ISBN: 1-931816-00-X
ISBN 13: 978-1-931816-00-7
$ 16.00 , 216 pages
$12.80 Online Price
(Quality paperback)

Prefatory Note

Few ever recover from the reflex of awe that fixates the mind upon studying Ramakrishna, India's nonpareil mystic. Skeptics aside, others, whether or not they become partisan, rarely recapture a sense of balance when appraising his life. His unprecedented spiritual career and unique personality leave the minds of the sympathetic in a prolonged state of arrest. Which helps not at all large numbers of souls who might benefit from an introduction to his life but are estranged by hagiographical passion, the euphoria of the converted. Analyze everything was one of his characteristic sayings, although in the case of the man who spoke it no analysis has been made that will provide much interest for the Westerner who comes to the legend without benefit of faith, but who yet might sincerely wish to know where to lodge his spiritual hungers.

The present work attempts to remedy this lack and so differs from the several biographical studies in existence. It also avowedly makes its appeal to the Western mind, and possibly to Hindus capable, with one of their own mystics, of that searching analysis of all things which not only Ramakrishna but their other illustrious names from Buddha to Gandhi have enjoined upon them. For biographical particulars it depends upon two massive works, the chief pillars of the extensive Ramakrishna literature: Sri Ramakrishna, the Great Master by a direct disciple, Swami Saradananda; and The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna in the complete and literate translation of Swami Nikhilananda.

But a saint's mind is so unlike every other that in hazarding a psychological study one is risking a great presumption. Perhaps the author can only reveal himself—his own psychology, not the mystic's: the saint's life a mirror in which are reflected the shadows of the author's psyche. Fortunate, at least, if he is able to correlate them sufficiently with the reader's to suggest something universally relevant in the picture he draws.

Although this work in its original intent was to be a concentrated analysis of Ramakrishna alone, there were so many cross-references to Christ in the early chapters that subliminal intuitions were plainly overruling the promptings of the conscious will. The result was a book about Ramakrishna and Christ, mystics supreme, who over the last twenty-five centuries—their last peer, Gautama Buddha—stand preeminent for spirituality. Just as a new Ramakrishna is presented here, so there is much that is unexpected in the portrayal of the Galilean; in both cases the orthodox devotee will doubtless suffer unavoidable chagrin not only from the nature of the material but from the realization that minds exist which approach the object of his reverence from standpoints that have never occurred to him. We are less offended by heretical sentiments than by the discovery that heretical minds, after the truth has been thoroughly revealed to us, go on existing.

If more of the book has been devoted to Ramakrishna it is because many pages had to be spent establishing the facts of his life before that life could be properly assessed—a condition obviously not applicable to the founder of Christianity.

Contents