Story of a Dream: Rani Rashmoni and the Miracle of Sri Ramakrishna
Sanjeev Kumar Nath
The life of a Master like Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramana Maharshi is always a wonder.
Devotees use terms like Thakur and Bhagavan to address them because they find that it is impossible to fully understand them, that they are not like ordinary human beings and are invested with extraordinary qualities. And just as God cannot be said to have a beginning, the story of such a one as Sri Ramakrishna or Sri Ramana Maharshi also does not have a beginning.
Besides, just as God is One, in the same manner there aren’t many masters, but just one Master or Guru or God or Atman or Self…although the manifestations can be many. So the stories of such masters are both one and many, different and the same, at the same time.
Although no one can say when or where such stories actually begin, or if indeed they have beginnings, the storyteller has to follow convention. So we will say that the story being told here begins with a dream. In a way, it is the story of dream, or of the effects of a dream.
Rani Rashmoni was a pious, generous, wealthy lady of 19th century Kolkata, the seat of British imperial power in India. Her immense wealth, influence, power, piety, generosity had earned her the sobriquet “Rani” meaning “Queen”. Married to Babu Rajchandra Das of Jan Bazar, Kolkata even before she had become a teen, she lost her husband some years after she came to live with him.
However, instead of succumbing to despondency after the loss of her husband, this wise and intelligent lady quickly learnt to oversee her late husband’s zamindari, and manage the large family estate. While the family business and estate prospered under her care, she led a simple, austere life befitting a Hindu widow of the times.
Rani Rashmoni was as generous as she was rich. She was revered for her countless deeds of charity, and was always a champion of the poor, at times even choosing to be at loggerheads with the British rulers, defending the rights of poor fishermen and farmers. She was responsible for the construction of a road from the Subarnarekha river to Puri, besides several ghats by the Ganga, all for the use of the common people.
She donated freely to institutions like the Imperial Library (now the National Library, Kolkata), and Hindu College (subsequently known as Presidency College, and now, Presidency University, Kolkata) She fought legal battles with the British, and even used force when necessary, to ensure that the poor were not unduly taxed or harassed by the colonial government.
During one of her legal battles with the British, she stopped the passage of British ships over the Ganga with the help of strong iron chains fastened across the river.
Once, this industrious, but also pious lady decided to go on a pilgrimage to Kashi, one of the holiest of all Hindu places of pilgrimage. Such a lady’s decision to go on a pilgrimage must have meant that the banks of the Ganga from where she was going to set sail was agog with activity: people loading supplies in the ships, checking if everything was in order, lots of comings and goings.
Many of her friends, relatives, servants, and acquaintances were ready to accompany her on the voyage. And then one night, when all was ready and she felt she could begin the journey, she had an extraordinary dream that changed everything. In that dream, the Divine Mother Kali told her not to go on the pilgrimage, but to build a temple to Kali instead, by the Ganga at Kolkata.
This is the beginning of this story without a beginning. The Divine Mother was not merely interfering with Rani Rashmoni’s plans of going on a pilgrimage, but was planting the seed of a great spiritual resurgence that would once again boldly assert the timeless truths that the great Indian sages of yore had proclaimed.
The pious lady took the dream to be the command of the Goddess Herself, and immediately dropped the plan of going on the pilgrimage. Instead, she now employed people to find land suitable for a great Kali temple, and indeed, the perfect land for such a temple was found at Dakshineswar by the Ganga: a large plot of land which was of the shape of the back of a turtle.
A wonderful temple depicting Bengali temple architecture was built there, and a beautiful image of Kali as Bhavatarini—the Divine Mother who grants safe passage across the ocean of samsara—was installed. However, the society of the times was such that in spite of the grandeur of the temple, the beauty of Bhavatarini, and the obvious prospect of earning a very good income—no priest came forward to work in Rani Rashmoni’s temple because she was from a so-called lower caste in her society.
