|
Sri Ramakrishna SRI Ramakrishna represents
spirituality at its absolute, its pristine fount and power. In him we find the
pure gold of spirituality at a time when duplicity, perplexity, deceit and
falsehood on the one hand and atheism, disbelief and irreverence on the other
reigned supreme. When
spirituality had almost disappeared from the world and even in He
proclaimed the quintessence of spirituality casting aside all husk and
rejecting all that was irrelevant. Sri Ramakrishna is the very embodiment of
this true and unadulterated spirituality. The
first word about spirituality is this that it is a clear realisation, an
unveiled intuition of truth, God-attainment. It is not a mere concept or a
doctrine or an intellectual conclusion, but a living experience, a concrete
realisation. Philosophers and scholars are at pains to prove the existence of
God and the Self with the help of reason, argumentation and syllogism. But it
is ridiculous to try that way. You stand before me face to face. Yet should I
try to prove your presence? Or to prove my own? Truth is self-existent. It is
rear since it exists. The existence of God, the Self, is the truth of all
truths and is axiomatic. It is a matter of experience, insight and intuition. The spiritual world is as
real as this physical world –
Page – 223 even more real,
Ramakrishna says. It is a different sphere of consciousness. One has to come up
to this level to know of it and one has to settle here for good, leaving behind
one's earthly dwelling. Not merely the field of action in life and not just one
part of the being but the whole life and being have to be consecrated to the
attainment of that only Goal. To know the Truth, the Self or God, one has first
to realise them, one has to merge in them, one has to become these
– as the Upanishad says, "Verily the knower of the Brahman becomes the
Brahman Itself." The essential truth of spirituality consists not even in
"doing" something but in this 'becoming'. Man manifests his inner
soul through his actions. His external conduct reflects his inner becoming. In
the words of Sri Ramakrishna, a man breathes out what he eats. Perhaps
we have a mission in the world, but before that we have to realise God. He
alone has the right to act, and his deeds alone achieve fulfilment, who has
been chosen and authorised by God. The spiritual practice of Sri Ramakrishna
laid great stress on Yogic trance. It signifies that the outer mind
should be withdrawn from all sense-attraction, not going out in all directions
but focussed on the pure spiritual truth, like an arrow shot into its target. What
absurd ideas do we not cherish in the name of spirituality? Firstly, according
to the common notion a spiritual figure, a Yogi, a sadhu is he who is endowed
with some miraculous powers - as for instance, walking over water, flying in
the sky, living without food or eating an enormous quantity, healing diseases
at a puff of breath, telling the ins and outs of a man at sight or at the mere
mention of his name. Any accomplishment of this kind commands our humble
devotion. The eightfold occult powers are considered the very acme of
spirituality. In
Page – 224 becomes rather an obstacle
to spirituality, and it is a proof of the want of true spirituality. Such
powers lead the aspirants astray from the straight path into blind alleys. The
measure of spirituality is not the display of occult power but the attainment
of discrimination, dispassion, devotion and love of God and such other
well-known but eternal qualities. On
the other hand, spirituality does not consist in any doctrine whatsoever.
Spirituality is not based on a credo or a mental deduction or a dogma. Real
spirituality is not a rational conclusion, but a realisation in the heart and a
direct intuition. A spiritual man may not express his realisations through a
new doctrine or relate it to some already existing doctrines, but that will not
in any way diminish his spirituality. Again many people hold that the observance
of ceremonials and rites comprises spirituality; this too is far from the
truth. The truth does not lie in any of these things. A spiritual aspirant may
take their help if necessary, but the spiritual realisation is far above them
and quite a different thing. One
thing is ever associated with the name of Sri Ramakrishna – it is the
synthesis of all religions. He has synthesised all religions within him. By
synthesis we usually mean finding out the essential principles of different
religions and harmonising them. But Sri Ramakrishna's work was not of this
type. Every religion leads to the same goal. However different and
contradictory may appear the outer forms of spiritual disciplines,
fundamentally each derives from the same source and culminates in the same
Truth. Sri Ramakrishna has proved this unity and has brought about, so to say,
a unification, not merely a union, of all religions. Religions
are at variance, not on the conception of God or spirituality, but when
something else is adored in their name or in their stead. When we take some
physical miracle or vital power or mental dogma as the object of our devotion,
then we deviate from the true spiritual path and become worshippers of
inferior gods or spirits of the lower
Page – 225 order. The spiritual
world, or God as He verily is, is beyond the domains of the body, life and
mind. Further, transcending these there is a fourth realm and its truth and
dharma alone constitute God-realisation and true spirituality. Another
very important characteristic distinguishing Ramakrishna is that he has taken
spirituality in a simple, straight, common-sense view and has attained it in a
very matter-of-fact way. He is generally depicted to a great extent as one who
was rapt in a state of inwardness and devoid of external and worldly knowledge.
