The Cauliflower, page 14
And, just as suddenly as it emerged, the giant void disappears. The walls reform. Only a couple of seconds have passed, in real time, but entire continents have shifted within Narendra’s consciousness.
He sits on the bed, slumped forward, struggling to catch his breath. The guru retreats. Once again everything about him appears small and harmless and childlike. He is now incredibly friendly and kind and warm to the visiting teenager. He offers him every sort of hospitality. And he is funny. He sings, he dances, he cracks jokes. He can be a bitch. He can be terse. He is an exceptionally droll impersonator. Before Narendra knows it a whole day has passed in his delightful company and it is time for him to return home again. The guru is dejected at the thought of him leaving. He visibly droops. He perches on the end of his small bed, shoulders slumping, chin on his chest, arms hanging, like a poignant, little Pierrot doll.
Only he himself, Narendra Nath Datta (it seems to the gilded youth), has the almost divine power to activate him now.
Rational explanations for the previous incident …
How did this happen?
Hunger? The heat? Exhaustion?
It’s incomprehen—
Waaaah!
Part 3.
After several months …
Among Sri Ramakrishna’s circle is a man called Pratap Chandra Hazra. Sri Ramakrishna doesn’t especially like him. He finds him “dry,” or lacking in sincere spiritual inspiration. Hazra is well read and perfectly intelligent, but something of a pedant (a quality Sri Ramakrishna especially loathes). And even though he has a wife and a family in dire financial need back in the place he calls home (somewhere near Hriday’s native village of Sihar), he still spends most of his time at the Dakshineswar Kali Temple in the orbit of the famous saint, loudly and piously practicing japam on Ramakrishna’s verandah and doing his best to attract attention to himself.
Ramakrishna is often irritated by Hazra and what he considers to be his unhelpful influence over some of his newer (and most precious) devotees. The saint is not averse to making the odd sarcastic aside at Hazra’s expense. Although he has finally come to realize (and how could he not?) that Hazra is simply a part of the Mother’s divine play. He accepts that Hazra has been sent to plague him for a reason, as a lesson—in much the same way that Krishna’s most passionate devotee, Radha, was persecuted by Jatila, her mother-in-law, so that her constant meddling and interfering might make Radha love Krishna still more—and that Hazra is therefore an essential part of the Mother’s divine scheme. And this knowledge—this insight—makes him surprisingly tolerant of Hazra, even to feel, at some level, a measure of gratitude toward him.
It is, nonetheless, a source of profound irritation to him that Narendra, his most beloved devotee (the savior of mankind—the devotee Ramakrishna knows will bring his message to the world), is great friends with this flawed individual and consequently open to his malign influence. Often he will struggle to get the teenager’s attention (the teenager, as he settles into his relationship with Sri Ramakrishna and becomes increasingly and delightfully aware of his own huge significance to him, will be cynical, argumentative, dismissive, and cruel to the guru). He is arrogant by nature. He will sometimes make snide remarks about the guru’s lack of a formal education.
The guru has a very particular way of guiding people to spiritual fulfillment. You might call it the “pick and mix” technique. He gets to know people (inspecting their faces, their hands, their tongues, their feet), asks them countless questions, then decides what spiritual approach most suits their needs. Ramakrishna is promiscuous by nature. There is no one route. No one-size-fits-all approach. And because Narendra Nath Datta is (in the guru’s mind, and in fact) destined to be his future mouthpiece to the world, he chooses to initiate this special disciple into Vedantic non-dualism, a highly difficult, obtuse, and intellectual doctrine which teaches that the disciple and God are identical.
But it isn’t all to be plain sailing. Hazra and the teenager certainly see to that. On one occasion Sri Ramakrishna comes outside onto his balcony to find the two of them engaged in a bitchy discussion about the credibility of the non-dualist approach. Narendra is pointing to a water pot which sits on the floor before them and is saying, “Is this water pot God?! Is this cup God?! Are you God?! Am I God?!”
They are laughing together, scornfully, at the very thought.
“What are you laughing at?” the childlike guru wonders, sweetly, and as he speaks he taps Narendra lightly on the shoulder, once again turning the teenager’s entire universe on its head.
Narendra immediately becomes conscious of the fact that the whole world is God. The. Whole. World.
God!
