Swami Shivapadananda on the universality of Sri Ramakrishna

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

DAILY READINGS

From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji

Day 528

 
 

Sri Ramakrishna is a unique manifestation of God. No Master was born like him in this Yuga [world cycle]. Swami Vivekananda said that Satyuga [age of Truth] started from the day Sri Ramakrishna was born.

Just as there is no peer to Hanumanji [the great devotee of Lord Rama], there is no peer to Sri Ramakrishna. Why I stress this is because other people worshipped personalities, they emphasised only personalities, and they became fanatics. Instead of having absolute love they had part love and part hatred. But universality does not mean that. Universality means giving absolute love to the absolute world.

What Swami Vivekananda meant when he spoke about not stressing the personality was that you must preach the principles of Sri Ramakrishna, whether you accept the personality of Sri Ramakrishna or not. You can accept him as God, as a sadhu [holy man] or as a devotee. Whichever one you accept him as, we will accept him as that. There may be others who do not accept him in any of these categories, but if I hate these others and divorce myself from them and their life then I am the fanatic. It makes me a fanatic because I did not understand the real Deity called Sri Ramakrishna; I did not become as universal as the universality of Sri Ramakrishna.

It does not matter whether a man accepts the personality of Sri Ramakrishna or not – providing I tell him the principles that Sri Ramakrishna stood for. If I do good to him, whether he criticises Sri Ramakrishna or praises him, I am then worshipping the principle. In personality worship people often say, 'If you do not worship this deity you are doomed to hell.' I am not saying that.

No religion in the world can be practised without emphasising the personality to some degree. If people of a particular religion do not stress the personality, they will stress their scriptures. In a sense they are a little worse than us because they are preaching a dead thing – a book. We may be better off preaching a personality – it is a living thing.

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