Very few mystics have ever known this vastness of the Mother in as profound and many-faceted a way as Ramakrishna. He is really our guide into this blissful vastness, this sweetness and peace, the omnipresence and magnificence and glory of the Mother. He knew her as the shining energy of Brahman, the shining source, the loving of love, the Shakti, the force that creates, sustains, and destroys all things at all moments, flaming from and inseparable from Shiva, the Father. Ramakrishna went into that final consciousness in which all things are one, and the "mother" and "father" aspect were to him known as inseparable.
— Andrew Harvey, The Return of the Mother