Ramakrishna

For other uses, see Ramakrishna (disambiguation).

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
Born	(1836-02-18)February 18, 1836 Kamarpukur, West Bengal, India
Died	16 August 1886(1886-08-16) (aged 50) Garden House in Cossipore.

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (Bangla: রামকৃষ্ণ পরমহংস Ramkṛiṣṇo Pôromôhongśo) (February 18, 1836 - August 16, 1886), born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay (Bangla: গদাধর চট্টোপাধ্যায় Gôdadhor Chôţţopaddhae), was born in a small Bengali village and became a Hindu religious leader and founder of the religious school of thought that developed into the Ramakrishna Mission. Ramakrishna along with his prominent monastic disciple Swami Vivekananda became an influential figure in the Bengali Renaissance and the Spiritual Renaissance. He practiced Vaishnava and Śakti bhakti, Vedanta, Tantra, and other spiritual disciplines and realized that all paths lead to the same ultimate goal. He was considered an avatar or incarnation of God by many of his disciples, and is considered as such by many of his devotees today.Academic studies have concentrated on the influence of Ramakrishna's personality in the growth of the Ramakrishna religious movement — the Ramakrishna Mission,Ramakrishna's contribution to the "harmony of religions", psychoanalysis and mysticism.

Biography

Birth and childhood

The small house at Kamarpukur where Ramakrishna lived (centre). The family shrine is on the left, birthplace temple on the right

Ramakrishna was born in 1836, in the village of Kamarpukur, in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, into a very poor but pious, orthodox brahmin family. His parents were Khudiram Chattopâdhyâya, and Chandramani Devî. Various supernatural incidents are recounted by Saradananda in connection with Ramakrishna’s birth. It is said that Ramakrishna was named Gadadhar in response to a dream Khudiram had in Gaya before Ramakrishna’s birth, in which Lord Gadadhara, the form of Vishnu worshipped at Gaya, appeared to him and told him he would be born as his son. Chandramani Devi is said to have had a vision of light entering her womb before Ramakrishna was born. Ramakrishna was born as the fourth and last child to his parents.

Gadadhar, as Ramakrishna was known in his early days, was an extremely popular figure in his village. He had a natural gift for the fine arts like drawing and clay modelling. However, he disliked attending school, and rejected his schooling saying that he was not interested in mere "Bread Winning Education". He became increasingly less interested in formal attendance. Though Gadadhar shunned the traditional school system, he showed great desire and ability to learn. He easily mastered the songs, tales and dramas which were based on the religious scriptures. At a very early age he was well versed in the Purāṇas, the Rāmāyaṇa, the Mahābhārata, and Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, by hearing them from wandering monks and the Kathaks — a class of men in ancient India who preached and sang the Purāṇas for the uneducated masses. He learned to read and write in Bengali. He was able to follow Sanskrit even though he could not speak the language. He would visit with wandering monks who stopped in Kamarpukur on their way to Puri. He would serve them and listen to their religious debates with rapt attention. Gadadhar loved nature and spent much time in fields and fruit orchards outside the village with his friends.

At the age of six or seven, Gadadhar had an intense experience of spiritual ecstasy. He was walking along the paddy fields and suddenly looked up to find a flock of white cranes flying with dark thunder-clouds as a background. To him, that was a beautiful sight, he was so absorbed that he lost consciousness of everything outward. He later said that in that state he had experienced an indescribable joy. Gadadhar had experiences of similar nature a few other times in his childhood.

Gadadhar's father died in 1843. This event had a profound effect on the boy and is considered as one of the determinative points in Ramakrishna's religious life. This loss drew him closer to his mother, and he spent his time in household activities, including the daily worship of the household deities. He also became more involved in contemplative activities such as reading the sacred epics.

At the age of nine, Gadadhar was to be invested with the sacred thread. When the arrangements for the ceremony were nearly complete, he declared that he would have his first alms from a certain low-caste woman of the village, as he had promised this to her. This was met with firm opposition from Gadadhar’s family, as tradition required that the first alms be received from a brahmin, but the boy was adamant that a promise made could not be broken. Finally, Ramkumar, his eldest brother and head of the family after the passing away of their father, gave in.

When Ramakrishna was into his teens, the family's financial position worsened. Ramkumar ran a Sanskrit school in Calcutta and also served as a purohit priest in some families. Ramakrishna moved to Calcutta in the year 1852 and started assisting his elder brother in the priestly work.

Career as priest

Dakshineswar Kāli Temple, where Ramakrishna spent a major portion of his adult life.

In 1855 Ramkumar was appointed as the priest of Dakshineswar Kali Temple, built by Rani Rashmoni — a rich woman of Calcutta who belonged to the untouchable kaivarta community, Ramakrishna moved in with his brother only after some persuasion, since the temple was constructed by a low caste woman. Ramakrishna, along with his nephew Hriday, became assistants to Ramkumar in the Kali temple. Ramakrishna was given the task of decorating the deity. When Ramkumar passed away in 1856, Ramakrishna took his place as the priest of the Kāli temple. Ramakrishna was allotted a room in the north-western corner of the temple courtyard, where he spent the rest of his life. The name Ramakrishna is said to have been given him by Mathur Babu, the son-in-law of Rani Rasmani.

Bhavatārini Kāli, the deity that Ramakrishna worshipped.

After Ramkumar's demise Ramakrishna became more contemplative. He began to look upon the image of the goddess Kāli as his mother and the mother of the universe. He became seized by a desire to have a vision of Kāli — a direct realization of her reality. He believed the stone image to be living and breathing and taking food out of his hand. After the regular forms of worship he would sit in front of the statue for long periods, singing hymns, talking and praying to her, till he lost all consciousness of the outward world. Sometimes he would weep bitterly and sometimes even cry out loudly while worshipping, and would not be comforted, because he could not see his mother Kali as perfectly as he wished. At night, he would go into a nearby jungle and spend the whole night meditating on God, without any consciousness of even his clothes falling off. People became divided in their opinions — some held Ramakrishna to be mad, and some took him to be a great lover of God.

One day, he was so impatient to see Mother Kāli that he decided to end his life. He seized a sword hanging on the wall and was about to strike himself with it, when he is reported to have seen light issuing from the deity in waves. Ramakrishna describes his first vision of Kali as follows—

I had a marvellous vision of the Mother, and fell down unconscious.…It was as if houses, doors, temples and everything else vanished altogether; as if there was nothing anywhere! And what I saw was an infinite shoreless sea of light; a sea that was consciousness. However far and in whatever direction I looked, I saw shining waves, one after another, coming towards me. They were raging and storming upon me with great speed. Very soon they were upon me; they made me sink down into unknown depths. I panted and struggled and lost consciousness.

… What was happening in the outside world I did not know; but within me there was a steady flow of undiluted bliss, altogether new, and I felt the presence of the Divine Mother.

After this vision of Kali, Ramakrishna became more and more aware of the presence of Kali and completely surrendered himself to Kali. Childlike, he obeyed what he called the will of the Mother in everything, no matter how trivial or philosophical. People thought he was insane, but he never cared for what the world might think of him. Although Rani Rasmani and her son-in-law Mathur Babu had faith in Ramakrishna and left him free do whatever he liked, they thought that Ramakrishna was suffering from the effects of unduly prolonged continence. So Mathur arranged for prostitutes to visit Ramakrishna, but their attempts to seduce Ramakrishna only failed. He took the prostitutes to be forms of Divine Mother herself.

Marriage

Rumors spread to Kamarpukur that Ramakrishna had gone mad as a result of his over-taxing spiritual exercises at Dakshineswar. Ramakrishna's mother and his elder brother Rameswar decided to get Ramakrishna married, thinking that marriage would be a good steadying influence upon him — by forcing him to accept responsibility and to keep his attention on normal affairs rather than being obsessed with his spiritual practices and visions. Far from objecting to the marriage, Ramakrishna, mentioned Jayrambati, three miles to the north-west of Kamarpukur, as being the village where the bride could be found at the house of one Ramchandra Mukherjee. The five-year-old bride, Sarada, was found and the marriage was duly solemnised in 1859. Ramakrishna was 23 at this point, but the age difference was typical for 19th century rural Bengal. Ramakrishna left Sarada in December 1860 and did not return until May 1867.

