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Sarada Devi, the Holy
Mother
In recent years the name of Sarada Devi, the Holy
Mother, is becoming increasingly known among the people,
and her Birth Centenary Celebrations in 1953-54 have
hastened the process of lifting the veil of obscurity
behind which she had remained hidden so far. This
knowledge has roused an amazing degree of spiritual
enthusiasm in men and women, and an eagerness to know
more about this great woman of our age who, as the
disciple and helpmate of Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna,
played the roles of wife and nun and mother and guru in
one.
What is the source of the mesmerism of this name and personality?
Even a slight acquaintance with her life will make us
realize that this mesmerism does not proceed from any
aspects of her personality which the modern world
recognizes as significant in women. To all outward
appearances the Holy Mother was just ordinary, or even
less than ordinary. Rustic in simplicity, almost
unlettered, and shy and modest, she was far removed from
the educated, self-conscious, active type of modern
women. And yet her life finds powerful responsive echoes
from the hearts of all men and women, rustic and modern
alike. It is evident that she has captured in her life
and being the fundamental value which transcends all
distinctions based on mere sex and the attractions
thereof. This fact alone explains her universal appeal,
representing, as she does, not a mere national or racial
type, but the fulfillment of woman as woman, the
realization in flesh and blood of the Eternal Faminine.
No greatness has sprung up and got reared and even flowered in
greater obscurity and silence than that of Sarada Devi.
She was born in the obscure village of Jayrambati in
West Bengal, India, on 22 December 1853. Her advent
coincided with the brightening of the family fortunes of
her poor but pious parents, who enfolded her in tender
love and care. Even as a child she was active and
hardworking, and helped her mother in her household
chores. She was hardly six when she was betrothed to Sri
Ramakrishna who was then twenty-three and who was
passing through the stormy period of his spiritual
sadhanas and realizations. Through th9is betrothal,
little Sarada entered into the current of the life of
one who, in his God-intoxication passed most of his life
in divine ecstasies and visions, and the rest in
soul-stirring conversations with earnest souls,
conveying a message of radiant spirituality to the
modern world.
It was a strange marriage; for it remained unconsummated in the
physical plane, but found its spiritual consummation in
a union of souls on the occasion of the Shodashi-puja in
1872. This was the culminating act of Sri Ramakrishna’s
spiritual sadhanas when he worshipped the Divine Mother
of the universe in the person of his wife, at the end of
which the worshipped and the worshipper entered into
deep Samadhi and realized their spiritual identity.
Thenceforth they became as one soul functioning in two
bodies, and Sarada Devi assumed her equal role in the
fulfillment of the mission of Sri Ramakrishna.
Sri Ramakrishna himself recognized the spiritual eminence of Sri
Sarada Devi. Unlike the general run of spiritual
aspirants who forsake all worldly connections on
entering the religious life, for which there is sanction
of religious law and custom behind them, Sri Ramakrishna
welcomed Sarada Devi to his side when she, coming of
age, came to claim her rights over him. It is a deeply
moving episode in their lives, which helps to reveal the
stuff of both. Sri Ramakrishna was in Dakshineswar,
passing through storms of spiritual moods and
experiences; except on the two occasions of his brief
visits to his native village, he has not met his wedded
wife these twelve long years and seemed apparently to
have forgotten her.
Sarada Devi, now about eighteen, entered his room late at night after
an arduous journey from her native village in the
company of her father. She had her fears in her heart
proceeding from the gossip she had heard in her village
about the deranged condition of her husband’s mind, and
her own knowledge of his utter indifference to worldly
concerns. But Sri Ramakrishna, through a bit surprised
at her sudden arrival, welcomed her very cordially, and
accommodated her in his own room for facility of her
medial attention, and arranged for the medical care of
her body which had been ravaged by illness and fatigue
during the long trek. She found in him the same loving
divine husband whom she had known during his previous
visits to the village. When she had settled down, Sri
Ramakrishna one day addressed her thus: ‘As for me, the
Mother has shown me that She resides in every woman, and
so I have learned to look upon every woman as Mother.
That is the one idea I can have about you; but if you
wish to drag me into the world, as I have been married
to you, I am at your service.’
To this challenging question of her divine husband, Sarada Devi gave
a straightforward answer: ‘Why should I desire to drag
your mind down to the worldly plane? I have come only to
help you in your chosen path. I desire only to live with
you and serve you and learn of you.’
This reply of his pure and spotless wife pleased Sri Ramakrishna
immensely and he experienced a great accession of
spiritual strength. His mission in the world of calling
humanity back to an awareness of its inborn divine
nature is not to be a lonely struggle; he recognized in
Sarada Devi a companion in this noble mission; and
within a year of her arrival, he verified the truth of
this exalted view of his wife through the Shodashi-puja
experience referred to above.
