What is the Vedanta preached by Sri Ramakrishna? A brief answer is found in this selection from Synthesis of Vedanta, published last year by Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai. The book is itself a compilation from two books by the author – Sri Ramakrishna: Life and Teachings and Bhakti Schools of Vedanta. Swami Tapasyananda (1904 – 1991) was one of the Vice-presidents of the Ramakrishna Order. Cover page artist: Sri Maniyam Selvan, Chennai.
Towards the close of 1865, some three or four months after Sri Ramakrishna had completed the sadhana of madhura-bhava, there arrived at Dakshineswar an august personage who was to play an important role in Sri Ramakrishna’s life. That was Tota Puri, a sannyasin of the Naga sect, who was an adept in Advaita Vedanta, and who, as a symbol of his having overcome bodyconsciousness, went about naked from one holy place to another. Sri Ramakrishna called him Nangta, or the Naked One. He is said to have practised Advaita discipline for forty years on the banks of the Narmada and to have attained nirvikalpa samadhi. After that, it was his habit to go about the country, always staying in the open, and never remaining in any place for more than three days. As Rani Rasmani’s temple extended hospitality to all wandering ascetics, Tota Puri also halted there on his return journey from Gangasagar. Sri Ramakrishna soon got acquainted with him, and Tota recognised in the former a highly competent spiritual aspirant to whom he felt inclined to impart the spiritual illumination he had gained.
Now, in the brand of Advaita which Tota Puri professed, there was not much room for a Personal God or the Divine Mother, who had hitherto been a part and parcel of Sri Ramakrishna’s life. In this connection there is an interesting incident that took place later that reveals Tota Puri’s attitude on this question. One day, while in Tota Puri’s company, Sri Ramakrishna, at the approach of dusk, began to clap his hands and take the Divine Name, as was his daily habit. Thereupon Tota, who could not appreciate such devotional habits, sarcastically asked him, “Are you making chapatis?” Nevertheless, he offered to initiate him into sannyasa and teach him Vedanta, and Sri Ramakrishna agreed to the proposal, provided he had the permission of his Mother. TotaPuri understood the term ‘Mother’ to mean his earthly mother, and with a suppressed cynicism, asked him to hurry to get that permission. Sri Ramakrishna approached his Divine Mother and prayed to Her in an ecstatic mood to give him the right direction, and received the command: “Be initiated by him. Tota Puri has been sent here only for that purpose.”
So, the day for initiation was fixed, and the ceremony took place in a hut under the Panchavati in the temple compound. After sannyasa, Tota imparted the teaching of Advaita Vedanta, the purport of which is that Brahman alone is real, that the world is a mere appearance projected by ignorance and having no ultimacy, and that the jiva in his real nature is Brahman Himself.
The teacher asked the pupil to practise discrimination along these lines and take the mind to a state of contentless self-awareness. When Sri Ramakrishna attempted to do so, the form of the Divine Mother always arose before him. Under the persuasive compulsion of Tota Puri, he fixed the mind between the brows and, when the Mother’s form appeared, he conceived of jnana (knowledge) as a sword with which he cut through that form, thus dissolving it in Pure Consciousness. His mind then merged in nirvikalpa samadhi or absorption in Unmodified Consciousness, the highest attainment of Advaitic spiritual discipline.
He remained in that summit state of Consciousness for three days continuously. Tota Puri was stupefied with wonder to see that his disciple had attained nirvikalpa samadhi so quickly and effortlessly, whereas he himself had taken forty years of strenuous practice to attain it.
All of those who came to teach Sri Ramakrishna got ample returns from his company in the form of completion of what was still imperfect in their spiritual attainments. Thus, Jatadhari came to realise in Sri Ramakrishna’s company that his Ishta, Ramlala, was not a mere presence in the image, but the Universal Being pervading everything. The Bhairavi Brahmani also had her knowledge perfected by Sri Ramakrishna’s association. It was, however, in the case of Tota Puri that a conversion was effected under conditions that looked like a miracle in a real sense.
