The Cauliflower (19 page)

He has barely begun to process this thought (and its concomitant dread) when the
guru
lifts his leg and places his bare foot firmly upon the teenager's body (where, we do not know—the lower thigh? The hip? The chest?) and then everything goes completely haywire. The walls of the
guru
's room collapse backward, everything starts to spin at an extraordinary speed, and the teenager has the powerful inkling that his consciousness—his essence—is about to be swallowed up into a massive, ravenous, rotating vortex, an all-engulfing void.

In terror he hears his own voice scream out (all signs of teenage hubris instantly evaporating), “What's happening to me? Help! What would my parents think?”

The laughing
guru
lifts his foot and gently touches his hand to the terrified teenager's chest. “All right,” he murmurs, half to himself, “let it stop. This needn't happen all at once.”

And, just as suddenly as it emerged, the giant void disappears. The walls reform. Only a couple of seconds have passed, in real time, but entire continents have shifted within Narendra's consciousness.

He sits on the bed, slumped forward, struggling to catch his breath. The
guru
retreats. Once again everything about him appears small and harmless and childlike. He is now incredibly friendly and kind and warm to the visiting teenager. He offers him every sort of hospitality. And he is funny. He sings, he dances, he cracks jokes. He can be a bitch. He can be terse. He is an exceptionally droll impersonator. Before Narendra knows it a whole day has passed in his delightful company and it is time for him to return home again. The
guru
is dejected at the thought of him leaving. He visibly droops. He perches on the end of his small bed, shoulders slumping, chin on his chest, arms hanging, like a poignant, little
Pierrot
doll.

Only he himself,
Narendra Nath Datta
(it seems to the gilded youth), has the almost divine power to activate him now.

Rational explanations for the previous incident …

How did this happen?

Hunger? The heat? Exhaustion?

It's incomprehen—

Waaaah!

Part 3.

After several months
 …

Among Sri Ramakrishna's circle is a man called Pratap Chandra Hazra. Sri Ramakrishna doesn't especially like him. He finds him “dry,” or lacking in sincere spiritual inspiration. Hazra is well read and perfectly intelligent, but something of a pedant (a quality Sri Ramakrishna especially loathes). And even though he has a wife and a family in dire financial need back in the place he calls home (somewhere near Hriday's native village of Sihar), he still spends most of his time at the Dakshineswar Kali Temple in the orbit of the famous saint, loudly and piously practicing
japam
on Ramakrishna's verandah and doing his best to attract attention to himself.

Ramakrishna is often irritated by Hazra and what he considers to be his unhelpful influence over some of his newer (and most precious) devotees. The saint is not averse to making the odd sarcastic aside at Hazra's expense. Although he has finally come to realize (and how could he not?) that Hazra is simply a part of the Mother's divine play. He accepts that Hazra has been sent to plague him for a reason, as a lesson—in much the same way that Krishna's most passionate devotee, Radha, was persecuted by Jatila, her mother-in-law, so that her constant meddling and interfering might make Radha love Krishna still more—and that Hazra is therefore an essential part of the Mother's divine scheme. And this knowledge—this insight—makes him surprisingly tolerant of Hazra, even to feel, at some level, a measure of gratitude toward him.

It is, nonetheless, a source of profound irritation to him that Narendra, his most beloved devotee (the savior of mankind—the devotee Ramakrishna knows will bring his message to the world), is great friends with this flawed individual and consequently open to his malign influence. Often he will struggle to get the teenager's attention (the teenager, as he settles into his relationship with Sri Ramakrishna and becomes increasingly and delightfully aware of his own huge significance to him, will be cynical, argumentative, dismissive, and cruel to the
guru
). He is arrogant by nature. He will sometimes make snide remarks about the
guru
's lack of a formal education.

