407

"Lord Krishna!" The glorious form of the avatar appeared in a shimmering blaze as I sat in my room at the
Regent Hotel in Bombay. Shining over the roof of a high building across the street, the ineffable vision had
suddenly burst on my sight as I gazed out of my long open third-story window.

The divine figure waved to me, smiling and nodding in greeting. When I could not understand the exact
message of Lord Krishna, he departed with a gesture of blessing. Wondrously uplifted, I felt that some
spiritual event was presaged.

My Western voyage had, for the time being, been cancelled. I was scheduled for several public addresses in
Bombay before leaving on a return visit to Bengal.

Sitting on my bed in the Bombay hotel at three o'clock in the afternoon of June 19, 1936-one week after
the vision of Krishna-I was roused from my meditation by a beatific light. Before my open and astonished
eyes, the whole room was transformed into a strange world, the sunlight transmuted into supernal
splendor.

Waves of rapture engulfed me as I beheld the flesh and blood form of Sri Yukteswar!

"My son!" Master spoke tenderly, on his face an angel-bewitching smile.

For the first time in my life I did not kneel at his feet in greeting but instantly advanced to gather him
hungrily in my arms. Moment of moments! The anguish of past months was toll I counted weightless against the
torrential bliss now descending.

408

"Master mine, beloved of my heart, why did you leave me?" I was incoherent in an excess of joy. "Why did
you let me go to the Kumbha Mela? How bitterly have I blamed myself for leaving you!"

"I did not want to interfere with your happy anticipation of seeing the pilgrimage spot where first I met
Babaji. I left you only for a little while; am I not with you again?"

"But is it you, Master, the same Lion of God? Are you wearing a body like the one I
buried beneath the cruel Puri sands?"

"Yes, my child, I am the same. This is a flesh and blood body. Though I see it as ethereal, to your sight
it is physical. From the cosmic atoms I created an entirely new body, exactly like that cosmic-dream physical
body which you laid beneath the dream-sands at Puri in your dream-world. I am in truth resurrected-not on
earth but on an astral planet. Its inhabitants are better able than earthly humanity to meet my lofty
standards. There you and your exalted loved ones shall someday come to be with me."

"Deathless guru, tell me more!"

Master gave a quick, mirthful chuckle. "Please, dear one," he said, "won't you relax your hold a
little?"

"Only a little!" I had been embracing him with an octopus grip. I could detect the same faint, fragrant,
natural odor which had been characteristic of his body before. The thrilling touch of his divine flesh still
persists around the inner sides of my arms and in my palms whenever I recall those glorious hours.

"As prophets are sent on earth to help men work out their physical karma, so I have been
directed by God to serve on an astral planet as a savior," Sri Yukteswar explained. "It is called
Hiranyaloka or 'Illumined Astral Planet.' There I am aiding advanced beings to rid
themselves of astral karma and thus attain liberation from astral rebirths. The dwellers on Hiranyaloka are
highly developed spiritually; all of them had acquired, in their last earth-incarnation, the meditation-given
power of consciously leaving their physical bodies at death. No one can enter Hiranyaloka unless he has
passed on earth beyond the state of sabikalpa samadhi into the higher state of nirbikalpa
samadhi. 1

409

"The Hiranyaloka inhabitants have already passed through the ordinary astral spheres, where nearly all
beings from earth must go at death; there they worked out many seeds of their past actions in the astral
worlds. None but advanced beings can perform such redemptive work effectually in the astral worlds. Then, in
order to free their souls more fully from the cocoon of karmic traces lodged in their astral bodies, these
higher beings were drawn by cosmic law to be reborn with new astral bodies on Hiranyaloka, the astral sun or
heaven, where I have resurrected to help them. There are also highly advanced beings on Hiranyaloka who have
come from the superior, subtler, causal world."

My mind was now in such perfect attunement with my guru's that he was conveying his word-pictures to me
partly by speech and partly by thought-transference. I was thus quickly receiving his idea-tabloids.

