Many consider Ramakrishna the Jesus of the 19th century. Anyone who samples "The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna" would soon see why. He, too, was a salt-of-the-earth figure whose spiritual parables and metaphors resonate very deeply on multiple levels for a wide audience, which attracted the erudite and those less educated alike. For example, because I am too well read in matters Advaitan, I can complicate the simplest instructions of Jnana yoga, which muddies something like self-inquiry meditation with all manner of misdirected conceptualization. Ramakrishna puts it ever so simply in order to reach overheated people like me:
"...cultivate discrimination between the Real and the unreal. God alone is the Real, that is to say, the Eternal Substance, and the world is unreal, that is to say, transitory. As soon as a man finds his mind wandering away to the unreal, he should apply discrimination. The moment an elephant stretches out its trunk to eat a plaintain-tree in a neighbor's garden, it gets a blow from the iron goad of the driver."
Is there a better way to instruct us on concentration? If only Jesus had had somebody like the fortunate scribe, "M," who sat at Ramakrishna's feet by day and wrote it all down that very night for four successive years. The New Testament came in parts anywhere from 10-60 years after Jesus' death, depending on the gospel and which researchers you choose to believe (with some of Paul's letters a little closer in time). "The Gospel of Ramakrishna" has not been handed down through centuries of translation and political and social prejudices extant in the Judeao-Christian bible. It is still pure.
"...cultivate discrimination between the Real and the unreal. God alone is the Real, that is to say, the Eternal Substance, and the world is unreal, that is to say, transitory. As soon as a man finds his mind wandering away to the unreal, he should apply discrimination. The moment an elephant stretches out its trunk to eat a plaintain-tree in a neighbor's garden, it gets a blow from the iron goad of the driver."
Is there a better way to instruct us on concentration? If only Jesus had had somebody like the fortunate scribe, "M," who sat at Ramakrishna's feet by day and wrote it all down that very night for four successive years. The New Testament came in parts anywhere from 10-60 years after Jesus' death, depending on the gospel and which researchers you choose to believe (with some of Paul's letters a little closer in time). "The Gospel of Ramakrishna" has not been handed down through centuries of translation and political and social prejudices extant in the Judeao-Christian bible. It is still pure.
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