Vivekananda Mailing List-10/21/03

[Guest guest]

Religion is with these people a sort of intellectual opium-eating, and

there it ends. " There is another sort of man " , says Bhagavan

Ramakrishna, " who is like the pearl-oyster of the story. The

pearl-oyster leaves its bed at the bottom of the sea, and comes up to

the surface to catch the rain-water when the star Svâti is in the

ascendant. It floats about on the surface of the sea with its shell

wide open, until it has succeeded in catching a drop of the rain-water,

and then it dives deep down to its sea-bed, and there rests until it

has succeeded in fashioning a beautiful pearl out of that rain-drop. "