15

The Wonder-Working
Preacher of Ahimsa

uni Sushil Kumarji is a person with

mysterious powers. He had become invisible
before he was scheduled to leave on his
foreign tour. T h e more conservative Jains had been
violently opposed to his world tour because it meant
flouting the traditional tenets laid down by Jainism,
which permitted monks to travel only on foot. Here, he
was going to board an aeroplane, which unleashed a
storm of opposition within the sect. It didn't die down
even w h e n the Muniji clarified the matter quoting
instances when Mahavira himself had crossed the river
Ganges several times.
O n the eve of his departure, some of his adversaries
came looking for Muni Sushil Kumarji, with a view to
prevent him from boarding the plane. Muniji was
sitting rapt in meditation right in front of them, yet
they seemed unable to perceive him. In fact they asked
several of his disciples where he was! We were wonderstruck because he was sitting large as life before them,
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but we didn't say a word. They passed by him several

times, looked high and low and finally departed. Such
is his power."
This was Mr Tej Prakash Kaushik speaking about the
first monk of the Jain religious sect to leave his
country's shores in its three thousand year history. The
Muniji departed on a foreign tour to preach a Universal
Religion to people in Canada and the United States.
He took with him his close disciple, Ashok Muni. Both
were clad in the simple vestments of Jain monks, with
white sheets to wrap around themselves and a cloth
across their mouths to prevent insects and germs from
being caught and destroyed in the course of their
inhalation. They also carried brooms made of wool to
brush living creatures from their path, lest they
unwittingly step on them.
India's ten million Jains all owe allegiance to their
founder, Mahavira who preached his creed of nonviolence in the 6th century B.C. He enjoined on them
to be vegetarians, prescribing a diet of cereals,
vegetables, milk and ghee and prohibited them from
taking life in any form. Their monks took the vow of
celibacy; constrained to walk barefoot and employ no
other means of locomotion.
T h e Muniji incurred the displeasure of the more
orthodox by flouting two of these tenets-once when he
boarded a plane in Delhi, though he dutifully walked
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the twenty miles to the airport and the other time when
he put on a pair of rubber sandals at the insistence of
officials at Honolulu airport.
The Muniji brushed aside the objections of his rigid
kinsmen by saying, "If our religion is for humankind
then we must make use of modern conveyance."
Muni Sushil Kumarji otherwise leads a frugal life,
observing all the austere tenets of Jainism rigorously.
He lives in a small room, sleeps on the floor even in the
US; does all his chores without the help of servants and
meditates at 4 a.m. daily. N o woman is allowed into his
presence after sundown and even when they do come
for darshan in the course of the day, he keeps his eyes
lowered. It is said there is a ritual in which he
periodically has his hair pulled out w h e n he is
meditating, just to prove that a Yogi in his sublime
trance-state feels no pain.
In Chicago, the Muniji astonished people with rare
psychic feats. In a private psychiatric hospital there, he
went into a semi-trance state and diagnosed the
emotional states of people from the colours of their
auras, which he declared he could perceive. T h e
symptoms he relayed were infallibly accurate.
A n o t h e r feat he demonstrated was varying the
temperature of different parts of his body at will. Yogis
who have advanced far in their meditative techniques,
as we have seen, are able to do this merely by
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concentrating on that particular part of the anatomy.

The Muniji was also able to change his brain-wave
states from Beta (wide awake) to Alpha (deeply relaxed
and perceptive) and Theta (light trance, recovery and
pre-sleep). He spoke of meditative trances in which the
bodily functions ceased and even the mind died. Just a
void remained and you entered astral worlds where the
intellect did not apply and experienced a rapture-which
you could not put into words.
Dr. J.S. Martindale, a staff psychologist said that the
Muniji's divination of emotional states in others, was
done "through some kind of telepathic communication.
W h a t he did was quite real and within the bounds of
what we know can happen. In India, mystics are able to
diagnose ailments in various parts of the body, to tell if
they (people) have been unwell, are unwell or are going
to be unwell."
More spectacular is a feat attributed to the
supernormal power of Muni Sushil Kumar by his
follower Mr Tej Prakash. In his own words, "Once
when I was in the mist of a house-warming ceremony,
an incident occurred, which left me baffled and
ruminative for days. I had invited a friend of mine,
Krishan Sharma who had brought his six-year-old son
along with him. While the grown-ups were engaged in
exchanging pleasantries, the child climbed up the
window ledge, lost his balance and plummeted down
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four stories. There was pandemonium all around. We