We have already observed that Tota had little regard for a Personal God. He accepted only the Impersonal Absolute, the Brahman of the Vedanta, and considered the idea of a Personal God, a Divine Person, who is the Creator, Preserver, etc. of the universe and the bestower of grace on devotees, as a figment of the imagination, like the world of duality itself. This extreme and unbalanced form of Advaitic conviction got corrected in Sri Ramakrishna’s company. It happened this way:
Instead of his usual three days, Tota continued to stay at Dakshineswar for several months; and in the course of it he became the victim of an attack of an excruciating form of dysentery, which medicines failed to relieve. The suffering was so intense that even the disciplined mind of Tota found it difficult to keep itself above body-consciousness, absorbed in Brahman. He therefore thought it better to put an end to that stumbling-block of a body. With this end in view, he walked into the Ganges towards the deeper levels, where the water would be sufficient to drown him. But to his astonishment, he found that even though he waded almost over to the other bank, the water in the river was too shallow to drown him.
At this point, a new revelation came to the astonished mind of Tota. His conviction till then had been that the Ultimate Reality is Pure Being but he realised through a new revelation that It was Pure Will also. It is this Cosmic Will, the Power of Brahman, that Sri Ramakrishna knew as the Divine Mother and that Tota had denied so far. Now, from his incapacity to court even selfchosen death, he found that without the sanction of that Divine Will, the Reality of realities, not a leaf can move in this world. He realised the glory of the Divine Mother in everything, and became a changed man. By Sri Ramakrishna’s grace, his knowledge was completed when he thus came to understand that Brahman is PersonalImpersonal or Being-Will.
Merged in Advaitic Consciousness
After Tota’s departure from Dakshineswar, Sri Ramakrishna spent some six months continually absorbed in nirvikalpa samadhi without any awareness of the body and the external world. Of this condition, Swami Saradananda writes:
The Master was in that nirvikalpa state continually for six months. “I was,” said the Master, “for six months in that state from which ordinary mortals never return, for, the body of one attaining to that state lives for twenty-one days only and then falls like a dry leaf from a tree. There was no consciousness at all of time, of the coming of day or the passing of night. Just as flies enter into the nostrils and the mouth of a dead man, so they entered into mine; but there was no awareness of it. The hair became matted on account of the accumulation of dust. Calls of nature were perhaps answered unconsciously. It was a miracle how the bodily life was sustained. It should have succumbed then and there. But a holy man came there to save it. He had a small stick like a ruler in his hand. He recognised my state as soon as he saw it, and came to know that much of the Mother’s work was yet to be done through this body, that much good would be done to many if only it could be saved. Therefore, he would carry food in time, and by striking this body again and again, would try to bring it back to consciousness. The moment he saw signs of consciousness appearing, he would thrust some food into the mouth. Thus, on some days a little food found its way into the stomach and on others, it did not. Six months passed that way. Then the Mother’s command was heard: ‘Remain in bhavamukha! For the spiritual enlightenment of man, remain in bhavamukha!’ This was followed by illness, blood-dysentery; there was a wringing pain in the intestines and it was excruciating. It was after continually suffering for about six months that the mind gradually came down to the normal bodyconsciousness; before that it used to be merged in the nirvikalpa state always.”1
What is Bhavamukha?
The commandment to remain in bhavamukha brings us to an important subject in Sri Ramakrishna’s life. Bhavamukha is a new expression unknown to religious texts in Sanskrit, and is for the first time given out by Sri Ramakrishna himself, as he heard it from the command of the Divine Mother. Literally translated, it means ‘the threshold or gateway of Becoming or the world of change’. The idea is that just as a person sitting at the gate or threshold of a building has access at will to both within and without, and is in close touch with the affairs on both sides, so there is a state of consciousness which is a sort of a junction between the absolute and the relative aspects of existence, between the nirvikalpa and the savikalpa states of consciousness.
The meaning and implication of the attainment of this state of bhavamukha have to be explained in the light of Sri Ramakrishna’s own teachings, as the concept is very new and forms a part of his contribution to Vedantic thought. According to Sri Ramakrishna, a jiva, if he really attains nirvikalpa samadhi, never returns to relative consciousness. His body remains alive for about twenty-one days in that state, and then perishes. It is only the adhikarikas (prophets with divine missions) and avataras (Incarnations of the Lord) who come back to the relative consciousness from the nirvikalpa state. They are drawn back to the relative consciousness by their love for jivas grovelling in ignorance, and thus they are the expressions of God’s redeeming love.
