He was born in a Hindu family. His family deity was Veerabhadra, but he had no interest in religion. His religious life actually started after he fell in love with, and married, a Christian girl. When in difficulty, he would go to church and pray for long durations. When his mother fell gravely ill, the doctors offered no hope of recovery. He prayed, ‘Lord, if you are the Truth, let my mother be healed immediately. Let her sit up and talk like a healthy person. If you fulfil this wish, I will be your slave.’
His mother recovered and lived on for many years, but Brother had bound himself to Jesus. He had made a promise and could not retract it. The Lord told him, ‘Quit your job.’ He obeyed.
His wife had a modest job in a school, and her income was barely enough to run the family. Their problems multiplied as his prayers intensified.
The Lord said, ‘Stop shaving.’
‘Amen.’
‘Stop cutting your hair.’
‘Amen.’
Around that time, there was a special occasion in the local church, and a well-known bishop was the chief guest. Brother sat in the midst of people, listening to the bishop speak. Suddenly he heard an inner voice say, ‘Get out! This is not your place.’ Brother asked for a sign to confirm that he had heard correctly because he was not yet sure of this inner guidance. The next moment, a curtain near the podium came crashing down. The Lord had given the sign, and Brother walked out of the church. He felt a little sad that he could not go to church again but he understood the message: God was within him.
Still, Brother wanted another sign of the Lord’s presence. The voice said, ‘Note the number of the autorickshaw that will pass you now.’ He did. When he reached home, he was asked to open the Bible and look at the verse number. I do not remember what the verse said exactly, but his doubts were allayed; his prayers intensified.
One day, the Mother Goddess appeared before him. She said, ‘Watch my powers,’ and opened her mouth wide. Divine beings entered her mouth. But Brother said, ‘I will not cease my prayers till Jesus appears before me.’ The goddess disappeared.
He went on praying steadfastly till a radiant form stood before him. He introduced himself as Satan. Unlike Satan in current Christian mythology, he was very handsome. He said, ‘You will not profit from the one you are calling. Trust me. Look at what I can give you.’ He presented a panorama of the pleasures that he could confer. When Brother did not give in, Satan was infuriated. He roared, ‘You’re advancing too fast. I know how to pull you down.’ Bother was enveloped by a sudden darkness.
His body started sweating; he felt terrorized. There was no sign of light anywhere and he experienced an utter sense of isolation. He then saw a very ordinary person standing in front of him. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘I am the Lord you have been calling upon,’ he was told.
The Jesus he saw was unlike his depictions in popular culture. So Brother asked, ‘Why are you so different?’ Jesus replied, ‘Why do you trust the images people make of me? They have never seen me.’
Brother still hesitated. He said, ‘Lord, I can only see you with my eyes but I also want to touch you with my hands.’
Jesus held out his hands. When Brother felt his hands, he found them very rough. He asked, ‘If you are Son of God, why are your hands so rough?’
Jesus answered, ‘My father was a carpenter. After he passed away, I had to take to carpentry. That is when my hands got rough.’
Thereafter Jesus led Brother by the hand to Paradise, which was filled with colours, lights and fragrances unknown on the human plane. The sun was about to set, and Jesus showed him the Great Light. All the angels gathered there and started singing hymns in a language unknown to humans.
After this experience, Jesus brought him back to the human world. Saddened, Brother asked, ‘Why did you bring me back?’ Jesus said, ‘You have offered to be my slave. I am now putting you on duty. You shall continue with it till I tell you otherwise. I am giving you a special blessing. You will be able to see the past and future of anyone who comes to you for help. Pray to me and I will sort out the difficulty. But there is one condition: Ask nothing for yourself. Never bother about your future because I have assumed the responsibility for it.’
Brother agreed. He found himself ministering to a large number of people on a daily basis. There was no time for emotions and he did not get personally involved in the lives of his clients. He would tell people just what Jesus had told him. His ‘prophecies’ began to come true. More and more people went to meet him. However, he had no permission to charge for his services. And now that he had children, his financial situation had worsened. After some time he was told, ‘Do not ask for money but you’re free to accept whatever people donate.’
Jesus’s next command was about footwear. ‘No more shoes or sandals. I appear wherever you call me, and that piece of land becomes holy. Wasn’t Moses asked to take off his shoes when he approached the burning bush?’ Brother stopped wearing shoes and sandals.
Though Brother had the power to help others with their problems, he also had difficulties like everyone else, which he had to face. But he had no right to complain, for Jesus was looking after him.
With his life now committed to Jesus, Brother became very keen to convert to Christianity and asked for Jesus’s permission. Jesus refused, saying, ‘Someone who doesn’t acknowledge his own father cannot acknowledge another’s father either.’
Thus, Brother doesn’t believe in proselytizing. In fact, I have heard him tell people to worship their own deities. ‘Why did God create so many paths? This is because he wants everybody to reach him in his own special way. Brother explained that Jesus had not given him the mandate to become a missionary; he had the permission only to help people, irrespective of their belief or religion. ‘I have no right to preach to others what has been revealed to me. God has instructed me to pray for others and offer them the guidance he gives me. And he has always answered my prayers.’ Then Brother added, ‘He is very fond of those in difficulty, particularly the poor.’
