It is hard to say when Naren actually accepted
Sri Ramakrishna as his guru. As far as the master
was concerned, the spiritual relationship was established at
the first meeting at Dakshineswar, when he had
touched Naren, stirring him to his inner depths. From that
moment he had implicit faith in the disciple and bore him a
great love. But he encouraged Naren in the independence of
his thinking. The love and faith of the Master acted as
a restraint upon the impetuous youth and became his
strong shield against the temptations of the world. By
gradual steps the disciple was then led from doubt to certainty,
and from anguish of mind to the bliss of the Spirit.
This, however, was not an easy attainment.
Sri Ramakrishna, perfect teacher that he was,
never laid down identical disciplines for disciples of
diverse temperaments. He did not insist that Narendra
should follow strict rules about food, nor did he ask him to
believe in the reality of the gods and goddesses of
Hindu mythology. It was not necessary for Narendra's
philosophic mind to pursue the disciplines of concrete worship. But
a strict eye was kept on Naren's practice of
discrimination, detachment, self-control, and regular meditation.
Sri Ramakrishna enjoyed Naren's vehement arguments
with the other devotees regarding the dogmas and creeds
of religion and was delighted to hear him tear to shreds their
unquestioning beliefs. But when, as often happened,
Naren teased the gentle Rakhal for showing reverence to
the Divine Mother Kali, the Master would not tolerate
these attempts to unsettle the brother disciple's faith in the
forms of God.
As a member of the Brahmo Samaj, Narendra
accepted its doctrine of monotheism and the Personal God. He
also believed in the natural depravity of man. Such
doctrines of non-dualistic Vedanta as the divinity of the soul and
the oneness of existence he regarded as blasphemy; the
view that man is one with God appeared to him pure
nonsense. When the master warned him against thus limiting
God's infinitude and asked him to pray to God to reveal to
him His true nature, Narendra smiled. One day he was
making fun of Sri Ramakrishna's non-dualism before a friend
and said, 'What can be more absurd than to say that this jug
is God, this cup is God, and that we too are God?' Both
roared with laughter.
Just then the Master appeared. Coming to learn
the cause of their fun, he gently touched Naren and
plunged into deep samadhi. The touch produced a magic effect,
and Narendra entered a new realm of consciousness. He
saw the whole universe permeated by the Divine Spirit
and returned home in a daze. While eating his meal, he felt
the presence of Brahman in everything — in the food, and
in himself too. While walking in the street, he saw
the carriages, the horses, the crowd, and himself as if made
of the same substance. After a few days the intensity of
the vision lessened to some extent, but still he could see
the world only as a dream. While strolling in a public park
of Calcutta, he struck his head against the iron railing, several
times, to see if they were real or a mere illusion of the
mind. Thus he got a glimpse of non-dualism, the fullest
realization of which was to come only later, at the Cossipore garden.
Sri Ramakrishna was always pleased when
his disciples put to the test his statements or behaviour
before accepting his teachings. He would say: 'Test me as
the money-changers test their coins. You must not believe
me without testing me thoroughly.' The disciples often
heard him say that his nervous system had undergone a
complete change as a result of his spiritual experiences, and that
he could not bear the touch of any metal, such as gold or
silver. One day, during his absence in Calcutta, Narendra hid
a coin under Ramakrishna's bed. After his return when
the Master sat on the bed, he started up in pain as if stung
by an insect. The mattress was examined and the hidden
coin was found.
Naren, on the other hand, was often tested by
the Master. One day, when he entered the Master's room,
he was completely ignored. Not a word of greeting
was uttered. A week later he came back and met with the
same indifference, and during the third and fourth visits saw
no evidence of any thawing of the Master's frigid attitude.
At the end of a month Sri Ramakrishna said to
Naren, 'I have not exchanged a single word with you all this
time, and still you come.'
The disciple replied: 'I come to Dakshineswar
because I love you and want to see you. I do not come here to
hear your words.'
The Master was overjoyed. Embracing the
disciple, he said: 'I was only testing you. I wanted to see if you
would stay away on account of my outward indifference. Only a
man of your inner strength could put up with
such indifference on my part. Anyone else would have left
me long ago.'
On one occasion Sri Ramakrishna proposed to
transfer to Narendranath many of the spiritual powers that he
had acquired as a result of his ascetic disciplines and visions
of God. Naren had no doubt concerning the Master's possessing such
powers. He asked if they would help
him to realize God. Sri Ramakrishna replied in the negative
but added that they might assist him in his future work as
a spiritual teacher. 'Let me realize God first,' said Naren,
'and then I shall perhaps know whether or not I
want supernatural powers. If I accept them now, I may
forget God, make selfish use of them, and thus come to grief.'
Sri Ramakrishna was highly pleased to see his chief
disciple's single-minded devotion.
Several factors were at work to mould the
personality of young Narendranath. Foremost of these were his
inborn spiritual tendencies, which were beginning to
show themselves under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna,
but against which his rational mind put up a strenuous
fight. Second was his habit of thinking highly and acting
nobly, disciplines acquired from a mother steeped in the
spiritual heritage of India. Third were his
broadmindedness and regard for truth wherever found, and his
sceptical attitude towards the religious beliefs and social
conventions of the Hindu society of his time. These he had
learnt from his English-educated father, and he was
strengthened in them through his own contact with Western culture.
With the introduction in India of English
education during the middle of the nineteenth century, as we have
seen, Western science, history, and philosophy were
studied in the Indian colleges and universities. The educated
Hindu youths, allured by the glamour, began to mould
their thought according to this new light, and Narendra
could not escape the influence. He developed a great respect
for the analytical scientific method and subjected many of
the Master's spiritual visions to such scrutiny. The
English poets stirred his feelings, especially Wordsworth
and Shelley, and he took a course in Western medicine
to understand the functioning of the nervous
system, particularly the brain and spinal cord, in order to find
out the secrets of Sri Ramakrishna's trances. But all this
only deepened his inner turmoil.
John Stuart Mill's Three Essays on
Religion upset his boyish theism and the easy optimism
imbibed from
the Brahmo Samaj. The presence of evil in nature and
man haunted him and he could not reconcile it at all with
the goodness of an omnipotent Creator. Hume's scepticism
and Herbert Spencer's doctrine of the Unknowable filled
his mind with a settled philosophical agnosticism. After
the wearing out of his first emotional freshness and
naivete, he was beset with a certain dryness and incapacity for
the old prayers and devotions. He was filled with an
ennui which he concealed, however, under his jovial
nature. Music, at this difficult stage of his life, rendered him
great help; for it moved him as nothing else and gave him
a glimpse of unseen realities that often brought tears to
his eyes.
