Excerpt: Sacrilegious gesture

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This is an excerpt from the book

 

" Ramakrishna And the Vitality of Hinduism "

by Solange Lemaitre

published by (1984) Overlook Press, New York.

(page 70)

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Often when he (SriRamakrishna)was engaged in adoration in

the temple he went from immeasurable exaltation to the inertia of

a stone, or he collapsed under the burden of

his extreme emotion. Suddenly he began to dance,

to sing, lapsing into childlike gambols before the Goddess.

He went at times to the point of committing acts that were contrary

to the religious tradition.

As he offered a flower to the Goddess, he touched his own

head or body or feet, and this constituted a sacrilegious gesture.

 

Later, almost two years before his death, he was to talk to

Dr. Sarkar, who was treating him, about this

incident of the flower, which, instead of offering to Kali during the

service of adoration, his hand placed for a second on his own head.

He added that a young acolyte had not dared to approach him and indeed

confided to him later: " I see a light in your face but I am afraid to

go near you. " )The Gospel of M., page 891)

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