RÂMAKRISHNA

PARAMAHAMSA

HIS LIFE AND SAYINGS

BY

F. MAX MÜLLER

[1898]

His often earthy sayings and short fables are immediately comprehensible to everyone, using vivid metaphors which employ everyday objects and settings to express deep Hindu philosophical concepts. This collection of sayings was collected by his followers after his death and translated by Max Müller.

PREFACE

THE name of Râmakrishna has lately been so often mentioned in Indian, American, and English newspapers that a fuller account of his life and doctrine seemed to me likely to be welcome, not only to the many who take an interest in the intellectual and moral state of India, but to the few also to whom the growth of philosophy and religion, whether at home or abroad, can never be a matter of indifference. I have therefore tried to collect as much information as I could about this lately-deceased Indian Saint (died in 1886), partly from his own devoted disciples, partly from Indian newspapers, journals, and books in which the principal events of his life were chronicled, and his moral and religious teaching described and discussed, whether in a friendly or unfriendly spirit.
Whatever may be said about the aberrations of the Indian ascetics to whom Râmakrishna belonged,
p. vi
there are certainly some of them who deserve our interest, nay even our warmest sympathy. The tortures which some of them, who hardly deserve to be called Samnyâsins, for they are not much better than jugglers or Hathayogins, inflict on themselves, the ascetic methods by which they try to subdue and annihilate their passions, and bring themselves to a state of extreme nervous exaltation accompanied by trances or fainting fits of long duration, are well known to all who have lived in India and have become acquainted there not only with Rajahs and Maharajahs, but with all the various elements that constitute the complicated system of Indian society. Though some of the stories told of these martyrs of the flesh and of the spirit may be exaggerated, enough remains of real facts to rouse at all events our curiosity. When some of the true Samnyâsins, however, devote their thoughts and meditations to philosophical and religious problems, their utterances, which sway large multitudes that gather round them in their own country, cannot fail to engage our attention and sympathy, particularly if, as in the case of Râmakrishna, their doctrines are being spread by zealous advocates not only in India, but in America also, nay even in England.
We need not fear that the Samnyâsins of India will ever find followers or imitators in Europe, nor would it be at all desirable that they should, not even for
p. vii
the sake of Psychic Research, or for experiments in Physico-psychological Laboratories. But apart from that, a better knowledge of the teachings of one of them seems certainly desirable, whether for the statesmen who have to deal with the various classes of Indian society, or for the missionaries who are anxious to understand and to influence the inhabitants of that country, or lastly for the students of philosophy and religion who ought to know how the most ancient philosophy of the world, the Vedânta, is taught at the present day by the Bhaktas, that is the friends and devoted lovers of God,' and continues to exercise its powerful influence, not only on a few philosophers, but on the large masses of what has always been called a country of philosophers. A country permeated by such thoughts as were uttered by Râmakrishna cannot possibly be looked upon as a country of ignorant idolaters to be converted by the same methods which are applicable to the races of Central Africa.
As the Vedânta forms the background of the sayings of Râmakrishna, I thought it useful to add a short sketch of some of the most characteristic doctrines of that philosophy. Without it, many readers would hardly be able to understand the ideals of Râmakrishna and his disciples.
I am quite aware that some of his sayings may sound strange to our ears, nay even offensive. Thus the conception of the Deity as the Divine Mother is apt to
p. viii
startle us, but we can understand what Râmakrishna really meant by it, when we read his saying (No. 89):
Sometimes the language which these Hindu devotees use of the Deity must appear to us too familiar, nay even irreverent. They themselves seem to be aware of this and say in excuse:
Or again:
Unless we remember that harem means originally no more than a sacred and guarded place, the following saying will certainly jar on our ears:
How deep Râmakrishna has seen into the mysteries of knowledge and love of God, we see from the next saying:
p. ix
The following utterances also show the exalted nature of his faith:
From such sayings we learn that though the real presence of the Divine in nature and in the human soul was nowhere felt so strongly and so universally as in India, and though the fervent love of God, nay the sense of complete absorption in the Godhead, has nowhere found a stronger and more eloquent expression than in the utterances of Râmakrishna, yet
p. x
he perfectly knew the barriers that separate divine and human nature.
If we remember that these utterances of Râmakrishna reveal to us not only his own thoughts, but the faith and hope of millions of human beings, we may indeed feel hopeful about the future of that country. The consciousness of the Divine in man is there, and is shared by all, even by those who seem to worship idols. This constant sense of the presence of God is indeed the common ground on which we may hope that in time not too distant the great temple of the future will be erected, in which Hindus and non-Hindus may join hands and hearts in worshipping the same Supreme Spirit--who is not far from every one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being.
by
(IGHTHAM MOTE,)

THE LIFE AND SAYINGS

OF

RÂMAKRISHNA

The Mahâtmans.

IT is not many years since I felt called upon to say a few words on certain religious movements now going on in India, which seemed to me to have been very much misrepresented and misunderstood at home. To people who are unacquainted with the religious state of India, whether modern or ancient, and ignorant of the systems of philosophy prevalent in what has often, and not unjustly, been called a country of philosophers, it is very difficult to understand these movements, more particularly to distinguish between their leaders, who may be open to criticism, and the ideas themselves by which they feel inspired, and which they preach, often with great eloquence, to the multitudes that believe in them and follow them. My article, entitled 'A Real Mahâtman,' appeared in the August number, 1896, of the Nineteenth Century, and gave rise to a good deal of controversy both in India and in England. My object was twofold: I wished to
protest against the wild and overcharged accounts of Saints and Sages living and teaching at present in India which had been published and scattered broadcast in Indian, American, and English papers, and I wished to show at the same time that behind such strange names as Indian Theosophy, and Esoteric Buddhism and all the rest, there was something real, something worth knowing, worth knowing even for us, the students of Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, in Europe. What happens so often to people whose powers of admiration are in excess of their knowledge and discretion, has happened to the admirers of certain Hindu sages. They thought they had been the first to discover and unearth these Indian Mahâtmans, whom they credited not only with a profound knowledge of ancient or even primeval wisdom, but with superhuman powers exhibited generally in the performance of very silly miracles. Not knowing what had long been known to every student of Sanskrit philology, they were carried away by the idea that they had found in India quite a new race of human beings, who had gone through a number of the most fearful ascetic exercises, had retired from the world, and had gained great popularity among low and high by their preachings and teachings, by their abstemious life, by their stirring eloquence, and by the power ascribed to them of working miracles. Mahâtman, however, is but one of the many names by which these people have long been known. Mahâtman means literally great-souled, then high-minded, noble, and all the rest. It is often used simply as a complimentary term, much as we use
reverend or honourable, but it has also been accepted as a technical term, applied to a class of men who in the ancient language of India are well known to us by their name of Samnyâsin. Samnyâsin means literally one who has laid down or surrendered everything, that is, one who has abandoned all worldly affections and desires. 'He is to be known as a Samnyâsin,' we read in the Bhagavad-gîta V, 3, 'who does not hate and does not love anything.'

The Four Stages of Life.

The life of a Brahman was, according to the Laws of Manu, divided into four periods or Âsramas, that of a pupil or Brâhmakârin, that of a householder or Grihastha, of an ascetic or Vânaprastha, and of a hermit or Yati. 1 The first and second stages are clear enough; they represent the scholastic and the married stages of a man's life, the former regulated by the strictest rules as to obedience, chastity, and study, the second devoted to all the duties of a married man, including the duty of performing sacrifices, both public and private. The names of ascetic and hermit for the third and fourth stages are of course approximate renderings only; not having the thing, we have not got the name. But the chief difference between the two seems to be that in the third stage the Brahman still keeps to his dwelling in the forest outside his village, and may even be accompanied there by his wife, see his children, and keep up his sacred
fires, performing all the time certain exercises, as enjoined in their sacred books, while in the last stage a man is released from all restrictions, and has to live alone and without any fixed abode 1. Some translators have used hermit for the third, and ascetic for the fourth stage. In Sanskrit also there exists a variety of names for these two stages, but the distinctive character of each is clear, the third stage representing a mere retreat from the world, the fourth a complete surrender of all worldly interests, a cessation of all duties, a sundering of all the fetters of passion and desire, and a life without a fixed abode. The modern Mahâtmans should therefore be considered as belonging partly to the third, partly to the fourth or last stage. They are what we should call friars or itinerant mendicants, for it is their acknowledged privilege to beg and to live on charity.
Another name of these Samnyâsins was Avadhûta, literally one who has shaken off all attachments, while in the language of the common people they are often called simply Sâdhus, or good men.
It has sometimes been denied that there are any Samnyâsins left in India, and in one sense this is true. The whole scheme of life, with its four stages, as traced in the Laws of Manu, seems to have been at all times more or less of an ideal scheme, a plan of life such as, according to the aspirations of the Brahmans, it ought to be, but as, taking human nature as it is, it could hardly ever have been all over India. Anyhow, at present, though
there are men in India who call themselves Samnyâsins, and are called Sâdhus by the people, they are no longer what Manu meant them to be. They no longer pass through the severe discipline of their studentship, they need no longer have fulfilled all the public and private duties of a married householder, nor have remained for a number of years in the seclusion of their forest dwelling. They seem free at any time of their life to throw off all restraints, if need be, their very clothing, and begin to preach and teach whenever and wherever they can find people willing to listen to them.
That the rules laid down in Manu's Law-book had often been broken in early times, we learn from the existence of a whole class of people called Vrâtyas. As far back as the Brâhmana period we read of these Vrâtyas, outcasts who had not practised brahmakarya, proper studentship 1, but who, if they would only perform certain sacrifices, might be readmitted to all the privileges of the three upper castes. That these Vrâtyas were originally non-Aryan people is a mere assertion that has often been repeated, but never been proved. The name was technically applied, during the Brâhmana period, to Aryan people who had belonged to a certain caste, but who had forfeited their caste-privileges by their own neglect of the duties pertaining to the first stage, brahmakarya. There were actually three classes of them, according as the forfeiture affected them personally or dated from their parents or grandparents. All the three classes could be readmitted
after performing certain sacrifices. In the modern language vrâtya has come to mean no more than naughty or unmanageable.
It is curious to observe how the Buddhist revolt was mainly based on the argument that if emancipation or spiritual freedom, as enjoyed in the third, and more particularly in the fourth stage, was the highest goal of our life on earth, it was a mistake to wait for it till the very end of life. The Buddhists were in one sense Vrâtyas who declined to pass through the long and tedious discipline of a pupil, who considered the performance of the duties of a householder, including marriage and endless sacrifices, not only as unprofitable, but as mischievous. Buddha himself had declared against the penances prescribed for the Brâhmanic ascetic as a hindrance rather than as a help to those who wished for perfect freedom, freedom from all passions and desires, and from the many prejudices of Brâhmanic society. It seems almost as if the early Buddhists, by adopting the name of Bhikshu, mendicant, for the members of their order (Samgha), had wished to show that they were all Samnyâsins, carrying out the old Brâhmanic principles to their natural conclusion, though they had renounced at the same time the Vedas, the Laws of tradition, and all Brâhmanic sacrifices as mere vanity and vexation of spirit.

Samnyâsins or Saints.

Similar ideas existed already among the Brahmans, and we meet among them, even before the rise of Buddhism,
with men who had shaken off all social fetters who had left their home and family, lived by themselves in forests or in caves, abstained from all material enjoyment, restricted their food and drink to a startling minimum, and often underwent tortures which make us creep when we read of them or see them as represented in pictures and, in modern times, in faithful photographs. Such men were naturally surrounded by a halo of holiness, and they received the little they wanted from those who visited them and who profited by their teaching. Some of these saints, but not many, were scholars, and became teachers of ancient lore. Some, however, and we need not be surprised at it, turned out to be impostors and hypocrites, and brought disgrace on the whole profession. We must not forget that formerly the status of a Samnyâsin presupposed a very serious discipline during the many years of the student and the domestic life. Such discipline might generally be accepted as a warrant for a well-controlled mind and as security against the propensity to self-indulgence, not quite uncommon even in the lives of so-called Saints. When this security is removed, and when anybody at any time of life may proclaim himself a Samnyâsin, the temptations even of a Saint are very much increased. But that there were real Samnyâsins, and that there are even now men who have completely shaken off the fetters of passion, who have disciplined their body and subdued the imaginations of their mind to a perfectly marvellous extent, cannot be doubted. They are often called Yogins, as having exercised Yoga.

Ascetic Exercises or Yoga.

Within certain limits Yoga seems to be an excellent discipline, and, in one sense, we ought all to be Yogins. Yoga, as a technical term, means application, concentration, effort; the idea that it meant originally union with the deity has long been given up. This Yoga, however, was soon elaborated into an artificial system, and though supplying the means only that are supposed to be helpful for philosophy, it has been elaborated into a complete system of philosophy, the Yoga philosophy ascribed to Patañgali, a variety of Kapila's Sâmkhya-philosophy. As described by Svâmin Râmakrishnânanda in the Brahmavâdin, p. 511 seq., it consists, as practised at present, of four kinds--Mantra, Laya, Râga, and Hatha-yoga. Mantra-yoga consists in repeating a certain word again and again, particularly a word expressive of deity, and concentrating all one's thoughts on it. Laya-yoga is the concentration of all our thoughts on a thing or the idea of a thing, so that we become almost one with it. Here again the ideal image of a god, or names expressive of the Godhead, are the best, as producing absorption in God. Râga-yoga consists in controlling the breath so as to control the mind. It was observed that when fixing our attention suddenly on anything new we hold our breath, and it was supposed therefore that concentration of the mind would be sure to follow the holding back of the breath, or the Prânâyama. Hatha-yoga is concerned with the general health of the body, and is supposed to produce concentration by certain portions of
the body, by fixing the eyes on one point, particularly the tip of the nose, and similar contrivances. All this is fully described in the Yoga-Sûtras, a work that gives one the impression of being perfectly honest. No doubt it is difficult to believe all the things which the ancient Yogins are credited with, and the achievements of modern Yogins also are often very startling. I confess I find it equally difficult to believe them or not to believe them. We are told by eye-witnesses and trustworthy witnesses that these Yogins go without food for weeks and months, that they can sit unmoved for any length of time, that they feel no pain, that they can mesmerise with their eyes and read people's thoughts. All this I can believe, but if the same authorities tell us that Yogins can see the forms of gods and goddesses moving in the sky, or that the ideal God appears before them, that they hear voices from the sky, perceive a divine fragrance, and lastly that they have been seen to sit in the air without any support, I must claim the privilege of St. Thomas a little longer, though I am bound to say that the evidence that has come to me in support of the last achievement is most startling 1.
That what is called a state of Samâdhi, or a trance, can be produced by the very means which are employed by the Yogins in India, is, I believe, admitted by medical and psychiatric authorities; and though impostors certainly exist among the Indian Yogins, we should be careful not to treat all these Indian Saints as mere impostors. The temptation, no doubt, is great for people, who are believed
to be inspired, to pretend to be what they are believed to be, nay, in the end, not only to pretend, but really to believe what others believe of them. And if they have been brought up in a philosophical atmosphere, or are filled by deep religious feelings, they would very naturally become what the Mahâtmans are described to be--men who can pour out their souls in perfervid eloquence and high-flown poetry, or who are able to enter even on subtle discussions of the great problems of philosophy and answer any questions addressed to them.

Râmakrishna.