Narendra did not have much patience with
humdrum reading, nor did he care to absorb knowledge from
books as much as from living communion and personal
experience. He wanted life to be kindled by life,
and thought kindled by thought. He studied Shelley under
a college friend, Brajendranath Seal, who later became
the leading Indian philosopher of his time, and deeply felt
with the poet his pantheism, impersonal love, and vision of
a glorified millennial humanity. The universe, no longer
a mere lifeless, loveless mechanism, was seen to contain
a spiritual principle of unity. Brajendranath, moreover,
tried to present him with a synthesis of the Supreme
Brahman of Vedanta, the Universal Reason of Hegel, and the
gospel of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity of the French
Revolution. By accepting as the principle of morals the
sovereignty of the Universal Reason and the negation of the
individual, Narendra achieved an intellectual victory over
scepticism and materialism, but no peace of mind.
Narendra now had to face a new difficulty. The
'ballet of bloodless categories' of Hegel and his creed of
Universal Reason required of Naren a suppression of the
yearning and susceptibility of his artistic nature and
joyous temperament, the destruction of the cravings of his
keen and acute senses, and the smothering of his free and
merry conviviality. This amounted almost to killing his own
true self. Further, he could not find in such a philosophy
any help in the struggle of a hot-blooded youth against
the cravings of the passions, which appeared to him as
impure, gross, and carnal. Some of his musical associates were
men of loose morals for whom he felt a bitter and
undisguised contempt.
Narendra therefore asked his friend Brajendra if
the latter knew the way of deliverance from the bondage
of the senses, but he was told only to rely upon Pure Reason
and to identify the self with it, and was promised
that through this he would experience an ineffable peace.
The friend was a Platonic transcendentalist and did not
have faith in what he called the artificial prop of grace, or
the mediation of a guru. But the problems and difficulties
of Narendra were very different from those of his
intellectual friend. He found that mere philosophy was
impotent in the hour of temptation and in the struggle for his
soul's deliverance. He felt the need of a hand to save, to
uplift, to protect — shakti or power outside his rational mind
that would transform his impotence into strength and
glory. He wanted a flesh-and-blood reality established in
peace and certainty, in short, a living guru, who, by
embodying perfection in the flesh, would compose the commotion
of his soul.
The leaders of the Brahmo Samaj, as well as those
of the other religious sects, had failed. It was only
Ramakrishna who spoke to him with authority, as none
had spoken before, and by his power brought peace into
the troubled soul and healed the wounds of the spirit. At
first Naren feared that the serenity that possessed him in
the presence of the Master was illusory, but his misgivings
were gradually vanquished by the calm assurance
transmitted to him by Ramakrishna out of his own experience
of Satchidananda Brahman — Existence, Knowledge, and
Bliss Absolute. (This account of the struggle
of Naren's collegiate days
summarizes an article on Swami Vivekananda by Brajendranath Seal,
published in the Life of Swami Vivekananda by the
Advaita Ashrama,
Mayavati, India.)
Narendra could not but recognize the contrast of
the Sturm und Drang of his soul with the serene
bliss in
which Sri Ramakrishna was always bathed. He begged the
Master to teach him meditation, and Sri Ramakrishna's reply
was to him a source of comfort and strength. The Master
said: 'God listens to our sincere prayer. I can swear that you
can see God and talk with Him as intensely as you see me
and talk with me. You can hear His words and feel His
touch.' Further the Master declared: 'You may not believe in
divine forms, but if you believe in an Ultimate Reality who is
the Regulator of the universe, you can pray to Him thus:
"O God, I do not know Thee. Be gracious to reveal to me
Thy real nature." He will certainly listen to you if your
prayer is sincere.'
Narendra, intensifying his meditation under
the Master's guidance, began to lose consciousness of the
body and to feel an inner peace, and this peace would
linger even after the meditation was over. Frequently he felt
the separation of the body from the soul. Strange
perceptions came to him in dreams, producing a sense of
exaltation that persisted after he awoke. The guru was
performing his task in an inscrutable manner, Narendra's
friends observed only his outer struggle; but the real
transformation was known to the teacher alone — or perhaps to
the disciple too.
In 1884, when Narendranath was preparing for
the B.A. examination, his family was struck by a calamity.
His father suddenly died, and the mother and children
were plunged into great grief. For Viswanath, a man of
generous nature, had lived beyond his means, and his
death burdened the family with a heavy debt. Creditors, like
hungry wolves, began to prowl about the door, and to
make matters worse, certain relatives brought a lawsuit for
the partition of the ancestral home. Though they lost
it, Narendra was faced, thereafter, with poverty. As the
eldest male member of the family, he had to find the
wherewithal for the feeding of seven or eight mouths and began to
hunt a job. He also attended the law classes. He went about
clad in coarse clothes, barefoot, and hungry. Often he
refused invitations for dinner from friends, remembering
his starving mother, brothers, and sisters at home. He
would skip family meals on the fictitious plea that he had
already eaten at a friend's house, so that the people at home
might receive a larger share of the scanty food. The Datta
family was proud and would not dream of soliciting help
from outsiders. With his companions Narendra was his
usual gay self. His rich friends no doubt noticed his pale
face, but they did nothing to help. Only one friend
sent occasional anonymous aid, and Narendra
remained grateful to him for life. Meanwhile, all his efforts to
find employment failed. Some friends who earned money in
a dishonest way asked him to join them, and a rich
woman sent him an immoral proposal, promising to put an end
to his financial distress. But Narendra gave to these a
blunt rebuff. Sometimes he would wonder if the world were
not the handiwork of the Devil — for how could one
account for so much suffering in God's creation?
One day, after a futile search for a job, he sat
down, weary and footsore, in the big park of Calcutta in
the shadow of the Ochterlony monument. There some
friends joined him and one of them sang a song, perhaps to
console him, describing God's abundant grace.
Bitterly Naren said: 'Will you please stop that
song? Such fancies are, no doubt, pleasing to those who are
born with silver spoons in their mouths. Yes, there was a
time when I, too, thought like that. But today these ideas
appear to me a mockery.'
The friends were bewildered.
One morning, as usual, Naren left his bed
repeating God's name, and was about to go out in search of
work after seeking divine blessings. His mother heard the
prayer and said bitterly: 'Hush, you fool! You have been
crying yourself hoarse for God since your childhood. Tell me
what has God done for you?' Evidently the crushing poverty
at home was too much for the pious mother.
These words stung Naren to the quick. A doubt
crept into his mind about God's existence and His Providence.
It was not in Naren's nature to hide his feelings.
