Lives there one who knows Kali, my Divine Mother?

The Consort of the Absolute, the Spirit of Eternity.

The six schools of philosophy cannot know her.

Mathurnath Biswas

Up to this point Sri Ramakrishna’s passions were recognizable on a human scale. We can sympathize with Gadadhar the truant, dream with Gadadhar the dreamer, empathize with Gadadhar the poet. We can identify with a young lad who rejects hypocrisy to forge his own way in the world. We can identify with a boy who emulates mythic heroes – we have done all this ourselves in our youth. We have been able to follow him through his sudden, inexplicable withdrawals from the material world with perplexity and some bemusement. But now the road turns precipitously, out of the gentle forest, climbs up steep inclines, falling into chasms, straining over jagged peaks – which the more normal amongst us are loath to tread. Identifying with a mature young man driven to conducting a frenzied pursuit of a stone goddess for years together is not easy.

Ramakrishna had seemingly come to the culmination of his ‘dark night of the soul’. He described this experience later, thus:

Suddenly, I had a marvellous vision of the Mother. Then it was as if houses, doors, temples – everything vanished. And there was nothing. I saw an infinite shoreless sea of light, a sea that was Consciousness. However far and in whatever direction I looked, I saw shining waves coming towards me, raging and storming at great speed. Then they were on me and engulfed me and I sank into the depths of infinity.

There are similar descriptions in other cultures and other times, of mystics being ‘flooded with light’. But in their deepest mind they have seen themselves as sparks of consciousness ‘speeding towards the light’. They have ‘seen the light’ or ‘entered the light’. And the experience has transformed them. On the material plane, saints are shown with halos of light.

However, this vision of the Mother, longed for and hungered after, was not sufficient to bring Sri Ramakrishna out of the shadows of eternity. While a lesser soul might bask comfortably in the afterglow of the radiance of one vision, Sri Ramakrishna’s restless spirit could not be satisfied with one charmed interlude – that vanished, leaving in its wake only the hollow certainty of impermanence.

He accepted nothing short of an utter and continuous union with the permanent source of all things. He entertained only continuous bliss. Searching for this union, he entered a state he was himself later to term unmada or insanity, Godly madness.

Sri Ramakrishna constantly held conversations with the Mother and felt Her presence and talked as if to a child, ‘Come Mother, eat. Or shall I eat first? Will that make you happy?’ He then turned and fed a cat and said: ‘Ah there you are! Ma, here, eat. Mother, you are in all things. Blessed are you, O Divine.’ He sometimes also lay down with the statue of Kali and said, ‘Mother, I will sleep by your side. For am I not your child?’ He often felt Her face and chucked Her fondly under the chin. Once he even placed a finger under the nostril of the statue. ‘Ah! yes, I feel you breathe. Are you breathing, Mother?’ He became frenzied and wept and said, ‘Mother, Mother, where are you. I’ve lost you, Mother.’ And he began to beat the floor, roll around on it like a lost child. While continuing to weep, he banged his head on the floor and said, ‘Mother, Mother, why have you left me again?’

Now Sri Ramakrishna saw the Mother often, suddenly, sporadically, in all things. Sometimes he saw Her and sometimes he lost Her. His search drove everyone at Dakshineswar to paroxysms of anxiety. Even the most pious visitors to the temple, accustomed to seeing a wide range in manifestations of religious fervour, found Sri Ramakrishna’s behaviour nothing short of dementia.

During those intense moments he sang and sometimes improvised lines in composed songs like:

Lives there one who knows Kali, my Divine Mother?

The Consort of the Absolute, the Spirit of Eternity.

The six schools of philosophy cannot know Her

The Yogi meditates upon Her as Muladhara and Sahasrara

The Goose and the Gander mate in the lotus wilderness –

They are Eternity and His Consort, my Divine Mother

She who gives birth to the Universe – how great is

She who appears in all Her majesty in every finite being.

To think that one can know Her is to imagine one can

swim the mighty ocean

My mind knows this, but my heart will not see –

It is a dwarf that aspires to reach the moon.

Kali, of the terrifying blackness, of the lolling tongue and severed heads. Kali, with blood on her hands … Why, we must ask ourselves, would a young man of such extraordinary purity of character, such a fine spirit of renunciation, reach out with such deranged recklessness towards a black basalt image? What did the Goddess Kali symbolize to this ‘Madman of God’?

