Sri Ramakrishna was born in 1836 in Kamarpukur village near Kolkata. His parents, Kshudiram Chattopadhyaya and Chandramani Devi, were poor but very pious and virtuous. From early days, Ramakrishna was disinclined towards formal education and worldly affairs. He was fond of serving holy men and listening to their discourses. He was also very often found absorbed in spiritual moods. At the age of six, he experienced the first ecstasy while watching a flight of white cranes moving against the background of black clouds. This tendency to enter into ecstasy intensified with age. His father’s death when he was seven years old served only to deepen his introspection and increase his detachment from the world.
When Sri Ramakrishna was sixteen, his brother took him to Kolkata to assist him in his priestly profession. In 1855 the Kali Temple at Dakshineshwar built by Rani Rasmani was consecrated. When his brother died, Ramakrishna became its chief priest. Ramakrishna developed intense devotion to Mother Kali and spent hours in loving adoration of her image, forgetting the rituals of priestly duties.His intense longing culminated in the vision of MotherKali as boundless effulgence engulfing everything around him.
Sri Ramakrishna’s god-intoxicated state alarmed his relatives in Kamarpukur and they got him married to Saradamani. Unaffected by marriage, Sri Ramakrishna plunged into even more intense spiritual practices.Impelled by a stronginner urge to experience different aspects of God, he followed with the help of a series of Gurus, the various paths described in the Hindu scriptures, and realised God through each one of them. In this way, Sri Ramakrishna relived the entire range of spiritual experiences of more than three thousand years of Hindu religion.
With his unquenchable thirst for God, Sri Ramakrishna broke the frontiers of Hinduism, glided through the paths of Islam and Christianity, and attained the highest realisation through each of them in a short span of time. He looked upon Jesus and Buddha as incarnations of God, and venerated the ten Sikh Gurus. He expressed the quintessence of his twelve-year-long spiritual realisation in a simple dictum: “Yatomat,tatopath- “As many faiths, so many paths.” He now habitually lived in an exalted state of consciousness in which he saw God in all beings.
Sri Ramakrishna’s name as a saint began to spread. He came into contact with several leaders and members of Brahmo Samaj and exerted much influence on them. His teaching on harmony of religions attracted people belonging to different denominations. Many householders and youth became his disciples.
The intensity of his spiritual life and untiring spiritual ministration to the endless stream of seekers told on Sri Ramakrishna’s health. He developed cancer of the throat. Sri Ramakrishna gave up his physical body, uttering the name of the Divine Mother.
Contributions of Sri Ramakrishna to World Culture
Spiritual ideal: Sri Ramakrishna’s life strengthened the ideal of God realisation in the modern world. Atheism, materialism and science have undermined people’s faith in traditional religions. Sri Ramakrishna established the possibility of having direct experience of transcendent Reality. Mahatma Gandhi has said: “His (Ramakrishna’s) life enables us to see God face to face. No one can read the story of his life without being convinced that God alone is real and that all else is an illusion.”
Harmony of religions: Sri Ramakrishna was an advocate of harmony of religions. He did not regard all the religions as one. He recognised differences among religions but showed that, in spite of these differences, all religions lead to the same ultimate goal, and hence they are all valid and true.
Sri Ramakrishna expresses this idea in the following words: A lake has many ghats. From one ghat the Hindus take water in jars and call it ‘jal’. From another ghat the Mussalmâns take water in leather bags and call it ‘pani’. From a third the Christians take the same thing and call it ‘water’. Suppose someone says that the thing is not ‘jal’ but ‘pâni’, or that it is not pâni but water, or that it is not ‘water’ but ‘jal’, it would indeed be ridiculous. But this very thing is at the root of the friction among sects, their misunderstandings and quarrels. This is why people injure and kill one another, and shed blood, in the name of religion. But this is not good. Everyone is going toward God. They will all realise Him if they have sincerity and longing of heart.
Thus Sri Ramakrishna anticipated the idea of pluralism. Sri Ramakrishna’s view is singular in that it was based, not on speculation, but on direct religious experience. Since conflicts among religions and the rise of religious fundamentalism are threats to humanity, Sri Ramakrishna’s doctrine of harmony of religions has great relevance to modern world. As the distinguished British historian Arnold Toynbee wrote: “… 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.”
Divinization of love
Sri Ramakrishna elevated love from the level of emotions to the level of the spiritual unity of all beings in God. This principle of oneness of the Supreme Self and its immanence in all beings is a central tenet of the Upanishads. But it was hardly applied in practical life. Sri Ramakrishna saw the Divine in all, even in fallen women, and treated them all with respect. He embodied the famous dictum of the New Testament, “God is Love”. This divinization of love and human relationships is a great contribution of Sri Ramakrishna to human welfare.
Sri Ramakrishna did not write any book, nor did he deliver public lectures. Instead, he chose to speak in 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 Bengal. Mahendranath Gupta, his disciple, noted down these conversations and published them under the title Sri Ramakrishna ftathamrita in Bengali. Its English rendering is The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
¤ Sri Ramakrishna bridged the gulf between the ancient and the modern by showing that the ancient ideals and experiences could be realised even while following the normal modern way of life.
¤ Sri Ramakrishna’s emphasis on truthfulness and renunciation of lust and greed enhanced the moral life in modern times. He also cleansed religious life of immoral practices, external pomp, miracle mongering and the like.
The great contributions of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa are: establishing the possibility of directly experiencing God; preaching of harmony of religions; harmonizing ancient religious practices with modern secular life; discounting the abuses which have entered religions; and improving the tone of morality in social life. His thoughts were free from obscurantism.