Sri Ramakrishna explains this with an analogy of his: There is a vast enclosure with high walls, from which very delightful sounds and fragrance are being wafted. There is a road around the enclosure, and there are a number of people going round and round along the road. Some of them are attracted by that delightful sound, and with difficulty they get up on the high wall and look down at the overpoweringly charming sights spread within the enclosure. They are so taken with it that they jump down into the enclosure, forgetting everything else, and they never come out. But occasionally there will be a few among them who remember the tragic fate of the numerous heedless men going round and round, and so go out to the road to give them the good tidings and to lead them to the higher destiny awaiting them within the enclosure. The Divine Incarnations and adhikarikas are such expressions of Divine mercy, and therefore form manifestations of His redeeming power. Such personages have no ends of their own to seek, not even salvation, and are entirely devoted to the welfare of all who are suffering in samsara.
Sri Ramakrishna explains it in another way also, justifying the doctrine that the Ultimate Reality is Being-Will and not mere Being, as maintained in the classical Vedanta. Unlike Sri Ramakrishna’s theory about nirvikalpa samadhi, the classical Vedanta maintains that there can be jivas who attain the nirvikalpa state, and yet continue to retain the body. They are called jivan-muktas or the liberated-in-life. Vedanta explains this by the doctrine of prarabdha, the operative karma or the quantum of karma that has brought the present body into existence. While the sanchita (stored up) karma, and agami (accumulating and inoperative) karma are burnt up by knowledge (jnana), it is dogmatically maintained that the prarabdha remains undissolved until its momentum is exhausted. No argument is advanced for this beyond the analogy of an arrow released from a bow, which stops not until it has struck the target.
But Sri Ramakrishna questions this doctrine. He contends that if karma, be it only prarabdha, is real and operative even after nirvikalpa samadhi, then the Divine Mother, the Personal God, who even according to the Vedanta is required to make insentient karma operative, must be accepted as a greater reality than prarabdha. The classical Vedanta is very much loath to accept such a position, because, according to its teaching, in nirvikalpa Samadhi even God is sublated and non-dual Brahman alone is; and this non-dual Brahman, as expounded in the Vedanta, is Pure Being and not Being-Will, as it would be if this theory of Sri Ramakrishna is accepted. According to him, however, the Divine Mother is not sublated in nirvikalpa samadhi. What happens is that She reveals Herself as the Impersonal also, holding Personality in abeyance. Reality is Being-Will. When the creative process is on, Will is dominant, and Being is latent as the substratum of change. When the creative process is withdrawn, Pure Being subsists, Will latent but not sublated. Sri Ramakrishna illustrates this by the example of the snake in motion and the snake at rest. The snake in motion and the snake at rest are only two modes of the same snake. So, the Personal and the Impersonal are the modes of the one Being-Will, and there is no question of sublating either.
The Impersonal aspect is realised only when the individual ego and the entire karma sustaining it are dissolved. That is nirvikalpa samadhi. If the individuality is to be revived, it can be affected only by a factor outside the karma theory, which presupposes the chain of cause and effect. So Sri Ramakrishna maintains that it is only by the will of the Divine Mother that a person merged in nirvikalpa samadhi regains individuality, and not by prarabdha. This individuality is not the old one, but a transformed one: God-centred, and not bodycentred. Emerging from nirvikalpa samadhi by the Mother’s will, the transformed individuality recognises that the one Sat-Chit-Ananda is sportively manifesting as the jiva (the sentient being) and the jagat (the insentient world).
From the view of ignorance, the jiva and the jagat form a multiplicity different from the Spirit. But enlightenment reveals that without Himself undergoing any change, the Sat-ChitAnanda, who is Being-Will, has manifested Himself as the jiva-jagat, which continues to be one with Him. In the creative phase, He is God the Personal, along with the jiva-jagat, and when creation is withdrawn, He is the Impersonal Absolute. The Personal and the Impersonal are recognised as the obverse and the reverse of the same coin—a non-dual but coeval existence. Sri Ramakrishna illustrates this by the example of the terrace and the steps of the staircase leading to it. Until the terrace is reached, the steps of the stairs are considered as distinct and different from the terrace, and are left behind as not being the terrace. But when the terrace is reached, it is found that the steps too are made of the same substance as the terrace.
Sri Ramakrishna calls a person established in this kind of perfect enlightenment a vijnani, in contrast to jnani who rejects the world of jiva and jagat as an appearance and seeks the Brahman transcending them. The vijnani rejects nothing. He perceives the whole universe not as maya, but as leela (sportive manifestation) of the Personal-Impersonal, the Being-Will Divine. He accepts both the terrace and the staircase as real. In accepting a fruit, he takes the whole of it into account—the seeds, the flesh, and the rind; for they all together constitute the whole, and a complete knowledge and acceptance of the fruit involves the acceptance of the whole.
