Professor Banmali Lahiri (1916 – 2004) was the great grandson of Shyamacharan Lahiri (also known as Shyamacharan Deva Sharma and popularly known as Lahiri Mahasaya) and a disciple of his eldest son, Tinkori Lahiri. His father was Abhaya Charan Lahiri, one of Tinkori Lahiri’s six children.

Professor Lahiry had achieved the degree of Master of Science at Banaras Hindu University (B.H.U.), just outside of Varanasi, U.P. India, where he became a professor of chemistry. He lived most of his life in the family house of his great grandfather, Shyamacharan Lahiri, located in the Bengali Tola neighbourhood of Varanasi.

His outer life was beset by family troubles, disturbances from the diverse factions and followers of the spiritual tradition initiated by his great grandfather, and stresses in his profession.

Parallel to his professional and family life, Banmali lived an intense secretive life evolving with the spiritual practices into which he was initiated by his grandfather, Tinkori Lahiri, at the young age of twelve.

Banmali’s life revolved around his spiritual evolution, and although he became a powerful yogi, he never flaunted his attainments.

Profession

Prof. Banmali Lahiri’s professional life was a continual source of frustration from never completing his PhD, and although he was a professor of Chemistry at B.H.U., he never achieved full tenure. Due to this, he endured professional humiliation throughout his life as he watched younger PhD’s attain tenure. Nevertheless, his financial necessities were adequately covered by his post as a professor, and he received a pension after he retired. He realized, later in his life what a prime advantage his lesser position at BHU gave him, because it allowed him sufficient unhindered time to properly devote to his spiritual practices.

Family Issues

The status of being one of the living grandsons of Shyamacharn Lahiri residing in his original house where he had performed most of his spiritual practices not only made his house a place of pilgrimage but also encouraged jealousies from family members.

Some family members gained large followings and basked in the limelight of adulation, which not only caused them to neglect their spiritual practices but made them forget what they were taught.

Thus, they passed on corrupted, distorted and ineffective versions of what they were taught by Shyamacharan’s sons, disciples and their disciples. No details are presented here because it is not the intention of this abbreviated biography to enter into polemics.

Life As A Householder And Yogi

Despite the attention his house attracted, Banmali managed to live a reserved life. He raised two children and lived with his loving and caring wife until his death in 2004.

Because Banmali intensely followed his spiritual practices he became a highly evolved yogi. It was his utter sincerity that made him intolerant of the people who came to him with ulterior motives and hidden agendas. Many visitors arrived desirous of engaging in the polemics between varied factions of his followers. Others offered to turn the room of Shyamacharan Lahiri into a public shrine and he would receive many offers to purchase his house for this purpose.

When people came with such motives he would deny them entry to his house, or if he did allow them enter, it would be only for a brief look into the room where his great grandfather performed his practices, and he would never allow any pictures to be taken.

For Prof. Lahiri was a mind reader1 who could instantly detect other people’s true intentions. He only allowed those with sincere intentions into his great grandfather’s practice room where he would sit with them and engage in deep and lengthy spiritual conversations. That room was highly charged with the aftermath of Syamacharan Lahiri’s powerful spiritual practices which could be felt by those who entered.

Prof. Lahiri, of all his living family, most closely embodied the spiritual practices of his great grandfather Lahiri Baba – as he used to call him. He had a small circle of friends and an even smaller group disciples who shared his passion for anonymity and who understood the value of secrecy, as well as humility. Apart from his small inner circle of disciples he initiated, he would never discuss the workings of the spiritual practices he inherited.

Banmali’s Spiritual Practices

Though it has been widely disseminated that Shyamacharan Lahiri taught ‘kriya yoga,’ Banmali has pointed out that this term is a later invention of many offshoots of his disciples and was never used by his great grandfather.

Banmali used to relate that the practices Shyamacharan Lahiri taught were an assembly of sets of actions he called ‘kriyas,’ and stressed that whenever his great grandfather used to tell his disciples to “do your kriya,” it simply meant “perform the practical actions I have taught you” and not, “perform ‘kriya yoga.’” A ‘kriya yoga’ does exist in yogic literature, and is described in the first verse of book II of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali , but its meaning has nothing to do with the ‘kriya yoga’ of organizations and persons who claim to teach Shyamacharan Lahiri’s method of spiritual evolution.

