Bruce
09-13-2006, 08:00 AM
There was an unbearable pain in
my heart, because I couldn't get a vision of God. Just as a man wrings out a towel with all his strength to get
the water out of it, so I felt as if my heart and mind were being wrung out. I began to think I should never see
God. I was dying of despair. In my agony, I said to myself: "What's the use of living this life?" Suddenly my
eyes fell upon the sword that hangs in the temple. I decided to end my life with it, then and there. Like a
madman, I ran to it and seized it. And then, I had a marvelous vision of God and fell down unconscious. It was as
if houses, doors and everything else vanished altogether; as if there was nothing anywhere! And then what I saw was
an infinite shoreless sea of light; a sea that was consciousness. However far and in whatever direction I looked, I
saw shining waves, one after another, coming towards me. They were raging and storming upon me with great speed.
Very soon they were upon me....
Sri Ramakrsna
(from the book Ramakrisna and his Disciples by
Christopher Isherwood)
One of my favorite books
my heart, because I couldn't get a vision of God. Just as a man wrings out a towel with all his strength to get
the water out of it, so I felt as if my heart and mind were being wrung out. I began to think I should never see
God. I was dying of despair. In my agony, I said to myself: "What's the use of living this life?" Suddenly my
eyes fell upon the sword that hangs in the temple. I decided to end my life with it, then and there. Like a
madman, I ran to it and seized it. And then, I had a marvelous vision of God and fell down unconscious. It was as
if houses, doors and everything else vanished altogether; as if there was nothing anywhere! And then what I saw was
an infinite shoreless sea of light; a sea that was consciousness. However far and in whatever direction I looked, I
saw shining waves, one after another, coming towards me. They were raging and storming upon me with great speed.
Very soon they were upon me....
Sri Ramakrsna
(from the book Ramakrisna and his Disciples by
Christopher Isherwood)
One of my favorite books