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RAMAKRISHNA
My Mother is the principle of consciousness. She is akhanda satchidananda - indivisible Reality, Awareness, and Bliss. The night sky between the stars is perfectly black. The waters of the ocean depths are the same. The infinite is always mysteriously dark. This inebriating darkness is my beloved Kali. Mother is now running up and down the stairs of Her Temple in sheer delight, Her tangled black hair flowing free. Her anklets are making musical sounds. Can you hear? Can you see?

...Her Energy is like the rays of the sun ... Awaken to nondual Reality through Mother Kali. She holds the key.

The passionate lover does not care for formless Divine Presence. The small child wants only its mother. But the vision of the ishtadeva, the aspect of Divinity most intimate to the heart, is equivalent to supreme knowledge, for the ishtadeva is actually the practitioner’s own infinite nature, limitless awareness.

Mother, is it You or I? Do I perform any action, think any thought? No! No! It is You alone. You listen through my ears to all these words of teaching. I am not listening. Only You.

Founder and original publisher and editor of this magazine, Lex Hixon is also remembered by many, many people who lived in New York in the seventies and eighties for the radio Interview program, "In the Spirit," which was broadcast weekly on WBAI for thirteen years, and on which just about every well known spiritual teacher who passed through New York City during those years appeared. For those who have wondered what has become of him since he withdrew from these two activities that opened spiritual doorways for so many, Hixon, a tall, handsome man with flowing white hair and a playful but firmly dedicated manner, is still about the same business of creating forums for the spirit to flow through, though in more refined form. He is now involved in opening a door for the energy which first initiated him to the spiritual way, to be more widely known. Author of Great Swan: Meetings with Ramakrishna, published in May by Shambhala, Hixon is giving the next year of his life as an offering to Ramakrishna, to do a rather unconventional promotional tour for the book (befitting his unconventional subject) to restore the great master to his rightful place in global consciousness.

'Everything I've, done up to this point prepared me to write Great Swan. The energy of Rarnakrishna has been permeating me for the last 27 years."

RAMAKRISHNA
Please remember. Although our conventional bodies are mere containers, the lotus heart of the lover is God's living room. A powerful sovereign may mercifully visit various regions of his vast kingdom at one time or another, but he remains directly accessible to his far family and close advisors in the innermost chamber of the royal palace. This is the heart of humankind. God dwells and flows as consciousness in and through all conscious beings, no doubt, but Divine Reality manifests most vividly in the hearts of those who love only for the sake of pure love- O friends, I beg you to come. Come to the living room of God!

'Great Swan," the literal translation of paramahamsa, the legendary swan of Hindu folklore who, when given a mixture of water and milk, drinks the milk and leaves the water, is the title of reverence given in India to a fully realized being - one who is able to extract the divine essence from earthly life. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, who lived in India from 1836 to 1886, was an ecstatic, eloquent, delight-filled holy man, a Brahmin priest who demonstrated with great freedom and joy that all religious paths lead to the same One Source, whether one worships the Divine in one of its many forms or in its formlessness; and who himself worshiped God with great devotion and bliss in the feminine form of the great goddess Kali. In the present abundance of spiritual paths and teachings available to westerners, Ramakrishna is not exactly a household word, but in many ways he can be said to have ushered in the spiritual renaissance going on today, especially in its aspect of the flowering of feminine energy.

“Its not that Ramakrishna had a theory of religions all being one, or that he was showing some particular commonality," says Hixon.

“He was a child of the Divine Mother who was just at play through all possible spiritual forms. He doesn't leave us a philosophy or a theology, but really an enthusiasm for God and for truth in whatever context we find it. He said, 'Go to your own traditions, go to your own roots and sources, go wherever you want to. Don't come to me. Don't call me guru, don't call me spiritual father.’ He used to say, 'Those words, guru and baba, they prick me like thorns. Please stop using them.'

