Notes 83 to 156

 Chapter 3

MAI WORSHIP 

Popularisation, Amplification, and Fructification

Jay Mai Jay Markand Mai 

83. Our next shift goes to Ahmedabad, where the founder was transferred. The news about Sisters' Social and Mother's Lodge had already preceded him, through papers, etc. The Theosophical Lodge came forth with its co-operation for the sister institute of Mother's Lodge and a large gathering was held in the Theosophical hall in Manek Chauk as also in the Hansaraj Pragji hall near Pankor Naka. Mai-ism was well explained to the citizens of Ahmedabad.

84. Here the Founder was dangerously ill and had to be operated upon and to remain as indoor patient of the Government hospital. He had wonderful experiences of Mother's Grace in the hospital which have been narrated in the Mai Sahasra Nam and Mai Kirtan Mala. In one word, Mother Herself attended by two female deity assistants appeared before the Founder every night for three consecutive nights, untied the bondage, cast a benedictory glance which removed all the pains and tied up the bandage and disappeared with a fortitude-pouring look. This incident got a great popularity as another patient (one Thakore, the precious inmate in the same specially reserved wardroom) on the night the Founder was taken there, actually saw Mother alone entering the door and immediately leaving after seeing the Founder in unconsciousness. He broadcasted the wonderful experience the next day to the vast number of his own visitors.

    This wonderful experience has been described in Mai Sahasranama, Vol I, Part II, Page 122, as also in Gujerati Mai Kirtanmala, as a commentary to the Founder's psalm "Hasane Hasane Wali". "The Smiling (Mother) and the Maker (of Her devotees) to smile." The Founder was burning with a rage against Mother because She discontinued Her attendance after three nights, for the simple reason that while She was removing his bandage to heal, he had the human weakness of no confidence and had moved his hand over his open parts to make sure he was not in a delusion. As soon as it became possible for him to be able to crawl without any outside help, his first work was to drag himself slowly in sitting posture to the Mother's picture in his solitary on patient's ward-room. Right from 10-30 p.m. to 5-30 a.m., he was profusely weeping and giving most provocative and insulting names and accusations to the dearest Mother, in the highest spirit of love indicated by the torrents of tears, and yet in the bitterest quarreling mood.

    He pierced arrows. "What can I expect from the daughter of a stony-hearted mountain? You cannot excuse one single human weakness? Why did you come at all to heal me, if you are so very touchy and to take no time to make any the smallest thing to mean a grave offense? Who had called you? You are not a Mother, but a demoness of Maya that creates and swallows up Her own children. From the Delusion-Creator, what happiness the world can possibly derive? Were it not for Thee, there would have been nothing like a Universe and nothing like millions rolling in miseries. They are the happiest who know nothing of Thee, or if by chance they happen to know, who spurn Thee out. You get only the weakest and most docile men in Thy clutches. Has anyone in Thy clutches been made happy by Thee?? Absolutely none. If Thou art so very spiteful, mind, I will also take revenge. When Thou art full of love-surges for me, I too will evade Thee and run away, etc."

    His blaming, accusing, quarreling, all-along-weeping profusely and bowing to the Lotus Feet again and again while abusing, continued right up to the morn when cocks began to crow and birds to chirp and milkmen began to run on their bikes on the public roads.

    Just then, Mother Herself in living and moving form sprang forth and stood before him and spoke most wrathfully thus: " Blame, Scold; Accuse, Abuse; but from this second without a single drop of tear. If one drop any more now falls, I am never never never Thine and Thou art never never mine." And with these words, She disappeared.

    This most inconceivable ultimatum gave him a heart stop. A wonderful compulsory change. A change indescribable. he feared, he may even just die of heart failure and die to be born a permanently abandoned and discarded soul, expelled from Her. The very first speediest precautionary thing that his soul so very speedily decided, climbed and sprang to, was the humblest and highest apologetic praise line.

    " Oh, Mother! Hasane Hasane Hasane Wali. Oh my Ever Smiling and ever making-to-smile Mother!!!" He prostrated with a determination never to get up till Mother raised him or permitted to rise.

    " Thou that art always smiling, and always keeping Thy devotees smiling". The first thing he laughed an artificial laughter that thundered throughout the room. From the mind and moment of the deepest lamentation and sorrow to that of the highest laughter, though artificial. Raising a spiritual " Maginot line" of self-surrender against Mother's permanently leaving him, catching the Lotus Feet preventing them to go away, with the most piteous invocation for pity and pardon. From the scorching heat to the freezing cold.

    Mother be thanked, the heart glass did not crack due to extremes, as one doctor said.

    He continued the further lines of his song, most fondlingly. MUZE KYA KHABAR? MERI SATH TU BHI ROTHI HAI, " How can I imagine? that with me, Thou too art weeping??"

    " MEN SAMAZTA ROOLAKE TU MERE PAPA DHOTI HAI. "I was all along under the belief that you are busy with washing off my sins by making me weep."

    I am wrong, blunderful. Please excuse, I assure Thee. Not a single drop shall now fall. Why should I, the dearest of child of Thee, weep when the whole world has begun smiling (at dawn at 5-30 A.M.)?

    "Hasale Hasale Rulaya Bhulaja, Sab Hasa Rahe Teri Alammen." "Oh Mother!! Thou Smile. Make me Smile. My having made Thee to weep, Forget and Forgive. All have been smiling now (at the dawn), in Thy Universe."

    "Oh, dearest Most Merciful Mother!! Thou art the very embodiment of smile. I am laughing now; you too laugh."

85. The forces for the spread of Mai-ism were gathering ground. In 1935, the Founder came in contact with late Brother Kantilal Desai a truly religious gentleman greatly fond of living with and serving saints and late Rev. Bro. Kaushikram Mehta. The latter was a man of highly scriptural lore, a Sanskrit scholar and a writer and a highly religious man of the old Sanatan school with a sense of moderation and tolerance superior to that of the usual Sanatanists. The latter, as he so often expressed in his lectures and writings, tested the Founder in so many ways, like the gold in the fire, for over a year, studying him, in and out, in every aspect of his life and in his every dealing with others and in his relationship with Mother Mai.

86. He was much older than the Founder. By his personal natural inclinations, he was a devotee of Jagadamba (Hindoo Mother) and of a purely Sanatanist type- (a Nagar of Surat born with high-class relations). Religiously he was one of the few nearest disciples of Shri Narsinhacharya. To accept the Founder as a personage deserving to be followed required a great deal of consideration proof and conviction about the supreme quality of this strange new planet rising on the horizon of Religion.

87. To all appearances and commonsense, Mai-ism or Founder's teachings were entirely different and contradictory to Hinduism. "No prohibition to Harijans in Mai worship" was something which was sure to upset any Sanatanist and ordinary average Hindu (in 1935). Once a large meeting was to be held for which Bhadra Kali big hall on River Sabarmati at Elis bridge was sought to be employed. The answer given by the authorities was, "We know Markandbhai (Founder) as a great devotee who has personal relations with Matajee, but his views are entirely eccentric, He would allow even Harijans to attend Mai worship. If he undertakes to put a poster "Harijans are not allowed" they (authorities) would be extremely glad to give their hall free not only once but every week for Mai Worship". There were so many points of prejudice against the Founder's views which made it hard for him to be immediately popular attractive and acceptable in a routinely religious place like Ahmedabad, containing many Hindu Maths and Ashrams. The greatest point which all the thinking and judging people have to bear in mind while making conclusions about the Founder and Mai-ism is that he was not for pulling the same old Hindu cart in the same direction in the same beaten track with the same type of people, with same notions, beliefs, and customs in the same way, (only with greater speed). He was for a change in the prevalent mentality, for an improvement, for a revision of one's own beliefs, and for a new outlook and a new mode of achieving religious progress. Another thing which was a matter of prejudice against the Founder was that he was not raising the glory of Geeta, Hinduism, and Vedas to the skies especially when he was utilizing the Hindu truths in all his lectures. He did of course so very often state that Mai-ism was indebted to Hinduism or was revised Hindu-ism with a more correct understanding and more sincere following of Hinduism itself. But that was not enough for them who identified their religiosity with their own knowledge of sacred lores doing some little of routine and the tom-tom of the greatness of their religion. In a word, the " Universality of Mai-ism " was a contradiction to the " Nothing so great and sublime as Hinduism" of an average type of Hindu. People of Ahmedabad loved religious pampering. " Is there any Harishchandra in any other religion? Show us." There will be a thunderstorm of claps and cheers. Their own blood-sucking black-marketing of the present day should not be in sight or referred to as being quite irrelevant. " What has that to do with Religion??," an average black-market man astonishingly asks to himself.

