Master at Balaram's house — Devotees in trance — Bigotry condemned — The mind's inability to comprehend God — Master's visit to Keshab — God and His glory — Dangers of worldly life — Prayer and holy company — Earnest longing — Explanation of evil — Washing away the heart's impurities with tears — Need of a guru.
March 11, 1882
ABOUT EIGHT O'CLOCK in the
morning Sri Ramakrishna went as planned
to Balaram Bose's house in Calcutta. It was the day of the Dola-yatra.
Ram, Manomohan, Rakhal, (A beloved disciple of the Master,
later known as Swami Brahmananda.)
Nityagopal, and other devotees were with him. M.,
too, came, as bidden by the Master.
The devotees and the Master sang and danced in a state of divine
fervour.
Several of them were in an ecstatic mood. Nityagopal's chest glowed
with
the upsurge of emotion, and Rakhal lay on the floor in ecstasy,
completely
unconscious of the world. The Master put his hand on Rakhal's chest and
said: "Peace. Be quiet." This was Rakhal's first experience of ecstasy.
He
lived with his father in Calcutta and now and then visited the Master
at
Dakshineswar. About this time he had studied a short while in
Vidyasagar's
school at Syampukur.
When the music was over, the devotees sat down for their meal. Balaram
stood there humbly, like a servant. Nobody would have taken him for the
master of the house. M. was still a stranger to the devotees, having
met only
Narendra at Dakshineswar.
A few days later M. visited the Master at Dakshineswar. It was between
four and five o'clock in the afternoon. The Master and he were sitting
on
the steps of the Siva temples. Looking at the temple of Radhakanta,
across
the courtyard, the Master went into an ecstatic mood.
Since his nephew Hriday's dismissal from the temple, Sri Ramakrishna
had been living without an attendant. On account of his frequent
spiritual
moods he could hardly take care of himself. The lack of an attendant
caused
him great inconvenience.
Sri Ramakrishna was talking to Kali, the Divine Mother of the Universe.
He said: "Mother, everyone says, 'My watch alone is right.' The
Christians,
the Brahmos, the Hindus, the Mussalmans, all say, 'My religion alone is
true.' But, Mother, the fact is that nobody's watch is right. Who can
truly
understand Thee? But if a man prays to Thee with a warning heart, he
can reach Thee, through Thy grace, by any path. Mother, show me
sometime
how the Christians pray to Thee in their churches. But Mother, what
will people say if I go in? Suppose they make a fuss! Suppose they
don't
allow me to enter the Kali temple again! Well then, show me the
Christian
worship from the door of the church."
Another day the Master was seated on the small couch in his room, with
his usual beaming countenance. M. arrived with Kalikrishna, who did not
know where his friend M. was taking him. He had only been told: "If
you want to see a grog-shop, then come with me. You will see a huge jar
of wine there." M. related this to Sri Ramakrishna, who laughed about
it.
The Master said: "The bliss of worship and communion with God is the
true wine, the wine of ecstatic love. The goal of human life is to love
God.
Bhakti is the one essential thing. To know God through jnana and
reasoning
is extremely difficult."
Then the Master sang:
Who is there that can understand what Mother Kali is?
Even the six darsanas are powerless to reveal Her. . . .
The Master said, again: "The one goal of life is to cultivate
love for
God, the love that the milkmaids, the milkmen, and the cowherd boys of
Vrindavan felt for Krishna. When Krishna went away to Mathura, the
cowherds roamed about weeping bitterly because of their separation from
Him."
Saying this the Master sang, with his eyes turned upward:
Just now I saw a youthful cowherd
With a young calf in his arms;
There he stood, by one hand holding
The branch of a young tree.
"Where are You, Brother Kanai?" he cried;
But "Kanai" scarcely could he utter;
"Ka" .was as much as he could say.
He cried, "Where are You, Brother?"
And his eyes were filled with tears.
When M. heard this song of the Master's, laden with love, his eyes were moist with tears.
April 2, 1882
Sri Ramakrishna was sitting in the drawing-room of Keshab
Chandra
Sen's house in Calcutta; it was five o'clock in the afternoon. When
Keshab
was told of his arrival, he came to the drawing-room dressed to go out,
for
he was about to call on a sick friend. Now he cancelled his plan. The
Master
said to him: "You have so many things to attend to. Besides, you have
to
edit a newspaper. You have no time to come to Dakshineswar; so I have
come to see you. When I heard of your illness I vowed green coconut and
sugar to the Divine Mother for your recovery. I said to Her, 'Mother,
if
something happens to Keshab, with whom shall I talk in Calcutta?'"
Sri Ramakrishna spoke to Pratap and the other Brahmo devotees. M. was
seated near by. Pointing to him, the Master said to Keshab: "Will you
please ask him why he doesn't come to Dakshineswar any more? He
repeatedly tells me he is not attached to his wife and children." M.
had been
paying visits to the Master for about a month; his absence for a time
from
Dakshineswar called forth this remark. Sri Ramakrishna had asked M. to
write to him, if his coming were delayed.