"Ramakrishna and his wife and spiritual consort Sarada, who are a unity," says HIxon, 'in their devotion to the blissful Mother of the Universe, really opened the way for the modern feminine age which we see dawning around us, which is manifesting in so many subtle ways, and which will continue to grow in depth and Intensity. Without a doubt, it is the most important movement of our time. He and Sarada and Kali, the beautiful black warrior goddess of wisdom who is their chosen form of worship, are extremely important for women and men today, not just to study in the limited sense of study, but to encounter and play with and dance with."

The voice of the Paramahamsa is so tender, so motherly, as he calls humanity to its own highest goal, that tears run down the cheeks or spring forth within the heart of everyone present. Ramakrishna can miraculously bring tears to the eyes of those who have never before wept for God.

Ramakrishna's energy was brought to the West almost 100 years ago, when Swami Vivekananda, his foremost disciple, spoke at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. The Swami, speaking in terms that could be accepted by western Christians, thoroughly charmed and inspired his listeners, and was able to found a worldwide movement based on Vedanta, the Hindu philosophy which declares the equality of all religions. Ramakrishna came to be known more particularly in the West fifty years ago, when Swami Nikhilananda, a direct disciple of Sarada Devi, translated into English one of the root texts of the lineage - lively, descriptive chronicles of meetings Ramakrishna had with his devotees, recorded in Bengali by the disciple who called himself M. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, as the English version is called, was midwifed and welcomed by some of the intellectual and creative elite of the time: Margaret Wilson, the daughter of President Wilson, helped the Swami with the language of the translation and Joseph Campbell helped with the editing.

Hixon sees his own encounter with Ramakrishna as the basis of all the work he's subsequently done. "Ramakrishna really chose me. The Gospel of Sri Ramokrishna came into my library through a strange series of events just as I was graduating from college, and then I met the translator of that wonderful book, Swami Nikhilananda, and my wife and I studied with him for seven years and received initiation into Sri Ramakrishna.'

On the urging of Swami Nikhilananda, Hixon entered the Ph.D. program at Columbia University, eventually completing his dissertation in the Religion Department and during that time became the host of the aforementioned radio program, 'In the Spirit," which "offered me the opportunity to meet the finest representatives of world traditions who, visited New York City. I interviewed the Dalai Lama and other important Tibetan Lamas, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, Rabbi Gedalia Kennig of Jerusalem, Sheikh Muzaffer of Istanbul, as well as homegrown figures such as Stephen Gaskin, Western Zen Master Bernard Glassman, Catholic activist Daniel Berrigan, Ram Dass, Hilda Chariton, Rabbi Shlorno Carlebach, Pir Vilayat Khan. I met literally hundreds of teachers and students -
both unknown and wellknown, authentic and not-so-authentic - observing the interesting dynamics of cultural interaction and spiritual growth.'

Along the way, his own path branched forth in many directions. His first book, Coming Home: The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions grew out of a course he taught at the New School for Social Research. He was initiated and accepted formal responsibility as a spiritual guide, or Sheikh, in the 700-year-old Khalwati-Jerrah! Sufi Order of F,gypt and Istanbul and now guides Sufi communities in New York City, Newark, Memphis, Boulder and Mexico City. Heart of the Koran, his meditations on the Koran and account of his experiences in mystical Islam, was published four years ago by Quest Books. He and his wife Sheila practice orthodox paths in both Tibetan Tantric Buddhism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity; and he is currently involved in koan study under the Zen Buddhist Sensei Bernard Glassman. Four more books, written from his experiences and meditations in these traditions, are due to be published over the next two years.

However, the idea of writing a book about Ramakrishna never crossed his mind.

"I wasn't really planning to write such a book. I sat down one day and started writing it. I hadn't even conceived of doing such a thing - it would have been much too audacious an idea for me to come up with. So you might say that, fifty years after The Gospel first came out in English, Ramakrishna himself has decided to reappear on our cultural scene.”

Ramakrishna often speaks of Divine Reality as a boundless golden meadow, blocked from view by the apparent wall of space and time, substantiality and separation. The awakened person, he explains, is an opening in that wall, through which a certain segment of the dimensionless expanse of God can actually be perceived. The God-man, or avatara, is like a vast opening in that wall, through which millions of sincere human beings can pass without need of the superhuman efforts at contemplation exerted by the saints.

