- Will You Give Me Your Son? – Sri Ramakrishna
- Wooded Place on The Ganges
- I Hold It Down to The Lower Planes – Sri Ramakrishna
- You Have Failed to Pass – Sri Ramakrishna
- Whatever I Have, It is All Yours
- Truthfulness is The Key to God-realization
- Emptiness and Vanity of Worldly Enjoyments
- You Are Like Monkeys
- See God in All
- Worship the Living Gods
- Are You and The Master Different?
- “Only He Who Loves, Can Rule.”
- Never Misuse Devotee’s Hard Earned Money
- Habit of Responsibility
- Love Sees No Faults
- He Made Us ‘nobodies.’
- Don’t See Faults in Others
On 30 June 1884 the Master again said to M.: “Yesterday I came to know Baburam’s inner nature. That is why I have been trying so hard to persuade him to live with me. The mother bird hatches the egg in proper time. Boys like Baburam are pure in heart. They have not yet fallen into the clutches of ‘woman and gold.’ They are like a new pot. Milk kept in it will not turn sour… . I need Baburam here. I pass through certain spiritual states when I need someone like him.”14 About Baburam’s purity, the Master used to say, “He is pure, pure to the very marrow of his bones.”
One night I (Swami Premananda) was sleeping in the master’s room. In the dead of the night I woke up and found him pacing from one end of his room to the other, saying: “Mother, I do not want this. Do not bring me honour from men. Don’t, Mother, don’t. I spit on it.” Saying this, he paced back and forth like a madman. I was filled with wonder. I thought: “How strange! People are so eager for name and fame, and he is pleading with the Mother not to give it to him! Why is this happening before me? Is it to instruct me?”
One day the Master had a hard time swallowing anything; then he said, “I shall eat later on in my subtle body through a million mouths.” Baburam responded: “I do not care for your million mouths or your subtle body. What I want is that you should eat through this mouth and that I should see this gross body.”
Swami Premananda told a touching episode about Swamiji: “After the Master’s passing away Swamiji used to cry for him so much secretly at night that his pillow would get wet and I would put it in the sun in the morning to dry.”
Before his passing away, Vivekananda gave two instructions to Premananda: first, to manage Belur Math, the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Order; second, not to initiate anyone. “If you make disciples,” he said, “then your disciples will quarrel and compete with Brahmananda’s.” Premananda obeyed Swamiji.
Despite his humility, Premananda could be stern if necessary. He laid great stress on gentleness of behaviour. “Be gentle first,” he would often repeat, “if you want to be a monk.” He said regretfully: “Nowadays no one pays any attention to social and common good manners and gentle behaviour. The Master used to take extreme care to teach us these things.”