"You have read in the scriptures," Master went on, "that God encased the
human soul successively in three bodies-the idea, or causal, body; the subtle astral body, seat of man's
mental and emotional natures; and the gross physical body. On earth a man is equipped with his physical
senses. An astral being works with his consciousness and feelings and a body made of lifetrons.2 A causal-bodied being remains in the blissful realm of ideas. My work is
with those astral beings who are preparing to enter the causal world."

410

"Adorable Master, please tell me more about the astral cosmos." Though I had slightly relaxed my embrace
at Sri Yukteswar's request, my arms were still around him. Treasure beyond all treasures, my guru who had
laughed at death to reach me!

"There are many astral planets, teeming with astral beings," Master began. "The inhabitants use astral
planes, or masses of light, to travel from one planet to another, faster than electricity and radioactive
energies.

"The astral universe, made of various subtle vibrations of light and color, is hundreds of times larger
than the material cosmos. The entire physical creation hangs like a little solid basket under the huge
luminous balloon of the astral sphere. Just as many physical suns and stars roam in space, so there are also
countless astral solar and stellar systems. Their planets have astral suns and moons, more beautiful than the
physical ones. The astral luminaries resemble the aurora borealis-the sunny astral aurora being more dazzling
than the mild-rayed moon-aurora. The astral day and night are longer than those of earth.

"The astral world is infinitely beautiful, clean, pure, and orderly. There are no dead planets or barren
lands. The terrestrial blemishes-weeds, bacteria, insects, snakes-are absent. Unlike the variable climates
and seasons of the earth, the astral planets maintain the even temperature of an eternal spring, with
occasional luminous white snow and rain of many-colored lights. Astral planets abound in opal lakes and
bright seas and rainbow rivers.

411

"The ordinary astral universe-not the subtler astral heaven of Hiranyaloka-is peopled with millions of
astral beings who have come, more or less recently, from the earth, and also with myriads of fairies,
mermaids, fishes, animals, goblins, gnomes, demigods and spirits, all residing on different astral planets in
accordance with karmic qualifications. Various spheric mansions or vibratory regions are provided for good
and evil spirits. Good ones can travel freely, but the evil spirits are confined to limited zones. In the
same way that human beings live on the surface of the earth, worms inside the soil, fish in water, and birds
in air, so astral beings of different grades are assigned to suitable vibratory quarters.

"Among the fallen dark angels expelled from other worlds, friction and war take place with
lifetronic bombs or mental mantric3 vibratory rays. These beings dwell in the
gloom-drenched regions of the lower astral cosmos, working out their evil karma.

"In the vast realms above the dark astral prison, all is shining and beautiful. The astral cosmos is more
naturally attuned than the earth to the divine will and plan of perfection. Every astral object is manifested
primarily by the will of God, and partially by the will-call of astral beings. They possess the power of
modifying or enhancing the grace and form of anything already created by the Lord. He has given His astral
children the freedom and privilege of changing or improving at will the astral cosmos. On earth a solid must
be transformed into liquid or other form through natural or chemical processes, but astral solids are changed
into astral liquids, gases, or energy solely and instantly by the will of the inhabitants.

412

"The earth is dark with warfare and murder in the sea, land, and air," my guru continued, "but the astral
realms know a happy harmony and equality. Astral beings dematerialize or materialize their forms at will.
Flowers or fish or animals can metamorphose themselves, for a time, into astral men. All astral beings are
free to assume any form, and can easily commune together. No fixed, definite, natural law hems them round-any
astral tree, for example, can be successfully asked to produce an astral mango or other desired fruit,
flower, or indeed any other object. Certain karmic restrictions are present, but there are no distinctions in
the astral world about desirability of various forms. Everything is vibrant with God's creative light.

"No one is born of woman; offspring are materialized by astral beings through the help of their cosmic
will into specially patterned, astrally condensed forms. The recently physically disembodied being arrives in
an astral family through invitation, drawn by similar mental and spiritual tendencies.

"The astral body is not subject to cold or heat or other natural conditions. The anatomy
includes an astral brain, or the thousand-petaled lotus of light, and six awakened centers in the
sushumna, or astral cerebro-spinal axis. The heart draws cosmic energy as well as light from the
astral brain, and pumps it to the astral nerves and body cells, or lifetrons. Astral beings can affect their
bodies by lifetronic force or by mantric vibrations.