The answer surely lies in a realm beyond earthly ties. In the realm of symbol and metaphor; in the human search for permanence, for meaning, in our all-too-temporary sojourn on earth.

Kali is the Universal Mother, the maternal mystery at the heart of our lives to which we are tied forever, by invisible but real umbilical cords. The darkness of deepest space out of which, without volition, we were born, and to which we must, without volition return. Our dependence on the mystery is absolute; our intimacy with this mystery is infinite. No human relationship can compare with it.

Kali, the embodiment of universal energy, shakti, the appalling power that makes and unmakes the universe. Kali of the two faces. Those who swim against Her laws, seeking false security in Her creations, see only Her horrific face, for She is Maya, the Mother of illusions. To them She is death, for all that is ‘matter’ to which they cling with such desperation, must be thrown into the cycle of birth and death.

To those who strive to unite with Her, flowing with the currents of the world, recognizing the pointlessness of clinging to things that must change, She shows Her benevolent face. It would not have occurred to our ancestors to doubt Her existence or to question the wisdom of dedicating the best energies of a lifetime in Her pursuit. But in a world dedicated to matter, we have become strangers to this Divine Mother. We have become strangers to ourselves. It takes a Sri Ramakrishna to remind us.

Once it so happened that when Sri Ramakrishna was performing a ritual, he began to shake uncontrollably and gradually became rigid and went into samadhi. Later, he explained his experience thus:

I saw particles of light like swarms of fireflies. Sometimes light covered everything like a mist. At other times everything was pervaded with light like molten silver. I didn’t understand what I was seeing. I didn’t know whether it was good or bad. I just prayed: ‘Mother, I don’t understand what is happening to me. I don’t know the scriptures or mantras. Please teach me how to know you. If you won’t teach me, who will?’

At that time, the devotees of the temple were simply concerned and uncomfortable. And Sri Ramakrishna gave them enough cause.

One day Rani Rasmani walked into the inner sanctum of the Kali temple and saw Sri Ramakrishna in a state of bliss. Rani requested Sri Ramakrishna to sing a song on Kali:

Ramakrishna responded and sang:

Lives there one who knows Kali, my Divine Mother?
The Consort of the Absolute, the Spirit of Eternity.
The six schools of philosophy cannot know her.

During that time Rani’s attention wandered. Ramakrishna immediately felt this and reprimanded her saying, ‘Shame on you! Thinking such thoughts at a time like this!’

The devotees were greatly baffled and angry at Sri Ramakrishna’s act. Mathur begged him to keep his feelings under control in future and heed the conventions of society. Simultaneously, he chided the devotees and said, ‘Be quiet. I’m sure the Bhattacharya has his reasons.’ Rani supported his words and said:

Yes! He does. Instead of listening to the hymn, I was thinking about that lawsuit I’m involved in. I was enmeshed in worldliness when I should have been worshipping the Divine. It was not Baba, it was the Divine Mother herself who struck me and enlightened my heart.

The concern about Sri Ramakrishna’s madness grew by the hour. Hriday kept asking himself if his uncle had gone mad. He was worried about his uncle’s health and brought it to Mathur Babu’s notice. He reported that his uncle had become very thin and hardly ever ate anything. His chest looked flushed. He bled from the very pores of his skin.‘What can I do?’ he asked. Quite often, Sri Ramakrishna was found wandering across the courtyard to the temple, bedecked with flowers and sandal paste.

Then, suddenly, Sri Ramakrishna stopped performing rituals at the Kali temple. At the time the uninitiated found it hard to realize that as a man progressed on the path to spiritual development, his regular actions gradually fell from him. Religious rituals became unimportant. Now Sri Ramakrishna no longer needed the image of Ma Kali to focus his attention, to find a path to the Divine Radiance. He worshipped the Mother in all things.

Sri Ramakrishna’s unconventional behaviour was a major point of discussion between Rani and Mathur Babu. Mathur told Rani that a part of him thought that Sri Ramakrishna was not only sane, but super sane. ‘But,’ he said, ‘a part of me cannot help thinking that he has traces of insanity as well and he might be suffering from a nervous disorder.’ When Rani heard this, she ordered Mathur to get the best Ayurveda doctor available. But Mathur, who had tried all the conventional approaches, replied: ‘The doctor says there’s nothing wrong with him. In fact, he has an amazingly strong constitution.’ Mathur also narrated an incident when he had bought a shawl for him from Benares. Although Sri Ramakrishna initially admired the gift, he later threw it on the ground and trampled on it saying: ‘It’s nothing but goats’ hair. A blanket is as good. Will owning such a beautiful thing help me realize God?’

