Page:Ramakrishna - His Life and Sayings.djvu/86

68 It would be a real help in judging of Keshub Chunder Sen if we knew that to quote the words of Mozoomdar c his association with Rdmakrzshfla developed the conception of the Motherhood of God'; or, again, that c the strange selectivism of Rdmaknsha suggested to Keshub's appre- ciative mind the thought of broadening the spiritual struc- ture of his own movement/ Whether toward the end of his life Keshub became mystic and ecstatic in his utter- ances, and whether his concept of the .Godhead as the Divine Mother was inspired by Rdmaknsh^a, I gladly leave to others to decide. By whatever terms these words mystic and ecstatic may be, if translated into BengSli, in English they mean exactly that spirit which pervades many of the utterances of the so-called New Dispensation, and which was s severely, and far too severely, animadverted on by many of Keshub's European admirers. Mystic has no such terrible meaning in English as its corresponding term seems to have in Bengali. People always seem to imagine that mystic has something to do with mist. Thus the late B. R. Rajam Iyer wrote in the Prabuddha Bharata, p. 123 : 'The VedSnta will certainly be mysticism if it seek to make a man live without food, enable him to preserve his life as long as he pleases, or get stiff like a corpse, dead entirely to the world, though an obscure spark of life may yet linger in the system. The Ved&ita will be mysticism if it seek to enable man to work wonderful feats, as flying in the air, leaving the body at will, and wandering in space unob- structed like a ghost, or entering into the bodies of others, and possessing them like spirits, and doing similar things