He argued before his friends and the devotees of
Sri Ramakrishna about God's non-existence and the
futility of prayer even if God existed. His over-zealous
friends thought he had become an atheist and ascribed to
him many unmentionable crimes, which he had
supposedly committed to forget his misery. Some of the devotees
of the Master shared these views. Narendra was angry
and mortified to think that they could believe him to have
sunk so low. He became hardened and justified drinking
and the other dubious pleasures resorted to by miserable
people for a respite from their suffering. He said, further, that
he himself would not hesitate to follow such a course if
he were assured of its efficacy. Openly asserting that
only cowards believed in God for fear of hell-fire, he
argued the possibility of God's non-existence and quoted Western
philosophers in support of his position. And when
the devotees of the Master became convinced that he
was hopelessly lost, he felt a sort of inner satisfaction.
A garbled report of the matter reached Sri
Ramakrishna, and Narendra thought that perhaps the
Master, too, doubted his moral integrity. The very idea
revived his anger. 'Never mind,' he said to himself. 'If good
or bad opinion of a man rests on such flimsy grounds, I
don't care.'
But Narendra was mistaken. For one day
Bhavanath, a devotee of the master and an intimate friend of
Narendra, cast aspersions on the latter's character, and the
Master said angrily: 'Stop, you fool! The Mother has told me
that it is simply not true. I shan't look at your face if you
speak to me again that way.'
The fact was that Narendra could not, in his heart
of hearts, disbelieve in God. He remembered the
spiritual visions of his own boyhood and many others that he
had experienced in the company of the Master. Inwardly
he longed to understand God and His ways. And one day
he gained this understanding. It happened in the
following way:
He had been out since morning in a soaking rain
in search of employment, having had neither food nor
rest for the whole day. That evening he sat down on the
porch of a house by the roadside, exhausted. He was in a
daze. Thoughts began to flit before his mind, which he could
not control. Suddenly he had a strange vision, which
lasted almost the whole night. He felt that veil after veil
was removed from before his soul, and he understood
the reconciliation of God's justice with His mercy. He came to
know — but he never told how — that misery could exist
in the creation of a compassionate God without impairing
His sovereign power or touching man's real self. He
understood the meaning of it all and was at peace. Just before
daybreak, refreshed both in body and in mind, he returned home.
This revelation profoundly impressed
Narendranath. He became indifferent to people's opinion and
was convinced that he was not born to lead an ordinary
worldly life, enjoying the love of a wife and children and
physical luxuries. He recalled how the several proposals of
marriage made by his relatives had come to nothing, and he
ascribed all this to God's will. The peace and freedom of the
monastic life cast a spell upon him. He determined to renounce
the world, and set a date for this act. Then, coming to
learn that Sri Ramakrishna would visit Calcutta that very
day, he was happy to think that he could embrace the life of
a wandering monk with his guru's blessings.
When they met, the Master persuaded his disciple
to accompany him to Dakshineswar. As they arrived in
his room, Sri Ramakrishna went into an ecstatic mood and
sang a song, while tears bathed his eyes. The words of the
song clearly indicated that the Master knew of the
disciple's secret wish. When other devotees asked him about
the cause of his grief, Sri Ramakrishna said, 'Oh, never
mind, it is something between me and Naren, and nobody
else's business.' At night he called Naren to his side and
said with great feeling: 'I know you are born for Mother's
work. I also know that you will be a monk. But stay in the
world as long as I live, for my sake at least.' He wept again.
Soon after, Naren procured a temporary job, which
was sufficient to provide a hand-to-mouth living for the family.
One day Narendra asked himself why, since Kali,
the Divine Mother listened to Sri Ramakrishna prayers,
should not the Master pray to Her to relieve his poverty. When
he told Sri Ramakrishna about this idea, the latter
inquired why he did not pray himself to Kali, adding
that Narendranath suffered because he did not
acknowledge Kali as the Sovereign Mistress of the universe.
'Today,' the Master continued, 'is a Tuesday,
an auspicious day for the Mother's worship. Go to Her
shrine in the evening, prostrate yourself before the image,
and pray to Her for any boon; it will be granted. Mother
Kali is the embodiment of Love and Compassion. She is
the Power of Brahman. She gives birth to the world by
Her mere wish. She fulfils every sincere prayer of Her devotees.'
At nine o'clock in the evening, Narendranath went
to the Kali temple. Passing through the courtyard, he
felt within himself a surge of emotion, and his heart leapt
with joy in anticipation of the vision of the Divine
Mother. Entering the temple, he cast his eyes upon the image
and found the stone figure to be nothing else but the
living Goddess, the Divine Mother Herself, ready to give him
any boon he wanted — either a happy worldly life or the joy
of spiritual freedom. He was in ecstasy. He prayed for
the boon of wisdom, discrimination, renunciation, and
Her uninterrupted vision, but forgot to ask the Deity for
money. He felt great peace within as he returned to the
Master's room, and when asked if he had prayed for money,
was startled. He said that he had forgotten all about it.
The Master told him to go to the temple again and pray to
the Divine Mother to satisfy his immediate needs. Naren
did as he was bidden, but again forgot his mission. The same
thing happened a third time. Then Naren suddenly
realized that Sri Ramakrishna himself had made him forget to
ask the Divine Mother for worldly things; perhaps he
wanted Naren to lead a life of renunciation. So he now asked
Sri Ramakrishna to do something for the family. The
master told the disciple that it was not Naren's destiny to enjoy
a worldly life, but assured him that the family would be
able to eke out a simple existence.
The above incident left a deep impression
upon Naren's mind; it enriched his spiritual life, for he
gained a new understanding of the Godhead and Its ways in
the phenomenal universe. Naren's idea of God had
hitherto been confined either to that of a vague Impersonal
Reality or to that of an extracosmic Creator removed from
the world. He now realized that the Godhead is immanent
in the creation, that after projecting the universe from
within Itself, It has entered into all created entities as life
and consciousness, whether manifest or latent. This
same immanent Spirit, or the World Soul, when regarded as
a person creating, preserving, and destroying the
universe, is called the Personal God, and is worshipped by
different religions through such a relationship as that of
father, mother, king, or beloved. These relationships, he came
to understand, have their appropriate symbols, and Kali
is one of them.
Embodying in Herself creation and destruction,
love and terror, life and death, Kali is the symbol of the
total universe. The eternal cycle of the manifestation and
non-manifestation of the universe is the breathing-out
and breathing-in of this Divine Mother. In one aspect She
is death, without which there cannot be life. She is smeared
with blood, since without blood the picture of
the phenomenal universe is not complete. To the wicked
who have transgressed Her laws, She is the embodiment
of terror, and to the virtuous, the benign Mother.
