Sri Ramakrishna

"Swami Med­hananda’s Swami Vivekananda’s Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism (Oxford University Press) is an extraordinary achievement. A brilliant, deep and searching exploration of Swami Vivekananda, this may also be the best book in English on philosophical debates in modern Hinduism, and philos­ophy of religion more generally."
  -- Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Princeton University

*** The South Asian edition of the book is now available for purchase in India and Bangladesh through Amazon.in and Advaita Ashrama:
https://shop.advaitaashrama.org/product/swami-vivekanandas-vedantic-cosmopolitanism/

A new paradigm, where the vices need not be seen as enemies to be avoided or defeated, but rather as friends! A unique method of spiritual practice inaugurated by Sri Ramakrishna for the modern age:
Translation of a Kannada booklet by Rev Swami Purushottamanandaji of Belgaum Ramakrishna Mission.

was both a Bhadraloka and a Caitanya Vaiṣṇava reformer. Consequently, he played a unique role in the nineteenthcentury Bengal Renaissance movement. This paper first briefly analyses Western impact on nineteenth-century Bengal and the responses to it from the Bhadralokas and the traditionalists, in terms of their attitude to six points, namely 1) ethics/morality, 2) monotheism, 3) the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, 4) image worship, 5) the caste system, and 6) the status of women. Then the paper examines Bhaktivinoda's unique contribution in relation to the above-mentioned six issues.

Independent scholar. https://jeanmacphail.academia.edu/ CHAPTER 2 AND LEVEL II Müller's Science of Religion and Vivekananda's Yoga as a Science Vivekananda's Emphasis on Yoga or Self-transformation Vis à Vis Müller With regard to Müller's influence on Vivekananda, Green asserts (50) that Vivekananda did not carry out a systematic study of religion and that his presentation of the historical development of religions, the essence of religion and its supernatural origins and theory are similar to Müller's. However, he admits that although Vivekananda read Müller's books, it is difficult to prove that Vivekananda borrowed from Müller and concludes that Vivekananda's integration of religion was not passively derivative of Müller's thought. A somewhat ambivalent assessment, as is true of much of what is said about Vivekananda in this book. The cogency of Green's remarks may now be explored in the light of Gayatriprana (2020), a compilation of all of Vivekananda's remarks on the history of Vedanta from its earliest Vedic stages up to the beginning of the twentieth century. In passing, Vivekananda does refer, though often obliquely, to Müller and other Western Orientalists and their theories, which would be in keeping with his respect for their work and his Westernized ability to gladly present some of their seminal ideas. In the same vein, he does not refrain from calling them out when their views simply make no sense in the Indian context. Further, it may be somewhat of a superimposition of Müller's thought on Vivekananda that Vivekananda was primarily moved by conceptual influences rather than by his own experience. These two positions could be further finessed by saying that Vivekananda saw that India desperately needed contemporary social consciousness and modern institutions to support its people if they were to gain independence from Western imperialism and gain a place in the global community. Such institutions were not to be built on Western presuppositions, but on the principles of indigenous thinking, including Vedanta and the practice of traditional yoga. On the other hand, his mission to the West was to introduce the time-tested methods of self-transformation (yoga) so that the West could find its "soul" without necessarily having to kowtow to outmoded religious forms or rejecting science, its crown jewel. Rather than relying on any conceptual analysis, this bipartite program arose more from Vivekananda's personal experience, supporting Green's other suggestion that Vivekananda's worldview was heavily influenced by his spiritual teacher, Ramakrishna. As we already know, it was at Ramakrishna's hands that Vivekananda-vehemently asserting the reality and value of the physical world-had been thrown into the world of pure subjectivity, a rather terrifying samadhi or saltation from the objective physical world to the totality of what Vivekananda would later call the superconscious, where any recognizable features of our material, rationalistic world-including the categories of exegesis by scholars-cease totally to exist, thereby bypassing any quibbles about established criteria of anything. This experience, occurring in what was to the Advaitins the "lowest" step of the chatushpad of "four steps of experiencing the Atman", can be said to throw a first monkey wrench into the apotheosis of Advaita and certainly is an illustration in actual life of the kind of process on which all of Vedanta, including Advaita, is built. Classical Advaita, however, was adamant in its denial of the worth of any practice other than that of intense focus on the meaning of non-dual scriptures and the resultant sudden saltation of the seeker's mind into pure intuitive experience. It therefore supports Müller's quest in the most radical of ways.

