Paramahansa Yogananda’s “God’s Boatman” offers his devotees the comforting knowledge that he will always remain their spiritual leader, or guru, throughout eternity, and he will not abandon them to delusion and despair. The poem reveals the empathy that a God-realized saint has for the suffering human beings in this world.
“I want to ply my boat, many times”
The speaker, who is a God-united saint, declares that he actually desires to return to earth as many times as is necessary to fetch those who have not gained the Superconsciousness that he has achieved. He metaphorically likens the space continuum between God-realization and earth-consciousness to an ocean across which he will travel by boat “from my home in heaven” to the “earth’s shores,” where his stranded fellows remain in delusion.
“I want to load my boat”
The speaker avers that he will “load [his] boat / With those waiting, thirsty ones / Who are left behind.” In fact, he will literally teach his yogic techniques to those who are open to them, to those who are suffering from the despair and misery that living in a physical body and with mentally agitated awareness causes.
The guru/speaker will figuratively transport his devotees across the great watery divide to the “opal pool / Of iridescent joy / Where [his] Father distributes / His all-desire-quenching liquid peace.” He will teach them to concentrate their efforts and make their minds one-pointed and clear through meditation until they are able to shed the tribulations of this world and enter the haven of bliss, where God will truly bless them.
“Oh, I will come again and again!”
The speaker insists that he “will come again and again!” The unselfishness of the God-united saint is beyond comprehension by those unrealized minds and hearts, whose very existence seems to dictate the necessity of remaining self-centered and self-focused as they identify with their flesh, race, country, gender, and their relatives and possessions.
Furthermore, this beloved Guru avers that he will suffer myriad inconveniences for his fellows; even if his feet have to bleed as he searches for them, he will come for them. He will come for them, “If need be, a trillion times — / So long as I know / One stray brother is left behind.” Who, without self-realization, can even fathom taking on the physical body with its bothers “a trillion times” just for sake of others?
“I want Thee, O God”
Turning to the beloved Divine, the speaker assures the Blessed Lord God that he desires God-realization, and he wants Him not only for himself but to be able to “give [Him] to all.” He supplicates to the Lord to be liberated from body delusion so that he may show others that they too can do as he has done, that they too can achieve the blessed state of superconscious awareness.
He reiterates his plea to the Lord; he desires this ultimate liberation “[f]rom the bondage to the body, / That [he] may show others / How they can free themselves.” He wants God’s “everlasting bliss / Only that [he] may share it with others.”
In his ultimate unselfishness, the Great Guru demonstrates, as Jesus did, that he desires above else to “show all [his] brothers / The way to happiness / Forever and forever, in [the Ultimate Reality].”
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