Gradually other Brahmo leaders began to feel Sri Ramakrishna's
influence.
But they were by no means uncritical admirers of the Master. They
particularly disapproved of his ascetic renunciation and condemnation
of
"woman and gold".1
They measured him according to their own ideals of
the householder's life. Some could not understand his samadhi and
described
it as a nervous malady. Yet they could not resist his magnetic
personality.
Among the Brahmo leaders who knew the Master closely were Pratap
Chandra Mazumdar, Vijaykrishna Goswami, Trailokyanath Sannyal, and
Shivanath Shastri.
Shivanath, one day, was greatly impressed by the Master's utter
simplicity
and abhorrence of praise. He was seated with Sri Ramakrishna in the
latter's
room when several rich men of Calcutta arrived. The Master left the
room
for a few minutes. In the mean time Hriday, his nephew, began to
describe
his samadhi to the visitors. The last few words caught the Master's ear
as
he entered the room. He said to Hriday: "What a mean-spirited fellow
you
must be to extol me thus before these rich men! You have seen their
costly
apparel and their gold watches and chains, and your object is to get
from
them as much money as you can. What do I care about what they think of
me? (Turning to the gentlemen) No, my
friends, what he has told you
about me is not true. It was not love of God that made me absorbed in
God
and indifferent to external life. I became positively insane for some
time.
The sadhus who frequented this temple told me to practise many things.
I tried to follow them, and the consequence was that my austerities
drove
me to insanity." This is a quotation from one of Shivanath's books. He
took
the Master's words literally and failed to see their real import.
Shivanath vehemently criticized the Master for his other-worldly
attitude
toward his wife. He writes: "Ramakrishna was practically separated from
his wife, who lived in her village home. One day when I was complaining
to some friends about the virtual widowhood of his wife, he drew me to
one side and whispered in my ear: 'Why do you complain? It is no longer
possible; it is all dead and gone.' Another day as I was inveighing
against
this part of his teaching, and also declaring that our program of work
in the
Brahmo Samaj includes women, that ours is a social and domestic
religion,
and that we want to give education and social liberty to women, the
saint
became very much excited, as was his way when anything against his
settled
conviction was asserted — a trait we so much liked in him — and
exclaimed,
'Go, thou fool, go and perish in the pit that your women will dig for
you.'
Then he glared at me and said: 'What does a gardener do with a young
plant? Does he not surround it with a fence, to protect it from goats
and
cattle? And when the young plant has grown up into a tree and it can no
longer be injured by cattle, does he not remove the fence and let the
tree
grow freely?' I replied, 'Yes, that is the custom with gardeners.' Then
he
remarked, 'Do the same in your spiritual life; become strong, be
full-grown;
then you may seek them.' To which I replied, 'I don't agree with you in
thinking that women's work is like that of cattle, destructive; they
are our
associates and helpers in our spiritual struggles and social progress'
— a view
with which he could not agree, and he marked his dissent by shaking his
head. Then referring to the lateness of the hour he jocularly remarked,
'It is time for you to depart; take care, do not be late;
otherwise your woman
will not admit you into her room.' This evoked hearty laughter."
Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, the right-hand man of Keshab and an
accomplished
Brahmo preacher in Europe and America, bitterly criticized Sri
Ramakrishna's use of uncultured language and also his austere attitude
toward his wife. But he could not escape the spell of the Master's
personality.
In the course of an article about Sri Ramakrishna, Pratap wrote in
the "Theistic Quarterly Review": "What is there in common between him
and me? I, a Europeanized, civilized, self-centred, semi-sceptical,
so-called
educated reasoner, and he, a poor, illiterate, unpolished,
half-idolatrous,
friendless Hindu devotee? Why should I sit long hours to attend to him,
I,
who have listened to Disraeli and Fawcett, Stanley and Max Muller, and
a
whole host of European scholars and divines? . . . And it is not I
only, but
dozens like me, who do the same. . . . He worships Siva, he worships
Kali,
he worships Rama, he worships Krishna, and is a confirmed advocate of
Vedantic doctrines. . . . He is an idolater, yet is a faithful and most
devoted
meditator on the perfections of the One Formless, Absolute, Infinite
Deity. . . . His religion is ecstasy, his worship means transcendental
insight,
his whole nature burns day and night with a permanent fire and fever of
a
strange faith and feeling. . . . So long as he is spared to us, gladly
shall we
sit at his feet to learn from him the sublime precepts of purity,
unworldliness,
spirituality, and inebriation in the love of God. . . . He, by his
childlike
bhakti, by his strong conceptions of an ever-ready Motherhood, helped
to unfold it [God as our Mother] in our minds wonderfully. . . . By
associating with him we learnt to realize better the divine attributes
as
scattered over the three hundred and thirty millions of deities of
mythological
India, the gods of the Puranas."
The Brahmo leaders received much inspiration from their contact with
Sri Ramakrishna. It broadened their religious views and kindled in
their
hearts the yearning for God-realization; it made them understand and
appreciate
the rituals and symbols of Hindu religion, convinced them of the
manifestation of God in diverse forms, and deepened their thoughts
about
the harmony of religions. The Master, too, was impressed by the
sincerity
of many of the Brahmo devotees. He told them about his own realizations
and explained to them the essence of his teachings, such as the
necessity
of renunciation, sincerity in the pursuit of one's own course of
discipline,
faith in God, the performance of one's duties without thought of
results,
and discrimination between the Real and the unreal.
This contact with the educated and progressive Bengalis opened Sri
Ramakrishna's eyes to a new realm of thought. Born and brought up in a
simple village, without any formal education, and taught by the
orthodox
holy men of India in religious life, he had had no opportunity to study
the influence of modernism on the thoughts and lives of the Hindus. He
could not properly estimate the result of the impact of Western
education
on Indian culture. He was a Hindu of the Hindus, renunciation being to
him the only means to the realization of God in life. From the Brahmos
he
learnt that the new generation of India made a compromise between God
and the world. Educated young men were influenced more by the Western
philosophers than by their own prophets. But Sri Ramakrishna was not
dismayed, for he saw in this, too, the hand of God. And though he
expounded
to the Brahmos all his ideas about God and austere religious
disciplines,
yet he bade them accept from his teachings only as much as suited their
tastes and temperaments.