Sri Ramakrishna is widely known as a nineteenth-century Indian mystic who affirmed the harmony of all religions on the basis of his richly varied spiritual experiences and eclectic religious practices, both Hindu and non-Hindu. In Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality, Ayon Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna was also a sophisticated philosopher of great contemporary relevance.

Through a careful study of Sri Ramakrishna's recorded oral teachings in the original Bengali, Maharaj reconstructs his philosophical positions and analyzes them from a cross-cultural perspective. Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual journey culminated in the exalted state of "vijñāna," his term for the "intimate knowledge" of God as the Infinite Reality that is both personal and impersonal, with and without form, immanent in the universe and beyond it. This expansive spiritual standpoint of vijñāna, Maharaj contends, opens up a new paradigm for addressing central issues in cross-cultural philosophy of religion, including divine infinitude, religious pluralism, mystical experience, and the problem of evil.

Sri Ramakrishna's vijñana-based religious pluralism—when grasped in all its subtlety—proves to have major philosophical advantages over dominant Western models. Moreover, his mystical testimony and teachings not only cut across long-standing debates about the nature of mystical experience but also bolster recent defenses of its epistemic value. Maharaj further demonstrates that Sri Ramakrishna's unique response to the problem of evil resonates strongly with Western "soul-making" theodicies and contemporary theories of skeptical theism. A pioneering interdisciplinary study of one of India's most important philosopher-mystics, Maharaj's book is essential reading for scholars and students in philosophy of religion, theology, religious studies, and Hindu studies.

The International Journal of Hindu Studies (Springer) published a Review Symposium on the book in 2020. Contributors include Michael S. Allen, Christopher Bartley, Francis X. Clooney, Jonathan B. Edelmann, Benedikt Paul Goecke, Jonathan C. Gold, Julius Lipner, Jeffery D. Long, Ethan Mills, Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Amiya P. Sen, Arvind Sharma, and Michael Williams.

The South Asian edition of this book (Rs. 850) is now available in India through Amazon.in and flipkart.com.

This is a paper written in Kannada language, one of the vernaculars in the Indian subcontinent. It is basically a list of commentaries on Śrīmad-Bhagavadgītā. Attempt is made to gather some details regarding the important commentaries, and sub-commentaries composed in Sanskrit, and other familiar Indian languages. Sample readings are also shown in the case of a couple of phrases from the Gītā. The paper limits itself to the works of the Indian authors.

How do we become pure? This question haunts every genuine spiritual aspirant. This small book addresses this vital question in great detail. This book is an English translation of the original Kannada booklet called 'Pavitrata svarupini Sri Sharada Maate' by Revered Swami Purushottamanandaji Maharaj

This paper summarizes central themes within the Vedas, Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita. Key concepts are defined such as Brahman, Atman, maya, karma, moksha, AUM, and the cycle of rebirth. The founder and reformers of Vedanta are reviewed including Shankara, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and Aurobindo. Shankara’s system of Advaita focuses on non-duality, meditation, study of sacred texts, and communion with the Godhead. Ramakrishna modernized Vedanta into a cohesive theology. His student, Vivekananda introduced Vedanta to the West. Aurobindo stresses the importance of compassion and performance of good works. Vedic knowledge leads to an understanding of Deity, cycles, and evolution of consciousness. The primary goals for Vedantins are performance of good works, daily mediation, achieving transcendence, and experiencing self-realization.  Primary source material: "Vedanta: Heart of Hinduism" (1991) by Hans Torwesten.

