Sri Ramakrishna, the Face of Silence

Swami Nikhilananda, Dhan Gopal Mukerji III

Description

An inspiring in-depth look at the nineteenth-century
Godman of India and Prophet of Harmony.

Sri Ramakrishna, one of the greatest spiritual personalities of our time, is widely recognized as the Prophet of the Harmony of Religions. After perfecting the practice of several religions—including Christianity, Islam and various traditions of Hinduism—he declared, “As many faiths, so many paths.”

For the first time, two classic biographies—Dhan Gopal Mukerji’s The Face of Silence (1926) and Swami Nikhilananda’s Sri Ramakrishna (1942)—are brought together to provide a fuller understanding of the life and spiritual significance of Sri Ramakrishna as well as the systems of Indian religious thought intimately connected with him. Pairing legend with fact, memory with history, this unique volume—including an Introduction to Sri Ramakrishna’s God-consciousness by Swami Adiswarananda—succeeds in intimately examining the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and conveying the true story of this great mystic, whose leaping flame of spiritual realization continues to influence the modern spiritual search.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Ramakrishna Order
• Swami Nikhilananda
• Ramakrishna
• Hinduism
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 05 décembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781594734090
• Langue: English

Extrait

God has made different religions to suit different aspirants, times and countries. All doctrines are so many paths; but a path is by no means God Himself. Indeed, one can reach God if one follows any of the paths with whole-hearted devotion.
-Sri Ramakrishna
SRI RAMAKRISHNA, THE FACE OF SILENCE
Swami Nikhilananda and Dhan Gopal Mukerji Edited and with an Introduction by Swami Adiswarananda Foreword by Dhan Gopal Mukerji II
Sri Ramakrishna, the Face of Silence
2005 First Printing
2005 by Swami Adiswarananda
Foreword 2005 by Dhan Gopal Mukerji II
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information regarding permission to reprint material from this book, please mail or fax your request in writing to SkyLight Paths Publishing, Permissions Department, at the address / fax number listed below, or e-mail your request to [e-mail] .
Page 325 constitutes a continuation of this copyright page.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nikhilananda, Swami.
Sri Ramakrishna / Swami Nikhilanda. The face of silence / Dhan Gopal Mukerji; [both] edited and with an introduction by Swami Adiswarananda; foreword by Dhan Gopal Mukerji II.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-59473-115-2 (hardcover)
1. Ramakrishna, 1836-1886-Teachings. 2. Hindu saints-Biography. I. Adiswarananda, Swami, 1925- . II. Mukerji, Dhan Gopal, 1890-1936. Face of silence. III. Title. IV. Title: Face of silence.
BL1175.R26N53 2005
294.5'55'092-dc22
[B]
2005010482
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Manufactured in Canada
Jacket Design: Sara Dismukes
Jacket Art: White Alabaster bust of Sri Ramakrishna by noted American sculptor Malvina Hoffman (commissioned by Swami Nikhilananda in 1952 and presently installed on the altar of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, New York City).