88. The Founder soon found that Ahmedabad was not a city of cosmopolitan population or mood or culture, like Bombay or Poona. The continuation of the Poona type of meetings of all shades of religious deliberations and discussions was soon found to be an impossibility. People were too busy to have anything to do with or any time to spare for religious deep-thinking or discussion. Religion was something of a routine to be honored and followed so long as it did not come in the way of a happy easy and any-way quick money-making life; something to be boasted about, something to be tom-tommed as a point of greatness or something like a happy pastime during leisure hours. Pampering people would procure palaces, places, and purses for preachers. Of course, the mass was much better informed about the sacred lore and stories and traditional illustrations than the average Gujerat, but the whole atmosphere was surcharged with moneymaking mania and none the smallest wear and tear for anyone else except wife and children, without some selfish purpose to serve. The religious liking of the mass was of a much superior order but of an out and out routine nature, as compared to other places. Citizens of Ahmedabad were known for their business, richness and religious charities (only to their select gurus and Saints; others can be even fleeced without the smallest conscience-prick). There was very little of profundity, free-thinking and universal outlook and nothing like a passion for religiosity which we find in other cities in Gujerat as for instance in Surat. This is what the Founder saw in Ahmedabad. He tried to get the sympathies of some Parsees and some Mohammedans and some Jains to try to form a cosmopolitan institute of the Poona type. He tried his best to bring about different sons and daughters of different religions together and to concentrate their attention on the need of creating oneness as children of the same Universal Mother. He had the sympathies of two Muslim brothers Mr. Hakim and a Sufi gentleman Mr. A. G. Usman who had traveled over the Continent and who had written books, a Zoroastrian brother Mr. Meherjibhai Ratoora and a Sanatanist brother Mr. A.S. Ayengar, a learned follower of Shree Ramanujacharya, who had a universal outlook with every tolerance, though a Sanatanist, and was a high-class Government Officer in Labour Department. The Founder started with a desire to create a society and to continue its own work on the same lines as at Poona. To put it in other words, to bring about a collection of people who were universal-minded, he wanted a congregation of various souls who would be believing in securing their welfare by fostering the spirit of sisterhood, brotherhood, and performing staunch devotion and living a life of love, service, devotion, and self-surrender. He had not had the success in collecting together such souls, mostly for the reason that there were few and those few also not in favor of an Institutional activity. They wanted only personal relations with the Founder.

89. For a time it appeared as if Mai-ism work stopped with a dazzling streak of light and lightning at Poona, but Mai had intended to take a different turn to suit the circumstances. When practical, intellectual and ordinary worldly working fails, a spirit has to work if progress and success is desired. It is here that the miraculousness acts its wonderful part, as it has often done in the case of all religious movements and religious Founders. When work, labor, money, logic, philosophy, intellectual exposition, or contractual or natural sympathy fails, such superior qualities as Faith, Sincerity, Honesty of purpose, Spirit of service, God's Grace, Intensity, Ardour, and Zest,- all are put to severe test. When what a man explains, does, or has done, fails to appeal, the subtler issue of what he actually is, inwardly as a soul itself, rises up in the minds of people demanding the satisfaction of a personal practical indisputable test. Surely that is a higher test. It is a test of inner qualities and supernatural powers and God's Grace.

90. There the Founder was string enough by Mai's Grace. Bro: Kantilal introduced the Founder to Rev. Kaushikram and the latter began to test the Founder on the spiritual plane; to see how far the Founder was Mother-enlightened and favored or, in severe words, how far his Mai was at his beck and call. And here, many modern religious preachers have failed. An acid test. A spiritual and devotional test, not of spiritual richness, proficiency of words, logic or sweet manners, attractive features, gaudy color dressing, etc.

91. Revered Kaushikram often tested the Founder like this. "In my Dhyana of Hindu Mother, the Founder's figure must appear". "He must come just now to see me" "When I return from Surat, I must meet him at Bhadra Kali temple square, during office hours when he cannot be away from Office". Tests became stronger and stronger and entered the realms of financial, social and physical reliefs as they were satisfied., till Kaushikram and others came by experience to at least one conclusion, viz., that whether his views and philosophies be agreed to or not, one thing was certain and beyond all doubts that the Founder had great influence with Mai and had most wonderful powers of helping people in distress, by removing calamities, of varied natures. Powers much greater than the highest and most effective worldly powers, with their possibilities. The popularity of Mai-ism in Ahmedabad was fully indebted to the most sincere and painstaking efforts and literacy and religious experiences and most serene simple sermons of Rev : Kaushikram, whom the Founder had respected all along with unique reverence while the latter had ever enjoyed highest pleasure in prostrating to the Founder even in large congregations of hundreds after Mother-worship, as " Pratyaksha Mai " (Eye to eye Living Mother).

92. It was the supreme literary and religious art of that venerable old personage which brought about the happiest blending of Mai and Matajee and showed to the religious world of Ahmedabad that Mai conception was nothing foreign to Hinduism but an exposition of Hinduism itself as understood on its highest plane, with some necessary changes in the running beliefs of the people to suit the changed circumstances. On the top of everything, he placed the crown of the truth which he so emphatically said, he had tested and tested him in every way. He assured the FOunder had wonderful and supernatural powers of relieving the miseries of those that approached him, through Mai's Grace. The Rev. K. began to take most lively interest in the Founder's next best burning desire to bring into existence a small institute for the propitiation of Mai with bhajans and worships and a talk of religious discourse here and there on important Religious facts and events of the day. The Founder prepared the Rev. man to take up the reins of the Institute on his retransfer to Poona and in spite of his greatest disinclination and refusal and courtesies of unworthiness, declared him to the President of Mother's lodge, or Mai Mandal, Ahmedabad.

93. It did not take a long for a man of his religious repute to make the Mother's Lodge a very popular institute with success and it is admirably working since 1935 uptill today, with all blissful pure and elevating atmosphere, conducting Mai worship programme of about three hours every Friday.

94. Poona and Ahmedabad showed their own individualities and points of excellence. In the history of Mai-ism, it is an interesting change leading to further development to be noted. Poona showed literacy and religious talent and practical work of a social type. It was the encouragement and support and public-voicing in papers about Mother's Lodge, its meetings, etc., of the people that had made it natural and in fitness of things, that the Founder was invited by the All-Faiths Conference and Indian Philosophical Congress. It was the Founder's speech published in writing in the proceedings of the conference, which placed the Founder in close contact with Rev: M C O'Nell, the president of the " World Fellowship of Faiths " at Chicago.

95. In Poona, there were big opportunities for propaganda work. Followers of Mai-ism took a great interest in rendering service. They would be immediately on their bikes or on foot as soon as a word about some Mai-istic work was spoken by the Founder.

96. The Mai work, in Poona, was, however, more or less of a purely intellectual bustling type with some numbered few who had close homely contact with the Founder and stayed with him for hours and joined him in the worship and general blissful conversation and ecstasy. In Ahmedabad, the Mai work took a practical shape on a much larger scale. Mai worship became a common available avenue of religious progress joy and relief for the mass, AND NOT OF FEW selected people in contact with the Founder alone, as in Poona. In Poona, Mai showed the intellectual beauty of Her tenets, theory, and philosophy. In Poona, Mother shouted, jumped and ran. In Ahmedabad, Mother showed the practical utility of Mother's Grace, sang a lullaby to various suffering children and worshipped Herself in vast worship functions. Poona was a theory, and Ahmedabad was practice. Poona brought fame and popularity, Ahmedabad brought Mai-Mataji proximity and practical relief to people. To the Founder, Ahmedabad gave an experience of the worldly mentality which was missing and which later enabled him to better deal with his further work in a more practical way.

97. The wonderful experiences of Mai's Grace should be reserved for an independent volume. In the words of Rev: Kaushikram, it well requires a big volume to recount all the wonderful experiences that people attained as a result of Mai devotion and to narrate remarkable instances of the subtle-most outright change in the outlook on life and the life itself, on coming in close contact with the Founder.

98. The Founder saw now the clear necessity of dealing at much larger length with the subject-matter of Mai-ism and that of practical instructions for persons wishing to pursue the religious path on lines of Mai-ism. He began to write and print several leaflets and booklets. The different things written and printed and published in the commencement were these: " God as Mother " and " Theory and principles of Mother's lodge ", both in English, were printed in Poona. " Salient feature of Mai dharma " (Mai dharmana mukhya tarka binduo) written by Founder in Gujerati was printed in Nadiad by Bro. Keshavlal Pandya of Nadiad. Further things were Mai Tatwa Mai Pujan and Mai Kumari Kavach (in Gujerati) which were printed in Ahmedabad. Heaven and hell (Swarga and Narak) and Mai Shakti (both in Gujerati) were two big manuscripts which were printed in pieces in "Shakti" of Nadiad by Bro. Keshavlal, in continued series. Rev. Kaushikram made a most useful and popular composition of bhajans of different bhaktas under the title of " Mai Kirtan Mala " with the Founder's preface, which is, as it were, the text-book of music in Mai-Mandals during Mai-worship on Fridays.

99. A word about the "Mai Kumari Kavach". It was a book of a novelistic type. The FOunder was so enthusiastic about the public taking up religious reforms that he wrote this book in five nights only with a view to have a text-book of different prayers by Kumaris (unmarried girls) of different ages. The Kumari worship has been explained in full details therein. The underlying ideas were these. "If we wanted to raise up the spirituality morality religiosity sociability and nobility of a nation or a community, the female world would have to play the most glorious part in that nation-lifting work. Home discipline and home education under the watchful superintendence of mothers and parents is the very foundation of national character-formation. Home life and home-education which have been almost entirely extinct since our contact with the West and the introduction of English education, are indispensably required to be re-established with love and obedience to the parents, seniors, and elders. The whole shattering process of the Hindu home requires a deep study to revive the original virtue which is germinated in home and then proceeds outward towards relations friends societies citizenships and national activities.

