Swami Vivekananda suffered from 31 ailments
In a life-span of only 39 years, Swami Vivekananda, who spread the message of India's spiritual heritage across the world, battled several health problems all along and no less than 31 diseases and ailments.
'The Monk as Man' by renowned Bengali writer Shankar lists insomnia, liver and kidney diseases, malaria, migraine, diabetes and heart ailments as some of the 31 health problems that the Swami faced in the course of his life.
Shankar describes Swami Vivekananda's health problems using a sanskrit quote 'shariram byadhimandiram' --- the body is the temple of diseases.
Ironically, Vivekananda used to emphasise greatly on physical strength and is known for the shocking statement 'Better to play football than read the Gita'.
One of the perennial problems that Vivekananda lived with was chronic insomnia and in a letter to Shashi Bhushan Ghosh dated May 29, 1897, he confided "I never in my life could sleep as soon as I got into bed."
The previous year, Vivekananda seemed to have written to his 'dhira mata' (Sara Bull) from New York complaining about his lack of sleep. "My health has nearly broken down. I have not slept even one night soundly in New York since I came ... I wish I could go to the bottom of the sea and have a good, long sleep."
It is also known that Vivekananda used to suffer from diabetes like his father and at that time suitable drugs were unavailable.
Shankar writes that Vivekananda had tried different modes of treatment ranging from allopathic, homoeopathic to ayurvedic and had also taken advice from all kinds of quasi-medical experts from various countries.
He narrates that in the summer of 1887, Vivekananda (whose real name was Narendranath Dutta) had fallen very ill due to overstrain and lack of food.
He narrates that in the summer of 1887, Vivekananda (whose real name was Narendranath Dutta) had fallen very ill due to overstrain and lack of food.
During this period, he also suffered from gallstones, and acute diarrhoea. Later, during the same summer, he came down with typhoid and problems in the urinary tract.
"Narendranath's abdominal pains were a source of great anxiety," Shankar says.
Shankar wonderfully chronicles the various medical problems Swami Vivekananda faced during his stint as a wandering monk in the country and across the world, and why he cut short his journey in Cairo, Egypt, to return to India.
It was to French operatic soprano Rosa Emma Calvet that Vivekandanda had declared in Egypt that he would die on July 4.
"Swami Vivekananda's eyes filled with tears. He said he wanted to return to his country to die, to be with his gurubhais," Shankar wrote.
The fateful evening of July 4, 1902, Vivekananda passed away following a third heart attack, completing 39 years, five months and 24 days.
The great figure who toured America and England and was known for his brilliant eloquence scored only a 47% at the university entrance level examination, a 46% in the FA (later this exam became Intermediate Arts or IA), and a 56% in his BA exam.
- After his father’s death, the family was reduced to poverty. On many mornings Vivekananda would tell his mother that he had lunch invitations and he would go out so the others would get a larger share. He writes, “On such days, I had very little to eat, sometimes nothing at all. I was too proud to tell anyone…”
- Taking advantage of his penury, many well-to-do ladies who were enamored of him tried to woo him. He preferred to starve than fall for such temptations. To one such lady he said, “Shun these worthless desires and call upon God.”
- In spite of his BA degree, Narendranath (Vivekananda's real name) had to go from door to door in search of employment. He would loudly proclaim, “I am unemployed” to those who asked him. His faith in god shook and he began to tell people rather aggressively that God does not exist. One neighbor complained, “There is a young fellow living in that house. I have never seen such a conceited fellow! He is too big for his boots – and all because he has a BA degree! When he sings, he even strikes the table arrogantly and struts around smoking cheroot before all the elders…”
- After the death of his paternal uncle Taraknath, his wife Gyanadasundari ousted Vivekananda’s family from their ancestral house and filed a suit in the court. Vivekananda fights the various litigation suits for 14 years and on the last Saturday of his life on 28 June 1902 he puts an end to the court case after paying some financial compensation.
- When Jogendrabala, his sister committed suicide, Vivekananda told Yogen Maharaj, “Do you know why we Duttas are so talented in our thinking? Ours is a family with a history of suicides. There have been many in our family who have taken their own lives. We are eccentric. We do not think before we act. We simply do what we like and do not worry about the consequences.
- The Maharaja of Khetri, Ajit Singh, used to send 100 rupees to Swamiji’s mother on a regular basis to help her tide over her financial problems. This arrangement was a closely guarded secret.
- He simply worshiped his mother. After his Chicago fame, when Pratap Mazoomdar viciously condemned him, “He is nothing but a cheat and a fraud. He comes here to tell you that he is a fakir,” Vivekananda responded in a letter to Isabelle McKindley – “Now, I do not care what they even my own people say about me – except for one thing. I have an old mother. She has suffered much in her life and in the midst of all she could bear to give me up for the service of God and man; but to have given up the most beloved of her children – her hope – to live a beastly immoral life in a far-distant country, as Mazoomdar was telling in Calcutta, would have simply killed her.”
- No women, not even his mother, were allowed inside the monastery. Once when he was delirious with fever his disciples fetched his mother. Seeing her Vivekananda shouted, “Why did you allow a woman to come in? I was the one who made the rule and it is for me that the rule is being broken!”
- Vivekananda was a connoisseur of tea. In those days when the Hindu pandits were opposed to drinking tea, he introduced tea into his monastery. Bally municipality increased taxes on Belur on the grounds that it was a ‘private garden house’ where tea was served. Vivekananda sued the municipality in Chinsurah Zilla District Court. The British magistrate came on horseback to investigate. Now, who can beat the British at tea drinking? The charges were dismissed.
- Vivekananda once convinced Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the great freedom fighter, to make tea at Belur Math. Tilak brought nutmeg, mace, cardamom, cloves and saffron with him and prepared Mughlai tea for all.
- Vivekananda’s tireless service to man and God took a toll on his physical body. In all his 39 years, he suffered from various ailments – migraines, tonsillitis, diphtheria, asthma, typhoid, malaria, other persistent fevers, body heating up after dinner, liver problem, indigestion, gastroenteritis, accumulation of water in the stomach, dysentery and diarrhea, dyspepsia and abdominal pain, gallstone, lumbago, neck pain, Bright’s disease (acute nephritis), kidney problem, dropsy, albuminuria, bloodshot eyes, loss of vision in his right eye, chronic insomnia, inability to bear heat, premature greying of hair, neurasthenia, excessive fatigue, sea sickness, sunstroke, diabetes, heart problems. His motto, “One has to die…it is better to wear out than to rust out.”
- Towards the end of his brief life he advised his disciples, “Learn from my experiences. Don’t be so hard on your body and ruin your health. I have harmed mine. I have tortured it severely, and what has been the result? My body has become ruined during the best years of my life! And I am still paying for it.” When one of his disciples asked him why he ignored his health, he replied he had no sense he has a body when he was in America.
- Vivekananda hated cowards. He writes to John P. Fox, “I like boldness and adventure and my race stands in need of that spirit very much…my health is failing and I do not expect to live long.”
