Tuesday 28 June 2011

Nine Miracles of Shri Ramakrishna

In this essay I shall try and narrate some of the miracles of Shri Ramakrishna which have been recorded but which are not known commonly. Many of us are aware that Mathur Babu's wife ( Jagadamba) had been cured of a mortal sickness after Mathur;s appeal to his 'baba' i.e., Shri Ramakriahna and that Mathur himself escaped a possible criminal charge after a similar appeal. Kathamrita  records how Bejoy Krishna Goswami had seen and felt (touched) the Master at Dhaka at a time when Shri Ramakrishna was very much there at Calcutta. The Master's power to transmit spirituality by a touch, look or glance is very well documented. Avoiding these and similar incidents which have become sort of common currency amongst the devotees of the Master, I shall select nine of those cases which are not so well known. Some of these have occurred when the Master was in the human body but others took place long after he had moved to the 'other room'. No attempt will, however, be made to arrange these in a time sequence or to classify them otherwise. The miracle's of Ramakrishna have by no means come to an end and we can expect many more in the years to come till his mission is fulfilled. As is known Shri Shri Ma had disclosed in her lifetime that the Master was to 'remain hidden in the hearts of his devotees for a hundred years' i.e., 1986. Perhaps the coming out process is best revealed in the storming of the Russian bastion which has suddenly, almost overnight, voluntarily opened its portals. Let a future generation then docket and classify the miracles of Shri Ramakrishna; it would be sufficient for us to eavesdrop on some of these partly hidden acts.

WILLIUMS

1. I shall begin with one who was born a devotee of Jesus but became one of Shri Ramakrishna also and who, true to Christian traditions, specifically asked for a sign from Shri Ramakrishna. Let the reader decide whether the signal he received was loud and clear enough! Unfortunately the full name of this fortunate one has not been recorded and the chroniclers have referred to him as William or Williams only.

There is also difference of opinion as to whether he was of European or Indian stock. We will call him Williums and consider him to be an Indian Christian and note that he was a teacher, an erudite biblical scholar of Protestant persuasion, and a resident of a city in north west India, probably Lahore. There he came in contact with a visiting Brahmo preacher who was also an admirer of Shri Ramakrishna, Kedarnath Chatterjee by name. What Kedar had told Williums about the Master is not on record but he made the long journey to Calcutta, the then capital city of India, in 1881 and on arrival there waited for an auspicious day for the visit to Dakhshineswar. This he did on Good Friday. He came, he saw and was conquered. Shri Ramakrishna was also greatly impressed by Williums' spiritual hunger and he asked him to come "twice more". On the second visit Williums, on arrival, saluted the Master and said: " Our Jesus performed so many miraculous acts. Would you show something for my benefit?" A smiling Shri Ramakrishna replied: "We shall see about that later. First you go and see my Mother Kali from a distance". Williums removed his shoes, went to the temple of Kali, looked inside and saw - not the image of the Goddess but of Jesus the Christ! Williums was so overwhelmed by Divine power that he virtually collapsed and sat down, while copious tears wet his shirt front. Then, saluting the image, still from a distance, he walked unsteadily to the Master's room. A still smiling Ramakrishna said: " Have you now realized that your Jesus and my Kali are one and the same?"

Several years later, Ramachandra Dutta, one of the principal householder devotees of the Master, who had been present at the time of the first visit of Williums to the Master, saw to his utter amazement that Williums was saluting the image of Siddheswari (Kali) at Thanthania (in Calcutta). On being questioned, Williums said:  " I saw Christ in the image. Shri Ramakrishna crushed my prejudice and has given me a new vision".

Saradananda in his Leelaprasanga has concluded the story of Williums thus: " The person.....came to the conclusion after paying only a few visits to the Master, that the Master was an incarnation of God and he renounced the world as per his instructions and engaged himself in sadhana at some place in the Himalayas to the north of Punjab, till his death".

The interested reader may consult  the articles by Shri Jyotirmoy Basu Roy in the Aswin 1391 (B.S.) number of Udbodhan and also " First meetings with Shri Ramakrishna" by Swami Prabadananda, for further details.

