Talks Excerpt 481. Swamiji asks what we’ll be thinking about as our bodies are about to die.

From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.

[Reading from ‘Days in an Indian Monastery‘ by Sister Devamata].

Balaram’s [Bose’s] family did not feel it fitting to drive to the Dakshineswar Temple in a pretentious carriage with servants and clanking harnesses. Yet to go on foot through the crowded streets of the city was contrary to the custom of Bengali ladies who never go about except in a palanquin or carriage. To solve the difficulty, they rose at three in the morning and walked the six miles to the Temple, whilst streets and roads were still empty of traffic and people. There they would wait until after eleven at night to return home.

Swamiji: Look at the humility of Balaram Bose and his wife. Just by lifting a finger they could get a carriage. But they knew better. To go to a holy place they had to humble themselves.

I want you to look at the humility, to look at the quality of these householders. Now if one of you did something like this your wives or your husbands would call you mad, silly. But there is nothing silly about it. Everything is holy about it.

The whole family caught the fire of their devotion and shared in the fervour of that spirit. I saw Balaram’s mother, she was over ninety years of age, yet she still went on special occasions to visit the widow [Holy Mother] Saradamani Devi.

She was full of glowing ardour and expressed her devotion for the Master [Sri Ramakrishna] in many ways. One day she arrived at the Temple when the barber was cutting Sri Ramakrishna’s hair. A curl fell from the shears onto Sri Ramakrishna’s lap. He picked it up and laughingly gave it to her. She took it home and put it in a silver box and preserved it with great reverence.

Swamiji: She preserved the hair of the Avatar with great reverence. I want you to look at the devotion behind it. Look at it. Look at the reverence. What did she put it in? Not in any box but in a silver box. She preserved it, and most probably worshipped it.

No one however, in that devout household, could surpass Balaram Babu in loyalty and unquestioning surrender. The disciple Shashi [later Swami Ramakrishnananda] told me that Balaram had a little casket in which he kept a picture of the Master. It was his custom to waken at four in the morning, open his casket, stand the picture up and, seated on his bed before him, spend a long time in prayer and meditation. When his life was ebbing and he was lying apparently unconscious, with closed eyes and helpless hands, exactly at four o’clock he reached for the casket, opened it, looked at the picture and soon after passed away.

How many of you have love for your guru like that? He was unconscious (that word must not be forgotten) but subconsciously he was awake. At four o’clock he opened that drawer, took out that picture, looked at it and passed away.

In this age and in this time a young boy did the very same thing. He came and visited us in Durban, went back to Ladysmith [a town in then Natal province in South Africa] and suddenly had a heart attack. He picked up his photograph of the Master – he was suffering from excruciating pain – he held it tight and passed away. That was Ricky [a devoted young sadhaka]. It happened then, it happened now. He did not call for his mother or his father, he did not call for his brother or sister. He knew that his eternal companion was God Himself. Nobody would expect that from Ricky. Think about it. Is it a play? Is it something so simple to do?

I have experienced that when death comes one straight away gasps for breath, one does not even think who is near and who is far. Here a man [Balaram Bose] had the time to take the casket out, open it, look at the photograph and go peacefully.

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These recordings or the excerpts from them, were made from the early 1970s onward, by Mother Radha, a close devotee of Swamiji’s and edited for uploading here by our gurubhai and her son, Brother Tim. Please be mindful that what Swamiji was saying may have been specific to an individual or a group of people with him, at the time.