In a letter written in 1927, the French writer Romain Rolland asked Sigmund Freud to analyse the “oceanic feeling,” a religious feeling of oneness with the entire universe. I will argue that Rolland’s intentions in introducing the oceanic feeling to Freud were much more complex, multifaceted, and critical than most scholars have acknowledged.  To this end, I will examine Rolland’s views on mysticism and psychoanalysis in his book-length biographies of the Indian saints Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, which he wrote just after he mentioned the oceanic feeling to Freud in 1927. I will argue that Rolland’s primary intentions in appealing to the oceanic feeling in his 1927 letter to Freud—intentions less evident in his letters to Freud than in his biographies of Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda—were to challenge the fundamental assumptions of psychoanalysis from a mystical perspective and to confront Freud with a mystical “science of the mind” that he felt was more rigorous and comprehensive than Freud’s psychoanalytic science.

Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886) is an important Hindu spiritual personality from the nineteenth century Bengal who is best known for his pluralistic approach to religions, which is based on his claim to have practically experienced the same divine reality through various strands of Hinduism and different religions of the world. This paper pertains to an analytical survey of his religious experiences including his supposed conversions to Islam and Christianity. Without taking an outright reductionist approach to all of his religious experiences it is viewed that claims of God-realisation through Islam and Christianity seem problematic from the perspective of these religious traditions. However, there is no denying of the fact that Ramakrishna's supposed realisation of God through various religions can definitively inculcate in Hindus (and others who endorse his experiences) a tolerant attitude and pluralist approach to different religions. To that extent Ramakrishna's religious experiences can be conducive to peaceful interreligious coexistence and interfaith harmony.

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedānta is a groundbreaking volume of sixteen newly commissioned chapters written by leading international scholars of Vedānta. The volume highlights the diversity of philosophical traditions within Vedānta, exploring their contemporary relevance and charting out new directions for research.

Contributors include Neil Dalal, Marcus Schmücker, Michael Williams,  Ravi M. Gupta, Jeffery D. Long, Stephen Phillips, Andrew J. Nicholson, Ankur Barua, Klara Hedling, Francis X. Clooney, Daniel Raveh, Anand Vaidya, Ethan Mills, Arindam Chakrabarti, and Ayon Maharaj.

The hardcover edition of the book will be available on 25 June 2020.

Endorsements:

“"Showcasing material from a commendably wide range of Vedāntin traditions and time periods, this Research Handbook provides tantalising tasters of intra-Vedāntin debates, ways of approaching texts, and modes of engaging Vedānta in cross-cultural conversations. With orienting introductions and bibliographies opening up the work of other important scholars in the field, this collection should provoke further specialist investigations and prove a rich source for those who are not specialists in Vedānta but would like to engage with these Indian examples of Asian Philosophy.””
–  Jacqueline Suthren Hirst, Honorary Research Fellow in South Asian Studies, University of Manchester, UK

“The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedānta brings the work of scholars shaping the field of Indian philosophy into a volume that presses forward into the future of Vedānta scholarship. The book refutes misconceptions, and corrects for the historical imbalance in the coverage of this diverse set of traditions, by covering the philosophy of Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaitādvaita, Bhedābheda, and Advaita too, ranging from the earliest authoritative texts of the traditions to the most influential modern and contemporary thinkers. Ayon Maharaj's precise overview of Vedānta in the introduction makes the book accessible to the eager, beginning student of Indian philosophy, even as the articles push the reader into unexplored material, original theses, and innovative cross-cultural work. The book deserves a place among even small collections of contemporary research on Indian philosophy.”
–  Christopher Framarin, Professor of Philosophy, University of Calgary, Canada

