Sri Ramakrishna  was born in 1836 in a poor and pious Brahmin family in Kamarpukur, a village sixty miles to the north-west of Kolkata.  His parents were Kshudiram Chattopadhyaya and Chandramani Devi. From his early boyhood Sri Ramakrishna was devoted to God and spiritual matters and showed lack of interest in worldly affairs. Hence he had only the rudiments of formal education. At the age of nineteen, he was appointed a priest at the newly built Kali temple at Dakshineswar in Kolkata. From then on for another eleven years he remained absorbed in the practice of various spiritual disciplines, which included the experience of Advaita or non-dual state of consciousness, he turned to the spiritual paths of Islam and Christianity. These paths led him finally to the same ultimate reality which he had earlier attained through the spiritual paths of Hinduism.

When Sri Ramakrishna was twenty three years old and was engaged in intense spiritual disciplines, his relatives at Kamarpukur, in the hope of diverting his mind to mundane affairs, got him married to a girl by name Sarada Devi who belonged to the neighbouring village of Jayrambati. Sarada Devi was born on 22 December 1853 as the first child of a pious couple, Ramachandra Mukherjee and Shyama Sundari Devi. The family was very poor and childhood Sarada helped her parents in various household chores and bringing up her younger brothers. She had no formal schooling and could hardly read.

At the age of eighteen she walked all the way, in the company of her father, to Dakshineshwar to meet her husband. Sri Ramakrishna received her with great love and taught her how to lead a spiritual life even while discharging her household duties.