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From the Kathamrita 168
(To the doctor) “A few people cannot gain spiritual wisdom. People who have the ‘I of learning,’ the ‘I of knowledge,’ and the ‘I of wealth’ do not attain spiritual knowledge. If you tell these people that there is a nice holy man at a certain place and ask them if they would like to visit him, they immediately offer a number of excuses and say they can’t go. They think to themselves, I am such a big man. Why should I go?
From the Kathamrita 167
“After you have realized God, your nature becomes that of a five-year-old child. The ‘I of a child’ and the ‘ripe ‘I.’ A child is not subject to the three gunas – it is beyond them. He is not subject to any one of the gunas – sattva, rajas, or tamas. See how a child is not governed by tamas. He may quarrel and fight with somebody now, but the next minute he puts his arm around him, shows him love, and plays with him. He is also not under the influence of rajas. He makes a toy house with so much effort! But soon afterward he leaves it and runs to his mother. He may wander around wearing a pretty cloth, but the next moment he lets it falls off into the dust. He may forget the cloth completely, or he may wander around with it under his armpit! (Laughter.)
“If you say to this boy, ‘You have a pretty cloth, whose is it?’ He replies, ‘It’s mine. My father gave it to me.’ If you say to him, ‘Dear one, give me your cloth,’ he replies, ‘No, I won’t give it to you! It’s mine. My daddy gave it to me.’ Later, if you can cajole him by giving him a doll or a flute, he may give you his five-rupee cloth and leave. A five-year-old child is also not attached to sattva. He is so fond of his neighborhood companions that he can’t bear to be separated from them for even a moment. But when he goes away with his parents, he makes new friends and showers all his love on them. He forgets his old companions altogether. And then he has no pride of caste. If his mother has told him that so-and-so is his elder brother, he accepts him as his real brother one-hundred percent. If he is the son of a brahmin, and the other the son of a potter, he will eat with him from the same plate. And then also he has no idea of purity or purity. He may eat without having washed his bottom after defecating. And he has no sense of shame: he may ask somebody if he has had full evacuation!
From the Kathamrita 166
Sri Ramakrishna
It is that very water of the ocean of Sat-chit-ananda that freezes into ice. And there is no harm if you want to reason further by saying that Brahman is real while the world is an illusion. In that case the ice will melt by the heat of the sun of jnana. Then what remains is the same ocean of Sat-chit-ananda.
From the Kathamrita 165
Doctor: When the sun rises, ice melts into water. But then, you know, water turns into formless vapour.
Sri Ramakrishna: That is to say, when one realizes that the Absolute is the only reality and the world an illusion, and all forms vanish. Then one is not aware of Him as a person. What He is cannot be put into words. Who would speak of it? He who is to speak does not exist. His ‘I’ cannot be found even if you search for it. Then the Absolute is without attributes, and one has only an inner knowledge. Brahman cannot be known through the mind and the intellect.
From the Kathamrita 164
“He is with form and He is formless. Do you know what He is like? Imagine an ocean of boundless Existence-Knowledge-Bliss. With the cooling effect of devotion, the water of this ocean freezes at places into icebergs. In other words, God takes a concrete form for the devotee, sometimes with a body. And when the sun of knowledge rises, the ice melts.”
From the Kathamrita 163
“If you ask whether there is a difference between the knowledge of a householder and a sannyasin, the answer is that both are the same. The former is a man of knowledge, and so is the latter – just the same. But there is some risk for a householder living in the midst of ‘lust and greed.’ Living in a sooty room, you cannot escape a little stain, however clever you may be. “So there may be a stain on the body of a person of knowledge who lives in the world, but this stain does no harm. The moon has stains – they don’t obstruct the moonlight.”
From the Kathamrita 162
Sri Ramakrishna
Janaka was unattached. That is why he is known by the name Videha, which means he had no consciousness of the body. Though he lived in the world, he moved around in it like one liberated in this very life. But to be rid of body-consciousness requires spiritual progress. It needs a lot of spiritual practice. Janaka was a great hero. He wielded two swords – one of spiritual knowledge and the other of work.
From the Kathamrita 161
“To be able to live unattached in the world, some spiritual practice is necessary. You have to live in solitude for some days – a year, six months, three months – and meditate on God. You must pray to Him earnestly to grant you love and devotion. And you should say to yourself, There is no one in this world who is my own. Those whom I call mine are so for just two days. Only God is my own. He alone is my all. Oh! how can I attain Him?
