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Hinduism    
The Sword of Kali – 7
Reply to "A Philosophical Critique of Radical Universalism"

Ramakrishna and the Irruption of Hindu Universalism

In his attempt to negate Radical Universalism, Dr. Morales also degrades and belittles the Hindu saint, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, who was perhaps the greatest living proof of Hindu Universalism.

The next two neo-Hindu Radical Universalists that we witness in the history of 19th century Hinduism are Ramakrishna (1836-1886) and Vivekananda (1863-1902).

Throughout his remarkable life, Ramakrishna remained illiterate, and wholly unfamiliar with both classical Hindu literature and philosophy, and the authentic teachings of the great acharyas who served as the guardians of those sacred teachings. Despite the severely obvious challenges that he experienced in understanding Hindu theology, playing upon the en vogue sentiment of religious universalism of his day, Ramakrishna ended up being one of the most widely popular of neo-Hindu Radical Universalists.

These are careless words. Do we recognize whom we are here sitting in judgment over? Which pole of the paradox that was Sri Ramakrishna are we speaking of? Is it of the Ramakrishna that was nothing but a flute through which Reality poured forth its Divine Music? Or is it of the Living Reality that filled the mortal frame through and through till there was nothing here but the Life of the Universe pulsating in the frame?

Do we recognise that there was no Ramakrishna, the man? That there was only Sri Ramakrishna, the artless child, and Sri Ramakrishna, the Unfathomable Reality?

This is Living Waters, not the arid desert of academy! The future of Hinduism is not determined by academic papers, but by the living founts of its living saints!

Religion is not archaeology; it is Life. The saint of Dakshineswar was not just a man; he was an irruption of epiphany into the flowing waters of Hinduism!

Did someone say that Sri Ramakrishna was not familiar with the authentic teachings of the great Acharyas? The authentic Self needs no teachings! It is the Reality that is spoken of in the Vedas! Have we not heard of the doctrine of Pratyabhijna? Sri Ramakrishna recognized within his Self what others strive to learn from without!

This world has come out of the Self; where shall ye find its truth if not in the recognition of Self? The Self is all this. Saints like Ramakrishna are not influenced from outside; they recognise each thing outside as the play of Eternity inside!

The play of Eternity is Kaala, Time! She is Kali who moves it; She is Eternity moving. She it was that filled Sri Ramakrishna!

Does anyone still say that Sri Ramakrishna was unfamiliar with the authentic teachings of Hindu religion? With what authority do we impugn the very life of Hindu religion? Are we blind to the fact that this child of God, this illiterate rustic from an unknown Indian village, was a blaze of jnyana-shakti that reduced great Hindu scholars into the likes of kindergarten students? Have we not heard of his meetings with Pundit Ishwara Chandra Vidyasagar and Pundit Shashadhar? The child of Kali might have been a simple and artless person, but the discriminative Sword of Kali never failed him. From where indeed did words like these arise in Sri Ramakrishna:

“No one can say that God is only ‘this’ and nothing else. He is formless, and again He has forms. For the bhakta, He assumes forms. But He is formless for the jnani, that is, for him who looks on the world as a mere dream. The bhakta feels that he is one entity and the world another. Therefore God reveals Himself to him as a Person. But the jnani – the Vedantist, for instance – always reasons, applying the process of ‘not this, not this’. Through his discrimination he realizes, by his inner perception, that the ego and the universe are both illusory, like a dream. Then the jnani realizes Brahman in his own consciousness. He cannot describe what Brahman is.

“Do you know what I mean? Think of Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, as a shoreless ocean. Through the cooling influence, as it were, of the bhakta’a love, the water has frozen at places into blocks of ice. In other words, God now and then assumes various forms for His lovers and reveals Himself to them as a Person. But with the rising of the sun of Knowledge, the blocks of ice melt. Then one doesn’t feel anymore that God is a Person, nor does one see God’s forms. What He is cannot be described. Who will describe Him? He who would do so disappears. He cannot find his ‘I’ any more.

“In that state a man no longer finds the existence of his ego. And who is there left to seek it? Who can describe how he feels in that state – in his own Pure Consciousness – about the real nature of Brahman? Once a salt doll went to measure the depth of the ocean. No sooner was it in the water than it melted. Now who was to tell its depth?

“There is a sign of Perfect Knowledge. Man becomes silent when it is attained. Then the ‘I’ which may be likened to the salt doll, melts in the ocean of Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute and becomes one with It. Not the slightest trace of distinction is left.”

