CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIII

REVELATION OF GOD AS MOTHER

'SIR, HAVE you seen God ?' 'Yes, I see Him just as I see you here, only in a much intenser sense.' The question was from an intellectual agnostic believing only in Western positivism; the answer was from an illumined mystic fixed on the certitude of his vision of God, and the time was the early eighties of the momentous nineteenth century when Indian youths —products of English education—were most of them rationalists, and when the Brahmo Samaj leaders following what they believed to be reason and truth were trying to reform the religious and social life of the country. The mind of educated India, yet under the spell of Western ideas, seemed to have been torn up for a while even from its own roots. The above question however was a welcome indication that it was then struggling to come back to its own. In fact, the question was more a quest than mere idle curiosity. It was the seeking of a chosen representative of the race destined to vindicate the very truth which his mind was then hesitating to accept. That was why, after having put the question round to the Brahmo Samaj leaders, none of whom could give him an affirmative answer, he came to one whose categorical ^fyes' convinced him for ever and made him gradually feel that what reason could not explain could be a fact of vivid experience, and that there was a world higher than that of the mind, the truths of which were eternal and universal and before which the so-called truths of mind were a blind groping in ignorance, or at best, half-truths. These eternal truths, the very grain of Hinduism, were realised, re-lived and revealed by Sri Ramakrishna who showed also how by an intense aspiration of the soul one can see even in an image of stone the living Presence of the Godhead. This was the first victory, in modern times, of spirituality over rationalism.

The new thought of national idealism evolved by Bankim and Bhudev had just then begun to permeate the mental consciousness of the race —so necessary at the time—but being mind-born, it could not touch the soul; and later, when an aspect of that thought did touch the soul and work a miracle, it was because their vision of India as the Divine Mother was a spiritual one, and also because there had happened almost immediately before it an event of vast importance in the spiritual history of mankind—the direct seeing of the infinite wonders of God by an illuminate, and the declaration of its world significance by his chosen mouthpiece. Indeed, with the lives and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Viveka-nanda began that movement of India's soul which brought about a wide-

spread national awakening—the first most important phase, .in modern times, of India's historic evolution towards her greater future. And this phase was characterised not simply by the rise of revolutionary nationalism but also by an upsurge of creative activities the fruits of which are modern India's imperishable contribution to human civilisation.

Throughout her history all movements in India, whatever their nature, had always behind them a spiritual idea, a new stir of her soul. Even the various endeavours made by the Indians in the nineteenth century to recover their national self were impelled by an inner urge of the race and it expressed itself in the thoughts and actions of the far-seeing minds of the time, although the immediate impulsion was obviously an effect of the Western impact. The results of these activities were no doubt mainly mental and intellectual. But that was enough for India at that moment of her evolution. It was not certainly the ultimate end of Nature in her work for the uplift of India, a country for which religion and spirituality are the very breath of life. To be truly herself India must rise to and become fully conscious of that central truth of her being. One therefore came, and about three decades after him, another, who were both sent by God once again to establish His Glory in this holy land and declare it to all, to the whole world enmeshed in rank materialism. The soul of India woke up from its long sleep and voiced through the latter its supreme cry — Thou art that.'

The affirmation of One God was indeed the common aim of all religious reform movements of nineteenth-century India. But few of their leaders had a vivid perception of the truth that the Infinite has infinite aspects through any one of which He could be approached by the aspirant, the soul in Nature. Hinduism alone recognises this truth and is therefore called the 'Eternal Religion'. A truth of spiritual experience, it is beyond the mind of man. When the new religious ideas of the time denied this truth, for the reformers believed it did not conform to reason, a renewal and restoration of the ancient spiritual truths of India was called for. And nothing but direct vision and complete realisation could accomplish it.

Indian religious thought has been following the line of the unity of Godhead in the multiplicity of His manifestation as the very basis of the supreme synthesis that has been developing in the spiritual consciousness of the race. What was needed at that hour of its history was the vision of the harmony of all religions as so many paths to the same goal. Sri Ramakrishna saw this vision and built the harmony by realising and living it in his own life. And in order to establish again the supremacy of the spirit over mind and matter, he did this by his intuitive faculty, he who had nothing of the so-called English education of the time. In his booklet The Brain of India Sri Aurobindo says : 'The Bengali has in a greater degree than other races the yet undeveloped faculty of direct knowledge, latent in humanity now to be evolved, which is above reason and imagina-

tion, the faculty which in Sri Ramakrishna, the supreme outcome of the race, dispensed with education and commanded any knowledge he desired easily and divinely.' And this is one of the 'gifts', also says Sri Aurobindo, 'which are most needed for the new race that has to arise'.

'It was in religion first,' to quote Sri Aurobindo again, 'that the soul of India awoke and triumphed. There were always indications, always great forerunners, but it was when the flower of the educated youth of Calcutta bowed down at the feet of an illiterate Hindu ascetic, a self-illuminated ecstatic and "mystic" without a single trace or touch of the alien thought or education upon him that the battle was won. The going forth of Vivekananda, marked out by the Master as the heroic soul destined to take the world between his two hands and change it, was the first visible sign to the world that India was awake not only to survive but to conquer.'¹

'Once the soul of the nation was awake in religion, it was only a matter of time and opportunity for it to throw itself on all spiritual and intellectual activities in the national existence and take possession of them.'²

How did Sri Ramakrishna accomplish this miracle ? By seeing God face to face as also by going through the inner disciplines generally known as Yoga. But the way in which he did it was another miracle that proved beyond doubt not only the outstanding greatness of the man but the divine mission he came to fulfil : the oneness of religions in the oneness of the One Divine whom all religions worship. This truth, challenged by Reason, by the ego-driven mind which sees the part and calls it the whole although the real Whole is beyond its reach, now stood its ground. An affirmation of the higher truth of unity and harmony was the imperative need of the age. Sri Ramakrishna embodying this truth became the shining oasis in the blinding desert of dry reason and unbelief. In him 'we see,' says Sri Aurobindo, 'a colossal spiritual capacity, first driving straight to the Divine realisation, taking, as it were, the kingdom of heaven by violence, and then seizing upon one Yogic method after another and extracting the substance out of it with an incredible rapidity, always to return to the heart of the whole matter, the realisation and possession of God by the power of love, by the extension of inborn spirituality into various experience and by the spontaneous play of an intuitive knowledge. Such an example cannot be generalised. Its object also was special and temporal, to exemplify in the great and decisive experience of a master-soul the truth, now most necessary to humanity, towards which a world long divided into jarring sects and schools is with difficulty labouring, that all sects are forms and fragments of a single integral truth and all disciplines labour in their different ways towards one. supreme experience.' ³

The inner, that is to say, the real life of such men of God is always

¹ Sri Aurobindo : The Ideal of the Karmayogin, p. 41.

² Ibid., p. 43.

³ Sri Aurobindo : On Yoga, Vol. 1, The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 45-46.

beyond the mind of man fully to understand, far less to describe. Some glimpses of Sri Ramakrishna's days on earth can be had through the authentic accounts—priceless gems of spiritual literature—left by the direct disciples of the Master, who were in close contact with him when the wonders of God-vision became articulate in the Master's divine words, became luminous in his very body, became vibrant in the ecstatic states of trance into which he used often to pass. Very few knew then that the happenings of those days in the temple of Dakshineswar had in them the power that would before long awaken India to the truth and light of her soul, awaken her to her divine mission on earth.

The thirties of the nineteenth century saw the birth of some of the greatest leaders of the Indian renaissance. He who was to give it its true meaning and the first spiritual turn was born on 18 February 1836, in a quiet and out-of-the-way village in the famous historic district of Hooghly. It was an orthodox and devout brahmana family living on priesthood, which had the privilege of having a child destined to become a world-figure. Sri Ramakrishna's family name was Gadadhar, given him after a name of Vishnu, the deity in the temple of Gaya, who in a dream assured Gadadhar's father that pleased with his devotion he would take human birth as his son.