Mathur Babu and Rani Rasmani began to ascribe the mental ailment of Sri Ramakrishna in part, at least, to his observance of rigid continence and practising a celibate life. Thinking that a natural life would relax his nerves, both Mathur Babu and Rani engineered a plan with two women of ill-repute. Both the women were sent to seduce Sri Ramakrishna.

When Sri Ramakrishna saw the women he exclaimed: ‘Ah Divine Mother, how beautiful you are!’ And went into samadhi. Mathur realized what a fool he was and so did the women, who fell at the master’s feet begging forgiveness.

What, we might ask, is this samadhi into which Sri Ramakrishna was falling. Can one ever become achaitanya (unconscious)? However, the difference is that the mystic not only retains affectionate ties to the world, he comes out of mystical retreat with new visions, deeper realizations, a greater integration of personality and an enhanced ability to make fine perceptual distinctions. The psychotic remains bound to his dead, dark world of attempted escape.

Samadhi, put simply, is the fourth state of consciousness, neither waking nor dreaming, nor a dreamless sleep. Only the merest handful of people in the world experience it, and those that do, find it difficult to describe; for the state of samadhi is by nature indescribable; words deal with knowledge obtained by the five senses; samadhi goes beyond the experience of senses.

While in samadhi, one transcends the ego. It is a state of awareness, unimaginably more intense than everyday consciousness. It is the very opposite of a trance; for trance is at the very least a condition of stupor or bewilderment. In his vision of Kali, Sri Ramakrishna had attained, unknown to himself and those around him, a level called savikalpa samadhi, the highest level within the realm of form. For, at this level he had attained the form of the Mother, to which he was deeply attached as if he were a child.

The psychic world, or that below the material, is experienced in dreams, under drugs and sometimes even when awake. These are psychic visions that can depress and terrify and are sometimes neutral. Psychic experiences remain attached to the world and do not change the individual. Beyond the psychic the mind loses awareness of the material world and enters the realm of the spiritual, always accompanied by feelings of great joy – for the devotee is then closer to the essential centre.

For anyone in a normal state of consciousness, Sri Ramakrishna’s actions certainly seemed to be the mood swings of an utter maniac. But once again, below the surface was a serious intent. Yearning for the realization of his family deity – Raghubir, the Lord Rama, whom he had worshipped as a child – literal-minded Sri Ramakrishna immersed himself quite unknowingly in dasa bhava. He transformed himself into Lord Rama’s greatest devotee, Hanuman, the monkey, the dasa or servant who followed his Lord’s word without the slightest question, murmur or hesitation. Sri Ramakrishna was heard calling out, Raghubir! Raghubir! And it was later discovered that when Sri Ramakrishna meditated in Panchavati with his eyes open, Sita appeared to him in a nimbus of light. She smiled and moved towards Sri Ramakrishna, who cried out in recognition, Mother! He rose with hands folded while Mother Sita put her hands on his head and smiled and merged into him.

Sri Ramakrishna was not in samadhi at the time. During this intense phase of worship of Lord Rama, it was Sita whom he saw, who blessed him and passed into his body, making a gift to him of Her smile. Henceforth, Sri Ramakrishna’s smile was said to be as sweet as that of Sita’s.

Sri Ramakrishna’s sadhanas, his long sessions in samadhi, were taking a toll on his mind and body while bringing him to priceless realizations about the nature of existence that he would begin to share with the world when the time came.

But life was not without its lighter moments. In 1858, Sri Ramakrishna’s cousin Ramtarak Chattopadhyay, whom Ramakrishna called Haladhari, came to live in Dakshineswar, remaining there for about eight years. On account of Sri Ramakrishna’s indifferent health, Mathur appointed Haladhari the official priest of the Kali temple. Though a scholarly Vaishnavite, well-versed in the scriptures, he was hardly aware of their spirit. Albeit devout, he was pompous, arrogant about his intellectual achievements and orthodoxy of Brahminhood.

