Seven jars filled with Gold -Bhagavan Ramakrishna's Short stories

Bhagavan Ramakrishna's Short stories - Seven jars filled with Gold

A ‘yaksha’ was living in a tree outside the village leading to the forest.  People had to cross the tree as they entered the forest and they just cut the trees for their livelihood as well as brought flowers for use and vegetations for food. A king who was ruling the area including the village was living in a nearby town and he had a barber who was attending to him. This barber also lived in this village and one day when he went to the forest there was a sound coming from a tree “whether you require 7 jars of Gold?”  Though the barber did not hear wherefrom the sound came, but his immediate reaction was to shout that he required the Gold. From the area from which the sound came earlier, a sound came then that the jars of gold have already been kept in his house. The barber could not believe himself first what he heard was correct and immediately rushed back to his house to find out whether the gold jars were indeed available in the house.  On reaching the house, he saw there were 7 jars which were covered and on opening to his surprise found gold coins filled in a jar.  His anxiety immediately rose to find out what was in the other jars. Yes he has now come to check the 6^th jar also, and all contained gold coins to the brim. On opening the 7^th jar he found it also contained gold coins but not full and some place was found to be filled up to make it like the other jars.  The barber wanted the 7^th jar to be filled up like the other ones.
              When he went to the king for his duties, on an opportune moment he asked the king that his salary be hiked and King who was in a good mood agreed and increased his salary.  He started telling his wife to curtail the expenses of the house and with the increased salary wanted to fill the 7^th jar with gold coins.  He found in a few months, he was not able to fill the jar and now asked his wife to give her savings and belongings and converted all into gold coins and he could not fill even with that. He started worrying and the King who noticed that, asked what had come off him? The king asked whether his health was alright and that he found the barber not in his normal mood these days. The king seeing the plight of the barber increased the wages to the barber further but later too found the barber not very happy. He was observing the barber and slowly he came to know the barber who used to be truthful earlier had started stealing here and there.  He wanted to give enough time for the barber to come out with his real difficulties.  The barber became irregular for his duties too. One day when the barber came for duty, the King said of late he was finding the barber to be very unhappy as well as he was not doing his allotted work too properly. He asked the barber what happened to him?  The barber replied that he has lost all his belongings and also the salary though hiked by the King, because of his absence to the work in the kingdom, he was not getting full salary and his expenses had increased and he was not able to manage and did not tell the truth that he was converting all into gold coins and still unable to fill the 7^th jar which was the reason for his unhappiness. 
            The king one day called and straightaway asked the barber by any chance he had taken the 7 jars with the “asareerie” asking for it?  The barber was shocked to hear it from the king and said all things that happened to him because of accepting the 7 jars of gold but there were only 6 jars filled and the last jar could not be filled with whatever efforts he made.  He also said to the King, all his beg, borrow and steal efforts have not resulted in the jar getting filled up and in the process he had denied all facilities to his family, he had become a miser and all his happiness too vanished.  The King said to first hand over the jars as that was the work of a Yaksha in a tree and that is the only way by which you would be rid of the worries and someone would be found out for that purpose by the Yaksha.

          The barber implicitly obeyed the King and shouted where he earlier heard the sound for asking the jars and now he shouted that he did not require the 7 jars of Gold. Immediately from a nearby tree, reply came that the 7 jars of gold had been removed from his house.  It need not be emphasized that the barber was the happiest man from then onwards.  But he learnt in the hard way, that he lost whatever he had earned by just means also in converting them as gold and lost the 7 jars of gold too.
Bhagavan Ramakrishna told his disciples this story and summed up: This is the state of affairs in the kingdom of God too.  Some people without knowing the real income and real expenses, ultimately lose whatever they have earned also by just means.

         Tailpiece:  Somehow ‘it’  (Yaksha??) made me to write this in English which             I had already written in Tamil in my blogspot during November 2012.