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Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
Born	(1836-02-18)February 18, 1836 Kamarpukur, West Bengal, India
Died	16 August 1886(1886-08-16) (aged 50) Garden House in Cossipore.

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (Bangla: রামকৃষ্ণ পরমহংস Ramkṛiṣṇo Pôromôhongśo) (February 18, 1836 - August 16, 1886), born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay (Bangla: গদাধর চট্টোপাধ্যায় Gôdadhor Chôţţopaddhae), was a rustic Bengali religious ecstatic who practiced Vaishnava and Śakti bhakti, Vedanta, Tantra, and other spiritual disciplines. Toward the end of his life, he became a guru to young, Anglo-educated Bengalis, including Narendranath Dutta—the future Swami Vivekananda—and also became an influential figure in the Bengal Renaissance. 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. Academic studies have concentrated on the growth of the Ramakrishna religious movement, the Ramakrishna Mission, contribution to the "harmony of religions", psychoanalysis and mysticism.

Biographical sources

Template:Totally-disputed Ramakrishna never wrote down the details of his own life. Sources for his life and teachings come from the writings of his disciples and live witnesses. Ramakrishna's recorded sayings mainly come from the last four years of his life.

While constructing Ramakrishna's life three classes of evidence are available:

• Direct and recorded on the same day — The Childhood, the spiritual practices, the teachings which have been recorded by the devotees and visitors to Ramakrishna on the same day. The book Sri Sri Rāmakrishna Kathāmrita by Mahendranath Gupta under the pseudonym M., belongs to this class of evidence. Mahendranath Gupta recorded his daily interactions with Ramakrishna in his dairy which were subsequently published as Sri-Sri-Ramakrishna-Kathamrta in 5 Volumes in bengali. The information in these volumes is available with "stenographic precision".
• Direct but unrecorded at the time of the Ramakrishna:
  • Sri Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsadever Jivan-vrittanta (1890) by Ram Chandra Dutta, is one of the earliest published biography of Ramakrishna. Contemporary scholars like Narasingha Sil and Jeffery Kripal cite a letter written by Swami Vivekananda in 1884 asking to "Avoid all irregular indecent expressions about sex etc...because other nations think it the height of indecency to mention such things, and his life in English is going to be read by the whole world" and calling Ramchandra Dutta's translation a "bosh and rot" and allege this book to be "scandalous". They also allege that Ramchandra Dutta faced a possible law suit from Swami Vivekananda. However, as of 1995, this book has been published in nine Bengali editions rendering these allegations untenable.
  • In 1887, Akshay Kumar Sen wrote Ramakrishna's life in verse — Sri Sri Ramakrishna Punthi in Bengali. Akshay Kumar Sen later wrote Padye Sri Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa Dever Upadesh and Sri Sri Ramakrishna Mahima.
  • Sri Sri Ramakrishna Lilaprasanga by Swami Saradananda. The book was begun in 1909 and left partially incomplete at the author's death in 1927. Swami Saradananda is considered an authority both as a philosopher and as an historian on Ramakrishna.
  • My Master, speeches by Swami Vivekananda in 1896.

• Hearsay and unrecorded at the time of the Ramakrishna — This includes the information available from his contemporaries like Hridya Mukherji, Roy Chatterji and other devotees, or from what one hears from the residents of Kamarpukur, Jayrambati, Shyam Bazaar.

Other notable biographies have been written by Western Scholars such as Max Muller, Romain Rolland, Christopher Isherwood

• Max Muller's book Râmakrishna: His Life and Sayings (1898) is one of the earliest works by a Western scholar on the life of Ramakrishna and a relatively independent source of biography..It is based on first-hand evidence, analysed in "broad and clear critical spirit". Max Muller based this book on the testimonies of Swami Vivekananda and several independent witnesses, both favorable and unfavorable to Ramakrishna. Scholars consider this book to be "containing the just criticism needed for a true valuation of Ramakrishna's personality and teaching". Max Muller, regarded Ramakrishna as The Real Mahatman.

• Romain Rolland's book : Life of Ramakrishna (1929) is another biographic work which — accoding to the author — is based on direct disciples and other "credible", independent eye-witnesses of Ramakrishna who were alive at his time. He had consulted the Christian missionaries who had interview Ramakrishna.

The details recorded by the direct disciples and other sources are originally in Bengali and several translations have been made into English and other languages.

Translations of original Bengali works and other research books have been published:

• The English translations of Kathamrita were published by Swami Nikhilananda in his book The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. According to Neevel, the book provides authentic information about Ramakrishna. The book was voted as one of the "100 Most Important Spiritual Books of the 20th Century" by the American scholars convened by HarperCollins publishers, However, scholars argue that the book has been bowdlerized.

• Life of Sri Ramakrishna, compiled from various authentic sources (1925) by Swami Madhavananda is, according to Rolland, also one of the primary sources of Ramakrishna's biography and a reliable source which contains first hand accounts of his disciples, live witnesses.

Biography

Birth and childhood

Various supernatural incidents are recounted by Saradananda in connection with Ramakrishna’s birth. It is said that Kshudiram, Ramakrishna’s father, named him Gadadhar in response to a dream he had had in Gaya before Ramakrishna’s birth, in which Lord Gadadhara, the form of Vishnu worshipped at Gaya, appeared to him and told him he would be born as his son. Chandramani Devi, Ramakrishna’s mother, is said to have had a vision of light entering her womb before Ramakrishna was born. Even in his childhood, some villagers considered Ramakrishna to be an incarnation of God.

According to his biographers, Ramakrishna was born in the village of Kamarpukur, in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, into a very poor but pious brahmin family. The young Ramakrishna, known as Gadadhar, was an extremely popular figure in his village. He was considered handsome and had a natural gift for the fine arts. However, he disliked attending school, and was not interested in earning money. As he was growing up, he was barely literate. He loved nature and spent much time in fields and fruit orchards outside the village with his friends. He would visit with wandering monks who stopped in Kamarpukur on their way to Puri. He would serve them and listen to their religious debates with rapt attention.

When arrangements for Gadadhar to be invested with the sacred thread were nearly complete, he declared that he would have his first alms from a certain low-caste woman of the village, as he had promised this to her. This was met with firm opposition from Gadadhar’s family, as tradition required that the first alms be received from a brahmin, but the boy was adamant that a promise made could not be broken. Finally, Ramkumar, his eldest brother and head of the family after the passing away of their father, gave in.

Meanwhile, the family's financial position worsened every day. Ramkumar ran a Sanskrit school in Calcutta and also served as a purohit priest in some families. About this time, Rani Rashmoni, a rich woman of Calcutta who belonged to the untouchable kaivarta community, founded a temple at Dakshineswar. She approached Ramkumar to serve as priest at the temple of Kali and Ramkumar agreed. Ramkumar recruited assistants among his relatives, including Gadadhar, who agreed only after some persuasion and was given the task of decorating the deity. When Ramkumar passed away in 1856, Gadadhar took his place as priest.

