Sri Ramakrishna, Christianity & Islam

Sri Ramakrishna was a 19th century saint who was one of the first to preach the essential validity of all religions. Apart from cleansing Hindu society of his time, especially in Bengal, of many regrettable practices, he was one of the first to practice the spiritual disciplines of Christianity & Islam till he attained their respective goals. These are given in considerable detail in his spiritual biography, "Sri Ramakrishna, the Great Master."

The obvious question arises as to why Sri Ramakrishna practiced the spiritual disciplines of those religions. In addition to proving that the highest goals of those religions were similar to those of Hinduism, he might also have provided first hand validity to those practices.  Then one would wonder whether any saints of those religions had also practised the spiritual disciplines of those religions & recorded their mystic experiences. The answer is yes, they did.

One of the first female saints was Hildegard of Bingen (11th Century), who was a mystic & polyglot to boot. Her vision of the "Cosmic Egg" as a symbol of the Cosmos, is strikingly similar to the "Hiranyagarbha" of the Rig Veda. Another was Julian of Norwich (14th century) who famously prayed for & obtained the priceless boon of experiencing the exquisite physical pain of Christ's crucifixion in her own mortal body. The Spanish St.Teresa of Avila (16th century), author of the revelatory "The Interior Castle", with its metaphorical seven mansions of God (similar to the eight chakras of Hinduism) was a visionary mystic, who was exploring her spirituality with her sister nuns, when her male counterparts were persecuting heretics in the notorious Spanish Inquisition.

The 8th century Sufi saint, Rabia of Basra, whose birth & influence was foretold by the Prophet himself (in a dream to her father), famously prayed for the pain of hell & exclusion from paradise in return for the love of Allah.

In conclusion, when we revere Sri Ramakrishna, we can also bow in reverence to the earlier mystics in Christianity & Islam, in addition to countless Hindu saints, who preceded him.