On 18 February 1836, Ramakrishna was born in the village of Kamarpukur, in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, India, into a very poor, pious, and orthodox Bengali Brahmin family. Kamarpukur was untouched by the city’s glamour and contained rice fields, tall palms, royal banyans, a few lakes, and two cremation grounds. His parents were Khudiram Chattopadhyay and Chandramani Devi. According to his followers, Sri Ramakrishna’s parents experienced supernatural incidents and visions before his birth. In Gaya, his father Khudiram had a dream in which Bhagwan Gadadhara (a form of Vishnu) said he would be born as his son. Chandramani Devi is said to have had a vision of light entering her womb from (Yogider Shiv Mandir) Shiva’s temple.

The family was devoted to Hindu God Rama, and the male children of Khudiram and Chandramani were given names that started with Ram or Rama: Ramkumar, Rameswar, and Ramakrishna. There has been some dispute about the origin of the name Ramakrishna, but there is ‘…evidence which proves beyond doubt that the name ‘Ramakrishna’ was given to him by his father…‘ Ramakrishna confirmed this himself, as recorded in ‘M’s diaries, ‘I was a pet child of my father. He used to call me Ramakrishnababu.’

Although Ramakrishna attended a village school with some regularity for twelve years, he later rejected traditional schooling, saying he was not interested in a ‘bread-winning education.’ Kamarpukur, being a transit point in well-established pilgrimage routes to Puri, brought him into contact with renunciates and holy men. He became well-versed in the Puranas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavata Purana, hearing them from wandering monks and the Kathaks—a class of men in ancient India who preached and sang the Puraṇas. In addition, he could read and write in Bengali.

Ramakrishna describes his first spiritual ecstasy at the age of six: while walking along the paddy fields, a flock of white cranes flying against a backdrop of dark thunderclouds caught his vision. He reportedly became so absorbed by this scene that he lost outward consciousness and experienced indescribable joy in that state. Ramakrishna reportedly had experiences of similar nature a few other times in his childhood—while worshipping the Goddess Vishalakshi, and portraying God Shiva in a drama during the Shivaratri festival. From his tenth or eleventh year of school, the trances became common, and by the final years of his life, Ramakrishna’s samadhi periods occurred almost daily. Earlier, these experiences were interpreted as epileptic seizures, an interpretation which Ramakrishna himself rejected.

Ramakrishna’s father died in 1843, the young Ramakrisna being just seven, after which family responsibilities fell on his elder brother Ramkumar. This loss drew him closer to his mother; he spent his time in household activities and daily worship of the household deities and became more involved in contemplative activities such as reading the sacred epics. When Ramakrishna was in his teens, the family’s financial position worsened. To earn a living, Ramkumar started a Sanskrit school in Kolkata (Jhama pukur lane) and also served as a priest. In 1852 Ramakrishna moved to Kolkata with Ramkumar to assist in the priestly work.

In 1855 Ramakrishna was appointed assistant priest of Dakshineswar Kali Temple, built by Rani Rashmoni—a wealthy female zamindar of Kolkata, who was well known for her kindness and benevolence to the poor and also for her religious devotion. She belonged to the Kaivarta community. Ramakrishna, along with his nephew Hriday, initially were assistants to Ramkumar, with Ramakrishna given the task of decorating the deity. When Ramkumar died in 1856, Ramakrishna took his place as the priest of the Kali temple.

After Ramkumar’s death, Ramakrishna became more contemplative. He began to look upon the image of the goddess Kali as his mother and the mother of the universe and became desperate for a vision of her. After many days of meditation, wherein he failed to receive a vision, he reportedly came to the point of such anguish that he impulsively decided to end his life. Seeing a sword hanging in a nearby room in the temple, he ran for it and was just about to reach it when he suddenly had a vision of the goddess Kali as the Universal Mother. He became overwhelmed, and before fainting, observed that to his spiritual sight, ‘… houses, doors, temples and everything else vanished altogether; as if there was nothing anywhere! And what I saw was an infinite shoreless sea of light; a sea that was consciousness. However, far and in whatever direction I looked, I saw shining waves, one after another, coming towards me.‘

Rumours spread to Kamarpukur that Ramakrishna had become unstable due to his spiritual practices at Dakshineswar. Ramakrishna’s mother and his elder brother Rameswar decided to get Ramakrishna married, thinking that marriage would be a good steadying influence upon him—forcing him to accept responsibility and keep his attention on everyday affairs rather than his spiritual practices and visions. Ramakrishna himself mentioned that they could find his future bride at the house of Ramchandra Mukherjee in Jayrambati, three miles to the northwest of Kamarpukur. The five-year-old bride, Saradamani Mukhopadhyaya (later known as Sarada Devi; she is also considered an avatar), was found, and the marriage was duly solemnised in 1859. Ramakrishna was twenty-three at that time, but this age difference for marriage was typical for nineteenth-century rural Bengal. They later spent three months together in Kamarpukur when Sarada Devi was fourteen and Ramakrishna thirty-two. Ramakrishna became a very influential figure in Sarada’s life, and she became a devoted follower of his teachings. After the marriage, Sarada stayed at Jayrambati and joined Ramakrishna in Dakshineswar at eighteen.

