আদ্যাপীঠ আশ্রমের ইতিহাস

Dakshineswar Ramkrishna Sangha Adyapeath, founded in 1921 by Sri Annada Thakur, is an organization dedicated to the service of humanity and the worship of the Divine Mother. Sri Annada Thakur believed us all to be the sons and daughters of the same Mother. Therefore, every monk in the Sangha is addressed as BHAI.To find the beginning of this story, it is necessary to go back in time, beyond the remarkable early-twentieth-century life of a Bengali man named Annada Charan Bhattacharya; beyond the even more remarkable nineteenth-century life of the great Bengali saint Sri Ramakrishna; beyond even the carving in antiquity of an exquisite black marble image of the Divine Mother--for this story begins at Creation itself and is continually beginning and being replayed in the cycle of birth, death, and renewal of every soul of every devotee of God.

Dreams and Visions

In 1915, a young Brahmin named Annada Charan Bhattacharya was setting up a successful practice in Ayurvedic medicine in Calcutta. A capable scientist, he had discovered seven patent medicines and went on to become a renowned doctor all over Bengal.

Annada Thakur, as he came to be known, was a deeply religious man, filled with devotion to the Divine Mother Kali and Her great nineteenth-century Bengali saint, Sri RamakrishnaNevertheless, even such a spiritual man as Annada was taken aback by the strange visions and dreams he began to have: A vision of four girls carrying an image (murthi) of the Divine Mother Kali down a Calcutta street, invisible to all but Annada, yet so real that he folded his palms and, to the puzzlement of passersby, bowed to thin air. Two dreams of a sannyasin telling him to shave his head and bathe in the Ganges, to which the outraged Annada replied, "Reverend Sir, if you again talk of head-shaving, I shall hold you by the neck and push you out of the room." Then, stranger yet, dreams of Sri Ramakrishna himself, so real that Annada was convinced the venerable saint, though long departed from this life, had been in the room with him.

When the order came from Sri Ramakrishna to shave his head and bathe in the Ganges, Annada could hardly refuse. Sri Ramakrishna then told him to go to the Eden Gardens, a magnificent British-built public garden in Calcutta, and to look there for a murthi of the Divine Mother where a coconut tree and a pakur tree grew together. There, at the bottom of a pond, Annada and three companions found the image. A commemorative plaque marks the spot today.