Adjustment is the law of nature, whether in the domain of spirit or matter. Through an inscrutable law, East and West offer two fields of activity, one mainly in the domain of spirit and the other largely in the domain of matter, for the glorious consummation of the ideal to which all humanity has been moving through its science, philosophy, metaphysics and religion. The West has mostly devoted itself to researches in and discovery of the nature of material things; the East from time immemorial has experimented in religion in order to learn the laws that rule the realm of spirit. Both ideals are necessary for the progress of humanity, whose future rests on cooperation and mutual understanding between East and West.

In the last century one more adjustment on the spiritual plane was needed. Materialistic ideas were at the height of their glory and power. The rampant growth of materialism, un inspired by higher idealism, governed the world. While the West was running after worldly enjoyments, the East had fallen from its true ideals. Devoid of the spirit of renunciation, the Eternal religion of the Vedas was broken up into conflicting sects. The world was awaiting the birth of a divine Incarnation in whose mind, purified of all worldly taint, the great truths underlying all the religious systems of the world would be revealed once more an Incarnation whose life would harmonize all the apparently contradictory religious ideals and the various national and social ideals of different races and countries, thus uniting humanity by the ties of love and toleration into a single brotherhood.

Here for the first time Shri Ramakrishna-for that is the name by which Gadadhar has become famous all over the world came in touch with modern ideas. His brother wanted him to have the education usual for a Brahmin boy in those days; but Ramakrishna, who was already beginning to realize that he was born for a definite purpose, asked himself, "Shall I attain piety, devotion and divine fervour by pursuing this education?" "No", was the emphatic reply of his mind. "Will it enable me to be as God-fearing and upright as my father?" "No", echoed his innate religious instinct. "Shall I be able to realize God through this education and escape from universal ignorance and the glamour of material enjoyments?" The same reply came from his heart. "Then what shall I do with this education which will not help me realize God or overcome the miseries of the world? I would rather remain ignorant all my life and follow the path of God, than throw away my cherished ideals", was his conclusion. To his brother's persuasion he emphatically replied, "Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education? I would rather acquire that wisdom which will illumine my heart, getting which one is satisfied for ever."

About this time the Kali temple at Dakshineswar, some four miles to the north of Calcutta on the east bank of the Ganga, was founded by Rani Rasmani, a pious Hindu lady of great wealth and influence. Mathuranath Biswas, her son-in-law, was the manager of her estate. Ramkumar was invited to be the priest at the temple. He accepted; and so, with his brother Ramakrishna, came to live at Dakshineswar. In course of time Ramakrishna was appointed as a priest at the Kali temple. The proximity of the holy Ganga, the quietness and solitude of the temple compound in contrast with the turmoil of the busy metropolis, and above all, the living presence of Kali, the Divine Mother of the Universe, filled the mind of Ramakrishna with a strong desire for the realization of God.

There came a great change in him. The boy became the devotee; the devotee became the ascetic; the ascetic became the saint; the saint became the man of realization; the man of realization became the prophet; the prophet often became merged in the Divine Nature which is God. And all this happened in the course of twelve years. It is impossible to give an idea of Ramakrishna's passionate yearning for realization, his utter renunciation of worldly enjoyments, his sincerity, his single-minded devotion, and the ecstasies of soul, which characterized the early period of his spiritual life. He was innocent of scriptures and the intricacies of religious practices. He hardly received any help from spiritual guides at this stage. All he possessed was the extreme eagerness of the child to see his mother, and a strong dispassion for worldly enjoyments. The day was spent in worship, prayer and song; in the twilight of the early morning and dusk he would stroll along the bank of the Ganga absorbed in the contemplation of the Divine Mother; the nights were spent in meditation. Thus while those about him were wasting time in all sorts of frivolity, he was burning day and night with this consuming thirst for God. The vision of the Divine Mother became the one passion of Ramakrishna; but he had not, as yet, realized Her. Days and months passed in this way, with no abatement of his zeal. The agony of longing for his Divine Mother was gradually increasing. In the evening on the bank of the Ganga he would cry aloud, "Another day is gone in vain, Mother, for I have not seen Thee. Another day of this short life has passed, and I have not realized the Truth." Then doubts would cross his mind, and he would say, "Art Thou real, Mother, or is it all fiction, mere poetry without any truth? If Thou dost exist, why can I not see Thee? Is religion just a phantasy, a mere castle in the air?" But this scepticism was only momentary; in a flash he would recall the lives and the struggles of those who had been blessed with the vision of God, and he would redouble his efforts.

