Ramakrishna Kali Mandir

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ramakrishna did not serve for long as temple's head priest however. From the first days of his service in the shrine of the goddess Kali, he was filled with a rare form of the love of God known in Hinduism as maha-bhava. Worshipping in front of the statue of Kali, Ramakrishna would be overcome with such ecstatic love for the deity that he would fall to the ground and, immersed in spiritual trance, lose all consciousness of the external world. These experiences of God-intoxication became so frequent that he was relieved of his duties as temple priest but allowed to continue living within the temple compound. During the next twelve years Ramakrishna would journey ever deeper into this passionate and absolute love of the divine. His practice was to express such intense devotion to particular deities that they would physically manifest to him and then merge into his being. The various forms of god and goddess such as Shiva, Kali, Radha-Krishna, Sita-Rama, Christ and Mohammed frequently appeared to him and his fame as an avatar, or divine incarnation, rapidly spread throughout India. Ramakrishna died in 1886 at the age of fifty but his life, his intense spiritual practices, and the temple of Kali where many of his ecstatic trances occurred continued to attract pilgrims from all over India and the world. While Ramakrishna grew up and lived within the domain of Hinduism, his experience of the divine went far beyond the bounds of that, or any other, religion. Ramakrishna fully realized the infinite and all-inclusive nature of the divine. He was a conduit for divinity into the human world and the presence of that divinity may still be clearly experienced at the Kali temple of Dakshineswar.

 

The 'Siva-Mahimna Stotra' composed by Pushpadanta is the most popular hymn on Siva in North India. Sri Ramakirshna certainly knew it by heart. One day he was reciting this hymn in one of the twelve Siva temples at Dakshineswar when he came to the following verse: 

"Asitagirisamam syat kaijalam sindhupatre

Surataruvarasakha lekhanipatramurvi

Likhati yadi grihitva Sarada sarvakalam

Tadapi tava gunanamisa param na yati." 

which means: "Oh Lord, if the blue mountian be the ink, the ocean the ink-pot, the biggest branch of the heavenly tree be the pen, the earth the writing leaf and taking these if Sarada, the goddess of learning, writes for eternity, even then the limit of Your virtues will not be reached."

Reciting the aforesaid verse, Sri Ramakrishna entered into an ecstatic mood and cried out again and again, "O Great God, how can I express your great glory?" All came running towards that spot hearing the cries of Thakur. Mathur Babu was in the temple at that time. Hearing the uproar, he also came and prevented others from removing Sri Ramakrishna forcibly from the Siva temple. Mathur had already formed a high opinion about Sri Ramakrishna by that time. When Thakur came down to normal consciousness and saw the crowd, he asked Mathur whether he had done anything wrong. Mathur saluted him and said, "No, Ba Ba (father), you were reciting a hymn: I stood here lest some one should disturb you unthinkingly." Thus Mathur Babu protected and served Thakur in all possible ways for fourteen years like Nandi who eternally serves Lord Siva. Truly Mathur Babu and Hriday were to Sri Ramakrishna, what Nandi and Bhringi are to Siva. At another time, Mathur Babu actually saw Sri Ramakrishna as Siva and Kali alternately, as Thakur was pacing up and down.  

 

Jyotirlingas at the Kali Mandir

There are twelve most holy Sivalingas known as Jyotir-Lingas, the manifestations of Siva in the form of emblems representing light. In the Dakshineswar temple also, twelve temples of Siva have been constructed in a row by Rani Rasmani, who perhaps had in mind the twelve Jyotirlingas. Sri Ramakrishna himself was a living Jyotirlinga of Siva as he was the embodiment of divine light which arose out of Jugi's Siva Temple of Kamarpukur. Thus it is no wonder that Thakur was much devoted to the twelve 'Jyotir Lingas' or Siva installed at Dakshineswar.

 

Sri Ramakrishna could not worship for long the twelve Sivalingas in the Dakshineswar temple which are called Yogeswar, Jatneswar, Jatileswar, Nakuleswar, Nakeswar, Nirjareswar, Nareswar, Nandiswar, Nageswar, Jagadiswar, Jaleswar and Yajneswar. Among these twe1ve Sivas, Jagadiswar (literally, Lord of the world) seems to be especially important, as the real name of the Kali at the Dakshineswar temple is 'Sri Sri Jagadiswari Mahakali.' Sri Ramakrishna himself was Jagadiswar-Siva who actually realised that the Jagad (world) itself is Iswara (Siva). He said "One day while worshipping Siva I was about to place a betle- leaf on the head of the image, when it was revealed to me that this Virat, this Universe, itself is Siva. After that my worship of Siva through the image came to an end." But he used to send his young disciples to the twelve Siva temples for meditation.