Sambodhi 2013 Vol 36

Author(s): Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 56

48
Dyuti J. Yajnik
SAMBODHI
Swami Tapasyanandaji, is a set of essays originally published as editorials in the Vedānta Kesarī in 1939. Swami Tapasyanandaji was a Vice President of the Ramakrishna Order and the editor of the Vedānta Kesarī from May 1931 to April 1939. This book was printed in 1993 in which the publisher "The President, Shri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, Chennai in the 'Publisher note said, “There is an urgent need today to make an in-depth study Ramakrishna's ideas, to discover his philosophy, and to present it in a systematic format. We hope this book will be helpful to those who wish to take up this challenging task.” The researcher humbly took up the challenging task to derive a philosophy of Shri Ramakrishna with special reference to his Gospel and tried to make an in-depth study for systematic presentation of different aspects of Ramakrishna's philosophy. As Aldus Huxley has said in the Foreword of 'The Gospel of Shri Ramakrishna' about the writing that "the casual and unstudied utterances of a great religious teacher” (GSR: V-vi), it was needed to present the utterances of Ramakrishna in a systematic form. Therefore, here, this attempt has been made to systematize Ramakrishna's utterances which in their own are logically very consistent and coherent. Ramakrishna on Ineffability and Noetic Qualities of Mystical Experience
Though Ramakrishna himself was a mystic having the mystical experiences with, he also has expressed his views on the nature of the mystical experience of Ultimate Reality.
In various places Ramakrishna a expresses his views regarding the ineffability of mystical experience. He says, “What Brahman is cannot be described. All things in the world - the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantra, the six systems of Philosophy - have been defiled, like food that has been touched by the tongue, for they have been read or uttered by the tongue. Only one thing has not been defiled in this way and that is Brahman. No one has ever been able to say what Brahman is.” (GSR: 102) And further he says, “God cannot be realized through scholarship. He is beyond the scriptures – the Vedas, Purānas and Tantras.” (GSR: 882)
He further says that the mystical experience or the experience of the Ultimate Reality has been so pure that it is not "polluted' by tongue-senses or mind or even intellect. According to him it is pure experience of the Whole, without the tint of any other physical or mental elements. He expresses, "What Brahman is cannot be described in words. Everything has been polluted. No one has been able to describe Brahman. It is therefore unpolluted." (GSR: 343)