I received a call from the Principal of Ramakrishna Mission, Vidyamandir, Swami Swami Shastrajnananda, asking me if I am interested in joining the faculty of the Masters in English to teach Communication. I was taken aback as I was not expecting this but taking my tight schedule at the University of Calcutta and at IIM I was hesitant. Then we agreed to eight classes a month which I agreed to. Thus began my spiritual journey in teaching.
Teaching in Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandir makes me feel different and special. My experiences makes me feel extra ordinary, and connected. I felt more spiritual.
Suddenly a feeling swam over me with a mighty strength. The feeling was both overwhelming and peaceful, linking me to some cosmic and eternal force as the earth around me became more vibrant and alive. It was as if heaven and earth, past and present, were all one in an instant.
Teaching and Expansion are two elements of meditation. No one can teach you about the experience. It comes through your act. In my mind, past, present and future became a blur as I stood in the middle of the class room, in the middle of forever. It was as if I were to take a rope that went on forever in both directions and cut it anywhere then the cut would always be exactly in the middle. And if I cut it twice I would have a beginning and an end, but eternity would continue in both directions.
The most critical of the spiritual experience is a renewed and transformed emphasis on mystical experience known as mind elevation. These interrelated spiritual innovations spread as significant components of present experience in large part through the mass print media. Rather than spiritual movements dependent on revivalism, these were first and foremost discourses, creatures of the printed word.
The travel from Calcutta to Howrah to Belur is, therefore, a mixture of a plenitude of densities, from the presence of the placid Ganga, to the mundane premonition, to the rain drops of small glisters which accompanied that autumnal rain. The music, in a simple ringing of the puja bell, recreated a new universe with the mission and all the hearts that were witness to it, pigeons, swallows the world were clothed in a new carnivalesque colouring: a celebration from within.
I felt entombed and stifled and desperately craved fresh air. Here in the Ramakrishna Vidyamandir I got it. Ramakrishna said that God has anointed us, has sealed us, and has given us the pledge, the foretaste, of the Spirit. If we are going to minister something of the Mother to others, we have to experience her by the working, and teaching and the pledge of the Spirit.
In Ramakrishna Vidyamandir I gained the capacity for heartfelt, extemporized prayer. I would have considered it spiritual to pray spontaneously aloud with other college teachers. I had also left behind my love; the prayers, and especially its hymns, but I always knew they would be there if I went back to find them.
The teachings of Ramakrishna define the nature of Soul. You are Soul, a particle of God sent into this world to gain spiritual experience.
The best thing about teaching is that you learn. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, and you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.
A person can learn a lot from teaching. Teaching taught me about living each day with unbridled exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and following your heart. It taught me to appreciate the simple things. It taught me about optimism in the face of adversity. Mostly, it taught me about friendship and selflessness and, above all else, unwavering belief in oneself.
As a teacher we never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his students, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.