He spends the entire day in this bizarre, heightened state. He tells nobody what is happening to him. He just hopes—desperately hopes—that it will wear off. But it doesn’t. He travels home. Everything is God. He sits down to eat. The plate is God. The food is God. His mother who serves him is God. Her words are God.
And it continues. He attends college. He walks the streets. Everything is God. A carriage approaches him as he crosses the road—at high speed—but he can barely bring himself to move out of its path. It is God. And he is God. So he is the carriage. And they are all God.
Experts call this a state of “divine intoxication.” It’s how Sri Ramakrishna feels all the time. The guru lives in a perpetual state of divine intoxication (almost to the point of finding it a nuisance).
As a part of his intoxication Narendra has lost all sense of feeling in his hands and his feet. This makes him anxious. And as the ecstasy fades, over days, weeks, he continues to worry about it. Now he feels like he is trapped inside in a strange kind of living dream. He feels distanced. Numb. Weird. Woolly. As he walks down a street one day he falls to his knees and starts hitting his head against a set of railings to try and establish whether they are real or not.
His poor mother has lost all hope for him. That pesky guru! That pesky, pesky guru!
“My poor, darling Naren … he won’t live long,” she murmurs.
“Sadhana is reached
When you witness God’s presence
In everything.”
Part 4.
1885, the Cossipore garden house, not long before Sri Ramakrishna’s death
Sri Ramakrishna is lying upstairs, desperately ill, when a certain amount of commotion erupts downstairs. The saint’s faithful diarist and scribe, modestly known to the world simply as M (but known in day-to-day life as the much-loved and respected, if incredibly humble, Calcuttan headmaster Mahendra Nath Gupta) kindly informs the saint of what is unfolding.…
Narendra Nath Datta, it transpires, has been sitting on the ground floor, meditating. And as he meditates he has the curious sensation of an intense, fiery warmth at the back of his head. He then loses all consciousness and experiences what is generally perceived to be the ultimate spiritual state—described by seasoned Vedantists as nirvikalpa samadhi. During this form of ecstasy the embodied soul is completely effaced and unified with God. It is known to be a rare, extraordinary, mind-blowing, and ego-shattering phenomenon. Sometimes—indeed, often—people die when it happens to them. In fact—if we can fast-forward seventeen years—Narendra himself will die (at the horribly premature age of thirty-nine) the next time he enters this state. Although, following his first experience, Sri Ramakrishna calls him upstairs and tells him that he will not enter the state again until the Mother’s work has been accomplished. And he is right. “This revelation will stay under lock and key,” the guru says, holding aloft an imaginary key, kissing it, and then placing it into an imaginary pocket lying close to his heart.
But this is still Narendra’s first experience of nirvikalpa samadhi. We have no idea how long his consciousness is lost to it in real time. All that we do know is that when he begins to regain consciousness, he does so only partially. He can open his eyes and see his head (the tip of his own nose, his tongue), but the rest of his body is now invisible to him.
And this is the source of all the commotion. Narendra, in a panic, is crying out: “Where is my body? Where is my body?”
Another devotee comes running into the room (followed, no doubt, by a panting M) and tries to reassure the early-twenty-something would-be savior of the world. “Your body is right here, Narendra! Don’t panic. Your body is here!”
But Narendra isn’t persuaded and he continues to wail.
At this point, M sensibly dashes upstairs to ask the guru what they can do to help. The guru receives the news of Narendra’s perceived disembodiment with complete equanimity. Then he smiles. Then he swipes a limp hand through the air, “Argh,” he whispers, with a hoarse chuckle, “Just leave him that way for a while. Let Naren have a little taste of his own medicine. He’s certainly worried me for long enough.”
After the great guru’s death, Narendra muses, somewhat astonished:
“We were trained by him
Without even knowing it—
Just through fun and games!”
:)
1863, at the Dakshineswar Kali Temple (six miles north of Calcutta)
Mathur Baba is a great and a powerful man, and he truly loves Uncle almost as much as I do. But it took Mathur Baba quite some time before he could fully accept the sudden arrival of the Brahmini and her great and immediate influence over Uncle’s sadhana.
The Brahmini has a very controlling manner and is of strong opinions, and after only a very short acquaintance with Uncle she became convinced that Uncle was an incarnation of God. Uncle received this shocking news with his typical childlike innocence. He skipped off to see Mathur Baba and gaily informed him of what the Brahmini had said:
“Mathur! Mathur! The Brahmini says that I am an incarnation of God!”