Kshudiram Chattopadhyaya—that was his father's name—was a man of remarkable integrity. Once he was called upon by his landlord to give false evidence for him and his refusal to deviate an inch from the path of truth and rectitude brought on him such persecutions as compelled him to leave his ancestral home and go through various hardships. Of kind and amiable nature, he and his wife, Chandra Devi, won the love and admiration of their neighbours in their new home at Kamarpukur. It was here that in their dreams and visions they had intimations that a great soul was coming to them as their son. Very early in life, Gadadhar showed signs of an extraordinary soul. While good at his lessons in the village school, he took no interest in book-learning and mathematics was a bugbear to him. What he liked most in those days was the lives of spiritual heroes contemplation of whom would often throw him into deep meditation. Not only this, sights and sounds of nature would touch his soul and he would lose his consciousness in ecstasy. One such experience he had when he was about seven. Anything divine or spiritual was for him an occasion to go off into superconscious states of trance. Once while playing the part of Siva in a village dramatic performance, young Gadadhar fell into deep trance and it was with great difficulty that he could be brought back to normal consciousness. Contact with itinerant monks passing through his village helped much to deepen his otherworldly and God ward inclinations.

When nine he had the investiture of the sacred thread which made him exceedingly happy because he would now be able to worship the

family deity Raghuvir—Sri Rama. This ceremony gave him the opportunity to keep his promise to a blacksmith woman who tended him in the lying-in-room—that he, as wished by her, would accept her alms on his investiture of the sacred thread, the custom being that the alms should be received only from a brahmana woman.

Instead of going to school for which he had a particular aversion, Gadadhar along with his young friends would spend his time in getting up dramatic performances on the life of Sri Krishna. While doing his part of Sri Krishna the boy would often fall into trance. Before long the school text-books were replaced by the Puranas and the Epics in whose study he was so much absorbed that he looked as if he had no connection with, or interest in, the affairs of the world. His other preoccupation was the worship of the family deity. He now came to be convinced that realisation of God was the only purpose of life, and for this he would have left hearth and home, had not his mother been a chief concern of his.

Meanwhile, owing to difficult circumstances his elder brother, Ramkumar, had to go to Calcutta and open a tol (school for Sanskrit studies) to earn money. Some time after he felt the need of help in managing his affairs, and when on a visit to his home he found Gadadhar indifferent to both studies and the world, he brought him to Calcutta with a view to training him as a priest. But Gadadhar refused to have 'a mere bread-winning education.' He said : T would rather acquire that wisdom which will illumine my heart and possessing which one is satisfied for ever.' This was beyond Ramkumar who, however, proceeded no further in the matter.

There were going on about this time preparations which were to help the young aspirant towards his destiny. And these centred round an important event—the erection of the famous temple of Dakshineswar by Rani Rasmani, a woman of exceptional intelligence and personality, whose association with the history of the time is not insignificant. A widow, she lived in the south of Calcutta, owning a huge property inherited from her husband. Her faith in God was as exemplary as was her courage and her beneficence for which qualities she was called Rani—queen.

It was the early sixties of the last century when Indian homes were yet exposed to the depredations of English soldiers, a drunken batch of whom, one day, entered by force the house of Rasmani, when the male members were out, and started plundering. As they were about to step into the inner apartment the Rani herself took up arms and faced the brutes and drove them out. Thus did she save not only her own honour but the honour of Indian womanhood of whom she was a valiant type.

The British Government imposed a tax on the fishermen for catching fish in the river Hooghly. Approached by the fishermen for help, the Rani took on lease that part of the river for catching fish and guarded the part by chains against the entry of ships and other vessels. The Government did not anticipate this and had to abolish the tax—a privilege the fishermen

enjoy to this day.

The Rani's charities knew no bounds. Besides helping the needy, she built many public institutions, roads, markets, rest-houses for pilgrims in different parts of Bengal. This remarkable woman was a devotee of the goddess Kali. Once she decided to go to Varanasi on pilgrimage. When preparations were going on, she was commanded by the goddess in a dream to abandon the journey and build and dedicate a temple to Her on the banks of the Ganga (now the river Hooghly), where, she said, she would manifest Herself in the image, when set up. Accordingly, the Rani purchased suitable lands at Dakshineswar, four miles to the north of Calcutta, and started on them the construction of two large and a number of small temples. These were ready for the installation in 1855. The big temples were dedicated, one to the Divine Mother, known as Bhavatarini or the 'Saviour of the World,' and the other to Radha-Govinda (Sri Krishna), the smaller ones, twelve in number, to Siva. A noteworthy fact about these 'Houses' of gods and goddesses is that they comprise the three main religious sects of the Hindus—Sakta, Vaishnava and Saiva. Was this a foreshadowing of the unity of religions, a divine dispensation, a pointer to the future realisation of its truth by the God-man who would come and make this place the seat of his wonderful spiritual achievements, the unity of all religions being one of the greatest? That is how the Divine shapes the future in the present.

A question arose about the priesthood of the temples. The orthodox brahmana scholars of Calcutta, consulted in the matter, were of the view that no brahmana would worship the deities for the Rani as she was inferior in caste to a brahmana. One of them, Gadadhar's elder brother Ramkumar, gave his opinion that no brahmana should refuse to act as priest if the Rani made a gift of the Kali temple to a brahmana, endowing it with sufficient funds for maintenance. Little did Ramkumar know that he himself would be approached to accept this office at least so long as a competent priest was not found. He agreed on this condition; but continued his stay there till his last days, overwhelmed by the kind and respectful treatment by the Rani and her son-in-law Mathur who looked after her estates. Thus was the dream of Rani Rasmani fulfilled. The beautiful image of the Divine Mother was installed in the temple and a suitable priest found who would worship her according to the scriptures.

With his elder brother Sri Ramakrishna—henceforth he will be called by this more familiar name—had also to come and put up at Dakshineswar though much against his will; he still adhered to his orthodox views in the matter; his adherence to the traditional ideals of his family would not let him change them. He stayed in the temple but would not have his food there; he would cook for himself on the banks of the river. It will be seen how this his sense of distinction fell off, as he grew in his spiritual consciousness. The beautiful site and its surroundings on the Ganga for

which he had great devotion impressed him much and his innate longing for God began to deepen.

About this time Mathur, Rani Rasmani's son-in-law, felt strangely drawn to this young brahmana whose unostentatiousness had about it something that struck him. Mathur wanted him to be on the temple staff. But Sri Ramakrishna whose sole object then was to attain God-consciousness, would not accept any work which involved any responsibility. Fortunately, however, there came to him at this time a young relative named Hridoy who remained with him as his most needed companion for twentyfive years. When Hridoy agreed to help him, he accepted the temple service. Both Rasmani and Mathur soon found out what an extraordinary soul they had the good fortune of having as their priest, whose simple wisdom, deep devotion and naturally-indrawn mind were brought home to them through several unforgettable incidents. When, for instance, he would worship the deity he would look upon the image as God Himself, totally oblivious of everything around him, sitting motionless for hours. His mantras called forth vivid pictures on which he would feast his eyes and feel the mystic atmosphere within and around his being.

After about a year's service at the Kali temple Ramkumar left his body and Sri Ramakrishna was asked to conduct the services of the Divine Mother. He was then burning day and night with a consuming passion for God. Kali was now the deity of his adoration and he worshipped her in his characteristic way. She was decorated with precious ornaments from head to foot, wearing a garland of human skulls and holding in Her lower pair of hands a sword and a human head as symbols of Her terrible aspect. With the upper pair She offers grace and protection, Her benign aspect. She is both terrible and sweet, the one aspect to destroy, the other to preserve and create. This is the Mother of Sri Ramakrishna's devotions, his Mā, 'Mother,' the Mother of sweetness and power, of blessedness and solicitude, the be-all-and-end-all of his life. And this, says Sri Ramakrishna, She is to those who worship her with all the devotion of their heart.

Relating later who this Mother is, Sri Ramakrishna said : 'My Divine Mother is none other than the Absolute. She is at the same time the One and the Many, and yet beyond the One and the Many. She says : T am the Mother of the Universe, I am the Brahman of the Vedanta, the Atman of the Upanishads. It is I, Brahman, who created differentiation. Good and bad actions alike obey Me. The Law of Karma, in truth, exists; but it is I who am the Law-giver. .. come to me either through Devotion, Knowledge or Works, for all lead to God. I will lead you through this world, the ocean of action. ...'My Divine Mother is the primordial Divine Energy. She is omnipresent, She is both the outside and the inside of visible phenomenon. She is the parent of the world, and the world carries Her in its heart... .She is the container and the contained, the shell as also

the kernel.'