Career as priest

When Gadadhar started worshipping the deity — Kali, he began to question if he was worshipping a piece of stone or a living Goddess. If he was worshipping a living Goddess, why should she not respond to his worship? This question nagged him day and night. Then, he began to pray to Kali: "Mother, you've been gracious to many devotees in the past and have revealed yourself to them. Why would you not reveal yourself to me, also? Am I not also your son?"

He is known to have wept bitterly and sometimes even cry out loudly while worshipping. At night, he would go into a nearby jungle and spend the whole night praying. One day, he was so impatient to see Mother Kali that he decided to end his life. He seized a sword hanging on the wall and was about to strike himself with it, when he is reported to have seen light issuing from the deity in waves. He is said to have been soon overwhelmed by the waves and fell unconscious on the floor.

Gadadhar, however, unsatisfied, prayed to Mother Kali for more religious experiences. He especially wanted to know the truths that other religions taught. Strangely, these teachers came to him when necessary and he is said to have reached the ultimate goals of those religions with ease. Soon word spread about this remarkable man and people of all denominations and all stations of life began to come to him.

Heterodox religious practices

At Dakshineswar, Ramakrishna engaged in a practice called madhura bhava, in which he imitated the "sweet mood" of the goddess Radha waiting for her lover Krishna. He wore female clothing and jewelry, and imitated female speech and behavior. This practice culminated with a vision of Krishna, in which Krishna's body merged with Ramakrishna's. He said:

I spent many days as the handmaid of God. I dressed myself in women's clothes, put on ornaments, and covered the upper part of my body with a scarf, just like a woman...Otherwise, how could I have kept my wife with me for eight months? Both of us behaved as if we were the handmaids of the Divine Mother. I cannot speak of myself as a man.

For a period, while he was practicing bhakti, he was supposed to have resembled the monkey-god Hanuman, the servant of Ram. He lived on roots and fruit, and a growth which resembled a tail was supposed to have grown from his spine. Later, Ramakrishna experienced the goddess Sita's body merging with his own (Sita is the consort of Ram).

At some point, Ramakrishna visited Nadia, the home of Chaitanya and Nityananda, the 15th-century founders of Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava bhakti. He had an intense vision of two young boys merging into his body.

Totapuri and Vedanta

Ramakrishna was initiated in Advaita Vedanta by a wandering monk named Totapuri, in the city of Dakshineswar. Totapuri was "a teacher of masculine strength, a sterner mien, a gnarled physique, and a virile voice". Ramakrishna address the monk as Nangta or Langta — the "Naked One".

I said to Totapuri in despair: "It's no good. I will never be able to lift my spirit to the unconditioned state and find myself face to face with the Atman." He replied severely: "What do you mean you can't? You must!" Looking about him, he found a shard of glass. He took it and stuck the point between my eyes saying: "Concentrate your mind on that point." The last barrier vanished and my spirit immediately precipitated itself beyond the plane of the conditioned. I lost myself in samadhi.

After the departure of Totapuri, Ramakrishna reportedly remained for six months in a state of absolute contemplation:

For six months in a stretch, I remained in that state from which ordinary men can never return; generally the body falls off, after three weeks, like a mere leaf. I was not conscious of day or night. Flies would enter my mouth and nostrils as they do a dead's body, but I did not feel them. My hair became matted with dust.

Marriage

Rumors spread to Kamarpukur that Ramakrishna had gone mad as a result of his over-taxing spiritual exercises at Dakshineswar. Alarmed, neighbors advised Ramakrishna’s mother that he be persuaded to marry, so that he might be more conscious of his responsibilities to the family. Far from objecting to the marriage, he, in fact, mentioned Jayrambati, three miles to the north-west of Kamarpukur, as being the village where the bride could be found at the house of one Ramchandra Mukherjee. The five-year-old bride, Sarada, was found and the marriage was duly solemnised in 1859. Ramakrishna was 23 at this point, but the age difference was typical for 19th century rural Bengal. Ramakrishna left Sarada in December 1860 and did not return until May 1867.

According to the Ramakrishna Mission, Sarada was Ramakrishna’s first disciple. He attempted to teach her everything he had learned from his various gurus. She is believed to have mastered every religious secret as quickly as Ramakrishna had. Impressed by her religious potential, he began to treat her as the Universal Mother Herself and performed a puja considering Sarada as a veritable Tripura Sundari Devi.

Yogeshwari and Tantra

In 1861, a female guru named Yogeshwari appeared at Dakshineshwar. She taught Ramakrishna 64 Tantric sadhanas. She taught him kumari-puja, the worship of a young girl; Ramakrishna entered into samadhi (or fainted, depending on which account one reads). Datta said: "We have heard many tales of the brahmani but we hesitate to divulge them to the public."

Sarada, now a young woman, heard rumors of Ramakrishna's bizarre practices and came to Dakshineshwar to protect him from Yogeshwari. They began to relate to each other as husband and wife, but did not consummate their marriage, due to Ramakrishna's severe asceticism.

Islam and Christianity

In 1866, Govinda Roy, a Hindu guru who practiced Sufism, initiated Ramakrishna into Islam. According to Christopher Isherwood, Ramakrishna said:

I devoutly repeated the name of Allah, wore a cloth like the Arab Moslems, said their prayer five time daily, and felt disinclined even to see images of the Hindu gods and goddesses, much less worship them—for the Hindu way of thinking had disappeared altogether from my mind.

His Muslim practices culminated in Ramakrishna experiencing the prophet Muhammad merging with his body.

Years later, as he contemplated an image of the Madonna and Christ child at a devotee's house, he began a phase of Christian spiritual practice. This phase culminated in a vision of the merging of Ramakrishna's body with that of Christ.

Later life

By the 1870s, Ramakrishna had established a reputation as a mystic and had attracted a large number of male devotees from the emerging urban Bengali bourgeoisie class, most of whom including Narendranath Dutta, had been educated at English schools. He came to be known among his devotees as Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa. The name Ramakrishna is said to have been given him by Mathur Babu, the son-in-law of Rani Rasmani. Many prominent people of Calcutta like Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, Shivanath Shastri and Trailokyanath Sanyal began visiting him during this time (1871-1885). He also met Swami Dayananda. Through his meetings with Keshab Chandra Sen of the Brahmo Samaj, he had become known to the general populace of Calcutta.

After fifteen years of teaching, in April 1885 the first symptoms of throat cancer appeared and in the beginning of September 1885 he was moved to Shyampukur. But the illness showed signs of aggravation and he was moved to a large garden house at Cossipore on December 11, 1885 on the advice of Dr. Sarkar, who was treating him. On August 15, 1886 his health deteriorated, and at 01:02 a.m. on the 16th he attained mahasamadhi. At noon, Dr. Sarkar pronounced that life had departed not more than half an hour before. He left behind a devoted band of 16 young disciples headed by Swami Vivekananda.

