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"Holy Mother" painted by Swami Tadatmananda

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December 11 2015 Friday: Mother As I Saw Her (Being Reminiscences of Holy Mother Sarada Devi)

11-December-2015 (Friday)
Mother As I Saw Her – Second Part
Swami Saradeshananda
APPENDIX
ABOUT THE RECORDER OF THE REMINISCENCES – 03

Those were days when malaria had become rampant in the villages like Kamarpukur and Jayrambati. Within three months of his arrival at Nabasan and Jayarambati, Gopesh was attached by malaria of a virulent nature, and was advised to go to his village for recovery of heath. A few months after his recovery, Gopesh returned from his home to Calcutta and met the Holy Mother at the Udbodhan. The Mother was very glad to see him in good health. As Jnanananda was alone and unhappy at Jayarambati, the Holy Mother asked Gopesh to go there and stay for some time. By this time, a separate cottage had been built for the Mother, and from 1916 she began to stay there, leaving the establishments of her brothers. After a month’s stay with Jnanananda, Gopesh came back to the Mother at the Udbodhan House, and to her great joy gave her all the news about Jnanananda and Jayarambati.

After a few months’ stay at the Udbodhan, the Mother returned to Jayrambati. But jnanananda could not serve her long. In spite of his sturdy constitution, he too fell victim to malaria, and had to leave those regions for recovery of his health. The Mother therefore asked Gopesh to come and take over the full responsibility of her establishment. It was such attacks of malaria that necessitated the frequent changes of the Mother’s attendants at Jayarambati.

For about seven months from the Jagaddhatri Pooka of 1917, Gopesh looked after the Mother’s house and in that capacity he had opportunities to come in close contact with her and render service to her. In regard to the events and conversations recorded here, he was a direct witness of, or an active participant in them and he has tried to give in these pages an exact representation of them. A few incidents, however, are based on what very reliable persons reported to him.

He could on two occasions, first in 1915 and next in 1917, attend the Jagaddhatri Pooja when the Mother herself conducted the worship. “It was a matter of joy and wonder for me,” he writes, “to see the Mother at the worshipper’s seat, offering flowers and sacred leaves at the feet of the holy image of Jagaddhatri. The spiritual mood that came on her then, made her face glow with a divine lustre. It was the same when she sat for worship daily before the Master’s picture. Keeping her hands in her lap, the back of the right hand resting on the left palm, she would be merged in meditation, when her countenance, grave and yet benign, looked exactly as described in Durga Saptasati – ‘Thou are pleasing, yea, more pleasing than all the pleasant things, and exceedingly beautiful (I.81).’”

[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 234 – 235]

Location: Bangalore