Haladhari was a complex character. He loved to participate in hair-splitting theological discussions and, by the measure of his own erudition proceeded to gauge Sri Ramakrishna. An orthodox Brahmin, he thoroughly disapproved of his cousin’s unorthodox actions, though he was not unimpressed by Sri Ramakrishna’s purity of life, ecstatic love of God and yearning for realization.

Once, Haladhari affectionately and patronizingly addressed Sri Ramakrishna:

Gadai, I do intensely disapprove of your throwing away your thread – do you believe you have reached such a high level of attainment that you can be so casual about caste rules? Yet … sometimes, I admit, I do catch a glimpse of the tremendous presence that has so mysteriously chosen to dwell in your emaciated body and half-crazed mind.

Sri Ramakrishna laughingly said, ‘Are you sure? Then why do you not accept me as I am?’ To which Haladhari replied, ‘Sometimes I doubt you. For you break every rule of caste, and you are almost wholly uneducated.’

Becoming serious at Haladhari’s words, Sri Ramakrishna asked, ‘But now you are sure?’

Haladhari responded with syrupy sweetness, ‘When I see the sweetness of your devotion, how can I be anything but sure? After all I am a priest, and I have some inner vision.’ Sri Ramakrishna teasingly answered, ‘Let’s see how long your certainty lasts.’

Upon hearing this, Haladhari pompously narrated a Sanskrit quote and said, ‘As it is said in the Adhyatma Ramayana …’

Cutting him short, Sri Ramakrishna observed, ‘I already know all that. I have realized all the states you talk about. I know everything that’s written in your scriptures.’

Haladhari was furious and said, ‘You idiot! You uneducated fool. Do you think you can understand the scriptures?’

Offended, but with seriousness, Sri Ramakrishna answered, ‘Believe me, brother, he who lives inside this body teaches me everything.’

Haladhari got even more furious and shouted, ‘Get out of here, you crazy blockhead. Do you think you’re an incarnation of Vishnu?’

Sri Ramakrishna sweetly and gently replied, ‘But Dada, you said you were sure this time.’ Usually, it was the simple Sri Ramakrishna who was at the receiving end of Haladhari’s arrogant intellect and vast learning.

Once, when Sri Ramakrishna was coming out of the Kali temple, Haladhari intercepted him and derisively asked, ‘How can you spend your time worshipping a Tamasika goddess who embodies nothing but destruction? It was the curse of Kali that killed my child.’

Sri Ramakrishna turned back to the temple with tears in his eyes and looking at the image of Kali, cried out, like an upset child, ‘Mother! Haladhari who is a great scholar, says you are nothing but wrath and destruction. Can this be true?’

Later, while Haladhari sat in front of Krishna’s image in the Radhakanta temple, Sri Ramakrishna came rushing in excited, jumped on Haladhari’s back and said, ‘Mother is everything! Do you dare call Her wrathful? No! She has every attribute, every quality – and yet She is nothing but pure love!’

Haladhari was shocked; his feelings underwent a radical change as his old feelings crumbled. He picked up some flowers and placed them on Sri Ramakrishna’s feet saying, ‘You touched me Master. You have touched me. I see. I see …’

Meanwhile, a garbled report of Sri Ramakrishna’s failing health, indifference to worldly life and various abnormal activities reached Kamarpukur and filled his poor mother’s heart with anguish. At her repeated requests, he returned to his village for a change of air. But his boyhood friends did not interest him any more. A divine fever consumed him. He spent a great part of the day and night in one of the cremation grounds, deep in meditation. The place reminded him of the impermanence of the human body, human hopes and achievements. It also reminded him of Kali, the Goddess of Destruction.

In the eighteenth century, in the days of Siraj-ud-Daulah, there lived in Bengal a man called Ram Prasad, famed and revered as the poet of the ‘Motherhood of God’. He had written thus:

In the world’s markets,
the Mother flies her kites:
souls soaring with winds,
yearning to be free;
held to the Earth
with strands of illusion.
In a hundred thousand
She in the limitless sky,
the kite wings up to the Infinite –
see how gleefully She laughs
and claps Her hands.