Teachings

God-realisation

The key concepts in Ramakrishna’s teachings were the oneness of existence; the divinity of all living beings; and the unity of God and the harmony of religions.

Ramakrishna emphasised that God-realisation is the supreme goal of all living beings. Religion, for him, was merely a means for the achievement of this goal. Ramakrishna’s mystical realisation, classified by Hindu tradition as nirvikalpa samadhi (literally, "bliss without differentiation", thought to be absorption in the all-encompassing Consciousness), led him to know that the various religions are different ways to reach The Absolute, and that the Ultimate Reality could never be expressed in human terms.

Kamini-kanchan

Ramakrishna taught that that the primal bondage in human life is to kaminikanchan, or "women and gold". Devotees insist that this phrase warns against lust and greed, but religion scholars and historians have tended to take it more literally. He seems to have overcome sexual desires by "becoming female":

A man can change his nature by imitating another's character. By transposing onto yourself the attributes of a woman, you gradually destroy lust and the other sensual drives. You begin to behave like a women. I have noticed that men who play female parts in the theater speak like women or brush their teeth like women while bathing.

Various scholars have come to opposing conclusions about Ramakrishna's attitude toward women. Some say that he was simply an ascetic and avoided lust in order to retain mystical clarity. Others say that he feared women deeply or pathologically, especially women as sexual beings. Narasingha Sil links this to traditional rural Bengali misogyny. Sil also says that Ramakrishna made his wife into a deity in order to avoid thinking of her as sexual.

Avidyamaya and vidyamaya

Devotees believe that Ramakrishna’s realisation of nirvikalpa samadhi also led him to an understanding of the two sides of maya, or illusion, to which he referred as Avidyamaya and vidyamaya. He explained that avidyamaya represents dark forces (e.g. sensual desire, evil passions, greed, lust and cruelty), which keep the world-system on lower planes of consciousness. These forces are responsible for human entrapment in the cycle of birth and death, and they must be fought and vanquished. Vidyamaya, on the other hand, represents higher forces (e.g. spiritual virtues, enlightening qualities, kindness, purity, love, and devotion), which elevate human beings to the higher planes of consciousness. With the help of vidyamaya, he said that devotees could rid themselves of avidyamaya and achieve the ultimate goal of becoming mayatita - that is, free from maya.

Harmony of religions

Ramakrishna recognised differences among religions but realised that in spite of these differences, all religions lead to the same ultimate goal, and hence they are all valid and true. Regarding this, the distinguished British historian Arnold J. Toynbee has written: “… Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of non-violence and Sri Ramakrishna’s testimony to the harmony of religions: here we have the attitude and the spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together into a single family – and in the Atomic Age, this is the only alternative to destroying ourselves.”

Other teachings

Ramakrishna’s proclamation of jatra jiv tatra Shiv (wherever there is a living being, there is Shiva) stemmed from his Advaitic perception of Reality. This would lead him teach his disciples, "Jive daya noy, Shiv gyane jiv seba" (not kindness to living beings, but serving the living being as Shiva Himself). This view differs considerably from what Ramakrishna’s followers call the "sentimental pantheism" of, for example, Francis of Assisi.

Ramakrishna, though not formally trained as a philosopher, had an intuitive grasp of complex philosophical concepts. According to him brahmanda, the visible universe and many other universes, are mere bubbles emerging out of Brahman, the supreme ocean of intelligence .

Like Adi Sankara had done more than a thousand years earlier, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa revitalised Hinduism which had been fraught with excessive ritualism and superstition in the Nineteenth century and helped it become better-equipped to respond to challenges from Islam, Christianity and the dawn of the modern era. However, unlike Adi Sankara, Ramakrishna developed ideas about the post-samadhi descent of consciousness into the phenomenal world, which he went on to term "vignana". While he asserted the supreme validity of Advaita Vedanta, he also he accepted both the Nitya (or the eternal substance) and the Leela (literally, "play", indicating the dynamic phenomenal reality) as aspects of Brahman.

The idea of the descent of consciousness shows the influence of the Bhakti movement and certain sub-schools of Shaktism on Ramakrishna’s thought. The idea would later influence Aurobindo's views about the Divine Life on Earth.

Views of Ramakrishna

Since the 1976 publication of Walter Neeval's essay "The Transformation of Ramakrishna", scholars have thought of Ramakrishna's image as going through three discrete transformations. The first transformation, which occurred during Ramakrishna's life, was from a local village madman into a divine avatar. The next transformation, occurring after his death and conducted by his most famous disciple Swami Vivekananda, was from a mystical ecstatic into the founder of a universalistic religious movement. The third transformation, this one also engineered by Vivekananda, was from a quietistic mystic into a social reformer.

Philosopher Arindam Chakrabarti called Ramakrishna "The practically illiterate, faith-bound, emotional, otherworldly esoteric Ramakrishna who prayed to the Goddess: "May my rationalizing intellect be struck by thunder!" And yet in his

...views about the nature of ultimate reality, the relation between the self and the body, ways of knowing truth, moral and social duties of human beings and metatheoretical explanations of why mystics disagree...Ramakrishna was no less a philosopher than Buddha or Socrates.

Chakrabarti then contrasts Ramakrishna's talkativeness with Buddha's reticence, and makes seven comparisons between Ramakrishna and Socrates. He then analyzes a song that Ramakrishna was fond of ("The Dark Mother Flying Kites") and pulls out six philosophical elements: a nondualistic metaphysics, a spiritualistic ethic, the doctrine of karma, a playful goddess, the possibility of moksha, and the theory of psychological causation.

Ramakrishna’s impact

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Born as he was during a social upheaval in Bengal in particular and India in general, Ramakrishna and his movement were an important part of the direction that Hinduism and Indian nationalism took in the coming years.

On Hinduism

His career was an important part of the renaissance that Bengal, and later India, experienced in the 19th century. Hinduism faced a huge intellectual challenge in the 19th century, from Westerners and Indians alike. The Hindu practice of murti came under intense pressure specially in Bengal, then the center of British India, and was declared intellectually unsustainable by some intellectuals. Response to this was varied, ranging from the Young Bengal movement that denounced Hinduism and embraced Christianity or atheism, to the Brahmo movement that retained primacy of Hinduism but gave up idol worship, and to the staunch Hindu nationalism of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. Ramakrishna’s influence was crucial in this period for a Hindu revival of a more traditional kind, and can be compared to that of Chaitanya's contribution centuries earlier, when Hinduism in Bengal was under similar pressure from the growing power of Islam.

Among his contributions is a strong affirmation of the presence of the divine in an idol. To the many that revered him, this reinforced centuries-old traditions that were in the spotlight at the time. Ramakrishna also advocated an inclusive version of the religion, declaring Joto mot toto path (meaning As many faiths, so many paths). He was given a name that is clearly Vaishnavite (Rama and Krishna are both incarnations of Vishnu), but was a devotee of Kali, the mother goddess, and known to have followed various other religious paths including Tantrism and even Christianity and Islam.