But who can understand the play of the Divine Mother, the ever playful One? Even the narrow-minded, superstitious society that gave such importance to things like caste hierarchy, may have been only an instrument in the hand of the Divine Mother, Who it seems, had already chosen Her priest.
If some established Brahmin priest of Kolkata had come forward and taken the job of worshipping Mother Bhavatarini, the story would have taken a very different turn. As it happened, however, no one accepted the rich lady’s offer, and so she sent written requests to scholars and priests for their suggestions. One of these letters reached a Brahmin scholar and priest named Ramkumar.
Ramkumar had come with his younger brother Gadadhar from the village of Kamarpukur and had been staying in Kolkata for some time, earning a livelihood for the family by teaching Sanskrit and also working as a priest. They had lost their father, and as the eldest son in the family, it was Ramkumar’s duty to earn and look after his mother and younger siblings.
In fact, Ramkumar would have very much liked Gadadhar also to help him in his work, but Gadadhar did not show any inclination to do anything for the sake of earning money.
Evidently, Ramkumar was a rather indulgent elder brother, who after having failed to persuade Gadadhar to do something towards earning an income, did not harass him on this issue. May be he thought that in time, with age, Gadadhar would learn.
When Ramkumar received Rani Rashmoni’s letter with the request for a suitable solution to her predicament, he responded by suggesting that if Rani Rashmoni bequeathed her temple to a Brahmin, possibly her family priest, then other Brahmins should not have a problem in working in her temple because then it would be a Brahmin’s temple, not hers.
Rani Rashmoni found this solution very suitable indeed, and promptly followed the instructions, and then requested Ramkumar himself to be the priest. Ramkumar accepted the job, but his younger brother Gadadhar was not too happy with his decision.
Apparently, the young Gadadhar was still worried by thoughts about caste. He went to the temple complex with his brother, but initially he even refused to eat the food there. However, when it was pointed out to him that food cooked in Ganga water could only be holy and pure, Gadadhar had no objections to taking that food.
At first, Gadadhar was not engaged in any work at the temple, but was simply staying with his brother. Gadadhar’s complete unworldiness and impeccable purity automatically attracted people, and sometimes even worldly and shrewd men would be charmed by the young man’s aloof, indrawn nature.
Gadadhar also had other talents that always attracted people. He was a good mimic who used to enact religious skits with his friends in the village, and was able to fashion beautiful images of gods and goddesses with mud.
Rani Rashmoni’s son-in-law Mathur Babu who was overseeing much of the family zamindari now, also noticed this out-of-the-ordinary young man, and decided to ask him to take up some work in the temple. Gadadhar was reluctant. Taking up work in the temple would mean being responsible for such things as jewellery and other valuables associated with the idols and the rituals.
He did not wish to be entangled with such responsibilities. However, Hriday, a relative who had come from the village looking for work, promptly agreed to be in charge of the jewellery of the idols of Radha Krishna—which were also installed in the temple—if Gadadhar agreed to do the worship. Thus, despite some initial hesitation, Gadadhar was drawn into the service of the temple.
Although Ramkumar was Mother Bhavatarini’s first priest, he was not destined to perform those duties for long, and he died in 1856. After his demise, Gadadhar was persuaded to be the priest of Mother Bhavatarini, and he performed his task with such intense absorption that people were struck by his devotion to the Divine Mother.
Gradually, Gadadhar was drawn more and more into deep and intense love for the Mother, and his love-drunk state looked like madness to some onlookers. People noticed that he would talk to the Divine Mother with feverish intensity of love, and would often disregard conventions in worshipping her.
Some of them thought that Gadadhar was failing to follow the rules regarding the worship of the Mother because of lunacy, and reported the matter to Mathur Babu. Mathur Babu who had come to address Gadadhar as “Baba” meaning “Father” in Bengali—although he was older than Gadadhar—had unshakable faith in the young priest, and the complaints did not work.
Gadadhar remained as priest, eventually gaining an extraordinary vision of the Divine Mother as all-pervading light and consciousness, and later being in perpetual communion with the Mother.
