Smokiing his Hookah

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>From a record by Alan ChadwickAshram Bulletin of January, 1964 A

question put to Bhagavan: Is it possible after having gained

self-realization to lose it again?  He took a copy of Kaivalya

Navarita: As long as the least desire or tie was left a person would

be pulled back into the phenomenal world by it.  After all, it is only

the vasanas or inherent tendencies that prevent us from being always

in our natural state; and vasanas are not got rid of all of a sudden.

One may have worked them out in a previous incarnation and have little

left to do in the present life, but in any case they have to go. Mr.

Chadwick was reminded of Ramakrishna who said that as long as a single

desire remained unfulled one had to go on being reborn in order to

fulfil it. He said he himself had always wanted to wear a silk cloth

and a gold ring and smoke a hookah. One day he asked Mathura Nath to

obtain these things for him. Then he sat on the banks of the Ganges

dressed in silk, wearing his gold ring and smoking his hookah. After a

while he got up, threw his ring into the river, flung his silk cloth

on the ground and stamped and spat on it and broke his hookah. He had

fulfilled his desire and no longer had any wish to do th