Life
THE GREAT AWAKENING
Arrived at Jayrambati, the Mother found the village still the charming old place she had known it to be; the love and affection of parents, brothers, and cousins, and, in fact, of all relatives were as deep as ever; the daily life with its work and recreation, talks and discussions, still flowed on as before; yet in the depths of her heart could be felt the stirring of some muffled sorrow.
At Kamarpukur she enjoyed a divine bliss, the memory of which remained for ever fresh in her mind; but finding nothing corresponding to it in the outside world, she turned inward with disappointment, converting life into a brooding, wailing dream Autumn was followed by early winter, and then came chilly days. But for ever the Holy Mother kept her ears pricked up for any chance news trickling into this village despite the barriers of transmission and rural indifference. Thus passed four long years.
In the meantime some stray pieces of news broke into the quiet sublimity of Jayrambati and stimulated gossip. The villagers concluded from what they had heard that Sri Ramakrishna had lost his mental balance. The Mother had now neither zest in work nor solace in imagination; she only went about her daily round of duties mechanically. The ever-present pang of separation from the Master gnawed at her heart and cast a gloom over her face which drew the instinctive sympathy of the village women. But they, however, owing to their ignorance or narrow outlook, talked in a way that intensified rather than assuaged her agony. Their companionship became intolerable rather than welcome. Though they seemed to share her sorrow, they really pointed to her husband as an object of ridicule. And quite a few said pointing to her, ‘That’s the wife of a madman,’ or under the guise of consoling her, inflicted on her a cruel wound by saying, ‘Ah me! Shyama’s daughter has been married to a lunatic.’ Loathing such company, the Mother avoided visiting any house and kept herself constantly engrossed in work. To a loving, faithful wife, any criticism of her husband is intolerable. She kept to her home all the time. And when this became oppressively monotonous, she would go to aunt Bhanu’s1 house and there on a verandah she would spread out her cloth and lie down.
The pure-hearted aunt Bhanu had an insight by which she got a glimpse of Sri Ramakrishna’s hidden greatness. She said to Shyamasundari Devi, ‘Well, sister-in-law, your son-in-law is Siva,— none other than Krishna Himself. I prophesy that in future you will believe what you don’t now.’ When the Master came to Jayrambati for the second time to take his girl-wife to Kamarpukur, aunt Bhanu reminded of the divine couple Siva and Parvati, sang merrily, ‘As thou art beautiful, my little child (Sarada) hast thou got a groom who is both mad and naked.’ We have to remember that in those days the Mother’s complexion was bright and fair. Aunt Bhanu recognised even in those early days, and in her own way, the Master and the Mother as Siva and His consort. But people regarded her as too emotional in her nature, and nobody heeded her. Her house was the only place where the Mother got shelter and mental composure.
But obviously a whole life could not be spent thus. True it was that she did not believe in all the gossip that was going on about the Master. For, it was incredible that the Master could be mad, —he whose holy company had conferred on her immeasurable bliss only the other day, whose divine fervour infected her also to some extent and brought about an indescribable elation in her, whose selfless thought for others had charmed her, and whose wise discourse and witty remarks held all spell-bound for hours. But, all the same, the ignorant village people could not evaluate his afflatus; and so their unbridled imagination raced apace, and their criticism was unchecked. The dutiful wife, therefore, came to think at last, ‘When all people talk thus, let me once go and see him. ’ At the beginning of 1872, many people of the neighbourhood were going to Calcutta for bathing in the Ganges on an auspicious day- which was near at hand. The Mother wanted to accompany them, and yet through fear and bashfulness she could not speak out. At last no longer able to suppress her idea, she divulged it to a woman who communicated everything to Ramchandra. The old noble-hearted father took it in the best of spirits and said, ‘Does she want to go? Very good.’ And he himself escorted her.