Before creation She contains within Her womb the seed of
the universe, which is left from the previous cycle. After
the manifestation of the universe She becomes its
preserver and nourisher, and at the end of the cycle She draws
it back within Herself and remains as the
undifferentiated Sakti, the creative power of Brahman. She is
non-different from Brahman. When free from the acts of
creation, preservation, and destruction, the Spirit, in Its
acosmic aspect, is called Brahman; otherwise It is known as
the World Soul or the Divine Mother of the universe. She
is therefore the doorway to the realization of the
Absolute; She is the Absolute. To the daring devotee who wants
to see the transcendental Absolute, She reveals that form
by withdrawing Her phenomenal aspect. Brahman is Her
transcendental aspect. She is the Great Fact of the
universe, the totality of created beings. She is the Ruler and
the Controller.
All this had previously been beyond
Narendra's comprehension. He had accepted the reality of
the phenomenal world and yet denied the reality of Kali.
He had been conscious of hunger and thirst, pain
and pleasure, and the other characteristics of the world,
and yet he had not accepted Kali, who controlled them
all. That was why he had suffered. But on that
auspicious Tuesday evening the scales dropped from his eyes.
He accepted Kali as the Divine Mother of the universe.
He became Her devotee.
Many years later he wrote to an American lady:
'Kali worship is my special fad.' But he did not
preach Her
in public, because he thought that all that modern
man required was to be found in the Upanishads. Further,
he realized that the Kali symbol would not be understood
by universal humanity.
Narendra enjoyed the company of the Master for
six years, during which time his spiritual life was
moulded. Sri Ramakrishna was a wonderful teacher in every
sense of the word. Without imposing his ideas upon anyone,
he taught more by the silent influence of his inner life than
by words or even by personal example. To live near
him demanded of the disciple purity of thought and
concentration of mind. He often appeared to his future
monastic followers as their friend and playmate. Through fun
and merriment he always kept before them the shining ideal
of God-realization. He would not allow any deviation
from bodily and mental chastity, nor any compromise with
truth and renunciation. Everything else he left to the will of
the Divine Mother.
Narendra was his 'marked' disciple, chosen by
the Lord for a special mission. Sri Ramakrishna kept a
sharp eye on him, though he appeared to give the disciple
every opportunity to release his pent-up physical and
mental energy. Before him, Naren often romped about like a
young lion cub in the presence of a firm but indulgent parent.
His spiritual radiance often startled the Master, who saw
that maya, the Great Enchantress, could not approach
within 'ten feet' of that blazing fire.
Narendra always came to the Master in the hours
of his spiritual difficulties. One time he complained that he
could not meditate in the morning on account of the
shrill note of a whistle from a neighbouring mill, and was
advised by the Master to concentrate on the very sound of
the whistle. In a short time he overcame the
distraction. Another time he found it difficult to forget the body at
the time of meditation. Sri Ramakrishna sharply pressed
the space between Naren's eyebrows and asked him
to concentrate on that sensation. The disciple found
this method effective.
Witnessing the religious ecstasy of several
devotees, Narendra one day said to the Master that he too
wanted to experience it. 'My child,' he was told, 'when a
huge elephant enters a small pond, a great commotion is set
up, but when it plunges into the Ganga, the river shows
very little agitation. These devotees are like small ponds; a
little experience makes their feelings flow over the brim.
But you are a huge river.'
Another day the thought of excessive
spiritual fervour frightened Naren. The Master reassured him
by saying: 'God is like an ocean of sweetness; wouldn't
you dive into it? Suppose there is a bowl filled with
syrup, and you are a fly, hungry for the sweet liquid. How
would you like to drink it?' Narendra said that he would sit
on the edge of the bowl, otherwise he might be drowned
in the syrup and lose his life. 'But,' the Master said,
'you must not forget that I am talking of the Ocean
of Satchidananda, the Ocean of Immortality. Here one
need not be afraid of death. Only fools say that one should
not have too much of divine ecstasy. Can anybody carry
to excess the love of God? You must dive deep in the
Ocean of God.'
On one occasion Narendra and some of his
brother disciples were vehemently arguing about God's
nature — whether He was personal or impersonal, whether
Divine Incarnation was fact or myth, and so forth and so
on. Narendra silenced his opponents by his sharp power
of reasoning and felt jubilant at his triumph. Sri
Ramakrishna enjoyed the discussion and after it was over sang in
an ecstatic mood:
How are you trying, O my mind,
to know the nature of God?
You are groping like a madman
locked in a dark room.
He is grasped through ecstatic love;
how can you fathom Him without it?
Only through affirmation, never negation,
can you know Him;
Neither through Veda nor through Tantra
nor the six darsanas.
All fell silent, and Narendra realized the inability
of the intellect to fathom God's mystery.
In his heart of hearts Naren was a lover of
God. Pointing to his eyes, Ramakrishna said that only a
bhakta possessed such a tender look; the eyes of the jnani
were generally dry. Many a time, in his later years,
Narendra said, comparing his own spiritual attitude with that of
the Master: 'He was a jnani within, but a bhakta without;
but I am a bhakta within, and a jnani without.' He meant
that Ramakrishna's gigantic intellect was hidden under a
thin layer of devotion, and Narendra's devotional nature
was covered by a cloak of knowledge.
We have already referred to the great depth of
Sri Ramakrishna's love for his beloved disciple. He
was worried about the distress of Naren's family and one
day asked a wealthy devotee if he could not help
Naren financially. Naren's pride was wounded and he
mildly scolded the Master. The latter said with tears in his
eyes: 'O my Naren! I can do anything for you, even beg
from door to door.' Narendra was deeply moved but
said nothing. Many days after, he remarked, 'The Master
made me his slave by his love for me.'
This great love of Sri Ramakrishna enabled Naren
to face calmly the hardships of life. Instead of hardening
into a cynic, he developed a mellowness of heart. But, as
will be seen later, Naren to the end of his life was
often misunderstood by his friends. A bold thinker, he was
far ahead of his time. Once he said: 'Why should I expect
to be understood? It is enough that they love me. After
all, who am I? The Mother knows best. She can do Her
own work. Why should I think myself to be indispensable?'
The poverty at home was not an altogether
unmitigated evil. It drew out another side of Naren's
character. He began to feel intensely for the needy and afflicted.
Had he been nurtured in luxury, the Master used to say,
he would perhaps have become a different
person — a statesman, a lawyer, an orator, or a social reformer.
But instead, he dedicated his life to the service of humanity.
Sri Ramakrishna had had the prevision of
Naren's future life of renunciation. Therefore he was quite
alarmed when he came to know of the various plans made
by Naren's relatives for his marriage. Prostrating himself
in the shrine of Kali, he prayed repeatedly: 'O Mother! Do
break up these plans. Do not let him sink in the
quagmire of the world.' He closely watched Naren and warned
him whenever he discovered the trace of an impure thought
in his mind.
