Holy Mother Sarada Devi’s Life and Ideals – Influence on today’s Women Part 1

By Shantanu -
Sister Nivedita had said about the Holy Mother that Sarada Devi is the final word of Sri Ramakrishna as to the idealism of Indian womanhood.[1] Then she puts forward a question herself, as to whether she (Sarada Devi) is the culmination of an old ideal or the beginning of a new ideal?
Miss Josephine McLeod had said that Sarada Devi is the ideal which Indian women will have to reach in the next three thousand years.
To understand the Holy Mother and her contribution to womanhood in general and Indian womanhood in particular, these two comments are extremely important, as they both come from extremely learned, erudite, well respected Western devotees whose culture and upbringings were vastly different from that of traditional Indian culture. The two remarks are actually complementary. Together they help in unraveling one of the greatest personalities of all ages, an ideal so vast that it would probably take many more centuries to understand her and emulate her life.
Swami Vivekananda had repeatedly said in his lectures that the ideal of motherhood is one of the greatest and grandest ideals that Hinduism, which worships God as the Divine Mother of the Universe, has provided to the world. Moreover Vatsalya, or worship of God as a mother would treat her child, is also a unique feature in Vaishnava tradition although traces of it are seen in Catholic Christianity through the icons of mother Mary and infant Jesus. Swami Gambhirananda had said in his preface to his great composition on Holy Mother’s life that when the Supreme Brahman who is beyond Maya, accepts a body to play the divine sports for the sake of the devotees, it takes along with it the inscrutable power, the very Maya or the Shakti, who is actually no different from Brahman. This Adyashakti or the divine power comes as a spiritual consort of the embodied Iswara in every age. The manifestation of the power has different degree depending on the need of the age. If the degeneration is great, the power manifests itself in greater degree in order to set things right. This power can take the form of a woman, whom we refer to as the Universal Mother because a mother is closer to us and more concerned about our welfare among the parents, and also is milder to us in terms of punishing when we go astray. A mother only knows what is needed by her sons and her love for her sons perhaps cannot be matched by anybody else. That is why the sages portray the inscrutable power as the divine mother Durga or Kali, the creator and sustainer of the world, as well as its destroyer. In Durga Shaptashati (popularly known as Sri Sri Chandi), the same Divine Mother gives an assurance to her devotees, “whenever there are great obstacles from the demonic tendencies, I shall come to destroy them”. The power incarnates to reestablish virtues as also proclaimed in Gita chapter 4 by the Lord. Therefore the incarnation and the power are not different from each other, they are like the fire and its power to burn.[i]
In the present age the power manifested in the form of two bodies, who were in reality one in spirit. The two different bodies were important as we would shortly see. Sri Ramakrishna and Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi were in reality the same entity manifested as two, just as the One Supreme manifests as many owing to Maya or ignorance. In this case however the dual presence had a definite purpose. To understand the purpose we need to see the context of the age in which they manifested. It was, to quote Charles Dickens, the best of time as well as the worst of time. The world was getting connected like never before. New nation states were coming up and old ideas and myths were lying shattered. Time was ripe for another great teacher to arrive on stage for a new divine play. And the teacher came, in three different avatars, one of whom was the greatest woman the world has ever seen - holy mother Sri Sarada Devi.


[1] The Master as I Saw Him, Sister Nivedita, page 186, Longman, Greens and Company, 1910



[i] Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, by M

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