Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa - Sri Ramakrishna Ashrama, Mysore: Chetan Hegde M
Sri Ramakrishna (1836-86)
A once obscure and conventionally ‘uneducated’ village boy, Gadhadhar Chatterji, who became a prominent Hindu holy man, emphasizing non-contradiction and unity among all religions.
Ramakrishna claims that he practiced all faiths and discovered that they all lead to the same spiritual place (i.e. they produce the same kind of numinous experience and attitudes toward God, other people and the meaning of life).
Just how thoroughly, however, one can effectively rid oneself of one’s cultural and religious biases remains open to question.
By way of analogy, it almost sounds like a rabbit saying, “I tried being a bird, a fish, a cow and a snake… and all are just the same.”
This phenomenological issue aside, biographers say Ramakrishna often fell into extended ecstatic raptures. These trances were extreme to the point that even Ramakrishna himself sometimes wondered if he’d gone mad.
At such moments the Blessed Mother, Kali, apparently would appear in a mystical vision and console him with her graces.
Before marrying Sri Devi, Ramakrishna prayed that Kali would “root out” all of her sexual tendencies. Not surprisingly, their marriage was never consummated. While this may seem strange to many who can’t see beyond material techno-sexual culture, the two reportedly were united in a purely spiritual sense, making sexual union redundant, perhaps even distasteful.
The Gospel of Ramakrishna, based on the writings of his direct disciples, is widely available in the West. Essentially it’s a wisdom book, full of pithy sayings and examples. In one analogy Ramakrishna notes, for instance, that bad tomatoes rot faster when bashed up and thrown in the garbage heap, referring to the idea that the soul may be purified of ungodly attitudes (i.e. bad tomatoes) through holy suffering (see » Bhagavad Gita, Alchemy).
Conforming to the idea of karma transfer, an Indian biographer writes that Ramakrishna apparently:
had a vision of his subtle body…[with] a number of sores on the back. He was puzzled by the sight, but it was made clear…profane people had caused the sores on his body. They themselves had been purified, but they had left the suffering arising from their own sins with him.¹
This well represents some of the central beliefs regarding the dynamics of Hindu mysticism. Similar but not identical beliefs can be found in the Christian mystical tradition–e.g. that souls close to God suffer for the liberation or salvation of less pure or holy souls (see » Faustina Kowalska).
Further on this point, the common worldly critique that “prayer does nothing” might, from the perspective of a bona fide saint, be seen as an unfortunate misunderstanding perpetuated by ignorance or sin.
On a more publicly visible level, Ramakrishna’s disciples founded the international charity organization known as the Ramakrishna Mission. And his most beloved disciple, Swami Vivekananda, became another pivotal Hindu religious figure.
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¹ Swami Tejasananda, A Short Life of Sri Ramakrishna, Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama [Publication Department], 1990, p. 92.
» Brahman, Contemplation, Hinduism, Mental Prayer, Spirit, Vocal Prayer
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