“Mukunda, I see your father is regularly sending you money. Please return it to him; you require none here. A second injunction for your discipline concerns food. Even when you feel hunger, don't mention it.”
Whether famishment gleamed in my eye, I knew not. That I was hungry, I knew only too well. The invariable hour for the first hermitage meal was twelve noon. I had been accustomed in my own home to a large breakfast at nine o'clock.
The three−hour gap became daily more interminable. Gone were the Calcutta years when I could rebuke the cook for a ten−minute delay. Now I tried to control my appetite; one day I undertook a twenty−four hour fast. With double zest I awaited the following midday.
“Dyanandaji's train is late; we are not going to eat until he arrives.” Jitendra brought me this devastating news. As gesture of welcome to the swami, who had been absent for two weeks, many delicacies were in readiness. An appetizing aroma filled the air. Nothing else offering, what else could be swallowed except pride over yesterday's achievement of a fast?
“Lord hasten the train!” The Heavenly Provider, I thought, was hardly included in the interdiction with which Dyananda had silenced me. Divine Attention was elsewhere, however; the plodding clock covered the hours. Darkness was descending as our leader entered the door. My greeting was one of unfeigned joy.
“Dyanandaji will bathe and meditate before we can serve food.” Jitendra approached me again as a bird of ill omen.
I was in near−collapse. My young stomach, new to deprivation, protested with gnawing vigor. Pictures I had seen of famine victims passed wraithlike before me.
“The next Benares death from starvation is due at once in this hermitage,” I thought. Impending doom averted at nine o'clock. Ambrosial summons! In memory that meal is vivid as one of life's perfect hours.
Intense absorption yet permitted me to observe that Dyananda ate absent−mindedly. He was apparently above my gross pleasures.
“Swamiji, weren't you hungry?” Happily surfeited, I was alone with the leader in his study.
“O yes! I have spent the last four days without food or drink. I never eat on trains, filled with the heterogenous vibrations of worldly people. Strictly I observe the SHASTRIC rules for monks of my particular order.
“Certain problems of our organizational work lie on my mind. Tonight at home I neglected my dinner. What's the hurry? Tomorrow I'll make it a point to have a proper meal.” He laughed merrily.
Shame spread within me like a suffocation. But the past day of my torture was not easily forgotten; I ventured a further remark.
“Swamiji, I am puzzled. Following your instruction, suppose I never asked for food, and nobody gives me
any. I should starve to death.”
“Die then!” This alarming counsel split the air. “Die if you must Mukunda! Never admit that you live by the power of food and not by the power of God! He who has created every form of nourishment, He who has bestowed appetite, will certainly see that His devotee is sustained! Do not imagine that rice maintains you, or that money or men support you! Could they aid if the Lord withdraws your life−breath? They are His indirect instruments merely. Is it by any skill of yours that food digests in your stomach? Use the sword of your discrimination, Mukunda! Cut through the chains of agency and perceive the Single Cause!”
I found his incisive words entering some deep marrow. Gone was an age−old delusion by which bodily imperatives outwit the soul. There and then I tasted the Spirit's all−sufficiency. In how many strange cities, in my later life of ceaseless travel, did occasion arise to prove the serviceability of this lesson in a Benares hermitage!
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