Welcome! Please scroll down till the bottom to read all the articles in this page.
Contributions this month by Mr Kees Boukema, Prof Paulo Bittencourt, Mrs Francis Schaik, Mrs Mary Saaleman, Marlow, and others. Also read about the Amulet of Sri Ramakrishna, hints to spiritual life, and so on.
Life and Passion
Kees Boukema
The American scholar William James, author of the classic The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902, p. vi), was convinced that the sinner is closer to God than the virtuous person, because ‘life’ is given to us as a ‘passion’. This was certainly true for Girish Chandra Ghosh (1844-1912), the very talented Indian actor, playwright and successful theatre director. He also had a hot-tempered character and a huge drinking problem. Ram Chandra Datta wrote about him in ‘Biography of Sri Ramakrishna’ [p. 153]:
“When the ‘Chatanya Lila’ of Girish Babu was enacted, Ramakrishna went to see it. Girish Babu felt blessed. After their meeting in person, the two of them would visit each other from time to time.” Girish was often drunk; he then lost all self-control. One evening he ended up in a brothel with a few friends. Suddenly he felt an urgent need to seek out Ramakrishna. They hired a carriage and drove to Dakshineswar. It was late; everyone was asleep. Dead drunk, they stumbled into Ramakrishna’s bedroom. Ramakrishna woke up, took both Girish’s hands and began to dance in ecstasy. “Then I realized,” Girish said later, “Here is a man who embraces everyone, even a bad person like me.” (They lived with God, p.273). “But whatever else Girish was, there was no doubt that he was extremely insightful and intelligent,” wrote Chandra Datta, “He knew that the guru is Brahma, Vishnu and also Mahesvara. Though he could understand that Ramakrishna was an extraordinary person, his mind wanted to test him, it seems. One day Ramakrishna came to see a play in the theater. At the end of the play, Girish, under the influence of liquor, came to Ramakrishna and voiced his desire: “I have not been able to serve you in this life. But if you are born again as my son I can do so. Please promise me that you will be my son. “What are you saying?” said Sri Ramakrishna. “Why should I be born as your son? I shall be your guru, your chosen Deity.” Then Girish became angry and abused the Master in such a foul language while talking, that it cannot be put in writing. [..] The devotees present were filled with anger at this foul abusive language, but Ramakrishna began to laugh and kept on laughing the whole time back to Dakshineshwar.”
The next day Ram Chandra Datta visited Dakshineswar. He heard the story of Girish’s behavior the previous evening and said to the Master: ‘When one of the cowherd boys died from the poison of the serpent Kaliya and Krishna gave Kaliya the proper punishment, Kaliya said humbly to Krishna: “But you have given me only poison, Lord. Where shall I get nectar?” It is the same with Girish. Where will he get nectar? Girish has worshiped with whatever you have given him.’ Ramakrishna smiled and said to the other devotees present: ‘Listen to what he is saying. Get a carriage. I shall go to Girish’s house right now’. Girish was very repentant. He had refused to eat and was weeping piteously. Suddenly he saw the Master at his house and was overwhelmed. He said: ‘Master, if you had not come today, I would have concluded that you had not attained that supreme state of knowledge where praise and blame are equal, and that you cannot be called an illumined soul.’ “Sri Ramakrishna once said to Girish: ‘You utter many abusive and vulgar words; but that doesn’t matter. It is better for these things to come out. There are some people who fall ill on account of blood poisoning; the more the poisoned blood finds an outlet, the better it is for them. You will be purer day by day. People will marvel at you.’
Girish one day requested Sri Ramakrishna to give him a spiritual vision. ‘Do not desire such visions’, was the reply, ‘for even if you have them, you may not believe what you see.’ Girish understood the import of those words, for he realized that his doubting mind would have considered such an experience to be some kind of magic or illusion. (They lived with God, p. 276 ff.). Ramakrishna told Girish: ‘Please call upon God at least once every day, whether you can do anything else or not. You will say, if I cannot do that? At least once make a pranam after sunset. You may say, even that is not convenient. Good. Then, give me the power of attorney and go.’