Pundit Samadhyayi was present. The Brahmo devotees introduced him to
Sri Ramakrishna as a scholar well versed in the Vedas and the other
scriptures. The Master said, "Yes, I can see inside him through his
eyes,
as one can see the objects in a room through the glass door."
Trailokya sang. Suddenly the Master stood up and went into samadhi,
repeating the Mother's name. Coming down a little to the plane of sense
consciousness, he danced and sang:
I drink no ordinary wine, but Wine of Everlasting Bliss,
As I repeat my Mother Kali's name;
It so intoxicates my mind that people take me to be drunk!
First my guru gives molasses for the making of the Wine;
My longing is the ferment to transform it.
Knowledge, the maker of the Wine, prepares it for me then;
And when it is done, my mind imbibes it from the bottle of the mantra,
Taking the Mother's name to make it pure.
Drink of this Wine, says Ramprasad,1
and the four fruits2
of life are yours.
The Master looked at Keshab tenderly, as if Keshab were his
very own.
He seemed to fear that Keshab might belong to someone else, that is to
say, that he might become a worldly person. Looking at him, the Master
sang again:
We are afraid to speak, and yet we are
afraid to keep still;
Our minds, O Radha, half believe that we are about to lose you!
We tell you the secret that we know —
The secret whereby we ourselves, and others, with our help,
Have passed through many a time of peril;
Now it all depends on you.
Quoting the last part of the song, he said to Keshab: "That is
to say,
renounce everything and call on God. He alone is real; all else is
illusory.
Without the realization of God everything is futile. This is the great
secret."
The Master sat down again and began to converse with the devotees.
For a while he listened to a piano recital, enjoying it like a child.
Then he
was taken to the inner apartments, where he was served with
refreshments
and the ladies saluted him.
As the Master was leaving Keshab's house, the Brahmo devotees
accompanied
him respectfully to his carriage.
Sunday, April 9, 1882
Sri Ramakrishna was seated with his devotees in the
drawing-room of
Prankrishna Mukherji's house in Calcutta; it was between one and two
o'clock in the afternoon. Since Colonel Viswanath
(The Resident of the Nepalese Government in Calcutta,
and a devotee of the Master.) lived in that neighbourhood,
the Master intended to visit him before going to see Keshab at the
Lily Cottage. A number of neighbours and other friends of Prankrishna
had been invited to meet Sri Ramakrishna. They were all eager to hear
his
words.
MASTER: "God and His glory. This universe
is His glory. People see His
glory and forget everything. They do not seek God, whose glory is this
world. All seek to enjoy 'woman and gold'. But there is too much misery
and worry in that. This world is like the whirlpool of the Visalakshi.
(A stream near Sri Ramakrishna's birth-place.)
Once a boat gets into it there is no hope of its rescue. Again, the
world is like a
thorny bush: you have hardly freed yourself from one set of thorns
before
you find yourself entangled in another. Once you enter a labyrinth you
find
it very difficult to get out. Living in the world, a man becomes
scared, as it
were."
A DEVOTEE: "Then what is the way, sir?"
MASTER: "Prayer and the company of holy
men. You cannot get rid of
an ailment without the help of a physician. But it is not enough to be
in
the company of religious people only for a day. You should constantly
seek
it, for the disease has become chronic. Again, you can't understand the
pulse
rightly unless you live with a physician. Moving with him constantly,
you
learn to distinguish between the pulse of phlegm and the pulse of bile."
DEVOTEE: "What is the good of holy company?"
MASTER: "It begets yearning for
God. It begets love of God. Nothing
whatsoever is achieved in spiritual life without yearning. By
constantly
living in the company of holy men, the soul becomes restless for God.
This
yearning is like the state of mind of a man who has someone ill in the
family. His mind is in a state of perpetual restlessness, thinking how
the
sick person may be cured. Or again, one should feel a yearning for God
like the yearning of a man who has lost his job and is wandering from
one
office to another in search of work. If he is rejected at a certain
place which
has no vacancy, he goes there again the next day and inquires, 'Is
there any
vacancy today?'
"There is another way: earnestly praying to God. God is our very own.
We should say to Him: 'O God, what is Thy nature? Reveal Thyself to
me. Thou must show Thyself to me; for why else hast Thou created me?'
Some Sikh devotees once said to me, 'God is full of compassion.' I
said:
'But why should we call Him compassionate? He is our Creator. What is
there to be wondered at if He is kind to us? Parents bring up their
children.
Do you call that an act of kindness? They must act that way.' Therefore
we should force our demands on God. He is our Father and Mother, isn't
He? It the son demands his patrimony and gives up food and drink in
order
to enforce his demand, then the parents hand his share over to him
three
years before the legal time. Or when the child demands some pice from
his mother, and says over and over again: 'Mother, give me a couple of
pice.
I beg you on my knees!' — then the mother, seeing his earnestness, and
unable to bear it any more, tosses the money to him.
