One incident in which both of us were involved remains imprinted in my memory. Those days, godmen who were ever hungry for publicity were eager to be written about in
The Illustrated Weekly of India.
Among the many I received in my office was Chandraswami, then a great favourite of the Jain family who own
The Times of India.
I was also approached by some followers of Shri Bhootnath. They assured me this saint was
pahunchay huey
(one who is close to God) and could see the future better than any astrologer. A meeting was set up for me at Shri Bhootnath’s temporary residence in Bombay. On my way, I picked up Vimla, assuring her that she would know what the future held in store for her. We were ushered into a room crowded with Bhootnathji’s admirers.
He sat cross-legged on a draped charpoy, dispensing words of wisdom. He was a wild-looking man with long hair, a shabby black beard, and sparkling eyes. It was apparent to me that he was somewhat put out by my arriving with a young, attractive woman. He was expecting me to come alone and had evidently been briefed on my background. But who was this woman? His eyes darted towards her.
He tried to work out our relationship. She was too young to be my wife. If she worked in the same office, it must be some kind of a liaison. My constantly switching the focus from me to Vimla convinced the holy man that my intentions towards her were not honourable. His
jyotish
told him that I was an unfulfilled man, but what I had in mind would bring me a lot of happiness.
He blessed the two of us and produced a stream of fresh cardamoms from his sleeves as prasad. We touched his feet and took our leave. On the way back, I took Vimla’s hand in mine (for the first time since I had known her) and exclaimed, “What Bhoonathji hath brought together, let no man cast asunder!” A faint smile of embarrassment spread over Vimla’s lovely face.
Vimla writes about this incident in
My Times: Memoirs.
She writes of many others in her long tenure in Bori Bunder. Unlike most editors in the Bennett Coleman Group who were unceremoniously booted out of their chairs, Vimla was given a touching farewell.
11/5/97
Lives: Before Life and After Death
A
s the time for my own departure draws near, I find myself more and more tempted to believe in an afterlife: will I be around in the world 20 years from now in new vestments as the
Gita
assures me? And what will I be reborn as – a cat, dog, serpent, rat or worm as punishment for what I have done in this life? Or return as a glamorous film star or the future Prime Minister of Hindustan for the few good things I have done? Or am I to be extinguished like a lamp never to be relit? I am more than willing to lend my ears to hear answers to these questions. It was in this state or uncertainty that I went to hear Swami Atmanand’s discourse on
Punarjanma
(rebirth).
The large auditorium was packed. For one hour and a half over a 1000 men and women heard Swamiji in rapt attention. I have never heard Hindi better spoken and arguments put with greater clarity marshalling knowledge of the past and the present. I will put his arguments as I took them down in my notebook along with my own comments.
The concept of birth-death and rebirth is unique to Indian-born religions: Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism, said Swamiji. He is only partially correct because some Greek philosophers had also expressed similar views. But he is substantially correct inasmuch as the Hebraic family of religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, though they have the concept of the day of judgement, when the dead will rise from their graves, subscribe only to one life not an unending cycle of birth, death and rebirth as we do.
Swamiji then proceeded to explain that there are three ways of acquiring knowledge. First, through one of our five senses (
pratyaksh pramaan
)
;
second by inference (
anumaan pramaan
)
;
and finally from inspired texts or people with divine knowledge (
agam pramaan
)
.
In the third category are our Vedas, Upanishads,
Gita,
as well as rishis and sages like Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa. He said that knowledge of rebirth could not be acquired by the senses. I am in agreement with him. He went on to say that all our sacred texts as well as our prophets and seers accepted the theory of instant rebirth after death. Once again I agree with him that they said so. But this is not good enough for unbelievers like me because I refuse to accept anyone’s word for something I should discover for myself.
We are left with only one of the three means of acquiring this knowledge viz. by inference (
anumaan pramaan
)
.
