Gopaler Ma

Gopaler Ma
Gopaler Ma, the devotee of Sri Ramakrishna, who had visions of Gopala or baby Krishna in Sri Ramakrishna
Native name	Aghoremani Devi
Born	Aghoremani Devi 1822 Kamarhati, Calcutta
Died	8 July 1906(1906-07-08) Calcutta
Cause of death	Illness
Nationality	Indian
Other names	Kamarhatir Brahmani
Citizenship	India
Occupation	Housewife
Known for	Spiritual devotion
Home town	Calcutta, India

Gopaler Ma (translation: Mother of Gopala, an epithet for Sri Krishna) (1822 – 8 July 1906) was a devotee and a householder disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, the saint and mystic from Bengal. Her birth name was Aghoremani Devi, but she came to be known as Gopaler Ma among the devotees of Sri Ramakrishna, owing to her intense motherly love for Sri Ramakrishna as "Gopala" or baby Krishna. She was famous for her divine visions of Lord Krishna as a baby and her devotion to the ideals of Sri Ramakrishna. In her later years she was very close to Swami Vivekananda and Sister Nivedita. She spent the last few years of her life with Sister Nivedita.

Aghoremani Devi was born of a Brahmin family in the year 1822 in the village called Kamarhati near Calcutta. According to the then prevailing customs, she was married when she was only nine years old but became a widow soon after her marriage, even before her marriage was consummated, when she was only fourteen years of age. As a widow she stayed in the house of Nilmadhav Bandopadhyaya, her brother, who was a priest in the temple of Krishna in Kamarhati. She was initiated into the spiritual life by the family guru of her husband's family and had the child Krishna as her personal deity. While frequenting the temple she was acquainted with the wife of Govinda Chandra Dutta, the proprietress, who provided her with a small room in the temple garden on the bank of the river Ganga. She sold her jewelry and husband's property and invested the sum of rupees five hundred and lived a simple and contemplative life on that small income of rupees four or five. She spent next thirty years of her life in that small room and led a very austere life. Her daily routine consisted of waking up at two in the morning, completing the ablutions and continuing spiritual practices till eight in the morning. She would then work in the adjacent temple of Krishna, also called the temple of Radha Madhava. Her entire day was spent in spiritual practices in some form or another through meditation, japam or repetition of the sacred mantra, and service to her chosen ideal of baby Krishna. She followed this routine from 1852 to about 1883. In the evening she would attend the vesper service in the temple and partake a simple meal after due offering to her Ideal according to the customs, and continued with her spiritual practices till midnight. She stayed in the South West corner of the garden house. The only break from her routine austere practices and penance was her travel to the holy places of Mathura, Vrindavan, Gaya, Varanasi and Allahabad with the landlady.