SWAMIJI'S TIME

swamiji's  time                  J K SIVAN
vivekananda

                           5  My Master

 Day after day he would weep and   say:

"Mother, is it true that Thou existest,or is it all poetry?

Is the Blissful Mother an imagination of poets and misguided

people, or is there such a reality ?

We have seen that of books, of education in our sense of the word, he had none and so much the more natural, so much the more healthy was his mind, so much the purer his thoughts, undiluted by drinking in the thoughts of others. This thought which was upper most in his mind gained in strength every day until he could think of nothing else. He could no more conduct the worship properly, could no more attend to the various details in all their minuteness.

Often he would forget to place the food offering before the image, sometimes he would forget to wave the light, other times he would wave the lights a whole day, and forget everything else. At last it became impossible for him to serve in the temple. He left it and entered into a littlewood that was near and lived there. About this part of his life he has told me many times that he could not tell when the sun rose or set, nor how he lived. He lost all thought of himself and forgot to eat.

During this period he was lovingly watched over by a relative who put into his mouth food which he mechanically swallowed. Days and nights thus passed with the boy. When a whole day would pass, towards evening, when the peals of bells in the temples would reach the forest, the chimes, and the voices of the persons  singing, it would make the boy very sad, and he would cry: " One day is gone in vain, Mother, and Thou dost not come. One day of this short life has gone and I have not known the Truth."

In the agony of his soul, sometimes he would rub his face against the ground and weep.

This is the tremendous thirst that seizes the human heart. Later on, this very man said to me:

 " My child, suppose there is a bag of gold in one room, and a robber in the room next to it, do you think that robber can sleep? He can not. His mind will be always thinking how to get into that 

room and get possession of that gold. Do you think then that a man firmly persuaded that there is a reality behind all these sensations,

that there is a God, that there is One who never dies, One that is the infinite amount of all bliss, a bliss compared to which these pleasures of the senses are simply playthings, can rest contented without struggling to attain it?

 Can he cease his efiforts for a moment?

No. He will become mad with longing."

This divine madness seized this boy. At that time he had  no teacher; nobody to tell him anything except that everyone thought that he was out of his mind. This is the ordinary condition of things.