 In the midst of this centuries-long dispute between the Dvaitans, Advaitans and Bhakti schools, a key modern figure arose: Ramakrishna (1836–86), sometimes called “the Great Reconciler” because he attempted to integrate all the schools into one pluralistic, non-sectarian approach. His major insight (birthing model 5 for this entry) is that “God is infinite, and the paths to God are infinite”, and the schools are among these infinite paths (Maharaj 2018: frontispiece). Ramakrishna came by this view firsthand when, after being in a state of samadhi for six months, which he said was “like reaching the roof of a house by leaving the steps  behind”,[32]  he had a divine command to come down and stay in a state he called “vijñāna” (intimate knowledge), during which he could see the roof but also see that “the steps are made of the same material as the roof (brick, lime, brick dust)”. In other words, in vijñāna he saw that Brahman is both non-dual and dual, and thus began to affirm the “spiritual core” of both schools, and eventually of all the Hindu schools and Christian and Muslim ones, too (Long 2020: 166). He decided they all must be contacting different “aspects” of one and the same reality, and that this reality thus must be deeply, indeed infinitely complex in order to make such diverse experiences possible (Maharaj 2018: Chapter 1, part 3, tenets 1 and 3; see also interpretive principle 4 and  K422/G423).[33]  Because he affirms the core of all schools, Ramakrishna is hard to classify, but his view is probably best read as panentheistic and world-affirming since he says over and over again that “all is Brahman” and that Brahman “has become everything”, i.e., Brahman → the cosmos but not vice versa (Long 2020, especially 163).