Tell me, Sir, you who say that Sri Ramakrishna wasn’t familiar with the authentic teachings of Hinduism, what these authentic teachings are. Before you dare to measure the words of the saint, quote me those words of Sri Ramakrishna (giving also the sources of your information) that you find so discordant with the authentic teachings of Hinduism. We shall then see who it is that is unfamiliar with the authentic teachings of Hinduism!

Unlike the lives of ancient and medieval saints that come down to us through the mists of legendary stories, we are fortunate to have the life of Sri Ramakrishna recorded in fairly accurate detail. But it is clear that Dr. Morales has not bothered to read them before writing his paper. How else does one account for such callous words as these?

Despite his Hindu roots, however, many of Ramakrishna’s ideas and practices were derived, not from the ancient wisdom of classical Hinduism, but from the non-Vedic religious outlooks of Islam and liberal Christianity. Though he saw himself as being primarily Hindu, Ramakrishna also resorted to worshipping in mosques and churches, and believed that all religions aimed at the same supreme destination. He experimented with Muslim, Christian and a wide variety of Hindu practices, blending, mixing and matching practices and beliefs as they appealed to him at any given moment.

Sri Ramakrishna had his first vision of the Divine Mother when he was twenty years of age. The year was 1856. For six years following this vision he practiced intense sadhana in the tradition of bhakti and meditation, paths that are intrinsic to Hinduism. In 1861, Ramakrishna met the Bhairavi Brahmani, a Tantrik teacher who guided him in the path of this ancient esoteric Hindu tradition. It may be noted that the tradition of Tantra has had such great Hindu saints as Matsyendranatha, Gorakanatha, Utpaladeva, Abhinavagupta, and in recent times, Jnanadeva. Sri Ramakrishna’s Tantrik sadhana continued for four years until, in 1865, it culminated in the highest goal that a bhakta may reach – the state of madhura bhava which is the supreme bhakti that Sri Radha had for Lord Krishna, a love supreme in which everything in the world becomes subservient to the call of Divine Love. Shortly after this, Sri Ramakrishna met Totapuri, an avadhuta who had spent 40 years of his life in the practice of Advaita sadhana. Totapuri initiated Sri Ramakrishna into the esoteric secrets of Vedanta, and within a short time Sri Ramakrishna attained the vision of the unspeakable Non-Dual Truth. Totapuri stayed at Dakshineswar for eleven months, and following his departure, Sri Ramakrishna remained for a full six months in the ineffable state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi, in complete neglect of his body and physical well-being. These years mark the first phase of Sri Ramakrishna’s sadhana – from the initial vision of the Divine Mother through the various paths of bhakti and yoga to the final vision of the highest Truth of Vedanta. When we recount all these years, we see that Sri Ramakrishna spent almost ten years in intense practice that belonged to the hallowed traditions of Hinduism. If Dr. Morales feels that Ramakrishna’s ideas and practices were derived from Islam and Christianity rather than from Hinduism, we can only conclude that Dr. Morales’ fertile imagination is susceptible to strange excursions into the land of fantasy.

It was only in 1866 – with ten years of Hindu sadhana behind him - that Sri Ramakrishna met a Sufi holy man and became eager to experience for himself how the Lord blessed devotees who worshipped Him through the forms of Islam. The sadhana lasted precisely for three days. It took place in the gardens of Dakshineswar and not in a mosque. In the words of Richard Schiffman, “this was followed by absorption in Allah, the Muslim God, whose attributes, in turn, led into the formless Absolute, the Brahman. The river of Sufi devotions had merged with the Hindu stream at the end in the selfsame ocean of Spirit without either name or form.” Eight years later, in 1874, Sri Ramakrishna undertook devotion to Christ. Again the sadhana lasted only for a few days. And again, the sadhana took place in the temple premises of Dakshineswar and not in a Church. It culminated one afternoon in the vision and absorption into Christ wherein “the two supreme lovers of God embraced, and merged into each other. Ramakrishna was propelled into deep rapture, which once again opened into the consciousness of the ineffable Brahman – the true wellspring of spiritual experience known to all the great prophets of mankind, and in which they are eternally united.” Ramakrishna recognised that Islam and Christianity are forms of the same Spiritual Truth. In Kashmir Shaivism, this recognition is called Ishvara Pratyabhijna.

