02. chapter-02-in the company of devotees

7/28/2019 02. Chapter-02-In the Company of Devotees

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Chapter 2

IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES

Master at Balaram's house Devotees in trance Bigotrycondemned The mind's inability to comprehend God Master's visit to Keshab God and His glory Dangers ofworldly life Prayer and holy company Earnest longing Explanation of evil Washing away the heart's impurities withtears Need of a guru.

March 11, 1882Master at Balaram's houseABOUT EIGHT O'CLOCKin the morning Sri Ramakrishna went asplanned to Balaram Bose's house in Calcutta. It was the day of the

Dolayatra. Ram, Manomohan, Rakhal, Nityagopal, and otherdevotees were with him. M., too, came, as bidden by the Master.

Devotees in tranceThe devotees and the Master sang and danced in a state of divinefervour. Several of them were in an ecstatic mood. Nityagopal'schest glowed with the upsurge of emotion, and Rakhal lay on thefloor in ecstasy, completely unconscious of the world. The Masterput his hand on Rakhal's chest and said: "Peace. Be quiet." Thiswas Rakhal's first experience of ecstasy. He lived with his father inCalcuttaand now and then visited the Master at Dakshineswar.About this time he had studied a short while in Vidyasagar's school


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at Syampukur.When the music was over, the devotees sat down for their meal.Balaram stood there humbly, like a servant. Nobody would havetaken him for the master of the house. M. was still a stranger to thedevotees, having met only Narendra at Dakshineswar.A few days later M. visited the Master at Dakshineswar. It wasbetween four and five o'clock in the afternoon. The Master and hewere sitting on the steps of the iva temples. Looking at the templeof Radhakanta, across the courtyard, the Master went into anecstatic mood.

Since his nephew Hriday's dismissal from the temple, SriRamakrishna had been living without an attendant. On account ofhis frequent spiritual moods he could hardly take care of himself.The lack of an attendant caused him great inconvenience.

Bigotry condemnedSri Ramakrishna was talking to Kli, the Divine Mother of theUniverse. 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'swatch is right. Who can truly understand Thee? But if a man prays toThee with a yearning heart, he can reach Thee, through Thy grace,

by any path. Mother, show me some time how the Christians pray toThee 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 enterthe Kli temple again! Well then, show me the Christian worshipfrom the door of the church."


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The mind's inability to comprehend GodAnother 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 onlybeen told: "If you want to see a grog-shop, then come with me. Youwill see a huge jar of wine there." M. related this to Sri Ramakrishna,who laughed about it. The Master said: "The bliss of worship andcommunion with God is the true wine, the wine of ecstatic love. Thegoal of human life is to love God, Bhakti is the one essential thing.To know God through jnna and reasoning is extremely difficult."

Then the Master sang:Who is there that can understand what Mother

Kli 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 cowherdboys of Vrindvan felt for Krishna. When Krishna went away toMathura, the cowherds roamed about weeping bitterly because oftheir 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 holdingThe 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.


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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, 1882Master's visit to KeshabSri Ramakrishna was sitting in the drawing-room of Keshab ChandraSen's house in Calcutta; it was five o'clockin the afternoon. WhenKeshab 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 cancelledhis plan. The Master said to him: "You have so many things toattend to. Besides, you have to edit a newspaper. You have no timeto come to Dakshineswar; so I have come to see you. When I heardof your illness I vowed green coconut and sugar to the Divine Motherfor your recovery. I said to Her, 'Mother, if something happens toKeshab, 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 anymore? He repeatedly tells me he is not attached to his wife andchildren." 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 weredelayed.Pundit Samadhyayi was present. The Brahmo devotees introducedhim to Sri Ramakrishna as a scholar well versed in the Vedas andthe other scriptures. The Master said, "Yes, I can see inside himthrough his eyes, as one can see the objects in a room through the


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glass door."

Trailokya sang. Suddenly the Master stood up and went intosamdhi, 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 EverlastingBliss,

As I repeat my Mother Kli'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 itfor me then;

And when it is done, my mind imbibes it from thebottle of the mantra,

Taking the Mother's name to make it pure.Drink of this Wine, says Ramprasad, and thefour fruits of life are yours.

The Master looked at Keshab tenderly, as if Keshab were his veryown. He seemed to fear that Keshab might belong to someone else,that is to say, that he might become a worldly person. Looking athim, the Master sang again:

We are afraid to speak, and yet we are afraid tokeep still;

Our minds, O Radha, half believe that we areabout to lose you!

We tell you the secret that we know -


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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 isillusory. Without the realization of God everything is futile. This is thegreat secret."

The Master sat down again and began to converse with thedevotees. For a while he listened to a piano recital, enjoying it like a

child. Then he was taken to the inner apartments, where he wasserved with refreshments and the ladies saluted him.

As the Master was leaving Keshab's house, the Brahmo devoteesaccompanied him respectfully to his carriage.

Sunday, April 9, 1882

Sri Ramakrishna was seated with his devotees in the drawing-roomof Prankrishna Mukherji's house in Calcutta; it was between one andtwo o'clockin the afternoon. Since Colonel Viswanath4 lived in thatneighbourhood, the Master intended to visit him before going to seeKeshab at the Lily Cottage. A number of neighbours and otherfriends of Prankrishna had been invited to meet Sri Ramakrishna.They were all eager to hear his words.

