When Ramana Remembered Ramakrishna: Śiva and Śakti on the Path to God

 

Ardhanarishvara — the union of Śiva and Śakti in one form, stillness and play together, the same truth expressed as Ramana’s silence and Ramakrishna’s song.

 

The Unexpected Visitor

 

Krishna Bhikshu records a small scene from the hall of Bhagavan that carries more weight than it first appears. One day, a man walked in wearing European clothes, shoes, and hat. He did not even remove his shoes before stepping inside. He looked at Bhagavan with a critical eye, as though measuring him, and then asked abruptly:

“Have you seen God?”

Bhagavan replied, “Who is he?” The man did not continue.

Then he shifted to a new demand: “Can I have your photo?”

“You can have it if you can take it,” said Bhagavan. The visitor failed to understand, clicked his picture, and left as suddenly as he had come.

When he was gone, Bhagavan turned to those around him and remarked with quiet irony:

“Vivekananda asked Ramakrishna the same question. He got the right answer as his own experience. But these people think they can get God by buying a railway ticket for ten rupees.”

(The Power of the Presence, Vol. III)

 

What Was Missed

 

Bhagavan’s reply, “You can have it if you can take it,” was not a simple permission. It was a doorway. To “take” his photo in the truest sense meant to recognize and abide in what he really was — the Self that no camera could capture. The body seated on the sofa was only a shadow; the living presence was beyond form.

But the visitor did not pause. He took the words in their surface sense, clicked a picture, and walked away. Outwardly he carried a photograph; inwardly, he had missed the point entirely.

That is why Bhagavan, with a touch of compassion and irony, drew the contrast: once, the very same question — “Have you seen God?” — had been asked by a young seeker named Narendranath. And when Ramakrishna answered him, something ignited in the boy’s heart. The words did not bounce off as clever phrases; they went in like fire, and stayed.

The difference lay not in the question but in the openness of the one who asked. One man came armed with shoes, hat, and skepticism, hoping for a curiosity. The other came naked with longing, ready to hear the impossible.

 

The Gospel Encounter

 

In his youth, Narendranath — who would later be known as Swami Vivekananda — went from teacher to teacher with a single burning question:

“Sir, have you seen God?”

Most answered with scriptures, theories, or evasions. None could speak with certainty.

But when he put the same question to Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar, the reply was unlike anything he had heard before.

Ramakrishna said:

“Yes, I see Him as I see you, only more clearly. And I can show Him to you.”

(The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Part I, Chapter I)

It was not an argument, not a doctrine, but the plain truth of his own seeing. Those words sank deep into Narendranath’s heart and became a turning point in his life.

 

A Rare Recognition

 

It is striking that Bhagavan should recall this story. In his conversations, there are almost no references to Sri Ramakrishna. He quoted the Upanishads, the Yoga Vasistha, Tamil saints like Thayumanavar — but hardly ever the mystic of Dakshineswar. And yet, here he was, drawing a line between a casual visitor with a camera and the burning sincerity of Vivekananda.

This single remark shows something quiet but important: Bhagavan knew Ramakrishna’s life and words. He must have read, or at least heard, the Kathamrita or the Gospel. He carried that recognition inwardly, even if he almost never spoke of it.

Why then this silence? Why did Ramana, who clearly honored Ramakrishna, refrain from mentioning him in his own teaching? The answer lies not in distance or dismissal, but in the very difference of their ways.

 

Why the Silence

 

Bhagavan’s silence about Ramakrishna was not indifference. It was fidelity to his own mode of transmission.

Ramakrishna taught through stories, moods, parables, the play of devotion. His bhāva was Shakti: colorful, tender, sometimes ecstatic, endlessly accessible. His words and gestures were meant to meet seekers wherever they stood.

Ramana’s current was utterly different. His way was stripped bare — silence, Who am I?, the steady gaze that cut through all stories. He avoided parables and personalities because his teaching was meant to drop the mind into the source directly, without detours.

There was also a practical side. By the early 20th century, the Ramakrishna Mission was already well known, with its own distinct flavor. Had Ramana invoked Ramakrishna often, people might have thought he was aligning with that institution. He wanted no affiliation, no coloring. His teaching stood alone, belonging to no movement.

So he held Ramakrishna within, but did not weave him into his outward speech. Not from rejection, but from the clarity of his own path.

