Photo: Roy Bonney

 

The Touch of Grace

IN INDIA WHERE there is no social security for old age, one’s sons become one’s security. When a man and a woman marry, the wife comes to live in the husband’s home, so that he remains with his family. Thus to Maharajji came many people who yearned to have a child, and most particularly a son. Maharajji was known to be able to make fertile the infertile and to determine the sex of a child. Most often he didn’t interfere, but every now and again he granted what was considered a great boon.

When my wife and I started our family we had three daughters. This was not of concern to me, but my own mother became very anxious for a grandson. Maharajji told me that I would have a son. I said that I didn’t wish for a son, and he said, “You don’t wish for a son, but your mother does. Now you will have sons. Many sons. If you wish for sons, you will have them. If you wish, you will have sons and sons and sons.” When my wife was again pregnant, about seven months, Maharajji was in Kainchi and he said, “Well, Siddhi Ma! Shiv Singh has a son! A son is born there.” But he was not born yet. Two months later our son was born. We put him on Maharajji’s lap: “Maharajji, this is your fruit.”

He blessed the boy and said, “You will have sons now. God has no scarcity of sons in his regime. You will go on producing sons now. Now, no daughters. Sons and sons.”

You need not necessarily have faith to receive grace. Maharajji once said to a tourist couple who had come to Kainchi from eastern Uttar Pradesh, “You have three daughters. You want a son. All right. Bring me ten bags of flour.”

“Maharajji, how should I send it? I’m from far away.”

“I know you are from far away. Go to Haldwani to this shop and they’ll arrange it.”

The man went to the shop and arranged that ten bags of flour be sent. The total cost was such that he had only enough for gas and expenses to get home. They later had a son.

A lawyer and his wife who had not had children came to Maharajji for help. He gave the man a guava and said to give it to the wife and they would have children. The man thought how his brother’s five children seemed as though they were his own. What did he really need children for? So he put the guava on his puja table. A month later he gave the guava, still in perfect condition, to a friend who also had no children. The couple ate it, and now they have three children.

A man who had no children came to Maharajji, who said, “You build a well here at the temple and you will have children.” So it happened. I met that man’s son, who himself now has two sons. Maharajji had told the father, “You construct a well and your boat will keep floating,” meaning that the family line would go on.

Once a chauffeur was driving Maharajji up to Nainital to visit some devotees. When he came to a steep hill the chauffeur debated with himself whether to push the car to excess, in order to make the hill. He didn’t want to break the car, but because he had Maharajji in the front seat he decided to try it. When they arrived, Maharajji said, “You don’t have any children.”

“No, Maharajji.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Nineteen years.”

“Here, eat this apple. You’ll have a child.”

Ten months later his wife had a son. The chauffeur said, “For such a little thing, Maharajji would do a big thing.”

BUT IT WAS NOT only for children that Maharajji bestowed his touch of grace. His touch healed, brought economic prosperity, and spiritual growth as well.

A very ill relative, a young boy who had been quite strong, had been committed to a hospital, and his situation deteriorated to the point where doctors gave up hope for saving his life. When Maharajji came to the hospital room he touched the boy on the head and remained with him for a short time. The hospital staff and patients assembled to have Maharajji’s darshan, so Maharajji distributed prasad and left for Kainchi. The boy began to recover immediately. It was like a second birth for him.

The brother of J said, “We were doing kirtan and we expected J, who drank to excess, to come and quarrel with Maharajji. He came rushing toward Maharajji and from the first touch of Maharajji he was changed. He stopped drinking, and hasn’t drunk since, and that was some years ago.

Mrs. P said, “I didn’t want to go see any gurus, and so decided I’d just go and take pictures, but I arrived to find that the door wasn’t open. Later someone told me just to walk up and down in front of the door and Maharajji would open it. Suddenly Maharajji opened the door and said, “Go away!”

I replied, “I’m not going.”

“Oh, my goodness, you are a very stubborn woman. What do you want?”

I replied that I wanted a photo. He said all right, but I replied, “No, you have to come outside. It’s too dark in the room.”

Maharajji replied, “The photo will come out.” I argued with him, and Maharajji again said, “You are very stubborn. Do you want to become a doctor?”

I said, “Even in my dreams I couldn’t become a doctor, because I am such a second-rate student.”

Then Maharajji touched me on the head and spoke some mantra. Shortly after, I was admitted to medical college where I got top distinctions.

