Shri Ramakrishna

Birth and childhood

Various supernatural incidents are recounted by Saradananda in connection with Ramakrishna’s birth. It is said that Kshudiram, Ramakrishna’s father, named him Gadadhar in response to a dream he had had in Gaya before Ramakrishna’s birth, in which Lord Gadadhara, the form of Vishnu worshipped at Gaya, appeared to him and told him he would be born as his son. Chandramani Devi, Ramakrishna’s mother, is said to have had a vision of light entering her womb before Ramakrishna was born. Even in his childhood, some villagers considered Ramakrishna to be an incarnation of God.

According to his biographers, Ramakrishna was born in the village of Kamarpukur, in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, into a very poor but pious brahmin family. The young Ramakrishna, known as Gadadhar, was an extremely popular figure in his village. He was considered handsome and had a natural gift for the fine arts. However, he disliked attending school, and was not interested in earning money. As he was growing up, he was barely literate. He loved nature and spent much time in fields and fruit orchards outside the village with his friends. He would visit with wandering monks who stopped in Kamarpukur on their way to Puri. He would serve them and listen to their religious debates with rapt attention.

When arrangements for Gadadhar to be invested with the sacred thread were nearly complete, he declared that he would have his first alms from a certain low-caste woman of the village, as he had promised this to her. This was met with firm opposition from Gadadhar’s family, as tradition required that the first alms be received from a brahmin, but the boy was adamant that a promise made could not be broken. Finally, Ramkumar, his eldest brother and head of the family after the passing away of their father, gave in.

Meanwhile, the family's financial position worsened every day. Ramkumar ran a Sanskrit school in Calcutta and also served as a purohit priest in some families. About this time, Rani Rashmoni, a rich woman of Calcutta who belonged to the untouchable kaivarta community, founded a temple at Dakshineswar. She approached Ramkumar to serve as priest at the temple of Kali and Ramkumar agreed. Ramkumar recruited assistants among his relatives, including Gadadhar, who agreed only after some persuasion and was given the task of decorating the deity. When Ramkumar passed away in 1856, Gadadhar took his place as priest.

Career as priest

When Gadadhar started worshipping the deity Bhavatarini, he began to question if he was worshipping a piece of stone or a living Goddess. If he was worshipping a living Goddess, why should she not respond to his worship? This question nagged him day and night. Then, he began to pray to Kali: "Mother, you've been gracious to many devotees in the past and have revealed yourself to them. Why would you not reveal yourself to me, also? Am I not also your son?"

He is known to have wept bitterly and sometimes even cry out loudly while worshipping. At night, he would go into a nearby jungle and spend the whole night praying. One day, the famous account goes, he was so impatient to see Mother Kali that he decided to end his life. He seized a sword hanging on the wall and was about to strike himself with it, when he is reported to have seen light issuing from the deity in waves. He is said to have been soon overwhelmed by the waves and fell unconscious on the floor.

Gadadhar, however, unsatisfied, prayed to Mother Kali for more religious experiences. He especially wanted to know the truths that other religions taught. Strangely, these teachers came to him when necessary and he is said to have reached the ultimate goals of those religions with ease. Soon word spread about this remarkable man and people of all denominations and all stations of life began to come to him.

Heterodox religious practices

At Dakshineswar, Ramakrishna engaged in a practice called madhura bhava, in which he imitated the "sweet mood" of the goddess Radha waiting for her lover Krishna. He wore female clothing and jewelry, and imitated female speech and behavior. This practice culminated with a vision of Krishna, in which Krishna's body merged with Ramakrishna's.He said:

I spent many days as the handmaid of God. I dressed myself in women's clothes, put on ornaments, and covered the upper part of my body with a scarf, just like a woman...Otherwise, how could I have kept my wife with me for eight months? Both of us behaved as if we were the handmaids of the Divine Mother. I cannot speak of myself as a man.

For a period, while he was practicing bhakti, he was supposed to have resembled the monkey-god Hanuman, the servant of Ram. He lived on roots and fruit, and a growth which resembled a tail was supposed to have grown from his spine. Later, Ramakrishna experienced the goddess Sita's body merging with his own (Sita is the consort of Ram).

At some point, Ramakrishna visited Nadia, the home of Chaitanya and Nityananda, the 15th-century founders of Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava bhakti. He had an intense vision of two young boys merging into his body.

Totapuri and Vedanta

Ramakrishna was initiated in Advaita Vedanta by a wandering monk named Totapuri, in the city of Dakshineswar. Totapuri was "a teacher of masculine strength, a sterner mien, a gnarled physique, and a virile voice". Ramakrishna would soon affectionately address the monk as Nangta or Langta, the "Naked One". Nikhilananda interjects that this is because as a renunciate, Nangta did not wear any clothing.