One remarkable fact concerning this extraordinary devotee was that all that he required for his intense sādhana as a spiritual aspirant came to him without his seeking them. Without his going in search of gurus, great adepts in different paths of sādhana came and taught him what he needed to learn. Thus, Bhairavi Brahmani, an expert in Tantra, came and taught him the intricacies of Tantra.
She was amazed by her pupil’s incredible powers of easily and completely internalizing difficult concepts and practices at great speed. What would normally take many lifetimes to learn was fully digested in a matter of days. Bhairavi Brahmani would generally not stop at one place for too long, but for the sake of her brilliant student, she stayed on at Dakshineswar for months.
Later, when she began to show something of proprietary rights over her pupil, there was some resentment among people close to Sri Ramakrishna, and Bhairavi Brahmani resumed her long-delayed journey.
Whoever taught anything to Sri Ramakrishna eventually learnt something from Him. Totapuri, a great sage in the Advaitic tradition, was astonished that when he uttered the holy mantra into Sri Ramakrishna’s ears and asked Him to meditate, the young man lost external consciousness in the twinkling of an eye, and remained in the profound state of nirvikalpa samādhi for an extraordinarily long time.
Later, one evening he saw Sri Ramakrishna singing the praises of the Divinve Mother and clapping to the rhythm of the song. Confirmed of the superiority of advaita sādhana over dualistic worship, Totapuri made fun of Thakur, his brilliant student, “What are you doing? Making rotis?” referring to the action of clapping which is similar to one method of making rotis in North India.
Sri Ramakrishna retorted, “Are you blind? Can’t you see I’m taking the name of God?”
But Totapuri got the real answer a few days later. He had already overstayed at Dakshineswar. Normally he would not stay in any place for so long, but the attraction for Sri Ramakrishna had made him delay his departure. Now, as he contemplated leaving Dakshineswar, his plans of leaving had to be again temporarily postponed because he fell sick.
He had diarrhoea and very severe stomach ache. Then the stomach ache intensified so much that he thought of shedding off his mortal coil. Deciding to cast off his body in the sacred Ganga, one night he entered the river and waded forward. But what is this?
As he moved further and further into the centre of the river, he could not even drown himself because the water was too shallow. “How can this be?” he thought, “I’ve come right into the middle of the great river, and the water is just knee-deep?” Then slowly he came to understand that all that was the play of Maya, of the Divine Mother, without whose permission, he could not do anything at all.
Suddenly, he seemed to have realized the value to praying to the Divine Mother. With a sense of gratitude towards the Divine Mother and Her priest, Totapuri withdrew from the water, a wiser man.
In recognition of his extraordinary devotion to the Divine Mother, his complete lack of worldliness, and the inexplicable aura of divinity that he seemed to exude, Gadadhar came to be known as Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa, a paramhamsa being one who is untouched by the world even as he lives in the world. A hamsa is a swan, and our myths attribute to the swan the capacity of separating milk from water, calling it a neera-ksheera viveki.
Thus, a paramhamsa is one who can never be deluded by the illusory nature of the world, who never forgets that the world is unreal and Brhaman alone is real. Sri Ramakrishna was also considered a jivanmukta, one who is liberated even while living here on earth.
When the sun rises, no one is in doubt about the arrival of the day. Similarly, Sri Ramakrishna was immediately recognized by many as a paramhamsa, a jivanmukta, and even an avatar, an incarnation of the Supreme Lord. Devotees called him Thakur, which simply means God.
The temple at Dakshnineswar with Mother Bhavatarini as the principal deity, the shrine of Radha Krishna, and twelve Shiva lingams soon became a place of pilgrimage for all, not only because of the beautiful buildings, the gardens and the deities, but also because of the fame of the priest of Kali there, continually absorbed in communion with God.
