Sri Ramakrishna, the Man-Gods

The year 2013-2014 has been the 150th birth anniversary year of Swami Vivekananda. The person who exerted the greatest influence on Swamiji and who in fact transformed the young restless Narendranath to the great yogi Vivekananda was Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa. Had Ramakrishna been not there at the appropriate time in the appropriate place, the world probably would not have seen Vivekananda, the great sannyasi,the great prophet, the great patriot, the great orator, the great reveller of Indian culture and religion before the world. Romain Rolland the great writer and philosopher had rightly said that the torrent forming the remarkable destiny of Vivekananda would have been lost in the bowels of the earth, if Ramakrishna’s glance had not, as with one blow of an axe, split the rock barring its way, so that through the breach thus made the river of his soul could flow. It was Sri Ramakrishna who saw in the wayward, tormented and storm tossed as Narendranath then was, the future leader. As Sri Ramakrishna used to say that whenever we think of fire, its burning power comes to our mind, whenever we think of milk its whiteness comes to our mind, similarly it will be appropriate if we say that whenever we think of Vivekananda, Sri Ramakrishna comes to our mind. Vivekananda described Sri Ramakrishna as his master, his hero, his ideal, his God in life. Romain Rolland described Ramakrishna as Man-Gods, the incarnation of the Divine Essence.

Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa worshipped as Thakur (God) by millions of his devotees was born into a very poor but pious orthodox brahmin family in the village of Kamarpukur, set in the midst of rice fields, palm trees, and lakes in the Hooghly  district of West Bengal. His parents were Kshudiram Chattopadhyay and Chandramani Devi.  Kshudiram while on a pilgrimage to Gaya had a dream in which Lord Gadadhara (a form of Lord Vishnu) appeared and said that he would be born as his son. At the same time in Kamarpukur, Chandramani Devi was said to have had a vision of a ray of light entering her womb from Shiva's temple. Her husband on his return from Gaya found her transfigured. She had conceived and was said to hear voices that she carried a God. The child, whom the world was to know as Ramakrishna was born on February 18, 1836 and was given the name of Gadadhar.

Ramakrishna experienced his first spiritual ecstasy at the age of six. While walking along the paddy fields, a flock of white cranes flying against a backdrop of dark thunder clouds caught his vision. He reportedly became so absorbed by this scene that he lost outward consciousness and experienced indescribable joy in that state.   Ramakrishna reportedly had experiences of similar nature a few other times in his childhood, while worshipping goddess Vishalakshi, and portraying god Shiva in a drama during Shivaratri festival. From his tenth or eleventh year on, the trances became common, and by the final years of his life Ramakrishna’s samadhi periods occurred almost daily.

Ramakrishna's father died in 1843, after which family responsibilities fell on his elder brother Ramkumar. Ramkumar started a Sanskrit school in Kolkata and also served as a priest. Ramakrishna moved to Calcutta in 1852 to assist Ramkumar in the priestly work. In 1855,  Ramkumar was appointed as the priest of Dakshineswar Kali temple built by Rani Rasmani.  Ramakrishna, along with his nephew Hriday, became assistants to Ramkumar, with Ramakrishna given the task of decorating the deity. When Ramkumar died in 1856, Ramakrishna took his place as the priest of the Kali. The young priest who was twenty years old began to look upon the image of the goddess Kali as his mother and the mother of the universe. His relationship with Kali, the Goddess was beautifully described by Romain Rolland and I quote him Quote He did not know what a terrible mistress he had elected to serve. As a purring tigress that fascinates her prey, She was to feed upon him, playing with him for ten long enchanted years passed beneath her gleaming pupils Unquote. In the words of Sri Ramakrishna himself one day he had a vision of the universal Mother, as "... 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”

Rumours spread to Kamarpukur that Ramakrishna had become unstable as a result of his spiritual practices 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. They could find the bride at the house of Ramchandra Mukherjee in Jayrambatii, three miles to the north-west of Kamarpukur. The five-year-old bride, Saradamani (later known as Sarada Devi) was found and the marriage was duly solemnised in 1859. But by the time his bride joined him, Ramakrishna had already embraced the monastic life of a sannyasi; as a result, the marriage was never consummated .  Rmakrishna regarded Sarada as the Divine Mother in person, addressing her as the Holy Mother, the name by which she was known to Ramakrishna's disciples. It is believed that he even worshipped Sarada Devi as the mother Goddess. Sarada Devi outlived Ramakrishna by 34 years and played an important role in the nascent religious movement. 

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The most widely known amongst the spiritual teachers of Ramakrishna was an ascetic woman, called Bhairavi Brahmani skilled in tantra and vaishnava bhakti and an advaita vedantic ascetic, Tota Puri who taught him non-dual meditation, and according to Ramakrishna, he experienced nirvikalpa samadhi under his guidance. Ramakrishna also practiced other religions, notably Islam and Christianity, and came to the conclusion that they all lead to the same God. He was comfortable with all faiths, with all modes of worship as he believed that ultimate aim of all religions, all faiths was to seek the Almighty, the omnipotent, the omnipresent, the omniscient,  the Brahmn of the  Hindus, the God of the Christians, the Allah of the Muslims. Ramakrishna was the embodiment of universal toleration and acceptance, the essence of Hinduism and Indian culture.

 Ramakrishna did not preach any new religion, he did not write any book, nor did he unlike Vivekananda deliver public lectures. Instead, he chose to speak in a simple language using parables and metaphors by way of illustration, drawn from the observation of nature and ordinary things of daily use. His conversations were charming and attracted the cultural elite of the then Bengal. He had only rudimentary education but the best university graduates of that time found in him an intellectual giant. Sri Ramakrishna by practicing different religions and different faiths realised the basic harmony among all religions their outward differences notwithstanding.  He in fact can be called the originator of the pluralism in religions. It was left to his greatest disciple Vivekananda to spread this message of harmony among all religions and faiths in the whole world.  

The last phase of his mortal life was both poignant and profound. It was poignant as he suffered intense pain because of the throat cancer he developed. Ramakrishna was advised by the doctors to keep the strictest silence, but ignoring their advice, he incessantly conversed with visitors and his admirers. During his last days, he was looked after by his monastic disciples and Sarada Devi. According to traditional accounts, before his death, Ramakrishna transferred his spiritual powers to Vivekananda and reassured Vivekananda of his avataric status. Ramakrishna's condition gradually worsened and he expired in the early morning hours of August 16, 1886 at the Cossipore garden house. After the death of their master, the monastic disciples led by Vivekananda formed a fellowship at a half-ruined house at Baranagar near the river Ganges, with the financial assistance of the householder disciples. This became the first Math or monastery of the disciples who constituted the first Ramakrishna Order. Today Sri Ramakrishna’s disciples, followers and admirers are located across the globe and Ramakrishna Math and Mission founded by Swami Vivekananda  to serve the humanity as embodiment of God has its headquarter at Belur and branches located across the world.

In the words of Maxmuller the great German orientalist and scholar, the fervent love of God, nay, the sense of complete absorption in Godhead, has nowhere found a stronger and more eloquent expression than in the utterances of Ramakrishna. According to British historian Arnold Toynbee, Ramakrishna’s 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. Sri Aurobindo had said that the world could not bear a second birth like that of Ramakrishna in five hundred years.Writing about his guru Swami Vivekananda had said that for the first time he 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.