Such a man was Râmakrishna, who has lately obtained considerable celebrity both in India and America, where his disciples have been actively engaged in preaching his gospel and winning converts to his doctrines, even among Christian audiences. This may seem very strange, nay, almost incredible to us. But we have only to remember what the religion of large numbers of people consists in who call themselves Christians, without even having had an idea of what Christ really taught or what He was meant for in the history of mankind. There are many who know absolutely nothing either of the history or of the doctrines of Christianity, or if they do, they have simply learnt their catechism by heart. They repeat what they have learnt, but without an atom of real faith or love. Yet every human heart has its religious yearnings, it has a hunger for religion which sooner or later wants to be satisfied. Now the religion taught by the disciples of Râmakrishna comes to these hungry souls without any outward authority. So far from being forced on
them, it is to them at first a heathen and despised religion. If they listen to it at all, it is of their own free will; and if they believe in any part of it, it is of their own free choice. A chosen religion is always stronger than an inherited religion, and hence we find that converts from one religion to another are generally so zealous for their new faith, while those who never knew what real religion meant are enthusiastic in proclaiming any truths which they seem to have discovered for themselves and to which their heart has yielded a free assent. Hence, though there may be some exaggeration in the number of those who are stated to have become converted to the religion of Râmakrishna, and though some who now call themselves converts to the Vedânta may in reality have made but the first step towards real Christianity, there can be no doubt that a religion which can achieve such successes in our time, while it calls itself with perfect truth the oldest religion and philosophy of the world, viz. the Vedânta, the end or highest object of the Veda, deserves our careful attention 1.
Râmakrishna himself never claimed to be the founder of a new religion. He simply preached the old religion of India, which was founded on the Veda, more particularly on the Upanishads, and was systematised later on in the Sûtras of Bâdarâyana, and finally developed in the commentaries
of Samkara and others. Even in preaching that religion, and in living the life of a recluse, as he did, Râmakrishna by no means claimed to stand alone. There were several leading Vedânta preachers in India during the last fifty years, sometimes called Paramahamsas. Keshub Chunder Sen, well known in England and America, who was a great reformer with a strong leaning towards Christianity, was not counted as one of them, because he never passed through the proper discipline and did not live the life of a Samnyâsin. But he mentions four among his contemporaries who deserved that title: first, Dayânanda Sarasvatî, for a time unfortunately connected with Madame Blavatsky; secondly, Pawâri Bâba of Ghazipur; thirdly, the Sikh Nagaji of Doomraon; and lastly, our Râmakrishna, commonly called the Paramahamsa of Dakshinesvar. 'These,' he adds, 'are the four ascetic saints whom our friends have from time to time duly honoured, and in whose company they have sought the sanctifying influences of character and example. May we respect,' he continues, 'and serve with profound respect and humility, every ascetic saint whom Providence may bring to us. The impure become pure in the company of Sâdhus.'

Footnotes

11:1 This is the explanation given of the name of Vedânta. But it is probably an after-thought. Like other compounds in anta, such as Siddhânta, Sûtrânta, &c., it was probably meant at first for no more than the subject-matter of the Veda; then, as it stands at the end of Brâhmanas and Âranyakas, it was explained as end of the Veda, and lastly as the end, i.e. the goal, the highest object of the Veda.

Dayânanda Sarasvatî.

Of the life of the first, of Dayânanda Sarasvatî, we have very full accounts. He initiated a great reform of Brahmanism, and seems to have been a liberal-minded man, so far as social reforms were concerned. He also was willing to surrender his belief in the divine revelation of the Brâhmanas,
though he retained it in full strength with regard to the Vedic hymns. He published large commentaries on the Vedas, which show great familiarity with Sanskrit and very wide reading, though at the same time an utter want of critical judgement. He sanctioned the remarriage of widows, supported the movement in favour of raising the marriageable age of boys and girls, and altogether showed himself free from many prejudices as to caste, food, and all the rest. He condemned idolatry and even polytheism. His name became better known in Europe also, from the time that he fell into the net spread for him by Madame Blavatsky. But this lasted for a short time only, and when he perceived what her real objects were, the Samnyâsin would have nothing more to say to her. She was not quite the Maitreyî he had expected. He did not know English, she did not know Bengâli or Sanskrit; hence they did not understand each other at first, while later on, as some people said, they understood each other but too well. However that may be, he certainly seems to have been a powerful disputant, his influence became greater and greater, till at last his opponents, the orthodox and unchanging Brahmans, were suspected of having poisoned their dangerous rival. He died suddenly, but his followers, under the name of Ârya-Samâj, form still a very important and growing sect in India, that keeps aloof from all European influences.

Pawâri Bâba.

The second Saint was Pawâri Bâba of Ghazipur. Little Is known of him, but his recent death has created a painful
sensation all over India. He had lived for about thirty years at Ghazipur, and was venerated as a Saint by the whole native community. The last nine years, however, he had almost entirely withdrawn from the world 1, living by himself in a compound surrounded by high walls and protected by a formidable gate. Inside there was a small flower-garden, a well, a small temple, and his own dwelling-house, which consisted of one room. He never allowed the gate to be opened, and no one ever saw him except his younger brother. Once every week or ten days, however, he would come up to the gate and converse for a few moments from within with any one who happened to be there. His younger brother always remained within calling-distance. But though his saintly brother had told him that he could not any longer bear the misery which the Kâlî-yuga, i.e. the present age, had brought upon India, he little suspected what his brother meant. The venerable man, after taking his usual bath and performing his devotions, seems to have covered his whole body with clarified butter, to have sprinkled himself all over with incense, then to have set fire to the four corners of his lonely house, and when the flames had taken hold of it on all sides, to have deliberately thrown himself into the fire, thus performing his last sacrifice. Before anybody could rescue him, the old man was burnt to ashes, and what remained of him was consigned with due ceremony to the sacred waters of the Ganges. All this happened only a few months ago. It is always difficult to get an exact account of anything that
happens in India. The conflagration of the house in which the old Saint had lived for many years cannot be doubted, nor the discovery of his burnt body. But some of his friends, unwilling to admit his self-immolation, ascribe the fire to an accident, while others consider his voluntary sacrifice as the proper ending to his saintly life.
His name Pawâri, sometimes spelt Pahâri, is explained as a contraction of Pavanâhâri, he who lives on air.
His teaching was probably much the same as that of Râmakrishna, but I have not been able to get a more accurate account of it. His position, however, as a Sage and a Saint seems to have been generally recognised, and Keshub Chunder Sen is a sufficient authority for the fact that he well deserved a place by the side of such men as Dayânanda Sarasvatî and Râmakrishna. The people of India evidently distinguish clearly between these professed ascetics and saints on one side, and mere reformers such as Rammohun Roy and Keshub Chunder Sen on the other. They evidently want to see a complete surrender of the world and its pleasures, riches, and honours before they quite believe in the truth and the sincerity of any teachers and reformers. Having undergone severe tortures and penances is likewise an essential condition of Sainthood, and for the crowd at large even the power of working miracles is by no means out of fashion yet as a test of being an inspired sage.
The best-known name by which some of these sages are called is Paramahamsa, a name that hardly lends itself to translation in English. Scholars who like to cavil and raise a smile
at every custom or tradition of the Hindus, translate it literally by Great Goose, but it would be more faithful to render that ancient title by High-soaring Eagle. Besides, hamsa, though it is the same word as goose, is not the same bird. But though these Paramahamsas form an elite by themselves, we know how many men there have been and are even now in India who, by the asceticism and saintliness of their lives, deserve a place very near to the Paramahamsas in our estimation. We know how Udayashankar, the Prime Minister of Bhavnagar, tried hard to revive, in his own case, the strict rules of life prescribed for the ancient Samnyâsins. The life of Keshub Chunder Sen also, though he was a married man and travelled much and moved in the world, was a life of extreme self-denial, as much as that of any Paramahamsa.

Debendranâth Tagore.

The same applies to Debendranâth Tagore, the friend and constant patron of Keshub Chunder Sen. Though he was the head of a wealthy and influential family, he spent most of his life in retirement from the world, in study, meditation, and contemplation. He has reached now what is considered a very high age in India, eighty-two, and we are glad to hear that he has written an autobiography to be published after his death. As the friend and protector of Keshub Chunder Sen, though for a time separated from him, he has acted a far more important part in the history of the Brâhma-Samâj than is commonly supposed. The following account of a visit lately paid to him by some members of the Brâhma-Samâj will give us an idea of the life of this
man. I am in possession of some of his letters, which are very instructive, but which are hardly fit for publication. Some friends who visited him lately give the following account of their interview with the old Saint.
'We were conducted to the spacious verandah on the second story, where the venerable old man was seated on a chair. We bowed down reverentially and took our seats. The Maharshi was the first to speak. He said: "Since you came here three months ago, my communication with the external world has been much diminished. I see things much less and hear much fewer words. But that is no loss to me. As my dealings with the external world are decreasing, my Yoga with the internal world is rapidly increasing. No effort on my part is now required for communion. I sit by myself and enjoy this company." As he spoke these words his countenance glowed with emotion.
On being asked if he remembered the different occasions on which he selected the verses from the Vedântic texts to form the liturgy of the Brâhma-Samâj (published by him many years ago), the Saint replied: "I cannot call back to my mind after such a length of time the process through which these texts were brought together from different Upanishads. I have got the essence of these things within me now, and I am enjoying the sweetness thereof. So there is now no more need for me to go to the texts. I fully agree with you, that from the True and the Intelligent we go to the Infinite person, and that then we find in the Infinite infinite splendours and behold his infinite mercy and other attributes. I might have talked much
with you on these subjects, had you come a short time before this. Now my mind is mostly occupied with things which the eyes see not nor the ears hear, so I shall not be able to talk much with you. . . . I have written an account of my life as I have been moved by the Spirit of God, but I do not know of what use it will be. Now I have become quite useless to the world. I have now very little to connect me with the world." When we replied that we did not consider his life to have been in vain, as he had given the world an example of a life lived in and with God, the Maharshi continued, "I am living the life of a recluse, I have no energy left. The energy and earnestness you see in me now is roused only by seeing you. Long, long ago, while I was studying the Upanishads, a great light dawned upon my soul and I felt that India would one day worship Brahman, the Only True God. I then badly wanted a companion, a man after my own heart, who would have my feelings and join hands with me. I tried almost all the men of light and leading of the time, but could find none. I then left Calcutta in despair and repaired to the hills. After a two years' stay there, the fall of the river Sutlej suggested to my mind a sacred lesson. I heard a voice urging me to go to Calcutta and resume my holy work. I was so much engrossed with this divine voice that nothing would give me rest. Every object seemed to reverberate the Divine injunction and press me to fulfil the Lord's will. In all haste I came back, and as I came back, Brahmânanda (Keshub Chunder Sen) made my acquaintance. I saw at once that he was exactly the
right man whom I wanted. I could then discern why I was led by the Spirit to come back to Calcutta. My joy knew no bounds. We passed the greater portion of the nights in conversation about deep spiritual matters, even up to two in the morning. Brahmânanda even told me that when he would be gone, those whom he would leave behind would express and promote my cause. I find his words are going to be fulfilled now." "Yes," we replied, "that is very true. While our minister was with us in the flesh, we did not realise our nearness unto you so much. Our impression is that the Brâhma-Samâj has accepted Râja Rammohun Roy, but has not yet accepted you. As you represent Yoga or direct vision of God, the Brâhma-Samâj will not be able to attain to that feature of spirituality, unless it accepts you. The present deplorable state of the Brâhma-Samâj is owing to its non-acceptance of you." The Maharshi replied: "God has called you to preach the Brâhma Dharma to this poor country of India, and particularly to Bengal--our weak, indigent, and helpless country. As the mother loves her decrepit child more tenderly, so God has shown this greater love to these His poor ones. For this special grace we are peculiarly thankful to God. God has shown special favour to you, and has made you particularly fit for your work. I have published my last work about Paraloka and Mukti, the next world and salvation, in a small volume. I make an offering of it to you." After these words the pilgrims departed, much comforted and helped 1.'
I thought that this glimpse at what passes in India within doors, and is but seldom seen or even suspected by those who tell us so much about the palaces, the Rajahs and Maharajahs, the car of Juggernâth, the Towers of Silence, or the Caves of Ellora, was worth preserving and might interest the true friends of India.
We have but to open the Indian papers to meet with notices of men who have led the same saintly and God-devoted life as Debendranâth Tagore, but who nevertheless have not reached the rank of a Paramahamsa in the eyes of the people of India. It is quite possible that some of them who are venerated as Saints in their own country, would be disposed of as fools or fanatics by European critics. Still they hold their own place in their own country, and they represent a power which ought not to be entirely neglected by the rulers of 'weak, indigent, helpless Bengal.'

Rai Shaligrâm Saheb Bahadur.

One more case and I have done with my imperfect sketch of the stage on which Râmakrishna appears before us to act his part, together with his fellow-actors who supported and often guided him in his unselfish and devoted endeavours. We read in the Prabuddha Bhârata, May, 1898, p. 132 seq., of one Rai Shaligrâm Saheb Bahadur. Saheb Bahadur, who is now about seventy years of age, has spent a very active and useful life as an official in the Post Office, where he rose to be Postmaster-General of the North-Western Provinces. It seems that the horrors of the mutiny in 1857 made a deep impression on his mind.
 [paragraph continues] He saw thousands of men, women, and children butchered before his eyes, the rich reduced to poverty, the poor raised to unexpected and undeserved wealth, so that the idea of the world's impermanent and transient nature took complete possession of him and estranged him from all that had formerly enlisted his interest and occupied his energies. From his very youth, however, his mind had been filled with religious and philosophical questions, and he is said to have devoted much time from his youth onward through all the years of his official life to the study of the Sacred Scriptures. No wonder therefore that after witnessing the horrors of the mutiny and its suppression, he should have wished to flee from this den of misery and to get happiness unalloyed and permanent where alone it could be found. He went to consult several Samnyâsins and Yogins, but they could not help him. At last one of his colleagues at the Post Office recommended his elder brother as a spiritual guide who could be trusted. For two years he attended his lectures, compared his teaching with that of the Upanishads and other holy writings, and then became his devoted pupil or Chela. During his stay at Agra he allowed no one else to serve his master. He used to grind the flour for him, to cook his meals, and feed him with his own hands. Every morning he could be seen carrying a pitcher of pure water on his head for the Guru to bathe in, which he fetched from a place two miles distant. His monthly salary also was handed over to the Saint, who used it for the support of his pupils, wife and children, and spent the rest in charity. All his home affairs were superintended by his Guru, and
this was done in spite of the opposition of his castemen who were Kayasthas, and did not approve of one of their caste cooking the Saint's food and eating from his dishes, because the Saint was a member of another caste, that of the Khetris. After some time the pupil wished to retire from the postal service, but the Saint would not allow it. When he was appointed Postmaster-General of the North-West he fell on his knees before the Saint and begged his permission to retire and enter soul and body into the true spiritual life, but the Saint once more refused, saying that the discharge of his official duties would in no way interfere with his spiritual progress. Accordingly he left Agra, and for many years held his new post at Allahabad, as it is said, with great success, having introduced many reforms and useful changes in the Postal Department.
It was not till the death of his Guru in 1897 that the Postmaster-General felt himself free and justified in leaving the service. He then became a Guru himself, and imparted spiritual instruction to those who came to seek for his help. Often those who came to listen to him were so inspired by his teaching that they renounced the world and began to lead the life of Samnyâsins, so that it became a general belief that whoever went to Rai Shaligrâm would forsake his family and become an ascetic. Nay, it was said that no one could even look at the lamp burning on the upper story of his house without being influenced to renounce the world, to forsake his relations, and thus to become useless to the community at large. When last heard of the old man was still alive, his house besieged every
day by large numbers of persons, both male and female, who flock there from different parts of the country. He holds five meetings day and night for the purpose of imparting religious instruction, so that he has hardly more than two hours left for sleep. Everybody is welcome, and no distinction is made between Brahman and !Sûdra, rich and poor, good and bad. The people are convinced that he can work miracles, but he himself regards such things as unbecoming, and below his dignity. It is said that the late Doctor Makund Lai, Assistant-Surgeon to the Viceroy, was in the habit of sending to him patients who had made themselves senseless by excessive practice of Prânâyâma, restraint of the breath, and that by a mere look he brought them back to their senses, and taught them that this practice was of little good, and in many cases injurious.