- In 1900 two years before his death when he arrived in India from the West for the last time, he hurried to Belur to be with his disciples or gurubhais. He heard the dinner gong but found the gate locked. He climbed over it and quickly made his way to the dining area to eat his favorite dish khichuri. No one suspected his rapidly failing health.
http://www.angelfire.com/ma/vivekananda/vivekanandaletters.html
Written to Mrs. Ole Bull whom Swamiji called "Dhirâ Mâtâ", the "Steady Mother" on the occasion of the loss of her father.]
BROOKLYN,
20th January, 1895. ...I had a premonition of your father's giving up the old body and it is not my custom to write to anyone when a wave of would-be inharmonious Mâyâ strikes him. But these are the great turning points in life, and I know that you are unmoved. The surface of the sea rises and sinks alternately, but to the observant soul the child of light—each sinking reveals more and more of the depth and of the beds of pearls and coral at the bottom. Coming and going is all pure delusion. The soul never comes nor goes. Where is the place to which it shall go when all space is in the soul When shall be the time for entering and departing when all time is in the soul?
The earth moves, causing the illusion of the movement of the sun; but the sun does not move. So Prakriti, or Mâyâ, or Nature, is moving, changing, unfolding veil after veil, turning over leaf after leaf of this grand book— while the witnessing soul drinks in knowledge, unmoved, unchanged. All souls that ever have been, are, or shall be, are all in the present tense and—to use a material simile—are all standing at one geometrical point. Because the idea of space does occur in the soul, therefore all that were ours, are ours, and will be ours, are always with us, were always with us, and will be always with us. We are in them. They are in us. Take these cells. Though each separate, they are all nevertheless inseparably joined at A B. There they are one. Each is an individual, yet ail are one at the axis A B. None can escape from that axis, and however broken or torn the circumference, yet by standing at the axis, we may enter any one of the chambers. This axis is the Lord. There we are one with Him, all in all, and all in God.
The cloud moves across the face of the moon, creating the illusion that the moon is moving. So nature, body, matter moves on, creating the illusion that the soul is moving. Thus we find at last that, that instinct(or inspiration?) which men of every race, whether higher low, have had to feel, viz the presence of the departed about them, is true intellectually also.
Each soul is a star, and all stars are set in that infinite azure, that eternal sky, the Lord. There is the root, the reality, the real individuality of each and all. Religion began with the search after some of these stars that had passed beyond our horizon, and ended in finding them all in God, and ourselves in the same place. The whole secret is, then, that your father has given up the old garment he was wearing and is standing where he was through all eternity. Will he manifest another such garment in this or any other world? I sincerely pray that he may not, until he does so in full consciousness. I pray that none may be dragged anywhither by the unseen power of his own past actions. I pray that all may be free, that is to say, may know that they are free. And if they are to dream again, let us pray that their dreams be all of peace and bliss. ... Yours etc.,
VIVEKANANDA.
http://www.richardrosenyoga.com/in-the-woods-of-god-realization.html
IN THE WOODS OF GOD-REALIZATION:
Swami Rama Tirtha and Practical Vedanta (1902)
Swami Rama Tirtha was born Tirath Ram in 1873 in the village of Mirariwala, where his father was the Brahmin priest, nowadays in Pakistan but then in India. It’s said he was born on the day after Divali (or Deepavali), the Hindu “Festival of Lights” symbolizing the triumph of the good guys over the bad. While Vivekananda and Baba Bharati were city boys from relatively well-to-do families, Tirath’s family was rural and chronically poor. His grandfather, an astrologer, predicted that either the newborn or his mother would die soon–not exactly the kind of information you want to start your life out on the right foot–though he added that if Tirath lived he would become a great man. The forecast turned out to be eerily prescient: the boy survived and grew up to be a relatively well-known figure, while his mother died soon after his birth.
Like Vivekananda, Tirath was a smart kid and did quite well in school, particularly in math and science. But like many of our other Indian gurus, he was also reported to be spiritually precocious, preferring to read and discuss scripture with adults rather than play with kids his own age. At 15 he enrolled in a Christian-run college, even though his father wanted him to get a job and contribute to the family’s upkeep. He earned a BA and then an MA in math, and by 1896 was a professor of mathematics at Lahore College. During this time too he joined the Lahore Sanantana Dharma Shabha (Society for Eternal Dharma), dedicated to protecting “true Hinduism”–whatever that is–and jumped into this work with both feet, soon giving lectures on Krishna-devotion (bhakti).
Then he met Swami Madhva Tirtha, the head of an Indian monastery founded by the great Vedanta philosopher Shankara. The two hit it off and, because of the Swami’s influence, Tirath dove head first into a study of Advaita or Non-dual Vedanta, relegating bhakti to the back burner. His enthusiasm for Vedanta heated up even more after an encounter with Vivekananda in Lahore in 1897. Like the two pans of an old-fashioned scale, as his dedication to the spiritual life
went up, his interest in his family and teaching career went down. Much to the chagrin of the folks back home, who depended on Tirath’s paychecks to keep them afloat, he seemed right on the verge of ditching the world and becoming a renunciate.
He wasn’t quite ready to take that step ... yet. But back at school in the Fall of 1899 he started lecturing on Krishna and Vedanta in his math classes. Needless to say this was well off the subject, and though the school’s administration didn’t exactly show him the door, they probably encouraged his resignation. Tirath then took a lower-paying job as a grader for another college in Lahore.
That didn’t last long though. In 1900, his disenchantment with mundane existence reached the breaking point, and Tirath left Lahore bound for the mountain town of Tehri, taking with him his wife and children and a handful of devotees he had accumulated along the way.
Once settled, Tirath rashly ordered one of his followers to throw all their money into the Ganges, which he reluctantly did. Fortunately the group was supported by the kindness of others.
The change of scenery might have been good for Tirath, but it didn’t help his relationship with his wife, whose name one source gives as Shivodevi. Not much is said about her or their children in his biographies (they either had two sons or two sons and a daughter, the exact number of children isn’t clear). Tirath and Shivodeva’s marrige was, according to custom, arranged by their parents, the ceremony conducted when they were both still children. It’s hard to say why Shivodevi left and went home: the company line claims it was because of illness, but she just might have gotten fed up with Tirath’s increasingly (to her) odd behavior. She either took the kids with her, or left one behind to attend the local school.
Not long after, Tirath declared himself (as Vivekananda had done before him) a renunciate, assuming the name Swami Rama Tirtha in honor of Madhva Tirtha. Now Rama (as we’ll call Tirath from now on) began to attract wider attention and receive invitations to lecture publicly, which he did on a range of subjects, from Krishna and Advaita Vedanta to Sufi poets and the New Testament.