100. At the root of all the shattering of the modern Hindu home-life is the flagrant flaring and flashing desire of material enjoyment in every walk of life. No limits, no stops, no ends, no responsibilities, no duties. The materialistic enjoyment desire increased by leaps and bounds, as a result of the contact with the West, which offered and introduced new material comforts and pleasures, made available with money. That enchantment for western ways further created a delusive notion about true culture and civilization. The pent-up desires of the whole nation suppressed for centuries of foreign rule and tyranny and religious control, blazed up catching and spreading fire, on finding the most suitable condition and atmosphere, to get themselves loosened and left scot-free. The infatuation which the husband or the father bore to his wife and children soon turned him to be a money-making machine, a debtor to every one of the family, hanging his head low at all hours for the incapacity of coping with the increasing standards of living. He became practically less cared for than the servant. A little later, mother had to pay her penalty for neglecting her personal duties to her husband by being turned out to be the maid-servant of the house by the princes and princesses of the royal house. The worst misfortune was that by the time the earner was able to somehow meet the standard of expenses, the family life jumped up to the higher standard of living. There could be no end to the revolving process and the vicious circle. What respect can a machine or maid-servant command?? Princes and princesses became their own teachers and masters, with the guaranteed service of the parents. They decided they needed no teaching, they were born with whatever was necessary as wisdom. If there was any little shortage, that would be made good by schooling and libraries and cinemas and friends. Rights were riotously shouted for, and duties went to dogs. Experience and enjoyment at the cost of others, without an idea of the consideration of return or gratefulness, individualism, selfishness, self centered-ness made everyone most petty minded and blindfolded. Infatuation, Ignorance of higher avenues of joyfulness and material enjoyment-desire-burst-fulness broke the homes of happy and innocent and virtuous Hindu life.

    The salvation of a nation depends on the cumulative strength of all individuals that make a nation, and character is best formed through home-life. Every effort should be made to restore the higher joys of self-control, sacrifice, and relinquishment, through arts, literature and Religious schools colleges and Institutes supported by the public and Government and conducted by personages, eminent not only by virtue of their profound learning but a sterling character as seen in their living itself. Hereditary capacities and virtues should not be belittled and thrown out of consideration. The old aspects understandings and interpretations of compulsion and fear should go. A new literature should be created that would appeal to the modern man, being based on practical considerations, psychological reasonings and reliable experiences of really great and tried men. We wany autobiographies, histories and faithful records of experiences actually lived and conclusions or beliefs actually held as the substance of experiences in life. No mythologies and no traditions and no Puranas. Churn out the best nectar from that invaluable inheritance, but make that stale food afresh with re-heating and adding the present day spices. Above everything, although that is much deplorable, lodge your appeal to the self-seeking and self-serving of the modern man. Establish a strong control over the sources and centers of evil influence and vice, like co-education, erotic-picture, race-course, speculation, etc.

101. Celibacy, self-control, and sacrifice are the generators of the creative nutritive and evil-destroying energies respectively, of each individual that goes to make a nation. All attempts to train a centuries-old nation on new materialistic and unnatural lines are bound to fail. You can neither imbibe the new western civilization nor retain the Aryan civilization. And that we see most deplorably in the modern average man today. He has all the vices of the West and no virtue, and his eastern virtue is already dead and gone. We may follow the West regarding its politics, trading and military methods and policies, but morality, education, home-life, society, and religiosity must be remodeled on the ancestral Hinduistic basis.

102. It is a pity, some of even the greatest men, (with no soft corner for religion), have not realized that it was Religion that came to the Hindus' help, even in the matter of our political freedom, through Ramdass Swami, the Guru of Shivaji Maharaj. Even in the case of the present Independence that India now enjoys, it was not some politician like a Churchill who brought it. The country's Saviour was a Mahatma and a religious saint. Just dispossess yourself from the most familiar and therefore the least thought-of and the least meaningful things, and you will begin to laugh, what has the national fight for Independence to do with fasts, prayers, hymns and Narsingh Mehta's definition of a Vaishnava Jana? Some people do understand this truth in their heart of hearts, but they love merely the fruits of religiosity, and those fruits must fall in their hands and mouths without their having the slightest labor, exertion, expense, inconveniences, discomfort, service or sacrifices.

103. If any religious leader wants to see a better type of society, children boys and girls, but more especially the latter, should be required to be trained in religious ideas and ideals from a very young age, in a regular schooling method.

104. Ideas and ideals and beliefs to take a permanent set in minds would be required to be sweetly ingrained and injected at the tender most age of the head and heart through certain set-up preaching and customs which would establish permanent repetitions of a huge periodical wave, and through certain constant flows and certain permanent sets of certain ideals. The ideal set forth in the Kumari Kavach was that of the most disciplined Mai worship as if Mai temples were regular schools on Tuesdays by Kumaris in presence of their parents, teachers, and conductors of worship. The Mai worship itself would take a very small, almost negligible time, but the actual training imparted as in a school would be the man most purpose. The untaxing easy playful free and frolicsome way of teaching would be that in the shape of readings of useful practical instructions and lessons for virtuous religious and moral living, by each one of the Kumaris present, turn by turn and under the blessings and sanctity of the parents and Mai.

105. The Founder often states that religious men must begin to appreciate such a standing custom of Kumari worship. Today such a practice may look ridiculous. Once it is started and brought into full swing, it would be appreciated as an indispensable moral necessity and the institute will have the reputation of a training ground. Just create for yourself the mood and then imagine before you a vast meeting of girls from eight to eighteen reading prayers, teaching highest practical life-truths and being blessed by a huge congregation of all mothers and fathers in the presence of the most Merciful Divine Mother Mai. If an institute of that type can be brought into existence, what a tremendous lifting work that institute would be doing, cannot be imagined. All new things are first ridiculed and then considered indispensable by virtue of their benefits. 

106. What is a home today but a free hostel without the superintendent, to the young boys and girls? What is a mother but an old cook and responsible maid-servant? What is a father except a money-providing platform ticket machine to be pulled whenever liked? Where is love, respect, gratitude, obedience, honest innocent pride and all the tenderness due to ancestry, parents, parentage, and home? Where do we find boys and girls sitting by the side of their parents and getting practical instruction and wisdom? No humility before parents; from them, only their wants, serving them, nursing them, and to be taking them out of difficulties. Parents are kept strictly forbidden to be advising them and are most impudently treated and neglected whenever they contradict or obstruct while the boys or girls are carrying out their own whims and wishes into action. The new world is being trained up and bred up in rebelliousness, in every phase of life.

107. For Indians and Hindus, their very backbone is Religion. All the best that is sought for has to come through religiosity. Before we had Swarajya, vast crowds were dancing and clapping their hands with " Raghupati Raghao Rajaram " and Rama Rajya was promised. It was no farce. It was no national cheating. The nation was electrified and spiritualized to be put to its highest possible mettle for its highest sacrifice, through Religion alone. Political powers had no allurement for the nation that had already passed through the experience of " no happiness " through material civilization. Only Religion can touch, move and stir up the nation's innermost chord and that work was so admirably and wonderfully done. The most horrible and deplorable blunder, which even some of the greatest non-religious men have committed, is that they have identified religion with whatever they saw in persons labeled as religious. They have never cared to study religion in a first-hand-direct manner, without prejudice and preconceived ideas, and have never valued religion in its abstract efficacy with the touch-stones of the fundamental valuable truths that religion alone can install. On the top of everything, they have never spent sufficient time with the constructive mind of remaking and reforming it with some unsuitabilities. Mending matters and trying one's best to see if such a valuable inheritance can be made useful by a little change, has never been a matter of anxiety for even the very custodians of Religion. What the, of others? We have no idea of the religious greatness as a tremendous centuries-old divine supernatural force,- quite a different thing from the worldly forces of money, intellect, militarism and physical brutality. Even the greatest thinking non-religious or half-religious persons have thrown away their best silken coats simply because a mosquito therein was found to be stinging while wearing. They never once thought of removing the mosquito and never thought twice before discarding, condemning and throwing away their costliest coats. Who and what made that grandest man of his age, (our Mahatmaji) to be what he was? Was it not religion? Was it not the precept of Satya and Ahimsa? Was it not the Puranas' teaching the lives of Harishchandra and Shrawan? To whom was he indebted for what he made himself to be? Our rotten and ungrateful mentality is that we love mangoes but hate mango trees,- planting them, gardening, fencing, etc. !! What can be more suicidal than this sort of thinking, believing and acting? for any nation?? 

108. Reverting to the matter in hand, the most important and exhaustive work of the Founder was " Mother and Mother's Thousand Names " covering over 750 pages, in two volumes. That is the standard work which mostly includes all that is of importance in " God as Mother " and " Theory and Principles of Mother's Lodge". Those former ones were printed and published in 1940-1941. Next came " Mai Sahasranam with Mai-prayers " and " Mai Guru Ananya Bhakti ", in Hindi. Then came forth English " Mother's Message ", Gujerati " Mai-Sandesh ", and also a Tamil translation of the same booklet (Thai-Myi Vazhi).

109. The MAI SAHASRANAMA two volumes are believed to have been dictated to the Founder by Mother Herself as stated even by high-class religious persons and authorities on Hindu religion, such as Rev. Ananta Krishna Shastry, commentator, and writer of so many religious books.

110. These volumes have the further wonderfulness of giving correct guidance to persons who repeat Mai Sahasranam. Just before the Founder began writing, on Friday, 17-3-1950, a devotee asked Mother to relieve him of his financial difficulties and he had a funny answer on opening the volume (after nine repetitions of Jay Mai Jay Markand Mai), which ran thus on page 56 on Vol.2, part. III. The questioner was shuddered at the reply which was an eye-opener. " People living on much higher standards than what their legitimate earnings and means permit, at the cost of others, by deception, borrowing, stealing, etc., need a rod."

    How true this is for so many of us constantly complaining of money-shortage, which never disappears, because by the time modern men are favored with 40 percent of increase in their earning, they with their family wife and children have jumped from their existing standard of comforts to almost double the standard !!!

111. Once the Founder himself was in an extremely depressed mood. He was pressing Mother to give him some proof, let it be distant-most. His heart agitation was " whether there is any meaning-fulness on my being madly after Mother's work when not even a crow cared to be looking at Mother or him, whether at least She Herself was pleased or not, let the world alone."

