Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyaya, was an Indian Hindu mystic and religious leader in 19th-century Bengal. Ramakrishna experienced spiritual ecstasies from a young age, and drew from several religious approaches, including devotion toward the Goddess Kali and observance of elements from Tantra, Bhakti, Vaishnava, Christianity, Islam, and Advaita Vedanta. He held that the world’s various religious traditions represented “so many paths to reach one and the same goal."
As a priest at the Dakshineshwar Kali Temple, his mystical temperament and ecstasies gradually gained him widespread acknowledgement, attracting to him various spiritual teachers, social leaders, Bengali elites, and lay followers; he eventually taught disciples, who would later form the monastic Ramakrishna Order. After his death, his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda popularized his ideas among Western audiences and founded both the Ramakrishna Math, which provides spiritual training for monastics and householder devotees, and the Ramakrishna Mission, to provide charity, social work and education.