- Lived:
- 18 February 1836, Kamarpukur village, Bengal → the Kālī temple garden at Dakshineswar, on the Ganges just north of Calcutta (Kolkata); died at Cossipore, 16 August 1886
- Field:
- mysticism — priest of Kālī, ecstatic in the Bengali Śākta tradition, and the fountainhead of modern Hindu spirituality
- The Big Idea:
- He tested the great religious paths from inside — tantra, Vedānta, Islam, Christianity — and reported that they all arrive at the same summit; and a schoolmaster wrote down his talk, day by dated day, so that we can still hear him.
- In their words:
- "Jato mat, tato path — as many faiths, so many paths." (his signature saying, from the Bengali record; the rendering is ours)
- If you remember one thing:
- A barely literate village priest at a temple no respectable brahmin would serve drew the entire English-educated elite of Calcutta to sit on his floor — and what he told them, between jokes and trances, became the argument that every religion is a ghat on the same pond.