education whose sole purpose was to earn mere bread and butter. He felt a deep
longing for the realization of God.
The floodgate of Ramakrishna's emotion burst all bounds when he took up the duties of
a priest in the Kali temple of Dakshineswar, where the Deity was worshipped as the
Divine Mother. Ignorant of the scriptures and of the intricacies of ritual, Ramakrishna
poured his whole soul into prayer, which often took the form of devotional songs.
Food, sleep, and other physical needs were completely forgotten in an all-consuming
passion for the vision of God. His nights were spent in contemplation in the
neighbouring woods. Doubt sometimes alternated with hope; but an inner certainty and
the testimony of the illumined saints sustained him in his darkest hours of despair.
Formal worship or the mere sight of the image did not satisfy his inquiring mind; for
he felt that a figure of stone could not be the bestower of peace and immortality.
Behind the image there must be the real Spirit, which he was determined to behold.
This was not an easy task. For a long time the Spirit played with him a teasing game of
hide-and-seek, but at last it yielded to the demand of love on the part of the young
devotee. When he felt the direct presence of the Divine Mother, Ramakrishna dropped
unconscious to the floor, experiencing within himself a constant flow of bliss.
This foretaste of what was to follow made him God-intoxicated, and whetted his
appetite for further experience. He wished to see God uninterruptedly, with eyes open
as well as closed. He therefore abandoned himself recklessly to the practice of various
extreme spiritual disciplines. To remove from his mind the least trace of the arrogance
of his high brahmin caste, he used to clean stealthily the latrine at a pariah's house.
Through a stern process of discrimination he effaced all sense of distinction between
gold and clay. Purity became the very breath of his nostrils, and he could not regard a
woman, even in a dream, in any other way except as his own mother or the Mother of
the universe. For years his eyelids did not 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 delicate body
and he returned to Kamarpukur to recover his health. His relatives and old friends saw
a marked change in his nature; for the gay boy had been transformed into a
contemplative young man whose vision was directed to something on a distant horizon.
His mother proposed marriage, and finding in this the will of the Divine Mother,
Ramakrishna consented. He even indicated where the girl was to be found, namely, in
the village of Jayrambati, only three miles away. Here lived the little Saradamani, a girl
of five, who was in many respects very different from the other girls of her age. The
child would pray to God 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 the stormy life
of religious experimentation. His mother, his newly married wife, and his relatives
were forgotten. Now, however, his spiritual disciplines took a new course. He wanted
to follow the time-honoured paths of the Hindu religion under the guidance of