The desire of Girish Babu became fulfilled from that very moment. […]. Girish Babu had no other spiritual or devotional practices. In his mind peace is surely abiding (Chandra Datta, p. 158).
The English writer Graham Greene distrusted ‘decent people’. He called the combination of Good and Evil “The Paradox of Christianity” (Antwerp, 1956). In life and death of the Flemish Father Damiaan he saw an example of that paradox. Damiaan was born in 1840 as Jozef de Veuster in the village of Tremelo near Leuven. He worked as a missionary in Honolulu from 1864 and died on the Hawaiian island of Molokai on April 15, 1889. There he helped sufferers of leprosy until he himself succumbed to the disease.
When leprosy broke out in early 1880, those who were infected (lepers) were transferred to the ‘leper house’; “a remote place on the island of Molokai between insurmountable mountains on one side and the sea on the other”, wrote Father Damiaan in a letter home. “They have been banished to that place, as it were, for life. This institution absolutely needs a resident priest, although that is not an easy task. All communication with the settlement is strictly forbidden, unless one agrees to be locked up here, together with the exiles. The government has considered itself obliged to exclude from society all those affected by leprosy.”
He continues: “A few months ago I was also forbidden to set foot outside the premises where our lepers are locked up in isolation. I became a prisoner of the state. It is not the disease and the suffering that discourage me, far from it. For up to now I feel happy and content. If I had the choice to leave here in good health, I would say without hesitation: I will remain here with my lepers until the end.”
In 1889, Father Damiaan himself became infected. On his deathbed he said: “Look at my hands, all my wounds are closing up and the scab is turning black, it is the sign of approaching death. Look also at my eyes, I have seen so many dying lepers. I am not mistaken, death is not far away. I would have liked to see Monsigneur again, but the good Lord calls me to celebrate Easter with Him.” (Argus, 8 May 2024, p. 15).
To show ‘how low piety can sink’, Graham Greene quotes from ‘a letter to the editor’ from the Protestant minister Dr. Hyde published in an Australian church magazine shortly after Father Damiaan’s death:
“ Dear Brother. In answer to your questions concerning Father Damiaan, I can only say that we who know the man are astonished at the lavish praises in the papers, which speak of him as if he were a saint. In reality he was a coarse, dirty, and stubborn fanatic. He was not sent to Molokai, but went there without a commission. He did not live in the Leper Colony (not until he himself became a leper), but moved freely over the whole island, less than half of which was reserved for lepers, and he often went to Honolulu. He has had no part in the recent reforms and improvements which are the work of our Department of Public Health, and which have been gradually introduced, according to necessity and the means available. His relations with women were not blameless, and the leprosy from which he died must be attributed to his immoral life and to his negligence. Others have done much for the lepers, as our own ministers and the physicians of the government, without seeking to gain eternal life, after the manner of the Catholics.”
“One would be tempted to believe that Evil is but the shadow of Good in its perfection,” wrote Graham Greene, “ and that we shall yet come to understand the shadow also.” As it is said in 1 John 3:20: “God is greater than our heart and knows all things.”
Mr Kees Boukema is a scholar in Vedanta and Comparative philosophy. His brilliant and thorough-going articles on various philosophical and spiritual subjects are being published since the first issue of the magazine. His latest work is De Beoefening van Meditatie.