The young aspirant was now bent on seeing the living Presence of this Mother with the naked eye. He started meditating on Her, passing many whole consecutive nights in a nearby dense jungle where nobody could disturb him. It was his one passion now to see the Mother. 'O Mother ! Where art thou ! Reveal Thyself to me' was the one cry of his soul, tears flowing continuously from his eyes as he would go on repeating the cry. One by one, days were passing away, he could not see God, he could not see the Mother. He became impatient and decided to put an end to his life; and one day he was actually on the point of doing so when the Mother appeared before him. This is how he himself describes the event: T was then suffering from excruciating pain because I had not been blessed with a vision of the Mother. I felt as if my heart were being squeezed like a wet towel. I was overpowered by a great restlessness, and a fear that it might not be my lot to realise Her in this life. I could not bear the sepation any longer : life did not seem worth living. Suddenly my eyes fell on the sword that was kept in the Mother's temple. Determined to put an end to my life, I jumped up like a mad man and seized it, when suddenly the blessed Mother revealed Herself to me, and I fell unconscious on the floor. What happened after that externally, or how that day or the next passed, I do not know, but within me there was a steady flow of undiluted bliss altogether new and I felt the presence of the Divine Mother.'

But the vision had only intensified the hunger of his soul and he became mad to have it again. He began to call aloud, 'Mother ! Be gracious unto me and reveal Thyself again.' He began to cry and cry and would rub his face on the earth till it got lacerated. Deeply absorbed in his quest he would lose his outward consciousness and see before him in trance the Divine Mother smiling and talking to him. He soon grew into that inner state of consciousness in which, whenever he was in meditation,—and he would often pass hours in it—he used to be in direct communion with the Mother who spoke to him and instructed him in his daily duties. It was not long before he needed no meditation or trance to have the vision of the Mother. The stone image melted away for ever. And in its place he would always see his smiling Mother showering Her Blessings upon him. Now he was not only a witness to Her Divine Presence but would actually feel Her breath on his hand, see no shadow but her concrete radiant form. He was indeed as close to the Mother, as one could be, clinging to Her like a babe.

Sri Ramakrishna was now a God-intoxicated man, living always in the vision of the Mother or in the Mother Herself. Hridoy said that onlookers seeing him absorbed in his worship would feel the thrill of a living Presence. And his worship was always in his own way, not according to set Sastric rules. He would, Hridoy said, take flowers, pass them over his whole body from head to foot, and then offer them at the feet of Kali.

He would sing, talk, joke, laugh, or even dance for joy holding the image by the hand—who would fathom the depth of his feeling, how vivid and real was the Presence of the Mother to him, and how near he was to Her as Her very own, how near She was to him as his very own ! In fact, the oneness of the Divine Mother and Her child was then the mystic secret of their relationship. Sri Ramakrishna saw the Mother, saw Her all the time, knew Her as the Divine Sakti and always lived in this consciousness. The vision and the knowledge mingled into that beatific state of identity wherein all sense of duality is lost for ever. This was the greatest realisation of Sri Ramakrishna which remained with him as the very bed-rock of his spiritual life. Consequent upon this victory, waves of heavenly effulgence would often inundate his being. And as it increased in frequency, his physical body became unable to stand it. It was 'the state of being blasted by an excess of Light'. He felt a tremendous force working in him, a burning sensation in his body, and he wondered what it actually was. The sensation left him after he had the vision of a black coloured human figure coming out of his body and being destroyed by another calm human figure in ochre robe. Thus was effected the purificantion of his being.

Certain physical ailments, however, persisted along with the intoxication of the God-vision. For these two reasons, his mind and body were not in their normal state. When his mother, Chandra Devi, came to know of this she brought him back to his native place where after a few months' stay he recovered though never abstaining from his usual spiritual practices. In order to interest him in worldly affairs his mother and relatives wanted to get him married. Vigorous efforts having failed to find a suitable bride, the mother was feeling very much dejected, when one day Sri Ramakrishna in a semi-conscious mood conveyed to her an address where, he said, a bride was reserved for him. His word proved true. A girl aged five was found at that address. Chandra Devi proposed the wedding and it took place without delay. A year and a half after this Sri Ramakrishna returned to Dakshineswar and resumed his office, resumed also his all-out spiritual endeavours, and he developed the same signs as before, which an indigenous physician called 'divine madness'. Sri Ramakrishna himself characterised it as something like a storm that blew away all externals—his sacred thread, his sense of caste etc. Most of the time he was in meditation, withdrawn from all consciousness of the outside world. Birds would perch on his matted hair, snakes crawl over his motionless body, his eyes remaining wide open in a steadfast gaze on the Mother in some form or other. For six years, he said, T could not close the eyelids however much I might try to do so.' He wondered what all that meant, prayed to the Mother for illumination. 'The blissful Mother would appear before me and console me with gracious words,' he said.

He now wanted to be free from any attachment for wealth and pride

of superior birth, which are hindrances to God-realisation.* With a few rupees in one hand, and some earth of equal weight in the other, he would pass and repass them from one hand to the other arguing that they were of the same value and would then throw away both into the Ganga. In this way grew his renunciation till it became the breath of his life, and one day when Mathur offered to set apart a large estate in his name the Master thundered out, 'What ! Do you intend to make me a worldly man ?' many such offers from rich people he sternly refused.

Sri Ramakrishna had already tried with remarkable success several methods of devotional approach to the Divine as laid down in the scriptures, one of the results of which was the ever-present smile on his lips bequeathed to him by Sri Sita, the divine consort of Sri Rama, who visited him in response to his contemplation of Sri Rama with the devotion of a Hanuman. The Vaishnavite discipline turned him into a most devoted adherent. An absolute love for Sri Krishna made him mad and he approached Him through all the bhāvas (exalted states) to which He responds. He became a Gopi brimming over with ecstatic emotions, and took part in the mystic līlā with the Divine Sweetheart. Seized by the mahābhāva of Sri Radha he became identified with her and the blissful fulfilment of his sādhanā came when Sri Krishna appeared before him and merged in his person.

He was now to go through other forms of spiritual discipline in order to renew and restore in himself the spiritual realisations of the past that would inevitably reawaken the race consciousness to their truth and light. While Sri Ramakrishna was burning with a passion to see God or doing Yogic practices of his own religion and other religions it was evidently the spirit of India that was working in his soul and fitting him into a Power for the inner regeneration of man.

Now for the Yogic disciplines he went through. About this time, as if divinely ordained, there came to Dakshineswar a woman Yogi known as Bhairavi Brahmani who was an adept both in the theory and practice of Vaishnava and Tantrik cults. At the very first sight she recognised Sri Ramakrishna's state as that of Mahābhāva, 'supernormal religious ecstasy', experienced by Sri Radha and Sri Chaitanya. She demonstrated on scriptural authority that he showed signs which were those of an Incarnation of God. She put him through all the Tantrik practices—some of them extremely difficult and dangerous—and 'the Infinite Grace of the Mother carried me through them unscathed', says Sri Ramakrishna, who attained perfection in this system in three days—an incredibly short time.

While traversing the path of the Tantras, he had wonderful visions, sublime experiences, and ultimately, the supreme realisation of the Transcendent Para-Sakti—'Super-Nature'. He saw the mystery of creation unfolded before him. He heard the music of the inner worlds, their rhythms and symphonies. He mastered the secrets of supernatural powers.

And he came out bright as gold, possessing spiritual knowledge of a supreme order. He became like a child, unable to keep on any clothes or even the sacred thread. In spite of him they would drop off. His complexion looked so beautiful that a gold amulet on his arm could not be distinguished from the golden colour of his body, and he had to keep his body wrapped up to avoid public notice. He prayed to the Mother to take back the outward beauty and give instead Her inner beauty, inner purity. But he had to be in that state for some years, perhaps that was the Will of the Mother, as it was certainly by Her Will that devotees from far and near would come to him for guidance in spiritual life.