One day the agony became unbearable. It was an excruciating pain. Feeling that life was useless without the vision of God, and determining to put an end to it, he seized the sword that was hanging in the Mother's temple. All on a sudden the Divine Mother, illuminating everything with Her effulgent splendour, revealed Herself to him. He fell unconscious to the floor. What happened after that he did not know, nor how that day or the next passed, for within him was a constant flow of ineffable bliss altogether new; and he felt the direct presence of the Divine Mother. After this vision Shri Ramakrishna became intoxicated with God. The period subsequent to this was replete with thrilling spiritual experiences. He was just stepping into a new, limitless realm. He had many and various visions, in trance and also in normal consciousness. It was as if he were living in another region where he held communion with strange beings. To people about him all this looked like madness.

Though the young priest had been blessed with the vision of the Divine Mother, he was not happy, for it was not continuous. He put fresh energy into his struggles and intensified his prayers. As his realizations deepened, his vision of the Mother began to be continuous; the image in the temple disappeared, and in its place there stood the living Mother Herself, smiling and blessing him. He even felt Her breath on his hand, and heard Her anklets tinkling as She went to the upper storey of the temple. The sense of separation from his Divine Mother gradually vanished, and he became Her child.

His whole mind and nervous system thus became attuned to the Highest Reality, unable to respond to any worldly stimulus. Sex consciousness was completely erased from his mind.Mathuranath even contrived to tempt him secretly; but he passed through such trials quite unscathed, embodiment of purity and self control that he was. He himself said that in his whole life not even in dream did he look upon a woman other than as the visible representation of the Divine Mother.

The strain of intense spiritual practices and austerities before the first vision of the Mother was so great that for a time his body became subject to various ailments. He went back to Kamarpukur at the request of his mother, and there his relatives, anxious on account of his health and in order to divert his mind to worldly affairs, arranged his marriage with a young girl from a neighbouring village. He readily agreed to the proposal, seeing it as the will of the Divine Mother.

At this time there came to Dakshineswar a nun who was an adept in the Path of Devotion as well as in the intricacies of the Tantrika Sadhana (spiritual practice according to the class of scriptures called Tantras). She was the first to diagnose the cause of Shri Ramakrishna's maladies and his so called madness. She saw that he was in the state which is known in the Vaishnava scriptures as Maha bhava and that his experiences were the result of his extreme love for God. Happy the man who had them! She was convinced that in his trances he had scaled the ultimate heights of spiritual realization. She came to the conclusion that Shri Ramakrishna was an Incarnation of God, and this she established before an assembly of pundits, giving the, scriptures as her authority, Ramakrishna accepted her as his guru and practised under her guidance the devotional and Tantrika methods of Sadhana (spiritual practices), in which he attained perfection in an incredibly short time.

Later there came to Dakshineswar a Vaishnava saint, an itinerant monk and a devotee of Rama. Ramlala, or the Child Rama, was his favourite deity, and he had already had a vision of Him. He carried a metal image of Ramlala with him which he showed to Shri Ramakrishna. But Ramakrishna saw the living Rama in it, and soon established a loving relationship with it. He saw Ramlala as vividly as he saw anyone else now dancing, now jumping up on his back or insisting on being taken in his arms. The latter became so attached to Ramakrishna that he refused to go with the monk, who was finally obliged to leave him behind, glad to see him happy in Ramakrishna's company.