"There is another benefit from holy company. It helps one cultivate
discrimination between the Real and the unreal. God alone is the Real,
that
is to say, the Eternal Substance, and the world is unreal, that is to
say,
transitory. As soon as a man finds his mind wandering away to the
unreal,
he should apply discrimination. The moment an elephant stretches out
its
trunk to eat a plaintain-tree in a neighbour's garden, it gets a blow
from
the iron goad of the driver."
A NEIGHBOUR: "Why does a man have
sinful tendencies?"
MASTER: "In God's creation there are all
sorts of things. He has created
bad men as well as good men. It is He who gives us good tendencies, and
it is He again who gives us evil tendencies."
NEIGHBOUR: "In that case we aren't
responsible for our sinful actions, are we?"
MASTER: "Sin begets its own result. This
is God's law. Won't you burn your tongue if you chew a chilli? In his
youth
Mathur3
led a rather fast life; so he suffered from various diseases before his
death.
"One may not realize this in youth. I have looked into the hearth in
the
kitchen of the Kali temple when logs are being burnt. At first the wet
wood
bums rather well. It doesn't seem then that it contains much moisture.
But when the wood is sufficiently burnt, all the moisture runs back to
one
end. At last water squirts from the fuel and puts out the fire.
"So one should be careful about anger, passion, and greed. Take, for
instance, the case of Hanuman. In a fit of anger he burnt Ceylon. At
last he
remembered that Sita was living in the asoka grove. Then ,he began to
treble lest the fire should injure her."
NEIGHBOUR: "Why has God created
wicked people?"
MASTER: "That is His will, His play. In His maya there exists avidya
as well as vidya. Darkness is needed too. It reveals all the more the
glory of
light. There is no doubt that anger, lust, and greed are evils. Why,
then, has
God created them? In order to create saints. A man becomes a saint by
conquering the senses. Is there anything impossible for a man who has
subdued his passions? He can even realize God, through His grace.
Again,
see how His whole play of creation is perpetuated through lust.
"Wicked people are needed too. At one time the tenants of an estate
became unruly. The landlord had to send Golak Choudhury, who was a
ruffian. He was such a harsh administrator that the tenants trembled at
the
very mention of his name.
"There is need of everything. Once Sita said to her Husband: 'Rama,
it would be grand if every house in Ayodhya were a mansion! I find many
houses old and dilapidated.' 'But, my dear,' said Rama, 'if all the
houses
were beautiful ones, what would the masons do?' (Laughter.)
God has
created all kinds of things. He has created good trees, and poisonous
plants
and weeds as well. Among the animals there are good, bad, and all kinds
of creatures — tigers, lions, snakes, and so on."
NEIGHBOUR: "Sir, is it ever possible
to realize God while leading the life of a householder?"
MASTER: "Certainly. But as I said just
now, one must live in holy company
and pray unceasingly. One should weep for God. When the impurities
of the mind are thus washed away, one realizes God. The mind is like
a needle covered with mud, and God is like a magnet. The needle cannot
be united with the magnet unless it is free from mud. Tears wash away
the
mud, which is nothing but lust, anger, greed, and other evil
tendencies,
and the inclination to worldly enjoyments as well. As soon as the mud
is
washed away, the magnet attracts the needle, that is to say, man
realizes God.
Only the pure in heart see God. A fever patient has an excess of the
watery
element in his system. What can quinine do for him unless that is
removed?"
"Why shouldn't one realize God while living in the world? But, as I
said,
one must live in holy company, pray to God, weeping for His grace, and
now and then go into solitude. Unless the plants on a foot-path are
protected
at first by fences, they are destroyed by cattle."
NEIGHBOUR: "Then householders, too, will
have the vision of God, won't they?"
MASTER: "Everybody will surely be
liberated. But one should follow the
instructions of the guru; if one follows a devious path, one will
suffer in
trying to retrace one's steps. It takes a long time to achieve
liberation. A
man may fail to obtain it in this life. Perhaps he will realize God
only
after many births. Sages like Janaka performed worldly duties. They
performed them, bearing God in their minds, as a dancing-girl dances,
keeping
jars or trays on her head. Haven't you seen how the women in northwest
India walk, talking and laughing while carrying water-pitchers on their
heads?"
NEIGHBOUR "You just referred to the
instructions of the guru. How shall we find him?"
MASTER: "Anyone and everyone cannot
be a guru. A huge timber floats
on the water and can carry animals as well. But a piece of worthless
wood
sinks, if a man sits on it, and drowns him. Therefore in every age God
incarnates Himself as the guru, to teach humanity. Satchidananda alone
is
the guru.
"What is knowledge? And what is the nature of this ego? 'God alone is
the Doer, and none else' — that is knowledge. I am not the doer; I am a
mere instrument in His hand. Therefore I say: 'O Mother, Thou art the
Operator and I am the machine. Thou art the Indweller and I am the
house. Thou art the Driver and I am the carriage. I move as Thou movest
me. I do as Thou makest me do. I speak as Thou makest me speak. Not
I, not I, but Thou, but Thou.'"
From Prankrishna's house the Master went to Colonel Viswanath's and
from there to the Lily Cottage.