By the time his bride joined him, Ramakrishna had already embraced the monastic life of a sannyasi; hence, the marriage was never consummated. As a priest, Ramakrishna performed the ritual ceremony—the Shodashi Puja (in his room)–where Sarada Devi was worshipped as the Divine Mother. Ramakrishna regarded Sarada Devi as the Divine Mother in person, addressing her as the Holy Mother, and it was by this name she became known to Ramakrishna’s disciples. Sarada Devi outlived Ramakrishna by thirty-four years and played an important role in the nascent religious movement.

As a part of practising a spiritual mood, called madhura bhava sadhana, Ramakrishna dressed and behaved as a woman. Disciple Mahendranath Gupta quotes the Master as follows:

How can a man conquer passion? He should assume the attitude of a woman. I spent many days as the handmaid of God. I dressed in women’s clothes, put on ornaments, and covered the upper part of my body with a scarf, just like a woman. With the scarf on, I used to perform the evening worship before the image. Otherwise, how could I have kept my wife with me for eight months? Both of us behaved as if we were the handmaid of the Divine Mother.

While Ramakrishna was a temple priest at Dakshineswar, itinerant sadhus would come and stay for a while, practising their particular mode of worship. Several of these people became Ramakrishna’s teachers in the various schools of Hinduism. He had grown up practising Bhakti (devotion) to Rama. His duties as a priest at the Dakshineswar temple led him to practise the worship of Mother Kali. Subsequently, he experienced a variety of spiritual paths and traditions:

In 1861, Bhairavi Brahmani initiated Ramakrishna into Tantra.

In 1864, Ramakrishna took up the practice of vatsalya bhava under a Vaishnava guru Jatadhari.

In 1865, Naga Sannyasi (monk) Tota Puri initiated Ramakrishna into sannyasa and non-dual (Advaita Vedanta) meditation.

In 1866, Govinda Roy, a Hindu guru who practised Sufism, initiated Ramakrishna into Islam.

In 1873, Ramakrishna practiced Christianity and had the Bible read to him.

After more than a decade of sadhana in various religious paths, each culminating in the realisation of God by that path, his personal practices settled, and he is said to have remained in bhavamukha, a level of blissful samadhi. He would meditate in the Panchavati (a wooded and secluded area of the Dakshineswar Temple grounds), go to the Kali temple to offer flowers to the Mother, and wave incense to the assorted deities and religious figures, whose pictures hung in his room.

At some point in the period between his vision of Kali and his marriage, Ramakrishna practiced daasya bhava, during which he worshiped Rama with the attitude of Hanuman, who is considered to be the ideal devotee and servant of Rama. According to Ramakrishna, towards the end of this sadhana, he had a vision of Sita, the consort of Rama, merging into his body.

Bhairavi Brahmani initiated Ramakrishna into Tantra. Tantrism focuses on the worship of Shakti, and the object of tantric training is to transcend the barriers between the holy and unholy as a means of achieving liberation and seeing all aspects of the natural world as manifestations of the divine shakti. Under her guidance, Ramakrishna went through sixty-four major tantric sadhanas, which were completed in 1863. For all the sixty-four sadhana, he took only three days each to complete. He began with mantra rituals such as japa and purascarana and many other rituals designed to purify the mind and establish self-control. He later proceeded towards tantric sadhanas, which generally include a set of heterodox practices called vamachara (left-hand path), which utilise as a means of liberation, activities like eating of parched grain, fish, and meat along with drinking of wine and sexual intercourse. According to Ramakrishna and his biographers, Ramakrishna did not directly participate in the last two of those activities (some even say he didn’t indulge in meat-eating); all that he needed was a suggestion from them to produce the desired result.

Ramakrishna acknowledged the left-hand tantric path, though it had ‘undesirable features,’ as one of the ‘valid roads to God-realisation,’ but he consistently cautioned his devotees and disciples against associating with it. Bhairavi also taught Ramakrishna the kumari-puja, a form of ritual in which the Virgin Goddess is worshipped symbolically in the form of a young girl. Under the tutelage of the Bhairavi, Ramakrishna also learned Kundalini Yoga. The Bhairavi, with the yogic techniques and the tantra, played an important part in the initial spiritual development of Ramakrishna.

In 1864, Ramakrishna practiced vaatsalya bhava under a Vaishnava (a worshipper of Lord Vishnu)  Guru, Jatadhari. During this period, he worshiped a small metal image of Ramlala (Lord Rama as a child) in the attitude of a mother. According to Ramakrishna, he could feel the presence of child Rama as a living God in the metal image.