To say that Sri Ramakrishna resorted to worshipping in mosques and churches is to distort a few singular events of his sadhana to make them appear as if they were regular features of his life. Exaggeration is a kind of untruth. Ramakrishna experiment once with Christianity and once with Islam, and each time his sadhana lasted for a few days. The sadhana took place in the gardens of Dakshineswar and not in mosques or churches. Anybody can today read the biographies of Sri Ramakrishna to confirm that it is thus. There is not a single biography that speaks of Sri Ramakrishna as having regularly frequented mosques and churches or as having derived his ideas and practices from Islam and Christianity. One expects more veneration for truth than what Dr. Morales displays when discussing Hindu saints.

Again, Dr. Morales tries to forge a spurious nexus between Radical Universalism, Brahmo Samaj and Sri Ramakrishna:

We encounter one of the first instances of the Radical Universalist infiltration of Hinduism in the syncretistic teachings of Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), the founder of the infamous Brahmo Samaj.

In addition to acquiring Radical Universalism from the Christian missionaries, Roy also felt it necessary to Christianize Hinduism by adopting many Biblical theological beliefs into his new neo-Hindu "reform" movement. Some of these other non-intrinsic adaptations included a rejection of Hindu panentheism, to be substituted with a more Biblical notion of anthropomorphic monotheism; a rejection of all iconic worship ("graven images" as the crypto-Christians of the Brahmo Samaj phrased it); and a repudiation of the doctrine of avataras, or the divine descent of God.

In 1875, Ramakrishna met Keshub Chandra Sen, the then leader of the neo-Hindu Brahmo Samaj, and formed a close working relationship with him. Sen introduced Ramakrishna to the close-knit community of neo-Hindu activists who lived in Calcutta, and would in turn often bring these activists to Ramakrishna’s satsanghas.

If Dr. Morales is here trying to say that the doctrine of the Brahmos was a form of Radical Universalism, then he is obviously confused, because he contradicts this very proposition by stating that the Brahmos rejected Hindu ‘panentheism’ as well as all forms of iconic worship6. If the Brahmos were really Radical Universalists who believed that all religions are the same, or that the paths of all religions led to the same goal, they would have had no reason to reject Hindu ‘panentheism’ or iconic worship. Dr. Morales is actually disproving the hypothesis that he claims to be proving!

The Brahmos were not universalists in the true sense of the word. In founding the Brahmo Samaj, Ram Mohan Roy had wished to institute a religion based on the twin poles of Formless God and Reason. He rejected both the Advaita of Shankara (the God of the Brahmos was a Formless God that created the world ex-nihilo) as well as the idolatry of Hindu polytheism. Ram Mohan Roy defined himself correctly as a Hindu Unitarian and not as a Universalist. Dr. Morales is deluded if he thinks he is showing that Hindu Universalism came from the Brahmo Samaj or that the Brahmos influenced Sri Ramakrishna into accepting a universalism that didn’t until then existed in Hinduism. It was in fact the Brahmos that were deeply influenced in this respect by the saint; their constricted notions of God slowly dissolved before the all-encompassing Universalism of Sri Ramakrishna.

Sri Ramakrishna never met Ram Mohan Roy; Roy died four years before Sri Ramakrishna was born. Devendranath Tagore, the successor of Roy, met Sri Ramakrishna once only; a second meeting that was planned between them never took place. It was Keshab Chandra Sen among the Brahmos that shared the closest and most intimate relationship with Sri Ramakrishna. This relationship was not, as Dr. Morales claims, a working relationship. Sri Ramakrishna had no work to do. He was unable to keep his wearing cloth on his body! His work was to dissolve and let Reality work through him! But Reality had decided that Keshab too would be Its instrument, for it was through Keshab that the word of Sri Ramakrishna spread to the educated elite of India, and it was again through Keshab that Sri Ramakrishna’s universal vision of God percolated to the Brahmos. It would therefore be appropriate for us to study this remarkable chapter in Indian history.

Keshab was a man of towering intellect and deep sensitivities, gifted at once with an intensely devotional nature and a restless mind, and altogether possessing a mysterious disposition that only Sri Ramakrishna among all his associations gauged fully. Even at an early age, Keshab had come under the spell of Christ and he professed to have experienced the special favour of John the Baptist, as well as of Jesus Christ and St. Paul. In a letter written to one of his close disciples in 1866, he said:

“I have my own ideas about Christ, but I am not bound to give them out in due form, until altered circumstances of the country gradually develop them out of my mind. Jesus is identical with self-sacrifice and as He lived and preached in the fullness of time, so must He be in turn preached in the fullness of time…. I am therefore, patiently waiting that I may grow with the age and the nation and the spirit of Christ’s sacrifice may grow therewith.”

