IV. A Mystic's Way

The Mystic and the Plain Man

The Sadhu has no sympathy with the conception of a Mystic as a kind of spiritual aristocrat aloof from the common herd of simple Christians. He has, indeed, as we have seen in the previous chapter, much to say about the ineffable quality of mystic experience; but he is no less insistent that the communion with the Divine which is its essence is open to every man — needing no rare or special gifts, and demanding no abandonment of the ordinary avocations of life. Especially remarkable is his constant repudiation of the Ascetic ideal which has appealed to so many Mystics, whether Christian or Hindu. To him the mystic way is not the via negativa of selfconscious renunciation but just a simple quiet life of Prayer and self-sacrificing Service.

"You deprecate the title 'ascetic,' you told us, would you accept that of 'mystic'?" we asked.

"That is a different matter," said he, "but I do not quite like to describe myself as a mystic. For one thing the ordinary man (here the Sadhu smiled) thinks 'mystic' is something connected with mist, and many even who know better than this are inclined to say of one who claims to be a mystic, 'He may be a very sensible man in most things, but in one thing he is mad.' The true mystic is one who lives with God and knows the mind of

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God; and very few, even of the greatest saints, have got very far in this. I am only a beginner, a child sucking milk from its spiritual mother. I enjoy it and it gives me strength. I ask no further questions than to be His child. Hence I hesitate to call myself a mystic, just as in India I always try to prevent people calling me ' Swami. ' I prefer to be called merely ' Sadhu, ' which only means 'religious man. " "

On another occasion we asked, "What about the religion of non-mystical people? Some people appreciate music and some don't. Some appreciate good pictures and some don 't. So may not some have the capacity for religion and others not? "

"The capacity for religion," he replied, "is not like the capacity to appreciate art. It is rather like thirst. Is there any man who does not become thirsty? Just as thirst has been created to make men use water, so the religious thirst has been created to make men come to God."

"But," we objected, "some men surely have a larger spiritual capacity than others. You would say, would you not, that men like Augustine, Luther, Wesley, are more gifted than others?"

"There are physical differences between different men. Some have larger heads than others and some smaller. But I believe that the spiritual capacity in all men is alike. Men like St. Augustine stand out because they have developed their capacity better. They have spent more time and energy on the cultivation of their spiritual life."

1 "Swami" means "Lord," and is a title applied in India to gods and holy men.

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Renunciation and Active Service

The Sadhu will not tolerate the suggestion that the cloistered mystics of the Middle Ages lived only for themselves, doing no good to the world. "Did not a monk," he asked, "write the Imitation of Christ, which has given priceless counsel to multitudes?" Yet, in spite of the long hours he spends in what to him is the Heaven of communion with Christ, the Sadhu 's own life is predominantly one of active service — busy and exhausting. Asked what he would do with a week, if he had it all to himself, whether he would spend it in prayer and meditation or in active work, he replied in his characteristic way, "Can we drink only water or eat only food for a week? We require both drink and food." He spends weeks together on the Himalayas, but it would be quite a mistake to conclude that he devotes them entirely to prayer and meditation. He rarely has complete days of pure meditation. He preaches the Gospel in the villages that are scattered all over the Himalayas, and meditates when he finds the time.

The practical character of his Christianity may be illustrated by a story which he often tells on account of its extremely literal exemplification of the truth of a favorite text: "whosoever would save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it" (Matt, xvi, 25).