Ramakrishna later engaged in the practice of madhura bhava, the attitude of the Gopis and Radha towards Krishna. During the practice of this bhava, Ramakrishna dressed in women’s attire for several days and regarded himself as one of the Gopis of Vrindavan. According to Ramakrishna, madhura bhava is one of the ways to root out the idea of sex, which is seen as an impediment in spiritual life. According to Ramakrishna, towards the end of this sadhana, he attained Savikalpa Samadhi (god seen with form and qualities)—vision and union with Krishna.

Ramakrishna visited Nadia, the home of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and Nityananda Prabhu, the fifteenth-century founders of Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava bhakti. According to Ramakrishna, he had an intense vision of two young boys merging into his body while he crossed the river in a boat. Earlier, after his vision of Kali, he is said to have cultivated the Santa bhava—the child attitude – towards Kali.

In 1865, Ramakrishna was initiated into sannyasa by Totapuri, an itinerant Naga Sannyasi (monk) of Mahanirvani Akhara, who trained Ramakrishna in Advaita Vedanta, the Hindu philosophy which emphasises non-dualism.

Totapuri first guided Ramakrishna through the rites of sannyasa—renunciation of all ties to the world. Then he instructed him in the teaching of Advaita—that ‘Brahman alone is real, and the world is illusory; I have no separate existence; I am that Brahman alone.’ Under the guidance of Totapuri, Ramakrishna reportedly experienced nirvikalpa samadhi, which is considered to be the highest state in spiritual realisation. He remained in that state of non-dual existence for six months without the slightest awareness of even his own body.

Totapuri stayed with Ramakrishna for nearly eleven months and instructed him further in the teachings of Advaita. Ramakrishna said that this period of nirvikalpa samadhi came to an end when he received a command from Mother Kali to ‘remain in Bhavamukha; for the enlightenment of the people.’ Bhavamukha is a state of existence intermediate between samadhi and ordinary consciousness.

According to Swami Saradananda’s biography, in 1866, Govinda Roy, a Hindu guru who practised Sufism, initiated Ramakrishna into Islam, and he practised Islam for three days. During this practice, Ramakrishna had a vision of a luminous figure, and Swami Nikhilananda’s biography speculates that the figure was ‘perhaps Mohammed.’ According to these accounts, Ramakrishna ‘devoutly repeated the name of Allah, wore a cloth-like the Arab Muslims, said their prayer five times 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.‘ After three days of practice he had a vision of a ‘radiant personage with grave countenance and white beard resembling the Prophet and merging with his body.‘ Kripal writes that this ‘would have been a heretical experience through and through’ for most Muslims during this time; also, Ramakrishna felt an urge to eat beef. However, this urge could not be satisfied openly. But one day, as he sat on the bank of the Ganges, a carcass of a cow floated by. He then entered the body of a dog ‘astrally’ and tasted the meat of a dead cow. Thus his Muslim Sadhana was completed.

At the end of 1873, he started to practise Christianity, when his devotee Shambhu Charan Mallik read the Bible to him. According to Swami Saradananda’s biography, Ramakrishna was filled with Christian thoughts for days and no longer thought of going to the Kali temple. Ramakrishna described a vision in which a picture of the Madonna and Child came alive, and he had a vision in which Jesus merged with his body. In his own room, amongst other divine pictures, was one of Christ, and he burnt incense before it morning and evening. There was also a picture showing Jesus Christ saving St Peter from drowning.

At the beginning of 1885, Ramakrishna suffered from a clergyman’s throat, which gradually developed into throat cancer. He was moved to Shyampukur near Kolkata, where some of the best physicians of the time, including Dr. Mahendralal Sarkar, were engaged. When his condition aggravated, he was relocated to a large garden house at Cossipore on 11 December 1885.

During his last days, he was looked after by his monastic disciples and Sarada Devi. The doctors advised Ramakrishna to keep the strictest silence, but ignoring their advice, he incessantly conversed with visitors. According to traditional accounts, before his death, Ramakrishna transferred his spiritual powers to Vivekananda and reassured Vivekananda of his Avataric status. Ramakrishna asked Vivekananda to look after the disciples’ welfare, saying, ‘keep my boys together,’ and asked him to ‘teach them.’ Ramakrishna also asked other monastic disciples to look upon Vivekananda as their leader.

Ramakrishna’s condition gradually worsened, and he died in the early morning hours of 16 August 1886 at the Cossipore garden house. According to his disciples, this was mahasamadhi. After the death of their Master, the monastic disciples led by Vivekananda formed a fellowship at a half-ruined house at Baranagar near the river Ganges, with the financial assistance of the householder disciples. This became the first Math or monastery of the disciples who constituted the first Ramakrishna Order.