Mathur simply frowned and shook his head. He loved Uncle, but he thought the Brahmini had gone too far. He told the Brahmini that there could only be ten avatars of Vishnu, as described in the Garuda Purana, and that this number had clearly already manifested. But the Brahmini insisted that there were also twenty-four in the Bhagavata Purana, and that anyway it also states in this most holy and sacred of texts that Vishnu’s incarnations are endless.
She showed the skeptical Mathur Baba the exact quotation. “Whenever righteousness wanes and unrighteousness increases I send myself forth,” she calmly read. “For the protection of the good and for the destruction of evil, and the establishment of righteousness, I come into being age after age.”
Mathur Baba merely sucked his tongue and scowled and gazed at Uncle suspiciously from under his lowering eyebrows. But was Uncle worried or disturbed by Mathur’s doubting? Not at all! Uncle just clapped his hands joyfully and danced around and sang his sweet and charming songs in praise of his beloved Goddess. He was completely unconcerned. For why should Uncle care about what people say? Uncle has no ego. Uncle only cares about God and nothing else.
But the Brahmini would not be silenced. She stood up to Mathur Baba and told him that he should convene a conference of famous pandits to openly discuss the matter and come to a final decision upon it. Mathur Baba is a sensible and an educated man. He has a weakness for Uncle, a great weakness for Uncle—as I do—but he was not to be convinced so easily as all that. And it was only after considerable heart-searching—and with his deep misgivings—that the conference was eventually convened.
Yet what a great and learned occasion it was! The Brahmini presented her case before the summoned pandits in grand style and with much detailed reference to the scriptures. The pandits were all very thoughtful and serious about what the Brahmini had said.
Uncle sat among them like a child, hardly paying any attention. To Uncle this was just the Mother’s divine play, just her lila. Because for Uncle, fame and reputation are merely an illusion. They are maya. And yet even though Uncle made no effort whatsoever to convince or beguile the pandits, one by one they announced that yes, indeed, Uncle truly was an avatar (although when I questioned Uncle about this after, Uncle just threw up his hands impatiently and said, “Pah! What do I know about such things?”).
Mathur Baba is a freethinking man. Who can be sure whether the pandits convinced him of Uncle’s being an incarnation or not? I love Uncle as much as it is possible to love another human being, but I must confess that I was yet to be fully won over by their many and clever arguments. Perhaps I simply do not possess the kind of mind which would be liable to understand the finer details of such lofty issues? When I dwelled deeply on the matter I would merely flip-flop like a landed fish! Because one minute I would really and truly believe in their decision, then the next I would be terribly confused and perplexed. How could I be absolutely sure? How might I finally decide and feel secure?
It wasn’t too long after that conference, however, before Mathur Baba fell neatly into line with the pandits’ opinions. Late one afternoon, just before the start of the evening arati, Mathur Baba came running to see me as I was rinsing Uncle’s dhoti in the plate-washing tank. “Hriday,” he panted, “something truly extraordinary has happened! I was standing by a window in the kuthi gazing over toward the temple, and I caught sight of your Uncle, deep in thought, pacing up and down on the temple’s northeastern verandah. But as I stood and watched him he was suddenly transformed, and in place of your Uncle I saw the Goddess—I saw Ma Kali herself—quietly pacing, deep in thought, upon that same verandah, and then, when she reached the farthest extent and slowly turned around, I saw Lord Shiva walking back toward me again. I stood there for many minutes, Hriday. I closed my eyes several times and I blinked. But when I opened them, still, it was them, Hriday, the Great Goddess and her holy spouse, both apparently contained within the earthly form of your beloved Uncle. I swear my heart almost stopped beating there and then. I was so filled with awe and fear that I could scarcely breathe.”
Mathur Baba covered his chest with one hand and then reached out his other to touch my forearm. I could feel that his fingers were icy cold and still trembling violently. Yet before I could speak and offer any sort of consolation, he quickly continued. “I left the kuthi and I ran straight to your Uncle, Hriday, and I confronted him. I told him what I had seen.…”
“How did Uncle react?” I wondered, almost to myself.