On one of the few occasions he spoke about himself, he said, ‘I do not know much about God. I don’t quite understand how I came onto this path. It was more His grace than my deserts. Many famous gurus have not had a direct vision of God; their experiences are second-hand as they follow the path created by someone else who has had the direct vision. But the Lord has revealed many secrets to me directly.’
Brother’s path is one of pure devotion; Jesus is his goal. The basis of his devotion is total surrender to the Divine. There isn’t even the mediation of a human guru.
Further, Brother has had to follow a path that is not mapped out, advancing by following the hints, suggestions and directions, most often non-rational, that he receives. He says repeatedly, ‘On our path, reason is the number one enemy. Abraham didn’t hesitate to sacrifice his own son when God asked him to, though it later turned out that God didn’t let his son die.’
According to Brother, God always speaks from within. His directions do not always conform to reason, but the devotee has to carry out the command no matter how much it conflicts with reason. Sometimes the devotee is told to go and pray in the most unexpected places. This could be at the entrance of a temple or at a railway platform, in a cremation ground or at a traffic island. However embarrassing this may be, the disciple has to carry this out.
Brother makes no great claim for himself. He says, ‘I am an ordinary person, and a sinner like everybody else. Whatever power I have is his grace. Sometimes, I get irritated and start demanding, “Why don’t you tell me about my future? You tell me about everybody else’s future!”’
Jesus has the same answer each time. ‘In that case, name what you want—money, wealth or power—and I will give it you. I will give it immediately. But then you will have to forget me as I will never come back to you.’
After every such experience, Brother has prayed with tears in his eyes and asked for forgiveness.
Like Baba, Brother is also always on duty. From 9 a.m. to
8 p.m., he receives people and prays for them, with only a short break for lunch. He works half-day on Sundays. Much of the night, he spends awake and praying, particularly for the most distressed of his clients. On new and full moon days, there is always a huge rush and more work.
Brother steers clear of publicity and avoids wealthy people as well as politicians since Jesus loved the poor the most. He hardly leaves his space unless Jesus tells him to go elsewhere and pray. He got Jesus’s permission to come and pray in my house twice. After praying for me on one such occasion, he told me a secret. ‘I know that my prayers are not the final solution. I can only give people relief, not complete healing. For instance, some people come to me due to family problems, which get sorted out after I pray for them. Soon, they come back to me with work problems. I pray and they go back happy. Then they return with health problems. The temporary relief people get when I pray for them is given only to make people aware of the power of grace. The real solution is complete surrender but how many people want this?’
However, there are times when Brother cannot provide a solution. A friend of mine from Delhi had a son two years after marriage but the baby had a breathing problem and was barely able to breathe. The couple went from doctor to doctor and hospital to hospital. My friend’s brother-in-law, also a great astrologer, organized a very rigorous Mahamrityunjaya homa to save the baby. A homa is a ritual that involves making offerings to the holy fire while chanting a sacred mantra. The Mahamrityunjaya homa is done to avert death and illness. When I called Brother on the phone and asked him to pray for my friend’s child, he prayed and said, ‘Ask your friend not to waste money. No matter what he does, the child will die in two weeks.’ That is precisely what happened.
There is another reason why Brother’s prayers may not work for someone. Prayer is a form of power and healing. People in trouble get so anxious that they start seeking help from multiple sources. For instance, someone who is ill seeks Ayurveda in the morning, allopathy in the afternoon, Unani medicine in the evening and something else the next day. Such people have little chance of getting cured as the effects of medicines or methods tend to cancel each other out when used simultaneously. Many people who come to Brother visit at the same time black magic practitioners, astrologers, doctors and psychiatrists, along with going to dargahs and temples.
This kind of dilettante approach does not get people anywhere. Sri Ramakrishna said that such people keep digging wells everywhere and find water nowhere.
The culture of black magic is more widespread in India than people openly admit. I have seen several self-proclaimed rationalists furtively frequenting black magic experts to take revenge on their enemies or to conquer someone sexually. I first heard of black magic as a child when I met a Shivarudra swami who had come to see my father. He was a well-known practitioner of black magic, and became a frequent visitor to our house. Another popular black magic practitioner had his chambers near our house, and was an expert in dealing with cases of possession. There was always a crowd outside his room.
As an adult, I became sceptical about black magic as a result of my Marxist and rationalist training. If it did work, I believed it was some weakness in a person’s temperament that made him vulnerable to such dark powers. My relatives really believed in black magic though. Whenever there was an illness or an unexpected death in the family, they would insist that it was the influence of black magic. Experience finally taught me a different lesson when I discovered that I was the target of a black magic attack by some family members.
Since 1987 I had been experiencing a variety of obstacles. There were delays and complications in every aspect of my life. All my efforts invariably resulted in failure. Even carrying out the most mundane of tasks became difficult. For instance, encashing a cheque in a bank would become a near-impossible task.
I was also having some really eerie experiences. I kept suffering head injuries no matter how hard I tried to be careful. I started to wonder at the recurrence of these injuries. Finally, I told a friend about them. He said, ‘Please check if these things happen on new and full moon days.’ I did as he suggested, and discovered that these occurrences were indeed happening on new and full moon days.
