17.
PROXY CURE AT A DISTANCE

SRI Mahadeva Iyer, a devotee of Sri Bhagavan, was
ailing in Madras from persistent hiccough for nearly a
month. His daughter wrote to Sri Bhagavan, appealing
to Him to bless her father and give relief to his distressing
ailment. On receipt of this letter, Sri Maharshi told me to
write to Sri Mahadeva Iyer that a paste of jaggery and
dried powdered ginger, if taken, would effect immediate
cure of his trouble.

      Then turning to Madhavan, His personal attendant,
Sri Bhagavan said: "We had some ready-made paste of
this medicine; can you find it?" Madhavan immediately
produced it. Bhagavan took a dose of it Himself, and
distributed the same paste among those around Him.1

He looked at me and said that I might write to
Sri Mahadeva Iyer by that very evening's post. I said in
jest: "Why, Bhagavan, Mahadevan is already cured.
Bhagavan has taken medicine for him!" And Bhagavan
gave a broad laugh.

¹ Sri Bhagavan's sense of unity was so intense that He would never
accept what was not shared with others. By first tasting the medicine
that He was going to send to His Madras devotee He made it holy as
a Prasad. Then on His normal principle: "if it is good for me it must
be good also for all these," He distributed it to all present.

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      I wrote to Sri Mahadeva Iyer from the Ashram office,
sut the next day's post brought us a letter from his daughter
to say that her father was relieved of his ailment at 1 p.m.
on the previous day. It was exactly the hour when
Sri Maharshi took the jaggery paste.2

Isn't this like the saying in Tamil: "The kurathi (gypsy)
was delivered of the child, though it was the kurava (her
husband) who took medicine on her behalf."

² Bhagavan never encouraged any talk of `miracles' but this did not
prevent His devotees from experiencing what cannot be explained by
normal physical science.

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