Pandit: Revered Sir, if there are such spiritual teachers, like the physicians of the highest class, then why dost Thou say that the spiritual awakening cannot come before the time is ripe?

Bhagavan: Yes, it is true; but suppose the medicine does not get into the stomach? What will the physician do then? Even the best of them are quite helpless. [Fit vessels.] To give proper instruction one must first choose fit vessels. You do not examine the capabilities of your pupils. But I ask those who come to me: "Whom have you to care for you?" Suppose a young man has no father or that his father has left him with debts; how is it possible for him to give his heart and soul to God? Do you hear, my child?

Pandit: Yes, Bhagavan, I am all attention.

[Grace of God.] The conversation then passed to another subject,--the Grace of God. The Bhagavan said: Once a number of Shikh soldiers came to the Temple. I met them before the Temple of the Divine Mother. One

of them said: "God is all-merciful." I asked: "Indeed, is it so? How did you come to know it?" "Why, Sir, is not the Lord feeding and taking care of us?" I said: "Is that so extraordinary? God is the Father of us all. If the father does not look after his own children, who will? Shall outsiders from another neighborhood come and take care of them?"

Narendra: Then we should not call Him merciful?

Bhagavan: Am I forbidding you to call Him all-merciful? What I mean is that the Lord is our nearest and dearest and not like a stranger.

Pandit: Priceless are these words!

The Bhagavan here asked for a fresh glass of water. He would not take the one already offered and it was therefore carried away. It appeared that he looked upon it as unfit to be offered to the God in Him, being made impure by the "feverish" touch of some wicked men.

Pandit (to Hazra): You who live with the Bhagavan day and night must enjoy the highest bliss.

Bhagavan (smiling): This day I have had the rare pleasure of looking at the moon of the second lunar day. Do you know why I say the moon

of the second lunar day? Sita [**] said to Ravana: "Thou art the full moon, and my Rama Chandra is the moon of the second lunar day." Ravana was highly pleased, for he did not understand the meaning. Sita meant to say that the fortune of Ravana had reached its climax like the full moon and that now it must be on the wane; but the fortune of Rama Chandra is like the moon of the second lunar day, which will increase day by day.

Here the Bhagavan rising to take leave, the Pandit and his friends bowed down before Him with great reverence and devotion. He then departed, followed by His disciples.

Footnotes

^261:* Ishan Chunder Mookerjee was a pious Brahmin householder. He regarded Sri Ramakrishna as the Incarnation of Divine Wisdom.