Even then my reason told me that these accidents could just be, well, accidents! I decided to be more careful. I stopped going out on new and full moon days but it was no use. I would get hurt even if I was sitting at home. Gradually matters became more serious. Travelling in an autorickshaw one day with my former student, Ram Chandra, we had an accident and the auto overturned. Both the driver and my student were badly hurt though I managed to escape unhurt. I now began to see these accidents in a different light.
Then my literary image started plummeting. One of my closest friends and supporters suddenly turned envious and began to tarnish my image most violently. One popular weekly had something ugly to say about me in every issue. My visits to Baba during this period brought me relief; in his presence, I was in another realm where nothing disturbing ever touched me. When I reported all these goings-on to Brother, he said, ‘It is a clear case of black magic.’
I said, ‘I still can’t believe it.’
He said, ‘Neither did I, until Jesus told me very clearly that some of my clients were under the influence of black magic.’ Though he felt I was protected, he suggested that I meet him each time things went out of hand. His prayers always helped.
Two other strange incidents happened around this time that I was reeling under the influence of black magic, and both incidents took place on new moon days. One day, I went to the college late in the afternoon. I could see my colleagues, most of them women, standing in groups and discussing something very serious. Their faces were pale. The moment they saw me walking in, they looked shocked. A few of them walked up to me and said, ‘Thank God you are okay!
I was at a loss and asked them what they meant. They explained: ‘We read in the newspaper this morning that a poet called Shivaprakash had met with a fatal accident near the Vijaynagar Bus Station.’ Strangely enough, I was living near the Vijaynagar Bus Station in those days. The person who had died was someone whose name was similar to mine: H.K. Shivaprakash. My colleagues had thought it was a printing mistake since H. S. Shivaprakash was the only poet they had known. I then remembered that this poet—who wrote superfluous limericks—would tell people whenever we ran into each other at a literary gathering, ‘I am Shivaprakash. He is also Shivaprakash. I am H.K. He is H.S.’
There was yet another Shivaprakash, who was a clerk in the examination section at Bangalore University. We were so alike that many people mistook him for me. I had long hair and so did he. We were both tall and well built. Even our beards were styled the same way. Barely a month after H.K. Shivaprakash died, this gentleman met with a scooter accident very close to the Vijaynagar Bus Station, and died on the spot. Even then some people were confused as to which of us had died. This was a clear demonstration that there were so many dark forces interfering with the normal course of human life.
As a result of these incidents, I became interested in the subject of black magic. I read all the books that were available on the subject and even gathered information from people who had borne the brunt of this practice. For example, I had a friend whose legs would get swollen on new moon days. Doctors could not diagnose the problem. When I took her to Brother, he got a bottle of coconut oil, empowered it in the name of Jesus and asked her to apply it immediately. Its effect was instantaneous and my friend was freed from this problem forever.
I also discovered that another literary friend of mine—and a self-styled rationalist—constantly resorted to black magic to increase his powers. Brother confirmed this and said, ‘He is only a meteor that will burn itself out prematurely.’ His words came true.
Gradually, I understood a lot about black magic. I also learnt about the possibility of returning attacks. However, the inner voice always asked me not to use black powers against black powers. Brother also cautioned me, saying that spiritual
people like us should never meddle with black magic but learn to get around such powers through spiritual means. For example, we can chant a protective mantra or perform a remedial ritual.
During this period, I was introduced to the world of spirits. I had an over enthusiastic Youth Congress friend called Darshan. He went to many gurus as he wanted to get a parliamentary ticket from his home district. He called me one day and told me that he had met a great mahatma; his life had changed after meeting the man. Thanks to my curiosity and attraction for such phenomena, I wanted to see this person for myself.
We went to the house of this miracle man in Konnan Kunte. I found him sitting in his room, the walls of which were filled with pictures and calendars of all the deities of the Hindu pantheon.
He was very keen to solve my problems. He asked me to go to the next room and write down my question on a piece of paper, fold the paper and come back to his room after three minutes. When I returned with the piece of paper, he asked me to hold out my fist. He took out a wooden staff and muttered some incomprehensible mantra over my hand. After this, he proceeded to tell me the question I had written down. He got every word right. He also mentioned that I’d crossed out the second word in the second line, which was true. He said, ‘You have seen my powers. Please come tomorrow.’
The next day he greeted me and asked me to sit down in front of him. He asked Darshan to go out and get two betel leaves and some vermillion powder. He then instructed me to open the packet, put the vermillion powder on the betel leaves and cup the leaves in my hands. Once again he started chanting some strange mantra and waved his magic wand about.
I felt something swelling between my palms. When I looked, I saw a gold plate with the Srichakra yantra inscribed on it. He said, ‘I have created this and blessed you with it. Worship this in your house for three months and all your problems will be solved. But I must warn you, Darshan tells me that you often go to see other gurus. Don’t ever do this again. If you do, I have the power to reverse everything. Trust that I am the greatest power on earth.’
Everyday Yogi Page 11