1836 - 1886 · Dakshineswar, Bengal
The priest who tested every path
A temple priest of the Divine Mother Kali on the banks of the Ganges, Ramakrishna longed for direct vision of God with an intensity that frightened those around him — and attained it. Then he did something almost unheard of: he practiced the disciplines of path after path — tantra, Vaishnava devotion, Advaita, and the ways of Islam and Christianity — and testified that each led to the same ocean.
From that lived experiment came the saying recorded by his disciples: as many faiths, so many paths. His conversations, preserved in the Kathamrita (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna), remain among the most vivid spiritual records ever kept, and his disciple Vivekananda carried his fire across the world.
The practice he urged on householders was sincere longing for God through one's own chosen form and name — call on the Divine, he taught, with the yearning of a child for its mother, and set aside time daily in solitude for that calling. Sincerity, he insisted, matters more than the path chosen.
