THE GOSPEL OF SRI RAMAKRISHNA

“SRI SRI RAMAKRISHNA KATHAMRITA”

By Mahendranath Gupta (“M”), His Disciple

Translated from the Bengali by Swami Nikhilananda

Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission
––––––—
FOREWORD

by Aldous Huxley

IN THE HISTORY of the arts, genius is a thing of very rare

occurrence. Rarer still, however, are the competent reporters
and recorders of that genius. The world has had many
hundreds of admirable poets and philosophers; but of these
hundreds only a very few have had the fortune to attract a
Boswell or an Eckermann.
When we leave the field of art for that of spiritual religion, the
scarcity of competent reporters becomes even more strongly
marked. Of the day-to-day life of the great theocentric saints
and contemplatives we know, in the great majority of cases,
nothing whatever. Many, it is true, have recorded their
doctrines in writing, and a few, such as St. Augustine, Suso
and St. Teresa, have left us autobiographies of the greatest
value.
But, all doctrinal writing is in some measure formal and
impersonal, while the autobiographer tends to omit what he
regards as trifling matters and suffers from the further
disadvantage of being unable to say how he strikes other
people and in what way he affects their lives. Moreover, most
saints have left neither writings nor self-portraits, and for
knowledge of their lives, their characters and their teachings,
we are forced to rely upon the records made by their disciples
who, in most cases, have proved themselves singularly
incompetent as reporters and biographers. Hence the special
interest attaching to this enormously detailed account of the
daily life and conversations of Sri Ramakrishna.
“M”, as the author modestly styles himself, was peculiarly
qualified for his task. To a reverent love for his master, to a
deep and experiential knowledge of that master’s teaching, he
added a prodigious memory for the small happenings of each
day and a happy gift for recording them in an interesting and
realistic way. Making good use of his natural gifts and of the
circumstances in which he found himself, “M” produced a
book unique, so far as my knowledge goes, in the literature of
hagiography. No other saint has had so able and indefatigable
a Boswell. Never have the small events of a contemplative’s
daily life been described with such a wealth of intimate detail.
Never have the casual and unstudied utterances of a great
religious teacher been set down with so minute a fidelity. To
Western readers, it is true, this fidelity and this wealth of detail
are sometimes a trifle disconcerting; for the social, religious
and intellectual frames of reference within which Sri
Ramakrishna did his thinking and expressed his feelings were
entirely Indian. But after the first few surprises and
bewilderments, we begin to find something peculiarly
stimulating and instructive about the very strangeness and, to
our eyes, the eccentricity of the man revealed to us in “M’s”
narrative. What a scholastic philosopher would call the
“accidents” of Ramakrishna’s life were intensely Hindu and
therefore, so far as we in the West are concerned, unfamiliar
and hard to understand; its “essence”, however, was intensely
mystical and therefore universal. To read through these
conversations in which mystical doctrine alternates with an
unfamiliar kind of humour, and where discussions of the
oddest aspects of Hindu mythology give place to the most
profound and subtle utterances about the nature of Ultimate
Reality, is in itself a liberal, education in humility, tolerance
and suspense of judgment. We must be grateful to the