Ramakrishna, the God-man of modern times,
was born on February 18, 1836, in the little village
of Kamarpukur, in the district of Hooghly in Bengal.
How different were his upbringing and the environment of
his boyhood from those of Narendranath, who was to
become, later, the bearer and interpreter of his message!
Ramakrishna's parents, belonging to the brahmin caste,
were poor, pious, and devoted to the traditions of their
ancient religion. Full of fun and innocent joys, the fair child,
with flowing hair and a sweet, musical voice, grew up in a
simple countryside of rice-fields, cows, and banyan and
mango trees. He was apathetic about his studies and
remained practically illiterate all his life, but his innate
spiritual tendencies found expression through devotional songs
and the company of wandering monks, who fired his
boyish imagination by the stories of their spiritual adventures.
At the age of six he experienced a spiritual ecstasy
while watching a flight of snow-white cranes against a black
sky overcast with rain-clouds. He began to go into trances
as he meditated on gods and goddesses. His father's
death, which left the family in straitened circumstances,
deepened his spiritual mood. And so, though at the age of sixteen
he joined his brother in Calcutta, he refused to go on
there with his studies; for, as he remarked, he was simply
not interested in an education whose sole purpose was to earn
mere bread and butter. He felt a deep longing for
the realization of God.
The floodgate of Ramakrishna's emotion burst
all bounds when he took up the duties of a priest in the
Kali temple of Dakshineswar, where the Deity was
worshipped as the Divine Mother. Ignorant of the scriptures and of
the intricacies of ritual, Ramakrishna poured his whole
soul into prayer, which often took the form of devotional
songs. Food, sleep, and other physical needs were
completely forgotten in an all-consuming passion for the vision of
God. His nights were spent in contemplation in the
neighbouring woods. Doubt sometimes alternated with hope; but
an inner certainty and the testimony of the illumined
saints sustained him in his darkest hours of despair.
Formal worship or the mere sight of the image did not satisfy
his inquiring mind; for he felt that a figure of stone could
not be the bestower of peace and immortality. Behind the
image there must be the real Spirit, which he was determined
to behold. This was not an easy task. For a long time the
Spirit played with him a teasing game of hide-and-seek, but
at last it yielded to the demand of love on the part of the
young devotee. When he felt the direct presence of the
Divine Mother, Ramakrishna dropped unconscious to the
floor, experiencing within himself a constant flow of bliss.
This foretaste of what was to follow made him
God-intoxicated, and whetted his appetite for further
experience. He wished to see God uninterruptedly, with eyes
open as well as closed. He therefore abandoned
himself recklessly to the practice of various extreme
spiritual disciplines. To remove from his mind the least trace of
the arrogance of his high brahmin caste, he used to clean
stealthily the latrine at a pariah's house. Through a
stern process of discrimination he effaced all sense of
distinction between gold and clay. Purity became the very
breath of his nostrils, and he could not regard a woman, even in
a dream, in any other way except as his own mother or
the Mother of the universe. For years his eyelids did not
touch each other in sleep. And he was finally thought to be insane.
Indeed, the stress of his spiritual practice soon
told upon Ramakrishna's delicate body and he returned
to Kamarpukur to recover his health. His relatives and
old friends saw a marked change in his nature; for the gay
boy had been transformed into a contemplative young
man whose vision was directed to something on a
distant horizon. His mother proposed marriage, and finding in
this the will of the Divine Mother, Ramakrishna consented.
He even indicated where the girl was to be found, namely,
in the village of Jayrambati, only three miles away. Here
lived the little Saradamani, a girl of five, who was in
many respects very different from the other girls of her age.
The child would pray to God to make her character as
fragrant as the tuberose. Later, at Dakshineswar, she prayed to
God to make her purer than the full moon, which, pure as
it was, showed a few dark spots. The marriage was
celebrated and Ramakrishna, participating, regarded the whole
affair as fun or a new excitement.
In a short while he came back to Dakshineswar
and plunged again into the stormy life of religious
experimentation. His mother, his newly married wife, and his
relatives were forgotten. Now, however, his spiritual disciplines
took a new course. He wanted to follow the time-honoured
paths of the Hindu religion under the guidance of competent
teachers, and they came to him one by one, nobody
knew from where. One was a woman, under whom he
practised the disciplines of Tantra and of the Vaishnava faith
and achieved the highest result in an incredibly short time.
It was she who diagnosed his physical malady as
the manifestation of deep spiritual emotions and described
his apparent insanity as the result of an agonizing love for
God; he was immediately relieved. It was she, moreover,
who first declared him to be an Incarnation of God, and
she proved her statement before an assembly of
theologians by scriptural evidence. Under another teacher, the
monk Jatadhari, Ramakrishna delved into the mysteries of
Rama worship and experienced Rama's visible presence.
