ned ear," which by cultivation and long practice detects
sounds at a seemingly miraculous distance.

But the priests know how many are in a wrecked boat, and can describe them,
and "converse" with them, although the fishermen are not aware that they
have "talked" to the priest.

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the latest incarnation of God in India, and
the master to whom the late Swami Vivekananda gives such high praise and
devotion, lived almost wholly in that exalted state of consciousness which
would appear to be more essentially _spiritual_, than _cosmic_ in the
strict sense of the latter word, since _cosmic_ should certainly imply
all-inclusiveness, rather than wholly _spiritual_ (spiritual being here
used as an extremely high vibration of the cosmos).

We learn that Sri Ramakrishna was a man comparatively unlettered, and yet
his insight was so marvelous, his consciousness so exalted that the most
learned pundits honored and respected him as one who had attained unto the
goal of all effort--liberation, _mukti_, while to many persons throughout
India to-day, and indeed throughout the whole world, he is looked upon as
an incarnation of Krishna.

It is related of Sri Ramakrishna that his yearning for Truth (his mother,
he called it), was so great that he finally became unfit to conduct
services in the temple, and retired to a little wood near by. Here he
seemed to be lost in concentration upon the one thought, to such an extent
that had it not been for devoted attendants, who actually put food into his
mouth, the sage would have starved to death. He had so completely lost all
thought of himself and his surroundings that he could not tell when the day
dawned or when the night fell. So terrible was his yearning for the voice
of Truth that when day after day passed and the light he longed for had not
come to him he would weep in agony.

Nor could any words or argument dissuade him from his purpose.

He once said to Swami Vivekananda:

"My son, suppose there is a bag of gold in yonder room, and a robber is in
the next room. Do you think that robber can sleep? He cannot. His mind will
be always thinking how he can enter that room and obtain possession of
that gold. Do you think, then, that a man firmly persuaded that there is a
reality behind all these appearances, that there is a God, that there is
One who never dies, One who is Infinite Bliss, a bliss compared with which
these pleasures of the senses are simply playt