MASTER MAHASHAY

MASTER MAHASHAY 

The realised soul chronicles 'The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna'. Mahendranath Gupta (M), the sage chosen for the purpose by the Avatar of the Age, who completed his proof-correction of the fifth and final volume of the Gospel before retiring once and for all on the lap of his Gurudev and Mother.

A regular keeper of diaries since the age of thirteen, Mahendranath had perfected the art of recollecting the day's events long before he in adulthood met his Master at Dakshineshwar. His phenomenal photographic memory with a knack for detail made him the ideal instrument for recording the day's proceedings at his Master's place or wherever he visited devotees in Kolkata or in the suburbs.

At the age of five Mahendranath had lost his way on a visit to the Dakshineshwar Temple complex with his family when a luminous young man had comforted him and found him his parents. Later Mahendranath reckoned that it must have been Sri Ramakrishna, then 23 years himself and in the storm of his sadhana, who had rescued him.

A brilliant student, Mahendranath stood third in the Matriculation Examination, then graduated and post-graduated from Calcutta University with first class marks and securing second rank. Thereafter, he took up the professorial job and entered family life which proved unhappy. So unhappy that the young erudite professor contemplated suicide. On a fateful night in February, 1882, Mahendranath set off on his suicide mission with his young wife, Nikunja Devi, who he thought he would keep in the care and custody of her cousin Ishan Mukhopadhyay before plunging himself in the sacred waters of the Ganga and ending his life's misery.

But fate decreed otherwise. A relative, Siddheshwar (Sidhu), took him along to the Dakshineshwar Garden nearby where stood the stately Kali Temple of Rashmoni and where lived a Paramahamsa who altered the course of Mahendranath's life. The professor's wish to end his material life was fulfilled though, but in a different way. This fateful meeting with his would be Master so spiritually transformed him that he at any rate died a material death, his links to aspirational life severed and sundered forever and his suffering ended for good. But that was as yet years apart. For the present let us dive into the Gospel to discover what happened.

M had been born in 1854 and now stood full 28 years tall in February, 1882 when the fateful evening saw him arrive at Dakshineshwar in the cowdust hour when the vesper service in the temples was about to begin. After preliminary exchanges with the solitary sage in his room, M retired, only to arrive at his feet a few days later on his second visit.

This was a seminal occasion with hoary India meeting young India at the crossroads of civilisation, at a momentous intersection of history when the future course of the country was being set and out of the clash and conflict of Occidental and Oriental culture a grand synthesis was being fused, a new age being ushered in by the peerless Paramahamsa of Dakshineshwar and his would be protégés in Narendranath, Mahendranath et al.

The preceptor had spotted the pupil although the pupil was as yet unaware. From his physical features the Master had known him to be a perfected yogi who had temporarily left his ethereal seat of meditation to assist him in his earthly mission. Thus, when apprised of the fact that Mahendranath had married and had fathered a son, the Paramahamsa lamented the loss of such a one to familial bond which greatly agonised M. Further, on attempting to argue against the validity of image-worship, M was chastised by the Master with a plethora of illuminating utterances which have now become staple to spiritual conversation in the Ramakrishna Movement across the world.

The next three visits to Dakshineshwar found M amidst a mart of joy with young Narendranath being imperceptibly given the cue for his future life as preacher of the Vedanta across the world and the behavioural guidelines thereof by way of self-preservation, with the Master's prophetic vision penetrating through the mist of time. It was prophetic indeed as the future course of events in the Swami's life would testify, he surviving a barrage of calumny cast at home and abroad by adversaries who could scarce bear his eminence and influence over the perceptive public, enthralled by his 'oratory by divine right'. Right now neither he nor M nor any around had an inkling, though, about future developments. But the Master knew.

On his fourth visit to Dakshineshwar M witnessed a strange sight. The Master had passed into a state of spiritual superconsciousness which is termed 'samadhi'. M was awestruck by it and had been absorbed into the spiritual ambit of the Master for good. The rest was a series of visits to Dakshineshwar and elsewhere, wherever the Master graced by his presence, as in Kolkata and its environs. It was mainly on Sundays and during school holidays -- M then worked in Vidyasagar's 'Metropolitan Institution' -- that M visited the Master. Sometimes he stayed at Dakshineshwar overnight, once staying for a continuous stretch of 25 days, occupying the upper floor room of Nahabat from where he could view the Ganga on a moonlit night and meditate on the infinite beauty of the Beloved whose earthly incarnation Sri Ramakrishna was, to his reckoning.