After his marriage Ramakrishna returned to Calcutta and took upon himself the charges of the temple again, but instead of toning down, his spiritual fervour and devotion only increased. He was unable to attend to any external duties, he suffered from sleeplessness, and burning sensations throughout his body. Physicians were consulted, and one of them told, "It seems to me that the patient's condition is due to some kind of spiritual excitement — medicine won't cure him."

Yogeshwari and Tantra

In 1861, Bhairavi Brahmani, an orange robed female ascetic appeared at Dakshineshwar. Her real name was Yogeshwari and she was in her late thirties. Other details about her life before her arrival in Dakshineswar is unknown. She was well versed in scriptures and was adept in Tantric and Vaishnava methods of worship. When Ramakrishna first met her, he immediately started describing her about his madness for God, his spiritual experiences and his physical symptoms. Bhairavi reassured him saying that all these physical manifestations come to an ardent lover of God. She quoted from the scriptures and declared that the same things happened to Radha and Chaitanya and that scriptures have recommended cure for such physical symptoms. She then smeared Ramakrishna's body with sandal-wood paste and put garlands on his neck, and the pain Ramakrishna experienced vanished in three days. Ramakrishna accepted Bhairavi as a teacher and she systematically taught him the practice of the eight-fold methods of Yoga prescribed by Patanjali.

Bhairavi initiated Ramakrishna into tantric practices, which expose the sense and spirit to all the disturbances of the flesh and imaginations, so that these may be transcended. Under her guidance, he went through a full course of sixty four major tantric sadhanas. The tantric sadhanas generally include, but not limited to, a set of heteredox practices called vāmāchāra (left-hand path), which utilizes as a means of liberation activities like eating of parched grain, fish and meat along with drinking of wine and sexual intercourse. According Ramakrishna and his biographers, Ramakrishna did not directly participate in the last two of those activities. Though Ramakrishna acknowledged the left-hand tantric path as another means of spiritual enlightenment, he did not recommend it to anybody. Later, when Narendra (Vivekananda) asked him about the left-hand path, he would say, "It is not a good path. It is very difficult and often brings about the downfall of the aspirant."

Ramakrishna's practice of tantra played a major role in his transformation from the uncontrollable and self-destructive madman of the early years into the saintly and relatively self-controlled—if eccentric and ecstatic—teacher of the later years. Bhairavi also taught Ramakrishna the kumari-puja, a form of ritual in which the Virgin Goddess is worshipped symbolically in the form of a young girl. Under the tutelage of Bhairavi, Ramakrishna also became an adept at Kundalini Yoga. Ramakrishna completed his tantric sadhana in 1863.

Ramakrishna took the attitude of a son towards Bhairavi. Bhariavi on the other hand looked upon Ramakrishna as an avatara, or incarnation of the divine, and was the first person to openly declare that Ramakrishna was an avatara. But Ramakrishna was indifferent and unconcerned about people calling him an incarnation.

Vaishnava Bhakti

The Vaishnava Bhakti traditions speak of five different bhāvas — different attitudes that a devotee can take up in order to express his love for the God. They are śānta , the serene attitude, dāsya, the attitude of a servant, sakhya, the attitude of a friend, vātsalya, the attitude of a mother toward her child, and madhura, the attitude of a woman toward her lover. Ramakrishna is known to have practised some of these bhavas

At some point in the period between his vision of Kali and his marriage, Ramakrishna practiced dāsya bhāva — the attitude of a servant towards his master. He started worshipping Rama in the attitude of Hanuman, the monkey-god, who is considered to be the ideal devotee and servant of Rama. In doing so, Ramakrishna completely identified himself with Hanuman, he ate and walked like a monkey, spent much of his time in trees and his eyes got a restless look like the eyes of a monkey. According to Ramakrishna and his biographers, there was even a small growth in the lower part of his spine resembling the tail of a monkey. As a climax to his dāsya experiment, Ramakrishna had a vision of Sita, the consort of Rama, merging into his body.

In 1864, Ramakrishna practiced vātsalya bhāva, the attitude of a mother towards God. During this period, he worshipped a metal image of Ramlālā (Rama as a child) in the attitude of a mother. As he was doing so, his character became filled with motherly tenderness, and he began to regard himself as a woman. His speech and gestures changed to that of a woman. According to Ramakrishna and his biographers, he could actually feel the presence of child Rama as a living God in the metal image.

Ramakrishna later engaged in the practice of madhura bhāva— the attitude of Gopis and Radha towards their lover, Krishna. Ramakrishna, in order to realise this love, dressed himself in women's attire for several days and regarded himself as one of the Gopis of Vrindavan. At the end of this sadhana, he attained savikalpa samadhi — vision and union with Krishna. Ramakrishna said,

"I spent many days as the handmaid of God. I dressed myself in women's clothes, put on ornaments, and covered the upper part of my body with a scarf, just like a woman...Otherwise, how could I have kept my wife with me for eight months? Both of us behaved as if we were the handmaids of the Divine Mother. I cannot speak of myself as a man."

At some point, Ramakrishna visited Nadia, the home of Chaitanya and Nityananda, the 15th-century founders of Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava bhakti. He had an intense vision of two young boys merging into his body.

Earlier, after his vision of Kali, he is said to have cultivated the Santa bhava — the passive "peaceful" attitude — towards Kali.

Totapuri and Vedanta

The Panchavati and the hut where Ramakrishna performed his advaitic sadhana. The mud hut has been replaced by a brick one.

In 1864, Ramakrishna was initiated into sanyassa by a vedantic ascetic, a wandering monk — Tota Puri. Totapuri was "a teacher of masculine strength, a sterner mien, a gnarled physique, and a virile voice". Ramakrishna address the monk as Nangta or Langta — the "Naked One".

Totapuri first guided Ramakrishna through the rites of sanyasa — renunciation of all ties to the world. Then he instructed him in the teaching of advaita — that "Brahman alone is real, and the world is illusory;I have no separate existence; I am that Brahman alone." Under the guidance of Totapuri, Ramakrishna experienced the Nirvikalpa Samadhi which is considered to be the highest state in spiritual realisation:

I [Ramakrishna] said to Totapuri in despair: "It's no good. I will never be able to lift my spirit to the unconditioned state and find myself face to face with the Atman." He [Totapuri] replied severely: "What do you mean you can't? You must!" Looking about him, he found a shard of glass. He took it and stuck the point between my eyes saying: "Concentrate your mind on that point." [...] The last barrier vanished and my spirit immediately precipitated itself beyond the plane of the conditioned. I lost myself in samadhi.

There is a view that it was Totapuri who gave him the title of Ramakrishna after initiating him formally into Sanyasa.

Totapuri stayed with ramakrishna for nearly eleven months and instructed him further in the teachings of advaita. After the departure of Totapuri, Ramakrishna reportedly remained for six months in a state of absolute contemplation:

For six months in a stretch, I [Ramakrishna] remained in that state from which ordinary men can never return; generally the body falls off, after three weeks, like a mere leaf. I was not conscious of day or night. Flies would enter my mouth and nostrils as they do a dead's body, but I did not feel them. My hair became matted with dust.

Ramakrishna said that this period of nirvikalpa samadhi came to an end, when he received a command from the Mother Kali, — "Remain in Bhavamukha; for the enlightenment of the people, remain in Bhavamukha." — Bhãvamukha being a state of existence, intermediate between samadhi and normal consciousness.

Islam and Christianity

In 1866, Govinda Roy, a Hindu guru who practiced Sufism, initiated Ramakrishna into Islam. Ramakrishna said:

I devoutly repeated the name of Allah, wore a cloth like the Arab Moslems, said their prayer five time daily, and felt disinclined even to see images of the Hindu gods and goddesses, much less worship them—for the Hindu way of thinking had disappeared altogether from my mind.

