Sri Ramakrishna - A Veritable Testimony to the Existence of God

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SRI RAMAKRISHNA—A VERITABLE TESTIMONY TO THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

2011 65 Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture

Sri Ramakrishna—A Veritable Testimony to

the Existence of God

SWAMI MUKTIDANANDA

‘God’ is an enigmatic word for

rational minds and a mind-

boggling concept for most of the

people who live a sense-bound life. For the

religious people, God is more real by virtue

of their faith, but the impact of Sri

Ramakrishna is such that God becomes real

not only to a seeker who is really serious

about the idea of God’s existence, but even

an atheist or an agnostic is compelled to be-

lieve in the existence of God. Nay, he may

even be inspired to explore the possibility of

experiencing the truth about His existence.

While Sri Ramakrishna is a source of great

inspiration to a serious spiritual seeker, he is

an oasis to the weary traveller—the so-called

rational-minded—for whom the world is a

Godless desert.

The unique life of Sri Ramakrishna is an

authentic record of a very inspiring spiritual

phenomenon of recent history which nobody

can doubt. The biographical account of his

own spiritual experiences and many of his

disciples who very vividly experienced the

divinity in a variety of ways, methods and

forms and also the Divinity of Sri

Ramakrishna himself should be more thanenough to convince anyone about the exist-

ence of God. These monastic and lay dis-

ciples virtually experienced that it was God,

the divine in human form, who lived amidst

them as their spiritual Master. Such a clear

example of palpable descent of God, who

lived a transparent divine life with continual

experience of exalted spiritual state called

samàdhi to the full gaze of the people

around, is a matchless spiritual spectacle

ever witnessed in modern history.

Even a superficial study and scrutiny of

Sri Ramakrishna drives home his central

message of life and amply makes it clear that

God exists and that the meaning of life with

all its struggles and strivings is to achieve an

understanding of Him and experience Him.

In fact, all holy men have stood for this

ideal, but Sri Ramakrishna’s distinction lies

in the uncompromising emphasis he laid on

God-realization, in the whole-hearted and

undivided manner in which he pursued it

and the most convincing demonstration he

gives through his life about the possibilities

of man in this direction.

A subject for debate

Whether God actually exists or not is a

valid and open question and subject for

debate even to the wisest among us. From

very early times scholars and philosophers

have been discussing and are still debating

the proof of God’s existence. But, is it not

absurd to speak about the proof of the exist-

ence of God? Establishing the proof for any-

thing means deducing it from somethingwhich is more definite and permanent than

it. For a human mind rooted in individual

body identity and the ordinary sense percep-

tions of the world with the earthly common

logic, what can be a convincing proof about

the experience of an existence (of God) more

subtler, deeper, higher and abstract than its

capacity to perceive it? It is seeing God

by another human mind and senses and



SWAMI MUKTIDANANDA

66 February Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture

realizing God as the actual core content of a

conscious living experience.

Nothing short of a direct heartfelt yearn-

ing, coupled with clearly perceived mental

contact and experience with God, can only

convince the ordinary questioning mindabout the reality of God’s existence. Sri

Ramakrishna’s experience of God is not dia-

lectical. It is a logical postulate but unques-

tionable and concrete fact of experience

which can be intelligibly communicated to

the ordinary people of the world.

Swami Vivekananda, who during his

initial inquiry and search for the proof of

God’s existence, recounts his most momen-

tous interaction with Sri Ramakrishna thus:

[Sri Ramakrishna] came to live near

Calcutta, the capital of India, the most im-

portant university town in our country

which was sending out skeptics and materi-

alists by the hundreds every year. Yet many

of these university men—skeptics and ag-

nostics—used to come and listen to him. I

heard of this man, with nothing remarkable

about him. He used the simplest language,

and I thought ‘Can this man be a great teacher?’ I crept near to him and asked him

the question which I had been asking others

all my life: ‘Do you believe in God, Sir?’

