Sri Ramakrishna was a simple unlettered man, who was also a genius and a saint: he never desired learning, but from early youth strove after the sight of God, and longed to dive into the hidden reality behind phenomena. And ultimately a wonderful light came to him. He had a distrust of the intellectual faculties as a means of bringing men to God, and he proved how love can guide us into all Truth — to a perfect state of expansion of the self into universal and eternal relations. The vision came to Sri Ramakrishna, but it did not come unsought. It was prepared for and gained by an unconditional self-surrender and a severe course of training. His real strong yearning and the self-discipline which he considered necessary for the development of inward revelation, is a most precious example, and shows to what regions of spiritual knowledge they conducted him.
He was a man who never stirred in others a feeling of jealousy
or antagonism: who seemed to have the power of making those who served him feel
honoured in their service: who always called out the love and dignity of his
followers. He taught his lessons by example rather than by argument, and
demonstrated that salvation is and can be nothing else but the birth of light
and love.
He possessed the truth that sees God, and the love that delights
in God. All perishable things he set at one price, and valued gold no more than
a handful of sand.
Sri Ramakrishna brought to its highest perfection the faculty
of spiritual vision, the contemplation of the Light invisible. During the
nineteenth century he was the most influential preacher of our eternal religion
and principles, and his life and teachings which contain the kernel of spirituality
have inaugurated a reform so far-reaching and important that it is difficult to
realise their full significance.
In preaching the Advaita aspect of Vedanta he brought out
the Eternal grand idea of the Oneness of the universe, that all is but One
Existence, and each one of us according to his different nature can tend to
increase the harmony of Unity, which must arise from various instruments,
sounds and voices. Behind every one, there is that Infinite soul, assuring the
possibility and the infinite
capacity of all to become good and perfect.
Source —Prabuddha Bharata, June 1908, 112–13.