The
guru
has a very particular way of guiding people to spiritual fulfillment. You might call it the “pick and mix” technique. He gets to know people (inspecting their faces, their hands, their tongues, their feet), asks them countless questions, then decides what spiritual approach most suits their needs. Ramakrishna is promiscuous by nature. There is no one route. No one-size-fits-all approach. And because Narendra Nath Datta is (in the
guru
's mind, and in fact) destined to be his future mouthpiece to the world, he chooses to initiate this special disciple into
Vedantic
non-dualism, a highly difficult, obtuse, and intellectual doctrine which teaches that the disciple and God are identical.

But it isn't all to be plain sailing. Hazra and the teenager certainly see to that. On one occasion Sri Ramakrishna comes outside onto his balcony to find the two of them engaged in a bitchy discussion about the credibility of the non-dualist approach. Narendra is pointing to a water pot which sits on the floor before them and is saying, “Is this water pot
God
?! Is this cup
God
?! Are you
God
?! Am I
God
?!”

They are laughing together, scornfully, at the very thought.

“What are you laughing at?” the childlike
guru
wonders, sweetly, and as he speaks he taps Narendra lightly on the shoulder, once again turning the teenager's entire universe on its head.

Narendra immediately becomes conscious of the fact that the whole world
is
God. The. Whole. World.

God!

He spends the entire day in this bizarre, heightened state. He tells nobody what is happening to him. He just hopes—desperately hopes—that it will wear off. But it doesn't. He travels home. Everything is God. He sits down to eat. The plate is God. The food is God. His mother who serves him is God. Her words are God.

And it continues. He attends college. He walks the streets. Everything is God. A carriage approaches him as he crosses the road—at high speed—but he can barely bring himself to move out of its path. It is God. And he is God. So he is the carriage. And they are all God.

Experts call this a state of “divine intoxication.” It's how Sri Ramakrishna feels all the time. The
guru
lives in a perpetual state of divine intoxication (almost to the point of finding it a nuisance).

As a part of his intoxication Narendra has lost all sense of feeling in his hands and his feet. This makes him anxious. And as the ecstasy fades, over days, weeks, he continues to worry about it. Now he feels like he is trapped inside in a strange kind of living dream. He feels distanced. Numb. Weird. Woolly. As he walks down a street one day he falls to his knees and starts hitting his head against a set of railings to try and establish whether they are real or not.

His poor mother has lost all hope for him. That pesky
guru
! That pesky, pesky
guru
!

“My poor, darling Naren … he won't live long,” she murmurs.

“
Sadhana
is reached

When you witness God's presence

In everything.”

Part 4.

1885, the Cossipore garden house, not long before Sri Ramakrishna's death

Sri Ramakrishna is lying upstairs, desperately ill, when a certain amount of commotion erupts downstairs. The saint's faithful diarist and scribe, modestly known to the world simply as M (but known in day-to-day life as the much-loved and respected, if incredibly humble, Calcuttan headmaster Mahendra Nath Gupta) kindly informs the saint of what is unfolding.…

Narendra Nath Datta, it transpires, has been sitting on the ground floor, meditating. And as he meditates he has the curious sensation of an intense, fiery warmth at the back of his head. He then loses all consciousness and experiences what is generally perceived to be the ultimate spiritual state—described by seasoned Vedantists as
nirvikalpa samadhi
. During this form of ecstasy the embodied soul is completely effaced and unified with God. It is known to be a rare, extraordinary, mind-blowing, and
ego
-shattering phenomenon. Sometimes—indeed, often—people die when it happens to them. In fact—if we can fast-forward seventeen years—Narendra himself
will
die (at the horribly premature age of thirty-nine) the next time he enters this state. Although, following his first experience, Sri Ramakrishna calls him upstairs and tells him that he will not enter the state again until the Mother's work has been accomplished. And he is right. “This revelation will stay under lock and key,” the
guru
says, holding aloft an imaginary key, kissing it, and then placing it into an imaginary pocket lying close to his heart.