On Indian Nationalism

Ramakrishna’s impact on the growing Indian nationalism was, if more indirect, nevertheless quite notable. A large number of intellectuals of that age had regular communication with him and respected him, though not all of them necessarily agreed with him on religious matters. Numerous members of the Brahmo Samaj respected him. Though some of them embraced his form of Hinduism, the fact that many others didn't shows that they detected in him a possibility for a strong national identity in the face of a colonial adversary that was intellectually undermining the Indian civilisation. As Amaury de Riencourt states,"The greatest leaders of the early twentieth century, whatever their walk of life -- Rabindranath Tagore, the prince of poets; Aurobindo Ghosh, the greatest mystic-philosopher; Mahatma Gandhi, who eventually shook the Anglo-Indian Empire to destruction -- all acknowledged their over-riding debt to both the Swan and the Eagle, to Ramakrishna who stirred the heart of India, and to Vivekananda who awakened its soul." This is particularly evident in Ramakrishna’s development of the Mother-symbolism and its eventual role in defining the incipient Indian nationalism.

Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission

Vivekananda, Ramakrishna’s most illustrious disciple, is considered by some to be one of his most important legacies. Vivekananda spread the message of Ramakrishna across the world. He also helped introduce Hinduism to the west. He founded two organisations based on the teachings of Ramakrishna. One was Ramakrishna Mission, which is designed to spread the word of Ramakrishna. Vivekananda also designed its emblem. Ramakrishna Math was created as a monastic order based on Ramakrishna’s teachings.

The temples of Ramakrishna are called the Universal Temples. The first Universal temple was built at Belur, which is the headquatress of the Ramakrishna Mission. Daily arathi, pooja and devotional singing are conducted everyday. The arathi song — Khandana Bhava Bandha written by Swami Vivekananda and rendered in the classic Dhrupad Music style.

Apart from celebrating the hindu festivals, other festivals like Christmas, Buddha Purnima are celebrated.

Legacy

It could be argued that Ramakrishna’s vision of Hinduism and its popularisation in the West, by converts like Christopher Isherwood and admirers like Aldous Huxley and Romain Rolland, have largely coloured Western notions of what Hinduism is.

Many great thinkers of the world have acknowledged Ramakrishna's contribution to humanity. Max Müller, who was inspired by Ramakrishna, said:

Sri Ramakrishna was a living illustration of the truth that Vedanta, when properly realised, can become a practical rule of life... the Vedanta philosophy is the very marrow running through all the bones of Ramakrishna’s doctrine.

Leo Tolstoy saw similarities between his and Ramakrishna's thoughts. He described him as a "remarkable sage". Romain Rolland considered Ramakrishna to be the "consummation of two thousand years of the spiritual life of three hundred million people." He said:

Allowing for differences of country and of time, Ramakrishna is the younger brother of Christ.

Mohandas Gandhi wrote:

Ramakrishna's life enables us to see God face to face. He was a living embodiment of godliness.

Sri Aurobindo considered Ramakrishna to be an incarnation, or avatar, of God on par with Gautama Buddha. He wrote:

When scepticism had reached its height, the time had come for spirituality to assert itself and establish the reality of the world as a manifestation of the spirit, the secret of the confusion created by the senses, the magnificent possibilities of man and the ineffable beatitude of God. This is the work whose consummation Sri Ramakrishna came to begin and all the development of the previous two thousand years and more since Buddha appeared has been a preparation for the harmonisation of spiritual teaching and experience by the Avatar of Dakshineshwar.

Christopher Isherwood also considered Ramakrishna to be an incarnation of God.

Jawaharlal Nehru described Ramakrishna as "one of the great rishis of India, who had come to draw our attention to the higher things of life and of the spirit." Subhas Chandra Bose was also influenced by Ramakrishna. He said:

The effectiveness of Ramakrishna's appeal lay in the fact that he had practised what he preached and that... he had reached the acme of spiritual progress.

Works related to Ramakrishna

Philip Glass

In 2006, composer Philip Glass wrote The Passion of Ramakrishna — a choral work as a "tribute to Ramakrishna". It premiered on September 16, 2006 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, California, performed by Orange County’s Pacific Symphony Orchestra conducted by Carl St. Clair with the Pacific Chorale directed by John Alexander.

Franz Dvorak

Franz Dvorak (1862–1927), a painter from Prague, inspired by the teachings of Ramakrishna made several paintings of Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi.

Views on Ramakrishna’s Religious Experiences and Practices

Romain Rolland

In his book The Life of Ramakrishna (1929), Romain Rolland, states that Ramakrishna's experiences were not pathological and indicates his opinion of psychoanalysis on Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda and other mystics:

Let the learned men of Europe, who are preoccupied by the problems of mystic psycho-analysis, put themselves in touch with these living witnesses while there is yet time. I myself, I repeat, have little curiosity about such phenomena, whose subjective reality is not in doubt, and I believe it my duty to describe them; for they are hedged about by all possible guarantees of good faith and analytical intelligence. I am more interested in the fact of great religious intuition in that which continues to be rather than in that which has been, in that which is or which can be always in all beings rather than in that which is privilege of a few.

Also Rolland had correspondence with Freud. In his letter of December 5, 1927, Rolland indicated that he was researching a book on the Hindu saints Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. The references to Freud and psychoanalysis in these books are considered as direct response to Civilization and Its Discontents. Rolland claims the inapplicability of psychoanalysis.

Leo Schneiderman

Leo Schneiderman, in this work Ramakrishna: Personality and Social Factors in the Growth of a Religious Movement (1969) describes Ramakrishna's samadhi as follows:

Ramakrishna's "bizarre" behavior must be judged within its proper cultural context. Because Ramakrishna was a Brahmin priest who combined the performance of traditional religious functions with demonstrations of divine possession, especially in samadhi, he could appeal to a wide clientele. He was both an exemplar of Redfield's "great tradition" of Hinduism, and of village shamanism, sublimated to a very high plane. Thus, Ramakrishna's trances and other dramatic manifestations, including, perhaps, even his psychotic behavior, were not truly aberrations from the standpoint of the non-Sanskritic popular culture.

Walter G Neevel

Walter G. Neevel in his essay — "Transformation of Ramakrishna" (1976) which studies Ramakrishna's ecstasy indicates that:

…It is clear that his ability to enter into trances so easily derived largely from his esthetic and emotional sensitivity — his capacity to so appreciate and identify with beauty and harmony in what he saw and did that he would become totally overcome by ecstasy.

Narasingha Sil

In 1991, historian Narasingha Sil wrote Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: A Psychological Profile, an account of Ramakrishna that suggests that Ramakrishna's mystical experiences were pathological and originated from alleged childhood sexual trauma.Other scholars, most notably psychologist Sudhir Kakar, judged Sil's study to be simplistic and misleading. Sil's theory has also been viewed as reductive by William B. Parsons, who has called for an increased empathetic dialogue between the classical/adaptive/transformative schools and the mystical traditions for an enhanced understanding of Ramakrishna's life and experiences.

