Ramakrishna Sadhan Parikrama- Ramakrishna's Spiritual Practices: A Study (An Old and Rare Book)

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A high-souled personality in the spiritual world is more often than not looked upon as Divinity incarnate, as it were. There is nothing unusual about it so long as it is a hyperbolic way of speaking. In reality, however, we find that such exaggerations exceed the bounds of figures of speech and people come to look upon such personality as embodiment of God Himself. There lies the rub. The immeasurable virtues of God are beyond our grasp and not unnaturally, therefore, desisting from even seeking to ascend those heights, we come to deify that Person, Great Master-solemnly instal him on a pedestal outside the pale of the banalities of daily life. We begin to worship him as though he were God Him-self and presume that thereby our task is over.

If. on the other hand, we take him to be all too like so many of us, but only bestowed with superior virtues, we should naturally feel like following him in our daily life and imbibe his tenets. Possibly that is the reason why God incarnates Himself in human form again and again. But there too, because of our innate mental lassitude we too easily instal that 'Divine Incarnation' in human form on the pedestal of God again, divesting Him of all normal anthropomorphic attributes.

Exactly this game we have played with Thakur Ramakrishna and congratulated ourselves that we have deified him. It is for this reason that the impress of his profound life and teachings has largely remained con-fined to the subconscious region of our mind and the music of ceremonial devout songs, chanting of cymbals and sentimental empty profusions are all that have found their way to the surface. In the present book the author has in course of analysing the Pilgrimage of Ramakrishna's Sadhana, sought to disabuse one's mind of this wrong assessment of Ramakrishna and tried to unveil the shrouds of the sub-conscious region of our mind. He has brought into bold relief the transformation of Gadadhara "The Man', into Ramakrishna. "The Sadhaka and shown how 'Sadhaka Ramakrishna has risen further to the heights of 'Siddhasadhaka Loka Guru' (The Preceptor of Man)" who has attained the fullest measure of spiritual freedom. Undoubtedly the seeds of Sadhaka Ramakrishna lay dormant in the boy Gadadhara. Otherwise, the supernatural manifestations in his Kamarpukur life would all go unexplained. It is only because that seed had already sprouted that the guidance of different preceptors was needed to conduct him through the various routes of spiritual exercise (sadhana). There is no gainsaying the fact that very early in his life he had the divine grace bestowed on him, but the root of all his sadhana lay in the stead-fast unrelenting strivings of Ramakrishna, the man. It is all the more true that only divine grace and divine proximity could bestow fullest spiritual consummation. It is to be noted, however, that even after the attainment of complete salvation, the highest objective of life in all the three worlds the heaven, the earth, and the hades, that Ramakrishna desired to remain in the world of man as man's preceptor and this was the proof positive of the fact that in the ultimate analysis he assigned to himself the human role. After all with his spiritual fulfilment he wanted to dedicate himself to alround human welfare. Our author has unfolded this story with rare clarity and precision.

The present work, Ramakrishna's Spiritual Practices: A Study comprises three chapters and attempts an exposition of the Ramakrishna 'phenomenon. This ex position is confined to an appraisal of the miraculous activities of Gadadhar Chattopadhyaya of Kamarpukur, Sri Ramakrishna, the priest and sadhaka (spiritual aspirant) of Dakshineswar and Sri Ramakrishna Param hamsadeva, the great Master. Thematically, the chapters vary, but the work as a whole is the evolution and un folding of one undivided entity. The first chapter briefly describes Gadadhar's doings in his boyhood days, his attitude of mind, aim of life, inherited tendencies, tradition, milieu, immediate surroundings, and so on. It poses the question: Was Gadadhar's advent at a critical turn of history at Kamarpukur in the district of Hooghly, a historical inevitability or divine grace, or both? Yet another question, in fact the basic one, has been raised: Was the Sadhaka Ramakrishna an evolution or transcendence of the entity of Gadadhar, or both?

Now what do we mean by 'transcendence'?

If we closely examine the experiences of our life we find that all that we do are more or less actuated by our biological urges; to satisfy the hunger and needs of the body is, as it were, the central purpose of our life. We strive to explain everything in our worldly life by using or stretching the language of the body (matter), and we formulate some logic in consonance with this explanation so as to rationalize our behaviour. It is undeniable that at the primary stage of our experience something un-defined presents itself as the 'given' and that we accept it as such. We cannot also deny that this undefined 'given' is an 'object', independent of the subject 'T'. This obviously results at the outset in the creation of duality in the sphere of experience. On one side something ever-changing and known as nature exists as a background of all that is happening in the world of experience, and on the other there is a particular type of creature called by the name of man, marking the highest point of evolution. Though born in nature, he makes ceaseless efforts to exert his supremacy over nature and shape it anew. It is the nexus and transcendence of the 'object' and 'subject' ('T) that signify knowledge or experience in its ordinary sense. This experience guides a common man's mundane life. But the boy Gadadhar's experience of life, that is, what he started his life with, was of a different kind. In other words, he did not follow the beaten track.

A little introspection and self-consciousness enable one to form an idea, independent of matter, and it is this idea which leads to self-awareness. From his early child-hood Gadadhar had the spirit of inquiry about the highest end of human life and the means of attaining it. He observed all the goings-on in life-the transitoriness of the world and man's untiring efforts to win name and fame and position at the expense of his life. Besides, he could perceive beauty in all the phenomena of nature such as the song of the birds, the murmur of the river and the blue expanse of the sky. His was indeed a subtle and aesthetic mind that was perceptible even at a cursory glance. Chapter 1 deals with all these matters and raises also a very pertinent issue. Extraordinariness marks the ways of many in their boyhood but in future they leave no trace of anything remarkable in human life. As against these there are others who, though just ordinary in their early life, ultimately grow up to be extraordinary. The issue has been touched upon in the first chapter.