Household troubles were laid aside as M absorbed with meticulous care and concentration every word uttered by his Master, his every manner and means, recording them in cryptic form at night in his diary for meditation during the week when he would miss his Master in person owing to the intervention of his professional work. He would read these notes and ruminate on the day's proceedings, once discovered in the act by dramatist and co-devotee Girish Chandra Ghosh who requested from M his diary for perusal but was politely refused on the ground that the notes were entirely for his personal recollection of the Master's words. In this way M, the mother eagle, protected his fledgling infant notes from the prying eyes of the world for future inundation of the world one day when the Master's words in cascading flow would bring bliss and peace to all and sundry.

Thus four and a half years passed and the Master passed away in August, 1886, plunging the devotees and disciples in inconsolable grief. The young eagles of Ramakrishna, under the protective patronage of Surendranath Mitra, Balaram Basu, Girish Chandra Ghosh and Mahendranath Gupta, took refuge successively in Baranagar Math and Alambazar Math from where they later shifted residence to Nilambar Babu's Garden House in Belur and finally to the permanent location in Belur Math which has ever since remained the Headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission. M on his part took refuge in his diaries and secretly started transcribing his cryptic notes into narrative which he first published as 'The Condensed Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna' in English. Swamiji was overjoyed on reading the first two published leaflets of the same and blessed M's endeavour in exuberant terms.

Girish Babu requested M to record the Master's words in the original Bengali and thus began the publication of 'Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita', a graphic description of the Master's pastimes and, incredibly, an almost stenographic recording of his actual words in their proper setting which has in hagiographic literature now occupied a seminally unique place.

M was initially reticent about publishing, having been criticised by Baburam Maharaj (Swami Premananda) for the inadequacy of his experience with the Master as he was with him only on weekends and other holidays and, so, had missed the Master's company and conversation in the major, his glowing words on absolute renunciation uttered in private before his would be monastic disciples. But Holy Mother Sarada Devi encouraged him,  saying that when M was reading out to her the Master's words one day, it had seemed to her as if it was the Master himself speaking those words. Thus reassured, M proceeded with his publication, a task in totality which he completed just before breathing his last. He had material for the publication of at least twelve volumes of the Gospel, though, but could by his Master's grace publish only five such, the rest remaining undeciphered and undecipherable in his diaries as his once recorded cryptic notes. Thus, like all things on earth, the Gospel too sought completion in its incompleteness.

Many years later when Paul Brunton, a British journalist and seeker, in his wanderjahre through the sacred resorts of India came to Master Mahashay's presence, he described him thus:

['A venerable patriarch has stepped from the pages of the Bible, and a figure from Mosaic times has turned to flesh. This man with bald head, long white beard, and white moustache, grave countenance, and large, reflective eyes; this man whose shoulders are slightly bent with the burden of nearly eighty years of mundane existence, can be none other than the Master Mahasaya. He takes his seat on a divan and then turns his face towards mine. In that grave, sober presence I realize instantly that there can be no light persiflage, no bandying of wit or humour, no utterance even of the harsh cynicism and dark scepticism which overshadow my soul from time to time. His character, with its commingling of perfect faith in God and nobility of conduct, is written in his appearance for all to see. He addresses me in perfectly accented English.

"You are welcome here."

He bids me come closer and take my seat on the same divan. He holds my hand for a few moments. I deem it expedient to introduce myself and explain the object of my visit. When I have concluded speaking, he presses my hand again in a kindly manner and says: "It is a higher power which has stirred you to come to India, and which is bringing you in contact with the holy men of our land. There is a real purpose behind that, and the future will surely reveal it. Await it patiently."

"Will you tell me something about your master Ramakrishna?" 

"Ah, now you raise a subject about which I love best to talk. It is nearly half a century since he left us, but his blessed memory can never leave me; always it remains fresh and fragrant in my heart. I was twenty seven when I met him and was constantly in his society for the last five years of his life. The result was that I became a changed man; my whole attitude towards life was reversed. Such was the strange influence of this god-man Ramakrishna. He threw a spiritual spell upon all who visited him. He literally charmed them, fascinated them. Even materialistic persons who came to scoff became dumb in his presence." 