    He concentrated and opened Mai book for an answer. It was page 114 part IV, Mai's name Adrishya (Invisible). The comment under the name ended with this:

    " Maiyaa Maiyaa Maiyaa Karake Aapahee Maiyaa Ho gaye" (Repeating Mother Mother Mother, he himself became Mother).

    The Founder's whole depression turned into a hearty loud laughter. He said to Mother: Who else will praise a deformed and deficient son, except his own Mother !!!

    The answer clearly meant: Mother and Mother's ways are invisible and incomprehensible. Further that the final result of all the lifelong work of devotees is a little something of the permanent improvement of the world or individuals, but a great deal of the absorption of devotees themselves in their Beloved Mother, God or any Deity.

112. The next shift after Ahmedabad was to Bombay (Santa Cruz). Bro. Parixit Raiji (the President of the Mother's Lodge subsequently) was thinking of a change of service from Bombay to Ahmedabad. He was the son-in-law of the said Rev: Kaushikram Mehta. He had come to receive the Founder and to take him from the station to his home, on his way to Poona.

    On the station, Bro. Raiji spoke to the Founder about the instability of his service in Bombay and a chance of a bit better pay at Ahmedabad. The Founder asked him what he actually wished. Did he like Bombay life or Ahmedabad life? The founder said, "If you like Bombay life, Mother will see that you prosper and have not to leave Bombay, on one condition, viz., that you will start Mother's Lodge at your place and conduct Friday worship as at Ahmedabad". Brother Raiji agreed and the Founder installed Mai in his bungalow at Santa Cruz on Tagore Road. Brother Raiji was quite well off in a very short time; this was 1936. The Founder used to come over from Poona to Bombay almost every month, to popularise Mai-ism.

113. Bombay was the first place where the Founder saw what royal hospitality on the grounds of the high religiosity for an unlabelled man, not in robes with a tonsured head, meant. Bombay people were the first who had in their considerations the idea of a duty to make some return in some shape or some wear and tear, towards the relief of the Founder's financial strain for Mai work, in view of their religious and material benefits received from the Founder. He was given the religious status he had erelong deserved in all religious matters. His future arrival in Bombay would be announced at the previous Friday meeting, on receiving Founder's telegrams from Poona. The worship conducted here was on a gaudy, grand and magnanimous scale. People came to worship Mai from distant suburbs and an audience of 250 persons was not an unusual thing. Attendants mostly consisted of the higher middle-class gentry, solicitors, doctors, officers, etc. Prasad was distributed in dry-leaf-cups which were counted before and after the meeting, to note the attendance. People of all communities attended these worships. The worship meant three programmes. 1. Bhajan, 2. Arti, 3. The repetition of Mai Sahasranama Patha. The function took more than three hours from 9 p.m. onwards. During other hours daily the Founder would be helping the visitors with patient hearing and administering righteous practical advice, solving difficulties, removing religious misunderstandings, and initiating desirous and deserved persons into the methods of Mai devotion, and Mai Sadhana.

114. Once the Founder was invited at Navaratra big celebration in Vile-Parle. Somehow, it rained heavily and continuously. The celebrator had a great devotional respect fro the Founder whom he took to the place on the last day with his party. The celebrator had his greatest sorrow, as due to rains, the sacrificial altar worship and everything were interrupted and had to be left uncompleted. He was very sorry that his undertaking at a heavy cost and labor had not happily and satisfactorily ended. Said the Founder: "Don't be sorry at all. In these days, who is devotional enough to even utter the name of God? Mother must remain satisfied with whatever is possible being done while exerting one's best. If She does not, even that much will be done by none and the final remnants of God and Religion will also disappear and will be obliterated." The celebrator modestly said, " These are only conventional sweet words. They do not give any assurance or satisfaction."

115. The Founder stared at him " Do you want really an assurance? Are you really so sorrowfully wounded?" The celebrator said with great humility, "I am really sorrowful and thinking nothing for the last three days, except that I could not complete this sacrifice due to profuse rains. I am doing this every year, and I am afraid this means I have lost all Mai Grace."

116. The Founder was in high spirits and said, "No! No! No! No!!!! Don't judge the mercifulness of Mother by our mortal standards; and, were you at fault in the matter that there was profuse raining?" The celebrator sweetly smiled, "No. But, is Mother so very merciful?"

117. Said the Founder, "Yes, Only thing is our sincerity, faith, and intensity is almost nil. If that is genuine and highest, are there not instances of Mother Herself appearing from the sacrificial altar?"

118. Just when he was talking, he stopped abruptly, got up and bent near the altar and prayed in loud words. " Mother? who will be Thy devotee if Thou dost not give encouragement and proof of Thy Mercy in this Kaliyug at every step of Thy devotees? See, here is Thy devotee; he is out-and-out depressed. The world smashes us and Thou also dost not take any heed. Does it befit Thee? Does it befit the Divine Mother, the Most Merciful Mai?!!!"

119. No sooner were these words addressed, than there was a blaze of fire as high as about seven feet above the altar and that remained there for about 10 to 12 minutes till the Arti was finished with Stotras, Hymns, etc.

120. All present there went to the highest point of humility with a saturation of the idea of their nothingness. Wherefrom came this blaze from an altar which was entirely wet, watery and empty? All were stunned and assured of Mother's existence and Mercy and of the Founder's relations of a "Son-to-Mother", whose request and prayer (even though of a scolding and bitter nature) She would not and did not fail to grant.

121. This miracle-incident spread all over Bombay, as there were not less than about 50 persons present there.

122. One great point about the Founder and Mai-ism is that most of the persons who have been appreciating and accepting Mai-ism were in personal touch with the Founder and had more or less some experience about the existence of God or Mother's grace on Her worship or Mantra repetition. The above-stated instance was a more developed variety of a similar experience at Ahmedabad. After the usual Friday Mother's Lodge worship was over, there had remained about 30 persons of the inner circle. Some of them strongly requested the Founder to show them some miraculous happening which would increase their faith regarding the existence of Mother and Her readiness to carry out the wishes of Her devotees. It was at that most sacred place that, a year before, the Founder was discoursing on Mother's names and dealing with the name "Suvasinyarchana Preeta"; and there was a strongly powerful breeze of the most fragrant smell. It was so very pleasant that every one began to ask others, "Do you feel the most pleasant fragrance?" "This is how Mai wants to assure us about Her love to Her son, and the truthfulness of what he preaches." The sermon by the Founder stopped awhile. Just then, some ladies who had gone to some marriage parties had joined. Some one got a suspicion if it was not those ladies that brought with them this wonderful smell through strong scents from there. The inquiry was made of them and the suspicion was found to be baseless and imaginary. This former experience being talked over again gave a strength to the desire of all present there, to make the request more pressing. The Founder asked; "What do you want to see?". Some said, "We wish to see that Mother gives Her garland to you." The Founder prayed for a few minutes standing before Mother at a respectful distance. The garland gradually untied itself, flew in the air, and fell on the neck of the Founder.

123. All were thunderstruck, because a mere belief is, after all, an imaginary thing; what people actually see with their own eyes is most convincing. Some began to applaud the event and stated, "Till now we had only heard and read that Lord Bhagavan Krishna Prabhu had given garland to his great devotee Bhakta Narsi Mehta in a closed room, but here we saw Mai giving garland to Mai-Markand just before our very eyes."

124. The Founder does not give great importance to miracles but there is surely a stage when the miracles do the eye-opening work for many people who are really of an atheistic mentality, but who courteously and not honestly assent to the beliefs about the existence of the other world, or life after death, or invisible spirits, deities and God. Their assent is only mostly out of fear of being thrown out from society of God-believers and for so many other reasons. Saints do not count upon miracles to enlarge their influence, but these are casual happenings managed by the Deities themselves to enhance the value of their devotees so that, they be heard with love, faith, and sanctity, respect, and obedience. The Founder very humorously says, "How do miracles help you and me if you do not make a point of being of the deserving plane in the matter of your devotion, love, service, and surrender? I would show you actual Mai Herself, but you are the same person that you were before the Vision. You would be telling Mother, "We, I and my wife, are going to cinema. Please rock the cradle of this child and keep meals ready, when we return." " Where is the joyfulness, the ecstasy, the madness, the feeling of having been blessed? Where is even the readiness to lose only an atom of your selfishness and worldliness? You would be simply exploiting Mother and that too most discontentedly and ungratefully. " Mother do this and Mother do that", yourself doing nothing for Mother except babbling some few words of praise, a little trouble of twisting your tongue to cheat the world, yourself and the Guru hypocritically. Mother is afraid of you all. The height of ungratefulness is that you do not even talk about your gratitude or even of the experience to your husband, wife, children, friends or neighbors; not even to a sparrow, nor permit even walls to hear you. You bury the experience and gratitude, both, then and there. She prefers being neglected and ignored rather than be exploited and expedited and expelled after your need is served."

125. At Poona after retransfer in 1938, the Founder had at that time much greater contact with Madrasees especially of Military Arsenal at Kirkee. Madrasees showed a different variety. They were not so much for singing and bhajans but were more fond of intelligent scriptural authoritative religious discourses with a unique respectfulness and the attitude of a humble disciple before his Guru and grandeurful costly worships and Mantra repetitions and rendering most efficient and humble personal prostration and the service to the Founder. Prasad, flowers, and decoration of the place and of Mother's picture would be showing pains taken and expenses incurred. Plentiful feeding, though of simple commonplace diets and dishes, would be invariably there at the close of any Mother-worship function. The Founder has in his memory the one glorious instance of Mother-worship in Kirkee when not less than 20 thousand rose flowers and jasmines were dedicated to Mai and there was a huge congregation of over 500 persons sitting for worship, Arti and Patha repetitions. As everyone knows, Madras is the place for religion and religiosity. Madras-mentality is this, "If you go to God or Guru empty-handed, you return not only empty-handed but also empty-headed." Founder humorously says "Bhajan and Bhojan (Gana aur Khana) are no insignificant factors in Religion."

