Ramakrishna Revisited

Ramakrishna Revisited
Author: Narasingha Prosad Sil
Publisher:
Total Pages: 376
Release: 1998
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Since the publication of Sri Ramakrishna's first biography, readers have been familiar with the awesome figure of a spiritual personality who established a direct liason with the divine and preached the most enlightened religious eclecticism in simple vernacular. All subsequent studies on the paramahamsa have been predicated on the monastic Vedantic interpretation of his career and character.This study is a pioneering attempt to uncover the human face behind the mask of the Paramahamsa. Using rare Bengali sources, it is an entirely new look at the saint. In his search for the historical and human figure, the author reexamines the saint's life and thought, and delves into his childhood experiences presenting him as a simple, gregarious, semiliterate rustic with a complex sexual dilemma and spiritual hunger who sought a solution to his troubled psyche in an eclectic piety of faith and fun.

Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda
Author: Narasingha Prosad Sil
Publisher: Susquehanna University Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 1997
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780945636977

The book also takes a hard look at his universally acknowledged reputation as a hypercosmological renouncer who championed the causes of the poor and the downtrodden and thus exemplified the doctrines of socialism at their finest. Sil is the first scholar to critically examine Vivekananda's attitude toward women in general and to probe into his experience with Margaret Noble (Sister Nivedita) in particular, and he is the first author to provide a detailed analysis of Vivekananda's popularity as a preacher and lecturer.

Interpretating Ramakrishna

Interpretating Ramakrishna
Author: Tyagananda Pravrajika Swami
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 9788120835320

Thibetan medicine is about 2500 years old. And some of its elements are even older, about 5000 years or more. The author had a cancer treatment with serious and chronic side effects, and turned to alternative medicine for help.

Kali's Child

Kali's Child
Author: Jeffrey J. Kripal
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 421
Release: 1998-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0226453774

Scholar Jeffrey J. Kripal explores the life and teachings of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a 19th-century Bengali saint who played a major role in the creation of modern Hinduism. The work is now marked by both critical acclaim and cross-cultural controversy. In a substantial new Preface to this second edition, Kripal answers his critics and addresses the controversy.

The Visions of Sri Ramakrishna

The Visions of Sri Ramakrishna
Author: Swami Yogeshananda
Publisher: Sri Ramakrishna Math
Total Pages: 135
Release: 2022-03-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

This book is a compilation of a number of transcendental, super-sensuous experiences of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Yogeshananda. This meticulous collection of extraordinary visions and experiences of Sri Ramakrishna—from the most profound to the seemingly trivial—is mainly drawn from Swami Saradananda’s Sri Ramakrishna the Great Master and Mahendra Nath Gupta’s The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna . The book, with its unobtrusive and helpful commentary on the visions, will be of immense help to both spiritual aspirants and the students of comparative religion.

Ramakrishna Paramhansa

Ramakrishna Paramhansa
Author: Dr. B.R. Kishore
Publisher: Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2014-03-27
Genre:
ISBN: 9350835959

This book on the legendary Indian religious missionary is a sequel to the author's earlier short biography titled 'Ramakrishna Paramhansa.' This is the life story of a prophet and messiah of the then undivided Bengal which would continue to be told and retold, because it is a testament of faith, devotion and God realization. Its appeal is universal and hence it belongs to the entire humanity. Nevertheless, the life and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa are so vast and multitudinous that even volumes of books can not exhaust them. The author has been in close touch with the life and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa as a reader for several years. Hence this book is an instant fallout of his studies in to the mysterious and fascinating life of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa.

Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality

Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality
Author: Ayon Maharaj
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2018-10-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190868244

