How Thoreau's Walden Pond Mixed with the Ganges and Yoga Came to America with Swami Vivekananda

Mahendranath Gupta
Mahendranath Gupta (March 12, 1854-June 4,
1932), (also famously known as M and Master
Mahashay), was a disciple of Ramakrishna—a
19th-century mystic and the author of Sri Sri
Ramakrishna Kathamrita, a Bengali classic. He
was also a teacher to Paramahansa Yogananda,
a famous 20th century yogi, guru and philosopher.
As an adult, Mahendranath, like some of the
other disciples of Ramakrishna, was connected
with the Brahmo Samaj for several years. Mahendranath
had lost his mother at a very early age and was experiencing domestic
friction in the joint family. As the friction within the joint family increased,
Mahendranath decided to commit suicide. At this critical juncture, Mahendranath's
nephew took him to the temple garden of Dakshineswar Kali Temple,
where Ramakrishna, a mystic and the chief priest of the Kali temple lived. It
was here that Gupta met Ramakrishna for the first time and this meeting was a
turning point in his life. Years later, when Mahendranath was asked about the
greatest day in his life, he said, "the day I had my first darshan of Thakur [Ramakrishna]
in February 1882." According to other traditional accounts, Mahendranath
related that he may have met Ramakrishna for the first time when he
was four years old and became separated from his mother while visiting the Dakshineswar
Kali Temple. He began crying, and a blissful and youthful man came
up and consoled him. He believed it to be Ramakrishna, who was then a priest
at the Kali temple.
M had the habit of maintaining a personal diary since the age of thirteen. M
met Ramakrishna in 1882 and attracted by Ramakrishna's teachings, M started
to maintain a stenographic record of Ramakrishna's conversations and actions
in his diary, which finally took the form of a book Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita.
Initially when M began writing the diaries, he had no plans of publication.
Regarding his methodology M wrote,
I wrote everything from memory after I returned home. Sometimes I had to
keep awake the whole night...Sometimes I would keep on writing the events of
one sitting for seven days, recollect the songs that were sung, and the order in
which they were sung, and the samadhi and so on...Many a time I did not feel
satisfied with my description of the events; I would then immediately plunge myself
in deep meditation ...Then the correct image would arise...That is why in
spite of the big gap in the physical sense, this story remains so fresh and lifelike
in my mind as if it happened just now.
In each of his Kathamrita entries, M records the date, time and place of the
conversation. The title Kathamrita, literally "nectarine words" was inspired by
verse 10.31.9 from the Vaishnava text, the Bhagavata Purana. Both Ramakrishna's
wife, Sarada Devi, and Swami Vivekananda later testified to Mahendranath's
faithfulness to Ramakrishna's words. The first four volumes were published
in 1902, 1904, 1908 and 1910 respectively and the fifth volume in 1932,
delayed because of M's health problems. The Kathamrita contains the conversations
of Ramakrishna from 19/26 February 1882 to 24 April 1886, during M's
visits. The Kathamrita is regarded as a Bengali classic and revered among the followers
as a sacred scripture. Famous translations of Kathamrita include works
by Swami Nikhilananda(1942), and Dharma Pal Gupta.
— Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia