Mad who? Ramkrishna is Guru of your guru!
Vivek Sharma
I wouldn’t have blogged on Ramkrishna Paramhamsa, hadn’t some spiritual ‘rudiments’ said he was a madman of West Bengal. He worshipped tantrik goddess Kali, exercised charm on the young and distracted them from a householder's life into accepting his guruship.
I can only laugh at such fools. They will only face themselves, get scared and then find the hand of Ramkrishna lifting them to real spirituality.
Whether you accept it or not, he is the continuity of the Reality which has been rescuing mankind from time to time by giving them time-specific direction and pushes now and then. He wasn’t a yogi, he wasn’t a guru, he wasn’t a sannyasi and he wasn’t even God (as people perceived him). He detested all these positions. He lovingly disclosed to his dear disciple Vivekananda, and others too later, that he was the power that came as Ram, the power that came as Krishna, not person but the principle behind these personalities. The principle which Krishna has declared in the Bhagwad Gita as
मत्तः परतरं नान्यत् किंचिदस्ति धनन्जय।
मयि सर्वं इदं प्रोतं सूत्रे मणिगणा इव।। Dis 7
It means—There is none beyond Me, O Arjuna, none whatsoever. I am that continuity which is rushing through everything like a thread rushes through the gems it strings together.
मया ततमिदं सर्वं जगदव्यक्तमूर्तिना।
मत्स्थानि सर्वभूतानि न चाहं तेषु अवस्थितः।। Dis 9
I am the unseen principle of what you see from here to there—the apparent world. All that you see, is in Me, but I am not stuck in them—I am rushing through them.
हन्त ते कथयिष्यामि दिव्या ह्यात्मविभूतयः।
प्राधान्यतः कुरुश्रेष्ठ नास्त्यन्तो विस्तरस्य मे।। Dis 10
It means—Now Arjuna, I will tell you about My representative manifestations (to help you understand My continuity), as there is no end to My continuous expansion.
Probably, this is why Ramkrishna declared to Vivekananda that He was the power that came as Ram and Krishna. He gave the representation of two personalities to establish the continuity that He is and that they were and are as One principle—Intelligent Energy.
Unbroken Continuity
What is that power or Intelligent Energy like? Krishna reveals in Discourse 13 that there are apparently three dimensions of His unbroken continuity. They are one principle yet they seem three. The principle of power may appear differently by way of its operationality and functionality. But, it is the same continuity of Intelligent Energy.
अविभक्तं च भूतेषु विभक्तमिव च स्थितम्।
भूतभर्तृ च तज्ज्ञेयं ग्रसिष्णु प्रभविष्णु च।। Dis 13
It means —Intelligent Energy, the eternal principle, is division-less though appears divided among the created beings. This has to be known as the maintainer, destroyer and creator.
To Them With Love
This is the madman they talk about.
They forget that their madman gave to the world Swami Vivekananda, who is the backbone of modern spirituality. Be it east, west, south or north, Swami Vivekananda’s ideas are manifesting through anything and anybody who holds some potential for creative change and excellence in their respective spheres.
Isn’t it amazing? Even Vivekananda said about your madman that His mere touch of the toe could turn a dust particle into a Vivekananda…’all that is great and noble about me is His and whatever else you find in me is my imperfection.’ He himself used to critically analyse Ramkrishna’s actions and words and would get the deepest truths after some time. He would often say he could write Vedas on each of Ramkrishna’s words to explain their dimensions. Ramkrishna was simple and he believed all paths led to God. He practised every spiritual and religious path and realised their goal. Islam, Christianity, and all the forms of worships popular in Sanatan Dharma, this madman practised and realised their truths. He concluded that all paths lead to same God. But, people out of their selfish interests have made them into multiple paths of your and mine gods. This is the cause of ego battles all around. He once said, “ I have cleared all the paths of egos and I am watching. Everybody has to pass through Me now—if you are honest you will get through to the goal. And if you are not, you will be made to get the experience and evolve.”