Along with other pilgrims the father and the daughter had to travel about sixty miles on foot. On either side of the track there were open fields covered here and there with green crops and dotted now and then by villages shaded by clusters of trees. They came by big tanks with sparkling water, and now and again they took rest under huge shady trees. Some two or three days thus passed uneventfully. The Mother was full of enthusiasm for reaching Dakshineswar soon, but unfortunately her health was not equal to the task. That part of the country was infested with malaria from which she had often suffered. Besides, she was not used to making such long journeys. But, for fear of causing her father and others anxiety and inconvenience, she kept quiet about her growing indisposition for two or three days. At last, she had fever and the temperature rose so high that it was impossible for her to proceed. Ramchandra took shelter with her in a nearby hut. It can well be imagined how great was the Mother’s disappointment. Fever was nothing new to her; so she had no worry on that score. Neither had this unknown place any terrors for her. But what caused her the greatest dismay was the delay interposed by all these events in meeting the Master for whom she had been pining away.
A divine vision came to her in this hour of dejection, and cheered her up.
As the Mother lay unconscious on the bed, she saw a dark woman of peerless beauty sitting by her caressing the Mother’s head and body with her soft, cool hands. It seemed to remove all her pain. The Mother asked, ‘Where do you come from, my dear?’ The stranger replied, ‘I come from Dakshineswar.’ The Mother wondered at this and said, ‘From Dakshineswar! I thought I would go there, see him, and serve him But as I am laid down with fever on the way, I fear this may never come to pass.’ The dark woman said, ‘Don’t you worry! You will certainly go to Dakshineswar; you will recover soon and see him It is for you that I have been holding him there.’ The Mother said, ‘Indeed! How are you related to us, my dear?’ The woman said, ‘I am your sister.’ The Mother said, ‘Indeed! That’s why you have come!’ After this conversation the Mother fell asleep.1
Next morning she found that the fever was off, and that the divine vision had put fresh zeal and vigour into her. Hence when her father suggested that instead of waiting helplessly in that unknown place it were better to proceed slowly, the Mother readily agreed. Then they moved on. Fortunately, a palanquin was available nearby. She had fever on the way again, but it was not very severe. Besides, she was not then as helpless as before. So she kept quiet without adding to the worry of her father by telling him of her predicament. Slowly, the long journey ended, and by crossing the Ganges, they reached Dakshineswar at nine o’clock in the night.
As the people from Jayrambati were landing from the boat, the Mother heard the Master saying, ‘O Hride(Hridaya), I hope the time is not inauspicious. This is her first visit.’ The Mother had no worry on that score as she knew that she had passed the inauspicious time in the boat itself. That apart, those few words of the Master had such a touch of sincere love in them that, moved by them, she went straight to his room, while others went to the Nahabat (i.e., the orchestra block or the concert house)1 or other places. As soon as he saw her, the Master said, ‘Ah! You are here at last! That’s well done.’ Then he ordered some one nearby, ‘ Spread a mat for her. ’ A mat was spread on the floor of the room. The Mother sat on it and talked with the Master. When the latter learnt that she was ill, he became very anxious about her treatment and comfort and said with extreme regret, ‘Alas! You have come so late! Would that my Mathur were there now to serve you! My right arm is broken now, as it were.’ Mathur, who was the son-inlaw of Rani Rasmani, the foundress of the Dakshineswar temple, and who was the first supplier of the Master’s needs, had died only a few months before (16th July, 1871).
After the first greetings, the Mother wanted to go to the Nahabat. But the Master said, ‘No, no, it will be difficult to arrange for treatment there; you stay here in this room.’ So a separate bed was spread for her; and it was arranged that a woman companion of the Mother would also sleep with her. The temple staff had just then finished their meals, leaving no surplus. Hridaya, however, brought some fried-rice for the two. Next day, at the Master’s instance, a physician was called in. Through proper care the Mother came round in three or four days, after which she went to live in the Nahabat, where her mother-in-law lived. When the old lady came to Dakshineswar, a room in the building where the proprietors of the temple lived was allotted to her. But a few months before the demise of Mathur, Akshay, a nephew of the Master, died in that room; and as Chandra Devi did not like to live there in the midst of old painful associations, she shifted on to the Nahabat, saying, ‘I won’t live there any longer. I shall stay in this Nahabat-room, and shall keep my eyes fixed on the Ganges. I have no need of that bungalow any more.’
