Sri Ramakrishna remains even today a phenomenon as Christopher Isherwood had chosen to call him. There has been none like him, before or after, so completely God-intoxicated with the possible exception of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. But even the latter had been restricted in his devotions within the confines of dualistic bhakti-marga (the path of devotion) although he was fully possessed of the realization of non-dual Brahman which no less an authority than Sri Ramakrishna has ratified. Mahaprabhu spent his years in Jagannath Puri in such an exalted state of spiritual fervour that it must have then seemed like an unsurpassable altitude of protracted spiritual existence. But God surpasses God and in every incarnation He reveals Himself a little more fully to meet the increasing demands of the Age and what was earlier a localized movement, sectarian to a degree, although in intent never so, has now assumed a universal proportion thanks to the catholicity of the Ramakrishna Avatar.
Sri Ramakrishna underwent the gamut of spiritual practices and realized the essence and end of all religions to be the same. He declared that whichever spiritual discipline he had pursued had led him eventually to the sea of God, that every path was therefore a valid way of seeking God, that all religions had their strengths and weaknesses and none was perfect and that they had come into existence by the will of God to suit the diverse temperaments of devotees. Thus, devotees ought not to quarrel over the inessential and often erroneous superficial features of religion but that they should be sincere in their spiritual aspirations and dive deep into the sea of God that they might pick up the pearls of realization. This was a departure from the earlier incarnations of the Divine who had traversed a single path of the Spirit and post-realization had affirmed the pre-eminence of their own chosen path. This had led to intolerance, disharmony, violence and war, fanatical barbarism in the name of God that had sent civilizations to despair and ruin. What was needed in the modern age was a religion which was universal in scope with a philosophy that could harmonize conflicting theological propositions and stand up to the challenge of the rationalistic sciences on the basis not of faith but enlightened reason and, to breathe life into this new dispensation, the birth of a being who would be the living embodiment of these grand catholic ideas.
Such a one was born at Kamarpukur in erstwhile Bengal in 1836, the Prophet of Dakshineshwar, who would change the course of world spiritual thought and give a new direction to the spiritual evolution of mankind. His protege Vivekananda gave utterance to his message in more forceful rational terms across the wide world from the Pacific to the Atlantic, the Voice of the Vedanta, his clarion call awakening the sleeping mass of humanity from its age-old stupor and sending a thrill across the landmass of the motherland whence she gained her long-lost freedom. These are known facts, matter of common talk, but the significance of the passage of this divine duo through the terrestrial plane is often lost in historical terms as we do not realize that the vibrational difference they brought about in the collective human consciousness careered the downfall of colonialism, imperialism and the like and ushered in the modern era of human freedom. And this is not vain talk or idle philosophizing on my part but I shall posit my defence to it.
Vivekananda changed the thought-current of India and so massively influenced the leaders of the Indian freedom movement like Mahatma Gandhi, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Aurobindo Ghose, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Chakravarty Rajagopalachari, Bagha Jatin, Surya Sen and a host of others, nearly all the leading lights of the day. This led to the people's movement that brought about the downfall of the British empire. The fall of the British empire destroyed colonialism the world over and liberated Asia and later Africa from the thraldom of the western powers. Two world wars were fought to settle the historical issues and usher in the new age. Political problems still abound and neo-colonialism is on the rise but the democratization of forces is an irreversible development throughout the world which is the single biggest achievement of the modern age. And although by no stretch of imagination I mean to imply that all of the developments of the modern world owe their existence to Ramakrishna-Vivekananda which, if averred, will be the greatest travesty of truth and a standing violation of the Vedantic principle of the divinity of man, I must affirm that the crowning glory of such development, the declaration of the spiritual freedom of man, is an evolutionary step grander than the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) or the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) and owes its existence to Ramakrishna-Vivekananda for sure. The Chicago Addresses of Vivekananda at the World Parliament of Religions (1893) may I call the Declaration of the Divinity of Man and this is the high-watermark of the resurgent civilization of the modern man. Vivekananda's ideas and ideals today find expression in the Charter of the United Nations which at places seems to be the echo of the great Swami's words. His ideas have percolated the consciousness of humanity and are working in the depths of the collective consciousness of man bringing about depth-transformation of the human psyche and preparing mankind for the coming of the golden age. All this may be attributed to the wonder that was Vivekananda. But who created Vivekananda?
My friends, you do not light a candle to see the sun. The effulgence that gave birth to the constructive genius of Vivekananda was a ' name that was writ in water '. He was so unconscious of his human self, having been purged of all vestige of human frailty, that the superconscious remained his permanent abode even as he dwelt in the human frame. He was unaware of the geographical extent of the earth although every moment the infinitude of Godhead was his spontaneous domain. In his visions he saw the fair-skinned westerners as queer people inhabiting a distant land across the seas with strange manners and customs and speaking a tongue which he could not understand but, nonetheless, who would be devoted to his Mother's Cause. This was Ramakrishna, Master of Vivekananda, whose sole purpose in the present incarnation was to fashion the mighty soul of the leonine Swami that he might refashion the world in the spiritual mould wherein lay its destiny.
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