He would call Vivekananda’s body as his sasural (inlaws' home). That simply meant he would work through his body as does a housewife work in her inlaws’ place. It has profound dimensions which reveal and prove that he was what he said—the power which came as Ram and Krishna is Ramkrishna, not according to your Vedanta, but as a matter of fact. The inlaws’ home is the world, where a kanya kumari (a virgin) is wedded to a boy and sent off to his place. She is a perfect stranger there. But, after sometime, she gathers herself up and becomes the light of the home. She begets children, becomes a mother from a wife and then the power centre of the house. What Ramkrishna meant here was that Vivekananda’s body was now the format of the changed world and He the centre of it. He will manifest through Vivekananda’s heart, the centre and carry out social, physical, scientific, cultural and spiritual evolution based on the principle of Intelligent Energy—maintain, destroy and create.
All great yogis who came after Swami Vivekananda, and are alive now, are just carrying forward his ideas…. Whatever they say, believe and preach is nothing but an echo of Vivekananda.We need more such madman, whose mere touch can turn a speck of dust into Vivekananda!
Madman’s Charm
By the way, all great saints and yogis of Ramkrishna’s times would come to him as if attracted by a big magnet. Their egos were so high that they would aspire to teach their skills to Ramkrishna. They saw a very good disciple in him. Ramkrishna was simple. He saw in it Mother’s hand and learnt whatever they wanted to teach him, but, of course, only after seeking permission from his Mother. They came to teach him and went back learning from him. This is the magic of this madman of Dakshineswar. He has dropped his body. But, he is still attracting those who have potential to bring about a change and excellence in society their way. Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi is one such small example. There have been many examples to quote. But, this blog is not meant to eulogise Ramkrishna. It is just meant to bust the myth people are still carrying in their heads about a phenomenon which set off a chain reaction of change. He was not the tantrik charmer of West Bengal, but a phenomenon which gave the world a new direction in every sphere of life. The magic is still on.
Top Bows To Him
Rabindra Nath Tagore, Dayananda Saraswati, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and the likes came across him like rivers rushing into the bottomless sea and resuming their course, recharged and redirected.
French Nobel Laureate Romain Rolland, Max Muller and Christopher Isherwood too were attracted to Ramkrishna, who remained at Dakshineshwar and would barely visit outside Kolkata (then Calcutta). What turned this illiterate, madman of West Bengal so special that he continued to draw people of eminence even after shedding his body? It is probably his mastery over all the forms of worship and spiritual paths that exist and may exist in future. He was never one-sided and hence became a unique confluence of all spiritual paths and religions. Symbolically, we can say he was as multi-headed as a Hindu deities are often shown—not four, not five, infinite numbers, as Arjuna described
अनेकबाहूदरवक्त्रनेत्रं पश्यामि
त्वां सर्वतोनन्तरूपम्।
नान्तं न मध्यं न पुनस्तवादिं
पश्यामि विश्वेश्वर विश्वरूप।।
रूपं महत्ते बहुवक्त्रनेत्रं
महाबाहो बहुबाहूरूपम्।
बहूदरं बहुदंष्ट्राकरालं
दृष्ट्वा लोकाः प्रव्यथितास्तथाहम्।।
Infinite hands, stomachs, mouths and eyes, I perceive You everywhere with infinite form. O Lord of the Worlds! O Universes Personified! There is no end, no middle and no beginning to Your form, I perceive. Waching Your multi-stomach, multi-toothed from, all are struck by anxiety as I am. So don’t take him to be a simpleton as he looks. His dimensions are beyond human perceptions and his reach is as continuously existent as the centre of all.
What They Say
Legendary Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood’s opening sentence in his book Ramkrishna and His Disciples says it all. He writes, “This is the story of a phenomenon. I will begin by calling him simply that, rather than holy man, mystic, saint or an avatar; all emotive words with mixed associations .… A phenomenon is often something extraordinary and mysterious. Ramkrishna was extraordinary and mysterious…a phenomenon is always a fact, an object of experience. That is how I shall try to approach Ramkrishna.”
When Isherwood describes about Ramkrishna’s spiritual fervour reflecting through his body as symptoms never seen before, he somehow is talking about the same phenomenon, which he began his book with.