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The Incarcerated Body
part – 2
Paulo J. Bittencourt
Professor at UFFS, Erechim Campus
There is an essential relationship between the premise that the soul constitutes a prison for the body and the structural misogyny that plagues us. In other words, if the condition of women is represented as a threat to the masculine “sublime,” let us imprison the former, relegating them to segregated gynaecea, the panopticons of male vigilantes. In fact, the prisoner in Plato’s allegory of the cave who frees himself actually frees himself from the yoke that the body of the sensible world has imposed on him. He is a freedman without a body because he has freed himself precisely from the body, which is left in its rightful place, that of the shackles of sensible opinion. René Descartes thought the same thing when he rationally formulated the fundamental notion of modernity that insists on traversing us through the split between what would be intangible thinking within us – the res cogitans – and what would constitute our bodily materiality – the res extensa. But if the notion of res extensa gives us the seal of participation in nature, it condemns, on the other hand, natural beings devoid of rationality to the condition of simple automatons. Rationalist Cartesianism only changes the guise of the more anthropocentric biblical faith: “Let them [always the man with his “marauding phallus”] rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock of all the earth and over every creeping thing that moves along the ground.” (Genesis 1:26) Our Western tradition has excelled in forging itself as a gigantic panopticon where, in truth, the body is not a prison. It has simply been imprisoned. It should be noted that the panopticon – this invention fundamental to Michel Foucault’s theoretical formulations about the docility of bodies through biopower – is nothing more than a “panoptic” prison, the ideal penitentiary conceived by the philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham in 1785, in which the guards can easily observe all parts of the enclosure in which the inmates are found, without, however, being seen by them. It is precisely the fear and apprehension of the prisoners of not knowing if they are being observed that would lead them to adopt the behavior desired by the observers. Here, the body with its unconsciously irresistible drives must be framed in simply “blind” submission to the jailers who punish it, the phallic and civilized male, the sublime and impalpable spirit, the conscious, the reason, the extractivism. It is no wonder that journalist Eliane Brum makes her powerful book, “Banzeiro Òkòtó: a trip to the Amazon center of the world”, an equally poetic x-ray of Cartesianism as the operator of the destruction of forest-peoples, peoples who belong to the forest in resistance and who we, civilizations, have ceased to be in conformity. “The person will think that he has a mind and a body, because Descartes was tremendously convincing and even more convenient at the time he formulated his theory, and who knows what was happening to his testicles when he invented this humane parted.” Obi Wan-Kenobe told Anakin Skywalker that his need to win made him blind, contrary to the panopticon-vigilante’s assumption that the inmate-body will be more controlled the more blind it is to those who observe it. It seems right to me, yes, that we need to see the place of meaning of the body in the worlds of life of other cultural matrices to the point of also allowing ourselves to be embodied by them. We must learn from the Japanese arts of Do – archery, martial arts, tea ceremonies, calligraphy, flower arranging –, from Indian Hatha Yoga, and from the long-forgotten Greek tradition of the inseparability of a healthy mind and body. In these traditions, a life with a virtuous meaning can only be achieved through corporeality.
But, much closer to home, Eliane Brum also emphasizes that the Amazon is a woman, so that the burning of the Brazilian forest obeys the same logic of the colonizing project of bodies. It turns out that this glimpse of the lived experience was strongly born from the understanding of the cosmogony of the native peoples, according to which we are nobly a body, and the body that we are, as is the forest, will rebel, “without division, because there is no part”, because it is the same body that “screams, hurts and loves, with everything mixed together”.
(to be continued…)
Professor Paulo Bittencourt is a brilliant teacher of Ancient and Medieval History at the Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul UFFS [Erechim Campus], Brazil. He contributes articles regularly, and is a columnist of a periodical too. He has several books to his credit. He is an ardent student of Vedanta.
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The Amulet of Sri Ramakrishna
Swami Shivananda’s memories of his father
1922, Belur Math. Swami Shivananda was sitting in the outer veranda of the main building, overlooking the sacred stream of the Ganges. Some monks of the monastery were sitting and standing near him.
One of them asked the Swami in the course of conversation: “Is it true that the amulet of the Master, which is worshipped here, was given to him by your father?” Shivanandaji replied: “While the Master was suffering from an excruciating burning sensation all over his body, my father suggested to him to wear an ista-kavacha (amulet containing an inscription of the sacred formula pertaining to his Chosen Deity) on his person. It is that same ista-kavacha.
A devotee : ”Were you at that time in Dakshineswar?”
