that he attained Self-realisation through the
grace of Arunachala.
Arya Samaj - literally, 'Society of Nobles'; a Hindu social and religious reform
movement started by Swami Dayanand (1824-1883 AD) as a reaction to
western influences upon Hinduism. See pp. 84-7 for more details.
Asadhi Ekadasi - devotees from all over Maharashtra converge on Pandharpur for
this festival that takes place every year in July or August. The walk primarily
re-enacts and commemorates a pilgrimage made by Jnaneshwar* from
Alandi to Pandharpur about 700 years ago. An estimated 700,000 pilgrims
attend the climactic day, and even though the moving darshan* of the deity
continues for twenty-four hours a day, the queue is often 5 km long.
asanas - physical postures, the regular performance of which is a standard feature
of many yoga* practices.
ashram - a forest retreat, dwelling place of sages, yogis*, and their students or
disciples.
Ashtavakra - literally, 'crippled eightfold'; the heavily deformed Guru* of
Janaka*. The Ashtavakra Gita (circa 500-400 BC) contains Ashtavakra's
answer to Janaka's question: 'How can realisation be attained?' The incident
Papaji told about J anaka attaining enlightenment while mounting a horse
was a favourite of Ramana Maharshi's*. I have not found a scriptural source
for this story, but Sri Ramana's version can be found in Letters and
Recollections by Suri Nagamma, pp. 28-32, 1992 edition, published by Sri
Ramanasramam *.
Ashtavakra Gita - see Ashtavakra.
Atma(n) - in Vedanta*, the immortal real Self* of all beings, identical with
Brahman*, but used more specifically to refer to Brahman as individuated
within the person.
aum - see Om.
avadhut( a) - Literally, 'cast off' or 'shaken off'; an enlightened being whose real-
isation is so intense, it has resulted in the casting off of all socio-religious
conventions and all signs of outside distinctions. Avadhuts tend to be
homeless wanderers who avoid human society.
avatar( a) - literally, 'descender'; an incarnation or 'descent' of a deity, especially
one of the ten incarnations of Vishnu*, who include Ram* and Krishna*.
avidya - ignorance, especially ignorance of one's true nature.
Badrinath - also known as Badrika; the main temple in this famous Himalayan
pilgrimage centre was supposedly established by Sankara*. Traditionally , it
is one of the four dhamas ('kingdoms of God') visited by Hindus who are
seeking Self-realisation .

400
 GLOSSARY

banian - a T-shirt, usually worn as an undergarment by Indian men.

Bhagavad Gita - literally, 'Song of God' or 'Celestial Song'; composed around
400-300 BC, it is the most famous sacred text of Hinduism . Found in the
sixth chapter of the Mahabharata*, it consists of the teachings given to the
Aryan prince Arjuna* by Lord Krishna* on the battlefield at Kurukshetra*.
It attempted to synthesise many strands of Indian philosophy (e.g. Vedanta*,
Yoga*, Samkhya*) as well as recommending personal worship of Krishna.
Bhagavan - 'The Lord God'; 1) An epithet of Vishnu and Siva; 2) One of the titles
by which Sri Ramana Maharshi* is known.
Bhagavatam - also known as Bhagavata Purana and Shrimad Bhagavatam.
Composed around 750 AD and attributed to Vyasa*, it contains extensive
stories about Krishna's* early life.
Bhagirathi - the name of the River Ganga before it joins the Alaknanda River. It
is named after the sage Bhagirath who originally persuaded Ganga to come
down from the heavens and flow on earth .
Bhai Saheb - 'respected elder brother'; it is both a title for an elder brother and a
way of addressing him in conversation.
bhajan - from the Sanskrit* root bhaj, 'to love, adore, worship'; a devotional
song or hymn .
bhakta - a lover of God, a devotee; one who follows or practices the path of
bhakti* .
bhakti - 'loving devotion to God'; the ideal religious attitude according to theistic
Hinduism.
bhang - crushed marijuana leaves, usually consumed either in food or drink.
bhiksha - food received as alms; the giving of such food; the act of going out to
beg for it.
Brahma - In Hindu cosmology, God as creator, the first conscious mind in the
universe and the first created being.
brahmachari - 1) one who practices brahmacharya, the first of four stages of life;
2) the period of student discipleship; 3) a young celibate student, usually
living in the house of his guru*.
brahmacharya - literally, 'dwelling, abiding in Brahman*'; the first of the four
stages of life in orthodox Hinduism, that of a chaste student; often it simply
means celibacy.
Brahman - The designation in Hinduism for the impersonal Absolute Reality,
ultimate truth, existence -knowledge-bliss; the one, formless, non-dual,
Absolute, substratum of all that exists; identical with Atman* .
brahmin - a member of the highest Hindu caste; a member of the priestly class,
having the duties of learning, teaching, and performing rites (pujas*) and
sacrifices (yagnas ).
brahmin thread - a circular string, about two feet in diameter; looped over the left
shoulder and around the waist, it is worn next to the skin by many brahmins.
Chadwick, Major - a British devotee of Sri Ramana Maharshi* who lived at Sri
Ramanasramam* from 1935-62.
chakras - see kundalini.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

