This book is a well-researched account of Sri Ramakrishna’s pilgrimages to Kashi, Vrindavan, Navadvip and other places. Swami Prabhananda, the author of this volume, has presented a lucid narrative of these pilgrimages with valuable illustrations and photographs. The wonderful radiant images which the author stirs up in the narrative will help the readers contemplate on the blissful personality of Sri Ramakrishna and kindle joy in their hearts.

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.

This is the authoritative source biography of Ramakrishna (1836-1886) based on interviews with those who knew him. It is also an interpreted description of the entire range of Ramakrishna?s spiritual disciplines and experiences, explained as much as possible in terms of reason and common empirical experience, with reference to Hindu scriptures and spiritual traditions, western philosophy, Hindu psychology, and Western religious tradition. The setting is Northeast India from 1775 to 1836. Topics include: Avatar; evolution of concept and purpose of: Bhavas (spiritual moods): Bhavamukha (mental state dwelling between the Absolute and the Relative): Brahmo Samaj: Cosmic Mind: Creation and Evolution; Brahman as efficient cause: God; various concepts and spiritual attitudes towards: Guru: India; its spiritual and religious beliefs compared to other countries: Kali Temple at Dakshineswar: Nondual Reality (Advaita): Ramakrishna?s life; worship of Divine Mother; realization of God in Hindu and non-Hindu religions; marriage; disciples: Samadhi: Tantra and Vaishnava Sects; history and methods of worship: Vedanta; main schools and basis in mystic experience: Vivekananda (Narendranath Datta): Yoga.

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.

This book provides information and guidelines to pilgrims to Belur Math founded by Swami Vivekananda that is well known for its architecture, elegance and spiritual atmosphere.It is also a reliable guidebook for devotees to make their pilgrimage fruitful to Belur Math and places associated with the Holy Trio. Appendices at the end of the book provide additional information like distances between various places and the time taken to reach them, list of books to be read before undertaking the pilgrimage, and the contact addresses of the various pilgrim centers. A color sketch of the entire Belur Math premises adds value to the book.

All the great personages of the past, who have left an indelible mark on the trail of events in the history of mankind, become a centre around which gathers, with the passage of time, a mass of legends and myths. These, more often than not, are later assumed to be facts that cannot be verified. The historicity of many of these legends begins to be questioned then, be they related to the life of a Christ, a Buddha or a Moses. Sri Ramakrishna, the latest in the line of these Great Masters, is an exception to this historical dilemma, as he appeared just a century ago. Even today researches succeed in discovering hitherto unknown truths about him, and these can be easily verified. The author of this book published by Advaita Ashrama, a publication house of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math, India, has brought to light some fresh findings on Sri Ramakrishna that will be extremely interesting for all his devotees and admirers.

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 is the first book to treat the impact of religious, philosophical and psychological traditions of the East on Western intellectuals, artists, travellers and spiritual seekers in the twentieth century. Addressed to both general readers and scholars of religion, it is especially valuable for its penetrating and inter-religious analysis of two of the most compelling themes now facing the world: the emergence of cross-cultural religious understanding of the natural order and ecological crisis and the metaphysical basis for both the formal diversity and essential unity of religious traditions of both East and West. The West has long romanticized the "mysterious" East, but it has, also, judged its traditions as "uncivilized." Our notions about Eastern spirituality have been formed by a succession of travellers, scientists, artists, intellectuals, poets, philosophers and missionaries, as well as by Eastern travellers who have spent time in the West. This book helps us to recognize the influence of Eastern ideas upon modern Western thought by tracing the history of engagements between East and West up until the present day. It concludes with a section that helps us to perceive the timeless value of the many Eastern contributions to the West's current intellectual and spiritual state.

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”.