Page:Ramakrishna - His Life and Sayings.djvu/204

186 invoking the Goddess Klt by the terrible process called ' .Savastdhana.* (This Tantrik invocation is performed in the cemetery yard, the invoker sitting on the body of a corpse in a dark night.) One invoker was frightened to insanity by the horrors of the earlier portion of the night ; the other was favoured with the vision of the Divine Mother at the end of the night. Then he asked her, c Mother ! why did the other man become mad ? ' The Deity answered, * Thou too, O child ! didst become mad many times in thy various previous births, and now at last thou seest me.'

388. There are various sects among the Hindus ; which sect or which creed should we then adopt? Pirvatl once asked MaMdeva, c O Lord ! what is the root of the Eternal, Everlasting, All-embracing Bliss ? ' To her MahUdeva thus replied, * The root is faith.' The peculiarities of creeds and sects matter little or nothing. Let every one perform with faith the devotions and the duties of his own creed.

389. As a little boy or a girl can have no idea of conjugal affection, even so a worldly man cannot at all comprehend the ecstasy of Divine communion.

38O. The body is transient and unimportant. Why then is it so much looked after? No one cares for an empty box. But people carefully preserve the box that contains money and other valuable property. The virtuous cannot but take care of the body, the temple of the soul in which God has manifested Himself or which has been blessed by God's advent