AkhandanandaBholanath DidimaGurupriya Didi Paramananda
HaribabaBhaijiGopinath KavirajAtmananda
Swami SwarupanandaSwami ChinmayanandaSwami VirajanandaSwami BhaskaranandaSwami SivanandaSwami BhajananandaSwami Omkarananda
Br KamalakantaBr YogeshdaBr AtuldaBr Hari HardaSri Abhayda
Br TanmayanandaPanudaSwami KeshavanandaNarayan-Swami
Swami Nirvanananda

Vijayananda

 

Swami Vijayananda

“Miracles still happen nowadays, and sometimes the most wild dreams become true ; and this is what happened to me when I met Sri Ma Anandamayee for the first time on the 2nd of February 1951 at Her Varanasi Ashram.
I had come to India in search of real Guru. Not just a teacher, but one of those mysterious great beings, who can by the their mere presence awaken in us the inner power which makes real Sadhana possible.” (Swami Vijayananda)

More about Swami Vijayananda

Swami Vijayananda on Video

“I knew about nothing about Sri Ma Anandamayee. The first time her name was mentioned before me was at Aurobindo Asram in Pondicherry. One Canadian lady who was coming from Northern India advised me to visit the Asram of Sri Ma Anandamayee beautifully nestled on the bank of the Ganges, and to have the darshan of Sri Ma It did not awakened in me any interest. Nevertheless, I noted down Her name among other things worthwhile to be seen at Banaras Anyhow, I had already lost any hope of finding the sage I was looking for and my passage back to France was already booked on the 21st of February from Colombo.

I reached Varanasi on the first of February and got my accommodation at the Clark Hotel, near the Cantonment Station. The next day in the afternoon a young man (I had an introduction letter from his uncle) accompanied me to Bhaidani area of the town. We crossed a narrow lane, entered through a small door and found us all of a sudden in a vast majestic ashram overlooking the Ganges with a breathtaking view along the Ghats. It was the Ashram of Sri Ma Anandamayee.

My first idea was to have a look and go away. But Sri Ma was just coming out from the Kanyapeeth building. My companion introduced me to Her. They were talking in Bengali. The young man told me : ” Ma says you are good”. She was looking at me with this strange look which is so familiar to me now. She looks at you, but also far beyond, in your past, your future, your whole destiny.

Can I recollect my first impression ? Surprise, I believe. I expected to see an old lady with white hair but I found myself before a person looking fairly young with Her jet black hair falling on Her shoulders ; but surprisingly, I did not notice Her beauty at that time.

But the real happening was inside me. How to explain this ? It was like somebody throwing a lighted match in gun-powder. You know that something extraordinary is going to happen, although it does not happen at the very moment. In that moment, I felt something strange which I could not define. But, indeed, a few hours later after I had gone to my hotel the explosion occurred – a feeling of unearthy joy and happiness : “I have found the Guru I was looking for”. There was no shadow of doubt about that in my mind. What gave me this conviction ?

People call it “Love” but this English word is misleading for the wonderful relationship between Guru and disciple.”

(Note Sw Vijayananda spent the next 19 months travelling with Sri Ma; then in 1954 she asked him to stay at Almora ashram for one year. Later he spent 7  years at Dhaulchina Ashram, above Almora, before moving to Kankhal Ashram).

The last Days
By Vigyânanand (Jacques Vigne)

Many of you probably already know that Swami Vijayânanda left his body peacefully on Monday the 5th of April at 5.10 PM.