After few days of practice he had a vision of a "radiant personage with grave countenance and white beard resembling the Prophet and merging with his body".

Seven years later, at the end of 1873 he started the practise of Christianity, when his devotee Shambu Charan Mallik read the Bible to him. For several days he was filled with Christian thoughts and no longer thought of going to the Kali temple. One day when he was sitting in the room he was on the wall a picture of Madonna and Child Jesus. He felt that the figures became alive and had a vision in which Jesus came and merged with him. In his own room amongst his Divine pictures was one of Christ, and he burnt incense before it morning and evening. There was also a picture showing Jesus Christ saving St.Peter from drowning in the water.

Referring to his experimentation with other religions Ramakrishna said:

"I have practised all religions - Hinduism, Islam, Christianity - and I have also followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. I have found that it is the same God toward whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. You must try all beliefs and traverse all the different ways once. Wherever I look, I see men quarrelling in the name of religion - Hindus, Mohammedans, Brahmos, Vaishnavas, and the rest. But they never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called Siva, and bears the name of the Primal Energy, Jesus, and Allah as well - the same Rama with a thousand names…"

Other attitudes

Not satisfied with his visions, he started practicing severe asceticism, usually by the banks of ganga at the Panchavati garden of Kali temple.

To get rid of the ego that he belonged to a higher brahmanical caste, he used to serve the Pariahs — servants and cleaners who belonged to the lowest caste. He would eat food cooked by the lowest classes. He explained his state as follows:

'Sometimes I used to go to the closet of the servants and sweepers and clean it with my own hands, and prayed, "Mother! destroy in me all idea that I am great, and that I am a Brahman, and that they are low and pariahs, for who are they but Thou in so many forms?"'

He regarded gold, sliver and dust to be the same. He said:

'I would sit by the Ganges, with some gold and silver coins and a heap of rubbish by my side, and taking some coins in my right hand and a handful of rubbish in the left, I would tell my soul, "My soul! this is what the world calls money, impressed with the queen's face. It has the power of bringing you rice and vegetables, of feeding the poor, of building houses, and doing all that the world calls great, but it can never help thee to realise the ever-existent knowledge and bliss, the Brahman. Regard it, therefore, as rubbish." Then mixing the coins and the rubbish in my hands, while repeating all the time, "money is rubbish, money is rubbish," I lost all perception of difference between the two in my mind, and threw them both into the Ganges. No wonder people took me for mad.'

Sarada Devi and Shodashi Puja

Sarada Devi

When the child bride, Sarada Devi attained the age of seventeen or eighteen, as the customs dictated, she had to join her husband, Ramakrishna. She had heard rumours that her husband had become mad, and was in deep grief. Then again she heard that he had become a great religious man.

Ramakrishna received her very kindly, and told that he could never look upon any woman as his wife and saw his mother, the Goddess Kâlî, in her. The marriage was never consummated because he regarded Sarada as the Goddess Kali in person.

As a priest he performed the ritual ceremonies, the Shodashi Puja — the adoration of womanhood and considered her as the Divine Mother. Sarada Devi was made to sit in the seat of Kali, and worshipped her with flowers and incense. His view of woman as Mother was not limited to his companion Sarada Devi. He recognised the mother even in the most degraded prostitutes..

With respect to Ramakrishna's treatment of her, Sarada Devi said —

I was married to a husband who never addressed me as 'tui.'(you) Ah! How he treated me! Not even once did he tell me a harsh word or wound my feelings.

Sarada Devi is considered as his first disciple. Ramakrishna referred to his wife as the Holy Mother, and it was by this name that she was known to his disciples. After Ramakrishna's death in 1886, Sarada Devi continued to play an important role in the nascent religious movement.

Influence on Brahmos and Bhadralok

See also: Keshub Chunder Sen and Brahmo Samaj

Ramakrishna in samadhi at the house of Keshab Chandra Sen. He is seen supported by his nephew Hriday and surrounded by Brahmo devotees.

In 1875, Ramakrishna met the influential Keshab Chandra Sen, a prominent leader of the Brahmo Samaj. Keshab Sen initially showed no affinity towards Ramakrishna's mysticism, and was hostile. He was won over to Ramakrishna less by his teachings than by his manner, which Keshab Sen identified with the behavior of an authentic saint. He recorded his experience as follows — "We met one (a sincere Hindu devotee) not long ago, and were charmed by the depth, penetration and simplicity of his spirit". He admitted further, ‘Hinduism must have in it a deep sense of beauty, truth and goodness to inspire such men as these.’

Attracted by Ramakrishna's teachings, Keshab Sen publicized them over a period of several years, and was instrumental in bringing Ramakrishna to the attention of a wide audience. A brief sketch of the teachings of Râmakrishna, and a few of his sayings, which Keshub published in his journal The New Dispensation, roused a wide interest about Ramakrishna among the English-educated classes of Bengal, and even of the Europeans residing in this country. Among the europeans, were Principal W.W.Hastie of the General Assembly’s Institution (now Scottish Church College), Calcutta. In course of explaining the word ‘trance’ contained in a poem by Wordsworth, Hastie told his students that if they wanted to know the real meaning of it, they might go to Ramakrishna of Dakshineswar. This prompted some of his students, including Narendranath Dutta (later Swami Vivekananda), to go to Dakshineswar.

Following Keshab, other Brahmos like Vijaykrishna Goswami also started to admire Ramakrishna, propagate his ideals and reorient their socio-religious outlook. Mozoomdar wrote the first English biography of Ramakrishna, entitled The Hindu Saint and published in the Theistic Quarterly Review in 1879 (later published in book form entitled Paramahamsa Ramakrishna). This biography played a vital role in introducing Ramakrishna to Westerners like the German indologist Max Muller. Other Brahmos proclaimed Ramakrishna's message to the educated public of Bengal through their speeches and writings since 1875, published in several newspapers and journals. Of the several newspaper reports, few reported that Ramakrishna was spreading "Love" and "Devotion" among the educated classes of Calcutta and that Ramakrishna had succeeded in reforming the character of some youths whose morals had been corrupt.

Ramakrishna also had interactions with Devendranath Tagore — the grand father of Rabindranath Tagore, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar — a renowned social worker. Many prominent people of Calcutta like Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, Shivanath Shastri and Trailokyanath Sanyal began visiting him during this time (1871-1885). He also met Swami Dayananda

However, not all Brahmos were uncritical admirers of Ramakrishna. They particularly disapproved his ascetic renunciation and condemnation of, "woman and gold". They measured him according to their own ideals of the householder's life. Some could not understand his Samadhi and described it as a nervous malady. Contemporary reaction to Ramakrishna was not always pleasant. Upadhyay Brahma­bandhab was originally a critic of Ramakrishna and refused to recognize him as an avatara. Another contemporary scholar described Ramakrishna as —

"an illiterate priest, crude, raw, unmodern and the commonest of the common. … He respected women, in the only way open to Indians, by calling them ‘mother’, and avoiding them. He would not perform the daily rituals. He would allow non-Brahmins to be initiated. … Yet, and this is the tragedy of the situation, with all the help of the dynamic personality of Swami Vivekananda, Paramahamsa Deb’s influence has not succeeded in shaking our social foundations. A number of people have been inspired, no doubt, but the masses have not trembled in their sleep."

Ramakrishna's influence was not confined only to the elite educated class of Calcutta. During his lifetime (1836-86) his ideas and influence spread beyond the intelligentsia to other sections of the Bengali society including the Bauls and the Kartabhajas. His name even crossed the boundaries of Bengal. During his lifetime, however, there was little of a movement.Ramakrishna played a important role in Bengali Renaissance as the link between the Brahmo Samaj and the emergance of the Hindu Revival Movement.

Devotees and Disciples

Main articles: Apostles of Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda

Few Monastic Disciples ( L to R ): Trigunatitananda, Shivananda, Vivekananda, Turiyananda, Brahmananda. Below Sadananda.