Crossing a range of mountains in a heavy snowstorm he was joined by a Tibetan who was afraid of going alone. The cold was so intense that they had already

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begun to despair of reaching their destination alive, when they saw a man, who had slipped down a slope of snow some thirty feet below the path, lying there unconscious. The Sadhu asked his companion to help him carry the man to the village. The Tibetan, telling him that he was a fool to try to help another when he could barely save himself, left him and hurried on ahead. The Sadhu went down the slope and just managed to get back on to the road again with the man on his shoulders and struggled slowly along. Some distance further on he perceived his former companion sitting by the wayside. He called, but there was no answer — he was frozen dead. The Sadhu himself meanwhile had become thoroughly warmed by his exertions and, as a result of this warmth and of the friction between their bodies, the man he carried also gradually became warmer and came to; and both reached the village alive and full of thankfulness. "It is easy to die for Christ. It is hard to live for Him. Dying takes only an hour or two, but to live for Christ means to die daily. During the few years of this life only I am given the privilege to serve man and Christ. If it were right for me to be in Heaven always I should have been called there, but as I am still left on earth it is my duty to work. This is where I entirely disagree with the Hindu idea of renunciation. I do not call myself a Sannyasi, for a Sannyasi means one who renounces. He renounces the world because he thinks everything in it is evil, but I think that all is good. The world is all the property of my Father, and is therefore my property. If I renounce the world I renounce some

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of the gifts which my Heavenly Father gives me out of Ills Love. Therefore I do not renounce the world, but onl} the evil in it. "

The world is full of difficulty and temptation, but it is not intrinsically bad. "In the Himalayas there is a place where there are beautiful flowers, but if you linger there you go off to sleep. The men who live there always smell another herb before passing the spot, to counteract their power. When they warned me, I supposed the flowers were poisonous; but they told me that they were not actually poisonous, as was proved by the fact that people affected by them did not die till after twelve days, and that, not directly from the effect of the flowers, but as a result of the hunger and thirst consequent on their long torpor. Just so, the good things of this world are not in themselves bad, but they may prevent one feeling spiritual hunger and thirst and thus be the cause of spiritual death. And just as there is another herb whose smell prevents one from falling asleep when one passes these flowers, so the medicine of Prayer will keep one safe amid the attractions of the world."

"Undoubtedly the claims of wealth and position do tend to distract man from the higher life. That is why," says the Sadhu, "few very wealthy people subscribe to Missions. So Rajas have sometimes become

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Sannyasis. So, too, the Buddha. They thought the good things of this world were in themselves evil, but in reality they are not evil, only they produce evil effects if they are not used properly. I admire some of these Indian kings who have renounced the world, even though their theory is mistaken. I admire their courage in that, once they grasped the effect of these things on them, they were able, after living in state and luxury, to renounce them. One such instance was Bharatri Harish Chandra, King of Ujjain. I saw his magnificent palace, and then, a few miles away, the underground cave to which he retired after his renunciation. The striking contrast of the two brought home to me how impossible it is for the soul to find satisfaction in worldly things. These may be good, but one cannot slake one's spiritual thirst with them. There was once a house on fire; the owner, wanting to quench the flames, took up a vessel full of paraffin. He thought it was water; both water and paraffin spring from the ground. He poured it on the fire, but it only made it worse. The same thing happens when we try to quench the flames of spiritual desire with the good things of this world. "

"Do you ever," we asked, "have people say to you, "It is all very well for you, a sadhu, without a family to support, or a business to carry on, to follow literally the teaching of Christ; but how is this possible for those who have families to bring up, and who have to carry on the world's work — which you yourself say is the life to which the majority of men are called?' " "For all men, " he replied, "as long as they live in this world, there will be great difficulties in the way of following Christ. My life is not an easy one. My difficulties are

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great. So are the difficulties of men who live in the world, though they are not quite of the same kind. But, if we do our best in spite of difficulties, we shall acquire a strength which will enable us at once to achieve great heights the moment we enter the next life where those difficulties will be removed. In olden days men trained themselves for certain races by trying to run in chains. They could not run either easily or fast in chains, but when, on the day of the race, the chains were thrown aside they found they could run much faster on account of the strength they had developed in the chains. "

We returned to the charge, "But business men often say, with some show of justice, that Christianity is not practicable in this world. What, for instance, would you say to a man in business who says that in order to keep his position he has to be dishonest, to say, for example, that a certain material is good when he knows it is not; otherwise his employer would dismiss him? "

"At first," said the Sadhu, "the man may suffer because of his desire to be honest. But soon people will begin to respect him and God also will prosper him. I knew a merchant in India who suffered because of his honesty. He suffered for two or three years. Then they all began to buy from him when they saw his sincerity and truth; and he became a rich man.

