The following is the full account from Shabda Cayanika of the depraved sadhaka Khagen who fell prey to the allurement of avidya tantra and occcult powers. Here below Baba is narrating the story.
I kept on going and going and going. The palásh forest was not as close as I thought it had been from a distance. After walking for a while, I came to a halt at one spot. To my left was a somewhat deep ditch where a dog had fallen in. He was still barking faintly in between pauses. I realized that this middle-aged creature had come to the last limits of his short life.
What an awful thing! Who could have done such a cruel deed? The dog showed no sign of any injury, that is, he hadn’t been attacked by any animal. If a tiger had attacked it would have seized him or her by the throat or the neck. That is the way that felines attack, from the tigers of the Sundarban jungle to the domesticated housecat. Even a common cat catches rats and mice in that way. A wolf would have attacked the stomach or the back which is how canines attack, from the lion to the fox. When kakt́esiyás creatures attack, however, they attack from the tail end. Their nature is to attack other animals from behind and swing and shake them about.
The dog appeared completely uninjured. From looking at him, it appeared as if some unnatural means had been used to arrest his blood circulation and bring him seemingly to the point of death. Almost as if someone was rapidly squeezing the last drop of its life’s essence. After a few minutes navel-breathing began. His dog-life did not have long to go. There was no water nearby. If it had been rainy season then some water could have been found in puddles and holes, but it was now the end of the cold season and water was getting scarce. There was none to be found anywhere. Alas, I thought, if I could just put a few drops of water in his mouth, his throat would not be dry during his last moments.
The dog looked at me with sorrowful eyes. Suddenly my eyes fell on a hillock directly across from the ditch, what we call d́uḿri in Rarhi Bengali. In Rarhi Bengali we call a large mountain páháŕ, a smaller, medium-sized mountain páháŕii, a smaller hill d́uḿri, still smaller t́ilá, and even smaller d́hibi. When I looked closely, I could see a motionless, imposing naked human figure.
I started moving slowly in his direction. After I had gone a little ways I noticed that he was sitting absorbed in meditation in the siddhásana posture, completely motionless. He seemed to be an extension of the hill itself. The only difference between the two was that the hill was reddish yellow and the human figure was bright and fair-complexioned. I crossed a vaenci-shiyákul thicket, approached very close to him and saw a Tantric sadhaka sitting in a bhaeravii cakra yantra. My curiosity was aroused. I went even closer, close enough to touch him, and took a good look. What did I see, to my amazement, but someone well-known to me, Khagen… Khagendranath Ghosh.
I had known Khagen since I was a child. His parents lived in Chakradharpur and he used to attend school in my town. After he finished his studies he left that area. I had heard from his father that the two of us were born on the same day. I was born most likely under the constellation of Vishákhá and he was born a few hours later, most likely under the constellation of Anurádhá. He was one class behind me in school.
There was a hereditary inclination towards spiritual practices in his family. His grandfather, father and uncles all followed the path of sádhaná. I remembered many years before, when he was studying in standard nine, and he had asked me what the eight occult powers were and what special practices existed by which one could attain them. I explained to him as much as I knew at the time and pointed out that these were dangerous things and that it was better not to tread that path.
Kśurasya dhárá nishitá duratyayá durgaḿ pathastat kavayo vadanti.
[The path is as sharp as a razor’s edge, difficult to tread. It is an intractable path. So realized persons say.]
Looking at his face back then I thought that he seemed to be devising a plan. I explained even more carefully the dangers associated with it and counselled him to shun that path. Sádhaná should be done only for the attainment of Parama Puruśa, not for any second thing. He asked me how it would be if he did the sádhaná for attaining Parama Puruśa along with the sádhaná for attaining the eight occult powers.
I told him: “Do you know how it would be? It would be just like eating bitter curry with sweet rice.” He fell silent.
Now I understood what kind of plans he had been hatching deep inside. I could see with my own eyes the fruits of his plans.
Khagen was totally absorbed, like a tree immersed in meditation. He didn’t blink at all or move even a finger or a toe so I kept quiet for some time and remained standing there, not disturbing him. At one point, I looked over at the dog and saw that he had died. His tormented eyes seemed to be looking in my direction, as if they were saying: “I am innocent, without fault. Why should a person have removed me from the earth in this way without any reason? Will you not redress this?”
I looked again at Khagen and saw his fair-complexioned body gradually start turning red. It stayed that way for a short time and then slowly turned jet-black. I watched for some time longer until he gradually turned pale, anaemic. Then I touched his body; it was as cold as ice and harder than iron. A human corpse will turn cold but it never becomes that hard. I was considering what to do or not to do, and then I remembered that in such cases the body should not be cremated for eighteen hours; one must wait. If it didn’t return to a normal state within eighteen hours then one could begin cremating. I thought about returning to town and letting someone know what had happened and then returning, but I realized that it would take at least two hours to go and come and in the meantime some wild animal might come and eat him, thinking him to be dead. Finally I decided to keep watch over the body throughout the night and then return to town in the morning to let people know. There would be little possibility of a wild animal showing up there during daylight hours. I remained standing there, looking now at the unfortunate dog and now at Khagen.
Suddenly I saw a point of light exit from Khagen’s third eye and enter into the third eye of the dog. Then an even more amazing thing happened. Could it really be? The dog’s tail started to move slowly two or three times. Then again quiet. As it had been.