If Rani Rashmoni’s dream had resulted in the construction of the great temple gardens at Dakshineswar and the daily worship of Mother Kali as Bhavatarini, the temple gardens also became the sport of the Divine Mother with her beloved devotee, Sri Ramakrishna. Dakshineshwar soon became the centre of attraction for seekers of truth who thronged there to witness the miracle that was Thakur Sri Ramakrishna.
At this time Kolkata was full of western-educated people who were sceptical of old Hindu systems of belief and worship. The Brahmo Samaj, which sought to infuse new energy into the spiritual life of the nation, was itself influenced by western thought, even Christianity. With his characteristic simplicity, Thakur would later gently question some of the presuppositions of the Brahmos.
For instance, in their prayers, they would call upon God, ascribing mighty deeds to Him and using extraordinary adjectives to describe Him, and Sri Ramakrishna would playfully tell Keshab Chandra Sen—one of the important leaders of the Brahmo Samaj and a highly educated and gifted speaker—why they could not simply address God as Father or Mother.
“Do you use such fantastic adjectives to describe your own father or mother? God is our very own, and we don’t need to flatter Him with extraordinary adjectives”, Sri Ramakrishna would say.
Indeed, it was a wonder that highly educated, learned men like Keshab Chandra Sen and Protap Chunder Mozoomdar felt irresistibly drawn towards Sri Ramakrishna, an uneducated Brahmin speaking the language of the peasants of Kamarpukur. But of course, there was something absolutely out-of-the-world about Sri Ramakrishna, and most people sensed that in their first meetings.
Mahendranath Gupta, who had kept records of Sri Ramakrishna’s conversations on various topics with devotees and others, and would later publish these as Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita (translated into English as The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna) had first come to the temple garden of Rani Rashmoni simply because one of his friends wanted him to accompany him there on a holiday.
His account of his first few visits to the Master shows how fascinated he was right from the first meeting. Sri Ramakrishna, who was always very kind to his devotees, did not seem to try in the least to ensure that Mahendranath Gupta became a frequent visitor. In fact, in one of his first visits Mahendranath was admonished by the Master.
Sri Ramakrishna had asked him how his wife was and he happened to answer that she was a good woman, but ignorant. Pat came Sri Ramakrishna’s retort: “Ah! She is ignorant. So you are a jnani, are you?”
Mahendranath, obviously influenced by western thought as most educated people of the times were, also attempted to argue that the people who were idol-worshippers needed to be told that the stone images were not gods. Sri Ramakrishna was not amused. He said that people like him, the people of Kolkata, wanted to teach the truth to the whole world, without knowing it themselves.
We can imagine that the same words spoken by an ordinary person would not have had any noticeable effect on Mahendranath, but now an ordinary person was not speaking to him. When Thakur spoke, Mahendranath Gupta could not help feeling that Truth itself was speaking to him. That was the last time he ever argued with Thakur.
Fascinated by the looks and talks of that God-mad priest of Mother Bhavatarini, feeling indescribable divine joy just to be near him, Mahendranath Gupta became a regular visitor at the Kali temple of Dakshineswar. In fact, Sri Ramakrishna made fun of him the third or fourth time Mahendranath Gupta came to see him. Thakur told him that a certain man fed an opium tablet to a peacock one day.
Next day, the peacock presented himself before the man at the exact moment, expecting his opium pill. Thakur knew he had cast his spell on the pure-souled Mahendranath, and felt free even to joke about that. Later, Mahendranath Gupta would keep notes of what he heard from Thakur. He never intended those notes for publication, but kept them merely as a spiritual exercise for himself.
After Thakur had shed his mortal coil, many people asked Mahendranath Gupta to publish his notes in book form, but he was reluctant to go for publication.
However, Ma Sharada, Sri Ramakrishna’s widow whom Thakur’s followers and disciples now looked up to for guidance, prevailed upon Mahendranath to publish his notes, and thus we have Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita by M (the humble name the author chose for himself) in Bengali, the wonderful book containing Ramakrishna’s conversations with various people. Its English translation, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna is also exceptionally lucid, and is a pleasure to read.
