-Sri Ramakrishna practiced all of the major Vaishnava, Tantric, and Vedantic paths of Hindu spiritual practice and reached their goal very quickly. He already possessed the intuitive understanding of the spiritual reality from his childhood experiences.
-Out of sincere interest, he also practiced Sufism and Christianity and saw that God could be realized by those paths.
-For him, he could experience and penetrate into the essence of every religion he practiced by concentrating on the core spirituality of that tradition.
-His life is an embodiment of the Vedic dictum that Truth is One, though sages call it by many names.
-Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi remarked that he never intended to demonstrate interfaith harmony through his practice but the implications for religious harmony are plain. Beyond the level of ritual, mythology, and philosophy, unity can be found at the level of intuitive spiritual experience.
This lecture was delivered at the Vedanta Society of Northern California on November 4, 2012.