Mahendranath Gupta, a householder devotee and the recorder of Sri-Sri-Ramakrisna-kathamrta

Most of his prominent disciples came between 1879 - 1885. Most of his disciples were highly educated, atheists and few of them came to meet him out of curiosity. Devotees like Surendranath Mitra, a confirmed libertine first approached Ramakrishna with an intent to "twist his ears" (a gesture of insult), only to end up as an inveterate follower. However, they were deeply influenced by Ramakrishna's teachings and few became his ardent disciples. Ramakrishna had an extraordinary style of preaching and instructing, conveying to even the most skeptical visitors to the temple.

His chief disciples consisted of  :

• Grihastas or The householders, like Mahendranath Gupta, Girish Chandra Ghosh, Akshay Kumar Sen, etc.,
• Monastic disciples who renounced their family and became the earliest monks of the Ramakrishna order. The disciples whom Ramakrishna trained for monastic life were — Narendranath Dutta (Swami Vivekananda), Nitya Niranjan Sen (Swami Niranjanananda), Rakhal Chandra Ghosh (Swami Brahmananda), Kaliprasad Chandra (Swami Abhedananda), Gopal Chandra Ghosh (Swami Advaitananda), Harinath Chattopadhyaya (Swami Turiyananda), Baburam Ghosh (Swami Premananda), Sarada Prasanna (Swami Trigunatitananda), Taraknath Ghoshal (Swami Shivananda), Gangadhar Ghatak (Swami Akhandananda), Jogindranath Choudhury (Swami Yogananda), Subodh Ghosh (Swami Subodhananda), Sashibhushan Chakravarty (Swami Ramakrishnananda), Saratchandra Chakravarty (Swami Saradananda), Hariprasanna Chatterji (Swami Vijnanananda), Latu (Swami Adhhutananda).
• There was also a small group of women devotees like Gauri Ma, Yogin Ma. Few of them were even initiated into sanyasa through mantra deeksha. Ramakrishna emphasized the service of women among them: "No, no. You must stay in this city and work here. You have done enough tapasya. Now use this life for the service of women."

Even though he had a band of dedicated renunciates, he never wanted the householders to renounce their family life, for few he advised:

"What will you gain by renouncing the world? Family life is like a fort. It is easier to fight the enemy from within the fort than from without. You will be in a position to renounce the world when you can bestow three-fourths of your mind on God, but not before." , "What is the necessity of giving up the world altogether? It is enough to give up the attachment to it."

As his name spread, an ever shifting crowd of all classes and all castes visited Ramakrishna — "Maharajas and beggars, journalists and pandits, artists and devotees, Brahmos, Christians, and Mohammedans, men of faith, men of action and business, old men, women and children". Ramakrishna incessantly conversed with them. Most of his time was spent in conversing about religious matters with his visitors, Sankirtana, bhajans . Ramakrishna used very simple rustic language, parables, apologues and humor while conversing with his visitors, which kept them en rapt. One of his humorous interactions with a drunkard is as follows:

...Ramakrisha in a calm and bantering tone said to him, "At least you might drink to God! Perhaps He drinks as well...."

The drunkard, his mouth agape, exclaimed, "How do you know?", to which Ramakrishna replied, "If he did not drink, how could he have created this topsyturvy world?"

In preparation for monastic life, Ramakrishna ordered his monastic disciples to beg their food from door to door without distinction of caste. He gave them the saffron robe, the sign of the Sanyasin, and initiated them with Mantra Deeksha.

The Last Days

The Disciples and Devotees at Ramakrishna's funeral

In the beginning of 1885 he suffered from the clergyman's throat, which gradually developed into throat cancer. Ramakrishna was relocated to Calcutta ( Shyampukur ), and the best physicians of that time, like Dr.Mahendralal Sarkar were engaged. But the illness showed signs of aggravation and he was moved to a large garden house at Cossipore on December 11, 1885 on the advice of Dr.Mahendralal Sarkar

During his last days, he was looked after by this disciples and sarada devi. Ramakrishna was advised by the doctors to keep the strictest silence; but the advice was to no effect. Despite the excruciating pain during his final days Ramakrishna used to say,

"Only the body suffers. When the mind is united to God, it can feel no pain. Let the body and its sufferings occupy themselves with each other. Thou, my mind, remain in bliss. Now I and my Divine Mother are one for ever."

Three of four days before his death, he called Narendranath Dutta and said :

"Today I have given you my all and am now only a poor fakir, possessing nothing. By this power you will do immense good in the world and not until it is accomplished will you return to the absolute."

Couple of days before the passing away of Ramakrishna, Naren, who still doubted Ramakrishna's spiritual height thought:

"The Master has said many a time that he is an Incarnation of God. If he now says in the midst of the throes of death, in this terrible moment of human anguish and physical pain, 'I am God Incarnate', then I will believe."

No sooner had Naren thought this, Ramakrishna turned towards him and summoning all his energy said,

"O my Naren, are you not yet convinced? He who was Rama, He who was Krishna, He himself is now Ramakrishna in this body: not in your Vedantic sense, but actually so."

His condition worsened gradually and he expired on early morning hours of August 16, 1886 at the Cossipore garden house. The final moments before his death is described by Sashi (Swami Ramakrishananda) as follows:

On that last night Ramakrishna was talking with us to the very last... He was sitting up against five or six pillows, which were supported by my body, and at the same time I was fanning him...Narendra took his feet and began to rub them and Ramakrishna was talking to him, telling him what he must do. "Take care of these boys", he repeated again and again... Then he asked to lie down. Suddenly at one o'clock he fell towards one side, there was a low sound in his throat... Narendra quickly laid his feet on the quilt and ran downstairs as if he could not bear it. A doctor who was feeling his pulse saw that it had stopped... We all believed that it was only Samadhi. Suddenly, at two minutes past one, a thrill passed through the Master's body, making the hair stand on end... The Master entered into Samadhi. It was Mahasamadhi, for never more did he return to the mortal plane..."

After the death of their master, the monastic disciples formed a fellowship at a half-ruined house at Barangore near Ganga, with the financial assistance of the household disciples. This became the first Math or monastery of the disciples, headed by Narendranath Dutta, as indicated by Ramakrishna. The Ramakrishna Mission was in its nascent stage at this point of time.

Teachings

God-realisation

Ramakrishna (1881, Calcutta)

The key concepts in Ramakrishna’s teachings were the oneness of existence; the divinity of all living beings; and the unity of God and the harmony of religions.

Ramakrishna emphasised that God-realisation is the supreme goal of all living beings. Religion, for him, was merely a means for the achievement of this goal. Ramakrishna’s mystical realisation, classified by Hindu tradition as nirvikalpa samadhi (literally, "bliss without differentiation", thought to be absorption in the all-encompassing Consciousness), led him to know that the various religions are different ways to reach The Absolute, and that the Ultimate Reality could never be expressed in human terms.

Kama-kanchan

Ramakrishna taught that that the primal bondage in human life is Kama-Kanchana (lust and gold). When speaking to men, Ramakrishna warned them against kamini-kanchan, or "women and gold". Devotees insist that this phrase warns against lust and greed, but religion scholars and historians have tended to take it more literally.

Ramakrishna, when speaking to women, warned them against purusha-kanchana — "man and gold." Gauri-Ma, one of Ramakrishna's prominent women disciples, said this about purusha-kanchana:

[Ramakrishna] has uttered this note of warning, against gold and sensuality, against a life of enjoyment, but surely not against women. Just as he advised the ascetic-minded men to guard themselves against women's charms, so also did he caution pious women against men's company. The Master's whole life abounds with proofs to show that he had not the slightest contempt or aversion for women; rather he had intense sympathy and profound regard for them.

He seems to have overcome sexual desires by "becoming female":

A man can change his nature by imitating another's character. By transposing onto yourself the attributes of a woman, you gradually destroy lust and the other sensual drives. You begin to behave like a women. I have noticed that men who play female parts in the theater speak like women or brush their teeth like women while bathing.