Naren's keen mind understood the subtle
implications of Sri Ramakrishna's teachings. One day the Master
said that the three salient disciplines of Vaishnavism were
love of God's name, service to the devotees, and
compassion for all living beings. But he did not like the word
compassion and said to the devotees: 'How foolish to
speak
of compassion! Man is an insignificant worm crawling on
the earth — and he to show compassion to others! This
is absurd. It must not be compassion, but service to
all. Recognize them as God's manifestations and serve them.'
The other devotees heard the words of the
Master but could hardly understand their significance.
Naren, however fathomed the meaning. Taking his young
friends aside, he said that Sri Ramakrishna's remarks had
thrown wonderful light on the philosophy of non-dualism
with its discipline of non-attachment, and on that of
dualism with its discipline of love. The two were not really
in conflict. A non-dualist did not have to make his heart
dry as sand, nor did he have to run away from the world.
As Brahman alone existed in all men, a non-dualist must
love all and serve all. Love, in the true sense of the word,
is not possible unless one sees God in others. Naren
said that the Master's words also reconciled the paths
of knowledge and action. An illumined person did not
have to remain inactive; he could commune with
Brahman through service to other embodied beings, who also
are embodiments of Brahman.
'If it be the will of God,' Naren concluded, 'I shall
one day proclaim this noble truth before the world at large.
I shall make it the common property of all — the wise
and the fool, the rich and the poor, the brahmin and the pariah.'
Years later he expressed these sentiments in a
noble poem which concluded with the following words:
Thy God is here before thee now,
Revealed in all these myriad forms:
Rejecting them, where seekest thou
His presence? He who freely shares
His love with every living thing
Proffers true service unto God.
It was Sri Ramakrishna who re-educated
Narendranath in the essentials of Hinduism. He, the fulfilment
of the spiritual aspirations of the three hundred millions
of Hindus for the past three thousand years, was
the embodiment of the Hindu faith. The beliefs Narendra
had learnt on his mother's lap had been shattered by a
collegiate education, but the young man now came to know
that Hinduism does not consist of dogmas or creeds; it is
an inner experience, deep and inclusive, which respects
all faiths, all thoughts, all efforts and all realizations. Unity
in diversity is its ideal.
Narendra further learnt that religion is a vision
which, at the end, transcends all barriers of caste and race
and breaks down the limitations of time and space. He
learnt from the Master that the Personal God and
worship through symbols ultimately lead the devotee to
the realization of complete oneness with the Deity. The
Master taught him the divinity of the soul, the non-duality of the
Godhead, the unity of existence, and the harmony
of religions. He showed Naren by his own example how
a man in this very life could reach perfection, and the
disciple found that the Master had realized the same
God-consciousness by following the diverse disciplines
of Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam.
One day the Master, in an ecstatic mood, said to
the devotees: 'There are many opinions and many ways. I
have seen them all and do not like them any more. The
devotees of different faiths quarrel among themselves. Let me
tell you something. You are my own people. There are
no strangers around. I clearly see that God is the whole
and I am a part of Him. He is the Lord and I am His
servant. And sometimes I think He is I and I am He.'
Narendra regarded Sri Ramakrishna as the
embodiment of the spirit of religion and did not bother to
know whether he was or not an Incarnation of God. He
was reluctant to cast the Master in any theological mould.
It was enough for Naren if he could see through the vista
of Ramakrishna's spiritual experiences all the aspects of
the Godhead.
How did Narendra impress the other devotees of
the Master, especially the youngsters? He was their idol.
They were awed by his intellect and fascinated by his
personality. In appearance he was a dynamic youth, overflowing
with vigour and vitality, having a physical frame slightly
over middle height and somewhat thickset in the shoulders.
He was graceful without being feminine. He had a strong
jaw, suggesting his staunch will and fixed determination.
The chest was expansive, and the breadth of the head
towards the front signified high mental power and development.
But the most remarkable thing about him was his
eyes, which Sri Ramakrishna compared to lotus petals.
They were prominent but not protruding, and part of the
time their gaze was indrawn, suggesting the habit of
deep meditation; their colour varied according to the feeling
of the moment. Sometimes they would be luminous in profundity, and
sometimes they sparkled in
merriment. Endowed with the native grace of an animal, he was
free in his movements. He walked sometimes with a slow
gait and sometimes with rapidity, always a part of his
mind absorbed in deep thought. And it was a delight to hear
his resonant voice, either in conversation or in music.
But when Naren was serious his face often
frightened his friends. In a heated discussion his eyes glowed.
If immersed in his own thoughts, he created such an air
of aloofness that no one dared to approach him. Subject
to various moods, sometimes he showed utter
impatience with his environment, and sometimes a tenderness
that melted everybody's heart. His smile was bright
and infectious. To some he was a happy dreamer, to some
he lived in a real world rich with love and beauty, but to
all he unfailingly appeared a scion of an aristocratic home.
And how did the Master regard his beloved
disciple? To quote his own words:
'Narendra belongs to a very high plane — the realm
of the Absolute. He has a manly nature. So many
devotees come here, but there is no one like him.
'Every now and then I take stock of the devotees.
I find that some are like lotuses with ten petals, some
like lotuses with a hundred petals. But among lotuses
Narendra is a thousand-petalled one.
'Other devotees may be like pots or pitchers;
but Narendra is a huge water-barrel.
'Others may be like pools or tanks; but Narendra is
a huge reservoir like the Haldarpukur.
'Among fish, Narendra is a huge red-eyed carp;
others are like minnows or smelts or sardines.
'Narendra is a "very big receptacle", one that can
hold many things. He is like a bamboo with a big hollow
space inside.
'Narendra is not under the control of anything. He
is not under the control of attachment or sense pleasures.
He is like a male pigeon. If you hold a male pigeon by its
beak, it breaks away from you; but the female pigeon keeps
still. I feel great strength when Narendra is with me in
a gathering.'
Sometime about the middle of 1885 Sri
Ramakrishna showed the first symptoms of a throat ailment that
later was diagnosed as cancer. Against the advice of
the physicians, he continued to give instruction to
spiritual seekers, and to fall into frequent trances. Both of
these practices aggravated the illness. For the convenience
of the physicians and the devotees, he was at first
removed to a house in the northern section of Calcutta and then
to a garden house at Cossipore, a suburb of the
city. Narendra and the other young disciples took charge
of nursing him. Disregarding the wishes of their
guardians, the boys gave up their studies or neglected their
duties at home, at least temporarily, in order to devote
themselves heart and soul to the service of the Master. His
wife, known among the devotees as the Holy Mother,
looked after the cooking; the older devotees met the expenses.
All regarded this service to the guru as a blessing
and privilege.
Narendra time and again showed his keen insight
and mature judgement during Sri Ramakrishna's illness.