Sri Ramakrishna is widely known as a nineteenth-century Indian mystic who affirmed the harmony of all religions on the basis of his richly varied spiritual experiences and eclectic religious practices, both Hindu and non-Hindu. In Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality, Ayon Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna was also a sophisticated philosopher of great contemporary relevance. Through a careful study of Sri Ramakrishna's recorded oral teachings in the original Bengali, Maharaj reconstructs his philosophical positions and analyzes them from a cross-cultural perspective. Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual journey culminated in the exalted state of "vijñana," his term for the "intimate knowledge" of God as the Infinite Reality that is both personal and impersonal, with and without form, immanent in the universe and beyond it. This expansive spiritual standpoint of vijñana, Maharaj contends, opens up a new paradigm for addressing central issues in cross-cultural philosophy of religion, including divine infinitude, religious pluralism, mystical experience, and the problem of evil. Sri Ramakrishna's vijñana-based religious pluralism--when grasped in all its subtlety--proves to have major philosophical advantages over dominant Western models. Moreover, his mystical testimony and teachings not only cut across long-standing debates about the nature of mystical experience but also bolster recent defenses of its epistemic value. Maharaj further demonstrates that Sri Ramakrishna's unique response to the problem of evil resonates strongly with Western "soul-making" theodicies and contemporary theories of skeptical theism. A pioneering interdisciplinary study of one of India's most important philosopher-mystics, Maharaj's book is essential reading for scholars and students in philosophy of religion, theology, religious studies, and Hindu studies.

Approaching Ramakrishna

Approaching Ramakrishna
Author: Prabuddha Bharata Compilation
Publisher: Advaita Ashrama (A publication branch of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math)
Total Pages: 371
Release:
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 8175059087

Sri Ramakrishna is an ocean in whose heart the universe is nestled like an island. Awed by the expanse of infinite depth around, we in the universe constantly try to perceive this personality in our own way. Our perception is unique every time as is the knowledge we obtain thereby. Approaching Ramakrishna becomes our prayer to the supreme reality. Published by Advaita Ashrama, a publication house of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math, India in commemoration of the 175th Birth Anniversary of Sri Ramakrishna.

His Words

His Words
Author: Amiya P Sen
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2010-04-09
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 8184752296

‘I found that I had begun to take a great liking for the man . . . Oddly, this did not grow out of any feeling of veneration . . . for that would have implied my being overawed and somewhat fearful in the presence of someone vastly superior. Rather, my feelings grew spontaneously and from the very depths of my heart. I simply revelled in the man’s company.’—Mahendra Nath Dutta (Swami Vivekananda’s brother) on Ramakrishna Press reports in the 1870s Calcutta marvelled at the way ‘highly educated’, ‘civilized’ and ‘reasoning’ men, like Mahendra Nath Dutta, were drawn to the ‘ill clad’, ‘illiterate’, ‘friendless’ and ‘unpolished’ Ramakrishna. The progressive press, which had first brought Ramakrishna to public attention, scoffed at his use of ‘vulgar’ speech, while acknowledging its effectiveness in religious communication. Despite these critiques, Ramakrishna came to occupy an important place in the cultural life of late-nineteenth-century Bengal. Amiya P. Sen’s lucid introductions and fluent translations of the interactions between Ramakrishna and his followers in His Words make for an engaging and illuminating account of Ramakrishna’s teachings. Compiled from a variety of contemporary and near-contemporary sources, this book brings out the dramatic simplicity of Ramakrishna’s incisive commentaries on profound religious ideas. See also by Amiya Sen Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: The Sadhaka of Dakshineswar

Secret Body

Secret Body
Author: Jeffrey J. Kripal
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 493
Release: 2017-11-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 022649148X

“An academic memoir . . . addresses topics as diverse as Hindu Tantra, Christian mysticism, American counterculture, and the history of the paranormal.” —Los Angeles Review of Books Over the course of his twenty-five-year career, Jeffrey J. Kripal’s study of religion has had two major areas of focus: the erotic expression of mystical experience and the rise of the paranormal in American culture. This book brings these two halves together in surprising ways through a blend of memoir, manifesto, and anthology, drawing new connections between these two realms of human experience and revealing Kripal’s body of work to be a dynamic whole that has the potential to renew and reshape the study of religion. Kripal tells his story, biographically, historically and politically contextualizing each of the six books of his Chicago corpus, from Kali’s Child to Mutants and Mystics, all the while answering his censors and critics and exploring new implications of his thought. In the process, he begins to sketch out a speculative “new comparativism” in twenty theses. The result is a new vision for the study of religion, one that takes in the best of the past, engages with outside critiques from the sciences and the humanities, and begins to blaze a new positive path forward. A major work decades in the making, Secret Body will become a landmark in the study of religion. “Kripal presents us with a compilation of theories, cultural references and anecdotes making up an impassioned thesis about the future of religious studies and ‘what human beings may become’ . . . For all its eccentricities, Kripal’s work is playful, engaging and original.” —Times Higher Education