‘Yes’ he replied. ‘Can you prove it, Sir?’

‘Yes.’ ‘How?’ ‘Because I see Him just as I

see you here, only in a much intenser

sense.’ That impressed me at once. For the

first time I found a man who dared to say

that he saw God, that religion was a reality

to be felt, to be sensed in an infinitely more

intense way than we can sense the world .

Ability to grant God-vision to others

Sri Ramakrishna not only had the first-

hand experience of God but also was able to

grant this vision to others. Through the train-

ing and the miraculous touch of Sri

Ramakrishna the skeptical young Naren

(Swami Vivekananda) was transformed into

one of the most powerful spiritual personali-

ties of the modern world. Sri Ramakrishna

imparted his authentic spiritual experiences

and convictions to Swami Vivekananda and

the rest is history as we all know.

Sri Ramakrishna’s life clearly tells ushow the quest for God can go beyond the

purview of the limited, traditional, ritualistic

and theoretical academic approach and can

assume the form of intense yearning that

harnesses the total energy of man culminat-

ing in tangible spiritual experience. To all

outward appearances, Sri Ramakrishna’s

personality and life though look to be simple

without religious ostentations, his

inner life is rich in spiritual content and one

can see the overflow of the power of that

spiritual content in all directions, subtly reg-

istering his spiritual influence on every sin-

cere and receptive person who come close to

him and need to realize him.

Swami Saradananda, the author of Sri

Sri Ramakrishna Leelaprasanga, observes

that one yardstick with which Sri

Ramakrishna ultimately judged the worth

and greatness of people is the extent to

which a person has sacrificed his ambitions

and desires for the sake of realizing God.

That spiritual yearning, he compared to the

desperate longing of a drowning man for air

to the exclusion of everything else in life. It

was Sri Ramakrishna’s experience that when

this aspiration reaches its peak with the

highest intensity there is a definite response

from the divine realm which infuses in himblissful light, fills his being with joy inef-

fable and a sense of certitude about the pres-

ence of divinity dawns upon him. This

transforms the sense-bound body-conscious-

ness—the centre of the forces of prakriti—

into a witnessing being suffused with Divine

consciousness.

When we read Sri Ramakrishna’s

authentically recorded day-to-day





conversations with the devotees regarding

spiritual life, we understand that he narrated

his exalted spiritual experiences of God

lucidly and directly in the simplest possible

manner in a language which can be under-

stood by ordinary person just as we narrateour worldly experience to the people. Thus

he disseminated the godly knowledge locked

up in difficult Sanskrit texts in the utterly

simple language which could be understood

by ordinary people. Further, he has brought

down to the realm of human consciousness

many secrets of the divine realm and the va-

riety of subtle spiritual experiences like

Kundalini, the vision of different bhàvas and

forms of the path of Bhakti and the

nirvikalpa samàdhi of Jnàna Yoga.

Describing his God-experience, Sri

Ramakrishna said: ‘The room, the temple

and everything around me, vanished from

sight. I felt as if nothing existed, and in their

stead I perceived a boundless effulgent

ocean of intelligence. Whichever side I

turned my eyes, I saw huge waves of that

shining ocean rushing towards me, and in a

short while, they all came, and engulfed me

completely. Thus getting suffocated under

them, I lost my ordinary consciousness and

fell down. At the same time I was also con-

scious, to the inner core of my being, of the

hallowed presence of the Divine Mother.’

Sri Ramakrishna’s words are the real evi-

dence of the validity of the spiritual experi-

ences that he had and thus he makes God

and the spiritual experience very real to us.

Spiritual experiences

Sri Ramakrishna’s experience of living

in the constant presence of the Divine Power

was related to the God with form. The vision

he had of Shiva, Ràmà or Hanumàn and of

Sri Krishna in his surroundings at Vrindavan

or the vision of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in

religious discourse, or that of Jesus Christ

and Prophet Mohammad can be seen as in-

stances of divinity with form. He regarded

Mother Kàli as the highest form of divinity

and experienced Her presence all the time.