Keshab’s faithfulness to Christ was to remain right up to the end of his life. His abiding allegiance to Christ needs to be seen against the backdrop of the relationship he believed he had with Christ; for he believed that he was the incarnation of Judas Iscariot, the thirteenth disciple of Jesus who had betrayed the Son of God. In a sermon that was to come much later (in 1881) he was to declare:

“I must tell you…. that I am connected with Jesus’ Gospel, and occupy a prominent place in it. I am the prodigal son of whom Christ spoke and I am trying to return to my Father in a penitent spirit. Nay, I will say more for the satisfaction and edification of my opponents… I am Judas, that vile man who betrayed Jesus… the veritable Judas who sinned against the truth. And Jesus lodges in my heart!”

Keshab was a giant who eclipsed the other leaders of the Samaj that had come before him. He roused immense enthusiasm during his triumphal visit to England, addressing seventy meetings of 40000 people in six months, and fascinating them with his musical speeches. He was compared to Gladstone, the great Irish parliamentarian and reformist. While Keshab enriched the doctrine of the Brahmos with the genius of his intellect, at its core it remained eclectic in character, intellectually pieced together from the best features of various religions. But despite his contributions to the Brahmo cause, the flame of Christ burned intensely in his heart. By 1866, he could no longer hide the inner propensity of his soul, and when he strove to introduce Christ to the Samaj a rupture became inevitable. In 1868 he broke with the older leader of the movement and founded the Brahmo Samaj of India, while the first Brahmo Samaj under the leadership of Devendranath Tagore came to be re-christened the Adi Samaj. In the aftermath of the schism, Keshab went through a deep moral crisis, and, in the dark years of his despair, he felt the voice of God speaking to him. Keshab emerged from the crisis stronger than before, but the restlessness in his heart had not been quelled. And then, in the year 1875, Keshab met Sri Ramakrishna. The following description of their first meeting shows the kind of relationship that sprang up between them.

Sri Ramakrishna’s face was beaming with a divine radiance. A torrent of inspiring words followed, which went straight to the hearts of the listeners. He spoke of the innumerable manifestations of God, illustrating it by the following parables:

“Some blind men happened to come across an elephant. Someone told them what it was and asked them to describe it as it seemed to them. The one who touched the leg said, ‘The elephant is like a column’, the second one, ‘The elephant is like a willowing fan’. He had touched one of its ears. Similarly, those who had touched its trunk or belly, gave different opinions. So with God, everyone conceives Him according to his experience.”

Ramakrishna ridiculed the attempt by the human mind to fathom the nature of God, by comparing it to an ant that desired to carry a whole sugar-hill in its mouth. It is God’s grace, he said, that leads to realisation. There was something in the manner of his speech that convinced Keshab that Sri Ramakrishna must have actually seen God. Stupefied and puzzled, Keshab Chandra, the high priest of the Brahmo cult, felt like a child before this man of realisation and listened to him with the utmost reverence. He opened the doors of his heart, and every word uttered by the Master found a permanent niche there.

Keshab was intensely moved by Sri Ramakrishna, and in course of time this attraction developed into deep reverence. He began to speak about Sri Ramakrishna in his sermons and quoted him frequently in his writings. Soon, he became the instrument through which the voice of Sri Ramakrishna reached the elite of Bengal.

Words fail to describe the reverence he felt for Sri Ramakrishna. If the Master came to the Brahmo Samaj while Keshab was conducting Services, he would stop his sermon and alight from the pulpit to greet him. At his home one day he showed Sri Ramakrishna all the places where he sat or dined or lay or studied, and requested him to bless them, so that they might always suggest holy thoughts to his mind. It is even said on reliable authority that he took the Master to his meditation room and there worshipped him with flowers.

Whenever he visited Dakshineswar he brought with him some offering in the way of fruits etc., which he reverently placed before the Master, and sitting at his feet like a humble disciple, drank in his words of wisdom. One day the Master said to him in fun, ‘Keshab, you charm people with your eloquence. Let me too hear something from you.’ Keshab modestly replied, ‘I must not be vending needles in a blacksmith’s shop; rather I should listen to you. It is your words repeated to people that are appreciated so much.’