chapati - round, flat, unleavened bread; a ubiquitous presence in all North Indian
meals.
chillam - a baked, earthenware pipe, often used for smoking ganja*.
Chitrakoot - The place where Ram* and Sita* spent eleven of their fourteen years
of exile. Ram stayed on Kamad Giri, which means, 'the hill that can fulfil all
desires'. Other places near Chitrakoot that are mentioned by Papaji are (1)
Sati Anasuya: sixteen kilometres upstream on the Mandakini River, it is the
ashram of the sage Atreya and his wife Anasuya, whose three sons were
incarnations of Brahma*, Vishnu* and Siva*. (2) Gupt Godavari: located
eighteen kilometres from the town, it has two caves in which Ram and his
brother Lakshman* are said to have held court. (3) Hanuman Dhara : a
spring, said to have been created by Hanuman* after he returned from setting
Lanka on fire. (4) Sita Rasoi: Sita's kitchen, located on top of a nearby hill.
(5) Bharat Koop: a well where Bharat, the brother of Ram, is said to have
stored water collected from all the pilgrimage places in India.
Commissioner - the title of a senior civil servant who runs several districts or who
heads a major government department.
Daksha - father of Sati, the woman who became Parvati * in her next incarnation.
darshan - from the Sanskrit* root, drs, meaning 'to see'; sight of a holy person
or temple deity, especially when the eyes meet; to be in, or be received into,
the presence of a saint.
Dattatreya - a post-vedic sage who is credited, inter alia, with the authorship of
the Avadhuta Gita, the Jivanmukta Gita, and the Tripura Rahasya, all of
which espouse the doctrine of advaita Vedanta*. Claimed by many schools,
he is held by different groups to represent the ideal avatar*, the ideal renun-
ciate, and the ideal Guru*. The Dattatreya Sampradaya, popular in many
parts of western India, worships him as the founder of its Guru* lineage.
Dayanand(a), Swami - see Arya Samaj.
deva - a celestial being, a god; an inhabitant of the Hindu heavens. The female is
devi.
Devaprayag - the confluence of the Bhagirathi and Alaknanda rivers, after which
the two streams officially become the Ganga. Spiritually, it is the second
most important confluence in India after Prayag in Allahabad.
Devaraja Mudaliar - one of the principal devotees of Sri Ramana Maharshi*;
author of Day by Day with Bhagavan, a diary of events and conversations at
Sri Ramanasramam* in the 1940s.
devasthanam - 'a place of God'; a Hindu temple or holy place .
dharamsala - a wayside shelter where pilgrims may stay for the night, either free
of cost or at a nominal rate. Such places are common on major pilgrimage
routes.
dharma - literally, 'that which bears, supports'; 1) the eternal principal of right
action; 2) moral duty; 3) virtue; 4) divine law; 5) religious tradition.
dhobi - washerman, launderer.
dhoti - a rectangular piece of cloth worn by Indian men. Draped around the waist,
it resembles a skirt.

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 GLOSSARY

dosa - a South Indian sourdough pancake, commonly eaten for breakfast or

supper.
Eknath (1533-99 AD) - A Marathi saint who edited Jnaneshwari* and wrote
poems of his own, along with commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita* and the
Bhagavatam*. His Bhagavatam commentary, which Papaji calls 'Bhagwat',
is a commentary on the eleventh canticle of the Bhagavatam.
Gangotri - A small town near the source of the River Ganga. The Ganga itself
begins at Gaumukh, about twenty kilometres upstream, when it emerges
from the base of a glacier.
ganja - dried marijuana leaves; in India they are usually smoked in a chillam*.
Garuda - in Hindu mythology, a demi-god in the form of an eagle; king of birds
and destroyer of serpents; the sacred mount of Lord Vishnu* and his consort,
Lakshmi*.
ghat - stepped terraces on the side of a river; any steep embankment.
Girija - literally, 'mountain -born'; one of the many names given to Siva's*
consort, Parvati.
Gita - see Bhagavad Gita.
Gnanananda Giri - a modem saint of India who spent his final years at Tapovan
Ashram, about twenty kilometres from Tiruvannamalai. During his life he
walked around the perimeter of India three times. When he died in 1974, his
devotees claimed that he was over 300 years old.
gopikas - see gopis.
gopis - also known as gopikas; the female cow herders of Vrindavan who left their
chores and homes to play and dance with Sri Krishna*; they are held to be
paradigms of loving devotion . The chief gopi was Radha*. More generally,
the term can nowadays mean any female devotee of Krishna.
Gorak:hnath - a 9th century Punjabi saint and siddha*, he is regarded as one of
the greatest Masters of hatha yoga* . He probably founded the Nath and
Kanphata sects of yoga*. Practitioners in these sects strive for physical
immortality and siddhis*.
guha - a cave; sometimes used metaphorically to describe the 'cave of the Heart'.
Gujarati - the language of a region north of Bombay, mostly contiguous with the
state of Gujarat; a person who speaks this language as his mother tongue .
guna - literally, 'quality'; many Hindu sects maintain that nature consists of three
'qualities' or 'strands', never at rest, called sattva (harmony, purity, bright-
ness), rajas (agitation, activity, passion) and tamas (inertia, darkness, igno-
rance), one of which is always predominant. The mutual interaction of the
gunas accounts for the quality of all change in both manifestation and
consciousness.
guru - literally, 'remover of darkness' ; a spiritual teacher or preceptor, qualified
to initiate disciples into a spiritual tradition. As capitalised in this book,
either as Guru or Sadguru*, it refers to the Guru who has the power to show
disciples who they really are.
Guru Pumima - 'Guru full-moon'; an annual festival celebrated on the day of the