Scholars also indicate that Sil's works are unreliable, and term them as virulently antagonistic "psycho-biography" of the saint.

William Radice in his review of Narasingha Sil's books indicates that:

…What makes one ultimately distrustful of his book, entertaining though it is, is his willingness to manipulate his sources with a merry abandon worthy of Ramakrishna himself. … Sil knows perfectly well that Vivekananda often made provocative, throw-away remarks that were at odds with the main lines of his thought. … If Sil can misuse Vivekananda's writings to support his hypothesis, can we trust him to use the Kathamrta fairly?

…Another weakness of the book is that his ridicule of Ramakrishna's ' ecstasies ' his view that his frequent states of samadhi were pathological rather than spiritual is not supported by any clear view of what would be a genuine state of mystical ecstasy…

…In the end, therefore, his book has to be rejected in favour of more cautious, less mocking psychological assessment

Dr.Jean Openshaw, further notes that:

…issues such as the saint's teachings, his status (either as "godman" or divine "incarnation") and his marital situation seem to be raised only to discredit the saint, often through a heady mix of tendentious argument, speculation and innuendo.

…Apart from the compulsions of contemporary academic life, this sleight of hand should perhaps be seen in the light of the furore caused in India by another psychoanalytically based book, Jeffrey Kripal's Kali's Child (1995), with which Sil's own work is dangerously easy to identify. At any rate, Sil's understandable attempts to distance himself from Kripal's portrayal of Ramakrishna as a homosexual are vitiated by his own emphasis on the saint's "homoerotic" tendencies, albeit related by him to repressed heterosexuality, which in turn is attributed, on no evidence whatever, to sexual seduction or abuse in childhood.

…Sil's account oscillates between a mad Ramakrishna and a bad one. One is left wondering how defects so gross escaped so many sophisticated first-hand witnesses.

Dr.Jeanne Openshaw

Dr. Jeanne Openshaw, a senior lecturer in Religious Studies, and who specializes in the area of Bengali Vaishnavism and Culture, indicates that the behavior or religious practices of Ramakrishna are not necessarily abnormal:

…In the context of devotional Bengali Vaishnavism, where femininity represents the highest attainable condition, the cultivation of femininity by men in various ways is not necessarily abnormal. Nor can it necessarily be taken as a sign of what we would call "homosexuality", that is, love between men.

…Unlike our own society (at least in modern times), male celibacy, in the sense of conservation of vital seminal essence, is highly prized in rural Bengal. Male fear of women, the attempt to see all women as mothers rather than as sexual partners, and, in its extreme form, a cultivated sense of revulsion for the female body - all these stem precisely from the attractive power of women, rather than from "homoerotic" tendencies.

Sudhir kakar

In 1991, Sudhir Kakar wrote "The Analyst and the Mystic" Gerald James Larson wrote, "Indeed, Sudhir Kakar...indicates that there would be little doubt that from a psychoanalytic point of view Ramakrishna could be diagnosed as a secondary transsexual." Kakar sought a meta-psychological non-pathological explanation that connects Ramakrishna's mystical realization with creativity. Kakar also argues that culturally relative concepts of eroticism and gender have contributed to the Western difficulty in comprehending Ramakrishna.In 2003, Sudhir Kakar wrote a novel, Ecstasy, in which an aspiring sadhu in 20th century India endures sexual molestation as a child, and has a feminine appearance and ambiguous sexuality. According to the author, the characters were modelled on Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.

Somnath Bhattacharyya

Somnath Bhattacharyya, in his work Kali's Child: Psychological And Hermeneutical Problems further elaborates on alleged transvestite and transsexuality traits of Ramakrishna:

...dressing up in a feminine dress as a part of a legitimate and culturally accepted sadhana for a short period of time does not amount to transvestism. Ramakrishna after all also dressed like a Shakta and a Vaishnava during his Shakti and Vaishnava sadhana days and like a Muslim during his Islam sadhana – and these were male attires – only to try and make his identification with these cults complete

… suggestions about his secondary trans-sexuality (KC xxi) are also all too facile. The American Psychiatric Association (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV) defines trans-sexuality as a strong and persistent cross-gender identification, and not merely a desire for any perceived cultural advantages of being the other sex. It is a disorder always involving distress to the person, with a feeling of estrangement from the body and a felt need to alter the appearance of the body. If Ramakrishna sometimes talked about his feminity he was also clear about what he meant by it – "Formerly I too used to see many visions, but now in my ecstatic state I don't see so many. I am gradually getting over my feminine nature; I feel nowadays more like a man. Therefore I control my emotions; I don't manifest it outwardly so much. …"(GSR 798; KA 4.214)

Jeff Kripal

In 1995, postmodernist author Jeffrey Kripal wrote Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna, which he called a psychoanalytic study of Ramakrishna. William Parsons described Kali's Child as a book "which performs a classic Freudian interpretation by seeing symptoms of repressed homoeroticism in the visions and acts of Ramakrishna, but then, in exemplifying the interdisciplinary approach of this dialogue, legitimates Ramakrishna’s religious visions by situating psychoanalytic discourse in a wider Tantric worldview." Kali's Child provoked controversy after Narasingha Sil wrote a scathing review of Kali's Child in The Statesman which produced a great deal of angry correspondence. In subsequent articles, Kripal's translations, his conclusions, and his authority to apply psychoanalysis to Ramakrishna were questioned by several scholars, including Alan Roland, Huston Smith, and Somnath Bhattacharya. According to Brian Hatcher, although some had their misgivings, the overall verdict of religion scholars and of experts on South Asian culture regarding Kali's Child has been approving, and at times highly laudatory. Kripal responded to the criticisms in journal articles and postings on his website, but stopped participating in the discussion in late 2002.

J.S. Hawley

John Stratton Hawley, Professor of Religion at Barnard College, in his paper The Damage of Separation: Krishna’s Loves and Kali’s Child examines the following:

• Is it right to think of the religious and erotic realms as overlapping, particularly when a homosexual dimension is involved?
• Second, if Hindus and Hinduism are the subject, should non-Hindus refrain from speaking?