Later there came to Dakshineswar a Vaishnava saint, an itinerant monk and a devotee of Rama. Ramlala, or the Child Rama, was his favourite deity, and he had already had a vision of Him. He carried a metal image of Ramlala with him which he showed to Shri Ramakrishna. But Ramakrishna saw the living Rama in it, and soon established a loving relationship with it. He saw Ramlala as vividly as he saw anyone else now dancing, now jumping up on his back or insisting on being taken in his arms. The latter became so attached to Ramakrishna that he refused to go with the monk, who was finally obliged to leave him behind, glad to see him happy in Ramakrishna's company.

Shri Ramakrishna next took up the highest form of Vaishnava Sadhana, the Madhura Bhava, or intensest love of a woman for her lover. All the Vaishnava disciplines centre on love. In this particular one the closest union between worshipper and worshipped is found. Not the grandeur of the Ideal but the sweetness and closeness of the relationship is what counts here. The most beautiful example of this form of worship is found in Shri Radha's life; and the perfect devotee in this path is one who looks only to the comfort of the Beloved, regardless of his or her own personal pleasure or convenience. This discipline roots out the sex idea. The soul has no sex; it is neither male nor female. Sex is of the body. The man who desires to reach the Spirit must get rid of sex distinctions. Shri Ramakrishna took up this discipline with his usual zeal. He brought femininity into everything, He dressed and spoke like women, and lived with the women in Mathuranath's family. He made every detail of their life his own till at last he found that the Truth could be gained as a woman too.

About this time Totapuri, a sannyasi of the highest Vedantic realization, came to Dakshineswar. Appreciating the spiritual gifts of Shri Ramakrishna he asked if he might teach him the secret of the Advaita (Non-dual) philosophy. Under his guidance Ramakrishna attained Nirvikalpa Samadhi, the state in which the soul realizes its identity with Brahman, the Absolute Truth. Shri Ramakrishna later said: "I was for, six months in that state from which ordinary mortals never return. Their body lives for twenty-one days only and then falls like a dried leaf from a tree; and the soul that was embodied realizes its identity with Existence Absolute." It had taken Totapuri forty years to attain this Supreme Consciousness; but Ramakrishna attained it in a single day!

A wandering monk who hitherto had never stayed at one place for more than three days, Totapuri remained at Dakshineswar for eleven months, imparting his knowledge to this wonderful disciple, setting him firmly on the lofty heights of Advaita. The disciple, in turn, became the guide of his teacher and enlightened him regarding the reality of the personal aspects of Truth which Totapuri had hitherto refused to recognize.

Shri Ramakrishna next sought to realize the ideals of religions other than Hinduism. He found from personal experience that they also led to the same goal which he had already attained through Hinduism. In his association with people of various sects, and in comparing their realizations with his own, he arrived at the conclusion that the ultimate aim of all religions was the realization in different aspects of one and the same Truth.

Meanwhile, strange stories that Shri Ramakrishna had gone mad were current in his native village. His wife Saradamani Devi resolved to learn the truth for herself So she set out and walked to Dakshineswar, where she was very cordially received by her husband. He accommodated her in his own room for three or four days, and then made arrangements for her to live with his mother in the Nahabat (concert room) near by. When Saradamani saw how loving her husband was, the anxiety caused by the rumours was removed from her mind.

Whenever opportunity arose, Shri Ramakrishna used to teach Saradamani a variety of things, from housekeeping to the knowledge of Brahman. Once he told her, "Just as `uncle' moon is the uncle of all children, so God is everybody's own. Whoever calls on Him will be blessed with His vision. If you call on him, you also will see Him." On another occasion he asked her, with the intention of testing her, "Did you come here to drag me into the world?" Saradamani, pure and noble soul that she was, at once understood and replied without hesitation, "No, why should I drag you into the world? I have come here to help you on your spiritual path."

One day during this period, Saradamani, while massaging Ramakrishna's feet, asked him, "How do you look on me?" He replied, "The Mother who is in the temple, the mother who gave birth to this body and now resides in the Nahabat it is the same Mother who is now massaging my feet. Truly, I always look upon you as a form of the blissful Divine Mother."