Râmakrishna.

The few cases mentioned here may suffice to show that Râmakrishna was by no means a solitary instance, and that, however much the old social system of the Four Stages as described by Manu may have changed, there are still Samnyâsins in India who live the life of the ancient Samnyâsins, though of course in different surroundings and under different conditions. These cases are as well authenticated as anything that comes to us from India is ever likely to be. If we turned our eyes to the ancient literature of that country, we should see Samnyâsins in large numbers, but their performances would probably be considered as fabulous, nor should I venture to say that they
are what we mean by well authenticated. The fact, how-ever, that some of these Samnyâsins reduced themselves by ascetic exercises to mere skeletons 1 or became raving mad-men can hardly be doubted, if we may judge by the warnings against such excesses which appear at a very early time in the ancient literature of the country. A well-known instance is that of Buddha himself, who, before he founded his own religion, went through all the tortures of Brâhmanic ascesis, but derived so little benefit from them that he denounced the whole system, as then practised, not only as useless but as mischievous, preferring in all things what he called the via media.
If now we turn our attention again to the fourth of the Paramahamsas, recognised by Keshub Chunder Sen as pre-eminent among his contemporaries, we shall feel less surprised by his life and his doctrines, but accept him as one of a class which has always existed in India. We possess indeed full accounts of his life, but they are often so strangely exaggerated, nay so contradictory, that it seemed almost hopeless to form a correct and true idea of his earthly career and his character. I applied therefore to one of his most eminent pupils, Vivekânanda, asking him to write down for me what he could tell of his own knowledge of his venerable teacher, and I received from him a full description of his Master's life. It will be easily seen, however, that even this account is not quite free from traditional elements. If I give it as much as possible unaltered, I have a reason for it.

The Dialogic Process.

Such as it is, it will give us an insight into the way in which a new religion, or rather a new sect, springs up and grows. It will place before our eyes the transformation which mere repetition, conversation, or what is called oral tradition will and must produce in the description of the facts as they really happened. We can watch here what is really a kind of Dialectic Process which is at work in all history, both ancient and modern. This Dialectic Process as applied to the facts of history comprehends all the changes which are inevitably produced by the mere communication and interchange of ideas, by the give and take of dialogue, by the turning of thoughts from one side to the other. It is in reality what is called in German the threshing out of a subject, a kind of Durchsprechen, or what the Greeks called a speaking forward and backward, or dialogue. Even Hegel's Dialectic Process, the movement of the idea by itself, that leads irresistibly from positive to negative and to conciliation, has its origin in what I should prefer to call by a wider name the Dialogic Process, of the greatest importance in history, both ancient and modern. There is hardly a single fact in history which can escape being modified by this process before it reaches the writer of history. It must be distinguished from the Mythological Process, which forms indeed a part of it, but acts under much more special rules. We can watch the Dialogic Process in Modern History also, though we have here reporters, and newspapers, the autobiographies and reminiscences
of great statesmen which would seem to render this Dialogic infection impossible or harmless. We can only guess what it must have been in times when neither shorthand nor printing existed, when writing and reading were the privilege of a small class, and when very often two or three generations had passed away before the idea of recording certain facts and certain sayings occurred to a chronicler or a historiographer. It is extraordinary that so many historians should have completely neglected this Dialogic Process through which everything must pass before it reaches even the first recorder, forgetting that it could never have been absent. How many difficulties would have been solved, how many contradictions explained, nay how many miracles would become perfectly natural and intelligible, if historians would only learn this one lesson, that we do not and cannot know of any historical event that has not previously passed through this Dialogic Process.
Let us take so recent an event as the telegram sent from Ems, where I am writing. It was meant to tell the world of the supposed insult which Benedetti had offered to the King of Prussia. That telegram marks one of the most decisive events in modern history, it has really helped to change the whole face of Europe. What do we know of it, even after Bismarck's own confessions, beyond what he thought and spoke in his own mind, beyond what he said to my friend Abeken, who wrote it out and sent it off, beyond what the people in Germany and in France thought of it, said of it, made of it, whether as justifying or condemning the war that sprang out of it. Shall we ever know the ipsissima verba 
of Benedetti, his tone of voice, the tone of voice in the Emperor's reply, the consternation or chuckle when the iron chancellor heard from all parts of Europe the echo of his own words and thoughts. And yet all this happened but yesterday. Benedetti himself has told us what he actually said, what the Emperor replied; Bismarck himself has told us what he meant when he had the cooked telegram published to all the world. Does the historian know then what really happened, what was intended by the words used by Benedetti, by the Emperor, and by Bismarck? Here in Ems the very spot is shown where the words were spoken, though opinions vary even on this point. We possess now the version given by the French diplomatist which is totally different from that given by Bismarck, and yet they had passed through one Dialogic Process only, that of the old King in his conversation with Benedetti and in his communications with his ministers. Again, every reader of modern history is acquainted with the words put into the mouth of the French officer at Waterloo, La guarde meurt, mais ne se rend pas; and every reader of French Memoirs knows by this time the real word which is said to have been uttered at that historical moment. How can we ever hope to escape from the transforming power of oral tradition?
The changes wrought by that power are of course more or less violent according to circumstances; entirely absent, I believe, they never are. And nowhere are they more evident than in the accounts which have reached us of the founding of new religions and of their founders. In
the case of Buddhism, it is well known that some excellent scholars have actually denied that there ever was such a person as the young prince of Kapilavâstu, of whose life and doings and sayings we possess fuller accounts than of the founders of any other religion. And let it be remembered that no revealed or miraculous character is claimed for Buddha's biographies, nay that Buddha himself rejected any such exceptional claims for himself and for his apostles, being satisfied with having been a man on earth, which, according to him, is the highest form of being in the world, potentially, and is, even in reality, high above all angels and above all gods (devas), such as they were in his time. Atideva, above all gods, is one of the names assigned to Buddha, showing the estimation in which Buddha and in which the gods were held by their followers.
This inevitable influence of the Dialogic Process in history cannot be recognised too soon. It will remove endless difficulties by which we are ensnared, endless dishonesties in which we have ensnared ourselves. If we once understand that after only one day, one week, one year any communication, even a communication given from heaven, must suffer the consequences of this Dialogic Process, must be infected by the breath of human thought and of human weakness, many a self-made difficulty will vanish, many a story distorted by the childish love of the miraculous will regain its true moral character, many a face disguised by a misplaced apotheosis will look upon us again with his truly human, loving, and divine eyes. All honest hearts, whatever religion they may profess, will feel relieved and
grateful if they once thoroughly understand the dialectic or dialogic working of oral tradition, particularly where it can be traced back to pure and perfectly natural sources.
It is for this very reason, and because this process can be so seldom watched, but can generally be traced in its later results only, that even this slight sketch of what a disciple of Râmakrishna, with every wish to be truthful, can tell us of his master, may be of some interest to ourselves both for its own sake and for the light which it throws on the conditions under which every religion has to grow up and to be recorded. Nothing is so human as religion, nothing so much exposed to the frailties inherent in human nature. Whatever the origin of a religion may be supposed to have been, its growth from the very first depends clearly on the recipient soil, that is, on human nature, and to study that human nature as it reacts on religion is one of the most useful lessons of Comparative Theology.
I had made it as clear as possible to Vivekânanda that the accounts hitherto published of his Master, however edifying they might be to his followers, would sound perfectly absurd to European students, that stories of miraculous events in childhood, of apparitions of goddesses (devî) communicating to the Samnyâsin a knowledge of languages and literatures which, as we know, he never possessed in real life, would simply be thrown away on us poor unbelievers, and that descriptions of miracles performed by the Saint, however well authenticated, ''would produce the very opposite effect of what they were intended for. Vivekânanda himself is a man who knows
 [paragraph continues] England and America well, and perfectly understood what I meant. Yet even his unvarnished description of his Master discloses here and there the clear traces of what I call the Dialogic Process, and the irrepressible miraculising tendencies of devoted disciples. And I am really glad that it does so, if only it helps to teach us that no historian can ever pretend to do more than to show us what a man or a fact seemed to be to him or to the authorities whom he has to follow, and not what he or it actually was. I have also, as far as I could, consulted another account of the life of Râmakrishna published in the late numbers of the Brahmavâdin. But I am sorry to say that this account stops with No. 19, and has not been continued.

Râmakrishna's Life.