Doubtless, Sri Ramakrishna too knew the thrill of free flight, the exhilaration of unfettered spaces and the terror of being cut loose from his social moorings; felt the vertigo of a soul freed from its familiar landscapes, perceiving the fathomless abyss below. Some part of him must have yearned for the more predictable, earthbound dullness of routine normalcy. For when his mother heard of his mad exertions at Dakshineswar, and called him home with the simple faith that the familiar surroundings of childhood would stabilize him, he came. Emaciated from his austerities, exhausted, he heaved a sigh of relief. He was twenty-four.

Sri Ramakrishna was welcomed by Rameshwar and Akshay. His mother Chandra Devi and Dhani, his maid when he was a child, discussed the situation with each other. Chandra Devi felt that her son was going mad. He kept crying ‘Mother! Mother!’ Shocked at hearing this, Dhani said, ‘He cried for you? A grown-up boy like that! Now that he’s home you can give him the comfort he needs.’

Chandra Devi smiled ruefully and said, ‘Ah, my friend, I am not the Mother he longs for. I wish it were that simple.’

Perplexed, Dhani enquired, ‘Where is he now?’

Rameshwar replied that he was meditating in the Bhutirkhal, under the peepul tree, while the jackals howled around him.

Shocked, Dhani asked, ‘But why? Why in the cemetery with all the dead!’

Akshay and Rameshwar informed her that that’s where the Mother he was seeking was likely to be found. Cemeteries are the ultimate symbol of impermanence.

Even more worried, Dhani said, ‘That doesn’t sound right. It’s a lonely place. He might do himself harm. He’s not well.’ To which Chandra Devi said the vaidya had assured her that her son was healthy. The exorcist never found him possessed by any spirit, and he had no disease.

Chandra Devi was almost sure that her son had gone mad and he must be saved before the desire for Kali possessed him again. At this point, Dhani suggested that Ramakrishna should get married and everybody agreed.

The very thought of marriage is usually anathema for those drawn to a life of the spirit. For the conservative and family-centred occupations of marriage cast a cold chill on the spiritual idealism of youth. Shuttered behind the walls of attachment and worldly care, the life of a householder is truly bondage. An inhibition of the spirit: samsara. Yet, Sri Ramakrishna, in the midst of a storm of renunciation, was surprisingly delighted at the idea.

However, when the search began for a suitable girl, it was frustrating at every turn. Unmarried girls of the right age, disposition and family background were hard to find. And when a prospective match was located, the demands made on Chandra Devi and Rameshwar fell beyond their limited means. Till Sri Ramakrishna, in a meditative state, himself pointed the way.

Watching his mother and Rameshwar going from pillar to post, consulting different matchmakers with no positive achievement, he told them: ‘There’s no point running here and there. Go to the house of Ram Mukhopadhyay in the village of Jayarambati. The bride has been marked with straw and kept reserved for me.’

In Bengal it was customary to put aside the finest fruit and vegetable as an offering to God. These were tied with a straw around the stem to mark them out from those due for the market. Sarada was indeed, as it will be seen, an offering to God.

Sri Ramakrishna’s marriage to Saradamani Devi was not destined to be a conventional one. When she attained puberty he did not become her conjugal husband but a spiritual guide, who prepared her to carry his work forward after his death. In his unusual relationship with Sarada, Sri Ramakrishna demonstrated that beyond the satisfaction of the senses, there is a higher purpose to marriage. With the insights of spiritual attainment, he knew this when he pointed out the place and family unseen, a girl who at the time was five years old and lived the next ten years with his mother. The matchmaker, he said, was the Divine Mother Herself.

Sri Ramakrishna spent one year and seven months at Kamarpukur, cherished by those who knew him. He rested and recovered the energies he had depleted in spiritual disciplines. Then, as Chandra Devi had feared, the call from the Divine Mother became too strong for him to resist. He left his child bride with his mother and returned to Dakshineswar.

In the Dakshineswar temple, Sri Ramakrishna got back to his old routine with more vigour, and the brief idyll of restful peace was shattered. He began his sadhanas without taking care of his physical self. The ‘Godly madness’ with its terrible physical symptoms appeared again, this time even more intensely. He spent days in the Panchavati meditating under the scorching sun and late into the nights. One day to the next, one hour to the next, Sri Ramakrishna was tossed from vision to despair and back again. All thoughts of brother, mother and bride disappeared from his mind.