"This essay argues that Sri Aurobindo’s unduly neglected Essays on the Gita (1916-20) develops a radically new hermeneutic approach to the Gītā, which helps account for crucial aspects of the Gītā’s philosophical and theological teachings that have baffled commentators for centuries.  Rejecting the eisegetic practice of traditional commentators such as Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja, Sri Aurobindo strives to interpret the Gītā on its own terms.  Sri Aurobindo’s key move is to foreground and reinterpret the mysterious concept of “vijñāna,” which occurs at five places in the Gītā.  In IX.1 of the Gītā, for instance, Lord Kṛṣṇa refers to the “highest secret” as “jñāna combined with vijñāna.”  By situating these two key concepts within the Gītā’s broader philosophical framework, Sri Aurobindo makes a convincing case that jñāna is the realization of the impersonal “Ātman,” the eternal non-dual “Self” common to all, while vijñāna is the still higher realization of God as the impersonal-personal “Puruṣottama,” the “Supreme Person.”  Upon the attainment of vijñāna, one realizes that the infinite God is at once the impersonal Ātman and the supreme Lord of the universe, at once immanent in the universe and transcendent to it. 

According to Sri Aurobindo, the concept of vijñāna is the hermeneutic key to understanding the Gītā’s entire thought-structure, including its complex account of the nature of God and its persistent privileging of devotion (bhakti).  Sri Aurobindo further demonstrates how vijñāna furnishes the conceptual basis for the Gītā’s unique syncretic conception of spiritual practice, which combines devotion, knowledge, and selfless action.  I conclude the essay by gesturing toward how Sri Aurobindo’s radical reinterpretation of the concept of vijñāna in the Gītā opens up exciting possibilities for interreligious dialogue and provides a fertile basis for exploring new directions in comparative theology."

This essay reconstructs Sri Aurobindo’s multifaceted response to the problem of evil. While a number of scholars have already discussed Sri Aurobindo’s theodicy, I highlight the significance of three aspects of his theodicy that have been largely neglected. First, I emphasize the crucial theodical role of the “psychic entity,” Sri Aurobindo’s term for the evolving, reincarnating soul within each of us. Second, I reconstruct the subtle chain of reasoning underlying his various theodical arguments, including a skeptical theist position that bears affinities with the views of some contemporary analytic philosophers of religion. Third, I argue that Sri Aurobindo’s approach to the problem of evil may very well have been influenced by Sri Ramakrishna, whose teachings anticipated most of the key tenets of Sri Aurobindo’s own theodicy. I also suggest that there are conceptual resources within Sri Aurobindo’s thought for responding to some of the most serious objections scholars have leveled against his theodicy.

he existing body of literature on the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda tradition is vast and spreads across several generations. Certain aspects of this tradition have come under close and increasingly critical scrutiny by academic scholars. This essay examines one of the major points of scholarly criticism: the pervasive claim that Swami Vivekananda's teachings marked a distinctive break from those of his master, Sri Ramakrishna.

The philosophical teachings of Sri Ramakrishna, the nineteenth-century Bengali mystic, have been a source of lively interpretive controversy.  Numerous commentators have interpreted Sri Ramakrishna’s views in terms of a particular philosophical sect, such as Advaita, Viśiṣṭāḍvaita, or Tantra.  Militating against this sectarian approach to Sri Ramakrishna’s teachings, I argue that Sri Ramakrishna’s philosophy is best characterized as “Vijñāna Vedānta,” a resolutely non-sectarian philosophy—rooted in the spiritual experience of what Sri Ramakrishna calls “vijñāna”—that harmonizes various apparently conflicting religious faiths, sectarian philosophies, and spiritual disciplines.  Part I outlines five interpretive principles that should govern any attempt to determine Sri Ramakrishna’s philosophical views on the basis of his recorded teachings.  With this hermeneutic groundwork in place, Part II attempts to reconstruct from Sri Ramakrishna’s philosophical teachings the six main tenets of his Vijñāna Vedānta.  Part III begins to explore how Sri Ramakrishna’s teachings on religious pluralism can be brought into dialogue with John Hick’s influential theory of religious pluralism.