He had attended all the satsangs in a very normal way up to the day before – Sunday evening, in spite of the fact his breath was getting shorter and shorter and his voice more and more difficult to hear. Before, when you were very close to him, you could hear him, but for one or two weeks, it was getting more difficult because his breath was shorter and shorter.
Mâ’s game is really surprising : as I was just beginning to write this message to give some details about the way Vijayânanda “had merged into the Braman “( in Sanskrit and Hindi, you say “ bhrama-lin ” when a sage leaves his body), I received a phone call from a young Swami of Israeli origin connected to Bhaskarânanda and who informed me that he left his body that morning on Thursday the 8th at 4.55 AM at the ashram in Bhimpura, on the banks of the Narmada, Gujarat. He was 94 and three months according to the Indian way of counting, which means 93 and three months according to the Western way of counting, what means two years and two months less than Swami Vijayânanda. They met Mâ Anandamayî at the same period and were both of them very close to her. Mâ had entrusted Bhaskârananda with the task of giving initiation on Her behalf. When they were sitting together, it happened from time to time in the ashram in Khankal for some celebrations, they did not show great emotion, but you could feel they had a deep connection and were united in a peaceful and spontaneous joy. The fact that Swami Bhaskarânanda “ merged into the Brahman ” just two and half days after Swami Vijayânanda, and that they knew each other for 60 years spent next to Mâ, is a good proof of their bond. We can assume that he heard, when he was conscious, that Swamiji Vijyânanda had left his body and that it helped him to leave his body.

Bhaskarânanda’s pacemaker had failed on 1st February and he was then mostly in a coma at that time. On the 19th of February, he had been brought back from the hospital to allow him to leave his body in the ashram at Bhimpura. He was on a ventilator, and feeding was through a tube to the stomach. After his return to Bhimpura he learned to breath without the ventilator, though still with the tracheostomy; the times when he appeared conscious with open eyes increased day-by-day. Some people heard him pronounce “Jai Ma” quietly. He would nod Yes or No to questions asked. Moreover, on occasions he blessed people who were visiting him, by holding their head with his hands, and would smile. It’s touching from a symbolic point of view, you can interpret this as the symbol of what he had done his whole life : to give his energy in the service of Mâ, to give on behalf of Mâ.

To come back to Swami Vijayânanda, we should first evoke the successive parts of his life in a nutshell. Born to a Jewish family on November 26, 1914, at the beginning of World War I in East France, he was destined to succeed his father who was the main rabbi of the town of Metz. As a child, he was very pious, but during his adolescence, he studied philosophy and distanced himself from the idea of a unique, omnipotent God and creator. He chose to study medicine, and first followed a spiritual teacher who was a French psychiatrist influenced by Buddhism, in Paris itself. In the end of 1950, he took a boat from Marseille in South France to Sri Lanka and India in the hope to find his guru. His idea was to ask instructions and to come back to practice them in this small town of South France where he was practising as a doctor. He had hoped to meet Shri Ramana Maharshi and Shri Aurobindo, but both had just passed away when he reached Chennai in January 1951. He met Ma Anandamayi in Varanasi on February 2, 1951, asked Her if he could stay for two or three days in her ashram, She said yes, and actually he spent the next 59 years in those ashrams, and he even never left the holy land, the devbhumi of India. For the first 19 months, he was always with Mâ, except for one day. In 1953 or 1954, She asked him to stay a full year in Patal Devi ashram in Almora, a place She did not visit the whole year. He did so, and then came back to Varanasi. He went again up to Patal Devi in 1961 for a year, and then for eight years in Dhaulchina ashram, in complete solitude. He used to come down to see Ma for only a month every year, and still not every year. In 1970, he came back to Patal Devi ashram until 1976, when Mâ asked him to stay in Kankhal. She arranged a room for him on the terrace of the sadhu kutir, and She told him : “Yahan baito! “, ‘Sit here! ‘ and so he did for 34 years, until his last breath in the afternoon of the 5th of April 2010. He hardly left this room but for one month if we add the duration of his different hospitalisations in Delhi. I stayed for the first time in Kankhal for three months and three weeks in 1985. At that time, Swamiji used to come down every day for the evening puja, but not to stay long, hardly five or ten minutes after which he used to go back to his room. Only after Atmânanda left her body in October 1985, he started to see more visitors, especially Westerners, because Ma had asked him to care for them. He did that as a seva.