"If a man is really living with Christ, misfortune, sickness, abuse, persecution cannot harm him. On the contrary he responds to these in such a way that good results both to himself and to others. A boy once threw some stones at a tree and the fruit fell down. His father said, 'You see if you try to hurt the tree it gives you in return good fruit/ so it is with those who live in Christ."

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The Nature op Prayer

Prayer is a theme on which it is possible to say much that is true, but not much that is new. Indeed one would instinctively suspect the soundness of views on this subject which seemed too startlingly original. At any rate the Sadhu has none such to proclaim. His observations on Prayer are on the same high level of "inspired common sense" as those on Service and Renunciation. They are in the main simple, familiar, straightforward maxims illuminated by his special gift for happy illustration. But they are also the expression of an absolute conviction resting upon personal experience, and for that alone would be worth recording.

" " How much of your prayer is petition and how much of it is communion? " we asked the Sadhu. "For the first two or three years after my conversion, " he replied, "I used to ask for specific things. Now I ask for God. Supposing there is a tree full of fruits, you will have to go and buy or beg the fruits from the owner of the tree. Every day you would have to go for one or two fruits. But if you can make the tree your own property, then all the fruits will be your own. In the same way, if God is your own, then all things in heaven and on earth will be your own, because He is your Father and is everything to you, otherwise you will have to go and ask like a beggar for certain things. When they are used up, you will have to ask again. So ask not for gifts, but for the Giver of gifts; not for life but for the Giver of life — then life and the things needed for life will be added unto you.

"Prayer is not begging, it is communion with God —it is conversing with God. How our life is transformed when we are in the company of a noble friend! Then how much more will communion with the One who is good beyond all measure transform us!

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"When I was traveling in Baluchistan I came to a village, and the water had to be brought three miles to that village. There is no spring or well there. One day there was a certain man whom I met; he told me everything about it. He had two sons and he asked his sons to go and dig in a certain field, saying, 'There is treasure in that field.' They said, 'We shall find gold and silver there. ' So from morning to evening they were digging for three days, but they did not find anything and they went to tell their father. The father said: ' There is a great treasure there; I am sure you will find it. ' On the fourth day they were still digging and were tired. They said, 'Even if we get gold and silver we cannot quench our thirst. The most important thing is water.' Suddenly a spring of water broke out and the men were so happy. One went to his father to tell him of what he had found. The father said, 'I did not say, "Go and dig for water. " I knew you would not go and dig for the whole village. You would say: "Let the villagers go and dig, " but when I said that a treasure was there you went. My meaning was that you would go for the sake of gold and silver, but would find something more precious than that. When you were digging for that it was a good bodily exercise for you; you found water also.' Prayer is an exercise like digging; it makes one stronger — stronger to deal with temptation. Also by means of it one finds a treasure far more valuable than one set out to seek.

"One day a man who was very hungry knocked at a house and asked for a slice of bread. The owner of the

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house welcomed him into the house and talked with him about spiritual things until dinner was ready and then he gave him dinner. The stranger's heart was deeply touched by this half -hour's conversation and he was converted and became a child of God. What he sought after was a slice of bread; what he obtained was the salvation of his soul. "

Intercession is an important element in the Sadhu's own prayers. "I have two or three hundred god-children. I have a list of their names. When I am on my preaching tours I do not find the time to pray for them. But when on the Himalayas I pray for them all. " Incidentally in one of his addresses he gives a glimpse of what this means: "For eight years I was praying for one person I knew and it seemed to me at times almost useless, but after eight years that man began to think and my prayer was answered."

