RAMAKRISHNA (1834/6–1886) was a Hindu ecstatic and mystic, and to many Hindus a "supremely realized self" (paramahaṃsa) and an avatāra, or incarnation of the divine. Through his disciple, Swami Vivekananda, his gospel of the truth of all religions became a source of inspiration for modern Hindu universalism.

Life

Born Gadādhar Chatterjee in an isolated village in Bengal, Ramakrishna belonged to a Vaiṣṇava brahman family whose primary deity was the avatāra of Viṣṇu, Rāma, although the family also worshiped other deities, such as Śiva and Durgā. As a boy, Gadādhar was gifted with immense emotional and aesthetic sensitivity, which was nurtured by norms of ecstatic devotion (bhakti) common within the Bengali Vaiṣṇava tradition. Often, when overwhelmed by beauty and emotion, the boy would lose consciousness in an ecstatic trance.

His father's death in 1843 increased Ramakrishna's dependence upon his mother, while the...