Sri Ramakrishna's musings.

[Guest guest]

"If you have to turn mad why should you do so for the things of the world? If you are to turn mad be mad for God."

 

"I said to Narendra [the future Swami Vivekananda], 'Look, God is the ocean of bliss. Don't you feel like plunging into this ocean? Just imagine that thereis a cup of syrup and that you are a fly. Where will you sit for drinking the syrup?' Narendra said, 'I will sit on the edge of the cup and sip the syrupstretching my head.' I asked him, 'Why so? Why should you sit on the edge?' He said, 'If I venture to go too far I will drown and lose my life.' Then Isaid, 'But, my child! There is no such danger in the ocean of existence-consciousness-bliss. It is the ocean of immortality. No one dies plunging intoit. A man becomes immortal! A man does not lose his head by becoming mad for God.'"

 

Vivekananda quoted Sri Ramakrishna, saying: "My Master used to say, 'This world is a huge lunatic asylum where all men are mad, some after money, some afterwomen, some after name or fame, and a few after God. I prefer to be mad after God. God is the philosophers' stone that turns us to gold in an instant;the form remains, but the nature is changed-the human form remains, but no more can we hurt or sin.'"

 

One of Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual teachers had told him: "My son blessed is the man upon whom such madness comes. The whole of this universe is mad-somefor wealth, some for pleasure, some for fame, some for a hundred other things. They are mad for gold, or husbands, or wives, for little trifles, mad totyrannize over somebody, mad to become rich, mad for every foolish thing except God. And they can understand only their own madness. When another man ismad after gold, they have fellow-feeling and sympathy for him, and they say he is the right man, as lunatics think that lunatics alone are sane. But ifa man is mad after the Beloved, after the Lord, how can they understand? They think he has gone crazy; and they say, 'Have nothing to do with him.' Thatis why they call you mad; but yours is the right kind of madness. Blessed is the man who is mad after God. Such men are very few."

 

The last word should come from Sri Ramakrishna himself: "If you see in a man ecstatic feeling and love of God spilling over and see that he is mad for Godand is intoxicated with his love, know for certain that God has become incarnated in that man."

 

 

Regards,K.s.Vishwanathan.Tel No: 022-28738192.e-mail:kalpathyvs.