Swami : “I was not even born then. It happened during his sadhana period. My father used in those days to visit Dakshineswar now and then. He used to practise as an advocate in Barasat [a city near kolkata]. He was connected with many landlords including Rani Rasmani as a legal practitioner, and used to earn a great deal of money. He was a great Tantrika sadhaka. I remember how he used to invite many Tantra practitioners from Kamakhya, paying all their expenses, worship the Divine Mother and practise japa. I, however, did not know that my father visited Dakshineswar. I learnt about it afterwards from Sri Ramakrishna. The Master would not generally ask anyone about his home affairs. He used to see his disciples with the spiritual eye and always behaved with them accordingly. But one day he asked me: ‘I don’t know why, but I am feeling a desire to ask you about your home. Where is your home?’ I mentioned my village. ‘Who is your father?’ ‘Kanai Ghosal,’ I replied.
On hearing this he exclaimed : ‘Oh I he was a great Sadkaka, He used to practise japa in the Kali temple here, clad in a red silk cloth. He used to bring a man with him, who would sit behind him singing Mother’s songs, and tears would trickle down your father’s face. And as he would come out of the temple, with his eyes all red, he would seem to me like a veritable Bhairava. At that time I had a terrible burning sensation all over my body. It was so intense that all the hair on my body was burnt. I said to your father : ‘You know many things. Can you tell me how I can get rid of this burning sensation ?’ He advised me to put on the ishta kavacha, and that indeed relieved me.’
A Monk: “Who made the kavacha for the Master?”
Swami Shivananda: “That I do not know. This is all that the Master told me.”
A Monk: “Where did you first see the Master? At Dakshineswar?”
Swami: “No, at the house of Ramachandra Datta. A relation of Ram Babu used to work in the same office with me. He would visit Sri Ramakrishna and often tell us his story at the office. I used to practise sadhana even from a boy. I was attached to Brahmoism in those days, and I read about the Master in Keshab Sen’s paper, Dharma-tattva. I did not, however, know the exact location of Dakshineswar or about how to reach there. I was afterwards told by this Ram Babu’s relation that it was opposite to the mouth of bally.
One Saturday, that gentleman informed me that the Master would be visiting Ramchandra Datta’s house that day, and that I could see him if I went there. I said: ‘The place is very near to where I stay. I shall surely go.
For a long time I had been eager to know the nature of Samadhi. I used to meditate and sometimes realise a condition which I thought was approximate to Samadhi, But I wanted very much to know what it exactly was. I questioned many people, but none could explain it to me. Finally a certain gentleman had told me: ‘None can realise Samadhi in this Kali Yuga. However, I have seen only one man who has it. He is Ramakrishna Paramahamsa of Dakshineswar.’
Anyhow, I went that evening to Ram Chandra Datta’s house. I found the Master sitting in a room crowded with people. The Master was scarcely conscious. I saluted and sat near him. What was my surprise when I heard him talking eloquently on a subject which I had been so eager to know about — on Samadhi!
A Monk: “What did he say about Samadhi that day?”
Swami: “I do not remember details. But I remember that he dwelt on Nirvikalpa Samadhi and said that very few could realise it in the Kali Yuga, and if one realised it, one’s body would not live for more than twenty-one days thereafter. Sri Ramakrishna also said that Shyam Mukherji of Salkhia realised Nirvikalpa Samadhi and his body lived only twenty-one days. I did not have any talk with the Master on that occasion. A month after, I went to Dakshincswar and became known to him.
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The Story of a Dream
Narendra, M., and Priya were going to spend the night at the temple garden. This pleased the Master highly, especially since Narendra would be with him. The Holy Mother,® who was living in the nahabat, had prepared the supper. Surendra’ bore the greater part of the Master’s expenses. The meal was ready, and the plates were set out on the southeast verandah of the Master’s room. Near the east door of his room Narendra and the other devotees were
gossiping.
Narendra : “ How do you find the young men nowadays ?”
M : “ They are not bad ; but they don’t receive any religious instruction.”
Narendra : “ But from my experience I feel they are going to the dogs. They smoke cigarettes, indulge in frivolous talk, enjoy foppishness, play truant, and do everything of that sort. I have even seen them visiting questionable places.”