He was convinced that the prayers of various friends in India were really holding him up and helping him in what he regarded as the peculiarly difficult and responsible work of delivering his message in England and in the English language. He always spoke of them with gratitude and regularly wrote, or more often dictated, for their encouragement accounts of his experiences. When asked to give a Good Friday address in Westminster Chapel, he took special steps to see that news of this meeting — which he regarded as a very important one — should reach India in time for his friends to remember him in prayer on that particular day.

At one time the Sadhu questioned the value of intercessory prayer. "We ourselves are not good. Then how can our prayers help others?" But the Book of

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Nature — so abundant in its inspiration to him — has dispelled this doubt. "I saw clouds being formed from the vapor which arose from sea-water. I thought that as the vapor came from salt water the rain which descended would be salt water too. So I stretched out my hand and catching a few drops tasted them, and, behold, they were fresh and sweet. The sun having shone, the salt had been left behind in the sea. So when we pray, thoughts arise up from our hearts like vapor. The Sun of Righteousness shines on them and anything that is evil is left behind. From the clouds thus formed, showers of blessing fall upon the world."

The Necessity of Prayer

"Once I was sitting on the bank of a river and observed some fish coming up to the surface and opening their mouths. I thought that they wanted to eat the smaller fish. But an expert in these matters afterwards told me that they had to come up to the surface occasionally for air even though they could breathe to a certain extent under water. Like these fish Christians also have to rise from time to time above their daily occupations in order that they may come into closer contact with God, though even while occupied in their work they can keep to some extent in touch with Him."

"When I was coming over on the steamer a very learned man said to me, "Are you not interested in the stars and planets and the men who are sending messages to Mars?' I said, 'It is interesting, but Mars is many millions of miles away from this earth. You are going to try and send messages there, but the Creator of

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that star and of yourself is nearer than breathing. Do you ever think of praying and sending messages to him "

"But what about the business man," we asked. "who says he has no time for prayer since he has to hurry through his breakfast to rush off to his office? " " Prayer is as important to him as his breakfast," said the Sadhu. " ' How can he get along without prayer any more than he can without food? If he once begins to form the habit of prayer he will find so much pleasure in it that he will somehow or other find the time for it.... Prayer is as important as breathing, e never say, 'We have no time to breathe.' "

He himself finds time for prayer by cutting out many things which others think essential. Before a meeting he insists on several hours of quiet. If he has to speak in the evening he declines invitations to tea or dinner, though when he has no engagements of pressing importance before him he readily accepts such invitations. when asked as to what a man should do when he has such a short time at his disposal that he.jnust choose between his newspaper and his Bible, he said, "It is his duty to choose the Bible. " He himself rarely reads the papers. He says, in the first place, he has no time, and, in the second place, he is not concerned with politics. "I am not greatly interested in Home Rule for India," he once confessed, "my Eternal Home is elsewhere."

Commenting upon the text, "TThat, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation." "Why." he said, "does our Lord address these words of counsel to Peter? There must have been a special reason for this. Peter was the one who was going to deny Christ. Christ asked him to

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pray so that lie might not enter into that great temptation. But he wasted that hour — and he denied Christ. There is a tradition about Peter that he often thought of this hour and grieved over it. calling it his 'thorn in the flesh.' Christ spent that hour in prayer. His prayer was heard and an angel from heaven strengthened Him. He obtained the strength needed to die on the Cross. K Peter had spent that hour in prayer he might have obtained the strength to overcome his temptation.

" Once on a mountain peak I heard below me the roar of thunder and saw flashes of lightning. At first I was rather afraid; but there was no danger to me from them, because I was seated above them and they were under my feet. In the same way Satan cannot harm the Christian who, by prayer, lives in the heavenly places with Christ.'

Devotional Habits

The circumstances of the life of a wandering evangelist do not admit of absolutely regular habits. At times the Sadhu will have almost whole days of solitary communion with his Lord and Master. On occasion he has spent the whole night praying. At other times he has to be content with two hours of devotion in the early morning, in England often from five to seven. When he can find time he extends these two hours to three or four hours. Whenever he is compelled by circumstances to omit or unduly curtail his morning meditation he feels a certain restlessness and unhappiness throughout the

day.

