Narendranath became a devotee to Ramakrishna

Ramakrishna got most of his devotees during the period between the middle of 1883 and that of 1884. Narendra was then struggling against dire poverty to maintain his family;With a kind of fore-knowledge of events, Ramakrishna would sometimes announce the coming of a devotee and said ' One belonging to this place is coming todayfrom this direction (pointing to a prticular direction)." or as soon as one came , he would receive him lovingly and say, " You are a person belonging to this place." in the case of a few fortunate ones, he felt special attraction and became eager to see and feed them and have a talk with them  on spiritual matters. Sometimes he would visit the houses of some some such devotees unsaked and would please their guardians with charming conversation, clearing their way to come to him.
Shortly after the arrival of  such a devotee, he would call him aside, ask him to meditate, and then touch under the influence of divine inspiration certain parts of his body like the chest or the tongue. By that potent touch, the devotee's mind would become indrawn into a trance in which his accumulated impressions of the past got activated and produced spiritual realisation in him . Consequently, on account of that touch, one would have the vision of a divine light or of the luminous figure of a  God or Goddess; another would be in deep meditation or feel a bliss never experienced before; a third would have the knots of his heart suddenly loosened and removed and experience an intense eagerness for God-realisation ; a fourth would be inspired with spiritual emotions and enter into Savikalpa Samadhi. But the experience of a foretaste of the Nirvikalpa Samadhi on account of that touch was seen in the life of Narendranath alone.Besides touching the devotees in that way, Ramakrishna, besides touching them in that way, initiated some of them in Mantras. While initiating he did not examine  horoscope of any devotee.
  Sometimes in 1884, a friend of ours came to Dakshineswar