Reminiscences of Swami Chinmayananda
As my thoughts wander away to Tapovan Kuti on the Ganges banks in Uttarkasi and to the period when I was doing my sadhana there, many remarkable anecdotes of Sri Gurudev (Swami Tapovanam) explode in my recollections.
I don’t exactly remember the specific occasions that brought up these live examples from him, but each one of them was a glorious answer to some question, or a blazing explanation of some moot point in higher Vedanta.
Once upon a time, described Sri Gurudev, a secular tyrant made a Mahapurusha hang from the branch of a tree by his teeth. Down below flowed the noisy Ganga, smashing her way through a bed of large rocks. At that time a seeker asked, “Sir! Tell me the nature of the Infinite Self.” If the Mahapurusha opened his mouth either to assert or to negate the Self, he would dash himself into the rocky floods; if he remained silent, the student would be neglected, which was against the Mahatma’s sole duty in life. How would he express?
“It is then,” concluded Sri Tapovanam “perhaps, that the Master showed the student the jnana mudra, meaning that the Self is not to be discussed. It is to be realised by oneself in the silence within.” Both assertion and negation are functions of the intellect. Beyond them both is the transcendental Self, the seat of pure Consciousness.