He starts the day by reading a chapter of the Bible, at first rapidly, but making a mental note of those verses which seem particularly rich and suggestive. Then he

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returns to these verses and lingers over them as long as he feels that he is having fruitful thoughts on them. Then he spends about fifteen or more minutes in collecting his thoughts in preparation for prayer. Then, as he puts it, the Holy Spirit Himself teaches him what to pray for, both in regard to himself and in regard to others. For prayer he has no one posture. He prays sitting, kneeling, sometimes walking. As a Sikh he used to prostrate himself in prayer, but now he does not follow this practice.

" ' In praying do you generally use words? " we asked.

"No, the language of prayer is a language without words. When God speaks to the soul we have an immediate apprehension of His meaning, somewhat like what occasionally happens in conversation when you know what the other man is going to say before he says it. So when we have a quiet time God speaks to the soul. His thoughts are put directly into our minds without words, and very often they are thoughts which are not expressible in words; yet in one minute we may learn in this way what we could not learn otherwise in thirty years. Hence in private prayer I do not use words, but in large gatherings it is necessary to do so."

He lays great stress on the necessity for stillness and waiting on God. "God is quiet, He does not make a noise; therefore to understand Him we must be quiet. " "In the hurry and rush of life God is silent; we have to sit at Christ's feet if we would feel His blessing, and then Heaven will be in our heart." "Before Pentecost the Apostles had to wait ten days." "To receive great blessing from the Holy Spirit there must be great preparation."

" Philosophers have found that they can think better

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when they are quiet. How much more then must this be true of the deeper spiritual things! But those who have had no experience think the desire for quiet is merely laziness. "

He prefers to pray alone, when his thoughts can flow steadily on with little or no distraction. He finds it hard to attain the same measure of concentration when in the company of others; though, frequently, for their sake, he has to pray with them. Little movements and shufflings seem to disturb him. Somewhat to our surprise he said that the Quaker method of silent corporate prayer did not particularly help him.

"When praying do you picture to yourself the figure of Christ?" we asked. "I always did so at first," he said, "I don't do it so frequently now. His figure comes up now and then. It is like the image of Christ which I always see in my Ecstasy. Often, and increasingly with the lapse of time, I feel the presence of Christ without seeing Him, either with my physical eyes, as in the case of the vision before my conversion, or with my spiritual eyes, as in the case of my ecstatic experiences. As you become like Christ you feel His presence more. when we are in a hot country and a cold wind blows, it refreshes us very much. So is the presence of Christ to me in the midst of work. ' "

Having in mind the practice of the mediaeval mystics, we asked the Sadhu whether he had found the use of the Crucifix of value. "Personally," he replied, "I do not get much help from the Crucifix, but I think it may be useful to children, to beginners and to people engaged all the time in worldly business."

He does not derive much help from the use of written prayers. "Prayers by St. Chrysostom and others are

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beautiful but they become mechanical in the course of time. " He hesitates to use even the Lord's Prayer too often lest it become mechanical. Speaking of written prayers he says, " The needs of men are in their hearts, not in books. " He sometimes tells this story: " A man was dying. A clergyman called on him but found that his prayer-book was not in his pocket. So he hurried home to get it. "When the clergyman came back the man was dead. The people said, 'Prayers don't seem to come out of his heart; they seem to come out of his pocket.' "

