PROLOGUE
This writing was commenced on Mother's Day, Friday, the 6th day of Chaitra Navaratra, 24th March 1950, after communion with Mother, by the Founder, and for the specific purpose of Her Glorification. It is a passing picture of certain events, facts, and experiences, without the garmentation of exquisite emotions of poetic pleasant pedantry, scriptural quotations or philosophical controversies or religious technicalities. It is just a recapitulation, practical and brief, of a portion of what the Founder had gone through, in the relationship with His Mother "MAI"- Mother and Mother's work of Mai-ism-spreading. During the writing, as also during the printing stages, there has been all along an implied sincere prayer, that Mother be pleased to confer Her choicest spiritual and temporal blessings and benefits on them that go through the contents of this book, with a religious faith and reverence, and those that are moved with an ardent desire to live their life as far as possible in full rhyming with whatever they find acceptable, useful and elevating in this Book.
To start with, this compilation is only a matter between the Founder and the Mother, was intended to be merely a scribbling or jotting down of a few pages, without any idea at the beginning about its publication in this form. Soon however thereafter, the idea of a simple remembrance of what had passed between both, developed itself to that of making, as it were, a triple-quinquennium-report of the "Mai-movement", which had a standing of nearly 18 years then (i.e. since 2nd September 1932 when the installation of MAI took place). The idea of a "Report" meant a relaxation of the requirement of strict privacy, as it surely meant a reading thereof by all those that were sincerely interested.
The fish in the ocean began growing up larger and larger, by leaps and bounds. General worldly experiences, opinions, suggestions, primary and advanced teachings of all shades etc., made their way, gradually and stealthily, as intruders, in the selected solitary small place, meant for prayer, worship, meditation, and communion. Finally, the idea forced itself on me (the undersigned is the writer and is the very same person referred to throughout the book in the first person as "I", with "me", "my" etc., and also in the third person as "the Founder") that at least I should get my "tirade" typed and kept as a record.
Thanks to certain friends and devotees at Madras, who undertook the work, as a religious service, practically at no cost and with a rapid speed. The typing work went on at Madras simultaneously with my writing at "Mai-Nivas," Santa Cruz, Bombay. On 23rg December 1950 (the Founder's birth-date), he had (in other words, I had) the full-fledged typed volume in the form of a book of 12 chapters and 575 pages of foolscap-size-paper typed matter. Till then, there was no idea of "publication". I had continued writing the book for Mother and myself, and just for a record, in case someone, in the future years, by some chance, misses his way from a mere money-making or pleasure-hunting-life, and with a leisure and curiosity, makes a peeping enquiry about "What is this Mai-ism, what does it mean, and what does it teach, and what are its opinions, beliefs and tenets."
The "Neither-here-nor-there"- nature and "Take-things-as-they-come"- attitude, in this writing, is sure to be immediately perceptible to any intelligent reader. The reader will so often find in the same page, in the same paragraph, sometimes even in the next sentence and so on, expressions such as "the Founder says", as also "I", "me" and "mine". As already stated, they refer to the writer, the undersigned, who is himself "the Founder" of "MAI-ISM", and who is also the author of this book. There is no observance of any rigid or particular principle behind the one expression or the other. It is only as the pen and the mood, fancied from time to time, or in what may be called "language of devotion", just as Mother was dictating. The whole writing has been done after communion, and while sitting before Mother, day after day, during the calm and quiet night-hours. "Dictation" is only a poor word, as the person dictated to has his own full consciousness and some discretion. This writing has been the petrol-pouring from the pump to the motor-tank through a mere unclean corroded and leaky hose-pipe.
It is supposed that the readers have at least some religious experience and religious sense to understand the various expressions, and the required religious spirit and visual angle, with reference to the contents of this book. It is presumed that they have, in addition, serenity enough, not to leave their high plane during reading, to raise worldly-minded two-penny-worth silly questions of a dry, learned or literary critic.
