This fact being admitted, might be accounted for by the uninitiated, as a wonderfully “trained 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 playthings,—­can rest contented without struggling to attain it?  No, he will become mad with longing.”

At length, after almost twelve years unceasing effort, and undivided purpose Sri Ramakrishna was rewarded with what has been described as “a torrent of spiritual light, deluging his mind and giving him peace.”

This wonderful insight he displayed in all the after years of his earthly mission, and he not only attained glimpses of the cosmic conscious state, but he also retained the Illumination, and the power to impart to a great degree, the realization of that state of being which he himself possessed.