MARRIAGE AND AFTER
But in a few months his health showed improvement, and he recovered
to some extent his natural buoyancy of spirit. His happy mother was encouraged
to think it might be a good time to arrange his marriage. The boy was
now twenty-three years old. A wife would bring him back to earth. And she
was delighted when her son welcomed her suggestion. Perhaps he saw in it
the finger of God.
Saradamani, a little girl of five, lived in the neighbouring village of
Jayrambati. Even at this age she had been praying to God to make her character
as stainless and fragrant as the white tuberose. Looking at the full
moon, she would say: "O God, there are dark spots even on the moon. But
make my character spotless." It was she who was selected as the bride for
Sri Ramakrishna.
The marriage ceremony was duly performed. Such early marriage in India
is in the nature of a betrothal, the marriage being consummated when the
girl attains puberty. But in this case the marriage remained for ever
unconsummated. Sri Ramakrishna lived at Kamarpukur about a year and a half
and then returned to Dakshineswar.
Hardly had he crossed the threshold of the Kali temple when he found
himself again in the whirlwind. His madness reappeared tenfold. The same
meditation and prayer, the same ecstatic moods, the same burning sensation,
the same weeping, the same sleeplessness, the same indifference to the body
and the outside world, the same divine delirium. He subjected himself to
fresh disciplines in order to eradicate greed and lust, the two great
impediments to spiritual progress. With a rupee in one hand and some earth in the
other, he would reflect on the comparative value of these two for the
realization of God, and finding them equally worthless he would toss them,
with equal indifference, into the Ganges. Women he regarded as the
manifestations of the Divine Mother. Never even in a dream did he feel
the impulses of lust. And to root out of his mind the idea of caste
superiority, he cleaned a pariahs house with his long and neglected
hair. When he would sit in meditation, birds would perch on his head and
peck in his hair for grains of food. Snakes would crawl over his body, and
neither would be aware of the other. Sleep left him altogether. Day and
night, visions flitted before him. He saw the sannyasi who had previously
killed the "sinner" in him again coming out of his body, threatening him
with the trident, and ordering him to concentrate on God. Or the same
sannyasi would visit distant places, following a luminous path, and bring
him reports of what was happening there. Sri Ramakrishna used to say later
that in the case of an advanced devotee the mind itself becomes the guru,
living and moving like an embodied being.
Rani Rasmani, the foundress of the temple garden, passed away in 1861.
After her death her son-in-law Mathur became the sole executor of the estate.
He placed himself and his resources at the disposal of Sri Ramakrishna and
began to look after his physical comfort. Sri Ramakrishna later spoke of
him as one of his five "suppliers of stores" appointed by the Divine Mother.
Whenever a desire arose in his mind, Mathur fulfilled it without hesitation.