unceasing stream. Gradually she became very much absorbed into herself. I knew she was in Samadhi. So I closed the door and came away.
'A long while after, I went again to her room. She said to me, "Are you just returning from the Master's room?" And I replied, "How is it, Mother, that you say you never experience Samadhi and other high spiritual moods?" She was abashed and smiled.
'After that event I sometimes used to spend the night with her at Dakshineswar. Though I wanted to sleep on a separate bed, she would never listen to it. She would drag me to her side. One night somebody was playing the flute outside. That brought on her a high spiritual mood. She was laughing at intervals. With great hesitation I sat in one corner of the bed. I thought that, being a worldly person, I should not touch her at that time. After a long while her mind came to the ordinary state.'
In later days, after the passing away of the Master, she had more frequent experiences of this exalted state. This will be dealt with in detail in the proper place.
4 Suffice it to say here that soon after her contact with the Master, her mind, pure and disciplined as it was, attained to great heights of concentration and illumination. Ecstasies and visions are only the by-products of spiritual realization. They may or may not appear according to temperament. The essence of realization, however, consists in a transformation of the inner life, and not in any external manifestation. The Holy Mother was speaking from experience when she put this idea so beautifully in the following words: 'What else does one
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4 See chaps. 9 and 11.