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Infinite Paths To Infinite Reality Sri R PDF
Infinite Paths To Infinite Reality Sri R PDF
Ayon M a h a r aj
INFINITE PATHS
TO INFINITE REALITY
Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural
Philosophy of Religion
Ayon Maharaj
Acknowledgments xi
A Note on Sanskrit and Bengali Transliteration xiii
Abbreviations of Texts xv
Introduction 1
viii • Contents
3. Historical studies of Sri Ramakrishna include Amiya P. Sen’s two books, Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa: The Sadhaka of Dakshineswar (New Delhi: Penguin, 2010), and Three Essays on Sri
Ramakrishna and His Times (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2001). Psychobiographical
studies of Sri Ramakrishna include Carl Olson, The Mysterious Play of Kālī: An Interpretive Study
of Rāmakrishna (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990); Narasingha Sil, Rāmakṛṣṇa Paramahaṃsa: A
Psychological Profile (Leiden: Brill, 1991); Narasingha Sil, Ramakrishna Revisited: A New Biography
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998); Jeffrey Kripal, Kālī’s Child: The Mystical and
the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Sri Ramakrishna (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2004). Such psychobiographical studies of Sri Ramakrishna are based on highly controversial,
and culturally specific, psychoanalytic assumptions that tend to distort, rather than illuminate, Sri
Ramakrishna’s life and teachings. For an incisive critique of psychobiographical approaches to Sri
Ramakrishna, see Swami Tyagananda and Pravrajika Vrajaprana, Interpreting Ramakrishna: Kālī’s
Child Revisited (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2010).
4. See, for instance, Walter Neevel, “ The Transformation of Śrī Rāmākrishna,” in Hinduism: New
Essays in the History of Religions, ed. B. L. Smith (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 53–97; Freda Matchett,
“ The Teaching of Rāmakrishna in Relation to the Hindu Tradition and as Interpreted
by Vivekānanda,” Religion 11 (1981), 171–84; Satis Chandra Chatterjee, Classical Indian
Philosophies: Their Synthesis in the Philosophy of Sri Ramakrishna, 2nd ed. (Calcutta : University
of Calcutta, [1963] 1985), 104–52; Swami Tapasyananda, Sri Ramakrishna’s Thoughts in a
Vedantic Perspective (Mylapore, India : Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1993); Arindam Chakrabarti,
“ The Dark Mother Flying Kites: Sri Ramakrishna’s Metaphysic of Morals,” Sophia 33.3 (1994),
14–29; Swami Bhajanananda, “Philosophy of Sri Ramakrishna,” University of Calcutta Journal
of the Department of Philosophy 9 (2010), 1–56; Jeffery D. Long , “Advaita and Dvaita: Bridging
the Gap—the Ramakrishna Tradition’s both/and Approach to the Dvaita/Advaita Debate,”
Journal of Vaishnava Studies 16.2 (Spring 2008), 49–70.
5. For a discussion of the influence of Sri Ramakrishna on Sri Aurobindo, see Ayon Maharaj,
“ Toward a New Hermeneutics of the Bhagavad Gītā: Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo, and
the Secret of Vijñāna,” Philosophy East and West 65.4 (October 2015), 1214–17. Tagore offers a
paean to Sri Ramakrishna in his 1936 speech, “Address at the Parliament of Religions,” in The
English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, vol. 4, ed. Sisir Kumar Das and Nityapriya Ghosh
(Kolkata : Sahitya Akademi, 2008), 957–65. Gandhi remarks on Sri Ramakrishna in the fore-
word to Swami Nikhilananda, Life of Sri Ramakrishna (Kolkata : Advaita Ashrama, [1928]
2008), ix. Radhakrishnan was influenced by Sri Ramakrishna primarily through his encounter
with Swami Vivekananda’s work. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, “Swami Vivekananda and Young
India,” Prabuddha Bharata 68.5 (May 1963), 183–84.
13. Thom Brooks, “Philosophy Unbound: The Idea of Global Philosophy,” Metaphilosophy
44.3 (April 2013), 254–66.
14. Mark Siderits, Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons (Burlington,
VT: Ashgate, 2003), xi.
