Lectures will not help worldly people

Ramakrishna Paramhansa

For the Kaliyuga the path of devotion described by Narada is best. Where can people find time now to perform their duties according to the scriptural injunctions? Nowadays the decoctions of roots and herbs of the orthodox Hindu physicians cannot be given to a fever patient. By the time that kind of medicine begins its slow process of curing, the patient is done for. Therefore only a drastic medicine like the allopathic ‘fever mixture’ is effective now.

You may ask people to practice scriptural rites and rituals; but, when prescribing the rituals, remove the ‘head and tail’. I tell people not to bother about the elaborate rituals of the sandhya as enjoined in the scriptures. I say that it will be enough for them to repeat the Gayatri alone.

FUTILITY OF LECTURING

You may deliver thousands of lectures, but they won’t make the slightest impression on worldly people. Can one drive a nail into a stone wall? The point of the nail will sooner break than make a dent in the stone. What will you gain by striking the tough skin of the crocodile with a sword? The sadhu’s water-bowl, made from the shell of a bitter gourd, may visit the four principal holy places of India with its owner, but it will still remain as bitter as ever.

Your lectures are not helping worldly people very much; and you will realize this by and by. The calf cannot stand on its legs all at once. Now it drops to the ground and now it stands up. So it learns to stand finally on its legs and walk.

You cannot distinguish a lover of God from a worldly person. It isn’t your fault, of course. When the first onrush of the gale shakes the trees, it is impossible to distinguish one tree from another – the mango from the tamarind, for instance.

Without having realized God one cannot give up rituals altogether. How long should one practice the sandhya and other forms of ritualistic worship?

As long as one does not shed tears of joy at the name of God and feel a thrill in one’s body. You will know that your ritualistic worship has come to an end when your eyes become filled with tears as you repeat ‘Om Rama’. Then you do not have to continue your sandhya or other rituals. When the fruit appears the blossom drops off. Love of God is the fruit, and rituals are the blossom.

When the daughter-in-law of the house becomes pregnant, she cannot do much work. Her mother-in-law gradually lessens her duties in the house. When her time arrives she does practically nothing. And after the child is born her only work is to play with it. She doesn’t do any household duties at all.

The sandhya merges in the Gayatri, the Gayatri in Om, and, Om in samadhi. It is like the sound of a bell: t-a-m. The yogi, by following in the trail of the sound Om, gradually merges himself in the Supreme Brahman. His sandhya and other ritualistic duties disappear in samadhi. Thus the duties of the Jnani come to an end.

There is no harm in teaching others if the preacher has a commission from the Lord. Nobody can confound a preacher who teaches people after having received the command of God. Getting a ray of light from the goddess of learning, a man becomes so powerful that before him big scholars seem mere earthworms.

Excerpted from ‘The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna’. The 184^th birth anniversary of Ramakrishna Paramhansa is being celebrated on February 18