Many of the devotees, who looked upon the Master as
God's Incarnation and therefore refused to see in him any
human frailty, began to give a supernatural interpretation of
his illness. They believed that it had been brought about
by the will of the Divine Mother or the Master himself to
fulfil an inscrutable purpose, and that it would be cured
without any human effort after the purpose was fulfilled.
Narendra said, however, that since Sri Ramakrishna was a
combination of God and man the physical element in him
was subject to such laws of nature as birth, growth, decay,
and destruction. He refused to give the Master's disease,
a natural phenomenon, any supernatural
explanation. Nonetheless, he was willing to shed his last drop of
blood in the service of Sri Ramakrishna.
Emotion plays an important part in the
development of the spiritual life. While intellect removes the
obstacles, it is emotion that gives the urge to the seeker to
move forward. But mere emotionalism without the
disciplines of discrimination and renunciation often leads him
astray. He often uses it as a short cut to trance or ecstasy.
Sri Ramakrishna, no doubt, danced and wept while
singing God's name and experienced frequent trances; but
behind his emotion there was the long practice of austerities
and renunciation. His devotees had not witnessed the
practice of his spiritual disciplines. Some of them,
especially the elderly householders, began to display
ecstasies accompanied by tears and physical contortions, which in
many cases, as later appeared, were the result of
careful rehearsal at home or mere imitation of Sri
Ramakrishna's genuine trances. Some of the devotees, who looked
upon the Master as a Divine Incarnation, thought that he
had assumed their responsibilities, and therefore they
relaxed their own efforts. Others began to speculate about the
part each of them was destined to play in the new
dispensation of Sri Ramakrishna. In short, those who showed
the highest emotionalism posed as the most
spiritually advanced.
Narendra's alert mind soon saw this dangerous
trend in their lives. He began to make fun of the elders
and warned his young brother disciples about the
harmful effect of indulging in such outbursts. Real spirituality,
he told them over and over again, was the eradication
of worldly tendencies and the development of man's
higher nature. He derided their tears and trances as symptoms
of nervous disorder, which should be corrected by the
power of the will, and, if necessary, by nourishing food and
proper medical treatment. Very often, he said, unwary
devotees of God fall victims to mental and physical breakdown.
'Of one hundred persons who take up the spiritual life,'
he grimly warned, 'eighty turn out to be charlatans,
fifteen insane, and only five, maybe, get a glimpse of the real
truth. Therefore, beware.' He appealed to their inner strength
and admonished them to keep away from all
sentimental nonsense. He described to the young disciples
Sri Ramakrishna's uncompromising self-control,
passionate yearning for God, and utter renunciation of attachment
to the world, and he insisted that those who loved the
Master should apply his teachings in their lives.
Sri Ramakrishna, too, coming to realize the
approaching end of his mortal existence, impressed it upon
the devotees that the realization of God depended upon
the giving up of lust and greed. The young disciples
became grateful to Narendranath for thus guiding them during
the formative period of their spiritual career. They spent
their leisure hours together in meditation, study,
devotional music, and healthy spiritual discussions.
The illness of Sri Ramakrishna showed no sign
of abatement; the boys redoubled their efforts to nurse
him, and Narendra was constantly by their side, cheering
them whenever they felt depressed. One day he found
them hesitant about approaching the Master. They had been
told that the illness was infectious. Narendra dragged them
to the Master's room. Lying in a corner was a cup
containing part of the gruel which Sri Ramakrishna could not
swallow. It was mixed with his saliva. Narendra seized the cup
and swallowed its contents. This set at rest the boys' misgivings.
Narendra, understanding the fatal nature of
Sri Ramakrishna's illness and realizing that the
beloved teacher would not live long, intensified his own
spiritual practices. His longing for the vision of God knew no
limit. One day he asked the Master for the boon of
remaining merged in samadhi three or four days at a
stretch, interrupting his meditation now and then for a bite of
food. 'You are a fool,' said the Master. 'There is a state
higher than that. It is you who sing: "O Lord! Thou art all
that exists."' Sri Ramakrishna wanted the disciple to see
God in all beings and to serve them in a spirit of worship.
He often said that to see the world alone, without God,
is ignorance, ajnana; to see God alone, without the world, is
a kind of philosophical knowledge, jnana; but to see
all beings permeated by the spirit of God is supreme
wisdom, vijnana. Only a few blessed souls could see God
dwelling in all. He wanted Naren to attain this supreme wisdom.
So the master said to him, 'Settle your family affairs first,
then you shall know a state even higher than samadhi.'
On another occasion, in response to a similar
request, Sri Ramakrishna said to Naren: 'Shame on you! You
are asking for such an insignificant thing. I thought that
you would be like a big banyan tree, and that thousands
of people would rest in your shade. But now I see that
you are seeking your own liberation.' Thus scolded,
Narendra shed profuse tears. He realized the greatness of
Sri Ramakrishna's heart.
An intense fire was raging within Narendra's
soul. He could hardly touch his college books; he felt it was
a dreadful thing to waste time in that way. One morning
he went home but suddenly experienced an inner fear.
He wept for not having made much spiritual progress,
and hurried to Cossipore almost unconscious of the
outside world. His shoes slipped off somewhere, and as he ran
past a rick of straw some of it stuck to his clothes. Only
after entering the Master's room did he feel some inner peace.
Sri Ramakrishna said to the other disciples
present: 'Look at Naren's state of mind. Previously he did
not believe in the Personal God or divine forms. Now he
is dying for God's vision.' The Master then gave Naren
certain spiritual instructions about meditation.
Naren was being literally consumed by a passion
for God. The world appeared to him to be utterly
distasteful. When the Master reminded him of his college studies, the
disciple said, 'I would feel relieved if I could swallow
a drug and forget all I have learnt' He spent night after
night in meditation under the tress in the Panchavati at
Dakshineswar, where Sri Ramakrishna, during the days of
his spiritual discipline, had contemplated God. He felt
the awakening of the Kundalini (The spiritual
energy, usually dormant in man, but aroused by
the practice of spiritual disciplines. See glossary.) and had other
spiritual visions.
One day at Cossipore Narendra was meditating
under a tree with Girish, another disciple. The place was
infested with mosquitoes. Girish tried in vain to concentrate
his mind. Casting his eyes on Naren, he saw him absorbed
in meditation, though his body appeared to be covered by
a blanket of the insects.
A few days later Narendra's longing seemed to
have reached the breaking-point. He spent an entire
night walking around the garden house at Cossipore
and repeating Rama's name in a heart-rending manner. In
the early hours of the morning Sri Ramakrishna heard
his voice, called him to his side, and said affectionately:
'Listen, my child, why are you acting that way? What will
you achieve by such impatience?' He stopped for a minute
and then continued: 'See, Naren. What you have been
doing now, I did for twelve long years. A storm raged in my
head during that period. What will you realize in one night?'
