Ramakrishna

He was an enlightened soul.

Uh, Sri Ramakrishna put his knowledge across in a very simple manner.

Then there were these masters like Swami Ramatirtha, intellectual giants who, who, uh, put it across differently.

So different people present it differently based on their own nature and also more importantly the nature of the audience they're talking to.

And it gives you a really good snapshot of Indian life, of like what it is to be in that cultural milieu and way before Hinduism.

So way before Rajaran Mohan Roy, the 1860s, way before Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda's reform, not reform, but renaissance of Hinduism prior to the British apologetics that happened in the Raj.

Like this is a time when the theories and practices that we're talking about now were developed and most wholesomely practiced in their own context, according to their own cultural understandings, before being taken through 700 years of Mughal like reframing, before being taken through 200 years of the British Raj reframing.

So to understand quote unquote Hinduism, whatever that is, you have to kind of look at it before the 900 years of its apologetic project.

You know, what money do they have? So it was actually a very harrowing thing to see him because he was, like, heartbroken because he felt like he was a spiritual failure for having gotten ill.

It's a remarkable thing.

Do you know? And Sri Ramakrishna was ill, and so many of the people that were attracted to him left after they saw him have throat cancer.

And people would say, "Can you cure it? I mean, you, you've done so many things.

And there are people like...

Ramakrishna, the grand guru or the guru of Swami Vivekananda who brought the Advaita Vedanta philosophy to New York City in the early 1900s and to the West.

The word yoga became popularized in the West by Swami Vivekananda and his guru is Ramakrishna.

And Ramakrishna, you could read is quite popular and well known in the yoga meditation circles.

You can research him and so forth, right? His wife, Sarada Devi, I think, her name, she used to repeat hundred thousand every day, her mantra, right? And she was very highly, very quiet and conservative woman, but She had the power to initiate people and she had very strong spiritual power and she was doing repetitions of 100,000 a day, right? So my assumption was always that someone who's doing high repetitions just by virtue of the repetition is you're going to get the power, right? So if someone can recite 1 billion, you're guaranteed to be on a level that It's going to be like a no-brainer, right? I was wrong.

Because I spoke to Grok, I said, if someone can repeat a mantra.

We know how that book has largely inspired many of the national leaders of the day.

We know how in his solitary traveling throughout India, Vivekananda had only the Gita and a photo of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa for his companion.

We know how it has influenced the national movement and has given it especially spiritual character.

So also it affected the Maharashtra of Saint Yaneshwar's time.

That is what Saint Ian Ashwar has done.

Sister Nivedita gives us a beautiful description of the Master as I saw him, of the lifelong struggle raging in the heart of her Master.

Quote, of how, though trying to remain faithful to the banner of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, he delivered a message, the utterance of which often used to strike him as a lapse, end quote.

She has told us how, quote, he would struggle against thoughts of country and religion and make of himself the poor homeless wanderer to whom every country and every religion should be alike, and yet how before he even knew it, end quote, He would be spreading broadcast those words of faith and hope which sent a thrill through the hearts of his countrymen, making them conscious of their own destiny.