15. Ganeri, “Manifesto for a Re:emergent Philosophy.”
16. Chakrabarti and Weber, Comparative Philosophy without Borders, 22.
17. As Michael Levine points out, some self-identified “comparative philosophers”—such
as Eliot Deutsch and Levine himself—do engage in the kind of cross-cultural philosophical
problem-solving that philosophers like Siderits consider to be postcomparativist. Levine, “Does
Comparative Philosophy Have a Fusion Future?,” Confluence 4 (2016), 208–15. While I agree
with Levine that comparative philosophy has often encompassed creative cross-cultural work,
the label “comparative philosophy” is still misleading, since it foregrounds the narrow aim of
comparison.
18. Garfield, Empty Words, viii.
19. An important book in Continental philosophy of religion is Merold Westphal’s Overcoming
Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2001).
and 4), the nature and epistemology of mystical experience (chapters 5 and 6),
and the problem of evil (chapters 7 and 8).
Chapter 1 sets the stage by reconstructing Sri Ramakrishna’s overall philo-
sophical framework. Militating against narrow sectarian interpretations of Sri
Ramakrishna’s philosophical teachings, I argue that his philosophy is best charac-
terized as “Vijñāna Vedānta,” a resolutely nonsectarian worldview—rooted in his
own mystical experience of vijñāna—that harmonizes apparently conflicting reli-
gious faiths, sectarian philosophies, and spiritual disciplines. I first delineate five
interpretive principles that I employ throughout the book in order to reconstruct
Sri Ramakrishna’s philosophical views on the basis of the Kathāmṛta. I then elab-
orate the six main tenets of Sri Ramakrishna’s philosophy of Vijñāna Vedānta.
On the mystical basis of vijñāna, Sri Ramakrishna affirms that both the imper-
sonal nondual Brahman of Advaitins and the loving personal God of theists are
equally real aspects of one and the same Infinite Reality. The remaining seven
chapters of this book explore the far-reaching philosophical implications of Sri
Ramakrishna’s unique standpoint of vijñāna.
Chapter 2 investigates the nature of divine infinitude from a cross-cultural
perspective by bringing Sri Ramakrishna into conversation with classical Indian
philosophers as well as Western philosophers and theologians. Sri Ramakrishna
claims that God is “infinite” (ananta) in the sense that God’s nature is an inex-
haustible plenitude that exceeds the grasp of the finite human intellect. I identify
what is distinctive in Sri Ramakrishna’s conception of divine infinitude within
the Indian philosophical context by comparing it with the Vedāntic views of
the Advaitin Śaṅkara, the Viśiṣṭādvaitin Rāmānuja, and the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava
Viśvanātha Cakravartin.
The remainder of the second chapter ventures into cross-cultural terri-
tory. First, I briefly identify some striking affinities between Sri Ramakrishna’s
vijñāna-based conception of the Infinite God and the medieval Christian theo-
logian Nicholas of Cusa’s doctrine of God as the coincidentia oppositorum (“co-
incidence of opposites”). I then bring Sri Ramakrishna into dialogue with the
contemporary analytic theologian Benedikt Paul Göcke. According to Göcke,
God is infinite in the radical sense that God is not subject to the law of contra-
diction and, therefore, should be analyzed in terms of “paraconsistent logic.”20
I contend that while Göcke’s argument helps clarify the paraconsistent underpin-
nings of Sri Ramakrishna’s own conception of the Infinite God, Sri Ramakrishna
pursues the paraconsistent logic of divine infinitude more fully and consistently
than does Göcke. Finally, I triangulate Sri Ramakrishna and Göcke with the
20. Benedikt Paul Göcke, “ The Paraconsistent God,” in Rethinking the Concept of a Personal
God, ed. Thomas Schärtl, Christian Tapp, and Veronika Wegener (Münster: Aschendorff,
2016), 177.
argument that it is reasonable to believe that God exists on the basis of the testi-
mony of people claiming to have experienced Him. As we will see, Sri Ramakrishna
defended a simple version of the argument from experience, and his teachings
and mystical reports also support the fundamental premises of the more sophis-
ticated versions defended by recent philosophers such as Richard Swinburne and
Jerome Gellman. Moreover, I argue that Sri Ramakrishna’s distinctive approach
helps defuse two of the most serious objections to the argument from experi-
ence: first, that mystical experiences, unlike sensory experiences, cannot be ade-
quately cross-checked; and second, that different mystics often make conflicting
claims about the nature of the ultimate reality they allegedly experience.