Swami Rama Tirtha was born Tirath Ram in 1873 in the village of Mirariwala, where his father was the Brahmin priest, nowadays in Pakistan but then in India. It’s said he was born on the day after Divali (or Deepavali), the Hindu “Festival of Lights” symbolizing the triumph of the good guys over the bad. While Vivekananda and Baba Bharati were city boys from relatively well-to-do families, Tirath’s family was rural and chronically poor. His grandfather, an astrologer, predicted that either the newborn or his mother would die soon–not exactly the kind of information you want to start your life out on the right foot–though he added that if Tirath lived he would become a great man. The forecast turned out to be eerily prescient: the boy survived and grew up to be a relatively well-known figure, while his mother died soon after his birth.
Like Vivekananda, Tirath was a smart kid and did quite well in school, particularly in math and science. But like many of our other Indian gurus, he was also reported to be spiritually precocious, preferring to read and discuss scripture with adults rather than play with kids his own age. At 15 he enrolled in a Christian-run college, even though his father wanted him to get a job and contribute to the family’s upkeep. He earned a BA and then an MA in math, and by 1896 was a professor of mathematics at Lahore College. During this time too he joined the Lahore Sanantana Dharma Shabha (Society for Eternal Dharma), dedicated to protecting “true Hinduism”–whatever that is–and jumped into this work with both feet, soon giving lectures on Krishna-devotion (bhakti).
Then he met Swami Madhva Tirtha, the head of an Indian monastery founded by the great Vedanta philosopher Shankara. The two hit it off and, because of the Swami’s influence, Tirath dove head first into a study of Advaita or Non-dual Vedanta, relegating bhakti to the back burner. His enthusiasm for Vedanta heated up even more after an encounter with Vivekananda in Lahore in 1897. Like the two pans of an old-fashioned scale, as his dedication to the spiritual life
went up, his interest in his family and teaching career went down. Much to the chagrin of the folks back home, who depended on Tirath’s paychecks to keep them afloat, he seemed right on the verge of ditching the world and becoming a renunciate.
He wasn’t quite ready to take that step ... yet. But back at school in the Fall of 1899 he started lecturing on Krishna and Vedanta in his math classes. Needless to say this was well off the subject, and though the school’s administration didn’t exactly show him the door, they probably encouraged his resignation. Tirath then took a lower-paying job as a grader for another college in Lahore.
That didn’t last long though. In 1900, his disenchantment with mundane existence reached the breaking point, and Tirath left Lahore bound for the mountain town of Tehri, taking with him his wife and children and a handful of devotees he had accumulated along the way.
Once settled, Tirath rashly ordered one of his followers to throw all their money into the Ganges, which he reluctantly did. Fortunately the group was supported by the kindness of others.
The change of scenery might have been good for Tirath, but it didn’t help his relationship with his wife, whose name one source gives as Shivodevi. Not much is said about her or their children in his biographies (they either had two sons or two sons and a daughter, the exact number of children isn’t clear). Tirath and Shivodeva’s marrige was, according to custom, arranged by their parents, the ceremony conducted when they were both still children. It’s hard to say why Shivodevi left and went home: the company line claims it was because of illness, but she just might have gotten fed up with Tirath’s increasingly (to her) odd behavior. She either took the kids with her, or left one behind to attend the local school.
Not long after, Tirath declared himself (as Vivekananda had done before him) a renunciate, assuming the name Swami Rama Tirtha in honor of Madhva Tirtha. Now Rama (as we’ll call Tirath from now on) began to attract wider attention and receive invitations to lecture publicly, which he did on a range of subjects, from Krishna and Advaita Vedanta to Sufi poets and the New Testament.
Back in Tehri in early 1902, Rama was sought out and befriended by the local maharajah, Kirti Shah. One day this maharaja happened to read a newspaper article about a big religious conference in Japan, and figured Rama would be a perfect representative for Hinduism. So in August 1902, Rama and an associate set off for Japan, arriving there the next month. There was one small problem however: the Indian newspaper report was wrong, there wasn’t any conference at all. Rama stayed on for two weeks, then opportunity knocked. He had met a troupe of Indian circus performers who were about to leave on a chartered boat for the US. He decided to tag along–I couldn’t discover if he had a vision like Baba Bharati urging him to go or it was just a whim–and so in October, 1902, he debarked in Seattle or, according to other accounts, San Francisco, or maybe even New York (most biographers favor San Francisco). His arrival, apparently penniless and wearing only the clothes on his back, is dramatically re-created in a 1930 publication, Hinduism Invades America:
As the steamer reached the harbor, he [Rama] was standing on deck calm and luminous in his flame-colored robe, amid the surrounding hustle and bustle of landing. No one would have taken him for the university professor he was–a teacher of mathematics ...
“
As the steamer reached the harbor, he [Rama] was standing on deck calm and luminous in his flame-colored robe, amid the surrounding hustle and bustle of landing. No one would have taken him for the university professor he was–a teacher of mathematics ...
“
“Rama keeps as much as he can carry himself,” was the serene reply.
“Have you any money?”
“No.”
“Are you landing here?”
“Yes.”
“Then you must have some friends to help you.”
“Yes, there is one.”
“Who is he?”
“You!” breathed Rama, touching his companion’s shoulder. [205] Just as Vivekananda was fortunate to run into generous people and gain their support, the American passenger that Rama more or less imposed on was a Dr Albert Hiller, who took the swami under his wing during his stay in the US.
Most bios are vague about exactly what Rama did during his stay in the US. He spent a lot of time in San Francisco and Shasta Springs, California, but traveled all over the country giving lectures. After nearly two years in the US, Rama returned to India on a German ship, stopping in Egypt where he lectured in Persian to Muslims in a Cairo mosque (it’s said he was also fluent in Hindi, Urdu, English, Arabic, Sanskrit, French, and German). He made it to Bombay late in 1904, spent time in a number of Indian cities lecturing and writing. Near the end of 1906, in poor health, Rama was back in Tehri, where one day–it’s said it was Divali–while bathing in a tributary of the Ganges, he was sucked into the swift current and drowned. He was then 33 years old. One biography claims that his undecayed body was found a week later, in the same spot where he had been bathing, sitting upright in a meditation posture, its mouth shaped as if pronouncing OM.
http://documents.mx/documents/the-story-of-swami-rama-tirtha.html
In pre-monk days, it was
Tirath Rama now it is Rama Tirath" Later on, he
deleted playfully the little 'i' out of the last word,
and began signing himself as "Rama Truth". He
gave his whole thought to mental healing, when he
said "Disease is only dis-ease". Be at ease with your
God, with yourself and be whole, holy, and you
cannot have any dis-ease. He changed atonement
and always wrote and pronounced it as at-one-
ment. He said understanding is standing under,
diving deep into your own Real Self. He played
with his title Swami. It is a Sanskrit word meaning'
‗Lord‘ and carries in it the sense of superiority over
others. He spelt and pronounced Swami as So-am-
I.
