Anurag Chouhan

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa (February 18, 1836 -

August 16, 1886), is a famous mystic saint of nineteenth

century India. He was considered an avatar or incarnation

of God by many of his disciples, and is considered as such

by many of his devotees today. Ramakrishna was born in a poor Brahmin Vaishnava family in rural Bengal. He became a priest of the Dakshineswar Kali Temple, dedicated to goddess Kali, which had the influence of the main strands of Bengali bhakti tradition.
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His first spiritual teacher was an ascetic woman skilled

in Tantra and Vaishnava bhakti. Later on, an Advaita Vedantin ascetic taught him nondual meditation, and according to Ramakrishna, he experienced Nirvikalpa Samadhi under his guidance. Ramakrishna also experimented with other religions, notably Islam and Christianity, and said that they all lead to the same

God. Though conventionally uneducated, he attracted

attention of the Bengali intelligentsia and middle class.

His religious school of thought led to the formation of the Ramakrishna Mission, by his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda and they both were influential figures in the Bengali Renaissance and the Hindu renaissance during

19th and 20th century.

Ramakrishnas ideas were spread to the West by Swami

Vivekananda, who attracted attention at the first

Parliament of the Worlds Religions at Chicago in 1893. Swamiji established the Vedanta Society to spread Vedanta and Yoga in America and in India he founded he Ramakrishna Missiona monastic society.
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In India Swamiji founded the Ramakrishna Missiona monastic society that promotes Hinduism, Vedanta, and religious pluralism and carries out social service. The Ramakrishna movement has been termed as one of the revitalization movements of India. As of 2008, Ramakrishna Mission has 166 branch centers all over India and in different parts of the world and

the headquarters is located at the Belur Math.

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Sri Ramakrishna represents the very core of the spiritual realizations of the seers and sages of India. His whole life was literally an uninterrupted contemplation of God. He reached a depth of God-consciousness that transcends all

time and place and has a universal appeal. Seekers of God

of all religions feel irresistibly drawn to his life and teachings.

Sri Ramakrishna, as a silent force, influences the spiritual

thought currents of our time. He is a figure of recent history and his life and teachings have not yet been obscured by loving legends and doubtful myths.
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Through his God intoxicated life, Sri Ramakrishna

proved that the revelation of God takes place at all

times and that God realization is not the monopoly

of any particular age, country, or people6. In him,

deepest spirituality and broadest catholicity stood

side by side. The God-man of nineteenth-century India did not found any cult, nor did he show a new path to salvation. His message was his Godconsciousness.
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When God-consciousness falls short, traditions become dogmatic and oppressive and religious teachings lose their transforming power. At a time when the very foundation of religion, faith in God, was crumbling under the relentless

blows of materialism and scepticism, Sri Ramakrishna,

through his burning spiritual realizations, demonstrated

beyond doubt the reality of God and the validity of the

time-honoured teachings of all the prophets and saviours of the past, and thus restored the falling edifice of religion on a secure foundation
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Drawn by the magnetism of Sri Ramakrishnas divine personality, people flocked to him from far and near men and women, young and old, philosophers and theologians, philanthropists and humanists, atheists and

agnostics, Hindus and Brahmos, Christians and Muslims,

seekers of truth of all races, creeds and castes. His small room in the Dakshineswar temple garden on the outskirts of the city of Calcutta became a veritable parliament of religions.

Everyone who came to him felt uplifted by his profound

God-consciousness, boundless love, and universal outlook. Each seeker saw in him the highest manifestation of his own ideal. By coming near him the impure became pure, the pure became purer, and the sinner was transformed into a saint. The greatest contribution of Sri Ramakrishna to the modern world is his message of the harmony of religions. To Sri Ramakrishna all religions are the revelation of God in His diverse aspects to satisfy the manifold

demands of human minds.

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Like different photographs of a building taken from different angles, different religions give us the pictures of one truth from different standpoints. They are not contradictory but complementary. Sri Ramakrishna faithfully practiced the spiritual disciplines of different religions and came to the realization that all of them lead to the same.

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