its beak, it breaks away from you; but the female pigeon keeps still. I feel great
strength when Narendra is with me in a gathering.'
Sometime about the middle of 1885 Sri Ramakrishna showed the first symptoms of a
throat ailment that later was diagnosed as cancer. Against the advice of the physicians,
he continued to give instruction to spiritual seekers, and to fall into frequent trances.
Both of these practices aggravated the illness. For the convenience of the physicians
and the devotees, he was at first removed to a house in the northern section of Calcutta
and then to a garden house at Cossipore, a suburb of the city. Narendra and the other
young disciples took charge of nursing him. Disregarding the wishes of their
guardians, the boys gave up their studies or neglected their duties at home, at least
temporarily, in order to devote themselves heart and soul to the service of the Master.
His wife, known among the devotees as the Holy Mother, looked after the cooking; the
older devotees met the expenses. All regarded this service to the guru as a blessing and
privilege.
Narendra time and again showed his keen insight and mature judgement during Sri
Ramakrishna's illness. Many of the devotees, who looked upon the Master as God's
Incarnation and therefore refused to see in him any human frailty, began to give a
supernatural interpretation of his illness. They believed that it had been brought about
by the will of the Divine Mother or the Master himself to fulfil an inscrutable purpose,
and that it would be cured without any human effort after the purpose was fulfilled.
Narendra said, however, that since Sri Ramakrishna was a combination of God and
man the physical element in him was subject to such laws of nature as birth, growth,
decay, and destruction. He refused to give the Master's disease, a natural phenomenon,
any supernatural explanation. Nonetheless, he was willing to shed his last drop of
blood in the service of Sri Ramakrishna.
Emotion plays an important part in the development of the spiritual life. While intellect
removes the obstacles, it is emotion that gives the urge to the seeker to move forward.
But mere emotionalism without the disciplines of discrimination and renunciation
often leads him astray. He often uses it as a short cut to trance or ecstasy. Sri
Ramakrishna, no doubt, danced and wept while singing God's name and experienced
frequent trances; but behind his emotion there was the long practice of austerities and
renunciation. His devotees had not witnessed the practice of his spiritual disciplines.
Some of them, especially the elderly householders, began to display ecstasies
accompanied by tears and physical contortions, which in many cases, as later appeared,
were the result of careful rehearsal at home or mere imitation of Sri Ramakrishna's
genuine trances. Some of the devotees, who looked upon the Master as a Divine
Incarnation, thought that he had assumed their responsibilities, and therefore they
relaxed their own efforts. Others began to speculate about the part each of them was
destined to play in the new dispensation of Sri Ramakrishna. In short, those who
showed the highest emotionalism posed as the most spiritually advanced.
Narendra's alert mind soon saw this dangerous trend in their lives. He began to make
fun of the elders and warned his young brother disciples about the harmful effect of
indulging in such outbursts. Real spirituality, he told them over and over again, was the