Ramakrishna

I practiced austerities for a long time. I cared very little for the body. My longing for the Divine Mother was so great that I would not eat or sleep. I would lie on the bare ground, placing my head on a lump of earth, and cry out loudly: “Mother, Mother, why does Thou not come to me?” I did not know how the days and nights passed away. I used to have ecstasy all the time. I saw my disciples as my own people, like children and relations, long before they came to me. I used to cry before my Mother, saying, “O Mother! I am dying for my beloved ones; do Thou bring them to me as quickly as possible.”…When I reached the state of continuous ecstasy, I gave up all external forms of worship; I could no longer perform them. Then I prayed to my Divine Mother: “Mother, who will now take care of me? I have no power to take of myself. I like to hear Thy name and feed Thy beloved ones and help the poor. Who will make it possible for me to do these things?...” — from The Gospel of Ramakrishna.

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) also known as Gadadhar Chattopadhyay, was a famous Indian mystic from the 19th Century. From humble peasant conditions in rural Bengal, Ramakrishna went on to found one of the most powerful religious schools of thought in India, leading to the formation of the Ramakrishna Mission by his chief disciple, Swami Vivekananda; perhaps because he was early formed in a devotion to the goddess Kali by an ascetic woman, Bhairavi Brahmani, much of his writing is dedicated to the cult of the “Divine Mother.”