Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion

Sri Ramakrishna is widely known as a nineteenth-century Indian mystic who affirmed the harmony of all religions on the basis of his richly varied spiritual experiences and eclectic religious practices, both Hindu and non-Hindu. In Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality, Ayon Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna was also a sophisticated philosopher of great contemporary relevance.

Through a careful study of Sri Ramakrishna's recorded oral teachings in the original Bengali, Maharaj reconstructs his philosophical positions and analyzes them from a cross-cultural perspective. Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual journey culminated in the exalted state of "vijñana," his term for the "intimate knowledge" of God as the Infinite Reality that is both personal and impersonal, with and without form, immanent in the universe and beyond it. This expansive spiritual standpoint of vijñana, Maharaj contends, opens up a new paradigm for addressing central issues in cross-cultural philosophy of religion, including divine infinitude, religious pluralism, mystical experience, and the problem of evil.

Sri Ramakrishna's vijñana-based religious pluralism--when grasped in all its subtlety--proves to have major philosophical advantages over dominant Western models. Moreover, his mystical testimony and teachings not only cut across long-standing debates about the nature of mystical experience but also bolster recent defenses of its epistemic value. Maharaj further demonstrates that Sri Ramakrishna's unique response to the problem of evil resonates strongly with Western "soul-making" theodicies and contemporary theories of skeptical theism. A pioneering interdisciplinary study of one of India's most important philosopher-mystics, Maharaj's book is essential reading for scholars and students in philosophy of religion, theology, religious studies, and Hindu studies.

Ayon Maharaj is Assistant Professor and Head of Philosophy at Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute in West Bengal, India. He is also an ordained Brahmacarin, with the name of Buddhacaitanya, in training to be a Sannyasin monk of the Ramakrishna Order. Holding a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, he has published over a dozen articles on Indian, German, and cross-cultural philosophy. He is the author of The Dialectics of Aesthetic Agency: Revaluating German Aesthetics from Kant to Adorno (2013) and the editor of the forthcoming Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedanta.

Acknowledgments
A Note on Sanskrit and Bengali Transliteration
Abbreviations of Primary Texts
Introduction

PART ONE: THE INFINITUDE OF GOD

Chapter 1
Sri Ramakrishna's Harmonizing Philosophy of Vijñana Vedanta

Chapter 2
A Cross-Cultural Inquiry into Divine Infinitude: Sri Ramakrishna, Paraconsistency, and the Overcoming of Conceptual Idolatry

PART TWO: RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

Chapter 3
"All Faiths Are Paths": A Reconstruction and Defense of Sri Ramakrishna's Vijñana-Based Model of Religious Pluralism

Chapter 4
John Hick's Vedantic Road Not Taken?: Hick's Evolving Views on Religious Pluralism in the Light of Sri Ramakrishna

PART THREE: MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

Chapter 5
Beyond Perennialism and Constructivism: Sri Ramakrishna's Manifestationist Model of Mystical Experience

Chapter 6
A Cross-Cultural Defense of the Epistemic Value of Mystical Experience: Sri Ramakrishna, Self-Authentication, and the Argument from Experience

PART FOUR: THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

Chapter 7
Sri Ramakrishna's Multidimensional Response to the Problem of Evil: Skeptical Theism, Saint-Making Theodicy, and the Panentheistic Standpoint of Vijñana

Chapter 8
A Cross-Cultural Approach to the Problem of Evil: Sri Ramakrishna, the Rowe-Alston Debate, and Hick's Soul-Making Theodicy

Methodological Postlude
Bibliography
Index