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"One should not think, 'My religion alone is the right path and other religions are false.' God can be realized by means of all paths." -- The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 158 |
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 Sri Ramakrishna (1836 - 1886) |
"His life enables us to see God face to face."
- Mahatma Gandhi "He was a wonderful mixture of God and man." - Friedrich Max Müller "I am bringing to Europe...the fruit of a new autumn, a new message of the Soul, the symphony of India, bearing the name of Ramakrishna." - Romain Rolland "This is the story of a phenomenon." - Christopher Isherwood "What a scholastic philosopher would call the "accidents" of Ramakrishna's life were intensely Hindu and therefore, so far as we in the West are concerned, unfamiliar and hard to understand; its "essence", however, was intensely mystical and therefore universal." - Aldous Huxley |
On February 7, 1889 Swami Vivekananda
wrote the following letter to 'M', the compiler of the original
Bengali version of The Gospel of Sri
Ramakrishna (Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita ):
Dear M--, Swamiji wrote this letter little less than three years after Sri Ramakrishna's passing away on August 16, 1886. The effect of the spiritual energy released by the advent of an Avatara, or Incarnation of God, such as, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, or Ramakrishna, is not felt immediately by mankind. That energy takes hundreds of years or perhaps more to manifest. Little over just one hundred years later, as we approach the new millennium, Sri Ramakrishna's message is being appreciated now by millions of people of many faiths all over the world. What Sri Ramakrishna preached---not only preached but demonstrated with his life, can be summed up in just three sentences:
Yet, Sri Ramakrishna preached nothing new---the ancient Vedanta scriptures unequivocally declared the same principles more than two thousand years before him. Then, what's so special about him? The answer: he demonstrated Vedantic principles in practical terms by living an exemplary spiritual life which is beyond human comprehension. And what an extraordinary and wonderful life that was!!
Sri Ramakrishna spent his entire adult life in a temple on the bank of river Ganges a few miles north of Kolkata (formerly, Calcutta). There he practiced intense meditation and other spiritual exercises prescribed by ancient Hindu scriptures for God realization. Most of the time his mind would soar at the highest level of consciousness, known as bhava samadhi, and he would be in communion with the Divine Mother, Kali, Only a few who were spiritually enlightened themselves, recognized him as a spiritual luminary during this early period of his life. Even during the later part of his life many, especially those belonging to the Europeanized, university educated, and elite society of Kolkata, thought that he was a lunatic because of his God-intoxicated, beyond-the-ordinary behavior and lifestyle. Swami Saradananda, one of his direct disciple wrote: It will not be an exaggeration to say that, before the Master became well known, the people of Calcutta, both the educated and the uneducated, were completely ignorant of bhava samadhi or the extraordinary visions and experiences of the spiritual realm. The uneducated masses had a fantastic conception about these, sprung from fear and sense of mystery; while the modern educated community, drifting on the currents of foreign ideologies introduced by the system of education that was devoid of the indigenous religious background, looked upon this kind of vision, ecstasy etc., as impossible or as derangement of the brain.[2] Slowly, as people watched him closely and listened to his most simple teachings, they started to realize that he was not an ordinary soul and the word started spreading about him. Swami Nikhilananda writes in the introduction of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna: In the year 1879 occasional writings about Sri Ramakrishna by Brahmos, in the Brahmo magazines, began to attract his future disciples from the educated middle class Bengalis, and they continued to come till 1884. But others, too came, feeling the subtle power of his attraction. They were an ever shifting crowd of people of all castes and creeds: Hindus and Brahmos, Vaishnavas and Saktas, the educated with university degrees and the illiterate, old and young, maharajas and beggars, journalists and artists, pundits and devotees, philosophers and the wordly-minded, jnanis and yogis, men of action and men of faith, virtuous women and prostitutes, office-holders and vagabonds, philanthropists and self-seekers, dramatists and drunkards, builders-up and pullers-down. He gave to them all without stint from his illimitable store of realization. No one went empty-handed. He taught them the lofty knowledge of the Vedanta and the soul-melting love of the Purana. Twenty hours out of twenty-four he would speak without rest or respite. He gave to all his sympathy and enlightenment and he touched them with that strange power of the soul which could not but melt even the most hardened. And people understood him according to their powers of comprehension. [3] With this crowd came Mahendra Nath, a young school teacher, who would be recording his teachings and would publish them as Kathamrita---The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna under the pen name 'M'. Also came Narendra, a teenage college student, the future Swami Vivekananda, who would be Ramakrishna's foremost disciple and whom he would entrust to spread his teachings all over the world. During his stay in USA and Europe, Vivekananda seldom mentioned Sri Ramakrishna and spoke only of his teachings and the Vedanta philosophy. In a lecture, however, titled "My Master" delivered in New York in 1896, he introduced Sri Ramakrishna with these words: . . . I heard of this man, and I went to hear him. He looked just like an ordinary man, with nothing remarkable about him. He used the most simple language, and I thought "Can this man be a great teacher?" ---crept near to him and asked him the question which I had been asking others all my life: "Do you believe in God , Sir?" "Yes," he replied. "Can you prove it, Sir?" "Yes." "How?" "Because I see Him just as I see you here only in a much intense sense." That impressed me at once. For the first time I found a man who dared to say that he saw God, that religion was a reality to be felt, to be sensed in an infinitely more intense way than we can sense the world.
