Sri Ramakrishna (was Re: The dvaita...)

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

I am replying to some of the points of many of the posters.

Giri wrote:

>        Ramakrishna did say that 'One who attains nirvikalpa samadhi dies
>in 21 days.' This has been rejected by some including Ramana. However, the

Exactly what I was talking about. Ramana has rejected it _explicitly_. So do
gauDapaada and shaMkara _explicitly_.

As for Ken's contention:

>You left out all the following comments and context.

Again ramaNa explicitly refuted any kind of 21 day limit or "god retaining them
etc". Also Giri gave the context later in another mail.

My feeling is that you are looking at ramaNa from vishistaadvaita tinted
glasses and interpreting his words based on that. If anything ramaNa was an
advaitin, though he has on occasions said that advaita is also a relative
term.

My point is very simple:

ramaNa has explicitly said "there is only _one_ path and there is only _one_
goal", on a question about various paths. The only path is self-enquiry. Others
are also quite valid as they lead to purification of the mind, and
automatically _result_ in self enquiry. This has been said _explicitly_ by
ramaNa without any ambiguity whatsoever.

Note: the above statement in quotes is straight from ramaNa, and no, I am not
quoting out of context.

In my limited readings of Ramakrishna, I have on lots of occasions felt that
he was espousing something like (vishistaadvaita+advaita)/2.

>To be more precise, Ramakrishna is said to have first followed the path of
>bhakti to divine realization.   Then he followed various other paths, and
>ascertained that they led to the same end.   More specifics on how this could

This is also against the philosophy of advaita and ramaNa's word's. According
to ramaNa either you are realized or not. There is no "path" after realization.
He has been quite explicit on this also.

ramaNa has explicitly said that he is always in sahaja samadhi (or permanent
nirvikalpa samadhi), again contrary to Ramakrishna.

My point was that Ramakrishna's words about some fundamental things were
contradicted by both ramaNa and shaMkara. I am not qualified to comment on
statements like:

>Then Shamkara and RamaNa are wrong ;-)

:-). Again, I don't mean any dis-respect to Ramakrishna, by my statements.

Ramakrishnan.