SARADA DEVI, THE HOLY MOTHER Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother SWAMI RANGANATHANANDA n recent years the name of Sarada Devi, realization in flesh and blood of the Eternal the Holy Mother, is becoming Feminine. Iincreasingly known among the people, No greatness has sprung up and got reared and her Birth Centenary Celebrations have and even flowered in greater obscurity and hastened the process of lifting the veil of silence than that of Sarada Devi. She was born obscurity behind which she had remained in the obscure village of Jayrambati in West hidden so far. This knowledge has roused an Bengal, India, on 22 December 1853. Her amazing degree of spiritual enthusiasm in advent coincided with the brightening of the men and women, and an eagerness to know family fortunes of her poor but pious parents more about this great woman of our age who enfolded her in tender love and care. Even who, as the disciple and helpmate of as a child she was active and hard-working, Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna, played the roles and helped her mother in her household of wife and nun and mother and guru in one. chores. She was hardly six when she was What is the source of the mesmerism of betrothed to Sri Ramakrishna who was then 23 this name and personality? Even a slight and who was passing through the stormy acquaintance with her life will make us period of his spiritual sàdhanàs and realize that this mesmerism does not realizations. Through this betrothal, little proceed from any aspects of her personality Sarada entered into the current of the life of which the modern world recognizes as one who, in his God-intoxication, passed most significant in women. To all outward of his life in divine ecstasies and visions, and appearances the Holy Mother was just the rest in soul-stirring conversations with ordinary, or even less than ordinary. Rustic earnest souls, conveying a message of radiant in simplicity, almost unlettered, and shy spirituality to the modern world. and modest, she was far removed from the It was a strange marriage; for it remained educated, self-conscious, active type of unconsummated in the physical plane, but modern women. And yet her life finds found its spiritual consummation in a union powerful responsive echoes from the hearts of souls on the occasion of the Shorashi-puja of all men and women, rustic and modern in 1872. This was the culminating act of Sri alike. It is evident that she has captured in Ramakrishna’s spiritual sàdhanàs when he her life and being the fundamental value worshipped the Divine Mother of the universe which lies at the back of the womanliness in the person of his wife, at the end of which of woman and which transcends all the worshipped and the worshipper entered distinctions based on mere sex and the into deep samàdhi and realized their spiritual attractions thereof. This fact alone explains identity. Thenceforth they became as one soul her universal appeal, representing, as she functioning in two bodies, and Sarada Devi does, not a mere national or racial type, but assumed her equal role in the fulfilment of the the fulfilment of woman as woman, the mission of Sri Ramakrishna. Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture February 2019 13 SWAMI RANGANATHANANDA Sri Ramakrishna himself recognized the To this challenging question of her spiritual eminence of Sri Sarada Devi. divine husband, Sarada Devi gave a Unlike the general run of spiritual aspirants straightforward answer: who forsake all worldly connexions on ‘Why should I desire to drag your mind entering the religious life, for which there is down to the worldly plane? I have come the sanction of religious law and custom only to help you in your chosen path. I behind them. Sri Ramakrishna welcomed desire only to live with you and serve you Sarada Devi to his side when she, coming of and to learn of you.’ age, came to claim her rights over him. It is This reply of his pure and spotless wife a deeply moving episode in their lives, pleased Sri Ramakrishna immensely and he which helps to reveal the stuff of both. experienced a great accession of spiritual Sri Ramakrishna was in Dakshineswar, strength. His mission in the world of calling passing through storms of spiritual moods humanity back to an awareness of its inborn and experiences; except on the two divine nature is not to be a lonely struggle; occasions of his brief visits to his native he recognized in Sarada Devi a companion village, he had not met his wedded wife in this noble mission; and within a year these twelve long years and seemed of her arrival, he verified the truth of apparently to have forgotten her. this exalted view of his wife through Sarada Devi, now about 18, entered his the Shorashi-puja experience referred room late at night after an arduous journey to above. from her native village in the company of From now on till the end of his life, for her father. She had her fears in her heart full fourteen years, Sarada Devi served proceeding from the gossip she had heard in the person of Sri Ramakrishna and the her village about the deranged condition of large number of disciples and devotees her husband’s mind, and her own knowledge visiting him, with a rare devotion and of his utter indifference to worldly concerns. self-effacement unrivalled in human history. But Sri Ramakrishna, though a bit surprised It was also the period of her intense spiritual at her sudden arrival, welcomed her very education under her divine husband. She has cordially, and accommodated her in his own referred to this period as a continuous room for facility of medical attention, and experience of intense bliss. Months together arranged for the medical care of her body they lived in the same room and slept in the which had been ravaged by illness and same bed with no trace of carnal thought in fatigue during the long trek. She found in the mind of either. Their minds constantly him the same loving divine husband whom soared in the region of divine awareness and she had known during his previous visits to bliss; each stood transfigured to the other; the village. When she had settled down, and both became instruments for the Sri Ramakrishna one day addressed her thus: working out of the divine will. The immense store of spiritual energy—divine shakti— ‘As for me, the Mother has shown me that à à She resides in every woman, and so I have which was generated by the s dhan s of Sri learned to look upon every woman as Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi contains the Mother. That is the one idea I can have promise of the spiritual evolution of about you; but if you wish to drag me into humanity which keenly feels its own tragic the world, as I have been married to you, I spiritual poverty in the midst of abundant am at your service.’ material wealth. 14 Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture February 2019 SARADA DEVI, THE HOLY MOTHER Sri Ramakrishna passed away in 1886. is only bad weather that tests their Sarada Devi was 33 at the time. Having genuineness. The calmness, poise and grace, lived in a non-physical plane of relationship and the spirit of unobstructed love and self- with her husband, she did not experience the effacing service, which Sarada Devi feeling of widowhood at his death. To her he expressed in her day-to-day life in the continued to be a living reality to the end of context of a highly distracting environment her days. And for the next thirty-four years of sheer worldliness, proclaims the she lived a life complex in its roles and supremely uplifting power of godliness and varied in its riches, and withal silent and spirituality. The possession of this power in sweet, that gained for her the endearing title a man or a woman makes him or her pure of ‘Sri Ma’, ‘the Holy Mother’, by which and holy. The expression of this power in she is known ever since. life is love. Sarada Devi was the very The Holy Mother was called upon to be personification of this purity, holiness, and the spiritual guide of the monks of the love which is the meaning of the ideal of Ramakrishna Order constituted initially of motherhood at its highest and best. This Sri Ramakrishna’s direct disciples under the power lies imbedded in the heart of every leadership of Swami Vivekananda, and to be woman. An ordinary woman captures in her the guru of an ever increasing circle of life only a fraction of this ideal by which she spiritually hungry men and women. Her shines in her loving kindness and holiness. spiritual eminence and the divine power of A merely biological function becomes her personality enabled her to fulfil this elevated through the infilling of a spiritual mighty role with ease and naturalness. But it value. But this spiritual value shone in its was in the role of a household woman, in the fullness, even outside the biological context, midst of her own family circle consisting of in the personality of the Holy Mother, her worldly-minded brothers, sisters-in-law, demonstrating thereby the ideal in its pure and their children, that the Holy Mother form. Out of the abundance of her heart manifested a unique facet of her character Sarada Devi gave of her love to one and and personality.