DEVAMATA

2. This story also relates to one born a Christian, a lady and indisputably white. Her American name need not concern us but she became Sister Devamata as a devotee of Shri Ramakrishna and she did the Master's work at the Vedanta Centre at California and for about two years in the Madras Math under the direct tutelage of Swami Ramakrishnananda, one of the direct disciples of the Master. Let the Sister tell her own story in her own words which I am extracting from an Article published in the February - March 1936 Number of the Vedanta Kesari, as a centenary tribute to the Master. She writes:
      The day is coming to a close.....what I write now I had thought to leave for ever unsaid. I shrink from setting on the printed page experiences so sacred and personal that I have never voiced them....
      Those who tell about divine manifestations are simple chroniclers, not makers of literature. Their duty is to preserve the tradition so that the mighty ones of God may live on in the hearts of men. This is my intent in giving out those visions; they were not psychic visions, they were not dreams. They were not imagination, nor was the Great One who came in them an apparition. He was a pulsating presence, a living personality....
If the Sears of Ancient India or the mystics of the Medieval Europe or all those who have seen or heard had locked their visions in the deep recesses of their hearts and kept them secret, the world would have been incalculably poorer.Even the witness of lesser devotees has value to strengthen the faith of men and lend them courage to go forward.
      So, now as the sun nears its setting, I break the silence of years and share this spiritual confidence of my life, in the hope that through it others may gain a deeper realization of the spiritual grandeur and boundless mercy of one of the greatest among the Great Ones who have come to earth as saviours of men.
     I had fled from the hurried life of New York to the calmer atmosphere of Boston and was spending my days in seclusion and silence. One afternoon as I sat alone in my living room troubling over my aimless future, suddenly two figures stood before me. The face of one shone with super earthly smile which seemed to shed an effulgence over his whole being. In quiet tones he spoke these words: " Do not grieve. You have work to do for me". Then both figures vanished but the sense of their presence lingered for many days. 
     In the early spring I returned to New York and soon after became a member of the Vedanta Society being put in charge of the Publishing Department. At that time books came out in rapid succession; my hours were very full and I was in frequent consultation with the head of work. One late afternoon, he called me to his private study to talk over a new publication. As I entered the room, my eyes fell upon a photograph hanging over the mantle. I stood still, transfixed. It was the figure I had seen in Boston. I walked quietly to the fireplace and asked, almost abruptly, "Of whom is this a picture?" the head of work replied "It is my Master, Shri Ramakrishna".

Sister Devamata has in the same article narrated several visions of Master that she had later. These would not however qualify as being miracles because they were bestowed on the devotee Devamata and what is so surprising about the darshan of the 'Ishta' by the 'Bhakta' ? The first darshan was indeed miraculous as at that time the Sister had no knowledge of the Master and the vision came as a call to her to do the Master's work which she did later so nobly. Unfortunately for us, she has not told is who the second figure was that she saw in the company of the Master. The article also does tell us who was the ' head of work' who's Master's photograph helped the Sister to identify the voice which called her to work.