Further, he communed with God through the divine
relationships of Father, Mother, Friend, and Beloved. By an
austere sannyasin named Totapuri, he was initiated into
the monastic life, and in three days he realized his
complete oneness with Brahman, the undifferentiated
Absolute, which is the culmination of man's spiritual
endeavour. Totapuri himself had had to struggle for forty years
to realize this identity.
Ramakrishna turned next to Christianity and
Islam, to practise their respective disciplines, and he attained
the same result that he had attained through Hinduism.
He was thereby convinced that these, too, were ways to
the realization of God-consciousness. Finally, he
worshipped his own wife — who in the meantime had grown into
a young woman of nineteen — as the manifestation of
the Divine Mother of the universe and surrendered at her
feet the fruit of his past spiritual practices. After this he
left behind all his disciplines and struggles. For according to
Hindu tradition, when the normal relationship
between husband and wife, which is the strongest foundation
of the worldly life, has been transcended and a man sees
in his wife the divine presence, he then sees God
everywhere in the universe. This is the culmination of the spiritual
life.
Ramakrishna himself was now convinced of his
divine mission on earth and came to know that through him
the Divine Mother would found a new religious
order comprising those who would accept the doctrine of
the Universal Religion which he had experienced. It
was further revealed to him that anyone who had prayed
to God sincerely, even once, as well as those who were
passing through their final birth on earth, would accept him as
their spiritual ideal and mould their lives according to
his universal teaching.
The people around him were bewildered to see
this transformation of a man whom they had ridiculed only
a short while ago as insane. The young priest had
become God's devotee; the devotee, an ascetic; the ascetic, a
saint; the saint, a man of realization; and the man of
realization, a new Prophet. Like the full-blown blossom attracting
bees, Ramakrishna drew to him men and women of
differing faith, intelligence, and social position. He gave
generously to all from the inexhaustible store house of divine
wisdom, and everyone felt uplifted in his presence. But the
Master himself was not completely satisfied. He longed for
young souls yet untouched by the world, who would
renounce everything for the realization of God and the service
of humanity. He was literally consumed with this
longing. The talk of worldly people was tasteless to him. He
often compared such people to mixture of milk and water with
the latter preponderating, and said that he had
become weary of trying to prepare thick milk from the
mixture. Evenings, when his anguish reached its limit, he
would climb the roof of a building near the temple and cry at
the top of his voice: 'Come, my boys! Oh, where are you all?
I cannot bear to live without you!' A mother could not
feel more intensely for her beloved children, a friend for
his dearest friend, or a lover for her sweetheart.
Shortly thereafter the young men destined to be
his monastic disciples began to arrive. And foremost
among them was Narendranath.
The first meeting at Dakshineswar between the
Master and Narendra was momentous. Sri Ramakrishna
recognized instantaneously his future messenger.
Narendra, careless about his clothes and general appearance, was
so unlike the other young men who had accompanied him
to the temple. His eyes were impressive, partly
indrawn, indicating a meditative mood. He sang a few songs,
and as usual poured into them his whole soul.
His first song was this:
Let us go back once more,
O mind, to our proper home!
Here in this foreign land of earth
Why should we wander aimlessly in stranger's guise?
These living beings round about,
And the five elements,
Are strangers to you, all of them; none are your own.
Why do you so forget yourself,
In love with strangers, foolish mind?
Why do you so forget your own?
Mount the path of truth,
O mind! Unflaggingly climb,
With love as the lamp to light your way.
As your provision on the journey, take with you
The virtues, hidden carefully;
For, like two highwaymen,
Greed and delusion wait to rob you of your wealth.
And keep beside you constantly,
As guards to shelter you from harm,
Calmness of mind and self-control.
Companionship with holy men will be for you
A welcome rest-house by the road;
There rest your weary limbs awhile, asking your way,
If ever you should be in doubt,
Of him who watches there.
If anything along the path should cause you fear,
Then loudly shout the name of God;
For He is ruler of that road,
And even Death must bow to Him.
Ramakrishna loved Narendranath because he saw
him as the embodiment of Narayana, the Divine
Spirit, undefiled by the foul breath of the world. But he
was criticized for his attachment. Once a trouble-maker
of twisted mind named Hazra, who lived with the Master
at Dakshineswar, said to him, 'If you long for Naren and
the other youngsters all the time, when will you think of
God?' The Master was distressed by this thought. But it was
at once revealed to him that though God dwelt in all
beings, He was especially manifest in a pure soul like
Naren. Relieved of his worries, he then said: 'Oh, what a fool
Hazra is! How he unsettled my mind! But why blame the
poor fellow? How could he know?'
