have a quiet place near your house where you can occasionally be alone for hours at a time and yet go home for your meals. Keshab Sen, Mozoomdar, and others have told me that they are like Raja Janaka, who lived in the world and yet attained to the highest realization. I replied: "It is not an easy thing to be like Raja Janaka. Raja Janaka was at first a great ascetic and practised extreme asceticism for many years. You could be like him if you practised a little. A man who writes English very fluently has not acquired that facility all at once; he has had to practise for a long time." I also said to Keshab Sen: "Without going into solitude, how can one cure so acute a disease as worldliness? It is like the worst form of typhoid fever. If you keep bottles of chutney and jars of water where a patient is suffering from this fever, he will surely be tempted to eat the one and drink the other and then it will be impossible for the best physicians to cure him. Objects of lust are like the bottles of chutney, and desire to enjoy is like the thirst after water. Worldly thirst has no end. And so long as the object of thirst is kept within reach of the patient, how can he be cured? Therefore I say, withdraw from the place where those objects

are and remain in solitude for a time. Then when the disease is cured, you may live in the world without being tempted by it. It is then that you will live like Raja Janaka." But in the first stage you must be very watchful. In solitude steadily practise devotional exercises. When a fig-tree is young, it must be protected by a hedge, otherwise it may be eaten up by sheep and cattle; but when the trunk has grown thick, the hedge is no longer necessary. You may tie an elephant to it without hurting it. If after practising in solitude you have acquired true Bhakti (devotion to God) and have gained spiritual strength, then you can go home and live in the world; nothing can corrupt you.

Sub-Judge (with great delight): Revered Sir, these are most beautiful teachings. We need to practise in solitude, but we always forget it and think that we have at once become Raja Janaka. It has given me great peace and joy to hear that it is not absolutely necessary to leave the world and that God can be realized even at home.

Sri Ramakrishna: Renunciation, why should you practise it? When you have to fight, it is better to do so from within the fort. You will