For conclusive proof, Swami Atmanand cited the research carried out by Dr H.N. Bannerjee, director of the erstwhile Institute of Parapsychology of the University of Rajashtan. Bannerjee’s book on the subject listed cases of children who recalled incidents of their previous births which, according to Swamiji, were all found to be authentic. I also read Bannerjee’s book and met him. I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that not one of the cases cited by him could be established as authentic. Rajasthan University itself ordered the institute, to be wound up and instituted proceedings against Bannerjee. The so-called research into para psychology, extrasensory perception (ESP) was found to be a massive hoax. Swamiji maintained that the breakthrough in knowledge like Newton’s discovery of the law of gravity did not come through trial and error but by what Einstein described as ‘intuitive flight’. He may be right. But that does not forward the argument for rebirth because children between the ages of two and seven who apparently have peeps into their past lives do not have ‘intuitional flights’ productive of anything except fantasies.
To clinch the argument, Swamiji posed the question: why are some born in rich homes, others in poor houses? Why are some born healthy, others blind or sickly? If we accept the theory of only one life, we cannot explain such god-inflicted injustice.
Ergo,
there must be a cycle of births whereby God punishes or rewards people for what they have done in one life by squaring their karmas in the next. I am sorry Swamiji, this does not convince me at all. I am happy to wallow in my ignorance and admit, I do not know where I come from, why I am here, where I will go when I die?
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint and heard great argument
About it and about: but ever more
Came out by the same door as I went
13/4/1986
E
nter Yogi Bacchan. In case you have not heard of him let me tell you about him. He is a tall, swarthy, bearded young man from Bihar. He came with his wife, an assistant and a lawyer of the Supreme Court who had told me on the phone that yogiji was a man of miracles. After introductions were made I was shown photographs of the Yogi performing surgical operations with his bare hands and testimonials including one from President Zail Singh testifying to his power of healing. I was told that Yogi Bacchan could also read the book of the future and would answer any three questions I put to him on a piece of paper without showing them to him. I said I would ask only one question but warned him that whether or not he got the answer right, I would write about it. He accepted the challenge. I wrote the one question uppermost in my mind: “Will I be returned to the Rajya Sahba?” I folded the paper and handed it to Yogi Bacchan. He crumbled it in his palm and gave it back to me. “You want to know whether you will be returned to the Rajya Sahba,” he said. I was baffled. Was it mind-reading? I begged to be allowed a second question. This time I wrote only one word: “When?” Yogiji asked me to tear up the paper in as many pieces as I liked and give them to him. I did so. He again crumbled the torn bits in the palm of his hand and returned them back to me. They were now in one piece miraculously joined together with the inscription beneath my question reading ‘in July.’ I was mystified. At that time the Rajya Sabha polls had been scheduled for July. Despite my scepticism I let an irrational hope enter in my mind. Since I was neither nominated nor returned by election (I tried my best) I keep my promise to Yogi Bacchan by writing about it. I retain the strips of paper with me.
29/6/86
F
or the past two years I have been carrying on desultory correspondence with Brother Stanny of St Ann’s Church in Dhule (Maharashtra). He is a Jesuit priest; I am agnostic. He overlooks my lack of faith; I do not question his belief in God, the Catholic church and his mission. There is no attempt on either side to convert the other. Nevertheless, we have plenty to talk about on paper.
A few weeks ago he wrote about a fellow Jesuit preacher, Tony De Mello, whose books and tapes had greatly influenced his thinking and those of thousands of people in the west.
I had never heard of De Mello and wrote back asking for the set of tapes. In due course seven arrived by VPP. One afternoon I listened to three of them. I was enchanted. By sheer coincidence another Jesuit, L. De Raedt, who is the librarian of the Caupion School in Bhopal, sent me as a gift a book entitled
The Song of the Bird.
The book did not carry the name of the author, but quite a bit of it was much the same as on the tapes.
