Episodes And Experiences

Episodes and Experiences

By Krishnanand

Published by Mrugank Patel at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

1. FREEDOM FROM FEAR

2. SPIRITS SPEAK

3. DESTINY'S DUAL DEAL

4. SHIVA'S SCORPIONS

5. DEATH'S DISRUPTIVE DRAMA

6. GEORGE CONVERTS GHOSTS

7. COMPLAINANT CORNERED

8. CHAMPA'S CURSE CAME CORRECT

9. A WELL-WOVEN EVENT

10. RAMPA'S ROSARY OF RESOLUTIONS

11. THE TAUGHT TROUBLE THE TUTOR

12. A SOMNAMBULIST

Life Sketch of Swami Krishnanand

Poem: What Statistics Don’t Prove

Poem: Alphabetical Prayer

PREFACE

Beloved reader,

The Hindu monks are so very much revered in our country that even the itinerant spiritual novices like me enjoy a free access to the hearts and homes of the members of the society. It is because of this advantageous situation that I have some u good many interesting and mysterious incidents that have taken place in the lives of people I have et and stayed with during the course of my extensive wandering throughout the length and breadth of India.

I have narrated in this book some such experiences, common and uncommon both; trying in my own way to dig deep and unravel some soul enriching truths behind them. My modest aim in writing this second series of TRUE EXPERIENCES contain in this book is to share them with you in the sincere hope that they may add to your knowledge, hope, cheer and orderly living-so necessary to live a richer and meaningful life on this glorious earth.

As I am wedded to the principle that my writings should reach the members of the public FREE.

Should you find in the contents of this book educative elements and enlightenment, you will please share it with your other friends.

Love and namaskar to you.

May God bless us all.

Your own self,

Krishnanand

This second book was published in April 1966. Swamiji dedicated the second volume of his experiences to His Holiness Shri Mota the founder of the Hari Om Ashram (Nadiad & Surat), who was the live fountain of love, knowledge and experiences.

1. FREEDOM FROM FEAR

Mental pain engendered by apprehensive feelings is what in short we call fear.

Fear springs out of ignorance. Fear haunts us because we are empty of perspective knowledge of life and rational understanding of situations. With our lacking of courage to face the natural effects of our thought-free and thoughtless actions, fear gets the better of us. When we are not able to squarely meet the eventualities of life which is orderly and just, we invite the rule of fear and oppression. Through attachment and infatuation for people and things we sow the seeds of fear and allow it to enslave us.

Major calamities and pangs that we suffer are born out of our imaginary fears. Onslaught of sickness, failures in examinations, service, or business, insecurity, premature ageing and sundry other unexpected events enter our lives more with the visa of one form of fear or the other. Fear robs us of all charms and chances of life. With gloom-cast faces, we become mere moving machines of melancholy, carrying our fears wherever we wander, withered, weary and weak to meet the little challenges of life.

Fear rakes our nerves, curdles the blood, chills the spine, causes bodily tremors and clouds our thinking-hindering and frittering our great possibilities. Fear is self-detention, deflection, decay and defacement.

When the horses of our self-imagined thoughts of danger and anxieties are let loose by throwing away the reins of prudence, we just jostle about in forebodings and our physical vehicles land in the truculent abyss of fear.

Unless we remain discriminatively awake, fear, the binding and blinding instinct-often difficult of recognition is hard to eradicate. Like other disruptive emotions, FEAR has a tendency to lurk, leap and lash out. We must sharply search, spot it out and slash it away.

Fear in any form or degree is bad. So is fearlessness of every kind. Dutiful obedience is superior compared to obeying out of fear. Overcoming the vices through rightful thinking is more desirable than desisting from it solely out of fear of the inevitable consequences. Likewise, fearlessness which enriches, ennobles, elevates and emancipates is what is worth achieving rather than the type which is disgraceful and damaging to oneself and others.

You will read in these pages how various forms of fears obsessed me and how I gained release from its hold.

Born and bred up in a fairly well-to-do family, I was circumstanced to grow in comfort and free from wants. But through excessive care, ' stick to us ' and ' mix not' codes, my otherwise good parents sowed the seeds of fear in me from my very childhood. I grew in and with fear - becoming a crotchety bundle of it.

