Things have been quite glum in the last nine months, even catastrophic for many, due to covid-related deaths, job losses, and shutdowns of small businesses. But the new year shows a glimmer of hope on the horizon, now that vaccines are being rolled out. It still is going to be a fairly long wait until everyone on our planet feels safe to venture out again and go back to “normal life.”
It would be foolhardy to imagine that life was hunky-dory before the pandemic. It wasn’t, of course, but the pandemic made our vulnerabilities so tangible that we could no longer pretend they didn’t exist. Even before the virus changed our lives—I am tempted to say—we were passing through a critical period. It’s pointless to say it though, because such statements are passé now, since they have often been made too glibly in almost every generation. There does seem to be, however, a crisis of hope. The arrival of vaccines notwithstanding, hope seems to be weakening sharply in the human psyche.
We have passed through periods of hopelessness before. But such occurrences were restricted to particular regions and did not assume almost a worldwide proportion as has happened now. Consciously or unconsciously many amongst us have lost faith in almost everything. A healthy skepticism is fine, even necessary, but when we begin to be skeptical about everything, when nothing seems intrinsically good and worthy, there is a reason to worry. Such nihilistic approach has left us precious little to be hopeful about. With joy and hope extinguished from the lamp of life, we have become little better than robots: we are programmed by the unknown forces lurking in our own minds, and we move through life mechanically until the body machine breaks down beyond repair.
We may want to revolt against this kind of a portrayal and reject it as unrealistic. But truth is truth for all that. We have made ourselves perfect automatons. We eat mechanically, we work mechanically, we laugh mechanically, we dream mechanically, we love mechanically, we weep mechanically—all programmed by our inner forces. And since life has transformed us into machines, we must meet the fate of machines: a life devoid of hope.
Sri Sarada Devi (1853–1920)
Spontaneity, joy, creativity belong to conscious beings, not to machines. Are these qualities manifesting in my life? This is the question I must ask myself. If the answer is yes, I’ve escaped being a robot. If the answer is no, I’ve got to do something about it. I need to find someone or something that will fill my life with hope. One person I can go to is Holy Mother Sarada Devi.
As a spiritual seeker, I have to encounter another kind of hopelessness as well. When I begin to practice spiritual disciplines earnestly, I am full of hope that soon I will be drifting along blissfully in the spiritual current, having visions and other spiritual experiences, and rising far above my failings and weaknesses. Days pass, perhaps months, and even years. And nothing happens. “Where are the visions? Why don’t I get any spiritual experience? Why do I continue to be my old self with all my old weaknesses?”—I ask myself.
I look around and say, maybe the environment and the people I’m living with are a problem. Maybe I should go to a new place and look for new friends. Or perhaps I feel depressed and conclude that spiritual life is not for me. My samskaras are too unspiritual. So I give up my spiritual quest and find comfort in doing “what everyone is doing.” I may have begun my practices with God-realization in view, but now I give up the hope of ever reaching the goal in the foreseeable future. Nonetheless I continue with my spiritual practice halfheartedly to soothe my troubled conscience. I consider my case hopeless and find myself drifting at the mercy of what people call “fate.” If I find myself in this situation, I should go to Holy Mother.
What do I find when I become a student of Holy Mother’s life? I find an unlettered village-woman, pure, simple and devoted, who scaled the pinnacle of spiritual life. She did all the duties that came her way, first as a daughter in Jayrambati, then as a wife at Dakshineswar, and later as the Guru and Mother of her numerous devotee-children.
She lived with her family, surrounded by her relatives—a quarreling bunch of brothers, a nagging and insane sister-in-law, and a mentally unstable niece—and several other weirdos. She loved them all and cared for them with infinite patience. Most important of all, she remained immersed in God-consciousness all the while, though outwardly very few could have known it.