The wide range of spiritual experiences

Sri Ramakrishna had are indeed unusual.Some rationalists may even dismiss them as

hallucinations of mind because these are not

the usual sensate experiences which can be

understood with usual parameters of ordi-

nary human psychology of common people

living on the sense plane. But we must

remember that the life and experiences of

Sri Ramakrishna take us to much higher

levels of human possibilities. They are very

much away from modern psychoanalysis

concerned only with the empirical experi-

ences of man. To understand these spiritual

experiences, which are transcendental in

nature, we have to first purify our mind and

discipline ourselves. The Yoga systems of

Hindu psychology give us a deeper under-

standing of the functioning of the different

dimensions of mind, namely subconscious,

conscious and superconscious. Sri

Ramakrishna not only had superconscious

experiences, he lived on a transcendental

plane most of the time.

To a great yogi like Aurobindo Sri

Ramakrishna’s amazing range of spiritual

experiences seemed unique. He writes in his

own inimitable style:

In a recent and unique example, in the life

of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa we see a co-

lossal spiritual capacity first driving straightto the divine realization, taking, as it were,

the Kingdom of Heaven by violence, and

then seizing upon one Yoga method

after another and extracting the substance

out of it with an incredible rapidity, always

to return to the heart of the whole matter,

the realization and possession of God by

the power of love, by the extension of

inborn spirituality into various experience

and by the spontaneous play of an intuitive



SWAMI MUKTIDANANDA

68 February Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture

knowledge. Such an example cannot be

generalized. Its object also was special and

temporal, to exemplify in the great and

decisive experience of a Master-soul the

truth, now most necessary to humanity,

towards which a world long divided into jarring sects and schools is with difficulty

laboring, that all sects are forms and frag-

ments of a single integral truth and all disci-

plines labor in their different ways towards

one supreme experience. . . Ramakrishna

Paramahamsa is the epitome of the whole.

His was the great super-conscious life which

alone can witness to the infinitude of the

current that bears us all ocean wards. He is

the proof of the Power behind us, and the

future before us.

Sri Ramakrishna was always in touch

with the Divine. This is one of the most fas-

cinating, unusual and a rare feature of Sri

Ramakrishna’s personality—his constant

awareness of God. As he himself narrated,

the Divine Mother had commanded him to

be in the ‘ Bhàvamukha’ — a state of con-

sciousness which keeps the mind on the

threshold of the Absolute and the relative.

Even after having a series of spiritual

experiences, Sri Ramakrishna’s mind was al-

ways linked with the Divine Power that is at

the centre of this universe. He called this

Power ‘Mother Kali’. Even in the spiritual

field, this kind of relationship with divinity

persisting over years together is extremely

rare. The frequent visions which Sri

Ramakrishna had and his going into tran-

scendental state called samà

dhi was a part of this rare relationship.

The real value of Sri Ramakrishna’s

spiritual experiences can be assessed by their

effect on his own personality and the impact

he could make on others’ life. His experi-

ence of God transformed him into

an effulgent divine being exuding bliss

which in subtle ways penetrated and created

positive impact on all who contacted him.

Further, the experience of his samàdhi

remained undiminished even in the midst of

the greatest trials of life like disease and

pain. This transformed a humble temple

priest into a divine personality who became

authentic proof of the existence of unseeingGod. It filled him with such strength of

divine conviction that could influence and

transform the most powerful intellectuals

who were skeptics like Narendranath, Girish

Chandra Ghosh, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar

and so on.

It is interesting to note how Sri

Ramakrishna continues to be a striking proof

of the existence of God. What are the

sources from which we can infer the exist-

ence of God and set at rest the skeptical ten-

dency of the modern mind? Late Sri

Shivakumar Shivacharya Swamiji of Sri

Taralabalu Math, Sirigere, Karnataka, in his

personal diary later published as early

as 1937 under the title ‘ Atmanivedane’

writes to this effect: There are three proofs

to determine the existence of God: (1) This

universe–the amazing creation; (2) Sri

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa; (3) the Vedas–

the authentic scriptural record of the exist-

ence of God.

