Page:The Gospel of Râmakrishna.djvu/442

 see the indivisible Absolute Brahman (Sat-chit-ananda) within me as well as all around me. You are all like my own parts. The In-finite Brahman is manifesting Itself through so many human forms. Human bodies are like pillow-cases of different shapes and various colors, but the cotton wool of the internal Spirit is one. When Jiva (ego) enters into that Spirit and becomes one with it, there is neither pain nor suffering. I am the Infinite Spirit covered by a human skin which has a wound somewhere near the throat. Mind affects the body and is in turn affected by the body. When the body is ill, that illness reacts upon the mind. When one is burned by hot water one says: "This water has burned me," but the truth is that heat burns and not the water. All pain is in the body, all disease is in the body, but the Spirit is above pain and beyond the reach of disease. My illness is to teach mankind how to think of the Spirit and how to live in God-conscious- ness even when there is extreme pain in the body; when the body is suffer-ing from the agony of pain and starvation, when there is no remedy within human power, even then the Mother shows that Spirit is the