Meaning of Radha and Krishna

ADHAR (introducing Bankim [Chandra Chatterji]): "Sir, he is a great scholar and has written many books. He has come here to see you. His name is Bankim Babu." 

MASTER (smiling): "Bankim! Well, what has made you bent?" 

BANKIM (smiling): "Why, sir, boots are responsible for it. The kicks of our white masters have bent my body." 

MASTER: "No, my dear sir! Sri Krishna was bent on account of His ecstatic love. His body was bent in three places owing to His love for Radha. That is how some people explain Sri Krishna's form. 

Do you know why He has a deep-blue complexion? And why He is of such small stature-only three and a half cubits measured by His own hand? God looks so as long as He is seen from a distance. So the water of the ocean looks blue from afar. But if you go near the ocean and take the water in your hand, you will no longer find it blue; it will be very clear, transparent. So the sun appears small because it is very far away; if you go near it, you will no longer find it small. When one knows the true nature of God, He appears neither blue nor small. But that is a far-off vision; one does not see it except in samādhi. As long as 'I' and 'you' exist, name and form will also exist. 

Everything is God's lila. His sportive pleasure. As long as a man is conscious of 'I' and 'you', he will experience the manifestations of God through diverse forms. 

- Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, P 666-67 (6 December 1884)

Sannyasi

 

See God in the World

MAHIMA: "Can a man live in the world if his mind is once directed to God?" 

MASTER: "Why not? Where will he go away from the world? I realize that wherever I live I am always in the Ayodhya of Rāma. This whole world is Rāma's Ayodhya. After receiving instruction from His teacher, Rāma said that He would renounce the world. Daśaratha sent the sage Vasishtha to Rāma to dissuade Him. Vasishtha found Him filled with intense renunciation. He said to Rāma: 'First of all, reason with me, Rāma; then You may leave the world. May I ask You if this world is outside, God? If that is so, then You may give it up.' Rāma found that it is God alone who has become the universe and all its living beings. Everything in the world appears real on account of God's reality behind it. Thereupon Rāma became silent. 

- Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, P 648 (26 October 1884)

Superior Devotee

 

Real Nature of God

 

God as Person

As long as a man is conscious of 'I' and 'you', and as long as he feels that it is he who prays or meditates, so long will he feel that God is listening to his prayer and that God is a Person. Then he must say: 'O God, Thou art the Master and I am Thy servant. Thou art the whole and I am a part of Thee. Thou art the Mother and I am Thy child.'

At that time there exists a feeling of difference: 'I am one and Thou art another.' It is God Himself who makes us feel this difference; and on account of this difference one sees man and woman, light and darkness, and so on. As long as one is aware of this difference, one must accept Śakti, the Personal God. 

It is God who has put 'I-consciousness' in us. You may reason a thousand times; still this 'I' does not disappear. As long as 'I-consciousness' exists, God reveals Himself to us as a Person. 

- Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, P 635 (19 October 1884)

Way to Brahmajnana