It was 8 p.m. Some monks and lay devotees had assembled in the visitors’ room at the Belur Math and were listening to the reading of Swami Vivekananda’s works.
When it was over, Swami Akhandananda (a direct disciple of Shri Ramakrishna) said, “From tomorrow I shall teach them the Upanishads.” At that the Swami Premananda remarked:
“What other Upanishads would you teach them when there is the living Upanishad? The life of the Master is the living, flaming Upanishad. None could have understood the meaning of the Radha-Krishna cult if Shri Chaitanya had not been born and demonstrated it in his life. Even so, the Master is the living demon-stration of the truths of the Upanishads. The
Upanishads have been current for many centuries and people also have been reading them. And yet they bow down to our ‘illiterate Master and accept his words as gospel truths. He never read the Upanishads or any other book. Yet how is it that he could explain those subtle and complex truths in so simple and straight a manner? If you want to read the Vedas, you have to commit the grammar to memory and read various commentaries, in which every commentator has sought to explain the texts in his own way. Innumerable scholars have been arguing over the texts without coming to any conclusion. Our Master, however, has in very simple language explained all those truths, and his words are extant. When you have such a living fountain before you, why dig a well for water ?” (Source: Spiritual Talks by the First Disciples of Sri Ramakrishna)