He would feel so intensely that his whole
frame would vibrate with passion and he would
raise his quivering arms to embrace the whole
universe. He was seen losing himself in poetry for
hours together. He would lose himself in the
middle of his public lectures, repeating his sacred
syllable OM (which to him meant God and the
whole Universe) so much so that his American
admirers observed him living most of the time
outside his body. * He had really almost forgotten
himself- As said above, he always referred to
himself in the third person, his first person was
God's own. And so natural was his third person
coming from him, that one who saw him for the
first time, did actually think that he was talking
about some third person, not about himself.
He enlisted himself, under his great intellectual
necessity, amongst the apostles of the Advaita
Vedanta as expounded by Shankara Acharya, but
he preached it with his own intense emotion of a
Vaishnava; he called himself God, but he strove all
his life to realise the Divine, and having realised it
to maintain it on a certain elevation that he had
attained. He was never neglectful of his great
remembrance of God, but always alert watching
the effects of men and things on his Godly mood. "
I contradict myself! Well! I contradict myself!" He
called God the True Self, and in the words of
Christ, proclaimed that one cannot have two things
at the same time; either have Mammon, which he
called the lower, little self of man, or have God, the
Higher Self. No apparent contradiction of his
theory and practice was visible in his own
character for he was a strenuous labourer who
gathered God with all his senses and filled his
heart with the gladness of& "That Un-nameable
Mystery"!
A truly Vedic poet, with the full realisation of the
Advaita, but by temperament and inheritance a
Vaishnava in his highly cultivated emotion, he was
in his fresh inspiration more a Persian than a
Hindu, while in his later days, in a way, he
succumbed to Shankaracharya's charming
philosophy of ‗Illusion‘ - "Maya". He would say, ―If
one realises Truth, even the physical body cannot
drop, it becomes everlasting. Even Shankar was
not a Brahmagnani. Yet in that sense the whole
world is illusion, it never was. There is but one, that is Truth, nothing else.
there is a state of life , he teaches above body and
mind, which is the state of inspiration—ecstasy,
merging into transcendental Trance. It is there
when man is in unison with God, is one with Him,
is God. He who lives in that state of Samadhi
continuously, is, verily, God Himself. Swami Rama
does not speak to us of the invisible powers at
work in this beautiful state; and he having
Samadhi or the religion of Trance as his subject, is
eminently a spiritual mystic who opens himself to
the full light that shines beyond the broken lamp of
mind. He says concentration means elevating one's
self above body and mind. It is the ecstatic state—
the Samadhi—from where all great ideas come,
from where the poet brings down his poetry, the
scientist his startling discoveries of the secrets of
Nature. The ecstatic state dawns upon man
sometimes in an extreme crisis of mental or
physical pain. "Live in the ecstatic state and you
need not worry. The world will readjust itself
towards you, just as you rise to that state. The
judge need but occupy his seat, and he will find all
things ready for him."
It is only when a limb is out of order, that you feel
it. A healthy man never knows that he has a body,
he carries it so light. Just so, the health of the
spirit keeps a man always above body-
consciousness.
The Swami is extremely fond of Absolute Monism.
He says, ―There is one substance and One Soul,
One Reality; Thou art That‖. No other philosophy
satisfies him.
He says, ―Thou art God, O Man! Only cease to live
in the body-centre‖. When body-consciousness,
‗skin-sight‘, is lost, God-consciousness, 'celestial
sight‘, is regained. The world and its darkness is
the shadow of body-consciousness, while God-
consciousness shines self-resplendent in the human
soul.
For those who have seen the divine, it is as difficult to be sick or sorry as it is others to be happy.
Crucifixion is the law of life. Crucify the body and
you rise as pure spirit. This is to say, the basis of all
ethics and social service is that you must suffer if
others are to be made happy* He says those who
wish to be worshipped as Gods have to undergo
crucifixion of the little self. It is the little self, this
matter or Maya; the rest is all spirit, the real self.
God-consciousness of man whose every pore
breathes the divine is the real self of man! He who
‗lives, moves, and has his being in God‘ is God.
Concentration is the secret. Renunciation comes to a man of concentration.
Repetition of Om..the way to freedom.
Simran..Guru Nanak.
In short he preaches the religion of ecstasy, trance,
Samadhi, and from his experiences he said that
success, both subjective and objective, could be
achieved if only one rises to that state of super-
consciousness. He further preaches the
continuousness of inspiration. He tries a great deal
to teach the modus operandi for it to the common
man; in substance his teaching is nothing but the
statement of his own inner struggle. Indeed in a
sense all that. He has written
If the alchemist hasn't reduced the Self, what has he reduced,...mercury?!
Self reduced is true alchemy-....Urdu.
This sun
www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/gospel/introduction/totapuri.htm
Exercising self-exertion and unshakable will-power, he had liberated himself from attachment to the sense-objects of the relative universe. For forty years he had practised austere discipline on the bank of the sacred Narmada and had finally realized his identity with the Absolute.
"Brahman", he said, "is the only Reality, ever pure, ever illumined, ever free, beyond the limits of time, space, and causation. Though apparently divided by names and forms through the inscrutable power of maya, that enchantress who makes the impossible possible, Brahman is really One and undivided. When a seeker merges in the beatitude of samadhi, he does not perceive time and space or name and form, the offspring of maya.
Whatever is within the domain of maya is unreal. Give it up.
Destroy the prison-house of name and form and rush out of it with the strength of a lion.
Dive deep in search of the Self and realize It through samadhi.
You will find the world of name and form vanishing into void, and the puny ego dissolving in Brahman-Consciousness.
You will realize your identity with Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute." Quoting the Upanishad, Totapuri said:
"That knowledge is shallow by which one sees or hears or knows another.
What is shallow is worthless and can never give real felicity. But the Knowledge by which one does not see another or hear another or know another, which is beyond duality, is great, and through such Knowledge one attains the Infinite Bliss. How can the mind and senses grasp That which shines in the heart of all as the Eternal Subject?"
Totapuri asked the disciple to withdraw his mind from all objects of the relative world, including the gods and goddesses, and to concentrate on the Absolute. But the task was not easy even for Sri Ramakrishna. He found it impossible to take his mind beyond Kali, the Divine Mother of the Universe. "After the initiation", Sri Ramakrishna once said, describing the event, "Nangta began to teach me the various conclusions of the Advaita Vedanta and asked me to withdraw the mind completely from all objects and dive deep into the Atman. But in spite of all my attempts I could not altogether cross the realm of name and form and bring my mind to the unconditioned state. I had no difficulty in taking the mind from all the objects of the world. But the radiant and too familiar figure of the Blissful Mother, the Embodiment of the essence of Pure Consciousness, appeared before me as a living reality. Her bewitching smile prevented me from passing into the Great Beyond. Again and again I tried, but She stood in my way every time. In despair I said to Nangta: 'It is hopeless. I cannot raise my mind to the unconditioned state and come face to face with Atman.' He grew excited and sharply said: 'What? You can't do it? But you have to.' He cast his eyes around. Finding a piece of glass he took it up and stuck it between my eyebrows. 'Concentrate the mind on this point!' he thundered. Then with stern determination I again sat to meditate. As soon as the gracious form of the Divine Mother appeared before me, I used my discrimination as a sword and with it clove Her in two. The last barrier fell. My spirit at once soared beyond the relative plane and I lost myself in samadhi."
