BIOGRAPHY OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

of various extreme spiritual disciplines. To remove from his mind the least traceof the arrogance of his high brahmin caste, he used to clean stealthily the latrineat a pariah's house. Through a stern process of discrimination he effaced allsense of distinction between gold and clay. Purity became the very breath of hisnostrils, and he could not regard a woman, even in a dream, in any other wayexcept as his own mother or the Mother of the universe. For years his eyelids didnot touch each other in sleep. And he was finally thought to be insane.Indeed, the stress of his spiritual practice soon told upon Ramakrishna's delicatebody and he returned to Kamarpukur to recover his health. His relatives and oldfriends saw a marked change in his nature; for the gay boy had beentransformed into a contemplative young man whose vision was directed tosomething on a distant horizon. His mother proposed marriage, and finding inthis the will of the Divine Mother, Ramakrishna consented. He even indicatedwhere the girl was to be found, namely, in the village of Jayrambati, only threemiles away. Here lived the little Saradamani, a girl of five, who was in manyrespects very different from the other girls of her age. The child would pray toGod to make her character as fragrant as the tuberose. Later, at Dakshineswar,she prayed to God to make her purer than the full moon, which, pure as it was,showed a few dark spots. The marriage was celebrated and Ramakrishna,participating, regarded the whole affair as fun or a new excitement.In a short while he came back to Dakshineswar and plunged again into thestormy life of religious experimentation. His mother, his newly married wife, andhis relatives were forgotten. Now, however, his spiritual disciplines took a newcourse. He wanted to follow the time-honoured paths of the Hindu religion underthe guidance of competent teachers, and they came to him one by one, nobodyknew from where. One was a woman, under whom he practised the disciplines ofTantra and of the Vaishnava faith and achieved the highest result in anincredibly short time. It was she who diagnosed his physical malady as themanifestation of deep spiritual emotions and described his apparent insanity asthe result of an agonizing love for God; he was immediately relieved. It was she,moreover, who first declared him to be an Incarnation of God, and she provedher statement before an assembly of theologians by scriptural evidence. Underanother teacher, the monk Jatadhari, Ramakrishna delved into the mysteries ofRama worship and experienced Rama's visible presence. Further, he communedwith God through the divine relationships of Father, Mother, Friend, andBeloved. By an austere sannyasin named Totapuri, he was initiated into themonastic life, and in three days he realized his complete oneness with Brahman,the undifferentiated Absolute, which is the culmination of man's spiritualendeavour. Totapuri himself had had to struggle for forty years to realize thisidentity.Ramakrishna turned next to Christianity and Islam, to practise their respective