Out of the three, the manner in which he

singled out Sri Ramakrishna’s life as a proof

of the existence of God tells us how Sri

Ramakrishna’s life and his words have pen-

etrated the minds of people all over the

world and convince them about the fact that

God is a tangible reality and not a figment of imagination.

Sri Ramakrishna nurtured a band of

young disciples to whom he transferred the

priceless spiritual treasures. The lives of the

monastic disciples act as a magnifying lens

to understand the divinity of their great spiri-

tual Master. The experiences of some of the

direct disciples about the continued divine

presence of Sri Ramakrishna, even after he





shed his mortal coil, bear testimony to the

fact that Sri Ramakrishna is an embodiment

of boundless divine power and compassion

who responds to the sincere prayers of his

devotees. An interesting incident in the life

of Swami Turiyananda, a great Vedantin andrational-minded monk, gives us a rare

insight into the divine power and presence of

the Master. It occurred in1916, nearly thirty

years after the passing away of Sri

Ramakrishna. One day Swami Turiyananda

went to the Jagannath temple. As he was

going up the entrance stairs, he suddenly

saw Sri Ramakrishna with a garland of flow-

ers around his neck, coming down the steps

towards him. Turiyananda rushed forward

and prostrated. But when he stretched out

his arm to touch the Master’s feet, he could

see him no more. Then he remembered that

the Master was no longer living in the body.

Turiyananda concluded that Sri

Ramakrishna, whom he believed was an in-

carnation of Lord Jagannath, had gra-

ciously appeared before him in a vision.

Conclusion

In the modern era characterized by the

advancement of science and technology,

there is a tendency to doubt and challenge

all the established faiths and institutions.

One can notice the modern man’s inability

to repose faith in the existence of God, and

a sense of meaninglessness of life assails

him. But Sri Ramakrishna’s experiences

as we have seen above gives a new mean-ing and orientation to the life of modern

man. In fact, Sri Ramakrishna’s life is a

challenge to the scepticism of all times and

a mighty vindication of the fact that the

highest fulfilment can be had only in

the blessedness of godly life.

The great lessons which we learn from

the life of Sri Ramakrishna are the follow-

ing: First, God is, and He can become an

object of direct experience if only man has

in his heart a yearning for Him so intensethat he prizes nothing on earth higher than

Him. Second, the essence of religion is to

come face to face with the Divine. Third, all

the great religions of the world are different

pathways for taking man to the self-same

goal.

In the dark and dreary arena of the mod-

ern world where living and thirsting for God

has become an almost obsolete and impracti-

cal ideal of life and where men and nations

are running a frenzied race for power and

self-aggrandizement, the wonderfully God-

centred life of Sri Ramakrishna, untouched

by the faintest taint of worldly longing and

earthly desire, stands as a beacon of unsur-

passed brilliance and lustre.

Mahatma Gandhi records the irresistible

appeal of the God-centred life of Sri

Ramakrishna in a beautiful passage thus:

‘Ramakrishna was a living embodiment of

godliness. His sayings are not those of a

mere learned man but they are pages from

the Book of Life. They are revelations of his

own experiences. They, therefore, leave on

the reader an impression which he cannot

resist. In this age of scepticism Ramakrishna

presents an example of a bright and living

faith which gives solace to thousands of men

and women who would otherwise haveremained without spiritual light.

Ramakrishna’s life was an object-lesson in

Ahimsà. His love knew no limits, geographi-

cal or otherwise. May his divine love be an

inspiration to all.’

* Swami Muktidananda is Correspondent, Sri Ramakrishna Vidyashala, Yadavagiri, Mysore.

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Sri Ramakrishna - A Veritable Testimony to the Existence of God