Ramakrishna never preached a belief - Part 2

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Ramakrishna never preached a belief - Part 2

 

(p.132) He, your Self, has the key. Beg for his compassion. Consecrate your life

to him. God is not to be trapped by the regimentation of rituals. He wants to be

caught by your heart, by your longing, by your sincerity.

 

However, along with his peculiarity, each incarnation embodied for the world a

certain ideal. Not that he lacked other ideals. But it was always one of them

that dominated the rest. Buddha embodied the ideal of living without earthly

desires or dreams. He was unattached through and through. He was so unattached

that he did not even want salvation for himself. He wanted others to have it.

 

After Buddha came Sankara, the ideal of wisdom. When a mere stripling he was

asked by his teacher, " Whence do you come; who are you; whither bound? " Sankara

answered:

 

I am not in the senses, nor in the mind.

I am not in touch, nor am I taste;

Breathing and beating of the heart

Even they can hold me not;

Eyes that see, see me not;

Ears that hear, hear not my silence!

For I am not the earth, nor in the air;

The light that scorches, and the spaces of ether,

Even they are tongue-tied when they seek to name me;

For I am infinite knowledge,

I am life that is behind the living,

I am the Absolute,

Existence infinite...

I am Bliss.

 

Sankara embodied wisdom. And to fulfill that wisdom later came the incarnation

of love--Chaitanya. They, all the incarnations, imply each other. While the

rabble think, they quarrel. To end all such quarreling came Ramakrishna. (p.134)

He has verified all the religions by his living and bound them together by their

common aim: realization of God. It is because he was so full of love and

compassion that Ramakrishna became the embodiment of tolerance and insight. His

compassion was shown when he made a pilgrimage to Benares. Seeing the poor and

the destitute, he said to the rich man who took him there, " I will not go hence

to see the holy of holies until these are fed and clothed. " Again, when he was

dying of cancer of the throat[1], one day no one came to ask him for food,

shelter, or spiritual light. It made him forget his pain: he wailed, " How I

suffer because none have needed my help today. "

 

He, who had to give up speaking and eating, yet cried aloud for others! Such was

his compassion. I have seen, watched, and nursed him a year and a half. Each and

every day he thought of someone to help.

 

He was never idle--always at work, gardening, or sweeping the rooms; petty

little miscellaneous work of the monastery he did without losing the purpose of

his life. He disliked disorder. He even taught me how best to fill a pan leaf

with nuts and 'chunam'. He was so practical.

 

He did not accept any religious teaching on hearsay. He proved its merits

through practice. And that is why all religions led him to the same God.

 

Not only through all religions, but in all beings he saw the Lord. He had no

preferences. He was intoxicated with the love of all creatures. He never

succumbed to forming groups and denominations. He who sees God in all, and all

things in God, needs no creed to fence himself in. The jewel of spirituality

needs no casket. And the day we, the sons of Ramakrishna, go in for doctrines

and creed-mongering will be our last hour before darkness and downfall. A river

needs no fences. Only ponds are fenced in. No wonder they become poisoned in

time. He has warned us against such sinister evils as saying about ourselves " We

are Ramakrishnites. No soul can be saved without Ramakrishna, therefore all must

embrace Ramakrishnaism. " Beware of such quarrels! Beware!

 

(p.135) Our scriptures say that holiness gives one power over one's entire self.

Had you seen him you would have believed it. He had perfect dominion over each

vein, each cell, and every blood corpuscle of his body. Though his throat pained

him excruciatingly, when he wanted to wash it with medicine, yet were afraid to

inflict further pain on him, he would say, " Wait...now wash. " Then he would

remove his consciousness from that spot. Though we would do all that medical

science ordered, he would feel no pain. It is because he controlled all of his

body, heart, mind, and soul. Like all full-grown yogis, he could suspend the

action of his heart and yet live. He could withdraw consciousness from any part

of his self. I am not telling stories. I have witnessed with mine own eyes what

I am setting down here.

 

Yet he lived in his body. How could he do it? He answered me once: " A fully

realized soul, no matter who, lives as little in the body as does the meat

inside a dried up fruit--just clinging slightly to one side of the skin. "

 

He had no caste and said, " Devotees of God are beyond any caste. " Sometimes I

saw him unable to eat food offered by the high and mighty because the food was

not offered by a pure heart. But sometimes he would eat from the plate of an

outcast. One such outcast said, " Don't, sir, don't--I have eaten forbidden

food. " but Ramakrishna went on eating and said, " Your food is pure because your

heart is sinless. " If anybody offered him anything wishing for a boon, he never

accepted it. Yet at the same time he could not abide those who were puritans,

suffering from a perpetual fear of contamination. " Too much concentration on

purity becomes a plague. People stricken with that fell disease find it hard to

think of God. "

 

(p.136) One of our fellow disciples felt himself too weak to follow the

spiritual path. He came to Ramakrishna and unburdened his heart's secret. The

Master said, " Very well, 'vakil-at-nama' [give me the power of attorney to

represent you before God]. " Now this is the severest thing to do, for it demands

the strictest sincerity on the part of the giver. If he is sincere through and

through, then his master can work for him. For the man who has such sincerity

has so much power that he can command anything. That is what really happens.