In 1864 a devotee of Sri Rama visited Sri Ramakrishna with an image of his iṣṭadeva which he fondly called Ramlala. In his deep love for Ramlala Sri Ramakrishna saw Sri Rama himself in the image and this vision abided with him. At the same time, as the image wished it, the devotee left the image with Sri Ramakrishna.

Sri Ramakrishna was now to realise the One Absolute in which knowledge, knower and known are one indivisible consciousness—'a state in which space disappears into nothingness, time is swallowed up in Eternity, causation becomes a dream of the past. He only knows that state who has experienced it. It is all stillness indefinable. The soul after a final struggle leaps over the last barrier of relative existence, shatters its prison of matter, and merges in the infinite glory of Brahman. This is called the Nirviklapa Samadhi—the highest flight of Advaita Philosophy.' Totapuri, a master of the theory and practice of Advaita, came at this time to Dakshineswar in order to initiate Sri Ramakrishna into the mystery of his cult. The child asked his Mother if he should go in for the realisation. The Mother said that Totapuri had been brought for that purpose. Sri Ramakrishna therefore took to the Advaita practice under his direction and in three days had the Nirvikalpa Samadhi. The guru was amazed at this unique achievement of his disciple, because in his own case it had taken him forty years, and he called it a miracle. After this realisation Sri Ramakrishna, absorbed in the self, looked serene, calm and radiant, his body showing no sign of life in it. Continuous utterance of the holy syllable Om by the guru brought Sri Ramakrishna back to a sense of the outside world, though for six months his consciousness was at one with Brahman in the Nirvikalpa state. After this period he was commanded by the Mother to come out of that absolute state and reamin on the threshhold of relative consciousness for the sake of humanity.

Sri Ramakrishna now felt impelled to seek the experiences that other religions had to offer. It was indeed utterly daring of him—a brahmana by caste and a priest by profession—to get formally initiated into Islam. He followed its ways like an orthodox Muslim, repeating the name of Allah and performing namaz regularly. In only three days he had a vision of the Prophet, and in no time realised the formless God of the Koran,

only to find himself identified with Brahman, the goal he ha£ already attained through his Advaita realisation. Years after, Sri Ramakrishna wanted to know the truth of Christianity. He first made himself acquainted with the teachings of the Christ, and one day as he was looking at a picture of the Madonna he felt overwhelmed by the descent into him of a downpour of a heavenly effulgence radiated by the picture. The Hindu brahmana was now a follower of the Christ. For three days he thought of nothing but the Christ, On the fourth day the Son of Man appeared before the child of the Divine Mother and took the latter into his bosom and became one with him. The Christ merged in Sri Ramakrishna and he had an immediate experience of the Brahman with attributes (Saguna Brahma). Sri Ramakrishna's love for the Buddha requires no mention. He regarded the Tathagata and the Christ as Incarnations of God. For him the Advaitic realisation differed little from the Nirvanic.

This is how Sri Ramakrishna for the first time in the spiritual history of mankind realised and proclaimed the harmony, nay, the unity of all religions, the vision of which had come to him earlier from a direct and intuitive seeing of the One Reality in Its many aspects. Sri Ramakrishna's was a call upon man to wake up and turn towards God, the Mother—that is how he called Him—not because he is the God of any particular religion, but because he is the God of all religions, the source of unity and harmony.

Following his Advaita realisation Sri Ramakrishna had certain physical ailments which he himself attributed to his taking upon himself the ailments of Mathur's wife when Mathur sought his help for her cure. The severe strain on his body of the long-continued state of Samadhi might be a contributing factor. It is also likely that these ailments served to bring him back to normal consciousness needed for his work.

Anyway, about the middle of 1867, Sri Ramakrishna went to his native home for a change. Here, for the first time after his marriage he met his wife, now fourteen, and taught her what she should do as the mistress of the household, but much greater than this teaching was his spiritual influence which made her feel the pure and selfless love her saintly husband bore towards her. Sarada Devi—that was her name—worshipped him as her Ishta-Deva, 'the chosen deity,' and began to grow in her inner life under his guidance, both open and silent. Referring to these days she once said : T used to feel always as if a pitcher full of bliss were placed in my heart—the joy was ineffable !' Four years after this when she heard that Sri Ramakrishna had run mad, she came to Dakshineswar and found him in a state of God-intoxication. She decided to stay on in order to serve him. A couple of months after her arrival Sri Ramakrishna wanted to fulfil a desire of his, and this he did in his own room where he asked Sarada Devi to take the seat reserved for her as the Goddess and then went through the regular form of worship. When the worship was going

on Sarada Devi was in a semi-conscious state and the Master in a super-conscious state. This was a Tantrik ceremony—the worship of the Divine Mother Tripurasundari—and the last of the long series of Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual practices.

One day Sarada Devi as she was massaging the Master's feet, asked him, 'What do you think of me ?' Quick came the answer, 'The Mother who is worshipped in the temple is the mother who has given birth to this body and is now living in the concert-room (in the temple compound) and she again is massaging my feet at this moment. Verily I always look upon you as the visible representation of the Blissful Mother.' Sarada Devi also came to regard Sri Ramakrishna as the Divine Mother. When he passed away she cried like a bereaved child, 'Mother ! O Mother ! Where are you going, leaving me ?' He used to say, 'After marriage I anxiously prayed to the Divine Mother to root out all sense of physical enjoyment from her mind. That my prayer had been granted I knew from my contact with her during this period.' No language can adequately express this holy relationship between the two souls, joined by ties of marriage, one possessed of the infinite splendours of God-vision descended on the earth to reawaken humanity; the other destined to be his wife to have her human love and relationship transmuted into their divine counterparts. Indeed Sri Ramakrishna developed the supreme capacity to transmit spirituality to others. In fact, he never followed the customary practice of formal initiation. Whenever necessary, he would just touch or cast a look to instil into seeking souls the power of the spirit of which he was then in complete mastery. Having perceived that Hridoy, his nephew and attendant, had developed a yearning for God, for the power to realise higher truths, Sri Ramakrishna told him that he would have them. One day Hridoy amazed to see Sri Ramakrishna's body changed into a luminous one, found to his utter amazement that he too possessed a luminous body and began to shout, 'O Ramakrishna, O Ramakrishna, we are not men, why are we here ? Come, let us go from place to place and save people from their misery. You and I are of one stuff !' No wonder that Sarada Devi should have her inner experiences of the Presence of the Divine Mother in Sri Ramakrishna. These two are, however, among very many instances of how he awakened souls to the light of God. A few other instances will be referred to later on.

Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual realisations were indeed marvels in themselves; he saw the Divine Mother in all and all in the Divine Mother. 'Seeing Brahman or God in all beings is the last word of Sadhana,' he used to say. His vision of the All-Pervading Mother, the Mother who was in him, and in Whom he was, was the very basis of all his teachings, of the sublime thought which originated from his life and sadhana, and which later became the very centre and soul of what Vivekananda proclaimed to the world as India's message for the spiritual regeneration

of humanity. And it is this vision seen by the early father? of the race which along with others has, down the ages, sustained the life-line of Indian civilisation. When Sri Ramakrishna saw and felt the presence of the Mother in him and in all, he felt also his oneness with all so much so that once when he saw a man beating another, he cried aloud, 'Help ! I am hurt ! I am hurt ! ' and people noticed on his back fresh Wales marking the finger-prints of the assailant. While on a pilgrimage with Mathur Sri Ramakrishna had to pass through a famine-stricken area. As he saw the distress of the people he stopped and began weeping bitterly with the sufferers, determined to fast with them unto death unless they were rendered help.

Sri Ramakrishna regarded every Jīva (creature) as Siva and affirmed time and again that the service of Jīva is the service of Siva. One day addressing Narendranath and some other disciples he said : 'They talk of mercy to the creatures ! How audacious it is to think of showering mercy on the Jīva, who is none other than Siva ! One has to regard the creature as God Himself and proceed to serve it with a devout heart, instead of taking up the pose of doling out mercy.' Narendranath—later Vivekananda—on that very day said and took the vow : T have heard today a saying of unparalleled significance. Time permitting, I shall communicate to the world the profound import of this marvellous utterance.' And this he did, and did as a god, and the world readily bowed to him.

