"I have just now had the opportunity to sit down with the advance pages of the early part of the work on Sri Ramakrishna, including your introduction, which you so kindly sent me some time ago. It is a work of absorbing interest. Your biographical introduction sets the reader at once into the atmosphere of India, its customs and its ways of thinking about the unseen world and about deity. I take it to be a high merit of the book that you have not omitted the details which will seem most strange to the Western reader; you have allowed them to bear their own message and to offer themselves intact for judgment. As you tell the life of Sri Ramakrishna, it engages with so much of the spiritual history of India during the last century that one gains a living sense of the forward movement of that history. The whole promises to be a document of importance for every one who wishes to gain a personal impression of Indian religious aspiration and to realize how naturally it spans the wide gamut from the particular and local symbols to the most universal conceptions." -- William Ernest Hocking, Alford Professor of Philosophy in Harvard University (from a letter to the translator) I have examined the proofs of your new volume, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, and send you herewith my praises for a work of noble scholarship and utter devotion. You have added to the scriptures of our English tongue a new Bible. When the volume appears, I shall add it proudly and reverently to my Bible of Humanity. I feel inexpressibly grateful to you for your labors thus crowned with this great achievement." -- John Haynes Holmes, Minister of the Community Church, New York (from a letter to the translator) The spirit of Ramakrishna, as given in his reported conversations, and his life, as rendered in the admirable Introduction by Swami Nikhilananda, constitute a unique and absorbing document for any serious student of the philosophy of religion. Ramakrishna is revealed as that rarity, the real thing in metaphysical mysticism and saintliness. He belongs in the great tradition of classic religious leaders. His teachings and his spirit here come wonderfully alive, and Western readers will have a new dimension added to their conception of the religious life." -- Irwin Edman, Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University Swami Nikhilananda has done an excellent piece of work. His very readable English translation of the Ramakrishnakathamrrita will enable the Western readers to understand the deep spiritual life of Sri Ramakrishna and the homely way in which profound truths are conveyed to ordinary mortals, and I hope that the book will have a wide publicity." -- Sir S. Radhakrishnan, Vice-chancellor of the Hindu University, Benares, India, and former Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics in Oxford University A new portrait of Ramakrishna, and a most fascinating one, comes to us through this first complete and authentic translation of the amazing diary by his faithful disciple 'M'. The famous figure of the outstanding embodiment of India's religious wisdom and message for mankind discloses his magic secret. A fervent experimentalist and devotee, Ramakrishna passes through every kind of religious tradition. Endowed with a Proteus-like vitality and voluptuousness for metamorphosis, his soul measures the celestial heights and fathoms the abyss. He achieves an unparalleled integration of the mystic heritage of India and the West. By enacting a sequence of kaleidoscopic transformations he realizes and simultaneously transcends the tangible forms of the formless Divine." -- Henry R. Zimmer, Lecturer on Indian Art and Philosophy in Columbia University, and former Professor of Sanskrit in Heidelberg University