Râmakrishna, we are told, was born in the village of Kamârpukar, in the Zillah Hugli, situated about four miles to the west of the Jahânâbad subdivision, and thirty-two miles south of Burdwan. His life on earth began on the 20th of February, 1833, and ended the 16th of August, 1886, 1 a.m. 1 The village in which he was born was inhabited chiefly by people of the lower castes, mostly blacksmiths, Karmakars, or in familiar abbreviation, Kamars, and hence called Kamârpukar, with some sprinkling of carpenters, cowherds (Gowalas), husbandmen (Kaivartas), and oilmen (Telis). His father was the head
of the only Brâhmanic family settled in the village. Though very poor, he would rather starve than stray from the strictest path of Brâhmanical orthodoxy. The original name given to his child was Gadâdhara, a name of Vishnu, which means one who holds the club, and it was given him, we are told, on account of a prophetic dream of his father, to whom, while on a pilgrimage to Gya, Vishnu appeared, telling him that he, the deity, would be born as his son. It was later in life that he began to be called Râmakrishna. We are told, and we could hardly have expected anything else, that his father, whose name was Khudiram Chattopâdhyâya, was a great lover of God, a man pure in mind, handsome of figure, straightforward and independent. Rumour says--and what is rumour but another name for the Dialogic Process of which we spoke--that he possessed supernatural powers, particularly what is called Vâk-siddhi, power of speech, which means that everything he told, good or bad, of anybody, would always come to pass. He was highly reverenced by all the people of his village, who stood up whenever they saw him coming, and saluted him, nay who would never talk frivolity in his presence.
It could hardly have been otherwise than that his mother also, Chandramani Devî, was a pattern of simplicity and kindness. We are told that Mathurâ Nâth, the rich and devoted disciple of her son, came to her once and pressed her to accept a present of a few thousand rupees, but to his astonishment she declined the offer.
The father proved his independence while still living at
 [paragraph continues] Dere, on his own ancestral property. The Zemindar of the village wanted him to appear as a witness on his side, threatening him with confiscation of his property and expulsion from his village, if he refused. Khudiram refused, left his village, and migrated to Kâmârpur, a village two or three miles east of Dere. There, through the help of some true friends, he managed to make a poor living, and yet he was always profusely generous to the poor and hospitable to everybody, living chiefly in the company of religious men, performing every kind of worship, and trying to realise religion to its fullest extent.
There is a story that Râmakrishna's father was going to pay a visit to his daughter one day, some twelve or fourteen miles from the place where he lived. After travelling more than half the way, he came across a Bel-tree, beautifully covered with new-grown green leaves. These leaves are very sacred to a Hindu, and they, use them in worshipping the god Siva. It was spring-time. The Bel-trees were casting off their old leaves, and the man had not recently been able to find any good leaves to offer to Siva. On finding these, he at once climbed up the tree, gathered as many leaves as he could carry, and returned home to worship Siva, without going to see his daughter. He was a great lover of Râma, and his tutelary deity was the pure and divine Srî Râmakandra. He had a little plot of land outside the village, and in the sowing time, after getting a man to plough the field, he would go himself, put a few grains of rice in the name of Raghuvîra on the ground first, and then order the labourers to finish
the work. It is said that that little plot of land produced enough, as long as he lived, to maintain the whole of the family. He ever depended upon his Raghuvîra, or the hero of the race of Raghu, the divine Râma, and never cared for the morrow. His son Râmakrishna, we are told, had something in him which attracted everybody and made people love him, as if he were of their own kith and kin, even at the first appearance.
The young child used to repeat the whole of the religious operas and dramas, the acting, the music, and everything, after hearing them once. He had a very good musical voice and a taste for music. He was a very good judge of the merits and defects of the statues or images of gods or goddesses, and his judgment was held as final by the old people of the village, even from his childhood. He could draw and make images of gods himself. One of the broken stone images of Srî Krishna, which he repaired in later days, is still to be seen in the temple of Dakshinesvara of Râni Râsmoni, about four miles to the north of Calcutta. After hearing a religious drama, e. g. the doings of Srî Krishna, he would gather his playmates, teach them the different parts, and enact it in the fields, under the trees. Sometimes he would build an image of the god Siva, and worship it with his companions. At the age of six he was well versed in the Purânas, likewise in the Râmâyana, the Mahâbhârata, and the Srîmad Bhâgavata, by hearing them from the Kathaks, a class of men who preach and read these Purânas for the enlightenment of the uneducated masses all over India. (His knowledge of
the Purânas, the Mahâbhârata, the Râmâyana, and the Bhâgavata must have been in Bengâli, as he never, according to Mozoomdar, who was his friend, knew a word of Sanskrit.)
The pilgrim road to Purî passes through the outskirts of the village where he lived, and very often a whole host of ascetics and religious men would come and take shelter in the Dharmasâlâ or pilgrim-house, built by the Lâhâ family, the Zemindar of the village. Râmakrishna used to go there very often, talk to them on religious subjects, mark their habits, and hear their tales of travel.
It is the custom in India to gather all the learned pandits or professors of the neighbourhood at a funeral ceremony. In one of these gatherings in the house of the Lâhâ family, a question arose about some intricate points of theology, and the professors could not come to a conclusion. The boy Râmakrishna went to them and decided it quickly with his simple language, and all present were astonished. (This might be taken from any Evangelium infantiae.)
Before he reached his teens, he was walking in the fields one day. The sky was very clear and blue, and he saw a flight of white cranes moving along it. The contrast of colours was so very beautiful and dazzling to his imagination, and produced such thoughts in him, that he fell down in a trance. (This would admit of a very natural pathological explanation, and may therefore be perfectly true, though it would easily lend itself to further poetical expansion.)
He was the youngest child of a family of three sons and two daughters. His eldest brother, Râmkumâr Chattopâdhyâya,
was a very learned professor of the old school. He had his own school at Calcutta. At the age of sixteen Râmakrishna, having been invested by his own father with the sacred Brâhmanic thread, was taken to this school, but what was his disgust to find that after all their high talk on being and non-being, on Brahman and Mâyâ, on how the soul is liberated by the realisation of Âtman, they would never dream of practising these precepts in their own lives, but run after lust and gold, after name and fame. He told his brother plainly he would never care for that kind of learning, the sole aim of which was to gain a few pieces of silver, or a few maunds of rice and vegetables. He yearned to learn something which would raise him above all these, and give him as a recompense God Himself. From that time he kept aloof from the school.
The temple of the goddess Kâlî at Dakshinesvara, about five miles to the north of Calcutta, was established in 1853 A.D. It stands on the side of the Ganges, and is one of the finest temples in India. The temple deeds were drawn in the name of the Guru, or spiritual director of Râni Râsmoni, for she being of a lower caste, none of the higher castes would come to the temple and take food there if she drew the deeds in her own name. The eldest brother of Srî Râmakrishna was appointed as priest to the temple. The two brothers came on the day when the temple was first opened and established, but such were the caste prejudices of Râmakrishna at that time that he protested vehemently against his brother's taking service under a Sûdra woman, or one of the lowest caste, and would not take any cooked food in
the temple precincts, because it was forbidden in the Sâstras. So, amidst all the rejoicings of the day, in which some fifteen to twenty thousand people were sumptuously entertained, he was the only man who kept his fast. At night he went to the grocer's close by, took a pice-worth of fried paddy, and returned to Calcutta. But after a week his love for his brother made him return again, and at his entreaty he consented to live there, on condition, however, that he should be allowed to cook his own meals by the side of the Ganges, which is the holiest place according to the Hindus. A few months afterwards his brother became incapable of conducting the services through illness, and requested Râmakrishna to take charge of the duties. He consented at last, and became a recognised worshipper of the goddess Kâlî.
Sincere as he always was, he could do nothing from mercenary motives, nor did he ever do anything which he did not 'thoroughly believe. He now began to look upon the image of the goddess Kâlî as his mother and the mother of the universe. He believed it to be living and breathing and taking food out of his hand. After the regular forms of worship he would sit there for hours and hours, singing hymns and talking and praying to her as a child to his mother, till he lost all consciousness of the outward world. Sometimes he would weep for hours, and would not be comforted, because he could not see his mother as perfectly as he wished. People became divided in their opinions regarding him. Some held the young priest to be mad, and some took him to be a great lover of God, and all this
outward madness as the manifestation of that love. His mother and brothers, thinking that his imagination would calm down when he had a young wife and a family of his own to look after, took him to his native village and married him to the daughter of Râma Chandra Mukhopâdhyâya, who was then five years of age, Srîmatî Sârodâ Devî or Saradamani Devî by name. It is said when his mother and brothers were looking after a suitable bride for him, he himself told them that the daughter of such and such a man was destined to be joined to him in marriage, and that she was endowed with all the qualities of a goddess or Devî, and they went and found the bride.
He used to hold that some women were born with all the qualities of a Devî, and some with the opposite qualities--the Âsurî, or the demoniacal. The former would help their husbands in becoming religious, and would never lead them to lust and sensuality, and he could distinguish them by their mere appearance. A woman, a perfect stranger to him, came to see him once at Dakshinesvara many years afterwards. She was of a noble family, the wife of a gentleman, and mother of five or six children, yet looked still very young and beautiful. Râmakrishna told his disciples at once that she had the qualities of a Devî in her, and he would prove it to them. He ordered them to burn some incense before her, and taking some flowers, placed them on her feet and addressed her as 'mother.' And the lady who never knew anything before of meditation, or Samâdhi, and had never seen him before, fell into a deep trance with her hands lifted as in the act of blessing. That trance did not
leave her for some hours, and he got frightened at the thought that her husband would accuse him of some black magic. He began, therefore, to pray to his mother Kâlî (the goddess) to bring her back to her senses. By-and-by she came to herself, and when she opened her eyes they were quite red, and she looked as if she were quite drunk. Her attendants had to support her while she got into a carriage, then she drove back home. This is one of many instances of the same kind (evidently cases of hypnosis).
Of men he used to tell the same. In his later days, when crowds of men and boys came to him to learn, he would select and point out some who, he said, would realise religion in this life, and of the rest he would say that they must enjoy life a little longer before they would have a sincere desire for religion. He used to say, 'That man who had been an emperor in his former birth, who had enjoyed the highest pleasures the world can give, and who had seen the vanities of them all, would attain to perfection in this life on earth.'
After his marriage he returned to Calcutta and took upon himself the charges of the temple again, but instead of toning down, his fervour and devotion increased a thousand-fold. His whole soul, as it were, melted into one flood of tears, and he appealed to the goddess to have mercy on him and reveal herself to him. No mother ever shed such burning tears over the death-bed of her only child. Crowds assembled round him and tried to console him, when the blowing of the conch-shells proclaimed the death of another day, and he gave vent to his sorrow, saying, 'Mother, oh my
mother, another day has gone, and still I have not found thee.' People thought he was mad, or that he was suffering from some acute pain, for how was it possible for them, devoted as they were to lust and gold, to name and fame, to imagine that a man could love his God or Goddess Mother with as much intensity as they loved their wives and children? The son-in-law of Râni Râsmoni, Babu Mathurânâth, who had always had a love for this young Brahman took him to the best physicians in Calcutta to get him cured of his madness. But all their skill was of no avail. Only one physician of Dacca told them that this man was a great Yogin or ascetic, and that all their pharmacopoeia was useless for curing his disease, if indeed it were a disease at all. So his friends gave him up as lost.
Meanwhile he increased in love and devotion day by day. One day as he was feeling his separation from Devî very keenly, and thinking of putting an end to himself; as he could not bear his loneliness any longer, he lost all outward sensation, and saw his mother (Kâlî) in a vision. These visions came to him again and again, and then he became calmer. Sometimes he doubted whether these visions were really true, and then he would say, 'I would believe them true, if such and such a thing happened,' and it would invariably happen, even at the very hour he expected. For instance, he said one day, 'I could believe them true, and not resulting from a disease of my brain, if the two young daughters of Râni Râsmoni, who never once came to this temple, would come under the big banyan-tree this afternoon, and would speak to me,' though he was
a perfect stranger to them. And what was his astonishment when he saw them standing under the tree at the exact hour, and calling him by name, and telling him to be consoled, for the Mother Kâlî would surely have mercy on him. These ladies of the Zenana had never come to a public place, especially when young, but somehow or other they got a strong desire to see that temple that very day, and they got permission to go there.
These visions grew more and more, and his trances became longer and longer in duration, till every one saw it was no longer possible for him to perform his daily course of duties. For instance, it is prescribed in the Sâstras that a man should put a flower over his own head and think of himself as the very god or goddess he is going to worship, and Râmakrishna, as he put the flower, and thought himself as identified with his mother, would get entranced, and would remain in that state for hours. Then again, from time to time, he would entirely lose his own identity, so much so as to appropriate to himself the offerings brought for the goddess. Sometimes forgetting to adorn the image, he would adorn himself with the flowers. Mathurânâth at first objected to this, but shortly after-wards, it is said, he saw the body of Râmakrishna transfigured into that of the god Siva, and from that day forward he looked upon him as God Himself, and addressed him always as Father whenever he spoke to him. He appointed the nephew of Râmakrishna to conduct the regular services, and left him free to do whatever he liked.
The ardent soul of Râmakrishna could not remain quiet with these frequent visions, but ran eagerly to attain perfection and realisation of God in all His different aspects. He thus began the twelve years of unheard-of tapasya, or ascetic exercises. Looking back to these years of self-torture in his later days, he said, 'that a great religious tornado, as it were, raged within him during these years and made everything topsy-turvy.' He had no idea then that it lasted for so long a time. He never had a wink of sound sleep during these years, could not even doze, but his eyes would remain always open and fixed. He thought some-times that he was seriously ill, and holding a looking-glass before him, he put his finger within the sockets of the eye, that the lids might close, but they would not. In his despair he cried out, 'Mother, oh! my mother, is this the result of calling upon thee and believing in thee?' And anon a sweet voice would come, and a sweeter smiling face, and said, 'My son! how could you hope to realise the highest truth, if you don't give up the love of your body and of your little self?' 'A torrent of spiritual light,' he said, 'would come then, deluging my mind and urging me forward. I used to tell my mother, "Mother! I could never learn from these erring men; but I will learn from thee, and thee alone," and the same voice would say, "Yea, my son!"' 'I did not once,' he continued, 'look to the preservation of my body. My hair grew till it became matted, and I had no idea of it. My nephew, Hridaya, used to bring me some food daily, and some days succeeded and some days did not succeed in forcing a few mouthfuls
down my throat, though I had no idea of it. Sometimes I used to go to the closet of the servants and sweepers and clean it with my own hands, and prayed, "Mother! destroy in me all idea that I am great, and that I am a Brahman, and that they are low and pariahs, for who are they but Thou in so many forms?"'
'Sometimes,' he said, 'I would sit by the Ganges, with some gold and silver coins and a heap of rubbish by my side, and taking some coins in my right hand and a handful of rubbish in the left, I would tell my soul, "My soul! this is what the world calls money, impressed with the queen's face. It has the power of bringing you rice and vegetables, of feeding the poor, of building houses, and doing all that the world calls great, but it can never help thee to realise the ever-existent knowledge and bliss, the Brahman. Regard it, therefore, as rubbish." Then mixing the coins and the rubbish in my hands, while repeating all the time, "money is rubbish, money is rubbish," I lost all perception of difference between the two in my mind, and threw them both into the Ganges. No wonder people took me for mad.' About this time Mathurânâtha, who was very devoted to him, one day put a shawl fringed with gold round him, which cost about 1,500 Rs. At first he seemed to be pleased with it. But what was the astonishment of Mathurânâtha when the next moment Râmakrishna threw it on the ground, trampled and spat on it, and began to cleanse the floor of the room with it, saying, 'It increases vanity, but it can never help to realise the ever-existent knowledge and bliss
 [paragraph continues] (Sat-kit-ânanda), and therefore is no better than a piece of torn rag.'
'About this time,' he said, 'I felt such a burning sensation all over my body; I used to stand in the waters of the Ganges, with my body immersed up to the shoulders and a wet towel over my head all through the day, for it was insufferable. Then a Brahman lady came and cured me of it in three days. She smeared my body with sandal-wood paste and put garlands on my neck, and the pain vanished in three days.'
Now this Brahman lady was, we are told, an extraordinary Bengâli woman. She was versed in the philosophies and mythologies of India, and could recite book after book from memory. She could hold her ground in argument with the best pandits of the country. Tall and graceful, she combined in herself all the physical and intellectual qualities that would raise any man or woman high above ordinary mortals. She had a fine voice and was well versed in music. She had given up the world, practised Yoga (ascetics), attained to some wonderful Yogic powers, and was roaming all over India in the red garb of a Samnyâsin. Nobody knew anything of her birth or family or name even, and nobody could induce her to say anything about them. She was as if some goddess had come to this earth to help men to perfection, moved by the sorrows and sins of this wicked world. She seemed to have known full well that she was destined to help three particular personages, who were very advanced in attaining perfection. Râmakrishna had been informed by his divine
mother that she would come and teach him the certain way to attain perfection. He recognised her at once, and she recognised him and said, 'I have found out the other two, and have been searching for thee for a long, long time, and to-day I have found thee.' Up to this time Râmakrishna had not found a single soul who could understand his superhuman devotion and perfect purity, and the arrival of this woman was therefore a great relief to him. His devotion and love knew no bounds.
All people were astonished at the wonderful learning of this Brahman lady, but they could not understand how she could sympathise and place even above herself this half-crazed Râmakrishna they took him for. To prove that he was not mad, the lady mentioned some Vaishnava scriptures, got the manuscripts from some learned pandits, and quoted passage after passage, showing that all these physical manifestations come to an ardent lover of God. It was recorded in these books that all these states physical and mental did happen to the great religious reformer of Bengal, Srî Chaitanya, four hundred years back, and the remedies were given, too, by which he overcame them. For instance, this burning sensation, as if all the body were in flames, from which Srî Râmakrishna was suffering at the time, was mentioned in these Vaishnava scriptures as having happened to the shepherdess of Braja, to the stainless Srî Râdhâ, the beloved of Krishna, centuries before, and again in later times to Srî Chaitanya, when both of them felt deeply the pain of separation from their beloved (God). In both these cases relief came by smearing the body with sandalwood
paste and wearing garlands of sweet-scented flowers. The lady held it to be no real disease, but a state of physical disturbance, which would come to all who arrive at that stage of Bhakti, or love of God. She applied the same remedies for three days, and the trouble passed away.
At another time during her stay he suffered much from an insatiable appetite. However much he might eat, the appetite was there, preying upon him as if he had taken nothing. The Brahman lady assured him that the same had happened to Chaitanya and other Yogins, and ordered all sorts of dishes to be put into his room on every side, day and night. This practice was continued for a few days, and the sight of so much food gradually acted upon the mind, and the false sensation passed away.
The lady lived there for some years, and made her friend practise all the different sorts of Yoga which make a man complete master of his body and mind, render his passions subservient to his reason, and produce a thorough and deep concentration of thought, and, above all, the fearless and unbiased disposition which is essential to everybody who desires to know the truth and the whole truth.
About this time Râmakrishna began to practise Yoga, or the physical discipline, which makes the body strong and enduring. He began by regulating his breath, and went through the eight-fold methods prescribed by Patañgali. His teachers were astonished at the short time in which he came to the realisation and attained the end of all these ascetic practices. One night, when he was practising Yoga, he was very much frightened at two strings of clotted blood
coming out of his mouth. The temple services were then in the hands of one of his cousins, Haladhâri, a man of great learning and purity and possessed of certain psychical powers, such as Vâk-siddhi, power of speech. A few days before, Râmakrishna had offended him by pointing out to him certain defects of his character, so much so that his cousin cursed him and said that blood should come out of his mouth. So Râmakrishna was frightened, but a great Yogin who was living there at the time came to his help, and after inquiring into his case assured him that it was very good that the blood had come out that way. It was because he had to teach many men, and to do good to them, that he was not permitted to enter into that Samâdhi (trance) from which nobody returns. He explained to him that when a man has attained to the perfection of this Yoga his blood rushes to his brain, and he becomes absorbed in Samâdhi, perceives his identity with the Supreme Self, and never returns any more to speak of his religious experiences to others. Only a few returned, namely, those who by the will of God were born to be the great teachers of mankind. In their case the blood rushes to the brain, and they feel the identity for some time, but after that the blood flows out again and they are able to teach.
By this time Râmakrishna had learnt all that the Brahman lady could teach, but he was still hankering after higher truths, when a Gñânîn (a true philosopher) came and initiated him into the truths of the Vedânta. This was a Samnyâsin named Totâ-puri, tall, muscular, and powerful. He had taken the vow of the order from his
very boyhood, and after a hard struggle had succeeded in realising the highest truths of the Vedânta. He wore no clothes whatever, and never rested under a roof. When the doors of palaces might have been opened to him if he had only wished, he passed the night always under a tree or the blue canopy of the heavens, even in winter and in the rainy season, never remaining more than three days in any place, and never caring to ask for food from anybody. Free as the wind, he was roaming all over the country, teaching and exhorting wherever he could find a sincere soul, and helping them to attain to that perfection which he had himself reached. He was a living illustration of the truth that Vedânta, when properly realised, can become a practical rule of life. On seeing Srî Râmakrishna sitting on the border of the Ganges, he at once recognised in him a great Yogin and a perfectly-prepared ground for the reception of the seeds of the highest truths of religion. He addressed him at once and said, 'My son! do you want to learn the way to perfect freedom? Come, then, and I will teach it to you.' Râmakrishna, who never did anything without first asking his mother (the goddess Kâlî), said that he did not know what he should do, but he would go and ask his mother. He came back in a few minutes and told the Samnyâsin that he was ready. Totâ-puri made him take the vow, and told .him how he was to meditate and how to realise unity. After three days of practice he attained to the highest, the Nirvikalpa stage of Samâdhi, where there is no longer any perception of the subject or of the object. The Samnyâsin was perfectly bewildered at the
rapid progress of his protégé, and said, 'My boy! what I realised after forty years of hard struggle, you have arrived at in three days. I dare not call you my disciple; henceforth I will address you as my friend.' And such was the love of this holy man for Srî Râmakrishna that he stayed with him for eleven months, and in his turn learnt many things from his own disciple. There is a story told of the Samnyâsin. He always kept a fire and regarded it as very holy. One day as he was sitting by this fire and talking to Srî Râmakrishna, a man came and lighted his pipe out of the same fire. The Samnyâsin felt enraged at this sacrilege, when a gentle scolding came from his disciple, who said, 'Is this the way that you look upon everything as Brahman? Is not the man himself Brahman as well as the fire? What is high and what is low in the sight of a Gñânîn?' The Samnyâsin was brought to his senses, and said, 'Brother, you are right. From this day forth you shall never find me angry again,' and he kept his word. He could never understand, however, Râmakrishna's love for his Mother (the goddess Kâlî). He would talk of it as mere superstition, and ridicule it, when Râmakrishna made him understand that in the Absolute there is no thou, nor I, nor God, nay, that it is beyond all speech or thought. As long, however, as there is the least grain of relativity left, the Absolute is within thought and speech and within the limits of the mind, which mind is subservient to the universal mind and consciousness; and this omniscient, universal consciousness was to him his mother and God.
After the departure of Totâ-puri, Râmakrishna himself tried to remain always in union with the absolute Brahman and in the Nirvikalpa state. Looking back to this period of his life in his later days, he said, 'I remained for six months in that state of perfect union which people seldom reach, and if they reach it, they cannot return to their individual consciousness again. Their bodies and minds could never bear it. But this my body is made up of Sattwa particles (pure elements) and can bear much strain. In those days I was quite unconscious of the outer world. My body would have died for want of nourishment, but for a Sâdhu (an advanced religious ascetic) who came at that time and stayed there for three days for my sake. He recognised my state of Samâdhi, and took much interest to preserve this body, while I was unconscious of its very existence. He used to bring some food every day, and when all methods failed to restore sensation or consciousness to this body of mine, he would even strike me with a heavy club, so that the pain might bring me back to consciousness. Sometimes he succeeded in awakening a sort of partial consciousness in me, and he would immediately force down one or two mouthfuls of food before I was lost again in deep Samâdhi. Some days when he could not produce any response, even after a severe beating, he was very sorrowful.' After six months the body gave way under these severe irregularities, and Râmakrishna was laid up with dysentery. This disease, he said, did much in bringing him back to consciousness, slowly and gently, in a month or two. When the native physicians had cured him, his
deep religious zeal took another turn. He began to practise and realise the Vaishnava ideal of love for God. This love, according to the Vaishnavas, becomes manifested practically in any one of the following relations--the relation of a servant to his master, of a friend to his friend, of a child to his parents, or vice versa, and a wife to her husband. The highest point of love is reached when the human soul can love his God as a wife loves her husband. The shepherdess of Braja had this sort of love towards the divine Krishna, and there was no thought of any carnal relationship. No man, they say, can understand this love of Srî Râdhâ and Srî Krishna until he is perfectly free from all carnal desires. They even prohibit ordinary men to read the books which treat of this love of Râdhâ and Krishna, because they are still under the sway of passion. Râmakrishna, in order to realise this love, dressed himself in women's attire for several days, thought of himself as a woman, and at last succeeded in gaining his ideal. He saw the beautiful form of Srî Krishna in a trance, and was satisfied. After having thus devoted himself to Vaishnavism, he practised in turn many other religions prevalent in India, even Mohammedanism, always arriving at an understanding of their highest purposes in an incredibly short time. Whenever he wished to learn and practise the doctrines of any faith, he always found a good and learned man of that faith coming to him and advising him how to do it. This is one out of many wonderful things that happened in his life. They may be explained as happy coincidences, which is much the same as to say they were
wonderful, and cannot be explained. To give another such instance. At the time when he perceived the desire of practising and realising religion, he was sitting one day under the big banyan-tree (called the Pancha-vatî, or the place of the five banyans) to the north of the temple. He found the place very secluded and fit for carrying out his religious practices without disturbance. He was thinking of building a little thatched hut in the place, when the tide came up the river and brought along with it all that was necessary to make a little hut--the bamboos, the sticks, the rope and all--and dropped them just a few yards off the place where he was sitting. He took the materials joyfully, and with the help of the gardener built his little hut, where he practised his Yoga.
In his later days he was thinking of practising the tenets of Christianity. He had seen Jesus in a vision, and for three days he could think of nothing and speak of nothing but Jesus and His love. There was this peculiarity in all his visions--that he always saw them outside himself, but when they vanished they seemed to have entered into him. This was true of Râma, of Siva, of Kâlî, of Krishna, of Jesus, and of every other god or goddess or prophet.
After all these visions and his realisations of different religions he came to the conclusion that all religions are true, though each of them takes account of one aspect only of the Akhanda Sakkhidânanda, i.e. the undivided and eternal existence, knowledge, and bliss. Each of these different religions seemed to him a way to arrive at that One.
During all these years he forgot entirely that he had been married, which was not unnatural for one who had lost all idea of the existence even of his own body. The girl had in the meantime attained the age of seventeen or eighteen. She had heard rumours that her husband had become mad, and was in deep grief. Then again she heard that he had become a great religious man. She determined therefore to find him and to learn her fate from himself. Having obtained permission from her mother, she walked all the way, about thirty or forty miles, to the Dakshinesvara temple. Râmakrishna received her very kindly, but told her that the old Râmakrishna was dead, and that the new one could never look upon any woman as his wife. He said that even then he saw his mother, the Goddess Kâlî, in her, and however much he might try he could never see anything else. He addressed her as his mother, worshipped her with flowers and incense, asked her blessings, as a child does from his mother, and then became lost in a deep trance. The wife, who was fully worthy of such a hero, told him she wanted nothing from him as her husband, but that he would teach her how to realise God, and allow her to remain near him and cook his meals and do what little she could for his health and comfort. From that day forward she lived within the temple compound, and began to practise whatever her husband taught her. Mathurânâtha offered her the sum of 10,000 Rs., but she declined, saying that her husband had attained perfection by renouncing gold and all pleasures, and she did not care for any, as she was determined to follow him. She is living
still, revered by all for her purity and strength of character, helping others of her sex to religion and perfection, looking upon her husband as an incarnation of God Himself, and trying to forward the work her husband began.
Though Râmakrishna had no proper education, he had such a wonderful memory that he never forgot what he once heard. In his later days he had a desire to hear the Adhyâtma Râmâyana, and he requested one of his disciples to read it to him in the original verse. As he was hearing, another of his disciples came and asked him whether he was understanding the original verses. He said he had heard the book before, with an explanation of it, and therefore knew all of it, but he wanted to hear it again because the book was so beautiful, and he repeated at once the purport of some of the verses which followed, and which were about to be read.
He had attained to great Yoga powers, but he never cared to display these marvellous powers to anybody. He told his disciples that all these powers would come to a man as he advanced, but he warned them never to take any heed of the opinions of men. They had not to please men, but to try to attain the highest perfection, that is, unity with Brahman. The power of working miracles was rather a hindrance in the way to perfection, inasmuch as it diverted the attention of man from his highest goal. But persons who went to him have found abundant proofs of his possessing such powers as thought-reading, predicting future events, seeing things at a distance, and healing a disease by simply willing. The one great power of
which he made most use, and which was by far the most wonderful, was that he was able to change a man's thoughts by simply touching his body. In some this touch produced immediate Samâdhi, in which they saw visions of gods and goddesses, and lost for some hours all sensation of the out-ward world. In others it produced no outward changes, but they felt that their thoughts had received a new direction and a new impetus, by which they could easily travel in the path of progress in religion. The carnally minded, for instance, would feel that their thoughts never ran after carnal pleasures afterwards, the miser would find that he did not love his gold, and so on.
About that time Mathurânâtha and his family went on a pilgrimage, and took Râmakrishna with them. They visited all the sacred places of the Hindus as far as Brindâbana, and Râmakrishna took the opportunity not only of seeing the temples, but of forming acquaintances with all the religious men, and with the Samnyâsins who were living in these places, such as the famous Tailanga Swâmin of Benares and Gangâ Mâtâ of Brindabana. These Sâdhus assigned to him a very high position, and regarded him not only as a Brâhmagñânin, but as a great religious teacher (Âchârya), nay, as an incarnation of God Himself. At Brindabana he was so much struck by the natural scenery and associations of the place, that he nearly made up his mind to reside there for ever. But the memory of his old mother made him return home. On his way back he was so much struck by the poverty of a village near Vaidyanâth, that he wept bitterly, and would not go from
the place without seeing them happy. So Mathurânâtha fed the whole village for several days, gave proper clothing and some money to each of the villagers, and departed with Râmakrishna contented.
'When the rose is blown, and sheds its fragrance all around, the bees come of themselves. The bees seek the full-blown rose, and not the rose the bees.' This saying of Srî Râmakrishna has been verified often and often in his own life. Numbers of earnest men, of all sects and creeds, began to flock to him to receive instruction and to drink the waters of life. From day-dawn to night-fall he had no leisure to eat or drink, so engaged was he in teaching, exhorting, and ministering to the wants of these hungry and thirsty millions. Men possessed of wonderful Yoga powers and great learning came to learn from this illiterate Paramahamsa of Dakshinesvara, and in their turn acknowledged him as their spiritual director (Guru), touched as they were by the wonderful purity, the childlike simplicity, the perfect unselfishness, and by the simple language in which he propounded the highest truths of religion and philosophy. But the people of Calcutta knew him not till Babu Keshub Chunder Son went to him and wrote about him. Râmakrishna's interview with Keshub was brought about in this way. It was in the year 1866 that Keshub was leading a life of prayer and seclusion in a garden house at Belgharia, about two miles from the temple of Dakshinesvara. Râmakrishna heard of him, and went to see him. Keshub was so much impressed with the simple words, full of the highest knowledge, the
wonderful love of God, and the deep trances of Srî Râmakrishna, that he began to come often and often to him. He would sit for hours at the feet of Râmakrishna and listen with rapture to the wonderful sayings on religion of that wonderful man. From time to time Râmakrishna would be lost in a deep Samâdhi, and Keshub would gently touch his feet that he might thereby be purified. Sometimes he would invite the Paramahamsa to his house, or would take him in a boat and proceed a few miles up and down the river. He then used to question him on some points of religion to clear away his own doubts. A strong and deep love grew up between the two, and Keshub's whole life became changed, till, a few years later, he proclaimed his views of religion as the New Dispensation, which was nothing but a partial representation of the truths which Râmakrishna had taught for a long time.
A brief sketch of the teachings of Râmakrishna, and a few of his sayings, which Keshub published, were sufficient to rouse a wide interest in the Paramahamsa, and numbers of highly-educated men of Calcutta and women of noble family began to pour in to receive instruction from this wonderful Yogin. Râmakrishna began to teach them and talk to them from morn till evening. At night, too, he had no rest, for some of the more earnest would remain and spend the night with him. He then forgot his sleep, and talked to them incessantly about Bhakti (devotion) or Gñâna (knowledge) and his own experiences, and how he arrived at them. Though this incessant labour
began at last to tell upon him, yet he would not rest. In the meanwhile the crowds of men and women began to increase daily, and he went on as before. When pressed to take rest, he would say, 'I would suffer willingly all sorts of bodily pains, and death also, a hundred thousand times, if by so doing I could bring one single soul to freedom. and salvation.'
In the beginning of 1885 he suffered from what is known as 'the clergyman's throat,' which by-and-by developed into cancer. He was removed to Calcutta, and the best physicians were engaged, such as Babu Mohindra Lal Sircar, &c., who advised him to keep the strictest silence; but the advice was to no effect. Crowds of men and women gathered wherever he went, and waited patiently to hear a single word from his mouth, and he, out of compassion for them, would not remain silent. Many a time he would be lost in a Samâdhi, losing all consciousness of his body and of his disease, and coming back he would talk incessantly as before. Even when the passage of his throat became so constricted that he could not swallow even liquid food, he would never stop his efforts. He was undaunted and remained as cheerful as ever, till on August 16, 1886, at 10 o'clock in the night, he entered into Samâdhi, from which he never returned. His disciples took it at first to be an ordinary Samâdhi, such as he used to have every day, during which the best doctors even could not find any pulsation or beating of the heart; but, alas, they were mistaken.
Râmakrishna felt such an aversion to gold and silver
that he could not even touch them, and a simple touch, even when he was asleep, would produce physical contortions. His breath would stop, and his fingers would become contorted and paralysed for a few minutes, even when the metal had been removed. In his later days he could touch no metals, not even iron.
He was a wonderful mixture of God and man. In his ordinary state he would talk of himself as servant of all men and women. He looked upon them all as God. He himself would never be addressed as Guru, or teacher. Never would he claim for himself any high position. He would touch the ground reverently where his disciples had trodden. But every now and then strange fits of God-consciousness came upon him. He then became changed into a different being altogether. He then spoke of himself as being able to do and know everything. He spoke as if he had the power of giving anything to anybody. He would speak of himself as the same soul that had been born before as Râma, as Krishna, as Jesus, or as Buddha, born again as Râmakrishna. He told Mathurânâtha, long before anybody knew him, that he had many disciples who would come to him shortly, and he knew all of them. He said that he was free from all eternity, and the practices and struggles after religion which he went through were only meant to show the people the way to salvation. He had done all for them alone. He would say he was a Nitya-mukta, or eternally free, and an incarnation of God Himself. 'The fruit of the pumpkin,' he said, 'comes out first, and then the flowers; so it is with the Nitya-muktas,
or those who are free from all eternity, but come down for the good of others.'
During the state of Samâdhi he was totally unconscious of himself and of the outward world. At one time he fell down upon a piece of live coal during this state. It burned deep into his flesh, but he did not know for hours, and the surgeon had to come in to extract the coal, when he came back to consciousness, and felt the wound.
At another time his foot slipped, and he broke his hand. The surgeon carne and bound it up and advised him not to use it till it was quite cured. But it was impossible. As soon as anybody spoke anything of religion or on God, he went straight into the state of Samâdhi, and his hands became straight and stiff, and the injured hand had to be bound up again. This went on for months, and it took six months or more to cure that simple fracture.
Mathurânâtha proposed again and again to hand over to him the temple of Dakshinesvara and a property yielding an income of 25,000 Rs. a year, but he declined the proposal, and added that he would have to fly away from the place if Mathurânâtha pressed his gift upon him. At another time another gentleman made an offer of some 25,000 Rs. to him, with the same result.