This knowledge of the totality cannot be had by mere talking or philosophising. It is attained by one only through the Mother’s grace, for which one has to yearn and pant. This yearning and panting for the Divine, is according to Sri Ramakrishna, the highest form of sadhana, and all the practices and disciplines given as sadhana in Yoga and Tantra are only the means for evoking it. For this feeling to mature, renunciation of all worldly attachments, or what Sri Ramakrishna calls kamini-kanchana, is needed. Only then does the Mother’s grace operate. Sri Ramakrishna’s illustration—the parable of children being left by their mother in the nursery to play by themselves until they begin to cry out of hunger—has already been referred to earlier.
Now, it has been pointed out that the vijnani gains back an ego when he emerges from the nirvikalpa state. But this ego or individuality is entirely different in quality from that of the unenlightened man. To put it briefly, the ordinary man’s ego is body-centred, while the vijnani’s is God-centred. The body-centred ego is based on a sense of absolute reality of difference, and expresses itself in terms of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ with regard to all objects and individuals. It evaluates everything and everyone in terms of their contribution to its pleasure and survival. An ego-centred man may love others, but it is in terms of his narrow self and the preservation of that narrow self and its interests is his primary concern in life. In contrast to this, the vijnani’s ego is entirely based on a sense of intimate relationship with God as His son, servant, comrade, sweetheart, etc. He looks upon all beings and objects, irrespective of their attitude towards him as a friend, foe or neutral as manifestations of the Lord to be loved and served, and not as objects for his enjoyment and aggrandisement.
Apart from these ethical implications, the state of vijnana has its metaphysical and psychological significance. The state of mind of the vijnani is what is called bhavamukha. The mind of the ignorant man is circumscribed by his individuality, and he sees everything else as discrete objects outside himself, having their fixed contours. But the vijnani is aware of a Cosmic Whole, a Cosmic Mind, from whom the ideation known as the universe radiates and in whom all beings and objects are like bubbles in a layer of water, or waves on the ocean’s surface—a part and parcel of the Whole, but with individualities that are of the stuff of ideas or fluid contents of Its own stuff or substance. He is not only aware of It but feels as one with It, either as a part of It or as Itself. So, when it is said that bhavamukha is the state of mind of the vijnani, it means that the vijnani is aware of his identity with the Cosmic Whole. As a consequence, a person in the state of bhavamukha shares the knowledge and outlook of the Cosmic Whole. Just as a spider stationed in the centre of its web can go to any part of it, similarly, he can at will go on the wings of ecstasy to any dimension in the cosmos. He can attune himself to every stratum of Consciousness, from the crudest to the most evolved, and share their characteristic experiences at will. Thus a vijnani’s state of bhavamukha enables him to be ‘all things to all men’
Being one with the Cosmic Whole in consciousness, he becomes the conduit for the expression of Its powers in the relative world. As the vijnani can traverse the whole gamut of the manifestation of Consciousness, he may behave like the humblest of the humble when he is in the attitude of the devotee. But when his individuality gets attuned to a sense of identity with the Immense Cosmic ‘I’, his behaviour will be different. As a conduit of the will of that Universal ‘I’, he becomes a centre of immense spiritual energy capable of even making a sinner into a saint by an act of will.
In Sri Ramakrishna the Great Master, this alternation between the devotee-mood and the saviour-mood was often noted, because his life was recent and was subjected to study by men who closely observed and recorded it, unlike in the case of the past Incarnations, whose lives have been clothed, long after their passing away, in thundering miracles by poets and mythologists. This process of distortion was partly due to a studied effort on the part of their followers to hide their human side. For, they felt it detrimental to their glory as divinities if any human qualities were allowed to percolate through their divinities. But an Incarnation is man and God in one, and the concept loses all its significance when the Incarnate is made into a Deity. Sri Ramakrishna’s life has enabled us to understand the significance of Incarnation in the proper perspective.
