in high respect as a Divine Incarnation, and kept in his room a photograph of the
Master. People from far and near visited the Baba, and when not engaged in meditation
he would talk to them from behind a wall. For several days before his death he
remained indoors. Then, one day, people noticed smoke issuing from his underground
cell with the smell of burning flesh. It was discovered that the saint, having come to
realize the approaching end of his earthly life, had offered his body as the last oblation
to the Lord, in an act of supreme sacrifice.
Narendra, at the time of his meeting Pavhari Baba, was suffering from the sever pain of
lumbago, and this had made it almost impossible for him either to move about or to sit
in meditation. Further, he was mentally distressed, for he had heard of the illness of
Abhedananda, another of his brother disciples, who was living at Hrishikesh. 'You
know not, sir,' he wrote to a friend, 'that I am a very soft-natured man in spite of the
stern Vedantic views I hold. And this proves to be my undoing. For however I may try
to think only of my own good, I begin, in spite of myself, to think of other people's
interests.' Narendra wished to forget the world and his own body through the practice
of Yoga, and went for instruction to Pavhari Baba, intending to make the saint his
guru. But the Baba, with characteristic humility, put him off from day to day.
One night when Naren was lying in bed thinking of Pavhari Baba, Sri Ramakrishna
appeared to him and stood silently near the door, looking intently into his eyes. The
vision was repeated for twenty-one days. Narendra understood. He reproached himself
bitterly for his lack of complete faith in Sri Ramakrishna. Now, at last, he was
convinced, he wrote to a friend: 'Ramakrishna has no peer. Nowhere else in the world
exists such unprecedented perfection, such wonderful kindness to all, such intense
sympathy for men in bondage.' Tearfully he recalled how Sri Ramakrishna had never
left unfulfilled a single prayer of his, how he had forgiven his offences by the million
and removed his afflictions.
But as long as Naren lived he cherished sincere affection and reverence for Pavhari
Baba, and he remembered particularly two of his instructions. One of these was: 'Live
in the house of your teacher like a cow,' which emphasizes the spirit of service and
humility in the relationship between the teacher and the disciple. The second
instruction of the Baba was: 'Regard spiritual discipline in the same way as you regard
the goal,'which means that an aspirant should not differentiate between cause and
effect.
Narendranath again breathed peace and plunged into meditation. After a few days he
went to Varanasi, where he learnt of the serious illness of Balaram Bose, one of the
foremost lay disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. At Ghazipur he had heard that Surendranath
Mitra, another lay disciple of the Master, was dying. He was overwhelmed with grief,
and to Pramadadas, who expressed his surprise at the sight of a sannyasin indulging in
a human emotion, he said: 'Please do not talk that way. We are not dry monks. Do you
think that because a man has renounced the world he is devoid of all feeling?'
He came to Calcutta to be at the bedside of Balaram, who passed away on May 13.
Surendra Mitra died on May 25. But Naren steadied his nerves, and in addition to the