Chapter (অধ্যায়): CHAPTER I : THE HOUSE ON THE GANGES PAGE-337Page: 337 of 548
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE ON THE GANGES
Place: A cottage at Belur, beside the Ganges.
Time: March to May, 1898.
Of the home by the Ganges the Master had said to one, "You will find that little house of Dhira Mata like heaven, for it is all love, from beginning to end".
It was so indeed. Within, an unbroken harmony, and without, everything alike beautiful__the green stretch of grass, the tall cocoanut palms, the little brown villages in the jungle, and the Nilkantha that built her nest in a tree‑top beside us, on purpose to bring us the blessings of Shiva. In the morning the shadows lay behind the house, but in the afternoons we could sit in front worshipping the Ganges herself__great leonine mother!__
and in sight of Dakshineswar.
There came one and another with traditions of the past, and we learnt of the Master's eight years' wanderings; of the name changed from village to village; of the Nirvikalpa Samâdhi; and of that sacred sorrow, too deep for words or for common sight, that one who loved had alone seen. And there too came the Master himself, with his stories of Umâ and Shiva, of Râdhâ and Krishna, and his fragments of song and poetry.
It seemed as if he knew that the first material of a new consciousness must be a succession of vivid but isolated experi‑ences, poured out without proper sequence so as to provoke the mind of the learner to work for its own conception of order and relation. . . . For the most part it was the Indian religions that he portrayed for us__today dealing with one and tomorrow with another__his choice guided, seemingly, by the whim of the moment. But it was not religion only that he poured out upon us. Sometimes it would be history. Again, it would be folk‑lore. On still another occasion it would be the manifold anomalies and inconsistencies of race, caste and custom. In fact India herself became, as heard in him, as the last and noblest of the Purânas, uttering itself through his lips.