Sri Ramakrishna remained completely absorbed in samadhi for three days. "Is it really true?" Totapuri cried out in astonishment. "Is it possible that he has attained in a single day what it took me forty years of strenuous practice to achieve? Great God! It is nothing short of a miracle!" With the help of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna's mind finally came down to the relative plane.
Totapuri had no idea of the struggles of ordinary men in the toils of passion and desire. Having maintained all through life the guilelessness of a child, he laughed at the idea of a man's being led astray by the senses. He was convinced that the world was maya and had only to be denounced to vanish for ever. A born non-dualist, he had no faith in a Personal God. He did not believe in the terrible aspect of Kali, much less in Her benign aspect. Music and the chanting of God's holy name were to him only so much nonsense. He ridiculed the spending of emotion on the worship of a Personal God.
After the departure of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna remained for six months in a state of absolute identity with Brahman. "For six months at a stretch", he said, "I remained in that state from which ordinary men can never return; generally the body falls off, after three weeks, like a sere leaf. I was not conscious of day and night. Flies would enter my mouth and nostrils just as they do a dead body's, but I did not feel them. My hair became matted with dust."
shines on the snows of the Himalayas and on the
streets of the common cities. The man of illumined
consciousness is seen in the prison house and even
in the still worse prison of the body, self-fettered
by his very hands, but there lie his fetters in the
prison, while he roams free in the infinite! In the
dark cells, the man of God with his hand in the
hand of God, though cast a prisoner is free. There
roams he in all the six worlds! In the thickness of
the crowd and its noise, a student while poring on
his books intently, suddenly reads a word which
cannot be written, and there he passes out of all
limits and the book lies there forever waiting for
him!
It is essential for all to be educated and not
essential for every one to be a professor. To know
this True Self, this soul, is the necessity for every
one to be happy, but to lose oneself day and night
in this spiritual ecstasy is the share of a few, the
true Faqirs.
Life alone defines in its infinite self-contradiction
the Reality and its Self-Realisation. Our definitions
are all abortive, being intellectual justifications
from our relative standpoints which in themselves
never touch life but at one infinitesimal unknown
point. The contradictory statements made by poets,
like Swami Rama, do not come strictly under
philosophy, and no true philosophy can undertake
to reconcile their contradictions. Their self-
contradictoriness in itself is an evidence of an
exalted self-realisation, or as Miss E. Underhill puts
it "it is proof of the richness and balance of his
spiritual experience."
The Path to God in your own self lies through
The Path to God renunciation of all desires.
Renounce within all desires and live repeating OM.
Without paying the price, you cannot reach God, you
cannot regain your birthright. "Blessed are the pure in
heart for they shall see Clod. Purity of heart means
making yourself free of all clingings to the objects of the
world, Renunciation, nothing short of it. Gain this
purity and you see God.
Could you love God with even half the love that yon
show your wife, you would realise the Truth this second.
Who puts you in bondage? Who is it that enslaves you,
your own desires, none else.
The very moment you cast over-board these desires,
clingings, love, hatred and attachments and also throw
off even the desire for light and chant OM for a second,
you free yourself from all bondage and become well-
balanced in equilibrium, nothing of yourself left with
that person, with that body, or with that object . . . Sit
still, chant OM and then think who is within you.
Feel that, and rejoice in your own divinity and desire
pleasure from within you, enjoy happiness of your
Atman. Throw aside all abnormal desires and inordinate
wishes.
All religion is simply an attempt to unveil ourselves and
to explain ourself.
The votaries of all religious creeds can at times be en
rapport with Divinity and lift off the veil, thick or thin
from before their eyes for so long as they remain in
communication with the supreme Being.
All the sects in this world are: "I am His" ―I am Thine‖
―I am Thou‖. Such a union with God is religion. Let my
body become His and let His Self become my self.
Know that you stand above all wants and needs. Have
The real self which is knowledge absolute and power
absolute is the only stern Reality, before which the
apparent reality of the world melts away!
OM is the name of this Reality,
Realise it and sing in the language of feeling, sing it
with your acts. Sing it through every pore of your body.
Let it course through your veins, let it pulsate in your
bosom, let every part of your body and every drop of
your blood tingle with the truth that you are the Light of
lights, the Sun of suns, the Ruler of the Universe, the
Lord of lords, the True Self!
Om represents O-Am, or I am He. Om represents the
pure idea of I am.
A man, who sings Om in all these ways, chants it with
his lips, feels it with his heart and sings it through
action, makes his life a continuous song. To everybody
he is God. But if you cannot chant it with feeling nor
chant it with your acts do not give it up, go on chanting
it with the lips. Even that is not without use . . . But
chanting it through feelings and actions would
naturally follow if you commence humming it with the
mouth.
How to make the mind rise higher into the celestial
regions, to make the soul soar away up to the throne of
God? When the benign light of the rising sun or the
setting sun is falling upon the translucent lids of half-
closed eyes, we begin humming the syllable OM, we
sing it in the language of feeling.
I am the Unseen spirit which forms all subtle essences.
I flame in Fire,
I shine in sun and moon, planets and stars.
I blow with the winds, roll with the waves,
I am the man and woman, youth and maid!
The babe new born, the withered ancient propped upon
his staff!
I am whatever is,
The black bee, the tiger and the fish,
The green bird with red eyes, the tree and the grass,
The cloud that hath lightning in it,
The seasons and the seas!
In me they are, in me begin and end.
- From Sir Edwin Arnold's translation of the Gita.
O people of America and the whole world! The Truth is
that you cannot serve God and Mammon. You cannot
serve two masters. You cannot enjoy this world and
also realise Truth.
You cannot enjoy the world, you cannot enter into petty
low, worldly, carnal, sensuous desires and at the same
time lay claim to Divine Realisation.
O dear people! You can never love anything so long as
you perceive ugliness. Love means perception of beauty.
Fighting with darkness will not remove it. Bring the
light in and the darkness is over.
See what the life of Christ
teaches you. If teaches you that all the power, the virtue
of Christ lay in his connection with or attachment to the
true spirit or Magnet.
Love divested of all carnality is spiritual illumination.
How blessed is he whose property is stolen away! Thrice
blessed is he whose wife runs away, provided by such
means he is brought in direct touch with the All-love.
True purity is that where all beauty is absorbed in me
and I feel and enjoy my spiritual oneness with all to
such an extent that to talk or think of meeting any object
sounds like a painful hint of separation.
If you make yourselves this second divested of all
desires, if you free yourselves of all worldly clingings,
you know that every desire of yours chops off a part
of yourself, leaves you only a small fraction of yourself.
How seldom it is that we meet a whole man!