126. It was these Madrasees who had been very helpful to the Founder in writing down to his dictation, transcribing and rewriting and typing and correcting, etc., the manuscript of his two volumes of Mai Sahasranama.

127. For the latter half of the year of 1942, the Founder was serving in Bombay. This gave him a great opportunity to spread Mai-ism and to give convincing proofs to different people what miraculous benefits Mai's devotion and worship is capable of offering to our much needy and suffering world.

128. Here too, just as in the matter of miracles, people commit the same blunder. As Founder says, " People lose their barest commonsense as soon as they sit in judgment on matters of religion; even the most intelligent and wisest of them, sometimes. In fact, the mind gets more or less bewildered as in an unknown land when it begins to think about Religion."

129. Some people began to think that the Founder had no higher ideal than relieving the worldly miseries of persons who approached him and they hence censured him representing him as on a much lower level than even the average worldly men.

    The Founder says, "If you find a Governor addressing a huge meeting of Mahars in Maharwada giving some instruction as to how the houses should be kept clean, how to be giving education to their children, etc. would you commit the blunder of saying that the Governor is a Mahar and is a resident of Maharwada? No; even a boy of twelve will not commit such a foolish blunder. But, when people sit in judgment about religious matters and religious persons, they have absolutely no idea that the Principal of a college would sometimes take pleasure and be considering it a voluntary duty to be teaching a primary class in the simplest and the childlike manner of the primary school-children.

    It has been the centuries-old wrong notion and mentality to consider worldly-distress-relieving work to be a much inferior variety of religious work. The highest seat would be given to one who bombastically talks Gyana, Vedas, Geeta discourses and explains different Schools of various Beliefs, Darshans, and philosophies and makes astounding professional exhibitions. The next place would be given to the poor and humble Bhakta (devotee) who tries to serve the opium of devotion to create forgetfulness. The man who advises on practical-life-matters or helps or serves people in distress or helplessness is only some Mr. So and So, nothing more than a good and kind man. There are innumerable instances in Puranas, where Rishis and Munis have helped and served the world and people in their most mundane matters and have been all the more revered for their service and sacrifice, (Rishi Dadhichi for instance, who gave his bones). But somehow, since so many years, perhaps centuries, Service and Sacrifice have lost all religious recognition. Divine knowledge and devotion-talks and ceremonious functions and ritualistic performances, temple-going, pilgrimage-running. river-bathing, saints-crowding etc. have altogether ousted both public and private source and sacrifice. The bankruptcy of inner richness is tried to be made up by creating inflated values for external easily manageable actions. Stuff-less people are always extremely particular about handsome and costly dresses. Man-to-Man relationship, conduct, character and behaviour etc. have been thrown in the background, whereas talks of Man-to-God relationship, divine knowledge, and devotion, and scripture-prescribed-religious undertakings like Yajna, Homa, Sandhya, eating, bathing, not-touching, etc. have become, practically, items of highest importance, in the matter of the definition and summation of Religion and Religiosity (as understood now). It has been most convenient both for the Guru-world and the disciple-world, to keep their eyes constantly closed towards practical ways of living life and imperfections and defects thereof.

130. Once a city was overflooded and the river-water left its bank limits. So many lives were in danger. A circus manager and proprietor engaged not only his whole staff but also elephants. All worked day and night. The proprietor was giving detailed orders and instructions. It was a terribly tiring work. He saved so many lives and so much of merchandise. Naturally, he could keep up his sustaining heroic power only with alcohol. He was standing for hours together in the Sun, getting into waters. He had spread no pains. He had risked his life. What about the religious response and recognition? The Founder heard of his drunkenness and frequent drinking and his being condemned as a drunkard twenty times more than of his bravery, service, and sacrifice. That is how people understand Religion and how they have been taught Religion.

131. They cannot forgive him, his drinking, while he was saving lives after lives. Popular religion does not go beyond worshipping the Gadi-patis of religious rich temples, prostrating before Gyanis in fat-fed Ashrams, enjoying prasads, and hearing or talking about philosophical teachings of Atma-Paramatma-subtleties.

132. To have both, the spirit of service and sacrifice, and yet the complete observance of the religious requirements as understood by people is surely most commendable. That is what these idealists insist on. But if both don't go together, Service and Sacrifice should not go altogether unrecognised as nothing. Mai-ism wants such a misunderstood notion about Religion to go. There are two extremities. One of a religious class to whom drinking as in this case is more hideous and unforgivable, even when having to do such a gigantic and risky task. The other extremity is that of an entirely irreligious class. Mai-ism wants service to humanity being recognised as not simply a good and praiseworthy act, humanity but a fully religious act, as good as feeding Brahmins or performing a Laksha-Chandi. Here lies the difference of one type of religiosity and the other, and this is one of the main arguments mainly putforth by youngsters who have left religion, in their defence. It is not " everything same ", to call a certain act as, "merely good" and as " surely religious". The difference is this. In a religious act, God's-Grace-propitiation and return are guaranteed. The idea of voluntariness is aptly substituted by that of a religious duty. The difference is to them alone who want to modulate and regulate their lives as per beliefs requirements and notions stated to be religious or otherwise. Mai-ism most emphatically says that Selfless service with nothing-sparing sacrifice and without any expectation of even the faintest recognition, is as religious and Mother-propitiating as Mother-worship, prasad-distribution, Mantra-repetition, etc., if not more. Who is dearer to you, if you are hungry, one who without a word prepares toilingly a dish for you and holds it before you? or one who sits in front of you reciting your praises up to the skies??

133. People lose their head and common sense when they think about religion and religious matters and religious persons. There are wrong judgments in Religious matters because mostly they are never untainted and without the contactual influence of some misunderstandings and some wrong notions and impressions. Beliefs, tendencies, likes, and dislikes play a predominating part in the matter of religion and religiosity.

    Unknownness, unfamiliarity, unapproachability, and mystic aloofness becomes an enchantment to some and a matter of dislike and disgust, to others. Richness, plentifulness, grandeur, impressive talks, unforgettable scenes and experiences, one's own nothingness-creating temporary atmosphere, Divinity-invoking silence, and solitude, retired peaceful quietude, suitability and congenial circumstances to forget the burning worries of worldliness and worldly life etc., create an imaginary heaven for some. For some others, a certain prevalent mood, or a certain unhappy mentality spoils the whole picture. All these factors by their presence or absence play an extremely important and invisible part, most unconsciously in all religious judgments. Religious effect is the cumulative result of hundreds of unknown notions and emotions. These factors or their reverse create certain once-for-all impressions prepossessions and prejudices, which form the basis of all subsequent outlook and usual angle in the case of each and every individual dealing with Religion and Religiosity. That is a hard working. Externally the extraordinariness of so many varieties of religious persons, their talks, thoughts, and ways of living, all drive thinkers' religious imagination to soar and fly in its limitless skies. So many subtle personal inherited and acquired factors of beliefs and disbeliefs, likes and dislikes, and infatuations, and disgusts rush in and most unconsciously and invisibly give their bold deep color; to the whole vision and to the subject-matter viewed and considered. After all, what prominently counts is one's own personal individuality and experience and one's stage of development and spiritual attainment. In a word, the working of the head, the heart, and their combination in the realm of religion is extremely complicated and perplexed and baffles best psychologists and logicians.

134. What can be the greater proof of this universal chaotic incapacity of judgment in religious matters (with few exceptions) than that the very same religious person with the same talk and way of living, thinking, feeling, and acting, appears to some as an Avatar, to some others as a maniac and to still some others as even a cheat?? The underlying Divine Truth is that Yudhisthir and Duryodhan could not find out one single wicked man, or one righteous man, respectively, from the vast assembly of all the highest men of all types of that time. Bigotry and ignorance also occlude their common vision.

    People mostly believe there can be no saintliness without certain externals and certain settled routine ways of external living and a stern unapproachability. Next to that wrong notion, is the greater blunder of believing, there is no other saint except the one whom a certain group family or person has accepted, at least none equal to the select. Common sense gets occluded and confused."

135. Whom to approach and with what mentality for one's spiritual progress is also a perplexing problem. The Founder has discussed this matter at length in Mai Saharanama  2nd  volume. Both the advantages, as a Pushpa Bhramar and a Kumud Bhramar (roaming in Saints and confining in one as Guru) should be secured and his advice is, "Revere and serve all saints; but be, in addition to revering and serving, loving obeying and sacrificing your full self in respect of your own Guru. Make a clear distinction of a saint and a Guru. It is foolish to be wandering from saints to saints like a rolling stone gathering no moss, without making someone as your Guru. But it is more foolish to be belittling all others except your own Guru.

136. Even in the matter of calling a particular saint as Guru, people must have insight enough to bear it in mind that the real "gurushishya" relationship does not merely mean a flying wish of some Tom Dick and Harry to call some Puri Anand or Bharti to be his Guru. There must be the initiation, the giving and taking of Mantra, and instructions and a particular programme and a continued personal contact through visits, letters, communications, mental telepathy, dreams, visions, etc.