Chapter 7 reconstructs Sri Ramakrishna’s multifaceted response to the
problem of evil. Several of Sri Ramakrishna’s visitors argued that instances of
apparently pointless evil—such as Genghis Khan’s act of mass slaughter—make
it reasonable to believe either that God does not exist or that God is omnipo-
tent and omniscient but not perfectly good. Sri Ramakrishna answers that the
ways of an omniscient and omnipotent God are inscrutable to the finite human
intellect—a response, I argue, that is best understood as a skeptical theist po-
sition: in light of our cognitive limitations, we are never rationally justified in
believing that God has no morally sufficient reason for permitting a given in-
stance of evil.
Sri Ramakrishna’s skeptical theism dovetails with a full-blown theodicy—a
positive account of why God permits evil and suffering. By situating Sri
Ramakrishna’s theodicy in the context of the classical Vedāntic theodicies of
Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja, I set its distinctive aspects into relief. According to Sri
Ramakrishna, God permits evil “in order to create saints” (K 37 / G 98). On the
basis of such teachings, I reconstruct what I call Sri Ramakrishna’s “saint-making”
theodicy: since God has created this world as an environment for saint-making,
evil is as necessary as good. Through the experience of good and evil in the course
of many lives, we gradually learn to combat our own evil tendencies and cultivate
ethical and spiritual virtues that bring us closer to the goal of eternal salvation
that awaits us all.
Finally, I discuss the crucial mystical dimension of Sri Ramakrishna’s the-
odicy. His theodicy culminates in an appeal to his own panentheistic experience
of vijñāna, which reveals to him that God has become everything in the universe.
From this mystical standpoint, Sri Ramakrishna is able to resolve lingering prob-
lems raised by his saint-making theodicy: since God Himself sports in the guise
of both evildoers and their victims, the problem of evil—which presupposes a
difference between God and His suffering creatures—loses its urgency.
Chapter 8 adopts a cross-cultural approach to the problem of evil by bring-
ing Sri Ramakrishna into conversation with recent philosophers. I begin by com-
paring Sri Ramakrishna’s skeptical theism with William Alston’s skeptical theist
refutation of William Rowe’s argument from evil against God’s existence. On the
one hand, I draw upon Alston’s skeptical theist response to Rowe as a means of
developing and defending Sri Ramakrishna’s own skeptical theist position. On
the other, I argue that Alston’s failure to consider Indian karma-based theodicies
significantly weakens his argument.
I then bring Sri Ramakrishna’s saint-making theodicy into dialogue with
Hick’s “soul-making” theodicy. Hick provides convincing arguments for the
necessity of evil in a soul-making environment, which equally support Sri
Ramakrishna’s saint-making theodicy. Furthermore, Hick’s “use of eschatology
to complete theodicy”—his argument that a successful theodicy must accept the
view that everyone will be saved—helps to clarify the importance of the doc-
trine of universal salvation in Sri Ramakrishna’s own theodicy.21 I argue, however,
that Hick’s soul-making theodicy also has major weaknesses, which stem from
his Christian assumption of a one-life-only paradigm and his neglect of mys-
tical experience. On this basis, I make the case that Sri Ramakrishna’s mystically
grounded saint-making theodicy, which presupposes rebirth, has significant phil-
osophical advantages over Hick’s theodicy.
Hopefully, this book will inspire scholars to explore further how Sri
Ramakrishna’s unique mystico-philosophical perspective can enrich contem-
porary discussions of a wide range of philosophical and theological issues.
The book’s broader polemical aim is to challenge the methodological paro-
chialism of philosophy as it is often practiced in the Western world.22 To
remain vital, we must adopt a broader, and more rigorous, cross-cultural
methodology that draws on the resources of both Western and non-Western
philosophical traditions. Cross-cultural philosophizing, as I understand it,
should be seen less as a niche activity of a tiny minority of philosophers than
as a methodological imperative for all philosophers. The time has come for
philosophers to go global.
21. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (London: Palgrave Macmillan, [1966] 2010), 351.
22. For a spirited critique of the parochialism of contemporary Anglophone academic phi-
losophy, see Bryan W. Van Norden’s recent book, Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural
Manifesto (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017).