87 Facts About Ramakrishna

Ramakrishna Paramahansa, spelled Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyaya, was an Indian Hindu mystic and spiritual leader.

Ramakrishna's followers came to regard him as an avatar, or divine incarnation, as did some of the prominent Hindu scholars of his day.

Ramakrishna, who experienced spiritual ecstasies from a young age, started his spiritual journey as a priest at the Dakshineshwar Kali Temple, built by Rani Rashmoni.

Sri Ramakrishna was born on 18 February 1836, in the village of Kamarpukur, in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, India, into a very poor and pious Bengali Brahmin family.

Ramakrishna was the fourth and the youngest child of his parents.

Ramakrishna's father, Khudiram Chattopadhyaya, was born in 1775, and his mother, Chandramani Devi, was born in 1791.

The parents of Ramakrishna are said to have experienced supernatural incidents and visions regarding his birth.

Around the age of six or seven, Ramakrishna experienced his first moment of spiritual trance.

Ramakrishna was sent to the village school where he learned to read and write, but he had an aversion to arithmetic, and didn't progress beyond simple addition, multiplication and division.

Ramakrishna instead became proficient in making images, acting and painting.

Ramakrishna had practically no formal education and spoke ungrammatical imperfect Bengali with a rustic accent.

Ramakrishna used to sing and enact the songs and scenes from the Puranas to the village women.

Ramakrishna argued with him that women can only be protected through good education and devotion to God, and not through Purdah.

Ramakrishna accepted the challenge and dressed himself like a weaver woman, then fooled Durgadas with his disguise and entered the inner apartments of his house.

Ramakrishna's father died in 1843, a loss which he felt very strongly, making him more reticent.

Ramakrishna was about seven and half years at this time.

Ramakrishna moved to Calcutta in 1852 along with his brother to assist him in the priestly work.

Ramakrishna was the first of many prominent women who played a major role in the life of Ramakrishna.

Ramakrishna was apparently charmed to see the religious fervor in Ramakrishna, who became ecstatic as soon as a mantra was recited in his ear.

Ramakrishna regarded their songs as an aid in his worship and was certain about getting the vision of Kali as Ramprasad did.

Ramakrishna assured his nephew that he would put them on after the end of his meditation.

Thoroughly convinced of Kali's existence, Ramakrishna now lived at her abode, all the time, and like a child disinclined to leave its mother, so was he disinclined to leave his Divine Mother Kali.

Rumors spread to Kamarpukur that Ramakrishna became unstable as a result of his spiritual practices at Dakshineswar.

Ramakrishna himself mentioned that they would find the bride at the house of Ramchandra Mukherjee in Jayrambati, three miles to the north-west of Kamarpukur.

Ramakrishna was twenty-three at this point, but this age difference for marriage was typical for nineteenth-century rural Bengal.

Ramakrishna became a very influential figure in Sarada's life, and she became a strong follower of his teachings.

Ramakrishna regarded Sarada Devi as the Divine Mother in person, addressing her as the Holy Mother, and it was by this name that she was known to Ramakrishna's disciples.

In 1860, Ramakrishna returned to Dakshineswar and was again caught up in a spiritual tempest, forgetting his wife, home, body, and surroundings.

Ramakrishna once described his experiences during this most tumultuous period of his life thus:.

Ramakrishna grew up practicing Bhakti towards Lord Rama and his duties as a priest at the Dakshineswar temple led him to practice worship of Mother Kali.

At some point in the period between his vision of Kali and his marriage, Ramakrishna practised dasya bhava, during which he worshiped Rama with the attitude of Hanuman, who is considered to be the ideal devotee and servant of Rama.

Bhairavi Brahmani, an ascetic who used to carry with her the Raghuvir Shila - a stone idol representing lord Rama and all Vaishnava deities, who is well versed in the texts of Gaudiya Vaishnavism stated that Ramakrishna was experiencing a phenomenon that accompanies mahabhava, the supreme attitude of loving devotion towards the divine, and quoting from the bhakti shastras, she stated that other religious figures like Radha and Chaitanya had similar experiences.

