Sri Ramakrishna Death - Did He Get Cancer Due to Past Bad Karma? (Part 1)

Sri Ramakrishna

Why Did Ramakrishna Paramahamsa Get Cancer?

Was It Past Bad Karma?

This question often circulates on the internet.

we shall arrive at the correct answer.

Hello everyone,

I am Pulkit Mathur,

Founder of the Spiritual Bee and as we know,

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa,

the great Avatar and guru of

Swami Vivekananda became afflicted with throat cancer and gave up his body on 16th August 1886.
He was just 50 years old.

When people typically hear this they wonder,

how could an Avatar,

an incarnation of God get cancer?

Did he do some bad karma in his past life?

And the answer is no,

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa certainly did not do any bad Karma in his past life.

He actually could not have.
For in his previous births too he had incarnated as the Avatars Lord Rama and Krishna.

Sri Ramakrishna had himself revealed this truth to Swami Vivekananda.

He had told Swami Vivekananda.

Now an Avatar,

being an incarnation of God is absolutely incapable of doing any bad Karma.

This, in fact, is one of the key attributes which distinguishes an Avatar from an ordinary person.

While an ordinary person remains trapped in Maya and is forced to be reborn again and again in order to work out their past karmas,

an Avatar is under no such compulsion.
In some distant past lifetime,

when an Avatar-like

Sri Ramakrishna first attained Samadhi,

he had at that moment conquered Maya once and forever.
At that instant of his first Samadhi,

all of

Sri Ramakrishna's Karmas from each and every preceding past life had been burnt up and permanently destroyed.

From that point onwards he became a free soul.
The law of Karma ceased to affect him completely.
Instead of being a helpless slave of the law of karma, like we ordinary mortals,

are,

at that moment of his first Samadhi,

Sri Ramakrishna forever transcended the law of Karma and became instead the ruler and Master of it.

Therefore whenever an Avatar-like Sri Ramakrishna takes birth,

it is not due to any forced compulsion of the law of Karma,

rather the Avatar takes birth again and again out of his own choice, out of his own free will.

An Avatar chooses to reincarnate only out of compassion for the suffering humanity - motivated purely by the desire to help liberate others too,

from the karmic cycle of birth and death.

Here it is important to note that apart from men there have been many women Avatars too.

Thus Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa being an Avatar was born free,

without any past karmic debt.

In his present life to being an Avatar he did not commit any bad karma.

So Sri Ramakrishna could not have gotten cancer as the karmic repercussion of bad actions done in this or some other past lifetime.

So what then was the real reason why

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa got cancer?

Now before we proceed to answer this question,

Sri Ramakrishna

one point worth highlighting here is that - this idea that every person suffering from cancer or some other deadly disease is doing

so because they have committed some bad deeds in their past lives,

this idea itself is deeply wrong and flawed.

Diseases as the sages tell us have many causes,

one of which is past karma.

Karma is merely one out of the innumerable possible causes.

What's more,

it is quite impossible for an ordinary person to determine whether the cause behind their's or somebody else's cancer is truly past bad karma.

In fact,

whenever a person is going through bad times,

it is not possible to know with certainty whether their suffering is necessary due to their past bad karma.

This is because the lines of karma, of all past good and bad actions of a person,

are extremely complex and interwoven with one another.

They are extremely difficult to trace and hence simplistic and linear conclusions cannot be drawn and should not be drawn.

Such expertise is possessed by God-realized sages - they certainly have the power to untangle the entanglement and know for sure whether past bad karma is the cause.

Such sages,
of course,
are rare.

It is for this reason that the Bhagavad Gita has stated:

Gehna Karmanogati - the law of Karma works in a deeply complex and indecipherable manner,

far beyond the comprehension of ordinary human beings and therefore we must not commit the mistake of drawing simplistic linkages and blaming past karma for each and every bad thing that happens to us or to others.

The difficulties of life,

in fact,

have many non-karmic causes:
For example,

it may be the case that the soul of a person has purposely charted out difficulties in its life plan

so that the person can grow and manifest the divine qualities which lie latent within and thus hasten their ascendancy to the realm of God-Consciousness.

In other words,

the inner self of a person can purposely invite difficulties,

and use them as tools to quicken the pace of spiritual growth.

