As the mother bird protects her fledglings, so the Master guarded his young disciples from various evil influences. One day at Dakshineswar the Master said to Baburam: “I can’t touch you today. Did you do anything wrong?” “No, sir.” “Then why can’t I touch you?” After a while Baburam remembered that in the morning while chatting with his friend he had said something which was not true. He confessed it to the Master. Baburam realized that Sri Ramakrishna’s life was established in truth, and that truthfulness is the key to God-realization. (Source: God Lived with Them)
In the middle of 1885 Sri Ramakrishna developed throat cancer, and began to withdraw his divine play from Dakshineswar. His feet also began to swell, and Dr. Mahendranath Pal advised the Master to drink some lemon juice every day. Jogin took the responsibility of supplying fresh lemons from their family garden. The Master took the juice regularly, but one day he could not drink it. Jogin wondered why. Later after investigation he learned that their lemon grove had been leased to a party on that very day and they had lost ownership. As a result, the Master could not drink the lemon juice that Jogin brought without informing the owner, as that would have been considered theft. The disciples were amazed to see how the Master’s body and mind were established in truth. (Source: God Lived with Them)
Another day the Master said to a devotee (pointing to Niranjan): “Look at this boy. He is absolutely guileless. But he has one fault: he is slightly untruthful nowadays. The other day he said that he would visit me again very soon, but he didn’t come.” Hearing this, Niranjan immediately apologized.
Subodhananda was a moderate eater. Once a devotee invited him to dine and he asked about the menu. The devotee humbly said: “What could we offer you, swami? We have arranged simple food — rice and lentils.” Subodhananda went to the dining room and found that the devotee was actually serving various delicacies, but he ate only rice and lentils. In spite of the devotee’s fervent request, he did not change his mind. The swami said to him, “The Master taught us that one should hold to the truth and keep his word.”
Sri Ramakrishna made his life a model for his disciples to follow. Gopal (Swami Advaitananda), though older than the other disciples, tried very hard to follow the ideal the Master set for them. Even his brother disciples praised his sincerity, love, and steadfast dedication to the Master. One day he heard the Master say, “Never tell a lie — even jokingly or casually.” Gopal followed this teaching to the letter and encouraged others to do the same. Once a doctor prescribed the juice of three lemons for the Master’s upset stomach, and Gopal was entrusted to collect them. Instead of only three he brought several additional lemons, but the Master accepted only three and asked him to return the extras. Gopal realized that the Master was an embodiment of truth and his speech and action were always congruous. (Source: God Lived with Them)
After returning from the temple, the Master asked Tarak (Swami Shivananda) to stay overnight with him, but Tarak declined because he had already promised to stay with his friend who lived in Dakshineswar. The Master was pleased and remarked: “One should keep one’s word. Speaking the truth is the austerity in this kaliyuga.” After a pause the Master said, “All right, come tomorrow.”
Ramakrishna was a hard taskmaster. He always insisted that his disciples unite their mind and speech. One day when Rakhal (Swami Brahmananda) returned from Calcutta, the Master asked: “Why can’t I look at you? Have you done anything wrong?” “No,” Rakhal replied; because he understood “wrong action” to mean stealing, robbery, or adultery. The Master again asked, “Did you tell any lies?” Then Rakhal remembered that the day before, while chatting and joking with two friends, he had told a fib. The Master told him: “Never do it again. Truthfulness alone is the spiritual discipline in the kaliyuga [the dark age].”
Ramakrishna demonstrated his teachings through his life and actions. Rakhal later recalled:
Oh, how deep was the Master’s devotion to truth! If he happened to say that he would not eat any more food, he could not eat more, even if he was hungry. Once he said that he would go to visit Jadu Mallick [whose garden house was adjacent to the Dakshineswar temple garden] but later forgot all about it. I also did not remind him. After supper he suddenly remembered the appointment. It was quite late at night, but he had to go. I accompanied him with a lantern in my hand. When we reached the house we found it closed and all apparently asleep. The Master pushed back the door of the living room a little, placed his foot inside the room, and then left. (Source: God Lived with Them)
Rajchandra (Rani Rasmani‘s Husband) was known for his truthfulness as well as his generosity. At the request of his brother-in-law, he once promised to lend 100,000 rupees to an English merchant. That night he heard that the company was going to be liquidated and the merchant would therefore have to return to England. But in the morning when the merchant came to him for the money, Rajchandra gave it to him. Someone asked him why he did not refuse when he knew of the merchant’s insolvency, and Rajchandra replied, “I have not learned to say no after having said yes.” (Source: They Lived with God)
Durga Charan’s love of truth was so great that, even in play or fun, he would never speak a lie. Once some mischievous boys insisted that he lie so they could win a game, but Durga Charan refused and consequently they lost. Enraged, they dragged him through a rice field until his body was covered with cuts and bruises. He returned home in the evening in pain but without a word of complaint against anyone. (Source: They Lived with God)
From boyhood Devendra was truthful. Once a relative complained about his naughtiness to Surendra, his elder brother. Surendra replied: “Devi [Devendra’s nickname]may be naughty now, but one day he will be great, because he never tells a lie.” Knowing Devendra’s trust worthiness, a neighbour once asked him to watch his grocery shop while he went on an errand. The neighbour was late in returning, and Devendra, having grown hungry, ate a handful of puffed rice from the shop. Immediately he was overwhelmed by fear and guilt. As soon as the grocer came back, Devendra confessed, but the man merely laughed and told him it was all right. The painful memory of this incident convinced Devendra that the path of untruth causes much suffering. Many years later he recounted this story to his followers.
