There is no limit to Goddess

 

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-1886) was a Indian mystic whose message was popularized in the West (and probably heavily revised) by his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), who founded the Ramakrishna Mission. I recently read two articles on the religious pluralism of Ramakrishna written by Ayon Maharaj (also called Swami Medhananda), "Sri Ramakrishna´s Philosophy of Vijnana Vedanta" and "`God Is Infinite and the Paths to God Are infinite´: A Reconstruction and Defense of Sri Ramakrishna´s Vijnana-Based Model of Religious Pluralism". The author´s perspective is similar to that of Swami Tapasyananda, whose work on Ramakrishna I review elsewhere on this blog. 

Strictly speaking, Ramakrishna didn´t have a "philosophy" at all, being an ecstatic mystic who frequently acted in a "crazy" manner. "Officially", so to speak, Ramakrishna was a Shakta and devotee of Mother Kali, literally living in a Kali temple outside Calcutta. However, he also practiced other spiritual paths, both Hindu and non-Hindu, and had powerful mystical experiences of both Brahman, Allah and Christ. From this, Ramakrishna drew the conclusion that all religions are true. But what exactly does this mean? Hindu "pluralism" has often been criticized for being a covert form of Advaita Vedanta supremacism, where all other religions are subsumed under the idea that Brahman alone is real, the gods of theistic religions just being lower manifestations (and ultimately illusions) of a formless impersonal Absolute. How is that *really* pluralist, rather than being a form of Advaita "inclusivism"? 

The author believes that Ramakrishna didn´t fall into this trap. He dubs Ramakrishna´s perspective Vijnana Vedanta, the word "vijnana" translated as meaning "special knowledge" (as opposed to mere "jnana" or knowledge, a term often used by Advaitins to denote the path to realize Brahman). From his higher mystical viewpoint, Ramakrishna realized that God is simultaneously both personal and impersonal, formless and endowed with form. Above all, God is infinite and illimitable. "There is no limit to God" was a favorite saying of Ramakrishna. God is always "more besides". Even the vijnani, the supreme mystic or gnostic of which there are very few, doesn´t come close to realize all of God, although he stands far above the religious and spiritual multitude. Since God is infinite, there are infinitely many ways of realizing Him/Her/It. Ramakrishna recognized many different Hindu paths as valid: Vaishnava devotionalism (in all its forms), Shaktism, Tantrism, Advaita Vedanta, even the modernist-deist Brahmo Samaj. Islam, Christianity and Buddhism were also valid. In context, all these religious traditions were present in Bengal during Ramakrishna´s lifetime. 

The point here is that none of these perspectives is "higher" than the others. This point is apparently somewhat controversial, since Ramakrishna is often cast as a Advaitin (or something to that effect). For instance, he "ascended" to a formless impersonal state for six months, only to "descend" later to the world of form. However, Ayon Maharaj believes that this Advaita-inspired take is a misinterpretation, since the so-called "descent" is the result of realizing that everything is really divine and hence really on the same ontological level as the "ascended" state. Personally, I note that Ramakrishna claimed that he was given a command to leave "nirvikalpa samadhi" by the Divine Mother! Thereafter, he entered the "bhavamukha" state, a unique mode of being in between the relative and the Absolute. 

Since no aspect of God is "higher" than any other, all or most religions are salvific. Realizing "saguna Brahman" (God with form) through intense bhakti is just as much salvation as realizing "nirguna Brahman" (God without form) through meditation. Presumably, salvation through the cross of Christ is just as "true" as salvation through Quranic precepts. Often, Ramakrishna would call on exclusivist traditions to learn from their opponents. Thus, he called on Advaitins and the Brahmo Samaj to learn from the Vaishnava bhaktas. Sometimes, Ramakrishna did say that certain traditions are less good than others. However, this simply means that they take longer time and have more pitfalls. Tantrism and hatha yoga were criticized in this way, Tantrism on account of its sexual practices, which are too dangerous for most people. 

But what about the mutually exclusive truth claims of most religions? Many Hindus believe that there are countless divine incarnations, Christianity hold that there is only one, and Islam says that such a thing is impossible. "Eastern" religions usually believe in reincarnation, while "Semitic" ones do not. How can these differences be reconciled without pluralism becoming incoherent? Maharaj believes that Ramakrishna made a distinction between the formal *doctrines* of various religions (which do indeed clash with one another) and their *salvific power*. Brahmo Samaj didn´t believe that the exploits of Krishna and Radha were real historical events, yet their practices (centered on a kind of Deist personal but formless divinity) could nevertheless lead to salvation for the Brahmo´s adherents. Still, to speed up the process, Ramakrishna asked the Brahmo´s members to at least cultivate the emotional attitude associated with the rasa-lila of Krishna and Radha, even though they didn´t believe the old stories to be literally true. I suppose Ramakrishna would tell modern ultra-liberal Christians to act as if the Gospel stories were real history, even if they don´t think they are! Ramakrishna also taught that all religious paths, including his own, were to some extent erroneous. They are, however, good enough for God-realization at our present state of being.

My impression is that Ramakrishna broke with the perspective "all religions lead to the same goal" in favor of a moderate version of the claim that all religions are true although they lead to strikingly different goals, "moderate" in the sense that ultimately all of these goals really are the same divine reality. In some deeper sense, there is still a "Brahman" that takes many different forms. Or in Ramakrishna´s case, rather a Shakti! An even more radical pluralist would presumably argue that Reality is radically plural, and that *this* fact makes all religions valid, not some underlying unity-in-supposed-diversity. Of course, it could be argued in response that such a pluralism is impossible. 

I don´t claim to be an expert on Ramakrishna, but it strikes me as intriguing that Medhananda mentions the mad saint´s connection to the Kali cult only in passing. The author even insists on calling God "he", while Ramakrishna frequently referred to God as the Divine Mother. Why is this? Here is a wild guess: what if Ramakrishna´s pluralism was really a form of Shakta inclusivism? The Shakti, after all, is a dynamic force that creates constantly new phenomena and hence takes many different forms - a bit like Ramakrishna´s Infinite Personal-Impersonal God, perhaps? 

Maybe this is the real secret of Ramakrishna´s special gnosis: there is no limit to Goddess.