I argue that contemporary philosophers have unduly ignored Sri Ramakrishna’s pioneering views on religious pluralism. The Bengali mystic Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886) taught the harmony of all religions on the basis of his own spiritual experiences and his diverse religious practices, both Hindu and non-Hindu. Part I reconstructs the main tenets of Sri Ramakrishna’s model of religious pluralism. Part II explores how Sri Ramakrishna addresses the problem of conflicting religious truth-claims. Part III addresses some of the major criticisms leveled against Sri Ramakrishna’s views on religious pluralism.

This article outlines and defends an 'Integral Advaitic' theodicy that takes its bearings from the thought of three modern Indian mystics: Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Sri Aurobindo. Their Integral Advaitic theodicy has two key dimensions: a doctrine of spiritual evolution and a panentheistic metaphysics. God has created this world as an arena for our moral and spiritual evolution in which evil and suffering are as necessary as good. The doctrine of spiritual evolution presupposes karma, rebirth, and universal salvation. The doctrines of karma and rebirth shift moral responsibility for evil from God to His creatures by explaining all instances of evil and suffering as the karmic consequence of their own past deeds, either in this life or in a previous life. The doctrine of universal salvation also has important theodical implications: the various finite evils of this life are outweighed by the infinite good of salvation that awaits us all. After outlining this Integral Advaitic theodicy, I address some of the main objections to it and then argue that it has a number of comparative advantages over John Hick's well-known 'soul-making' theodicy.

This article proposes to examine in detail Aurobindo’s searching—and often quite original— criticisms of Advaita Vedānta, which have not yet received the sustained scholarly attention they deserve. After discussing his early spiritual experiences and the formative influence of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda on his thought, I outline Aurobindo’s philosophy of “realistic Adwaita”. According to Aurobindo, the sole reality is the Divine Saccidānanda, which is not only the static impersonal Brahman but also the personal, dynamic Cit-Śakti (Consciousness-Force), which manifests as everything in this universe. At various points in his corpus, Aurobindo criticizes Advaita Vedānta on three fronts. From the standpoint of spiritual experience, Aurobindo argues that Śaṅkara’s philosophy is based on a genuine, but partial, experience of the Infinite Divine Reality: namely, the experience of the impersonal nondual Absolute and the corresponding conviction of the unreality of everything else. Aurobindo claims, on the basis of his own spiritual experiences, that there is a further stage of spiritual experience, when one realizes that the impersonal-personal Divine Reality manifests as everything in the universe. From a philosophical standpoint, Aurobindo questions the logical tenability of key Advaitic doctrines, including māyā, the exclusively impersonal nature of Brahman, and the metaphysics of an illusory bondage and liberation. Finally, from a scriptural standpoint, Aurobindo argues that the ancient Vedic hymns, the Upaniṣads, and the Bhagavad-Gītā, propound an all-encompassing Advaita philosophy rather than the world-denying Advaita philosophy Śaṅkara claims to find in them. This article focuses on Aurobindo’s experiential and philosophical critiques of Advaita Vedānta, as I have already discussed his new interpretations of the Vedāntic scriptures in detail elsewhere. The article’s final section explores the implications of Aurobindo’s life-affirming Advaitic philosophy for our current ecological crisis.

NOTE: This conference paper has been superseded by chapters 3 and 4 of my book, Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Abstract: I will argue that contemporary philosophers of religion have unduly ignored Sri Ramakrishna’s views on religious pluralism.  Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886), a nineteenth-century Bengali mystic, taught the harmony of all religions on the basis of his own spiritual experiences and his diverse religious practices, both Hindu and non-Hindu.  In Part I, I will reconstruct the main tenets of Sri Ramakrishna’s model of religious pluralism.  In Parts II and III, I will demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Sri Ramakrishna’s model of religious pluralism by bringing it into dialogue with John Hick’s early Vedāntic theory of religious pluralism and Hick’s later quasi-Kantian theory.