From now on till the end of his life, for full fourteen years, Sarada
Devi served the person of Sri Ramakrishna and the large
number of disciples and devotees visiting him, with a
rare devotion and self-effacement unrivalled in human
history. It was also the period of her intense spiritual
education under her divine husband. She has referred to
this period as a continuous experience of intense bliss.
Months together they lived in the same room and slept in
the same bed with no trace of carnal thought in the mind
of either. Their minds constantly soared in the region
of divine awareness and bliss; each stood transfigured
to the other; and both became instruments for the
working out of the divine will. The immense store of
spiritual energy – divine Shakti – which was generated
by the sadhanas of Sri Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi
contains the promise of the spiritual evolution of
humanity which keenly feels its own tragic spiritual
poverty in the midst of abundant material wealth.
Sri Ramakrishna passed away in 1886. Sarada Devi was thirty-three at
that time. Having lived in a non-physical plane of
relationship with her husband, she did not experience
the feeling of widowhood at his death. To her he
continued to be a living reality to the end of her days.
And for the ext thirty-four years she lived a life,
complex in its roles and varied in its riches, and
withal silent and sweet, that gained for her the
endearing title of ‘Sri Ma’, ‘The Holy Mother’, by which
she is known ever since.
The Holy Mother was called upon to be the spiritual guide of the
monks of the Ramakrishna Order constituted initially of
Sri Ramakrishna’s direct disciples under the leadership
of Swami Vivekananda, and to be the guru of an
ever-increasing circle of spiritually hungry men and
women. Her spiritual eminence and the divine power of
her personality enabled her to fulfill this mighty role
with ease and naturalness. But it was in the role of a
household woman, in the midst of her own family circle
consisting of her worldly-minded brothers,
sisters-in-law, and their children, that the Holy Mother
manifested a unique fact of her character and
personality. It is this aspect of her personality that
provides a shining example of practical spirituality
capable of inspiring all men and women. The nun shone
through the householder, and both through the heart of
an all-loving mother. Far from shunning a distracting
world, she embraced it and enfolded it in her love. And
in the midst of a thousand distractions, she preserved
the naturalness of her personality.
Verification is the proof of a theory or a claim. The test of life alone
proves the genuineness of a moral virtue or a spiritual
value; virtues are tested more in ill-fortune than in
good fortune. To maintain poise and grace in good
weather is easy enough; but it is only bad weather that
tests their genuineness. The calmness, poise, and grace,
and the spirit of unobstructed love and self-effacing
service, which Sarada Devi expressed in her day-to-day
life in the context of a highly distracting environment
of sheer worldliness, proclaims the supremely uplifting
power of godliness and spirituality. The possession of
the power by a man or woman makes him or her pure and
holy. The expression of this power in life is love.
Sarada Devi was the very personification of purity,
holiness, and love which is the meaning of the ideal of
motherhood at its highest and best. This power lies
embedded in the heart of every woman. An ordinary woman
captures in her life only a fraction of this ideal by
which she shines in her loving kindness and holiness. A
merely biological function becomes elevated through the
infilling of a spiritual value. But this spiritual value
shone in its fullness, even outside the biological
context, in the personality of the Holy Mother,
demonstrating thereby the ideal in its pure form. Out of
the abundance of her heart Sarada Devi gave of her love
to one and all without any distinction and, by so doing,
justified the endearing epithet of ‘the Holy Mother’.
Herself out of the ordinary in all basic values of character and
personality, but hiding these under the mantle of the
simple and the ordinary in social and physical make-up,
the Holy Mother eludes the grasp of ordinary minds, but
reveals her true form to all seekers of basic values.
Did not Sri Ramakrishna say of her: ‘She is Saraswati,
the goddess of Wisdom, come to give spiritual knowledge
to humanity’? And had she not also said of herself: ‘Sri
Ramakrishna has left me to manifest the ideal of divine
Motherhood’?
In her life and in her teachings she has left a balm for suffering
humanity in search of light and peace. Her love knew no
distinctions of sex, creed, or race. It emboldened and
uplifted the Muslim labourer Amzad as much as the
sannyasin Saradananda, the gifted Sister Nivedita as
much as the simple ‘mother of Annapurna’. The Holy
Mother’s deathbed advice to the latter is typical of her
universal personality and depth of insight. To the
‘mother of Annapurna’ sorrowing at the thought of the
Holy Mother’s imminent passing away, she spoke these
words of uplifting consolation and strength:
If you want peace of mind, do not look
for faults in others. Rather look out to discover your
own weakness. Learn to make the whole world your own. No
one here is an alien or a stranger, my child. The whole
world is your own.
Let me conclude this tribute with the beautiful Sanskrit verse composed
by Swami Abhedananda, a direct disciple of Sri
Ramakrishna, in praise of the Holy Mother’s pure
nobility:
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