Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Why Sri Ramakrishna’s Religious Pluralism Still Matters

The Bengali mystic Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886) is perhaps most well known for having taught and practiced the dictum, “As many faiths, so many paths.” Far from affirming that all religions are the “same,” he held that various religions are different, but equally effective, paths to the common goal of the direct experiential knowledge of some aspect or form of one and the same impersonal-personal Infinite Divine. While some of the most prominent Western theories of religious pluralism adopt a monolithic conception of the salvific goal of all religions, Ramakrishna’s religious pluralism affirms the equal reality and value of multiple salvific goals, including the theistic goal of eternal communion with the personal God, the Buddhist goal of nirvāṇa, and the classical Advaitic goal of realizing one’s true nature as nondual Pure Consciousness. Swami Vivekananda, the chief disciple of Ramakrishna, further deepened his guru’s religious pluralism into an even more radical religious cosmopolitanism, which affirms the ideal of actively learning from religions other than one’s own and furnishes the rationale for multiple religious belonging.

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