"The astral body is an exact counterpart of the last physical form. Astral beings retain the same
appearance which they possessed in youth in their previous earthly sojourn; occasionally an astral being
chooses, like myself, to retain his old age appearance." Master, emanating the very essence of youth,
chuckled merrily.

"Unlike the spacial, three-dimensional physical world cognized only by the five senses, the
astral spheres are visible to the all-inclusive sixth sense-intuition," Sri Yukteswar went on. "By sheer intuitional feeling, all astral beings see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. They possess three
eyes, two of which are partly closed. The third and chief astral eye, vertically placed on the forehead, is
open. Astral beings have all the outer sensory organs-ears, eyes, nose, tongue, and skin-but they employ the
intuitional sense to experience sensations through any part of the body; they can see through the ear, or
nose, or skin. They are able to hear through the eyes or tongue, and can taste through the ears or skin, and
so forth.4

413

"Man's physical body is exposed to countless dangers, and is easily hurt or maimed; the ethereal astral
body may occasionally be cut or bruised but is healed at once by mere willing."

"Gurudeva, are all astral persons beautiful?"

"Beauty in the astral world is known to be a spiritual quality, and not an outward conformation," Sri
Yukteswar replied. "Astral beings therefore attach little importance to facial features. They have the
privilege, however, of costuming themselves at will with new, colorful, astrally materialized bodies. Just as
worldly men don new array for gala events, so astral beings find occasions to bedeck themselves in specially
designed forms.

"Joyous astral festivities on the higher astral planets like Hiranyaloka take place when a being is
liberated from the astral world through spiritual advancement, and is therefore ready to enter the heaven of
the causal world. On such occasions the Invisible Heavenly Father, and the saints who are merged in Him,
materialize Themselves into bodies of Their own choice and join the astral celebration. In order to please
His beloved devotee, the Lord takes any desired form. If the devotee worshiped through devotion, he sees God
as the Divine Mother. To Jesus, the Father-aspect of the Infinite One was appealing beyond other conceptions.
The individuality with which the Creator has endowed each of His creatures makes every conceivable and
inconceivable demand on the Lord's versatility!" My guru and I laughed happily together.

"Friends of other lives easily recognize one another in the astral world," Sri Yukteswar went on in his
beautiful, flutelike voice. "Rejoicing at the immortality of friendship, they realize the indestructibility
of love, often doubted at the time of the sad, delusive partings of earthly life.

"The intuition of astral beings pierces through the veil and observes human activities on earth, but man
cannot view the astral world unless his sixth sense is somewhat developed. Thousands of earth-dwellers have
momentarily glimpsed an astral being or an astral world.

414

"The advanced beings on Hiranyaloka remain mostly awake in ecstasy during the long astral day
and night, helping to work out intricate problems of cosmic government and the redemption of prodigal sons,
earthbound souls. When the Hiranyaloka beings sleep, they have occasional dreamlike astral visions. Their
minds are usually engrossed in the conscious state of highest nirbikalpa bliss.

"Inhabitants in all parts of the astral worlds are still subject to mental agonies. The sensitive minds of
the higher beings on planets like Hiranyaloka feel keen pain if any mistake is made in conduct or perception
of truth. These advanced beings endeavor to attune their every act and thought with the perfection of
spiritual law.

"Communication among the astral inhabitants is held entirely by astral telepathy and television; there is
none of the confusion and misunderstanding of the written and spoken word which earth-dwellers must endure.
Just as persons on the cinema screen appear to move and act through a series of light pictures, and do not
actually breathe, so the astral beings walk and work as intelligently guided and coordinated images of light,
without the necessity of drawing power from oxygen. Man depends upon solids, liquids, gases, and energy for
sustenance; astral beings sustain themselves principally by cosmic light."

"Master mine, do astral beings eat anything?" I was drinking in his marvelous elucidations with the
receptivity of all my faculties-mind, heart, soul. Superconscious perceptions of truth are permanently real
and changeless, while fleeting sense experiences and impressions are never more than temporarily or
relatively true, and soon lose in memory all their vividness. My guru's words were so penetratingly imprinted
on the parchment of my being that at any time, by transferring my mind to the superconscious state, I can
clearly relive the divine experience.

