Ramakrishna's samadhi
Encyclopedia
Ramakrishna's samādhi
was an ecstasy
- or trance
-like state that India
n mystic
Ramakrishna
entered several times a day, over a period of many years till his death.
or heart beat
. It is also said that he already had the power of inducing samādhi in others. Some claimed that these recurrent trances left his body extraordinarily sensitive and delicate.
According to his biographers, Ramakrishna's trances were accompanied by low metabolic rate, reduction of respiration and heart-rate, high-body temperature, tremor of the fingers. It is also mentioned that after divine visions during this spiritual sadhana, usually the next day, Ramakrishna used to feel intense pain, so he eventually used to resist the vision to avoid the pain.
Ramakrishna described his trances as a "limitless infinite, effulgent ocean of consciousness or spirit".
However, some Brahmins like Upadhyay Brahmabandhab considered Ramakrishna's samadhi a nervous malady.
, a physician
of Calcutta who treated Ramakrishna during his final days is one of the firsthand witnesses who examined Ramakrishna during his samadhi. Sarkar reportedly was a rationalist, who did not share the religious views of Ramakrishna, nor did he see him as an avatar
He was present during several ecstasies of Ramakrishna and studied them from a medical point of view. He claimed that the stethoscopic
examination of the heart
and the condition of the eyes during samadhi showed all the symptoms of death, and, when Ramakrishna's actually died, he could not distinguish his death from normal samadhi.
Somnath Bhattacharyya, a psychoanalyst and psychologist
, claimed that Ramakrishna's samadhi states were accompanied by very profound inward withdrawal of consciousness, and remarkable physiological changes, consistent with the highest stages of meditative
absorption as documented in Hindu Tantra
, Yoga
and Buddhist
literature.
G. C. Ray of IIT
analyzed Ramakrishna's EEGs and ECG
during his trances. He suggests that, during the trance, some physiological subsystems of the body may be switched off. The author also suggests that, "this process of gradually dropping the subsystems may be same as "neti, neti" (not this, not this, ... and reject it in the journey towards ultimate reality) as is voiced in the Upanishads".
Bhagavan Rudra was another who treated the Ramakrishna
. During one of his visits, Ramakrishna asked a devotee to bring a rupee
coin. When he held it in his hand, the hand began to writhe and he reported feeling pain. His breathing also stopped. After the coin had been taken away, he breathed deeply three times and relaxed his hand. Rudra ascribed this behavior to "action on the nerves." Ramakrishna also told Rudra that when a knot was tied in the corner of his cloth, he could not breathe until the knot was untied.
It is reported that in 1881, when Ramakrishna was once in ecstasy
, another medical doctor touched the eyeballs of Ramakrishna to test if his ecstasy was a real one. He was surprised to find no reaction from Ramakrishna.
, who would later become Ramakrishna's most ardent and prominent disciple, initially viewed Ramakrishna's ecstasy as pathological, and his visions as "creations of a sick brain, mere hallucination
s".
, a term that had been used by Freud in his book Civilization and its Discontents
.
Rolland and scholar D. S. Sharma and compared Ramakrishna's samādhi to the reported trances of other religious personalities:
Walter G. Neevel and Bardwell L. Smith argue that Ramakrishna's ability to easily enter into trances was largely due to "his esthetic and emotional sensitivity — his capacity to so appreciate and identify with beauty and harmony in what he saw and did".
Leo Schneiderman claimed that Ramakrishna's samādhi, like his other "bizarre" behavior could be understood in the context of the broad tradition of Hinduism, village shamanism, and the non-Sanskritic popular culture.
Samadhi
Samadhi in Hinduism, Buddhism,Jainism, Sikhism and yogic schools is a higher level of concentrated meditation, or dhyāna. In the yoga tradition, it is the eighth and final limb identified in the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali....
was an ecstasy
Religious ecstasy
Religious ecstasy is an altered state of consciousness characterized by greatly reduced external awareness and expanded interior mental and spiritual awareness which is frequently accompanied by visions and emotional/intuitive euphoria...