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

July full moon, in which devotees worship or felicitate their spiritual

Masters.
Hanuman - the monkey-god , renowned as the devoted servant of Ram* . Helped
Ram retrieve Sita* from captivity in Lanka. The story is recounted in
Valrniki's Sanskrit* Ramayana * and its Hindi* bhakti *-cult version, the
Ramcharitmanas* .
Hari - 'the one who captures'; a name for Vishnu* and His avatars*. The rules of
Sanskrit* grammar change 'Hari ' to 'Hare' when it is followed by a name,
e.g ., 'Hare Ram, Hare Krishna' .
Heart - a term frequently used by both Papaji and Sri Ramana Maharshi*, it is a
translation of the Sanskrit* word hridayam, which literally translates ,
according to Sri Ramana Maharshi, as 'this is the centre'. When capitalised
in this book, it is synonymous with the Self*. It denotes the spiritual centre
of one's being and the place from which all thoughts and material
phenomena originally manifest.
Hindi - the native language of most North Indians ; the most widely spoken
language in India.
Holi - nowadays, a major North Indian spring festival during which Hindus throw
coloured powder or liquids at each other. Originally, it commemorated the
death of a demoness Holika who was burned to death while she was trying
to kill Prahlad, her baby nephew.
homa - a yagna* in which consecrated offerings to a god are ritually thrown into
a sacred fire.
hridayam - The Sanskrit * term for the spiritual Heart*; the centre and source
from which all mental and physical creation manifests .
iddly - a South Indian sourdough cake, made of rice and black gram; commonly
eaten for breakfast or supper.
ISKCON - Interational Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Jai Sitaram - 'Victory' or 'Glory to Sitaram*' .
Janabai - A servant and disciple of Namdev* , she was an accomplished mystical
poet and a passionate devotee of Vitthal* , the image of Krishna* in
Pandharpur. She and Muktabai , sister of Jnaneshwar*, are considered to be
the two foremost women saints of Maharashtra .
Janaka - king of Videha, the father of Sita*; he is the ideal of the sage who lives
serenely in the world after liberation. See also Ashtavakra .
Janmastarni - the birth celebration of Sri Krishna *, celebrated annually in the
month of Sravan (August).
japa - literally, 'uttering' ; the scientific repetition, usually after initiation, of a
word or words (mantra*), or name of God. It is repeated as a means of
invoking grace, a vision of a deity, or Self-knowledge.
Jaya Jaya Vitthal Panduranga - 'Glory! Glory to Vitthal*, the Lord of
Pandharpur.'
Jee - see ji.
ji - a Hindi * and Sanskrit* honorific suffix added to a name to denote respect; a
respectful term of address, short for jiva*.

404
 GLOSSARY

jiva - philosophical term denoting the individual embodied human soul, espe-
cially when unenlightened. Indian schools of thought differ on what degree
of reality it has . In advaita*, it has formal, relative reality only until one is
enlightened, after which it is seen to be not-separate or one with all that is.
jivanmukta - 'A liberated soul'; traditionally, one who is liberated while still
alive, as opposed to a videha mukti*, one who is liberated at the moment of
death .
jnana - knowledge, wisdom, especially knowledge that is incontrovertible and
permanent; absolute knowledge.
Jnaneshwar (circa 127 1-1296 AD) - the founder of the bhakti* movement in
Maharashtra, the author of the Jnaneshwari*, a verse translation -and-
commentary on the Bhagavad Gita*, and one of the greatest Marathi saint-
poets.
Jnaneshwari - 'The Goddess of Wisdom'; the most important work of
Jnaneshwar*, it is a 9,000-verse, late-thirteenth -century commentary on the
Bhagavad Gita*. He is also known as Jnandev.
jnani - literally, 'one who knows'; a person who has jnana*; a liberated or
enlightened one. Jnana is not an experience of true knowledge, it is knowl-
edge itself. 'There are no jnanis, there is only jnana. ' - Sri Ramana
Maharshi*.
jvalana - an intense gastric fire created by advanced yogis* in the manipura
chakra*. Created by intense pranayama*, contemplation on this jvalana is
supposed to induce great bliss . Though Papaji appears to have utilised this
fire merely to bum undigested food, yogic texts maintain that adepts, at the
moment of death, can bum up their whole body by contemplating this inner
fire. In such cases, no trace of the physical body remains.
Kabir (circa 1440-1518AD) - celebrated saint, poet and mystic of Varanasi . An
illiterate weaver by trade, his poetry and mystic teachings still form the focus
of a popular sect in modem India. Kabir was above caste and class distinc-
tions, against ritualism and idolatry, and equally disposed to Hindus and
Muslims. The Bijak, an anthology of his poems, is the sacred text of the
Kabir Panth, a group that reveres Kabir as a God. The book is divided into
the Raimini, the Sabdas and the Sakhi.
Kali - also known as Devi; the wife of Siva*; though depicted in a horrific form,
she is the primal creative force behind manifestation and she also bestows
the grace that destroys egos.
Kannada - the native language of most people in Karnataka state.
karma - literally 'action', 'rite', 'work'; the law of retributive action, the moral
force generated and accompanying all performance of action, held to bring
back upon the doer good or evil according to the doer's motive, in this or a
future life.
Kauravas - see Mahabharata.
Kausar - Papaji's literary pen name seems to be derived from the name of a lake
of nectar in the Muslim paradise . Called 'The Pond of Abundance', its smell
is supposedly sweeter than musk. According to the Koran, he who drinks of

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

it shall never thirst.

Krishna - literally, 'One who attracts or wins over'; the cowherd -god whose flute
playing and sportive ways enchanted the gopis*; His instructions to Arjuna*
on the battlefield during the great Mahabharata* war form the text of the
Bhagavad Gita*. The eighth avatar* of Vishnu*, He is considered to be an
incarnation of love and is worshipped in His own right.
Kumbha Mela - a great Hindu religious fair held once every twelve years at
Allahabad. Three other pilgrimage centres (Hardwar, Ujain and Nasik) also
have Kumbha Melas every twelve years.
kundalini - 'the serpent power'; a psychospiritual force that lies dormant at the
base of the spine until activated by yogic practices. Conceived of as a coiled
snake by yogis*, it uncoils and rises progressively up the spine through
various chakras (literally, 'wheels'), which can be visualised as spinning
vortices of energy and which are located in the subtle body in the centre of
the trunk and head. The chakras are the muladhara ('root -foundation
wheel') located at the anus, swadhishthana ('wheel of the self-base') located
at the genitals, manipura ('wheel of the jewelled city') located at the navel,
anahata ('wheel of the unstruck sound') located at the heart, vishuddha
('pure wheel') located at the throat, ajna ('command wheel') located in the
centre of the head, behind the point between the eyebrows, and the sahas-
rara ('thousand -spoked wheel') at or above the crown of the head .
According to Yoga* philosophy, when the kundalini reaches the sahasrara
chakra, samadhi* ensues.
kurta - a long-sleeved, collarless men's shirt.
Kurukshetra - the battlefield on which the Mahabharata* war was fought.
kutir - a small cottage or hut, especially one used as a hermitage.
laddu - a spherical sweet, usually about the size of a golf ball.
lakh - one hundred thousand.
Lakshman(a) - faithful brother of Ram*; He accompanied Ram and Sita* into
exile in the forest; the Hindu ideal of the devoted brother.
Lakshmi - wife of Vishnu* and goddess of wealth and good fortune .
Lila - literally, 'sport', 'play'; held by the Vaishnavas* to be the divine purpose
behind the creation of the manifest universe.
linga(m) - literally, 'sign' or 'emblem'; a vertical column of stone with a rounded
top; the symbol of the unmanifest Siva*, it is worshipped in the inner shrines
of all Saivite* temples.
Lota- a brass or copper pot, used to contain drinking water.
lungi - see dhoti.
Mahabharata - 'Great Bharata'; composed between 200 BC and 200 AD, it is a
massive poetical compilation of myths and legends about the Hindu gods. Its
centrepiece is a narrative describing the struggle between two families, the
Kauravas and the Pandavas, for control of Bharata (North India) .
maharaj( a) - 'great king' or 'great ruler'; a title held by many rulers of Indian
princely states; a respectful title given to some spiritual teachers.
mahatma - literally, 'great soul'; a fully realised saint; a title given to Mohandas