"But how can such persons feel reverence for spirituality -- a quality in which they do not believe?" I interpose, slightly puzzled. 

The corners of Mahasaya's mouth pull up in a half-smile. He answers: "Two persons taste red pepper. One does not know its name; perhaps he has never even seen it before. The other is well acquainted with it and recognizes it immediately. Will it not taste the same to both? Will not both of them have a burning sensation on the tongue? In the same way, ignorance of Ramakrishna's spiritual greatness did not debar materialistic persons from 'tasting' the radiant influence of spirituality which emanated from him." 

"Then he really was a spiritual superman?" 

"Yes, and in my belief even more than that. Ramakrishna was a simple man, illiterate and uneducated. He was so illiterate that he could not even sign his name, let alone write a letter. He was humble in appearance and humbler still in mode of living, yet he commanded the allegiance of some of the best educated and most cultured men of the time in India. They had to bow before his tremendous spirituality which was so real that it could be felt. He taught us that pride, riches, wealth, worldly honours, worldly position are trivialities in comparison with that spirituality, are fleeting illusions which deceive men. Ah, those were wonderful days! Often he would pass into trances of so palpably divine a nature that we who were gathered around him then would feel that he was a god, rather than a man. Strangely, too, he possessed the power of inducing a similar state in his disciples by means of a single touch; in this state they could understand the deep mysteries of God by means of direct perception. But let me tell you how he affected me.

"I had been educated along Western lines. My head was filled with intellectual pride. I had served in Calcutta colleges as Professor of English Literature, History and Political Economy at different times. Ramakrishna was living in the temple of Dakshineswar, which is only a few miles up the river from Calcutta. There I found him one unforgettable spring day and listened to his simple expression of spiritual ideas born of his own experience. I made a feeble attempt to argue with him but soon became tongue-tied in that sacred presence whose effect on me was too deep for words. Again and again I visited him, unable to stay away from this poor, humble but divine person, until Ramakrishna one day humorously remarked: 'A peacock was given a dose of opium at four o'clock. The next day it appeared again exactly at that hour. It was under the spell of opium and came for another dose.'

"That was true, symbolically speaking. I had never enjoyed such blissful experiences as when I was in the presence of Ramakrishna. So, can you wonder why I came again and again? And, so, I became one of his group of intimate disciples, as 

distinguished from merely occasional visitors.

"One day the Master said to me: 'I can see from the signs of your eyes, brow and face that you are a Yogi. Do all your work then, but keep your mind on God. Wife, children, father and mother, live with all and serve them as if they are your own. The tortoise swims about in the waters of the lake but her mind is fixed to where her eggs are laid on the banks. So, do all the work of the world but keep the mind in God.'

"And so, after the passing away of our Master, when most of the other disciples voluntarily renounced the world, adopted the yellow robe, and trained themselves to spread Ramakrishna's message through India, I did not give up my profession but carried on with my work in education. Nevertheless, such was my determination not to be of the world although I was in it, that on some nights I would retire at dead of night to the open veranda before the Senate House and sleep among the homeless beggars of the city, who usually collected there to spend the night. This used to make me feel, temporarily at least, that I was a man with no possessions.

"Ramakrishna has gone, but as you travel through India you will see something of the social, philanthropic, medical and educational work being done throughout the country under the inspiration of those early disciples of his, most of whom, alas! have now passed away too. What you will not see so easily is the number of changed hearts and changed lives primarily due to this wonderful man. For his message has been handed down from disciple to disciple who have spread it as widely as they could. And I have been privileged to take down many of his sayings in Bengali; the published record has entered almost every household in Bengal while translations have also gone into other parts of India. So you see how Ramakrishna's influence has spread far beyond the immediate circle of his little group of disciples."

Mahasaya finishes his long recital and relapses into silence.

As I look at his face anew, I am struck by the non-Hindu colour and cast of his face. Again I am wafted back to a little kingdom in Asia Minor where the children of Israel find a temporary respite from their hard fortunes. I picture Mahasaya among them as a venerable prophet speaking to his people. How noble and dignified the man looks! His goodness, honesty, virtue, piety and sincerity are transparent. He possesses that self-respect of a man who has lived a long life in utter obedience to the voice of conscience.

"I wonder what Ramakrishna would say to a man who cannot live by faith alone, who must satisfy reason and intellect?" I murmur questioningly.