The light of India's soul was never wholly extinct but dimmed during the medieval times by various untoward conditions some of which were obscure customs and practices and meaningless beliefs. It began to burn again in its ancient and eternal splendour when Sri Ramakrishna won his unique victories in the world of the Spirit and brought them within the reach of seeking souls—many of them being learned scholars, saints, yogis and religious leaders of the time—who came to him from various parts of the country. And with this there started the movement of India's national being towards the renewal of her strength as a people whose inward pursuits have always guided, and given their meaning to, her outer activities.

The movement may be said to have begun when Sri Ramakrishna expressed a desire to see the celebrities of Calcutta most of whom were Brahmo Samaj leaders. In fact, they represented the intellectual life of the city and the Samaj was then the only public institution which sought to reform Hindu religion and society on the basis of what they had learnt from the West and to some extent from the Upanishads. Sri Ramakrishna wanted first to know what the Brahmo Samaj ideals were and how their followers were living up to them, and then to bring home to them what his ideals were and how he lived them. The magic spell of his contact was now at work. The intellectuals, the Europeanised Indians or the

orthodox pandits, who came to argue, remained to pray at the feet of this God-drunk unlettered brahmana, captivated by his matchless wisdom and mastery of spiritual things. Even the guides who had been with him to help in his spiritual practices stayed on charmed by the aura of his divine personality and of the universal character of his teachings—the very attractions that drew people of all castes and sects from far and near to the holy shrine of Dakshineswar. In his Bengali book Sri Ramakrishner Anudhyan, 'Memoirs of Sri Ramakrishna', Mahendranath Datta, a younger brother of Swami Vivekananda, says that he used often to see such aura round the figure of Sri Ramakrishna. And this was also the experience of other contemporary writers.

Sri Ramakrishna's meeting with Devendranath Tagore and Keshub-chandra Sen and his influence on the latter have been already referred to. He also met Iswarchandra Vidyasagar, the large-hearted 'intellectual dictator' of the time. It is not that every one of them understood him as he really was. Keshub however had an inkling of it. There is evidence that many of them were deeply touched by the personality of this God-man. Sivanath Sastri, a prominent Brahmo of the time and in whom Sri Ramakrishna took particular interest, persisted in his doubts till one day Sri Ramakrishna burst out : 'Well, Sivanath, I hear that you call my Samadhi a disease and say that I become unconscious at that time. You think day and night all sorts of material things and yet consider yourself to be of sound brain, while I who meditate on the Eternal Fountain-head of Consciousness appear to you as deranged ! A fine piece of reasoning !' Sivanath had nothing to say. He however perceived something in this God-intoxicated mystic which made him write : T have seldom come across any other man in whom the hunger and thirst for spiritual life was so great----He was a Siddha Purusha or one who had attained direct vision of spiritual truth.'

Pratapchandra Mozoomdar, the famous associate and biographer of Keshubchandra Sen, whose contact with Sri Ramakrishna has been mentioned before, wrote : 'I, a Europeanised, civilised, self-centred, semisceptical, so-called educated reasoned, and he, a poor, illiterate, unpolished, half-idolatrous, friendless Hindu devotee. Why should I sit long hours to attend to him, I, who have listened to Disraeli and Fawcett, Stanley and Max MÜller, and a whole host of European scholars and divines?.. . and it is not I only, but dozens like me who do the same.' He answers the why himself saying that it is his religion that is his only recommendation. 'His religion is ecstasy, his worship means transcendental insight, his whole nature burns day and night with a permanent fire and fever of a strange faith and feeling.. . .So long as he is spared to us, gladly shall we sit at his feet to learn from him the sublime precepts of purity, unworldliness, spirituality and inebriation in the love of God.. . .By associating with him we learnt to realise better the Divine attributes as scattered over the

three hundred and thirty millions of deities of the mythological India, the gods of the Puranas.'

Another Brahmo visitor wrote : 'A living evidence of the depth and sweetness of the Hindu religion is this good and holy man. He has wholly controlled this flesh. It is full of soul, full of the reality of religion, full of joy, full of blessed purity.. ..His spotless holiness, his deep and unspeakable blessedness, his unstudied, endless wisdom, his childlike peacefulness and affection towards all men, his consuming and all-absorbing love for God are his only reward.'

Here is yet another visitor's testimony to the sublimity of the words that came out of Sri Ramakrishna : 'From his lips flowed a sream of marvellous wisdom, unhurried and unresting. No other man within the memory of men spoke as Ramakrishna spoke. The wisdom of the ancient Aryan sages, the difficult teachings of the Upanishads, the intricacies of the Vedanta were all familiar to him as if he had been studying them all his life.' "

Vijaykrishna Goswami (1841-1899), mentioned before as a prominent and successful preacher of the Brahmo Samaj, used to come to Sri Ramakrishna, attracted, like other Brahmos, by the incomparable greatness of his life and teachings. This contact, as Vijaykrishna himself admitted, was of much spiritual help to him. Once while meditating in his room with closed doors in Dacca he had had a vision of Sri Ramakrishna and had actually touched his body to see if his vision had been a fancy—a fact which afterwards made him declare : 'I have travelled in various parts of the country, on hills and mountains, and seen many great holy souls, but I have never seen such a one (pointing to Sri Ramakrishna)... in whom I see power fully manifested.' 'Vijaykrishna had then,' said Sri Ramakrishna, 'reached the room just adjacent to the innermost chamber, the acme of spiritual realisation and is knocking at its door.' Later, following the marriage of Keshub's daughter to the Coochbihar Prince, he severed his connection with the Brahmo Samaj and began to pursue his own line of spiritual development which brought him wonderful visions and experiences. He now believed in the personal God and showed definite inclinations towards the neo-Vaishnavism of Sri Chaitanya. Born as a Vaishnava, he was in his youth a Vedantist, then as a Brahmo a monotheist and also a Sannyasi initiated by a Yogi of Nanak's school, last, after his meeting with Sri Ramakrishna he returned to the original faith of his forefathers—Sanatana Dharma, the Eternal Religion which, as he said, embodied the universal principles of man's spiritual unfoldment. True to his Vaishnavite inheritance, he took to the path of Devotion, and having realised its truth, made an approach to the Divine, in which the intensity of love for God purified the heart making it a fit habitation for the Indwelling Deity whose Light would make the whole being of the devotee luminously one with the Presence within him. This

was the first step to feeling the same Presence in all, that is to say, in the collectivity as the Universal Being of Narayana whose personal Being resides in the individual devotee. This is how Vijaykrishna envisaged the fundamental basis of Universal Harmony and Universal Humanity. While he was in one of his trances he spoke in vivid terms of a vision he was then seeing of the gods of heaven descending on earth to manifest in man—an indication of a divine future for humanity. These visions of Vijaykrishna have some affinity with Sri Ramakrishna's vision of the Mother's Light pervading everything, manifesting more markedly in man so that he might one day realise his oneness with the Mother and with all in Her Divine Light.

Bengal's and, as a matter of fact, India's reverence for Vijaykrishna is certainly not confined to his immediate followers and the followers of his spiritually-advanced disciples. Those who have heard his name and know of his spiritual realisations bow to his memory as of one who did much for the spiritual uplift of India. But a significant and not-so-well-known fact about him is that he was one of those Yogis and spiritual teachers of India who were most eager to see their motherland free from foreign domination and who did whatever they could towards her attainment of a life of freedom without which they felt that India would not be able to fulfil her divine mission on earth. And it was this idea that was often repeated by the leaders of the Swadeshi movement, many of whom were VijayKrishna's direct disciples. It is said that Lala Lajpat Rai, the Lion of the Panjab, drew his inspiration from the teachings of this great saint and Yogi.