This chapter examines the Bengali philosopher-mystic Sri Aurobindo’s highly original and sophisticated commentary on the Īśā Upaniṣad—which was first published in 1924—and brings him into dialogue with both traditional and modern commentators. Militating against the reductive view that he simply read his own mystical experiences into the Īśā Upaniṣad, the author argues that Sri Aurobindo consciously strove to avoid eisegesis by adopting a “hermeneutics of mystical immanence.” According to Sri Aurobindo, the fundamental principle of the Īśā Upaniṣad is the reconciliation of opposites. This chapter makes the case that Sri Aurobindo’s distinctive reading of the Īśā Upaniṣad in the light of this principle provides new ways of resolving numerous interpretive puzzles and difficulties that have preoccupied commentators for centuries. Drawing on the hermeneutic insights of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Francis X. Clooney, the author demonstrates that Sri Aurobindo combines a traditional commitment to the transformative power of scripture with a historico-philological method favored by recent scholars. On this basis, the author contends that Sri Aurobindo’s unduly neglected commentary on the Īśā Upaniṣad deserves a prominent place in contemporary scholarly discussions.

The pluralistic turn in modern Hindu thought corresponds with the rise of an emphasis on direct experience of divine realities in this tradition. Both pluralism and a focus on experience have precedents in premodern Hindu traditions, but have become especially prominent in modern Hinduism. The paradigmatic example in the modern period of a religious subject embarking upon a pluralistic quest for direct experience of ultimate reality as mediated through multiple religious traditions is the nineteenth century Bengali sage, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa (1836-1886), whose most famous disciple, Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) played a prominent role in the promotion of the idea of Hinduism as largely defined by a religious pluralism paired with an emphasis on direct experience. The focus in the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda on Brahman as a universal reality available, at least in principle, to being experienced by anyone, and interpreted using the categories of the experiencing subject's religion or culture, gives rise to a corresponding pluralism: a move towards seeing many religions and philosophies as conducive to the experience of a shared ultimate reality. This paper will analyze the theme of experience in the thought of these two figures, and other figures who are representative of this broad trend in modern Hindu thought, as well as in conversation with recent academic philosophers and theorists of religious experience, John Hick and William Alston. It will also argue that aspects of Hinduism, such as pluralism and an emphasis on direct experience, that are often termed as 'Neo-Vedantic' or 'Neo-Hindu' are not simply modern constructs, as these terms seem to suggest, but are reflective of much older trends in Hindu thought that become central themes in the thought of key Hindu figures in the modern period. Finally, it shall be argued that a pluralistic approach to the diversity of religions, and of worldviews more generally, is to be commended as an approach more conducive to human survival than the current global proliferation of ethno-nationalisms.

In the past several decades, numerous scholars have contended that Swami Vivekananda was a Hindu supremacist in the guise of a liberal preacher of the harmony of all religions. Jyotirmaya Sharma follows their lead in his provocative book, A Restatement of Religion: Swami Vivekananda and the Making of Hindu Nationalism (2013). According to Sharma, Vivekananda was "the father and preceptor of Hindutva," a Hindu chauvinist who favored the existing caste system, denigrated non-Hindu religions, and deviated from his guru Sri Ramakrishna's more liberal and egalitarian teachings. This article has two main aims. First, I critically examine the central arguments of Sharma's book and identify serious weaknesses in his methodology and his specific interpretations of Vivekananda's work. Second, I try to shed new light on Vivekananda's views on Hinduism, religious diversity, the caste system, and Ramakrishna by building on the existing scholarship, taking into account various facets of his complex thought, and examining the ways that his views evolved in certain respects. I argue that Vivekananda was not a Hindu supremacist but a cosmopolitan patriot who strove to prepare the spiritual foundations for the Indian freedom movement, scathingly criticized the hereditary caste system, and followed Ramakrishna in championing the pluralist doctrine that various religions are equally capable of leading to salvation.