Prof. Banmali Lahiri achieved the highest attainment possible in Shyamacharan Lahiri’s system in 1988, at the age of 72, after 60 years of intense, sincere practice of the original system that was he was taught by his grandfather.

Organizations

Prof. Lahiri often used to stress that Shyamacharan Lahiri used to warn his disciples against starting their own organizations. As a result, it was his policy to reject the founders of organizations that purported to teach his practices and philosophies. He believed the activities and attention such organizations would not only degrade the available time for spiritual practices, but would affect a person’s ego in a negative way.

He was emphatic that neglected practices would quickly become corrupted and forgotten, for it was strictly prohibited to write them down. Professor Lahiri used to criticize the writings of those who claimed to have been urged on by his great grandfather, saying they were inaccurate and calculated to further their founder’s agendas rather than to report the truth.

Today, there are many sources of information regarding the teachings originated by Shyamacharan Lahiri and more disinformation than information exists in the public domain.

Because of this, Prof. Lahiri used to state that none should be trusted, because when the true system becomes corrupted with arbitrary invention, it becomes negative and produces negative results. Shyamacharan Lahiri inititated many people, and there are various offshoots of his disciples that are alive today, but it is not the scope of this biography to categorize all his varied disciples and where their lineages lead. The spiritual traditions of Shyamacharan Lahiri remain alive and thriving today, though the sincere ones are not organized under the blanket of any institution and remain hidden from the public eye.

Publications

In March 1963, at the age of forty-seven, Banmali published “Quest for Truth6,” in Prajña, a BHU journal of oriental learning. It was the reading of this article that prompted Pandit Gopinath Kaviraj , a recognized authority of oriental learning and a sincere and powerful yogi, to enter into frequent dialogues with him, and they would often share each other’s company discussing deep spiritual issues.

On July 28, 1967, at the age of fifty-one, he gave a talk, under the auspices of Kashi Tattva Sabha, at the Varanasi Theosophical Society titled, “Time, Space and Man,”7 and an article based on this talk was printed in the compilation, “Pathway to God.”8 In 2001 both articles were compiled in “Quest for Truth, followed by Time, Space and Man,”9 by Professor Jean Roger Riviere of France, who used to occasionally travel to India to visit Banmali. He was one of the two foreigners Banmali would entertain at any length. Unfortunately, Prof. Riviere’s publication of “Time, Space and Man” is not complete as Banmali originally published. As well, there is only a limited introduction to Prof. Banmali’s teachings as was described and taught to Prof. Riviere. This is found towards the end of the aforementioned compilation’s “Introduction” and reflects what Prof. Lahiri taught him. It is called ‘asparsha yoga’ and is described in the “Manduka Karika” by Gaudapada, a seventh-century C.E. commentary of the “ Mandukya Upanishad,” one of the Upanishads of Vedanta – spiritual commentaries appended to the ancient Vedas – commented on by Gaudapad in the non-dualist “advaita” tradition (one of ten schools of interpretation of the Upanishads), in his Karikas III – 39 & IV – 2. It should be stressed that it is not part of what he had learned from his teacher Tinkori Lahiri, his grandfather, but is a technique he learned outside that tradition.

Philosophy

When Prof. Banmali Lahiri was asked why he did not write more than his two articles, he would reply that nothing more can be written than that contained in his two articles, the main ideas of which are:

The importance of finding the eternal and infinite in the human. That the embodied human consciousness is a miniature replica of the infinite universal consciousness. That the human consciousness can reflect the infinite consciousness. The human being can achieve a stable unity with the infinite before death, making death irrelevant. That evolution proceeds in two directions: the descent of spiritual consciousness into matter and the ascent of matter into spiritual consciousness. That the scientific attempt to uncover the unknown is limitless, therefore futile, and that the proper quest to discover the truth of the matter requires an entirely different direction and methodology, which requires: Overcoming the difficulty of judging from a particular set of predisposed mental conditionings.

Overcoming the limitations of a body/mind-dependent point of reference.

The recognition of the lack of universal a-priori postulates independent of methodological assumptions.

The dissolution of the ego as a point of reference.

The acquisition of a thought-free consciousness as a new point of reference. The existence of an indeterminate – though not vague – substratum of Reality (Banmali’s capitalization) that can be experimentally verifiable by the elimination of a particular embodied frame of reference, a process of knowledge by “BEING THAT” (Banmali’s stress) where “the knowledge, the knower and the thing known converge and merge into a single whole.” That discussion is incapable of arriving at such knowledge, and that a person must work out the means as described. The risk that a society which diverges from the above principles will self-destruct.