The greatest idiotic blunder, that I am very much afraid of, and I am extremely nervous about, is that some of even the most broad-minded readers would likely slip into the error of thinking that the Founder has no great love or reverence for Hinduism, and for Hindu saints, because he is not for pampering and sky-raising. If I say "don't be sleeping and snoring, but unite, set up the strongest religious iron machinery, the enemy is dashing against and is breaking open your doors", fools (and I have found sometimes that the wisest men have been fools in this respect) are offended with my "imputation" (?), but they are unable to realise the burning-ness of my love for Hindus and Hinduism. I have simply to pity them for their blindness of religious self-pride and incapacity to realize the simplest truth, viz., that he is the best friend, nay, even a savior, who speaks about the forth-coming calamity and who forewarns. I can only tell them one thing. Study me personally by contact, to know me really and well in the matter of my love and reverence to Hinduism and Hindu Saints.
The subject of religion is so very vast, and all-pervading like the atmosphere enveloping us, and yet so very subtle, that it is hard to set up limits of relevancies and chronologies, etc., or to secure a strictly logical sequential order and arrangement. There are many paragraphs and sentences which were inserted and were sometimes amplified during the later stages while the typed matter was received and read, and in a few cases, also while the printing work was proceeding. The smallest seeming relevancy was considered enough to ascertain new places for insertion of the later ideas and thoughts.
As regards the language, style, grammar and literary expressions, English language has been used by the Founder merely as the widest medium of expression, although any English Scholar may find the language and style rather crude and wholly unsatisfactory.
The Founder is fond of writing at great length, and in involved and lengthy sentences, and of coining his own words, phrases and compound words for the purpose of expressing his ideas. He says "Language and words are only means to an end." He prefers prolixity to leave any chance whatsoever for the possibility of a misinterpretation in such a subtle and life-long-affecting important subject as "Religion" and self-illumination. Pronouns often mislead.
Readers of religious literature must be above worldly shallowness, with infinite patience, a general faith in Divine matters, and an approach and attitude of reverence and eagerness to assimilate whatever is valued, with a feeling of sanctity and gratitude. After all, religious writings are not novels, stories or histories or books of literature. Their greatness lies in that any page or chapter can be read with advantage, without any knowledge of the contents of the previous or the subsequent pages. A mango fruit sucked up either from the top, or the bottom, or the sides fills up one's mouth with the juice of the fruit.
Even while the book is in the Press, while I am writing these lines, my patent idea is that I am getting my writing printed, for the only main-most reason that Mother may not have to pull Her eyes to read it. It is not an unusual thing that all the most important appeals, petitions or memorials addressed to Emperors, Kings, Viceroys, Governors and Royal Highnesses, have to be or are in print. My own mind on the question of how the world would receive the book is extremely easy and ripples-less. Select what you (the reader) think best, reject that you are not interested in, or what you do not like; but, very subtly, succinctly and silently. As I have written this book principally for Mother and myself, no courtesies of thanks-givings to the helpers or apologies to the readers are required, and they are not indispensable.
Early in May 1951, at my native place Petlad (in Gujerat), a certain amount of money (as my wife's) due from a certain gentleman for over 39 years raised its head, to play its destined part of partly financing the publication. The gentleman who owned the money became fairly rich, on selling his fertile lands. To my greatest surprise, I received word from him. With an extremely high liberality, in an interview which lasted only 20 minutes, this gentleman asked me "how much should I pay". I said, "if you give me Rs.3500, that is my need of the moment, I will utilize that amount (which is a windfall to me) for the sacred cause of Religion in printing my last faddish production." Without a single word of higgle-haggle, he handed me over the cheque on the spot then and there.
I am not writing this book for them, whose outlook, in spite of an extremely keen intellect, has not matured itself to be truly religious. Where a devotional soul would be rolling on the ground in ecstasy, the worldly man will be ready to pounce, with a long list of questions. He calls them difficulties, with the usual religious hypocrisy, but sometimes he is carrying wounding bullets there under, though in a few cases, unconsciously. Goes the proverb, "A fool can ask a question, which forty wise men cannot answer." Some would be flared up or disgusted, on having to go through what they can neither realize nor imagine as a result of their inexperience nor even, by way of a courtesy, appreciate. In the absence of a subtle religious insight, they would be seeing only superfluities, repetitions and incongruities. Right approach and righteous attitude cannot be too much emphasized.
Most fortunate, and most unfortunate, are they (as goes the repeated history), that are nearest the centers of religiosity. Mother help them, Mother saves them and their victims!!