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Contents
Foreword by Dhan Gopal Mukerji II
Preface by Swami Adiswarananda
Introduction: Sri Ramakrishna and His God-Consciousness by Swami Adiswarananda
The Face of Silence by Dhan Gopal Mukerji
1 . Ramakrishna Monastery
2 . The Ramakrishna Legend
3 . Ramakrishna s Early Life
4 . Holy Man
5 . Ramakrishna and Other Religions
6 . Orthodox Hindus and Ramakrishna
7 . Ramakrishna and a Modern Social Reformer
8 . Ramakrishna and His Disciples
9 . Ramakrishna and His Disciples (continued)
10 . Description of the Indescribable
11 . A Recent Initiation
12 . Holy Man or Incarnation of God
13 . Ramakrishna and a Wayward Soul
14 . Mahaprasthan or Last Journey
15 . Turiyananda s Conclusion
16 . Last Impression
Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Nikhilananda
1 . The Early Years
2 . Dakshineswar
3 . Spiritual Longing and God-Vision
4 . Sadhanas or Spiritual Disciplines
5 . Contemporaries
6 . The Coming of the Disciples
7 . The Final Years
Appendix: Dhan Gopal Mukerji and His Intense Spiritual Longing
Notes
Glossary
Credits
About SkyLight Paths
Copyright
Foreword
The Face of Silence was the first book written in English to make Sri Ramakrishna known outside India. My father saw it as a follow-up to Swami Vivekananda s famous visit to America in 1893.
A further reason the book was important was more personal. My father s first literary success had been Caste and Outcast, which told of his arrival in America as a penniless brahmin seeking his destiny. That was followed by My Brother s Face, which told of his return to India in 1920, with an American wife, only to find a different India, to which he was now an outsider. The only aspect that was unchanged was the loving face of his elder brother. It was Caste and Outcast in reverse.
During the months he and my mother were visiting India, my father was aware that all his life so far had been a search for who he was and where he belonged. In The Face of Silence, the reader shares his discovery that the whos and whys of his life have become inextricably enlaced with the glorious name of Ramakrishna. Taken with the two earlier books, The Face of Silence made a trilogy of a man s search for his soul. It would dominate a life that ended while he was still relatively young, forty-seven, a few days after receiving the ocher cloth from Swami Akhandananda, the president of the Ramakrishna Order.
The Face of Silence has a life of its own. When it appeared in 1926, it was an immediate literary success, encouraging publishers in Europe to translate it for their readers. Victor Attinger, who had presses in France and Switzerland, urged my father to come to Geneva to participate in the translation to French of all three books. This led to a necklace of events.
By 1928, Romain Rolland, the 1915 Nobel laureate in literature, was living in Geneva. He had been exiled by his native France for opposing World War I. He was seriously depressed. His solace was to have his sister, Madeleine, read the latest publications aloud to him.
She returned from shopping one day with The Face of Silence in French. On hearing it, he became excited; he told his sister to find out how he could contact the author. She called old man Attinger who was honored, he said, to tell her, Mukerji is living here in Geneva. That same day, she called my father and begged him to come and see her brother. My father, who considered Romain Rolland to be a great soul, was overjoyed to accept.
In Romain Rolland s famous journal, he tells of my father s visit. Rolland questioned him about Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Vedanta, the new India. My father put him in touch with the monastery at Belur Math and wrote personal letters of introduction to Swami Shivananda, one of the direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna, and other monks. A few years later, Romain Rolland wrote his great Life of Ramakrishna and Life of Vivekananda, thus bringing them to the attention of his enormous audience.
On July 28, 1936, Josephine Tantine MacLeod, Swami Vivekananda s devoted follower, wrote from Helsinki to my father s beloved brother, Jadu, in India, on hearing of my father s death. She had received the news of Dhan s death while on her way to Leningrad. She wrote:
Dhan Gopal has gone to join the great ones he so loved. His nostalgie de Dieu [love of God] took him over . The Russian government has translated all of Rolland s books into Russian-including his life of Ramakrishna and Swamiji [Swami Vivekananda]! It was Dhan Gopal s book The Face of Silence that inspired him to write those two great lives-bless them both.
May The Face of Silence continue to enlarge our souls.
Dhan Gopal Mukerji II
Preface
Nobel laureate Romain Rolland refers to Sri Ramakrishna s life as nothing less than the book of life itself. In Rolland s words,
It is always the same Book. 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. The man whose image I here evoke was the consummation of two thousand years of the spiritual life of three hundred million people.
Writers and thinkers have used many epithets in an attempt to describe Sri Ramakrishna: Prophet for the New Age, Prophet of the Harmony of Religions, Godman of Modern India, Spiritual Hero, Savior of the Eternal Religion, the Great Master, a Phenomenon. But perhaps no description is more profound or intriguing than that given by Dhan Gopal Mukerji: the Face of Silence. It was this 1926 biography that was destined to play a key role in introducing the life and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna to the world.
Dhan Gopal Mukerji was one of the earliest migr s from India to America, and he achieved a great measure of success as a writer. Nevertheless, at one point in his life, feeling at home neither in India nor America, he faced a crisis of identity-a spiritual crisis that proved to be a turning point in his life. It was Josephine MacLeod, the dedicated devotee of Swami Vivekananda, who introduced Dhan Gopal Mukerji to the life of Sri Ramakrishna and paved the way for his visit to the Sri Ramakrishna Monastery at Belur, India. It was there that Mukerji became acquainted with many of the direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna, a transforming experience that inspired him to write The Face of Silence. The book was widely read and found its way into the hands of Romain Rolland, prompting him to write his Life of Ramakrishna. In the preface, Romain Rolland expresses his gratitude to Mr. Dhan Gopal Mukerji, who first revealed Ramakrishna s existence to me. Thus, within only a few decades of Sri Ramakrishna s passing, his name became known throughout Europe, the United States, and other Western countries.
Dhan Gopal Mukerji tells us that in writing The Face of Silence, he was guided not so much to write a factual history of Sri Ramakrishna but rather what he called the Ramakrishna legend. Mahendranath Gupta (known as M.), the chronicler of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, encouraged Mukerji in this approach, suggesting that by the