This essay reconstructs the sophisticated views on free will and determinism of the nineteenth-century Hindu mystic Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886) and brings them into dialogue with the views of three Western philosophers—namely, the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Lord Kames (1696-1782) and the contemporary analytic philosophers Saul Smilansky and Derk Pereboom. Sri Ramakrishna affirms hard theological determinism, the view that God determines everything we do and think. At the same time, however, he claims that God, in His infinite wisdom, has endowed ordinary unenlightened people with the illusion of free will for the sake of their moral and spiritual welfare. Kames, I suggest, defends a theological determinist position remarkably similar to Sri Ramakrishna's. However, I argue that Sri Ramakrishna's mystical orientation puts him in a better position than Kames to explain why a loving God would implant in us the illusion of free will in the first place. I then show how certain aspects of the views of Smilansky and Pereboom resonate with those of Sri Ramakrishna.

This essay critically examines Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s doctrine of collective salvation (sarvamukti) by focusing on its complex metaphysical underpinnings. According to Radhakrishnan, liberated individuals retain their individuality in order to help others achieve liberation. Once everyone attains liberation, the universe—along with all the liberated souls and the personal God Himself—lapse into the non-dual Absolute. I argue that there a number of ambiguities and tensions in Radhakrishnan’s sarvamukti doctrine which stem from its aporetic metaphysical foundations.

It is not widely known that Swami Vivekananda remarked to his disciple Swami Shuddhananda that he should try to understand the “true intention” of the author of the Brahmasūtras instead of relying on the biased interpretations of traditional commentators such as Śaṅkara.  In the same conversation with his disciple, Vivekananda himself furnished a striking example of such an independent approach to the Brahmasūtras: he suggests that sūtra 1.1.19 (asminnasya ca tadyogaṃ śāsti)—translated as “The scriptures teach the union of the jīva and Brahman”—supports “both Advaita and Viśīṣṭādvaita.”  This essay aims to explore and develop Vivekananda’s provocative—if all too brief—reading of Brahmasūtra 1.1.19 by placing it in the context of his broader hermeneutic speculations and showing how his reading of 1.1.19 might help explain other relevant sūtras from the Brahmasūtras.  For Vivekananda, I argue, 1.1.19 not only captures the essence of the original non-sectarian Vedānta of the Upaniṣads but also provides the hermeneutic key to interpreting the entire prasthānatraya in a liberal and non-eisegetic spirit.  In Part I, I will outline briefly some of the fundamental principles of Vivekananda’s scriptural hermeneutics and their basis in the life and teachings of his guru Sri Ramakrishna.  This will set the stage for Part II, where I will develop Vivekananda’s unique interpretation of Brahmasūtra 1.1.19.  As we will see, while both traditional and modern commentators have tended to explain 1.1.19 in terms of a particular philosophical sect, Vivekananda suggests—quite radically—that the author of the Brahmasūtras deliberately employs the capacious and open-ended language of "yogam" ("union") in 1.1.19 in order both to harmonize a variety of apparently conflicting scriptural passages concerning the jīva’s relation to Brahman and to accommodate numerous sectarian interpretations of these passages.  From Vivekananda’s perspective, 1.1.19 serves as an ideal hermeneutic framework for honoring and reconciling the various types of union with the Divine expressed in the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad Gītā, ranging from the Advaitic union of absolute identity with Brahman to the Viśiṣṭādvaitic unity of part and Whole, the Bhedābheda unity of difference and non-difference, and the Dvaitic unity of servant and Master.

