All best wishes for a Happy New Year.

January 1st, 1886 is the day Sri Ramakrishna blessed his devotees with spiritual illumination, becoming, as it were, a wish-fulfilling tree or “Kalpataru”. Swami Saradananda describes how Sri Ramakrishna exclaimed, 

“What more shall I say to you? May you all be blessed with the spiritual awakening.” Beside himself with love and compassion for the devotees, hardly had he said those few words when he entered into Bhavasamadhi. Those words of profound blessing, untouched by the slightest tinge of selfishness, directly entered the devotees’ hearts where they raised high billows of bliss. They forgot time and space, forgot the disease of the Master and forgot their previous determination not to touch him till he recovered, and were aware only that out of sympathy for them in their plight, an extraordinary divine Being, feeling excruciating pain at their misery and his heart overflowing with compassion, had come down to them from heaven and called them affectionately to Him for giving protection. (From Sri Ramakrishna The Great Master)

May he bless us all with spiritual awakening and illumination!