Page:Ramakrishna - His Life and Sayings.djvu/66

rapid progress of his protg, and said, c My boy ! what I realised after forty years of hard struggle, you have arrived at in three days. I dare not call you my disciple ; henceforth I will address you as my friend.' And such was the love of this holy man for Sri Ramakr/shtfa that he stayed with him for eleven months, and in his turn learnt many things from his own disciple. There is a story told of the Sawny^sin. He always kept a fire and regarded it as very holy. One day as he was sitting by this fire and talking to SA Rmaknsha, a man came and lighted his pipe out of the same fire. The Sa^ny^sin felt enraged at this sacrilege, when a gentle scolding came from his disciple, who said, ' Is this the way that you look upon everything as Brahman ? Is not the man himself Brahman as well as the fire? What is high and what is low in the sight of a (rtfanln ? ' The Sa#mysin was brought to his senses, and said, ' Brother, you are right. From this day forth you shall never find me angry again,' and he kept his word. He could never understand, however, Rdmakr/sha's love for his Mother (the goddess Kdlt). He would talk of it as mere superstition, and ridicule it, when Ramaknsh^a made him understand that in the Absolute there is no thou, nor i; nor God, nay, that it is beyond all speech or thought. As long, however, as there is the least grain of relativity left, the Absolute is within thought and speech and within the limits of the mind, which mind is sub- servient to the universal mind and consciousness ; and this omniscient, universal consciousness was to him his mother and God.