In this study, J.S.Hawley, revisits the Kali's Child debate highlighting one of its central terms — the vyakulata feeling of Ramakrishna. J.S.Hawley concludes:

…neither the gopis’ torment nor Ramakrishna’s must be allowed to devolve to a bodily level that could be indiscriminately shared—either between religious communities, or between the erstwhile colonizers and their erstwhile colonial victims, or between communities of people who respond to different sexual orientations. Eros is too dangerous. It flows potentially everywhere, and it seems to take exquisite pleasure in crossing boundaries that should not be crossed. …If we see anything at the end of this foray into the landscape of vyakulata, it is that the vectors that tie the realm of eros to that of religion are an exceedingly complex set…

Alan Roland

Attempts by modern authors to psychoanalyze Ramakrishna are questioned by practicing psychoanalyst Alan Roland, who has written extensively about applying Western psychoanalysis to Eastern cultures, and charges that psychoanalysis has been misapplied to Ramakrishna. Roland decries the facile decoding of Hindu symbols, such as Kali’s sword and Krishna’s flute, into Western sexual metaphors—thereby reducing Ramakrishna’s spiritual aspiration to the basest psychopathology. The conflation of Ramakrishna’s spiritual ecstasy, or samadhi, with unconscious dissociated states due to repressed homoerotic feelings is not based on common psychoanalytic definitions of these two different motivations, according to Roland. He also writes that it is highly questionable whether Ramakrishna’s spiritual aspirations and experiences involve regression—responding to modern attempts to reduce Ramakrishna’s spiritual states to a subconscious response to an imagined childhood trauma.

Kelley Ann Raab

While most of the studies have been conducted from either a primarily psychoanalytic perspective or from the perspective of a devotee, Kelley Ann Raab's work — Is There Anything Transcendent about Transcendence? A Philosophical and Psychological Study of Sri Ramakrishna, focuses upon Ramakrishna from both a philosophical perspective and a psychoanalytic perspective. The study proposes that neither a purely psychological explanation nor a solely philosophical account of his visions is adequate to understand his madness or his godliness, but that together psychology and philosophy can deepen our understanding.

Raab concludes as follows:

Through exploration of philosophical understandings of his devotional mysticism and tantric underpinnings, I have shown how Ramakrishna's visions and behavior were in keeping with his culture and tradition. Coupled with a psychological analysis of his behavior as an internalization of Kali, I have demonstrated that in dressing as and imitating a woman, Ramakrishna broke through dualistic thought patterns defining gender, humanity, and God; at the same time he retained dualism to the extent that his devotions to Kali vere as a child to his mother, he experienced her in various forms, and he retained his anatomical maleness. This behavior in turn expressed the spiritual insight found in his writings that dualism, qualified monism, and absolute monism are all aspects of and paths to truth. This study shows that philosophical insights and psychological analysis, while often leading to different conclusions, can sometimes find a common meeting ground.

Notes

1. Smart, Ninian The World’s Religions (1998) p.409, Cambridge
2. Jeanne Openshaw, "The mystic and the rustic" Times Higher Education 15 December 1995 "Towards the end of the last century, a rural Bengali priest of the goddess Ka-lu- became an object of fascination for the anglicised gentry of Calcutta."
3. Sumit Sarkar (1999). "Post-Modernism and the Writing of History" (PDF). Studies in History. 15 (2). SAGE Publications: 293–322. doi:10.1177/025764309901500205. Finding traces in the Kaṭamrita of a learned literate knowledge/unlearned oral wisdom binary, I had seen it as evidence of a liminal moment, where a rustic near-illiterate Brahmin becomes the guru of highly educated bhadralok. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |quotes= ignored (help)
4. ^ Leo Schneiderman (Spring, 1969). "Ramakrishna: Personality and Social Factors in the Growth of a Religious Movement". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 8. London: Blackwell Publishing: 60–71. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
5. Copley, Antony (2000). Gurus and Their Followers: New Religious Reform Movements in Colonial India. Oxford University Press. p. 235.
6. Children of Immortality. The Ramakrishna Movement with Special Emphasis on the South African Context by Anil Sooklal
7. Swami Atmajnanananda
8. Bhawuk, Dharm P.S. (February 2003). "Culture's influence on creativity: the case of Indian spirituality". International Journal of Intercultural Relations. 27 (1). Elsevier: pp. 1-22. He may very well be the first, if not the only, person to practice the major religions of the world to come to the conclusion that they lead to the same God. His contribution to humanity is particularly significant for the world after the bombing of the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Clearly, Islam is not to be blamed for the incident of September 11, and no religion should be blamed for any act of terrorism,… {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); line feed character in |quote= at position 59 (help)
9. Kakar 1991; Sil 1991, 1998; Kripal 1995; Raab 1995; Roland 2002; John Stratton Hawley 2004
10. Neevel, Walter G (1976). "The Transformation of Ramakrishna". Hinduism: New Essays in the History of Religions. Brill Archive. p. 61. ISBN 9004044957. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
11. "Three Classes of Evidence". Retrieved 2008-08-23.
12. ^ Rolland, Romain (1929). "Bibliography". The Life of Ramakrishna. pp. pp.232-237. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
13. ^ The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda ~ Volume 5 ~ Epistle XXIII
14. Atmajnanananda, Swami (August, 1997). "Scandals, cover-ups, and other imagined occurrences in the life of Ramakrishnaa: An examination of Jeffrey Kripal's Kali's child". International Journal of Hindu Studies. 1 (2). Netherlands: Springer: pp.401-420. doi:10.1007/s11407-997-0007-8. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
15. Vrajaprana, Pravrajika. "Review of Kali's child, by Jeffrey Kripal". Hindu-Christian studies bulletin. 10: 59–60. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help)
16. Jeffrey Kripal,. "Pale Plausibilities: A Preface for the Second Edition". "I have also, I believe, overplayed the degree to which the tradition has suppressed Datta's Jivanavrttanta. Indeed, to my wonder (and embarrassment), the Ramakrishna Order reprinted Datta's text the very same summer Kali's Child appeared, rendering my original claims of a conscious concealment untenable with respect to the present{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
17. Neevel, Walter G (1976). "The Transformation of Ramakrishna". Hinduism: New Essays in the History of Religions. Brill Archive. p. 62. ISBN 9004044957. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
18. Vivekananda, Swami (1896). "My Master" . Complete Works . pp. pp.154-188. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
19. Neevel, Walter G (1976). "The Transformation of Ramakrishna". Hinduism: New Essays in the History of Religions. Brill Archive. p. 63. ISBN 9004044957. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
20. Muller, Max (1898). "Mozoomdar's Judgement". Râmakrishna his Life and Sayings. pp. pp.61. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
21. Maurice Bloomfield (Dec., 1899). "Reviewed work(s): Ramakrishna, His Life and Sayings by F. Max Müller". The American Historical Review. 5 (2). American: American Historical Association: pp. 347-349. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
22. Max Muller (1896). "A Real Mahatman". The Nineteenth Century.

23. "I have received glowing testimony at their hands. I have talked with some among them, who were the companions of this mystic being - of the Man-Gods- and I can vouch for their loyalty. Moreover, these eye-witnesses are not the simple fishermen of the Gospel story; some are great thinkers, learned in European thought and disciplined in its strict school."

    — Rolland, Romain (1929). "Prelude". The Life of Ramakrishna. pp. pp.xxiii.

