Daily Archives: 11th June 2014

Ramakrishna Paramhansa

Swami Trigunatitananda’s actions and behaviour were unusual and sometimes not understandable to others. He had indomitable energy and was undaunted by any situation. He was sceptical about the existence of ghosts; he had visited a number of haunted houses and found nothing to substantiate claims of ghostly inhabitants. This aroused in him a determination to see a ghost, should one really exist.

Someone told him about an old empty house near Baranagore Monastery where he could see a ghost at midnight. Without telling anyone, Swami Trigunatitananda went there before midnight and waited for the ghost. Suddenly he saw a faint light appear in the corner of the room. The light grew brighter until, in the centre of the light, there appeared an eye. It approached him with deadly malevolence. The swami felt his blood dry up in his veins and his body wither like a green tree before a forest fire in the sinister light of that eye. He was about to faint, when all of a sudden Sri Ramakrishna appeared. Holding his hand, the Master said: “My child, why are you so foolishly taking chances with certain death? It is sufficient for you to keep your mind fixed on me.” With those words, the Master disappeared. Trigunatitananda’s spirit at once revived and he left the house, his curiosity about ghosts satisfied forever.

Ramkrishna Paramhansa

After spreading the message of Vedanta in America and England for several years, Vivekananda desperately needed an assistant to continue the momentum. He wrote to Swami Saradananda and asked him to come to England. In the beginning Saradananda was reluctant, but then he went to Holy Mother [Maa Sharada] and sought her advice. The Mother told him: “My son, be not afraid. You should go to the West. The Master will protect you, and will be with you wherever you go.”

In March 1896 Swami Saradananda left for England and arrived there on 1 April. On the way his ship was buffeted by a hurricane in the Mediterranean Sea. “All the passengers were in a great panic,” the swami recalled. “Some were crying; some were running here and there in fear; some were shaking out of nervousness. The whole scene was frightening, but I was not afraid in the least. My mind was as steady and calm as the needle of a compass.” When the ship stopped at Rome, he went to visit Saint Peter’s Cathedral. Standing in front of the sanctuary, his mind became absorbed in his previous incarnation, and he lost outer consciousness for some time. (Sri Ramakrishna had said that he and Shashi had previously been companions of Christ.)