ns, bereft of his patrimonial heritage. Like Josef and Mary, the father and mother of Ramakrishna were both very religious people. Ramakrishna surely inherited the devotional aspect of his character from his father, who is said to have wept daily praying to the goddess Gayatri. Ramakrishna would also foster a lifelong adoration for a goddess, the goddess Kali, whom he sometimes venerated with such surrender and devotion that the prayer resulted in fits of ecstasy (or in the eyes of a rather detached Westerner, in fits of madness).

Both Jesus and Ramakrishna were relatively unlearned and spoke simple and plain language, directed not to an academic circle of scholars but to the average man in the street, whom they addressed in familiar images taken from day to day life. Ramakrishna did not know how to read or write and has not committed anything to writing. His pupils wrote down his words. The gospel of Jesus also is not written down by the master himself but has come down to us on a hear-say basis.

Like Jesus Ramakrisha was born with an ardent zeal for religion and showed signs of this inclination at a rather young age. He was so preoccupied with religion that he used to shed bitter tears when people busied themselves with more mundane topics in conversation. First he went silent and then he used to cry. In his youth he wanted nothing more than to realise god. He even behaved as a monkey for considerable time, because he wanted to be like the servant of Rama, Haruman, the god of the apes. It must have been, even in a land as religious as India, a rather strange sight seeing a young priest in the temple of Kali behave like an ape, with shouting and jumping up and down and all. More seriously Ramakrishna took up all the world religions for a while, because he wanted to experience if god was the same for all the world beliefs. Later on he claimed to be not only a Hindu, but a Buddhist, a Christian and a Muslim as well.

Like Jesus Ramakrishna wanted to give new impetus to a dying religion. His reforms are like the reforms of Jesus of a more inward character. His criticism is not aimed at the formal and outward character of the Hindu religion, but his words of warning are addressed to the heart of the Hindu believer. Like Jesus Ramakrishna wanted men to find god in their very hearts. A life without realising god was not worth living. God should be at the centre of ones life.

Ramakrishna was also caught up in a religio-political movement, the Brahma Samaj, which strived at giving a new identity to the Hindu believer by making him feel proud of his religious heritage in the face of English colonialism. But again like Jesus Ramakrishna, though the acclaimed spiritual leader of the movement, was not very political by nature and never gave lectures of a revolutionary content. In dealing with the Englishmen he condemned their worldly ways, but he was full of praise as Christianity was concerned. He considered the Christ an avatar, an incarnation of god on earth, like Krishna and Rama were.

In the religious spectrum Ramakrishna occupies the place of the Bhakti yogi, ie. a person who believes that god is with form and can be prayed to and worshipped. The believer and god have a very personal and emotional relationship, wherein the believer regards himself as the humble servant of an all powerful master. Ramakrishna prayed to Kali and prostrated himself daily before her statue, often in a state of religious ecstasy. To quote a beautiful prayer of the master:

Mother, I surrender myself to your mercy. I have taken my refuge at your holy feet. I do not wish any comforts for my body. I don't crave after name and fame. I don't seek to obtain the eight occult powers. Be merciful and grant me to have a pure love for you, a love untouched by desires, unsullied by selfish needs - a love implored by your believer, simply because of love.

Two things are striking: in this bhakti of Ramakrishna there is a complete surrender of the believer to the goddess. He places his whole life in the hands of the transcendent power. He lets her take control. She is like a mother towards him, who's going to protect and foster her child. She is powerful. He is powerless. The second thing is the total lack of demand on behalf of the believer. He does not want anything for himself. He just places himself at her mercy having the conviction that she will do everything for the best of her child. There is no selfishness involved. No petty claims for success or personal needs. This is truly in the mystic tradition. The total Love reminds one of the Love felt by a St. John-of-the-Cross or a Hildegard van Bingen. The hesitation to ask any 'worldly gift' has also a close parallel with the writings of Meister Eckhart, who also had the conviction that a believer is not entitled to ask anything from God, but simply had to surrender himself.

