(Source -Memoirs of Muktananda – ‘Sai Sudha’ January 1951)
On one evening in 1932, as Sri Narasimha Swamiji walked into a Darmashala at Chalisgaon, in Maharashtra, he had a pleasant surprise to meet a young ascetic Krishna who was his associate at Siddharudha Ashram at Hubballi in Karnataka in 1929. Both were happy to meet each other and happily discussed spiritual matters. Krishna adored the scholarship of Sri Narasimha Swamiji and by then had sufficient grounding of renunciation and was looking forward to initiation from Swami Nityananda of Vajreshwari.
Krishna did not think that education is simply restricted to a school or an academic environment, and if we did then we perhaps have not understood the whole process of life. The fact is that life is where the process of understanding and becoming as well as learning and unlearning never ends. His opinion was that every aspect of life triggers a set of events, relationships, incidents, and experiences, which end up teaching us something or the other. Every aspect makes us individually understand something more about life as well as about the self.
Sri Narasimha Swamiji questioned him – “What about Karma?” As we learn, we become better equipped to settle our karma which is the reason why we all are born. So, simply put, we are here to perform our karma, settle old karma, understand the nature of karma, and eventually become karma-free. This precisely is the reason according to Krishna, why we are all on this material plane. The very Karma has brought Sri Narasimha Swamiji and Krishna to meet in a Dharmashala at Chalisgaon!
Krishna told Sri Narasimha Swamiji – ‘Yet if we do not learn from life – its experiences, its events, and its people – we would not know how to deal with karma. And this way life would just keep happening to us in the most futile way and we would most likely end up merely suffering life and not living it. For we would remain ever caught up in the cycle of cause and effect, without it making any difference to our sensibility as a soul. And with such ignorance, we would aimlessly move through the cycle of birth and death and keep coming back to similar lessons and lifetimes, till we learn to become self-aware. Aware of who we are, what we are here to do, and how to become better souls’.
Sri Narasimha Swamiji remembered Ramana Bhagawan’s instructions to him to contemplate ‘who am I’ in a cave at Ramana Ashram in Tiruvannamalai, which he did during 1925-28
Krishna told him – ‘The whole purpose of karma is to teach us something. And without it, we would not be on this journey. The fact that we are here means that we have karma; karma to live out, to settle, to perform, and to dissolve. The important thing to remember is that till the time we begin to live a little consciously and understand the value of learning from life and expanding our consciousness, we will keep adding more karma – perhaps negative karma – to our old set of karmic debts that we are here to settle on this mortal journey. Therefore, learning is very integral for karma cleansing’.
He continued – ‘As they say, life is the best teacher. And karma is the tool, the technique, the method, and the curriculum as well as the book it uses to teach us what we must learn as souls. But till the time we value this learning and adopt this learning as the purpose of life, karma will seem as suffering or something that will forever remain a complex mystery’.
Sri Narasimha Swamiji narrated as to how he suffered from people and police but was stubborn in his ‘Quest of a Guru’. He was beaten up and harassed as a spy. Many days he had to go without food. He slept in burial grounds. If someone offered food, he would have it or go hungry otherwise. Sometimes he filtered fine sand and drank that juice!
Krishna’s advice to Sri Narasimha Swamiji is to learn something new when we suffer in our lives and if we do not learn, we will likely suffer again. Though, if we choose to turn inwards and reflect on the fact that our karma plays out as a reaction to how we are, we shall pick the pieces of the puzzle and understand the mystery of life much better. We will be better equipped to settle our karma this way because when we understand the very purpose of life as learning and go through it with sincerity, there comes a point after which we no longer need any lessons. Therefore, it is critical that every time we learn, we learn with joy. Only then do we excel and evolve and mature as a soul.
From Chalisgaon, Krishna went on to become Swami Muktananda Maharaj, as the worthy disciple of Swami Nityananda. It took another three years (1936) for Sri Narasimha Swamiji to realize Lord Sainath.
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