415

"Luminous raylike vegetables abound in the astral soils," he answered. "The astral beings consume
vegetables, and drink a nectar flowing from glorious fountains of light and from astral brooks and rivers.
Just as invisible images of persons on the earth can be dug out of the ether and made visible by a television
apparatus, later being dismissed again into space, so the God-created, unseen astral blueprints of vegetables
and plants floating in the ether are precipitated on an astral planet by the will of its inhabitants. In the
same way, from the wildest fancy of these beings, whole gardens of fragrant flowers are materialized,
returning later to the etheric invisibility. Although dwellers on the heavenly planets like Hiranyaloka are
almost freed from any necessity of eating, still higher is the unconditioned existence of almost completely
liberated souls in the causal world, who eat nothing save the manna of bliss.

"The earth-liberated astral being meets a multitude of relatives, fathers,
mothers, wives, husbands, and friends, acquired during different incarnations on earth,5 as they appear from time to time in various parts of the astral realms. He
is therefore at a loss to understand whom to love especially; he learns in this way to give a divine and
equal love to all, as children and individualized expressions of God. Though the outward appearance of loved
ones may have changed, more or less according to the development of new qualities in the
latest life of any particular soul, the astral being employs his unerring intuition to recognize all those
once dear to him in other planes of existence, and to welcome them to their new astral home. Because every
atom in creation is inextinguishably dowered with individuality,6 an astral friend will be recognized no matter
what costume he may don, even as on earth an actor's identity is discoverable by close observation despite
any disguise.

416

"The span of life in the astral world is much longer than on earth. A normal advanced astral being's
average life period is from five hundred to one thousand years, measured in accordance with earthly standards
of time. As certain redwood trees outlive most trees by millenniums, or as some yogis live several hundred
years though most men die before the age of sixty, so some astral beings live much longer than the usual span
of astral existence. Visitors to the astral world dwell there for a longer or shorter period in accordance
with the weight of their physical karma, which draws them back to earth within a specified time.

"The astral being does not have to contend painfully with death at the time of shedding his luminous body.
Many of these beings nevertheless feel slightly nervous at the thought of dropping their astral form for the
subtler causal one. The astral world is free from unwilling death, disease, and old age. These three dreads
are the curse of earth, where man has allowed his consciousness to identify itself almost wholly with a frail
physical body requiring constant aid from air, food, and sleep in order to exist at all.

"Physical death is attended by the disappearance of breath and the disintegration of fleshly cells. Astral
death consists of the dispersement of lifetrons, those manifest units of energy which constitute the life of
astral beings. At physical death a being loses his consciousness of flesh and becomes aware of his subtle
body in the astral world. Experiencing astral death in due time, a being thus passes from the consciousness
of astral birth and death to that of physical birth and death. These recurrent cycles of astral and physical
encasement are the ineluctable destiny of all unenlightened beings. Scriptural definitions of heaven and hell
sometimes stir man's deeper-than-subconscious memories of his long series of experiences in the blithesome
astral and disappointing terrestrial worlds."

417

"Beloved Master," I asked, "will you please describe more in detail the difference between rebirth on the
earth and in the astral and causal spheres?"

"Man as an individualized soul is essentially causal-bodied," my guru explained. "That body
is a matrix of the thirty-five ideas required by God as the basic or causal thought forces from which
He later formed the subtle astral body of nineteen elements and the gross physical body of sixteen
elements.

"The nineteen elements of the astral body are mental, emotional, and lifetronic. The nineteen
components are intelligence; ego; feeling; mind (sense-consciousness); five instruments of knowledge,
the subtle counterparts of the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch; five instruments of
action, the mental correspondence for the executive abilities to procreate, excrete, talk, walk, and
exercise manual skill; and five instruments of life force, those empowered to perform the
crystallizing, assimilating, eliminating, metabolizing, and circulating functions of the body. This subtle
astral encasement of nineteen elements survives the death of the physical body, which is made of sixteen
gross metallic and nonmetallic elements.

"God thought out different ideas within Himself and projected them into dreams. Lady Cosmic Dream thus
sprang out decorated in all her colossal endless ornaments of relativity.

