Swami Vivekananda - A Biography by Swami Nikhilananda
Swami Vivekananda - A Biography by Swami Nikhilananda
Swami Vivekananda - A Biography by Swami Nikhilananda
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education whose sole purpose was to earn mere bread and butter. He felt a deep<br />
longing for the realization of God.<br />
The floodgate of Ramakrishna's emotion burst all bounds when he took up the duties of<br />
a priest in the Kali temple of Dakshineswar, where the Deity was worshipped as the<br />
Divine Mother. Ignorant of the scriptures and of the intricacies of ritual, Ramakrishna<br />
poured his whole soul into prayer, which often took the form of devotional songs.<br />
Food, sleep, and other physical needs were completely forgotten in an all-consuming<br />
passion for the vision of God. His nights were spent in contemplation in the<br />
neighbouring woods. Doubt sometimes alternated with hope; but an inner certainty and<br />
the testimony of the illumined saints sustained him in his darkest hours of despair.<br />
Formal worship or the mere sight of the image did not satisfy his inquiring mind; for<br />
he felt that a figure of stone could not be the bestower of peace and immortality.<br />
Behind the image there must be the real Spirit, which he was determined to behold.<br />
This was not an easy task. For a long time the Spirit played with him a teasing game of<br />
hide-and-seek, but at last it yielded to the demand of love on the part of the young<br />
devotee. When he felt the direct presence of the Divine Mother, Ramakrishna dropped<br />
unconscious to the floor, experiencing within himself a constant flow of bliss.<br />
This foretaste of what was to follow made him God-intoxicated, and whetted his<br />
appetite for further experience. He wished to see God uninterruptedly, with eyes open<br />
as well as closed. He therefore abandoned himself recklessly to the practice of various<br />
extreme spiritual disciplines. To remove from his mind the least trace of the arrogance<br />
of his high brahmin caste, he used to clean stealthily the latrine at a pariah's house.<br />
Through a stern process of discrimination he effaced all sense of distinction between<br />
gold and clay. Purity became the very breath of his nostrils, and he could not regard a<br />
woman, even in a dream, in any other way except as his own mother or the Mother of<br />
the universe. For years his eyelids did not touch each other in sleep. And he was finally<br />
thought to be insane.<br />
Indeed, the stress of his spiritual practice soon told upon Ramakrishna's delicate body<br />
and he returned to Kamarpukur to recover his health. His relatives and old friends saw<br />
a marked change in his nature; for the gay boy had been transformed into a<br />
contemplative young man whose vision was directed to something on a distant horizon.<br />
His mother proposed marriage, and finding in this the will of the Divine Mother,<br />
Ramakrishna consented. He even indicated where the girl was to be found, namely, in<br />
the village of Jayrambati, only three miles away. Here lived the little Saradamani, a girl<br />
of five, who was in many respects very different from the other girls of her age. The<br />
child would pray to God to make her character as fragrant as the tuberose. Later, at<br />
Dakshineswar, she prayed to God to make her purer than the full moon, which, pure as<br />
it was, showed a few dark spots. The marriage was celebrated and Ramakrishna,<br />
participating, regarded the whole affair as fun or a new excitement.<br />
In a short while he came back to Dakshineswar and plunged again into the stormy life<br />
of religious experimentation. His mother, his newly married wife, and his relatives<br />
were forgotten. Now, however, his spiritual disciplines took a new course. He wanted<br />
to follow the time-honoured paths of the Hindu religion under the guidance of