HINDU MYSTIC

Hokitika Guardian, 22 July 1931, Page 5

HINDU MYSTIC

THREE STAGES OF MARRIED LIFE. LONDON June 10. His Holiness Sh-ii Purohit Swami, poet, philosopher, and monk—the holy man of Central India who has trailed alone thiough jungle and forest, and ivnom no wild beast- has ever molested, and whose sole companions for ten years were birds, snakes, tigers and bears—is in London.

He has no- church, no particular form of religion to preach; all creeds . are alike to him. His doctrine is the spiritual li-le, and, through the soulful eyes of this Hindu monk, the'salvation of the nations can come through the spiritual life alone. It was i>n a small, oblong room at the top of one of those expansive Victorian houses in Bayswater that I met his Holiness Sliri Purohit Swami. It was a plain room without a picture 011 any of its four walls and just enough furniture to make it habitable as a bed-setting-room. It is all lie needs and desires for his London home. Silence, solitude and incense. His Holiness lives in the everlasting perfume of incense.

He was sitting in a chair meditating on the spiritual life when an interviewer walked into the room. He wore a long black gown like a priest's efts-, tiock, which -reached from his neck to his shoes, He lit, an incense cone,, and while the smoke curled, iff blue-black rings towards the ceiling he talked of his strange life iff tlxe ? jungle, of his lonely wanderings on the snow-capped ridges of the Himalayas, and, stranger still of the ten years he spent,as an exile, cut off from mankind, iu the wild heart of Central India, where he meditated on the spiritual life.

MOST ANCIENT ORDER

Sliri Purohit Swami belongs to the highest and most ancient- order of monks in.lndia. His family is rich and religious, and he graduated at the University of Calcutta, taking his LL.B. from Bombay University in 1907. Then he turned his back upon his earthly career and went off to the lonely Santhvadri mountains to meditate and pray. For ten long years-he lived, on two cups of milk a day, rose every morning .at four, and for hours at a stretch, sat.like-a figure carved out of bronze on a grass mat in mediation and prayer.. . ', ; i ■' V < j The mystic monk became a. , second Francis of Assisi in Ithe" secret power he seemed to weild over the wild birds of the jungle. Birds which had never known the sound of a human voice perched on his shoulders while he recited his scriptures. . . and. there were some birds which would not go to 'bed ' until "lire•'-Holiness gave’ the '(vbrcL of command.

Shri Purohit Swami went to -his wardrobe, took off' his long black 'cassock and put on a picturesque robe of orange that !m a)wayswears In Tncrta. Orange, he believes, is symbolic of fire, and the wearer, of the orange robe lias burned all selfish desires. The soft, musical voice of the man of solitude and silent prayer said, “I belong to all humanity; my nationality is universal. It matters not what you are in religion—Gentile or J-ew, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Nonconformist, or whatever you choose to call yourselves—the spiritual life as I found it in my long exile, will make you better.” THE “GOOD SOULS.”

His Holiness lias been three months in London, but lie lias not seen London. “I am not a sightseer,” be said with a mild note of protest. What he lias seen are the “good souls.” The Poet Laureate- and Alfred- Yeats, the Irish poet, - re among them. He hopes to meet many more “good souls” before he leaves in the autumn.-

This Indian philosopher has passed through what he describes as the four physicial stages of life. The first stage was celibacy, the second marriage. At the third stage, of-life his wife became his friend, and at the fourth and final stage came complete renunciation. His Holiness has left his wife behind in India; but they still meet occasionally as friends, “The more you realise your spiritual life the more you lose your faith in a purely physicial one,” be said.