Car Festival At Balarām's House

Monday, July 13, 1885

SRI RAMAKRISHNA was sitting in Balarām’s drawing-room with the devotees. It was nine o’clock in the morning. Balarām was going to celebrate the Car Festival the following day.

The Deity Jagannath was worshipped daily at his house. He had a small car which would be drawn along the verandah to celebrate the festival. The Master had been specially invited for the occasion.

Sri Ramakrishna and M. were talking together. Narayan, Tejchandra, Balarām, and other devotees were in the room. The Master was talking about Purna, a lad of fifteen. He was very eager to see the boy.

MASTER (to M.): Well, by which road will he come to see me? Please have Purna and Dwija meet each other.

“When two people are of the same age and have the same inner nature, I bring them together. There is a meaning in this. In this way both make progress. Have you noticed Purna’s longing for God?”

M: “Yes, sir. One day I was riding on a tram. He saw me from the room of his house and ran down to the street. With great fervour he saluted me from the street.”

MASTER (with tears in his eyes): “Ah! Ah! It is because you have helped him make the contact through which he will find out the supreme ideal of his life. One doesn’t act like that unless one longs for God.

“Narendra, the younger Naren, and Purna-these three have a manly nature. It is not so with Bhavanāth. He has a womanly nature.

Master on Purna

“Purna is in such an exalted state that either he will very soon give up his body-the body is useless after the realization of God-or his inner nature will within a few days burst forth.

Purna’s divine traits

“He has a divine nature-the traits of a god. It makes a person less fearful of men. If you put a garland of flowers round his neck or smear his body with sandal-paste or burn incense before him, he will go into samādhi; for then he will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Narayana Himself dwells in his body, that it is Narayana who has assumed the body. I have come to know about it.

A few days after my first experience of the God-intoxicated state at Dakshineswar, a lady of a brahmin family arrived there. She had many good traits. No sooner was a garland put round her neck and incense burnt before her than she went into samādhi. A few moments later she experienced great bliss; tears streamed from her eyes. I saluted her and said, ‘Mother, shall I succeed?’ ‘Yes’, she replied.

“I want to see Purna once more. But how will it be possible for me? It seems he is a part. How amazing! Not a mere particle, but a part very intelligent, too. I understand that he is very clever in his studies. Therefore I have hit it right.

“By dint of austerity, a man, may obtain God as his son. By the roadside on the way to Kamarpukur is Ranjit Raya’s lake. Bhagavati, the Divine Mother, was born as his daughter. Even now people hold an annual festival there in the month of Chaitra, in honour of this divine daughter. I feel very much like going there.

Story of Ranjit Raya

Ranjit Raya was the landlord of that part of the country. Through the power of his tapasya he obtained the Divine Mother as his daughter. He was very fond of her, and she too was much attached to him; she hardly left his presence. One day Ranjit Raya was engaged in the duties of his estate. He was very busy. The girl, with her childlike nature, was constantly interrupting him, saying: ‘Father, what is this? What is that?’ Ranjit Raya tried, with sweet words, to persuade her not to disturb him, and said: ‘my child, please leave me alone.

I have much work to do.’ But the girl would not go away. At last, absent-mindedly, the father said, ‘Get out of here!’ On this pretext she left home. A pedlar of conch-shell articles was going along the road. From him she took a pair of bracelets for her wrists. When he asked for the price, she said that he could get the money from a certain box in her home. Then she disappeared. Nobody saw her again. In the mean time the pedlar came to the house and asked for the price of his bracelets. When she was not to be found at home, her relatives began to run about looking for her.

Ranjit Raya sent people in all directions to search for her. The money owed to the pedlar was found in the box, as she had indicated. Ranjit Raya was weeping bitterly, when people came running to him and said that they had noticed something in the lake. They all ran there and saw an arm, with conch-shell bracelets on the wrist, being waved above the water. A moment afterwards it disappeared. Even now people worship her as the Divine Mother at the time of the annual festival. (To M.) All this is true.

M: “Yes, sir.”

MASTER: “Narendra now believes these things.

“Purna was born with an element of Vishnu. I worshipped him mentally with bel-leaves; but the offering was not accepted. Then I worshipped him with tulsi-leaves and sandal- paste. That proved to be all right. God reveals Himself in many ways: sometimes as man, sometimes in other divine forms made of Spirit. One must believe in divine forms. What do you say?”

M: “It is true, sir!”

Gopal Ma

MASTER: “The brahmani of Kamarhati sees many visions. She lives all by herself in a lonely room in a garden on the bank of the Ganges. She spends her time in japa. Gopala sleeps with her.

(The Master gives a start.) It is not imagination, but fact. She saw that Gopala’s palms were red. He walks with her. She suckles Him at her breast. They talk to each other. When Narendra heard the story he wept. Formerly I too used to see many visions, but now in my ecstatic state I don’t see so many. I am gradually getting over my feminine nature; I feel nowadays more like a man. Therefore I control my emotion; I don’t manifest it outwardly so much.

“The younger Naren has the nature of a man. Therefore in meditation his mind completely merges in the Ideal. He does not show emotion. Nitya-gopal has a feminine nature. Therefore while he is in a spiritual mood his body becomes distorted and twisted; it becomes flushed.

(To M.) “Well, people renounce grain by grain, but what a mood these youngsters are in! “Binode said: ‘I have to sleep with my wife. That makes me feel very bad.’ It is bad for an aspirant to sleep with his wife, whether he has intercourse with her or not. There is the friction of the body and also the physical warmth.

“What a state Dwija is passing through! In my presence he only sways his body and fixes his glance on me. Is that a trifling thing? If a man gathers his whole, mind and fixes it on me, then, indeed, he achieves everything.