There are other aspects to Prof. Lahiri’s philosophy not included in his articles. His practical advice as to how to organize life to include spiritual evolution was:

To divide the day into 3 equal parts, each comprising 8 hours. One part is to be used for making money (profession), a second part was for family and social life, and the third part was for sleep and spiritual development. When asked about sleep, he would say that the 3 parts were not strict as to their length. Thus, in his case, his work would be completed in much less than 8 hours, the section of family and social life was shorter as well, which would leave more time for the sleep/spiritual practices. If 6 hours looked after work, and 5 hours family and social life, then 13 hours would be left. He would stress that one should dedicate a minimum of 5 hours for sleep, which would leave 8 hours for spiritual practices, which is congruent with the initial program of 3 8-hour periods. To dedicate a portion of each and every day to spiritual practices. Exceptions were for travel (he would make journeys to visit family members not residing in Varanasi) and he did make one long pilgrimage trek to Badrinath in the high inner Himalayas. He would stress that difficulty was opportunity and that God was present even in a pile of dirty dishes. He would stress the importance of Brother Lawrence’s work, “The Practice of the Presence of God,” as a practical guide to living the divine life. Although he would mention that Shyamacharan Lahiri used his powers to occasionally give his disciples direct experience of spiritual reality, Banmali Lahiri used to say and stress that the function of a guru is simply to be the person on the crossroads to point out the right path. There is much more practical advice that Professor Lahiri would give his small circle of disciples, but stressed that, just like the letters of his great grandfather Shyamacharan Lahiri were written in a specific context to specific persons and should not be disseminated because without the specific context they would be meaningless and perhaps convey the wrong message when taken out of context, as well as his private publication of the commentaries of the Bhagavat Gita and commentaries on other works having been privately financed and published for strict distribution to his disciples, that any commentaries in a direct context of his spiritual practices would serve no purpose. All drugs such as cannabis and alcohol are detrimental to spiritual practices. The prime importance of celibacy and the antagonistic effect of sex on spiritual practice and attainment. To this end, he recommended marriage and the family life and the best environment for spiritual practice because not only could one free oneself of sexual experience by producing children, it would also free one from our ancestral debt of having been brought up without an expectation of reward. It would also be superior to the monk’s or asthete’s or sadhu’s apparent conquest over sex by shunning it, as it was superior to avoid sex with the constant possibility of having it than to lock one’s self out of sex, which – he used to explain – is like pressing down on a spring. He also lauded pursuing spiritual practices in society because he would say, “It is easy to drive a car on a flat plain with no cars, roads or pedestrians, but hard to drive in a city.” To this end, he said that spiritual attainment in society was possible whereas one could “BE THAT” in the act of performing one’s mundane duties. Prof. Banmali Lahiri used to say that the initiated male partner initiating the female partner sets up the best environment of all for spiritual practice and attainment. The prime importance to perform one’s practices without any expectation of results. That all valid spiritual practices lead to a state of consciousness that transcends space-time and is the state where there is no desire. With regards to the Abrahamic religions, Banmali said, “The god or the heavens of the Abrahamic religions do not exist. They are false promises in order to manipulate the masses.” Death is simply the dropping off of the gross physical adjunct of our greater self, and that the point of spiritual practice is to increase the state of consciousness beyond space-time so that when death comes, it comes in that state and thus is not death, but simple the shedding of an old skin. Near the end of his life Banmali said, “I am like a ripe fruit now, ready to be dropped on the ground by the Tree of Life! But the falling on the ground is not the end, but the beginning of sprouting a new tree from the seeds of the ripe fruit. Death is nothing but a mere change of form! The aim of Sadhana is to be free from the endless circle of these changes of Form only.”

Apart from his two articles, Banmali’s philosophy was especially influenced his great grandfather Shyamacharan Lahiri’s interpretation of the philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita. That interpretation postulates that the Kurukshetra war between two clans was symbolic of the inner war against the enemies of one’s spiritual evolution. The symbolism is dissected in detail in the works of Bhupendranath Sanyal3 and Pranabananda4 (Manmath Nath Mukherji), which takes into context the Gita within the broader Mahabharata, of which it forms a small part. The entire ancestry of the Mahabharata, starting from King Shantanu – who is the symbolic Atma-soul – proceeds from his two wives and culminates in two clans who eventually go to war on the ‘Kurukshetra’ battlefield. The symbolism is that the Kurukshetra battlefield is the human body, where the human being is bound by his actions, or ‘karma,’ and where two armies are at war. The ‘Kaurava’ clan army is that of bondage (to the sensual world, mind and ego) and the ‘Pandava’ clan army is the liberating force which leads to points nos. 4 & 7, as stated above.