Avidyamaya and vidyamaya

See also: Avidyamaya and vidyamaya and mayatita

Devotees believe that Ramakrishna’s realisation of nirvikalpa samadhi also led him to an understanding of the two sides of maya, or illusion, to which he referred as Avidyamaya and vidyamaya. He explained that avidyamaya represents dark forces (e.g. sensual desire, evil passions, greed, lust and cruelty), which keep the world-system on lower planes of consciousness. These forces are responsible for human entrapment in the cycle of birth and death, and they must be fought and vanquished. Vidyamaya, on the other hand, represents higher forces (e.g. spiritual virtues, enlightening qualities, kindness, purity, love, and devotion), which elevate human beings to the higher planes of consciousness. With the help of vidyamaya, he said that devotees could rid themselves of avidyamaya and achieve the ultimate goal of becoming mayatita - that is, free from maya.

Harmony of religions

Ramakrishna recognised differences among religions but realised that in spite of these differences, all religions lead to the same ultimate goal, and hence they are all valid and true. Regarding this, the distinguished British historian Arnold J. Toynbee has written: “… Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of non-violence and Sri Ramakrishna’s testimony to the harmony of religions: here we have the attitude and the spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together into a single family – and in the Atomic Age, this is the only alternative to destroying ourselves.”

Other teachings

Ramakrishna’s proclamation of jatra jiv tatra Shiv (wherever there is a living being, there is Shiva) stemmed from his Advaitic perception of Reality. This would lead him teach his disciples, "Jive daya noy, Shiv gyane jiv seba" (not kindness to living beings, but serving the living being as Shiva Himself). This view differs considerably from what Ramakrishna’s followers call the "sentimental pantheism" of, for example, Francis of Assisi.

Ramakrishna, though not formally trained as a philosopher, had an intuitive grasp of complex philosophical concepts. According to him brahmanda, the visible universe and many other universes, are mere bubbles emerging out of Brahman, the supreme ocean of intelligence .

Like Adi Sankara had done more than a thousand years earlier, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa revitalised Hinduism which had been fraught with excessive ritualism and superstition in the Nineteenth century and helped it become better-equipped to respond to challenges from Islam, Christianity and the dawn of the modern era. However, unlike Adi Sankara, Ramakrishna developed ideas about the post-samadhi descent of consciousness into the phenomenal world, which he went on to term "vignana". While he asserted the supreme validity of Advaita Vedanta, he also he accepted both the Nitya (or the eternal substance) and the Leela (literally, "play", indicating the dynamic phenomenal reality) as aspects of Brahman.

The idea of the descent of consciousness shows the influence of the Bhakti movement and certain sub-schools of Shaktism on Ramakrishna’s thought. The idea would later influence Aurobindo's views about the Divine Life on Earth.

Ramakrishna’s impact

Born as he was during a social upheaval in Bengal in particular and India in general, Ramakrishna and his movement were an important part of the direction that Hinduism and Indian nationalism took in the coming years.

On Hinduism

His career was an important part of the renaissance that Bengal, and later India, experienced in the 19th century. Hinduism faced a huge intellectual challenge in the 19th century, from Westerners and Indians alike. The Hindu practice of murti came under intense pressure specially in Bengal, then the center of British India, and was declared intellectually unsustainable by some intellectuals. Response to this was varied, ranging from the Young Bengal movement that denounced Hinduism and embraced Christianity or atheism, to the Brahmo movement that retained primacy of Hinduism but gave up idol worship, and to the staunch Hindu nationalism of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. Ramakrishna’s influence was crucial in this period for a Hindu revival of a more traditional kind, and can be compared to that of Chaitanya's contribution centuries earlier, when Hinduism in Bengal was under similar pressure from the growing power of Islam.

Among his contributions is a strong affirmation of the presence of the divine in an idol. To the many that revered him, this reinforced centuries-old traditions that were in the spotlight at the time. Ramakrishna also advocated an inclusive version of the religion, declaring Joto mot toto path (meaning As many faiths, so many paths). He was given a name that is clearly Vaishnavite (Rama and Krishna are both incarnations of Vishnu), but was a devotee of Kali, the mother goddess, and known to have followed various other religious paths including Tantrism and even Christianity and Islam.

On Indian Nationalism

Ramakrishna’s impact on the growing Indian nationalism was, if more indirect, nevertheless quite notable. A large number of intellectuals of that age had regular communication with him and respected him, though not all of them necessarily agreed with him on religious matters. Numerous members of the Brahmo Samaj respected him. Though some of them embraced his form of Hinduism, the fact that many others didn't shows that they detected in him a possibility for a strong national identity in the face of a colonial adversary that was intellectually undermining the Indian civilisation. As Amaury de Riencourt states,"The greatest leaders of the early twentieth century, whatever their walk of life -- Rabindranath Tagore, the prince of poets; Aurobindo Ghosh, the greatest mystic-philosopher; Mahatma Gandhi, who eventually shook the Anglo-Indian Empire to destruction -- all acknowledged their over-riding debt to both the Swan and the Eagle, to Ramakrishna who stirred the heart of India, and to Vivekananda who awakened its soul." This is particularly evident in Ramakrishna’s development of the Mother-symbolism and its eventual role in defining the incipient Indian nationalism.

Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission

See also: Apostles of Ramakrishna and Belur Math

The marble statue of Ramakrishna at Belur Math

Vivekananda, Ramakrishna’s most illustrious disciple, is considered by some to be one of his most important legacies. Vivekananda spread the message of Ramakrishna across the world. He also helped introduce Hinduism to the west. He founded two organisations based on the teachings of Ramakrishna. One was Ramakrishna Mission, which is designed to spread the word of Ramakrishna. Vivekananda also designed its emblem. Ramakrishna Math was created as a monastic order based on Ramakrishna’s teachings.

The temples of Ramakrishna are called the Universal Temples. The first Universal temple was built at Belur, which is the headquatress of the Ramakrishna Mission. Daily arathi, pooja and devotional singing are conducted everyday. The arathi song — Khandana Bhava Bandha written by Swami Vivekananda and rendered in the classic Dhrupad Music style.

Apart from celebrating the Hindu festivals, other festivals like Christmas, Buddha Purnima are celebrated.

Legacy

It could be argued that Ramakrishna’s vision of Hinduism and its popularisation in the West, by converts like Christopher Isherwood and admirers like Aldous Huxley and Romain Rolland, have largely coloured Western notions of what Hinduism is.

Many great thinkers of the world have acknowledged Ramakrishna's contribution to humanity. Max Müller, who was inspired by Ramakrishna, said:

Sri Ramakrishna was a living illustration of the truth that Vedanta, when properly realised, can become a practical rule of life... the Vedanta philosophy is the very marrow running through all the bones of Ramakrishna’s doctrine.

Leo Tolstoy saw similarities between his and Ramakrishna's thoughts. He described him as a "remarkable sage". Romain Rolland considered Ramakrishna to be the "consummation of two thousand years of the spiritual life of three hundred million people." He said:

Allowing for differences of country and of time, Ramakrishna is the younger brother of Christ.

Mohandas Gandhi wrote:

Ramakrishna's life enables us to see God face to face. He was a living embodiment of godliness.

Sri Aurobindo considered Ramakrishna to be an incarnation, or avatar, of God on par with Gautama Buddha. He wrote:

When scepticism had reached its height, the time had come for spirituality to assert itself and establish the reality of the world as a manifestation of the spirit, the secret of the confusion created by the senses, the magnificent possibilities of man and the ineffable beatitude of God. This is the work whose consummation Sri Ramakrishna came to begin and all the development of the previous two thousand years and more since Buddha appeared has been a preparation for the harmonisation of spiritual teaching and experience by the Avatar of Dakshineshwar.

Christopher Isherwood also considered Ramakrishna to be an incarnation of God.