On another occasion, seeing Saradamani asleep by his side, Ramakrishna addressed his own mind, discriminating: "This, O mind, is a female body. People look upon it as an object of great enjoyment, a thing to be highly prized, and they die for the sake of enjoying it. But if one goes after it, one has to remain confined in the body, and cannot realize God, who is Existence-Knowledge-Bliss. O mind, do not have one thought within and a contrary attitude without. Say in truth whether you want to have this or have God. If you want it, it is here before you; take it." Scarcely had he entertained the idea of touching the person of Saradamani than his mind recoiled. At once he was so deeply lost in Samadhi that he did not regain normal consciousness that night. He had to be brought back with great care the next morning by repeating the divine name in his ears.

Later on Shri Ramakrishna used to say, "Had she (Sarada-mani) not been so pure and, losing herself, assailed me, who knows that my self control would not have broken down and body-consciousness arisen? I had importunately asked the Divine Mother after my marriage to keep her mind absolutely free from lust. After living with her at that time, I knew that the Divine Mother had really granted my prayer." Saradamani was thus endowed with rare spiritual fervour, and she became Ramakrishna's first disciple.

Among the innumerable aspects of divinity which Shri Ramakrishna realized, the one that stands out most prominently is that of Kali, the Divine Mother whose emblem is death and destruction. She, as time, engulfs all things; as Death She destroys all. Therefore Her garland is a necklace of skulls, Her girdle is made of human arms, and in Her hand She holds a bleeding head. And yet Kali is Brahman; for does not the eternal Consciousness, the background of the mind, remain when all ideas, temporal and mortal, have been eliminated?

Shri Ramakrishna worshipped Kali both as the Mother and as Brahman; in Her terrible forms as well as in the blessedness and bliss of Brahman. The Personal Kali merged, in his reali-zation, in the Impersonal. To Ramakrishna, She was also the giver of immortality. She puts down the mighty from their seats and exalts those of low degree; She fills the hungry with good things and the rich She sends empty away. To Her devotee the Mother reveals Herself as the Ocean of Reality: Her heart ¬throb is that of the Infinite Soul. For him, Kali held the scales of life and death, and the keys of wisdom and ignorance. At Her bidding the world begins the whirl of creation and at Her bidding it ends in destruction. Yet She is, also, ineffable Peace. Shri Ramakrishna saw the Mother in all things. He likewise realized Her as the indwelling Divinity in all souls. Though change, time, death and destruction are aspects of Her, She is the everlasting, unchanging Reality-Brahman. His ideas of Her took on their intrinsic reality as his conscious mind was transcended, and his soul shone forth as the Mother Herself. Lost in Samadhi, his whole body stiff, his hands automatically took the form of Varabhaya-offering boons with one hand and protection with the other. The vastness of nature was seen by Shri Ramakrishna as the living reality of the Mother. Of what was embodied, She was the embodiment; of what was ensouled, She was the soul. Beyond all and as all She dwelt incarnate as the active power of Supreme Reality. "Brahman and Shakti are one", Ramakrishna would say, "as fire and its heat, or milk and its whiteness, are one. When static the reality is Brahman; when active it is Shakti, the Mother." She is beyond speech and thought; verily, She is the Brahman of the Vedas and the Vedanta.

In the higher forms of Samadhi, Ramakrishna merged in the impersonal aspect of the Divine Mother. But for the fulfilment of the divine mission his mind had to be brought down, as if by force, to the phenomenal plane of consciousness. Then he regarded the world as the play of the Divine Mother. He, like a child, placed implicit trust in Her and, as will be seen, followed Her guidance in everything.

