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Book Review
Spiritual discourses
SRI RAMAKRISHNA AND HIS GOSPEL Vol. I — English translation from the original Bengali: Swami Bhuteshananda; Advaita Ashram, 5, Delhi Entally Road, Calcutta-700014. Rs. 125.
SRI MAHENDRANATH Gupta played the role of Boswell to Sri Ramakrishna, recording with an inspired fidelity and a matchless sense of propriety and relevance, the words and deeds of one of the greatest of "Avatarapurushas" of all time, Sri Ramakrishna.
His book, Sri Ramakrishna Kathamruta, is in Bengali and is rightly hailed as a classic of religious and hagiological literature. Swami Nikhilananda, a great Ramakrishna Missionary and one of the greatest of millions of loving devotees of Sri Ramakrishna served devotees of Ramakrishna all over the world, by bringing out an unusually faithful and classical English translation of the great work of "M'' (Mahendranath Gupta).
Swami Bhuteshananda gave weekly discourses in Bengali on the content and significance of the "Kathamruta" of "M". Devotees played the role of "M" to Swami Bhuteshananda and the result was a seven-volume "Kathamruta" discourses. Advaita Ashram must be congratulated on getting the Bengali book translated into English by a loving devotee who had listened to these discourses and recorded them. The result of such devotion is the book under review. It is only the first volume covering the first three volumes of the original Bengali edition. Other volumes will naturally follow and will be most welcome.
On the contents of the book under review one can say, what Dryden said of Chaucer, "Here is God's plenty". God's plenty indeed, in every sense of the term. Swami Bhuteshananda shows how Sri Ramakrishna solved the knottiest philosophical problems with his razor-sharp intellect and intuition.
There was an unaffected simplicity, a thrilling and moving homeliness about Sri Ramakrishna's teachings, particularly about his parables. Swami Bhuteshananda brings out Sri Ramakrishna's fidelity to the spirit and the significance of the story.
S.R.
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