[Bhakta's attitude.] The dualistic devotees and lovers of the Personal God (Bhaktas), on the contrary, accept all states as real. Unlike the non-dualists, they look upon the waking state as a reality and they do not hold that the external world is like a dream. They say that the external world is the glory of the Lord. The heavens, stars, moon, mountains, ocean, men, birds and beasts, all these He has created. He manifests His glory by these. He is both within and without. He dwells in our hearts. The most advanced Bhaktas say that the Lord Himself manifests as the twenty-four categories of the Sankhya philosophy, that He appears as the individual soul and the external world. A Bhakta wishes to enjoy communion with his Lord and not to become one with Him. His desire is not to become sugar, but to taste of it. [The innermost feelings of a true Bhakta.] Do you know what are the innermost thoughts and feelings of a true devotee? He says: "O Lord! Thou art the Master, I am Thy servant.

[Raja Yogi.] [paragraph continues] Thou art my Mother, and I am Thy child"; or again: "Thou art my Child and I am Thy father or Thy mother"; or thus: "Thou art the Whole and I am Thy part." The dualistic devotee does not wish to say, "I am Brahman." A Raja Yogi also seeks to realize the Universal Being. His object is to bring the finite human soul into communion with the infinite Spirit. He tries first to collect his mind which is scattered in the world of senses, and then seeks to fix it on the Universal Spirit; hence the necessity of meditating on Him in solitude and in a posture which causes no distraction.

[Different aspects of God.] But all these various ideals are of one and the same Brahman, the difference being only in the names. It is the same Being whom men call by the name of the Absolute (Brahman), the Universal Spirit, the Impersonal God, or the Personal God with Divine attributes.

ii

The steamer had already started and was on its way to Calcutta. Many there were who looked on Sri Ramakrishna with eyes that did not move, and who drank the nectar of the words

that dropped from His hallowed lips. They did not perceive that the steamer was in motion. The Temple garden of Kali had faded from sight. Beneath were the sacred waters which reflected the blue firmament above, but the murmur of the waves fell unheeded on the ears of the devotees. The magic of the blessed vision had thrown a charm over them. They beheld before them a wonderful Being, a God-in-Man and a Man-in-God, with smiles playing on His sweet face, radiant with the joy of the Lord, and with eyes enhanced in beauty by the collyrium of Divine Love. They gazed as if spell-bound, on One who had given up the world and its pleasures, on One intoxicated with the Love of the Lord and who looked not for anything except the Lord.