Sri Ramakrishna was outspoken in Narendra's
praise. This often embarrassed the young disciple, who
would criticize the Master for what he termed a sort of
infatuation. One day Ramakrishna spoke highly of Keshab Sen and
the saintly Vijay Goswami, the two outstanding leaders of
the Brahmo Samaj. Then he added: 'If Keshab possesses
one virtue which has made him world-famous, Naren
is endowed with eighteen such virtues. I have seen in
Keshab and Vijay the divine light burning like a candle flame,
but in Naren it shines with the radiance of the sun.'
Narendra, instead of feeling flattered by these
compliments, became annoyed and sharply rebuked the Master
for what he regarded as his foolhardiness. 'I cannot help it,'
the Master protested. 'Do you think these are my words?
The Divine Mother showed me certain things about you, which
I repeated. And She reveals to me nothing but the truth.'
But Naren was hardly convinced. He was sure
that these so-called revelations were pure illusions. He carefully
explained to Sri Ramakrishna that, from the viewpoint
of Western science and philosophy, very often a man
was deceived by his mind, and that the chances of
deception were greater when a personal attachment was
involved. He said to the Master, 'Since you love me and wish to
see me great, these fancies naturally come to your mind.'
The Master was perplexed. He prayed to the
Divine Mother for light and was told: 'Why do you care
about what he says? In a short time he will accept your
every word as true.'
On another occasion, when the Master was
similarly reprimanded by the disciple, he was reassured by
the Divine Mother. Thereupon he said to Naren with a
smile: 'You are a rogue. I won't listen to you any more.
Mother says that I love you because I see the Lord in you. The
day I shall not see Him in you, I shall not be able to bear
even the sight of you.'
On account of his preoccupation with his studies,
or for other reasons, Narendra could not come to
Dakshineswar as often as Sri Ramakrishna wished. But the
Master could hardly endure his prolonged absence. If the
disciple had not visited him for a number of days, he would
send someone to Calcutta to fetch him. Sometimes he went
to Calcutta himself. One time, for example,
Narendra remained away from Dakshineswar for several weeks;
even the Master's eager importunities failed to bring him.
Sri Ramakrishna knew that he sang regularly at the
prayer meetings of the Brahmo Samaj, and so one day he
made his way to the Brahmo temple that the disciple
attended. Narendra was singing in the choir as the Master
entered the hall, and when he heard Narendra's voice, Sri
Ramakrishna fell into a deep ecstasy. The eyes of
the congregation turned to him, and soon a commotion
followed. Narendra hurried to his side. One of the
Brahmo leaders, in order to stop the excitement, put out the
lights. The young disciple, realizing that the Master's
sudden appearance was the cause of the disturbance, sharply
took him to task. The latter answered, with tears in his
eyes, that he had simply not been able to keep himself away
from Narendra.
On another occasion, Sri Ramakrishna, unable to
bear Narendra's absence, went to Calcutta to visit the
disciple at his own home. He was told that Naren was studying
in an attic in the second floor that could be reached only by
a steep staircase. His nephew Ramlal, who was a sort
of caretaker of the Master, had accompanied him, and
with his help Sri Ramakrishna climbed a few steps.
Narendra appeared at the head of the stair, and at the very sight
of him Sri Ramakrishna exclaimed, 'Naren, my beloved!'
and went into ecstasy. With considerable difficulty Naren
and Ramlal helped him to finish climbing the steps, and as
he entered the room the Master fell into deep samadhi. A
fellow student who was with Naren at the time and did
not know anything of religious trances, asked Naren
in bewilderment, 'Who is this man?'
'Never mind,' replied Naren. 'You had better go
home now.'
Naren often said that the 'Old Man,'
meaning Ramakrishna, bound the disciple for ever to him by
his love. 'What do worldly men,' he remarked, 'know
about love? They only make a show of it. The Master alone
loves us genuinely.' Naren, in return, bore a deep love for Sri
Ramakrishna, though he seldom expressed it in words.
He took delight in criticizing the Master's spiritual
experiences as evidences of a lack of self-control. He made fun of
his worship of Kali.
'Why do you come here,' Sri Ramakrishna once
asked him, 'if you do not accept Kali, my Mother?'
'Bah! Must I accept Her,' Naren retorted,
'simply because I come to see you? I come to you because I
love you.'
'All right,' said the Master, 'ere long you will not
only accept my blessed Mother, but weep in Her name.'
Turning to his other disciples, he said: 'This boy
has no faith in the forms of God and tells me that my
visions are pure imagination. But he is a fine lad of pure mind.
He does not accept anything without direct evidence. He
has studied much and cultivated great discrimination. He
has fine judgement.'