Who can imagine my joy and weeping in gratitude, on getting the substantial money-help, as aforesaid? Overnight in my terrace, while revelry and merrymaking of hundreds around a bride and a bridegroom were at its climax in the courtyard on the ground floor, the bridegroom's father was shedding hottest tears, and rolling on the ground in his solitary sacred place on the third floor. What did he care to know or think of (?), except his Mother, in the midst of all worldly joys and pleasures for all others around him?? The 5% lingering intention of publication rose to be 95%. There is not a single step in the spiritual ascension, which is without a temptation and a test, right up to the final salvation.
The Satan dropped his whisper: "have I any right over the money of my wife? Can I spend it on my fad?" (By the by, I have been always beset with the question "which devil is going to read or appreciate the book"). "Without the consent of my wife and children, in their already poor condition, have I any right to spend this money over my fad of printing and publishing this book?" Mother tests, Mother suggests, Mother strengthens, Mother plays; Mother blesses them all, whose money and labour and time go to such noblest religious purposes!!! Mother had, however, Her freaks. The cheque that I got was lost, in spite of care. I had lost the very consciousness that I had returned to Bombay "Mai-Nivas" with a cheque of what was no small amount for me. Mother pulled me up with every fright and anxiousness, for about a month until the intention of 95% rose to be a full cent per cent resolution. The cheque was stolen, and it was nothing but Mother's grace that I got cash on its duplicate before money was taken away on the lost cheque. I had quite a narrow escape. The mention of this event is neither for the irreligious nor for the rich man who ridicules poverty. Religious experience is the greatest of God's gifts. Eyes don't change so long as, as a result of God's and Guru's grace, Mother's mysteries do not reveal themselves to the average worldly people.
Madras again came forward, to help me out with regard to typing and printing work, as I had now a substantial sum enough to meet a great portion of the initial cost of printing. In July 1951, the printing work was commenced by the Hind Press Ltd., whose Directors and Staff is good and godly people. Were it not for the said Press, its Directors and its Staff, and the all along responsible care and work with worry of an extremely staunch Mai-devotee (an advocate in Madras) who all took up, so to say, the charge of the printing work, going through the proofs etc., this book would not have seen the light of day in September 1952, exactly 14 months since the printing work commenced. (In my experience, principally, Gujerat is for Commerce and Charity, Deccan is for Art and Learning and Madras is for Originality and high Religiosity). Those who handled the printing and proofs in Madras scrupulously avoided any correction of or alternation in my language of the writing- in their faith that the originality of "Mother's dictation" should be kept intact.
My great point of disappointment, when I place this book in the hands of the public and my beloved readers, is that few and fewest realize that I have to say something which is not the very same "ditto-ing" that has come down to us since centuries!!! Absolute Truths can never change, but other subsidiary things can be greatly improved with an immense advantage, from time to time. I am neither irreligious, nor, routinely religious, Being not "in the same boat", and "a bird of the very same feather," I have been all along most indifferently and most unsympathetically dealt with, by at least the routine-religious world, AS A FOREIGNER.
The gist of the whole Mai-istic teaching, in fewest words, is that our religious outlook is extremely narrow and that our preliminary religious grounding is extremely poor. Even the smallest Hindu child has heard everything about Religion. We have heard everything, understood nothing, exerted for a greater nothing, assimilated still greater nothing, and practised yet still greater nothing. Too much familiarity has only bred up contempt. We have suffered from overdoing externals and theories and neglecting (with belittling) the internals. We are more for theory and quantity than for practice and quality.
Our values for a man-to-man relationship, love, service, sacrifice, and morality, especially the business-morality, stand no proportion with our expressions of the same during religious talks, discourses, controversies, solitary or congregational studies, and scriptures-recommended religious undertakings for "Punyam". In the understanding of "Religion"- (cool-minded impartial and unfanatic)- psychological, rational and logical thinking is extremely rare. We want work to be done and gone through, for the attainment of true religiosity, to be shortened practically to the point of nothingness. Most of us have "penny-heaven-buying" desires, beliefs and mentalities. We have too great a belief of wonderful magic results in Saints' merely placing their hands over our heads. We have most of us a blind faith, mostly out of a fear. individualistic and restricted to self-serving, with almost a ridiculous expectation of someone placing, magically, morsels of ready-made food in our mouths.