406
 GLOSSARY

Gandhi (1869-1948), leader of India's Independence movement.

mahavakya - literally, 'great saying'; term used to refer to one of the four great
sayings of the Upanishads*, one from each Veda*, which express in different
ways the fundamental truth - the equation of Atman* with Brahman*.
mala - in Hinduism, a rosary of 108 beads used in the practice of japa*; also
means a garland.
manipura - see kundalini.
mantra - a sacred word or phrase given to a disciple by his Guru*; the repetition
of the mantra (mantra -japa*) is one of the most common forms of sadhana*.
Mast Kalandars - members of the Qalandari sect of Sufis, they deliberately act in
public in ways that are designed to offend the people they meet. Famous for
their musical parties, called sama, they dress outrageously and often
consume large amounts of hashish. 'Mast' denotes an ecstatic, blissful state
in which one is unaware of one's surroundings .
mauna - 'silence'; sometimes refers to the practice of not speaking, though it can
also denote the mental state of silence in which no thoughts arise.
mela - a festival; a large gathering of people who have assembled for spiritual,
commercial or cultural reasons, or just tci enjoy themselves.
Mira(bai) (1498- 1546 AD) - celebrated North Indian princess, saint and poet; her
poems and songs, expressing her devotion to Krishna*, are even today
known and sung by ordinary Hindus all over India. The shoemaker-saint
Ravidas* was her Guru* .
moksha - 'liberation', 'freedom'; in Hindu philosophy, the emancipated state of
the jiva* or individual soul; freedom from the round of rebirths (samsara*);
Self-realisation.
muladhara - see kundalini .
mulla(h) - in Islamic India, a learned man, a teacher, a doctor of Islamic law; one
who leads the prayers in a mosque; also, commonly, a schoolmaster.
nagas - a sect of sadhus* who traditionally wear no clothes.
Namdev (1270-1350 AD) - a Marathi tailor-saint who was a contemporary of
Jnaneshwar*. He travelled extensively in India, extolling the virtues of
repeating God's name.
Narasimha (1414-1480 AD) - the Narasimha mentioned by Papaji's mother was
probably Narasimha Metha, a Gujarati saint and poet. Regarded as the father
of Gujarati poetry, his poetical compositions extol the love of Krishna* and
his lilas*.
Narayana - literally, 'the son of Nara', meaning, 'the son of a man'; a very early,
traditional name of the supreme being in Hinduism. By a syncretistic process
common in Hindu mythology, Narayana 's name came to refer to either
Vishnu* or Krishna*.
Nataraja - Siva*, depicted as performing the tandava, the cosmic dance of
creation, sustenance and destruction.
Neem Karoli Baba - modem saint and Guru* of indeterminate origins who passed
away in 1973; a devout Ram* and Hanuman* bhakta, he was famous for his
eccentric behaviour and for the many miracles he performed.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Nemisharanya - 'the Nemisha Forest'; located near Sitapur in North India, it was
famous in puranic times for several reasons: a major yagna* lasting twelve
years was conducted there, and was attended by thousands of rishis*;
according to some sources Suka*, the son of Vyasa*, gave the first recitation
of the Mahabharata* there; Krishna's* discus, the sudarshan chakra, landed
there at the end of the Mahabharata* war. The place where it landed is now
a place of pilgrimage.
neti-neti - literally, 'not this, not this'; the famous dictum in the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad* which asserts that Brahman* cannot be described in words or
encompassed by thought, since it is beyond all subject-object distinctions.
Repeated as a spiritual practice, it attempts, progressively, to discover the
Absolute by negating all the things that it is not.
nirvana - 'extinction'; a Buddhist term denoting the state of enlightenment in
which all desires have been extinguished .
nirvikalpa samadhi - the samadhi* in which no differences arise or are perceived;
the supreme superconscious state; the formless, intensely blissful samadhi of
non-dual union with Brahman*, the highest state of consciousness according
to Vedanta* and Yoga*.
Nischaldas - an obscure but esteemed scholar-saint of early 19th century North
India whose learned and original works on advaita Vedanta* elicited the
admiration of Swami Vivekananda*, Swami Ram Tirtha* and Sri Ramana
Maharshi *. Author of Vichar Sagar.
Nityananda Swami - a celebrated naked, silent avadhut*, he was the Guru* of
Swami Muktananda. Nityananda spent many years in a state known as sarpa
bhava samadhi, i.e., lying on his side motionless like a snake, not even
stirring for food . The village of Ganeshpuri, made famous by Swami
Muktananda's ashram, grew up around him. Muktananda passed away on
4th August, 1961.
Nizam - the title of the ruler of Hyderabad state before it was incorporated into
India. Prior to Independence, it was the largest independent state in India,
having an area about the size of France.
Om - according to Hinduism it is the primordial sound from which all creation
springs. It is the most important element in all mantras*.
Om shanti, shanti, shanti - 'Om*, peace, peace, peace'; an ancient vedic bene-
diction concluding the prayer mantras* that introduce many of the classical
Upanishads*; a common form of benediction after the recital of a mantra, or
at the conclusion of ritual worship (puja*). For several years Papaji began all
his satsangs* with this mantra.
pa( a)n - a preparation of chopped areca nut, lime and occasionally other ingredi-
ents wrapped in a betel leaf and chewed. It colours the gums and teeth a char-
acteristic red.
pada puja - ritual worship of the feet of a God or a Guru* as an act of veneration
and respect.
padmasana - 'lotus posture'; in classical and hatha yoga*, the full-lotus posture
in which the body is seated with the legs folded over the thighs, left ankle