Remarks on Râmakrishna's Life.

This is all that Vivekânanda sent me when I had asked him to write down whatever he could gather from his own memory and from communication with Râmakrishna's other disciples. I had warned him repeatedly not to send me
mere fables, such as I had read about his Guru in several Indian periodicals, and I believe he fully understood what I meant. Yet we can hardly fail to see the first beginnings of the ravages which the Dialogic Process works even in the first generation. Given his own veneration for his departed master, there is a natural unwillingness, nay, an incapability, to believe or to repeat anything that might place his master in an unfavourable light. Besides, his master was dead when these records were written, and the de mortuis nihil nisi bonum is deeply engraved in every human heart. What is believed and told by everybody in a small village, chiefly by his friends and admirers, is not likely to be contradicted; and if once a man is looked upon as different from others, as possessed of superhuman and miraculous powers, everybody has something new to add in confirmation of what everybody is ready to believe, while a doubt or a denial is treated as a sign of unkindness, possibly of envy or malice. The story, for instance, of the Brahman lady who was sent as a messenger and teacher to Râmakrishna, will sound to us far from probable. But when I first heard of it, this lady was represented as a kind of goddess who met her pupil in a forest and instructed him, like another Sarasvatî, in all the Vedas, Purânas, and philosophies. The difficulty that had to be solved by this heavenly apparition was, no doubt, the fact that Râmakrishna had never received a proper classical education, and yet spoke with authority about the ancient literature and religion of his countrymen. The fact that he was ignorant of Sanskrit, nay, that he did not know a single word of the sacred language of India, is
denied by nobody, and has been distinctly asserted by one of his great admirers, the Rev. P. C. Mozoomdar. Of course he knew Bengâli, and a man who speaks Bengâli can guess the meaning of Sanskrit as an Italian may guess the meaning of Latin. Some of the classical Sanskrit texts exist in Bengâli translations, and may have given him all the information which he wanted for his own purposes, to say nothing of his constant intercourse with learned men who would have warned him against mistakes and answered any question he chose to ask. Thus the Dea ex machina was really not wanted. If this Brahman lady was called a goddess, we must remember that Devî is not much more than a title of honour given to high-born and illustrious ladies, nay, that an exceptionally well-informed and en-lightened lady might well have been spoken of as an incarnation of the goddess Sarasvatî. In India the distance between deity and humanity is very small; gods are believed to become men, and men gods, without much ado about it.

