Sri Ramakrishna''s Religion (An Old and Rare Book)

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I never thought that my twelve lectures on Ramakrishna's Religion would deserve publication as a book. That these twelve lectures are being serialized in the monthly Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture is, I think, enough reward for this work. I am, however, immensely grateful to our Secretary Swami Prabhanandaji Maharaj for his very kindly choosing these lectures for publication as a book. I have no words to thank the Revered President Maharaj of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission for his blessing in the form of a foreword to this work.

Dr Visvanath Chatterjee, Associate Editor of the Institute's Bulletin, has very kindly prepared the press copy of the work and has in the process removed from the manuscript many imprecisions and repetitions, apart from very carefully repairing my English. I am grateful to Sri Amalendu Dasgupta for saving me from three grave errors in my quotations from Kamalakanta Bhattacharya, Rabindranath Tagore and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Sri Ramakrishna is now regarded as the Prophet of the Modern Age by a large number of people in different parts of the world. Nobody can deny the fact that he is the greatest spiritual personality born in the modern age. No other religious leader has exerted so profound and pervasive an influence on modern thought as Sri Ramakrishna did, although much of that influence has been indirect and unrecognized as such. Among the contri butions that Sri Ramakrishna has made to modern thought, three need special mention. They are: re-establishment of the supremacy of the spiritual ideal, harmony of religions, and spiritualization of the humanistic impulse.

The modern world is characterized by the dominance of the materialistic outlook and the multiplication of the objects of enjoyment. Mechanization of life's activities and the endless quest for material enjoyment have alienated man not only from nature but also from the source of power and joy in the soul within him. As a result, modern man's life has come to be characterized by a sense of futility, meaninglessness and boredom. There is also an enormous increase in acts of violence, crime, immorality and strange new diseases.

It is in this context of the predicament of modern man that we can understand the true import of Sri Ramakrishna's central teaching, Ishvar-labhi manush jivaner uddeshya 'God-realization alone is the great purpose of human life'. By God, Sri Ramakrishna meant the Supreme Self, the Ultimate Reality, of which the individual Selves are parts of reflections.

**Contents and Sample Pages**