Conversations and Dialogues: Shri Sharat Chandra Chakravarty
1. Each Hindu, I say, is a brother to every other
[Place: Belur, the rented Math premises. Year:1898]
Swamiji was staying at the time at the rented garden-house of Nilāmbar Bābu where the Math had been removed from Alambazar. Arrangements had been made for Shri Ramakrishna’s Tithipujā (Nativity) on a grand scale. On the morning of the auspicious day, Swamiji personally inspected the preliminaries of the worship. The inspection over, Swamiji asked the disciple, “Well, you have brought the holy threads, I hope?”
Disciple: Yes, sir, I have. Everything is ready, as you desired. But, sir, I can’t make out why so many holy threads are in requisition.
Swamiji: Every Dwijāti1 (twice-born) has a right to investiture with the holy thread. The Vedas themselves are authority in this matter. Whoever will come here on this sacred birthday of Shri Ramakrishna, I shall invest him with the holy thread. These people have fallen from their true status, and the scriptures say that after proper expiation, those fallen in the way earn the right to investiture with the holy thread. This is the great day of Shri Ramakrishna’s nativity, and men will be purified by taking his name. So the assembled devotees are to be invested with the holy thread today; do you now understand?
Disciple: I have collected, Sir, quite a good number of holy threads according to your instructions, and after the worship, I shall with your permission invest the Bhaktas with them.
Swamiji: To the Bhaktas who are not Brahmins, give this Mantra of Gāyatri (here Swamiji communicated to the disciple the special Gāyatris for them). By degrees all the people of the land have to be lifted to the position of Brahmins, not to speak of the Bhaktas of Shri Ramakrishna. Each Hindu, I say, is a brother to every other, and it is we who have degraded them by our outcry, “Don’t touch, don’t touch!” And so the whole country has been plunged to the utmost depths of meanness, cowardice, and ignorance. These men have to be uplifted; words of hope and faith have to be proclaimed to them. We have to tell them, “You are also men like us, and you have all the rights that we have.” Do you understand?
Disciple: Yes, sir, it should be so.
Swamiji: Now, ask those who will take the holy thread to finish their bath in the Gangā. Then after prostration before Shri Ramakrishna, they will have their investiture.
About forty to fifty Bhaktas then duly received the Gāyatri from the disciple and were invested with the holy thread. When receiving them, Swamiji’s face beamed with profound delight. A little after this, Shri Girish Chandra Ghosh arrived at the Math from Calcutta.
Now arrangements for music were made at the desire of Swamiji, and Sannyāsins of the Math decorated Swamiji as a Yogin.
Swamiji now chanted with the sweetest intonation, to the accompaniment of the Tānpurā, the Sanskrit hymn beginning with कूजन्तं राम रामेति (“repeating in a low tone the name of Rāma” etc.), and when the chanting came to a close, he went on repeating with exquisite charm the holy words “Rāma, Rāma, Shri Rāma, Rāma”. His eyes were half-closed, and the natural sublimity of his countenance seemed today to have deepened a hundredfold. Everybody remained spelled for over half an hour.
After the chanting of Shri Rāma’s name, Swamiji continued to sing a song of Tulasidās on Shri Rāmachandra in the same intoxicated strain of mind. Then other music followed.
After this, Swamiji suddenly took to putting off all the decorations he had on his person and began to dress Girish Bābu with them. Then he declared, “Paramahamsa-deva used to say our brother is the incarnation of Bhairava2 There’s no distinction between him and us.” Girish Bābu sat speechless all the time. A piece of geruā cloth was also brought, and he was draped in it and uttered no word of remonstrance. For he had merged his self fully today in the wishes of his Brother-disciples. Swamiji now said, “Well, G. C., you are to speak to us today about Thākur (Lord). And all of you (turning all round himself) sit quiet and be attentive.” Even then, Girish Bābu sat motionless, voiceless like marble, absolutely lost in joy. And when at last he opened his lips, he did so to say, “Ah, what can this humble self speak of our Lord of unbounded mercy! Verily in this alone I realise his mercy, that to me, this lowly creature, He has extended the privilege of sitting and mixing on the same footing with you Sannyāsins, pure from your childhood, who have renounced all lust and lucre.” While speaking thus, the words choked in his throat, and he could not speak anything more.
After this, some pieces of Hindu music were rendered by Swamiji. The devotees were now called to partake of refreshments. After refreshment, Swamiji came and took his seat in the parlour on the ground-floor, and all the many visitors sat round him. Accosting a householder friend who had his investiture with the holy thread that day, Swamiji said, “Really you all belong to the twice-born castes, only it is long since you lost your status. From this day again you become the twice-born. Repeat the Gāyatri at least a hundred times daily, won’t you?” The householder expressed his assent.
Meanwhile Srijut Mahendranāth Gupta (Master Mahāshaya [Venerable], or “M”) appeared on the scene. Swamiji cordially received him and made him take his seat. “Master Mahāshaya,” said Swamiji, “this is the anniversary of Shri Ramakrishna’s birthday. So you shall have to relate to us something about him.” Master Mahāshaya bent his head down smilingly in reply.
