Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa
Ramakrishna Parmahamsa is perhaps
the best known saint of nineteenth century India. He was born in a poor
Brahmin family in 1836, in a small town near Calcutta, West Bengal. As a
young man, he was artistic and a popular storyteller and actor. His parents
were religious, and prone to visions and spiritual dreams. Ramakrishna's
father had a vision of the god Gadadhara (Vishnu) while on a religious
pilgrimage. In the vision, the god told him that he would be born into the
family as a son.
Young Ramakrishna was prone to
experiences of spiritual reverie and temporary loss of consciousness. His
early spiritual experiences included going into a state of rapture while
watching the flight of a cranes, and loosing consciousness of the outer world
while playing the role of the god Shiva in a school play.
Ramakrishna had little interest in
school or practical things of the world. In 1866, he became a priest at a
recently dedicated temple to the Goddess Kali located near Calcutta on the
Ganges River. It was built by a pious widow, Rani Rasmani. Ramakrishna became
a full-time devotee to the goddess spending increasing amounts of time giving
offerings and meditating on her. He meditated in a sacred grove of five trees
on the edge of the temple grounds seeking a vision of the goddess Kali.
At one point he became frustrated,
feeling he could not live any longer without seeing Kali. He demanded that
the goddess appear to him. He threatened to take his own life with a ritual
dagger (normally held in the hand of the Kali statue). At this point, he
explained how the goddess appeared to him as an ocean of light:
When I jumped up like a madman and seized [a sword],
suddenly the blessed Mother revealed herself. The buildings with their
different parts, the temple, and everything vanished from my sight, leaving
no trace whatsoever, and in their stead I saw a limitless, infinite,
effulgent Ocean of Consciousness. As far as the eye could see, the shining
billows were madly rushing at me from all sides with a terrific noise, to
swallow me up. I was caught in the rush and collapsed, unconscious … within me
there was a steady flow of undiluted bliss, altogether new, and I felt the
presence of the Divine Mother.
Mahendranath Gupta, Ramakrsna Kathamrta translated by Swami Nikhilananda as The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (Mylapore: Sri Ramakrsna Math, 1952), Book 1, p. 15
Ramakrishna's behavior became more
erratic as time passed and began to worry his family and employer. He would
take on ritual and mythical roles identifying with figures from the Puranas
(medieval Indian holy books describing the adventures of gods). His parents
found him a wife hoping his mental instability was a result of his celibacy.
About this time, an elderly holy
woman named Bhairavi Brahmani appeared and determined that Ramakrishna's
madness was "spiritual madness" rather than ordinary madness. He
was literally mad for the vision of God. She convened a group of respected
religious leaders who examined Ramakrishna's symptoms. They concluded that
this was a case of divine madness similar in nature to that of other famous
saints such as Caitanya (a fifteenth century Bengali saint). From this point
on, people began to treat Ramakrishna with more respect though his unusual
behavior in worship and meditation continued. The holy women stayed with
Ramakrishna for some time teaching him yogic and tantric meditation
techniques.
A yogin named Totapuri then became
Ramakrishna's mentor. Ramakrishna adopted the role of renunciant and learned
a nondualist form of Vedanta philosophy from him. In this system, God is
understood to be the formless unmanifest energy that supports the cosmos.
Ramakrishna experienced a deep form of trance (nirvilkalpa samadhi) under the
guidance of this teacher. This state can be described as complete absorption
of the soul into the divine ocean of consciousness.
Disciples began to appear at this
point in Ramakrishna's life. He embarked on a long period of teaching where
he gathered a group of disciples around him. This period of his life is well
documented by two sets of books written by his disciples. These references
are listed below.
Ramakrishna explained on different
occasions that god is both formed and formless and can appear to the devotee
either way. He often asked visitors whether they conceived of god as having
qualities or as being beyond qualities. He then proceeded to teach the
devotee according to the way he or she viewed the divine. His acceptance of
different approaches to the worship of God and the validity of different
religious paths, such as Christianity and Islam, is in the best tradition of
the universalist approach to religion common throughout India today.
One extraordinary quality of
Ramakrishna's message was its universal appeal to a broad cross section of
Indian society. In the West, religions like Christianity and Judaism tend to
be exclusive, and find the contradictions that arise from a religion that is
too broad to be objectionable. If one religious approach is right, the others
must be wrong.
However, the Indian mind tends to
more readily accept someone like Ramakrishna who preaches universality of
religion and accepts and even promotes individuality in the seeker's approach
to God. This is illustrated by Ramakrishna describing God as a mother who
cooks fish differently for her children according to their tastes,
temperaments, and their ability to digest different types of foods. For
Ramakrishna, God is both the mother of the universe and of individual souls
who are her children. In India, a mother is often idealized as one who
sacrifices herself for her children and goes to great lengths to satisfy
them, and bring them happiness. God, as a Mother, therefore makes different
religions and belief systems according to each person's needs and tastes.
Of course like other theistic
religions that focus on benevolent deities, there is the often the mystery of
explaining the origin of suffering and evil in the lives of devotees who are
devoted to the Mother and under her protection. The famous Shakta poets like
Ramprasad Sen and Kasi Nazrul Islam often questioned how a loving mother
could allow her children to suffer in myriad ways in their poetic works. In
spite of the complaints and protestations directed at the goddess, these
poets generally conclude that the Mother always knows what is best for her
children, and will eventually do what is right for them in spite of any
appearances to the contrary.