M ; “I didn’t notice such things during our student days.”
Narendra : “ Perhaps you didn’t mix with the students intimately. I have even seen them talking with people of immoral character. Perhaps they are on terms of intimacy with them.”
M : “It is strange indeed.”
Narendra : “ I know that many of them form bad habits. It would be proper if the guardians of the boys, and the authorities, kept their eyes on these matters.”
They were talking thus when Sri Ramakrishna came to them and asked with a smile, “ Well, what are you talking about ?”
Narendra ; “ I have been asking M. about the boys in the schools. The conduct of students nowadays isn’t all that it should be.”
The Master became grave and said to M. rather seriously: “ This kind of conversation is not good. It isn’t desirable to indulge in any talk but talk of God. You are their senior, and you are intelligent. You should not have encouraged them to talk about such matters.”
Narendra was then about nineteen years old, and M. about twenty-eight. Thus admonished, M. felt embarrassed, and the others also fell silent. While the devotees were enjoying their meal, Sri Ramakrishna stood by and watched them with intense delight. That night the Master’s joy was very great.
After supper the devotees rested on the mat spread on the floor of the Master’s room. They began to talk with him. It was indeed a mart of joy. The Master asked Narendra to sing the song beginning with the line: “ In Wisdom’s firmament the moon of Love is rising full.”
Narendra sang and other devotees played the drums and cymbals :
In Wisdom’s firmament the moon of Love is rising full.
And Love’s flood-tide, in surging waves, is flowing everywhere
O Lord, how full of bliss Thou art ! Victory unto Thee !
Sri Ramakrishna sang and danced, and the devotees danced around him. When the song was over, the Master walked up and down the northeast verandah, where Hazra was seated with M. The Master sat down there. He asked a devotee, “ Do you ever have dreams?”
Devotee : “ Yes, sir. The other day I dreamt a strange dream. I saw the whole world enveloped in water. There was water on all sides. A few boats were visible, but suddenly huge waves appeared and sank them. I was about to board a ship with a few others, when we saw a brahmin walking over that expanse of water. I asked him, ‘ How can you walk over the deep?’ The brahmin said with a smile: ‘Oh, there is no difficulty about that. There is a bridge under the water.’ I said to him, ‘ Where are you going?’ ‘To Bhawanipur, the city of the Divine Mother,’ he replied. ‘Wait a little’, I cried. ‘I shall accompany you.’”
Master : “ Oh, I am thrilled to hear the story!”
Devotee: “The brahmin said: ‘I am in a hurry. It will take you some time to get out of the boat. Good-bye. Remember this path and come after me.’”
Master: “Oh, my hair is standing on end ! Please be initiated by a guru as soon as possible.”
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The Wood Wide Web
Contributed by Francis van Schaik
The Wood Wide Web: Trees are connected by a vast underground network!
Research has shown that beneath every forest lies a complex underground web of roots, fungi and bacteria that connect trees and plants.
This underground social network, almost 500 million years old, has become known as the “wood wide web”.
Scientists have now mapped this underground network of fungi that provide trees with nutrients.
This has produced the first global map of the “mycorrhizal fungal networks”.
The research shows how important mycorrhizal networks are for mitigating climate change and how vulnerable they are to its effects.
“Just as an MRI scan of the brain helps us understand how the brain works, this global map of the fungi beneath the ground helps us understand how global ecosystems work,” said Prof Crowther, author of the report.
“What we find is that certain types of microorganisms live in certain parts of the world, and by understanding that, we can figure out how to restore different types of ecosystems and also how the climate is changing.”
There are two main groups of mycorrhizal fungi: arbuscular fungi (AM) that invade the roots of the host, and ectomycorrhizal fungi (EM) that surround the roots of the tree without penetrating them.
EM fungi, which are mainly present in temperate and boreal systems, help to retain more carbon from the atmosphere. They are more vulnerable to climate change.
AM fungi, which are more dominant in the tropics, promote rapid carbon cycling.
