THE MYSTERY THAT IS THE MASTER

Who Sri Ramakrishna was is impossible to determine. I am of the opinion, and it is entirely my personal observation, that even ‘The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna’ cannot quite reveal the true depth of the personality of the Master for it seems that the written word invariably deflects from the truth, bound as it is in the limitation of the literary form. ‘The Divine Play of Sri Ramakrishna’ offers another clue to the mystery that is the Master but fails to plumb the fathomless depth of his personality for the word ever falls short of the Word that has become flesh. While ‘The Gospel...’ articulates in dramatic style the words of the Master, albeit, slightly polished for propriety’s sake, it, therefore, necessarily suffers from the defect of the ‘drama’ in not allowing enough time lapse for the long pauses which used to occur between phases of the verbal torrents of the Master. It is stylistically bound to the dramatic form and is, therefore, an incessant outflow of the Master’s words which gives the impression to the reader that the Master was constantly in the mode of speech quite contrary, though, to the actual state of things as recorded by Mohendranath Datta in his ‘Sri Sri Ramakrishner Anudhyan’ where he beautifully brings out the long pauses between the articulations of the Master and the rapt silence that enveloped the atmosphere around him, transporting his listeners to an ethereal world, quite beyond the senses, a world of subtle ideas and conceptions, a realm of consciousness quite beyond the humdrum reality of everyday life, a world so different that the author admits his inability to clearly express it in words.

Other versions of the Master’s life and words abound, those of Ram Chandra Datta (refer, ‘Sri Sri Ramakrishner Jeevanbrittanta’), Girish Chandra Sen, Suresh Chandra Datta, Swami Brahmananda, Swami Vivekananda (refer,‘My Master’) and Akshay Kumar Sen (refer, ‘Sri Sri Ramakrishna Punthi’), but all these succeed merely in giving partial or self-coloured representations of the Master’s personality. It seems that the Master was so wide a being and with such profundity of personality that anyone, however great, and this includes the mighty Vivekananda as well, could at best present only a fractional view of his great being and the perceptive reader would have to form his image of the Master by resolving all these different biographical impressions in his meditations to arrive at a totality of personal understanding of the Master. Such an impression would, however, again fall short of the real magnitude of the Master’s being but, then, what can be done about it? Can the infinite ever be apprehended by finite means, that of the material mind of mortal man? That is an impossibility. So, where does it all boil down to eventually? Back to ‘The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna’ and ‘The Divine Play of Sri Ramakrishna’ for hints and clues to the unravelling of this marvellous mystery, the Master. Let us be original and don our spiritual sleuth-selves as we follow the terrestrial trail of the Master in finally discovering him our way. May the Master himself bless us with this revelation!