ABSTRACT
Sri Ramakrsna’s behaviour became stranger and stranger; but it must be noted that whenever persons of genuine spirituality met him they considered him to have attained a blessed state. At the age of nine he was invested, according to brahmin custom, with the sacred thread, and initiated into the Gayatri mantra, a Vedic prayer. He was thenceforward allowed to do the worship of the household deity, Rama. He entered into the Vaisnava path first by worshipping Rama as his own child, the relation of vatsalya, for there had come to him a mystic saint, Jatadhari, who had attained the highest spiritual state as a devotee of Rama, and who initiated him into his own form of worship. Afterwards Sri Ramakrsna took up various relations in his devotion to Krsna. He had a vision of a radiant person with a long beard and a solemn countenance.
