Ramakrishna

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

Brahman and Shakti are one: the divine with form and without form

Both personal and impersonalStated explicitly

According to the conversations recorded by Mahendranath Gupta (M.) in the Kathamrita, Ramakrishna holds that the motionless Brahman and the active Shakti, the divine Mother he worshipped as Kali, are one and the same reality, like fire and its power to burn. When the divine is inactive it is called Brahman; when it creates, preserves and destroys, Shakti. So he need not choose between a personal God and an impersonal Absolute: the same Sat-chit-ananda appears with form to the devotee and without form to one who follows the path of knowledge. His image of the single substance that some call water and others aqua or pani, recorded among his sayings, also serves to argue that the different names of God point to the same thing. To one who denies God he replies that the stars are still in the sky even though they cannot be seen by day.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

The salt doll dissolves in the ocean; the servant’s ‘I’ remains

The Self is the AbsoluteStated explicitly

According to the Kathamrita, Ramakrishna teaches that the true self is not the ego that says ‘mine’: in samadhi the individual dissolves into Brahman like the salt doll that went to measure the depth of the ocean and never came back to tell. A human being is like a pillowcase: they come in different colours, but all contain the same cotton. Yet he distinguishes the ‘unripe I’, which thinks itself doer and owner, from the devotee’s ‘ripe I’, which knows itself child or servant of God; this second, harmless self may be kept in order to love and to teach. His ideal of vijnana is to have known the unity and to return to live the relationship with the divine without losing it.

Why do we suffer?

God is in all, but not all are in God: hence suffering

Separation from GodStated explicitly

One of Ramakrishna’s sayings gathered by his disciples sums it up: God is in all men, but not all men are in God, and that is why they suffer. Pain does not come from God’s absence but from the human being living turned towards something else. In the Kathamrita that something else has a name: ‘woman and gold’ (kamini-kanchana), that is, lust and greed, which bind the mind to the world and draw it away from the divine. Ramakrishna compares the attached mind to a damp match that will not light. The remedy is not resignation but longing: to cry for God as a child cries for its mother, until the Mother answers.

What happens after death?

One is reborn while desire remains; boiled paddy no longer sprouts

Rebirth according to karmaStated explicitly

In the conversations of the Kathamrita Ramakrishna takes the doctrine of rebirth for granted: as long as desires and attachment to the world remain, the soul is born again. His best-known image is agricultural: paddy in its husk, if sown, will sprout; paddy that has been boiled will not. So whoever has realised God is not reborn, for knowledge has cooked the seed of desire. Ramakrishna does not dwell on describing intermediate worlds or the soul’s fate after death; what matters to him is the urgency of seeking God in this life. His biographers relate that in his last months, ill with throat cancer, he kept speaking of God and entering samadhi.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

Cry for God as a child cries for its mother

Through devotion and surrenderStated explicitly

According to his biographers, Ramakrishna practised the disciplines of Tantra, Vedanta, Vaishnava devotion and even Islam and Christianity, and concluded that every sincere path leads to the same goal: as many faiths, so many paths. But for his age he chiefly recommended bhakti. One of his recorded sayings asks where the aspirant’s strength lies and answers: in his tears; just as a mother finally grants the child who cries insistently what it asks for, so God gives himself to one who truly longs for him. In the Kathamrita he advises chanting the Name, the company of holy people and periodic retreat into solitude. What is decisive is not technique but the intensity of longing.

Is a teacher necessary?

Sachchidananda alone is the guru; the human is its instrument

The teacher is withinStated explicitly

Ramakrishna had several human teachers, among them the Bhairavi Brahmani, who guided him in Tantra, and the monk Totapuri, who initiated him into Advaita. Yet according to the Kathamrita he resisted being called guru and repeated that Sachchidananda, the Absolute, alone is the guru: if someone in human form awakens another’s spiritual consciousness, it is God who has taken that form. He compared one who thinks himself a teacher of others to a water snake trying to swallow a frog too big for it. For most people a guide is necessary, as on an unknown road; but whoever truly longs will receive teaching from God himself, who speaks from within.

