Sri Ramakrishna's life is a life of spirituality in practice, a sublime sonnet with a singular note of God consciousness, a summary of all that the scriptures of the world have to say, and even much more. To contain such a boundless life and personality within a few pages is certainly as audacious a task as to attempt to contain the ocean in a pot. Yet this book published by Advaita Ashrama, a Publication House of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math, humbly attempts to portray his life and personality in a clear and candid style.

A collection of the teachings of Ramakrishna, a great saint of India, told in the form of stories and parables.

An indispensable memoir by one of the most prominent writers of his generation Originally published in 1976, Christopher and His Kind covers the most memorable ten years in the writer's life—from 1928, when Christopher Isherwood left England to spend a week in Berlin and decided to stay there indefinitely, to 1939, when he arrived in America. His friends and colleagues during this time included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and E. M. Forster, as well as colorful figures he met in Germany and later fictionalized in his two Berlin novels—and who appeared again, fictionalized to an even greater degree, in I Am a Camera and Cabaret. What most impressed the first readers of this memoir, however, was the candor with which he describes his life in gay Berlin of the 1930s and his struggles to save his companion, a German man named Heinz, from the Nazis. An engrossing and dramatic story and a fascinating glimpse into a little-known world, Christopher and His Kind remains one of Isherwood's greatest achievements.

This book is a short life and select teachings of modern Indian prophet Sri Ramakrishna whose life is a story of religion in practice that enables us to see God face to face. His life was one of constant communion with the divine. The author has presented in an original and striking way a biographical narrative of Sri Ramakrishna, interspersing it with detailed analysis of his deep spiritual states. The book, therefore, serves as an excellent interpretation of the life and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna, for both devotees and scholars.

For nearly a decade Swami Bhuteshananda, the 12th President of the Ramakrishna Order, devoted his weekly Bengali religious classes to discussions on Sri Ramakrishna and to the unique book, 'The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna'. His illuminating discussions brought out the thought-provoking deeper dimensions of the simple, homely utterances of the great prophet, and they helped the audience comprehend these simple sayings of the Great Master in the light of the ancient scriptures of India, specially the Vedanta, as well as modern thought. Not unoften, many abstruse concepts, many knotty philosophical questions and doubts of Vedanta metaphysics, were lucidly explained and resolved. These were later transcribed and eventually published in a seven-volume Bengali work, 'Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita Prasanga'. The present work is an English translation of volume six and the appendix to volume five of the original Bengali work. Published by Advaita Ashrama, a publication house of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math, India.

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 "vijñana," 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 vijñana, 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.

Sri Ramakrishna is regarded variously as a saint, sage, spiritual leader, world teacher, prophet, Avatara of the present age and so on. Finding these terms unsatisfactory, the noted British author Christopher Isherwood described Sri Ramakrishna as a “phenomenon”. The present book published by Advaita Ashrama, a publication house of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math, India, is a modest attempt to understand that phenomenon in the context of world thought currents and in the light of authentic sources. According to Swami Vivekananda, “With the birth of Sri Ramakrishna the Golden Age has begun.” But today, such an assertion may appear preposterous, with no sign of such a beginning visible. Who was Sri Ramakrishna? What was the purpose of his advent? What is the true dimension of his personality? Was he an Avatara? What is the role of an Avatara? Devotees, followers, and admirers of Sri Ramakrishna encounter these questions at some juncture of their life's journey. And in answer to these questions lies the opening to the realm of an ineffable “Light”, which is the “Light of the Modern World”.