At one time Niranjan was compelled to accept a job with an indigo planter at Murshidabad, more than a hundred miles north of Calcutta. Ramakrishna was aggrieved when he heard of this and remarked, “I would not have been more pained had I heard of his death.” A few days later, when he saw Niranjan, he learned that he had to accept the job to maintain his aged mother. With a sigh of relief, the Master told Niranjan: “Ah, then it is all right. It won’t contaminate your mind. But I tell you, if you had done so for your own sake, I could not have touched you. Really, it was unthinkable that you would stoop to so much humiliation. Didn’t I know that my Niranjan had not the least trace of impurity in him?”
Upon hearing this remark, a member of the audience questioned the Master: “Sir, you are condemning service; but how can we maintain our families without earning money?” The Master replied: “Let him who likes do so. I don’t forbid everyone. I say this only to these young aspirants [pointing to Niranjan and others] who form a class by themselves.” Ramakrishna did not want his intimate disciples to become slaves of lust and gold. (Source: God Lived with Them)
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On 15 June 1884 M. recorded the feelings the Master had for Niranjan in The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna:
After the music the Master sat with the devotees. Just then Niranjan arrived and prostrated himself before him. At the very sight of this beloved disciple the Master stood up, with beaming eyes and smiling face, and said: “You have come too! (to M.) You see, this boy is absolutely guileless. One cannot be guileless without a great deal of spiritual discipline in previous births. A hypocritical and calculating mind can never attain God.
(To Niranjan) “I feel as if a dark veil has covered your face. It is because you have accepted a job in an office. One must keep accounts there. Besides, one must attend to many other things, and that always keeps the mind in a state of worry. You are serving in an office like other worldly people; but there is a slight difference in that you are earning money for the sake of your mother. One must show the highest respect to one’s mother for she is the very embodiment of the Blissful Mother of the Universe. If you had accepted the job for the sake of wife and children, I should have said: ‘Fie upon you! A thousand shames!’”
Ramakrishna had two types of teaching. One was for the householders, who are obliged to take care of their families and at the same time practise spiritual disciplines. He reminded them constantly: “First God and then the world.” Secondly, he established the monastic ideal for his would-be monastic disciples: “The sannyasi must renounce ‘woman and gold’ for his own welfare… . The sannyasi, the man of renunciation, is a world teacher. It is his example that awakens the spiritual consciousness of men.”13 Ramakrishna was overjoyed to learn that Niranjan was not attached to women and would not marry. Niranjan told him, “A woman never enters my thoughts.” On 15 July 1885, like a proud father, the Master praised Niranjan to the devotees: “Look at Niranjan. He is not attached to anything. He spends money from his own pocket to take poor patients to the hospital. At the proposal of marriage he says, ‘Goodness! That is the whirlpool of the Vishalakshi [a stream near Kamarpukur]!’ I see him seated on a light.”
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On that same day, while sitting in his room at Dakshineswar, Ramakrishna was chanting the names of gods and goddesses. M. recorded in the Gospel: “Then he repeated, ‘Alekh Niranjana,’ which is a name of God. Saying ‘Niranjana,’ he wept. The devotees wept too. With tears in his eyes the Master said: ‘O Niranjan! O my child! Come! Eat this! Take this! When shall I make my life blessed by feeding you? You have assumed this human form for my sake.’” Perhaps this sincere call of the Master reached Niranjan: He resigned from his job and came to visit the Master. In an ecstatic mood, Ramakrishna told him: “You were living in an indigohouse of such a place; on this particular day you rode on your deputy’s horse; you stood in such a place with a bow and arrow.” Niranjan realized the Master was all-knowing. With tearful eyes he surrendered himself to Ramakrishna, saying, “Sir, all these days I could not recognize you.” From that day Niranjan visited the Master frequently.
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- Thus, I have explained to you this knowledge that is more secret than all secrets. Ponder over it deeply, and then do as you wish. (BG 18.63)