408
 GLOSSARY

over right, spine and neck straight. Properly mastered, it allows the body to
remain for long periods in trance or samadhi* without falling .
paisa - plural paise; a unit of currency now equal to 11100th of a rupee. Before
Independence there was a different division of the rupee: it was divided into
sixteen annas, with each anna having four paise.
pakora - a preparation of chopped vegetables coated with batter, and deep fried.
Panchadasi - a classic 14th-century exposition of advaita Vedanta* by
Vidyaranya *.
Pandavas - see Mahabharata.
Pandhari - see Pandharinath.
Pandharinath - 'The Lord of Pandhari'; a title of Lord Vitthal *, the deity in the
Pandharpur Temple.
pandit - a Hindu scholar; one who writes about, researches or teaches subjects
whose authority is derived from sacred Hindu texts.
Panduranga - see Pandharinath.
parikrama - the more-or-less circular route around a sacred place; the act of
walking the route in a clockwise direction by a pilgrim as an act of venera-
tion or worship.
Parvati - the wife or consort of Siva*.
Patanjali- writing around the 2nd century AD, he compiled and systematised the
existing knowledge of Yoga* and gave it a sound philosophical base.
pir - a Muslim saint or holy man; the term is generally reserved for those who
have disciples or students.
prajna - literally, 'knowledge beyond'; transcendental wisdom, the knowledge
inherent in freedom. Equivalent to jnana*.
prana - vital energy; life breath; the common basis of breath and mind.
pranayama - yogic exercises that control or regulate the breath. Since Yoga*
philosophy maintains that the breath and the mind are linked, controlling the
former is supposed to control the latter.
prasad - a sanctified present; food offered to a Guru* or deity becomes prasad
when some or all of it is publicly distributed or returned to the devotee who
offered it.
puja - ritualistic worship; adoration and decoration of a deity or saint with
mantras, yantras*, hymns and offerings of light, water, flowers, sandalpaste,
food, gifts, etc.
pujapath - devotional practices such as puja*, chanting God's name, reciting spir-
itual texts, and so on.
Puranas - the principal repositories of myths and legends about the Hindu gods.
Most of the eighteen principal Puranas were compiled between 1,000 and
2,000 years ago, although some are of more recent origin.
purva samskaras - mental habits and tendencies which have been carried forward
from a previous incarnation.
Radha - chief of the gopis*, the female cowherds of Vrindavan who were the
favourite lovers and playmates of Sri Krishna*.
rajas - see gunas.

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

raja yoga - literally, 'kingly yoga*'; in Indian philosophy, usually taken to mean
the yoga of meditation (dhyana or samadhi* yoga) associated with the
school of Patanjali* and expounded in his Yoga Sutras* and allied texts. It
has non-dual nirvikalpa samadhi* as its highest goal.
Ram Tirtha, Swami (1873-1906 AD) - famous North Indian saint and mystical
poet whose lyrical celebrations of the pristine advaitic state in Hindi*,
English, Persian and Urdu rank among the best of their genre. A contempo -
rary of Swami Vivekananda*, whose talks he arranged in Lahore, he also
travelled to the United States (1902-4), meeting President Theodore
Roosevelt, before returning to India where he retreated to the high
Himalayas. He drowned in the Ganga at Tehri, Garhwal, in 1906. Ram Tirtha
was the maternal uncle of Papaji.
Ram(a) - the seventh avatar* of Vishnu*, said to be the incarnation of dharma*.
He is the eponymous hero of one of India's great national epics, the
Ramayana*, which recounts the story of his rescue of Sita*, his queen, from
her capture by Ravana*, the demon king of Lanka.
Ramakrishna Mission - any branch of the Ramakrishna order; a monastic order
established by Swami Vivekananda* and his fellow disciples after the
passing away of their Master, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa*, in 1886.
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-1886 AD) - the great Bengali saint and
visionary mystic who realised the truth of the world's great religions by
direct experience. Guru* of Swami Vivekananda*, he had a great harmon -
ising and revivifying influence on modem Hinduism. Despite his attainment
of jnana*, he remained a lifelong devotee of the Divine Mother, whom he
identified with Kali*.
Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950 AD) - Guru* of Papaji and one of the most
acclaimed spiritual figures of modem times. He spent all his adult life in
Tiruvannamalai, at the foot of Arunachala*. His clear presentations of
advaita*, his saintly lifestyle and his innovative method of self-enquiry
attracted followers from all over the world .
Ramayana - one of India's great national epics, it recounts the story of Ram*. The
original version was composed in Sanskrit* by Valmiki. The bhakti-cult
version was composed in Hindi* by Tulsidas* (1532-1623 AD) and is called
Ramcharitmanas*. It is the most popular scripture in modem India.
Ramcharitmanas - 'The Sacred Lake of the Deeds of Ram*'; the title of the Hindi
Ramayana* written by Tulsidas* between 1574 and 1584 AD. Though the
basic theme is the same as Valmiki's Sanskrit* version, Tulsidas places more
emphasis on devotion to Ram.
ras lila - a drama enacted by devotees of Krishna* in which they dress up as
Krishna and His gopis* and then, through music and dancing, implore
Krishna to manifest before them.
rasam - a spicy, watery soup consisting primarily of boiled pepper and tamarind.
Ravana - ruler of Lanka and the principal villain of the Ramayana*. By kidnap -
ping Sita*, the wife of Ram*, he triggered a major war, which he eventually
lost.