The above are some of the direct evidences of Sri Ramakrishna's deep and decisive influence, particularly on the rationalists of the time; but the crowning victory was yet to come. It was to turn a typical product of Western education into a living embodiment of India's spiritual culture and an authentic exponent of the Master's message to India and the world. Therefore the call went forth from the Master not only to him but to a number of others who were to form the nucleus of a spiritual brotherhood of dedicated lives through whom the Master would work for the inner regeneration of man. Sri Ramakrishna would often get on the roof the house and call aloud : 'O my children, where are you ? Come, My life has become unbearable by your delay in meeting me.' Shortly after, this cry of his soul, the call of the Mother, as he named it, reached the chosen ones, and when, one by one, all of them came, the Mother, he says, showed them all to me and said, 'All these are your devotees of the inner circle.' It is interesting that the last to come was named Purna, literally meaning complete.

Ramchandra Datta, a medical man and an atheist, and his cousin Monomohan Mitra, were the first to come. And it is they who brought Sri Ramakrishna's two greatest disciples : Rakhalchandra Ghose whose

monastic name was Swami Brahmananda, the first President of The Ramakrishna Math and Mission, and Narendranath Datta, known the world over as Swami Vivekananda, who was commanded by the Master to found the Order. It is noteworthy that of the twentyfour who formed the Master's inner circle, only six were brahmanas, and these were also among the twelve who severed their worldly connections and were the first members of the Order the creation of which was divinely ordained. All the twelve were marked by the Mother, and Sri Ramakrishna recognised Her invisible sign in every one of them, the souls of some of them having had association with past Avataras. This shows that spirituality, in the new age that was then dawning, was not to be the monopoly of any particular caste. In fact, it had never been so in the great days of India's past. And Sri Ramakrishna denounced the medieval casteism when he himself broke the convention and admitted to his inner circle people not for any external qualifications but for the purity of their soul and for their fitness for the work of God, of the Mother, Who called them for the purpose.

The first to be so chosen was Latu who later became Swami Abdhutananda. The Master used to speak very highly of Latu's spirituality. This young man was an unlettered Bihari servant in Ramchandra's house. Narendra, however, towered over his fellow-disciples, though many of them were marked for their rare spiritual purity and intense aspiration. The Mother in a vision showed to Sri Ramakrishna that Rakhal was his 'spiritual child', 'one of the pure souls who had been playmates of Sri Krishna.' The Master used to say that Rakhal and Baburam—Swami Premananda—belonged to the class of the nītya-siddha, 'eternally perfect.' Saratchandra Chakravarty—Swami Saradananda—, who was a rationalist, is the famous author of the Bengali book Sri Ramakrishna Lilaprasanga ('Sri Ramakrishna The Great Master'), a matchless gem of hagiographical literature in the world. He and his cousin Sashibhusan—Swami Ramakrishnananda—were often mentioned by the Master as devout followers of Jesus Christ in a previous incarnation. Kaliprosad Ghosh—Swami Abhedananda—was a great scholar noted for his constant spiritual practices. Narendra, an educated youth of Calcutta full of Western ideas, came to Sri Ramakrishna with his question, 'Sir, have you seen God ?' This young man, destined to shake the world by his mighty declaration of the inherent divinity of man, was in his early days, an earnest seeker, and his seeking deepened with the years but took a different turn under the influence of Western positivism. Such was the case with almost all young men of the time. But, unlike others, Narendra was no victim of it. He got over the western influence at the very touch of Sri Ramakrishna.

Narendra was the eldest son of a respectable middle class Kayastha family of Calcutta. Hardly had he finished his education when he felt an urge to have a direct vision of God, but none could tell him how he could fulfil his desire. Having heard about Sri Ramakrishna one day he

came to se& the Master who at once recognised in this young aspirant one of those whom he had been waiting for, who were to do the Mother's work. Narendra's anglicized mind did not seem to have been impressed by Sri Ramakrishna because of what appeared to him to be the mad behaviour of Sri Ramakrishna, 'the God-drunk unlettered brahmana.' Soon the Master revealed to his chosen disciple the Light of the Mother. This awakened in Narendra a sense of his destiny. Thus began the wonderful story of Narendra's preparation for his future work, a clear indication of which was given by the Master. Once when Narendra expressed his desire to remain absorbed in the nirvikalpa samādhi, the Master reproving him said : 'Shame on you ! I thought you would be the great banyan tree giving shelter to thousands of weary souls. Instead you are selfishly seeking your own well-being. Let these little things alone, my child.' This incident will be further dealt with when Narendra comes under study in the next chapter.

About Narendra's incarnation Sri Ramakrishna gave broad hints on several occasions. He said that he would never speak of the inmost truth of Narendra as it would ever remain beyond the ken of man. Once he referred to him as a 'child of heaven' through whom descended on earth from his celestial abode one of the Seven Rishis he had seen, in a vision, 'shining in their bodies of light.' 'Hardly had I seen Narendra for the first time when I knew that he was that Rishi,' said the Master; 'he was verily the sun of knowledge by whose side the intellectual celebrities of the time were mere flames.' On another occasion Sri Ramakrishna said that Narendra was nityasiddha, 'eternally perfect,' an iśwarakoṭi, 'a special messenger of God born on earth to fulfil a divine mission,' 'Narayana Himself who had come to the world to help Sri Ramakrishna in his 'work of renovating the Eternal Religion to serve the needs of the modern times by clearing it of its age-long, undesirable accretions.' To make a clean sweep of these accretions required the courage of a modern mind. The purpose behind Narendra's mental training in Western ideas stands explained here. Narendra really fulfilled the desire of Sri Ramakrishna that a rationalist should come forward and question the validity of his spiritual experiences thereby affording him an opportunity to prove their truth and genuineness.

Narendra along with the other young souls, some of whom also had rationalistic inclinations, was thus chosen by the Divine Mother as instruments of Her work and it was Her Will that brought them to Sri Ramakrishna who at once recognised them. Indeed, when from the house-top he was calling out to them, he was only externally transmitting the call of the Mother, and their almost immediate appearance showed the preordained dispensation; for the Mother must have Her work done by her chosen ones.

Equally chosen were the householder-disciples of the Master, many

of whom, spiritually, were equals of their monastic breather, and whatever they did for their Master was the offering of their soul at his Feet, the Lotus-Feet of the Divine Mother, whose Grace he showered on them in all its supernal plenitude. Durgacharan Nag, commonly known as Sadhu Nagmahasaya, had been from his boyhood a seeker of God, and led a most austere life trying always to keep away from all attachments. When he wanted to embrace sannyasa Sri Ramakrishna told him not to do so but live in the world with his mind fixed on God. And this he was able to do and became one of the foremost householder-devotees of the Master. Another intimate follower of Sri Ramakrishna was Mahendranath Gupta, the immortal writer of Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita, (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna) containing the Master's conversations—his varied spiritual experiences—faithfully recorded in the simplest and sweetest language of the Master. The book has hardly an equal in the whole range of spiritual literature. Girishchandra Ghosh, whose name is a household word in Bengal as the greatest dramatist in the Bengali language and the father of the Bengali stage, was a victim of Western materialism and led a reckless life before he came in contact with Sri Ramakrishna in 1884. The contact changed him so much that he started declaring to all that Sri Ramakrishna was verily the Divine in human form. Sri Ramakrishna used to help his devotees in their inner development, each according to his distinct individual need. He would give them the strength and the will to discover for themselves their line of spiritual unfoldment. He did not ask Girish to give up his drinking habit or his profession which needed free mixing with public women. The Master himself undertook to do everything for Girish, the only condition being that he must rely absolutely on him. This was how a Bohemian was turned into a saint, one of the greatest of the householder-devotees of Sri Ramakrishna.

Thus did they come, they who had the unique privilege of having that blessedness direct from the Master which gave a new turn to their life and sadhana,—life dedicated to the service of the Mother and the Master, sadhana for the attainment of the goal which the Master held up before them. This was how the beginning was made of a work of tremendous import for the future of India and the world. In fact, the beginning had started earlier when with all the depth and passionate intensity of his soul Sri Ramakrishna had been praying to the Divine Mother for her appearance in visible form. This movement in the inmost depths of his soul stirred the soul of his country, the Bharata Sakti which is an embodiment of the Divine Mother's Will and carries on her work with India as her centre, for the spiritual evolution of man. Sri Ramakrishna is thus the first in modern times to vindicate the essence of Hinduism, to restore it to its true and eternal values which could liberate the world from its subjection to rank materialism. It was he again who proved to the world that Hinduism was yet a living religion in whose temple the living

Presence of God could not only be seen but also shown to those who enter it in right spirit. And this God, Sri Ramakrishna taught, was the God of all; the realisation of His Presence in all is the highest religion, the eternal basis of the spiritual religion for all humanity. This is one of the truths that Sri Ramakrishna came to establish on earth and India recovered her inner self and turned round again to her own path of spirituality, reassured of her glorious future. Resurgent India was thus set on her course of further and ever-new endeavours and newer discoveries.