Any suspicion that might still be lingering in the Mother’s heart about the Master’s mental aberration and apathy towards her, was set at nought by direct communication. What exaggerated tales had indeed been circulated among the ignorant villagers! There a god had been equated with a lunatic! And not only so, the gossips had been persistent and vigorous enough to impart even to such a faithful heart as the Mother’s a slight touch of doubt! But now she saw that her god was just as he had been. Far from forgetting his wife, he seemed to be even more concerned about her. So it did not take her long to decide; she stayed on at the Nahabat serving both him and his mother out of the fullness of her heart. Her father also, being reassured by the Master’s love for his daughter and respect for himself, returned home cheerfully.
Taking his cue from the words of his guru Totapuri, the Master, while at Kamarpukur, had proceeded to test the strength and genuineness of his knowledge and to fulfil his duty towards his wife. After that his mind had been engaged for four years in visiting places of pilgrimage and undergoing austerity. Now, finding his wife again by his side through some divine dispensation, he resumed both the unfinished tasks. But in this he was not guided by the requirements of any commonplace conjugal relationship. He rather took his stand on the spiritual relationship subsisting between the teacher and his disciple or that between the Universal Mother and Her votary, and thereby he brought down to the world a new value by assimilating which humanity could move higher up. All this we write by way of introduction to the worship of the Mother in the form of goddess Shodashi. But before we actually come to that important event, we shall do well to understand more fully the mutual esteem which inspired the conjugal life of this unique couple.
During this time, the Master instructed his wife about everything ranging from such worldly affairs as domestic duties, dealing with relatives, good manners, and the need for adaptability under varying conditions, to spiritual practices like religious music, meditation, service, and self-abnegation. From her talks with him the Mother formed a clear conception of the aim and purpose of human life. Tor instance, the Master one day told her, ‘Just as the moon is equally lovable to all, so also is God the nearest one to all. Everyone has an equal right to call on Him. If you invoke Him, you too will see Him’ And he did not stop with such instruction; he saw to its fulfilment in the everyday conduct of the Mother. The Mother spent the day at the Nahabat attending to her duties; but at night she had the Master’s permission to share his bed with him During one of these intimate moments, the Master, by way of examining her, suddenly asked, ‘Well, my dear, have you come to drag me down to the worldly level?’ The Mother replied without a moment’s hesitation, ‘No. Why should I drag you to worldly ways? I have come to help you in your chosen path.’ The Mother, too, while massaging his-feet one night asked, ‘How do you regard me?’ The Master said in reply, ‘The same Mother that is n the (Kali) temple, gave birth to this body and now resides at the Nahabat, and she, again, is now massaging my feet. Truly do I see you as a veritable form of the Blissful Mother!’ The reader now can very well realize what super-normal characters we have undertaken to paint, and how hard the task is. If we are to follow these holy lives with an amount of understanding, transcending as they did all sensual relationships and carnal contacts, we on our part must for a while free our minds from worldly preconceptions and concentrate on eternal verities.
The Mother, for aught we know, slept every night with the Master. But this was no ordinary matrimonial love. The Master was then in the full vigour of his manhood and the Mother in the prime of her youth. The fiery ordeal that they now undertook, or rather the drama that they were now to enact for the edification of the world, throws, into the shade the hardest trial recorded in history. The Master, free from all sense of body-consciousness, spent the whole night in a state of divine afflatus. During one of the intervals between such moods of ecstasy he looked at the youthful, charming person of the Mother lying asleep by his side, and he engaged himself in a self-examination thus: ‘O mind, this is what is called a female form. People think of this as a thing of supreme enjoyment and wistfully run after it. But if this is accepted, one becomes, enmeshed in body-consciousness and cannot attain God who is Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Don’t be insincere to yourself: don’t have a hidden hankering and yet make false profession. Tell me truly, do you want this or God? If you want this, then here it is before you; take it.’ With such self-inquiry no sooner did he stretch his hand to touch her body than his mind suddenly recoiled and got lost in the higher reaches of ecstasy; it never returned to the ordinary plane that night. Next day it was possible to bring his mind down only after repeating the Lord’s name for a pretty long time.