Superficially, Mother’s life looks so ordinary, so commonplace—one reason why it is so difficult to understand. Swami Premananda (1861–1918), an eminent disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, contrasts her life with Ramakrishna’s in a letter:
“Who can really understand the greatness of Holy Mother? True it is there have been great holy women in past ages—such as Sita, Savitri, Sri Radha. But in this present age, before our very eyes, we see Holy Mother surpass them all by her exemplary life.
“She is difficult to understand because she keeps her superhuman powers hidden. In the life of Sri Ramakrishna we have seen these powers expressed. Many times during the day he would go into ecstasy and samādhi. We saw him always God-intoxicated. But Mother holds these powers suppressed within herself. How much greater her superhuman power must be! Hail Mother! Hail Mother! Hail Mother, the embodiment of Shakti, the Divine Mother.” (Memories of a Loving Soul, ed. & tr. By Swami Prabhavananda, pp. 226-27.)
Swami Premananda speaks in this letter of her superhuman powers. This may possibly have two kinds of effects. The first effect is apparently negative. If Holy Mother possesses all the superhuman powers, if she is the Divine Mother incarnate, then she right away ceases to be a model. It is easy to conclude that she could attain enlightenment even while living in the midst of a large household beset with the usual problems and wrangles, only because she was the Divine Mother. How can I even think of emulating her? I can aspire to follow the example of another evolved human being, even a saint, with the hope of becoming like them, for the difference between me and them is only one of degree.
But the Divine Mother? She is in a class by herself. It would be ridiculous to even imagine doing and succeeding in whatever she does. After all, she is endowed with superhuman powers, while most of us have not yet tapped into even the human powers already within us. If she has chosen to take birth as an unlettered village-woman and to live in the midst of quarrelsome relatives, it is only a matter of playacting for her. But for me, my life-situation is cruelly real. How can Holy Mother be a source of inspiration for me? Her divinity and her power make her different, someone far removed from humanity. How can I relate myself meaningfully to someone who is so radically different?
But Mother’s divinity can also have a positive effect on me. The knowledge that Holy Mother is the Divine Mother is necessary, for only then can I surrender myself fully and unconditionally at her feet. If she has to protect me and save me, she must herself be beyond the need for protection and saving. No human being, however exalted or evolved, can assume that position. Only the Divine Mother can. Holy Mother’s superhuman powers are a source of strength to the devotee who knows, come what may, “my Mother will always protect me and save me.” Holy Mother herself gave this assurance when she said,
“I am the mother of the wicked, as I am the mother of the virtuous. Never fear. Whenever you are in distress, just say to yourself, ‘I have a mother.’” (Teachings of Sri Sarada Devi the Holy Mother, p. 164)
Mother was, of course, referring to the redeeming powers of the Divine dwelling in her own self, who could grant protection and freedom from fear to anyone.
When we begin the study of Holy Mother’s life, this is the first dilemma we are faced with: Is she human or divine? This is the kind of dilemma we face while studying the lives of all the great ones whom we adore today as prophets and incarnations. Do their lives indicate the ascent of a human being or the descent of a divine being?
Vedanta teachers have a way of answering this question. They simply say, neither. There is a point, they tell us, where the human ascent and the divine descent intersect. It is at that point that the divine incarnation, or the Avatāra, dwells. The Avatāra is either fully human and fully divine, or neither human nor divine. The Avatāra simply defies all categorization.
When Dr. Sarkar, the Homeopath who was treating Sri Ramakrishna at Kasipur, objected to the devotees’ looking upon Sri Ramakrishna as divine, Vivekananda—then a twenty-two year old Narendra—articulated this idea of the Avatāra as the meeting-point of the human and the divine.
