The Roerichs' spouses called Ramakrishna “the bright giant of India”. It just so happened that the greatest reformer of Hinduism and preacher was the semi-literate son of ignorant parents, who had nothing but love for God and for people. He is remembered not only in his country: Ramakrishna is the first Indian mystic of modern times, who was recognized by Europe and America.
Sri Ramakrishna is a rare case for Hinduism when the biography of its prominent representative becomes the property of society. In India, traditionally, more attention is paid to the teachings of the saints, rather than the names, dates and facts associated with them. The true and most interesting description of the life of Sri Ramakrishna was left by his disciple Swami Saradananda, who, sifting facts from legends and myths, wrote a biography called Sri Ramakrishna Lilaprasanga. Another famous biographical work, "The Life of Ramakrishna", belongs to the pen of Romain Rolland - by the way, it was published in Russian in Rolland's collected works back in 1936.
The word "Sri", addressed to a divine or spiritual person, is a Hindu title of high reverence and can be translated as "lord" or "teacher". And here is how Romain Rolland interprets the word “Paramahamsa”: “Paramahamsa is a large bird, soaring high (literally - an Indian goose. But this species in India does not correspond to the European goose). This word, meaning "wise and holy," usually accompanies the name of Sri Ramakrishna. " But they began to call him that much later.
Ramakrishna Chattopadhya (Chatterjee), who was called Gadadhar in his youth, was born on February 18, 1836 in the village of Kamarpukur (now the Hooghly region of West Bengal). He was the fourth of five children in the family.
Ramakrishna's parents, Khudiram and Chandra, came from a poor but superior, brahminical, caste family, and were pious people who dedicated their lives to serving the virtuous hero Rama, worshiping him as the embodiment of God in human form.
Once Khudiram refused to give false testimony on the orders of the village headman, who started a lawsuit with a poor neighbor, and thereby doomed his family to ruin. Ramakrishna's father died when the boy was seven years old. The family left without a livelihood was going through hard times.
Ramakrishna experienced his first vision in June or July 1842. On the night of Shiva's holiday, Ramakrishna, as an eight-year-old child, played the role of Shiva in a religious performance and suddenly felt himself dissolved in his hero. Since then, visions have become more frequent.
Time passed, and it was time for Ramakrishna to think about making money. In 1855, his elder brother agreed to become a priest of the temple of the great goddess, the divine Mother Kali at Dakshineswar near Calcutta. The founder of the temple, Rani Rasmani, belonged to the Shudra caste - the lowest of the four Indian varnas. For a brahmana, a native of the highest caste, to which the Ramakrishna family belonged, the position of a priest in the Kali temple was a kind of disqualification, both due to the low origin of its founder and the generally unenviable position of a temple priest in India, who was obliged to collect despicable money for exalted religious ceremonies.
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At that time, Ramakrishna was still very sensitive about the caste system. However, his aversion to the sudras soon waned, and when his elder brother passed away the following year, 20-year-old Ramakrishna replaced him as the temple priest.
The thoughts of the divine occupied all of Ramakrishna's thoughts: he was often scolded for distraction. He was in despair that Mother Kali still would not appear to him, but once, when he was on the verge of suicide from grief, a miracle happened: the statue of Kali came to life and spoke to him. This is how Ramakrishna attained oneness with his beloved deity.
From that moment his studies began. As if by magic, people who became his spiritual teachers came to the Kali temple: the wanderer Bhairavi, who revealed to him the ancient secrets of tantra, the ascetic naga, who introduced him to the teachings of Advaita Vedanta. It boils down to the fact that God, Brahman, is actually the only one for all mankind, but due to the fact that all peoples are different, and times change, he appears in different guises so that people are able to perceive his word … God fills with himself all that exists, and the human soul, Atman, is its particle.
Gradually, in his revelations, Ramakrishna reached the point that both his beloved Kali and other gods of the Hindu pantheon, and not only the Hindu, are different incarnations of Brahman. He became interested in other religions. Praying and meditating, in his visions he saw Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, but behind all of them, in the end, the same power appeared to him.
Gradually, disciples began to flock to Ramakrishna - both ordinary people and not so much. One of them was the famous actor, director and playwright from Calcutta, the founder of the Bengali drama Girish Chandra Ghosh. At first, he treated Ramakrishna with some disdain, he could appear drunk, but gradually he was imbued with respect and accepted his ideas - and he gave up drinking.
Another student was Narendranath Dutt, who later discovered Hinduism in Europe and America under the name of Swami Vivekananda. Young Narendra - the son of wealthy aristocratic parents, a well-educated handsome man - also at first could not take seriously the teachings of the semi-literate Ramakrishna, who now and then lost touch with the world in bouts of samadhi - a state of oneness with the Absolute. But Ramakrishna saw in him his best disciple, who had to take the ideas of Vedanta and the spiritual experience of India beyond its borders - and gradually Narendranath became his most devoted follower.
Ramakrishna's inner circle included his wife Sarada. Indeed, the ascetic Ramakrishna was married, but his marriage was not like the usual. One day, his mother, preoccupied with her son's too strong passion for lofty matters, spoke to him about marriage. Contrary to her fears, Ramakrishna did not deny the marriage and even showed her the village where she could find him a bride. The wedding - purely formal, of course - took place when Ramakrishna was 24 and his bride was seven.
When Sarada reached the age where their marriage could become real, her husband honestly invited her to make a choice. He said that if she wished, their union would become real. But he admitted that the divine attracts him much more than the earthly, and promised that if their relationship remains platonic, he will take her as a student and will respect and honor not only as a spouse, but as Mother Kali herself - and the mother of his students. Sarada preferred the latter.
In general, a variety of people gathered around Ramakrishna, but he took into the closest circle of students only those who did not have obligations to the world - that is, people who did not need to feed and support their wife, children or elderly parents. “In fact, it doesn't matter at all whether you live in the world or in a family, just not to lose communication with God …”, Romain Rolland quotes him as saying.
At the end of his life, Ramakrishna, along with his 12 closest disciples, retired to the Calcutta suburb of Kossipur - he suffered from laryngeal cancer. Ramakrishna once compared a person to a coconut: until it is ripe, it is impossible to separate its body-skin and soul-pulp, but the further, the easier it is to do this. On August 16, 1886, Ramakrishna's coconut shattered: death freed his soul.
Ramakrishna's disciples continued his work. Very soon Vivekananda traveled to America and Europe, and Ramakrishna's name became known outside India. And in 1897 they founded the Ramakrishna Mission educational center and the Belur Math religious center near Calcutta, where people wishing to devote their lives to serving humanity could prepare for this. They are still in effect.
Lavrentieva Elizaveta