Is the world real?

The Mother has become all this: the world is her play (lila)

Manifestation of the divineStated explicitly

Ramakrishna knew in Advaita the experience in which the world vanishes, but he did not stop there. According to the Kathamrita, one who has attained full knowledge (vijnana) sees that the same Brahman which is motionless has become the universe and living beings: the world is the manifestation and play (lila) of the divine Mother. Hence he can say that God is in everything, and also, with humour, that if God is in the elephant he is also in its driver, who warns people to stand aside: seeing the divine in all does not exempt one from discernment. Against those who call the world illusory, Ramakrishna sometimes describes it as a mansion of mirth for one who has seen God.

What is love?

Love God with the miser’s craving for his gold

Longing and unionStated explicitly

In the Kathamrita Ramakrishna describes love of God as a longing that must combine three attractions at once: the miser’s for his money, the faithful wife’s for her husband and the mother’s for her child. When the desire for God reaches that intensity, God reveals himself. He distinguishes formal devotion, governed by rules, from ecstatic love (prema), in which the devotee forgets the world and even his own body, like the gopis of Vrindavan. But that love does not close in on itself: the formula he passed on to Vivekananda, serving beings as forms of Shiva, turns love of God into service of others, not out of condescending pity but out of reverence.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

Thou art the operator and I the machine

There is no doerStated explicitly

In the Kathamrita Ramakrishna repeats a formula of surrender in which he addresses the Mother as the operator and calls himself the machine, or the house of which She is the indweller. Whoever has seen God understands that it is He who acts through all, and that the sense of being the author of one’s acts comes from the unripe ego. But he does not preach passivity to one who still feels he chooses: as long as one thinks oneself the doer, one is responsible for what one does and must strive, pray and discern. With realisation that sense of authorship falls away of itself, like the husk of a ripe fruit. True freedom, for him, belongs to one who no longer claims anything.

Why meditate or pray?

Pray like a child calling its mother, sincerely and with tears

Friendship with GodStated explicitly

Ramakrishna’s prayer, as the Kathamrita and his biographers describe it, was a filial conversation with the divine Mother: he spoke to her, reproached her, begged her to reveal herself and wept when she did not. He advised his visitors to pray sincerely, in solitude, and above all with longing; the aspirant’s strength lies in his tears. Meditation, he said, should be done in the mind, in a corner and in the forest, and should be as continuous as oil flowing without a break. For him praying and meditating serve the same end: to make God cease to be an idea and become someone present.

Can reason know the ultimate?

The salt doll never returns to tell how deep the sea is

The ultimate lies beyond the mindStated explicitly

Ramakrishna, who could barely read and write, distrusted the bookish learning of scholars (pandits), whom he compared to vultures that soar high but keep their eyes on carrion. According to the Kathamrita, Brahman is the only thing the human tongue has not defiled, because no one has been able to say what it is. His parable of the salt doll that wanted to measure the depth of the ocean and dissolved in it expresses the limit of all conceptual knowledge: whoever arrives does not come back to describe it. Yet he did not despise reflection: he considered it useful for discriminating between the real and the unreal. Reason prepares the ground; knowledge of God comes through direct experience.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

Live in the world like a maidservant in another’s house

Contemplation in actionStated explicitly

Ramakrishna trained young men who would become monks, but most of his visitors were householders, and he did not ask them to abandon the world. According to the Kathamrita he proposed that they live like the maidservant of a rich house: she looks after the master’s children and calls them ‘my children’, but knows her real home is elsewhere. Or like the mudfish, which lives in the mud without being soiled. He advised withdrawing into solitude from time to time to pray, and then returning to one’s duties with the heart set on God. His formula of serving beings as forms of Shiva inspired Vivekananda’s Ramakrishna Mission, which joined monasticism with social service.