The Mother slept with the Master continuously for eight months. During this long period not only did the Master’s mind soar high, but the Mother’s also was lost in thinking of eternal verities. So there was no occasion for physical hankering on either side. The Master was so deeply impressed by the immaculate purity of the Mother’s character that in later days he bore witness to it in these words: ‘If she had not been as pure as she really was, if she had lost self-control and seduced me, then who can say if I too might not have lost self-control and come down to the physical plane? After my marriage I prayed earnestly to the Mother (of the Universe), “ Mother, do please totally eradicate all passion from my wife.” Living with her at this time I realized that the Mother (of the Universe) had really responded to my importunity. ’ Whatever the Master might have said by way of a lesson to others, we know for certain that there was no possibility of Sri Ramakrishna’s succumbing to feminine fascination. For, had he not fully established himself in transcendental poise after being freed from earthly cravings? And what need could there be of any solicitude for the purity of the Holy Mother who was purity itself? But there is some meaning in all this when we look at it as a deliberate attempt at setting up a model; and then also the need for a public declaration of a secret truth becomes comprehensible. For only the husband and the wife know each other thoroughly; and so from the worldly point of view a certain intrinsic value attaches to the evidence of each for the other.
Although the mutual relationship of the Master and the Mother found expression in various ways, it reached its acme in the Shodashi1 worship. This is not the occasion for understanding the mystic import of this rite from the Master’s angle of vision. Our endeavor will be to study its implication from the Mother’s side.
The Master had accepted the little Sarada as his wife and given her a foretaste of divine love at Kamarpukur; and at Kamarpukur and Dakshineswar he had equipped her mind for domestic as well as divine life. Now was the time for awakening and making active the divine in the woman. Moreover, on the Master’s part, there was need for raising her in the estimation of the world by offering his own sincerest worship, so that she might naturally take up the threads of his unfinished task after him; and it was necessary, too, to make that deity conscious of her real stature. That was the meaning of this worship.
After the Master had been assured of Sarada Devi’s purity by living with her for a month and a half, he proceeded to offer her his heart’s adoration. The new-moon night of 5th June, 1872, was the auspicious time for the worship of Kali in her aspect as Phalaharini (destroyer of the effects of past deeds). In Sri Ramakrishna’s mind grew the desire of worshipping that night the
Mother of the Universe as Shodashi.2 The worship was not to be performed in public, but secretly in the Master’s room according to his own wishes. The Master usually relied on Hridaya for such odd jobs. But that night, Hridaya had to perform the special worship at the Kali temple; and he left for the temple after doing what little he could. Then
Dinu,1 the other priest, came to the Master’s help after finishing his daily task at the Vishnu temple. All the accessories of the worship were now duly arranged; and there was in front of the Master an artistically decorated low wooden seat for the deity, though no image had been brought. At last when everything was in order, priest Dinu left the place at nine o’clock.
The Master had asked the Mother to be present at the worship; now she entered the room and looked on intently as the worship proceeded. The Master sat near the western door-way facing eastward. With the chanting of appropriate mantras he sanctified the accessories of the worship and after finishing the preliminaries, he beckoned the Mother to the decorated seat. The Mother had become semi-conscious through spiritual fervour as she had been watching the worship, and now not knowing what or why she was doing, she moved forward as though under a charm and sat on the allotted low stool facing the Master. The Master took some sanctified water from the pitcher and sprinkled it on her body. Then, after uttering the mantras appropriate to the occasion, he prayed to her, ‘O Thou eternal Virgin, Thou Mother Tripura-sundari, the Source of all power, do Thou open the gates of perfection. Sanctifying her mind and body, do Thou manifest Thyself through her (the Holy Mother) and ordain all good.’ Then he mentally identified the different limbs of the Holy Mother with the corresponding parts of the Deity with appropriate sacred formulae (mantras), and considering her as none other than the Deity Herself, worshipped her duly with the usual sixteen kinds of offering. At last the votary took up some sweets in hand and put them in the mouth of the Deity. By and by, the Mother lost all outer consciousness and the worshipper, too, as he proceeded with his ceremonies, gradually lost himself in beatitude. On that level of ecstasy the Deity and the devotee became identified. In this way hours passed; and when midnight was long over, there were signs of the Master’s recovery from his absorption. As soon as he regained sufficient consciousness, he offered himself to the Deity; and then laying himself, the fruits of all his disciplines, and his rosary at the feet of the Goddess, he uttered the salutation: ‘O Thou, the most auspicious goodness among all auspicious things, the fulfiller of all aims, the refuge of all, Thou the threeeyed, golden hued consort of Siva, Thou the power of Narayana, I salute thee.’ The worship was over; and this adoration in a human figure of the Divine Mother who is the source of all enlightenment, ended the long course of austerity that the Master had undertaken.