When this happens,

the individual himself will not be aware of this decision made by his inner subconscious self.

Another example of life's difficult situations having non-karmic causes is when an individual becomes the victim of another person's evil thoughts and actions.

When we are born on earth,

we each take birth in a realm of deep ignorance - where we and others around us are all ignorant of our true divine natures.

Thus we go about committing numerous mistakes,
acts of bad judgment,
and evil deeds.
Living in this realm of ignorance,

we can easily become the victims of another person's misdeeds.

Consider for example the case of a farmer who is illiterate, and who routinely sprays pesticides on his fruits.

A pesticide company whose executives are all highly educated,

but morally weak - these executives are blinded by greed for profits,

market their product aggressively to this illiterate farmer.

The farmer being uneducated is not

Sri Ramakrishna

Sri Ramakrishna pointed to his throat and said: "That is why this cancer is there.

Swami Saradananda recounts that when the disciples heard their Guru

Sri Ramakrishna's words they felt an immense amount of despair and sadness,

for they remembered all the times when they had touched

Sri Ramakrishna's feet after committing various evil acts like lying, cheating, etc.

And the great sage all this while was silently absolving them of the karmic repercussions of their bad actions by absorbing their sins into himself.

Swami Saradananda particularly recalled one noteworthy incident which had happened:

Once,

a man suffering from the skin disease of leucoderma begged

Sri Ramakrishna, that if only the sage would pass his hand over his body, he would be cured of the disease.

Sri Ramakrishna out of compassion said,

"As you desire, I shall pass over my hand.
Your disease will be cured if the Divine Mother wills."

And he passed his hand over the man's body.

For the whole of that day,

Sri Ramakrishna experienced excruciating pain in his hand.

Sri Ramakrishna said later,

"The man was cured of the disease but the suffering was experienced by this body."

So this is how

Sri Ramakrishna took other people's sins upon himself.

This phenomenon of a guru absorbing other people's sins has been further explained by Sri Aurobindo, another great sage and Avatar.

Once Sri Aurobindo's disciple Nirodbaran asked him:

It is said that Ramakrishna Paramahamsa got cancer because of the sins of his disciples?

Is this possible?

Sri Aurobindo replied:

The Guru has to take up many things of the disciple.

There was a famous Yogi who advised a disciple who was getting ready to become a Guru - the Yogi said to the disciple:

"In addition to your own difficulties, you will now have to take up those of others."

So a genuine guru takes up some of the past karmas of his disciples in order to hasten their spiritual progress.

We must remember however that the guru,
of course,
does this only after determining the Patrata or the worthiness of his disciple.

He does not bestow such boons willy-nilly and for free.
If you wish to understand this point better, then do watch the earlier video series on Patra.

Continuing his conversation with Nirodbaran,

Sri Aurobindo remarked:

"No doubt if the Guru cuts his connection with his disciples,

then this transfer of sins from the disciple to the Guru cannot happen,

but then this would also mean that no work of spiritual upliftment gets done,

the Sadhaks are left to themselves without any support.

For this reason, Mother,

here Sri Aurobindo is referring to Mother Mirra -who took up many sins of the disciples because she united herself with the Sadhaks.

Now such a transference of Karma is not anything to be surprised about.

As Sri Aurobindo explains further:

"Such an interchange of forces between persons is actually very common.

Whenever two people meet,

the interchange goes on.

In that way one contracts a disease from another without any infection by germs.

Even without a meeting, there can be mutual effects.

Even though his power is for good and evil. Bad thoughts may affect others.

That is why Buddha used to emphasize right thinking."

So to conclude,

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa the Avatar did not get cancer due to past bad karma,

rather he got cancer because he purposely took it upon himself,

the sins of his disciples,

because the great saint wanted to smoothen his disciple's path and hasten their spiritual evolution.

This is the truth.

Now having understood this a follow-up question then arises -

which is that having taken on his disciple's sins

why did Sri Ramakrishna not use his immense yogic powers to cure Himself of throat cancer?

Why did he have to go on suffering?

Surely he could have used his tremendous Yogic powers to restore his health.

So why didn't he?

We shall visit the answer to this question in the next Article.

Until then,

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