Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (Indian Hindu Philosopher)
About:- Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836–86,) spelled Rāmakṛṣṇa Paramahaṃsa, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay, was a renowned Hindu guru and religious exemplar of India. A mystic, he asserted, based on many ecstatic experiences, that all religions represent aspects of a single truth.
Born in Kamarpukur in Bengal to a rural family of poor Vaiṣṇava Brahmins, Ramakrishna moved to Calcutta in 1855 to join his brother as a priest at the city’s Dakṣhineswar Kālī Temple. Following his brother’s death, Ramakrishna became more absorbed with and more emotionally devoted to the Goddess Kālī. He experienced a series of trances that led him to regard the image of the Kālī as his mother, and as the Mother of the universe. He lived at the temple as a spiritual practitioner and an ascetic. In 1859, his family married him to a five-year-old girl, Śāradā Devī, who joined him in Calcutta when she turned 17. She became his disciple, and he revered her as an incarnation of the Goddess. Ramakrishna’s followers (who later organized the Ramakrishna Mission) worshiped Devī as the Holy Mother (“Sri Maa,”) which was Ramakrishna description for Goddess Kālī.
Ramakrishna became very renowned in Calcutta and other parts of India. Crowds regularly assembled to witness the intensity of his religious passion, and to hear him emphasize the need for engagement with God and religion. Some modern scholars have argued that Ramakrishna’s passionate mystical experiences were pathological, possibly due to a distressed upbringing or a deep-seated emotional turmoil.
Ramakrishna put none of his teachings in writing himself. Still, his devotees documented many of his orations and published such celebrated texts as Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita, (The Gospel of Ramakrishna; Mahendranath Gupta; 1902–32.) In his teachings, Ramakrishna denounced lust, wealth, and the caste system, and advocated that all religions that bring about the mystical experience are evenly virtuous and pure.
Ramakrishna’s religious school of thought led to the establishment of the Ramakrishna Mission by his chief disciple, Swami Vivekananda. Ramakrishna continues to have a profound influence on the intellectuals and gurus who advocate Neo-Vedānta and other varieties of Neo-Hinduism.
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