And for the Holy Mother too, was opened the door leading to the highest achievement that humanity conjoined with divinity can attain. After the worship she returned to the normal plane and saluting the Master left for the Nahabat.
The Mother had then completed the eighteenth year of her age and entered the nineteenth, though by mistake she often said, ‘I had then commenced my sixteenth year.’ We now put in brief the other details of this incident that the curious women devotees gathered from the Mother. When the Mother said that at the commencement of the ceremony, the Master painted her feet with liquid lac-dye, put vermilion on her forehead, clad her with a new piece of cloth, and put betel and sweets into her mouth, Lakshmi Devi asked with an amused smile, ‘You are so shy, my dear, how did he put clothes on you?’ The Mother simply replied, ‘I was not quite myself then.’ The Mother sat facing the jar of Ganges water which used to be kept at the north-west corner of the room and to her right were the materials for the worship. A night-long festivity was going on outside, and nobody knew what was happening within the closed room, nor did noise from outside reach them There were only two persons sitting facing each other—the Master and the Mother. Towards the end Hridaya came in. After the adoration, the Mother was faced with a problem,—what was she to do with the conch bangles, cloth, etc., which she had received as offerings. She referred the matter to the Master, who after a little reflection said, ‘Well, you can give them to your mother; but mind you, when making them over, do not think of her as a mortal, but rather as the Universal Mother.’ The Holy Mother did accordingly.
In a state of divine afflatus the Mother accepted the worship as also the result of all the spiritual disciplines of the Master. In fact, she inherited the richest spiritual wealth without any corresponding conscious endeavour on her part; and in addition, she learnt how to look upon all beings as manifestations of the Universal Mother. The Master, too, felt himself quite at ease after discharging the highest duty to his partner in life.
The Mother continued to share the Master’s room for about six months more even after this ceremony. This was not for her, however, an unmixed boon; for not being fully familiar with the divine moods of this unique personality who constantly got lost in trances and raptures, she off and on spent sleepless nights sitting by him and anxiously watching the startling, unfamiliar, physical changes. ‘Words can’t describe,’ she said, ‘the spiritual states in which the Master remained merged. Often in his divine ecstasy he would be talking of many things; sometimes he would laugh and sometimes weep, and sometimes he would be totally lost in trances. This went on for the whole night. How deep a fervour it was and what an absorption! My whole body trembled at the sight, and I waited eagerly for day-break. I did not then understand much of divine afflatus and ecstasies. One night, seeing his samadhi continuing interminably, I began weeping in fear and called in Hridaya with the help of Kali’s mother (the maidservant). He went on repeating the Lord’s name in his ears, till after quite a long time he returned to the conscious plane. Learning next day that I suffered from this kind of fear, the Master himself taught me, “ If you notice such a kind of mood in me, then utter such a name; and if such another, then this other Bija (mystic syllable).” After this I was not so afraid; he regained consciousness when those names were uttered. Quite a long time passed in this way and then as he came to know one day afterwards, that in apprehension of his moods I sat up for the whole night and could not sleep, he asked me to sleep apart at the Nahabat. ’ But wherever she might be, whether in the Master’s room or at the Nahabat, she considered the service of the Master and his mother to be the one duty of her life. The old lady was then too feeble to move about freely, and so she depended much on the Holy Mother, who was well aware of this. Hence, whenever the old lady called her, she rushed to her side. If any one warned her that by such heedless dashing she ran the risk of striking her head against the low doorframe, she would reply, ‘What if I do? She is my superior and my mother. Alas, she is old! If I don’t hurry up, it may inconvenience her and so I run. ’ The old lady then lived upstairs and the Holy Mother on the ground floor of the Nahabat.