About spiritual matters in general, the following were his convictions: As the result of his realizations through all forms of discipline, he was firmly convinced that all religions were true, that every religious system was a path to God. Secondly, the three great systems of thought known as Dualism, Qualified Nondualism, and Nondualism-Dvaita, Vishishtadvaita, and Advaita-were not contradictory but complementary to one another; they were stages in man's progress towards the Goal. With regard to activity and inactivity he said, "A man whose mind is absolutely pure naturally goes beyond action. He cannot work even if he tries to; or the Lord does not allow him to work. But the ordinary man must do his duties unattached, depending on the Lord-like the maidservant in her master's house. She does everything for her master, but knows in her heart that her home is elsewhere." Thirdly, Ramakrishna realized that through him the Mother would found a new monastic Order, comprising those who would put into practice the doctrines of universality illustrated in his life. Lastly, his spiritual insight told him that those who were in their last incarnation-those who had sincerely prayed to 'the Lord at least once-must come to him. This statement may be taken in a universal or in a personal way, as one chooses.

Firmly established in the consciousness of God and totally unified with the Cosmic Will, Shri Ramakrishna was eager to disseminate the results of his realizations to all earnest seekers of Truth. He literally burned with that desire. He would say later: "There was no limit to the yearning I had then. In the day-time I managed somehow to control it. The ordinary talk of the worldly-minded was galling to me, and I would look wistfully to the day when my beloved, all-renouncing spiritual companions [his future apostles] would come. I hoped to find solace by telling them about my realizations, and so unburdening my mind. Every little incident would make me think of them. I used to arrange in my mind what I should say to one, give to another, and so on. But when the day came to a close, I could not curb my feelings. Another day had gone by and they had not come! When during the evening service the temple precincts rang with the sound of bells and conchs, I would climb to the roof of the building in the garden, and writhing in anguish of heart, cry at the top of my voice, `Come, my boys! Oh, where are you all? I cannot bear to live without you!'_x000d_ A mother never longed for her child so intensely, nor a friend for his companions, nor a lover for his sweetheart, as I did for them! Oh, it was indescribable! Shortly after this yearning the youngsters began to come."

To the fragrant full-blown lotus of the soul of Ramakrishna also came, like bees, Gauri Pandit, Padmalochan, Vaishnavacharan, Shashadhar Tarkachudamani and a host of other great pundits and aspirants; Keshabchandra Sen and Pratapchandra Mazumdar, Vijaykrishna Goswami and the great Nag Mahashaya; Christians, Mohammedans, Sikhs and Hindus, hundreds of them. There came poets and thinkers, preachers and theologians, professors and leaders of public opinion, rich and poor, great devotees and fit disciples.

It was at this time that Narendranath was pining for the vision of Truth. Unconsciously attracted by the wonderful aroma of Shri Ramakrishna's realizations, he also came to Dakshineswar he and that group of young men who were later to become the first monks of the Ramakrishna Order.

At this psychological moment of the world's history, the Lord, true to His promise that whenever virtue subsides and vice prevails He bodies Himself forth, incarnated Himself as Shri Ramakrishna, combining in a single personality the wonderful love and compassion of Buddha and Christ with the keen intellect of Shankara to demonstrate what true religion is._x000d_ On Wednesday, February 18, 1836, at Kamarpukur, a village of Bengal, a child was born of poor Brahmin parents. Both father and mother were venerated as living saints by the simple villagers. The child was named Gadadhar. He grew up amid the simplicities of a village-the cows, the fields and the typical rural life-yet he manifested even in his early boyhood remarkable traits. It is said that religious songs in praise of the gods or the discussing of religious topics would often send him into a trance. When the father passed away, the family fell into straitened circumstances. The eldest son, Ramkumar, came to Calcutta and opened a school. Soon Gadadhar joined his brother there.

Some months after this, there arose in Shri Ramakrishna's mind a desire to worship Saradamani as a symbol of the Divine Mother Shodashi Mahavidya (a form of Kali), and to offer himself to her. This he did on the new-moon day of the month of Jyaishtha (May 25, 1873), when Phalaharini Kalika Devi is worshipped. While the worship was going on Saradamani went into Samadhi; and so did Ramakrishna after finishing the ritual. Priest and Goddess were joined in a transcendental union in the Self. When the Master recovered, he surrendered himself, the fruits of his lifelong spiritual practices, and his rosary, with appropriate Mantras, at the feet of Saradamani. It was the consummation of his spiritual disciplines. Everything now became to him a symbol of God.