Sri Sarada Devi

Sri Sarada Devi (1853 – 1920), rev­er­ently called Holy Mother by devo­tees through­out the world, was mar­ried to Sri Rama­kri­shna, one of the great­est saints of India of mod­ern India. But the cou­ple never con­sum­mated their mar­riage, and Sri Sarada Devi remained a nun, dis­ci­ple and Ramakrishna’s spir­i­tual suc­ces­sor. After the pass­ing away of the Mas­ter in 1886, Sarada Devi said that she lived so long “to demon­strate to the world the Moth­er­hood of God,” which she really did by giv­ing her uncon­di­tional love to one and all. She once said: “ I am the mother of the wicked as I am the mother of the vir­tu­ous. When you are in dis­tress, just say to your­self, ‘I have a mother.’”

If, as the Holy Mother once said, renun­ci­a­tion of “me” and “mine,” and greed and lust is Sri Ramakrishna’s spe­cial mes­sage for this age, then love is her own gospel. Her mother-heart excluded no one, but embraced Hin­dus and Mus­lims, saints and sin­ners, and the peo­ple of all races. She served Amjad, a Mus­lim and a con­victed thief, as she served her other devo­tees. In fact she once said that “Amjad is as much my son as Sarat [Swami Saradananda],” one of Sri Ramakrishna’s direct dis­ci­ples and her care­taker till her death.

Mother also gave refuge to the fallen women whom soci­ety had cast away and had nowhere to go. She for­gave them for their past sins and even gave them ini­ti­a­tion. Besides, she was ever ready to voice against the abuse of women by their hus­bands. Once she heard the screams of a woman in a street out­side Udbod­han, her res­i­dence in Kolkatta. On com­ing to the bal­cony at the sec­ond floor to find the cause, she saw that a young man was beat­ing his wife for not prepar­ing his meal on time. Mother, oth­er­wise very bash­ful, spoke very loudly at the man, “Are you going to kill my daugh­ter?” The man got afraid and retreated.

In the orga­ni­za­tional struc­ture of Rama­kri­shna Math and Mis­sion the Holy Mother didn’t have any offi­cial role. Yet she was its undis­puted leader. Once Swami Vivek­a­nanda fired one ser­vant because he stole some­thing. The poor man came to Mother’s house in Kolkatta, and explained to her the rea­son for his trans­gres­sion. Mother got him restored on the plea that monks and ser­vants couldn’t be judged by the same moral stan­dards. At another occa­sion, a Brah­machari was expelled from Belur Math for being quar­rel­some. He came to the Mother for help, and she inter­vened on his behalf too. When he went back to the Math with the Mother’s let­ter, Swami Shiv­ananda jok­ingly said, ‘so you went to the High Court!’ Truly, she was indeed the one-person High Court of the Rama­kri­shna Order.

Although the Holy Mother gave no dis­courses, and sel­dom talked to her male dis­ci­ples directly, she showed by her own exam­ple that cook­ing and clean­ing dishes, serv­ing all those who were under her care, if done with the right atti­tude, atten­tion and devo­tion, were equally worth­while activ­i­ties in the real­iza­tion of God. Once a woman came to receive some spir­i­tual instruc­tion from her. But the Holy Mother kept busy in her house­hold activ­i­ties. At last the woman said, ‘Mother I came to get some spir­i­tual instruc­tion. But it seems that you are too busy to even speak to me.’ The Mother replied, ‘Have I not been giv­ing you spir­i­tual instruction?’

Holy Mother’s under­stand­ing of some of the sub­tle philo­soph­i­cal points of the Master’s teach­ings was superb. When Swami Vivek­a­nanda came back from the West, some of his west­ern dis­ci­ples too came with him. These west­ern­ers were of non-dualistic (Advaita) Vedanta tem­pera­ment. For such peo­ple the Swami had estab­lished an Ashrama at Maya­vati in the Himalayas. In the shrine of that Ashrama, no pic­ture of the Mas­ter was placed, nor was there any rit­ual wor­ship, as is done at other places. But one Brah­machari didn’t like that and placed Sri Ramarkrishna’s pic­ture there. Swami Vivek­a­nanda saw that and rep­ri­manded the Brah­machari. On return­ing to Kolkatta, the lat­ter com­plained to the Holy Mother about the inci­dent. Instead being show­ing appre­ci­a­tion of the Brah­machari for his devo­tion toward the Mas­ter, the Mother, too, rep­ri­manded him and said, ‘the Mas­ter indeed was an Advaitist.’

Her last state­ment also, made to a devo­tee before her death, elo­quently summed up not only her own life of silent lov­ing ser­vice, but also how she wanted us to live. “But let me tell you one thing. If you want peace of mind, do not find fault with oth­ers. Rather see your own faults. Learn to make the whole world your own. No one is a stranger, my child, the whole world is your own.”

What a pro­found state­ment! Sri Rama­kri­shna used to say that a white cloth takes the color of the dye in which it is soaked. So, if we soak our mind in the dye of oth­ers’ faults, it will become tainted with those very faults that we see in oth­ers. Mother coun­seled her devo­tees to look inside their own selves. By doing so, they would dis­cover that some of the faults they see in oth­ers are in them too. That will make them hum­ble, for­giv­ing, sym­pa­thetic and under­stand­ing. Besides she coun­seled every one to reg­u­larly prac­tice spir­i­tual dis­ci­plines like prayers, rep­e­ti­tion of God’s name, and med­i­ta­tion. That will keep the mind pure and focused.

Her other advice was not to look upon oth­ers as strangers. Our real nature is Atman, but by falsely iden­ti­fy­ing our­selves with our body and mind, cre­ates sep­a­rate­ness. So Mother wanted us to become aware of our divine nature, see God in every­thing, and become one with all. If we did that we won’t be strangers to one another, rather become a com­mu­nity of broth­ers and sis­ters, inter­con­nected and inter­de­pen­dent, and liv­ing in har­mony and peace.