Equally whole-hearted was her service of the Master. The companionship that she had through this medium of service, she considered to be a fortune for herself. The communion through service was not confined to the physical plane alone. Whenever the Master came down to the conscious plane during this period, he was swayed by a feeling of womanliness within himself, so much so that he considered himself, as also the Holy Mother and others, as the maids or handmaids of the Universal Mother. The Mother then clothed and adorned him like a woman and felt elated at the thought that just like the Master, she too was a maid of Kali. Again, she asserted no independence and showed no self-will in this act of service; she felt satisfied by doing the little the Master wanted and that in the manner he favoured.
A year after the Shodashi worship, the Mother fell ill. Shri Shambhunath Mallick had then succeeded Mathur Babu as the supplier of needs (rasad-dar, as the Master put it) for the Master. He called Prasad Babu, a physician, to treat her, but there was no relief. Realizing that then at Dakshineswar, she could be of no use to others and that on the contrary she would be adding to their anxiety, she left, for Jayrambati.
1. Aunt Bhanu or Bhanu-pisi was born at Shihar and married in a Ghosh (cowherd) family at Jayrambati. The Mukherjis were their priests at Jayrambati and the Mazumdars, of her father’s family at Shihar. Pisi means father’s sister, and though this non-Brahmin woman could have no family ties with the Mother, this relationship was established between them according to rural custom. The Master also called her Bhanu-pisi.
1. The Lila-prasanga takes this to be Dola-purnima which fell on 25th March, 1872. But it might have been the Chaitra-samkranti day which is widely observed as an occasion for holy bath. The Mother never spoke of Dola-purnima, but vaguely referred to ‘ some sacred day.’ She also said, ‘ The Master worshipped me as Shodashi a month and a half after my arrival there.’ If Dola-purnima is accepted as the auspicious day in question, the period intervening between the Mother’s arrival and the Shodashi worship would be two and a half months instead of one and a half. The Mother was not likely to forget such an important event in her life. In this, as also in subsequent narratives, we take her version as the most authoritative.
1. On another occasion the Mother related the incident thus: ‘Once, when on my way to Dakshineswar in my early years, I had fever. I lay unconscious, when I saw a dark-complexioned girl with dusty feet sitting by my bed-side and stroking my head. Seeing her feet full of dust I asked, “ Dear child, did not anybody offer you water for washing your feet? “ She replied, “ No, mother, I shall leave forthwith. I came to see you. Don’t be afraid, you will recover.” And truly, I did recover gradually from the very next day.
1. There are two detached two-storeyed structures on the Ganges on either side of the main temple compound. They were originally meant to be used for playing temple music at stated hours, particularly, early morning and evening. We are concerned only with the northern one, which does not seem to have been used for this purpose. The Master’s mother Chandra Devi first used the upper storey as a dwelling room. Later the Holy Mother took up residence on the ground floor.
1. Shodashi is the Mother of the Universe in the form of a most beautiful woman in the prime of her youth, exquisitely attired, and seated on a throne. She is otherwise known as Tripura-sundari or Sri-vidya. In this instance the Master accepted the Holy Mother as a symbol for the deity, to start with, and ultimately established her identity with the deity. This worship of the Mother in human form is sanctioned by the scriptures, though the usual symbols are pictures, pitchers, earthen images, yantras (ritualistic drawings), etc.
2. The Lila-prasanga, Sadhaka-bhava (pp. 553-54) fixes the date for this ceremony as the 25th May, 1873 or more than a year after the Mother’s arrival at Dakshineswar. The Mother herself put this as one month and a half (vide foot-note on p. 41); and in Sri Ramakrishna Deva, a biography of the Master by his direct disciple, Shashibhushan Ghosh, we read that the worship was performed ‘ within three months of Sri Sarada Devi’s reaching Dakshineswar ‘ (p. 331). The Mother abo says that she returned to Jayrambati one year after the worship (Sri Sri Mayer Katha, II, 130).
1. He belonged to Mukundapur and was the son of a cousin of the Master.
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