"He would tell the man to pray. Prayer is a tremendous force. Ramakrishna himself prayed to God to send him spiritually inclined people, and soon after that those who later became his disciples or devotees began to appear."

"But if one has never prayed -- what then?"

"Prayer is the last resort. It is the ultimate resource left to man. Prayer will help a man where the intellect may fail."

"But if someone came to you and said that prayer did not appeal to his temperament. What counsel would you give him?" I persist gently.

"Then let him associate frequently with truly holy men who have had real spiritual experience. Constant contact with them will assist him to bring out his latent spirituality. Higher men turn our minds and wills towards divine objects. Above all, they stimulate an intense longing for the spiritual life. Therefore, the society of such men is very important as the first step, and often it is also the last, as Ramakrishna himself used to say."

Thus we discourse of things high and holy, and how man can find no peace save in the Eternal Good. Throughout the evening different visitors make their arrival until the modest room is packed with Indians -- disciples of the Master Mahasaya. They come nightly and climb the stairs of this four-storeyed house to listen intently to every word uttered by their teacher. And for a while I, too, join them. Night after night I come, less to hear the pious utterances of Mahasaya than to bask in the spiritual sunshine of his presence. The atmosphere around him is tender and beautiful, gentle and loving; he has found some inner bliss and the radiation of it seems palpable. Often I forget his words, but I cannot forget his benignant personality. That which drew him again and again to Ramakrishna seems to draw me to Mahasaya also, and I begin to understand how potent must have been the influence of the teacher when the 

pupil exercises such a fascination upon me.

When our last evening comes, I forget the passage of time, as I sit happily at his side upon the divan. Hour after hour has flown by; our talk has had no interlude of silence, but at length it comes. And then the good master takes my hand and leads me out to the terraced roof of his house where, in the vivid moonlight, I see a circling array of tall plants growing in pots and tubs. Down below a thousand lights gleam from the houses of Calcutta. The moon is at its full. Mahasaya points up towards its round face and then passes into silent prayer for a brief while. I wait patiently at his side until he finishes. He turns, raises his hand in benediction and lightly touches my head. I bow humbly before this angelic man, unreligious though I am. After a few more moments of continued silence, he says softly: "My task has almost come to an end. This body has nearly finished what God sent it here to do. Accept my blessing before I go."

He has strangely stirred me. I banish the thought of sleep and wander through many streets. When at length I reach a great mosque and hear the solemn chant, "God is most great!" break forth upon the midnight stillness, I reflect that if anyone 

could free me from the intellectual scepticism to which I cling and attach me to a life of simple faith, it is undoubtedly the Master Mahasaya.

Before long I was apprised of his death.']

Overcome by the vision of this venerable sage and mesmerised by his prophetic presence, Paul Brunton was glued to his audience over the next few days as narrated above, meeting Master Mahashay in his rooftop rendezvous with devotees every evening. These encounters with a timeless teacher he wrote of along with memoirs of other sages in his book 'A Search in Secret India' which became an instant bestseller.

The sage who had thus enthralled a sceptical British journalist traversing through India in search of Truth, had also held enthralled a small group of devoted followers for decades in his rooftop conferences on his Guru, an experience that was in turn chronicled by a monastic follower, Swami Nityatmananda, who penned down M's conversations in his sixteen volume magnum opus 'Srima Darshan' ('শ্রীম দর্শন') in a like manner after M's own 'Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita'.

Master Mahashay was so saturated with the spirit of his Guru Sri Ramakrishna that he hardly ever spoke anything that did not refer to him. He was imbued with the one idea and the one ideal that permeated his being, and that was the Paramahamsa of Dakshineshwar who occupied every inch space of his self, leaving no room for him. Egoless and full of God-consciousness, he moved on in this world like a divine child of the Blissful Mother and slaked the thirst of parched souls with the nectarine water of Ramakrishna. Monk and lay, they all flocked to him. He was after all the Master's chosen apostle for the great work of preserving for posterity his words and he was the Mother's (Sri Sarada Devi's) initiated disciple by the Master's commandment postmortem. Equally belonging to both -- in essence an integrated, indivisible divine entity, though -- M was like his Master and the Mother the exemplar of renunciation to both householder and monk alike. However, to keep up the ideal of the Master's absolute renunciation of 'woman and gold' ('kaminikanchan'), M accorded special reverence to all the monastic members visiting him from Belur Math and always encouraged young and unmarried aspirant men to visit Belur Math instead and associate with the monks there. In this way M was directly responsible for many a youth joining the Ramakrishna Order and many many more did so after having read 'The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna'. According to Swami Virajananda, 80% of the monks who had joined the Ramakrishna Order had done so after having read 'The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna'. Incalculable has been, thus, M's contribution to the bolstering of the Master's movement. He has left humanity in perennial debt.

