In the fifty years of his life, Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886) realised the experiences of five thousand years of spiritual life of millions of people in India and outside India. He was born in a remote village of Bengal in eastern India. His family name was Chattopadhyay. He had very little formal education. He never wrote a book or gave a lecture or preached from a pulpit or led the masses in spectacular religious movements. Even before his attainment of puberty, he was thrice in the super-conscious state (samadhi). He came to live in a temple garden near Calcutta at the age of 19. He traversed through the various paths of Hinduism including the monism of Vedanta and the path of Sufism under the guidance of different spiritual masters. Sometime in 1874, he passed three days in the intense meditation on Jesus who appeared to him.
He was fond of addressing God as Mother. The divine Mother explained to him the essence of the voluminous scriptures ( Vedas, Puranas, Tantras) of the Hindus and showed him through mystic visions how Her chosen children would come to him for inspiration and training. These children, who were adolescent boys, began to flock to him when he was 44 years old. They found that their master’s was a life of constant communion with God and of singing and dancing in the name of God even while instructing small groups of seekers of truth. In the midst of all these he would often pass into the state of samadhi.
A few years of training moulded the young men into saints with a high degree of mystic achievement. In the summer of 1885 Sri Ramakrishna fell sick and passed away in the monsoon of 1886. During his sickness, he commissioned one of these young saints called Naren, later known as Swami Vivekananda (1863—1902) to take the leadership of the would-be monastic order. Sri Ramakrishna enthused posthumously a lay disciple for the financial support of the budding saints who founded a monastery (Math) about two months after his disappearance. Therefore, it is evident that Sri Ramakrishna himself is the founder of the Order of Ramakrishna. The first biographies of Sri Ramakrishna in English and in French were written by Max Müller towards the end of the19th century and Romain Rolland in the twenties of the 20th century respectively.
The following are the cardinal points of Sri Ramakrishna’s teachings:
- God, personal or impersonal, is the only eternal entity.
- One should lead the day-to-day life in such a way that a tangible contact with God may be realized. The sublimation of the libido and the absence of the thirst for material acquisition are sine qua non for such a realization.
- Though God is one, His names, forms and aspects are varied. In His impersonal aspect, He is without name or form.
- If an aspirant is sincere and has the necessary qualifications, he or she can take up any of the said names, forms and aspects; success is sure for him or her.
- The different religions are but paths to God; even if a particular path is relatively poor in respect of a philosophically elaborated doctrine, it is the sincerity of the aspirant which counts; because God cognises it.
- Regarding the most essential things, the religions are harmonious. So intolerance should be banned from the field of religion.
- The divine glory is manifest in a human being. Try to discover it and render service to that divinity.