God and His glory & Dangers of worldly lifeMASTER: "God and His glory. This universe is His glory. People seeHis glory and forget everything. They do not seek God, whose gloryis this world. All seek to enjoy 'woman and gold'. But there is toomuch misery and worry in that. This world is like the whirlpool of the


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Vilki. 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 yourselffrom one set of thorns before you find yourself entangled in another.Once you enter a labyrinth you find it very difficult to get out. Livingin the world, a man becomes seared, as it were."A DEVOTEE: "Then what is the way, sir?"Prayer and holy company & Earnest longingMASTER: "Prayer and the company of holy men. You cannot get ridof an ailment without the help of a physician. But it is not enough tobe in the company of religious people only for a day. You shouldconstantly seek it, for the disease has become chronic. Again, youcan't understand the pulse rightly unless you live with a physician.Moving with him constantly, you learn to distinguish between thepulse 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. Byconstant living in the company of holy men, the soul becomesrestless for God. This yearning is like the state of mind of a man whohas someone ill in the family. His mind is in a state of perpetualrestlessness, 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 insearch of work. If he is rejected at a certain place which has novacancy, he goes there again the next day and inquires, 'Is there anvacancy today?'

"There is another way: earnestly praying to God. God is our very


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own. We should say to Him: 'O God, what is Thy nature? RevealThyself to me. Thou must show Thyself to me; for why else hastThou created me?' Some Sikh devotees once said to me, 'God is fullof 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 tous? Parents bring up their children. Do you call that an act ofkindness? They must act that way.' Therefore we should force ourdemands on God. He is our Father and Mother, isn't He? If the sondemands his patrimony and gives up food and drink in order toenforce his demand, then the parents hand his share over to him

three years before the legal time. Or when the child demands somepice from his mother, and says over and over again: 'Mother, giveme a couple of pice. I beg you on my knees!' - then the mother,seeing his earnestness, and unable to bear it any more, tosses themoney to him.

"There is another benefit from holy company. It helps one cultivatediscrimination 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 wanderingaway to the unreal, he should apply discrimination. The moment anelephant stretches out its trunk to eat a plantain-tree in a neighbour'sgarden, it gets a blow from the iron goad of the driver."

Explanation of evilA NEIGHBOUR: "Why does a man have sinful tendencies?"

MASTER: "In God's creation there are all sorts of things. He has


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created bad men as well as good men. It is He who gives us goodtendencies, and it is He again who gives us evil tendencies."NEIGHBOUR: "In that case we aren't responsible for our sinfulactions, are we?"

MASTER: "Sin begets its own result. This is God's law. Won't youburn our tongue if you chew a chilli? In his youth Mathur6 led arather fast life; so he suffered from various diseases before hisdeath.

"One may not realize this in youth. I have looked into the hearth inthe kitchen of the Kli temple when logs are being burnt. At first the

wet wood burns rather well. It doesn't seem then that it containsmuch moisture. But when the wood is sufficiently burnt, all themoisture runs back to one end. At last water squirts from the fueland 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 aoka grove. Thenhe began to tremble lest the fire should injure her."

NEIGHHBOUR: "Why has God created wicked people?"

MASTER: "That is His will, His play. In His maya there exists avidyas well as vidy. Darkness is needed too. It reveals all the more theglory 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 manbecomes a saint by conquering the senses. Is there anythingimpossible for a man who has subdued his passions? He can evenrealize God, through His grace. Again, see how His whole play ofcreation is perpetuated through lust.

"Wicked people are needed too. At one time the tenants of an estate


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became unruly. The landlord had to send Golak Choudhury, whowas a ruffian. He was such a harsh administrator that the tenantstrembled 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 Ayhodhya were a mansion! I findmany houses old and dilapidated.' 'But, my dear,' said Rama, 'if allthe houses were beautiful ones, what would the masons do?'(Laughter.) God has created all kinds of things. He has created goodtrees, and poisonous plants and weeds as well. Among the animalsthere are good, bad, and all kinds of creatures - tigers, lions, snakes,

and so on."Washing away the heart's impurities with tearsNEIGHTBOUR: "Sir, is it ever possible to realize God while leadingthe 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. Whenthe impurities of the mind are thus washed away, one realizes God.The mind is like a needle covered with mud, and God is like amagnet. The needle cannot be united with the magnet unless it isfree from mud. Tears wash away the mud, which is nothing but lust,anger, greed, and other evil tendencies, and the inclination toworldly 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 thewatery element in his system. What can quinine do for him unlessthat is removed?"Why shouldn't one realize God while living in the world? But, as I


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said, one must live in holy company, pray to God, weeping for Hisgrace, and now and then go into solitude. Unless the plants on afoot-path are protected at first by fences, they are destroyed bycattle."Need of a guruNEIGHBOUR: "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 willsuffer in trying to retrace one's steps. It takes a long time to achieveliberation. A man may fail to obtain it in this life. Perhaps he willrealize God only after many births. Sages like Janaka performedworldly duties. They performed them, bearing God in their minds, asa dancing-girl dances, keeping jars or trays on her head. Haven'tyou seen how the women in northwest Indiawalk, talking andlaughing while carrying water-pitchers on their beads?"NEIGHBOUR: "You just referred to the instructions of the guru. Howshall we find him?"

MASTER: "Anyone and everyone cannot be a guru. A huge timberfloats on the water and can carry animals as well. But a piece ofworthless 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 aloneis the Doer, and none else' - that is knowledge. I am not the doer; Iam a mere instrument in His hand. Therefore I say: 'O Mother, Thou


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art the Operator and I am the machine. Thou art the Indweller and Iam the house. Thou art the Driver and I am the carriage. I move asThou movest me. I do as Thou makest me do. I speak as Thoumakest me speak. Not I, not I, but Thou, but Thou.' "

From Prankrishna's house the Master went to Colonel Viswanath'sand from there to the Lily Cottage.

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02. chapter-02-in the company of devotees

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