Haladhāri; Marriage

In 1858, Sri Ramakrishna’s cousin Haladhāri came to Dakshineśwar and stayed there for 8 years.

Mathur appointed Haladhāri as priest in the Kāli temple. He was a complex character, versed in the letter of the scriptures, but hardly aware of their spirit.

He loved to participate in hair-splitting theological discussions and tried to gauge Sri Ramakrishna.

An orthodox brāhmin, he thoroughly disapproved of his cousin’s unorthodox actions. But he was impressed by Sri Ramakrishna’s:

• purity of life
• ecstatic love of God
• yearning for realization.

One day, Haladhāri was upset by Sri Ramakrishna’s statement that God is incomprehensible to the human mind.

Sri Ramakrishna wondered whether his visions had misled him:

His poor mother at Kāmārpukur was anguished at:

• Sri Ramakrishna’s failing health,
• indifference to worldly life,
• various abnormal activities

At her repeated request he returned to his village for a change of air. But his boyhood friends did not interest him anymore.

A divine fever was consuming him. He spent a great part of the day and night in one of the cremation grounds, in meditation.

The place reminded him of the impermanence of the human body, of human hopes and achievements.

It also reminded him of Kāli, the Goddess of destruction.

Marriage and After

But in a few months, his health improved.

His happy mother was encouraged to arrange his marriage. He was now 23 years old. A wife would bring him back to earth.

Saradāmani was a little girl of five. She lived in the neighbouring village called Jayrāmbāti.

Even at this age she had been praying to God to make her character as stainless and fragrant as the white tuberose. Looking at the full moon, she would say:

She was selected as the bride for Sri Ramakrishna.

Such early marriage in India is in the nature of a betrothal, the marriage being consummated when the girl attains puberty.

But in this case, the marriage remained forever unconsummated. Sri Ramakrishna lived at Kāmārpukur 1.5 years then returned to Dakshineśwar.

Hardly had he crossed the threshold of the Kāli temple when he found himself again in the whirlwind.

His madness reappeared tenfold.

He subjected himself to fresh disciplines in order to eradicate greed and lust, the two great impediments to spiritual progress.

With a rupee in one hand and some earth in the other, he would reflect on the comparative value of these two for the realization of God, and finding them equally worthless he would toss them, with equal indifference, into the Ganges. Women he regarded as the manifestations of the Divine Mother.

Never even in a dream did he feel the impulses of lust.

To root out of his mind the idea of caste superiority, he cleaned a pariah’s house with his long and neglected hair.

When he would sit in meditation, birds would perch on his head and peck in his hair for grains of food. Snakes would crawl over his body, and neither would he aware of the other.

Sleep left him altogether.

Day and night, visions flitted before him. He saw the sannyāsi who had previously killed the “sinner” in him. He came out of his body, threatening him with the trident, ordering him to concentrate on God.

Or the same sannyāsi would visit distant places, following a luminous path, and bring him reports of what was happening there.

Rāni Rāsmani, the foundress of the temple garden, passed away in 1861.

After her death, her son-in-law Mathur became the sole executor of the estate. He placed himself and his resources at the disposal of Sri Ramakrishna and began to look after his physical comfort.

Sri Ramakrishna later spoke of him as one of his five “suppliers of stores” appointed by the Divine Mother. Whenever a desire arose in his mind, Mathur fulfilled it without hesitation.