SWAMI BRAHMANANDA
One day Sri Ramakrishna saw a vision which threw his whole body into a shiver. He saw that the divine Mother pointed out to him a boy as being his son. How could he have a son? The very idea was death to him! Then Divine Mother consoled Her disconsolate child and said that the boy was his spiritual son and not a son in the worldly sense. Sri Ramakrishna breathed a sigh of relief. Afterwards when the same boy came to him as a disciple, Ramakrishna at once recognized him to be the one he had seen in his vision. He was later known as Swami Brahmananda. The early name of Swami Brahmananda was Rakhal Chandra Ghosh. He came of an aristocratic family in a village not far from Basirhat in the strict of 24 Parganas. His father Ananda Mohan Ghosh was a zemindar. His mother was a pious lady and a devotee of Sri Krishna. Perhaps it was she who gave her son the name Rakhal (meaning the boy-companion of Sri Krishna) when the later was born on 21 January 1863. Unfortunately, the mother died when Rakhal was only five-year-old. Soon after, his father married a second wife who brought up Rakhal.