A certain man was staying in the ashram whose wife had recently died and whose business was ruined. Maharajji called for this distressed man and asked him to play his flute. The man played “Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram,” and Maharajji sat still, with tears flowing from his eyes. Maharajji took the man alone into a room, and when the man came out he was happy. He said that Maharajji had touched his foot to his head. Maharajji told a devotee to give the man some money and send him home. Maharajji’s blessings have sustained the man and his family ever since.

One day in 1968 Maharajji sent word that a group of nine of us would go for a ride in the Land Rover. After one stop at an apple orchard, we went up into the mountains to a rest house owned by the forestry service. The servants there obviously were expecting us and were delighted at Maharajji’s presence. Maharajji went immediately into the building, which appeared to consist of one large room, and Gurudatt Sharma went inside with him. We all sat out on the lawn, then Gurudatt called me. I ran in and found Maharajji sitting on a tucket and I knelt at his feet. Only the three of us were present. Maharajji looked closely at me, then closed his eyes for a moment and said, “You make many people laugh in America.”

I thought of my lecture style, which consisted of much humor, and I replied, “Yes, I guess so.” “You like to feed children.”

(H’m. That was a strange one.) I love to cook for people and I certainly like children, so I said, “Yes, I guess so.”

Then he reached toward me and tapped me three times on the forehead.

The next thing I recall is Gurudatt Sharma leading me by the arm out the door and the brilliance of the light outside. A few minutes later we all piled back into the Land Rover and returned to the temple.

What was that all about? Was it an initiation? What had happened to me? I recalled the story of Ramakrishna touching Vivekananda on the chest with his foot and putting him into samadhi, until Vivekananda yelled, “But what about my family?”—for they were dependent upon him. At that point Ramakrishna removed his foot and Vivekananda returned to normal consciousness.

Was this a similar event? Many months later, in a letter to me in America, Hari Dass said, “That day you were in a very high state. When you came outside, tears were streaming down your cheeks.” I don’t remember that at all.

Over the years since then, I have asked many devotees about that incident but have never received a clear answer. Some said it was a boon; others pointed out that Maharajji was in the habit of masking important initiations so that they looked like nothing had happened. Another devotee told me that the guru could awaken the kundalini energy in a devotee with a touch. The matter is still not clear. At the time it only seemed to increase my confusion—but that was Maharajji’s way. (R.D.)

I had been teaching in America but felt that my impurities were contaminating my teaching, so when I came before Maharajji in 1971, I asked that he make me pure enough to serve him in sharing the dharma in the West. At the time he hit me on the head and said, “You will be.” That seemed like a true boon and I accepted it as such. But some months later when I was still in India I continued to be aware of and often overwhelmed by my impurities. So again I asked Maharajji to make me pure. At that time he looked me over carefully and said, “I don’t see any impurities.”

Well and good for him to say that—after all, he saw God in everyone—but I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to feel pure. At any rate, I persisted in complaining. Then one day I was called into a back room, into which I had never been before, where Maharajji remained at night. Maharajji was on his tucket and S. L. Sah, who was a great Ramayana student and had become my deep friend and trusted teacher, was also present. Maharajji asked me what I wanted, and I said that I just wanted to be pure enough to serve him.

Then he went under his blanket. There were strange movements under the blanket followed by some snoring. I felt deep peace, and curiosity as well. Then he came out from under the blanket and tapped me on the head and said, “You will be.” Later, SL said that under the blanket Maharajji had been doing mudras.

Shortly before that incident Maharajji was reported to have said to KK about me, “I’m going to do something for him.” Perhaps this was another of those underplayed initiations. Nobody seemed to know; Maharajji didn’t say; and I still felt impure.

On the last day I was with Maharajji, I said, “Maharajji, you promised me that I would be pure enough to do work in the West and I don’t feel that I am.”

Maharajji looked mildly interested in that observation, then handed me a mango which he had been holding and said, “Here, eat this.”

I had often heard about Maharajji giving boons to people, sometimes by means of a piece of fruit. At the first opportunity I went into the latrine to eat the mango so that I wouldn’t have to share it with anybody. I debated whether to hold on to the seed to get more mango boons, but finally I discarded that plan as being too “clever.”

It is now more than twenty years since that day, and slowly, very slowly, the impurities have been falling away. (R.D.)