Faith & Spirit Quote by Ramakrishna

Ramakrishna’s line lands like a theological koan with a social diagnosis tucked inside. It begins by flattening the spiritual hierarchy: divinity isn’t a distant monarch but an indwelling presence, “in all men.” That first clause is radically democratizing, especially in 19th-century Bengal, where reform movements, colonial pressure, and rigid caste habits made the question of who counts as fully human painfully political. If God is present in everyone, then contempt, exclusion, and domination aren’t just moral failures; they’re metaphysical misreadings.

Then comes the turn that gives the sentence its bite: “but all men are not in God.” Ramakrishna shifts the burden from divine absence to human misalignment. The subtext is not “God abandoned us,” but “we live as if we’re sealed off.” “In God” suggests participation, attunement, surrender - a lived relationship rather than a doctrinal checkbox. It’s a rebuke to mere religiosity: you can talk about God, police rituals, even build institutions, and still remain outside the reality you claim to serve.

The final clause, “that is why we suffer,” reframes suffering away from punishment and toward estrangement. Pain becomes the experiential cost of disconnection: from the divine within others, from the divine within ourselves, and from the unity we keep breaking into “us” and “them.” It’s consoling without being soft. The remedy implied is not better arguments about God, but a reorientation of perception and practice - a politics of recognition rooted in mysticism.