Let us now describe what happened in the last few months. At Christmas 2009, he had bad flu that handicapped him and he missed the satsang for a few days. Afterwards he came back and gave satsang as usual up to Sunday 4th of April in the evening – that was his last meeting with the devotees. Mâ had asked him to take care of the Westerners and he was doing it as a seva, selfless work. I am personally very moved because it was my birthday. Our birthdays were 51 years apart. Thanks to the Kumbh Mela where I was since the beginning of February, I attended the two last months of satsangs of Swamiji almost continuously, except a few days, amongst which were the last four days.

On Monday morning, Izou, who was close to him for more than twenty years, went to his room because he was feeling unwell. He was tossing and turning in bed so as to find a position that would alleviate his pain, but in vain.

The nape of the neck, the back of the head and his chest were very painful. He vomited several times. An Indian doctor from the village came, diagnosed gastro-enteritis and prescribed some medicines. Vijayânanda did not take them because he had understood that the diagnosis was wrong. In fact, it was probably the symptoms of an intracranial hypertension with the beginning of an engagement of the basis of the brain in the spinal canal: this results in depression of the breathing function that makes breathing weaker and weaker, and leads to death. For Swamiji, it was probably due to the considerable bending of the nape of the neck through osteo-arthritis, and the vertebral compression that was pressing the spinal cord and that had paralysed the lower limbs when he wanted to walk a few steps.

In fact, for a few months, his breath had been getting shorter and shorter, and his voice was very weak during the satsangs. As we said before, for two or three weeks, he had difficulty in finishing long sentences. Beforehand, we could understand his words by getting very close to his mouth, but more recently there were some times when even when doing so, we were not able to hear him. Consequently, at the end of March, I said to my hermit neighbour in Dhaulchina, Swami Nirgunânanda, and to another friend of mine on the phone, that is seemed that Swamiji would not stay much longer in his body.

On Monday around noon, his breathing became more difficult, but he could communicate and even stand up to go to the toilet. At 5.OO pm, the breathing got even more difficult. Gonzague was next to him and Izou was calling the air- ambulance that was supposed to carry him to Delhi urgently. Izou went up to his room, to be with him and after 10 minutes, he breathed his last. What is surprising is that he had predicted to her that she would be present when he would leave his body, in spite of the strict rules that prohibit women from entering the sadhu kutir, which is reserved for male ascetics. He left his body in his usual position of meditation, resting against some cushions with the hands brought together and the legs stretched out; it had been difficult for him to cross his legs for several years. He was always very encouraging to people, for when Narayan came back from the exams he had on that day, he was very happy to see him and asked him with much interest if he had done well. Narayan did not realize that he was at the point of death and that he had only one hour to live. Izou, and Sonia from Delhi, had done their best to charter an air-ambulance in order to transfer Swamiji to the Delhi. He expressed his appreciation for their efforts by saying: “ It’s great ! ”. They were almost his last words, He passed away a little after. Izou could contact the plane that was already on the take-off runway and cancelled it. It was better that way. Vijayânanda had been living in that room for 34 years where Mâ had installed him telling him : “ yahan baito ! ” “ Sit down here ! ” Indeed he died there after some decades of intense sadhâna.

Swamiji often said that the function of a guru is not to give an intellectual teaching but to transmit energy. That’s what he was doing in a way through several channels, sometimes very direct ones, but mostly very subtle ones. Those who have spent time in Kankhal, in particular during the last year, can testify personally. He himself had a lot of energy; for several months, he was sleeping very little. Despite that, he was giving much of his time to attend regularly the satsangs. When he knew that the people had important questions and a strong desire to spend more time with him, he was staying more than the two usual hours, in spite of his old age and the removal of the prostate that forced him to go and urinate quite often. He was never complaining about his health. For this reason, we had not expected his imminent departure. When he was asked about his health, he could not lie to say that he was going well, so he replied : “ As usual ! ”. He almost did not take any medicine. He had often said that to live to be very old was not always a blessing and could be a disadvantage. He probably meant that the handicap was a weight for oneself and for the others. Narayan, Pushparaj’s nephew, who was brought up at the ashram in Almora, has taken care of Swamiji daily for the last two or three years, while he was studying. His departure is for him a very big change and it’s even more beautiful to see how quiet he has remained and how helpful he was for all that has to be done during these last days. We can see the direct and stabilising influence of Swamiji, beyond the superficial changes of life and death.