Regarding the actual solid religious work, that can be undertaken, the present greatest difficulty is that religious and irreligious western-minded and eastern-minded elements have been huddled up together. Further, everybody's business has become nobody's business, and unlike other items of national progress, Religion has been left to take care of itself. Those that are capable of doing substantial work have run away either to sea-costs, mountains, or forests or have merged themselves in forming their individual folds. There is nothing like a standing constitutional arrangement, which has for its aim and object, the efficient tackling and handling of religious questions in a practical, instructive and guiding manner, to preserve and promote the cause of the general religions, social and moral culture of the Nation, as a whole- as a whole comprehensive unit, that takes within its embrace all the differences, of all places, all communities, all deities, and all philosophies.
What India wants today, is the establishment of a strong Religious Machinery, operating in an extremely general wide and universal spirit, covering all grounds and all corners and all men and women of the country. However capacious and strong individual may be, they have to yield and break under the crushing weight of universally-spread evils and calamities. Universal evils can never be eradicated except by universal remedies, measures and machinery, and that too, under the merciful guidance of THE UNIVERSAL MERCIFUL ALMIGHTY PARENT.
Mai-ism has only six terms: (1) GOD AS MOTHER, (2) MOTHER OF ALL, (PROPITIABLE ON LIVING THE LIFE OF) (3) LOVE, (4) SERVICE (5) DEVOTION AND (6) UNCONDITIONAL CHEERFUL SELF-SURRENDER. Under MAI-ISM, the very belief in the existence of God is not indispensable, provided one serves and loves all, to the best of one's capacity. Mother is the same Being as Father. Mother is the Mother of all Religious Founders, and a Mai-ist, in the sacred humble service of Mai Herself, is ten times the servant of any of the Mother's Illustrious Sons that have been the Recognised Incarnations, and the Founders of any Religion. How very trivial and tiny nothing, it becomes to bring in together several threads and shades of Hinduism, on broadcasting the Mai-istic faith spirit and theory?? Even on the rebellious-ness side, what greater conception can you have, regarding your personal liberty, in the matter of Religion (to whatever religion you may belong by birth or otherwise), than under Mai-ism, with full knowledge about what the Founder definitely proclaims?? "For all other religious questionings, my first and last answer is 'ASK YOUR MOTHER YOURSELF'" (Vide page 30 of MAI-SAHASRANAMA Vol.I, Part I).
In understanding Mai-ism, there are no frightful words of Brahma, Maya, Kali, Avatars, Shakti, Adwaitism, etc., which may be un-understandable, at any rate, often unacceptable, to the westernised Hindus, or to the followers of religions other than Hinduism, who may remain under the suspicion of "Proselytism". If all religions are the creations of someone or another of all Mother's Sons, where is the need of your transferring your own coin from one of your own pockets to another one of your own pockets?? None worth the name is unaware, either about God or about what "a Mother-and-child-relationship" is. Mai-ism says "Establish that relationship between a Mother and child, between yourself and your God, by whatever name you call your God". There are no incomprehensible religious technicalities of Vedas, Upanishads, Brahmasootras, Prasthana Traya, Gita, Shad-Darshans, etc., in Mai-ism.
On the higher religious plane, Mai-ism lays the highest stress on "Guru-Shishya-relationship". You can't proceed a single solid step after a certain stage, without the two chariot-wheels of (a) God's Grace and (b) Guru's grace. Let your Guru be, one whom you yourself select, who is nearest to and who is ever available to you, let him be only one step spiritually ahead of you. He must be one, who is heart and soul interested in your worldly and spiritual welfare. It is neither the Guru, nor the Shishya, but the Guru-Shishya relationship that is highest of the three elevating factors. If you succeed in establishing your unification full of Love, Service, Devotion, and Self-surrender, with one Master, you have mastered the art of unifying yourself with the whole Universe. Without God's and Guru's grace, you have only endless repetitions of "makes and breaks", "advances and retreats", "virtues and vices", "pleasures and pains", "infatuation and disgust", "love and hate", and you are perpetually linked up in a never-stopping endless chain of "actions and reactions".
