Disciple: Yes, Bhagavan, it is so difficult to understand one's self. We see the self only as it appears to us. Behind it there may be a hundred previous incarnations. We walk upon the floor of a house but we never stop to see how it is made and what various things are beneath it.

The Bhagavan smiled at the disciple and left His seat. He went out into the veranda next to the western door of His room and for a time looked on the sun which was sinking rapidly towards the horizon. Then He gazed down upon the holy waters of the sacred stream before Him. A disciple was walking alone in front of the Temple on the embankment of the Ganges. He was watching Balaram and others getting into a boat to return to Calcutta. It being midsummer, the sacred waters of the river were broken into waves. The day was drawing to its close, it was past five, the sky was cloudy and the clouds presented a most wonderful sight, especially towards the north. In the foreground were the Panchavati, backed by a line of tall willow trees, with the silver stream flowing past on their right. In the background were the beautiful dark blue clouds and the dark stream beneath.

The disciple was looking on this charming scene. Suddenly his attention was arrested by the Bhagavan coming from the south in the direction of the Panchavati and the willow trees. As Sri Ramakrishna, smiling like a child of five, came up, the beautiful picture seemed to be more than complete. There was the universe on the one hand, and on the other the One Soul who reflected the universe and saw it in its real nature. Yes, the disciple felt that in that Presence he was as near the solution of the problem of life as he could be. It was this Presence that made everything--the images of gods and goddesses, men, women and children, trees, flowers, leaves, every inch of ground in that Temple instinct with spirituality and full of the Joy of the Lord: Yes, he felt truly that it was the God-Man before him that had thrown an irresistible charm over everything in that wonderful place--over every object, divine or human, animate or inanimate, seen by the outer or by the inner eye, from the dust under His Hallowed Feet to those sacred images worshipped in the Temple or perceived by looking within that other temple, the body of man, that veritable "revelation in the flesh." He felt like one spell-bound in that Presence!

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