Keshab’s doctrine was until now a mere intellectual synthesis; it was not the spontaneous and effortless vision of a living religion. But his association with Sri Ramakrishna broadened his vision and his eclecticism began to give way to a more truly universal conception of God. To Keshab, God had been the Father, but from Sri Ramakrishna he learnt that God is also the Mother, that Brahman and His Maya are One. From Sri Ramakrishna, he learnt that idol worship is not different than singing the glories of God’s attributes. Sri Ramakrishna opened the floodgates of Keshab’s heart, and its devotional outpouring deluged the Brahmo Samaj with a new religious fervor and took it in a new direction. Sri Ramakrishna had said to him:

‘Why do you dwell so much upon the glories of God? Does a son, when with his father, think of his father’s possessions – his houses, gardens, horses, and cattle? On the contrary he thinks of his father’s love. He knows that it is proper for a father to maintain his children and look out for their welfare. We are all children of God. So what is there to wonder at in His paternal care for us? The real devotee never thinks about these things. He looks upon God as his very own – his nearest and dearest – and says boldly, ‘Thou must fulfill my desires – must reveal Thyself to me.’ If you dwell so much upon His glories, you cannot think of Him as your own, nor can you feel intimate with Him. You are awed by His majesty. He is no longer near. No, no, you must think of Him as your nearest and dearest. Then only can you realize Him.’

Keshab introduced the singing of kirtans into the Brahmo Samaj, and from morning till night the Samaj resounded to devotional hymns sung to the accompaniment of Vaishnavite music. In 1878, in the midst of this growing fervour, there was a second split in the Brahmo Samaj. This time it was brought about by the marriage of his daughter to a wealthy man before she had attained the marriageable age approved by the Samaj. Keshab’s action came under severe criticism and he was once again thrown into a crisis. And then, out of the depths of his despair, there arose a new voice, a voice that was still a whisper, but one that was to thunder its way across the seas all the way to Europe. It was the stirrings of the New Dispensation. Mazoomdar gives us an account of its genesis*******:

One evening while Keshab lay in bed, and we had proceeded far into the excitement of such a talk, he suddenly got up and said, there must be a great and unprecedented Revival, if the Brahmo Samaj is to tide over the present crisis. In devotions, disciplines, doctrines, and missionary activities, there should be introduced all along the line such spirit of Revival as had never yet been seen. We all concurred with the idea, but we did not perceive that what Keshab said was the result of long and intense mediation and much earnest prayer, that it boded a kind of activity for which none of us was prepared. When therefore Keshab spoke of a Revival in 1879, he meant a further advance, a greater advance than had been ever made before, on the lines of a new revelation, a new life, altogether a new departure.

The Revival was the New Dispensation. It was born out of the vision fashioned in his heart by Sri Ramakrishna. It was a vision of the Vedic God, but Keshab covered It with the name of Christ. Perhaps the New Dispensation was his atonement for his terrible betrayal of the Son of God. He announced it to his Hindu brethren in 1880 in his famous Epistle to the Indian Brethren:

“Paul wrote full of faith in Christ. As a theist I write to you this, my humble epistle, at the feet, not of one prophet only, but of all the prophets in heaven and earth, living or dead….”

“The New Dispensation is the prophesy of Christ fulfilled…. The Omnipotent speaks today to our country as formerly He did to other nations….”

“The Spirit of God and my inner self are knit together, If you have seen me, you have seen Him….”

In the same year, Keshab also sent out a proclamation declaring the God as Mother:

“A New Dispensation has come down upon the Brahmo Samaj which proclaims a new programme to India. Its chief merit is its freshness, and its own watchword is – God, the Mother of India…. all its changes are rung upon that single word – God Mother.”

According to the New Dispensation, God, out of His boundless love for man, incarnates on earth from time to time. As sleeping Logos, Christ lives potentially in the Father’s bosom. He had lived long, long before he came into this world of ours as Christ. He came in Greece and India, Egypt and China, he came in the form of the Rg-Veda poets, he came in the form of Confucius, and he came in many countries and in many forms. Clearly, the vision was Hindu, but in Keshab’s eyes it bore the name of Christ. The New Dispensation was not merely Christ coming to India, but Christ coming to the entire world – for the New Dispensation was proclaimed as the true revelation of Christ that the West had narrowed and reified into a form of iconic worship. These words of Keshab were aimed not at the Hindus, but at the West:

“Begone, idolatry! Preachers of idol-worship, adieu!”

“Sectarian and carnal Europe, put into the scabbard the sword of your narrow faith! Abjure it and join the true Catholic and Universal Church in the name of Christ, the Son of God!….”