From the Kathamrita 160
Sri Ramakrishna (to Ishan): “Blessed is the worldly man who attends to his duties in life but has love and devotion for God’s lotus feet. He is indeed brave. He is like a man carrying a two-maund load on his head, who watches a bridal procession passing by. The man has a heavy load on his head, yet he sees the bridegroom. Without great power of mind, it is not possible. He is just like a mud fish living in the mud – not a speck of mud soils its body. Or like a waterfowl that is forever diving into water – no water clings to its body when it flutters its wings even once.
From the Kathamrita 159
Girish: “Narendra says, ‘He (the Lord) is beyond word and intellect.’” Sri Ramakrishna: “No, He may be beyond this mind, but He is known by the pure mind. He may be beyond this intellect, but He is seen with the pure intellect. As soon as one is freed from the attachment to ‘lust and greed,’ the mind and intellect become pure.
From the Kathamrita 158
Before evening, Mani is strolling in the temple garden as he recalls the story of Rama’s will. This is very beautiful, he thought. It solves the confusion between predestination and free will, between liberty and necessity.
But then, if God has made everything, our responsibility ends. But why would it end? Unless you have realized God, unless you have had His vision, you cannot have one hundred percent faith. As long as you don’t have full faith, you will certainly have the feeling of vice and virtue, and the feeling of responsibility. Thakur has explained what “Rama’s will” is. Repeating “Rama’s will” like a parrot won’t do. As long as you don’t know God, as long as “my” will and His will don’t become one, as long as you don’t have the full understanding that I am an instrument, so long does He retain the knowledge of vice and virtue, joy and sorrow, purity and impurity, good and bad, and the sense of responsibility. Otherwise, how can His world of maya go on?
From the Kathamrita 157
‘‘The scriptures instruct us to perform numerous rites, so I perform them. This is called ritualistic devotion. The other is loving devotion. It comes out of an especially deep love for God, such as Prahlada had. When one develops this love, there is no longerthe need for rituals.”
From the Kathamrita 156
Sri Ramakrishna (to Ishan): “You have firm faith. I don’t have that much. (All laugh.) One can realize Him by that faith alone.”Ishan: “Yes sir.”Sri Ramakrishna: “You perform repetition of the name and daily puja, observe fasts, and perform purascharana and other rites and rituals. This is very good. God makes one who has sincere attraction for Him do all these things. If one is able to perform them all without desire for their fruits, one surely attains Him.”
From the Kathamrita 155
Sri Ramakrishna: (To Hazra) “Why do you call the pure Atman Ishvara (God)? The pure Atman is beyond all action. It is only a witness to the three states. When I think of creation, preservation, and dissolution I call Him Ishvara. What is pure Self like? It is like a magnet lying at a distance, but the needle still moves toward it. The magnet itself remains unmoved – actionless.’’
From the Kathamrita 154
Mahima: “He (Hazra) is very argumentative.”Sri Ramakrishna: “And then he also lectures me from time to time. (All laugh.) In a discussion I scolded him. Later, lying inside the mosquito net remembering the language I used, I thought I might have offended him. So I went to salute him. Only then was my mind at peace.”
From the Kathamrita 153
Mahimacharan (smiling, to Sri Ramakrishna): “Sir, I have to ask you something. Why have you asked Hazra to go home when he doesn’t want to go back to his family?”
Sri Ramakrishna: “His mother expressed great grief to Ramlal, so I told him, ‘Go for three days. zome back after seeing her once.’ Can one practice spiritual disciplines after hurting one’s mother? I was going to stay in Vrindavan when all of a sudden I remembered my mother. I said to myself, ‘Mother would weep.’ So I returned here with Mathur Babu.
From the Kathamrita 152
Sri Ramakrishna: All spiritual practices are done for the sake of attaining Him. The more you meditate on Him, the less will be your attachment for the ordinary things of the world. The more devotion you have for His lotus feet, the less desire you will have for sense objects, and the less your mind will concern itself with physical comfort. Someone else’s wife will appear to you as your mother, and you will think of your own wife as your helper in spiritual life. She will be a friend in spiritual life. You will be freed from lower desires, and divine qualities will develop in you. You will be completely detached from the world. Then even if you live in the world, you will move about as one already liberated in life.