A Story by Revered Swami Ranganathanandaji

Kindly read the following story In full as told by Revered Swami Ranganathanandaji, thirteenth President of the Ramakrishna Order. A VERY INTERESTING AND ILLUMINATING ONE.
” I will tell you about a lady, by name Kiliani, who died just two years ago. I was with her in Paris, as well as in a village near Munich. She was the lady-in-charge of the four daughters of
Aristotle Onassis, that famous shipping magnate of Greece. Those four girls grew up. By the time they were 20 or 23, they were all married. Kiliani retired after twenty years of
service with the Onassis family. She has never thought of God or religion. She came to Paris. What was she to do in Paris? One Saturday, she saw in the papers that there was a
Ramakrishna-Vedanta centre in Gretz and there was going to be a talk there. She decided, ‘let me go there.’ All along she had never thought about spiritual things. She went there and
saw the beautiful ashrama. So many people were there. There she purchased the famous book on spiritual life, ‘The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.’ She started reading the book.
It was entirely new to her, but deeply inspiring. She had also read my book, ‘The Message of the Upanishads’, by the time I went there. Then she told me her story. At her request for a
Sanskrit name, I gave her the name, Kalyani, ‘the auspicious one’. And the most important part of her story was, she was so full of joy; she told me, why did I waste my seventy years
without knowing this truth ! This is something wonderful. But then she got a phone call from Mrs. Onassis from London, ‘Ms. Kiliani, what is the matter with you? Are you okay?’
‘Yes, I am perfectly okay, madam.’ ‘No, no, you are in an ashrama. How can you be okay? Unless you are in trouble you cannot be there.’ She kept telling me, ‘How can I make
them understand! What a joy I am having! All these seventy years have been a waste, I find. If I had heard these beautiful ideas earlier, how nice it would have been!’ That is the story
of Kiliani; hundreds of people have the same story—people not knowing that their religion can be a religion of joy.”

Story told by Rev. Ranganathanandaji Maharaj