According to the study, 60% of trees are associated with EM fungi, but as temperatures rise, these fungi and their associated tree species will decline and be replaced by AM fungi.
The species of fungi that support vast carbon stores in the soil are being lost and replaced by those that spew carbon into the atmosphere.
This could potentially accelerate climate change.
If there is no reduction in carbon emissions by 2100, there could be a 10% reduction in EM and the trees that depend on it.
The results of this finding can now serve as a basis for restoration efforts such as the UN campaign to plant trillions of trees. This will help determine which tree species, depending on their associated mycorrhizal network, should be planted in which specific part of the world.
We as humans have a World Wide Web, nature has had it for much longer. Let it give us new insights into the restoration and protection of nature!
Francis van Schaik is a coach of young people and also a student of human relationships with nature, the world and Truth. She regularly contributes to our online magazine. Francis is the regular contributor of articles in this page.
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Swami Turiyananda on Sri Ramakrishna
Sri Ramakrishna used to say, “God dwells even in stones and trees, but He manifests Himself mainly in the hearts of men and He plays with men.” He further said, “If there were no men or devotees, who would recognize or respect God? Who would understand the infinite power of God and spread His glory by writing the Vedas and Vedanta? The lives of devotees testify to the existence of God. These three—-the Bhagavata (the scriptures) the bhakta (the devotee), and the Bhagavan (God)—-are one and the ONE is the three.”
Sometimes avatars, or divine incarnations, come to this world incognito. About this the Master said, “Sometimes a king visits his capital in public with his convoy and his trumpeters, but at other times he moves around in disguise to observe the true circumstances and activities of his subjects. As soon as people recognize him, they whisper among themselves, “He is the king.” He visits us disguised as an ordinary person. Then the king immediately leaves that place. In the same way, the avatar sometimes appears in public and sometimes in secret. ”
The Master further said about avatars: “An avatar will never be liberated. As an executive officer of an estate rushes to a place where there is chaos and unrest, so the avatar comes to relieve the suffering of the people when there is an unusual condition, in the vast realm of the Divine Mother—–that is, in the world.” Do not think from this statement that the avatar is ever under the control of maya. He is, by nature, the master of maya and is stabilized in his own Self. He is never bound. So the question of his liberation does not arise at all. He is the Beacon Light of the spiritual world, and his pure life will be the object of worship throughout the ages.
The Master came to make religion easy. People are crushed under the weight of rules and regulations!
According to the Master, there is no special time and place required to repeat his name and worship Him. The Master never attached much importance to outward celebrations. As for the means, he taught that one should adopt what suits him best. If you love God with form, you will reach your goal. If you love God without form, well and good. Stick to it and you will go forward. Even if you doubt his existence, ask him thus: “I do not know whether you exist or not, whether you are formless or with form. Please let me know your true nature.” As for changing clothes, taking a bath and other external observations, if you can observe them, well and good, otherwise keep calling on him without paying much attention to them.
The Master once sang a song to me and said: “Assimilate one of these ideas and you will reach the goal.”
You are my All. O Lord—–the Life of my life,
The Essence of essence.
In the three worlds I have none but You to call mine.
You are my peace, my joy, my hope, You my support,
My wealth, my glory;
You my wisdom and my strength.
Thou art my home, my resting place, my dearest Friend,
My descendants,
My present and my future, Thou my heaven and my salvation.
Thou art my scriptures, my commandments, Thou art my ever-gracious Guru;
Thou the Spring of my boundless bliss.
Thou the Way, and Thou the Goal; Thou the Adorable One, O Lord!
Thou art the tender Mother, Thou the chastising Father;
Thou the Creator and Protector;
Thou the Helmsman who steers my vessel over the sea of life.
Mary Saaleman is a devotee of Mother Sarada and Sri Ramakrishna since decades. She translates selections from books like The Master as we Saw Him and presents snippets about the disciples of Sri Ramakrishna.