    Reversing the position, where there is initiation-giving and taking of a Mantra and instruction and periodical programme and a continued personal contact through visits, letters, and communications, etc., the initiator is Guru, in the eyes of Almighty, whether the initiator and the initiated declare or accept the Guru-Shishya relationship or not. Non-acceptance of the Initiator, as one's Guru, after the selfish ends are served is the culmination-point of ungratefulness and is one of the highest sins, punishable with financial misfortune, repeated illness, and secret invisible rebelliousness at home in the family life.

137. To revert to the subject under consideration, it is not that Nishkama Bhakti, is not preached or held in higher reverence than Sakama Bhakti by the Founder. It would be simply foolish to conclude that way. The fact of facts is that the Founder has accepted "Stooping to conquer" like a mother "as She is really the mother that has no hesitation and takes no time to descend to the plane of her children when the latter are entirely disabled to climb up plane by plane to meet her."

138. This is what the Founder explains as " Practical spiritual diplomacy " in his comments under "Sarva Mantra Swarupini" on page 142, Mai Sahasranama  part II, Vol. I, which reads thus: "Mantras have their laudable uses when, 1. they serve magnetic healing or abating of diseases or for very general removal of miseries, 2. for ornamental grandeur, decency, poetry, sublimity, purification of place and mind, inviting a deity or seeking grace, or 3. as spiritual diplomacy. This diplomacy adopted especially by some few religious teachers is to pull out a disciple from the barbed-wire and mud-mire of worldliness by offering baits under the temptation of benefits, gradually introducing him to the higher world of God, Guru, Devotees, etc, (although through the disciple's selfish motive to start with) and making him ascend the spiritual ladder, rung after rung".

139. Some villagers have some strange notions about cities like Bombay; they think there is such a dearth of sons with rich men in Bombay that any outsider who is a bit brisk is immediately taken up as an adopted son and with that notion they act in a frantic sense when they step in Bombay. They are fondly hoping a large inheritance for just a little show of briskness, gentlemanliness, goodness, and intellect-(windfalls). Exactly so, even most educated and most religious and saints-familiar people have ridiculously strange notions, and a penny-heaven-buying mentality, regarding religion. They wind up their common sense and roam about leaving one saint after another in religious realms, aimlessly irresponsibly arguing illogically and acting insensibly, with extremely ridiculous and poor notions about the work labour and struggle, service and sacrifice, required to be gone through to rise by even the smallest height in true and solid religious development. If we ask any educated man about his opinion about a certain matter or a certain man, in the usual run of life, he would say, "He has not thought about it or has no personal experience"; but the very same man when he deals with religion not only forms his judgment about anything and everything and anyone and everyone without any basis but is extremely determined and desirous of making others accept his beliefs. He loses his balance as soon as he sees a contradiction; and, a failure of winning over the opponent not seldom leads him to be saturated with contempt for him. Since the world began, there is no subject of so much interest, so much talked over, and yet so much misunderstood, as Religion.

140. In a word, therefore, the Founder is of opinion that the preliminary grounding of the people entering religion is extremely poor in matter of the true understanding and the necessary requisites and that people immediately run to be trained in colleges before they have mastered their primer; and that creates the greatest chaos, misunderstanding inefficiency insincerity bitterness and finally the misleading idea of nothingness or a nonsensical humbug about religion. People demand and usurp the same place in religion, as they have in their most fortunate otherworldly positions. Political leaders are most aggressive and formidable in this respect. There is no systematization, no goal, no discipline, no definite procedure, no law, and no order for many of them that call and consider themselves as religious or whom people call religious. And earlier that anarchical situation is ought and worked out to be removed, the sooner will be the real solid progress in full commensuration with the sacrifice which people are surely making in the matter of attainment of true religiosity.

141. The substance of the Founder's mentality is this. God Guru and Religion are going down and down from day-to-day as selfishness, individualism, materialization agnosticism and atheism has been increasing by leaps and bounds. People want debates and proofs of sunrise and sunset. What they really want is " Khulja Sisam " relief from all their miseries and greater happiness of the type they conceive. Scripture's teachings, rules, and regulations have almost miserably failed. Let us then meet people on their own ground. Let Mohammed go to mountain. The Founder has very funny experiences how people can be brought round to a recognition of religious living on being shown their miseries can be and are removed by undertaking a certain religious process for the removal of a certain misery. When people get sickened about a religion because it is too old, and shut their doors, its external colors should be changed and it should be poured from the roof-sky-holes. That is what a Mother and a Mother's Religion alone would do, just as doctors manage artificial feeding through injections, etc.

142. Once the Founder was in the house of an atheist as a guest, in South. He was given a spacious room where he was conducting his worship in a corner. The landlord who was hospitable and courteous in every way, definitely said, he did not believe in religious things. Two days later, a pet son of the man fell dangerously ill. The boy surprise fully said to his parents, "I won't be cured unless you worship Mai, that has come to us and repeat hymns and Mantras which Baba dictates." Very strange and very ridiculous, the man who had so vehemently argued only two days before, explained the situation to the Founder. Said the Founder, "It does not matter you have no faith. Your son has his full faith, with the divine innocence of a child and that is more than enough. The Founder quoted an instance. "Once a Mahatma in a certain village suffering from no rains, decided to hold a prayer convening a congregation of all villagers. He had a look around and dismissed the meeting, asking only a small boy to join him in a prayer with him, two alone in solitude. The rain fell in big showers, on prayer. The boy had faith, he was the only one in the meeting, who had brought an umbrella. Others had no faith. One boy's faith was enough to move God to shower His Grace." "Do these things for the sake of the recovery of your son. We shall see at the end how long you are retaining your atheism." The boy began to be speedily cured and the whole family became changed in a matter of their outlook about Religion. Religion is now required to be exhibited from home to home, and man to man, with SERVICE as the practical remedy of all miseries. That is the Founder's stand, without the nonsense of the superiority and inferiority of the Nishkam and Sakaam Bhakti.

143. The Founder says: "Let there be any amount of atheism of discarding of God, religion, scriptures, etc.; so long as man has a body, he is sure to have physical suffering. So long as he has a heart, he is sure to have disquietude. So long as he has desires, he is sure to be in some pressing need. Where can the poor beggarly creature like man dependent on so many things escape? How long can he run away? Truly capacious religious preachers have to develop their giving-power, their misery-relieving desire and the world will remain in their fists with folded hands up to the last day of the "pralaya" of the world (dissolution). Be yourself really capacious of relieving the miseries of the world, not by tall-talks, appearances, paraphernalia, scriptural quotation, shouting tomtoms, etc., but by actually proving your capacity of relieving the sufferings of them that come to you. The whole world will be flocking around you, in temples or Ashrams. Except few blesseds, none wants God and religion but for their own self-interest. They do not love God. They love what God gives, money, wife, children, happiness, health, heaven, peace, bliss, etc. They are, in fact, loving not even those things, in the absolute sense. They are loving only themselves. We can't expect the world to be consisting of one and all on the highest plane of disinterested love and service with devotion and self-surrender. Let the animal-deity mixture with each one be only very gradually increased by truly religious persons to greater and greater strength of the Godliness-element. That is the only efficient way of dealing in Kaliyuga, with the new situation after our contact with the West.

144. Frowning, scolding, intimidating, and dismissing will not mend matters. Even isolating, which is the most efficacious remedy, is by now, extremely impracticable and difficult. The number of runaways increases and it is the religious schools that have finally to be closed. To be the master, one has first to serve as a servant. People have to be served in their own way. Create the feeling of gratitude and a confidence in you, your words and teachings by numerous precedents of your having helped them. It is sickening for any man to be constantly advised by mere sermons, without any practical solid help or service or sacrifice to enable the distressed to be relieved of a calamity.

145. People have no sense when they decry Sakama Bhakti as being a foreign thing to Religion. Even Geeta accepts the Arta and Artharthi Bhaktas in its shloka 16th of the 7th Discourse. Mai-ism admits all legitimate moral and harmless desires and their satisfaction, through Mai propitiation.

146. The Founder humorously says mankind and world have no direful demonish ancestral vengeance with God, Guru, and Religion. When the world is roaring with "There is nothing like God. Down with this humbug of religion," it only means not an absence of belief or a disbelief in God, but a disowning, a rebelliousness just as a wayward (and therefore always miserable) son says, he has no father. The only course left for the world is the intervention of Mother between the unrelenting father and the ever-rebellious son. This is for them that believe in both the Mother and Father. For a Mai-ist, Mother Herself is both Mother and Father. That is the only possible chance of a reconciliation or re-establishment of peace happiness and bliss. For Mai-ists who believe God himself as Mother, there is only one step, and not two, to climb. Whichever way you go, Motherhood of God is the only remedy left for the world especially in this Kaliyuga.

147. Says the Founder, "The bitterest atheism of a man is simply a strawlike thing which is blown away on turning the blast of a misery into a beatitude breeze by Mother's Grace. These are proved facts and not oratories. The Founder has seen most thinking educated people changing from the most vehement " No " to weeping and repentant " Yes ", within a few hours of the Mother's Grace-Showers."

    This changing from most vehement " No " to the most repentant " Yes " is unbelievably subtle. Few people realize that it is the She-monkey mind of man that sometimes raises him to the high palatial terrace and sometimes buries him in the deepest and darkest cellars of despondency. People have always heard but few have practised the secret of being an unconcerned and uninfluenced spectator. Few have learnt to laugh at their own contrasts, contradictions, and inconsistencies. Few have thought of what passes in their own mind and life, spiritually.

148. According as that mind is cheerful or sorrowful, the whole outlook changes. The whole sky gets bright or cloudy. People say at one moment: "There is nothing like Sun". The cloud disappears and the very same they, at the next moment, say: "The Sun is surely there." None of the two contradictory statements is necessarily a lie or a hypocrisy. People actually and honestly feel like that. Only thing is they have not risen to the height of seeing the game play of the mind itself as an introspective expert spectator. They are immediately carried away as their mind chooses.