And a final fact or two that cannot but be mentioned. Many of Sri Ramakrishna's young disciples and devotees were brought into contact with the Master by M acting as intermediary. Thakur even entrusted M with giving spiritual instructions to some of these young ones and to facilitate their coming to him in Dakshineshwar from their Kolkata residence. M was veritably the lone link between these lads and the Lord. Which is why boys like Purna owed their heartfelt gratitude to Master Mahashay for he had paved the way for their meeting their beloved Lord.

When Narendranath's family fell on evil days after the sudden demise of his father, with creditors at their doorstep demanding payment of their loans afforded to the extravagant Vishwanath, and relatives cheating them of hearth and home that left Bhuvaneshwari and her children refugees at her mother's, and, to compound matters worse, when Narendranath turned a renunciate at the behest of Thakur, leaving a starving family at the mercy of hyenas and wolves, it was the silent, secret monthly benevolence of Master Mahashay that had kept the family alive, a fact never disclosed to the future Vivekananda who has written about it that he remained in eternal debt to an unknown benefactor who had helped his family tide over those difficult days. M continued to provide a monthly allowance of rupees ten for decades that saved Swamiji's family from starvation. Of course, later Swamiji's disciple, Raja Ajit Singh of Khetri had supported the family on a monthly basis as well. But in those early days of destitution Master Mahashay was the lone star that gleamed in a darkened sky of hunger and hopelessness.

Thakur had passed away in August 1886. Then began a period that saw the birth of his Order amidst what labour pain! Swamiji in America had recounted their ordeal in his now celebrated lecture, 'My Life and Mission', how a million hands had risen to crush the fledgling fraternity, how homeless, penniless beggars with big ideas, ridiculed and reviled by society, like literal outcastes they clung to the Master and his ideals and dreamt of propagating his message through their exemplary living and blazing renunciation which they hoped would transform human society for good and relocate deflected humanity in its proper channel of historical evolution that led upwards to the Divine. Enemies abounded on all sides. Sympathisers were few, detractors were many and outright adversaries hell-bent on their destruction were a legion. Amidst these crushing circumstances stood out a few householder devotees of Thakur who stood by them. One was Surendra Mitra, another Balaram Basu, a third Girish Ghosh and a fourth the great chronicler of the Gospel, the prophetic patriarch in the making who Paul Brunton saw in his fertile fullness, Master Mahashay of modest means and a magnanimous spirit. To meet all ends he worked in three academic institutions, apportioning his income equally among his family, monastic brethren and the poor and the needy. Living like an itinerant monk with no thought of the morrow, Master Mahashay spent his days in loving remembrance of his Divine Master.

His days were now drawing to their end. The shadows lengthened as youthful vitality gave way to a solemn luminosity and the grand patriarch set about tying up the loose ends of his terrestrial life. The fifth and final volume of the Gospel was about to go to print after he had finished with his final proof-reading. The fateful day arrived. He had first seen the sun 77 years 10 months and 20 days ago on 14 July, 1854. Now, so many summers later, it was 4 June, 1932. It was 6 a.m. in the morning when M, the secret chronicler of the Gospel, finished with the proof-reading of its final page. Out there Sri Ramakrishna had also just finished his proof-reading of his disciple's 'Book of Life'. Both had complemented each other's work thus far and now both had completed their labour of love. M laid down his manuscript, bowed in reverence and uttered, "গুরুদেব, মা, আমায় কোলে তুলে নাও |" ["Gurudev, Mother, take me in your lap."] M's head, bent low in devotion, bent a little lower. All was still. The soul that had served had ascended into limpid spaces of freedom whence there was no return. Master Mahashay had united with his Master. The earthly chronicler and the divine chronicler had become one. All that remained was 'Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita' whose fifth and final volume went into print.

Hari 🕉 Ramakrishna!

Written by Sugata Bose