A SAINT'S DIARY ... 2 ... THE THREE MUSKETEERS

Today, three youngsters came to see me. They seemed to have lost faith in God and right away challenged me to prove the existence of God. I asked them as to whom I should prove the proposition. When they said that it was to them that my proof was to be furnished, I was amused and asked them if it ought not to be first proved that they themselves existed so that I could for sure know that there was after all some recipient of my statement of proof as to God's existence. Now they were in a quandary and, intelligent as they were, understood the implication of my primary demand. They, nonetheless, proceeded to argue as follows:

Youth: Why, sir, to me of course?

I: To you? But I am not sure if you exist although apparently it may seem that I do believe that you do for I am, after all, addressing you, isn't it? But to furnish my proof about the existence of God, well, rationally speaking, ought I not be made convinced that, after all, my opponent exists in the first place?

Youth: Yes, for sure it ought to be and I do exist for you can see me.

I: Now imagine I go away from this place and then I cannot see you. So, as per such reasoning, you do not seem to exist, isn't that so?

Youth: No, but the others out here who will remain will continue to see me and vouch for my existence.

I: Imagine that all your friends are forcibly removed from here or voluntarily for some reason choose to leave this place. Then, for sure, such reasoning makes you non-existent, isn't it?

Youth: But I continue to see myself.

I: Then let me do one thing. Let me call an anaesthetist and he will induce temporary unconsciousness in you. Then you will neither be able to see yourself nor feel yourself. Now, surely, you will admit that there will remain to you no proof of your existence just as there is none every night in deep sleep. Tell me now if you are still convinced that you exist from the rational standpoint or have you started doubting your very existence. You may say that you experience your existence in the waking state but are you not then non-existent in the deep sleep state or in the temporarily unconscious state of which you have no recollection whatsoever when you apparently wake up from it? Strange situation, isn't it, when you cannot prove your own existence beyond any reasonable doubt and, yet, hazard to challenge the existence of God who is existence itself. Now, my dear friend, do you follow that sages and saints have not in vain been spending priceless hours of their lives in search of the one reality behind this ever-shifting dream of phenomena which is insubstantial and a curious mixture of truth and falsity and, therefore, in summation false.

Youth: Sir, you have opened my eyes and have blessed me with a fine understanding that those who argue vainly like us without pondering deeply the questions of life find themselves terribly flawed in perception of this subtlest of realities which devotees lovingly call God. Pranam Maharaj.

I: God bless you, my children. Do not forget what Swami Vivekananda had said about Indians. He had said that however much an Indian may try to be an atheist, he will eventually see that he could not be one, for faith in God runs deep in the psyche of the nation and this is founded not on superstition but on the realisation of countless sages and saints who have trodden the dust of this holiest of lands on earth, the blessed punyabhumi Bharatvarsha. Now go and try to set yourselves to activating this faith through service to the motherland beholding everyone as God-incarnate. May Sri Ramakrishna bless you all!

The three youngsters prostrated at the shrine of Sri Ramakrishna and took their leave of Thakur, beaming with an unearthly joy that they had, perhaps, not experienced before. Jai Ramakrishna!