The Mother

To that Devi Shakti, who shines in every class of creature in the world in the form of the Mother, our salutations, salutations, salutations.

Matru rupa means a wonderful form of the Adi Shakti that everyone experiences.

“My mother, who is herself a form of the Devi, is my inspiration.”

She sowed the spiritual seed even before I began to crawl.

When I took my first small steps, she held my hand and walked me.

When childhood came, she showed me the picture of how life changes.

She awakened in me an understanding of the ways of society.

When I grew a little older, she began telling me social, scientific and sacred stories from the Puranas.

She taught me how to weigh right and wrong in life.

She inspired me and urged me on: however hard things are, do not stop until you reach the goal.

When I stumbled, she corrected me and brought me back to the right road.

She said: when you let go of the ego of “I” and “mine,” you will come to know who you are.

It is not for nothing that the mother is called the first god. However much we describe such a god, it is never enough.

The god, the guru, the world and nature that we can see with our own eyes: that is the mother alone.

Awe, devotion and reverence arise in the heart only when we hear the word “mother.”

We must know and understand that the quality of a mother is present in every woman.

This is an essential power, a primal force.

This power fills every class of creature, shining in the form of the Mother.

The Mother power naturally and simply improves, nourishes and cares for us, and in this way the Mother power shows us a beautiful new path.

We call our India Bharat Mata, Ma, the motherland. We call the language we speak our mother tongue.

In the same way we call nature Mother Nature, because nature too cares for us and nourishes us naturally.

The very sound “Ma” carries the power to move us. So we observe and celebrate Mother’s Day. But many people do not clearly understand the good experiences and good thoughts behind such celebrations.

A mother does not only give birth. All animals give birth; all women give birth to children. But the meaning of motherhood is something else, and experiencing it is the greatest thing.

When cheerfulness, peace and a stream of love grow within us, more and more they create the bond of motherhood and a good experience of it. Motherhood is not an emotion; it is a bond, a kinship, of boundless sensitivity.

That is why, in Indian philosophy and the Sanatana tradition, the guru too is seen as a mother.

The guru is a form of the mother. In the same way the guru can be seen as death. That is, through the practice of meditation, the art of dying, the guru shows the ordinary person death every day in their spiritual life.

And when we look at Durga, she is the Mother who naturally protects, nurtures, cherishes and sustains, and she is also the form of death, whom we call Kali.

She is also the form of Kala. Kala means time.

When we see a new creative way merging in, the motherhood within us gives us the power to clearly erase the old. “We have to attain something and lose something; the meaning of life is coming and going.”

Only when we give something up or let it go can something new be created. If we do not let go, nothing new can be made. (“Kuch pakar khona hai, kuch khokar pana hai; jeevan ka matlab to aana aur jaana hai.”) This is the one clear message.

When the Mother power is present in every way, she fills everything as the Mother power, revealing, showing, clarifying, discovering and expressing, as nature gives it, the two movements of creation and destruction, birth and death.

The Mother is not only one who cares for us lovingly. The power that transforms everything is also the Mother.

If that Mother power does not transform everything, a person falls into anarchy and becomes destructive.

When she brings transformation within you as the Mother power, a person lives skilfully, capably, free of worry and without duality.

There is no conflict (clash, struggle) within us, no stress, no tension.

The quality of the Mother is this: she erases the old and shapes the new. It is the quality of transformation.

If a person is to gain a new life, certain beliefs, assumptions, convictions and their authority must be dropped and erased. Only then does a new life come and the person is transformed. Otherwise they keep walking crookedly, stumbling, rising and falling.

When the power called Mother begins her work mysteriously, with a power beyond the senses, a new life begins. A mystical function.

This cannot be told in words, cannot be merely spoken by the mouth.

It becomes an inexpressible, indescribable, ineffable life (an inexpressible moment of life). You are matchless love, you are truth, you are knowledge. You are Saraswati, you are Mahalakshmi, you are Mahakali. You are bliss, you are pure consciousness, you are the friend of the humble, you are living energy.

Kabir says the guru cannot be written in words. Make the whole world into paper, make the ocean into ink, make pens from all the forests, and still the glory of the guru, the nature of the guru, the power of the guru cannot be described or told.

(Song: “Guru Brahma roop, Shiv ka swaroop, Guru ke samaan jahaan mein nahin re.”)

So too the state of the Mother. (Song: “Nij charanon ka pyaar, jai jai Maa.”)

The guru, in its root form, is the form of the Mother.

And the guru, in its root form, is also death.

This relationship between the Mother and the guru is unforgettable; remember it.

When pure power reveals itself as living power in the form of motherhood within any body and mind, it gives peace and gives comfort. However full of attraction we are, there is a kind of fear and dread within us. She brings to an end the useless rituals within us.

But we do not want to finish off the waste products we do not understand. We do not want to finish them completely or throw them out; we want to keep holding on to them.

We try to keep everything in bondage. We just say “enough, it’s over” and sit still.

But the mother also exists in a physical form, a biological form.

There too an event manifests.

In the womb the baby grows in many ways, and each stage is complete and beautiful.

Yet the power called Mother is filled with the power to keep moving forward.

She does not insist, out of excess love, on keeping the child inside her body.

The Mother power also knows how to bring it out of the body.

It is not that inside the body there is safety and outside there is danger.

The power called Mother protects all this and carries it along. Biologically this happens naturally, as natural instinct, and others do not understand or know it. The Mother power has the capacity to hold continuously, and to hold and to let go.

Now, when the mother, Ma, turns physically into a biological, functional, relationship-based role, attachment, holding on and some sort of abnormality creep in.

When we look at another form of the Mother, she does not hold on, and it is not that she separates the child from her body. The nature of the Mother is that she keeps pushing us forward, pushing and nudging us onward on the path of evolution.

When the Mother awakens, there is a power that dissolves rituals and assumptions, that dissolves each thing and each power into itself.

So motherhood is a power that lives in the present.

All forms are contained in it.

When we understand the great sayings, we see the creative form that fills it.

We come to understand how she raises us, nurtures us and protects us. The power that gives us our shape is the form of the Mother.

Like turning a rock into a beautiful statue, the power that has such skill, distinction, capability, patience and foresight is the Mother power.