Ramakrishna said, " To give your master the task of realizing God for you is to

renounce yourself so that you grow totally indifferent to the material world of

good and evil! "

 

About books on philosophy and religion--he had a book with him entitled

'Salvation--Its Realization'. We used to read it to him. He explained his love

of books thus: " As long as you read about him, you are in his mood. You cannot

meditate all the time, so fall back on the second-best thing--reading about him.

Since the zephyr does not blow from the sea to cool you, you had better fan

yourself with a fan. "

 

About places of pilgrimage, he held that " he who has no God within will not find

him in a holy city. He who has the Lord in his heart will find him there. Men

bring sanctity with them to a place and make it holy. It is men's purity that

makes a place of pilgrimage, otherwise how can a place purify a man? "

 

So with the blessings of Ramakrishna, sink yourselves in spirituality and do not

stop sinking till you find the bottom--him. God is not to be found by

discussion, but through realization. We must realize him in our present life and

by every possible means. Without him there is no pathway to bliss. And nothing

on earth can give you peace without him.

 

Premananda's paper ends here. He has perfect faith that Ramakrishna was an

incarnation of God. (p.137) But what about those who do not share that faith?

Ramakrishna himself answers: " All pathways lead to the same God. " And one of the

laws the monastery lays down is this: " He who believes Ramakrishna to be a mere

holy man is just as right as he who calls him an incarnation of God. " [2] And if

I were to give any advice to the reader, I should say that it does not matter

what anybody says; what really matters is the life that Ramakrishna lived. If

the example of that life does not quicken our spirituality then no amount of

words about him and from him can make any difference.

 

Sri Ramakrishna, The Face of Silence

Swami Nikhilananda and Dhan Gopal Mukerji

Edited and with an Introduction by Swami Adiswarananda

Foreword by Dhan Gopal Mukerji II

Mahaprasthan or Last Journey, p.132-137

SkyLight Paths Publishing, Woodstock, Vermont

ISBN 1-59473-115-2

 

Notes:

 

[1] At Syampukur the devotees led an intense life. Their attendance on the

Master was in itself a form of spiritual discipline. His mind was constantly

soaring to an exalted plane of consciousness. Now and then they would catch the

contagion of his spiritual fervor. They sought to divine the meaning of this

illness of the Master, whom most of them had accepted as an incarnation of God.

One group, headed by Girish with his robust optimism and great power of

imagination, believed that the illness was a mere pretext to serve a deeper

purpose. The Master had willed his illness in order to bring the devotees

together and promote solidarity among them. As soon as this purpose was served,

he would himself get rid of the disease. A second group thought that the Divine

Mother, in whose hand the Master was an instrument, had brought about this

illness to serve her own mysterious ends. But the young rationalists, led by

Narendra, refused to ascribe a supernatural cause to a natural phenomenon. They

believed that the Master's body, a material thing, was subject, like all other

material things, to physical laws. Growth, development, decay and death were

laws of nature to which the Master's body could not but respond. But though

holding differing views, they all believed that it was to him alone that they

must look for the attainment of their spiritual goal.

 

In spite of the physician's efforts and the prayers and nursing of the devotees,

the illness rapidly progressed. The pain sometimes appeared to be unbearable.

The Master lived only on liquid food, and his frail body was becoming a mere

skeleton. Yet his face always radiated joy, and he continued to welcome the

visitors pouring in to receive his blessing. When certain zealous devotees tried

to keep the visitors away, they were told by Girish, " You cannot succeed in it;

he has been born for this very purpose--to sacrifice himself for the redemption

of others. "

 

The more the body was devastated by illness, the more it became the habitation

of the divine Spirit. Through its transparency the gods and goddesses began to

shine with ever-increasing luminosity. On the day of the Kali Puja, the devotees

clearly saw in him the manifestation of the Divine Mother. (p.285-286 - The

Final Years)

 

[2] Some days later, when Narendra [swami Vivekananda] was alone with the

Master, Sri Ramakrishna looked at him and went into samadhi. Narendra felt the

penetration of a subtle force and lost all outer consciousness. Regaining

presently the normal mood, he found the Master weeping.

 

Sri Ramakrishna said to him, " Today I have given you my all and I am now only a

poor fakir, possessing nothing. By this power you will do immense good in the

world, and not until it is accomplished will you return. " Henceforth the Master

lived in the disciple.

 

Doubt, however, dies hard. After one or two days Narendra said to himself, " If

in the midst of this racking physical pain he declares his Godhead, only then

shall I accept him as an incarnation of God. " He was alone by the bedside of the

Master. It was a passing thought, but the Master smiled. Gathering his remaining

strength, he distinctly said, " He who was Rama and Krishna is now, in this body,

Ramakrishna--but not in your Vedantic sense. " Narendra was stricken with shame.

(p.293 - The Final Years)