As Yogananda lay ill, Vivekananda said, “Jogin, you get well, let me die instead.” “Jogin, you are our crest jewel,” said Niranjanananda. One day Girish’s sister said to Yogananda: “Jogin, why don’t you ask Holy Mother to tell the Master to give you back your health?” Yogananda replied: “Sister, you don’t know their ways. They do what is right. My request will not change their will.”
Yogananda never prayed to Sri Ramakrishna to cure his disease. He was an illumined soul. He experienced that the Atman alone is real, and the body is made of five elements that disintegrate after death. An embodied being cannot escape pain and misery. So he silently endured his prarabdha karma (the result of deeds that were begun in former lives and are now working themselves out in the present one). There is a difference between an ordinary soul and an ever-free soul. The former attains liberation through self-knowledge, but the ever-free soul is the eternal companion of an avatar or divine incarnation.
Six months before Swami Yogananda’s death, Sri Ramakrishna appeared before him. Yogananda said: ‘Master, I don’t want to be born again. The lesson of this life is enough for me. Please give me final liberation.’ The Master replied: ‘You will have to come once more.’ ‘No, I won’t come.’ Swami Yogananda demanded, ‘Please release me forever.’ Immediately Sri Ramakrishna disappeared. Swami Yogananda went through six months of physical suffering, hoping that the Master would grant his request.
Knowing Swami Yogananda’s resolution, Girish at last said to him: ‘Brother, don’t you know that you have been suffering terribly these last six months? Your pain is causing pain to all of us. Please agree to the will of the Master. Don’t refuse to come back with the Master. Look here, Jogin! Don’t seek nirvana. Don’t think of the Master as pervading the entire universe, the sun and the moon forming His eyes. Think of the Master as He used to be with us, and thus thinking of Him, go to Him.’ At this Swami Yogananda said: ‘What! I have been suffering in the bed for the last six months? All right. Let the Master’s will be done. I am his servant. Whatever He asks me to do, I will do.’ Saying so, Swami Yogananda fully resigned himself to the Master.
Swami Yogananda passed away in Samadhi at 3:10 p.m. on 28 March 1899. Before his passing away, he said to Holy Mother, ‘Mother, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva and Sri Ramakrishna have come to take me.’ In the morning while performing worship, Holy Mother saw that the Master had come to take Swami Yogananda. When Yogananda breathed his last, Brahmachari Krishnalal cried out. Holy Mother was upstairs and she realized what had happened. She also burst into tears and said, “My Jogin has left me — who will now look after me?” Because Yogananda was the first disciple of the Master to die, Mother remarked with a deep sigh: “A brick has slipped from the structure; now the whole thing will come down.”
Before the body of Yogananda was taken to Kashi Mitra’s cremation ground in North Calcutta, Swamiji waved the light and offered flowers and sweets as a part of the ritual. Swamiji was so stunned that he did not go to the cremation ground. Brahmananda and other disciples and devotees went in a procession and cremated their beloved brother disciple’s body on the bank of the Ganges. Grief stricken, Swamiji did not go to Sri Ramakrishna’s shrine for three days. He remarked, “A beam is down and now the rafters will fall one after another.” Just before Yogananda’s death, Shivananda had asked him, “Jogin, do you remember the Master?” Yogananda replied, “Yes, I remember the Master more — even more — much more.”
“In Every Age I Come Back”
The Master said he would return after 100 years. Meanwhile, for those 100 years, he would live in the hearts of those who love him. The Master said this as he stood on the semicircular veranda in Dakshineswar, pointing towards the northwest. I (Sri Sarada Devi) told him I could not come again. Lakshmi also said she would not come again, even if she were chopped into shreds like tobacco leaves! The Master laughed and said: “How can you avoid coming? Our roots are twined together like the kalmi plant [a vine that grows on the surface of a pond]. Pull one stem and the whole clump will come forward.” (Source: Sri Sarada Devi and Her Divine Play)