Sri Ramakrishna, the Face of Silence

Face of Silence was the first book written in English that made Sri Ramakrishna known outside of India. Written in 1926, the title was an immediate literary success and was brought out in many languages. The author said that he was guided not so much to write a factual history of Sri Ramakrishna but rather what he called the “Ramakrishna Legend.”

Mahendranath Gupta (M.), the author of Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna encouraged Mukerji in this approach, suggesting that facts by themselves lacked the power to uplift anyone. “Legend,” he said, “is the chalice of truth.” Face of Silence is the story of Sri Ramakrishna and at the same time, a poetic interpretation that conveys the deeper spirit within that story, the Ramakrishna legend.

A second part of the book has the biography of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Nikhilananda, as it appears in The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.

The two books together give both an historic and a poetic view of a major spiritual figure for our era.