Ramkrishna

The life of  the spirit that Ramkrishna lived gives a silver lining to the cloud of clash and conflict in the world today. The words of wisdom that fell from his lips have leaped the mountains and crossed the seas. The world saw in him for the first time a peerless mystic who had such varied experiences as those of Shankara and Chaitana, Buddha and Ramanuja, and whose realizations of the truths of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and other religions bore fruit in the most perfect synthesis of thought and life ever known to history. His heart was the confluence of spiritual currents flowing from all directions. In it met all spiritual truths as in the Divine Heart Itself to which they belong. His message of the Harmony of Religions forms his greatest contribution to spiritual thought. Ramkrishna’s message was unique in being expressed in action. The message itself was the perennial message of Hinduism. Religion is not just a matter for study; it is something that has to be experienced and to be lived, and this is the field in which Ramkrishna manifested his uniqueness. He practiced successively almost every form of Indian religion and philosophy, and he went on to practice Islam and Christianity as well. His religious activity and experience were, in fact, comprehensive to a degree that had perhaps never before been attained by any other religious genius, in India or elsewhere. He devotion to God in the personal form of the Great Mother did not state of prevent him from attaining the state of ‘contentless consciousness’-- an absolute union with absolute spiritual reality.

The vast and all-comprehensive synthesis arrived at by Ramkrishna is a spiritual verity. It was not designed, but discovered; it was not reasoned out, but revealed. It has, therefore, all the permanence of a natural law or scientific truth.

In  Ramkrishna’s own words—as one and the same water is called by different names by different peoples, some calling water, some wari, some aqua and some pani, so the one Sat-Chit-Ananda—Existence-Intelligence-Bliss Absolute—is invoked by some as God, by as Allah, by some as Hari and by others as Brahman. In a potter’s shop there are vessels of different shapes and forms—pots, jars, dishes, plates, etc.—but all made of the same clay. So God is one, but he is worshipped in different ages and climes under different names and in different aspects. As a mother, in nursing her sick children, gives rice and curry to one, sago and arrowroot to another, and bread and butter to a third, so the lord has laid out different paths for different men suited to their natures. God is one, but His aspects are many. As the master of a house is father to one, brother to another and husband to a third, and is called by different names by different persons, so the one God is described in various ways according to the particular aspect in which He appears to His particular worshipper.