Jawaharlal Nehru described Ramakrishna as "one of the great rishis of India, who had come to draw our attention to the higher things of life and of the spirit." Subhas Chandra Bose was also influenced by Ramakrishna. He said:

The effectiveness of Ramakrishna's appeal lay in the fact that he had practised what he preached and that... he had reached the acme of spiritual progress.

Works related to Ramakrishna

Painting by Franz Dvorak

Philip Glass

In 2006, composer Philip Glass wrote The Passion of Ramakrishna — a choral work as a "tribute to Ramakrishna". It premiered on September 16, 2006 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, California, performed by Orange County’s Pacific Symphony Orchestra conducted by Carl St. Clair with the Pacific Chorale directed by John Alexander.

Franz Dvorak

Franz Dvorak (1862–1927), a painter from Prague, inspired by the teachings of Ramakrishna made several paintings of Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi.

Views on Ramakrishna

Biography and Stages of Life

Since the 1976 publication of Walter Neeval's essay "The Transformation of Ramakrishna", scholars have thought of Ramakrishna's image as going through three discrete transformations. The first transformation, which occurred during Ramakrishna's life, was from a local village madman into a divine avatar. The next transformation, occurring after his death and conducted by his most famous disciple Swami Vivekananda, was from a mystical ecstatic into the founder of a universalistic religious movement. The third transformation, this one also engineered by Vivekananda, was from a quietistic mystic into a social reformer.

Language and education

Philosopher Arindam Chakrabarti called Ramakrishna "The practically illiterate, faith-bound, emotional, otherworldly esoteric Ramakrishna who prayed to the Goddess: "May my rationalizing intellect be struck by thunder!" And yet in his

...views about the nature of ultimate reality, the relation between the self and the body, ways of knowing truth, moral and social duties of human beings and metatheoretical explanations of why mystics disagree...Ramakrishna was no less a philosopher than Buddha or Socrates.

Chakrabarti then contrasts Ramakrishna's talkativeness with Buddha's reticence, and makes seven comparisons between Ramakrishna and Socrates. He then analyzes a song that Ramakrishna was fond of ("The Dark Mother Flying Kites") and pulls out six philosophical elements: a nondualistic metaphysics, a spiritualistic ethic, the doctrine of karma, a playful goddess, the possibility of moksha, and the theory of psychological causation.

Religious Practices and Experiences

The Oceanic feeling

Ramakrishna's experiences of Samadhi were termed as Oceanic feeling by Romain Rolland. Scholars note that the same term was adapted by Freud in his book Civilization and its Discontents.

Scholars have noted similarities between Ramakrishna's oceanic feeling and other religious personalities:

• St. Paul, after a similar experience, was struck blind.
• Suso, a German mystic of the fourteenth century, suffered at the time of his awakening so greatly in body that it seemed to him that none even in dying could suffer so much in so short a time.
• Richard Rolle of Hampole has recorded that his heart burned with a sensible fire, "truly not imaginingly."
• St.Theresa of Avila.

Swami Vivekananda

One of first persons to look at Ramakrishna's ecstasy and experiences as pathological and hallucinations, to question Kali as the "mother of universe" as Ramakrishna preached, was his most ardent and beloved disciple — Swami Vivekananda. When he first approached Ramakrishna, he was an iconoclast, the hater of superstitions and idols,and was against the worship of Kali.

Swami Vivekananda's interaction with Ramakrishna can be see as undergoing two phases :

• Period of scrutiny and revolt against few of Ramakrishna's practices and principles.
• Acceptance of Ramakrishna as his guru and preaching his principles.

During his initial days of acquaintance, Vivekananda used to question Ramakrishna's experiences:

"How do you know that your realisations are not creations of your sick brain, mere hallucinations?"

In another instance he challenged Ramakrishna:

"Even if millions of men called you God, if I had not proved it for myself, I would never do so."

To which Ramakrishna laughingly approved, and said to his disciples,

"Do not accept anything because I say so. Test everything for yourselves."

He even rejected the Advaitist Vedantism of identity with absolute as blasphemy and madness, and often made fun of the concept:

"This jug," they said, "is God!… and these flies are God!…"

After examining Ramakrishna and accepting him as his guru, Swami Vivekananda set forth his life to preach Ramakrishna's teachings. He even wrote a poem — Kali the Mother.

Referring to the practice of Madhura Bhava, by his guru, years later in 1896 in one of his speeches My Master, he explained:

One of the Sâdhanâs was to root out the sex idea. Soul has no sex, it is neither male nor female. It is only in the body that sex exists, and the man who desires to reach the spirit cannot at the same time hold to sex distinctions. Having been born in a masculine body, this man wanted to bring the feminine idea into everything. He began to think that he was a woman, he dressed like a woman, spoke like a woman, gave up the occupations of men, and lived in the household among the women of a good family, until, after years of this discipline, his mind became changed, and he entirely forgot the idea of sex; thus the whole view of life became changed to him.

Referring to the teaching of Kama-Kanchana, Vivekananda explained:

Man is a soul, and soul is sexless, neither man nor woman. The idea of sex and the idea of money were the two things, he thought, that prevented him from seeing the Mother. This whole universe is the manifestation of the Mother, and She lives in every woman's body. "Every woman represents the Mother; how can I think of woman in mere sex relation?" That was the idea: Every woman was his Mother, he must bring himself to the state when he would see nothing but Mother in every woman. And he carried it out in his life.

Later vivekananda describes his acceptance of Kali and Ramakrishna:

"How I used to hate Kali!" he said, referring to his own days of doubts in accepting the Kali ideal, "And all Her ways! That was the ground of my six years' fight — that I would not accept Her. But I had to accept Her at last! Ramakrishna Paramahamsa dedicated me to Her, and now I believe that She guides me in everything I do, and does with me what She will. . . . Yet I fought so long! I loved him, you see, and that was what held me. I saw his marvellous purity. . . . I felt his wonderful love. . . . His greatness had not dawned on me then. All that came afterwards when I had given in. At that time I thought him a brain - sick baby, always seeing visions and the rest. I hated it. And then I, too, had to accept Her! "

Romain Rolland

In his book The Life of Ramakrishna (1929), Romain Rolland, states that Ramakrishna's experiences were not pathological and indicates his opinion of psychoanalysis on Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda and other mystics:

Let the learned men of Europe, who are preoccupied by the problems of mystic psycho-analysis, put themselves in touch with these living witnesses while there is yet time. I myself, I repeat, have little curiosity about such phenomena, whose subjective reality is not in doubt, and I believe it my duty to describe them; for they are hedged about by all possible guarantees of good faith and analytical intelligence. I am more interested in the fact of great religious intuition in that which continues to be rather than in that which has been, in that which is or which can be always in all beings rather than in that which is privilege of a few.

Also Rolland had correspondence with Freud. In his letter of December 5, 1927, Rolland indicated that he was researching a book on the Hindu saints Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. The references to Freud and psychoanalysis in these books are considered as direct response to Civilization and Its Discontents. Rolland claims the inapplicability of psychoanalysis.

Leo Schneiderman

Leo Schneiderman, in this work Ramakrishna: Personality and Social Factors in the Growth of a Religious Movement (1969) describes Ramakrishna's samadhi as follows:

Ramakrishna's "bizarre" behavior must be judged within its proper cultural context. Because Ramakrishna was a Brahmin priest who combined the performance of traditional religious functions with demonstrations of divine possession, especially in samadhi, he could appeal to a wide clientele. He was both an exemplar of Redfield's "great tradition" of Hinduism, and of village shamanism, sublimated to a very high plane. Thus, Ramakrishna's trances and other dramatic manifestations, including, perhaps, even his psychotic behavior, were not truly aberrations from the standpoint of the non-Sanskritic popular culture.

Walter G Neevel

Walter G. Neevel in his essay — "Transformation of Ramakrishna" (1976) which studies Ramakrishna's ecstasy indicates that:

…It is clear that his ability to enter into trances so easily derived largely from his esthetic and emotional sensitivity — his capacity to so appreciate and identify with beauty and harmony in what he saw and did that he would become totally overcome by ecstasy.

