I would like to discuss the reincarnation is purgatory. If one dies with such a fixation on the things of this world that one’s spirit is not ready to behold the beatific vision, then one has to undergo a purgation, one has to be purged clean of one’s limitations. The limitations are what are called sins. Sin is simply a limiting factor that limits your consciousness and fixes it in an inappropriate condition. In the Oriental metaphor, if you die in that condition, you come back again to have more experiences that will clarify, clarify, clarify, until you are released from these fixations. The reincarnating monad is the principal hero of Oriental myth. The monad puts on various personalities, life after life. Now the reincarnation idea is not that you and I as the personalities that we are will be reincarnated. The personality is what the monad throws off. Then the monad puts on another body, male or female, depending on what experiences are necessary for it to clear itself of this attachment to the field of time.
Numerous examples could be given of the relationship, with mathematical precision, between a person’s breathing and the different states of his consciousness.
When a person’s mind is fully absorbed, as in a deep intellectual debate or in the performance of some exceptionally delicate or difficult physical feat, his breathing becomes slow itself.
The intensity of the mind depends on the slow pace of breathing; Breathing is essentially fast or uneven speed in the stages of harmful enthusiasts, fear, work, anger etc. Breathing 18 times in a minute, the fickle monkey breathes 32 times compared to human speed. The breathing of elephants, turtles, snakes and other organisms, famous for its longevity, is less than humans. For example, the giant sea turtle, which survives for three hundred years, inhale only four times in a minute.
So we can control our anger by just witnessing the breathing of our own.
I went alone in the Natya mandir in front of the huge temple of Maa Kali. Seeing a shady place near a pillar, I sat in Padmasana. It was only seven o’clock, but soon the sun was going to be fast.
I drowned in the deep sense of devotion. The world was lost. My mind was concentrated on mother Kali. In this temple, his idol became the favored adorable to the great saint Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. On his distressed call, this idol often took a living form and interacted with him.
“O Stone Mayi Maa,” I was praying. “You used to be alive on the call of your beloved devotee Ramakrishna, why don’t you listen to the fierce lament of this son?
Along with the divine peace, my yearning grew deeper and deeper. But when five hours passed in this manner and still there was no response from the Goddess on whom I was meditating in my heart, I was a little disappointed. Sometimes God tests his devotee by delaying the fulfillment of his prayers, but ultimately He does appear to the obstinate devotee in the form of his Ishta Devta. A devoted Christian devotee gets a vision of Jesus Christ, a Hindu gets a vision of Lord Krishna or Mother Kali or, if his devotion has turned towards the formless form, a vision of a spreading flame.
Reluctantly I opened my eyes, and a priest was closing and locking the temple door as per the afternoon ritual. I got up from that lonely spot in the Natya Mandir and came into the temple courtyard. Its stone floor was burning like embers in the afternoon sun; the soles of my bare feet were burning.
I became angry and said to myself: “Maa, you did not appear before me and now you hid behind the closed door of the temple. I wanted to make a special prayer to you on behalf of my brother-in-law.”
My inner prayer was immediately granted. First of all, I felt a pleasant cool wave on my back and under my feet and all the pain disappeared. After that I saw with surprise that the temple became very huge in size. Its huge door opened slowly and the stone idol of Maa Kali became visible.
Then slowly the stone idol became alive and looking at me it smiled and nodded its head. I was thrilled with indescribable joy. As if the breath had been pulled out of my lungs with an invisible spray; my body became absolutely still but there was no inertia in it.
After this my consciousness expanded ecstatically. I could see clearly for many miles up the river Ganga on the left.
Similarly, the entire area of Dakshineswar outside the temple also became clearly visible to me. The walls of all the houses shimmered transparently and through them I could see people walking here and there in the distance. I was breathless and my body was in a strange state of stillness, yet I could move my hands and feet. For several minutes I alternately closed my eyes and opened them again; but in both the states I could see the whole scene as clearly.
Like an X-ray, spiritual vision also penetrates all objects. The divine eye is everywhere the center, nowhere the circumference. Standing in the sun in that courtyard, I realized afresh that when man is no longer a wayward child of God and is not involved in the dreamlike material world, which is like a bubble, then he regains his infinite kingdom. If escape is necessary for man, who is sitting shrinking in his narrow personality, then is there anything else like escape into omnipresence?
In my sacred experience at Dakshineswar, only the temple and the form of Mother Kali assumed an unusually large size. Everything else appeared in its normal size. Of course, it all seemed enveloped in a soft light of white, blue and rainbow colours. My body seemed to be made of ether, ready to rise into the air at any moment. I was fully aware of the physical conditions around me. I looked around me and took a few steps without interrupting the blissful vision.
Behind the temple walls I suddenly saw my brother-in-law sitting under the thorny branches of the Pavil bael tree. Without any effort I could read his thoughts. His thoughts had become somewhat elevated under the influence of the sacred atmosphere of Dakshineswar, but his thoughts about me were still not very good. I turned straight to the gracious Mother Kali and began to pray.
The function of art is to reveal this radiance through the created object. When you see the beautiful organization of a fortunately composed work of art, you just say, “Aha!” Somehow it speaks to the order in your own life and leads to the realization of the very things that religions are concerned to render
