Sarada Devi The Crowning Glory of Indian Womanhood - Swami Ranganathananda

Woman as Wife to Grow into Woman as Mother

India’s spiritual heritage gently whispers to every woman, as also to every man, to utilize the marriage context to achieve the increasing liberation of the tremendous value of the Atman, the sexless Self, behind man and woman. Vedanta upholds this as the goal and direction of social evolution, or of evolution at the human stage.

So far as woman is concerned, this is achieved by the wife growing into the mother, not merely, or even necessarily, biologically, but certainly spiritually. Motherhood is a spiritual transformation of wifehood. If woman as wife is socially significant, woman as mother is spiritually glorious. If the spiritual is no more than coterminous with the biological, then woman as mother of a little genetic group

would have remained the highest possible moral and spiritual development for her sex. But Vedanta sees the spiritual as transcending the merely genetic and the biological, and even the social, and finding expression in an ideal of motherhood, where love and service break the barriers of family, race, and creed, and assume a universal aspect. It is this spiritual elevation in self-transcendence that enables woman, even as wife, to function effectively as a citizen of a free socio-political order, embracing with her mother-heart the millions of its body-politic. If this is called finding life—larger and fuller life—then the path to it lies through self-development by self-effacement. That is what a woman does when she grows from wifehood to motherhood. In this, no human value is neglected or negated, but there is only a growth from a smaller to a larger personality, and a progressive manifestation of the inherent divinity.

The Glory of Mother in Indian Culture

This is the Vedantic criterion of progress of an individual or a culture. This motherhood ideal is the highest reach of womanhood, according to Indian culture. This symbol of self-effacing love and service, namely, the mother, has revealed to the Hindu mind the presence of a divine reality within, over and above the limited personality of the visible mother. To the Hindu, even God is revealed as the Mother of all creation. A people and a philosophy that has educated itself to look upon God as Mother, has also learnt to invest its view of woman with the utmost tenderness and reverence. The very hoary culture of the Hindu trains him/her to look upon all women, nay, to look upon the female of all species, as forms of the one Divine Mother.

What constitutes this abundant glory in the mother is her self-effacing love and compassion which, to the Hindu, is the mark of high spirituality and true culture. And men in general, and women in particular, have the privilege to attain to this high spirituality and true culture by growing beyond the limitations of mere sex, even while living and functioning physically at that level in all dignity and freedom. It is this vision that India has always held up before all men and women, and which her women, more than her men, have passionately struggled to realize in their lives.

Indian Ideal of womanhood: Ancient and Modern

The ideals of purity, unselfishness, simplicity and modesty, exemplified in great women like Sita, Savitri, and Damayanti, have been pursued by the Indian women, drawn by that vision of innate and inalienable divinity of man and woman. Millennia of historic experience have made these the warp and woof of their being. And modern Indian woman cannot jump out of this age-old inheritance of theirs.

Women in old India were nourished on the ideals of Sita, Savitri, and Damayanti. But women in modern India, even while responding to these ideals and examples, are in search of a newer inspiration to sustain them in the wider opportunities for self-expression offered by the modern age, compared to their sisters of previous ages. Modern Indian women are in search of an adaptation of the ancient spiritual values to the vastly expanded modern conditions and opportunities of life and work. And it is this authentic sanction that the modern Indian women receive from Sri Ramakrishna, Holy Mother Sarada Devi and Swami Vivekananda.

The Mesmerism of Sarada Devi’s Personality

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 lies at the back of the womanliness of woman and which transcends all distinctions based on mere sex and the attractions thereof. This fact alone explains here 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 Feminine.

Sarada Devi: Her spiritual Eminence

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 the 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 had 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, though a bit surprised at her sudden arrival, welcomed her very cordially, and accommodated her in his own room for facility of medical 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 Divine 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 to 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; within a year of her arrival, he verified the truth of this exalted view of his wife through the Shodasi puja in 1872. 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 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 modern humanity which keenly feels its own tragic spiritual poverty in the midst of abundant material wealth.

Her Role as Spiritual Teacher

Sri Ramakrishna passed away in 1886. Sarada Devi was thirty-three at the 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 next 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 fulfil 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 facet 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 and peace of her personality.

Divine Motherhood in Sarada Devi

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, possession of this power by a man or a woman makes him or her pure and holy. The expression of this power in life is love. Sarada Devi was the very personification of this 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 she 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 Sarasvati, 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.’

© `The Vedanta Kesari’ (December, 2003) published by Sri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, Chennai 600 004. Website: www.sriramakrishnamath.org. Reprinted with permission.

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