An extraordinary experience overwhelmed Rama-devotee Kshudiram Chattopadhyay in 1835 when in Gaya on a pilgrimage: appearing before him in a dream, Lord Vishnu, aka Gadadhar, expressed His wish to come to his home as his son! Taken aback, devout Kshudiram tried to dissuade Him: He, Lord Vishnu, would face great hardship in his home because poor he, Kshudiram, had not the wherewithal to adequately serve and minister to Him. But Lord Vishnu smiled and reiterated His wish.

Meanwhile in his village Kamarpukur, around the same time, Kshudiram’s wife Chandramani Devi too had a wondrous experience. She had gone to a Shiva temple near their house when a radiance emanated from the Shiva image and entered her person! Wonderstruck Kshudiram and Chandramani thought the unthinkable: God was to come to them as their son!

On 18 February 1836 (6 Falgun, second day of the waxing moon), in the rice-husking room of their Kamarpukur abode, was born their third son, soon named Gadadhar, Gadai for short. Later Kshudiram would sometimes call his favourite Gadadhar by the name Ramakrishna.

Gadai’s education began at age five in a school in front of a playhouse in Kamarpukur. Soon afterward all Kamarpukur began to know of his innate abilities and unusual qualities. Born with art in him, he showed high skill in singing, chanting sacred hymns, play-acting, painting, and making clay figurines, especially of deities. In later times, some described his singing as the sweetest of all. In contrast, he disliked mathematics and calculations; those flummoxed him, he said later.

Years afterward, as a spiritual teacher par excellence, he was to say that God cannot be apprehended by ‘calculating intelligence’; emotional bonding was essential.

What distinguished him most was his love for divinity and things divine. The road to the sacred seaside temple-town Puri went past Kamarpukur and sadhus (holy ascetics) on pilgrimage used to stop and take rest there. And, true to form, Gadai used to joyfully serve them and listen to their religious discourses and readings and storytelling. It used to make his day.

But a surprise awaited all: Gadai gave up schooling after only a few years of it. And started spending time attending to their home shrine and deity. He explained that what he wanted was not the shallow ‘mere bread-winning’ education of the conventional school but something far deeper: something that gives man ultimate fulfillment by awakening supreme knowledge in him, the realization of Ultimate Truth. Later he would often describe such realization as ‘Seeing God’.

Friendly by nature, he made friends with many Kamarpukur boys. He loved them and they loved him; he was their leader. He would spend hours playing and engaging in other collective activities with them. When he enacted his own roles while rehearsing plays with his friends in a mango orchard, he would also at the same time coach his friends in their roles.

Endowed with great memory and acumen, child Gadadhar picked up the essence of scriptural passages, religious expositions, and words of wisdom, on hearing them only a few times. Later in life, he advised religious aspirants to make their minds like photographic plates by coating them with the silver bromide of reverent attention so they register and retain pictures falling on them. As a boy he learned a fair amount of the shastras (scriptures), the religious commentaries, the epics, the histories, and mythologies, simply by listening to others narrating, reading out, or discussing those.