But the master was pleased with Naren's
spiritual struggle and made no secret of his wish to make him
his spiritual heir. He wanted Naren to look after the
young disciples. 'I leave them in your care,' he said to him. 'Love
them intensely and see that they practise
spiritual disciplines even after my death, and that they do not
return home.' He asked the young disciples to regard Naren
as their leader. It was an easy task for them. Then, one
day, Sri Ramakrishna initiated several of the young
disciples into the monastic life, and thus himself laid the
foundation of the future Ramakrishna Order of monks.
Attendance on the Master during his sickness
revealed to Narendra the true import of Sri Ramakrishna's
spiritual experiences. He was amazed to find that the Master
could dissociate himself from all consciousness of the body by
a mere wish, at which time he was not aware of the
least pain from his ailment. Constantly he enjoyed an inner
bliss, in spite of the suffering of the body, and he could
transmit that bliss to the disciples by a mere touch or look.
To Narendra, Sri Ramakrishna was the vivid
demonstration of the reality of the Spirit and the unsubstantiality of
matter.
One day the Master was told by a scholar that he
could instantly cure himself of his illness by concentrating
his mind on his throat. This Sri Ramakrishna refused to
do since he could never withdraw his mind from God. But
at Naren's repeated request, the Master agreed to speak
to the Divine Mother about his illness. A little later he said
to the disciple in a sad voice: 'Yes, I told Her that I could
not swallow any food on account of the sore in my throat,
and asked Her to do something about it. But the Mother
said, pointing to you all, "Why, are you not eating
enough through all these mouths?" I felt so humiliated that I
could not utter another word.' Narendra realized how
Sri Ramakrishna applied in life the Vedantic idea of
the oneness of existence and also came to know that only
through such realization could one rise above the pain
and suffering of the individual life.
To live with Sri Ramakrishna during his illness
was in itself a spiritual experience. It was wonderful to
witness how he bore with his pain. In one mood he would see
that the Divine Mother alone was the dispenser of pleasure
and pain and that his own will was one with the Mother's
will, and in another mood he would clearly behold, the
utter absence of diversity, God alone becoming men,
animals, gardens, houses, roads, 'the executioner, the victim,
and the slaughter-post,' to use the Master's own words.
Narendra saw in the Master the living explanation
of the scriptures regarding the divine nature of the soul
and the illusoriness of the body. Further, he came to know
that Sri Ramakrishna had attained to that state by the
total renunciation of 'woman' and 'gold,' which, indeed,
was the gist of his teaching. Another idea was creeping
into Naren's mind. He began to see how the
transcendental Reality, the Godhead, could embody Itself as the
Personal God, and the Absolute become a Divine Incarnation.
He was having a glimpse of the greatest of all divine
mysteries: the incarnation of the Father as the Son for the
redemption of the world. He began to believe that God becomes
man so that man may become God. Sri Ramakrishna
thus appeared to him in a new light.
Under the intellectual leadership of Narendranath,
the Cossipore garden house became a miniature
university. During the few moments' leisure snatched from
nursing and meditation, Narendra would discuss with his
brother disciples religions and philosophies, both Eastern
and Western. Along with the teachings of Sankara, Krishna, and
Chaitanya, those of Buddha and Christ were
searchingly examined.
Narendra had a special affection for Buddha, and
one day suddenly felt a strong desire to visit Bodh-Gaya,
where the great Prophet had attained enlightenment. With
Kali and Tarak, two of the brother disciples, he left,
unknown to the others, for that sacred place and meditated for
long hours under the sacred Bo-tree. Once while thus
absorbed he was overwhelmed with emotion and,
weeping profusely, embraced Tarak. Explaining the incident, he
said afterwards that during the meditation he keenly felt
the presence of Buddha and saw vividly how the history
of India had been changed by his noble teachings;
pondering all this he could not control his emotion.
Back in Cossipore, Narendra described
enthusiastically to the Master and the brother disciples of
Buddha's life, experiences, and teachings. Sri Ramakrishna in
turn related some of his own experiences. Narendra had
to admit that the Master, after the attainment of the
highest spiritual realization, had of his own will kept his mind
on the phenomenal plane.
He further understood that a coin, however
valuable, which belonged to an older period of history, could not
be used as currency at a later date. God assumes
different forms in different ages to serve the special needs of
the time.
Narendra practised spiritual disciplines with
unabating intensity. Sometimes he felt an awakening of
a spiritual power that he could transmit to others. One
night in March 1886, he asked his brother disciple Kali to
touch his right knee, and then entered into deep meditation. Kali's
hand began to tremble; he felt a kind of electric
shock. Afterwards Narendra was rebuked by the Master
for frittering away spiritual powers before accumulating
them in sufficient measure. He was further told that he
had injured Kali's spiritual growth, which had been
following the path of dualistic devotion, by forcing upon the
latter some of his own non-dualistic ideas. The Master
added, however, that the damage was not serious.
Narendra had had enough of visions and
manifestations of spiritual powers, and he now wearied of
them. His mind longed for the highest experience of
non-dualistic Vedanta, the nirvikalpa samadhi, in which the
names and forms of the phenomenal world disappear and
the aspirant realizes total non-difference between
the individual soul, the universe, and Brahman, or
the Absolute. He told Sri Ramakrishna about it, but the
master remained silent. And yet one evening the experience
came to him quite unexpectedly.
He was absorbed in his usual meditation when
he suddenly felt as if a lamp were burning at the back of
his head. The light glowed more and more intensely and
finally burst. Narendra was overwhelmed by that light and
fell unconscious. After some time, as he began to regain
his normal mood, he could feel only his head and not the
rest of his body.
In an agitated voice he said to Gopal, a brother
disciple who was meditating in the same room, 'Where is my body?'
Gopal answered: 'Why, Naren, it is there. Don't
you feel it?'
Gopal was afraid that Narendra was dying, and
ran to Sri Ramakrishna's room. He found the Master in a calm
but serious mood, evidently aware of what had
happened in the room downstairs. After listening to Gopal the
Master said, 'Let him stay in that state for a while; he has
teased me long enough for it.'
For some time Narendra remained unconscious.
When he regained his normal state of mind he was bathed in
an ineffable peace. As he entered Sri Ramakrishna's room
the latter said: 'Now the Mother has shown you
everything. But this realization, like the jewel locked in a box, will
be hidden away from you and kept in my custody. I will
keep the key with me. Only after you have fulfilled your
mission on this earth will the box be unlocked, and you will
know everything as you have known now'.
The experience of this kind of samadhi usually has
a most devastating effect upon the body; Incarnations
and special messengers of God alone can survive its
impact. By way of advice, Sri Ramakrishna asked Naren to
use great discrimination about his food and companions,
only accepting the purest.
