Reflections about the life of Bhagavan and Sri Ramakrishna

Een artikel geschreven door Satya Prana Mata in het Engelstalige tijdschrift van International Vedanta Society 'Satyasya Pantha' wat halfjaarlijks verschijnt.

Reflections about the life of Bhagavan and Sri Ramakrishna

Being in the proces of writing a book about my time with Bhagavan, I am reading through all the diary fragments written down during my visits with Him. It is at the same time beautiful and heartbreaking. Beautiful because it is as if I am sitting at His feet again listening to His deep vibrant voice and feeling His tremendous aura of Love and Stillness. Heartbreaking because those special times will not come back again.

Reading through the diary, I came upon some of His words I would like to share and discuss with you:

Diary fragment from 06-03-2018

Today, Bhagavan said: ‘It’s not about our intellect, but about the right desire. People who are very intelligent can cause immense harm to the world through their intelligence. The poor, uneducated person doesn’t have that power. Ultimately, it’s not about intelligence, but about the desire that bubbles up from the heart. The desire for God. Those who feel drawn to Me are good people because they are drawn by My goodness and can recognise it. Whereas those who feel drawn to a Hitler are drawn by evil and thus must have that evil within themselves to recognise it. Perhaps evil may achieve a brief victory, but ultimately it can never win.’

Furthermore, He said: ‘You cannot understand Me. Perhaps you say: ‘Yes, Bhagavan, I understand you’, but that is at most a very small part of the whole. This is because I go beyond this world and have risen far above any mental capacity of understanding. Most of the time you still reside in this world of the limited mind. Only after 1000 years will people be able to understand Me.’

The Great Masters

More and more I realise how similar Bhagavan and Sri Ramakrishna were. Especially because currently we are studying the book ‘Sri Ramakrishna- The Great Master’.

Sri Ramakrishna was a poor, simple and illiterate boy from a small village. Already at a young age he decided that going to school was useless, because the only thing you learn there is for helping yourself to secure a job in later life so you can maintain your body. He already realized that becoming more intelligent, means becoming more attached to the external world of name, fame and money. Therefore he chose to only direct His attention to God.

Of course there is nothing wrong with a good education and we all know that Bhagavan was very keen on encouriging young people to finish their schools and studies, but if we don’t have the right desire, intelligence will become a huge obstacle on our spiritual path. This we can clearly see in the Western world. More and more life is about material gain. A few days ago I went to a highschool to talk about Vedanta and why I choose to dedicate my life completely to spirituality. One of the questions that came back was: ‘How much do you earn being a monk?’ This is not just one girl asking this question, you see this idea reflected in the whole society. Intelligence is mainly used for getting wealth and all the comforts this external world has to offer; big luxury houses, expensive cars, exclusive holidays. When I answered the girl I am living on donations and completely happy with that, the whole class looked at me as I if I came from another planet.

The desire of most people is only directed to sensuous pleasures. They are completely unaware that it will bring them further away from true and permanent happiness, which is the happiness that bubbles up from the heart spontaneously. They are too busy with searching for vain, short-lived happiness that they can not see the constant flow of the sweetest happiness running through their hearts. They have no idea how rich they actually are!

Moreover Bhagavan explains us in above diary fragment that, by doing this, we don’t only harm ourselves, we also can harm the people around us with our intelligence if our motive is only to satisfy our own needs. The human race is extremely smart nowadays in creating the most horrible weapons which can kill people by the thousands in a second.

Yes, I can understand why Sri Ramakrishna didn’t want to put effort in enhancing His intelligence! Instead He roamed around in search for God. Singing, acting in plays where He became Shiva and other Gods. Everybody loved Him so much and could feel something very special in Him. Something beyond the mind and intellect. He gave everybody a taste of the Divine.

We also see this in the life of Bhagavan. He wanted to study, but without any hesitation He gave up on this idea when His parents couldn’t afford this. Serving His parents in any way possible was far more important to Him than His studies. He realised at a young age that the real truth and importance lies withing serving others with an open heart even if you have to share one egg with all your siblings. It is not about money or wordly power, but love for people. At that point Bhagavan didn’t even start His Sadhana with His Guru yet, just like Sri Ramakrishna at that age. However, deep within them they already could grasp the Divine Truth.

Everlasting Victory

Furthermore Bhagavan explains us that evil might bring us victory, but it is of a short nature and can never win. Why not? Because, as we learn from Vedanta, all happiness, peace and freedom gained from the external world is temporary. It can’t be permanent since everything in this world exists for a limited time. Therefore the only victory that can be permanent is the victory over evil, which you can also call ignorance. We have to conquer our own minds, ego’s and intellect. This will result in discovering our true, limitless and eternal nature of the Self. As soon as our intellect start to realise this and intelligence is combined with the right desire for God- or Selfrealisation a new civilisation can be created. And this is exactly the wish of the great Masters like Bhagavan and Sri Ramakrishna. Therefore they have set their lifes as an example to inspire and transform people. It is extremely valuable to read their biographies to learn about their struggles and victories, about their sacrifices and Sadhana.

In 1000 years

However as Bhagavan told us on that day in march 2018, it is impossible to understand Him completely, since He is not from this world and we still are. Maybe, by being with Bhagavan or reading about His life, you can get a glimpse of understanding. Never think however you know Him. Also Swami Vivekananda said that it will take 500 years to understand Sri Ramakrishna. Bhagavan even told us it will take a 1000 years to understand Him. It only indicates how great the God-incarnates are. Every little detail in their lifes, every little, seemingly unimportant, action they do, like eating or drinking chai, can be studied upon for the rest of our lifes. To me it feels like an invitation to keep on contemplating about every moment I was able to be in the physical presence of Bhagavan, about the words He shared with us, about the moments He was in deep Silence, about the way He asked us: ‘Did you have your breakfast?’

For the rest of my physical days in this world I only want to contemplate about His immense Love and about the mystery of how He made me love Him more every time I was with Him. I want to keep on marveling about this unique, most precious Love-story between a devotee and God.