CHAPTER V
ALL ABOUT GOD-INCARNATE
At the door stands Girish. He has come to greet the Master. The Master comes up, the disciples coming after. At the blessed sight Girish falls at his feet upon his face like a rod! Blessed indeed is the sight, and the disciples behold it with awe and admiration.
Girish rises at his bidding. He receives on his head and person the dust of his hallowed feet. He leads the way to the reception-room where the Master and the disciples take their seats. The disciples are eager to sit close to the Master. They long to drink the nectar of the words that bring Everlasting Life.
Newspapers and Sri Râmakrishna.
He is about to take his seat, when he finds a newspaper lying by his side. Newspapers have concern with worldly-minded men and deal with worldly matters,—with gossip, and with scandals. Hence they are unholy objects—in his eyes. He makes a sign and the paper is put away. Upon this he takes his seat.
Nityagopal bows down and salutes his feet.
Master (to Nitya): Well! and then?
Nitya: Yes. Revered Sir, I was unable to come to Dakshineswar. I was unwell. There was pain all over the body.
Master: Are you keeping well now?
Nitya: Not very well, I am sorry to say.
Master: You had better remain one or two notes below the highest in the gamut!
Nitya: Company does not agree with me. They say of me all manner of thing. That puts me into fright. At other times I am quite free from fear, and I feel the strength of the Spirit within me.
Master: That is only natural. Who is thy constant companion?
Nitya: Târak. At times even he does not agree with the state of my mind.
Master: Nangta* used to say that he had at his monastery an ascetic who had acquired some miraculous powers. He used to go about with his eyes fixed on the sky. His companion Ganesh Gorgy left him and he became disconsolate!
By this time a change has come over the Master. He remains speechless for a while!
Getting back into consciousness he says, 'Thou hast come, hast thou? Well, I am here too!'
Who will pretend to fathom this mystery? Is this the language of the Gods?
Among the disciples who sat on this occasion at the feet of the Master were Narendra, Girish, Ram, Haripada, Chuni, Balaram, M., and many others.
Narendra does not believe in the Incarnation of God. On the other hand Girish has a burning faith that God incarnates Himself from age to age in this world of ours. The Master wishes that they should argue the point before him.
Sri Râmakrishna (to Girish): I should like to see you both talk over the matter in English. (Laughter).
* Nangta.—The Sannyasin (Totâ Puri) who taught Vedanta Philosophy to Sri Râmakrishna for about a year.
They talk—not however, in English but in Bengali, with a few sprinkling of English words. Narendra says, "God is Infinite, it is beyond our power to conceive Him by means of our little intellect. God is in every human being. It is not the case that He is manifest only in one particular individual."
he Master (affectionately): I quite concur. He is in every object, in every human being; only there is a difference in the manifestation of Divine Energy in those objects. Sometimes the Divine Energy manifest in certain objects leads one away from God. It is then called Ignorance1. When it leads Godward it is called Knowledge2. Again, the Manifested Energy is greater in some "receptacles" and less in others. Thus it is that all men are not equal.
Ram: What is the use of all this idle talk?
Master (sharply): No, no; there is a good deal of meaning in all this.
Girish (to Narendra): How do you know that God does not take a human body, and thus incarnate Himself?
Narendra: Surely God cannot be realised by words or by the mind!
Master: Quite so; not by the finite conditioned mind. But He can be realised by the pure Mind freed from its sensuous nature by means of culture and sadhana. Then this very mind becomes the same as the Pure Reason or the Faculty of the Unconditioned; which is the same thing as the Pure Unconditioned Soul1. In this wise did the Holy Sages2 realise the Pure Unconditioned Soul.
1 Avidyâ.
2 Vidyâ.
Girish (to Narendra): Do you not see that if God would not incarnate there will be none else to make all these things clear and solve all these problems? God incarnates Himself and becomes man in order to teach what is True Knowledge, what again is True Devotion or the Love of God. Who else is there to teach?
Narendra: Why! He will certainly teach me from within the heart!
Master (affectionately): That is indeed so. He will teach as the Ruler of the heart within3.
The discussion grows warm. It turns on matters too high for human comprehension. 'Infinite'—is it divisible? What does Hamilton say as to the limits of human knowledge; and Herbert Spencer—and Tyndal—and Huxley?
Master (aside to M.): I for my part do not like these things. God is beyond the power of reasoning. Something more: I see that whatever is, is God. Then what is the good of reasoning about Him? I do actually see that whatever is, is God.
The Saint Ramanuja and his Doctrine of qualified Non-Dualism or Visishtadwaitavad.
Master: It is He who has become all these things! 'It is this and it is also that which seems to contradict this!' There is a stage at which the mind and the determinative faculty1 are lost in the 'Absolute—the Absolute which cannot be conceived as made up of parts.' At the sight of Narendra my mind gets lost2 in the Absolute;—what, pray, do you say to this?
1 Âtman.
2 Rishis.
3 Antaryâmin.
Girish (smiling): I hope Revered Sir, you do not think as though we understood everything besides that! (Laughter).
Master: Then at the end of the Samadhi I must come down two notes at least below the Highest note in the scale before I can utter another word!
Vedanta has been explained by Sankara. Another point of view is that of Ramanuja, who put forward the doctrine of qualified non-dualism3.
Narendra (to Master): Sir, May I ask what is meant by Visishtadwaitavad?
Master (to Narendra): There is this doctrine,3 the view of Ramanuja; viz, the Absolute4 must not be considered apart from the world and the soul. The Three between them form One—Three in One and One in Three!
Let us take a Bel fruit. Let the shell, the seeds and the kernel be kept separate. Now suppose somebody wanted to know the weight of the fruit. Surely it would not do now to weigh the kernel alone of the fruit. The shell, the seeds and the kernel are all weighed in order to get the real weight of the fruit.
1 Buddhi.
2 Samâdhi.
3 Visishtâdwaitavâd.
4 Brahman.
No doubt we reason at the outset that the all-important thing is the kernel, and not either the shell or the seeds. In the next place we go on reasoning, saying that the shell and the seeds belong to the same Substance* to which the kernel belongs. At the first stage of the reasoning we say, Not this,' 'Not this.' Thus the Absolute1 is not soul (not the finite individual soul). Again, it is not the world either. The Absolute is the only Reality, all else is unreal. At the next stage we go a little further. We see that the kernel belongs to the same Substance as that to which the shell and the seeds belong. Hence the Substance from which we derive our negative conception of the 'Absolute' is the identical substance from which we derive our conception of the finite soul and the phenomenal world. Your 'Relative,2 must be traced to that very Being on which your 'Absolute'3 rests. Hence, as Ramanuja says the Absolute is qualified by the finite soul and the phenomenal world. This is the doctrine of qualified non-dualism.