Pinnacle Of Spirituality

Author(s): Kumarpal Desai
Publisher: Raj Saubhag Satsang Mandal

Page 56

20. An Extraordinary Poet
Afew months before he wrote Mokshamala, Shrimad was in Morvi. He attended
a public demonstration of memory skills known as Ashtavdhan by the then-famous Shankarlal Maheshvar Shastri in a Jain hall. The demonstration was basically attending simultaneously to several (in this case eight) tasks of varying complexity.
Shrimad observed the whole process very carefully and tried to repeat it himself. The very next day, with some friends in Morvi's Vasantbag park, he succeeded in performing 8 tasks even more complex than those performed in the hall. His friends, in their excitement, told everyone about it, and the next day, in the very same Jain hall that the 8 tasks had been performed two days earlier, Shrimad simultaneously performed twelve tasks in front of a large audience.
Shrimad had until now been known for his poetry and his learning. His fame now spread further. In Jamnagar he performed sixteen different tasks before an audience of scholars, two of whom had not been able to perform this way despite ten years of practice. Shrimad was given the title of 'Diamond of India' (Hind-na-Hira). He then performed 16 tasks before an assembly of 2000 people in Wadhvan city in the presence of an English Colonel, H. L. Nutt and other dignitaries.
As a result of this performance in Wadhvan, his performances were described in various journals and newspapers in English and Gujarati. In Botad, he gave a performance of 52 such simultaneous tasks with no prior preparation whatsoever for a wealthy friend called Harilal Shivlal. On this occasion his tasks included mathematical calculations, exercises involving the completion of half-finished verses and the composition of verses on various subjects. He also was given four hundred words in random order in 16 languages including Greek, Arabic, Latin, English, Sanskrit, Urdu and had to put them back in order, by case.
It is said that he could memorise 500 shlokas (verses) in an hour.
In Vikram Samvat (VS) 1943, he performed in Mumbai the extraordinary feat of Shatavadhan, simultaneously attending to a hundred diverse activities, at the Faramji Cawasji Institute. This demonstration astounded Dr. Peterson and the Judge of the Mumbai High Court Justice Sir Charles Sargent.
When asked what the secret behind this power was, Shrimad in his mystic style responded that it was impossible without purity of mind and that it could not be taught. Shrimad was now famous as a poet with extraordinary mental faculties.