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Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna

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Jeffrey Kripal, starts with the intention of showing Ramakrsihna to be a homsexual. Several of his arguments are flawed because of his lacking of Bengali and because of his over eagerness to bring down the spirituality of Ramakrishna to suppressed sexuality.

1. The supposed difference between Tantra and Vedanta is fictitious and exists only in the western author's minds and not in practicing Hinduism. Millions of South Indian followers of the Vedantic Shankara use Tantric pujas and practice Sri Vidya Upasana a Tantric ritual. In the monasteries associated with the Advaiatic Sankara Tantric pujas are very common. The author should investigate the Smarta sect of Brahmins to discover this. They have often been clubbed with Saivas but this is not true.

2. The strong association between Tantra and sexuality is false. Western authors have a prurient interest in degrading indigenous religious practices to sexual orgies. Yes, Sex is seen as one of the ways to seek divine bliss, but only in one of the tantric sects the left hand path. Tantra in South India and Kashmir is Kaula and part of the righ hand path. Not that there is anything wrong with Sex but Tantra does not necessarily involve sexual connotations.

3. It is a tradition in Hinduism and some other mystical religions for the spiritual seeker whether male or female to approach God as the only maleand himself as female. Several saints including Maniccka Vachagar, Ramalinga Adigal, Arunagirinathar have sung hymns in Nayaki Bhava where they implore the lord to marry them. This does not mean all of these men are homo sexuals. The reason they use this Bhava is the medeival and (biological reality) , female as the receptive and relatively passive element in the Universe. The devotee remains passive and receptive to god.

The problem of such biased scholarship is the suspicion that it creates about genuine scholars and seekers from the west as to their intentions. Several European intellectuals made it a practice to denigrate India and what she represents during colonical rule to seek justification and reassurance of European imeprialism. The Ramakrsihna Math is a neo-Hindu institution and one of the earliest reinterpreters of Hinduism in the face of modernity and on which much of the pride of the modern Hindu rests. Striking at it root , though masked as scholarship and apparent concern for truth, is easily recognizable by any intelligent observer as something less inoccuous.

While I am a Ramakrishna admirer, I admit I was intrigued by the book at first. Expecting long-supressed secrets about RK, what I got was a very few obscure statements and stories turned into an elaborate Freudian analysis of Tantra. This, along with a meandering hypothesis about what was in RK's subconscious. It's just too shaky, and Kripal is too eager to sniff out a conspiracy. For example, in the book's second edition, Kripal admits that Ram Chandra Datta's book--which he claimed was supressed by the RK establishment--was, to his surprise, published by the Ramakrishna Mission the same summer as the first edition of "Kali's Child"! In the end, Kripal does not convince, and RK remains a mystery.

The author uses (misuses) freudian psychoanalysis, which reduces all emotions to sexuality, to formulate his opinions. This is highly reductionist (to say the least). The other problem is that a superficial look at something as complex as culture can yield absurd conclusions. For example, using (misusing) freudian principles, one can say the following thing about chistianity.

Jesus was a filthy, unclean man dressed in rags. He learned some magic tricks from the visiting Persian merchants. The Romans often invited him to perform at their parties, and in exchange, they offered him wine. So he routinely got drunk, tried to be "a notorious womanizer," and was a hobo all his life. Since Jesus' mother was a prostitute, fearing social retribution, she did not want to announce the true identity of his father, and had to make up a fantastic story for the illiterate nomads. Therefore, Mary claimed that Jesus was born without physical intercourse. So all his life, Jesus guarded the myth of his mother's virginity and hid the immoral activities of his father and other customers who visited his mother for sex. When Jesus become politically strong, the Roman commanders got rid of him and played a joke upon Jesus by crucifying him using the cross, symbolizing that the cross was the phallus and dildo which his mother must have used for her sexual gratification when customers weren't available. Thus, his followers today carry a cross as the phallic symbol of his immaculate conception. Jesus was a hopeless drunkard, to escape public scorn for his vice, he started a bizzare and revolting cannibalistic ritual of symbolically sharing wine and said that it was his blood. This revolting ritual is followed even today by mindless christians. It is safe to say that the obsession of the west with sex and alchoholism is a direct result of such prurient beliefs and immorality which pass as religious ritual. No wonder christia countries suffer from teen pregnancies, and drug and alchohol abuse.