He writes,… “Ramkrishna resumed the worship at the Kali temple, but he did not continue it for long. After a few days his awareness of the Mother’s presence overwhelmed him once more, and he was unable to attend any external duties. His earlier symptoms returned, the blood flushed his chest, his body burned, he couldn’t sleep…”
What Isherwood is talking about is the phenomenon of the eternal principle of Intelligent Energy manifesting inside out in Ramkrishna’s body. It was burning him, like the fire does, the blood flushed his chest, as it was getting converted into Intelligent Energy. In all, his entire body-mind system was transforming into Intelligent Energy. It is the same phenomenon which we witness in day-to-day life. When you put a piece of iron, or wood, or even a paper into the fire, it first converts into fire, takes up its colour and then begins to manifest the fire—heat, light and energy. This was real spirituality. The spirituality which Krishna talks about in Bhagwad Gita. And Ramkrishna’s body was nothing but the glowing, burning golden sun. The principle, which is operative in the sun, was equally working in Ramkrishna. Intelligent Energy began to blaze through him, burning out what was not required and retaining which was required to maintain sun-like structurality—the sun is all fire, but it still has retained its shape. This is how people witnessed the phenomenon and recorded it after observing it externally. All those talk about mytical story-telling of one baba converting into energy and back, was practically happening here. But, what went inside Ramkrishna’s experiential world within can best be understood by how he explained it all.
“No sooner had I passed through one spiritual crisis than another took its place. It was like being in the midst of a whirlwind—even my sacred thread was blown away, I could seldom keep hold of my dhoti. Sometimes I would open my mouth and it would be as if my jaws reached from heaven to the underworld….”
This is what happens when the Energy transformation is taking place. It is a cosmic event. The whirlwind epitomises the spiralling galaxy, the churning process, the samudra manthan, the awakening of the cosmic serpent (brahma kundalini). As a simple person, who went into Intelligent Energy headlong with the honesty of purpose to know what it is all about, whether it exists or exists not…and there he was witnessing everything wide-eyed, experiencing every bit of it. It was new for him to find his infinite dimension—his jaws spreading from cosmic height to cosmic depths….as if the entire universe was in his mouth.
He would later say, “An ordinary man couldn’t have borne a quarter of that tremendous churning; it would have burnt him up. I had no sleep at all for six long years. My eyes lost the power of winking. I stood in front of a mirror and tried to close my eyelids with my finger—and I couldn’t! I got frightened and said to Mother—Mother, is this what happens to those who call on you? I surrender myself to you, and you give me this terrible disease! I saw that my body didn’t matter—it was of no importance, a mere trifle. Mother appeared to me and comforted me and freed me from my fear.”
What he is talking here about is that it was a strange experience for him to see his body change extraordinarily. Mother appeared to him and comforting him is nothing but he seeing his unending extension where body didn’t matter. It is as if he had transcended bodily from the limited to the unlimited. This matches well with the descriptions given in Discourses 10 and 11 of the Bhagwad Gita.
यद्यद्विभूतिमत्सत्त्वं श्रीमदुर्जितमेव च।
तत्तदेवावगच्छ त्वं मम तेजोंशसम्भवम्।। Dis 10
Krishna says, wherever you find anything or anybody radiant and energised (like the sun), know it for sure to be continuation of My Resplendent Energy ( Intelligent Energy).
Ramkrishna is almost saying the same—he is one with his resplendent, all powerful cosmic continuity, here all divisions are only in appearance. That apparent veil too has been dissolved and now what remains is the comforting cosmic dimension, the limitless, the infinite, the beyond, that is his body now.
अदृष्टपूर्वं हृषितोस्मि दृष्ट्वा
भयेन च प्रव्यथितं मनो मे।
तदेव मे दर्शय देवरूपं
प्रसीद देवेश जगन्निवास।। Dis 11
When somebody experiences what he has not experienced before, besides the joys of that experience he also gets fears and anxiety of losing the apparent. This happens when the limited dimension transforms into the limitless one within. The signs of which become evident to the experiencer, as was it for Arjuna in Discourse 11.
