Excerpts

1. Essence of Sri Ramakrishna's teachings

RAMAKRISHNA The sensitive mother presents various preparations of fish to her hungry children -- plain and bland or rich and spicy, depending on their tastes and their powers of digestion. Just so, the Mother of the Universe reveals various spiritual practices. This child enjoys every one of Her delicious dishes without exception.

Whether you follow the ideal of the Personal God or the impersonal Truth, you will certainly realize the One Reality, provided that you experience profound longing. The same cake tastes sweet from every direction.

Place your devotion whole-heartedly at the service of the ideal most natural to your being, but know with unwavering certainty that all spiritual ideals are expressions of the same supreme Presence.

Do not allow the slightest trace of malice to enter your mind toward any manifestation of God or toward any practitioner who attempts to live in harmony with that Divine Manifestation. Kali, Krishna, Buddha, Christ, Allah -- these are all full expressions of the same indivisible Consciousness and Bliss. These are the revelatory initiatives of Divine Reality, not manmade notions.

The ecstatic lover has burning faith in every Divine Manifestation -- as formless Radiance, as various Forms or Attributes, as Divine Incarnations like Rama and Krishna, and as the Goddess of Wisdom, who is beyond form and formlessness, containing both in Her mystic Womb.

Meet as many adepts from various paths as you can. Love these persons, receive their initiations, and passionately practice their disciplines. But enter your own inner chamber of primordial awareness to enjoy selfless peace and delight.

Everyone will attain God-consciousness and be liberated. Some receive their meal early in the morning, others at noon, still others not until evening. But none will go hungry. Without any exception, all living beings will eventually know their own true nature to be timeless awareness.

A PARAMAHAMSA, or great swan, is a true human being: one who has realized the timeless nature of awareness, one who has awakened with relaxed delight to the indescribable, the inconceivable, the inexpressible, one who has attained the goal of spiritual evolution. To meet and communicate with a paramahamsa is to perceive through the eyes of every sacred scripture revealed during the long history of humanity. To breathe the healing atmosphere of bliss and illumination that surrounds such a person and to hear the resonant words of a paramahamsa in intimate conversation is to commune with every saint of love, every wise sage, every mystic poet. This fully awakened being is a confluence of all the lineages of sacramental power -- initiatory successions that have been cherished and carefully transmitted by generations of disciplined practitioners.

Where can we encounter a true human being? The Great Swan, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, abides in a sacred garden dedicated to Goddess Kali, Great Mother of the Universe. Hidden within the perennially ancient realm of India, he lives peacefully, roaming and dancing through twenty acres of consecrated land along the Ganges River, just north of modern Calcutta. He converses for hours on end with his spiritual friends, who remain fascinated by the luminous flow of words and silences. Shall we visit these hallowed grounds to meet with the Great Swan?

Ramakrishna teaches that the closer one comes to Mother Ganga, the river of transcendent peace, the more one experiences Her delicious tranquility, Her subtle coolness that alleviates disease, suffering, and anxiety. As we now approach Dakshineswar Garden, we begin to intone spontaneously SHANTI SHANTI SHANTI -- peace, peace, peace. May the perfect peace of knowing the one Presence permeate us, through and through, pervading all space and illuminating conscious beings everywhere!

Arriving at the impressive main gate of the Temple Garden along the dusty highway from the conventional world, the crowded city of Calcutta, we proceed directly to the chamber of Ramakrishna, moving through exalted architecture and beside abundantly flowering gardens -- a natural offering of the earth to the sublime Wisdom Goddess enshrined here. Even the nine domes of the Kali Temple seem to bloom from this rich, sacred soil.

The Paramahamsa's room is always open. He cherishes no sense of separate, private, personal space. We find him seated comfortably on a common wood-frame bed facing east, his wonderful eyes gazing into the perpetual dawn of Divine Wisdom. Smiling with delight, experiencing only the innate bliss of primordial awareness, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa is conversing with his friends about Divine Reality -- its play as the universe, its compassionate manifestation through various traditional religious forms, its nature as formless radiance that shines at the heart of every conscious being, and its essence that can never be touched by speech or mind. This is the sage's only subject of conversation, yet his approach to it is constantly new and unpredictable.

Welcoming and treating all visitors as messengers from his Divine Beloved, or even as direct manifestations of the Beloved, Ramakrishna talks and laughs with them -- communing as well in radiant silence -- for more than twenty hours every day. He feasts with these forms of his Beloved, dances and sings with them, rests with them on white cloths spread over the cool stone floor during the heat of the afternoon, keeps vigil with them at the mystic midnight hour, worships with them in the Temple of the Universal Mother.

In the delicate early morning light and again at twilight, the Paramahamsa burns incense in his room, bowing humbly and devotedly before sacred images and symbols from the diverse religious traditions of humanity. After chanting various beautiful Divine Names in a melodious voice and dancing gracefully, he sits at ease in his natural state of total illumination, radiating a mother's tender concern for all conscious beings, with whom he identifies his own being constantly and completely. His blessed wife, Mother Sarada, who lives almost invisibly in the small music pavilion just north of the Master's room, has experienced her husband's blissful presence even in the ants that abound in the Temple Garden. She treats all sentient beings with loving respect, for to her they manifest the indivisible Consciousness that she and Ramakrishna simply call Ma, Mother. At this Temple Garden of the Great Goddess, a timeless festival is blossoming, night and day, around these enlightened twin souls, Ramakrishna and Sarada.