Fixed in his vision of the All-Pervading Divine, Sri Ramakrishna began now to feel that his work was over. 'Whom can I teach ?' he asked; Tor I see the whole world is filled with God.' And he was so full of divine bliss that on I January 1886, it burst its bounds and his touch of benediction threw some of those present at the .time into transports of joy, and some into silent ecstasy; but all felt as if they had received an electric shock, 'an access of power, so that each one realised his chosen ideal at a bound'. Could there be more convincing proofs of Sri Ramakrishna's 'power of spirituality transfusing itself into others' ?

Sri Ramakrishna was never particular about his own health. To turn away spiritual seekers because his health did not permit his attending to them was for him a kind of selfishness. But the strain was much too great for his body to stand. He developed a serious throat trouble which he attributed mainly to this strain and which he knew would prove fatal. He gave hints of it and was preparing to withdraw. He was now keen on giving some outer form to the spiritual brotherhood of his young devotees and this he did when one day he actually made them beg their food like sannyasin, and on another occasion gave them ochre cloth, the robe of the Hindu monk. And the day came for Narendra to receive the command of the Master : T leave these young people in your charge. Busy yourself in developing their spirituality.' Thus was born Ramakrishna Math and Mission. Narendra had already been armed by the Master with whatever strength he needed for the accomplishment of the work. About this time Narendra had the transcendental experience of the Absolute through a period of nirvikalpa samādhi, and as soon as he came back to the normal plane of consciousness the Master said : 'Now the Mother has shown you all. But this realisation of yours shall be locked up for the present, and the key will remain with me. When you will have finished doing the Mother's work, this treasure will be yours.' This was a reaffirmation by the Master to his chosen instrument of what was to be the latter's mission in life. Four days after this and four days before his Mahasamadhi, Sri Ramakrishna called Narendra to sit before him and gazing at him went into Samadhi. Narendra felt a subtle force like an electric current penetrating his body. Gradually he too lost outward consciousness. When he recovered it, Sri Ramakrishna told him rather pathetically, 'Today I have given you my all and have become a

Fakir. Through this power you will do immense good to* the world, and then only shall you go back.' Narendra was now in possession of all that Sri Ramakrishna had and was. The Master and the disciple were now one soul, and this because the successful fulfilment of the work of the Mother required the combination of the highest that was in each of them; and how this work was done by the Mighty Lion of the Vedanta is a most sublime chapter in the history of modern India's resurgence.

The two striking factors in the phenomenon were, first, the intense and exclusive Godwardness of Sri Ramakrishna, the greatest necessity in that 'age of denial,' and second, the modern rationalistic mind represented by Narendra whose seeking soul was not only fully satisfied by the Master but who was awakened by him to his wider divine destiny. That Narendra persisted in his rationalism might have been the Will of the Mother even as it was Her Will that Sri Ramakrishna should be the revealer of the Light that She is—the Light of God—as the only truth to which man must open for his liberation from the ills of the earth. Not only this, the revelation took on its deeper meaning when Sri Ramakrishna reaffirmed his own divinity. An occasion that demonstrated the rationalistic aspect of the disciple occurred when, in order to see how Sri Ramakrishna would react to the touch of money, he put some silver coins under his bed without his knowledge. As Sri Ramakrishna was lying down, his hand became bent and his whole body got, as it were, paralysed; and this happened every time he came in touch with money. The other occasion for the disciple to be divested of the last trace of doubt in his mind was when he said to himself that he would believe in Sri Ramakrishna's Godhead if he could declare it in the midst of this dreadful physical pain caused by his illness. Strange to say, the moment this thought crossed Narendra's mind, Sri Ramakrishna summoning all his energy said distinctly, 'He who was Rama and Krishna is now Ramakrishna in this body—but not in your Vedantic sense.' Narendra felt abashed and sad that he should have doubted the Master even after so many proofs.

On 15 August 1886, having repeated several times to Narendra, 'Take care of these boys', Sri Ramakrishna passed into Mahasamadhi, leaving his devotees, particularly the younger group and their young God-appointed leader to keep burning the Light of the Mother of which Sri Ramakrishna's whole life was a radiant example—the Light which he rekindled in the consciousness of the race to remake it into what, in its soul, it really is.

Sri Ramakrishna left his body when he was certain that the work the Mother commanded him to do on earth had begun, that the influence of his life and teachings had permeated the mind, heart and soul of the people, particularly, of the intelligentsia for whom the Mother had brought him to Dakshineswar, so near to Calcutta. His words were, every one of them, the words of his soul always in communion with the Divine Mother,

Who in order that his words might always carry Her Light, wanted Sri Ramakrishna always to remain bhāvamukha, to be able to voice only Her thoughts and Her ideas. As a consequence, whatever came out of his mouth was spiritual truths of the highest value. And how simple was the expression he gave to these truths !—one of the reasons why they were so easily grasped by one and all much to their inner uplift and unfoldment. The truths that had for millenniums been locked up in the scriptures were released and broadcast, as it were, for all to profit by. In the words of Sister Nivedita, 'Everyone about him caught the vision of the Divine.'

The one point round which his teachings centre is to turn man from the trivialities of life to the infinitudes of the Godhead. The' aim of life, he said, is to realise God and to see Him in all. He who, having the rare privilege of being born a man, does not care, or fails, to realise God in this life is born to no purpose. He who seeks Him finds Him. Move one step towards Him and He will come seven steps forward to you. Verify it in your own life, he would urge; try for three days and you are sure to succeed. You will see God if your love for Him is as strong as is your attachment for things of the world. Live in the world and do all your worldly duties but with your mind and heart always fixed on God. God as the Mother is the sweetest of things to realise and remember. And when you can constancy do that you open into Her Presence in you and in all; for She is indeed the Mother of all. A mother gives playthings to her children and they get tied down to them but if they leave them aside and cry for her she at once appears and takes them up into her arms and soothes them. O men, you are absorbed in thoughts of lust and gold. When these thoughts find no place in you and you cry for the Divine Mother, She will envelop you in Her Love. This is the path of self-consecration—the sure path that protects, delivers and leads to the Supreme Felicity that the Mother is. You should be like the baby cat which, unlike the baby monkey, does not hold to its mother but is held by her and has no fear of responsibility. Lust of the flesh and love of gold are the two things that keep man away from God. Shun all attachment to them as a positive evil. Conquer the lower passions not by mere suppression but by sublimation. When directed towards the world they are enemies, when towards the Deity, they are the best friends of man, for they then take him to God. The desire for things worldly must change into longing for God. The inferior T must be purified, transformed and put into action as the superior T. Not T and mine' but 'Thee and Thine'. This is the secret. And nothing is unreal when your vision of God is complete, that is to say, when you see Him in every creature and in everything. God, God and God and, nothing else but God. To know Him is to know all, to see and worship Him in all, in whatever way suitable to the aspirant, is to practise the highest religion. These are the fundamental principles of 'the Sanatana Dharma, the eternal religion, the religion of the Rishis, which has been in

existence from time out of mind and will exist eternally. 'There exist in this Sanatana Dharma all forms of worship—worship of God with form, and worship of an Impersonal Deity as well. It embraces all paths, such as the path of knowledge, the path of devotion, the path of works.'

'I have practised all religions,' says Sri Ramakrishna, 'Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and I have followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. I have found that it is the same God towards whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths.

'The tank has several ghats. At one Hindus draw water in pitchers and call it jal; at another Mohammedans draw water in leather botdes and call it pani; at a third Christians, and call it water. Can we imagine that the water is not jal, but only pani or water ? How absurd ! The substance is One under different names, and everyone is seeking the same substance.

