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Born in the Khulna district of Bengal in 1863, Kebalananda gave up his body in Benares at the age of sixty-eight. His family name was Ashutosh Chatterji. Emerson paid the following tribute in his JOURNAL to Vedic thought: "It is sublime as heat and night and a breathless ocean.
The Omniscient One had unerringly directed his disciple to repeat the name of Rama, adored by him above all other saints. Ramu's faith was the devotionally ploughed soil in which the guru's powerful seed of permanent healing sprouted." Kebalananda was silent for a moment, then paid a further tribute to his guru.
I never became a Sanskrit scholar; Kebalananda taught me a diviner syntax. From Sanskrit verb roots, "to cast aside." Krishna was the greatest prophet of India; Arjuna was his foremost disciple. DA is a respectful suffix which the eldest brother in an Indian family receives from junior brothers and sisters. His biography has been recently published in Bengali.
Many of our happy hours together were spent in deep KRIYA meditation. Kebalananda was a noted authority on the ancient SHASTRAS or sacred books: his erudition had earned him the title of "Shastri Mahasaya," by which he was usually addressed. But my progress in Sanskrit scholarship was unnoteworthy. I sought every opportunity to forsake prosaic grammar and to talk of yoga and Lahiri Mahasaya.
But the tables were subtly turned: my new teacher, far from offering intellectual aridities, fanned the embers of my God-aspiration. Unknown to Father, Swami Kebalananda was an exalted disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya. The peerless guru had possessed thousands of disciples, silently drawn to him by the irresistibility of his divine magnetism.
"Two amazing incidents of Babaji's life are known to me," Kebalananda went on. "His disciples were sitting one night around a huge fire which was blazing for a sacred Vedic ceremony. The master suddenly seized a burning log and lightly struck the bare shoulder of a chela who was close to the fire. "'Sir, how cruel! Lahiri Mahasaya, who was present, made this remonstrance.
A very strange fact is that Babaji bears an extraordinarily exact resemblance to his disciple Lahiri Mahasaya. The similarity is so striking that, in his later years, Lahiri Mahasaya might have passed as the father of the youthful-looking Babaji. Swami Kebalananda, my saintly Sanskrit tutor, spent some time with Babaji in the Himalayas.
"I myself consider KRIYA the most effective device of salvation through self-effort ever to be evolved in man's search for the Infinite." Kebalananda concluded with this earnest testimony. "Through its use, the omnipotent God, hidden in all men, became visibly incarnated in the flesh of Lahiri Mahasaya and a number of his disciples."
"The peerless master moves with his group from place to place in the mountains," Kebalananda told me. "His small band contains two highly advanced American disciples. His words are the signal for moving with his group instantaneously to another place. He does not always employ this method of astral travel; sometimes he goes on foot from peak to peak.
"I soon returned to Danapur. Firmly anchored in the Spirit, again I assumed the manifold business and family obligations of a householder." Lahiri Mahasaya also related to Swami Kebalananda and Sri Yukteswar the story of another meeting with Babaji, under circumstances which recalled the guru's promise: "I shall come whenever you need me."
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