The person who wrote the original Gospel In Bengali, who called himself M., was chosen and molded by Ramakrishna for this task, although he only saw this In retrospect. I feel that all of my studies and all of my contacts with people within our culture who are attempting to reach out spiritually was Ramakrishna's way of pre- paring' me to write this book. There wasn’t a question of my deciding who to write about, but rather him deciding I should write about him.

"Ramakrishna said one time to M., 'Mother is going to give you some teaching responsibility to direct some, of Her knowledge,' and then he went or say, 'but you know, She can make great teachers out of mere straws,' which immediately took away whatever ego M. might have felt in being given responsibility as a teacher. In Great Swan, there’s narrator - the thirty-three encounters are written in the first person in the present time. In there I quote that - Ramakrishna says, "I can see that Mother is going to give you some responsibility to teach, but she can make great teachers out of mere straws." So in the first person narrative of this book, I had those words directed to myself, as it were. There's nothig in the book I’ve made up. They're all statements made under various conditions to various people. Some of them are contained in The Gospel, others are contained in obscure parts of the Ramakrishna literature. I tried to bring them all together and make them as part of one flow."

The Paramahamsa’s room is always open. I cherishes no sense of separate, private, persoral space. We find him seated comfortably on a common wood-frame bed facing east, his wonderful eyes gazing into the perpetual down 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 manifestions of the Beloved, Ramakrishna talks and laughs with them - communing as well in radiant silence - for more than twenty hours every clay.

"Certain American thinkers have been drinking from the well of Sri Ramakrishna for many years. One thinks of Aldous Huxley, of Christopher Isherwood, of Huston Smith, of Joseph Campbell, of J. D. Salinger and many others one could name who have never publicly stated their connection with Ramakrishna; of John Cage, who in a recent interview in Tricycle was asked how he got into spiritual life and he said, “I was lucky. I read The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.” Ramakrishna has already proven his ability to enter into our culture through these particular thinkers and effect profound cultural changes and creativity. I think the next wave of people who will be inspired by him, that the majority of them will be women, because he was first and foremost a worshiper of the feminine and a transrnitter of the shakti energy, the divine feminine wisdom.

"The book Great Swan is simply Ramakrishna at play. He's playing through the way of speaking of late twentieth century America, borrowing the language that he finds in my psyche, in my educational background. He's freely playing through that, and the book is primarily the gift of his energy and his presence. He manifests the lovely face of this charming, unconventional Bengali sage simply as a way for people to become conscious of that luminous energy that's flowing through them already, that is their very life, that is at the roots of all their highest aspirations.

"I place his stature as a paramahamsa, as a fully unfolded human being, as a central truth. One becomes invigorated by the presence of a pararnahamsa. This is the way he taught primarily. He told stories, he gave some advice, but mainly it was his presence and the playfulness of his presence which really transformed people. Ramakrishna reaches far beyond religious and theological categories. He didn't make any claims. He was a person without claims, without any assumptions. He was in love with God and praying constantly with what he called his blissful Mother, the Mother of the Universe. He was really Her creativity, Her playfulness. He flooded the world with this energy of his love and enthusiasm.

"I've attempted to paint a living, breathing icon of Indian spirituality in all its richness and fullness. An icon is not just something to look at, its something to contemplate. An icon is an open door to another world, so this book also attempts to be an open door into the world that it depicts, and when one enters that world, there are different levels there. The surface level is this charming and delightful being who's constantly lost in love of God and dancing and singing with the lovers of God, who's entering high states of samadhi, or absorption in the One Reality. But beneath that is also a series of principles of a way of looking at the world, a way of being in the world, a way of accomodating totally different perspectives.

"For Ramakrishna, basically everything is the Mother, everything is the Mother's will; what looks to us as terrible or beautiful, they're all Her faces, Her manifestations. They're for the teaching and for the liberation of souls and we have to become intuitive and take what's right for us and just leave the other aside. As Ramprasad, the great poet of Mother Kali who predated Ramakrishna by a hundred years, Sings,

Who can tell who or what my Mother Kali really is? All the traditional systems of philosophy and theology are powerless to describe Her.

