Sri Aurobindo On Sri Ramakrishna

Remarks on Spiritual Figures in India Ramakrishna Paramhansa
I would have been surprised to hear that I regard (in agreement with an advanced sadhak) Ramakrishna as a spiritual pigmy, if I had not become past astonishment in these matters. I have said, it seems, so many things that were never in my mind and done too not a few that I have never dreamed of doing! I shall not be surprised or perturbed if one day I am reported to have declared, on the authority of advanced or even unadvanced sadhaks, that Buddha was a poseur or Shakespeare an overrated poetaster or Newton a third-rate college Don without any genius. In this world all is possible. Is it necessary for me to say that I have never thought and cannot have said anything of the kind, since I have at least some faint sense of spiritual values? The passage you have quoted is my considered estimate of Ramakrishna.1 3 February 1932
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I have heard that if one learns logic or philosophy it can be
a great help in the yoga, because it makes the mind wider to
spiritual experiences so that once the mind gets beyond the
intellect and reaches the intuitive, it is able to bring down or
express knowledge which an unintellectua lmind could not do.

An unintellectual mind cannot bring down the Knowledge? What then about Ramakrishna? Do you mean to say that the majority of the sadhaks here who have not learned logic and are ignorant of philosophy will never get Knowledge?
4 November 1936
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“An unintellectual mind cannot bring down the Knowledge?”
Certainly it can. But don’t you think there is a world of difference
between the expression of an intellectual mind and an
unintellectual one?

Expression is another matter, but Ramakrishana was an uneducated, nonintellectual man, yet his expression of knowledge was so perfect that the biggest intellects bowed down before it.
5 November 1936
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What a difference there is between Ramakrishna’s expressions
of knowledge and those of a perfectly developed intellect like
yourself!

His expressions are unsurpassable in their quality. Don’t talk nonsense. Moreover I never developed my intellect and I made zero marks in Logic.

Who preached Ramakrishna’s gospel to the world? Vivekananda,
a highly developed mind.

And who taught Vivekananda the Truth? Not a logician or highly developed intellect certainly? 13 November 1936
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I have heard different things about Ramakrishna from different
people. Some say he was an Avatar and some that he
was not. Do you think he was an Avatar as he said in his
autobiography?

He never wrote an autobiography. What he said was in conversation with his disciples and others. He was certainly quite as much an Avatar as Christ or Chaitanya. 13 November 1936

Ramakrishna himself never thought of transformation or tried for it. All he wanted was bhakti for the Mother and along with that he received whatever knowledge she gave him and did whatever she made him do. He was intuitive and psychic from the beginning and only became more and more so as he went on. There was no need in him for the transformation which we seek; for although he spoke of the divine man (Ishwarakoti) coming down the stairs as well as ascending, he had not the idea of a new consciousness and a new race and the divine manifestation in the earth-nature


SOURCE:LETTERS ON HIMSELF AND THE ASHRAM