It is important to indicate his attitude towards the Holy Communion. He finds himself at home among Christians of all denominations. Now he stays with High Anglicans who attend daily Mass, now with Nonconformists who celebrate the Lord's Supper only occasionally. The nature of his work throws him in contact with Christians of all types of belief and practice, and the frequency with which he partakes of the Lord's "Supper seems to be dependent somewhat on the people in whose midst he is living, and also on the time at his disposal. "If I had the time I would like to partake of it every day. I get great benefit from it. " Nevertheless, the sense of the presence and companionship of the Living Christ is his, quite independently of participation In the Eucharist. His doctrine is simple. "I do not believe that the bread and wine are actually transformed into the body and blood of Christ, but their effect on the believer is as if they were. There was nothing in the brazen serpent that Moses lifted up in the wilderness, but it was the obedience of the people that healed them. So is it with the Sacrament. By themselves, the bread •and wine are nothing, but the obedience to the commandment and the believer 's attitude towards them make all the difference. "

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The Beginner's Way

Thinking that not a few of those who have met the Sadhu or heard him preach would value some practical advice from such a man on the cultivation of the devotional life, we put to him the question: " ' What advice about prayer and meditation would you give to a beginner?"

"I should tell him to read a chapter, say of St. John, and to note the striking texts; then to try and find the inner meaning of these texts. This will teach him how to concentrate.

"In the earlier stages of my Christian experience I used generally to select one or more texts from the New Testament about the love of God, and fix attention on them. Such concentration produces the same result as the focusing of a magnifying glass on a piece of cloth. When we concentrate on spiritual things by fixing our thoughts and hearts towards the Sun of Righteousness, light and heat from that Sun will fall on all the rubbish of life and burn it. Everything against the will of God will thus be destroyed.

"At different times I have asked converts to Christianity what it was that led them to Christ. Some have quoted, 'Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest'; others, verses from St. Paul. Different texts appeal to different people. So it is better to read a whole chapter and to pick out the text that appeals to one.

"But the same method will not suit all men. I knew

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two men who were suffering from the same disease. One was from North India and the other from South India. I thought the doctor would give them both the same medicine, but he did not do so. One came from a cold place and the other from a hot place. So he prescribed a different medicine for each, and they were both cured.

"Have you ever seen the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, and do you advise anything like his method?" "I have read the book, and I think that his method may be a help to others, but it did not help me much. It helped me a little, but not as much as my own method of meditation.

"Often we do not spend enough time in prayer; that is why we lose strength and power. Sometimes it may be necessary to spend more than an hour; early morning is the best time. First we feel His blessing. Afterwards we find that He is not only blessing us, but teaching us how to pray. "

" Scientists often spend years, sometimes a whole lifetime, in making an important scientific discovery. Then how can we expect to discover spiritual beauties by spending only five minutes every day in quiet and prayer? Some people become tired at the end of ten minutes or half an hour of prayer. What would they do when they have to spend Eternity in the presence of God? We must begin the habit here and become used to being with God.

"If we are going to work for Him He must be with us, and only through prayer can that be.

"There are several strings to a violin. They must be tightened if they are to produce a melody. Different thoughts are like the different strings. They must be

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tightened, that is, brought into subjection to Christ, and then the bow of prayer will produce wonderful songs.

"If we have not obtained this new life and light already, let us try to do so forthwith. If we have them, let us use them for His glory now. For if we do not use His gifts we may lose them for ever. A biologist told me that the ostrich was once able to fly, but now it has lost its power of flight because it never made use of its wings. "

But without self-sacrificing service prayer is, in the Sadhu's view, of small account. Self-sacrificing service, then, is the first and last word of his exhortation. " There were twelve apostles and only five loaves; but when they were willing to give they found there was more than enough for all. It is when we are apparently dissipating our strength that people begin to think, 'They are not selfish — they have been saved.' Our Savior says that we are the salt of the earth. Only when it dissolves does salt give its savor to other things. Suppose we throw some salt into a pot of boiling rice, what is the use of the salt if it does not dissolve? If it dissolves its savor spreads through the thousands of grains of rice in the pot. Though hidden from sight, we know its presence by the taste. Because it dissolves, thousands of grains of rice become savory. We likewise can save others only by losing ourselves. Otherwise we shall become like Lot 's wife who became a piUar of salt through her love of the world. What is the use of salt that does not dissolve?"