Sri Ramakrishna On Himself

Sri Ramakrishna on Himself

Compiled by Dr. Mohit Ranjan Das/Advaita Ashrama/5 Dehi Entally Road/Kolkata 700014/May 2014

A wonderful selection of Sri Ramakrishna’s utterances, taken mostly from Swami Nikhilananda’s translation of the Kathamrita and  known widely as the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna in two volumes.  Dr. Mohit Ranjan Ray and Advaita Ashrama must take credit for having established through this selection that God alone is His/Her own absolute complement or point of comparison. Sri Ramakrishna (Thakur) stands resplendent and irresistible, through his many utterances, which provide a rich range of his early and also late spiritual experiences, the play of his mind and intellect as it forayed into closely observed natural phenomena and domestic details, coming up with compelling images and metaphors, with which to extend and substantiate spiritual ideas and philosophies. This is what makes the Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita, a text of the utmost plenitude and joy, whose multiple layers and multiple resonances, linking the quotidian and the most sublime, sets up a  universe, in which the verbal, intellectual, artistic and philosophical, endlessly intersect and interface, literally linking Heaven to Earth.  These charged utterances  give proof of Sri Ramakrishna’s prodigious memory and also of  his innate artistic sensibilities, not only manifested  in his proclivity towards song, but in  his ability to transform and recast the world of ordinary perception and experience, by creating new and startling juxtapositions and associations, much as an artist does through his/her paint brush or words!