October 2011 - Advaita Ashrama

28
putrid wounds lying uncared for in the lanes of
Varanasi. In later years, when his legs had become
stiff due to standing for long hours every
day for more than sixty years, he would go to
the dressing room on a specially designed wheelchair
to do the dressings. Th e dressing room had
turned him into a saint.4
Ban Bihari Baba’s is the path to sainthood, and
in this case Mother’s laughter sounds diff erent.
The Delusion of ‘I and Mine’
Sri Ramakrishna says: ‘“I” and “mine”—these
constitute ignorance. “My house”, “my wealth”,
“my learning”, “my possessions”—the attitude
that prompts one to say such things comes of
ignorance.’5 When we look at ourselves, we fi nd
that we have constructed many walls around us.
Th ese walls made of gender, language, colour,
caste, state, country, religion, and so forth separate
our ‘I’ from others. All these walls constrict
and bind down our Self. We hold ourselves free,
though we are driven like slaves by our senses,
our property, our family, our religion, our country,
our ‘mine’.
Each person has a unique station in the spiritual
journey towards freedom; each is a unique
ray returning to the infi nite centre. And as we
proceed to the centre the soul’s clinging to ‘I and
mine’ is slowly transformed; fi rst the gross aspect
is renounced, then the subtle, and fi nally
the causal. It can be also said that the journey is
from instinct to reason, and then to inspiration;
or from the animal to the human, and then to the
Divine. As we proceed, we discover that ‘all our
misery comes through ignorance, and this ignorance
is the idea of manifoldness, this separation
between man and man, between nation and nation,
between earth and moon, between moon
and sun.’ 6 We come out of the individual and
ascend towards the universal, for ‘in the heart of
things there is Unity still. … Unity between man
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Prabuddha Bharata
and man, between races and races, high and low,
rich and poor, gods and men, and men and animals.
… And he who has attained to this conception
of Oneness has no more delusion’ (ibid.).
Today science is converging to this idea of oneness,
as it studies and searches nature in all its variety
and diversity, whether internal or external.
Reverberating Laughter
In the present society, when the most devastating
confl agration of ‘I and mine’ is contracting the
human heart, paradoxically, the greatest opportunity
for the expansion of the spirit is possible.
For this reason we hear today Mother’s laughter
all around much more than ever before. Th e following
incident took place on December 1908,
while the Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi was at
Jayrambati:
Th e Mother sat on the porch near the main entrance
of her house, while the monks sat on the
verandah of the parlour. In front moved the
loads of paddy towards the farm-yard of uncles
Varada and Kali. Th e fencing put by the latter
outside his threshing fl oor had encroached a little
on the road, so that the paddy bags coming
to uncle Varada’s barn could not pass through
easily. Th is gave rise to an altercation between
the two brothers, and a scuffl e was about to ensure
when the Mother, no longer able to sit indiff
erently, rushed to the place and, to pacify
them, sometimes said to the one ‘It is your fault’,
and sometimes dragged the other by the hand.
… Her intervention stopped them from coming
to blows. Nevertheless, she could not stop them
from exchanging hot words. She, however, kept
standing between them. Just then the monks
came to her rescue, and the brothers walked
away cursing each other. Th e Mother was excited,
no doubt; and in a fl urry she returned
and sat down on the verandah of her house.
And then in the twinkling of an eye her anger
and agitation were nowhere; on the contrary,
the eternal peace behind all clashes of worldly
PB October 2011