410
 GLOSSARY

Ra(v)idas - cobbler poet-saint of Varanasi who probably lived in the fourteenth

or fifteenth century. In addition to his poems, some of which appear in the
Guru Granth, he is famous for producing, miraculously, a diamond necklace
from a bag in which he soaked pieces of leather.
rishi - literally, 'a seer'; one who through inner vision sees the truth of himself,
or of spiritual texts .
Rukmini - the consort of Vitthal * in the temple at Pandharpur, Maharashtra.
Sadguru - literally, 'truth teacher'; the Self or Atman* manifesting through a
human form. See Guru.
sadhak - one who practises spiritual exercises or sadhana*.
sadhana - from the Sanskrit* root sadh: 'to go straight to the goal, be successful';
conscious spiritual exercise; that which produces success (siddhi*) or the
result sought; spiritual practice.
sadhu - an ascetic holy man; one who does sadhana*, especially as a way of life.
sadhu bela - a colloquial Punjabi term that denotes a place where sadhus*
congregate or reside.
sahaja - 'natural'; in compounds such as sahaja samadhi* and sahaja stithi* it
denotes the natural, fully enlightened state.
sahaja stithi - 'the natural state'; the state of enlightenment.
sahasrara - see kundalini .
Sai Baba, Sathya - born in 1925, he is probably India's most famous living spir-
itual teacher. His ashram at Puttaparthi attracts millions of visitors each year.
Sai Baba, Shirdi - Maharashtra saint of unknown origin who lived at Shirdi and
died there in 1918. Well known for his miraculous powers, he still has a
major following in western India .
Saivite - pertaining to the worship of Siva*; a follower or a devotee of Siva.
sakti - divine power or energy; the cosmic force that allows manifestation to take
place, and the energy that bestows grace and enlightenment.
samadhi - literally, 'to bear or support together'; 1) an intensely blissful, super-
conscious state or trance; the highest condition of human consciousness in
which the seer-seen, subject -object distinction is transcended; 2) the tomb of
a saint.
Samkhya - derived from a word meaning 'number', its doctrines are based on the
twenty-five tattvas, or 'categories of existence'. Most of them pertain to or
classify different levels of manifestation. In practical terms Samkhya teaches
a gradual renunciation of everything that is not Purusha, the Samkhya term
for the Self*. The literature of the school evolved more than 2,000 years ago.
Though it is still listed as one of the six major schools of Indian philosophy,
it has been in a state of decline for at least 1,000 years .
samsara - the empirical world of names and forms, especially as it appears to the
unenlightened mind; the continuous cycle of death and rebirth to which the
jiva* is subject till liberated.
samskara - a mental habit or tendency, particularly one that has been inherited
from a previous incarnation.
Sanatan Dharma - 'Eternal Truth'; the original name of Hinduism; also the name

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NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

of an organisation that propounds Hindu teachings.

Sankara (788-820 AD) - also known as Adi-Sankara or Adi-Sankaracharya, he
was the great Hindu scholar-saint and reformer whose commentaries on the
classical Upanishads*, Bhagavad Gita* and Brahma Sutras revived
orthodox Hinduism at a time when it was stagnating under ritualistic brah-
minism. He established advaita Vedanta* on an impregnable popular
footing, rendering it proof against the onslaught of Mahayana Buddhism,
especially the Madhyamika School of Nagarjuna, which subsequently died
out in India. The prefix 'Adi' means 'original'. It is used to distinguish the
first and original Sankaracharya from his successors.
Sankaracharyas - honorific title given to the heads or pontiffs of the five principal
monastic institutions established by Adi -Sankara*: Joshi Math, near
Badrinath; Kanchipuram, southwest of Madras; Puri, on the east coast near
Cuttack; Dwarka, in western Gujarat; Sringeri, in south-west Kamataka.
Each of these monasteries (maths) traces its lineage back to either one of
Adi-Sankaracharya's four direct disciples (Sureshwaracharya, Padmapada,
Trotakacharya and Hastamalaka) or to Adi-Sankara himself.
sannyasa - renunciation, specifically the monastic rite enacting the vow to
renounce; the last and highest stage of Hindu life when one leaves worldly
cares and responsibilities for the wandering life of a monk, living on alms,
having freedom (moksha*) as the sole aim of life.
sannyasin - one who has taken sannyasa vrata, the vow of renunciation; a
renouncer.
Sanskrit- no longer widely spoken, it is the language in which Hinduism's sacred
texts were composed.
sari - traditional form of dress for Hindu women in which five to nine metres of
cloth are draped first around the lower half of the body, and then finally over
the shoulder.
satsang - literally, 'fellowship or company with truth'; the conversation and/or
company of a realised saint; the group of disciples or seekers who form such
a company; conversation which leads one towards truth; a sacred and
essential component of spiritual life for all traditions in orthodox Hinduism.
sattva - see gunas.
Self - the term adopted in English, when capitalised, for the Atman*.
Serpent Power, The - a 1918 English translation of two texts on Zayayoga by John
Woodroffe, a British judge who was then working in Calcutta. The work is
now considered to be a classic of kundalini* literature.
shakti - See sakti.
Shams Tabriz of Multan - The most well-known Shams Tabriz was the Guru* of
Jelaluddin Rumi, the famous 13th century Sufi. However, he was not from
Multan and he never visited India. Another possibilty would be Mohammad
Shams ad-Din Multani, a 9th century Persian Sufi of the Qadiri order.
shanti - peace.
shloka - a type of Sanskrit* verse, especially from a sacred text, of four half lines
containing, usually, praise or precept; a literary form in modem Hindi*