….. Although Devendra had no desire to get involved in family life, in 1870 his mother forced him to marry Meghambari, the nine-year-old daughter of Harish Chandra Chattopadhyay. His young wife was very pure, simple, and devoted to her husband. Since Surendra was supporting the whole family, Devendra led a carefree life. In 1878, however, Surendra died from cholera at the age of forty-one. The entire responsibility for the family fell on Devendra, now thirty-five, who did not have a job. The family suffered terribly from poverty. Indeed, Devendra’s mother, wife, and sister-in-law were often close to starvation. Devendra moved to an inexpensive apartment on Nimu Goswami Lane in the western part of Calcutta, and finally got a clerical job in the Tagore family’s estate in Jorasanko, Calcutta. The job paid very little, but it was easy to make extra money by cheating and by exploiting the poor peasants. Devendra was upright, however, and would not accept an extra penny from anyone, even though he was living in debt. One day he mentioned his condition to his employer, who was so impressed with Devendra’s honesty that he cleared up all his debts. (Source: They Lived with God)
“One who has steadfast devotion to truthfulness realizes the God of Truth,” said Sri Ramakrishna. His own life was based on truth, and whatever he said invariably came to pass. One day Gopal-ma cooked for the Master at Dakshineswar. When he found that the rice was not properly boiled, he indignantly said: “Can I eat this rice? I shall not take rice from her hand anymore.” People thought that the Master had only warned her to be careful in the future. But shortly afterwards it so happened that cancer developed in his throat, and from then on he could only eat thin porridge and liquids.
As his illness grew worse, Sri Ramakrishna was moved from Dakshineswar to Calcutta, and then to Cossipore (a northern suburb of Calcutta) for treatment. Gopal-ma now and then would come to serve him. One day the Master expressed a desire to eat a special kind of thick milk pudding. Jogindra, a young disciple, was sent to Calcutta to buy the pudding from the market. On the way, however, he stopped at the house of Balaram Basu, and when the women devotees there heard about his errand, they asked him to wait and let them cook it. They meant well, reasoning that the homemade food would be of a better quality than the market food. Jogindra agreed. But when he returned with the pudding and told the Master the reason for his delay, the Master scolded him: “I wanted to eat the market pudding, and you were told to buy it. Why did you go to the devotees’ house and give them trouble over it? Besides, this pudding is very rich and hard to digest. I will not eat it.” Indeed, he did not touch it, but he asked the Holy Mother to give the pudding to Gopal-ma. As he explained: “This is given by the devotees. Gopala dwells in her heart. Her eating it will be the same as my eating it.” (Source: They Lived with God)
Once in Dakshineswar the Master said, in an ecstatic mood, “Henceforth I shall eat nothing but rice pudding.” The Holy Mother overheard this as she was carrying a tray of food to him. She knew that the words that came from the Master’s lips were never false. Alarmed, she asked: “Why only rice pudding? I shall cook rice and fish soup for you.” The Master exclaimed in the same mood, “No, only rice pudding.” Shortly after that the Master developed throat cancer and could no longer eat spicy food. In fact, he lived on rice pudding, milk and barley, and other soft foods. (Source: Sri Ramakrishna and His Divine Play)
The Master designated Shambhu Charan Mallick, a well-known, wealthy and generous devotee of Calcutta, as the second of four suppliers of his provisions. Shambu had a garden house near Rani Rasmani’s Kali temple, where he used to spend time with the Master in spiritual conversation. He had a charitable dispensary in that garden. Sri Ramakrishna quite often suffered from stomach trouble, and one day Shambhu came to know about it. He suggested that the Master take a little opium as a remedy and asked that he get it from him before he returned to Rasmani’s garden. The Master agreed to do so. In the course of conversation, however, both forgot about this.