His physical self deteriorated. His hair became so matted that birds sat on his head. But he paid no attention to these irritants. He was found weeping or rubbing his face on the ground or sitting up imploring the sky in the harsh sunlight. Hriday, his devoted nephew, carried food to him and generally looked after his physical body as best as he could.

Recalling this period, Sri Ramakrishna later remarked:

It was like being in the midst of a whirlwind – even my sacred thread was blown away. Sometimes I would open my mouth and it would be as if my jaws reached from heaven to the underworld. I felt I had to pull the Mother in towards me as a fisherman pulls in a fish.

He further explained:

Sometimes I shared my food with a dog. I had no sleep for six long years; my eyes lost the power of blinking. I tried to close my eyelids with my finger and I couldn’t. I thought: I am on the verge of insanity. I cried out: ‘Mother is this what happens to those who call on you? I surrender myself to you and you give me this terrible disease?’ I wept. The next moment I was filled with ecstasy. And my body didn’t matter. ‘Let my body go, Mother,’ I cried. ‘It does not matter, but do not forsake me.’ Mother appeared to me and comforted me.

His body trembled and burned. The pain began at sunrise and by midday it was unbearable. To ease the burning, Sri Ramakrishna stood in the Ganga with a wet towel on his head for two to three hours. Had it not been for Hriday, his constant companion, Sri Ramakrishna might have died. It was at this time that Sri Ramakrishna and Hriday planted a grove of five holy trees that came to be known as the Panchavati: fig, amalaki, banyan, asoka and bilva for the purposes of Sri Ramakrishna’s austerities.

Days passed by in the same manner with Sri Ramakrishna’s unconventional behaviour increasing every hour and once he was even seen in the Shiva temple reciting the Mahima Stotra :

With the blue mountain for ink,
A branch of the heaven tree as a pen,
And all the Earth as her writing leaf,
Were the goddess Sarada to describe your greatness
She could not – though she were to write forever.

Ramakrishna, in his state of seeming madness, cried out:

Oh great Lord God, how can I express your glory! Oh great Lord God, how can I express your glory! Oh great Lord God, how can I express your glory! Oh great Lord God, how can I express your glory! Oh great Lord God, how can I express your glory?

A passer-by thought he was crazier than usual and feared that in a moment he would ride on Shiva’s shoulder, so he called out to Mathur to remove this madman. Mathur threatened the devotees that he would take them to task if they so much as touched Sri Ramakrishna. By then Sri Ramakrishna recovered and naively asked if he had done anything wrong. Mathur assured him and said, ‘Oh no, Master! You were just reciting a hymn and I came to see that no one interrupted you.’

Once Mathur looked out of the window and watched Sri Ramakrishna pacing around in the distance. Suddenly Mathur ran, fell at Sri Ramakrishna’s feet and wept inconsolably. Shocked at Mathur’s behaviour, Sri Ramakrishna said, ‘Babu what are you doing? You’re a gentleman and Rani’s son-in-law! What will people say if they see you acting like this? Calm yourself. Please. Get up!’

Mathur, unable to control himself said, ‘Baba, I was watching you walk up and down. And I saw it distinctly. As you came towards me, you became Ma Kali. As you walked away, you became Lord Shiva. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I rubbed them. But it happened again.’

Sri Ramakrishna looked disturbed and said, ‘What are you saying, Mathur Babu? You are not well. Don’t go around saying such things, people will say I’ve put a spell on you.’

Mythologizing? Creating legends? The truth? Whose truth? It’s difficult to say. Suffice that Mathur was rewarded for his implicit and unshakeable belief in Sri Ramakrishna.

Thus far Sri Ramakrishna had only the internal evidence of his visions to support their authenticity. And he did not have the scriptural knowledge to allay his own doubts. What the young priest needed was an independent judgement from someone with the breadth of vision and training to verify his experiences. But where could such enlightenment be found? He was surrounded by people to whom he was a mystery – including Mathur and Rani for whom he was wondrous and holy, but a mystery nevertheless. Then, Rani Rasmani died with a vision of Mother Kali before her eyes. Sadly, her eldest daughter Padma also died without signing the deed handing over control of the temple.

In the deepest reaches of his being, Sri Ramakrishna was alone and exposed; he ploughed ahead in uncharted seas by sheer instinct, without even a map.