412
 GLOSSARY

applied to many types of verses.

shraddh( a) - an annual ceremony in which Hindus feed the spirits of their
ancestors.
siddha - an enlightened being; one who has mastered many siddhis*; an indigi-
nous form of Indian medicine; a practitioner of that form.
siddhi - from the Sanskrit* root sidh, 'to be accomplished; succeed'; superhuman
powers or attainments, usually achieved through the practice of yoga*. The
ashtadha siddhi, the eight major accomplishments, vary from text to text, but
the following are the most commonly cited: 1) anima - the ability to shrink
the body to a minute, even atomic, size. 2) mahima - enlarging the body to
a gigantic size, enabling the adept (siddha*) to witness cosmological
processes such as the formation of stars. 3) laghima - weightlessness, used
to levitate the body. 4) prakamya - to have one's wishes regarding the
location and size of the body fulfilled merely by willing them. 5) garima -
making the body as heavy as one wishes. 6) isitva - lordship or dominion
over all beings and substances. Through this siddhi the adept can either
create new beings or order living entities or inanimate objects to appear and
disappear. 7) vasitva - universal mastery; an adept with this faculty can make
any creature act as he wishes, and he can also change the course of nature,
since he has control over the wind, the rain, and other elements. 8) prapti -
the ability to accomplish everything desired, or a state in which nothing
remains to be desired.
Sita - daughter of Janaka*, King of Videha, wife and consort of Ram*, the
seventh incarnation of Vishnu*. Their story is told in the Ramayana*.
Sitaram - the gods Sita* and Ram* treated as a joint, divine entity.
Siva- the god of destruction in Hindu mythology; also, by extension, the god who
destroys the egos of his devotees .
Sivananda, Swami ( 1887-1963 AD) - a popular North Indian swami who founded
the Divine Life Society in Rishikesh. His world tours and his more than 300
books did much to popularise hatha yoga* and meditation in the 1960s and
'70s in India and the West.
Smt - short for Srimati; a respectful form of address for married Hindu women;
approximately equivalent to 'Mrs'.
Sri - literally, 'the auspicious one'; often used as an honorific prefix, it also
denotes Devi, the Divine Mother, or Lakshmi*, the consort of Vishnu* .
Sri Ramanasramam - the ashram* of Sri Ramana Maharshi* in Tiruvannamalai .
Founded in 1922, Sri Ramana spent the last twenty-eight years of his life
there.
stitha prajna - the state of enlightenment; the state of transcendental wisdom.
sudarshan chakra - an irresistible, discus-like weapon wielded by Krishna*.
Suk(a)dev - see Suka.
Suka - also known as Sukdev, he was the son of Vyasa*, to whom is attributed
authorship of the Mahabharata* and the Brahma Sutras. Suka was the
narrator of the Bhagavat Purana, also known as the Bhagavatam*.
swadishtana - see kundalini .

413
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

swami - literally, 'one's own'; strictly, 'one's own Master'; a person who has
realised the Self*; a spiritual preceptor, guru*; often used as a respectful term
of address for senior monks, approximately equivalent to 'sir'.
tamas - see gunas.
Tamil - the Dravidian language spoken mainly in Tamil Nadu, South India; the
mother tongue of Ramana Maharshi *.
tapas - literally, 'heat'; asceticism or ascetic practice; one of the adjuncts to
sadhana* for the Yoga* school; Vedanta* too has its counterpart. It is a deep-
rooted notion in Hinduism that some form of restraint or discipline (psycho-
logical heat) is needed for transformation.
tattvas - see Samkhya.
tilak - a coloured dot, applied to the forehead either as a decoration or at the
culmination of a Hindu religious ceremony.
tonga - a small, covered, two-wheeled cart, pulled by a horse. Formerly a major
form of public transport in many Indian cities.
Tukaram (1608-1649 AD) - a Marathi poet-saint who lived near Pune,
Maharashtra. Author of many devotional poems addressed to Ram*.
tulsi - a sacred plant, the flavour of whose leaves resembles basil.
Tulsidas (1532-1623 AD) - the most celebrated name in Hindi* literature, his
Ramcharitmanas* is the most influential religious text in northern and
central India. A brahmin* of Uttar Pradesh, he belonged to a lineage that can
be traced back to Ramananda, the Guru* of Kabir*. Other details of his life
are scanty and probably legendary.
tyaga - sacrifice.
Upanishads - literally, 'sitting close to'; the later 'knowledge portion' of the
Vedas* which incorporates the profound speculations and teachings,
originally secret, of the ancient Aryan seers of Hinduism. Since these
teachings came later, after the ritualistic portion of the Vedas, as a group they
are called the Vedanta*, or 'end of the Veda*'. Traditionally, the Upanishads
number 108. They are the fundamental authorities for the Hindu teachings
on reincarnation, karma*, and the doctrine that the Self* and Brahman* are
identical.
Urdu - The language produced by the confluence of Hindi* and Persian during
Mughal rule. Similar to Hindi in grammar, it is written with a Persian -Arabic
script and contains numerous Persian, Arabic and Turkish words. It is the
national language of Pakistan.
Vaishno Devi - a cave-temple in Kashmir where three major goddesses are
worshipped, it is located at an altitude of 5,100 feet, sixty-one kilometres
north of Jammu (Kashmir) and fourteen kilometres from Katra . Over a
million pilgrims attend the main festivals in March/April and
September/October.
Vaishnava - a follower of Vishnu*. See Vaishnavism.
Vaishnavism - one of the three great divisions of modern theistic Hinduism (the
other two being Saivism and Shaktism) which identifies Vishnu* - or one of
his incarnations, Ram* or Krishna* - with Brahman*, the Supreme Being.