'Every religion of the world is one such ghat. Go direct with a sincere and earnest heart by any of these ghats, and you will reach the water of Eternal Bliss.'

Swami Vivekananda said: 'This is the message of Sri Ramakrishna to the modern world : 'Do not care for doctrines, do not care for dogmas, or sects, or churches, or temples; they count for little compared with the essence of existence in each man, which is spirituality, and the more this is developed in man, the more powerful is he for good. ...Show by your lives that religion does not mean words, or names, or sects, but that it means spiritual realisation....' Therefore my Master's message to mankind is, 'Be spiritual and realise Truth for yourself. To proclaim and make clear the fundamental unity underlying all religions was the mission of my Master.'

Spirituality and religious harmony have never before been so lucidly explained, simply because the exponent lived what he said and spoke from his soul. Thus an unlettered village brahmana became a world-teacher, a world-saviour who moved the world from that secluded spot at Dakshineswar where the Divine Mother revealed Herself to him for Her revelation not only to believers but also to those who believed in nothing but reason and materialism. And what a change this Revelation wrought in them ! Says Sri Aurobindo, 'He pervades and returns. Every age of denial is only a preparation for a larger and more comprehensive affirmation.' In that 'age of denial' Sri Ramakrishna's life and teachings represented the first and most important phase of preparation for the coming of the Age of the Spirit when the Truth of God alone shall prevail and nothing else.

Sri Ramakrishna, says Nolini Kanta Gupta, is spirituality of the purest form, the fundamental being of the Spirit, the primal energy of the Spirit. He came with this spiritual substance at an hour when in India spirituality had become a mere word, and from the world it had virtually vanished. He gave India her eternal certitude, her unmistakable swamp, her proper

self. Spirituality is clear realisation, seeing the truth, finding God. It is no mere conception, no ism, no intellectual conviction—it is conscious feeling and faith. Scholars and philosophers occupy themselves in proving the existence of God and soul by reason, by logical principles; but that way, of proving (or disproving) God and soul is a ridiculous activity. Do I seek to prove that you are standing before me ? or do I sit down to prove that I exist ? What is true is, that is to say, because it is, it is true; the existence of God and Soul, the truth of truths, is axiomatic—it is a matter of direct sight, direct vision and direct perception. Sri Ramakrishna's one-pointed sadhana gave him all these, and more. He proved in his own self the conquest of the Inner over the outer, of the Spirit over matter, of the Divine over human, and established that great truth in the life of Humanity. He has sown the seeds of the whole future creation, and is therefore the meeting-point of two cycles. In him a Past has ended and a Future is begun. By his intense spirituality he renewed in himself the whole spiritual effort of the past and repossessed all their fruits to enrich and energise the spiritual consciousness of the race with a view to building up a greater future for humanity.¹

Sri Ramakrishna's life, says Swami Vivekananda, 'is a search-light of infinite power thrown upon the whole mass of Indian religious thought. He was the living commentary on the Vedas and their aim. He had lived in our life the whole cycle of the national religious existence in India.'

In 1908 when as a result of the spiritual forces released by the Divine Sakti through the life and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, and through Bankim's vision of Mother India and his mantra of her worship, India, primarily Bengal, was at the height of a new awakening, of which the immediate cause was the Partition of Bengal, Sri Aurobindo in an article in the Bande Mataram of 29 March 1908, entitled 'Spirituality and Nationalism' revealed the inner significance of the advent of Sri Ramakrishna and its bearing on the national resurgence. Sri Aurobindo writes: '.. .The long ages of discipline which India underwent, are now drawing to an end. A great light is dawning on the East, a light whose first heralding glimpses are already seen on the horizon; a new day is about to break, so glorious that even the last of the avatāras cannot be sufficient to explain it, although without him it would not have come. The perfect expression of Hindu spirituality was the signal for the resurgence of the East. Mankind has long been experimenting with various kinds of thought, different principles of ethics, strange dreams of perfection to be gained by material means, impossible millenniums and humanitarian hopes. Nowhere has it succeeded in realising the ultimate secret of life. Nowhere has it found satisfaction. No scheme of society or politics has helped it to escape from the necessity of sorrow, poverty, strife, dissatisfaction from which it strives for an outlet; for whoever is

¹ Freely rendered from Nolini Kama Gupta's Bengali book Banglar Pran.

trying to find one by material means must inevitably fail. The East alone has some knowledge of the truth, the East alone can teach the West, the East alone can save mankind. Through all these ages Asia has been seeking for a light within, and whenever she has been blessed with a glimpse of what she seeks, a great religion has been born, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Mohammedanism with all their countess sects. But the grand workshop of spiritual experiment, the laboratory of the soul has been India, where thousands of great spirits have been born in every generation who were content to work quietly in their own souls, perfect their knowledge, hand down the results of their experiments to a few disciples and leave the rest to others to complete. They did not hasten to proselytise, were in no way eager to proclaim themselves, but merely added their quota of experience and returned to the source from which they had come. The immense reservoir of spiritual energy stored up by the self-repression was the condition of this birth of avatāras; of men so full of God that they could not be satisfied with silent bliss, but poured it out on the world, not with the idea of proselytising but because they wished to communicate their own ecstasy of realisation to others who were fit to receive it either by previous tapasyā or by the purity of their desires. Of all these souls Sri Ramakrishna was the last and greatest, for while others felt God in a single or limited aspect, he felt Him in His illimitable unity as the sum of an illimitable variety. In him the spiritual experiences of the millions of saints who had gone before were renewed and united. Sri Ramakrishna gave to India the final message of Hinduism to the world. A new era dates from his birth, an era in which the peoples of the earth will be lifted for a while into communion with God and spirituality become the dominant note of human life. What Christianity failed to do, what Mohammedanism strove to accomplish in times as yet unripe, what Buddhism half accomplished for a brief period and among a limited number of men, Hinduism as summed up in the life of Sri Ramakrishna has to attempt for all the world. This is the reason of India's resurgence, this is why God has breathed life into her once more, why great souls are at work to bring about her salvation, why a sudden change is coming over the hearts of her sons. The movement of which the first outbreak was political, will end in a spiritual consummation.'

The seed of this consummation was sown by Sri Ramakrishna when after his vision of the Divine Mother he revealed Her to the chosen representatives of the race of whom Swami Vivekananda. was the leader and to whom the Master gave the mantra that every Jīva is Siva and that the worship of Jīva is the worship of the Supreme. Vivekananda reaffirmed this with all the force given him by the Master, the Mother, declaring that the suffering millions of India are the living gods, 'now next door neighbours to brutes', who must be raised to the status of decent and honourable human beings. The result was the birth of resurgent

nationalism with its high-priest in Sri Aurobindo who said : 'So long as India is not free, the world is not free, because only then will she be able to fulfil her divine mission of liberating humanity into a new life of true freedom, unity and peace.' This envisages a spiritual revolution implicit in Sri Ramakrishna's clear vision of the Day when man will live in God alone and in nothing else. Thus did this 'God-drunk mystic' break down all barriers of religious isolation. A straight entry into the Temple of the Spirit is the aim of the new spiritual religion which would be bound by no outward form, by no institution, no creation of the human mind. Only by his heart and soul would man seek this larger life in God. This future of man is presaged in the subjective tendencies of the modern age, which, developed, would pave the way for his divine destiny.

The silent spiritual movement initiated by Sri Ramakrishna was widened and made dynamic in the life of the race when with the whole of his heavenly strength Vivekananda threw himself into the cause of India's uplift so that she might rise again and be her own self, and then help in bringing about the salvation of the human race. This consummation will be achieved when Indian opens to the Truth and Light of the Divine Mother seen and revealed by Sri Ramakrishna, hailed and hymned as Mother India by Bankim and Bhudev, declared by Vivekananda as the 'Ancient Mother who has awakened once more.' That these visions should appear during a particular period of the momentous nineteenth century pointed to that propitious hour chosen by the Divine Mother for the descent of her Truth and Light into the national being of India so that her work for the future of India and the world might expand through her first chosen instrument—Swami Vivekananda. .