Just then it was announced that Swami Akhandānanda had come from Murshidabad with two Pāntuās3 which weighed one maund and a half! All of us hurried out to see these prodigious Pantuas. When they were shown to Swamiji, he said, “Take them up to the chapel for offering.”
Making Swami Akhandānanda the subject of his remarks, Swamiji said to the disciple, “Mark you, what a great hero he is in work! Of fear, death, and the like he has no cognisance—doggedly going on doing his own work—’work for the welfare of the many, for the happiness of the many’.”
Disciple: Sir, that power must have come to him as the result of a good deal of austerities.
Swamiji: True, power comes of austerities; but again, working for the sake of others itself constitutes Tapasyā (practice of austerity). The karma-yogins regard work itself as part of Tapasyā. As on the one hand the practice of Tapasyā intensifies altruistic feelings in the devotee and actuates him to unselfish work, so also the pursuit of work for the sake of others carries the worker to the last fruition of Tapasyā, namely the purification of the heart, and leads him thus to the realisation of the supreme Ātman (Self).
Disciple: But, sir, how few of us can work whole-heartedly for the sake of others from the very outset! How difficult it is for such broad-mindedness to come at all as will make men sacrifice the desire for their own happiness and devote their lives for others!
Swamiji: And how many have their minds going after Tapasyā? With the attraction for lust and lucre working the other way, how many long for the realisation of God? In fact, disinterested work is quite as difficult as Tapasyā. So you have no right to say anything against those who go in for work in the cause of others. If you find Tapasyā to be to your liking, well, go on with it. Another may find work as congenial to himself, and you have no right to make a prohibition in his case. You seem to have the settled idea in your mind that work is no Tapasyā at all!
Disciple: Yes, sir, before this I used to mean quite a different thing by Tapasyā.
Swamiji: As by continuing our religious practices we gradually develop a certain determined tendency for it, so by performing disinterested work over and over again, even unwillingly, we gradually find the will merging itself in it. The inclination to work for others develops in this way, do you see? Just do some such work even though unwillingly, and then see if the actual fruit of Tapasyā is realised within or not. As the outcome of work for the sake of others, the angularities of the mind get smoothened down, and men are gradually prepared for sincere self-sacrifice for the good of others.
Disciple: But, sir, what is the necessity at all for doing good to others?
Swamiji: Well, it is necessary for one’s own good. We become forgetful of the ego when we think of the body as dedicated to the service of others—the body with which most complacently we identify the ego. And in the long run comes the consciousness of disembodiedness. The more intently you think of the well-being of others, the more oblivious of self you become. In this way, as gradually your heart gets purified by work, you will come to feel the truth that your own Self is pervading all beings and all things. Thus it is that doing good to others constitutes a way, a means of revealing one’s own Self or Ātman. Know this also to be one of the spiritual practices, a discipline for God-realisation. Its aim also is Self-realisation. Exactly as that aim is attained by Jnāna (knowledge), Bhakti (devotion) and so on, also by work for the sake of others.
Disciple: But, sir, if I am to keep thinking of others day and night, when shall I contemplate on the Ātman? If I rest wholly occupied with something particular and relative, how can I realise the Ātman which is Absolute?
Swamiji: The highest aim of all disciplines, all spiritual paths, is the attainment of the knowledge of Ātman. If you, by being devoted to the service of others and by getting your heart purified by such work, attain to the vision of all beings as the Self, what else remains to be attained in the way of Self-realisation? Would you say that Self-realisation is the state of existing as inert matter, as this wall or as this piece of wood, for instance?
Disciple: Though that is not the meaning, yet what the scriptures speak of as the withdrawal of the Self into Its real nature consists in the arresting of all mind-functions and all work.
Swamiji: Yes, this Samādhi of which the scriptures speak is a state not at all easy to attain. When very rarely it appears in somebody, it does not last for long; so what will he keep himself occupied with? Thus it is that after realising that state described in the scriptures, the saint sees the Self in all beings and in that consciousness devotes himself to service, so that any Karma that was yet left to be worked out through the body may exhaust itself. It is this state which has been described by the authors of the Shāstras (scriptures) as Jivanmukti, “Freedom while living”.
Disciple: So after all it comes about, sir, that unless this state of Jivanmukti is attained, work for the sake of others can never be pursued in the truest sense of the term.
Swamiji: Yes, that is what the Shāstras say, but they also say that work or service for the good of others leads to this state of Jivanmukti. Otherwise there would be no need on the part of the Shāstras to teach us a separate path of religious practice, called the Karma-Yoga.
The disciple now understood the point and became silent, and Swamiji giving up the point commenced rendering in a voice of superhuman sweetness the song composed by Bābu Girish Chandra Ghosh to commemorate Shri Ramakrishna’s Nativity, and beginning:
“Who art Thou lying on the lap of the poor Brahmin matron.”
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