Though they accept alms, they never ask for them; and even the missionaries who have travelled all the way to America to lecture and preach, never ask for money. They do not want it, and what is given to them is sent to India forthwith towards a fund for building and endowing what we should call monasteries, where the style of life is as simple as it was in the best days of monastic life in Europe. The sayings of Râmak_ri_sh_n_a have been published by his disciples, and I cannot resist the temptation of giving here at least a few of them:— “Thou seest many stars at night in the sky, but findest them not when the sun rises. Canst thou say that there are no stars then in the heaven of day? O man, because thou beholdest not the Almighty in the days of thy ignorance, say not that there is no God.” “Different creeds are but different paths to reach the Almighty.” “As from the same gold various ornaments are made, having different forms and names, so our God is worshipped in different countries and ages, and has different forms and names. Though He may be worshipped variously, some loving to call Him Father, others Mother &c., yet it is one God that is being worshipped in all these various relations and modes.” “Man is like a cushion-cover. The colour of one may be red, another blue, another black, but all contain the same cotton inside. So it is with man; one is beautiful, one is black, another holy, a fourth wicked; but the Divine dwells in all of them.” “God is in all men, but all men are not in God, that is the reason why they suffer.” “As the lamp does not burn without oil, man cannot live without God.” “There are two egos in man, one ripe and the other unripe. The ripe ego thinks, ‘Nothing is mine, whatever I see, or feel, or hear, nay, even this body is not mine; I am always free and eternal.’ The unripe ego, on the contrary, thinks, ‘This is my house, my room, my child, my wife, my body,’ &c.” “When the knowledge of Self is obtained, all fetters fall off by themselves. Then there is no distinction of a Brâhma_n_a or a _S_ûdra, of high caste or low caste. In that case the sacred thread, the sign of caste, falls away of itself. But so long as man has the consciousness of distinction and difference of caste, he should not forcibly throw it away.” “A man after fourteen years of hard asceticism in a lonely forest, obtained at last the power of walking on the waters. Overjoyed at this acquisition, he went to his teacher and told him of his great feat. At this the master replied: ‘My poor boy, what thou hast accomplished after fourteen years of arduous labour, ordinary men do the same by paying a penny to the boatman.’” “Where is God? How can we get at Him? There are pearls in the sea. One must dive again and again till one gets at them. So there is God in the world, but you should persevere in diving.” “The vanities of all others may gradually die out, but the vanity of a saint is hard, indeed, to wear away.”