Mozoomdar's Judgement.

Fortunately in our case we have the testimony not only of Vivekânanda, who, as a devoted disciple of Râmakrishna, might be suspected of partiality, but we have several independent witnesses, some favourable, others unfavourable. Mozoomdar must be counted as a favourable witness. He stands aloof from the propaganda carried on by Râmakrishna's disciples, but he speaks of him in the highest terms. In a letter which he addressed to me in September, 1895, he wrote: 'Both in Keshub's Life and Teachings, and in the
old Theistic Review, I have frankly and warmly expressed my estimate of that saintly man and our obligations to him. But there was another side of his character, which of course one could not take up, because it was not edifying.' Here we see another ingredient of the Dialogic Process.

Râmakrishna's Language.

His speech at times was abominably filthy. For all that, he was, as you say, a real Mahâtman, and I would not withdraw a single word I wrote in his praise. Râmakrishna was not in the least a Vedântist, except that every Hindu unconsciously imbibes from the atmosphere around some amount of Vedântism, which is the philosophical backbone of every national cult. He did not know a word of Sanskrit, and it is doubtful whether he knew enough Bengâli. His spiritual wisdom was the result of genius and practical observation.'
There is a ring of truth and impartiality about this, and there is no sign of jealousy, which often breaks out, even in India, among religious reformers and their followers. As to his filthy language, we must be prepared for much plain speaking among Oriental races. In a country where certain classes of men are allowed to walk about in public places stark naked, language too is not likely to veil what with us requires to be veiled. There is, however, a great difference between what is filthy and what is meant to he filthy. I doubt whether the charge of intentional filthiness or obscenity, which has been brought against writers like Zola, could be brought, or has ever been brought, against
 [paragraph continues] Râmakrishna. It is quite true that Hindus who belong socially to the higher classes, though not necessarily Brahmans by birth, would be more careful in their expressions. We seldom find any blemishes of that kind in the writings of Rammohun Roy, Keshub Chunder Sen, and their friends. But a certain directness of speech which would be most offensive in England is evidently not regarded in that light in India, and every scholar knows that many of their classical poems, nay, even their Sacred Writings, contain passages which simply do not admit of translation into English. In the three centuries (sataka) of Bhartrihari, treating of worldly wisdom, love, and passionlessness, the second, that of love, has generally been left out in English translations. But the spirit of that Srimgâra-Sataka is by no means the same as that of Zola's novels. On the contrary, the object of the poet is to warn people against voluptuousness, not as something in itself criminal, which has never been an Indian view, but as a hindrance in obtaining that serenity of mind without which the highest objects of life, dispassionateness, serenity, and clear-sightedness can never be obtained. A most useful edition of all the three Satakas has lately been published by Purohit Gopi Nath, M.A., Bombay, 1896.
It should not be forgotten that in Homer, in Shakespeare, nay, even in the Bible, there are passages against which our modern taste revolts, yet we object to Bowdlerised editions, because the indecencies are never of an intentional character, and would seem to have been so, if they were now removed by us.

Râmakrishna's Wife.

Another charge which Mozoomdar seems to consider as proved against Râmakrishna is what he calls his almost barbarous treatment of his wife. What he means is evidently that he forgot or neglected her till she was seventeen years of age. But this can hardly be called barbarous in India, where it is a recognised custom that a girl of five years of age, as his wife was when he married her, should remain at her parents' house for years before she migrated to the house of her husband and his parents. And that a man in a state such as Râmakrishna is described to have been in should decline to live maritalement, is again by no means unusual in Eastern, nay, in Western countries also.
Vivekânanda told us that when at the age of seventeen his wife went to find him, he received her with real kindness, and that she was quite satisfied to live with him on his own terms, if he would only enlighten her mind and make her to see and to serve God. Such a relationship is by no means without a precedent, and cannot be called barbarous, for volenti non fit injuria. Strange to say, I received not many days ago a letter from an American lady who had gone to visit Râmakrishna's widow, Mrs. S. C. Ole Bull, the widow of the famous violin player, and deeply interested in the religious movements in India. On July 11, 1898, she writes from Srînâgar in Kashmir: 'We were the first foreigners who were allowed to see Sarada-devî, the widow of Râmakrishna. She called us her children, and saying that our visit to her was of the
 [paragraph continues] Lord, she felt no strangeness in being with us. When asked to define the obedience to a Guru, who in her case was her husband, she replied to the effect that when one had chosen a Guru or teacher, one should listen to and obey all his directions for spiritual advancement, but in things temporal one could most truly serve a Guru by using one's own best discernment, even if at times it were not in agreement with suggestions given.
'When she gladly gave her husband, to whom she had been united by child-marriage, her assent that he should lead a Samnyâsin's life, she gained his intimate friendship, and became his disciple, receiving daily instruction. During the years of her life with him she was his adviser, praying earnestly for such purity of motive that she might never fail him. She had also taken the vow of poverty and chastity, and in renouncing the natural joys of a mother, she became with him the spiritual parent of many children.'
It is strange that a man of Mozoomdar's knowledge and experience should have considered the resolve of Râmakrishna's wife to live with him as a Samnyâsinî as barbarous treatment. She herself evidently did not think so, nor have I heard of any other cruelties on the part of her husband. If she was satisfied with her life, who has any right to complain; and is love between husband and wife really impossible without the procreation of children? We must learn to believe in Hindu honesty, however incredulous we might justly be on such matters in our own country. Anyhow, I know of no one else who has taken offence at Râmakrishna's spiritual marriage.

Râmakrishna's Influence on Keshub Chunder Sen.

A more painful misunderstanding has arisen with regard to the exact relationship between Râmakrishna and Keshub Chunder Sen. A disciple may mean many things, but Keshub Chunder Sen was never chary in giving credit where credit was due, and he was the last man to withhold the name of master and teacher from Râmakrishna or any one else from whom he had received inspiration, encouragement, or instruction. 'Whoever he may be,' he writes, 'I desire to learn from him. If I see an ordinary minstrel, I love to learn at his feet. If an ascetic comes, I consider that a lac of rupees has come to my house. I learn much by hearing his hymns. . . . I can clearly perceive that when-ever a saint takes leave of me he pours into my heart his virtues. To some extent I become like him--I am a born disciple.' On the other hand, no one repudiated the title of Master or Guru more emphatically than Râmakrishna. A relative of Keshub Chunder Sen, however, who evidently completely misapprehended what was implied by the influence which I said that Râmakrishna had exercised on Keshub Chunder Sen, Mozoomdar, and others as his disciples, is very anxious to establish the priority of Keshub Chunder Sen, as if there could be priority in philosophical or religious truth. 'It was Keshub Chunder,' he tells us, 'who brought Râmakrishna out of obscurity.' That may be so, but how often have disciples been instrumental in bringing out their master? He then continues to bring charges against Râmakrishna, which may be true or not, but have nothing
to do with the true relation between Keshub and Râmakrishna. If, as we are told, he did not show sufficient moral abhorrence of prostitutes, he does not stand quite alone in this among the founders of religion. If he did not 'honour the principle of teetotalism according to Western notions,' no one, as far as I know, has ever accused him of any excess in drinking. Such bickerings and cavillings would have been most distasteful both to Keshub Chunder Sen and to Râmakrishna. Both had no words but words of praise and love for each other, and it was a great pity that their mutual relation should have been treated in a jealous spirit, and thereby totally misrepresented. I can under-stand that in India, where the relation between Guru and Sishya is a very peculiar and very definite one, one of Keshub Chunder Sen's relatives should have objected to Râmakrishna being represented as the Guru of Keshub. Keshub had no real Guru, nor was he a Brahman by birth like Râmakrishna. But that he learnt from Râmakrishna he, as well as Mozoomdar, has repeatedly admitted. As to myself, I can only say that Keshub Chunder Sen's memory is quite safe in my hands, perhaps safer than in those of his relatives. I stood up for him when his nearest friends forsook him and turned against him. If my words could possibly have been misunderstood in India, I gladly state that neither did Râmakrishna act as Guru or Keshub Chunder Sen as Sishya. The only thing that interested me was whether the influence exercised by the former on the latter might possibly account for certain, as yet unexplained, phases in the later spiritual development of Keshub Chunder Sen.
 [paragraph continues] It would be a real help in judging of Keshub Chunder Sen if we knew that--to quote the words of Mozoomdar--' his association with Râmakrishna developed the conception of the Motherhood of God'; or, again, that 'the strange selectivism of Râmakrishna suggested to Keshub's appreciative mind the thought of broadening the spiritual structure of his own movement.' Whether toward the end of his life Keshub became mystic and ecstatic in his utterances, and whether his concept of the Godhead as the Divine Mother was inspired by Râmakrishna, I gladly leave to others to decide. By whatever terms these words mystic and ecstatic may be, if translated into Bengâli, in English they mean exactly that spirit which pervades many of the utterances of the so-called New Dispensation, and which was so severely, and far too severely, animadverted on by many of Keshub's European admirers. Mystic has no such terrible meaning in English as its corresponding term seems to have in Bengâli. People always seem to imagine that mystic has something to do with mist. Thus the late B. R. Rajam Iyer wrote in the Prabuddha Bharata, p. 123:
The Vedânta will certainly be mysticism if it seek to make a man live without food, enable him to preserve his life as long as he pleases, or get stiff like a corpse, dead entirely to the world, though an obscure spark of life may yet linger in the system. The Vedânta will be mysticism if it seek to enable man to work wonderful feats, as flying in the air, leaving the body at will, and wandering in space unobstructed like a ghost, or entering into the bodies of others, and possessing them like spirits, and doing similar things
of an unnatural character. The Vedânta will certainly be mysticism if it seek to make a man read the thoughts of others, and lay him in an eternal trance, when he would be more dead than alive, both with reference to himself and to others.' I quote these words partly to show the misapplication of the term mysticism, for all this should not be called mysticism, but fraud and jugglery; and partly to show what the Vedânta is not, and certainly never was, in the eyes of Keshub Chunder Sen or Râmakrishna. It was in order to express my conviction that some later phases in Keshub's so-called New Dispensation were not essential to his simple original teaching, that I tried to trace them back to their different sources. If some of Râmakrishna's followers have made capital out of these remarks, surely such local jealousies and backbitings may safely be ignored. An honest under-standing between East and West, which was one of Keshub's highest ideals, cannot be furthered by the somewhat childish misunderstandings of Keshub's self-constituted advocates. Keshub himself would have been the last person to approve of the spirit that pervades his friend's passionate, though, I trust, well-intentioned advocacy.

Vedânta-philosophy.

If now we return to Râmakrishna, I can assure Keshub's zealous advocate that I never looked upon Râmakrishna as the originator of the Vedânta-philosophy. He was not a man possessed of a scholarlike knowledge of the ancient system of the Vedânta-philosophy, nor do I feel certain that even Keshub Chunder Sen had studied Samkara's
or Râmânuga's famous commentaries on the Vedânta Sûtras. But both were thoroughly imbued with the spirit of that philosophy, which is, in fact, like the air breathed more or less by every Hindu who cares for philosophy or religion. It is difficult to say whether we should treat the Vedânta as philosophy or religion, the two being really inseparable from the Hindu point of view.
What is curious, however, both in Keshub Chunder Sen's and in Râmakrishna's utterances, is the admixture of European ideas. Neither the one nor the other would have spoken as they did, before the English Government began its educational work in India. The bulk of their teaching is, no doubt, Indian to the backbone. It is the old Indian philosophy, properly called Vedânta or the highest goal of the Veda, but there is clearly a sprinkling, and sometimes far more than a mere sprinkling, of European thoughts in Keshub's writings; and we often meet with quite unexpected references to European subjects, not excluding railways and gas, in the sayings of Râmakrishna.
It is necessary to explain in a few words the character of that Vedânta-philosophy which is the very marrow running through all the bones of Râmakrishna's doctrine. It is by no means easy, however, to give a short abstract of that ancient philosophy, particularly if we consider that it exists now, and seems always to have existed, under three different forms, the Advaita School (non-duality school), the Visishta-advaita School (non-duality school, with a difference), and the Dvaita School (real duality school), the last of which seems hardly to have a right to the name
of Vedânta, but nevertheless is so called. The Advaita or non-duality school, chiefly represented by Samkara and his followers, holds that there is and there can be one reality only, whether we call it God, the Infinite or the Absolute, the Unknowable or Brahman, so that it follows by the strictest rules of logic that whatever is or seems to be, can be that one Absolute only, though wrongly conceived, as we are told, by Avidyâ or Nescience. The human soul, like everything else, is and can be nothing but Brahman or the Absolute, though for a time misconceived by Avidyâ or Nescience. The desire of each individual soul is not, as commonly supposed, an approach to or a union with Brahman, but simply a becoming what it has always been, a recovering and recollection of its true being, a recognition of the full and undivided Brahman as the eternal basis of every apparently individual soul.
The second school, called Visishta-advaita, or Advaita, non-duality, with a difference, was evidently intended for a larger public, for those who could not bring themselves to deny all reality to the phenomenal world, and some individuality likewise to their own souls. It is difficult to say which of the two schools was the more ancient, and I am bound to acknowledge, after Professor Thibaut's luminous exposition, that the Visishtâdvaita interpretation seems to me more in keeping with the Sûtras of Bâdarâyana. It is true that Râmânuga lived in the twelfth, Samkara in the eighth century, but there were Visishtâdvaita expositions and commentaries long before Râmânuga. Considered as a case of philosophical athletics, the rigidly
monistic school cannot fail to command our admiration. Samkara makes no concessions of any kind. He begins and never parts with his conviction that whatever is, is one and the same in itself, without variableness or shadow of turning. This, what he calls the Brahman, does not possess any qualities (visesha), not even those of being and thinking, but it is both being and thought. To every attempt to define or qualify Brahman, Samkara has but one answer--No, No! When the question is asked as to the cause of what cannot be denied, namely, the manifold phenomenal world, or the world as reflected in our consciousness, with all its individual subjects, and all its individual objects, all that Samkara condescends to say is that their cause is Avidyâ or Nescience. Here lies what strikes a Western mind as the vulnerable point of Samkara's Vedânta-philosophy. We should feel inclined to say that even this Avidyâ, which causes the phenomenal world to appear, must itself have some cause and reality, but Samkara does not allow this, and repeats again and again that, as an illusion, Nescience is neither real nor unreal, but is something exactly like our own ignorance when, for instance, we imagine we see a serpent, while what we really see is a rope, and yet we run away from it in all earnestness as if it were a real cobra. This creative Nescience once granted, everything else proceeds smoothly enough. Brahman (or Âtman), as held or as beheld by Avidyâ, seems modified into all that is phenomenal. Our instruments of knowledge, whether senses or mind, nay, our whole body, should be considered as impediments or fetters rather, as
Upâdhis, as they are called, which one feels tempted to translate by impositions. And here the difficulty arises--are these Upâdhis, these misleading organs of knowledge, the cause or the result of Avidyâ? With us they are clearly the cause of Avidyâ; but are they not, like everything that we call created, the result also of that universal beginning-less Avidyâ, without which Brahman could never have become even phenomenally creative? This is a point that requires further consideration. It is touched upon, but hardly decided, by Samkara in his commentary (pp. 787, 789), where we read 1: 'The omniscience and omnipotence of the Âtman are hidden by its union with the body, that is, by the union with the body, senses, Manas (mind), and Buddhi (thought), the objects, and their perception as such.' And here we have the simile: As fire is endowed with burning and light, but both are hidden when fire has retired into the wood or is covered with ashes, in the same manner, through the union of the Self with the Upâdhis, such as body, senses, &c., that is, with the Upâdhis formed by Avidyâ from Nâmarûpa, names and forms, there arises the error of the Âtman not being different from them, and this is what causes the hiding of the omniscience and omnipotence of the Âtman. It is under the influence of that Avidyâ that Brahman assumes or receives names and forms (nâmarûpa), which come very near to the Greek λόγοι, or the archetypes of everything. Then follow the material objective elements which constitute animate and inanimate bodies, in fact the whole objective world. But all this is illusive. In reality there
are no individual things, no individual souls (gîvas); they only seem to exist so long as Nescience prevails over Âtman or Brahman.