A short while later, the dog’s tail again started to move slowly back and forth, and some barks came from his mouth. What an amazing sight! Then again everything was quiet, silent, still, not even a quiver.
Again, moments later, the dog’s tail started to move. From its mouth came a few soft barks. This time the dog seemed to be trying to stand up. It rose to its feet then and fell down again. Then it was na yayao na tasthao [“it remained in the same condition”]. Again the dog’s tail moved a few times and again it barked a little. This time it stood up, looked here and there, and then started climbing the hill.
It approached us and then started circling around Khagen like a machine with someone at the controls, like an ox with blinders tracing fixed circles around the oil-mill. The dog didn’t enter the bhaeravii cakra, but stuck close to its outer edge as it circled around. It was easy to understand what a dreadful state it was in; it had no fear, no thought, perhaps not even a sense of existence. It was a crude flesh-and-bone machine, a mindless, energy-driven body. And in whose hands was the switch for turning on the energy that drove him? You could not say that it was living because behind it there was no independent unit mind at work – it was acting at the urge of some other entity’s mind.
I understood that this was all Khagen’s affair. He had mastered the skill to kill an innocent creature and drive its body. It made no difference whether the dog was alive or not because it didn’t have any independent individual existence. Its existence was actually just like that of a puppet.
I couldn’t bear it any longer. Such misuse of the human being’s hidden internal powers would not help to elevate the human race. Rather it would bog down one’s hands and feet in the quagmire of power and bring stagnancy into one’s forward movement.
I grabbed a fistful of hair and slapped him in the face; his body fell over, just like a large, precariously balanced rock topples at the slightest touch. His body was not a living body; it was like a huge puppet carved out of a piece of hard iron. As Khagen’s body fell from its seat another astonishing thing occurred. A point of light exited from the third eye of the dog and entered into Khagen’s third eye. The dog uttered a cry and collapsed on top of a rock. It was dead once again.
I looked over at Khagen and saw him slowly trying to open his eyes. He looked at me and started to cry. Then with a weak voice he whispered: “I have committed a great injustice, a great injustice. I didn’t listen to you. Please forgive me.”
I stretched out a hand and pulled him up. “You were studying in high school then,” I said. “I told you these things were deadly, that this was not a path to tread. Why didn’t you listen to me?”
He started sobbing and said: “I have done wrong, very wrong. Please forgive me.”
Khagen wasn’t able to stand properly. His vocal cords were also not functioning properly. I helped him to put his clothes on. At first I had to use my arms to help him, but after a little while he told me that he could walk by himself.
He started walking by my side but very slowly. I did not scold him any more along the way because he was not in a normal state. He was somewhere halfway between life and death. When I got to the edge of the muddy pond where I had been sitting, I saw that some black figure was standing beside the pigeon-pea field right behind me. His body was not luminous but rather fashioned from a black shadow. Lest Khagen be disturbed or feel worried, I didn’t say anything. I pressed his elbow and gently made him sit down. “Take some rest now,” I said, “then we’ll go on some more.”
He started crying and said: “I have committed such a great sin, yet you still love me so much. I disobeyed you, yet you still don’t hate me.”
“That may be so,” I said, “but you’re my childhood friend. Don’t forget that.”
The black shadow figure by the side of the pigeon-pea field gradually started becoming pointed like a needle and a blue light came out from that needle-like portion. I realized that Khagen might perhaps be creating another disturbance here.
“Are you practising márańa tantra [death-tantra] while you’re sitting there,” I asked. “And was that the Avidyá Tantra practice for entering another body that you were doing while sitting on the hill?”
“Yes,” he said, sobbing. Then he cried out: “Forgive me. Help me to forget all these things.”
“I also want that,” I replied. “Come on, let us return to town.” We continued walking side by side. I kept hold of his left elbow with my right hand and pulled him along in a fashion. Glancing behind, I noticed a point of light following us. Since I was looking at the point of light, Khagen also glanced in that direction. He shivered and said: “That dog, again that dog, again that dog is chasing me.”
“Wipe that dog out of your mind,” I said. “Repeat your Iśt́a mantra.”
“I am trying,” he said. “But I am not able to.”
“Think of me for a little bit,” I said. “Think that I am pulling you along by the hand. Then, while thinking of me, fix your mind at your Iśt́a cakra. Try it. Then you’ll be able to do it.”
I took a few steps forward and saw that the point of light had disappeared into the void. Khagen cried out again, sobbing, and said: “I have left that path, I have left that path. I don’t ever want to return to it again.”
A few years later I was once again sitting in that same place at the dead of night bathed in moonlight. With the change in time comes a change in place and person as well. And so it was, though it wasn’t a great change. I remembered the incident of Khagen and the dog on that full-moon night in Phalgun. Neither of the two was present.
During the day I asked the local villagers for news about Khagen. “Yes, yes,” they said. “Sometimes we see a half-mad fellow wandering the jungle paths at the edge of the hills. He often goes around barking as if he thought he was a dog. Whenever he sees anyone with glasses he rushes after them, grabs them and says: ‘Prabhat, you have come. I have left that path, I have left that path, bark, bark, I have left that path, but that dog won’t leave me alone. Whenever I want to meditate or to repeat my Iśt́a mantra that dog comes into my mind and starts barking mercilessly. What can I do, tell me! It would be better to die.’”
(Shabda Cayanika - 2, Disc: 13)
