CHAPTER-8 : IN THE SERVICE OF THE MASTER; PART-V
Another
instance illustrating the same point took place in connection with the feeding
of young devotees. In later days several of them used to spend their nights
occasionally with the Master with a view to practising meditation during the
night under his guidance. Knowing that overeating would stand in the way of
meditation, the Master had strictly regulated the number of Chapatis allowed to
each according to his physical capacity. One day he asked Baburam (later Swami
Premananda) how many pieces he was taking at night. On being told that he was
taking five or six, the Master said it was too much, and asked him why he did
so. Baburam answered that he took whatever the Holy Mother gave him. At this
the Master went to the Holy Mother, and said complainingly that she would spoil
the spiritual prospect of those young men by overfeeding them. But the Holy
Mother replied, 'Why do you worry so much because he has eaten two Chapatis
more? I shall look after their welfare. You need not find fault with them for
eating.' Evidently the mother could not feel content without feeding her
children to their satisfaction. The Master understood the point and laughed
away the whole affair. Thus the Master showed the utmost deference to the Holy
Mother's wishes on fundamental questions, and while receiving her loving
service and moving with her in all frankness and childish joviality, he always
maintained an attitude of profound respect towards her as his spiritual
counterpart and the fulfiller of his life's mission. This attitude was often
implicit, but sometimes it expressed itself in striking little actions. One day
the Holy Mother entered the Master's room with his meal. He thought it was his
niece Lakshmi and asked her in a careless way to shut the door. In doing so he
used the word 'tui' an expression meaning 'thou' but used only for addressing a
junior or an inferior person. When the Holy Mother responded, saying that she
was doing so, the Master felt very much embarrassed, and said, 'Ah! is it you!?
I thought it was Lakshmi. Please forgive me.' The Holy Mother replied that it
did not matter at all, and that there was nothing wrong in his addressing her as
he did Lakshmi. But the Master was not quite satisfied. Next morning he went to
the Nahabat and said to the Holy Mother, 'Well, I couldn't sleep at all last
night. I was so worried because I spoke to you rudely.' Referring to this the
Holy Mother often said in later times, especially when she was worried or
treated disrespectfully by some of her senseless relations, 'I was married to a
husband who never addressed me as "tui." Ah! how he treated me! Not
even once did he tell me a harsh word or wound my feelings! He did not strike
me even with a flower!'
The Holy Mother in turn reciprocated a
hundredfold this regard and reverence that the Master showed her. This she did,
not only by the loving and reverential service she rendered to him every day,
but by the way in which she tuned her thoughts and aspirations to the dominant
note of his life. There is no better way in which the wife of a great man can show
her love and regard for her husband than by cultivating such a spontaneous and
whole-hearted receptivity to his ideals and thus becoming his helpmate in the
fulfillment of his life's mission. We have already seen how the Holy Mother
proved herself worthy of her great husband in respect of divine love and
control over the senses. To complete the picture, we may mention here another
striking incident illustrating how deeply she had absorbed the Master's ideal
of renunciation. Among the Master's devotees there was a rich Marwari merchant
named Lakshminarayana. One day, finding the Master's bedsheet unwashed, he
wanted to deposit ten thousand rupees in his name, so that from the interest of
it all his personal needs might be met. The living embodiment of renunciation
that he was, Sri Ramakrishna could not brook the proposal, and he requested the
merchant never to mention such a thing in his presence. As a test perhaps, the
Master directed the merchant to the Holy Mother, telling him that he might give
the amount to her if she had no objection to accept it. But the Holy Mother
rejected the proposal, saying that if she accepted the money it would be as
good as his accepting it, because all the amount would then go only to his
service. It is said the Master was very much pleased with the reply.
