A certain king who was Bhaskarananda’s disciple went to stay with him and spend a few days sitting at his feet. On the fourth day of his visit the king received an express telegram from his palace. A serious catastrophe had taken place and it demanded his immediate attention. His physical presence was also needed.

The king wanted to leave immediately, but Bhaskarananda said, “No, you can’t go. No matter how serious the thing is, you can’t go today.” The king did not want to disobey the Master, but he was very sad. Finally the Master said, “All right, you can go today. But don’t go on the afternoon train at two o’clock. I want you to take the evening train.”

When the king arrived at the station that evening, he was shocked to hear that the previous train had met with an accident. Many people had been thrown out of it and killed. When he heard this, the king was overwhelmed with gratitude to the Master. Instead of returning home as he had planned, he went back to the Master’s house and touched his feet with gratitude.

Commentary:

The Master sees the future continuously glowing and spreading itself in the immediacy of the eternal Now. The future is at the command of his vision-eye. The Master saved his disciple’s life by asking him not to take a particular train. He could easily have told the station authorities to pay special attention to the train’s journey. But he did not warn them, not because he was indifferent or unkind to the ill-fated passengers and the train, but because he got the command from within, from the Supreme Reality, that he could save only his disciple’s life. God wanted him to remain silent about the serious accident that the train was destined to have.

A Master does not want to change the cosmic Law unless it is expressly decreed by God Himself, for it is God who has created the cosmic Law. In a case like this, it is not the Master’s indifference to the rest of the world and his preference to his own little world that we are seeing. The Master is just executing God’s Will in His world of multiple realities. Creation-preservation and destruction-transformation are all of God and for God. In them and through them He binds Himself and enjoys the destruction-death or transformation-life of the finite and the satisfaction-perfection of infinity’s Immortality.

Sri Chinmoy