Sri Ramakrishna- Prophet of India’s spiritual renaissance

MR Lalu

Some events go unrecognized and some memories fail to stick. Similar was the situation of the 188^th birth anniversary of Sri Ramakrishna on 18^th February. There haven’t been any noticeable comments or writings in the memory of this spiritual master. Sri Ramakrishna once controlled the spiritual imaginations of a nation through his unfathomable penance. The splendor of his spiritual greatness was capable of disseminating the ideal and intellectual essence of Sanatana Dharma after Adi Shankara. Throughout his life he remained a pure personification of truth, innocence, compassion and extreme spiritual devotion. Going through his revelations, one thing becomes clear, that his intense sadhana was the foundation of his saintly makeover. With him began an indubitable flow of Dharmic renaissance in India, especially through idol worship. The temple priest in him developed an intense devotion to the symbol of divinity that he worshipped in an idol with extreme purity of mind. And with this questionable spiritual fantasy of Sri Ramakrishna began the modern version of Bhakti movement, a spiritual renaissance, which opened doors for idol worship during the days when India was passing through the crucial period of external invasion.

Sri Ramakrishna allows us to study him from an astounding spiritual angle. The level of divine ecstasy and spiritual fulfillment he was capable of achieving was the result of his personal purity and religious exuberance. Keeping God realization as his supreme goal, the man in the sanctum sanctorum of the temple lived through his mystical intuitions and that was enough for him to attract Narendra, who was known for his logical reasoning and intellectual eloquence. Through his profound Vedantic teachings and saintly dispositions, Ramakrishna managed to attract a group of youth to his side and Narendra, one among those, who chose to learn at his illiterate master’s feet, later came be to be known as Vivekananda, the stormy monk of India. He would subsequently rise to shake the world with his eloquent knowledge of Vedanta and set out to propagate his master’s teachings internationally. Ramakrishna was an ordinary person. His extraordinary self purity and austerities could capture the majestic power of the glory of eternity in its ordinary sculpted divine form, an idol in the sanctorum of the temple. His experimental transition into an indefinable spiritual ecstasy was a queer subject for all those who visited him at the temple premises of Dakshineswar.

As I said, this indescribable and incomprehensible ecstatic connection between the deity and the worshipper accelerated a new Bhakti movement. The worship in the temple intensified his spiritual visions and his yearning to see the divine form of the universal supreme motherhood in a little idol was deepened. A unique approach to spirituality and worship and his quite unusual way of devotion pulled people to him. With his uncommon spiritual visions, his God-intoxicated mind kept longing for more profound experiences and slowly, from the translucence of his egoless state of mind came the divine undiluted conviction of the supreme reality. He communicated with people in the simplest possible manner with the innocence of a child and his simple yet powerful story telling created a magnetic field of spiritual evolution for many people. Thousands assembled at the premises of the temple and they felt their questions answered in his presence. The most important aspect of Ramakrishna’s teachings was that he made people realize that the possibility to discover and realize divinity in each one of them was their most profound potentiality. This, according to him, was possible through self- control and self-purification.

A consistent journey through the inner self towards perfection is the essential Vedantic philosophy and this Sri Ramakrishna advocated throughout his teachings. This, he believed, was possible, mainly through personal hard work. Known for his spiritual focus and devotion and for the magnitude and depth of his spiritual involvement, Ramakrishna etched an unassailable impact of spiritual greatness. Amid his assertions against the hypocrisy of belief systems and the strict regimentation that frequently divided humanity in the name of religions and sects, Ramakrishna remained a profound example of religious cohesion. The renaissance movement that he began and Vivekananda continued became a strengthening factor for India’s present spiritual awakening even after decades of their leaving the soil.

To simply consider Sri Ramakrishna as one among the many ordinary spiritual seekers would be an utter folly. His image and powerful existence as a spiritual revolutionary gets him a special place among the pantheon of Hindu spiritual luminaries, at least from the days of Adi Shankara. A strong quest for realizing God and incidents attributed to such experiences have always been associated with saints. But Sri Ramakrishna brings a certain level of authenticity into this spiritual churn. This is mainly because his spiritual experimentation had found its authority manifesting in his main disciple Swami Vivekananda. Flipping through the pages of their spiritual chemistry, one thing is sure, that Sri Ramakrishna considered Swami Vivekananda as a potential tool to execute his mission and saw in him the fulfillment of his spiritual penance taking shape in its actuality. Beyond doubt, Vivekananda appears to have fulfilled his mission of translating the spiritual essence of his teacher’s devotion into a visible assignment, especially squeezing his abilities to the last drop by way of struggling and activating India’s cultural renaissance.

Sri Ramakrishna presented the world a pluralist view of the Hindu dharma, which he thought would effectively help a sincere seeker in his path of liberation. The temple priest, going beyond his consistent spiritual practices in front of the deity, decided to try flavors of other spiritual traditions as well. They were practiced and propagated by different religions including that of the Abrahamic traditions. Having gone through a variety of spiritual traditions of Islam and Christianity and those in the Indic block as well, testifying their veracity and authority, Ramakrishna came to a solid conclusion that all paths are leading to the same light. The destination that people across the globe are aspiring to evolve into was the same, he declared. This was a revolutionary spiritual makeover in a world that frequently plunged in conflicts and conundrums as different religions were exclusively trying to superimpose their greatness over the other groups.

Sri Ramakrishna’s spiritual enquiry brought him to realizing the oneness of the entire universe which Vedanta calls the Brahman. He had no reason to cast his doubt on the divinity of the man next door. That made him the foremost exponent of Vedanta. Having been forced to remain under British captivity, the Indian spiritual awakening was turning fragile and insignificant. The colonial oppression crushed India’s ethnic ideals of humanism and universalism extensively but Sri Ramakrishna emanated from the backyards of India’s cultural destruction by the English invasion. His overwhelming love for God experimentally directed him through the ordeals of conflicting traditions and the result, the outcome according to him was the same. Spiritual realization was equally attainable through whatever religions he undertook his journey. The essential message lying deeper in his words comes with a consoling hint. Those religions engaged in a fight in order to establish their supremacy need to hold for a second and realize that all rivers direct their current towards the same ocean. Understanding this, all conflicts turn meaningless.

(Author is freelance journalist and social worker based in Kerala. The views expressed are personal opinion of the author.)