Page:Ramakrishna - His Life and Sayings.djvu/56

38 leave her for some hours, and he got frightened at the thought that her husband would accuse him of some black magic. He began, therefore, to pray to his mother KSli (the goddess) to bring her back to her senses. By-and-by she came to herself, and when she opened her eyes they were quite red, and she looked as if she were quite drunk. Her attendants had to support her while she got into a carriage, then she drove back home. This is one of many instances of the same kind (evidently cases of hypnosis),

Of men he used to tell the same. In his later days, when crowds of men and boys came to him to learn, he would select and point out some who, he said, would realise religion in this life, and of the rest he would say that they must enjoy life a little longer before they would have a sincere desire for religion. He used to say, ' That man who had been an emperor in his former birth, who had enjoyed the highest pleasures the world can give, and who had seen the vanities of them all, would attain to perfection in this life on earth/

After his marriage he returned to Calcutta and took upon himself the charges of the temple again, but instead of toning down, his fervour and devotion increased a thousand- fold. His whole soul, as it were, melted into one flood of tears, and he appealed to the goddess to have mercy on him and reveal herself to him. No mother ever shed such burning tears over the death-bed of her only child. Crowds assembled round him and tried to console him, when the blowing of the conch-shells proclaimed the death of another day, and he gave vent to his sorrow, saying/ Mother, oh my