Gauri-Ma
This girl was one of a kind.
She lived not many years ago, ending her days in the
city of Calcutta, India. From childhood Gauri learned
many hymns and sayings in the sacred Sanskrit language.
Caring little for play, her mind ran to spiritual things.
One day she came upon a strange hermit-like man, meditating
in a hut. She asked him some questions and he gave her
instructions in meditation and encouraged her to seek for God.
All of this made her parents nervous. They began to
make arrangements for her marriage, as parents in India
do, although she was only thirteen. Gauri spoke up:
"I am not going to marry any mortal man, who could
die at any time; I will marry only the immortal Sri Krishna
(that is, God)." The family shut her in a room
on the day before the wedding, but after dark she managed to
get out. Of course she was found and brought back, but no
one dared again push her to marry.
When Gauri was eighteen she happened to go with a party
of relatives on a pilgrimage in the Himalayan foothills.
She had understood, now, that her life was going to
be different, a solitary search for spiritual experience.
She slipped away from the group and soon joined a party
of monks and nuns who were also on pilgrimage. For a
long time her family could find no trace of her. She carried round
her neck a stone image of her beloved Lord, Sri Krishna,
which she worshiped daily. Gauri had now taken up the
wandering life in earnest, crossing mountains and plains,
visiting many sacred places far off, something women
never did alone. She would conceal her identity by
putting on ashes, often dressing as a man, with a turban
etc. Sometimes she even passed as a lunatic. Bravely she
faced the wild animals, unknown paths, dark caves to escape
storms, tired and swollen feet, and hunger. There, in the
mountain wastes Gauri had rare and profound experiences
of God and the Spirit.
She returned to Calcutta and city life in 1882 and
came in touch with Balaram Bose, a close disciple
of Sri Ramakrishna,
who introduced her to him. Not long after meeting this
teacher, Gauri was sitting one day in her house in meditation
when she felt a thread pulling at her heart. This thread
seemed to run along the floor and out the door. She
tried to ignore it but could not. Fascinated, finally
she followed the thread which she was seeing, through
the streets of the city and all the way to the Kali
Temple at Dakshineswar, where Sri Ramakrishna lived. That
thread led right to his room and, entering it, she found
him winding string on a wooden stick, like a spool. "So
you have come!" he remarked, innocently.
Indeed she had come to stay. Gauri became the only sannyasini
(professed nun) of his disciples; she loved and
often stayed with the Holy Mother .
One day she was out in the garden picking flowers for
worship, when Sri Ramakrishna said to her, pouring
water from a pot to the ground, "Look, I am pouring
the water; you knead the clay." Puzzled, she wondered
what he wanted to make. Then he explained that he was
inspiring her to spend her life for the women and girls
of Calcutta. She was to educate them and mold their lives
for the better in every way. Which Gauri-Ma (as she
was then called) did, influencing the lives of
hundreds with her school and convent.
Understanding that without proper education, girls
could not become good mothers nor have peace and happiness
in their own lives, she felt intensely the misery of
womanhood in her day. At one time she had looked upon
the painful incidents in such lives with a sort of
detachment; now those same things filled her with distress and
compassion. But how would she begin to work? Gauri-Ma had
no money, nor workers nor help of any kind. And her
teacher had passed away. Then, suddenly, help seemed
to come from nowhere.
Her fine singing and chanting, her learning and obvious
sincerity drew first a boatman, then others who put
their little bit together and an ashrama was
started at a village on the Ganges River. Some twenty-five
women gathered there, some unmarried, some separated, some
widows. All began to live a dedicated, holy life under Gauri-Ma's
guidance. As years went by she was able to move into
Calcutta, renting at first, but finally in 1924 laying
the foundation stone for her school and convent. Famous
now, it continues growing to this day.
We take it for granted, but in those days it was unthinkable
for a Hindu girl to leave home and family, remain single,
and take the vows of nun, serving society as the emblems
of the Divine. Over these many difficulties and against
all odds, Gauri-Ma sacrificed her life to help the
women of her time and far beyond. And this is what
she said one day: "Name and fame are like filth. Do
your work with a detached attitude....When you go to serve
others, if you find lurking in the corner of your heart
any desire for praise or prestige, it is like committing
suicide in your spiritual life."
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