RENU

3. This story is also one of the calls to action but of a male, an Indian and a Hindu. The main point of similarity with Devamata's story is that he also did not have a detailed knowledge of Shri Ramakrishna when the call came to do the Master's work, some sixty five years after the Master's passing away. Faniswar Nath 'Renu' was at the point of death in a Patna hospital when the story starts (1951-52). Till then he had mainly been a political activist and had been jailed in India and in Nepal. He had been awarded a Padmashree  by the government  of India and a pension by the government of Bihar, both of which he had surrendered. He had been smoking and drinking heavily and was drifting to his death, an embittered soul, when (to quote him): 
     " I re-live often the great moments in the hospital at that ecstatic time when I saw a figure like that of Shri Ramakrishna and he spoke to me! before that, photographs of Shri Ramakrishna did not evoke any feeling of veneration in my mind; on the other hand I had a feeling of hostility towards him. I knew practically nothing about him nor did I have any desire to learn anything. Vivekananda, I knew, was his disciple. But without bothering to find out what he had said or done I had developed a similar feeling of hostility towards Swamiji also. The Marxist's do usually consider men of God as if they are opium addicts or hemp-smokers! 
     (On that memorable day in the hospital) " after vomiting bucket fulls of blood I become cold with exhaustion. About half a dozen patients had already died in our (T.B.) ward that day. Electricity had failed, water taps had gone dry and ceiling fans had ceased to work. The spittle was like glue in my mouth and my tongue was stuck inside; breathing was becoming difficult, suffering as I was from a lung ailment but I was still conscious. Many of the patients in the ward were whimpering for a sip of water and though drowsy I could hear them and I could not avoid smelling the hellish odour that pervaded the ward. In my half sleep, I could sense someone bending over me and guessed it was the low caste attendant (dom), who removes the corpses, checking up whether I has ceased breathing before removing any valuables. Finding me stll alive the fellow leapt away. I put my hand under the pillow to check whether the watch and the pen were there. Then I lay down again with the hand under the pillow and tried my best to keep awake. 
      " It was then that a bearded person who looked as if he was crazy or had been smoking hemp, came near me still exuding some smoke. He smiled, exhaling the smoke in my direction and asked (in Hindi), " What makes you weep?" Then still smiling he spoke again, unexpectedly in Bengali, " You rascal why are you crying?" I replied, " I have left a lot of work incomplete and these now must remain so; I cannot also stand this life of confinement to a bed". The bearded one said, with biting irony, " Work! does the rascal think he was working for the country's salvation? He, serving the country! don't you realize that the people are fed up - . But you have a golden pen don't you? "Yes" I replied slightly ashamed, "a Parker - 51". " WHAT HAVE YOU WRITTEN SO FAR?", asked the bearded one. " Have you ever written my name with this pen? This rascal knows nothing yet", and with a laugh he continued,  " YOU ARE NO LONGER ILL; YOU ARE WELL, YOU ARE CURED. GET UP". Then he was there no more.
    " I opened my eyes wide and noticed the sunlight streaming on the Verandah of the hospital wall. I felt better. The fever which had been nagging me unabated for a year and a half that day came down for the first time by half a degree. Dr. Hord attending physician, examined me, and declared " the crisis is over".
     " The day after my release from hospital, I visited a book shop. The cover of a Bengali book attracted my attention- Param Purush Sri Sri Ramakrishna, written by Achintya Kumar Sen Gupta, cover design by Satyajit Ray ( not yet a film director). The photograph inside, as I turned the pages, completely unnerved me!  Yes, it was the same figure I had seen on that great occasion, six or seven months before.
     " I started consuming Ramakrishna-Vivekananda literature like a starving person gobbling up his food. The more I read the more I wanted to read". 

Then it was that Fanishwar Nath, the political activict - cum- pamphleteer, sat before a portarait of Shri Ramakrishna to write his name with his 'golden' and pen and slowly, blossomed into 'Renu' the sahithyik. The interested reader may consult the article by Professor Sankari Prasad Basu in the Agrahayan 1394 (B.S.) number of Udbodan were he may learn for what specific work of his Ramakrishna gave a new lease of life to 'Renu' and how that life ended. Incidentally, 'Renu' means the minute, the insignificant particle. Would that we could be called to such insignificance!

Editors note ... to be continued.






11 comments:

  1. Thank You. The world needs more of this. Keep posting.

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  2. More postings please. After reading ' The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna' by Mahendranath Gupta ("M"), His disciple, would like to read more of your postings.

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  3. Really fascinating .. Thanks for sharing

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  4. Fantastic!more please Jai Shri Guru Maharaj!

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  5. nice article! i have linked your article on my post. http://www.plutopetclinics.com/occult-kali-supernatural/

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  6. In your blog a character appearing Faniswar nath Renu,was close friend of my grandfather. Renu was a great shahtyakar of his time and still are....in his sahitya!

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  7. Koti koti Naman to Thakur Paramhansa

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  8. so Sri Ramakrishna is Jesus?
    Why not just believe in Jesus?

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