Sri Ramakrishna was born Gadadhar Chatterjee in 1836 at Kamarpukur about sixty miles from Calcutta. His parents, Khudiram and Chandramani, were poor and made ends meet with great difficulty. The spent most of their time worshipping their family diety, Raghuvir, Whom they looked upon as their patron and protector.

Gadadhar was the pet of the whole village. He was handsome and had a natural gift for the fine arts. He, however, disliked going to school. When asked why he did not want to go to school, his reply was, "The so-called education is for earning money only; I don't care for this kind of education." He loved Nature and spent his time in fields and fruit gardens outside the village with his friends. Now and then, he went into ecstasies. A line of white cranes against black monsoon clouds, singing religious songs or acting in a religious drama sent him to ecstasies.

Gadadhar lost his father a the age of seven. He became more serious from then on, but he did not change his ways and habits. He continued to refuse to go to school. Instead, he was seen visiting monks who stopped at his village on their way to Puri. He would serve them and listen with rapt attention to the arguments they often had among themselves over religious issues.

Gadadhar had now attained the age when he should be invested with the sacred thread. When arrangements were nearly complete for this, Gadadhar declared that he would have his first alms as a brahmin from a certain Sudra women of the village. This was something unheard of! Tradition required that it should be a brahmin and not a Sudra who would give him the first alms. This was pointed out, but he was adamant. He said he had given his word to the lady and if he did not keep his word, what sort of brahmin would he be then? No argument, no appeal, no amount of tears could budge him from his position. Finally, Ramkumar his eldest brother and now the head of family, had to give in.

Meanwhile, the family's financial position worsened everyday. Ramkumar ran a Sanskrit school in Calcutta and also served as priest for some families. His earnings were pitifully small and he was unable to send money home regularly. He decided to bring Gadadhar to Calcutta. His plan was to try to make him study Sanskrit. Perhaps he could also do some priestly work and make some money of his own. Gadadhar arrived but he lost no time in making it clear that he was not going to study. He, However, did not mind doing some priestly work, not for money but for the pleasure of it.

About this time, a rich women of Calcutta, Rani Rashmoni, founded a temple at Dakshineswar. She approached Ramkumar to serve as priest at the Temple of Kali and Ramkumar agreed. After some persuasion, Gadadhar agreed to decorate the deity. When Ramkumar retired, Gadadhar took his place as priest.

When Gadadhar started worshipping Mother Kali, that is, Kali Ma, he began to ask himself 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 would weep bitterly and sometimes even cry out loudly while worshipping. At night, he would go into a near-by 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 saw light issuing from the deity in waves and he was soon overwhelmed by those waves. He then fell down unconscious on the floor.

Gadadhar was not, however, content with this. He prayed to Mother Kali for more religious experiences. He specially wanted to know the truths over religious systems taught. Ramakrishna then entered upon a period of Twelve Years, during which he went through very elaborate spiritual disciplines. Strangely enough, teachers of those systems arrived as and when necessary as if directed by some invisible power. One of those teachers was a wandering monk named Totapuri, and it was he that eventually contributed to the unfolding of the Awakening experience in Ramakrishna.

In 1863, at age 27, Ramakrishna took the first of two pilgrimages. His second pilgrimage took place five years later, in January 1868, visiting Kashi dham, Prayag and Vrindavan. It was during his second pilgrimage that he met and spoke with one of India's most truly remarkable holy men, Trailanga Swami, who had taken the vow of silence, and who at the time, was 267 years old.

NOTE: There are four short references to Trailanga Swami in The Gospel of Ramakrishna. The longest, in Swami Nikhilananda's introduction, describes Ramakrishna's VISION of the Siva in Benares; "with ash-covered body and tawny matted hair, serenely approaching each funeral pyre and breathing into the ears of the corpses the mantra of liberation."

When Ramakrishna paid his visit to Trailanga Swami he later declared him to be a real Paramahamsa, a "veritable image of Siva." Ramakrishna also described the Swami as having taken a vow of silence, but also quotes him regarding the mind, so apparently he was not always silent (possibly writing responses).

Soon word spread about this remarkable man who was to become known as Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and people of all denominations and all stations of life began to come to him. He taught ceaselessly for fifteen years or so through parables, metaphors, songs and above all by his own life the basic truths of religion. He passed away in 1886, leaving behind a devoted band of young disciples headed by the well-known scholar and orator, Swami Vivekananda, followed shortly thereafter by a just as devoted second generation group.

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SECOND GENERATION DEVOTEES

Several members of the first and second generation devotees traveled beyond India and were soon found to be rubbing shoulders with various people of international renown. Two such individuals they found themselves rubbing shoulders with were the authors Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood, both of whom were Englishmen residing in the United States on the west coast. Their writings and support were partly responsible for bringing the word of Ramakrishna into the public consciousness after they came into contact with the Vedanta Society founded by Swami Vivekananda and his followers in California in the late 1930s.

Swami Prabhavananda

In the 1920's a woman living in South Pasadena named Carrie Mead Wyckoff became acquainted with Swami Prabhavananda, a young monk and second generation devotee sent to America by the Order. In 1929 he established the Vedanta Society of Southern California in a house in the Hollywood hills given to the Order as a gift by Mrs. Wyckoff. By the 1940's the Society had attracted a number of noted writers and intellectuals that had been showing up in the general Hollywood area about that time, of which Huxley and Isherwood were two. It should be noted that British playwright and author W. Somerset Maugham, who wrote the novel The Razor's Edge about a young man in search of Spiritual Awakening, was peripheral to the group as well, although his novel was primarily influenced from his Travels in India and meeting with the Enlightened sage of Arunachala, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.***(see)

While in Hollywood working on The Razor's Edge it is said Maugham did approach Isherwood to translate the following quote from the Katha Upanishad that he used as the opening to the novel:

The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over;
the the wise say the path to Salvation is hard.

What did Sri Ramakrishna teach ?

Ramakrishna's American religious offshoot, The Vedanta Society of Southern California, under the auspices of Huxley and Isherwood, seemed to place an extraordinary heavy emphasis on Samadhi, but, although an intregal part of the Ramakrishna movement generally, Samadhi didn't seem to carry any more than its regualar importance otherwise.

1. Sri Ramakrishna taught no creed or dogma. His only concern was man's uplift. According to him, there is infinite moral and spiritual potential in man. To develop that potential is man's foremost duty in life. He taught man to strive to develop that potential without wasting time over sense pleasure or religious quibblings.

2. Religions are like so-many paths leading to the same goal, i.e., God. Man reaches his religious goal when he attains his highest moral development.

3. God is both personal in impersonal. It is difficult to conceive an impersonal God, so, to begin with God has to be thought of as a person. Can anyone think of the white colour without thinking of a white object? One can look at the morning sun, but not at the midday sun. Similarly, when God is manifest in a person we know what God is like, otherwise God is impersonal and beyond thought and speech.

4. Be in the world but not of it. Perform your duties as well as you can, but do not count too much upon the fruits of your action. Rather, surrender them to God. Try to feel as if you are only a tool at the hands of God.

5. Religion is an experience. Religion makes no sense unless its truths are experienced. Is your thirst satisfied unless you drink water when you are thirsty?

6. God is everywhere but He is most manifest in man. So serve man as God. That is as good as worshipping God.