I don't recall whether I shared the below before. Anyway, today is an appropriate time to do so again even if I had:
One day an attendant of Swami Saradananda worked up the courage to ask him if he had experienced nirvikalpa Samadhi.
“Did I waste my time cutting grass when I lived in the company of Sri Ramakrishna?” he asked in reply.
When the attendant pressed him for details, the swami said, “Read the chapter on samadhi in Sri Ramakrishna, the Great Master. I have not written anything about Samadhi without experiencing it myself.”
He rarely mentioned his personal spiritual experiences and never described them in detail as Sri Ramakrishna had instructed his disciples not to reveal the secrets of their sadhana to anyone but their guru.
One of the few about which anything is known occurred in 1896 when the swami visited Rome on his way to London. The elaborate mass in St. Peter’s Cathedral interested him but did not affect his mood. On his way out, he saw a statue of the Virgin Mary and stood in front of it for a long minute, then sat quietly nearby, meditating. He lost all outer consciousness: the world disappeared for him. His mind was filled with joy, and the radiance of love enveloped his being. In a vision, he saw the cathedral being supported, not by pillars, but by figures of saints shining with effulgent rays which penetrated to every corner of the building, filling it with holiness and spirituality. In the midst of the saints stood the Virgin Mary holding her divine Child in her arms. And as he looked at the Mother and Child, the swami felt the presence of Christ in his heart.
Once when Sri Ramakrishna had been talking to his devotees about Christ, the Messenger of Light, he went into an exalted state of consciousness. When he could speak, he said, “Sarat (Saradananda) and Sashi (later Ramakrishnananda) in a former incarnation were disciples of Jesus Christ. They belonged to his very close and intimate family.”
It is difficult for me to interpret the precise meaning of Sri Ramakrishna’s words as I never asked Swami Saradananda about his relationship to Christ: We never asked certain questions of the direct disciples of the Master. The Bengali phrase that Sri Ramakrishna used was Rishikrishna daler lok. Daler lok can be translated as follower, but Swami Saradananda’s experience in St. Peter’s Cathedral suggests that he was very close to Christ because that experience was not of an ordinary type.
Ordinary love breaks because it is fastened to a finite soul, but when love is attached to the Infinite Spirit, it endures forever. Time and birth cannot sever that connection. Kalidas, the famous poet, said, “Love and friendship never die. They are renewed again and again from life to life. Such is the power of impression forged by love that time cannot change it and death cannot erase it. Perfect love is therefore established not in time but in eternity: deep calling unto the deep…” Holy Mother put it more simply: “Je yar Se Tar” – he who belongs to Him will stay with Him from birth to birth.
It is interesting to note that, when Sri Ramakrishna met Swami Saradananda for the first time and wanted to call forth his spirit of renunciation, he quoted not from Hindu scriptures but from the Christian Bible.
We also know of a vision Swami Saradananda had at Dakshineswar when he happened upon Holy Mother as she came to bring Sri Ramakrishna a plate of rice, vegetables, and other dishes. She was wearing a thick red-bordered sari; her face was lit up with a smile, and the swami saw her as Annapurna, the embodiment of the abundance of nourishing food, an image that dazzled his eyes and left a deep impression on his mind. That vision may have been the reason he took the name Saradananda when he became a sannyasin, and it may also have prompted him to seize the opportunity to take the responsibility for caring after Holy Mother after Swami Yogananda’s mahasamadhi in 1899. Holy Mother used to say, “Sarat and Yogin are my very own; they belong to my inner circle (antaranga).”
Excerpted from Glimpses of a Great Soul – A Portrait of Swami Saradananda by Swami Aseshananda