went downstairs and saw the child lying unconscious in
a pool of blood. Somebody brought a sheet to wrap up
the boy, while another man went to inform Muni Sushil
Kumar about the disaster."
"We were just carrying the child to Gangaram
Hospital w h e n we were intercepted by the Muniji
himself. H e touched the still form of the boy and
blessed him with jivan daan, a fresh lease of life.
"At the hospital, a strange thing happened. We
unwrapped the boy and laid him down on the table for
examination, while one of us told the doctor exactly
how bad a fall the boy had had. Then we all filed out.
Imagine our surprise when the doctor appeared a few
minutes later and asked us to take him away. My first
thought was that he was dead but the white-robed
specialist said, "Are you joking? This boy hasn't fallen
from the fourth floor at all! Why do you exaggerate so
much? H e must have had a slight toss somewhere.
There are a few bruises. I have dressed them and you
can take' him away. T h e n I will have room here for
more serious cases."
We just stared in consternation at each other, not
knowing what to say. But we were convinced that this
was the supreme power of the Muniji. But how o n
earth could we convey all this to a practical man of
medicine?"
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Sushil Kumarji doesn't profess to be the incarnation

of any God. He declares however that this is his
seventh birth, that he was a sanyasi in all of them and
that he is destined to be born once more in his eighth
and last exile on earth, as is revealed by the Bhrigu
Samhita, after which he will attain moksha.
Muni Sushil Kumar was born on 15 June 1926 in a
small village called Shikohpur, now known as
Sushilgarh in Haryana.. At the age of eight, he left
home, never to return. He went to Shri Chotey Lalji
Maharaj and became his staunch disciple. Just before
his twenty-fourth birthday, Sushil Kumarji became a
Muni and was initiated into the rather austere order of
jain monks, giving up the many temptations of the
mundane world.
H e crossed several examinations in his brilliant
academic career, namely Shastri, Prabhakar, Acharya,
Sahitya Ratna, Vidya Ratna and others. He also
l a u n c h e d two magazines called Pariksha and Naya
Sahitya. For a while he was organiser of the Literary
Department of the Stanakvasi Jain Sangh. He had in
him the attributes of a poet, historian, writer, orator
and ascetic, which enabled him to cull exactly what he
wanted from life and make it coherent for the masses.
H e believed implicitly in the importance of education
and established three schools-the Bhagwan Mahavir
Vishwa Vidyapeeth affiliated to the Rashtriya Sanskrit
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Sanstan; the Shri Mahavir Vishwa Vidyapeeth affiliated

to the Varanaseya Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya and the
Ahimsa Ayurvedic Maha-vidyalaya in Delhi.
His ideal was an inter-religious coordination - a
harmonious blend of all the faiths of the world. He
believed the present state of strife led to schisms, which
pushed people further apart instead of uniting them in
a common philosophy. He drew a simpler analogy by
comparing all religions to cattle. He said, "It struck me
that all milk is white, in spite of the different coloured
kine from whom it was milked." By the same reasoning,
it followed that all religions yielded t h e same
wholesome fruits but we cavilled at the outward
differences and lost sight of the underlying unity.
He said the experience of communing with the
Divine and the act of meditation which achieved it,
was not the prerogative of any particular religion but
was the property of Buddhism, Sikhism, Christianity,
Islam, Hinduism and other faiths alike. The truth was
not with any one religion. In fact according to him,
"Anyone who says he is the only one in possession of
the truth, is not telling the truth."
T h e Founder of a very popular organisation, "The
World Fellowship of Religions', Muni Sushil Kumarji
preaches unity of all religions based on the cult of
Ahimsa. India's ten million Jains do not believe in any
specific God but think each man has implicit within
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him, the potentiality to ascend divine heights, if only

he takes the trouble to kindle the spirit awake. Muniji
carries the doctrine of Ahimsa a step further when he
says
that one can flout the cult not merely by destroying life but even by thinking ill of others, offending them
in devious ways or wounding their sentiments.
His foreign tour, according to him, was aimed at
neither promoting Jainism nor discussing theology but
rather showing the world the underlying unity and
oneness which lies at the root of diverse religions. His
cause gleaned active support in India and was patronised by political stalwarts like Dr Rajendra Prasad,
Dr S. Radhakrishnan, Shri Maulana Abul Kalam Azad,
Pandit Jawahar Lai Nehru, Shri Morarji Desai, Shri Lai
Bahadur Shashtri, Shri Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and Smt
Indira Gandhi.
Mere science and technology, according to Muni
Sushil Kumar, are n o t sufficient to resolve our
problems. "Truth," he feels, "is eternal. Science and
religion must go together if the world is to be saved."

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