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Some Thoughts on the Indian Systems
A. N. Marlow
I think I am right in saying that all Hindu systems demand from the student of philosophy a preliminary discipline of body and mind. The body is to be relaxed and the mind stilled, so that truth may enter in. This seems to me the very greatest and most fundamental of the differences between East and West. Truth is treated in India as something so intimate and withal so full of majesty that only a properly purified and cleansed spirit could even approach the threshold. We learn from the Upanishads, from the Buddha, from Shankara, from Ramanuja, from Ramakrishna, from a host of other sages, that this discipline of stillness and humility must be undergone,. And how true it is and how fitting that we should approach reality in a humble way. But there is no suggestion in Aristotle or in Plato’s Socrates, or in Descartes or Hegel, that the intellect was to subdue and humble itself. The Greeks light-heartedly went on with their speculations–and they had much excuse, for the gods with whom Homer and the sculptors and artists copying Homer had peopled Olympus had no honour and very little decency, and really the speculating minds of these old Greeks were performing a service in clearing speculation of these imaginary and irresponsible beings–human beings with their worst faults magnified.
How remarkable it is that so many really profound modern thinkers have turned to Vedanta for a solution of their problems! This brings me to another important point–the value of the mystical experience of union with the Absolute through samadhi, and the finality of this experience. Now in the West there is much splendid literature about this golden key of mysticism, and it is influenced by the East through Plotinus, Dionysius, Duns Scotus and many others, but it is almost entirely confined to the monastic life. Ruysbroeck, John of the Cross, Suso, Tauler, Richard Rolle, Thomas ‘a Kempis–one could go on with the list, but these were all religious geniuses, not independent and secular thinkers. The beauty of the best Indian mystical thinking and experience is that it can emerge from ordinary life and not be tied to any one absurd or logical system of dogma, to 39 or 390 articles of faith. Here I would pay my tribute to Ramakrishna, whom I am sure most of you are far better qualified than I to appraise. How inspiring is the story of his life, of his incredible spiritual sensitiveness, so that he experienced the ways to truth provided by all the great religions and pronounced the goal of all to be the same, of his wonderful childlike simplicity, the simplicity of one who knows and does not need to posture; of his unexpectedness, which is always a mark of genuine greatness; and of his knowledge of people.
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From a talk given by A. N. Marlow in the 1940s.
Vedanta in a New Light
A small drop from the ocean of Sri Ramakrishna’s life
One day Sri Ramakrishna was told by a scholar that he could instantly cure himself of his illness by concentrating his mind on his throat. This Sri Ramakrishna refused to do because he could never turn his mind away from God. But upon Naren’s repeated request, the Master agreed to speak to Divine Mother about his illness. A little later he said to the disciple in a sad voice: ‘Yes, I told Her that I could not swallow food because of the pain in my throat and asked Her to do something about it. But the Mother said, pointing to all of you, ‘Why don’t you eat enough through all these mouths?’ I felt so humiliated that I couldn’t say a word anymore.’ Narendra realized how Sri Ramakrishna applied in life the Vedantic idea of the oneness of existence and also came to realize that only through such realization could one rise above the pain and suffering of the individual.’ to live.
Living with Sri Ramakrishna during his illness was in itself a spiritual experience. It was beautiful to see how he endured his pain. In one mood he would see that only the Divine Mother spread pleasure and pain and that his own will was one with the will of the Mother, and in another mood he would clearly see the total absence of diversity, that only God becomes man . animals, gardens, houses, roads, ‘the executioner, the victim and the place of slaughter’, to use Sri Ramakrishna’s own words. Narendra saw in Sri Ramakrishna the living explanation of the scriptures regarding the divine nature of the soul and the illusory nature of the body. He further came to know that Sri Ramakrishna had attained that state through the total rejection of ‘woman’ and ‘gold’, which was indeed the core of his teaching. Another idea came into Naren’s mind. He began to see how the transcendental Reality, the Godhead, could embody itself as the Personal God, and how the Absolute could become a Divine Incarnation. He glimpsed the greatest of all divine mysteries: the incarnation of the Divine for the redemption of the world. He came to believe that God becomes man so that man can become God. Sri Ramakrishna thus appeared to him in a new light.
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