Vijayânanda’s special way of transmitting energy arose when he was asked to bless something. If it was a rosary, he would take it in his hands and began to recite it; if it was a book, he would leaf through it; if it was a photo of Mâ, he would comment briefly on the particularity of the face, holding the photo in his hand; and if it was a meditation mat, he would usually put it on his head before putting it on the head of the person who was expecting the blessing.

He often drew our attention to the energy of the Kumbh Mela that was taking place all around. He recommended that we go to the ritual baths and meet the naga babas. These sadhus, despite their peculiar attraction for hashish, and their pitched battles against some other sadhus from time to time, are even so an example of renunciation with their nudity and their simple way of life. Around the big bath of the 30th of March, dedicated to Hanuman, the god of service and devotion, Vijayânanda said that he was feeling his presence in particular. For two months, the region of Kankhal and the ashram that opens directly onto the southern part of the vishnouit camps (bairagis) was resonating with the names of Sita and Rama day and night. Several ashrams had organised continuous repetition of mantras. I kept watch over Swamiji’s body in his room and for sure, this name of God continuously repeated, helped me and purified me in my meditation.

After Swamiji’s departure, I often remembered the story of the end of a great Zen guru. He was plunged deep in himself in the lotus position and his breath stopped. The devotees began to wail complaining : “ Our guru died, how sad it is ! What will we do now we are left to our own devices ? ” So that, the guru woke up and said : “ You did not understand anything ! We’re going to organise a big banquet to celebrate together ! ” That’s what they did, and only afterwards the guru fell asleep forever.

Which funeral rituals for Vijayânanda ?

