When and How the 'rituals' fall away-Gospel of the Master

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Sri Ramakrishna said: " When hearing the name of Hari or Rama once, you shed tears and you hair stands on end, they you may know for certain that you do not have to perform such devotions as the sandhya any more. Then only will you have a right to renounce rituals; or rather, rituals will drop away of themselves. Then it will be enough if your repeat only the name of Rama or Hari, or even simply Om. " Continuing, he said, " The sandhya merges in the Gayatri, and the Gayatri merges in Om. "

(para 4, page 1, Ch. 1, Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna).

 

When one attains a great degree of purity of mind, on account of 'extraordinary' devotion to God,-like the Master Himself,-one will 'see' the mergence of the sandhya in the Gayatri, the Gayatri in the name of God, and the name of God in Om, thus causing the withdrawal of all the manifested 'worlds' into their origin of the primal sound of 'Om'. Such 'seeing' amounts to the falling away of the 'rituals'.

 

This experience will 'irresistibly' repeat itself', upon hearing once the name of God', causing the overflow of tears from one's eyes, and the hairs of one's body standing on end. This is typically seen in the Life of the Master. When experiencing the 'Bhava Samadhi', the Master used to completley merge in the idea, that used to rise in His mind, by way of recollection of His previous spiritual experiences.

 

This 'power' of the Master to dwell on any 'idea' and to realise its 'potency' both in its manifest and unmanifest states, was seen in its fullness, even from His very early age. Swami Saradananda, in the early chapters in his biography of the Master, " Sri Ramakrishna, the Great Master " , graphically describes this 'quality' of the Master's Mind, at a great length, drawing 'sceintific' support to his conclusions from the 'facts' pertaining to the daily Life of the Master.

 

This 'falling away' was also typically seen in the Life of the Master. After His mother's passing away, when He 'tried' to perform the 'obsequies' of His mother, the water used to 'roll down between His fingers', preventing Him from performing such rites.

 

i This is because, by that time, He had attained the Highest Realisation of Brahman.

ii a Also, He had by then been 'initiated' into 'Sanyasa', at the instance of Sri Totapuri, His Guru in Advaita Vedanta Sadhana,

b a 'Sannyasin' is 'barred' from performing the 'obsequies' in relation to even his own parents, and

c further, as He Himself used to say, since the Divine Mother, Kali,

i will 'prevent' any of even His 'casual' words from becoming 'untrue',

ii how could 'She' allow, the Master's 'Vows' relating to Sanyasa, to become untrue?

 

Thus, although the Master's words seem so simple, the 'entire universe of spiritual experiences' is compacted into them. That is why, Swami Vivekananda says, in His 'Sri Ramakrishna as I Saw Him', that 'shelves of books' can be written from every sentence that flowed from the Divine Lips of Sri Ramakrishna.

 

Thanks and kind regards