"The following day, at ten
o'clock in the morning, while I was still in Benares, my room was
suffused with a great light. Lo! before me stood the flesh and
blood form of Lahiri Mahasaya! It looked exactly like his old body,
except that it appeared younger and more radiant. My divine guru
spoke to me.
"'Keshabananda,' he said, 'it is I. From the disintegrated atoms
of my cremated body, I have resurrected a remodeled form. My
householder work in the world is done; but I do not leave the earth
entirely. Henceforth I shall spend some time with Babaji in the
Himalayas, and with Babaji in the cosmos.'
"With a few words of blessing to me, the transcendent master
vanished. Wondrous inspiration filled my heart; I was uplifted
in Spirit even as were the disciples of Christ and Kabir {FN36-9}
when they had gazed on their living gurus after physical death.
"When I returned to my isolated Hardwar hermitage," Keshabananda
went on, "I carried with me the sacred ashes of my guru. I know he
has escaped the spatio-temporal cage; the bird of omnipresence is
freed. Yet it comforted my heart to enshrine his sacred remains."
Another disciple who was blessed by the sight of his resurrected
guru was the saintly Panchanon Bhattacharya, founder of the Calcutta
Arya Mission Institution. {FN36-10}
I visited Panchanon at his Calcutta home, and listened with delight
to the story of his many years with the master.
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