Going back to Vivekananda's letter to 'M', why is it that only a "few understood Ramakrishna"? For the same reason why only a few recognized Rama, Krishna, and Jesus Christ---we cannot recognize an Incarnation of God or Avatara with our finite mind and intellect. Sri Ramakrishna himself said: Ordinary people do not recognize the advent of an Incarnation of God. He comes in secret. Only a few of His intimate disciples can recognize Him. That Rama was both Brahman Absolute and a perfect Incarnation of God in human form was known only to twelve rishis. . . [5] In this context, Sri Ramakrishna used to tell this parable: a rich man asked his servant to go the market and trade a diamond in exchange for goods. Following his master's instructions, the servant first tried to sell the diamond to a vegetable peddler, then to a rice merchant, and so on. All these ordinary traders offered him some vegetable, or some rice in exchange for that expensive diamond! Finally, the rich man instructed the servant to go to a jeweler. The jeweler just looked at the diamond and without a second thought offered him to pay one hundred thousand rupees [Indian currency] for it! Swami Tathagatananda writes: The finite mind cannot understand the infinite. The heart of so great a mystery cannot be even reached by following only one road. God is omnipotent. He may assume a human form to set an example of divine life before us. Divine Incarnation is a fact of history. Avatara as epoch-maker functions as a perennial source of power and beneficence in a whole epoch. By his mere look, wish or touch people are saved. The Avatara, unlike an ordinary saint, is not static guide like a lighthouse. "He is," in the words of Sri Ramakrishna "a very big ship, capable of carrying thousands of people across the waters of life." He is like an atomic reactor, a far superior model of either a charcoal hearth or an electric oven. His message and power transcends the age and time. People look upon him as an eternal source of faith, hope, love, strength and inspiration. [6] History corroborates there have been many Incarnations in the past. Scriptures tell us there will be many more in the future. Sri Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita: When goodness grows weak, when evil increases, I make myself a body. In every age I come back to deliver the holy, to destroy the sin of the sinner, to establish righteousness. Yes, every age has witnessed these come backs that, Established righteousness (Bhagavad Gita, IV-8) or, declared: Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled or, reaffirmed Rig Veda's "Truth is one; sages call it variously" by unequivocally declaring: One should not think, 'My religion alone is the right path and other religions are false.' God can be realized by means of all paths. (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 158) History also indicates that these come backs resulted in turning points in the evolutionary process followed by tremendous progress made by mankind in every aspect of life---material, social, cultural, and spiritual. Nonetheless, there has never been a complete eradication of evil resulting in everlasting peace on earth---Utopia has always been a myth through all ages. Swami Vivekananda said: "The world is like a dog's curly tail, and people have been striving to straighten it out for hundreds of years". [7] Sri Ramakrishna taught: That is His play. The glory of light cannot be appreciated without darkness. Happiness cannot be understood without misery. Knowledge of good is possible because of knowledge of evil. [8] How true! How little we know!! The known history of the evolution of the human society is hardly ten thousand years. And we boast of the little knowledge acquired during that time period---we boast of our scientific and technical achievements. Yet how little we know about Nature, both external and our own internal Nature. Again, in Sri Ramakrishna's words: Why should we try to know the reason for Brahman's acting this way or that way? You have come to the orchard to eat mangos. Eat the mangoes. What is good of calculating how many trees there are in the orchard, how many thousand of branches, and how many millions of leaves? One cannot realize Truth by futile arguments and reasoning.[11] Keeping these precious words in mind, we conclude this brief introduction with one quotation from the writings of Sri Aurobindo (1872- 1950), a mystic and a great yogi who wrote in 1910: The world could not bear a second birth like that of Ramakrishna in five hundred years. The mass of thought that he has left has first to be transformed into experience; the spiritual energy given forth has to be converted into achievement. Until that is done, what right have we to ask for more? What could we do with more? [12]
Written by: Webmaster You can learn more about Sri Ramakrishna and his teachings from the following books and by attending lectures and classes at any Ramakrishna Order Vedanta Center nearest you. Suggested books for further reading
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What is Vedanta?
Vedanta Centers World-wide
Articles, Reports, Book Reviews |
The Ramakrishna Movement
Yoga 101
Photo Gallery |
About Us
Monthly Bulletin
Glossary |
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1998 - To date, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, The Vedanta Society of New York
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GOD IS and can be realized by everyone.