414
 GLOSSARY

vasana - subtle desire; a tendency created in a person by the performance of an

action or the enjoyment of it; the subtle impression of an action which
remains unconsciously in the mind and which is capable of developing itself
again into action.
Vedanta - literally, 'end of the Vedas*; the system of Hindu thought based on the
Upanishads*, Bhagavad Gita* and Brahma Sutras, and holding primarily
the doctrines of pure non-dualism (advaita*) and qualified non-dualism
(visistadvaita).
Vedas - literally, 'knowledge, wisdom';.the highest, oldest and most sacred scrip-
tures of Hinduism and the oldest written religious texts in the world. The
earliest portions are about 4,000 years old.
vibhuti - ash from a sacred fire that is subsequently used for worship . It is applied
to the body and sometimes swallowed as prasad*.
Viceroy - 'Deputy Emperor'; the title given to the seniormost British official in
India during colonial times .
videha mukti - 'disembodied liberation'; generally understood to be the post-
mortem state of enlightened beings. Papaji, with some scriptural authority,
takes it to be a pre-death state, a condition of perfect identity with the
Absolute, in which all body consciousness has been lost.
vidya - knowledge; it includes both higher, absolute knowledge and lower
relative knowledge.
Vidyaranya - celebrated 14th-century saint and scholar, the pontiff of Sringeri
monastery, a renowned seat of advaitic learning. He wrote several important
works in Sanskrit* on the advaita* system including Panchadasi* and
Jivanmukta Viveka.
Vishnu - 'the strider', 'the pervader'; in the Hindu trinity, the Lord of preserva -
tion and appearance. He is the ruler of maya and the guardian of dharma* .
As his avatars* Ram* and Krishna*, he descended from his celestial abode
in order to defeat various demons plaguing humanity and to uphold the
eternal human aims of dharma* and moksha*.
vishuddha - see kundalini.
Vitthal - the name of Krishna* as He appears in the temple at Pandharpur,
Maharashtra.
Vivekananda, Swami - dynamic successor of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa*, he
was, in 1893, one of the first Indian swamis to take the message of Hinduism
to the West. Through his lectures, his books, and through the organisation he
founded, he promoted a major revival of Hindu culture and philosophy.
Vyasa - a generic term meaning 'the arranger' or 'the compiler', it is applied to
the author or authors of various important Sanskrit* works, especially to
Veda-Vyasa, the arranger of the Vedas*. He is listed as the author of the
Mahabharata*, the Bhagavatam* and the eighteen major Puranas*. Some
texts mention as many as twenty-eight Vyasas who have appeared on earth
at various times to compile and disseminate vedic knowledge .
yagna - a sacrificial fire; a ritualistic sacrifice, especially one that follows vedic
prescriptions.

415
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED

Yajur Veda - one of the four principal revealed or 'heard' scriptures (sruti) of
orthodox Hinduism. They have the highest authority and antiquity, and
consist of sacrificial formulas to be chanted along with sacred rites.
Yamunotri - the official source of the Yamuna River, although it actually emerges
in a hard-to-reach glacial lake further upstream.
yantra - a sacred geometrical design ; the empowerment of yantras and their
subsequent ritual worship are a central element of tantra.
Yoga - literally, 'to yoke, harness, unite ' ; the orthodox system of Hindu philos-
ophy associated with the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali* (1st or 2nd century AD) .
It comprises the eight-limbed path set out in the Yoga Sutras*: moral obser-
vance (yama); self-discipline (niyama); physical postures (asanas); breath
control (pranayama); restraint of the senses (pratyahara); concentration
(dharana); meditation (dhyana); and samadhi* in which the subject and
object of meditation have become one.
Yoga Sutra s - compiled by Patanjali*, it contains 195 aphorisms on Yoga*,
divided into four chapters. They are an early and authoritative exposition of
classical Yoga.
Yoga Vasishta - a Sanskrit work of 32,000 lines; composed between the 9th and
13th centuries AD, it is classified as an epic (itihasa). It contains the teach-
ings on liberation given to Lord Ram* by his Guru*, the sage Vasishta.
Although there are many long teaching parables and occasional digressions
into various yogic techniques, its main message, that the Self* alone exists,
is uncompromisingly advaitic. The author is unknown .
yogi - one who practises yoga* ; one who strives earnestly for union with God,
particularly by the path of raja yoga; one who has achieved siddhi* (success)
in yoga; one who has become 'harmonised' or 'yoked' in Brahman*; a spir-
itually advanced or freed soul.

416
 David Godman, Papaji, and a rented snake on a bridge in
Hardwar, sometime in March, 1993.

David Godman has been living in India since 1976, mostly at the
ashram of Sri Ramana Maharshi. He has written or edited four
other books about Sri Ramana and his direct disciples: Be As You
Are, No Mind - I am the Self, Papaji Interviews, and Living by the
Words of Bhagavan. From 1993 -7 he resided in Lucknow,
researching and writing this book and attending Papaji's satsangs.

If you are interested in obtaining books, audio tapes and videos on

Papaji, please contact the Avadhuta Foundation, 2888 Bluff Street,
Suite 390, Boulder, Colorado 80301 USA.
e-mail: [email protected]
Telephone: 001 -303-473 -9295
Fax: 001-303 -473-9284
 "~en I know my personal self and the impersonal Self are
by nature one and the same, how could there be anyone to meditate
or anything to meditate upon? Whatever I enjoy, whatever I give,
whatever I dedicate, whatever I do, nothing belongs to me.
I am without blemish, I am without birth, I am without death.
It is my firm conviction that I am free in the beginning,
free in the end, free in the middle, with
unborn cleanliness and simplicity. "
PAP A J I

Hariwansh Lal Poonja , nowada ys The first volume of this major new
called 'Papaji ' by his man y devotees , biograph y covers his early years in the
li ved in Luckno w, India. In his Punjab , his dramatic meetings with his
presence and through his dynamic Master , Sri Ramana Maharshi , and
transmissions countless people have other spiritual luminaries , his work as
been made aware of the impersonal a mining manager and his teaching
reality that underlies the world and all encounters ~ith South Indian dev6tees
phenomenal experience s. in the late 1960s.

ISBN 0 - 96 3 8022 - 2 - 4
51500>

9 780963 802224