In the field of different Deities, philosophies, and superiority of one's own Guru to another's Guru, etc., Mai-ism asks you to drown all differences, with its first and foremost commandment "Love all". Further, it says, everything has only a relative superiority or inferiority. Not only one man's meat another man's poison, but the meat itself of a man at one moment turns out to be the poison of the very same man at another moment. Your quarrelsomeness over petty matters, out of sheer ignorance, can only result in inviting Satan, to make you almost shattered and miserable. The highest power and highest happiness proceeds from "Loving all". Love is the final word of bliss and peace. The parent of Love is Mother. Don't lose your head and say "World does not exist at all", nor, in an idiotic manner try to usurp "Godship" ; but train your mind to see the temporariness, changefulness, deceitfulness and fruitlessness of worldliness, and with the raising up of the pictures of both past and future, simultaneously with the present, carry yourself to the conclusion, the world and its working is as unprofitable and worthless as not existing at all.
Take only an all-flinging bird's-eye view. Man is the enjoyer, a woman is a center, wealth is the means, and sense-pleasures are the different modifications during a man's effort to seek complete union. Happiness proceeds from union with the desired. For the inferior man, the objects sought to be unified with, are inferior. A little higher-mind is the enjoyer, peace and happiness are the centers, concentration and consolidation are the means, and the development of various dormant occult powers are the modifications. The higher man has begun to realize at this stage, that happiness proceeds from neither woman nor wealth, but from the mind. Later, the soul is the enjoyer, Mother or God is the center; the spirit is the means, and all universalistic and altruistic heart-yearnings and mental-activities of love, service, devotion, and self-surrender, are the modifications.
Higher and higher, the aspirant has to go with his own exertions, under God's and Guru's Grace. Do not be cheated by your mind, like a cook that makes your mouth to water, with various descriptions of dainties, but, in the end, keeps you starved. Don't pass away your whole night, in the fastidiousness about the cot, the bed, the pillow and the bed sheet, till the cock crows, and you are no longer your master. Begin with any spiritual exercise. Once you have secured God's and Guru's Grace, if you go wrong, at least, God is there to remunerate your sincerity, humility, and purity, and to guide you and to set you on right lines. The final stage is when the Soul and God are mutually the Enjoyer and the Enjoyed, with nothing between the two, till the Soul finally merges in Mother. There should not be the slightest feeling of droopingness, on a comparison of yourself with the highest saints, that have "realized". Judge your progress by how far and how much you have bettered yourself, and never, by how much still remains. There is no end to how much still remains, even for the highest of saints. The highest proof of the Mother's Mercifulness is, that for the smallest effort of any striving aspirant, he gets a permanent benefit, that helps him, not for one life alone, but for lives and lives. In fact, true Religion is a science of not only improving your externals, but also and mainly, your own internal instruments and faculties, and transferring and sublimating your mind, heart and your own very Self. Further, the most secret point of a guiding principle, in the serial arrangement of events, circumstances, and conditions in the chalked-out life for every being, has been that of the alternate following of opposites. Without this, life would have been unbearable and all exertion for progress would have been discouraging and tiresome. Pleasure and pain, success and failure, perspiring work and undisturbed peaceful rest, rise and fall, march and retreat, have been designedly made to fill up alternately the long decades of a period of each and every human life. There are extremely few cases of "no joy" and "misery" all alone at a long suicide-suggesting stretch. A little feasting has been always provided after every fasting.
The Founder buries the centuries-old quarrel of Dwaitism and Adwaitism, stating that on the strictest analysis, there is nothing intrinsically, and practically conflicting or contradictory between the two. Not only that, but Adwaitism is, as Founder believes, on strictest censorship, only the continuation, and extension of Dwaitism. Mai-ism says, it is much safer to teach "Thou art God" than "I am God", when you have to select a teaching for millions of people of all places for all times. As a matter of fact, "I am God" is not really a teaching, but the most spontaneous expression of the fewest of the few blessed, that have realized the final-most stage, and it is given to few to realize. Don't forget that, in your modern madness of equality. It is only a modesty and a pampering, when a high-placed man says "What one man can do, another can surely do". In fact, "one man may not be worth even to tie the laces of the shoes of another".
The world is neither unreal nor real. It is an unreal reality and a real unreality. It is real at one stage, and temporarily an unreal at another stage, and again real at the final "Parabhakti-stage" of "Poorna-Prema", when everything becomes Mother. The unreality of the world is not an absolute fact, but a hypothesis of unflinching faith for Adwaitists, which, on the perfect training of the mind, permanently places them in undivided, undifferentiated, infallible, perfect unification with Almighty Mother.