“Your Uncle was not at all happy!” Mathur exclaimed, astonished. “In fact, he reprimanded me quite severely. ‘Stop all this fuss and commotion,’ he snapped, ‘and please leave me in peace! Is it not bad enough already that everyone in this temple thinks I have cast a wicked spell on you? Take control of yourself! What will they think if you continue to behave in this way?’ And then he sent me off with a flea in my ear. That is why I have come to you with this news, Hriday. For who else might I possibly confide in?”
Mathur burst into noisy tears, and I—humble and lowly Hriday, Mathur Baba’s newest spiritual confidant—was obliged to shake water from my callused working hands and embrace this great and soft and wealthy patriarch as if he were merely a sobbing village boy.
In that instant I was possessed of a most powerful feeling, not of fear, nor even of compassion, but of overwhelming triumph. Perhaps I had not been so foolish after all to dedicate my services so wholeheartedly to Uncle? Because of what real import was the mere “truth” of the matter? Whether Uncle was an incarnation of God or not was surely just a trifling issue if we had the belief and the loyalty and the support of a wealthy, powerful, and influential man like Mathur Baba.
Hmmm. Interesting … [plucks at chin, thoughtfully]
Sri Ramakrishna—
Why did you choose to marry
Then live as a monk?
If you are a god
So your wife—by extension—
Must be a goddess …
Mustn’t she?
?
Okay, so we’re still coming to terms with the sudden shock of the Rani’s passing (although she will doubtless pass again—and again, and again—in a variety of media), and we’ve also painstakingly created a little elbow room for the elusive Brahmini (seamlessly! quite seamlessly!), and before too long, we’ll probably need to engage with the self-effacing conundrum that is Sri Ramakrishna’s wife, Sarada Devi, aka the Holy Mother—but before we do that:
Some minor wrangles—or, well, perhaps just the one:
Remember lobon?
Salt?
Bangladeshi for “nun”?
And remember Hridayram? Or Hriday? Who serves his great master so dutifully (and through this service, the saint claims, will find God)? Well, the English translation of his name, Hriday, actually means “pure heart.” And sixty-two years after the death of the great Bengali saint Sri Ramakrishna—a prophet without a prophecy, a guru without a system, a bizarrely exclusivist egalitarian—will come another saint (gasp!), hot on his heels, to this lost and chaotic and sprawling metropolis, who will breathe sharply down his neck (Ramakrishna wears his unpretentious white dhoti with its bright red trim; this other “impostor” saint wears an unpretentious white sari, fringed in blue) and even (dare we say it?) threaten to partially overshadow his startling Calcuttan legacy.
She will be unconventional, too. She will sidestep all traditional formalities. She will refuse to accept government funding for her charitable endeavors because she will not waste so much as a precious second on (argh—yawn—eye roll) pen-pushing. She will not embrace modernity, per se, only the dignity of work, of rolling up one’s sleeves and mucking in, of good, honest sweat and heartfelt sacrifice.
Like Sri Ramakrishna, she will eschew aversion. She will actively embrace filth. Which is fortunate. Because she is here, right here, in the heart of the slums of this belching, rotting, teeming city. She will love the unloved, the unlovable. This is her mantra. And there will be no official record of her work. Neither saint will leave a private paper trail. To them, books, articles, lectures are all silly and worldly and stupidly vainglorious.
Ah. They are close, so close, these two.
In 1952, this other saint—this new (let’s just come out and say it) foreign saint—will establish her Home for the Dying a stone’s throw from Kalighat, the most famous and ancient of all the Kali temples, and it will be a place of selfless service called Nirmal Hriday (Home of the Pure Heart). But here their parallel journeys take somewhat different routes. Mother Teresa (for it is she—who else?) will dedicate her life to an entirely practical kind of service. She will pitch in and get her sari filthy. Then she will trudge to her un-air-conditioned cell, utterly exhausted, and wash it, herself, in a bucketful of cold water. Sri Ramakrisha? Although his legacy—in the hands of Swami Vivekananda (his beloved Naren)—will be improving and altruistic, the saint himself (the source of this great movement which will inspire the likes of Mahatma Gandhi) will be surprisingly indifferent to human suffering. He will not focus on anything—anything—barring the pursuit of God. He is not remotely political. He is not remotely social. He is not remotely incensed or incendiary or indignant.