He was convinced that the West had not understood Christ, and that the New Dispensation was ‘an institution of the Holy Spirit that completes the Old and New Testaments’:

“Christian Europe has not understood one half of Christ’s words. She has comprehended that Christ and God are one, but not that Christ and humanity are one. That is the great mystery, which the New Dispensation reveals to the world: not only the reconciliation of man with God; but the reconciliation of man with man!”

The sequence of events that we have so far delineated belies the charge that Hindu Universalism was the infiltration of a Western idea into Hinduism, or ‘the Christianisation of Hindu theology’ as Dr. Morales calls it. The New Dispensation is proof that the current of history actually flowed in the reverse direction - originating in a Hindu source and moving towards the Universalisation of Christian theology in the New Dispensation.

Even when the inspirational storm of the New Dispensation was blowing in his mind, Keshab could not resist the pull of Sri Ramakrishna and the Divine Mother. He had become an ardent devotee of Mother Kali, and he would often cry at the mention of Her name. Yet the New Dispensation never stopped tugging at his heart. Sri Ramakrishna saw the inner turmoil in Keshab’s soul and treated him with extreme tenderness and consideration. Keshab became seriously ill in 1883, and soon afterwards, in January 1884, he succumbed to his illness. Sri Ramakrishna visited him a few weeks before his death and spoke to him profound words that were like a balm to the hidden wounds of the dying man; and the two devotees then talked nothing but God. It is said that Keshab spoke to the Divine Mother from his deathbed, and that in his last moments he laughed and wept in divine ecstasy.

It was not only Keshab but many of the Brahmos that came under the sway of Sri Ramakrishna’s influence. Here is an account from one of Sri Ramakrishna’s biographies:

Having realized God in His different aspects, relative as well as Absolute, Sri Ramakrishna had not difficulty in guiding these devotees (Brahmos) along their own lines, at the same time removing their prejudices so that they might concentrate their whole energy upon the search for God. Knowing that they would not be able to follow his teachings in their entirety, he told them to take as much as they could and reject the rest.

The Brahmos gained a broader and more comprehensive idea about God from the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna. He would say to them, ‘None can limit God by saying that he has known all about Him. He has form, and again He is without form. Who knows how many aspects He has!’….. The Brahmos began to appreciate that there was much significance behind image worship – a practice which they used to call idolatry. From Sri Ramakrishna they learnt that Brahman and Its manifestations are inseparable.

We have in the words hereinabove briefly outlined how it was that the tide of Hindu Universalism flowed from Sri Ramakrishna to the hearts of Keshab Chandra Sen and the Brahmos. If these words still fail to convince our readers that this was the direction in which the idea of Hindu Universalism flowed, then the final verdict must lie with the words of Pratap Mazoomdar, a Brahmo himself and a disciple of Keshab Sen, who writes:

What is there in common between him and me? I, a Europeanised, civilised, self-centred, semi-sceptical, so-called educated reasoner, and he, a poor, illiterate, unpolished, half-idolatrous, friendless Hindu devotee? Why should I sit long hours to attend to him, I, who have listened to Disraeli and Fawcett, Stanley and Max Muller, and a host of European scholars and divines?….. And it is not I only, but dozens like me, who do the same….. He worships Shiva, he worships Kali, he worships Rama, he worships Krishna, and is a confirmed advocate of Vedantic doctrines….. He is an idolator, yet is faithful and most devoted meditator on the perfections of the One Formless, Absolute, Infinite Deity….. His religion is ecstasy, his worship means transcendental insight, his whole nature burns day and night with a permanent fire and fever of a strange faith and feeling….. So long as he is spared to us, gladly shall we sit at his feet to learn from him the sublime precepts of purity, unworldliness, spirituality, and inebriation in the love of God….. He, by his childlike bhakti, by his strong conceptions of an ever-ready Motherhood, helped to unfold it in our minds wonderfully….. By associating with him we learnt to realise better the divine attributes as scattered over the three hundred and thirty millions of deities of mythological India, the gods of the Puranas.

Sri Ramakrishna’s universal vision was not, as Dr. Morales claims, due to the influence of the Brahmo Samaj or Keshab Sen. Sri Ramakrishna was influenced by only one thing, and that one thing was God! It speaks out of the pages of his biographies – if one cares to read them!
In conclusion, we would like to state that Dr. Morales fails to provide a single argument to substantiate his claims - he merely gives us his blinkered opinions instead. Dr. Morales is welcome to outline the biography of Sri Ramakrishna and show us that his dogmatic opinions have a base, but until then we are fully justified in classifying the words of Dr. Morales as a work of pure fiction.    

– Continued

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