24. Rolland, Romain (1929). "The River Re-Enters the Sea". The Life of Ramakrishna. pp. p.205. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
25. Carl E. Purinton (Jan, 1949). "Reviewed work(s): Ramakrishna: Prophet of New India. Abridged from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Nikhilananda". Journal of Bible and Religion. 17 (1). London: Oxford University Press: pp. 67-68. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
26. Neevel, Walter G (1976). "The Transformation of Ramakrishna". Hinduism: New Essays in the History of Religions. Brill Archive. pp. 61–62. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
27. "100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century". Retrieved 2008-08-21.
28. Zalewiski, Phillip (2000). The Best Spiritual Writing 2000. San Francisco: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0062516701. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
29. Sil, 1993; Hatcher, 1999; Radice, 1995; Kripal 1998
30. ^ Parama Roy, Indian Traffic: Identities in Question in Colonial and Post-Colonial India Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998
31. Amiya P. Sen, "Sri Ramakrishna, the Kathamrita and the Calcutta middle Classes: an old problematic revisited" Postcolonial Studies, 9: 2 p 176
32. Swami Nikhilananda, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1972), Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, New York
33. Roland, Romain The Life of Ramakrishna (1984), Advaita Ashram
34. Swami Nikhilananda, Ramakrishna, Prophet of New India, New York, Harper and Brothers, 1942, p. 28.
35. ^ Sil, Divine Dowager, p. 42
36. name=dowager>Sil, Divine Dowager, p. 42
37. Life of Sri Ramakrishna, Advaita Ashrama, Ninth Impression, December 1971, p. 44
38. Last days
39. Kathamrita, 1/10/6
40. Sil, Divine Dowager, p. 52
41. Sil, Divine Dowager, p. 55
42. Contributions of Sri Ramakrishna to World Culture
43. Hixon, Lex, Great Swan: Meetings with Ramakrishna, (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992, 2002), p. xvi
44. Gospel of Ramakrishna, vol. 4
45. Das, Prafulla Kumar, "Samasamayik Banglar adhymatmik jibongothone Sri Ramakrishner probhab", in Biswachetanay Ramakrishna, (Kolkata: Udbodhon Karyaloy, 1987,1997- 6th rep.), pp.299-311
46. Neeval 1976; Openshaw 1995; Openshaw 1998
47. Arindam Chakrabarti, "The Dark Mother Flying Kites: Sri Ramakrishna's Metaphysic of Morals" Sophia, 33 (3), 1994
48. Mukherjee, Jayasree, "Sri Ramakrishna’s Impact on Contemporary Indian Society". Prabuddha Bharata, May 2004 Online article
49. Swami Saradananda,Sri Sri Ramakrishna Leelaproshongo, (Kolkata:Udbodhon Karyaloy, 1955), Part I, pp.113-125
50. Gupta, Mahendranath, Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita, (Kolkata: Kathamrita Bhavan, 1901, 1949 17th edition), Part I, pp. 20-21
51. de Riencourt, Amaury, The Soul of India, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1961), p.250
52. Jolly, Margaret,"Motherlands? Some Notes on Women and Nationalism in India and Africa".The Australian Journal of Anthropology,Volume: 5. Issue: 1-2,1994
53. Bhuteshanandaji, Swami. "Why are Sri Ramakrishna Temples called "Universal Temples"?". Retrieved 2008-17-08. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
54. Vedanta Society of New York
55. World Thinkers on Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, pp.15-16
56. The Life of Ramakrishna, Advaita Ashrama
57. Life of Sri Ramakrishna, Advaita Ashrama, Foreword
58. World Thinkers on Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, p.16
59. Ramakrishna and His Disciples, Advaita Ashrama, p.2
60. World Thinkers on Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, p.28
61. World Thinkers on Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, p.29
62. Philipglass.com
63. Rolland, Romain (1929). "The Master and his Children". The Life of Ramakrishna. pp. pp.143-168. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
64. Fisher, "Sigmund Freud and Romain Rolland: The Terrestrial Animal and His Great Oceanic Friend", p. 29,
65. Werman, "Sigmund Freud and Romain Rolland", p. 236
66. Neevel, Walter G (1976). "The Transformation of Ramakrishna". Hinduism: New Essays in the History of Religions. Brill Archive. p. 20. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
67. Sil, Narasingha, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. A Psychological Profile, (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1991), p.16
68. ^ Kakar, Sudhir, The Analyst and the Mystic, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p.34
69. Parsons, William B., The Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling: Revisioning the Psychoanalytic Theory of Mysticism, (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999), pp.125-139
70. ^ Dr.Jeanne Openshaw (11 December 1998). "Crucifying a Saint" (html). Times Higher Education. Retrieved 2008-08-21. {{cite journal}}: Check |authorlink= value (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help); External link in |authorlink= (help)
71. Radice, William (1995). "Reviewed work(s): Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: A Psychological Profile by Narasingha P. Sil". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 58 (3). London: Cambridge University Press: 589–590.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
72. Dr Jeanne Openshaw (15 December 1995). "The mystic and the rustic" (html). Retrieved 2008-08-23. {{cite journal}}: Check |authorlink= value (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help); External link in |authorlink= (help)
73. In The Indian Psyche, 125-188. 1996 New Delhi: Viking by Penguin. Reprint of 1991 book.
74. Gerald James Larson (Autumn 1997). "Polymorphic Sexuality, Homoeroticism, and the Study of Religion". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 65 (3). London: Oxford University Press: 655–665. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
75. "The Rediff Interview/Psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar". Retrieved 18 August 2008.
76. Bhattacharyya, Professor Somnath. "Kali's Child: Psychological And Hermeneutical Problems". Infinity Foundation. Retrieved 2008-08-23.
77. "Secret Talk: Sexual Identity and the Politics of Scholarship in the Study of Hindu Tantrism" (no date): "I thus write, certainly not as a South Asian commenting on my own culture or even as an anthropologist with extensive ethnographic experience commenting on someone else’s (I claim neither theoretical voice), but as an American historian of religions trying to make sense of American religious pluralism and the profound effects it has had and continues to have on our contemporary understandings of religion, mysticism, and Western Hinduism, not to mention my own postmodern plural self."
78. Kripal, Jeffrey J.: Kali's Child
79. Kripal, Jeffrey J., Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, 1998)
80. WILLIAM B. PARSONS, "PSYCHOLOGY" in Gale's Encyclopedia of Religion, 2005
81. Brian A. Hatcher (August 1999). "Kali's problem child: Another look at Jeffrey Kripal's study of Ramakrishna". International Journal of Hindu Studies. 3 (2). World Heritage Press Inc: 165–82. doi:10.1007/s11407-999-0002-3. Most of the people in the room were familiar with the book, since not long before there had been a scathing review of the book and a welter of angry correspondence in the pages of Calcutta's major English daily, the Statesman. Judging from those reviews, one would have thought Kali's child had to be right up there with Lady Chatterly's lover. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |quotes= ignored (help)
82. Sil went even further when "in one Calcutta newspaper, The Statesman, Narasingha Sil recently decried Kripal as a shoddy scholar with a perverse imagination who has thoughtlessly "ransacked" another culture and produced a work which is, in short, "plain shit" (January 31, 1997)..." Urban, Hugh (Apr., 1998). "Kālī's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna". The Journal of Religion. Vol. 78, No. 2 (2): pp. 318–320. doi:10.1086/490220. Retrieved 2008-03-18. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); |volume= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
83. Smith derided Kripal's work as "colonialism updated".Smith, Huston (Spring 2001). "Letters to the Editor". Harvard Divinity Bulletin. 30/1: Letters.
84. "Freud never had access to non-Western patients, so he never established the validity of his theories in other cultures. This is a point emphasized by Alan Roland, who has researched and published extensively to show that Freudian approaches are not applicable to study Asian cultures." Ramaswamy and De Nicholas, p. 39.
85. Somnath Bhattacharyya is emeritus professor and former head of the Psychology Department at Calcutta University(Ramaswamy and DeNicholas, p. 152), and a practicing psychotherapist(Ramaswamy and DeNicholas, p. 152) who is fluent in Bengali(Ramaswamy and DeNicholas, p. 152) and familiar with the primary source material used by Kripal(Ramaswamy and DeNicholas, p. 152). In addition to pointing out that Kripal is not qualified in psychoanalysis, he says the textual errors in Kali’s Child are “particularly grave”, and “large scale distortions of source material in an ill attempted effort at establishing a thesis, is certainly not academically acceptable.” Ramaswamy and DeNicholas, p. 162.
86. Brian A. Hatcher (August 1999). "Kali's problem child: Another look at Jeffrey Kripal's study of Ramakrishna". International Journal of Hindu Studies. 3 (2). World Heritage Press Inc: 165–82. doi:10.1007/s11407-999-0002-3. As a glance at the reviews will show, Kali's child has been praised by scholars of religion (see Haberman 1997; Parsons 1997) and by experts on South Asian culture more generally (see Radice 1998; Vaidyanathan 1997). Granted, some of these reviewers have their misgivings--and later in this essay I will raise one of my own---but their overall verdict has been an approving, and at times highly laudatory, one. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |quotes= ignored (help)
87. Kali's Child
88. ^ Hawley, John Stratton (June 2004). "The Damage of Separation: Krishna's Loves and Kali's Child". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 72 (2): pp.369-393. doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfh034. Retrieved 2008 Aug 18. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
89. Roland, Alan. (1996) Cultural Pluralism and Psychoanalysis: The Asian and North American Experience. Routledge. ISBN 0415914787.
90. Roland, Alan (1998) In Search of Self in India and Japan: Toward a Cross-cultural Psychology. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691024588.
91. Roland, A. (1991). Sexuality, the Indian Extended Family, and Hindu Culture. J. Amer. Acad. Psychoanal., 19:595-605.
92. Roland, A. (1980). Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Personality Development in India. Int. R. Psycho-Anal., 7:73-87.
93. Roland, Alan (October 2004). "Ramakrishna: Mystical, Erotic, or Both?". Journal of Religion and Health. 37: 31–36. doi:10.1023/A:1022956932676.
94. Roland, Alan. (2007) The Uses (and Misuses) Of Psychoanalysis in South Asian Studies: Mysticism and Child Development. Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America. Delhi, India: Rupa & Co. ISBN 978-8129111821
95. Roland, Ramakrishna: Mystical, Erotic, or Both?, p. 33.
96. Roland, Ramakrishna: Mystical, Erotic, or Both?, p. 33.
97. Roland, The Uses (and Misuses) Of Psychoanalysis in South Asian Studies: Mysticism and Child Development, published in Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America. Delhi, India: Rupa & Co. ISBN 978-8129111821, p. 414.
98. ^ Kelley Ann Raab (Summer, 1995). "Is There Anything Transcendent about Transcendence? A Philosophical and Psychological Study of Sri Ramakrishna". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 63 (2). London: Oxford University Press: 321–341. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)

