Talks Excerpt 483. Swamiji discusses the significance of Master, Sri Ramakrishna’s photograph.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
[From ‘Days in an Indian Monastery‘ by Sister Devamata]
Arduous spiritual practices, the severest exercises in yoga, were tried and mastered by Sri Ramakrishna.
Swamiji: Master performed the most difficult exercises in yoga. He does not look like that does he? If you look at his photograph he still looks simple.
Someone once said to me, ‘But I don’t find Master’s photograph everywhere, Swamiji.’ I said, ‘If you want to have Master’s photograph everywhere, all you have to do is to put two stripes on his forehead, put a rudraksha mala on him, and put a thirusula by him – then people will buy his photograph by the thousands.”
Do you know why they do not buy his picture? Because he is so simple, he is so sattvic. Only a pure mind will be attracted to that pure spirituality.
Sometimes, when Sri Ramakrishna found people following him, he would take off his dhoti and carry it in his hand, so that the people left him alone and ran away. That is the kind of being he was – he did not want people to gather around him, to praise him and flatter him for nothing.
The Master practised pranayama so much that he formed a habit of remaining for long periods without breathing. The [direct] disciple Shashi [later Swami Ramakrishnananda] told me, ‘Now and then he would stop breathing. Even after we came to him he used to tell us; ‘If I am not breathing please remind me.’
Swamiji: Look at this innocent, guileless, child. How beautiful it is. It is such a natural state.
Not hours, but whole days and nights, were spent in continuous meditation. Someone asked the disciple Sashi, in my hearing, if his Master had not remained once for three days wholly unconscious of outer things. His reply was: Three days? For twelve years, through that time, he did not know when the sun rose or when it set. He did not know whether he had taken food or not. Occasionally when a moment’s consciousness would come he would feel as if someone was dwelling inside him and he would ask, ‘Who are you? Why are you here?‘ So completely had the Divine Mother possessed him.
Swamiji: This is why I draw your notice to the fact that if, after getting trance, that person does wrong things, then know that it is not the right kind of trance. At the same time I want you to understand that I am not running down any trance.
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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.