The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Full Audiobook
Channel: spiritual audiobooks
Date: 17/12/2023

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, by his Disciple  Mahendranath Gupta, alias  “M.” or Mahendra (like in this Audiobook).
 Full Audiobook (24.09 hours), Youtube limits the length to 12 hours, so the entire audiobook can be downloaded. 
Gospel of Ramakrishna by Swami Abhedananda published in 1942.


THE GOSPEL OF SRI RAMAKRISHNA
By Mahendranath Gupta; His Disciple.
INTRODUCTION.
by Swāmi Nikhilānanda.
Sri Ramakrishna, the God man of modern India, was born at Kāmārpukur. This village in the Hooghly District preserved during the last century the idyllic simplicity of the rural areas of Bengāl. Situated far from the railway, it was untouched by the
glamour of the city. It contained rice fields, tall palms, royal banyans, a few lakes, and two cremation grounds. South of the
village a stream took its leisurely course. A mango orchard dedicated by a neighbouring zamindār to the public use was
frequented by the boys for their noonday sports. A highway passed through the village to the great temple of Jagannāth at
Puri, and the villagers, most of whom were farmers and craftsmen, entertained many passing holy men and pilgrims. The dull
round of the rural life was broken by lively festivals, the observance of sacred days, religious singing, and other innocent
pleasures.
About his parents Sri Ramakrishna once said: "My mother was the personification of rectitude and gentleness. She did not
know much about the ways of the world; innocent of the art of concealment, she would say what was in her mind. People
loved her for open heartedness. My father, an orthodox brāhmin, never accepted gifts from the Śudrās. He spent much of his
time in worship and meditation, and in repeating God's name and chanting His glories. Whenever in his daily prayers he
invoked the Goddess Gāyatri, his chest flushed and tears rolled down his cheeks. He spent his leisure hours making garlands
for the Family Deity, Raghuvir."
Khudirām Chattopādhyāya and Chandra Devi, the parents of Sri Ramakrishna, were married in 1799. At that time Khudirām
was living in his ancestral village of Derepore, not far from Kāmārpukur. Their first son, Rāmkumār, was born in 1805, and their
first daughter, Kātyāyani, in 1810. In 1814 Khudirām was ordered by his landlord to bear false witness in court against a
neighbour. When he refused to do so, the landlord brought a false case against him and deprived him of his ancestral
property. Thus dispossessed, he arrived, at the invitation of another landlord, in the quiet village of Kāmārpukur, where he was
given a dwelling and about an acre of fertile land. The crops from this little property were enough to meet his family's simple
needs. Here he lived in simplicity, dignity, and contentment.
Ten years after his coming to Kāmārpukur, Khudirām made a pilgrimage on foot to Rāmeswar, at the southern extremity of
India. Two years later was born his second son, whom he named Rāmeśwar. Again in 1835, at the age of sixty, he made a
pilgrimage, this time to Gayā. Here, from ancient times, Hindus have come from the four corners of India to discharge their
duties to their departed ancestors by offering them food and drink at the sacred footprint of the Lord Vishnu. At this holy
place Khudirām had a dream in which the Lord Vishnu promised to be born as his son. And Chandrā Devi, too, in front of the
Sheevah temple at Kāmārpukur, had a vision indicating the birth of a divine child.
Upon his return the husband found that she had conceived.
It was on February 18, 1836, that the child, to be known afterwards as Ramakrishna, was born. In memory of the dream at
Gayā he was given the name of Gadādhar, the "Bearer of the Mace", an epithet of Vishnu. Three years later a little sister was
born.
Boyhood.
Gadādhar grew up into a healthy and restless boy, full of fun and sweet mischief. He was intelligent and precocious and
endowed with a prodigious memory. On his father's lap he learnt by heart the names of his ancestors and the hymns to the
gods and goddesses, and at the village school he was taught to read and write. But his greatest delight was to listen to
recitations of stories from Hindu mythology and the epics. These he would afterwards recount from memory, to the great joy
of the villagers. Painting he enjoyed; the art of moulding images of the gods and goddesses he learnt from the potters. But
arithmetic was his great aversion.