“The morning you left for the Allahabad mela,” Prafulla told me, “Master dropped heavily on the davenport.
“‘Yogananda is gone!’ he cried. ‘Yogananda is gone!’ He added cryptically, ‘I shall have to tell him some other way.’ He sat then for hours in silence.”
My days were filled with lectures, classes, interviews, and reunions with old friends. Beneath a hollow smile and a life of ceaseless activity, a stream of black brooding polluted the inner river of bliss which for so many years had meandered under the sands of all my perceptions.
“Where has that divine sage gone?” I cried silently from the depths of a tormented spirit.
No answer came.
“It is best that Master has completed his union with the Cosmic Beloved,” my mind assured me. “He is eternally glowing in the dominion of deathlessness.”
“Never again may you see him in the old Serampore mansion,” my heart lamented. “No longer may you bring your friends to meet him, or proudly say: ‘Behold, there sits India’s Jnanavatar!’”
Mr. Wright made arrangements for our party to sail from Bombay for the West in early June. After a fortnight in May of farewell banquets and speeches at Calcutta, Miss Bletch, Mr. Wright and myself left in the Ford for Bombay. On our arrival, the ship authorities asked us to cancel our passage, as no room could be found for the Ford, which we would need again in Europe.
“Never mind,” I said gloomily to Mr. Wright. “I want to return once more to Puri.” I silently added, “Let my tears once again water the grave of my guru.”
[42-1:] Literally, param, highest; hansa, swan. The hansa is represented in scriptural lore as the vehicle of Brahma, Supreme Spirit; as the symbol of discrimination, the white hansa swan is thought of as able to separate the true soma nectar from a mixture of milk and water. Ham-sa (pronounced hong-sau) are two sacred Sanskrit chant words possessing a vibratory connection with the incoming and outgoing breath. Aham-Sa is literally “I am He.”