But this is still Narendra's first experience of
nirvikalpa samadhi
. We have no idea how long his consciousness is lost to it in real time. All that we do know is that when he begins to regain consciousness, he does so only partially. He can open his eyes and see his head (the tip of his own nose, his tongue), but the rest of his body is now invisible to him.

And this is the source of all the commotion. Narendra, in a panic, is crying out: “Where is my body? Where is my body?”

Another devotee comes running into the room (followed, no doubt, by a panting M) and tries to reassure the early-twenty-something would-be savior of the world. “Your body is right here, Narendra! Don't panic. Your body is here!”

But Narendra isn't persuaded and he continues to wail.

At this point, M sensibly dashes upstairs to ask the
guru
what they can do to help. The
guru
receives the news of Narendra's perceived disembodiment with complete equanimity. Then he smiles. Then he swipes a limp hand through the air, “Argh,” he whispers, with a hoarse chuckle, “Just leave him that way for a while. Let Naren have a little taste of his own medicine. He's certainly worried me for long enough.”

After the great guru's death, Narendra muses, somewhat astonished:

“We were trained by him

Without even knowing it—

Just through fun and games!”

:)

1863, at the Dakshineswar Kali Temple (six miles north of Calcutta)

Mathur Baba is a great and a powerful man, and he truly loves Uncle almost as much as I do. But it took Mathur Baba quite some time before he could fully accept the sudden arrival of the
Brahmini
and her great and immediate influence over Uncle's
sadhana
.

The
Brahmini
has a very controlling manner and is of strong opinions, and after only a very short acquaintance with Uncle she became convinced that Uncle was an incarnation of God. Uncle received this shocking news with his typical childlike innocence. He skipped off to see Mathur Baba and gaily informed him of what the
Brahmini
had said:

“Mathur! Mathur! The
Brahmini
says that I am an incarnation of God!”

Mathur simply frowned and shook his head. He loved Uncle, but he thought the
Brahmini
had gone too far. He told the
Brahmini
that there could only be ten
avatar
s of Vishnu, as described in the
Garuda Purana
, and that this number had clearly already manifested. But the
Brahmini
insisted that there were also twenty-four in the
Bhagavata Purana
, and that anyway it also states in this most holy and sacred of texts that Vishnu's incarnations are endless.

She showed the skeptical Mathur Baba the exact quotation. “
Whenever righteousness wanes and unrighteousness increases I send myself forth
,” she calmly read. “
For the protection of the good and for the destruction of evil, and the establishment of righteousness, I come into being age after age
.”

Mathur Baba merely sucked his tongue and scowled and gazed at Uncle suspiciously from under his lowering eyebrows. But was Uncle worried or disturbed by Mathur's doubting? Not at all! Uncle just clapped his hands joyfully and danced around and sang his sweet and charming songs in praise of his beloved Goddess. He was completely unconcerned. For why should Uncle care about what people say? Uncle has no
ego
. Uncle only cares about God and nothing else.

But the
Brahmini
would not be silenced. She stood up to Mathur Baba and told him that he should convene a conference of famous pandits to openly discuss the matter and come to a final decision upon it. Mathur Baba is a sensible and an educated man. He has a weakness for Uncle, a great weakness for Uncle—as I do—but he was not to be convinced so easily as all that. And it was only after considerable heart-searching—and with his deep misgivings—that the conference was eventually convened.

Yet what a great and learned occasion it was! The
Brahmini
presented her case before the summoned pandits in grand style and with much detailed reference to the scriptures. The pandits were all very thoughtful and serious about what the
Brahmini
had said.

Uncle sat among them like a child, hardly paying any attention. To Uncle this was just the Mother's divine play, just her
lila
. Because for Uncle, fame and reputation are merely an illusion. They are
maya
. And yet even though Uncle made no effort whatsoever to convince or beguile the pandits, one by one they announced that yes, indeed, Uncle truly was an
avatar
(although when I questioned Uncle about this after, Uncle just threw up his hands impatiently and said, “Pah! What do
I
know about such things?”).