“We think of the Master [Narendra told Dr.Sarkar] as a person who is like God. Do you know, sir, what it is like? There is a point between the vegetable creation and the animal creation where it is very difficult to determine whether a particular thing is a vegetable or an animal. Likewise, there is a stage between the man-world and the God-world where it is extremely hard to say whether a person is a man or God… [So] we offer worship to him [Sri Ramakrishna] bordering on divine worship.” (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, tr. Swami Nikhilananda, pp. 904-6)
When we look at Mother’s life against the background of this understanding, we begin to realize how she is so human and so divine at the same time. Through her humanity she establishes a strong bond with her spiritual children, and through her divinity she lifts them up and protects them. It is this delightful intermingling of the human and the divine in Holy Mother that produces hope in us.
First and foremost, Mother’s life teaches us that it matters little where we live. What is important is how we live. We tend to attribute our failures, setbacks and weaknesses to the environment in which we live. Holy Mother showed through her life that it is possible to maintain the deepest poise and live a life of ceaseless prayer and God-consciousness even in the midst of circumstances which we would normally dub as hostile and unsuitable for spiritual life: a busy household and cranky relatives, for instance. She evidently chose the circumstances of her external life to teach us that no one need feel hopeless. Wherever we are, and in whatever condition, it is possible for us to grow and to evolve.
Next, Mother’s practical approach to life’s problems. Philosophy may often impress, but it does not always satisfy. When I ask a question, what kind of an answer do I look for? Philosophical or practical? This is not to say that a philosophical answer cannot be practical, or vice versa. But philosophers are popularly regarded as impractical, and people considered “practical” are generally seen to swear by anything but philosophy. Right or wrong, this distinction is often made.
Holy Mother obliterates this distinction in her own quiet, gentle manner. When we study her life or read her conversations, we find it difficult to think of a more practical person. To every doubt and to every question, her answer is practical. And because it is practical, it goes straight to the heart. She does not mince words, she does not philosophize, she simply tells us the truth as it is, bare and simple. Further she tells us the truth in words we can understand. And yet, her answer—her practical answer—is not divorced from its philosophical implications.
Take the simple teaching that has come to be known as Mother’s “last message,” since she gave it to a devotee before her passing. When the devotee wept and said, “Mother, what will happen to us after you go?” Mother said to her, “Why should you be afraid? You have seen the Master [Sri Ramakrishna]. What should frighten you?” Then she added very slowly,
“Let me tell you something. My child, if you want peace, then do not look into anybody’s faults. Look into your own faults. Learn to make the whole world your own. No one is a stranger, my child; the whole world is your own.” (Swami Nikhilananda, Holy Mother, p. 319)
This is obviously a practical teaching. But Vedanta teachers have emphasized that behind its all-too-apparent simplicity and practicality lies the profound philosophy of Advaita. (This is a potentially enriching study and I hope to explore it in a future blog post.) Every teaching of Holy Mother is practical, and if we care to follow its trail backwards, we will find ourselves gazing into the vast expanse of Vedantic thought. Mother bridges the gap between being philosophical and being practical. The unique nature of Mother’s intensely practical teachings injects hope into us. We are able to see a clear path to God emerging from the abstractions of philosophy. From Holy Mother we know what we must do and how we must do it.
Holy Mother’s village, Jayrambati
But every time we undertake to do something, we cannot be too sure we will succeed. Obstacles come: some we overcome, some we cannot. Besides, we have to work within our limitations. There are times when we feel we are just up against a stone wall. Who are we going to turn to? When a child is in danger or difficulty, where does she go? She goes to her mother. That is what even the spiritual seekers do: they go to Holy Mother. They know that there are chances of being rejected if they go anywhere else. But a mother will never reject her child. A human mother may sometimes fail, but the Divine Mother never does. As spiritual seekers, we are convinced that we have to simply know—and never forget—that we are Mother’s children. Everytime we run to her, she will be there to protect us, to console us, and to cheer us. What more can we ask for?
These, then, are the three main factors which make Holy Mother a haven of hope: one, her life which shows it is possible to lead a spiritual life wherever we are and in whatever condition; two, her intensely practical teachings which clearly show the how of everything; three, her being what she is, a true Mother—not only for one life, but for eternity—and as her children we are assured of her constant love, protection and guidance.