References

• Bhattacharyya, Somnath. "Kali's Child: Psychological And Hermeneutical Problems". Infinity Foundation. Retrieved 2008-03-15.
• Hixon, Lex. Great Swan: Meetings With Ramakrishna. Burdett, N.Y: Larson Publications. ISBN 0-943914-80-9.
• Isherwood, Christopher (1980). Ramakrishna and His Disciples. Hollywood, Calif: Vedanta Press. ISBN 0-87481-037-X. (reprint, orig. 1965)
• Kripal, Jeffery J. (1995). Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. University of Chicago Press.
• Muller, max (1898). Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings. Great Britain: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. ISBN 81-7505-060-8.
• Nikhilananda, Swami (1942). The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center. ISBN 0911206019.
• Rajagopalachari, Chakravarti (1973). Sri Ramakrishna Upanishad. Vedanta Press. ASIN B0007J1DQ4.
• Ramaswamy, Krishnan (2007). Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America. Delhi, India: Rupa & Co. ISBN 978-8129111821. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Rolland, Romain (1929). Life of Ramakrishna. Vedanta Press. ISBN 978-8185301440.
• Saradananda, Swami (2003). Sri Ramakrishna and His Divine Play. St. Louis: Vedanta Society. ISBN 978-0916356811. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Saradananda, Swami (1952). Sri Ramakrishna The Great Master. Sri Ramakrishna Math. ASIN B000LPWMJQ. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Tyagananda, Swami. "Kali's Child Revisited or Didn't Anyone Check the Documentation?". Infinity Foundation. Retrieved 2008-03-15.

Further reading

• Ananyananda, Swami (1981). Ramakrishna: a biography in pictures. Advaita Ashrama, Calcutta. ISBN 978-8185843971.
• Chetanananda, Swami (1990). Ramakrishna As We Saw Him. St. Louis: Vedanta Society of St Louis. ISBN 978-0916356644.
• Hourihan, Paul. Ramakrishna & Christ, the Supermystics: New Interpretations. Vedantic Shores Press. ISBN 1-931816-00-X.
• Olson, Carl (1990). The Mysterious Play of Kālī: An Interpretive Study of Rāmakrishna. American Academy of Religion (Scholars Press). ISBN 1-55540-339-5.
• Satyananda, Saraswati. Ramakrishna: The Nectar of Eternal Bliss. Devi Mandir Publications. ISBN 1-877795-66-6.
• Torwesten, Hans (1999). Ramakrishna and Christ, or, The paradox of the incarnation. The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture. ISBN 978-8185843971.

External links

• The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
• Ramakrishna Kathamrita literally, The Nectar of Ramakrishna’s Words
• Ramakrishna, His Life and Sayings by Max Müller
• My Master- from Vivekananda's 1896 Lectures on Ramakrishna
• Works of Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda
• Official website of the Headquarters of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission
• Direct Disciples of Sri Ramakrishna

• Misplaced Pages neutral point of view disputes from August 2008
• Hindu gurus
• Indian religious leaders
• Hindu revivalists
• Bengali renaissance
• 1836 births
• 1886 deaths
• Ramakrishna Mission
• Ramakrishna
• Advaitin philosophers