In later days the Holy Mother always spoke
of the Master as pre-eminently a teacher of renunciation. One day a disciple
said to her, 'Mother, what a unique thing our Master gave' to the world! He has
established the harmony of all religions.' To this the Mother replied: 'My
child, what you say about the harmony of religions is true. But it never seemed
to me that he had practised the different religions with any definite motive of
preaching the harmony of religions. Day and night he remained overwhelmed with
the ecstatic thought of God. He enjoyed the sport of the Divine by practising
spiritual disciplines, following the paths of the Vaishnavas, Christians,
Mussalmans and the rest. But it seems to me, my child, that the special feature
of the Master's life is his renunciation. Has anyone ever seen such natural
renunciation?' As she said to another, renunciation was his ornament.
Once a niece of hers, when taken to task by
her for her worldly attachment, retorted that she (the Holy Mother) had not
known the value of a husband. The Holy Mother's reply was very significant.
'Yes' she said with pride, 'my husband was a naked fakir!'
One may conclude the account of the conjugal
life of this holy couple by briefly recapitulating its principal features that
make it an object lesson to humanity. In the Holy Mother we find a combination
of an ideal wife and disciple. Her highest delight consisted in serving her
husband heart and soul without any consideration of personal difficulties. For her
it was neither a slavish drudgery nor the conventional fulfillment of an
obligation. Self-abnegation, modesty, submissiveness - these no doubt were in
ample evidence in her conduct, but they were in her case the very antipodes of
slavishness and conventionality in so far as they formed the expression of
deepest love and remained consistent with a dignified pursuit of principles.
Her participation in her husband's life was
not confined to mere external service of him. She grasped the central principle
of his life and made it a part and parcel of her own self. So well did she
absorb them that she ever remained a help, never a hindrance, to him in the
realization of his life's mission. As such, she won her husband's unqualified
love and respect.
And withal the most wonderful thing is that
this holy couple set so perfect an example of married love, and yet were free from
the least taint of corporeal passion. In fact, it is the great lesson of their
lives that in the highest specimens of humanity, love is not dependent on sex
or any consideration of physical intimacy. Many a modem thinker on questions of
sex-life is disposed to separate the life of love from the function of
procreation and invest the former with an independent value in itself, in spite
of the association one finds between them in nature. Even a Christian writer
like Nicholas Berdyaev argues that to make love dependent on, or subordinate
to, procreation is to transfer the principle of cattle breeding to human
relation. He may or may not be right in this view. Many who hold the
cultivation of holiness as the highest ideal of life might have agreed with this
view if such thinkers had admitted the possibility of transcending the
instinctive side of sex in a perfect union of souls. But they are particular in
insisting that love between the sexes can never be perfect without physical
expression. For example, Edward Carpenter remarks on this subject: 'But equally
absurd is any attempt to limit (love)..to the spiritual with a somewhat lofty
contempt for the material - in which case it tends...to become too like trying
to paint a picture without the use of pigments. All the phases are necessary,
or at least desirable - even if...a quite complete and all-round relation is
seldom realized.' [ Edward Carpenter: The Drama of Love and Death]. The conjugal life of the Holy Mother and Sri
Ramakrishna contradicts this view and sets another norm, at least for the
noblest of mankind. For those in whom consciousness is yet centred in the body,
love without sex may be like painting without pigment. But there are men and
women who transcend the body-consciousness and realize the Self behind it. If
they happen to paint the life of love as an example for humanity, the pigment
they use is not sex but the Self. The Upanishads recognize it when they say:
'It is not for the sake of the husband that the husband is loved, but it is for
the sake of the Self that he is loved. It is not for the sake of the wife that
the wife is loved, but it is for the sake of the Self that she is loved. It is
not for the sake of the sons that the sons are loved, but it is for the sake of
the Self that the sons are loved.' (Brihadamnyaka Upanishad 1,4, 5).
A perfect example of this principle is
furnished by the life of the Holy Mother and Sri Ramakrishna. In their case
both stood for a common ideal of great sublimity, each helped to elicit the
best that was in the other, and both found perfect satisfaction in mutual
service, without the aid of any corporeal passion to hold them together in love
and amity. If one enquires as to what constituted the cementing principle in
this perfect union, one arrives at the Self, of which everything else is but a
reflection.
Author: Srimat Swami Tapasyanandaji Maharaj, late Vice-President of Ramakrishna Order.
SOURCE: saradadevi.info
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