Ekam advitîyam. One without a Second.

If you ask, what then is real in all things and in every individual soul? the answer is, Brahman, the One without a Second, the One besides whom there is nothing; but this answer can be understood by those only who know Avidyâ, and by knowing it have destroyed it. Others believe that the world is this or that, and that they themselves are this and that. Man thinks that he is an Ego dwelling in the body, seeing and hearing, comprehending and reasoning, reasoning and acting, while with the strict Vedântist the true Self lies deep below the Ego, or the Aham, which belongs to the world of illusion. As an Ego, man has become already an actor and enjoyer, instead of remaining a distant witness of the world. He is then carried along into the Samsâra, the concourse of the world; he becomes the creature or the slave of his accumulated acts (karman), and goes on from change to change, till in the end he discovers the true Brahman which alone really exists, and which as being himself is called Âtman or Self, and at the same time Paramâtman, or the Highest, Âtman and Brahman, both being one and the same thing. Good works may be helpful in producing a proper state of mind for receiving this knowledge, but it is by knowledge alone that men can be saved and obtain Mukti, freedom, and not by good works. This salvation or freedom finds expression in the celebrated
words Tat tvam asi, thou art that, i.e. thou art not thou, but that, i.e. the only existing Brahman; the Âtman, the Self, and the Brahman are one and the same.
Strange as Samkara's monism may seem to us, yet the current idea that God created the world out of nothing can, strictly speaking, mean nothing else than that nothing can ever exist by the side of God, that God, out of His own energy, supplied both the material and the efficient cause of the world. Râmânuga is less exacting. He is at one with Samkara in admitting that there can be only one thing real, namely Brahman, but he allows what Samkara strenuously denies, that Brahman possesses attributes. His chief attribute, according to Râmânuga, is thought or intelligence, but he is likewise allowed to possess omnipotence, omniscience, love, and other good qualities. He is allowed to possess within himself certain powers (saktis), the seeds of plurality, so that both the material objects of our experience and the individual souls (gîvas) may be considered as real modifications of the real Brahman, and not merely as phenomena or illusions (mâyâ). In this modified capacity Brahman is spoken of as Îsvara, the Lord, and both the thinking (kit) and the unthinking world (akit) are supposed to constitute his body. He is then called the Antaryâmin, the ruler within, so that both the objects and the souls which he controls are entitled in their individuality to an independent reality, which, as we saw, Samkara boldly denies. Though Râmânuga also would hardly accept our idea of creation, he teaches evolution or a process by which all that existed potentially
or in a subtile invisible form in the one Brahman, while in its undeveloped state (pralaya), becomes visible, material, objective, and individual in this phenomenal world. Could our evolutionists have wished for a better ancestor ? Their phraseology may be different, but what is meant is the same. Râmânuga distinguishes between Brahman as a cause and Brahman as an effect, but he teaches at the same time that cause and effect are always the same, though what we call cause undergoes parinâma, i.e. development, in order to become what we call effect. Instead of holding with Samkara that we are deceived about Brahman, that we turn it aside or invert it (vivarta) while under the sway of Nescience, Râmânuga teaches that Brahman really changes, that what is potential in him at first, becomes real and objective at last. Another important difference between the two is that while Samkara's highest goal consists in Brahman recovering itself by knowledge, Râmânuga recognises the merit of good works, and allows a pure soul to rise by successive stages to the world of Brahman, to enjoy there perfect felicity without fear of new births or of further transmigration. With him, as with us, the soul is really supposed to approach the throne of Brahman, to become like Brahman, and participate in all his powers except one, that of creating, that is, sending forth the phenomenal world, governing it, and absorbing it again when the time comes. Thus not only does Râmânuga, allow individuality to individual souls, but likewise to Îsvara, the Lord, the personal God, while with Samkara a personal god would be as unreal as a personal soul, both becoming real only in their recovered identity.
What Râmânuga thus represents as the highest truth and as the highest goal to be reached by a man seeking for salvation, is not altogether rejected by Samkara. It is tolerated, but it is looked upon by him as Lower Knowledge, the personal Brahman as the Lower Brahman. That Brahman is called aparam, lower, and sagunam, qualified, and being a merely personal God, he is often worshipped by Râmânuga and his numerous followers, even under such popular names as Vishnu or Nârâyana. With Samkara that personal Îsvara or Lord would be conceived as the pratika, the outward face or appearance only, we might almost say as the persona or the πρόσωπον of the Godhead, and his worship (upâsanâ), though ignorant, is tolerated and even recommended as practically useful. The Jewish and the Christian idea of God would be in his eyes the same, a pratika or persona of the Godhead. A worship of that .God makes the God to be what he is worshipped as (Ved. Sûtra III, 4, 52), and, such as it is, it may lead the pious and virtuous man to eternal happiness. But it is true knowledge alone that can produce eternal salvation, that is, recovered Brahmanhood, and this, even in this life (gîvan mukti), with freedom from karman (works) and from all further transmigration after death, in fact with freedom from the law of causality. It seems strange that the followers of these two schools of Vedânta have so long lived in peace and harmony together, though differing on what we should consider the most essential points, whether of philosophy or religion. The followers of Samkara do not accuse the followers of Râmânuga of downright error (mithyâdarsana), but
of Nescience only, or of, humanly speaking, inevitable Avidyâ. Even the phenomenal world and the individual souls, though due to Avidyâ, are not, as we saw, considered as empty or false; they are phenomenal, but have their reality in Brahman, if only our eyes, by the withdrawal of Avidyâ., are opened to see the truth. What is phenomenal is not nothing, but is always the appearance of that which is and remains real, whether we call it the Brahman, the Âtman, the Absolute, the Unknowable, or, in Kantian language, das Ding an sich. Besides, it is recognised, even by the strictest monists, that for all practical purposes (vyavahâra) the phenomenal world may be treated as real. It could not even seem to exist (videri) unless it had its real foundation in Brahman. The only riddle that remains is Avidyâ or Nescience, often called Mâyâ or illusion. Samkara himself will not say that it is or that it is not real. All he can say is that it is there, and that it is the aim of the Vedânta-philosophy to annihilate it by Vidyâ, Nescience by science, proving thereby, it would seem, that Avidyâ is not real.
At first sight this Vedânta-philosophy is, no doubt, startling, but after some time one grows so familiar with it and becomes so fond of it that one wonders why it should not have been discovered by the philosophers of any other country. It seems to solve all difficulties but one, to adapt itself to any other philosophy, nay, to every kind of religion which does not intrench itself behind the ramparts of revelation and miracle. The difficulty is to find a natural approach to it from the position which we occupy in looking at philosophical and religious problems. I tried before to open
one of its doors by asking the question, what is the cause of all things? and we met with the answer that that cause must be one, without a second, because the very presence of a second would limit and condition that which is to be unlimited and unconditioned. We saw how, in order to explain what cannot be doubted, namely, the constant changes in the world by which we are surrounded, Avidyâ or Nescience was called in to explain what cannot be denied --the variety of our sensations. It is curious only that what the Greek philosophers called the logoi, the thoughts or names as archetypes of all phenomenal things, were by the Vedânta treated not as the expressions of Divine Wisdom or of Sophia, but as Nâma-rûpa, names and forms, the result of Nescience or Avidyâ. This Greek conception, apparently the very opposite of that of the Vedânta, is nevertheless the same, only looked at from a lower and higher point of view. Nâma-rûpa, names and forms, and Logoi, names and what is named, express the same idea, namely, that as words are thoughts realised, the whole creation is the word or the expression of eternal thoughts, whether of Brahman or of the Godhead, or, in another version, that the world represents the idea in its dialectic progress from mere being to the highest manifestations of thought. That Brahman can easily be proved to have originally meant word, makes the coincidence between Vedânta, Neo-Platonism, and Christian philosophy still more striking, though it would be hazardous to think of any historical connexion between these ancient conceptions of a rational universe. Lest it should be supposed that I had assimilated the Hindu idea
of the word, as being with Brahman and becoming the origin of the world, too closely to the Greek conception of the Logos, I subjoin a literal translation of a passage in Samkara's commentary (p. 96, 1). He holds that Brahman is pure intelligence, and when the opponent remarks that intelligence is possible only if there are objects of intelligence, he replies: 'As the sun would shine even if there were no objects to illuminate, Brahman would be intelligence even if there were no objects on which to exercise his intelligence. Such an object, however, exists even before the creation, namely, Nâma-rûpa, the names and forms, as yet undeveloped, but striving for development (avyâkrite, vyâkikîrshite), that is the words of the Veda living in the mind of the creator even before the creation 1.' Might not this have been written by Plato himself?
We may try now another door for an entrance into the Vedânta-philosophy, which may help in bringing the Vedânta nearer to ourselves, or ourselves nearer to the Vedânta, so that it may be looked upon not simply as a strange and curious system, but as a system of thought with which we can sympathise, nay, which, with certain modifications, we can appropriate for our own purposes 2. One of the most ancient commands of Greek philosophy was the famous Γνῶθι σεαυτόν, know thyself. Here the Hindu philosopher would step in at once and say that
this is likewise the very highest object of their own philosophy, only that they express it more fully by Âtmânam âtmanâ pasya, See the Self by the Self! But like true philosophers they would let no word pass unchallenged, and would ask at once, who or what is meant by the αὐτός, or by the Self? The Vedânta-philosophy has been called a philosophy of negation, which tries to arrive at the truth by a repeated denial of what cannot be the truth. It often defines its own character by Na, na, Not this, not that. First of all then the Vedânta would say, the αὐτός, or that which is what we are, the Self; cannot be the body. In the true sense of the word, the body is not, has no right to be called being, sat, because sooner or later it ceases to be, and nothing can ever cease to be, if it really is. As the body is not eternal, it is not real in the highest sense of reality. If therefore we want to know what is truly real, the body (deha or sthûlasarîra) cannot be the αὐτός or the Self.
But if we see that all we know comes to us through the five senses of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling, that we cannot go beyond the senses, that we never have nor can have more than sensuous images of the world and of ourselves, and that what we call our knowledge consists in the first instance of these images, not of any realities, which we may postulate, indeed, as underlying these images, but which we can never reach, except by hypothesis, might we not say that our senses as a whole are our αὐτός or Self? The Vedântist would reply again, No, no. Our senses are wonderful indeed, but they are only the instruments of our knowledge, they
form part of our body, they perish with the body, and cannot therefore constitute our real Self. Besides the five senses which the Hindus call gñânendriyas, senses of knowledge, they admit five other senses which they call karmendriyas, senses of action, namely, the senses of speaking, grasping, moving, excretion, and procreation. This is an idea peculiar to the Hindus, the former five being intended for action from without to within (upalabdhi), the latter for action from within to without (karman). The images brought to us by the senses, on which we depend for all our knowledge, are what we should call states of consciousness, they are not even our Ego, much less our Self. They come and go, arise and vanish, and cannot therefore be called real or eternal, as little as the body. In all these images we may distinguish the subject or the active element, and the object or the passive element. The passive or objective elements are what we are accustomed to call matter, and this matter, according to the five senses by which it is perceived, is divided into five kinds, viz. ether, corresponding to hearing; light, corresponding to seeing; air, corresponding to touching; water, corresponding to tasting; and earth, corresponding to smelling. This is all that we can legitimately mean by the five elements. They are to us states of consciousness, or vigñana only. But though to us elementary matter exists, and can exist as known, or in the form of knowledge only, the Vedânta does not deny its existence, whatever it may say about its reality. If the objects of our sensuous knowledge are all the result of Avidyâ, the elements also
must share that fate, and cannot claim more than a phenomenal reality.
As, however, there are few, if any, sensations corresponding to one element only, without being mixed up with others, each element is supposed to be five-folded, that is, to contain one preponderating quality, and small portions of the others. This so-called Pañkîkarana or quintupling is not to be found, however, in the ancient Vedânta; it belongs to the refinements, and not always improvements, of a later age to which we owe such works as the very popular Vedântasâra. A different and, as it would seem, far more primitive conception of the elements is found in the Upanishads, for instance, the Khândogya Upanishad VI, 2. We generally find in India four elements, or, with the addition of âkâsa, ether, as the vehicle of sound, five. The most primitive conception of the constituent elements of the world, however, would seem to have been three; namely, what is earthy, what is fiery, and what is watery. These three elements could not possibly be overlooked, and this threefold division is actually found in the Khândogya, where the three elements are called Anna, Tegas, and Ap, or, as they are arranged there, first, Tegas, including fire, light, and warmth, then Ap, water, and lastly Anna, earth. It is true that Anna means otherwise food, but it can here be taken in the sense of earth only, as sup-plying food. The first is represented as red, the second as white, the third as black. These three elements also are represented as being mixed in three proportions, and as constituent elements of the human body they are