The world is physically and mentally and scientifically getting more consolidated and compacted. A time must come when either Religion altogether disappears, or there is only One Religion- assuredly, the latter though for the fewest of the few. The world is advancing towards simplest classifications, such as God or Nature, Religion or Science, Altruism or Individualism, Man or Woman, Selflessness or Selfishness, give or take, virtue or vice, love or hate, etc.
Founder believes, in the changed circumstances, God has become Mother, who was till now Father; and Mother, with every mercifulness for Her children, has offered to the world, the simplest, surest and speediest Universal Religion of Mai-ism, having made its start with Mai-Swarupa Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, who lived his whole life as Mother's Child. The element of Universality, so very convincingly taught by Paramahamsa during his Sadhana of identification with different religious Founders and Deities, was given a world-wide spread and application to include all men, one and all, by Swami Vivekanand, the Saint of Saints and the disciple of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. The Founder further believes, Mother has declared The Universal One Religion of Mai-ism through the "nimitta" (nominal instrumentality) of his own humble little self, on 2nd September 1932.
Regarding the success of any religious movement, Mother alone knows the future; but this much is certain, that the hopes of every originator are in most cases ever immortal. He leaves nothing undone that he can, within his possibilities; and if the originators' hearts were possible of being fathomed, one would find there, pictures of perpetuities and infinities, which need no basis for their existence, of any actualities and possibilities. Any religious movements originator's soul does not get satisfied and peaceful, on leaving his work half-done, and he continues his work sometimes with much greater powerfulness and promptness, in the disembodies state. During the lifetime of a worker, so many imperfections are there, with incongruencies, jealousies, enmities, adversities, poverties, obstructions, oppositions, etc. On the personal-prejudice-factors disappearing, on demise, the true worth of the spade-work done and the principles taught and laid down, gradually begin to advance, if both have their intrinsic worth, and if the foundations have been laid deep enough, beyond devastating time-effects. If the world continues to give a hearty response with nourishment and replenishment of men, money, and material, solid work more and more follows. Every plant may grow, or die as well, with no fault attachable to the seed-sower. The growth of a religious movement is extremely slow and has to be measured in terms of decades, in the cases of small sub-religions, or sects or "Sampradayas", and quarters and higher fractions of centuries, in the case of religions, possessing the potential magnitude of the major religions prevalent in this world of ours. The calculation of probabilities is outside the pale of human imagination, as would be seen from the history of every religion, large or small, as there are innumerable, indeterminate factors that play their wonderful part both ways, in the present as well as in the future. Anyway, the proportion that the full stature bears to the inception, great for great movements, and small for small ones, is surely unimaginable. It is all only Mother's Will, and no one knows what scenes are being arranged behind the curtains of the Unknown Future.
One surpriseful phenomenon, however, cannot escape the observation of serious and profound religious thinkers. If searching inquiries were made under the solemnity of oaths, to form the exact idea of what certain people or a certain society thought about a certain saint or a certain movement, during his lifetime, or in the commencement-period, strange revelations would meet our eyes and ears, sometimes under the brand-marks of madness and mischievousness. At least, the past history in this direction would amply justify the greatest claim to clemency, for the new workers, from time to time, if innocent ambition with a life-long sacrifice in the cause of world's wholesale welfare is not a crime.
This is an extremely interesting subject by itself, and, quite impersonally, I cannot withstand the inner urge of recording my views, because I have a mad passionateness about the psychological true understanding of Religion, although that is least attractive for the average Hindu mind, which loves Devotion and Divine knowledge, many times much more than the psychological analysis and synthesis. I record my views and beliefs, for the truest, and therefore, most automatically profitable understanding, and greatly indulge in dealing with details. I believe you can't have a perfect mastery over a whole, unless you have the same over the smallest piece-atoms, of a complicated complex whole.
We often find very little, or practically nothing, during the lifetime of a saint; and later, their places become centers of vast pilgrimages and fairs and festivals !!! Names of certain saints, practically unknown during their lifetime, or even spoken with ridicule, disgust, and blasphemy, are later in vogue as a sacred word for curing diseases and removing afflictions !!! Some saints had to pass days and days, without two happy meals, whereas their disciples got Rajahs and Kings to pull their cars. While Tukaram or Narasimha Mehta dies in poverty, and Meerabai in miseries, the stars, and cinema-owners, showing them on curtains only, moved in Rolls-Royce cars. Persons that were condemned as "unable to break a straw" during their lifetime, were later made "Saviours". The heart breaks when the two contrasts stand vividly before a deep devotee's eyes, and the heart chokes up as he tries to speak in broken words to the nearest friend-devotees. "It is all Her greatness and Her play. The Mother's Sportivity !! As if the world cannot be brought round except through miraculousness !!". "As if there is the Divine Plan to make the contrast as amazing as possible". Who would not be surprised if there were no history to learn, how few followers Christ or Mahommed had during their lifetime? And, while the life of Christ was full of highest miraculous experiences given to so many aggrieved, how fewest were they, that bore him out during his lifetime? There, there, there, is a triple alliance of Mother's Will, Maya-delusion and World's wickedness.