- or trance
Trance
Trance denotes a variety of processes, ecstasy, techniques, modalities and states of mind, awareness and consciousness. Trance states may occur involuntarily and unbidden.The term trance may be associated with meditation, magic, flow, and prayer...
-like state that India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n mystic
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
Ramakrishna
Ramakrishna
Ramakrishna , born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay , was a famous mystic of 19th-century India. His religious school of thought led to the formation of the Ramakrishna Mission by his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda – both were influential figures in the Bengali Renaissance as well as the Hindu...
entered several times a day, over a period of many years till his death.
Description
During his trances, Ramakrishna became unconscious and sat in a fixed position for a short time, or for hours, and would then slowly return to consciousness. When he was in this condition, doctors could find no trace of pulsePulse
In medicine, one's pulse represents the tactile arterial palpation of the heartbeat by trained fingertips. The pulse may be palpated in any place that allows an artery to be compressed against a bone, such as at the neck , at the wrist , behind the knee , on the inside of the elbow , and near the...
or heart beat
Cardiac cycle
The cardiac cycle is a term referring to all or any of the events related to the flow or blood pressure that occurs from the beginning of one heartbeat to the beginning of the next. The frequency of the cardiac cycle is described by the heart rate. Each beat of the heart involves five major stages...
. It is also said that he already had the power of inducing samādhi in others. Some claimed that these recurrent trances left his body extraordinarily sensitive and delicate.
According to his biographers, Ramakrishna's trances were accompanied by low metabolic rate, reduction of respiration and heart-rate, high-body temperature, tremor of the fingers. It is also mentioned that after divine visions during this spiritual sadhana, usually the next day, Ramakrishna used to feel intense pain, so he eventually used to resist the vision to avoid the pain.
Ramakrishna described his trances as a "limitless infinite, effulgent ocean of consciousness or spirit".
However, some Brahmins like Upadhyay Brahmabandhab considered Ramakrishna's samadhi a nervous malady.
Medical examinations
Mahendralal SarkarMahendralal Sarkar
Mahendralal Sarkar was a conventional-turned-homeopath doctor, social reformer, and propagator of scientific studies in nineteenth-century India...
, a physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
of Calcutta who treated Ramakrishna during his final days is one of the firsthand witnesses who examined Ramakrishna during his samadhi. Sarkar reportedly was a rationalist, who did not share the religious views of Ramakrishna, nor did he see him as an avatar
Avatar
In Hinduism, an avatar is a deliberate descent of a deity to earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being and is mostly translated into English as "incarnation," but more accurately as "appearance" or "manifestation"....
He was present during several ecstasies of Ramakrishna and studied them from a medical point of view. He claimed that the stethoscopic
Stethoscope
The stethoscope is an acoustic medical device for auscultation, or listening to the internal sounds of an animal body. It is often used to listen to lung and heart sounds. It is also used to listen to intestines and blood flow in arteries and veins...
examination of the heart
Heart
The heart is a myogenic muscular organ found in all animals with a circulatory system , that is responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions...
and the condition of the eyes during samadhi showed all the symptoms of death, and, when Ramakrishna's actually died, he could not distinguish his death from normal samadhi.
Somnath Bhattacharyya, a psychoanalyst and psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
, claimed that Ramakrishna's samadhi states were accompanied by very profound inward withdrawal of consciousness, and remarkable physiological changes, consistent with the highest stages of meditative
Meditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
absorption as documented in Hindu Tantra
Tantra
Tantra , anglicised tantricism or tantrism or tantram, is the name scholars give to an inter-religious spiritual movement that arose in medieval India, expressed in scriptures ....
, Yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
and Buddhist
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
literature.
G. C. Ray of IIT
Indian Institutes of Technology
The Indian Institutes of Technology are a group of autonomous engineering and technology-oriented institutes of higher education. The IITs are governed by the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961 which has declared them as “institutions of national importance”, and lays down their powers, duties,...
analyzed Ramakrishna's EEGs and ECG
Electrocardiogram
Electrocardiography is a transthoracic interpretation of the electrical activity of the heart over a period of time, as detected by electrodes attached to the outer surface of the skin and recorded by a device external to the body...
during his trances. He suggests that, during the trance, some physiological subsystems of the body may be switched off. The author also suggests that, "this process of gradually dropping the subsystems may be same as "neti, neti" (not this, not this, ... and reject it in the journey towards ultimate reality) as is voiced in the Upanishads".