I could never sleep alone, without lights or move about in darkness. Talks of ghosts and crocodiles, etc., generated fear in me. Out in the swimming pool, I never swam under water, neither did I swim with the crowd of mischievous boys who generally pulled one by the legs from below. Before going to bed, I always stuffed cotton-balls in my ear - holes to prevent ear - wigs and ants from creeping into them while I was asleep.

People usually wish to hear about or see from safe distance what they fear. For instance, almost everyone fears ghosts, wild-animals and death, but yet they like to hear or read ghost - stories and see the caged wild-animals and dead bodies. As for me, fear of ghosts and wild-animals had so much flooded my whole being that I perspired with shivers when hearing ghost stones or seeing the pictures of wild-animals. The first time I visited a zoo was in the year 1947 - at the age of 27. It was about that time then I saw for the first time a dead body from close quarters. Because wild - animals participate in the circus - shows and because I feared them, I never witnessed any circus-shows, and films of Tarzan or wars.

Of all the things that I most feared was snakes. I shrieked at their sight - both in wakefulness and in dreams. In my book ' Sermons in the Storms ' I have narrated in the experience under the caption 'A night with a python ' the mental uneasiness I suffered at the intrusion of a baby - python in the cave where by mistake I had gone for midnight meditations.

My fears very often brought me face to face with dangers. Fear hindered my progress. I suffered nervous disorders and allied physical and mental complications.

While visionary dreamers dream about good things and of becoming big and thereby feel exhilarated, I dreamt of failures, stings, bites, beats, rebukes, detection, insult, destitution, poverty, accidents, sickness and other negative situations and became sore and sullen.

The only good which my fearfulness did was, to delight my school and class mates to see my funky figure in tantrums. In order that they may not frighten me, I spent every pie of my pocket-money on lollipops and lozenges which I freely distributed to my mischief-minded mates. That's how I had to keep them at bay.

My parents were not religious-at least not in the regular ritualistic way. But because of my spiritual-minded uncle who had also embraced sanyasa, we had good many saints visiting our house. It was a case of water released for wheat crops reaching and feeding the weeds also. I went to them with one question can you cure my fear complex? But their prescriptions were such as would arouse more fear in me. Someone asked me to pray seated in a lone room, some said reciting japa in a cemetery would help and others asked me to propitiate the fearful-form of Mahakali. I had no guts, faith or patience for practicing these efficacious methods then. There wasn't encouragement from my parents either.

With this background of fear complex, I left my house in search of peace in the year 1944. I did not set out with the usual preparedness with which the adorable seekers who want God above everything do. Distaste and dispassion for worldly way of living was there in me, yet, lurking in a corner was also the fear of insecurity. So, I carried with me sufficient money to last me for a year-by which period I expected to soar in the state of absolute reliance on God. I didn't know where to go and how to start. But I somehow felt that once I left, I would be led to somewhere and that God's agents would meet me and guide me to the sought for destination.

I went to Hubli in Karnatak and thence to Kumarswami - a place of pilgrimage near Sandhur State via Humpi and Pampa sarovar. From there I trekked to several places in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra and later decided to go to Sindh.

Possessed by fears as I was, I didn't enjoy the wandering. Fear had already done enough damage to my inner and outer-self. I longed for freedom from its clutches. Through regular prayers and incantations of the japa in which I was initiated as a student, I endeavored without success to keep away the negative and hurtful thoughts. Thereafter, I clung to the following one-line prayer - O' Mother ! out of Thy bountiful grace, do Thou be pleased to free me from fear." Thus, moving from place to place, I kept reciting the prayer, sometimes mentally, vocally at times and occasionally I even bawled out. I addressed the supplication to every name and form in which people prayed and pray to God and also to forms in which people don't worship-perhaps they never will. I was impatient for results - but my prayers went unheard. I didn't then know that my prayers were bereft of technique, persistent faith and poise. Nor did I know or wish to believe that in trying to introduce anything new or endeavoring to drive away anything that is deep-rooted and irksome, one shouldn't expect too quick results. Yet, I continued the same unproductive process.

Whenever people came to me, I freely spoke to them about my plight and begged them to pray for me. Some good souls asked me to stick to prayers, some sermonised,