Though unlearned and not being able to read or write Ramakrishna did nevertheless knew everything there was to know about the sacred writings of India. From childhood onwards he had conversed with sadhu's, the mendicant yogi's of India, and had learned from them the content of the Veda's and all later writings. He was also introduced by them to Vedanta. Though by nature a bhakta, he came to appreciate and value the religious views of jnana-yoga, which believes that god is without form and which treads the path of knowledge and intelligence to get into contact with the primal source Brahman. Jnana-yoga is monistic ie. it believes that everything is Brahman and that all separateness of Brahman is an illusion. Vedanta is basically jnana. These differences in religious believe often seem to spring from differences in character of the individual believers. People who are more emotional tend to be bhakta's and more intellectual and reflective persons have an inclination for jnana-yoga. Sankara eg. with his penetrating intelligence, is more jnana and Ramakrishna with his sympathetic emotionality is more a devotional believer, a bhakti.

But Ramakrishna, although his character compelled him to venerate god in a definite form, nevertheless held that the ultimate vision of god in enlightenment was one without form, name and content, underlining with this statement the views of Vedanta. But in daily life, struggling on our way to the final vision, it was perhaps better to have a personal god to pray to in a personal way. For Ramakrishna both god with form and without form were the same aspect of the one ultimate truth. A man with vision does not condemn either way. Exactly because of Brahman being everything and everywhere, he is also present in a statue or in incense or in ritual fire, even more than in ordinary things because of the religious feelings that are being aroused by it. Alongside of his Vedantic reasonings he always stayed a fervent practitioner of the Hindu rites, never seeing them to contradict the more intellectual views of religion.

Ramakrishna is within the mystic tradition a true ascetic in the sense that he gave up all 'worldly life' and abhorred 'the ways of the world'. He wanted man to live always with his eyes uplifted towards god. He wanted man to give up all desires and worldly possessions and to become unattached to outward belongings. He frequently spoke out his disgust for sex and money. He deemed it nevertheless possible for a man living within a family to come into contact with god and even to become enlightened, but only if he lived 'with one hand working in the world and with the other reaching for god'. A housekeeper should always live in a rather detached way as his life in the family and in society is concerned. Because the only road to everlasting happiness is living in close contact with god. These precepts offer some resemblances with the teachings of Jesus and especially with the writings of St. Paul, who also thought it better for man to stay unmarried. It is also within the Indian tradition, because the role of housekeeper for a Hindu was not the ultimate goal of life. After he had done his duties as a housekeeper and raised his children, many Brahmana became a sanyassin ie. a person who has left his family and the world to seek enlightenment.

Perhaps this hard ascetic line is one of the more unsympathetic traits in the philosophy of Ramakrishna, because it opens up the way for intolerance towards people who want to enjoy life and live in a more gratifying way towards the demands of their body. For most people it is simply asking too much. By these precepts one alienates people from spirituality, instead of inviting them to it. And to be frank: what is wrong with enjoying life? You can see god even or especially in sexuality. Evil is in the eyes of the beholder and everything can be done with a clean heart, even working on Wall Street. Was not Jesus a friend of prostitutes? And right so he was. It is worth noticing that not all mystics have condemned sexuality or a hard working life in society. There is even the criticism to be feasible that it is because of people like Ramakrishna that India has not developed and progressed in its social and economic well fare. The more modern mystic view is that living in close contact with the source will give you prosperity on all levels, not only on the spiritual. But the true mystic never grows attached to this prosperity, but his heart is always with the god/Brahman.

What can also be a point of criticism in the writings about Ramakrishna is exactly the point which has raised so much praise, namely the sheer simplicity of the writings. After a while the more intellectual reader wants some more arguments and a more thorough handling of the problems under discussion. Compared to the deep intellectual gifts of a Plato or a Sankara, the writings of Ramakrishna seem rather pale, though not altogether shallow. They only never seem to soar to great heights of intellectual insight. His depreciation of intellectuality and learning is truly mystic in as far as the need for learning and books ceases in the unio mystica, but it is my strong believe that mystic insights can also be corroborated by intellectual reasoning, as eg. the Greeks or a Schopenhauer have so admirably proven.

But the ultimate picture we get from Ramakrishna is a saintly one. Here's a man that was so in love with god that only a glimpse of beauty in human beings or in his surroundings could make him weep with joy. He worshipped his friends. He used to stroke their feet as they did his. Religious words and music brought him to fits of ecstasy. He only wanted to talk about god and religion. People were exultant with joy if he visited their houses. They wanted to touch his cloths and his body. If there have been incarnations of godliness on earth, then surely Ramakrishna deserves to be nominated.

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