"In thirty-five thought categories of the causal body, God elaborated all the complexities of man's
nineteen astral and sixteen physical counterparts. By condensation of vibratory forces, first subtle, then
gross, He produced man's astral body and finally his physical form. According to the law of relativity, by
which the Prime Simplicity has become the bewildering manifold, the causal cosmos and causal body are
different from the astral cosmos and astral body; the physical cosmos and physical body are likewise
characteristically at variance with the other forms of creation.

418

The fleshly body is made of the fixed, objectified dreams of the Creator. The
dualities are ever-present on earth: disease and health, pain and pleasure, loss and gain. Human beings find
limitation and resistance in three-dimensional matter. When man's desire to live is severely shaken by
disease or other causes, death arrives; the heavy overcoat of the flesh is temporarily shed. The soul,
however, remains encased in the astral and causal bodies.7 The adhesive force by which all three bodies
are held together is desire. The power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all man's slavery.

"Physical desires are rooted in egotism and sense pleasures. The compulsion or temptation of sensory
experience is more powerful than the desire-force connected with astral attachments or causal
perceptions.

"Astral desires center around enjoyment in terms of vibration. Astral beings enjoy the ethereal music of
the spheres and are entranced by the sight of all creation as exhaustless expressions of changing light. The
astral beings also smell, taste, and touch light. Astral desires are thus connected with an astral being's
power to precipitate all objects and experiences as forms of light or as condensed thoughts or dreams.

"Causal desires are fulfilled by perception only. The nearly-free beings who
are encased only in the causal body see the whole universe as realizations of the dream-ideas of God; they
can materialize anything and everything in sheer thought. Causal beings therefore consider the enjoyment of
physical sensations or astral delights as gross and suffocating to the soul's fine sensibilities. Causal
beings work out their desires by materializing them instantly.8 Those who find themselves covered only by the
delicate veil of the causal body can bring universes into manifestation even as the Creator. Because all
creation is made of the cosmic dream-texture, the soul thinly clothed in the causal has vast realizations of
power.

419

"A soul, being invisible by nature, can be distinguished only by the presence
of its body or bodies. The mere presence of a body signifies that its existence is made possible by
unfulfilled desires.9

"So long as the soul of man is encased in one, two, or three body-containers, sealed tightly with the
corks of ignorance and desires, he cannot merge with the sea of Spirit. When the gross physical receptacle is
destroyed by the hammer of death, the other two coverings-astral and causal-still remain to prevent the soul
from consciously joining the Omnipresent Life. When desirelessness is attained through wisdom, its power
disintegrates the two remaining vessels. The tiny human soul emerges, free at last; it is one with the
Measureless Amplitude."

I asked my divine guru to shed further light on the high and mysterious causal world.

"The causal world is indescribably subtle," he replied. "In order to understand it, one would have to
possess such tremendous powers of concentration that he could close his eyes and visualize the astral cosmos
and the physical cosmos in all their vastness-the luminous balloon with the solid basket-as existing in ideas
only. If by this superhuman concentration one succeeded in converting or resolving the two cosmoses with all
their complexities into sheer ideas, he would then reach the causal world and stand on the borderline of
fusion between mind and matter. There one perceives all created things-solids, liquids, gases, electricity,
energy, all beings, gods, men, animals, plants, bacteria-as forms of consciousness, just as a man can close
his eyes and realize that he exists, even though his body is invisible to his physical eyes and is present
only as an idea.

"Whatever a human being can do in fancy, a causal being can do in reality. The most colossal imaginative
human intelligence is able, in mind only, to range from one extreme of thought to another, to skip mentally
from planet to planet, or tumble endlessly down a pit of eternity, or soar rocketlike into the galaxied
canopy, or scintillate like a searchlight over milky ways and the starry spaces. But beings in the causal
world have a much greater freedom, and can effortlessly manifest their thoughts into instant objectivity,
without any material or astral obstruction or karmic limitation.

420

"Causal beings realize that the physical cosmos is not primarily constructed of electrons,
nor is the astral cosmos basically composed of lifetrons-both in reality are created from the minutest
particles of God-thought, chopped and divided by maya, the law of relativity which intervenes to
apparently separate the Noumenon from His phenomena.

