papaji

Papaji (Hariwansh Lal Poonja) (1910-97)

In the first few months after my realization, I did not have a single thought. I could go to the office and perform my duties without ever having a thought in my mind. It did not take me long to realize 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 much mental effort or activity.

On one of my visits to Tiruvannamalai, I took my seven-year old daughter with me. She sat before the Maharshi and went into a deep meditative trance. She spent several hours in that condition before returning to her normal waking state. Major Chadwick [No.42], who was watching

all this, approached the Maharshi and said, “I have been here for more than 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 efforts. How can this be?”The Maharshi merely smiled and said, “How do you

know that she is not older than you?”

My daughter did not want to go back to Madras.The Maharshi advised her to first finish her education and then come back if she wanted to do so. If anyone asked her, “What happened that day when you were in

trance before the Maharshi?” she could not answer and just cried.

I would sometimes accompany the Maharshi on his walks around the Ashram. I watched him remonstrate with the workers who wanted to prostrate to him rather than carry on 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 and in an unspectacular way. There was no demonstration of his power, just a subtle emanation of grace, which seeped into the hearts of those who came into contact with him.

One incident that I witnessed illustrates very well the subtle andindirect way the Maharshi worked. A woman brought her dead son to the Ashram. The boy had apparently died of snakebite. The woman cried and begged the Maharshi to bring him back to life, but he did not respond to her repeated requests. After a few hours, the Ashram manager made her take

the corpse away. As she was leaving the Ashram, she met some kind of a snake charmer who claimed that he could cure her son. The man did something to the boy’s hand where he had been bitten, and the boy immediately revived.

The devotees 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 has done nothing consciously to help the boy, but at a deeper, unconscious level, his awareness of the problem has 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 him.

The Maharshi never performed any miracles. 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 could quieten the minds of people around him, enabling them to become aware of who they really were.

In July 1947, a month before Independence, Devaraja Mudaliar

[No.35] told me about the problems which I could face if I did not bring my family to India from the Punjab, which was soon to become a part of Pakistan. I told him, “I am not going. I cannot leave the company of the Maharshi.” 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.

When Mudaliar told the Maharshi that Poonja’s family seems to be stranded in West Punjab and he did not want to go there, the Maharshi told me, “There will be a lot of trouble in the area you come from. Why don’t you go and bring your family out?” Though this amounted to an order; I was still hesitant. 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 that I cannot take my eyes off you.”

“I am with you wherever you are,” was his answer. From the way he spoke to me I could see that he was determined that I should go. I accepted the decision. I prostrated before him and for the first time in my life I touched his feet as an act of veneration, love, and respect. He will not

normally let anyone touch his feet, but this was a special occasion and he did not object. Before I rose, I collected some of the dust beneath his feet and put it in my pocket as a sacred memento. I also asked for his blessings because I had an intuition that this was our final parting.

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