“Please do the stomach exercise I have taught you.”
“If you knew the extent of my suffering, Master, you would not ask me to exercise.” Nevertheless I made a feeble attempt to obey him.
“You say you have pain; I say you have none. How can such contradictions exist?” My guru looked at me inquiringly.
I was dazed and then overcome with joyful relief. No longer could I feel the continuous torment that had kept me nearly sleepless for weeks; at Sri Yukteswar’s words the agony vanished as though it had never been.
I started to kneel at his feet in gratitude, but he quickly prevented me.
“Don’t be childish. Get up and enjoy the beauty of the moon over the Ganges.” But Master’s eyes were twinkling happily as I stood in silence beside him. I understood by his attitude that he wanted me to feel that not he, but God, had been the Healer.
I wear even now the heavy silver and lead bangle, a memento of that day-long-past, ever-cherished-when I found anew that I was living with a personage indeed superhuman. On later occasions, when I brought my friends to Sri Yukteswar for healing, he invariably recommended jewels or the bangle, extolling their use as an act of astrological wisdom.
I had been prejudiced against astrology from my childhood, partly because I observed that many people are sequaciously attached to it, and partly because of a prediction made by our family astrologer: “You will marry three times, being twice a widower.” I brooded over the matter, feeling like a goat awaiting sacrifice before the temple of triple matrimony.
“You may as well be resigned to your fate,” my brother Ananta had remarked. “Your written horoscope has correctly stated that you would fly from home toward the Himalayas during your early years, but would be forcibly returned. The forecast of your marriages is also bound to be true.”
A clear intuition came to me one night that the prophecy was wholly false. I set fire to the horoscope scroll, placing the ashes in a paper bag on which I wrote: “Seeds of past karma cannot germinate if they are roasted in the divine fires of wisdom.” I put the bag in a conspicuous spot; Ananta immediately read my defiant comment.