How would the above be considered if it were written by a non-Christian academic scholar from a non-chistian culture? Who claims he has "found the true meaning of the christian beliefs?"

The problem with people analysing a culture without being part of it is that only the superficial is visible. And even that is perceived through a conditioning process that is outside the culture. A person not aware of christianity is likely to wonder how come these christians worship a bag of bones nailed to a piece of wood and call it divine? Perhaps their obsession with world domination is linked to their innate sense of shame at the inability of this emaciated, begraggled, bag of bones to face up to his tormentors. Maybe the whole of the west needs to be psychoanlyzed. Perhaps this explains how ruthlessly they treated the trusting and friendly american indians. The christians tranfered their own crisis of self-identity on to the Indians and massacred them.

A christian at a church is not thinking, look how indecent Jesus is, he hardly has any clothes on. Look I can count 4 no 8 bones in his ribs. Gosh! he must stink what with all the blood and sweat. Not to mention the fact that he probably didn't have a bath for days. The fact that christians worship this person surely means that they have no sense of shame, who knows perhaps they are all perverts who wouldn't think twice about torturing and killing people. After all, their senses are dulled by the appalling suffering of the figure they call god.

Do you see how absurd it sounds? This, then is the problem with reductionist thinking. You see everything colored by what preconceptions you have...

One need not waste his time collecting junks. May read something useful...Should one dare to translate a foreign-language book when he can't speak/write/understand a paragraph without the help of a dictionary? It seems, that's not a problem for Mr. Kripal at all! Without knowing Bengali, the author tries to prepare his "thesis" with the help of several books written in Bengali. Outcome is: massive intentional and stupid mis-translations leading to a utterly crazy (NOT scholarly) hypothesis.

My comment:
If Mr. Kripal's translation from his references are correct, then the other frightening possibility is (I happened to carefully read those original Bengali books.):
I must have absolutely forgotten my mother tongue (Bengali), which I hoped to use until I die!

I am a Bengali myself. I found that the author has intentionally used very obscure translations of the original Bengali words , and have used those to suit his perverse agenda to degrade one of the greatest spiritual genius of India.

Very skewed perceptions of a respected Giant of Indian Spirituality. This book portrays less knowledge about Shri Ramakrishna then the most ignorant peasant in India. By implication this is a putdown on Hindus and the Hindu Faith. Everthing is viewed from a sexual angle. Read this book and replace the name Ramakrishna with an Iconic person of any other faith and the reader will feel a sense of the outrage that Hindus felt on reading this book.

It is a very poor showing of religious scholarship and nothing less than an attempt to defame and defile reputation of Shri Ramakrishna. I believe that I would take the word of the following over the base writings of MR Kripal :

Mahatma Gandhi
"The story of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa's life is a story of religion in practice. His life enables us to see God face to face."

Huston Smith
"Ramakrishna's teachings on the essential unity of the great religions comprise Hinduism's finest voice on this topic."

Arnold Toynbee
"Sri Ramakrishna's message was unique in being expressed in action. Religion is not just a matter for study, it is something that has to be experienced and to be lived, and this is the field in which Sri Ramakrishna manifested his uniqueness. His religious activity and experience were, in fact, comprehensive to a degree that had perhaps never before been attained by any other religious genius, in India or elsewhere."

Romain Rolland
"Ramakrishna was a rare combination of individuality and universality, personality and impersonality. His word and example have been echoed in the hearts of Western men and women. His soul animates modern India."