"Souls in the causal world recognize one another as individualized points of joyous Spirit; their
thought-things are the only objects which surround them. Causal beings see the difference between their
bodies and thoughts to be merely ideas. As a man, closing his eyes, can visualize a dazzling white light or a
faint blue haze, so causal beings by thought alone are able to see, hear, feel, taste, and touch; they create
anything, or dissolve it, by the power of cosmic mind.

"Both death and rebirth in the causal world are in thought. Causal-bodied beings feast only on the
ambrosia of eternally new knowledge. They drink from the springs of peace, roam on the trackless soil of
perceptions, swim in the ocean-endlessness of bliss. Lo! see their bright thought-bodies zoom past trillions
of Spirit-created planets, fresh bubbles of universes, wisdom-stars, spectral dreams of golden nebulae, all
over the skiey blue bosom of Infinity!

"Many beings remain for thousands of years in the causal cosmos. By deeper ecstasies the freed soul then
withdraws itself from the little causal body and puts on the vastness of the causal cosmos. All the separate
eddies of ideas, particularized waves of power, love, will, joy, peace, intuition, calmness, self-control,
and concentration melt into the ever-joyous Sea of Bliss. No longer does the soul have to experience its joy
as an individualized wave of consciousness, but is merged in the One Cosmic Ocean, with all its waves-eternal
laughter, thrills, throbs.

"When a soul is out of the cocoon of the three bodies it escapes forever
from the law of relativity and becomes the ineffable Ever-Existent.10 Behold the butterfly of Omnipresence, its
wings etched with stars and moons and suns! The soul expanded into Spirit remains alone in the region of
lightless light, darkless dark, thoughtless thought, intoxicated with its ecstasy of joy in God's dream of
cosmic creation."

421

"A free soul!" I ejaculated in awe.

"When a soul finally gets out of the three jars of bodily delusions," Master continued, "it becomes one
with the Infinite without any loss of individuality. Christ had won this final freedom even before he was
born as Jesus. In three stages of his past, symbolized in his earth-life as the three days of his experience
of death and resurrection, he had attained the power to fully arise in Spirit.

"The undeveloped man must undergo countless earthly and astral and causal
incarnations in order to emerge from his three bodies. A master who achieves this final freedom may elect to
return to earth as a prophet to bring other human beings back to God, or like myself he may choose to reside
in the astral cosmos. There a savior assumes some of the burden of the inhabitants' karma11 and thus helps them to terminate their cycle of reincarnation in the
astral cosmos and go on permanently to the causal spheres. Or a freed soul may enter the causal world to aid
its beings to shorten their span in the causal body and thus attain the Absolute Freedom."

"Resurrected One, I want to know more about the karma which forces souls to return to the three worlds." I
could listen forever, I thought, to my omniscient Master. Never in his earth-life had I been able at one time
to assimilate so much of his wisdom. Now for the first time I was receiving a clear, definite insight into
the enigmatic interspaces on the checkerboard of life and death.

422

"The physical karma or desires of man must be completely worked out before his permanent stay in astral
worlds becomes possible," my guru elucidated in his thrilling voice. "Two kinds of beings live in the astral
spheres. Those who still have earthly karma to dispose of and who must therefore reinhabit a gross physical
body in order to pay their karmic debts could be classified, after physical death, as temporary visitors to
the astral world rather than as permanent residents.

"Beings with unredeemed earthly karma are not permitted after astral death to go to the high causal sphere
of cosmic ideas, but must shuttle to and fro from the physical and astral worlds only, conscious successively
of their physical body of sixteen gross elements, and of their astral body of nineteen subtle elements. After
each loss of his physical body, however, an undeveloped being from the earth remains for the most part in the
deep stupor of the death-sleep and is hardly conscious of the beautiful astral sphere. After the astral rest,
such a man returns to the material plane for further lessons, gradually accustoming himself, through repeated
journeys, to the worlds of subtle astral texture.