Such an interpretation – Banmali used to comment – is the proper way to interpret spiritual works, and he would lament the misinterpretation of spiritual writings used as pretexts for violence, which he witnessed whenever there were uprisings between Hindus and Mohammedans. The Bengali neighborhood where he lived was embedded in a Muslim area of Varanasi, and whenever violence erupted between Muslims and Hindus, blood would often flow on his street.

Both of these works used to lie (amongst others) on the wooden ‘chauki’ platform on which Prof. Lahiri’s great grandfather performed his practices. The commentaries of Shyamacharan Lahiri that they contain were originally published privately, and only disseminated amongst his disciples because their yogic content would have no meaning to anyone who was not practicing the spiritual techniques he taught.

Another work Banmali used to consult was the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, a work on yoga which described techniques of uniting the spiritual sun and moon. When asked about astrology, he used to say, “To me there is only one planet, and that is the sun.” As for the western spiritual canon, the work he most praised was “The Practice of the Presence of God5” by Brother Lawrence. Professor Lahiri commented on many things which are beyond the scope of this brief biography and more information about Banmali and his ideas is available in a work of fiction entitled, “Highway of Spirits,” by Remi Peter Baronas, available at http://remibaronas.com , where Banmali is the inspiration for one of the characters.

Spelling Of Banmali’s Family Name

The commonly published transliteration of the family name is “Lahiri,” but it is curious that Professor Banmali used to write his last name, “Lahiry.”

In the Bengali and Devanagari scripts, there are two “i’s,” a short ”i” and a long “ī,” and a y, and whatever standard transliteration convention is used to transliterate Bengali or any of the dialects which use the Devanagari script (such as Sanskrit and Hindi), a distinction is made for each and every different consonant, its inflection and phonic variation. Banmali preferred to write “y” for the long “ī” not only on the byline on his published writings, as well as whenever he signed his name. Here, to make the spelling of his name congruent with the many sites where the family name of Lahiri is used, a simple ‘I’ is used to avoid confusion. With regards to the “r” of his name, the correct transliteration would be “ṛ” to denote the cerebral “r,” but since Banmali did not add the dot under the “r” in his surname, I will omit it.

It should be noted that the correct pronunciation of “Lahiṛi” is different to the native ear, than Lahiri as commonly pronounced by the western speaker. Furthermore, his first name is commonly spelled “Banamali” but if the sound of his name in pronounced correctly in Bengali or Hindi accents, phonetically it would be, “Banmali,” and this convention is followed here. The following is a scan of his signature:

References

1 Mind reading is one of the powers that Professor Lahiri had developed. The technique of mind reading is described in the Patanjali III – 19. Prof. Lahiri had developed other powers, but they were only discussed amongst his inner circle.

2 Gopinath Kaviraj. Bharatya Sanskriti aur Sadhana. In Hindi. Bihar Rashtra Parishad. Patna, Bihar. 1963.

3 Bhupendranath Sanyal. Hindi Prakashan Samiti. In Hindi. Bhagalpur, Bihar. 1966.

4 Pranav Gita. Pranavananda. In Hindi.

5 The Practice of the Presence of God. Brother Lawrence. 11th printing. Jan 1976. Flemming H. Revell Company. NJ. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 58-10227

6 Quest for Truth. B. Lahiry. First printed in Prajna (Banaras Hindu University Journal) – Vol VIII (2) – March 1963, pp 83-105 reprinted with an addendum in the same Journal, Vol X, March 1965, pp 69-96.

7 Time, Space and Man. Prof. B. Lahiry. Preprint from “Pathway to God,” pp 207-213 (citation needed) adapted from the lecture delivered on 28th July, 1967, under the auspices of Kashi Tatva (Sic) Sabha at the Theosophical Society Hall, Varnasi.

8 citation needed

9 Banamali Lahiry. Quest for Truth followed by Time, Space and Man. 2001. Indica Books, Varanasi ISBN 81-86569-20-0

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