Sri Ramakrishna

Sometimes I can play the role of Sri Ramakrishna! When he cared deeply for some disciples, at times he treated them with an iron rod. Dearer than the dearest was his Naren. Nobody could come near Naren! Sri Ramakrishna gave the ocean to Naren. To others, he gave perhaps a few drops or a few waves. To Naren he said, “I have given you everything. I have nothing more to give. Everything I have poured into you, only you.” This was Sri Ramakrishna’s blessingful utterance before he breathed his last. But once, when there were twenty or thirty close disciples gathered, Sri Ramakrishna said to Swami Vivekananda, “I cannot look at your face. I cannot look! Stop, stop the life you are leading!”

On the one hand, Sri Ramakrishna said that if anybody spoke ill of Swami Vivekananda, he would not look at the face of that person. But on that day Sri Ramakrishna was in another mood. When he spoke to Swami Vivekananda in that way, each disciple got the shock of his life. Swami Vivekananda got that kind of treatment!

This is all written in Bengali, in Kathamrita. Kathamrita I read, I read. I have such love and devotion for Swami Vivekananda. But Swami Vivekananda also was one day assailed by Sri Ramakrishna, in front of the disciples. Swami Vivekananda was so humiliated, but he was awakened. Then Swami Vivekananda shed tears of ecstasy because Sri Ramakrishna had scolded him. I read this at the age of seven.

All these things we get from “M.” “M” wrote everything about his Master in Kathamrita. It has now come out in five volumes. Everything is there!

One evening Sri Ramakrishna was with five or six very close disciples. He said, “I am telling you something. Do not tell anybody else. I am God, I am God, I am God!” But those four or five definitely told “M,” who was not there. He said to his disciples, “I am God, I am God, I am God!”