A whole man is an inspired man, a whole is the Truth. Every
wish or clinging seems to add to your stock, but in
reality makes you a fraction, an insignificant portion of
yourself.
The very moment you cast over-board these
desires, clingings, loves, hatreds and attachments and
also throw off even the desire for light and chant Om for
a second, you attain immediate freedom, Anand, Bliss
Supreme.
"Having nothing to do, be always doing", sums up
Vedantic teaching. O happy worker, success must seek
you, when you cease to seek success.
Christ spoke only to eleven disciples, but those words
were stored up by the atmosphere, were gathered up by
the skies, and are today being read by millions of people.
Truth crushed to earth shall rise again.
The very word ecstasy (e, out, and sto, stand) shows that
HAPPINESS, no matter under what conditions or
circumstances experienced, is nothing different from
standing, so to say, outside the body, mind and world.
Referring to one's own experience any person can see
the oneness of happiness with freedom, though
temporary, from all duality. The longed-for object, and
the wooing subject welding into one constitute joy. Thus
manifestly the very nature of happiness is religion.
If anybody should ask me to give my philosophy in one
word, I would say, "Self-Reliance", the ―Knowledge of
Self‖.
You respect your Self when you are filled with God-
consciousness; when you are filled with the thought of
God within, then are you filled with Self respect. By the
worship of the body you are committing suicide; you are
digging a pit for yourself.
The path of salvation, the way to realisation, is
apparent death, that and nothing else, crucifixion and
nothing else, there is no other way to inspiration.
Let God work through you, and there will be no more
duty. Let God shine forth. Let God show Himself. Live
God. Eat God. Realise the Truth and the other things
will take care of themselves.
Try to make great and good men of yourselves. Do not
expend your energies, do not waste thought on
building beautiful and grand houses. Many of your
houses are large and grand, but the men in them are
very small. There are large tombs in India, but what do
they contain? Nothing but rotten carcasses, crawling
worms and snakes!
Do not try to make your wife, your friends and yourself
grand, by wasting energy on big houses and grand
furniture. If you take this idea, if you realise that, if you
perceive and know that the one aim and goal of life is not
in wasting energy and accumulating riches, but in
cultivating the inner powers, in educating yourself, to
free yourself, to become God, if you realise that and
expend your energies in that direction, the family ties
will be no obstacle to you.
* * * * *
It is strange, very strange, that people want to rob each
other, as for worldly wealth, but as for higher wealth
(spiritual religious riches), when they are presented with
it, they want to kill their donors.
A rope-dancer at first rides the rope, single, alone. When
highly practiced he takes with him a boy or some heavy
object and dances on the rope. So, after living a single
life and acquiring perfection, a man may allow others in
his company.
Man must conquer his passions or disappear. It is
impossible to imagine a man presided over by his
stomach or sexual passions—a walking stomach, using
hands, feet, and all other members merely to carry it
from place to place and serve its assimilative mania.
The reading of books and learning all knowledge is one
thing; and to acquire the Truth is another. You may
read all the sacred Scriptures and yet not know the
Truth.
Death asks, not "What have you?" but ―Who are you?"
Life's question is not "What have I?" but "What am I?"
Thoreau preferred leisure to ornaments.
To give is a better bargain than to get.
Love is a disease if it impairs the freedom of the soul.
Make it thy slave, and all the miracles of Mature shall
lie in the palm of thy hand.
A soldier who is going to a campaign does not seek what
fresh furniture he can carry on his back, but rather what
he can leave behind. So if thou seekest fame or ease or
pleasure or aught for thyself, the image of that thing
which thou seekest will come and cling to thee and thou
wilt have to carry it about—and the images and the
powers which thou hast thus evoked will gather round
and form for thee a new body—clamouring for
sustenance and satisfaction—Beware then lest it become
thy grave and thy prison—instead of thy winged abode
and a palace of joy.
The Self within is the Self without Yes, but the Real Self,
and not the false self induced by "sense-slavery".
The true work is God-consciousness. If you could
sustain it then, whether in busy New York or the silent
Himalayas, the effect remains the same. The place, form
and mode of activity do not matter.
He insists at times in very emphatic language on
the ceaseless repetition of OM. His own repetition
of OM was ceaseless. But none of his followers ever
caught this fire, except for the days and hours they
were with him. I never saw him excuse himself
from this incessant labour. "OM," he used to say,"
is the divine punctuation of life, without it, one
cannot breathe the divine breath. Without it one
dies."
denied that the process of Simrin or the ceaseless
repetition of Nam is a symptom of inspiration, it is
never an act of will as understood in ordinary
parlance. It cannot be. Those who take to its
repetition as a matter of spiritual discipline by the
sheer force of a trained will, do it all their life
without any gain whatsoever. It starts as a mere
discipline and ends a mere discipline. But those
who are inspired cannot live without it; if the
repetition stops, their skin burns up, as it were
their mind is scorched, their heart grows blind and
they prefer death to the stopping of the flow of this
Gang& through their soul. It is the Great Prophet
of Nam of the Punjab, Guru Nanak, who came and
cleared this great confusion that for centuries clung
to the fundamental secret of Brahma Vidya that, in
India, leads to the right kind of development of
human personality, and it is he who emphasised
that man on this earth in order to rise, has to come
under the influence of great Powerful Men living
in other Higher Spiritual worlds, and it is under
their inspiration that he is to develop his own Self.
Simrin or Nam is His Favour, it is the touch of
Higher Beings Guru Nanak points to the life of the
invisible Satya Sangat. This is the Spirit of the
Punjab that permeates every true Punjabi, be he a
Hindu, a Muslim, or a Sikh. Self-Realisation is
infinite and without inspiration all efforts of man
unaided end in despair and in weariness of spirit
and fatigue of soul.
Without inspiration, all is
vanity.
That the Swami -was inspired none can
deny.
Swami Rama lived the deep life of a Bhagat,
of a man of Simrin, of a self-intoxicated poet, of a
man maddened with the exquisite beauty of the
Divine Face in the Universe, and this almost
continuous ecstatic state of his mind does not seem
to be the result of any self-discipline] but of a
sudden onrush of Higher Inspiration.
There are
evidences of the sudden floods coming into him,
and his self-discipline of years helped him to live
on those floods with the tenacity of a
mathematician, with the devotion of a lover, with
the recklessness of a philosopher and with the will
of a conqueror, even in times of depression. Swami
Rama held fast to the tides. His poetry, his vast
reading, his choice of solitude, and of incessant
work all helped him. But no man with any spiritual
insight could deny that the beautiful glow of his
personality was of a kind that reminds one faintly
of Chaitanya. The spirit of Bhakti vibrated
intensely even when he was blazing in his own
words as veritable God Himself, In San Francisco,
when he said: "I am God" tears of bliss trickled
down his closed eyes, his face sparkled, and his
arms vibrated with passion to hold the very
universe in his embrace. This emotion assuredly is
not of any philosopher. This passion was of a
Vaishnava Bhakta. In early days, he seldom spoke
in public without shedding tears at the very name
of Krishna for hours. He beheld Him on the
Kadamb tree and heard his flute ringing in his ears,
while bathing in the Ganges at Hardwar. In his
house at Lahore, he read Sur Sagar with the
glorious passion that brought him the vision of
Krishna after which he swooned away. Seeing a
serpent with upspread hood in his room that very
day after the swoon, he beheld Krishna dancing on
its hood. He told me that for days and nights he
wept in love of Krishna, and his wife saw in the
morning that his pillow was wet with tears,
By going to
one's native place, one becomes gross, loses the
subtle thread of thought that grasps fine ideas. The
reason for it is that the mind gets degraded by
contact with physical pleasures.