Whatever his behaviour in the conduct of daily life, he was marvellously
pragmatic in his inner consciousness and in the practice of his spiritual
sadhana. Dogmatism, nebulous fantasy and sophistry eclipse the truth, the
thing in itself, and in the place of truth a semblance of truth or something
quite non-essential is interpolated. The amount of common sense that is needed
for success in ordinary life is also equally required for victory in the domain
of consciousness. Sri Ramakrishna was endowed with an inborn, alert, practical
sense. So nothing could delude him in the name of spirituality and nothing could
entrap him in any way. Moreover, by virtue of this quality he has brought about
an immense reconciliation between the physical and the spiritual worlds. In a
good many cases men, devoted too much to spirituality, are found to be inept in
keeping up with the physical world or to respond to it adequately.
Sri Ramakrishna is not to
be classed among them. The ideal of Sri Ramakrishna would not admit stupidity as
a qualification for saintliness. Sri
Ramakrishna's advent took place in a scientific age, in the world of modern
civilisation, amid a deluge of atheism, when the physical consciousness was the
dominating principle everywhere. He appeared before such a world in all his
rusticity, for he was to demonstrate by the very example of his own life that
the highest aim of human life is to find God, to find him dwelling in the heart.
"Know Him alone and give up all thought and speech and act that are of no
Page –
226 value." However great
may be the external education and culture, there is something still higher
before which all these dwindle into insignificance and even their complete
absence does not matter at all if one gets at the one heart of all things. So
we see that an ultra-modern youth born and brought up in the atmosphere of
modernism had to offer all the accomplishments of modern life at the feet of
an artless, rustic soul, with the prayer, "I am thy disciple, deign to
teach me." Further, inspired by his Master's unique power he, Vivekananda,
threw himself, like a thunderbolt, upon that very country where modern
civilisation had reached its acme. In Vivekananda modernism received the
initiation of the supreme spirituality to become its instrument and servitor. Sri
Ramakrishna, at the very outset, proved in his own life the conquest of the
inner over the outer, of Consciousness over Matter, of the spiritual over the
mundane. And then he sought to impress that high truth on the life-plane of
humanity. He sowed the seed of a new future creation. That is why he is the
confluence of two epochs. The past ceases and the new future is ushered in him.
He seems to have assimilated the essence of all the different spiritual
practices of the past and discarded as husk and skin all the non-essentials
which vary according to the variations of time and place and person. He brought
forward and revived for the future the real truth, the quintessence of
spirituality, which means also the supreme felicity. The fundamental nature of
the spiritual perfection of Sri Ramakrishna consists in the realisation of God
in his Absoluteness. He exemplified, philosophically speaking, the unity and
synthesis of the Self and Nature, existence and power, the immutable and its
dynamis. He used to say that the Eternal and its manifestation .always go
together. The Transcendent is inherent in the manifest; again, the manifest is
inherent in the Transcendent. Ascend to the Eternal through the stages of the
manifestation and come down from the Eternal into its manifestation – its
creation which should not be looked
Page – 227 upon as an illusion but
only as a form of the Eternal. Therefore Sri Ramakrishna was the worshipper of
the Divine Power, the child of the Mother. The Mother herself is the Power of
the Brahman. The
dynamic Vedanta of Vivekananda, its application in life, is based on this
foundation. Spirituality and life are not two separate things – spirituality
should be established and made to flower and bloom in life itself. This great
truth always inspired Vivekananda in all his activities. Before the advent of
Sri Ramakrishna the word "religion" or "spirituality" used
to convey an otherworldly pursuit to the aspirant and to the public as well.
Wherever there was some real spiritual practice, the aim and the impulse
naturally tended to illustrate the dictum that Brahman alone is the truth and
the world an illusion. Sri Ramakrishna shook to its roots the then prevailing
conception of illusionism when he made the great Vedantin Totapuri give up the
negative path, "Brahman is not this, not this", and accept all this
too as Brahman. He further showed Totapuri the glory of the Mother of the
universe. Vivekananda seized upon this fundamental realisation of Sri
Ramakrishna to turn the tide of religion. His endeavour was to bring down
religion or spirituality on the surface of the earth, into normal society and
into the ordinary ways of life-activities. Sri Ramakrishna was a genuine
Sannyasin at heart but he had never appeared in the garb of a Sannyasin.
Vivekananda in spite of his hoisting up the banner of a Sannyasin was a mighty
worker in his heart and conduct. He was a worker, but inwardly in communion
with the spirit. No doubt, Sri Ramakrishna laid great stress on Samadhi,
trance, for the achievement of the unalloyed, pure spiritual truth, but he
never accepted the Nirvikalpa Samadhi as the sole self-sufficing goal for all
or even for the many. He did not want, personally, to melt away as a salt-doll
in the ocean. Like Ramprasad he would rather not become a lump of sugar but
taste it instead. The aim of his dynamic personality
Page – 228 was to purify and
transform the egoistic 'I' into the real ‘I’, and take part in the play of the
Divine Mother in her creation. The
future spiritual realisation will follow this line of development; all efforts
will seek to make this great realisation still more manifest, widely
established and universally practised. Sri Ramakrishna opened this immortalising
fount of true spirituality and Vivekananda spread it abroad to create a living spiritual
atmosphere. The spiritual leader of the future will fix for ever its concrete
and permanent form.
Page – 229
|
