Sri Ramakrishna
1836-1886 · Modern Indian Thought · Prominent
Ramakrishna was a Bengali Hindu mystic who served as a priest of the Kali temple at Dakshineswar and was given to ecstatic absorption, samadhi, a state so complete that the world around him dropped away. He took up Tantra, Vedanta, Islam and Christianity in turn, working each one through as a practice, and came out saying that the many religions are so many paths to the same divine reality.
Signature
The position Ramakrishna is most identified with in the Profiler:
- The Divine
- mildly between Describable and Indescribable
- Theology
- Panentheism
Positions on the 8 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- mildly between Describable and Indescribable (50 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Conviction
- leans Certain (80 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
12 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Ramakrishna refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Panentheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God / Love
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Non-Dual Awareness
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Karmic Causation
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Cyclical Recurrence
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Cyclical Return
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Charismatic Authority
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Sacred Speech
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Apophatic Pointer
What is the status of paradox? - Death
- Reincarnation
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?