Swami Vijayânanda often said that once when Mâ had asked him what he wanted to do with his body after his death he had answered : “ You can throw it anywhere, I do not care about it ! ” Mâ stood up and told him : “ Your body has done so many intense practices (tapasya), it can’t be thrown like this ! ” We can reasonably interpret these words as meaning that they should not put Swamiji’s body in the Ganga as it is usually done for the sannyasis, but that it was better to make a samâdhi, a traditional grave. Seven or eight years ago, an old western friend of Swamiji who had been long associated with Ma had decided to buy a piece of land where they could build a samadhi. But Swamiji had no interest in being placed in a place that could become a temple, with morning and evening rituals. He wanted people’s devotion to remain focused on Mâ Anandamayi’s large samadhi. Nevertheless, in order to respond to the numerous demands, he suggested that they could put his grave in Pushparâj’s garden, but with no daily rituals, to make matters easier and in order that the place should not look like a sâmadhi. For the last few months, he was saying that Pushparaj had been a monk in a former life and that he was returning progressively to this kind of life ; for several months, he was sleeping in Swamiji’s room, at the bottom of his bed, to be with him when he wanted to go to the toilet, because Swamji had fallen several times whilst doing so. In fact, since he was five years old, Pushparaj was brought up in Mâ’s ashrams, and his current house where he usually receives Mâ’s devotees – including the Western ones − can be actually considered more a part of the ashram than a family home in the literal sense of the word. This verbal suggestion of Swamiji’s was accepted on Tuesday 6th of April in the evening by the ashram board along with Panuda, the president of the Sangha, who has known Swamiji for 60 years. There was some resistance from a part of the ashram. Moreover, the conservative people in the village and the sadhus connected to the Daksha temple, the Mahanirvanî Akhara and a group of pandas (monks on pilgrimage) in Kankhal opposed this project and began to demonstrate. When we heard this on the 7th in the morning, we had a meeting with a special official from the head of the police in Haridwar, Panuda, the president of the Sangha and Debuda, the secretary-general, Izou and Gonzague, and Swami Atmananda, a French-speaking disciple of Chandra Swami who lives in Rishikesh. Vijayânanda had left with Izou and Gonzague a written document where he gave them the responsibility to decide what to do with his body after his death. He did not write down his suggestion concerning a grave at Pushparaj’s because it would have put him in the forefront, which he did not want. We must remember that neither Mâ’s husband Bholanath nor her faithful assistant Didi had a samadhi. Even for Mâ in August 1982, the devotees were about to put her body in the Ganga and it was the head of Mahânirvâni Akhara in Khankal who insisted and he took matters upon himself for building a samadhi. We were very aware that Vijayânanda would not like having any conflict with the villagers. We have decided that the best way to respect Mâ’s will concerning the body preservation was to repatriate it to France. There was the theoretical possibility to bury the body for the time being in a garden and find another place far away from Haridwar and its pandas, and to quietly build a samadhi for Vijayânanda. We even thought of Daulchina and this area of Kumaon where he had spent 17 years. But it would have been a problem to look after the samâdhi from a great distance and we finally decided on repatriation to Paris. In fact, it will be a blessing for the French people to have the body of this great sage close to them. For Indian people, it would not make a big difference, as with jal samâdhi (in the Ganga) the body would not be there anymore anyway. I know only one example of a sage in the Indian tradition who has a samâdhi in France; this is Ranjit Mahâraj, who had the same guru as Nisargadatta Mahâraj. He left his body in 2001 and his long-time devotee Laurence Le Douaré built him a samâdhi with a part of his ashes in a beautiful garden in her house that overlooks the Douarnenez Bay near Brest.

Sonia Barbry has been visiting Kankhal for ten years. When she finished at the French school of political science in Paris, she asked Swamiji if he felt that a diplomatic career would suit her, as she liked India very much, and Swamiji greatly encouraged her. Nowadays she is a political consultant in the French ambassy in Delhi. She came and visited the Kumbh Mela from the 27th to the 31st, for herself and also to write a “ telegram ”, which means a report for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, about this great event of India. She felt that Swamiji wanted to say goodbye to her when he asked her to come for two private interviews, included on her last day in Kankhal just before taking the train to Delhi. A few days later she was very helpful in organising emergency assistance just before the death, and afterwards for the formalities and the organisation of the repatriation of the body to France. She was the one who signed the death certificate in the name of the French Republic. May we thank her for her service to Vijayânanda.

 

 

I should mention that another great Swami of Mâ, Shivânanda, left his body just 4 days after Vijayânanda, on Friday the 9th of April in the morning. He had been to hospital two days before. My feeling is that the spiritual atmosphere of the Kumba Mela in Kankhal was getting stronger and stronger as the big bath of the 14th of April, Mesh Sankranti, approached, which marks the end of one cycle of 12 years and the beginning of another one. Those who consider they have made enough cycles on this earth tend to choose this auspicious period to leave their body.

 

 

In many ways, Vijayânanda was turning his back on many things and prepared people for his departure. Before he would often ask visitors who were about to leave, to come back later, but recently he did not do that. He often related one of his last private meetings with Mâ, in the hall of the ashram in Kankhal. She told him as she was showing him her body : “ This is just a cloth, I am omnipresent ! ” He concluded saying that he believed Ma.

As a general rule, the simple way Vijayânanda considered death often reminded me of a sentence from Montaigne in his Essais : “ Each day brings us closer to death and the last one gets us there.”

 

Vigyânanand, Kankhal, Delhi, 8-11th of April 2010
extracts from Amrita Varta January 2011.