RAMAKRISHNA PARAMAHAMSA. - His real name was Gadādhar Chatterji, born into a poor Brahmin family at Hoogly in Bengal on 20 February 1834 (according to others, 18 February 1836) and died on 15 March 1886.
At the age of 17, after his father's death, he accompanied his elder brother Pandit Rām Kumār to Dalsinesvar near Calcutta; the latter was to be a priest in a temple in honor of the goddess Kālī, venerated as the divine mother by a Hindu sect. Gadādhar was his assistant. Endowed with a strong memory, he managed to acquire a broad religious culture and had outward manifestations of an uncommon religiosity. To bring him back to a normal life, they married him to a girl of six; she, however, according to Hindu custom, was to be left in her father's house until the age of 11 or 12. At that time a Brahmin Sanyāsini taught him the discipline of Yoga according to the Sāktya school. But his spiritual guide was a certain Totā-puri, who instructed him in the Vedanta of Sankara and initiated him into the life of the Sanyāsī, leading him to the highest degree of Samādhi. He then took vows of absolute renunciation and celibacy, forgetting that he was already married, and from his Guru he received the name R. The epithet of Paramahamsa, that is, "celestial swan," was given to him later by his devotees.
The ecstasies and the alleged visions of Kṛṣṇa himself became ever more frequent, to the point of seriously undermining his health. Then, to the great scandal of his devotees, he began to practice Muslim asceticism and afterwards turned to Christianity, showing an intense love for Jesus. He nevertheless always remained a perfect Hindu, and his religious experiences claimed to demonstrate that all religions are true and capable of leading souls toward the divinity. The intensity of his religious manifestations and his love for the poor procured for him many disciples, who collected his dialogues and discourses and, on the initiative of Narendra Nāth, known under the name of Vivekānanda, formed the religious association called the "R. Mission," which today is one of the most powerful missionary organizations of Hinduism.
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