What people call brain, that too develops by
exercise and by hard labour.
It was the
example of Swami Vivekananda that gave tongue
to his dumb self-realisation and then he went
roaming in the Himalayas and he came down
preaching the same practical Vedanta which
Swami Vivekananda preached, but with an
inspired madness, divine, all his own.
In his
student life, Swami Rama was growing inwardly.
He was melting and casting and melting and
casting his life again and again into moulds of
perfection. He went on chiselling day and night to
shape out the curve lines of his model and to finish
its beauty.
O! The joy of leaving behind the prosaic plains of
parching body-consciousness! O! The joy of mingling
with the sun and breezes! O! The joy of roaming in the
heavenly infinite forest deeps of Ekamevadvitiyam (One
without a second)!
Swami Rama Tirath in those days, was living in the
neighbourhood of Tehri Garhwal. His days and
nights passed in incessant thought. He lived in the
wild, unrestrained, joys of Vedantic consciousness.
Most of his poems were composed in those days,
and the greatest poem was he himself.
pg214.
7. SELF-RELIANCE,
Last but not least, nay, the vital principle or the very
key-note of success is self-reliance, self- dependence. If
anybody asks me to give my philosophy in one word, I
would say "self-reliance", the knowledge of self. Hear, O
man! Know thyself. True, literally true it is when you
help yourself, God must help you. Heaven is bound to
help you It can be proved, it can be realised that your
very Self is Grod—the Infinite, the Omnipotent. Here is
a reality, a truth, waiting to be verified by experiment.
Verily, verily, depend upon yourself and you can
achieve anything. Nothing is impossible before you.
Slowly and resolutely as a fly cleans its legs of the
honey in which it has been caught, so we must
remove every particle of attachment to forms and
personalities. One after another the connections
must be cut, the ties must snap, till the final
concession in the form of death crowns all
unwilling renunciations.
The Law is fire, it burns up all worldly
attachments, it scorches the ignorant mind, yet it
purifies and destroys all kinds of pestilential
plague germs which attack the spirit.
Why do deluded, short-sighted creatures love
appearances (personalities) more than the Ideal
Law? Because through ignorance persons and
other appearances seem to them persistent
realities, and the Law an intangible evanescent
cloud. ...328
The Law of Renunciation is a stern Reality. No
flimsy phantom this!
People not knowing the real cause of their miseries,
which is falling out of tune with the Law, begin to
fall foul of the outside symptoms of their malady,
i.e. the apparent circumstances.
Let nothing be prized higher than God, nothing
valued equally with God. Compliments, criticisms
and diseases are equally fatal if we regard the Self
as subject to them. Feel yourself God and sing
songs of joy in God-head. Look upon compliments
and criticisms even as Rama looks upon physical
ailments merely as footmen from God's Durbar
who with all the authority of the supreme
Government say—"Get out of this house, i.e. body-
consciousness, at once!" They obey me when I
occupy the Durbar throne; they whip and stab me
when I enter into this hovel—the body-
consciousness.
Even Governments whose so-called Laws do not
conform to the divine Law of the Trishul (or the
cross work their own destruction. Shylock-like
laying stress on personal rights, thinking this or
that mine, feeling a sense of possession, saying
‖the law grants it‖ is to contradict the real Law
according to which the only haq (right,
prerogative) we have, is Haq (God) and every
other right is wrong. If nobody else recognises this
principle the Sanyasin at any rate ought to work it
into life.
The Law is all pervasive, it is the higher Self of
each and all, and it is Rama in this sense. Yet it
must kick out and kill out the personal self. It is
cruel but its cruelty is the quintessence of love,
because in this very-death of the apparent self
consists resurrection of the real Self and life eternal.
He who keeps the false self and claims for it the
prerogatives of the King-Self, must as it were, be
devoured by vultures on the height of vanity. The
freedom of Vedanta is not immunity from Law for
the limited local self, i.e., personality and body.
This is turning GOD into the very reverse. Millions
of beings perish every hour through this mistake.
Thousands of heads are sinking into pessimism,
and hundreds of thousands of hearts are breaking
every minute, by the foolish reversal of the order of
the Law. Freedom from Law is secured by
becoming the Law, that is, the realisation of
Shivoham.
That prayer of the ancient Aryan maidens is
springing deep from the very bottom of Rama's
heart, and tears, O! Tears are pouring madly along
with it.
O God! O Law! O Truth! Let this head and heart be
instantaneously rent asunder, if any other
connection lodges there but Thee. Let this blood be
curdled immediately, if any other idea flows in the
arteries and veins along with it but Thee. Another
Shruti:
"As a woman of a man, so shall I learn of Thee, I
shall draw Thee closer and closer, I will drain Thy
lips and the secret juices of Thy body, I will
conceive of Thee, O Law! O Liberty!"
Is not Rama married to the Trishul, married to
Truth and Law, that other attachments and other
connections are still expected of him as of a harlot?
"I own no other as my King but He the Beloved
Krishna."—Mira Bai.
As a little bird just learning to fly, leaving one
stone or twig, perches on another similar support,
then on another and another, but cannot leave
entirely those ground objects and soar into the
higher air, so a novice in Brahmajnana while
disengaging his heart from one thing or disgusted
with a particular person, immediately rests on
something else, then clings to another similar
delusion, does not give up dependence on frail
reed or straw, and quits not in his heart the whole
earth. An experienced Jnani would turn the
apparent faithlessness of one earthly object into a
stepping stone for a leap into the Infinite. The art of
religion consists in making every little bit of
experience an occasion for a leap into the Infinite.
The seeming things being all of a piece, while
giving up one thing outwardly he makes it a sign
and a symbol for renouncing all inwardly.
Deplorably dense must he be who does not
recognise the piercing Truth that Death of the
selfish personality alone is the Law of life. The
Trishul shakes off personalities. The shaking off of
personalities is the Resurrection of Life Eternal.
Live ye for ever! Farewell. 337
As Self is Ananda and is the All, therefore Self-
realisation means Realisation of my own Self as
Supreme Bliss crystallised into the whole world.
So long as any sort of desire clings to a person, he
cannot realise bliss.
To realise God, have the Sanyasa spirit, i.e., entire
renunciation of self-interest, making the little self
absolutely at one with the great self.
