December 10 2015 Thursday: Mother As I Saw Her (Being Reminiscences of Holy Mother Sarada Devi)
10-December-2015 (Thurday)
Mother As I Saw Her – Second Part
Swami Saradeshananda
APPENDIX
ABOUT THE RECORDER OF THE REMINISCENCES – 02
It was in March 1913 that he first came to Calcutta with the idea of meeting the Holy Mother at the Udbodhan House. But the Mother had by that time gone to her village home at Jayarambati. Revered Swami Saradananda consoled Gopesh telling him that the Holy Mother and Sri Ramakrishna are one, and to see the one is to see the other too. Gopesh now devided to go to Jayrambati and went with a friend to the railway station to catch the train. Unfortunately as he friend sustained some injury at the station from an accident, he had to return to Calcutta with him. Thus his effort to see the Holy Mother in 1913 proved futile.
It was only in 1915 that he had the great blessing of a meeting with the Holy Mother through the good offices of a friend of his boyhood days, then known as Brahmachari Jnanananda. Jnanananda once made a pilgrimage to Kamarpukur, the birthplace of the Master, and from there he went to see the Holy Mother at Jayarambati. The Mother was pleased to initiate him. Jnanananda felt a great urge to serve the Holy Mother, and so took his residence at a small Ashrama at Nabasan, some seven miles from Jayarambati. Jnanananda’s service of the Holy Mother chiefly consisted in carrying on his own head loads of vegetables and other daily requisites for the Holy Mother’s establishment at Jayarambati. He also did heavy manual work at the Mother’s house whenever there was need for it. Jnanananda was kind enough to allow Gopesh to stay with him at the Nabasan Ashram, and from there Gopesh began to visit the Holy Mother either singly or with his friend.
Gopesh Maharaj write as follows about his meeting with the Holy Mother: “The Mother was pleased to bless me with initiation on the very first day of my meeting her, and with Brahmacharya about two months thereafter, when I was 23. After initiation into Brahmacharya, she handed over to me a piece of loin cloth, saying, ‘As long as you live, so long will you have to observe Brahmacharya (the vow of celibacy).’ From the very beginning the Mother bestowed on me her motherly affection, and I too began to feel that she was none other than my affectionate mother. I now began staying off and on at the Mother’s establishment at Jayarambati. I can now very well recollect that I stayed there for only one day during Jagaddhatri Puja, and for three days just after my initiation into Brahmacharya.”
[Mother As I Saw Her (Being Reminiscences of Holy Mother Sarada Devi) – Swami Saradeshananda. Translated by Prof. J. N. Dey. Sri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore Madras-600004: p 233 – 234]
