I had read some books on Thakur in Bengali and in one there was the description of an incident. Once Swamiji wanted to test Thakur. Since Thakur used to say that he could not handle money (as it represented something grossly material), Swamiji deliberately put a note under Taker’s pillow when Thakur was not in the room. Later when Thakur come to sleep in the bed, he instantly got up as if in pain and said something is very wrong in here, Hriday, who was used to be there, searched the bed and found that money under his pillow.

But Thakur never got offended with these things. In fact, in one instance, when one of his disciples had come to him for the first time, Thakur asked him to stay over at Dakshineshwar. At night the disciple woke up and saw that Thakur was leaving the room.

A doubt entered the disciples mind, he thought maybe Thakur is going towards the Nahabat house where Sri Sarada Ma used to stay. So he quietly decided to follow Thakur and see where he is going, after all it maybe that Thakur used to visit the Nahabat secretly etc etc.. he was genuinely suspicious. Then as he left the room following Thakur at a distance, he saw Thakur going to the Panchvati and sitting down for meditation and there he sat for two hours. Later when Thakur came back, he told that person, who later became his disciple, that he had done very good to test Thakur. Further Thakur said, no one should accept a Guru without testing. And to see and judge a person’s spirituality he has to be observed when he is public and when he is alone. There should be no difference in his words and actions. Etc etc. Every incident in Thakur’s life is like an illustration of a deeper point for ordinary people like us.

A. For those who do not realize it, the word “Swamiji” in the first episode with a rupee note under the pillow refers to Swami Vivekananda (Narendranath Datta then).

The person in the second episode below is Swami Yogananda (Jogindra Nath Roy Chaudhury). However, this incident did not happen the first time Jogin met Ramakrishna. The first time Jogin met Ramakrishna, he left quickly but decided to meet again. After meeting Ramakrishna several times, Jogin decided to spend a night with him and serve if needed. So he stayed over one night. That is when the incident happened.

Jogin was a light sleeper and woke up in the middle of the night. He found Ramakrishna missing in his bed. He went and checked at the water pot and looked outside to see if Ramakrishna was walking outside.

When he did not find, then he suspected “maybe he teaches us about brahmacharya (celibacy), but goes to his wife secretly in the night”. He positioned himself outside the nahabat (where Sarada Mata lived) and watched the door carefully. Later he heard the chattering of slippers from Panchavati on the other side and found Ramakrishna approaching him. Ramakrishna first asked “what are you doing here”. When Jogin was silent and had an expression of shame on his face, Ramakrishna calmly said “well, you are right to test me. You should test a saint by the day and night before believing in him.” Of course, Jogin was ashamed and did not sleep the whole night.

I too suspected my guru a few times like Jogin and questioned him. He too never took offense. I will describe one such incident.

Once he told me that he “saw” me earlier in the day when he was driving on a highway in UK. He apparently “saw” me doing homam at my house in US. He said he lifted his hand while driving, as if

blessing me. His wife sitting next to him asked what he was doing in the middle of driving at a high speed on a highway. When he told her “Narasimha is doing a homam right now and I am blessing him”, she thought he was being crazy.

When he described this incident, I immediately knew of a way to find out if he was being truthful. When I do homam, I normally wear a veshti of white or red or yellow color. On that day, I was wearing something I very rarely wear and it would be nearly impossible to get it right with a random guess. I asked him “can I test you and verify if you really saw me”. He said “ok, let us see”. Then I asked him “what was I wearing when doing homam this morning”. He said, “It seemed like you were wearing some strange kind of blue color veshti and a shirt of a different shade of blue color.”

He was absolutely correct. I used my blue veshti only twice so far and that day was one of the two days. What I was wearing on that day for homam was something I rarely wear and difficult to just guess. So it is very very likely that he indeed saw me doing homam on that day. Of course, siddhis like divya drishti (seeing things far away mentally) are irrelevant. I am not interested in them at all. My guru teaches “whatever abilities we need for our work will be given by the Mother. We should not desire anything and at the same time not reject anything given by Her. Our only desire shouldbe to remain at Her feet always and to remember to desire that always. Rest of the things will come and go as She wants us to do various things. Leave it to Her and go with the flow without resisting and feeling emotions like pride or shame, happiness or sadness etc.”

I believe that my impulse to test my guru at that instant came only because my guru (and the Mother) wanted me to do so, because there is some reason for that. Though it seems like I suspected my guru, I have a lot of faith in him and in the Mother and think that I am used as an instrument by them to do the work they want done, including testing guru with temporary suspicion. I am an unsuspecting playmate in their Play. I will not be surprised if Jogin also felt the same way later, after testing Ramakrishna. But his action taught something to others (even today!). That is perhaps why Ramakrishna and Kali used Jogin as an instrument in their Play.

In the example of money under Ramakrishna’s pillow, how did he know it? Did he have all kinds ofsuper-natural abilities? May be. But there is another way to look at it. He was a pure soul and the Mother devised a divine play to demonstrate his purity. It was the Mother’s divine play that Naren should get an impulse to test Ramakrishna, Ramakrishna should get an impulse to run away from the bed and pass the test and it should inspire some people in future.

It is foolish to go after anything other than getting a perfect sense of surrender and devotion to the chosen deity. If that comes, everything needed for what one is supposed to do in the world is provided by the chosen deity. No pride and no shame, no happiness and no sadness, no excitement and no depression, no attraction and no repulsion – one becomes a child and a playmate in the Divine play of the chosen deity.

ALL that is needed is a perfect sense of surrender. Ramakrishna had it. Nature composed several beautiful plays involving him and attracted the other actors of that play towards him.

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Source : Vedic Wisdom, [email protected]