It transpired that the author of the book was Tony De Mello. A pamphlet which came with the book mentioned other publications by the same author:
The Prayer of the Frog; A Book of Story Meditations
in two volumes:
Sadhana: A Way to God; Wellsprings: A Book of Spiritual Exercises; One Minute Wisdom.
Then there was another,
Unencumbered by Baggage: An Intimate Biography of Father Antony De Mello – A Prophet of Our Times
by Carlos G. Valles.
Printed on one of the pages was an excerpt from a review written by M.V. Kamath in
The Times of India.
It read: “If you ask me which two books I would care to take with me if I am stranded on an island, I would choose
Wellsprings
and
The Song of the Bird.
Not the
Gita
or the
Bible,
not even bound volumes of
Penthouse
and
Debonair,
much as I fancy them.” Great praise indeed. But who was this Antony (or Tony) De Mello?
De Mello was born in Bombay in 1931, entered the Society of Jesus when he was only 16 (in 1947), studied psychology at Loyola University, Chicago, and spirituality at the Gregorian University, Rome. He returned to the United States to become a much sought after speaker at religious conferences. His speeches were taped on audio-visual cassettes and widely distributed all over the country. His books as well as anthologies of his orations were translated in many foreign languages and likewise sold by the thousands. He succumbed to a heart attack while on a visit to Fordham University. He was 56 then.
I am inclined to agree with Kamath that De Mello is worth his weight in gold. What is unique about him is the total absence of fundamentalism. He quotes the Buddha, Hindu scriptures, the
Quran,
the Sufis, Shri Aurobindo, Krishnamurthy, as well as Christian thinkers. He prescribes physical and mental exercises very much of the kind propagated by yoga. It was a truly eclectic faith that he preached. He did not believe in dogma nor the literal interpretation of any scriptures. He tried to answer simple questions people ask about God, life and life hereafter in simple language illustrated with parables and anecdotes from mythologies of different religions. Here is one example:
“The disciples were full of questions about God.
Said the Master, ‘God is unknown and the Unknowable. Every statement made about Him, every answer to your questions, is a distortion of the Truth.’
The disciples were bewildered. Then why do you speak about Him at all?’
‘Why does the bird sing?’ said the Master.
How then does one get to know God?”
De Mello answered the question with a fable about a temple on an island:
The temple had stood on an island two miles out to sea. And it held a thousand bells. Big bells, bells fashioned by the best craftsmen in the world. When a wind blew or a storm raged, all the temple bells would peel out in unison, producing a symphony that sent the heart of the hearer into raptures.
But over the centuries the island sank into the sea and, with it, the temple and the bells. An ancient tradition said that the bells continued to peal on ceaselessly, and could be heard by anyone who listened attentively. Inspired by this tradition, a young man travelled thousands of miles, determined to hear those bells. He sat for days on the shore, opposite the place where the temple had once stood, and listened – listened with all his heart. But all he could hear was the sound of the waves breaking on the shore. He made every effort to push away the sound of waves so that he could hear the bells. But all to no avail; the sound of the sea seemed to flood the universe.
He kept at his task for many weeks. When he got disheartened he would listen to the words of the village pundits who spoke with unction of the legend of the temple bells and of those who had heard them and proved the legend to be true. And his heart would be aflame as he heard their words … only to become discouraged again when weeks of further effort yielded no results.
Finally he decided to give up the attempt. Perhaps he was not destined to be one of those fortunate ones who heard the bells. Perhaps the legend was not true. He would return home and admit failure. It was his final day, and he went to his favourite spot on the shore to say goodbye to the sea and the sky and the wind and the coconut trees. He lay on the sand, gazing up at the sky, listening to the sound of the sea. He did not resist that sound that day. Instead he gave himself over to it, and found it was a pleasant, soothing sound, this roar of the waves. Soon he became so lost in the sound that he was barely conscious of himself, so deep was the silence that the sound produced in his heart.