The Immense ‘I’ or the Cosmic Whole, of which we have been speaking till now, is the junction-point between the Absolute and the relative, the Impersonal and the Personal, the nirguna and the saguna aspects of the Divine Mother—the universal Being-Will. And to be established in that is to be in bhavamukha, the threshold of relative consciousness—a state in which the mind can ever dwell in the Divine in both His absolute and relative aspects, and yet without the least distraction to this union, apply itself actively to everyday concerns. Established in that, Sri Ramakrishna was in touch with all aspects of the Mother’s evolution as the world of manifestation, combined with a keen sense of their unity with Her.
It must be clearly noted that the person in bhavamukha is not in touch with the manifestation of the Whole alone, which Sri Ramakrishna called leela, but also with the unmanifested Absolute state of It, the nirguna, for which he used the term nitya. When he is in the awareness of the leela, the knowledge of the non-separate or hypostatic nature of the leela in relation to the nitya is fully present in his awareness. He is always in touch with It, the nitya, even while he is in the leela. That is the significance of being in the ‘threshold state’. But he could also be in the nirvikalpa state—that of full identity with the nitya, the Infinite and the Absolute as Pure Being, with Will not sublated, according to Sri Ramakrishna, but in abeyance.
This is a point on which Sri Ramakrishna’s doctrine differs from the traditional Advaita represented by Tota Puri, the point on which Tota Puri got corrected by Sri Ramakrishna’s company. The Immense ‘I’, whose play is the leela, is not sublated, but is only held in abeyance or in latency in the nirvikalpa state. The vijnani, who is poised in the state of bhavamukha, can at will be merged in the nitya with no link to the leela. This is the state of nirvikalpa from which there is no return for the ordinary jiva. It is only the Incarnations, as Sri Ramakrishna insists, who pass from the one state to the other, and who are in touch with both aspects. Hence their uniqueness, expressing itself simultaneously as jnana and bhakti of the highest order, which a jiva cannot attain in one and the same state. It looks somewhat contradictory, but the supreme truth can be expressed, though inadequately, only in the language of paradoxes
On this point, Sri Ramakrishna said, referring to his own condition, that the natural state of his mind was towards the nirvikalpa, wherein there is the total obliteration of multiplicity and the ‘I’-sense. In that state, one is lost to humanity at large, as any kind of communication is out of question. But the Will of the Divine Mother, which is operative even in the nirvikalpa state, unlike in the teaching of classical Vedanta, does not allow the Divine Incarnate to remain in that state. He is an expression of the Divine’s grace, of His love for jivas in samsara. As such, in order to keep up his link to the external world, Sri Ramakrishna used to create some small artificial desires in his mind, like: “I want to go to such and such a place”, “I want to meet such and such a person”, “I want to eat such and such a thing”, etc., and with the help of such created desires, he forced his mind to remain at the threshold of relative consciousness, bhavamukha, from where he could communicate with the world without losing hold of the nirvikalpa. In bhavamukha, he had no will separate from the Will of the Immense ‘I’ or the Universal Mother. As that Will directed, he could be in complete identification with that Will when he manifested the capacity to give enlightenment and liberation to jivas. He could also be at any lower levels of identification up to that of a humble devotee worshipping Her through images or participating in the weal and woe of fellow human beings.
In the days of his intense
physical suffering,
Sri Ramakrishna expressed his
willingness to take any number
of such bodies and endure
endless suffering if he could
bring illumination and put an
end to the sufferings of even a
single jiva.
It is said that, in the days of his intense physical suffering, Sri Ramakrishna expressed his willingness to take any number of such bodies and endure endless suffering if he could bring illumination and put an end to the sufferings of even a single jiva. This expression of allconsuming and universal love is the most significant implication of the Divine’s command to him to remain in bhavamukha. For one whose natural state was the bliss of nirvikalpa samadhi, to come down, in order to serve suffering humanity, to the level of bodyconsciousness and inhabit a filthy human body subject to all kinds of ailments, trials, and tribulations, is a far greater act of mercy than anything we can conceive of—say, of an emperor abandoning his palace and living in a slum with all its filth and privations in order to serve the slum dwellers. Yet, this was what was done by Sri Ramakrishna, the greatest lover of mankind that the modern world has produced, when he held in abeyance the tendency of his mind to be merged perpetually in nirvikalpa samadhi and forced it to live in the state of bhavamukha in order to save mankind. Thus, he was a conspicuous expression of that redeeming power of God. That is the implication of calling him a Divine Incarnation.
Reference
- Great Master, Vol. I, pp. 411–412
Source : Vedanta Kesari, February, 2020
