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oldest maternal uncle, who comforted me with soft, endearing words after a fit of prolonged
weeping caused by the anger of my mother for having stayed out too long playing with the
children. As I was the only son she never dressed me in fine clothes, to guard against the evil
eye, nor allowed me long out of her sight for fear of mishaps. Another indelible childhood
memory is of a moonlit night with my mother and one of my maternal uncles, sleeping on an
open-from-the-sides but roofed top of a small wooden cabin, used as a granary, a common
structure in rural habitations in Kashmir. We had travelled all day on horseback on the way to
the distant abode of a reputed hermit, but failing to reach our destination at nightfall had
sought shelter in the house of a farmer, who accommodated us thus for the night. I cannot
recall the appearance of the saint, except that his long, matted hair fell on his shoulders as he
sat cross-legged against one of the walls of his small room directly facing the door. I
remember him taking me in his lap and stroking my hair, which my mother had allowed to
grow long in conformity with a solemn vow she had taken not to apply scissors or razor to it
except at the time of the sacred thread ceremony.
13
Years later, when I had grown intelligent enough to understand her, my mother revealed to me
the purpose of her visit to the saint. She said that years before he had appeared to her in a
dream at a most anxious time. She had passed the preceding day in an extremely perturbed
frame of mind caused by my inability to swallow anything owing to a swollen and badly
inflamed throat. In the dream the holy personage, of whose miraculous deeds she had heard
astounding accounts from innumerable eyewitnesses, opened my mouth gently with his hand
and touched its interior down to the throat softly with his finger; then making a sign to her to
feed me vanished from sight. Awakening with a start, my mother pressed me close to her and
to her immense relief felt me sucking and swallowing the milk without difficulty. Overjoyed
at the sudden cure, which she attributed to the miraculous power of the saint, she then and
there made a vow that she would go on a pilgrimage to his place of residence to thank him
personally for the favour. Owing to household worries and other engagements she could not
make the pilgrimage for some years and undertook it at a time when I was sufficiently grown
up to retain a faint impression of the journey and the visit. The most surprising part of the
story is that, as my mother affirmed afterwards repeatedly, the hermit, at the very moment of
our approach after entering the room, casually inquired whether I had been able to suck and
swallow my milk after his visit to her in the dream. Wonder-struck, my mother had fallen
prostrate at his feet, humbly invoking his blessings upon me.
I cannot vouch for the miraculous part of the episode. All I can say is that my mother was
veracious and critically observant in other things. I have related the episode merely as a
faintly remembered incident of early childhood. Since then I have come across innumerable
accounts of similar and even more incredible feats, narrated by trustworthy, highly intelligent
eyewitnesses; but on closer investigation the bulk of the material was found to be too weakly
supported to stand the force of rigid scientific inquiry. For a long time I lent no credence to
such stories, and I can emphatically assert even today that a real Yogi in touch with, the other
world, capable of producing genuine psychical phenomena at will, is one of the rarest beings
on earth.
Another remarkable event of my childhood at the age of eight which I remember more vividly
occurred one day as I walked along a road in Srinagar in early spring on my way to the house
of our religious preceptor. The sky was overcast and the road -muddy, which made walking
difficult. All at once, with the speed of lightning, a sudden question, never thought of before,
shot across my mind. I stood stockstill in the middle of the road confronted within to the
depths of my being with the insistent inquiry, 'What am I?', coupled with the pressing
interrogation from every object without, 'What does all this mean?' My whole being as well as
the world around appeared to have assumed the aspect of an everlasting inquiry, an insistent,
unanswerable interrogation, which struck me dumb and helpless, groping for a reply with all
my strength until my head swam and the surrounding objects began to whirl and dance round
me. I felt giddy and confused, hardly able to restrain myself from falling on the slimy road in [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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