Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa

9. On two occasions the Lord smiles. First when the doctor comes to the bed-side of a patient who is seriously taken ill and is about to die, and says to his mother, “Why madam, there is no cause for anxiety at all. I take upon myself the responsibility of saving your son’s life.” Next He smiles when two brothers, who are busy partitioning their land, take a measuring tape, put it across the land and say, “This side is mine, and that side is yours.”

10. The ‘I’ which makes a man worldly and attached to lust and wealth is mischievous. The individual soul and the Universal Being are separated because this ‘I’ comes in between them. If a stick is placed on the surface of water, the water will appear to be divided into two sections. The stick is the Aham – the ‘I’. Take that away, and the water becomes again undivided. 

11. If you feel proud, let it be in the thought that you are the servant of God, the son of God.

12. As a piece of rope, when burnt, retains its form, but cannot serve to bind, so is the ego which is burnt by the fire of supreme Knowledge.

13. That knowledge which purifies the mind and heart alone is true Knowledge.

14. To explain God after merely reading the scriptures is like explaining to a person the city of Banares after seeing it only in a map.

15.The nearer you come to God, the less you are disposed to questioning and reasoning.

16. The sacred books tell us only the way to God, i.e. of the means for the realisation of God. That way being known, the next step is to work one’s way to the goal. Realisation is the goal.