death beyond death. 85
nunciation. Lastly the acarya cut off the fikha(topknot) from my head—the well-
trained, well-oiled, stately fikha—and threw it into the fire as the last gift.
The Swami asked me to stand up. I followed him to another, much smaller plat-
form that I had not seen before. Here was a small pyre of wood, not yet alight. I was
asked to lie on it. The Swami approached with a firebrand and some live charcoal.
He touched my body in seven places. Symbolically, the pyre was set on fire. Sym-
bolically, I was now being cremated. As I stood up, I made my own obsequial rite,
with the mantras that are chanted by the living for the dead. I was now dead, though
the body lived. It signifies: when the sannyasisays “I,” he does not mean his body,
not his senses, not his mind, not his intellect. “I” means the cosmic spirit, the Brah-
man, and it is with This that he henceforth identifies himself. This is the only im-
portant difference between the monk and the layman. The layman too is Brahman,
and so is all that lives. The monk is Brahman too, but the monk is aware of it, the
sannyasiis aware of nothing else. Or at least, he should be aware of nothing else. I
now threw off my white novice ’s robe and all the other items of the neophyte
wardrobe—they are not many—and walked down the few steps into the Ganges,
with the four directions as my garments.
The municipality of Banaras is a puritan municipality, like all the municipalities
in India. Even corpses would not be tolerated in the nude. However, it appears that
for sannyasa consecrations some special arrangement is made lest offense be given
to the occasional late bathers and to municipal orders: people are just asked to move
away whenever novices step into their last bath.
As I emerged from Ganga’s womb, Swami Vifvananda, who had followed me,
gave me the ochre robe, which I donned immediately. “Victory to you, HOME-
LESS BLISS, Victory, Master Agehananda Bharati, be thou a light to the three
worlds”—he spoke loudly and distinctly. This then was the name he had chosen for
me, and he must have known why. Bliss through homelessness, bliss that is home-
lessness, bliss when there is no home—the Sanskrit compound of the privative pre-
fix a+ geha + ananda covers all of these meanings.
He then gave me the danda (monk’s staff ); I bowed to it and flung it far into the
River, saying, “Keep this danda, Mother Ganga, for I have no more leisure for rules.
The Supreme Swans are not bound by any rules, the paramahaksas do not carry the
rod of rules and rites. They are free.”
“Come with me, Swami Agehananda,” said Swami Vifvananda softly. “Choose
whom you will honor by taking your first bhiksa.” Then I remembered that I had
promised his host that I would take my first food from him. But when we left the
ghat, there was a crowd of more than a dozen people, both men and women, with