149. When you are in trouble and disappointment, everything gets dark. When the miraculous  Grace showers, the whole view changes. Let me first talk about this point in a humorous light manner, applicable to most of us. A beggarly relative of a rich zamindar in Benares was invited to stay with him for eight months in two sessions in a year for almost the whole of his life. Every time he returned from the Zamindar's place, sometimes he would talk about him as "the most charitable and in every way a Godlike man", at other times he would call him "that beggarly fellow". What was his opinion about the man?? No opinion. It is only the royal or indifferent or poor treatment, that is the true giver of the opinion. It is none of his own opinion. Another instance. Just try if you like. "Catcha" poor brahmin, you being rich. If he comes to your place just when you are on your royal dish and he is hungry, ignore his hunger and palate but make him sit by your side and you go on praising all the dainties in your dish, which he has only to see. After your dinner, he remaining hungry, just ask him, "What do you think of the rich Shethias of this city? Imagine his answer. Half an hour later, let your wife call him in for dinner with every praise and reverence for his piety, every sweetness, and daughterly endearment, pressing him to take yet more, asking his opinion about each dainty, and let her, in the end, say "you took practically nothing, very little. You do come next-Sunday without fail, I will be waiting for you." Let her then now ask the same question. "How are the Shethanis of this city?" He will say "cuckoos that ever enlivened forests". More or less every one of us is like that claiming relative and that begging brahmin. We joyfully dance with praises and prayers, if, when and provided, Mother keeps us happy gay and jubilant. We don't want treatment meted out to us, to have anything to do with our work and doings. During a little calamity or a discomfort or worry, all cheerfulness, faith, belief, praise-word, everything evaporates and we deny the very existence of God. Few are disbelievers about the existence of God, in their heart of hearts. Fewer are the believers of God that are not His beggars, and our talks about and dealings with God are entirely dependent on how He keeps us. I am talking of the usual worldly men, however intelligent and good they may be. Their " no " is nothing worse than their " yes " and their " yes " is nothing better than their " No ".

150. Let us now turn to the serious side. Nothing is more thrilling and mystic, in the matter of the said change to " Yes ", than the vivid description about the Saint of Saints, Swamy Vivekanand. " Yes " must be seen in the wholesale change of the outlook, the very way you deal with the world, the life itself, leading you practically to a relinquishment of all worldly pleasures and possessions. " Yes, " to be a permanent " Yes " requires a huge sacrifice and an acid test.

    The first contact with the reality of life convinced Swami Vivekanand (then Narendra) that unselfish sympathy was a rarity in the world. There was no place in it for the weak, the poor, the destitute. The world often seemed to him to be the handiwork of the devil. One day, weary and footsore, he sat down in a Maidan. Some friend sang a song about the overflowing grace of God, perhaps to comfort him. It was like a blow on his head. He explained in bitter anguish and despondency "Please stop that song. Such fancies may be pleasing to those who are born with a silver spoon." He asked to himself, "Does God really hear the fervent prayer of man? Why is there so much woe in His benign kingdom??" He sometimes concluded God was a myth and if He did exist, to call upon Him was fruitless. If God did exist but was deaf to our prayers, it was a cowardice to believe in and to be obeying God merely through fear of hell.

    But notwithstanding these atheistic views, the vivid memories of divine VISIONS especially after his CONTACT with Paramahamsa led him to think, God must exist, and there must be some way to realize Him. Otherwise, life would be meaningless and that the way has to be found out, only in the very midst of all troubles and tribulations.

    One evening, suddenly he felt as if by some DIVINE POWER the coverings of his soul were being removed one after another. All his former doubts regarding the co-existence of divine justice and mercy, and the presence of misery in the Creation of a Blissful Providence were automatically solved. By a deep concentration, he found all meaning and was satisfied.

151. Let us dive deep. Do you think there were any new answers which Swamiji had not heard before? If it were something like that, Swamiji would have turned the whole world to be theistic with that magic wand of an intellectual response recipe. It is something much deeper- the very same arguments with which the ears have been so often deafened. But they have their moment. And that moment comes when the final most thing of Grace dawns. The very same arguments, today you will be satisfied with, but tomorrow you will say, "I was deluded." What is it then?? Two illustrative matters, I will say. Take the Surveying instrument box for instance; you may use the machine, do all your work, but while you set the instrument in, a simple imperfection of a smallest part's adjustment, will make it impossible to close the box. You are twisting some parts, raising some, lowering some. You are busy doing something which you yourself don't know. Only thing is, your desire that the box be closed, goes stronger and stronger. Something takes place. At some moment the box closes. It closes with a spring. You can't open it easily. None can dabble with it thenceforth without a key. You heave a sigh of relief. You can't say why it was not closing and why it closed. The only thing you know is that your worry is over and you have the fullest fixity. It was the intensity of your desire that brought forth by repeated trials (about the logic whereof, you know nothing) the perfection of the adjustment and the setting and the permanent closing of the box.

    The truest understanding about it is that your mind must cease to ask and raise questions. No answers will satisfy you. And your satisfaction can only be the result of your own intense-most desire and unceasing effort, to be satisfied, abandoning and forgetting all other things. That condition of yours pulls the grace-shower and your thirst is once for all allayed. No questions and no answers but the annihilation of the mind in the matter of the monkeyish-ness of asking questions, beyond all human-answering limits.

    Another matter of an illustration or rather an allied idea is this. The best physician may give you the most efficacious medicine, but if it does not remain in?? There comes the Divine Mother's Grace. Take my word, you know nothing about the working in spite of your highest boasts. At best they are mere surmises. My best advice is "go on trying medicines after medicines; the moment of Grace at length does arrive and you are saved."

    Three words in the above description about Swamiji are most important. Vision, Contact, and Divine Power and they combined, give the solution.

    Why should you be so very stubborn?? Why do you require God's existence to have been proved to you??, like a prince who would not shake himself from his seat till all the possible conveyances are announced to have been ready in waiting for him before you are prepared to do anything? Is there any man, even the king of kings, who had not had to do certain things although he did not will it?? We do so many things, about which we know nothing and about which there is no willingness, but on the other hand, there is a definite unwillingness. Look upon all your efforts and troubles in this direction with that eye and readiness. Does the newly married girl (not of today) go to her husband's parents so very willingly? She is actually weeping when she leaves her father's house, as she advances each step. Years after, she says to her father mother and brother "Do come over to my house". Follow the path which has made so many happy and successful in finding God. Leave all senseless foolish notions, none was born like you. Millions were there like you. Tie down all your doubts and difficulties and dislikes in a packet and hang the packet on a peg.

    Secure the CONTACT with a Saint. That requires no particular rare fitness. Serve him. Remain with him as much as you can. He will introduce you to the DIVINE POWER. That Power will give you VISION. Thereafter start the machinery of the mutual power raising through revolutions of " One's self, One's Guru, One's God. One's Guru, One's Self," ad infinitum.

    If in spite of such repeated simplest instructions, you are hesitating, it only means you are merely a talker. You have no urge. You are yet too immature. Satisfaction has come to so many, and it must come to you sooner or later; only a question of time.

152. Carry relief to the world and the world is yours. It will join you in the praise of Almighty. God is not hungry of your praises. Praising is a part of the remedies to help yourself for your own good. Study the situation most minutely, meditate deeply, and you will come to no other conclusion than that the present world of the heaviest tragedy needs The Most Merciful Mother, that does not weigh the world's action, but forbears, forgives, and forgets and relieves the world's miseries out of a magnanimity of Her Ownself without a word of even recognition. And, that is Mai-ism, the propitiation of God as Mother, with love service devotion and unconditional cheerful self-surrender.

153. The Founder's views on this matter are of the nature that can be seen from the following. He was once a famine supervisor in Baroda State. There was a laid-down standard of the quantity of excavation and the daily wage in proportion to the work. The maximum rate was 4 annas a day which would help to just keep the body and soul together. After his appointment, he soon saw in about a week's time that more than 80% could not be entitled to minimum-meal wages. By starvation, the coolies became weaker and weaker and doing still less work. The vicious circle started. He was moved with pity. He became extremely liberal in his measurements and saw that everyone got the minimum so as not to starve. The shortage of work of 3000 persons was gradually increasing; he hoped it will be made up, but that day never came. A complaint had already reached the head office that he was too liberal and it was ordered that a sub-engineer should give a surprise visit and check measurements and the total amount paid. The Founder had handled over his fate in the hands of dearest Mother, after profound sorrow on hearing the report.

    During this period of this suspense, His Highness visited the place. The technicalities of the work were inspected (not the finance). His Highness was quite pleased, but the Founder was trembling within his heart; "all this satisfaction will disappear on sub-engineer's report." But there was Mother at his beck and call, ever protecting him. Three days later, Her Highness came over. She expressed great satisfaction at the healthy glow joyfulness and the minimum number of deaths and illness, etc. in the Founder's famine relief camp. She called him at her royal tents. This was the conversation. Her Highness said, "I find your famine work arrangement has shown the best condition of preservation in the whole of the State. What do you wish me to do for you?". "I propose distributing clothes to all your work people". The Founder said, "They will be praying for God's blessings on your Highness more and more for the bounty. They are already more than grateful for their very lives being saved." The queen saw there was some deep meaning. She abruptly said, in fewest majestic words "Be plain." The founder said, "I have been very liberal, too liberal, in measurements." "That ought to be, is it not? The object in view is to see that poor people survive." Her Highness guessed more than half things, on looking deep into the Founder's face.

