Blissful Papa Swami Ramdas - V

The Problem of Suffering

Dilip: What about the suffering He(Lord) makes us go through in the process?

Papa: Who is this 'us' Ram, will you first tell Ramdas that? There is none anywhere but Him.  As a saint He sings hymns to His own Grace, as a poet to His own beauty, till at last, as an atheist, He again denies Himself.  It's all His lila - as a burglar He breaks into a house, as a policeman He catches Himself red-handed, as an advocate defending Himself once more.

Dilip: And as judge condemning Himself finally to twelve years of hard labour I suppose?

Papa: Rings like an oracle, for can anything ever happen under the sun, or above it, unless Ram sanctions it? It is not for us to question why, but to do His bidding; for, then only shall we be able to see the fun of it all, even seeing, if we would, into the heart of this huge paradox of His cosmic play.  Ramdas prefers to enjoy the fun, seeing the One in the Innumerable.  That's why he says there are only two in the world: Ram Himself and - "then indicating himself - "Ramdas, His slave and child."

Dilip: But how then would you account for so many?

Papa: But where are the many? Ramdas sees but one Ram in each and everyone to whom you give a local habitation and a name.

Nilakantan: But Papa, if you see the one Ram in all of us, then why make an exception in you own favour? Why call yourself Ramdas, thus multiplying one into two?

Ramdas laughed and said: Oh! that, just for Ramdas' joy - the joy of taking part in the Ramlila which consists in His creating Ramdas for the joy of enjoying Himself through His slave and devotee.

But Ramdas is not joking.  For the bhakta does enjoy the joke of Ram when He creates him to manifest His lila of bhakti.  Ramdas has known devotees who refused to merge in Him just for the fun of enjoying Him through this Maya-play of separateness, a make-believe, of course - since there can be no separateness - Reality. And incidentally, this meets your question about suffering being rampant everywhere. For, when you see Ram in everything, you see in everything but a new aspect of His lila of delight. When you don't see this, you may indeed smile incredulously, but when you do, the perspective changes.  You have inhibited your smile in time, but Ramdas has realised this in life - and isn't merely uttering slogans - when he denies the reality of suffering, because what appears to you as pain from the lower level of consciousness can and does appear as pure joy when you react to it from the higher, Ramdas has verified this in his life times without number.

Instances of Painless state

Here is an instance, When Ramdas roamed all over India, God-intoxicate, it happened once that thorns found deep lodgement in his feet.  But he was entirely unconscious of the bleeding and the prick.  Here's another, an experience of intense physical pain changing into joy; he developed once, while wandering, a boil on the sole of his right foot.  It got worse from day to day till it swelled into the size of a lemon.  But Ramdas sat smiling and cheerful.  The news got abroad, so that sadhus came from everywhere to see such a phenomenon, since Ramdas was experiencing no pain at all but unbroken ecstasy.  Not only that.  When a barber came at last to open his boil, Ramdas felt no pain even when he probed the abscess to squeeze out the accumulated pus by sheer force.

Again, once he was chased from place to place till he had to sleep under a tree where people urinated.  But Ramdas slept there peacefully.  On another occasion, it so happened that Ramdas woke up in the middle of the night to see a mangy dog seated happily with his hind parts pressed against his nose.  But Ramdas far from feeling a loathing, felt in it the touch of his beloved Ram.  He felt the same about a serpent once.  It happened in this way.  At the time, he was in a party of Sadhus who sang Ram-bhajans in the undergbround cellar of a temple.  Suddenly they saw a cobra materialising from nowhere.  There were scared, but Ramdas didn't budge.  'Come away with us', they adjured him.  Ramdas smiled and said: 'But why are you so nervous? Don't you see it's Ram Himself who has come disguised as aserpent to honour you by attending your music party?  But they looked stupefied and watched from a distance.  The cobra crept near. 'Come beloved Ram, greeted Ramdas as he placed before it a piece of jaggery.  The serpent licked it a little with relish and then crawled away, when Ramdas threw what remained of the jaggery into his mouth and passed the whole night in blissful trance.