Encouraging Bhavanāth

Narendra recited a few verses from the Ashtāvakra Samhitā. The room again became silent.

MASTER (to Hirananda, pointing to Narendra): “He seems to be walking with an unsheathed sword in his hand. (To M., pointing to Hirananda) How quiet! Like a cobra, quiet before the charmer, with its hood spread.”

Sri Ramakrishna fell into an inward mood. Hirananda and M. were seated near him.

There was complete silence in the room. The Master’s body was being racked with indescribable pain. The devotees could not bear the sight of this illness; but somehow the Master made them forget his suffering. He sat there, his face beaming as if there were no trace of illness in his throat. The devotees had placed flowers and garlands before him as their loving offerings. He picked up a flower and touched with it first his head, then his throat, heart, and navel. To the devotees he seemed a child playing with flowers.

Sri Ramakrishna used to tell the devotees that his divine visions and moods were accompanied by the rising of a spiritual current inside his body.Now he talked to M. MASTER: “I don’t remember when the current went up. Now I am in the mood of a child.

That is why I am playing with the flowers this way.

Master’s exalted vision

Do you know what I see now? I see my body as a frame made of bamboo strips and covered with a cloth. The frame moves. And it moves because someone dwells inside it. “Again, I see the body to be like a pumpkin with the seeds scooped out.

Inside this body there is no trace of passion or worldly attachment. It is all very clean inside, and- " It became very painful for Sri Ramakrishna to talk further. He felt very weak. M. quickly guessed what the Master wanted to tell the devotees, and said, “And you are seeing God inside yourself.”

MASTER: “Both inside and outside. The Indivisible Satchidananda-I see It both inside and outside. It has merely assumed this sheath [meaning his body] for a support and exists both inside and outside. I clearly perceive this.”

M. and Hirananda listened intently to these words about his exalted state of God-Consciousness. A few moments later Sri Ramakrishna looked at them and resumed the conversation.

MASTER: “You all seem to me to be my kinsmen. I do not look on any of you as a stranger.

“I see you all as so many sheaths, and the heads are moving.

“I notice that when my mind is united with God the suffering of the body is left aside.

“No I perceive only this: the Indivisible Satchidananda is covered with skin, and this sore in the throat is on one side of it.”

The Master again fell silent. A few minutes later he said: “The attributes of matter are superimposed on Spirit, and the attributes of Spirit are superimposed on matter.

Therefore when the body is ill a man says, ‘I am ill.’ "

Hirananda wanted to understand what the Master had just said; so M. told him, “Then hot water scalds the hand, people say that the water scalds; but the truth is that it is the heat that scalds.”

Master and Hirananda

HIRANANDA (to the Master): “Please tell us why a devotee of God suffers.”

MASTER: “It is the body that suffers.“Sri Ramakrishna seemed about to say something more. Hirananda and M. eagerly awaited his words. Sri Ramakrishna said, “Do you understand?”

M. said to Hirananda, in a whisper: “The body suffers for the purpose of teaching men.

His life is like a book of reference. In spite of so much physical suffering, his mind is 100% united with God.”

HIRANANDA: “Yes, it is like Christ’s crucifixion. But still the mystery remains-why should he, of all people, suffer like this?”

M: “The Master says it is the will of the Divine Mother. This is how She is sporting through his body.”

The two devotees were talking in whispers. Sri Ramakrishna asked Hirananda, by a sign, what M. was talking about. Since Hirananda could not understand the sign, Sri Ramakrishna repeated it.

HIRANANDA: “He says that your illness is for the teaching of men.”

MASTER: “But that’s only his guess.

(To M. and Hirananda) “My mood is changing. I think that I should not say to everyone,

‘May your spiritual consciousness be awakened.’ People are so sinful in the Kaliyuga; if I awaken their spiritual consciousness I shall have to accept the burden of their sins.”

M. (to Hirananda): “He will not awaken people’s spiritual consciousness except at the right time. When a person is ready, he will awaken his spiritual consciousness.”