SWAMIJI'S TIME

SWAMIJI’S TIME: J K SIVAN

MY MASTER

For a long time he practised a singular discipline. He took in one hand a piece of gold and in the other a lump of earth. He would then look at both, repeatedly calling the gold earth, and the earth gold, and then shuffling the contents of one hand into the other, he would keep up the process until he lost all sense of the difiference between the gold and the earth. His ideal of service is absolute unworldliness and freedom from the desire of gain.

He loves and serves Rama because Rama is the best and most loving master. The service of the true saint is the service of the purest affection and most unselfish loyalty.

Some of the songs he sings expressive of this touching devotedness are exceedingly pathetic, and show how very negligent we often are. Nor is his reverence confined within Hinduism.

For long days he subjected himself to various disciplines to realize the Mahomedan idea of an all-powerful Allah. He let his beard grow, he fed himself on Moslem diet, he continually repeated sentences from the Koran. His reverence for Christ is deep and genuine. He bows his head at the name of Jesus, honors the doctrine of his sonship, and we believe he once or twice attended Christian places of worship.

These ideas at all events show the catholic religious culture of this great Hindu saint. Each form of worship that we have tried to indicate above is to the Paramhamsa a living and most enthusiastic principle of personal religion, and the accounts of discipline and exercise through which he has arrived at his present state of devotional eclectism are most wonderful, although they cannot be published. He never writes anything, seldom argues, he never attempts to instruct, he is continually pouring out his soul in a rhapsody of spiritual utterances,he sings wonderfully, and makes observations of singular wisdom. He unconsciously throws a flood of marvelous light upon the obscurest passages of the Puranic Shastras, and brings out the fundamental principles of the popular Hindu faith with a philosophical clearness which strangely contrasts itself with his simple and illiterate life. These incarnations, he says, are but the forces (Shakti) and dispensations (Lila) of the eternally wise and blessed Akhanda Sachchiddnanda who never can be changed or formulated, who is one endless and everlasting ocean of light, truth and joy.