By Swami Kebalananda

Swami Kebalananda, Paramhansa Yogananda’s Sanskrit tutor, meditating with him

A blind disciple, Ramu, aroused my active pity. Should he have no light in his eyes, when he faithfully served our master, in whom the Divine was fully blazing? One morning I sought to speak to Ramu, but he sat for patient hours fanning the guru with a hand-made palm-leaf punkha. When the devotee finally left the room, I followed him.

“Ramu, how long have you been blind?”

“From my birth, sir! Never have my eyes been blessed with a glimpse of the sun.”

“Our omnipotent guru can help you. Please make a supplication.”

The following day Ramu diffidently approached Lahiri Mahasaya. The disciple felt almost ashamed to ask that physical wealth be added to his spiritual superabundance.

“Master, the Illuminator of the cosmos is in you. I pray you to bring His light into my eyes, that I perceive the sun’s lesser glow.”

“Ramu, someone has connived to put me in a difficult position. I have no healing power.”

“Sir, the Infinite One within you can certainly heal.”

“That is indeed different, Ramu. God’s limit is nowhere! He who ignites the stars and the cells of flesh with mysterious life-effulgence can surely bring luster of vision into your eyes.”

The master touched Ramu’s forehead at the point between the eyebrows.

“Keep your mind concentrated there, and frequently chant the name of the prophet Rama 8 for seven days. The splendor of the sun shall have a special dawn for you.”

Lo! in one week it was so. For the first time, Ramu beheld the fair face of nature. 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.

It was evident in all miracles performed by Lahiri Mahasaya that he never allowed the ego-principle to consider itself a causative force. By perfection of resistless surrender, the master enabled the Prime Healing Power to flow freely through him.

The numerous bodies which were spectacularly healed through Lahiri Mahasaya eventually had to feed the flames of cremation. But the silent spiritual awakenings he effected, the Christlike disciples he fashioned, are his imperishable miracles.