Arnold Toynbee gave this talk at the Ramakrishna Vedanta Center in London on the occasion of the 1959 anniversary meeting in honor of Sri Ramakrishna.
SRI RAMAKRISHNA and the Indian contribution to world harmony
I HAVE BEEN asked to speak, as well as to take the chair. I am much touched and honored. It is characteristic of the Indian spirit that an Indian religious order has invited an Englishman to speak at this anniversary meeting that is a memorial to Sri Ramakrishna.
I speak with diffidence, because I am an outsider. In a few minutes you will be hearing Swami Ghanananda, who will be speaking from inside. An outsider cannot say anything of much value. Still, I have several things in my mind which I should like to put before you: firstly, whether one is an insider or an outsider, one is deeply concerned, because religion is the most important concern of every human being who passes through this world. Secondly, religion knows no barriers of nationality. It may speak through a Hindu mouth or through a Christian one or through a Muslim one; but, if the message does truly come from the source of truth, it speaks to each one of us directly. Thirdly, this is the special insight of Hinduism, and the special gift that Indian religion has to give to the world.
Some of the religions that have arisen to the west of India are inclined to say, “We have the truth.” Hinduism would not dispute this, but it would go on to say: “Yes, you have the truth; we have it too, but neither of us has the whole truth or the same piece of it. No human being ever can have the whole truth, because truth has an infinite number of sides to it. One human being will get one glimpse. Truth is one, but there are many approaches to it. These different views do not conflict; they supplement each other.”
This recognition of the many-sidedness of religious insight and experience was part of Sri Ramakrishna’s message. It was also part of his life, because – if I am right- his life and his message cannot be distinguished from each other. He gave his message by living as he did.
The goal of Sri Ramakrishna’s life was union with God. Having been born in India as a Hindu, he approached this goal first along the Hindu road. Later, he approached it along the Muslim road and then along the Christian road as well. But all the time he was also a Hindu.
A Muslim or a Christian might say: “You can’t do that. You can’t take our road unless you give up all others, because ours is the only right one.” A Hindu will say: “I can take all these roads and many more, because they are not mutually exclusive.”
On this point, I myself believe that Hinduism has seen further into the truth than the Western religions have. I also believe that this Indian understanding of the truth is of supreme significance and value for the human race today.
Of course, it always has been, and always will be, right and good that we should appreciate and value other people’s glimpses of truth as well as our own; but this is particularly important today, when the peoples of the world are facing each other at close quarters, armed with fearful weapons. In this situation, the exclusive-minded, intolerant temper is not more wrong than it has been in the past; it has always been as wrong as it could be, but today it is more dangerous than it has ever been. The Hindu attitude is the opposite of exclusive-mindedness and this is India’s contribution to world harmony.
Sri Ramakrishna was in this world for half a century: 1836-1886. Look up one of the conventional histories of India dealing with those years. You may not find the name Sri Ramakrishna in the index. You will find a lot about war and politics; the establishment of British rule over India; the Indian Mutiny. You will find something about economics; the digging of irrigation canals; the building of roads and railways.
Now open a life of Sri Ramakrishna. Fortunately, he had a disciple who did for him what Boswell did for Dr. Johnson. This book is a very full record of his conversations, with a great deal too about his religious experiences, recorded at first-hand by an eye-witness. You will find that this book – it is called The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna – mentions none of the things that fill the conventional history books about India in those same fifty years.
Sri Ramakrishna was born and brought up in a village in Bengal. He spent most of his life in a temple on the bank of the Ganges, only a few miles away from Calcutta. Outwardly, his life might seem uneventful. Yet in its own field – the field of religion – his life was more active, and more effective, than the lives of his contemporaries – Indian and English- who were building the framework of modern India in Sri Ramakrishna’s lifetime. Perhaps Sri Ramakrishna’s life was even more modern than theirs, in the sense that his work may have a still greater future than their work may be going to have.
Sri Ramakrishna’s action was communion with God. It drew to him people of all ages, and a group of his younger disciples, headed by Swami Vivekananda, became the first members of the religious order that is holding this meeting here tonight. If I am right, Sri Ramakrishna himself did not found his order in any formal way. You might say that it founded itself after his death through the continuing effect of his life on disciples who had lived with him during his later years. There can be few people alive today who are old enough to have known Sri Ramakrishna personally. Most of us today can know him only at second hand, in the way we know, say, Socrates or the Buddha or Christ or Mohammed. But we can measure his spiritual power, like theirs, indirectly by seeing the force and impetus of the religious movement which he set in motion.
One last word: Indian ideals and Western ideals are not mutually exclusive. There is room for them both, and need for them both. Put them together, and they will be able, between them, to do great things for humanity.
Arnold Toynbee
SRI RAMAKRISHNA’S OWN WORDS
[Some people] insist that God is formless. Suppose they do. It is enough to call on Him with sincerity of heart. If the devotee is sincere, then God, who is the Inner Guide of all, will certainly reveal to the devotee His true nature.
But it is not good to say that what we ourselves think of God is the only truth and what others think is false; that because we think of God as formless, there fore He is formless and cannot have any form; that because we think of God as having form, therefore He has form and cannot be formless. Can a man really fathom God’s nature?
I see people who talk about religion constantly quarrelling with one another. Hindus, Mussulmans, Brahmos, Shaktas, Vaishnavas, Saivas, all quarrel with one another. They haven’t the intelligence to understand that He who is called Krishna is also Siva and the Primal Shakti, and that it is He, again, who is called Jesus and Allah. “There is only one Rama and He has a thousand names.”
Truth is one; only It is called by different names. All people are seeking the same Truth; the variance is due to climate, temperament, and name. A lake has many ghats. From one ghat the Hindus take water in jars and call it jal. From another ghat the Mussalmans take water in leather bags and call it pani. From a third the Christians take the same thing and call it water. Suppose someone says that the thing is not jal but pani, or that it is not pani but water, or that it is not water but Jal. It would indeed be ridiculous. But this very thing is at the root of the friction among sects, their misunderstandings and quarrels. This is why people injure and kill one another, and shed blood, in the name of religion. But this is not good. Everyone is going toward God. They will all realize Him if they have sincerity and longing of heart.
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Swami Vivekananda
BEFORE WE CAN understand Swami Vivekananda – or any other great spiritual leader or prophet- we must understand the true spirit of religion. And by religion I do not mean any particular faith, such as Hinduism, or Christianity, or Mohammedanism, or Buddhism, but what in India we call Sanatana dharma, the eternal religion. In this eternal religion there is no dogma, no creed, no doctrine, no theology. Three truths are pre served at the core of the eternal religion, and these may be very simply expressed.