Incidentally, in telling this story, people like Mahendranath Gupta have been mentioned. Actually, there were many, many ripe souls that were attracted by Sri Ramakrishna like iron filings being attracted by a magnet. The temple garden of Rani Rashmoni at Dakshineswar became a centre of attraction for all kinds of people: simple devotees and intellectual stalwarts.
All were amazed by what they saw and heard. All were enthralled by Thakur’s presence, his talk, his frequent attainment of Samadhi. Thakur spoke with a slight stammer, and his speech was the rather unsophisticated speech of village folk, but he never failed to fascinate his listeners.
Sri Ramakrishna often spoke in parables. Sometimes these parables were complete stories, sometimes just a little illustration, but almost always, they were drawn from the experience of simple village life. How can one remain connected with God even in the midst of all the chaos of daily activities?
Sri Ramakrishna would say: In Kamarpukur (his native village), the woman who cooks and sells puffed rice may be seen at her work, cooking, and at the same time pacifying her baby on her lap and also negotiating with a customer that may have come to buy puffed rice. So, you can put your mind to God, and at the same time, carry on your ordinary activities.
A devotee might ask why he did not see God in spite of his prayers. Thakur would say that when a disciple asked a guru this question, the guru took the disciple to the river, and both got into the water.
In the middle of the river, the guru thrust the disciple’s head into the water so that the disciple struggled with all his might to come out of the water. Releasing him, and letting him take a big gasp of breath, the guru said, “If you want to see God the way you wanted to come out of the water a moment ago, you will certainly see God.”
Or, to explain what renunciation is, He would say: The wife of a man came and told him that she wanted to go to her mother’s home and see her brother once because he was going to renounce the world soon and become a sannyasi. “How do you know that your brother will become a sannyasi?” the man asked.
“Oh, he has himself declared that he was going to become a sannyasi. In fact, he has already left a few of his several wives; and soon he will leave the remaining ones too, and leave home.”
“Well, your brother will never be able to renounce the world. That is not the way to renounce the world,” the husband said. “Really?” the wife, angry to hear criticism of her brother said, “Then how does one renounce the world?” “Like this,” said the man, and taking off his clothes and wearing only a loincloth, set off as a sannyasi that very moment.
Sometimes what Thakur said might look contrary to conventional wisdom, but when one listened carefully, one would notice that Thakur indeed gave excellent advice. For instance, tāmas is normally considered bad, and scriptural injunctions are generally there to make us cultivate satva, not tāmas, but Thakur would say that to live in the world, a little tāmas may sometimes be required.
He would explain with a story: In a certain village, there lived a venomous snake whom everyone feared for the snake was known to be of a fiery temperament. Even unprovoked, it may attack. So most people never went anywhere near the place where the snake lived. Now, it so happened that once a sadhu on his way to a pilgrimage was walking through this village.
When he was about to go through the place most feared by the villagers, people told him about the snake and requested him not to go on that track, but to change his route. The sadhu said the snake would not be able to harm him, and went right through its territory, and sure enough, the moment the snake saw the sadhu, it came rushing towards him, ready to bite. But the sadhu threw a little consecrated water from his kamandalu and immediately, the snake forsook its anger.
The sadhu then told the snake to forsake all tāmas, and do sadhana with the mantra that he would give him. The snake agreed, and the sadhu gave him mantra dikshā. He asked the snake to constantly do japa with the mantra, eat vegetarian food, and not bite anyone. Parting from the snake, the sadhu told him that on his return from the pilgrimage, he would come and see how the snake was progressing in sadhanā. Days passed.
Meanwhile, the cowherd boys who were wont to wander here and there noticed that the terrible venomous snake nowadays did not seem his former self. It just basked in the sun, sometimes, noticing the boys, but not making any move at all. Intrigued, the boys threw sticks and pebbles at the snake from a distance, and still the snake did nothing. Emboldened by the snake’s docility, they came right near now, and started pelting stones and sticks at it.