Under her guidance, Ramakrishna went through sixty-four major tantric sadhanas which were completed in 1863.

Ramakrishna began with mantra rituals such as japa and purascarana and many other rituals designed to purify the mind and establish self-control.

Ramakrishna acknowledged the left-hand tantric path, though it had "undesirable features", as one of the "valid roads to God-realization", he consistently cautioned his devotees and disciples against associating with it.

Under the tutelage of the Bhairavi, Ramakrishna learnt Kundalini Yoga.

In 1864, Ramakrishna practised vatsalya bhava under a Vaishnava guru Jatadhari.

Ramakrishna later engaged in the practice of madhura bhava, the attitude of the Gopis and Radha towards Krishna.

Ramakrishna visited Nadia, the home of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Nityananda Prabhu, the fifteenth-century founders of Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava bhakti.

Ramakrishna was the head of a monastery and claimed leadership over seven hundred sannyasis.

Ramakrishna looked upon the Devi as a delusional figure and had no belief in her existence, much less worshipping or propitiating Her.

At the Panchavati, situated to the north of the temple garden, Ramakrishna was initiated into sannyasa by Tota Puri.

Ramakrishna then offered his sacred thread and the tuft of hair on his head as part of the oblation.

Ramakrishna tried to enable his disciple to experience the gains from his lifelong Sadhana, right on that day and attempted to make him attain Samadhi.

Ramakrishna asked his disciple to free his mind from all functions, and merge it in the meditation of the Self.

Ramakrishna would withdraw his mind easily from everything, but as soon as he did so, the intimately familiar form of the divine Mother, made up of pure consciousness, would appear before him as a living and moving being, making him unmindful of renunciation.

Days passed by and nights rolled on, and at the end of three days when there was no call, surprised and curious, he entered the hut and found Ramakrishna sitting in the exact same posture in which he left him, with no sign of breath whatsoever and face calm and radiant.

Ramakrishna particularly examined if his heart was beating and whether there was the smallest amount of breath coming out through his nostrils.

Ramakrishna touched and checked his body, which was now in a firm posture like a piece of fixed wood.

Ramakrishna further elaborated his view on the Brahman of Vedanta and the Divine Mother of Tantra thus:.

Ramakrishna thus set out and on reaching a bank of the river, started walking into it and kept walking further all the way to almost other side of the bank.

When Ramakrishna met him in the morning to enquire about his health, he was found a totally different person with no more illness.

Ramakrishna has convinced me already of the fact that just as fire and its burning power are not different, so, Brahman and the power of Brahman are not different, but one and the same.

Some time after the departure of Tota Puri from Dakshineswar, Ramakrishna owing to his lack of any restraining elements in life or desires in the world, decided to dwell in the plane of Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

Ramakrishna remained in the Nirvikalapa state continually for a period of six months, a state of perception said to be from which no ordinary person returns, as the body would then fall dead after twenty-one days, like a dry leaf from a tree.

Ramakrishna remained unconscious of the outer world throughout this period, and stayed put like a dead man, with matted hair and flies moving through his mouth and nostrils.

Ramakrishna then firmed his awareness at the sixth chakra of Tantra, and lived with his consciousness oscillating between being either absorbed into the impersonal absolute, or remaining in personal devotion to the Mother.

Ramakrishna learned about Govinda through the latter's regular visits to Dakshineswar.

Ramakrishna engaged himself in the practice of Islam according to its prescribed rules.

Ramakrishna devotedly repeated the name of Allah and said their prayers five times a day and remained in that state of mind for three days, after which he had full realisation through their path.

Ramakrishna opined this vision to be of the all pervasive Brahman with attributes, as the vision eventually ended with him merging into the attributeless absolute Brahman.

Ramakrishna considered thinking of oneself as weak and sinful to be the greatest sin.