The Master took his leave of Shambhu and was starting down the road when he remembered the opium. But when he returned to pick it up, he found that Shambhu had retired to his inner apartment. So without disturbing him any further, the Master went to the dispensary supervisor and got some opium from him. The Master left for the temple garden, but as soon as he came near the road he became dizzy and could not find his way. He felt as if someone were pulling his legs towards the ditch beside the road. He said to himself: “What is this? This is not the road!” At the same time he could not find the road. Thinking that he had made a wrong turn, he looked back to Shambhu’s garden and clearly saw the road in that direction. After further deliberation he returned to the gate of Shambhu’s garden, checked his bearings, and again carefully resumed his journey towards Rasmani’s garden. But after a few steps he experienced the same problem — he could not find the road. He felt as if someone were pulling his legs in the opposite direction. When this had happened a few times, it struck him: “Oh, Shambhu told me, ‘Please take the opium from me.’ But instead I took it from his supervisor without telling him; for that reason the Mother is not allowing me to move on. The supervisor had no right to give it to me without Shambhu’s permission, and I should have taken it from Shambhu as he suggested. My action was wrong on two counts, falsehood and theft. Because of that the Mother is turning me around and keeping me from returning to the temple.” With that thought he went to Shambhu’s dispensary but could not find the supervisor, who had gone to eat. So the Master threw the opium packet through a window, calling loudly, “Hello, here I am returning your opium.” Then he started towards Rasmani’s garden. This time he did not have any dizzy spells; he saw the road clearly and reached the temple garden.
The Master said: “I have completely surrendered myself to the Mother, so She is holding my hand all the time. She never allows me to take a false step.” (Source: Sri Ramakrishna and His Divine Play)
The wonderful constitution of the Master’s mind.
The Master said that no worldly object or relationship obstructed his journey to the experience of nirvikalpa samadhi according to Vedanta. At the outset of his spiritual quest he had renounced all desire for enjoyment in exchange for the vision of the Divine Mother. He prayed: “Mother, here is Thy knowledge and here is Thy ignorance; here is Thy righteousness and here is Thy unrighteousness; here is Thy good and here is Thy evil; here is Thy virtue and here is Thy vice; here is Thy fame and here is Thy infamy. Grant me only pure love for Thee. Do Thou reveal Thyself to me.” With this, he sincerely renounced all desires within his mind because of his pure love for the Mother. Ah, can we experience — or even imagine — that kind of one-pointed love? Sometimes we say to God, “Lord, I offer everything to You”; in the next moment in everyday life we take possession of everything and reject God, and calculate our own profit and loss. We consider public opinion before we perform any action. We run around restlessly. As we dream about the future we sometimes sink in boundless misery and the next moment float in excitement. And we are convinced that although we may not be able to overturn the whole world ourselves, at least we can have some effect on it. However, the Master’s mind was not deceptive, as is ours. When he said, “Mother, please take back the things You gave me,” his mind immediately stopped casting covetous looks at them. From that point on, even such thoughts as these did not arise in his mind at all: “Alas, I have said this. What can I do now? It would have been better if I had not said so.” So we see the Master could never claim anything as his own once he had offered everything to the Divine Mother.
The Master’s adherence to truth.
Here we would like to mention another thing in connection with this. Even though the Master offered the Divine Mother righteousness-unrighteousness, virtue-vice, good-evil, fame-infamy, and everything else pertaining to the body and mind, he could not say, “Mother, take Your truth and take Your untruth.” The Master himself once told us the reason for this. He said that if he renounced truthfulness in that way, how could he hold onto the truth that he had offered everything to the Divine Mother? What steadfast love for truth did we witness in the Master, even though he had offered everything to the Mother! When he said that he would go to a place on a particular day, invariably he went there at the proper time. If he said that he would accept something from a certain person, he could not take that thing from anyone else. When he said that he would not eat a particular thing or do a certain action anymore, he could not eat that food or do that thing from that day on. The Master used to say: “One who has steadfast love for truth attains the God of truth. The Divine Mother never allows the words of one who adheres to truth to become untrue.” We have witnessed many illustrations of these axioms in the Master’s life. (Source: Sri Ramakrishna and His Divine Play)
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- This Atman, resplendent and pure, whom the sinless sannyasins behold residing within the body, is attained by unceasing practice of truthfulness, austerity, right knowledge and continence. (Mundaka Upanishad 3.1.5)
- Truth alone prevails, not falsehood. By truth the path is laid out, the Way of the Gods, on which the seers, whose every desire is satisfied, proceed to the Highest Abode of the True. (Mundaka Upanishad 3.1.6)