"Normal or long-established residents of the astral universe, on the other hand, are those who, freed
forever from all material longings, need return no more to the gross vibrations of earth. Such beings have
only astral and causal karma to work out. At astral death these beings pass to the infinitely finer and more
delicate causal world. Shedding the thought-form of the causal body at the end of a certain span, determined
by cosmic law, these advanced beings then return to Hiranyaloka or a similar high astral planet, reborn in a
new astral body to work out their unredeemed astral karma.

"My son, you may now comprehend more fully that I am resurrected by divine decree," Sri Yukteswar
continued, "as a savior of astrally reincarnating souls coming back from the causal sphere, in particular,
rather than of those astral beings who are coming up from the earth. Those from the earth, if they still
retain vestiges of material karma, do not rise to the very high astral planets like Hiranyaloka.

423

"Just as most people on earth have not learned through meditation-acquired vision to appreciate the
superior joys and advantages of astral life and thus, after death, desire to return to the limited, imperfect
pleasures of earth, so many astral beings, during the normal disintegration of their astral bodies, fail to
picture the advanced state of spiritual joy in the causal world and, dwelling on thoughts of the more gross
and gaudy astral happiness, yearn to revisit the astral paradise. Heavy astral karma must be redeemed by such
beings before they can achieve after astral death a permanent stay in the causal thought-world, so thinly
partitioned from the Creator.

"Only when a being has no further desires for experiences in the pleasing-to-the-eye astral cosmos, and
cannot be tempted to go back there, does he remain in the causal world. Completing there the work of
redeeming all causal karma or seeds of past desires, the confined soul thrusts out the last of the three
corks of ignorance and, emerging from the final jar of the causal body, commingles with the Eternal.

"Now do you understand?" Master smiled so enchantingly!

"Yes, through your grace. I am speechless with joy and gratitude."

Never from song or story had I ever received such inspiring knowledge. Though the Hindu scriptures refer
to the causal and astral worlds and to man's three bodies, how remote and meaningless those pages compared
with the warm authenticity of my resurrected Master! For him indeed existed not a single "undiscover'd
country from whose bourn no traveller returns"!

"The interpenetration of man's three bodies is expressed in many ways through his threefold nature," my
great guru went on. "In the wakeful state on earth a human being is conscious more or less of his three
vehicles. When he is sensuously intent on tasting, smelling, touching, listening, or seeing, he is working
principally through his physical body. Visualizing or willing, he is working mainly through his astral body.
His causal medium finds expression when man is thinking or diving deep in introspection or meditation; the
cosmical thoughts of genius come to the man who habitually contacts his causal body. In this sense an
individual may be classified broadly as 'a material man,' 'an energetic man,' or 'an intellectual man.'

424

"A man identifies himself about sixteen hours daily with his physical vehicle. Then he sleeps; if he
dreams, he remains in his astral body, effortlessly creating any object even as do the astral beings. If
man's sleep be deep and dreamless, for several hours he is able to transfer his consciousness, or sense of
I-ness, to the causal body; such sleep is revivifying. A dreamer is contacting his astral and not his causal
body; his sleep is not fully refreshing."

I had been lovingly observing Sri Yukteswar while he gave his wondrous exposition.

"Angelic guru," I said, "your body looks exactly as it did when last I wept over it in the Puri
ashram."

"O yes, my new body is a perfect copy of the old one. I materialize or dematerialize this form any time at
will, much more frequently than I did while on earth. By quick dematerialization, I now travel instantly by
light express from planet to planet or, indeed, from astral to causal or to physical cosmos." My divine guru
smiled. "Though you move about so fast these days, I had no difficulty in finding you at Bombay!"

"O Master, I was grieving so deeply about your death!"

"Ah, wherein did I die? Isn't there some contradiction?" Sri Yukteswar's eyes were twinkling with love and
amusement.

"You were only dreaming on earth; on that earth you saw my dream-body," he went on. "Later you buried that
dream-image. Now my finer fleshly body-which you behold and are even now embracing rather closely!-is
resurrected on another finer dream-planet of God. Someday that finer dream-body and finer dream-planet will pass away; they too are not forever. All dream-bubbles must eventually burst at a
final wakeful touch. Differentiate, my son Yogananda, between dreams and Reality!"