Noble laureate Romain Rolland, in his book, Ramkrishna: Christ’s Younger Brother, writes about the unique experience of Intelligent Energy, which dissolved everything dimensional about him and put him in its lap, with her multiple shimmering, luminous hands holding him from beheading him for not being able to see Mother Divine. In a sheer anguish over his unheard prayers, a thought flashes that he should pick up the sword of the Mother in the temple and behead himself as he was unable to see Her, his Mother. This is the first time He witnesses a phenomenon. As he picked the sword, he says, “And lo! The whole scene , doors, windows, the temple itself vanished…it seemed as if nothing existed anymore. Instead I saw an ocean of the Spirit, boundless, dazzling. In whatever direction I turned, great luminous waves were rising. They bore down upon me with a loud roar, as if to swallow me up. In an instant they were upon me. They broke over me, they engulfed me. I was suffocated. I lost all natural consciousness and I fell….How I passed that day and the next I know not. Round me rolled an ocean of ineffable joy. And in the depths of my being I was conscious of the presence of the Divine Mother.” What it really means is that the moment he was about to kill himself, Intelligent Energy dissolved all that was around him, raised him to the absolute dimension from the relative and he found himself in the midst of the luminous ocean which was raging in its multiple waves at him, engulfed him and after this he could feel the presence of Intelligent Energy all around himself as the ocean of joys. This joy shows that the apparent separation between him and Intelligent Energy was dissolved by Intelligent Energy itself and he experienced the continuity of it all around—no division, all one ocean of joy around him. This experience of Ramkrishna proves that Energy is intelligent. It is not just a mechanical something. It is Intelligent. It knows who to lift up from the relative trap and who not to. Ramkrishna was chosen by him. As he himself said the salt doll was dissolving in the ocean of Intelligent Energy. In other words, he was rising to his dimensions of essentially being one with Intelligent Energy.
Ramkrishna always said that honesty, simplicity and love for God is what is required in Kaliyuga to be with Him at every step. Open your heart to God and he will guide you through life —spiritual and material. All harsh practises and elaborate rituals are no good now. Remember! Who is saying it? It is Ramkrishna who practised every kind of path to realise God. Right at the core was His honesty and whatever He did in the world was not His doing, it was Intelligent Energy working through him. He was/is just an instrument of Her.
Paramhamsa Yogananda
Yogananda ji referred to Ramkrishna Paramhamsa as the Great Master. He would often visit Dakshineshwar where Ramkrishna Paramhamsa remained engaged in his Divine Moods and realisations. During one of his visits to Mother Kali temple, Paramhamsa Yogananda explained his spiritual realisation there as of Mother presence as, “Its large doors slowly opened revealing the stone figure of Goddess Kali. Gradually it changed into a living form, smilingly nodding and greeting, thrilling me with joy indescribable, as if by a mystic syringe, the breath was withdrawn from my lungs, my body became very still, though not inert and ecstatic enlargement of consciousness followed. I could see clearly for several miles over the Ganges river, to my left and beyond the temple, into the entire Dakshineswar precincts….In my sacred experience at Dakishineswhar, the only extra ordinarily enlarged objects were the temple and the form of the Goddess. Everything else appeared in its normal dimensions, although each was enclosed, in a halo of mellow light white, blue, and pastel rainbow hues. My body seemed to be of ethereal substance, ready to levitate. Fully conscious of my material surroundings, I was looking about me and taking a few steps, without disturbing the continuity of the blissful vision. …
Yogananda Ji was guided by Master Moshay, who wrote The Gospel of Ramkrishna. Master Moshay was a disciple of Ramkrishna. Yogananda Ji was about to accept him as his guru, looking at his simplicity and honesty, and his conversations with Divine Mother. But, Master read his mind and told him that he should visit Dakshineshwar from where he would be guided to his guru. Later, he got his guru, as he has mentioned in his autobiography. He later on went on to establish Self Realisation Centres every where with the prime objective of educating people how to be honest and sincere to be able to manifest the Divine and live with the Divine. He called it kriya yoga. This is what his Great Master Ramkrishna Paramhamsa would teach too.
There are many like him who are being guided by Ramkrishna, the Mother.
Aughad Baba Bhagwan Ram of Aghor Peeth in Varanasi also visited the temple very often. He too was guided by Ramkrishna’s Mother Kali in spiritual paths and he realised Her as the composite form of all the gods and goddesses. He later on established Sarveshwari Samooh. The Samoon is engaged in leprosy treatment and providing free of charge medication for the poor. Isn’t it amazing that a yogi of the Aghor tradition setting up an organisation after Mother’s name. Incidentally, Ramkrishna was also called sarvadevadevi swaroop, which also means sarveshwari—the Powerful Mother of all.
Never ever think that Ramkrishna was a madman of West Bengal. He is the Power which came as Ram and Krishna….His charm is Intelligent Energy. You can’t deny it…He is the operative principle in every life. Throw away your garbage of calling him baba, avatar or a saint or a madman. Re-read if you want to understand what it means.