Truth-consciousness brings strength and victory. Skin-
consciousness (even if it be Brahman-consciousness or
Sannyasa-consciousness) makes a cobbler of you.
Let us sweep out from the country the
most pernicious principle which has practically been
swaying us so long: Marry, multiply in ignorance, live,
and in bondage die.
363..In short, Yajna implies realising in active practice my
neighbour to be my own self, feeling myself as one or
identical with all, losing my little self to become the self
of all. This is the crucifixion of selfishness and this is
resurrection of the All Self. One aspect of it is usually
styled Bhakti and the other is called Jnana.
www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/gospel/introduction/totapuri.htm
Exercising self-exertion and unshakable will-power, he had liberated himself from attachment to the sense-objects of the relative universe. For forty years he had practised austere discipline on the bank of the sacred Narmada and had finally realized his identity with the Absolute.
"Brahman", he said, "is the only Reality, ever pure, ever illumined, ever free, beyond the limits of time, space, and causation. Though apparently divided by names and forms through the inscrutable power of maya, that enchantress who makes the impossible possible, Brahman is really One and undivided. When a seeker merges in the beatitude of samadhi, he does not perceive time and space or name and form, the offspring of maya.
Whatever is within the domain of maya is unreal. Give it up.
Destroy the prison-house of name and form and rush out of it with the strength of a lion.
Dive deep in search of the Self and realize It through samadhi.
You will find the world of name and form vanishing into void, and the puny ego dissolving in Brahman-Consciousness.
You will realize your identity with Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute." Quoting the Upanishad, Totapuri said:
"That knowledge is shallow by which one sees or hears or knows another.
What is shallow is worthless and can never give real felicity. But the Knowledge by which one does not see another or hear another or know another, which is beyond duality, is great, and through such Knowledge one attains the Infinite Bliss. How can the mind and senses grasp That which shines in the heart of all as the Eternal Subject?"
Totapuri asked the disciple to withdraw his mind from all objects of the relative world, including the gods and goddesses, and to concentrate on the Absolute. But the task was not easy even for Sri Ramakrishna. He found it impossible to take his mind beyond Kali, the Divine Mother of the Universe. "After the initiation", Sri Ramakrishna once said, describing the event, "Nangta began to teach me the various conclusions of the Advaita Vedanta and asked me to withdraw the mind completely from all objects and dive deep into the Atman. But in spite of all my attempts I could not altogether cross the realm of name and form and bring my mind to the unconditioned state. I had no difficulty in taking the mind from all the objects of the world. But the radiant and too familiar figure of the Blissful Mother, the Embodiment of the essence of Pure Consciousness, appeared before me as a living reality. Her bewitching smile prevented me from passing into the Great Beyond. Again and again I tried, but She stood in my way every time. In despair I said to Nangta: 'It is hopeless. I cannot raise my mind to the unconditioned state and come face to face with Atman.' He grew excited and sharply said: 'What? You can't do it? But you have to.' He cast his eyes around. Finding a piece of glass he took it up and stuck it between my eyebrows. 'Concentrate the mind on this point!' he thundered. Then with stern determination I again sat to meditate. As soon as the gracious form of the Divine Mother appeared before me, I used my discrimination as a sword and with it clove Her in two. The last barrier fell. My spirit at once soared beyond the relative plane and I lost myself in samadhi."
Sri Ramakrishna remained completely absorbed in samadhi for three days. "Is it really true?" Totapuri cried out in astonishment. "Is it possible that he has attained in a single day what it took me forty years of strenuous practice to achieve? Great God! It is nothing short of a miracle!" With the help of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna's mind finally came down to the relative plane.
Totapuri had no idea of the struggles of ordinary men in the toils of passion and desire. Having maintained all through life the guilelessness of a child, he laughed at the idea of a man's being led astray by the senses. He was convinced that the world was maya and had only to be denounced to vanish for ever. A born non-dualist, he had no faith in a Personal God. He did not believe in the terrible aspect of Kali, much less in Her benign aspect. Music and the chanting of God's holy name were to him only so much nonsense. He ridiculed the spending of emotion on the worship of a Personal God.
After the departure of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna remained for six months in a state of absolute identity with Brahman. "For six months at a stretch", he said, "I remained in that state from which ordinary men can never return; generally the body falls off, after three weeks, like a sere leaf. I was not conscious of day and night. Flies would enter my mouth and nostrils just as they do a dead body's, but I did not feel them. My hair became matted with dust."
Totapuri, coming to know of the Master's marriage, had once remarked:
"What does it matter? He alone is firmly established in the Knowledge of
Brahman who can adhere to his spirit of discrimination and renunciation
even while living with his wife. He alone has attained the supreme illumination
who can look on man and woman alike as Brahman. A man with the
idea of sex may be a good aspirant, but he is still far from the goal."
In the nirvikalpa samadhi Sri Ramakrishna had realized that Brahman
alone is real and the world illusory. By keeping his mind six months on the
plane of the non-dual Brahman, he had attained to the state of the vijnani,
the knower of Truth in a special and very rich sense, who sees Brahman
not only in himself and in the transcendental Absolute, but in everything
of the world. In this state of vijnana, sometimes, bereft of body-consciousness,
he would regard himself as one with Brahman; sometimes, conscious of the
dual world, he would regard himself as God's devotee, servant, or child. In
order to enable the Master to work for the welfare of humanity, the Divine
Mother had kept in him a trace of ego, which he described — according to
his mood — as the "ego of Knowledge", the "ego of Devotion", the "ego of a
child", or the "ego of a servant". In any case this ego of the Master, consumed
by the fire of the Knowledge of Brahman, was an appearance only, like a
burnt string. He often referred to this ego as the "ripe ego" in contrast with
the ego of the bound soul, which he described as the "unripe" or "green"
ego. The ego of the bound soul identifies itself with the body, relatives,
possessions, and the world; but the "ripe ego", illumined by Divine Knowledge,
knows the body, relatives, possessions, and the world to be unreal and
establishes a relationship of love with God alone. Through this "ripe ego"
Sri Ramakrishna dealt with the world and his wife. One day, while stroking
his feet, Sarada Devi asked the Master, "What do you think of me?" Quick
came the answer: "The Mother who is worshipped in the temple is the
mother who has given birth to my body and is now living in the nahabat,
and it is She again who is stroking my feet at this moment. Indeed, I always
look on you as the personification of the Blissful Mother Kali."
A man of
God-realization transcends the idea of worldly duties, but the ordinary
mortal must perform his duties, striving to be unattached and to surrender
the results to God. The mind can comprehend and describe the range of
thought and experience up to the Visishtadvaita, and no further.
The Advaita,
the last word in spiritual experience, is something to be felt in samadhi.
for it transcends mind and speech. From the highest standpoint, the Absolute
and Its manifestation are equally real — the Lord's Name, His Abode,
and the Lord Himself are of the same spiritual Essence. Everything is Spirit,
the difference being only in form.