425

This idea of Vedantic12 resurrection struck me with wonder. I was
ashamed that I had pitied Master when I had seen his lifeless body at Puri. I comprehended at last that my
guru had always been fully awake in God, perceiving his own life and passing on earth, and his present
resurrection, as nothing more than relativities of divine ideas in the cosmic dream.

"I have now told you, Yogananda, the truths of my life, death, and resurrection. Grieve not for me; rather
broadcast everywhere the story of my resurrection from the God-dreamed earth of men to another God-dreamed
planet of astrally garbed souls! New hope will be infused into the hearts of misery-mad, death-fearing
dreamers of the world."

"Yes, Master!" How willingly would I share with others my joy at his resurrection!

"On earth my standards were uncomfortably high, unsuited to the natures of most men. Often I scolded you
more than I should have. You passed my test; your love shone through the clouds of all reprimands." He added
tenderly, "I have also come today to tell you: Never again shall I wear the stern gaze of censure. I shall
scold you no more."

How much I had missed the chastisements of my great guru! Each one had been a guardian angel of
protection.

"Dearest Master! Rebuke me a million times-do scold me now!"

"I shall chide you no more." His divine voice was grave, yet with an undercurrent of
laughter. "You and I shall smile together, so long as our two forms appear different in the maya-dream
of God. Finally we shall merge as one in the Cosmic Beloved; our smiles shall be His smile, our unified song
of joy vibrating throughout eternity to be broadcast to God-tuned souls!"

Sri Yukteswar gave me light on certain matters which I cannot reveal here. During the two hours that he
spent with me in the Bombay hotel room he answered my every question. A number of world prophecies uttered by
him that June day in 1936 have already come to pass.

426

"I leave you now, beloved one!" At these words I felt Master melting away within my encircling arms.

"My child," his voice rang out, vibrating into my very soul-firmament, "whenever you enter
the door of nirbikalpa samadhi and call on me, I shall come to you in flesh and blood, even as
today."

With this celestial promise Sri Yukteswar vanished from my sight. A cloud-voice repeated in
musical thunder: "Tell all! Whosoever knows by nirbikalpa realization that your earth is a dream of
God can come to the finer dream-created planet of Hiranyaloka, and there find me resurrected in a body
exactly like my earthly one. Yogananda, tell all!"

Gone was the sorrow of parting. The pity and grief for his death, long robber of my peace, now fled in
stark shame. Bliss poured forth like a fountain through endless, newly opened soul-pores. Anciently clogged
with disuse, they now widened in purity at the driving flood of ecstasy. Subconscious thoughts and feelings
of my past incarnations shed their karmic taints, lustrously renewed by Sri Yukteswar's divine visit.

In this chapter of my autobiography I have obeyed my guru's behest and spread the glad tiding, though it
confound once more an incurious generation. Groveling, man knows well; despair is seldom alien; yet these are
perversities, no part of man's true lot. The day he wills, he is set on the path to freedom. Too long has he
hearkened to the dank pessimism of his "dust-thou-art" counselors, heedless of the unconquerable soul.

I was not the only one privileged to behold the Resurrected Guru.

One of Sri Yukteswar's chelas was an aged woman, affectionately known as Ma (Mother),
whose home was close to the Puri hermitage. Master had often stopped to chat with her during his morning
walk. On the evening of March 16, 1936, Ma arrived at the ashram and asked to see her guru.

"Why, Master died a week ago!" Swami Sebananda, now in charge of the Puri hermitage, looked at her
sadly.

427

"That's impossible!" She smiled a little. "Perhaps you are just trying to protect the guru from insistent
visitors?"

"No." Sebananda recounted details of the burial. "Come," he said, "I will take you to the front garden to
Sri Yukteswarji's grave."

Ma shook her head. "There is no grave for him! This morning at ten o'clock he passed in his usual walk
before my door! I talked to him for several minutes in the bright outdoors.

"'Come this evening to the ashram,' he said.

"I am here! Blessings pour on this old gray head! The deathless guru wanted me to understand in what
transcendent body he had visited me this morning!"

The astounded Sebananda knelt before her.

"Ma," he said, "what a weight of grief you lift from my heart! He is risen!"