Later the master said to the other disciples:
'Narendra will give up his body of his own will. When he realizes
his true nature, he will refuse to stay on this earth. Very
soon he will shake the world by his intellectual and
spiritual powers. I have prayed to the Divine Mother to keep
away from him the Knowledge of the Absolute and cover
his eyes with a veil of maya. There is much work to be
done by him. But the veil, I see, is so thin that it may be rent
at any time.'
Sri Ramakrishna, the Avatar of the modern age,
was too gentle and tender to labour himself, for
humanity's welfare. He needed some sturdy souls to carry on his work.
Narendra was foremost among those around him;
therefore Sri Ramakrishna did not want him to remain immersed
in nirvikalpa samadhi before his task in this world
was finished.
The disciples sadly watched the gradual wasting
away of Sri Ramakrishna's physical frame. His body became
a mere skeleton covered with skin; the suffering was
intense. But he devoted his remaining energies to the training
of the disciples, especially Narendra. He had been
relieved of his worries about Narendra; for the disciple
now admitted the divinity of Kali, whose will controls all
things in the universe. Naren said later on: 'From the time he
gave me over to the Divine Mother, he retained the vigour
of his body only for six months. The rest of the
time — and that was two long years — he suffered.'
One day the Master, unable to speak even in a
whisper, wrote on a piece of paper: 'Narendra will teach
others.' The disciple demurred. Sri Ramakrishna replied: 'But
you must. Your very bones will do it.' He further said that
all the supernatural powers he had acquired would
work through his beloved disciple.
A short while before the
curtain finally fell on
Sri Ramakrishna's earthly life, the Master one day called
Naren to his bedside. Gazing intently upon him, he passed
into deep meditation. Naren felt that a subtle force,
resembling an electric current, was entering his body. He
gradually lost outer consciousness. After some time he
regained knowledge of the physical world and found the
Master weeping. Sri Ramakrishna said to him: 'O Naren, today
I have given you everything I possess — now I am no
more than a fakir, a penniless beggar. By the powers I have
transmitted to you, you will accomplish great things in
the world, and not until then will you return to the
source whence you have come.'
Narendra from that day became the channel of
Sri Ramakrishna's powers and the spokesman of his message.
Two days before the dissolution of the Master's
body, Narendra was standing by the latter's bedside when
a strange thought flashed into his mind: Was the Master
truly an Incarnation of God? He said to himself that he
would accept Sri Ramakrishna's divinity if the Master, on
the threshold of death, declared himself to be an
Incarnation. But this was only a passing thought. He stood
looking intently at the Master face. Slowly Sri Ramakrishna's
lips parted and he said in a clear voice: 'O my Naren, are
you still not convinced? He who in the past was born as
Rama and Krishna is now living in this very body as
Ramakrishna — but not from the standpoint of your
Vedanta.' Thus Sri Ramakrishna, in answer to Narendra's
mental query, put himself in the category of Rama and
Krishna, who are recognized by orthodox Hindus as two of
the Avatars, or Incarnations of God.
A few words may be said here about the meaning
of the Incarnation in the Hindu religious tradition. One of
the main doctrines of Vedanta is the divinity of the soul:
every soul, in reality, is Brahman. Thus it may be presumed
that there is no difference between an Incarnation and
an ordinary man. To be sure, from the standpoint of
the Absolute, or Brahman, no such difference exists. But
from the relative standpoint, where multiplicity is perceived,
a difference must be admitted. Embodied human
beings reflect godliness in varying measure. In an Incarnation this
godliness is fully manifest. Therefore an Incarnation is
unlike an ordinary mortal or even an illumined saint. To give
an illustration: There is no difference between a clay lion
and a clay mouse, from the standpoint of the clay. Both
become the same substance when dissolved into clay. But the
difference between the lion and the mouse, from the
standpoint of form, is clearly seen. Likewise, as Brahman, an
ordinary man is identical with an Incarnation. Both become the
same Brahman when they attain final illumination. But in the
relative state of name and form, which is admitted by
Vedanta, the difference between them is accepted. According to
the Bhagavad Gita (IV. 6-8), Brahman in times of spiritual
crisis assumes a human body through Its own inscrutable
power, called maya. Though birthless, immutable, and the Lord
of all beings, yet in every age Brahman appears to be
incarnated in a human body for the protection of the good
and the destruction of the wicked.
As noted above, the Incarnation is quite different
from an ordinary man, even from a saint. Among the many
vital differences may be mentioned the fact that the birth of
an ordinary mortal is governed by the law of karma,
whereas that of an Incarnation is a voluntary act undertaken
for the spiritual redemption of the world. Further,
though maya is the cause of the embodiment of both an
ordinary mortal and an Incarnation, yet the former is fully
under maya's control, whereas the latter always remains
its master. A man, though potentially Brahman, is
not conscious of his divinity; but an Incarnation is fully
aware of the true nature of His birth and mission. The
spiritual disciplines practised by an Incarnation are not for His
own liberation, but for the welfare of humanity; as far as He is
concerned, such terms as bondage and liberation have
no meaning, He being ever free, ever pure, and ever
illumined. Lastly, an Incarnation can bestow upon others the boon
of liberation, whereas even an illumined saint is devoid
of such power.
Thus the Master, on his death-bed, proclaimed
himself through his own words as the Incarnation or God-man
of modern times.
On August 15, 1886, the Master's suffering
became almost unbearable. After midnight he felt better for a
few minutes. He summoned Naren to his beside and gave
him the last instructions, almost in a whisper. The
disciples stood around him. At two minutes past one in the
early morning of August 16, Sri Ramakrishna uttered three
times in a ringing voice the name of his beloved Kali and
entered into the final samadhi, from which his mind never
again returned to the physical world.
The body was given to the fire in the
neighbouring cremation ground on the bank of the Ganga. But to
the Holy Mother, as she was putting on the signs of a
Hindu widow, there came these words of faith and
reassurance: 'I am not dead. I have just gone from one room to another.'
As the disciples returned from the cremation
ground to the garden house, they felt great desolation. Sri
Ramakrishna had been more than their earthly father. His
teachings and companionship still inspired them. They felt
his presence in his room. His words rang in their ears.
But they could no longer see his physical body or enjoy
his seraphic smile. They all yearned to commune with him.
Within a week of the Master's passing away,
Narendra one night was strolling in the garden with a brother
disciple, when he saw in front of him a luminous
figure. There was no mistaking: it was Sri Ramakrishna
himself. Narendra remained silent, regarding the phenomenon
as an illusion. But his brother disciple exclaimed in
wonder, 'See, Naren! See!' There was no room for further
doubt. Narendra was convinced that it was Sri Ramakrishna
who had appeared in a luminous body. As he called to the
other brother disciples to behold the Master, the figure
disappeared.