I [Ramakrishna] said to Totapuri in despair: "It's no good. I will never be able to lift my spirit to the unconditioned state and find myself face to face with the Atman." He [Totapuri] replied severely: "What do you mean you can't? You must!" Looking about him, he found a shard of glass. He took it and stuck the point between my eyes saying: "Concentrate your mind on that point." [...] The last barrier vanished and my spirit immediately precipitated itself beyond the plane of the conditioned. I lost myself in samadhi.

After the departure of Totapuri, Ramakrishna reportedly remained for six months in a state of absolute contemplation:

For six months in a stretch, I [Ramakrishna] remained in that state from which ordinary men can never return; generally the body falls off, after three weeks, like a mere leaf. I was not conscious of day or night. Flies would enter my mouth and nostrils as they do a dead's body, but I did not feel them. My hair became matted with dust.

Marriage

Rumors spread to Kamarpukur that Ramakrishna had gone mad as a result of his over-taxing spiritual exercises at Dakshineswar. Alarmed, neighbors advised Ramakrishna’s mother that he be persuaded to marry, so that he might be more conscious of his responsibilities to the family. Far from objecting to the marriage, he, in fact, mentioned Jayrambati, three miles to the north-west of Kamarpukur, as being the village where the bride could be found at the house of one Ramchandra Mukherjee. The five-year-old bride, Sarada, was found and the marriage was duly solemnised in 1859. Ramakrishna was 23 at this point, but the age difference was typical for 19th century rural Bengal. Ramakrishna left Sarada in December 1860 and did not return until May 1867.

According to the Ramakrishna Mission, Sarada was Ramakrishna’s first disciple. He attempted to teach her everything he had learned from his various gurus. She is believed to have mastered every religious secret as quickly as Ramakrishna had. Impressed by her religious potential, he began to treat her as the Universal Mother Herself and performed a puja considering Sarada as a veritable Tripura Sundari Devi.

Yogeshwari and Tantra

In 1861, a female guru named Yogeshwari appeared at Dakshineshwar. Reportedly, she taught Ramakrishna 64 Tantric sadhanas. She tried to teach him kumari-puja ("virgin worship"), — which reportedly can include ritualized copulation with a young girl — but Ramakrishna fainted. Datta said: "We have heard many tales of the brahmani but we hesitate to divulge them to the public."

Sarada, now a young woman, heard rumors of Ramakrishna's bizarre practices and came to Dakshineshwar to protect him from Yogeshwari. They began to relate to each other as husband and wife, but did not consummate their marriage, due to Ramakrishna's severe asceticism.

Islam and Christianity

In 1866, Govinda Roy, a Hindu guru who practiced Sufism, initiated Ramakrishna into Islam. According to Christopher Isherwood, Ramakrishna said:

I devoutly repeated the name of Allah, wore a cloth like the Arab Moslems, said their prayer five time daily, and felt disinclined even to see images of the Hindu gods and goddesses, much less worship them—for the Hindu way of thinking had disappeared altogether from my mind.

His Muslim practices culminated in Ramakrishna experiencing the prophet Muhammad merging with his body.

Years later, as he contemplated an image of the Madonna and Christ child at a devotee's house, he began a phase of Christian spiritual practice. This phase culminated in a vision of the merging of Ramakrishna's body with that of Christ.

Later life

By the 1870s, Ramakrishna had established a reputation as a mystic and had attracted a large number of male devotees from the emerging urban Bengali bourgeoisie class, most of whom including Narendranath Dutta, had been educated at English schools. He came to be known among his devotees as Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa. The name Ramakrishna is said to have been given him by Mathur Babu, the son-in-law of Rani Rasmani. Many prominent people of Calcutta like Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, Shivanath Shastri and Trailokyanath Sanyal began visiting him during this time (1871-1885). He also met Swami Dayananda. Through his meetings with Keshab Chandra Sen of the Brahmo Samaj, he had become known to the general populace of Calcutta.

After fifteen years of teaching, in April 1885 the first symptoms of throat cancer appeared and in the beginning of September 1885 he was moved to Shyampukur. But the illness showed signs of aggravation and he was moved to a large garden house at Cossipore on December 11, 1885 on the advice of Dr. Sarkar, who was treating him. On August 15, 1886 his health deteriorated, and at 01:02 a.m. on the 16th he attained mahasamadhi. At noon, Dr. Sarkar pronounced that life had departed not more than half an hour before. He left behind a devoted band of 16 young disciples headed by Swami Vivekananda.