represented as passing through three forms of development, the earthy portion being manifested in faeces, flesh, and Manas, the watery portion in urine, blood, and life, the fiery portion in bones, marrow, and speech. There are many of these purely fanciful speculations to be found in the Upanishads. This, however, should not be allowed to prejudice us against what is simple and primitive and rational in these depositories of ancient thought. But if it is asked, Can these passive and active senses be the Self? the Vedântist says again, No, no; they are not what we are in search of, they cannot be the αὐτός, which must be real, unchanging, and eternal.
If this applies to the ten senses, it applies with equal strength to what is sometimes called the eleventh sense, the Manas, all treated as material, and as products of the earthy element. Manas is etymologically closely connected with mens and has therefore been generally translated by mind. But though it may be used in that sense in ordinary language, it has a narrower meaning in Sanskrit philosophy. It is meant for the central and combining organ of the senses of perception and action. This Manas performs originally, what we ascribe to the faculty of attention (avadhâna): it acts, as we are told, as a doorkeeper, pre-venting the impressions of the different senses from rushing in simultaneously, and producing nothing but confusion. It is easy to show that this central sense also falls under the Vedântic No, no. It cannot be the Self, which must be permanent and real; it is an instrument only, and therefore called antahkarana--the inner organ. We see here the
same confusion which exists elsewhere. There is such an abundance of words expressive of what is going on within us, our antahkarana, our mind in its various manifestations, that we are embarrassed rather than helped by this wealth. The worst of it is that as there are so many words, it was supposed at a later time that each must have its own peculiar meaning; and, if it had not, scholastic definition soon came in to assign to each that special meaning which it was to have in future. In the meantime the stream of languages flowed on in complete disregard of such artificial barriers, and with every new philosophy the confusion became greater and greater. It is easy to understand that if each language by itself can seldom give us well-defined terms for the various manifestations of our perceptive and reasoning powers, the confusion becomes still greater when we attempt to render the psychological terms of one by those of another language. For instance, if we translated Âtman, as is mostly done, by soul, we should be rendering what is free from all passions by a word which generally implies the seat of the passions. And if we were to follow the example of others and translate Manas by understanding or Verstand, we should render what is meant as chiefly a perceptive and arranging faculty by a name that implies reasoning from the lowest to the highest form. With us Verstand is what distinguishes men from animals, while in the Vedânta, Manas is not denied to animals, not even, as it would seem, to plants 1.
It seems better therefore to retain as much as possible
the technical terms of Sanskrit philosophy, and to speak of Âtman or the Self instead of soul, of Manas, or possibly mind, instead of understanding or Verstand.
We shall see that even in Sanskrit itself the confusion is very great, there being more terms than can be accommodated or be kept distinct one from the other. By the side of the Indriyas, or senses, for instance, we also find Prânas, literally vital spirits, which include the Manas, and as a conditio sine qua non, but not as one of the Indriyas, the so-called Mukhya Prâna, the vital breath, that passes from the lungs through the mouth, and which again in a very artificial, if not to say foolish, manner is divided into five varieties. The Manas is then treated, like the senses, as part of the body, being meant at first, I believe, for no more than the central and superintending perceptive organ But it has many functions, and the names of some of them are interchanged with the names of the Manas itself. We have Buddhi, the general name for perception and mental activity, Kitta, thought or what is thought, Vigñâna, discrimination, some of which are sometimes treated as separate faculties. Samkara, however, shows his powerful grasp by comprising all under Manas, so that Manas is sometimes reason, sometimes understanding, or mind or thought. This simplifies his psychology very much, though it may lead to misunderstandings also. Manas gives us the images (Vorstellungen) which consist of the contributions of the different senses; it tells us this is this (niskaya) and fixes it (adhyavasâya). Images are formed into concepts and words (samkalpa); these may be called into question samsaya),

and weighed (vikalpa) against each other, so as to give us judgements. Here then we should have in a rough form the elements of our psychology, but it must be confessed that they were never minutely elaborated by the Vedânta philosophers. Even the meanings here assigned to the different psychological terms, were so assigned etymologically rather than from definitions given by Samkara himself. According to him, Manas gives us everything; impressions, images, concepts, and judgements, nay even self-consciousness or Ahamkâra, i.e. the Ego-making, and consequently the distinguishing between subjects and objects, all are Manas. But when we ask, is the Manas, or the Ahamkâra, or Buddhi, or Kitta, are any of the attributes of Manas, such as Kâma, desire, Dhî, fear, Hrî, shame, Dhî, wisdom, Vikikitsâ, doubt, Sraddhâ, belief, Asraddhâ, unbelief, Dhriti, decision, Adhriti, wavering,--are all or any of these the true Self? the Vedântist answers again, No, no; they are temporal, they are composite, they come and they go, they cannot be what we are in search of, the true and eternal Self. It is clear that when we say my body, there are two things presupposed, one thing the body, the other he to whom it belongs. So again when we speak of my senses, my mind, nay of my Ego, we distinguish between a possessor and what for the time being he possesses. But we should never say my Self, because that is tautological: the Self cannot belong to any one else. If we were to say my Self, we could only mean our Ego, but if we say our Self, i.e. the Self of all, or simply Self, we mean Brahman, Brahman as hidden within us and
within the world. At the time of death the organs of knowledge are not supposed to be destroyed absolutely, but while there is another life before us, they are reduced to a seminal or potential form only, and though the outward organs themselves will decay, their potentia or powers remain, dwelling in what is called the Sûkshma-Sarîra, the subtile body, the body that migrates from birth to birth and becomes again and again a Sthûla-Sarîra, a material body. But when real freedom has once been obtained, this Sûkshma-Sarîra also vanishes and there remains the Âtman only, or Brahman as he was and always will be. The form assumed by the body in every new existence is determined by the deeds and thoughts during former existences: it is still, so to say, under the law of causality.
Then what remains for the surds, for the Âtman? The Greek sages have hardly any answer to give; to them the αὐτός was seldom more than the Ego, Ahamkâra, while with the Vedântist it is distinctly not the Ego as opposed to a Non-Ego, but something beyond, something not touched by the law of causality, something neither suffering, nor enjoying, nor acting, but that without which neither the gross nor the subtile body could ever exist. This Self, this the true αὐτός, was discovered in the lotus of the heart in true Self-consciousness, it was discovered as not-personal; though dwelling in the personal or living Âtman, the Gîva, it remained for ever a mere looker-on, untouched by anything. As I said before, the Vedânta-philosophy is a philosophy of negation; it says No, no, it says all that the Self is not, but what the Self is, defies all words and all thoughts.
 [paragraph continues] Our thoughts and our words return from it baffled, as the Veda says. There are passages in the Upanishads where attempts are made to bring us nearer to a conception of the Self, whether we call it the Brahman or the Âtman, but these attempts never go so far as a definition of these two, or of this One Power. In the Khândogya Upanishad III, 14, we read: 'Surely this universe is Brahman. It should be worshipped in silence as the beginning, the being, and the end of all. Its matter is thought, life its body, light its form. Its will is truth, its Self the infinite (ether). It works all, it wills all, it scents all, it tastes all, embracing the Universe, silent and unconcerned. This is the Self in the innermost heart, smaller than a mustard-seed or the kernel of it. This is the Self in the innermost heart, larger than the earth, larger than the atmosphere, larger than the sky, larger than all worlds. The all-working, all-willing, all-scenting, all-tasting one, the all-embracing, silent, unconcerned one, this is the Self in the innermost heart, this is Brahman, this I shall become when parting from hence. He who has this, does not doubt.'
This subject is treated again and again. Very much as we saw it treated in the Khândogya, we find it treated in the Taittiriya Upanishad II, 1-7. One covering after another is there removed, till there remains in the end the pure Self. First the body of flesh and blood is re-moved, then the vital breath, then the Manas, and with it thought, till at last nothing remains but the Self full of bliss. This is called the sap or the essence. It is this Self
that brings bliss, finding peace and rest in the invisible, the immaterial, the inexpressible, the unfathomable. So long as anything else is left, hidden anywhere, there is no peace and no rest, however wise a man may think himself. Or, as Yâgñavalkya says: 'He who knows this, knows everything.' Every name that can be imagined for expressing what is really inexpressible, is assigned in the Upanishads to Brahman. Brahman is neither long nor short, neither subtile nor gross; he is without parts, without activity, still, without spot, without fraud, he is unborn, never growing old, not fading nor dying, nor fearing anything; he is without and within.' Whether such a being can be called he, is very doubtful, for he is neither he nor she; he is It in the very highest sense of that undifferentiated pronoun.
We thus see that both methods, the first that started from the postulate that the true Self must be one, without a second, and the second, which holds that the true Self must be unchanging, eternal, without beginning or end, arrive at the same final result, viz. that the Self of the world can be nothing that is perceived in this changing world, and that our own Self too can be nothing that is perceived as changing, as being born, as living and dying. Both may, in one sense of the word, be called nothings; though they are in reality that in comparison with which everything else is nothing. If the world is real the Self is not, if the Self is real the world is not.

Final Conclusion, Tat tvamasi.

Then follows the final conclusion that these two Selfs are one and the same, only reached by different methods. Man is man phenomenally, the world is world phenomenally, the gods of the world are gods phenomenally, but in full reality all are the Godhead, call it Âtman or Brahman, metamorphosed and hidden for a time by Avidyâ or Nescience, but always recoverable by Vidyâ or by the Vedânta-philosophy.
These ideas in a more or less popular form seem to pervade the Hindu mind from the earliest to the latest date. They are taught in the schools, but even without the schools they seem to be imbibed with the mother's milk. They are often exaggerated and caricatured so as to become repulsive to a European mind, but in their purity and simplicity they contain an amount of truth which can no longer be safely neglected by any student, whether of philosophy or religion. It can no longer be put aside as merely curious, or disposed of as mystic, without a definition of what is meant by mystic, and without an argument that everything that is called mystic has really nothing to do with either religion or philosophy. That it may lead to dangerous consequences no one would deny, but the same may be said of almost every religion and every philosophy, if carried to its last consequences. I have already drawn attention to the false reasoning, that because good works cannot secure salvation, therefore bad works also are indifferent or harmless. Good works, according to the Vedânta, certainly do not lead straight to salvation, but
they represent the first essential step that leads on to salvation, while evil deeds form a barrier that keeps a man from making even the first step in his progress towards knowledge and beatitude. That a Saint cannot sin, or that Sciens non peccat, has been held true not in India only, but it is easily seen in what sense this is either true or false, whether in India or at home. It cannot be deeply enough impressed on the minds of the modern apostles of Râmakrishna that nothing would be more likely to lower their master and their own work in the eyes of serious people than the slightest moral laxity on their part, or a defence of any such laxity on the ground that a Gñânin, a Knower, is above morality. It is one thing to say that such a man cannot sin because his passions are completely subdued, another that if he should from any defect of knowledge lapse from his passionless and perfect state it could not be imputed to him as sin. I confess there is a little uncertainty on that point even among ancient authorities, but we know as yet far too little of the classical Vedântic writings to speak with confidence on such a point. There are too many passages in which strict morality is enjoined as a sine qua non for Vedântic freedom to allow any one to use a few doubtful passages in defence of immorality. When we have first learnt all that can be learnt from the Vedânta, it will be time to begin to criticise it, or, if possible, to improve it. We study the systems of Plato and Aristotle, of Spinoza and Kant, not as containing the full and perfect truth, cut and dry, but as helping us on towards the truth. Every one of these contains partial
truths which might easily be proved to lead to dangerous consequences. What is necessary to us at present, more than at any previous time, is a historical study of all philosophy, that of India not excluded, in its genetic or dialectic development, so that we may not be swayed by every philosophical breeze that announces itself as new, though it has been discussed again and again before, and, it may be, far more thoroughly than by its most recent advocates. It will hereafter sound almost incredible that in our time the philosophical public should have been startled by the idea of evolution as a philosophical novelty, nay, that there should have been an angry contest as to who was really the first discoverer of what has been discussed again and again during the last two thousand years. What is parinâma, if not evolution, the evolution advocated by Râmânuga, but rejected by Samkara. That the illustration of this evolutionary process of the world, as given in our time, should stand incomparably higher than anything attempted from Râmânuga down to Herder, who would deny? But to the historian of philosophy the idea is one thing, its illustration of it quite another. It is most unfair to represent a man like Darwin, who was the most eminent observer of nature, as a philosopher, an abstract philosopher; the very thing which he himself would have most strongly deprecated.
At present, however, I am not concerned with Indian philosophy, pure et simple, but with its effects on the popular mind of India, as shown by one of its recent representatives, Râmakrishna. He himself distinguishes very clearly between philosophy or Gñâna (knowledge) and
devotion or Bhakti, and he himself was a Bhakta, a worshipper 1 or lover of the deity, much more than a Gñânin or a knower. It was in order to show the background from which Râmakrishna emerges, and the lights and shades of the atmosphere in which he moved, that I thought it useful to add a short sketch of Vedântic thought. Râmakrishna was in no sense of the word an original thinker, the discoverer of a new idea or the propounder of any new view of the world. But he saw many things which others had not seen, he recognised the Divine Presence where it was least suspected, he was a poet, an enthusiast, or, if you like, a dreamer of dreams. But such dreams also have a right to exist, and have a claim on our attention and sympathy. Râmakrishna never composed a philosophical treatise; he simply poured out short sayings, and the people came to listen to them, whether the speaker was at the time in full possession of his faculties, or in a dream, or in a trance. From all we can learn, it is quite clear that he had, by a powerful control of his breath, and by long continued ascetic exercises, arrived at such a pitch of nervous excitability that he could at any moment faint away or fall into a state of unconsciousness, the so-called Samâdhi. This Samâdhi may be looked at, however, from
two points, as either purely physical or as psychical. From an ordinary Samâdhi a man may recover as one recovers from a fainting fit, but the true Samâdhi consists in losing oneself or finding oneself entirely in the Supreme Spirit. From this Samâdhi there is no return, because there is nothing left that can return. A few men only who have reached it, are enabled to return from it by means of a small remnant of their Ego, and through the efficacy of their wish to become the instructors and saviours of mankind. Something very like Samâdhi is the state of deep dreamless sleep, during which the soul is supposed to be with Brahman for a time, but able to return. This deep, unconscious sleep is one of the four states, waking, sleeping with dreams, sleeping without dreams, and dying. With Râmakrishna it often happened that when he had fallen into this deep sleep, he remained in it so long that his friends were afraid he would never return to consciousness, and so it was at last at the time of his death. He had fallen into a trance, and he never awoke, but even death could lay hold of his body and his breath only; his Self, no longer his, had recovered its Brahmahood, had become what it had always been and always will be, the Âtman, the Highest Self, in all its glory, freed from all the clouds of appearances, and independent of individuality, personality, and of the whole phenomenal world.

The Sayings of Râmakrishna.

His sayings or Logia were collected and written down by his pupils, in Bengâli; some were translated into Sanskrit
and into English. There are many that remind us of old Sanskrit sayings, of which there are several collections, all, however, in metrical form. The sayings of Râmakrishna are different, because they are in prose, uttered evidently on the spur of the moment, and tinged here and there with European ideas which must have reached Râmakrishna through his intercourse with Anglo-Indians, and not from books, for he was ignorant of English. I received a complete collection of them from Râmakrishna's own pupil, Vivekânanda, well known by his missionary labours in the United States and England. I give them as they were sent to me, with such corrections only as seemed absolutely necessary. I thought at first of arranging them under different heads, but found that this would have destroyed their character and made them rather monotonous reading. I believe as they are, they give a true picture of the man and of his way of teaching, suggested by the impulses of the moment, but by no means systematic, and by no means free from repetitions and contradictions. I should have liked very much to leave out some of his sayings, because, to our mind, they seem insipid, in bad taste, or even blasphemous. But should I not in doing so have offended against historic truth? We want to know the man who has exercised and is exercising so wide an influence, such as he was, not such as we wish him to have been. He himself never wished to appear different from what he was, and he often seems to have made himself out worse than he was. Besides, if I had done so, I know that there are men who would not have been ashamed of suspecting me
of a wish to represent the religions of the East, both modern and ancient, as better than they really are. These are the very men who would find many a lesson to learn from Râmakrishna's sayings. No, I said, let the wheat and the tares remain together. Few thoughtful readers will go through them without finding some thought that makes them ponder, some truth that will startle them as coming from so unexpected a quarter. Nothing, on the other hand, would be easier than to pick out a saying here and there, and thus to show that they are all insipid and foolish. This is a very old trick, described in India as the trick of the rice-merchants who wish to sell or to buy a rice-field, and who offer you a handful of good or bad grains to show that the field is either valuable or worthless. To my mind these sayings, the good, the bad, and the indifferent, are interesting because they represent an important phase of thought, an attempt to give prominence to the devotional and practical side of the Vedânta, and because they show the compatibility of the Vedânta with other religions. They will make it clear that the Vedânta also possesses a morality of its own, which may seem too high and too spiritual for ordinary mortals, but which in India has done good, is doing good, and may continue to do good for centuries to come.
In conclusion, I have to thank my friend Mozoomdar, and several of the disciples of Râmakrishna, more particularly Vivekânanda and the editor of the Brahmavâdin, for the ready help they have rendered me in publishing this collection of the sayings of their departed Master.