Shodashi Puja

During this period of her stay at the temple –garden of Dakshineswar, Sri Ramakrishna felt a strong desire to worship the Goddess Shodashi, the Divine Mother of the universe. It was the new moon of June 5, 1872, an auspicious night for the worship of the Goddess Kali. Sri Ramakrishna made all the arrangements for it in his own room and instructed the Holy Mother to be present there at 9 pm. As desired by him, she appeared in time and occupied the seat which was reserved for the Goddess Shodashi. Sri Ramakrishna went through all the appropriate rites and formalities of worship in which the Holy Mother took the place of the Deity. In the stillness of night both the worshipper and the worshipped passed into spiritual ecstasy and were joined in a transcendental union in the Self. At the end of this worship he surrendered himself and the fruits of his lifelong Sadhana (spiritual practices) together with his rosary at the feet of the Holy Mother and saluted her. With this sacred ceremony, called in the scriptures the Shodashi-Puja or the worship of the Divine Mother Tripurasundari, was finished the long course of his spiritual practices. Thus the ultimate objective of a marital life was revealed and demonstrated in this twin personality in a manner unprecedented in the annals of mankind. It is a luminous instance of how the conjugal relation between the husband and the wife can be spiritualized and be the means to realization of the highest end of human existence.