    The chief engineer then, all of a sudden, came over to the queen, to pay his respects, with the executive engineer. The queen simply laughed, while interviewing them and said, "I was just talking to your supervisor; he told me he was very liberal in measurements. I said to him that he ought to be, for the object in view for which famine works have been started." When was the executive engineer to have another chance like this? He picked up the opportunity, "Your Highness, I have been constantly visiting the work and I have found him working best and I have already strongly reported recommending him to our chief Engineer Saheb here." The Chief Engineer took not a second to shake his head with an artificial smile as if to convey he had received the report and had already issues orders which had promoted him. Said the kind-hearted queen, "That is the way of the best officers and departmental heads. No Head of a department could be happy without a truly contented staff and no discontented servant would be efficiently working," etc. Needless to say, the Executive Engineer sent a memo to the sub-engineer to cancel the inspection and the checking of measurements. Mother saved the Founder. " Be serving Mother's children. Mother is at your beck and call".

    His Highness would be seeing " efficiency ". Her Highness would be seeing the preservation and the well-feeding of the subjects. That is the difference of God as Father, and God as Mother. What does it matter on the whole, if out of 100 of the religious code rules only 10 are strictly observed? If men are for religion, is not the religion for men as well?? Is not preservation of the religion a more vital issue than the strictest adherence to Law's orders and the things stated in the Scriptures? and laid down centuries before?? 

154. If saints and most illustrious God-beloved souls and sons leave their mountain-caves, river-banks and sea-costs and living-in-aloofness, if they condescend to just be in midst of the people entrusted to their care, study them, try to find out solution for their burning questions and insurmountable difficulties, pity their weakness and guide them in every step and make people stronger and stronger in religiosity, the task will be more successfully satisfactorily and happily done. Take up yourself a major part of ignorant unhappy children's responsibility, while doing your best to make up the shortage below the normal standards. Mix freely and be one of them. Familiarity will, I admit, bring contempt, at least a devaluation. None would be awe-inspired of you. None will give you big names. You may be even considered below the average, and even mad. But what of that? You will be doing much more solid work and make a handsome return of what the world has done for you, in so many ways, giving you the very inheritance of religiosity itself which has enabled you to be what you are now (The Superman). Don't forget. Your physical needs are supplied by the world itself. All things said and done, there is above you the highest Queen Shree Maharani Mother Mai; to bless you for your troubles and give you an unimaginable lift in your efforts towards salvation if at all it (Jiven-Mukti) has remained unattained. What does it matter?, if a saint's salvation is delayed by some few lives because he has been engaged in the noblest and loftiest work of discharging his debt to the world before he gets into God's plane and gives his final goodbye to the world??

155. The latter half of 1942 which the Founder passed at Bombay was greatly useful in the matter of the spread of Mai-ism. Shri Swamiji Asimanand having heard about it came over there and gave a thrilling discourse on the greatness of Mother and principles of Mai-ism. Here the spiritual powers of the Founder were getting more exhibited. Some innocent girl, turned away by her husband and husband’s parents, was received honorably and lovingly in the house. A radio songstress that was ill of typhoid with all the hopes lost, was most speedily cured. One of the devotees got a miraculous lift from the post of Rs. 250 to be an officer as a head with a trebled pay. A lady who had lost her husband and whom she had loved most dearly all her life and who was on the verge of turning lunatic or committing suicide was gradually brought to the normal quietude. An officer who had been degraded for over two years was restored to his former post. So many things were there, which not only benefitted people but gave a convincing proof about the highest efficiency of Mother’s Mercy on devotion and straight-living and gave a complete idea about what the Founder Mai Markand was to Mai. It is a folly, not to immediately grasp the truth, that the last thing is an indispensable practical requirement for the spread of what the Founder has to leave as Mother’s Message.

156. People began to understand him about what he preached as the last panacea and the drowning man's last steel-straw. Mai-ism led many young people that never cared to know about God or Religion and who had a contempt for religion for reasons known generally to all, to realize its importance. They were brought in direct connection with Religion, as Mai-ism is religion mainly of service and Sadhana. The thickest veil for so many was torn asunder. Of course, it was only the first step. Some people did remain selfish and soon forgetful and loose after the calamity disappeared, but then they were raised from the state of total blankness to the stage of periodical devotion under calamities.

    Some few did rise to permanent devotion and even to Nishkama Bhakti. Being trained to school-going is in itself not a small satisfactory thing for ignorant, world-dipped wayward and rebellious children of Mother, whom She was pleased to bring on the proper path. Sakama Bhakti or Nishkama Bhakti, the highest achievement was the training and raising of the mind to relishfulness in religious matters from the rotten sense-pleasures.

    The Founder is burningly anxious to see that not only the world but the religious teachers and even saints themselves, set a highly religious value to service and sacrifice. Infuse the spirit amongst people to serve and sacrifice for one another in the very common most daily routine life. Pull them up in devotion even though they be approaching you for some desired objects. Let all discouraging and destructive notions go. Let there be no belittling of their religious enthusiasm and progress, with the mischievous hypocrisy of Nishkama Bhakti. In the matter of being moved to pity and running to help or to save others, don't bring in your cold heartlessness under the sheltering pretext of the Prarabdha theory of everyone suffering because of one's past bad Karmas. Don't be indulging in the cruel indifferent attitude with the sophistry of not dabbling with the Divine Law of human suffering.

    The mentality of pleasing the talkers and talks of Divine knowledge, and the dancing and dancers under the name of devotion, as hundred planes higher above that of service and sacrifice, should be buried deep. We have entered a new age of new circumstances, where almost every one of the new world has to pass through the trouble of the new triple fires. The new situation requires that the practical action of service and sacrifice be reckoned at a much higher value than the dry Divine knowledge talks or barren fruitless effusions of devotion.

    The most illuminated head and the most developed noblest heart have their worth and utility, only if the body is sound healthy and undiseased. Service and sacrifice are the hands and feet with which the body works and on which the body stands.

    For heaven's sake, don't create annoyance by saying service and sacrifice have been already given a high religious value. Don't evade the issue by saying, "We have never said service and sacrifice are bad things." What is wanted is a positive preaching with every emphasis, temporarily throwing all other better things of religion. Don't escape by laying the blame on the shoulders of the people themselves. Repeatedly hammer them with the scriptural quotations, which state, nothing can be achieved without Tyaga (sacrifice). Open their eyes with your emphatic assertions that without the solidity of service and sacrifice, they are not practising, but merely playing with Religion. Don't narrow down the loftiest word of Tyaga (sacrifice) to mean Home-Relinquishment or some such extremely astounding action alone. One can practise Tyaga and make sacrifice for another in the smallest manner, as well.

    The true understanding is that one who cannot make a sacrifice in smallest matters is simply bluffing when he talks of big sacrifices.

    Begin yourself giving and creating high values to persons that render service and make sacrifice for public, mankind, and individuals even in small worldly matters. You yourself start to set up precedents by coming down to the common men's plane, for teaching people to serve others even in ordinary distress and helplessness. The world that has reverence for you will begin to walk in your footsteps. The world is what its highest people make it. Teach your religion with service and sacrifice as its very first alpha and beta. Mai-ism says there can be no religiosity without selflessness and there can be no selflessness without Love. There can be no Love unless you begin and have constantly before your mind that you please God as Mother by loving and serving and sacrificing for Mother's children. The said truth can never be permanently set up in your heart so long as the truth is not replenished with the strength of a religious commandment.

    The Founder is not looking for any immediate success and result. He is passionately fond of recording religious experiences, and conclusions. He is working not only for some few people in this age but for ages to come- Possibly if records survive. There is a time for everything. If there is none, nothing is lost. What could even otherwise have been a better use of his life?? At least he is pleasing his Mother. Religious matters have very long periods of waitings for results, in terms of centuries and halves and quarters, but nothing lesser. This one Idea is constantly before him. Let him and his work be a big cipher, but he is in the line and a fish of those waters. These questions have to be viewed universally, and one has just to see, how the world fails to profit by its saints, during their lifetime. How difficult has it been to establish the Shishya-Parampara, continued lineage- the relationship of the Masters and disciples?? Let the new and modern world have then the modern ways of learning through records books of teachings and experiences.

    In the first place, the life of a saint is often very short. Even the longest life is really too short for the work any saint can do. So many years pass away before he has any confidence in himself. Still more years for him to have a conviction that he has something to give to the world. Still, some more years for him to be determined to undertake giving. Yet still more years to lapse before he is freed from his worldly duties and bondages. After that he is himself ready, some decades pass away before the deep-sleep-indulged world begins to know him and look at him. Yet some more years to overcome oppositions, harassments, and accusations (usually by the nearest people).

    In the end, as Founder has observed most sorrowfully, by the time a saint is in a position to open his mouth as a recognised teacher to pour out his heart and multiply his soul, and by the time people decide to hear him, understand him, study him, follow him, and imitate him, there comes up the most deplorable moment of his being called away.

    Regarding which true saint, the world has not most repentingly said, shedding hot tears, "The world would have been immensely benefitted if he had lived at least some ten years more!!?"

    The world bewails and curses the cruelty of Death in snatching away a saint, but it has never once introspectively thought and said "We are sleeping too snoringly, "over our saints." Whoever can give something however little, let him not leave the world without giving in person or on paper.

    "The world leaves the living and decorates the dead" as was stated in a composition composed and sung by a Mai-ist devotee in one of the meetings when in a large congregation the Founder was conducting the worship of His beloved Divine Most Merciful Mother.

Jay Mai Jay Markand Mai