In 1874, Ramakrishna experienced a strange vision at the parlour of Jadu Mallik's garden house, situated to the south of Kali temple in Dakshineswar.

Ramakrishna was sitting there and looking keenly at a picture of Madonna and Child hanging on the wall, when all of a sudden he saw it come to life with effulgent rays of light emerging from the image and merging into his heart.

In 1875, Ramakrishna met the influential Brahmo Samaj leader Keshab Chandra Sen.

Mazumdar wrote the first English biography of Ramakrishna, entitled The Hindu Saint in the Theistic Quarterly Review, which played a vital role in introducing Ramakrishna to Westerners like the German indologist Max Muller.

Newspapers reported that Ramakrishna was spreading "Love" and "Devotion" among the educated classes of Kolkata and that he had succeeded in reforming the character of some youths whose morals had been corrupt.

Ramakrishna had interactions with Debendranath Tagore, the father of Rabindranath Tagore, and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, a renowned social worker.

Ramakrishna is considered one of the main contributors to the Bengali Renaissance.

Monastic disciples, who renounced their family and became the earliest monks of the Ramakrishna order, included Rakhal Chandra Ghosh, Kaliprasad Chandra, Taraknath Ghoshal, Sashibhushan Chakravarty, Saratchandra Chakravarty, Tulasi Charan Dutta, Gangadhar Ghatak, Hari Prasana Swami Turiyananda and others.

In preparation for monastic life, Ramakrishna ordered his monastic disciples to beg their food from door to door without distinction of caste.

Ramakrishna gave them the saffron robe, the sign of the Sanyasi, and initiated them with Mantra Deeksha.

Ramakrishna was moved to Shyampukur near Kolkata, where some of the best physicians of the time, including Dr Mahendralal Sarkar, were engaged.

Ramakrishna was advised by the doctors to keep the strictest silence, but ignoring their advice, he incessantly conversed with visitors.

Ramakrishna preferred "the duality of adoring a Divinity beyond himself to the self-annihilating immersion of nirvikalpa samadhi, and he helped "bring to the realm of Eastern energetics and realization the daemonic celebration that the human is always between a reality it has not yet attained and a reality to which it is no longer limited.

The principal source for Ramakrishna's teaching is Mahendranath Gupta's Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita, which is regarded as a Bengali classic and "the central text of the tradition".

Ramakrishna's teachings were imparted in rustic Bengali, using stories and parables.

Ramakrishna's teaching, "Jive daya noy, Shiv gyane jiv seba" is considered the inspiration for the philanthropic work carried out by his chief disciple Vivekananda.

Ramakrishna saw the imposition of strict adherence to each second on the watch as a roadblock to spirituality.

Amiya Sen writes that Vivekananda's "social service gospel" stemmed from direct inspiration from Ramakrishna and rests substantially on the "liminal quality" of the Master's message.

Ramakrishna's influence is seen in the works of artists such as Franz Dvorak and Philip Glass.

Neevel notes that the image of Ramakrishna underwent several transformations in the writings of his prominent admirers, who changed the 'religious madman' into a calm and well-behaving proponent of Advaita Vedanta.

McDaniel notes that the Ramakrishna Mission is biased towards Advaita Vedanta, and downplays the importance of Shaktism in Ramakrishna's spirituality.

The dialogue on psychoanalysis and Ramakrishna began in 1927 when Sigmund Freud's friend Romain Rolland wrote to him that he should consider spiritual experiences, or "the oceanic feeling," in his psychological works.

Jeffrey J Kripal argued that Ramakrishna rejected Advaita Vedanta in favour of Shakti Tantra.

Kripal argued in Kali's Child that the Ramakrishna Movement had manipulated Ramakrishna's biographical documents, that the Movement had published them in incomplete and bowdlerised editions, and that the Movement had suppressed Ram Chandra Datta's Srisriramakrsna Paramahamsadever Jivanavrttanta.

Kripal associates his translation of the phrase with Ramakrishna's alleged disgust for women as lovers.