ONE must believe in the Divine Presence in the image.
Once I went to Vishnupur1. The Raja of that place has several fine temples. In one of them there is an image of the Divine Mother, called Mrinmayi. There are several lakes near the temple, known as the Lalbandh, Krishnabandh, and so on. In the water of one of the lakes I could smell the ointments that women use for their hair. How do you explain that? I didn’t know at that time that the woman devotees offer ointments to the Goddess Mrinmayi while visiting Her temple. Near the lake I went into samadhi, though I had not yet seen the image in the temple. In that state I saw the divine form from the waist up, rising from the water. (149)
- A place, on the way to Kamarpukur, Sri Ramakrishna’s birth place, from Calcutta ↩︎