There has been a long-standing academic debate on the religious orientation of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-1886), one of the leading religious figures of modern India. In the light of his teachings, it is possible to accept that Ramakrishna's ideas were Vedantic, albeit not in a sectarian or exclusive way. This article explores the question of where exactly to place him in the chequered history of Vedantic ideas. It points out that Ramakrishna repeatedly referred to different states of consciousness while explaining the difference in the attitudes towards the Divine. This is the basis of his harmonization of the different streams within Vedanta. Again, it is also the basis of his understanding of the place of sakti. He demonstrated that, as long as one has I-consciousness, one is operating within the jurisdiction of sakti, and has to accept sakti as real. On the other hand, in the state of samadhi, which is the only state in which the I-consciosuness disappears, there is neither One nor many. The article also shows that, while Ramakrishna accepted all of the different views within Vedanta, he was probably not as distant from the Advaita Vedanta philosopher Adi Samkara as he has been made out to be.

According to the influential German Indologist Paul Hacker, Swami Vivekananda was a “Neo-Hindu” who mistakenly clothed what were essentially Western values in superficially Indian garb in order to promote Indian nationalism. I argue that Vivekananda’s philosophy of “practical Vedānta”—which upholds the ethical ideal of serving all human beings as manifestations of God—has its roots not in Western values but in the teachings of his beloved guru Sri Ramakrishna. Sri Ramakrishna often spoke of his own spiritual experience of “vijñāna,” which revealed to him that everything in the universe was a manifestation of God. Sri Ramakrishna derived from this vijñāna-based worldview a spiritual ethics of service—“śivajñāne jīver sevā” (“serving human beings knowing that they are manifestations of God”)—that directly shaped Vivekananda’s later formulation of practical Vedānta. I conclude the paper by arguing that we should reject the “Neo-Vedāntic” paradigm in favor of a more nuanced and dialectical “cosmopolitan” approach to modern Vedānta.

This is my response to the Book Symposium on my book, Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018), which has been published in the International Journal of Hindu Studies (Springer). Contributors to the symposium include Michael S. Allen, Christopher Bartley, Francis X. Clooney, Jonathan B. Edelmann, Benedikt Paul Goecke, Jonathan C. Gold, Julius Lipner, Jeffery D. Long, Ethan Mills, Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Amiya P. Sen, Arvind Sharma, and Michael Williams.

This essay will pose and seek to answer the following question: If, as Swami Vivekananda claims, the four yogas are independent and equally effective paths to God-realization and liberation from the cycle of rebirth, then what must reality be like? What ontology is implied by the claim that the four yogas are all equally effective paths to the supreme goal of religious life? What metaphysical conditions would enable this pluralistic assertion to be true? Swami Vivekananda’s worldview is frequently identified with Advaita Vedānta. We shall see that Vivekananda’s teaching is certainly Advaitic in what could be called a broad sense. As Anantanand Rambachan and others, however, have pointed out, it would be incorrect to identify Swami Vivekananda’s teachings in any rigid or dogmatic sense with the classical Advaita Vedānta of Śaṅkara; this is because Vivekananda’s teaching departs from that of Śaṅkara in some significant ways, not least in his assertion of the independent salvific efficacy of the four yogas. This essay will argue that Swami Vivekananda’s pluralism, based on the concept of the four yogas, is far more akin to the deep religious pluralism that is advocated by contemporary philosophers of religion in the Whiteheadian tradition of process thought like David Ray Griffin and John Cobb, the classical Jain doctrines of relativity (anekāntavāda, nayavāda, and syādvāda), and, most especially, the Vijñāna Vedānta of Vivekananda’s guru, Sri Ramakrishna, than any of these approaches is to the Advaita Vedānta of Śaṅkara. Advaita Vedānta, in Vivekananda’s pluralistic worldview, becomes one valid conceptual matrix among many that bear the ability to support an efficacious path to liberation. This essay is intended not as an historical reconstruction of Vivekananda’s thought, so much as a constructive philosophical contribution to the ongoing scholarly conversations about both religious (and, more broadly, worldview) pluralism and the religious and philosophical legacies of both Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. The former conversation has arrived at something of an impasse (as recounted by Kenneth Rose), while the latter conversation has recently been revived, thanks to the work of Swami Medhananda (formerly Ayon Maharaj) and Arpita Mitra.