Material desires need to be fulfilled before starting Spiritual journey

(from "The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.")

Ramakrishna

Mahendra: "Why does one slip from the path of yoga?"

Master: "While thinking of God the aspirant may feel a craving for material enjoyment. It is this craving that makes him slip from the path. In his next life he will be born with the spiritual tendencies that he failed to translate into action in his present life."

Mahendra: "Then what is the way?"

Master: "No salvation is possible for a man as long as he has desire, as long as he hankers for worldly things.

Therefore fulfil all your desires regarding food, clothes, and sex. (Smiling) What do you say about the last one?

Legitimate or illegitimate? 

(M. and Mahendra laugh.)

"It is not good to cherish desires and hankerings. For that reason I used to fulfill whatever desires came to my mind. 

Once I saw some coloured sweetmeats at Burrabazar and wanted to eat them. They brought me the sweets and I ate a great many. The result was that I fell ill.

"In my boyhood days, while bathing in the Ganges, I saw a boy with a gold ornament around his waist. During my state of divine intoxication I felt a desire to have a similar ornament myself. I was given one, but I couldn't keep it on very long. When I put it on, I felt within my body the painful uprush of a current of air. It was because I had touched gold to my skin. I wore the ornament a few moments and then had to put it aside.

Otherwise I should have had to tear it off.

"I once felt a desire to eat the famous sweetmeats of different cities. (All laugh.) I had a desire to hear Sambhu's musical recital of the Chandi. After fulfilling that desire I wanted to hear the same thing by Rajnarayan. That desire also was satisfied.

"At that time many holy men used to visit the temple garden. A desire arose in my mind that there should be a separate store-room to supply them with their provisions. Mathur Babu arranged for one. The sādhus were given food-stuffs, fuel, and the like from that store-room.

"Once the idea came to me to put on a very expensive robe embroidered with gold and to smoke a silver hubble-bubble. Mathur Babu sent me the new robe and the hubble-bubble. I put on the robe. I also smoked the hubble-bubble in various fashions. Sometimes I smoked it reclining this way, and sometimes that way, sometimes with head up, and sometimes with head down. Then I said to myself, 'O mind, this is what they call smoking a silver hubble-bubble.' 

Immediately I renounced it. I kept the robe on my body a few minutes longer and then took it off. I began to trample it underfoot and spit on it, saying: 'So this is an expensive robe! But it only increases man's rajas.'"