BUT FOR HIM

BUT FOR HIM

One has to a good carrier of the message of the Master, equipped psychologically to be the bearer of His words of wisdom pregnant with the highest spiritual import. Not any commoner can be the empty chalice into which such divine nectar may be poured in. One has to be the anointed one to receive the message, fluid free as it is delivered fresh, and pour it out to slake the thirst of the world thereafter. Such a one is, indeed, rare but always accompanying the Lord when He does visit this world to redress the lost balance of forces. Unto such a one remains the eternal gratitude of an ever-fulfilled humanity.

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo : M, the chronicler of 'The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna'. He was a householder disciple of the Master. 'M' is his pseudonym, designed to hide his identity so as to be the effective chronicler of the episodes of the Master's life where he is present in every event and, yet, unobtrusively in terms of the narrative. His real name was Mahendranath Gupta. He was an erudite scholar, a college professor, the Headmaster of many a school including that of Vidyasagar's school, a founder of his own school later and a great supporter in every sense, moral and financial of the monastic disciples of the Master. When Swami Vivekananda's father expired suddenly in 1884, the bereaved family fell into debt and were driven to destitution. It was Mahendranath who then secretly kept sending monthly monetary help to the family through someone while keeping his identity concealed in this case as well, a fact attested to by Swamiji with unbounded gratitude later in his life at Belur Math, although, even then Swamiji remained unaware as to who that generous man was.

Mahendranath had not been formally initiated with the sacred mantra by Sri Ramakrishna who in a dream unto Holy Mother commissioned her to duly initiate him spiritually which she did. Thus, M became the disciple of both Sri Ramakrishna, in the overall spiritual sense, and the Holy Mother, in the formal sense. He remained loyal to both to the end of his life, a period sanctified by his writing down his memoirs of the Master in five volumes, the last of whose correction of the proof he completed on a hallowed morn in 1932 before falling off to sleep on the lap of the Master and the Mother.

M was in his adolescent habit of writing the daily diary. Somehow he had taken to this habit which many do but do not persist for a lifetime. But M did and this stood him in good stead when it came to his writing down cryptic notes of the daily conversations which Sri Ramakrishna had with his devotees and associates, conversations to which M was privy to on account of his visiting the Master at Dakshineshwar and elsewhere in Kolkata where the Master paid visits. He visited the Master on Sundays and holidays and closely observed everything that went about him which he then duly recorded in his diary to serve him as material for future meditation. So acute was his observation and so phenomenal his memory that the final version of 'Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamarita' ('The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna') is almost a videographic representation of the occurrences centring the Master. We are all indebted to M for thus holding in the camera of his mind the divine play of the Avatar of the Age and presenting to us it finished reproduction.