 

Bhakti and Jñāna

 

Though Bhagavan rarely spoke of Ramakrishna, he never dismissed bhakti. On the contrary, he affirmed again and again that surrender and devotion are not secondary paths but complete in themselves.

He once said: “Bhakti is Jñāna Mata — devotion is the mother of knowledge.” For him, the end of devotion and the end of enquiry are one: when the ego is dissolved, what remains is the Self.

He often explained it this way: the jñāni says, “I am the Self,” while the bhakta says, “All is Thine.” Both attitudes, if total, destroy the separate “I” that veils the truth.

So Ramana did not see bhakti as lesser. He simply did not teach it outwardly, because his own bhāva was pure jñāna. His seat was silence and enquiry — but he recognized the river of devotion as equally capable of carrying a soul to the sea.

 

Śiva and Śakti — Two Currents of the Same Ocean

 

When we place Ramana and Ramakrishna side by side, it is not to compare or to measure, but to feel the astonishing diversity of how the Divine speaks through human form.

Ramana was pure Śiva. His body sat still on the sofa at Arunachala, gaze steady, words pared down to the bone. He was like a mountain wrapped in silence, a cremation ground where all questions and all identities went to burn. His teaching was not decoration but fire — “Who am I?” Nothing more was needed, because that one question contained the whole annihilation of ego. To sit in his hall was to feel the gravitational pull of stillness, the dark-blue depth where mind ceases. He was the still axis, the hub of the wheel, refusing to spin in the play of moods, because he was the unmoving center.

Ramakrishna, by contrast, was pure Śakti. His whole being danced with bhāva. One moment laughing, another singing, another lost in samādhi, another speaking in parables about salt dolls and mango trees. He was intoxicated with the Mother — tender, playful, poetical. Where Ramana sat in silence, Ramakrishna poured out stories like rivers; where Ramana’s gaze dissolved questions, Ramakrishna’s words multiplied openings for every kind of seeker. If you came to him with devotion, he gave you devotion; if you came with doubt, he gave you paradox; if you came with hunger, he fed you on song and tears. He was like the sky full of colors at dusk, shifting and shimmering, because his current was the Mother’s play.

And yet — both led to the same summit. Both demanded the surrender of ego. In Ramana’s hall, the ego was cremated in stillness. In Ramakrishna’s room, the ego was drowned in love. One cut the knot of “I” with silence, the other melted it in song.

This is why Ramana’s brief reference to Ramakrishna matters. He recognized the authenticity of that current, though it was utterly different from his own. He saw that Vivekananda’s openness allowed Ramakrishna’s words to ignite realization. He did not need to imitate or borrow that style. He simply bore witness that the path of bhakti, in its purity, reaches the same end as jñāna.

And so we can say:

• Ramana as Śiva — still, fierce in simplicity, the ash-covered mountain of Being.

• Ramakrishna as Śakti — tender, playful, overflowing, the dancing Mother in human form.

Two poles of one mystery. Without Śiva, Śakti has no ground; without Śakti, Śiva has no expression. To see them together is to see the wholeness of the Divine — one axis, two currents, the same ocean breaking into two waves.

 

The Same Summit, Different Paths

 

The little scene in Bhagavan’s hall began with a man in shoes, hat, and hurry. He asked, “Have you seen God?” and later demanded a photograph, as though truth could be carried away like a souvenir. Bhagavan’s reply — “You can have it if you can take it” — revealed the real point: God, the Self, cannot be captured by lens or by question. It can only be taken if the heart is ready to dissolve.

That is why he remembered Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. The same question, spoken with a different spirit, became a flame that lit the way to realization. One seeker went home with a photograph; the other went home with fire in his soul.

And here we glimpse the rare bridge between two masters. Ramana, the embodiment of Śiva, acknowledged Ramakrishna, the embodiment of Śakti. Their methods could not have been more different — silence and enquiry on one side, stories and ecstasy on the other — yet their summit was the same. Both demanded the death of the ego. Both offered the living God, not as belief but as direct seeing.

Ramana did not often speak of Ramakrishna, because his task was to transmit his own current without mixture. But in this one moment he let the recognition show: bhakti and jñāna are not rivals. They are two currents of the same ocean. One burns, the other melts — yet both erase the false self and reveal what alone is real.

For us, the lesson of the story is simple and severe. The difference does not lie in the question, but in the asker. One may come armed with doubt and leave with nothing; another may come open and be transformed forever. What matters is not the form of the teacher, nor the path they embody, but the readiness to receive.