Thomas Mann
"This highly noteworthy document [The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna] conveys the personality of a great mystic in such an intimate, direct, and almost astounding manner that to read it must be an enriching experience for any intellect which is receptive and open to all things human."

Christopher Isherwood
"This is the story of a phenomenon." (Isherwood's opening sentence in Ramakrishna and His Disciples.)

I am saddened at the way a few individuals tend to tear down the accomplishments of notable personalities. The manner in which Sri Ramakrishna's character has been deconstructed is completely illogical. This book is another attempt to view the lives of great people through the sex-jaundiced eyes. Similar attempts have been made to denigrate an all time great, M K Gandhi too. Apparently, the author belongs to the clan of psychoanalysts who use Freudian logic to interprete incidents / actions. ... Ramakrishna was a notable teacher/mystic/saint who has a wide following not only in India, but also in the West. His followers even condsider him a reincarnation of God. To my knowledge, he is the only man who ever tried to reach God by following the path of Christianity, Islam as well as Hinduism. The essence of his teachings was that 'Every belief leads to God'. Let us move forward with visions of a better future for all mankind, and work towards achieving it for everybody. Let us not waste time and energy in trampling great figures beneath our shoes. This is most certainly not the best book to learn about Ramakrishna. If somebody wants to learn about Sri Ramakrishna, I would urge him/her to read The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Women Saints of East and West, Great Women of India, Practice of Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.

Paramahansa's life is scrutinized under a psycho analytic lens. The analysis is certainly plausible, but I think the author needs to consider the following .

1. Viraha or longing for the beloved usually as a female is a well accepted way of expressing devotion in India even among very heterosexual people. Arunagirinatha a mystic from SOuth India who composed the famous hymn Thiruppugazh was historically very heterosexual and sexually active before his renunciation yet many of his songs long for God Muruga, himself portrayed as a female. So does Manickavachagar, Vallalar. I do not know if that would make them all homosexuals, not that I find anything wrong with Ramakrishna being a homosexual

2. The author jumps to conclusions that Totapuri left Ramakrishna because he was wrecked physically because of Tota's sexual abuse and Mathur Babu sexually abused Ramakrishna even if there is no empirical evidence presented anywhere. The author himself says that he is just supposing and hypothesizing, but later many of these hypotheses become the main argument for his thesis. The only empirical evidence presented is Ramakrishna's himself saying he played with his linga and his anxiety and sometimes physical closeness to young boys which sometimes are disturbing indeed. Yet young children are usually treated as pure and innocent in Western Theology too. Ramakrishna would not have had access to young female children any way given the taboo in India about male-female relationships. So if he wanted to see young boys from school I think it is preposterous to suppose that it had a sexual motive rather than a desire to associate with uncomplicated , simple minds. Yet I agree some of the episodes such as sitting on lap , caressing chest etc are certainly perplexing

3. It is possible that Vivekananda used the Ramakrishna movement as a platform to launch his own ideas yet the transformation of his personality due to Ramakrishna was tangible indeed. If he did actually use Ramakrishna as the mask to push his own ideas, I am just supposing he would not have accepted this side of Ramakrishna especially after all his talk of manliness and facing upto the truth. But again this is subjective.

Over all a good start to rediscovering the Saint. All said and done the saint is a saint because of his child-like simplicity of sharing even his most intimate thoughts with everyone. If there was distortion it was of the followers.

This is what the review in the Hindu-Christian Studies Bulletin, vol 10, 1997 had to say about the book: ``There are inaccuracies of one sort or another on a majority of the book's pages. Kripal's hypotheses are based upon innuendo, prejudicial translation, and cultural misjudgments.'' I concur.

The author presupposes first and then manufactures evidence.
A classic example of the pursuit of the exotic under the guise of scholarship that has come to personify much of work in the West regarding Hinduism. However, it makes "interesting" reading for someone (like myself) who many many years ago spent 8 years as a student in Ramkrishna Mission educational institutions. This book is worthless to anyone seeking an introduction to Ramakrishna's life or his ideas.