The world is always wise after the fair. We know hating the deserters or blaming the saints' relations, friends or followers, generations after. In revering and sky-raising the dead, the world has least to lose, as the contradicting, belittling tendency and the provability one way or the other go less and less, with the times. The World cautiously enough opens its mouth, only after every safety is there, after a certain time lapse, which can also be utilized to make out an ideal saint, selecting only the suitable living facts roundabout the saint when he was in flesh and blood.
During the lifetime of a saint, even for honest appreciators, followers and disciples, the wickedness of the world prepare a hotbed, in the matter of an open declaration and a fearless free following. It looks, as if a Saint has not simply to make his life, a series of supreme virtues and sacrifices, but has also to win a victory over the world. And there, it is Mother's Will alone that decides the issue. Main-most thing is the consideration of the whole future of mankind, or of a certain nation, with its deservedness or its reverse. That consideration is supreme with Mother, in making final decisions.
But for Bhairavi Brahmini, who could have the most astonishing boldness of declaring Paramahamsa to be an Incarnation? Whose Incarnation? has not been clarified, as far as Founder's scanty knowledge goes. Mai-ism proclaims "He was UNIVERSAL MOTHER INCARNATE".
That is the secret of understanding the lives of saints. There is a superb supernatural courage, which God alone can give to such ones, as have lived their lives on the practically same plane as the saint. The worshipped is merely nothing without the worshippers; and the world knows one Shakespeare, although creating hundreds. For persons of the usual ordinary religious stuff, or of the still inferior selfish worldly stuff, a mere conviction about saintliness is not enough. It requires a crushing-resistance-strength of sacrifice, to be siding with a new unknown unaccepted star or planet in the Religious Firmament.
How much is really claimable by man, in the coming forth of any new religious movement, or a sub-religion or a religion?? It is all the making of Mother alone. The miraculousness of "nothing during a saint's life", and "an amazing huge blaze" thereafter, is not simply a freak or fancy of Almighty. That too has a deep meaning. It is a proclamation of Man's nothingness, even the highest saint's nothingness, and a working out of an Inviolable Divine Law. "The seed shall have to perfectly perish". To the extent any crushing is incomplete, the growing tree will lose in lusciousness, lustre, and longevity. There is nothing more complicated and incomprehensible, as the dealing of the World and Worldliness, with a Saint and his Saintliness.
The life and longevity of any religious movement depend on its Sacred Fire being kept up alive, by the further sacrifices of more and more high souls as disciples and faithful followers, and as the fire, light and spirit of the predecessors get dimmed, with the advent of times.
We know nothing. We see nothing. Who can understand the working of millions of waves, rising and falling every second, of every unimaginable and immeasurable variety, in the Infinite Ocean of Universal Consciousness, in the midst of which, and governing controlling and commanding every action thereof, stands the UNIVERSAL DIVINE MOTHER?? HERSELF!! ALL ALONE!!
Who is the Reader? And who is the Writer? Who is the Founder? And who is the Follower? Who is the Judge of and who is the Judge? Everything is only Mother, Mother and Mother alone. Mother dictates, and Mother writes. Mother reads and Mother thinks. Mother blames and Mother praises. Mother worships Herself, and Mother plays with Herself.
Where are you and I?? Mere reflections of the Mother Moon !!! In the lake of Maya !!! Either when the lake dries up, or when Mother-moon wills it so !!!
UNIVERSAL MOTHER MAI, BLESS US ALL.
JAY MAI JAY MAI JAY MAI
MAI-SWARUPA MAI-MARKAND
Founder of MAI-ISM and President,
"MOTHER'S LODGE". Saraswathi Road,
Santa Cruz West,Bombay-23
