Ramakrishna Jayanti

India is undoubtedly a land with an allure of the unknown; a lot of its belief systems actively venture into that which may not be fully understood. Perhaps that is why it has produced so many philosophers, thinkers, and saints who have changed the way we view human consciousness. Ramakrishna Paramhansa was one such mystic.

Image Caption: Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa; Source: Wikipedia

This year, the auspicious day falls on 21 February. It is celebrated to commemorate one of the greatest and most knowledgeable saints of all time, Ramakrishna Paramhansa, born on 18 February 1836 in Kamarpukur village of Hooghly district in West Bengal. He was born into a poor but religious family, with the village located at the centre of the pilgrimage route to Puri, which exposed Ramakrishna to many religious traditions. He deeply appreciated them and soon became immersed in the systems of Vedanta, Yoga, Bhakti and Tantra. However, his tale is not based on a relationship of cause and effect. It has a very Indian touch to it - it is composed of dreams, spirituality and transcendence.

Before Ramakrishna’s birth, his father experienced a divine proclamation. Lord Gandhara (a form of Vishnu) came to him in a dream and said that he would be born in his house. And soon after, the family was blessed with a baby boy. This prophecy began to come true when Ramakrishna experienced spiritual ecstasy for the first time when he was just six years old. He continued to experience states of indescribable joy throughout his life. These states, which are called ‘trances’ due to no proper English language equivalent for them, are referred to in Sanskrit as the state of ‘Samadhi’. It is a state of being which goes beyond the normal boundaries of consciousness. The difference between the self and the world disappears, and the self finally gets united with the divine. During these states, Ramakrishna would lose consciousness, have high body temperature, tremors in his fingers, and low respiration and heart rates. Initially, these states were called epileptic seizures, but soon, no medical condition could account for the cognitive experiences Ramakrishna would subsequently describe.

From an early age, Ramakrishna gravitated towards Ma Kali. He saw her as the mother of the universe and himself as her disciple. He became the priest of the Dakshineswar temple in 1855 and was desperate to get a vision of her. He meditated endlessly but to no avail. The goddess would not reveal herself to him. Frustrated and hopeless, he impulsively reached for a sword hanging in a room in the temple and tried to end his life. However, just before he could do so, the goddess finally appeared in front of him.

The next part of Ramakrishna’s life began when he met a monk from Punjab by the name of Totapuri, a sanyaasi. Trained in spirituality and the whims of the mind, Totapuri began guiding Ramakrishna on how to traverse the path to transcendence in 1865. He asked his disciple to withdraw his mind from all objects in consciousness and instead focus on the Absolute, but each time Ramakrishna tried to do so, he found himself getting distracted by the vision of Ma Kali. Determined to reach the Absolute, he envisioned cleaving the goddess into two with a sword. While this might seem disrespectful, it was an act that arose out of devotion towards spirituality. These terms are often used synonymously, but they are completely different. Devotion is always directed towards something - an object located within the general human consciousness. Spirituality is directed towards the superior states of consciousness, where the world simply ceases to matter. When Ramakrishna finally moved beyond his enchantment of Ma Kali, he attained Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

In 1885, Ramakrishna began to show signs of throat cancer. He was looked after by his monastic disciples and his wife, Saradi Devi, who is widely regarded as the Divine Mother. He is said to have transferred his spiritual powers to his student, Swami Vivekananda, who went on to become one of the greatest monks the world has ever seen. Ramakrishna attained Mahasamadhi on 16 August 1886, when he breathed his last.

Ramakrishna Paramhansa personifies the true nature of traditions that have developed in the subcontinent — traditions that cannot be placed in boxes of black and white but will always be in different shades of grey. The concern for productivity is not paramount, rather, the search for knowledge that leads to a superior state of mind is cherished. India’s history of colonialism and the domination of Western influences has led a large part of the population to forget indigenous teachings. The Western emphasis on categorisation is necessary in some cases, but in the Indian context, where heterogeneity is the only homogeneity, it is better not to organise things in compartments. Many Indian systems of thought have been comfortable with uncertainty and with the lack of empirical evidence. They are different from Western schools, but that does not mean one is inferior to the other. They are simply different. That is why the celebration of Ramakrishna Jayanti becomes so much more important — it is not just a reminder of a great man or some of the most influential Brahmanical systems. Still, it is also a reminder of how comfortable we used to be in believing what others may not be able to see.

Image Caption: Swami Vivekananda (left), Ramakrishna Paramhansa (centre), Sarada devi (right); Source: IndusScrolls