Bhagavan Rudra was another who treated the Ramakrishna
Ramakrishna
Ramakrishna , born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay , was a famous mystic of 19th-century India. His religious school of thought led to the formation of the Ramakrishna Mission by his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda – both were influential figures in the Bengali Renaissance as well as the Hindu...
. During one of his visits, Ramakrishna asked a devotee to bring a rupee
Rupee
The rupee is the common name for the monetary unit of account in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, Mauritius, Seychelles, Maldives, and formerly in Burma, and Afghanistan. Historically, the first currency called "rupee" was introduced in the 16th century...
coin. When he held it in his hand, the hand began to writhe and he reported feeling pain. His breathing also stopped. After the coin had been taken away, he breathed deeply three times and relaxed his hand. Rudra ascribed this behavior to "action on the nerves." Ramakrishna also told Rudra that when a knot was tied in the corner of his cloth, he could not breathe until the knot was untied.
It is reported that in 1881, when Ramakrishna was once in ecstasy
Religious ecstasy
Religious ecstasy is an altered state of consciousness characterized by greatly reduced external awareness and expanded interior mental and spiritual awareness which is frequently accompanied by visions and emotional/intuitive euphoria...
, another medical doctor touched the eyeballs of Ramakrishna to test if his ecstasy was a real one. He was surprised to find no reaction from Ramakrishna.
Contemporary views
Swami VivekanandaSwami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda , born Narendranath Dutta , was the chief disciple of the 19th century mystic Ramakrishna Paramahansa and the founder of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission...
, who would later become Ramakrishna's most ardent and prominent disciple, initially viewed Ramakrishna's ecstasy as pathological, and his visions as "creations of a sick brain, mere hallucination
Hallucination
A hallucination, in the broadest sense of the word, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid,...
s".
Scholarly views
Ramakrishna's description of his feelings during samādhi was called oceanic feeling by scholar Romain RollandRomain Rolland
Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...
, a term that had been used by Freud in his book Civilization and its Discontents
Civilization and Its Discontents
Civilization and Its Discontents is a book by Sigmund Freud. Written in 1929, and first published in German in 1930 as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur , it is considered one of Freud's most important and widely read works....
.
Rolland and scholar D. S. Sharma and compared Ramakrishna's samādhi to the reported trances of other religious personalities:
- St. Paul, after a similar experience, was struck blind.
- SusoHenry SusoHenry Suso was a German mystic, born at Überlingen on Lake Constance on March 21, c. 1300; he died at Ulm, January 25, 1366; declared Blessed in 1831 by Gregory XVI, who assigned his feast in the Dominican Order to March 2...
, a German mystic of the 14th century, suffered at the time of his awakening so greatly in body that it seemed to him that none even in dying could suffer so much in so short a time. - Richard RolleRichard RolleRolle is honored in the Church of England on January 20 and in the Episcopal Church together with Walter Hilton and Margery Kempe on September 28.-Works in print:*English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Edited by George Perry...
of HampoleHampoleHampole is a small village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster , on the border with West Yorkshire. The eastern boundary of the parish is marked by the Great North Road, and the parish lies in what was once the Barnsdale Forest. It has a population of 187.Hampole itself is a...
has recorded that his heart burned with a sensible fire, "truly not imaginingly." - St.Theresa of AvilaTeresa of ÁvilaSaint Teresa of Ávila, also called Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada, was a prominent Spanish mystic, Roman Catholic saint, Carmelite nun, and writer of the Counter Reformation, and theologian of contemplative life through mental prayer...
.
Walter G. Neevel and Bardwell L. Smith argue that Ramakrishna's ability to easily enter into trances was largely due to "his esthetic and emotional sensitivity — his capacity to so appreciate and identify with beauty and harmony in what he saw and did".
Leo Schneiderman claimed that Ramakrishna's samādhi, like his other "bizarre" behavior could be understood in the context of the broad tradition of Hinduism, village shamanism, and the non-Sanskritic popular culture.