This fits Ramakrishna's mood perfectly, but he wouldn't make it as a statement, he would sing this with his enthralling and enchanting tenor voice and people would feel it tingling in
very cells of their being - that no one can say who or what She is. And this is liberation. This is awakening and enlightenment.

'What I believe is the depth of this book is precisely the new paradigm that we're all talking about and looking for and getting glimpses of from various areas. Encoded, as it were, in the depths of the life of Ramakrishna is this new paradigm, not expressed intellectually but as a living energy of flexibility that enables one to dispense with boundaries, whether it’s boundaries between different religions or boundaries between individuals or boundaries between the human and the divine. But what results is not some sort of chaotic, confused situation where everything is flowing into everything else. Each unique being retains its uniqueness, each unique tradition retains its uniqueness and yet simply there’s no sense of boundary. This is the deeper gift of Sri Ramakrishna to the modem world and to the globe itself, with implications for ecology and social justice and many other topics.

'The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna was translated into English by my teacher, Swami Nikhilananda and published in 1942 and now it's 1992, fifty years later. if once every fifty years Ramakrishna speaks to a culture in a dramatic and profound way, it's worth paying attention to."

Rejoicing in the opportunity to be a "mere straw" for the Master and his Mother, Hixon has taken on the responsibility of seeing that Ramakrishna's newest appearance doesn't get overlooked in the shuffle of the many books published each year. Due largely to his efforts, the book has already surpassed its publisher's expectations in sales (one large store on the West Coast actually reported people on a waiting list to buy it), and went into its second printing a month and a half after publication date. In keeping with the joy and enthusiasm of Ramakrishna, Hixon is taking his show on the road in a colorful way and creating a promotional tour as a celebration of the Divine. This summer he and his longtime friends and fellow Ramakrishna lovers - internationally known musicians Bob Kindler, cellist, Daniel Paul, tabla, and Rose Cabanlit, vocals and electric autoharp - who comprise the music ensemble Jai Ma and play a vibrant fusion of contemporary and Indian music as a setting for Hindu and English chants, will be crossing the United States doing a combination of readings from Great Swan and concerts. The tour will culminate in a trip to India early next year, where Hixon will present Great Swan to religious leaders, scholars and intellectuals there, exactly 100 years after Vivekananda brought Ramakrishna to the West.

“Ramakrishna can be used as a kind of tuning fork," Hixon concludes by saying, “to give the different pitches for the different spiritual paths people might walk, for the different types of ecstasy. In his life you’ll find all of them to a very exact pitch. He himself had perfect pitch musically, and it was painful to him to hear music performed off-key. So that what he does is give the pitch and then everyone can sing their own song, and by reading him, by knowing him, they can go back and correct themselves if they may have become a little flat or a little sharp.”

The Paramahamsa walks with almost supernatural speed. He is now moving east toward the main Temple Gate. The road, lined with flowering trees, is covered by red brick-dust, contrasting beautifully with the sage’s white cloth and polished black slippers. Above his head, the golden morning sun is suspended. As I stand and watch, the dynamic flgure suddenly turns bright black against the red road. It is Goddess Kali - infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite peace, infinite delight. She is approaching the ornamental gates of Her magnificent Temple Garden. Her Devine Intensity is fully focused. The Wisdom Goddess is prepared to go forth from Her sanctuary and transform the modem world.

Lex Hixon will be available to sign copies of Great Swan on 9/ 18 at EastWest Books, 78 Fifth Avenue, New York City, from 5-6:30PM. He will do a reading from Great Swan from 6:30-7PM.

Cassia Berman is continually amazed, delighted and well provided for by the Divine Mother in her many forms, including that of Mother Kali, Who Introduced her to Lex Hixon, whose radio program had been a guiding light for her, on Kali Puja, 1988. A poet, writer, and editor who lives in Woodstock, New York, Cassia was a student of the late Hilda Charlton. She practices and teaches t’ai chi and qi gong and leads occasional writing workshops.