In terms of mass appeal to
different classes of society, Ramakrishna's message appealed to the upper
classes who are likely to follow a Vedantist or philosophical approach to
religion by sometimes describing God as a non-dual formless essence.
His description of Kali as an
ocean of light had much in common with the ocean of Brahman that the Brahmins
(the traditional priest caste) seek to encounter when they are initiated into
the Gayatri mantra, or the mantra of the sun. One divine ocean of
consciousness may be difficult to distinguish from another.
Ramakrishna also appealed to those
with an interest in yoga and esoteric practices by practicing a non-dual form
of meditation prescribed by Totapuri which seeks samadhi.
The most popular religious
practice by far in India is bhakti, or devotion to a deity. Ramakrishna's
message was welcomed by both the rural and urban religious people who did
puja to different deities. As an example, Ramakrishna worshiped the divine
mother Kali as a protective and benevolent deity (Kali also has a fierce and
destructive side which she generally does not show to those who worship her).
These devotees saw him as a great teacher and bhakta who sang the names of
God and talked incessantly about God. They too did puja and sang the names of
their chosen deities in hopes of having healthy children, getting good jobs
or marriages, producing a plentiful harvest, or entering into the deity's
paradise after death. Ramakrishna believed the sincere devotee could even
hope for a vision or dream of the divine mother or other deity. Though
Ramakrishna was devoted to Kali, he showed respect and gave guidance to many
visitors who worshiped other gods and spoke highly of the past Indian saints
who were devoted to other deities.
Those who followed the Vedic
prescription of religious universalism summed up in the phrase "There is
but one Truth, but sages call it by different names" noted that
Ramakrishna practiced the rituals of many religions, and found that they all
brought him to the same divine reality in the end. For those who worshiped
many different saints and deities throughout India, this universal approach
echoed their own multi-faceted religious practices.
Finally, for those with a strong
sense of Hindu nationalism, Ramakrishna's chief disciple, Swami Vivekananda,
entered onto the world stage by doing a keynote address at the World
Parliament of Religions meeting in Chicago in 1893, and he electrified his
audience. Hindus for generations could point to their indigenous traditions
with pride after his exemplary speech.
Vivekananda also promoted a more
activist form of Hinduism, which focused on education, feeding the poor, and
developing libraries and other institutions. His works were a way of showing
Hindus that it was not only the Christian missionaries that could benefit
society, but that Hindu religion was also valuable with respect to improving
society and combating social ills.
Ramakrishna died of cancer of the
throat in 1886, leaving his wife Sarada Devi who was considered a saint in
her own right to take charge of his disciples and carry on his message.
Ramakrishna
and Psychological Reductionism
An unusual development in modern
attempts to understand Ramakrishna’s life has been the recent application of
psychoanalytic theory to his experience. While a large majority of
psychologists consider psychoanalytic theory to be discredited, historians of
religion have resuscitated this moribund methodology in an attempt to explain
the existence of Ramakrishna’s mystical experience. Though numerous
psychologists and writers have been doing this kind of psychological
reductionism over the years, it has recently been done with a major focus on
sexual abuse. One author has claimed that Ramakrishna's mystical states (and
through generalization all mystical states) are a pathological response to
alleged childhood sexual trauma.
There are, however, some serious
problems with the attempt to apply this form of psychological reductionism to
Ramakrishna. First, the most recent proponent and popularizer of this theory
is not a psychologist and has no formal training in psychoanalytic (or any
clinical) theory. Second, he is doing his analysis based on a set of biographical
texts rather than direct contact with an individual patient in a clinical
environment. Psychoanalysis is a highly interactive process, and analysis of
textual data cannot begin to approximate the complex and detailed information
provided by the one-on-one relationship that develops between patient and
analyst. Applying the psychoanalytic method to one or more texts about a
person is therefore likely to result in a failure to understand the patient.
Third, the author is working in a thoroughly non-western culture where is it
highly questionable whether Western psychoanalytic theory even applies.
Fourth, the author has been shown to have difficulty understanding the
nuances of the Bengali culture in general as well as the Bengali language in
which Ramakrishna's biographical texts are written. He spent a mere eight
months in West Bengal most of it apparently in libraries and on this basis
makes grandiose claims about understanding both the mind and cultural
environment of the renowned saint.
Also the Bengali language is rich
with meaning and many words and idioms have literally dozens of definitions
and interpretations. So a scholar doing translation can easily intentionally
distort meanings by looking at a long list of possible definitions and choose
the most lurid and sexually-oriented interpretation. But even if we assume
good faith on the part of scholars, this limited exposure to the language
makes them subject to serious errors in translation and to misinterpretation
of both historical and textual data.
These would be serious problems
even if psychoanalysis was supported by a great deal of experimental data and
was a widely accepted and respected theory in psychology. Combining them with
the fact that psychoanalytic theory is disrespected and ignored by most of
today’s psychologists seems to call the whole reductionist enterprise into
question.
This work is a recent addition to
a long series of psycho-biographies in which the biographer sees every virtue
in their subject as a secret vice or weakness. Thus the great people of
history become either traumatized victims, or master manipulators and con
men.
The fact that some respected
historians of religion have eagerly embraced this antiquated Freudian
methodology in an attempt to understand Ramakrishna and mystical phenomena in
general is an indication that the field may be in trouble. Historians of
religion and those in the field of religious studies who grant awards to
books based on cultural and psychoanalytic illiteracy seem to be at a loss to
find a better methodology by which to understand saints and their religious
experience.
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