It is not necessary to tell everybody about myself. It is not out of modesty, but what to tell you about myself? I am the transmitter; the knowledge does not belong to me. I am a medium; I am an agent; the middle man. That is my identity. My guru had chosen me.
My guru was Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh. He had many disciples. They are scattered over the world like the fragrance of a flower, qualified and wonderful. I am just one among the prominent ones, but I was chosen. I was chosen in such a way that even my physical frame changed. I don’t say that even my mother would not be able to recognize me. Even if I would tell her, ‘I am your son,’ she would say, ‘No, you are an impostor.’ My handwriting changed completely, like Swami Sivananda’s. I don’t know what exactly this is.
I do not like ashrams, I never liked disciples. If you have to exhaust your karma and suffer, you must have disciples. Disciples are the agony of a guru. I do not like this counting money, day and night. I like to be all alone, even today. I don’t like to meet people. That is my nature.
Up to 1963, I was able to do it. Suddenly on 14 July something happened. At midnight I started receiving wireless messages from my guru. Do this, do this, do this, do this. You will be surprised to know I did not know yoga at all, yoga was as far as anything from me, because my tradition is Vedanta. I belong to the special order of Advaita Vedanta philosophy in the Indian tradition. I thought asana and pranayama were all jokes. I thought, ‘What are these people doing, drinking water through their nose?’ I thought it was all useless, but the messages said, ‘No, yoga has to be taught, mankind needs it.’ From time to time, I received those messages. I don’t know how to contact him, but he is able to contact me.
Sometimes I think it is my fortune; I am blessed. Sometimes I think ‘Oh, he should not have chosen me, it would have been much better.’ I would be sleeping somewhere on the banks of the Ganga in a dilapidated Shiva temple, and I would sleep and sleep and sleep. What a joy there is in sleeping! You understand? You don’t enjoy anything and you don’t want it at all. That is a little about myself.
If you expect any power from me, please don’t because all that I am delivering to humanity is not my property. Things happen I know, and many people are helped, but I definitely do not claim that upon myself.
How did the things happen? When I was six years old, I suddenly felt that my body was there, but I did not feel myself. It was a peculiar experience. I did not feel the link between matter and prana. It was very fast, like lightening and it repeated itself. I spoke of it to my parents and since my father was also an initiated disciple of a very famous swami in India, he knew that something was happening to me, but he could do nothing more.
By God’s grace, in those days, in 1929, there were not many doctors in my country, otherwise they would have given me tranquillizers and so many things and my development would have been finished forever. Ultimately I was only taken to a few spirit healers, village magicians, as you call them. But they did not know what was happening to me.
I could never understand what exactly spiritual life and monastic life was. My guru has given me sannyasa and I stick to it because I have respect for him, but logically I cannot understand it. I think everybody can be a sannyasin in coat, pant and trousers, saris and frocks. Spiritual luminosity, spiritual enlightenment is not a cadre, it is not a sect. Spiritual illumination can happen to anybody, at any time. For that, you don’t have to shave your head and put on this garb. I knew it very well, still I did it.
Always engrossed in intellectual pursuits, reading from Einstein to the mysteries at the Court of London, well any absurd book. I was reading from the Bible, Koran and the Vedas to the books on sexual sciences. Reading about politics, sociology, history, geography and science, day in and day out, that was my life. Or I would take a rifle, go into the forest and hunt.
At the age of ten, I started hunting and stopped at the age of eighteen, when I shot the first tiger at a distance. That was my life. I did not understand, even today I do not understand how I became a swami.
That experience repeated itself again and again. My father referred this matter to four or five people. One was Swami Shraddhananda of Arya Samaj, a very powerful swami in that era. The second was Ma Anandamayi, a lady saint, who recently left her body, and a few more. They said, ‘Send him to an ashram. Give him to a swami.’ Well, my father did it. He used to ask me for years, ‘When are you going?’ Every time he came back from his duties, he said, ‘Are you not going for sannyasa?’ I said, ‘Let me complete my education.’ When the result was out, he took 90 rupees from his pocket, brought me to the motor stand, put me on the bus and said, ‘Get out.’ He said to me, ‘You are meant for a different life.’ So I think I was supposed to be the medium of my guru.
During my sojourn I met many important yogis in India, but I liked Swami Sivananda. The relationship between guru and disciple is the relationship between the master and the medium. I keep myself open. I have my own intellectual personality, I have my own philosophy, and I have my own idiosyncrasies in life. But towards him I am completely open, so that his aspirations and his wishes will be fulfilled through me.
Many times Swami Sivananda told me, ‘You have to go from door to door and shore to shore to meet people and to tell them to practise meditation.’ I don’t know, it may be a sort of hallucination also. Maybe I am deluding myself, maybe it is self-hypnotism. It is very hard. When I remember that I am a chela, a disciple, whenever the disbeliefs come into my mind from time to time, and when I get fed up with all these silly things that I see I am doing, immediately that voice comes, the aura comes, and I get my next order, ‘Do it’ and I do it. It works.
I get guidance about my work and about people. Many times the persons I see in the future, I have already seen them. If I have to pick up one among you for my work, I know it very well. That face has already been shown to me. I know what I am going to do in which country. This is the glory of guru and therefore we should try to become a good chela, disciple.
I think everybody must have a guru; do not doubt. If you are a good aspirant, even a charlatan guru cannot cheat you. If you only wait for a great guru to come, please keep on waiting. Such gurus are not born every day like pigs and dogs. Have your search for a guru and try to correct your inner self.
So many things have happened in my life and everything against my personal wishes, I don’t know what is in store for me. Perhaps I do not want things and they are happening. I have completely submitted myself to his will, so let things happen. Guru is the shepherd and let him take care of us.
3 April 1982, Casablanca, Morocco