Chander M. Bhat
Endearingly known as ‘Holy Mother’, Sri Sarada Devi, the spiritual consort of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, was born on 22 December 1853 in a poor Brahmin family in Jayrambati in West Bengal. This village is situated in the District of Bankura and is three miles to the west of Kamarpukur where Sri Ramakrishna had already taken his birth seventeen years back i.e. in 1836. The nativity of Sri Sarada Devi who was none other than the Goddess Lakshmi incarnate, took place on an auspicious evening when the womenfolk of the village were carrying on their worship of the Mother Lakshmi in their respective houses to the accompaniment of the blowing of conchs.
Sri Sarada Devi grew up amidst the peaceful environs of her village home under the loving care of her affectionate parents Sri Ramachandra Mukhopadhyaya and Srimati Shyamasundari Devi who were well known for their inborn piety, large-hearted charity, and devotion to truth and also for their profound sympathy for the poor and the helpless.
Like Sri Ramakrishna’s, her birth too was preceded by miraculous phenomena. Two such incidents are mentioned, one concerning her father, and another, her mother. Falling asleep after lunch one day, her father saw in a vivid dream, a young girl of golden complexion and unusual beauty, tenderly encircling his neck with her arms. Noticing her precious ornaments, he asked who she was. In a musical voice, she replied: ‘You see, I have come to your family.’
As a child, Sarada was devoted to God and spent most of her time helping her mother in various household chores like caring for younger children, looking after cattle, and carrying food to her father and others engaged in work in the field. She had no formal schooling but managed to learn the Bengali alphabet. When she was about six years old, she was married to Sri Ramakrishna, in 1859, according to the custom prevalent in India in those days. However, after the event, she continued to live with her parents, while Sri Ramakrishna lived a God-intoxicated life at Dakshineswar. While staying at Dakshineswar, one of her tasks was cooking for the Master, in which she took great delight and in later years at Dakshineswar, she had to cook not only for the Master but for many of his young disciples who came to the Master during the rest period of his life.
Sarada Devi was simplicity and innocence personified and, as a young girl, was rather grave for her years and did not indulge in any kind of childish frivolity. She liked to play with various kinds of earthen dolls. She particularly preferred to worship with flowers and sacred leaves, the clay models which she made with her own hands.
Wild rumors that her husband had become insane at Dakshineswar, soon reached her ears and she became so disconcerted thereat that she inwardly felt a strong desire to see him at the temple garden of Dakshineswar to personally ascertain the truth thereof. Her father sensing the intention of her daughter accompanied her to Dakshineswar in March 1872, 12 years after her marriage, when she was eighteen years old. She was most affectionately received by Sri Ramakrishna and she found her God-intoxicated husband quite hale and hearty.
During this first visit to Dakshineswar, Sri Ramakrishna asked her, “Have you come here to drag me into worldly life?” She emphatically said, “Why should I do it? I am here to help you in realizing your spiritual ideal.”
During this period of her stay at the temple garden of Dakshineswar, Sri Ramakrishna felt a strong desire to worship the Divine Mother. It was the new moon of June 5, 1972, an auspicious night for the worship of the Goddess Kali. Sri Ramakrishna made all arrangements for it in his own room and instructed the Holy Mother to be present the next morning. As desired by him, she appeared in time and occupied the seat which was reserved for the Divine Mother. Sri Ramakrishna went through all the appropriate rites and formalities of worship in which Sri Sarada Devi took the place of the Deity. In the stillness of the room both the worshipper and the worshipped passed into trance (spiritual ecstasy) and were joined in the transcendental union in the Self. At the end of this worship, he surrendered himself and the fruits of his lifelong spiritual practices together with his rosary at the feet of Sri Sarada Devi. Thus the ultimate objective of a martial life was revealed and demonstrated in the twin personality in a manner unprecedented in the annals of mankind. It is a luminous instance of how the conjugal relation between the husband and the wife can be spiritualized and be the means of the realization of the highest end of human existence. From this day, Sri Sarada Devi was, in the eyes of Sri Ramakrishna, no other than the embodiment of the Mother Divine.
Immediately after the passing away of Sri Ramakrishna, the Holy Mother became so disconsolate that she wanted to give up her body. But the Master appeared before him in a vision and asked her not to do so as she would have to carry on the works which still remained unfinished.
Swami Vivekananda and other disciples of the Master also looked upon the Holy Mother as the Goddess incarnate and sought her guidance in all matters of importance. The Holy Mother, upon whom the mantle of spiritual ministry and the responsibility of conducting the Ramakrishna-Brotherhood fell after the Mahasamadhi of the Great Master, always prayed for and looked after the well-being of her spiritual children. The Mother did not make any distinction between the rich and the poor, the high and the low, the learned and the ignorant, the monks and the householders, not even between the pure and the impure.
Sri Sarada Devi’s life as such was not an accident in the cultural history of India, but a natural outcome of centuries of silent working of India’s manifold creative forces. She stands silhouetted today on the canvas of time as a triune personality wherein the wife, the nun and the mother have been beautifully blended. Her life has conclusively shown once again that Truth knows no limits of land or sex, caste or creed, and that spirituality is not the monopoly of men alone. It reveals itself in women as in men when the moral stature of an individual is fully developed.
During her last days, she withdrew her mind from all those who were close to her. Only a few could approach her and serve her. Nevertheless, she did not want anyone to feel hurt. She consoled them.
On Tuesday, 21 July 1920 she breathed heavily several times and entered into a deep Samadhi from which she never returned to the consciousness of the physical world. A white marble temple has been erected over her birthplace at Jayrambati, from the top of which flies a flag emblazoned with the single world ‘Ma’, recalling to her devotees from far and near her words of reassurance. ‘I am the mother of the wicked, as I am the mother of the virtuous. Whenever you are in distress, just say to yourself “I have a mother.”
(The author is Vice President Ramakrishna Mission, Srinagar)
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