Recorded at the Vedanta Society of Western Washington on December 26, 2010.

In this talk, Swami Bhaskarananda explains the Vedantic understanding of God as the timeless, formless source behind all creation, and how divine incarnations appear on earth as “large windows” through which we glimpse that divinity. Sri Ramakrishna is seen as one such incarnation, and Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi as the perfectly complementary manifestation of the Divine Mother—the compassionate face of Sri Ramakrishna. Swami Bhaskarananda describes how God, though beyond gender, can be lovingly approached as father, mother, friend, or child, and how Sarada Devi’s life reveals the motherhood of God in a concrete, approachable way.

Through vivid anecdotes, he shows Sarada Devi’s unconditional love, her refusal to reject anyone who came to her, and her insistence that all were her children—good and “wicked” alike. She accepted offerings from thieves, comforted those burdened by guilt, and assured devotees that she would “clean them” and then place them on her lap. Her compassion ignored social boundaries of caste, nationality, and religion; she could bless an Englishwoman’s sick daughter in colonial India, yet also declare that the British were her children too. Swami Bhaskarananda concludes by highlighting her universal benediction—that her blessings extend to those who came to her, those who will come, and even those who never come—affirming her as an ever-present, all-embracing spiritual mother.