Superphysics
Master's visit to Keshab
April 2, 1882 6 minutes • 1271 words
Sri Ramakrishna was sitting in the drawing-room of Keshab Chandra Sen’s house in Calcutta at 5pm.
When Keshab was told of his arrival, he came to the drawing-room dressed to go out, for he was about to call on a sick friend.
He cancelled his plan. The Master said to him:
“You have so many things to attend to. Besides, you have to edit a newspaper. You have no time to come to Dakshineswar. so I have come to see you. When I heard of your illness I vowed green coconut and sugar to the Divine Mother for your recovery. I said to Her, ‘Mother, if something happens to Keshab, with whom shall I talk in Calcutta?’”
Sri Ramakrishna spoke to Pratap and the other Brahmo devotees. M. was seated near by. Pointing to him, the Master said to Keshab:
Please ask him why he doesn’t come to Dakshineswar anymore? He repeatedly tells me he is not attached to his wife and children.
M. had been paying visits to the Master for about a month; his absence for a time from Dakshineswar called forth this remark.
Sri Ramakrishna had asked M. to write to him, if his coming were delayed.
Pundit Samadhyayi was present. The Brahmo devotees introduced him to Sri Ramakrishna as a scholar well versed in the Vedas and the other scriptures.
The Master said:
“Yes, I can see inside him through his eyes, as one can see the objects in a room through the glass door.”
Trailokya sang. Suddenly the Master stood up and went into samādhi, repeating the Mother’s name. Coming down a little to the plane of sense consciousness, he danced and sang:
I drink no ordinary wine, but Wine of Everlasting Bliss, As I repeat my Mother Kāli’s name; It so intoxicates my mind that people take me to be drunk!
First my guru gives molasses for the making of the Wine; My longing is the ferment to transform it. Knowledge, the maker of the Wine, prepares it for me then; And when it is done, my mind imbibes it from the bottle of the mantra, Taking the Mother’s name to make it pure. Drink of this Wine, says Ramprasad, and the four fruits of life are yours.
The Master looked at Keshab tenderly, as if Keshab were his very own. He seemed to fear that Keshab might belong to someone else, that is to say, that he might become a worldly person. Looking at him, the Master sang again: We are afraid to speak, and yet we are afraid to keep still; Our minds, O Radha, half believe that we are about to lose you! We tell you the secret that we know - The secret whereby we ourselves, and others, with our help, Have passed through many a time of peril; Now it all depends on you.
Quoting the last part of the song, he said to Keshab: “That is to say, renounce everything and call on God. He alone is real; all else is illusory. Without the realization of God everything is futile. This is the great secret.”
The Master sat down again and began to converse with the devotees. For a while he listened to a piano recital, enjoying it like a child. Then he was taken to the inner apartments, where he was served with refreshments and the ladies saluted him.
As the Master was leaving Keshab’s house, the Brahmo devotees accompanied him respectfully to his carriage.
Sunday, April 9, 1882
Sri Ramakrishna was seated with his devotees in the drawing-room of Prankrishna Mukherji’s house in Calcutta; it was between one and two o’clock in the afternoon. Since Colonel Viswanath4 lived in that neighbourhood, the Master intended to visit him before going to see Keshab at the Lily Cottage. A number of neighbours and other friends of Prankrishna had been invited to meet Sri Ramakrishna. They were all eager to hear his words.
This universe is God’s glory. People see His glory and forget everything.
They do not seek God, whose glory is this world. All seek to enjoy ‘woman and gold’. But there is too much misery and worry in that.
This world is like the whirlpool of the Viśālākśi. Once a boat gets into it there is no hope of its rescue.
The world is like a thorny bush. You have hardly freed yourself from one set of thorns before you find yourself entangled in another.
Once you enter a labyrinth you find it very difficult to get out. Living in the world, a man becomes seared, as it were.
A DEVOTEE: “Then what is the way, sir?”
Prayer and holy company & Earnest longing
Prayer and the company of holy men. You cannot get rid of an ailment without the help of a physician.
But it is not enough to be in the company of religious people only for a day. You should constantly seek it, for the disease has become chronic.
Again, you can’t understand the pulse rightly unless you live with a physician. Moving with him constantly, you learn to distinguish between the pulse of phlegm and the pulse of bile.
DEVOTEE: “What is the good of holy company?”
It begets yearning and love for God. Nothing whatsoever is achieved in spiritual life without yearning. By constant living in the company of holy men, the soul becomes restless for God.
This yearning is like the state of mind of a man who has someone ill in the family. His mind is in a state of perpetual restlessness, thinking how the sick person may be cured.
Or again, one should feel a yearning for God like the yearning of a man who has lost his job and is wandering from one office to another in search of work.
If he is rejected at a certain place which has no vacancy, he goes there again the next day and inquires, ‘Is there an vacancy today?’
“There is another way: earnestly praying to God. God is our very own.
We should say to Him: ‘O God, what is Thy nature? Reveal Thyself to me. Thou must show Thyself to me; for why else hast Thou created me?’ Some Sikh devotees once said to me, ‘God is full of compassion.’ I said: ‘But why should we call Him compassionate? He is our Creator.
What is there to be wondered at if He is kind to us? Parents bring up their children. Do you call that an act of kindness? They must act that way.’
Therefore we should force our demands on God. He is our Father and Mother, isn’t He? If the son demands his patrimony and gives up food and drink in order to enforce his demand, then the parents hand his share over to him three years before the legal time.
Or when the child demands some pice from his mother, and says over and over again: ‘Mother, give me a couple of pice. I beg you on my knees!’ - then the mother, seeing his earnestness, and unable to bear it any more, tosses the money to him.
“There is another benefit from holy company. It helps one cultivate discrimination between the Real and the unreal. God alone is the Real, that is to say, the Eternal Substance, and the world is unreal, that is to say, transitory. As soon as a man finds his mind wandering away to the unreal, he should apply discrimination.
The moment an elephant stretches out its trunk to eat a plantain-tree in a neighbour’s garden, it gets a blow from the iron goad of the driver.”