The snake was very badly bruised all over, but did not show any anger. Finally, one of the boys caught it by its tail, violently whirled it round and round it, and dashed it hard on the ground. The snake remained completely inert, and the boys took it to be dead. After a long time, the snake regained consciousness, and struggled somehow towards its hole, and crept inside.
After a few months, the sādhu came to the village again, returning from his pilgrimage, and asked the villagers about his disciple, the snake. The villagers told him that they were sorry, but the snake must have died because the cowherd boys had hit it badly with stones and sticks. The sādhu, however, said that the power of the mantra that he had imparted to the snake would not let the snake die before attaining realisation.
He then went near the snake’s hole and called out, asking it to come and see him. With great difficulty, the battered and bruised snake slowly emerged from the hole and did obeisance to his master.
The sādhu asked, “Tell me, my son, who did this to you? You are very badly injured all over.”
“I don’t know, master,” the snake said, “I have been diligently doing the japa you taught me, and have been living on dried leaves and roots, not eating non-vegetarian food, not harming anyone. But that is all. I do not remember anyone harming either.”
The snake had developed satva to such an extent that it did not have even a trace of tāmas, so it did not merely forgive the boys who had attacked it, but had even forgotten that it had been attacked by anyone at all.
The guru said again, “Think properly. Try to remember. Did some people throw stones and sticks at you?” With great effort, slowly the snake remembered and said, “Yes, master, now I seem to remember a little. I think the cowherd boys hit me with stones and sticks. They are just ignorant boys. What to do?”
“You fool!” the sādhu retorted, “I told you not to bite anyone. But did I tell you that you cannot even hiss at anyone? Those boys would have run away had you merely hissed at them.”
Thakur taught that we surrender completely to God, not retaining anything of our individual ego, and in teaching this, he would sometimes tell his devotees how worldly people failed to give themselves up to God.
He said that once a certain woman heard the news of the death of a relative, and then she took off her earrings, her necklace, and such other articles of jewellery, and after carefully putting these valuable things aside, the good woman rolled on the ground, crying in grief for the bereavement.
Thakur said that worldly people’s devotion for God was like this woman’s grief : lukewarm, not intense. They always make endless little calculations, and never completely surrender to the Lord. (In Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi’s words, they behave like a person who, on boarding a train, still keeps his load of things on his head. On boarding the train, keep your load on the train, not on your head; on surrendering to God, let go of all your worries and anxieties, don’t hold on to them.)
Thakur enthralled his audience with his endless parables and illustrations drawn from rural Bengali life. Besides, his presence itself was divine. Anyone that came into the ambit of his presence could not but feel irresistibly drawn towards him. But of all the people who gathered around Thakur, some were marked special by the Divine Mother Herself.
Her play continued in gathering a select group of pure-souled young men around Sri Ramakrishna, and the foremost among them, of course, was Narendranath Dutta, whom Thakur fondly called Naren, and who would later become Swami Vivekananda.
The first time Thakur saw Naren was in a gathering at Kolkata, and He begged the young boy to come to Dakshineswar. In the beginning, the openly partial, exclusive treatment that Thakur gave Naren did not in the least please the young man who was of a fiercely independent and outspoken temperament.
He in fact wondered if it was indeed true that this priest of Mother Kali was mad, as he had heard rumoured by some people. He could not understand why Thakur seemed to dote on him like that. Once again, it was the Divine Mother bringing Thakur’s chosen disciples to Him.
Eventually, Swami Vivekananda would head the monastic order founded by Thakur, and would be a primal force in the resurgence of India’s spiritual glory and power. That of course, is another long story, a story that continues today in the activities of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission.
In a way, all this had its seed in that dream that the pious lady Rani Rashmoni had when she was about to embark on her pilgrimage.
(Sanjeev Kumar Nath, English Department, Gauhati University, sanjeevnath21@gmail.com)
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