Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-1886) was one of the best loved and most influential spiritual masters modern India has produced. He entered the highest mystical states as easily as other men step through a door, and described his extraordinary inner experiences with an innocent eloquence that brought spirituality to life for millions around the globe. How to Live with God is a treasure chest of inspiration for contemporary men and women confused about the purpose of life. It unveils the life and teachings of this great Bengali saint who insisted, based on personal experience: "God exists. Do not seek God, see God. I have seen Him — you can see Him Too". For those who want to walk with God, Ramakrishna reveals the path. He knows the road because he walked it himself, singing joyfully all the way. Swami Chetanananda transports us into Ramakrishna’s world with brilliant lucidity and painstaking detail. Sitting alongside his closest disciples, we witness the master’s spiritual ecstasy, his astonishing insights, his humour, and his practical advice for common people yearning to know God better. Ramakrishna communicated the living reality of spiritual life with a clarity and immediacy rarely matched in world literature. Chetanananda peels away time and space to introduce us to the God-intoxicated mystic as a living presence whose message is even more critically important today than ever before. One of Ramakrishna’s most valuable legacies was his vision of world harmony and cross-cultural respect. The greatest threat facing humanity in his time as in our own was the active antagonism between the world’s great religions. How can we live with each other if we haven’t learned to live with God? Ramakrishna set out to replace implacable mistrust with enlightened mutual understanding. In perhaps the most famous experiment in religious history, he practiced each world faith in turn and personally experienced that they all led to the same divine reality. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, news about this remarkable Indian sage spread rapidly throughout the world, influencing Russian writer Leo Tolstoy and French Nobel Prize Winner Romain Rolland, the religious savant Huston Smith and mythologists Joseph Campbell, the English historian Arnold Toynbee and Trappist Monk Thomas Merton, as well as the Dalai Lama. Today Ramakrishna’s teachings permeate the Interfaith Movement, new Age thought, Yoga and modern Hinduism. How to Live with God is spiritual therapy for this cynical era.
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