"O! Breaker of Bonds, We Adore Thee"
Tributes to Sri Ramakrishna
Mahatma Gandhi
"The story of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa's life is a story of religion in practice. His life enables us to see God face to face. No one can read the story of his life without being convinced that God alone is real and that all else is an illusion. Ramakrishna was a living embodiment of godliness. His sayings are not those of a mere learned man but they are pages from the Book of Life. They are revelations of his own experiences. In this age of scepticism, Ramakrishna presents an example of bright and living faith, which gives solace to thousand of men and women who would otherwise have remained without spiritual light. Ramakrishna's life was an object-lesson in Ahimsa. His love knew no limits, geographical or otherwise. May his divine love be an inspiration to all."
Prof Max. Muller
"The state of His religious exaltation has been witnessed again and again by serious observers of exceptional psychic states. It is in its essence some thing like our talking in sleep, only that with a mind saturated with religious thoughts and with the sublimest ideas of goodness and purity the result is what we find in the case of Ramakrishna, no mere senseless hypnotic jabbering, but a spontaneous outburst of profound wisdom clothed in a beautiful poetical language. His mind seems like a kaleidoscope of pearls diamonds, and sapphires shaken together at random but always producing precious thoughts in regular, beautiful outlines."
Ravindranath Tagore
"To the Paramahamsa Ramakrishna Deva
Diverse courses of worship
from varied springs of fulfillment
have mingled in your meditation.
The manifold revelation of the joy of the Infinite
has given form to a shrine of unity in your life
Where from far and near arrive salutations
to which I join mine own."
Romain Rolland
"I am bringing to Europe, as yet unaware of it, the fruit of a new autumn, a new message of the Soul, the symphony of India, bearing the name of Ramakrishna. With his victorious sign he marks a new era. The man whose image I here evoke was the consummation of two thousand years of the spiritual life of three hundred million people. He was no hero of action like Gandhi, no genius in art or thought like Goethe or Tagore. He was a little village Brahmin of Bengal, whose outer life was set in a limited frame without striking incident, outside the political and social activities of his time. But his inner life embraced the whole multiplicity of men and gods."
"It is my desire to bring the sound of the beating of that artery to the ears of fever-stricken Europe, Which has murdered sleep. I wish to wet its lips with the blood of Immortality. It is always the same Man-the Son of Man, the Eternal, Our Son, Our God reborn. With each return he reveals himself a little more fully, and more enriched by the universe. Allowing for differences of country and of time, Ramakrishna is the younger brother of our Christ."
Sri Aurobindo
"Of all these souls Sri Ramakrishna was the last and greatest, for while others felt God in a single or limited aspect, he felt Him in His illimitable unity as the sum of an illimitable variety. In him the spiritual experiences of the millions of saints who had gone before were renewed and united. A new era dates from his birth; an era in which the peoples of the earth will be lifted for a while into communion with God and spirituality will become the dominant note of human life. This is the reason of India's resurgence, this is why God has breathed life into her once more. What was Ramakrishna? God manifest in a human being; but behind there is God in His infinite impersonality and His universal Personality. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa is the epitome of the whole."
Christopher Isherwood
"This is a story of phenomenon. A phenomenon is often something extraordinary and mysterious. Ramakrishna was extraordinary and mysterious; most all to those who were best fitted to understand him. I myself am a devotee of Ramakrishna; I believe, or am at least strongly inclined to believe, that he was what his disciples declared that he was an incarnation of God upon earth."
Jawaharlal Nehru
"Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa obviously was completely outside the run of average humanity. He appears to be in the tradition of the great rishis of India, who have come from time to time to draw our attention to the higher things of life and of the spirit."
Arnold J Toynbee
"Sri Ramakrishna's message was unique being expressed in action; the message itself was the perennial message of Hinduism. To know this is good, but it not enough. Religion is not just a matter for study: it is something, that to be experienced and to be lived, and this is the field in which Sri Ramakrishna manifested his uniqueness. He practised successively almost every form of Indian religion and philosophy and he went on to practise Islam and Christianity as well. His religious activity and experience were, in fact, comprehensive to a degree that had perhaps never before been attained by any religious genius in India or elsewhere."
S Radhakrishnan
"It is not necessary to speak of the great influence of Ramakrishna on modern thought. It has become a part of India's history, and there is no necessity to emphasize Ramakrishna's achievements."
Pitirim A Sorokin
"A successful growth of Sri Ramakrishna and of the Vedanta movements in the West is one of many symptoms of two basic processes, which are going on at the present time in the human universe."
C Rajagopalachari
"But the greatness-the uniqueness, if I am say so, of Sri Ramakrishna was this, that he was hundred percent Hindu. There are many books on Hinduism, both ancient and modern, books like the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. But they are books for scholars. You may read them and be benefit. But nothing explains the true core of Hinduism so well as the written records of the sayings of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa."
Muhammad Daud Rahbar
"His open, passionate, and transparent devotion humbles and chastens us. He is no common mortal. He is a man of phenomenal gifts. His presence is a heaven. His experiments with psychology of religion are of both spiritual and scientific value for us. Was not the unsophisticated Sri Ramakrishna a gifted scientist in his own right? In his blissful life we find a happy union of religion and science."
Nicholas De Roerich
"Thought turned to the radiant giant of India-Sri Ramakrishna. Around this glorious name, there are so many respectful definitions. Sri, Bhagavan, Paramahamsa-all best offerings through which the people wish to express their esteem and reverence. The personal name has already changed into a great all-national, universal concept. Who has not heard the Blessed Name! The conception of goodness and benevolence truly befits him. Except for petrified hearts, who would oppose the Good!"
P. C. Mazumdar
"A living evidence of the sweetness and depth of Hindu religion is this holy and good man. He has wholly controlled, and nearly killed his flesh. He is full of soul, full of reality of religion, full of joy, full of blessed purity. His religion means ecstasy, his worship means transcendental perception, his whole nature burns day and night with the permanent fire and fever of a strange faith and feeling."
Henry R. Zimmer
"To speak of Sri Ramakrishna's teachings with regard to our present world-situation means, as the wicked jester-king in Hamlet puts it, 'In equal scale weighing delight and dole'. It means putting the question, what can the spiritual forces of the enlightened and perfect, of the teacher who embodies the Divine, effect in the world-wide struggle and suffering caused by the demoniac forces of man's nature."
Joseph Campbell
"The Europeans who protested against the empire of mediocrity, themselves failed to attain to the springs of power. So their world of ideas went down before the steamroller. But in Dakshineswar, only a few miles outside the Victorian metropolis of Calcutta, practising his Sadhana not according to enlightened, modern methods, but after the most ancient, most superstitious, most idolatrous traditions of timeless India, Sri Ramakrishna cut the hinges of the heavens and released the fountains of divine bliss."
George Williams
"On the philosophical level, in Ramakrishna we find a formula for adapting the philosophy of India, Vedanta. Without the impulse of Ramakrishna, the great treasures of the Indian philosophical speculation might not have become so available, in the present flexible and constructive form, to the Western world."
Thomas Merton
"You have to experience duality for a long time until you see it's not there. In this respect I am Hindu. Ramakrishna has the solution."
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Life History | Tributes | Teachings | Suggested Readings
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