Narasingha Sil

In 1991, historian Narasingha Sil wrote Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: A Psychological Profile, an account of Ramakrishna that suggests that Ramakrishna's mystical experiences were pathological and originated from alleged childhood sexual trauma. Narasingha Sil links Ramakrishna's teaching of Kamini-Kanchana to traditional rural Bengali misogyny. Sil also says that Ramakrishna made his wife into a deity in order to avoid thinking of her as sexual.

Other scholars, most notably psychologist Sudhir Kakar, judged Sil's study to be simplistic and misleading. Sil's theory has also been viewed as reductive by William B. Parsons, who has called for an increased empathetic dialogue between the classical/adaptive/transformative schools and the mystical traditions for an enhanced understanding of Ramakrishna's life and experiences.

Scholars also indicate that Sil's works are unreliable, and term them as virulently antagonistic "psycho-biography" of the saint.

William Radice in his review of Narasingha Sil's books indicates that:

…What makes one ultimately distrustful of his book, entertaining though it is, is his willingness to manipulate his sources with a merry abandon worthy of Ramakrishna himself. … Sil knows perfectly well that Vivekananda often made provocative, throw-away remarks that were at odds with the main lines of his thought. … If Sil can misuse Vivekananda's writings to support his hypothesis, can we trust him to use the Kathamrta fairly?

…Another weakness of the book is that his ridicule of Ramakrishna's ' ecstasies ' his view that his frequent states of samadhi were pathological rather than spiritual is not supported by any clear view of what would be a genuine state of mystical ecstasy…

…In the end, therefore, his book has to be rejected in favour of more cautious, less mocking psychological assessment

Dr.Jean Openshaw, further notes that:

…issues such as the saint's teachings, his status (either as "godman" or divine "incarnation") and his marital situation seem to be raised only to discredit the saint, often through a heady mix of tendentious argument, speculation and innuendo.

…Apart from the compulsions of contemporary academic life, this sleight of hand should perhaps be seen in the light of the furore caused in India by another psychoanalytically based book, Jeffrey Kripal's Kali's Child (1995), with which Sil's own work is dangerously easy to identify. At any rate, Sil's understandable attempts to distance himself from Kripal's portrayal of Ramakrishna as a homosexual are vitiated by his own emphasis on the saint's "homoerotic" tendencies, albeit related by him to repressed heterosexuality, which in turn is attributed, on no evidence whatever, to sexual seduction or abuse in childhood.

…Sil's account oscillates between a mad Ramakrishna and a bad one. One is left wondering how defects so gross escaped so many sophisticated first-hand witnesses.

Dr.Jeanne Openshaw

Dr. Jeanne Openshaw, a senior lecturer in Religious Studies, and who specializes in the area of Bengali Vaishnavism and Culture, indicates that the behavior or religious practices of Ramakrishna are not necessarily abnormal:

…In the context of devotional Bengali Vaishnavism, where femininity represents the highest attainable condition, the cultivation of femininity by men in various ways is not necessarily abnormal. Nor can it necessarily be taken as a sign of what we would call "homosexuality", that is, love between men.

…Unlike our own society (at least in modern times), male celibacy, in the sense of conservation of vital seminal essence, is highly prized in rural Bengal. Male fear of women, the attempt to see all women as mothers rather than as sexual partners, and, in its extreme form, a cultivated sense of revulsion for the female body - all these stem precisely from the attractive power of women, rather than from "homoerotic" tendencies.

Sudhir kakar

In 1991, Sudhir Kakar wrote "The Analyst and the Mystic" Gerald James Larson wrote, "Indeed, Sudhir Kakar...indicates that there would be little doubt that from a psychoanalytic point of view Ramakrishna could be diagnosed as a secondary transsexual." Kakar sought a meta-psychological non-pathological explanation that connects Ramakrishna's mystical realization with creativity. Kakar also argues that culturally relative concepts of eroticism and gender have contributed to the Western difficulty in comprehending Ramakrishna.In 2003, Sudhir Kakar wrote a novel, Ecstasy, in which an aspiring sadhu in 20th century India endures sexual molestation as a child, and has a feminine appearance and ambiguous sexuality. According to the author, the characters were modelled on Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.

Somnath Bhattacharyya

Somnath Bhattacharyya, in his work Kali's Child: Psychological And Hermeneutical Problems further elaborates on alleged transvestite and transsexuality traits of Ramakrishna:

...dressing up in a feminine dress as a part of a legitimate and culturally accepted sadhana for a short period of time does not amount to transvestism. Ramakrishna after all also dressed like a Shakta and a Vaishnava during his Shakti and Vaishnava sadhana days and like a Muslim during his Islam sadhana – and these were male attires – only to try and make his identification with these cults complete

… suggestions about his secondary trans-sexuality (KC xxi) are also all too facile. The American Psychiatric Association (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV) defines trans-sexuality as a strong and persistent cross-gender identification, and not merely a desire for any perceived cultural advantages of being the other sex. It is a disorder always involving distress to the person, with a feeling of estrangement from the body and a felt need to alter the appearance of the body. If Ramakrishna sometimes talked about his feminity he was also clear about what he meant by it – "Formerly I too used to see many visions, but now in my ecstatic state I don't see so many. I am gradually getting over my feminine nature; I feel nowadays more like a man. Therefore I control my emotions; I don't manifest it outwardly so much. …"(GSR 798; KA 4.214)

Jeff Kripal

In 1995, postmodernist author Jeffrey Kripal wrote Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna, which he called a psychoanalytic study of Ramakrishna. William Parsons described Kali's Child as a book "which performs a classic Freudian interpretation by seeing symptoms of repressed homoeroticism in the visions and acts of Ramakrishna, but then, in exemplifying the interdisciplinary approach of this dialogue, legitimates Ramakrishna’s religious visions by situating psychoanalytic discourse in a wider Tantric worldview." Kali's Child provoked controversy after Narasingha Sil wrote a scathing review of Kali's Child in The Statesman which produced a great deal of angry correspondence. In subsequent articles, Kripal's translations, his conclusions, and his authority to apply psychoanalysis to Ramakrishna were questioned by several scholars, including Alan Roland, Huston Smith, and Somnath Bhattacharya. According to Brian Hatcher, although some had their misgivings, the overall verdict of religion scholars and of experts on South Asian culture regarding Kali's Child has been approving, and at times highly laudatory. Kripal responded to the criticisms in journal articles and postings on his website, but stopped participating in the discussion in late 2002.

J.S. Hawley

John Stratton Hawley, Professor of Religion at Barnard College, in his paper The Damage of Separation: Krishna’s Loves and Kali’s Child examines the following:

• Is it right to think of the religious and erotic realms as overlapping, particularly when a homosexual dimension is involved?
• Second, if Hindus and Hinduism are the subject, should non-Hindus refrain from speaking?

In this study, J.S.Hawley, revisits the Kali's Child debate highlighting one of its central terms — the vyakulata feeling of Ramakrishna. J.S.Hawley concludes:

…neither the gopis’ torment nor Ramakrishna’s must be allowed to devolve to a bodily level that could be indiscriminately shared—either between religious communities, or between the erstwhile colonizers and their erstwhile colonial victims, or between communities of people who respond to different sexual orientations. Eros is too dangerous. It flows potentially everywhere, and it seems to take exquisite pleasure in crossing boundaries that should not be crossed. …If we see anything at the end of this foray into the landscape of vyakulata, it is that the vectors that tie the realm of eros to that of religion are an exceedingly complex set…

Alan Roland

Attempts by modern authors to psychoanalyze Ramakrishna are questioned by practicing psychoanalyst Alan Roland, who has written extensively about applying Western psychoanalysis to Eastern cultures, and charges that psychoanalysis has been misapplied to Ramakrishna. Roland decries the facile decoding of Hindu symbols, such as Kali’s sword and Krishna’s flute, into Western sexual metaphors—thereby reducing Ramakrishna’s spiritual aspiration to the basest psychopathology. The conflation of Ramakrishna’s spiritual ecstasy, or samadhi, with unconscious dissociated states due to repressed homoerotic feelings is not based on common psychoanalytic definitions of these two different motivations, according to Roland. He also writes that it is highly questionable whether Ramakrishna’s spiritual aspirations and experiences involve regression—responding to modern attempts to reduce Ramakrishna’s spiritual states to a subconscious response to an imagined childhood trauma.

