One morning while walking along the narrow ridges of a paddy field, eating some puffed rice from a small basket, he came across the sight of a flock of milky white cranes flying against the backdrop of a heavy rain laden black clouds, which soon engulfed the entire sky.

[31] When Ramakrishna was in his teens, the family's financial position worsened, Ramkumar then started a Sanskrit school in Calcutta (Jhama pukur lane), whilst also serving as a priest there.

[33] Inheriting property from her husband, the Rani managed to endear herself to the people of the city through her exceptional managerial skills of the estate, her resistance against the British colonial authorities, and her various philanthropic works.

[37] With great delight the Rani bought a large piece of land on the banks of Hooghly river at Dakshineswar and started the construction of a nine-spired temple where pilgrims could congregate to catch a glimpse of the Goddess.

[39] When all hope was seemingly lost, she received a letter from Ramkumar, who assured her that the scriptural principles would be observed intact if she made a gift of the property to a Brahmin, who could then install the deity and make arrangements for food offerings.

After the daily worship, he would sit in the temple looking intently at the deity and get absorbed in her, before losing himself in devotion whilst singing with profound emotion the songs composed by devotees like Ramprasad and Kamalakanta.

Ramakrishna answered that when one thinks about God, one should be free from all attachments and the eight servitudes of "hatred, fear, shame, aversion, egoism, vanity, noble descent, and good conduct."

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.

[76] Towards the end of 1864, an itinerant monk named Tota Puri, a tall naked mendicant with tangled hair; a Naga sadhu of Mahanirvani Akhara, born probably in Punjab, arrived at Dakshineswar while on a pilgrimage through various holy sites in India.

[97] Arriving at the temple ghat, Tota Puri had a glimpse of the devotional face of Ramakrishna, and stepped up to him wondering if he can be a fit aspirant for learning Vedanta in Bengal, a province which was then saturated with Tantra.

[99] In accordance with the scriptural injunctions and tradition of successive generations, he offered as an oblation; to be free from the desire of having spouse, children, wealth, admiration from people, beautiful body and so on, and renounced them all.

He would withdraw his mind easily from everything, but as soon as he did so, the intimately familiar form of the divine Mother, made up of pure consciousness, would appear before him as a living and moving being, making him unmindful of renunciation.

[102] After the experience of Nirvikalpa Samadhi, Ramakrishna realized that the great weaver of Maya is none other than Kali, the Divine Mother herself; that she projects it by Her will like a spider that spins a web out of itself, and She can no more be differentiated from Brahman than can the power of burning from fire.

During the course of one such lively discussion, a servant of the temple garden visited them and took a piece of charcoal from the pit of the sacred Dhuni fire, which was then lit by the great ascetic himself to light his own tobacco.

Ramakrishna would go on to say, "Caught in the net of five elements, Brahman weeps" and that no amount of self-knowledge will make the life of a man better until the grace of God is bestowed on him through the power of Maya.

However, on one night the pain in his intestines became so intense that his mind was no longer able to merge in Samadhi, and he decided to drown his "cage of bones and flesh" in the river Ganga and be free from the consciousness of having body.

Baffled that there seemed to be not enough water in the river to drown himself, he looked back and found, in one dazzling vision, the sight of the divine Mother, the one beyond Turiya, filling up all the space round him.

[108] Some time after the departure of Tota Puri from Dakshineswar, Ramakrishna owing to his lack of any restraining elements or desires in the world, decided to dwell in the plane of Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

After much internal deliberation, with great courage, Ramakrishna again, while meditating, took up knowledge as the sword and cut her form into two, and then "there was nothing left in the mind then; and it rushed quickly up to the complete Nirvikalapa state.

Ramakrishna then firmed his awareness at the sixth chakra of Tantra, and lived with his consciousness oscillating between being either absorbed into the impersonal absolute or remain in personal devotion to the Mother.

[111] Later in his life, it was observed that while talking about or listening to subjects related to God, Ramakrishna with his face beaming a smile and body turning radiant, would become noticeably stiff and unconscious.

He was sitting there and looking keenly at a picture of Madonna and Child hanging on the wall, when all of a sudden he saw it come to life with effulgent rays of light emerging from the image and merging into his heart.

In the course of explaining the word trance in the poem The Excursion by William Wordsworth, Hastie told his students that if they wanted to know its "real meaning", they should go to "Ramakrishna of Dakshineswar."

[144] Neevel notes that the image of Ramakrishna underwent several transformations in the writings of his prominent admirers, who changed the 'religious madman' into a calm and well-behaving proponent of Advaita Vedanta.

Ayon Maharaj, also known as Swami Medhananda, supports these scholars' view, proposing that Ramakrishna's teachings are best understood through a nonsectarian Vedantic framework, specifically characterizing his philosophy as "Vijnana Vedanta".

"[151] Amiya Prosad Sen criticises Neevel's analysis,[152] and writes that "it is really difficult to separate the Tantrik Ramakrishna from the Vedantic", since Vedanta and Tantra "may appear to be different in some respects", but they also "share some important postulates between them".

The dialogue on psychoanalysis and Ramakrishna began in 1927 when Sigmund Freud's friend Romain Rolland wrote to him that he should consider spiritual experiences, or "the oceanic feeling", in his psychological works.

Ramakrishna's primary biographers describe him as talkative and would reminisce for hours about his own eventful spiritual life, tell tales, explain Vedantic doctrines with humorous, and at times colorful illustrations, raising questions and answering them himself, crack jokes, sing songs, and mimic the ways of all types of worldly people, keeping the visitors enthralled.

On a basic level, Ramakrishna saw this system as a corrupt form of European social organisation that forced educated men to be servants not only to their bosses at the office, but also to their wives at home.

Amiya Sen writes that Vivekananda's "social service gospel" stemmed from direct inspiration from Ramakrishna and rests substantially on the "liminal quality" of the Master's message.