Spiritual Conversations with Swami Premananda

SPIRITUAL TALKS

- Swami Atmaswarupananda

(This is an English translation of ‘Kathaprasange Swami Premananda’ compiled by Swami Omkareshwarananda in Bengali and published by Udbodhan Karyalaya, Kolkata. Prabuddha Bharata has already published the translation of the first three cantos of this book from February 2016 to July 2016. We are happy to present now the translation of the same serially from the fourth canto onwards —Editor)

[The spiritual literature of the world would have become vastly impoverished but for the availability of the reminiscences about the illumined souls. It is in these memoirs that the abstract spiritual ideal becomes accessible in its living and poetic form. Indeed, a sincere spiritual seeker ever yearns for a vivid quotidian account of these men of God. This intense aspiration of spiritual seekers seems to have found a clear and precise voice in Arjuna’s question to God: ‘O Keshava! What is the description of a person who has attained to steady wisdom and deep introspection? How does he speak? How does he sit? How does he walk?’ And, God’s answers to Arjuna, drifting across centuries, most decidedly became embodied in the lives of the direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. One such glorious soul was Swami Premananda— popularly known as ‘Baburam Maharaj’ in the Ramakrishna tradition. The name—Premananda— means bliss of love. And, seldom did a name befit a person so uniquely, for Baburam Maharaj was the very personification of love and bliss. And he was the very epitome not only of love but of purity too. Sri Ramakrishna used to say about him: ‘He is pure, pure to the very marrow of his bones.’