Kelley Ann Raab

While most of the studies have been conducted from either a primarily psychoanalytic perspective or from the perspective of a devotee, Kelley Ann Raab's work — Is There Anything Transcendent about Transcendence? A Philosophical and Psychological Study of Sri Ramakrishna, focuses upon Ramakrishna from both a philosophical perspective and a psychoanalytic perspective. The study proposes that neither a purely psychological explanation nor a solely philosophical account of his visions is adequate to understand his madness or his godliness, but that together psychology and philosophy can deepen our understanding.

Raab concludes as follows:

Through exploration of philosophical understandings of his devotional mysticism and tantric underpinnings, I have shown how Ramakrishna's visions and behavior were in keeping with his culture and tradition. Coupled with a psychological analysis of his behavior as an internalization of Kali, I have demonstrated that in dressing as and imitating a woman, Ramakrishna broke through dualistic thought patterns defining gender, humanity, and God; at the same time he retained dualism to the extent that his devotions to Kali vere as a child to his mother, he experienced her in various forms, and he retained his anatomical maleness. This behavior in turn expressed the spiritual insight found in his writings that dualism, qualified monism, and absolute monism are all aspects of and paths to truth. This study shows that philosophical insights and psychological analysis, while often leading to different conclusions, can sometimes find a common meeting ground.

Notes on Biographical sources

Ramakrishna never wrote down the details of his own life. Sources for his life and teachings come from the writings of his disciples and live witnesses. Ramakrishna's recorded sayings mainly come from the last four years of his life.

• The book Sri Sri Rāmakrishna Kathāmrita by Mahendranath Gupta under the pseudonym M., belongs to this class of evidence. Mahendranath Gupta recorded his daily interactions with Ramakrishna in his dairy which were subsequently published as Sri-Sri-Ramakrishna-Kathamrta in 5 Volumes in bengali. The information in these volumes is available with "stenographic precision".
• Sri Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsadever Jivan-vrittanta (1890) by Ram Chandra Dutta, is one of the earliest published biography of Ramakrishna. Contemporary scholars — Narasingha Sil and Jeffery Kripal cite a letter written by Swami Vivekananda in 1884 asking to "Avoid all irregular indecent expressions about sex etc...because other nations think it the height of indecency to mention such things, and his life in English is going to be read by the whole world" and calling Ramchandra Dutta's translation a "bosh and rot" and allege this book to be "scandalous". They also allege that Ramchandra Dutta faced a possible law suit from Swami Vivekananda. However, as of 1995, this book has been published in nine Bengali editions rendering these allegations untenable.
• In 1887, Akshay Kumar Sen wrote Ramakrishna's life in verse — Sri Sri Ramakrishna Punthi in Bengali. Akshay Kumar Sen later wrote Padye Sri Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa Dever Upadesh and Sri Sri Ramakrishna Mahima.
• Sri Sri Ramakrishna Lilaprasanga by Swami Saradananda. The book was begun in 1909 and left partially incomplete at the author's death in 1927. Swami Saradananda is considered an authority both as a philosopher and as an historian on Ramakrishna. The book provides authentic information on Ramakrishna.
• My Master, speeches by Swami Vivekananda in 1896. While scholars like Sil argue that Ramakrishna is a product of Vivekananda's "Mythmaking and Propaganda", other scholars have expressed the opinion that Vivekananda has presented a accurate picture of Ramakrishna.

• Max Muller's book Râmakrishna: His Life and Sayings (1898) is one of the earliest works by a Western scholar on the life of Ramakrishna and a relatively independent source of biography..It is based on first-hand evidence, analysed in "broad and clear critical spirit". Max Muller based this book on the testimonies of Swami Vivekananda and several independent witnesses, both favorable and unfavorable to Ramakrishna. Scholars consider this book to be "containing the just criticism needed for a true valuation of Ramakrishna's personality and teaching". Max Muller, regarded Ramakrishna as The Real Mahatman.

• Romain Rolland's book : Life of Ramakrishna (1929) is another biographic work which is based on direct disciples and other "credible", independent eye-witnesses of Ramakrishna who were alive at his time. He had consulted the Christian missionaries who had interview Ramakrishna.

• The English translations of Kathamrita were published by Swami Nikhilananda in his book The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. The book provides authentic information about Ramakrishna. The book was voted as one of the "100 Most Important Spiritual Books of the 20th Century" by the American scholars convened by HarperCollins publishers, However, scholars argue that the book has been bowdlerized.

• Life of Sri Ramakrishna, compiled from various authentic sources (1925) by Swami Madhavananda is also one of the primary sources of Ramakrishna's biography and a reliable source which contains first hand accounts of his disciples, live witnesses.

References

• Bhattacharyya, Somnath. "Kali's Child: Psychological And Hermeneutical Problems". Infinity Foundation. Retrieved 2008-03-15.
• Hixon, Lex. Great Swan: Meetings With Ramakrishna. Burdett, N.Y: Larson Publications. ISBN 0-943914-80-9.
• Isherwood, Christopher (1980). Ramakrishna and His Disciples. Hollywood, Calif: Vedanta Press. ISBN 0-87481-037-X. (reprint, orig. 1965)
• Kripal, Jeffery J. (1995). Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. University of Chicago Press.
• Muller, max (1898). Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings. Great Britain: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. ISBN 81-7505-060-8.
• Nikhilananda, Swami (1942). The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center. ISBN 0911206019.
• Rajagopalachari, Chakravarti (1973). Sri Ramakrishna Upanishad. Vedanta Press. ASIN B0007J1DQ4.
• Ramaswamy, Krishnan (2007). Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America. Delhi, India: Rupa & Co. ISBN 978-8129111821. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Rolland, Romain (1929). Life of Ramakrishna. Vedanta Press. ISBN 978-8185301440.
• Saradananda, Swami (2003). Sri Ramakrishna and His Divine Play. St. Louis: Vedanta Society. ISBN 978-0916356811. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Saradananda, Swami (1952). Sri Ramakrishna The Great Master. Sri Ramakrishna Math. ASIN B000LPWMJQ. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Tyagananda, Swami. "Kali's Child Revisited or Didn't Anyone Check the Documentation?". Infinity Foundation. Retrieved 2008-03-15.

Further reading

• Ananyananda, Swami (1981). Ramakrishna: a biography in pictures. Advaita Ashrama, Calcutta. ISBN 978-8185843971.
• Chetanananda, Swami (1990). Ramakrishna As We Saw Him. St. Louis: Vedanta Society of St Louis. ISBN 978-0916356644.
• Hourihan, Paul. Ramakrishna & Christ, the Supermystics: New Interpretations. Vedantic Shores Press. ISBN 1-931816-00-X.
• Olson, Carl (1990). The Mysterious Play of Kālī: An Interpretive Study of Rāmakrishna. American Academy of Religion (Scholars Press). ISBN 1-55540-339-5.
• Satyananda, Saraswati. Ramakrishna: The Nectar of Eternal Bliss. Devi Mandir Publications. ISBN 1-877795-66-6.
• Torwesten, Hans (1999). Ramakrishna and Christ, or, The paradox of the incarnation. The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture. ISBN 978-8185843971.

External links

• The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
• A chronology of the life of Ramakrishna
• Ramakrishna Kathamrita literally, The Nectar of Ramakrishna’s Words
• Ramakrishna, His Life and Sayings by Max Müller
• My Master- from Vivekananda's 1896 Lectures on Ramakrishna
• Works of Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda
• Official website of the Headquarters of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission
• Direct Disciples of Sri Ramakrishna