God-Consciousness of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, by Mahendra Mathur
Ramakrishna Parmahansa 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. He adopted the role of a renunciate and learned a no dualist form of Vedanta philosophy from his mentor Totapuri, a yogi. In this system, God is understood to be the formless unmanifest energy that supports the cosmos. Ramakrishna explained on different occasions that god is both formed and formless and can appear to the devotee either way. He died of cancer of the throat in 1886.
Guru of the famous Swami Vivekananda, 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.
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 people. In him, deepest spirituality and broadest catholicity stood side by side. The God-man of 19th century India did not found any cult, nor did he show a new path to salvation.
His message was his God-consciousness. When it 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 skepticism, Sri Ramakrishna, through his burning spiritual realizations, demonstrated beyond doubt the reality of God and the validity of the time-honored teachings of all the prophets and saviors of the past.
Drawn by the magnetism of Sri Ramakrishna’s 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. 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 goal. Thus he declared, “As many faiths, so many paths.” The paths vary, but the goal remains the same. Harmony of religions is not uniformity; it is unity in diversity. It is not a fusion of religions, but a fellowship of religions based on their common goal — communion with God. This harmony is to be realized by deepening our individual God-consciousness. In the present-day world, threatened by nuclear war and torn by religious intolerance, Sri Ramakrishna’s message of harmony gives us hope and shows the way.
Following are ten quotes by Sri Ramakrishna:
God is Love. If you must be mad, be it not for the things of the world. Be mad with the love of God. Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious. One must practice the virtues taught in such books in order to acquire love of God.
God is True Knowledge. If you first fortify yourself with the true knowledge of the Universal Self, and then live in the midst of wealth and worldliness, surely they will in no way affect you. When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low. Good and evil cannot bind him who has realized the oneness of Nature and his own self with Brahman.
God is in Your Heart. Because of the screen of Maya (illusion) that shuts off God from human view; one cannot see Him playing in one’s heart. After installing the Deity on the lotus of your heart, you must keep the lamp of remembering God ever burning. While engaged in the affairs of the world, you should constantly turn your gaze inwards and see whether the lamp is burning or not.
God is in All People. God is in all men, but all men are not in God; that is why we suffer.
God is Our Father. As a nurse in a wealthy family brings up her master’s child, loving it as if it were her own; yet knowing well that she has no claim upon it, so you also think that you are but trustee and guardians of your children whose real father is the Lord himself.
God is Infinite. Many are the names of God and infinite the forms through which He may be approached.
God is Truth. Unless one always speaks the truth; one cannot find God Who is the soul of truth. One must be very particular about telling the truth. Through truth one can realize God.
God is above all Arguments. If you desire to be pure, have firm faith, and slowly go on with your devotional practices without wasting your energy in useless scriptural discussions and arguments. Your little brain will otherwise be muddled.
God is Work. Work, apart from devotion or love of God, is helpless and cannot stand alone.
God is the End. To work without attachment is to work without the expectation of reward or fear of any punishment in this world or the next. Work so done is a means to the end, and God is the end.
What follows is the writing of Jean Pierre Camus, 17th Century French fiction and Spiritual Writer, which is almost in the same vein:
Francois de Sales, Bishop of Geneva in the early 17th Century, used to say, “I hear of nothing but perfection on every side; but I see very few people who really practice it. Every body has his own notion of perfection. One man thinks it lies in the cut of his clothes, another in fasting, a third in almsgiving, or in frequenting the Sacraments, in meditation, in some special gifts of contemplation – but they are all mistaken, as it seems to me, because they confuse the means, or the results, with the end and cause.
For my part the only perfection I know of is a hearty love of God, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself. Charity is the only virtue which rightly unites us with to God and man. Such union is our final aim and end, and all the rest is mere delusion.”
‘That’ of the Upanishadic teaching ‘That Thou Art’ has been indeed beautifully explained by the life of Ramakrishna Paramhansa.
Colonel Mahendra Mathur prematurely retired from the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army in 1975 to build a highway in Tobago. Subsequently he was appointed Director of National Emergency Management Agency of Trinidad and Tobago before retiring in 1998. You can contact him at mmathur@tstt.net.tt.
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