Hindu conception of Mother

HINDU CONCEPTION OF MOTHER

Hindus have well developed and fully appreciated the motherly aspect. Hindu devotees have not seldom propitiated their Gods by the last remedy of addressing them as Mother. Bhakta Tukaram addressed his worshiped, Vithobā, as Māuli (Mother) when He could not be moved to pity otherwise In the life of Lord Gauranga (CHAITANYA PRABHU) we find that his devotees who were unworthy o approaching him as Lord Krishna were once full of remorse on being refused to have his darshan during his manifestation as Lord Krishna. However, when they were prepared to commit suicide, He BECAME MOTHER. Hindus have left no tribute unpaid in the matter of adoration and appreciation of Mother. While praying to God, they have first addressed Him as Mother. “Thou art Mother, Thou art Father, Thou art Brother and Thou art Friend”.

Nothing is more popular than Shree Shankar āchārya's prayer in these words “ Wicked sons are many to be found in this universe, but there has never existed one wicked Mother”. Further, he apologizes to Mother by referring to the human selfish nature of people, who, resort to Mother only in difficulties and then entirely forget neglect and disown Her, in these words “The child only when hungry remembers Mother". Hindus have also from time to time appreciated Mother's might (SHAKTI) in destroying evils, which none else can eradicate. Further, Hindus have accepted Mother's right to be worshiped along with other Gods. There are also Purāns and Bhāgawats in adoration of Mother. Mother's Ideal has also been recognized in the home worship of the five Gods,

For Mother's conception, the Mother's Lodge is fully indebted to Hinduism. But the conceptions of the Mother's Lodge are not the same as those of Hinduism, at least as understood to-day by the masses.

With the advent of times, the Mother's Ideal has been so degenerated, that as understood to-day it is not even the shadow of its real self. As soon as the word Mātā which means “ Mother ” is repeated, the picture which an average Hindu has before him is that of an invincible power, which if pleased enthrones one in heaven, and if displeased buries him in the Netherworld. The ideal of the Mother's Love to Her child has been followed by few of Her worshipers. All along Mother has been depicted as the highest power and in the outer circle of devotees at least, it is not entirely wrong if one says, that the adoration for Mother is an outcome of fear of Her displeasure and the very easy pro-curability of whatever is demanded through Her. Most of the people approach Herefor one of the two reasons. It is either to demand Her help if they are under some difficulty or to avert Her wrathfu-lness, but there is little beyond this on the higher plane of love or spiritual evolution. There have been very few instances of devotees who have loved Mother as mother, and still worse, most of the devotees who have done so have treated their devotion to Mother as one of the greatest secrets.

During the last Navratri holidays of 1938, I happened to read the Amrit Bazar Patrika issue, in which there were vivid and detailed descriptions of Mother worship in all parts of India, as also a description of Sjt. Arbindo Ghosh's Mother Conception. I request readers to be impartial and decide for themselves, as to what the universal conception throughout the length and breadth of India has been. Is it a Personification of Power or Mother's Love to Her child ?
Very recently in a leading paper dated 2nd October 1938, the popular conception about Mother was ably and aptly analyzed and that described Mother as Goddess though benign, of sternness, terror and destructivity.

In a word, as time passed, Love-aspect was almost lost and the Power-aspect got wildest publicity. The Mother has revived to be Mother in Her Love-aspect, recently only when Blessed Shree Ramakrishna gave by his life of Love to Mother, the living realization of the Ideal.

They have not understood Blessed Shree Ramakrishna who have not churned out this essence of his living, viz., that he had a specific message give, viz., that of loving God as Mother and Mother as mother. The first need was however first served and the tremendous power of his spirituality was utilized to revive the lost luster and glory of Hinduism. Mother gave up Her son to Hinduism and remained satisfied with the uplift of Hinduism, although the promulgation of Her fully universal legitimate doctrine and devotion was shelved and postponed for a second Ramakrishna to come in more favourable age. Mother's true lovers do feel sorry when celebrations of that Mother's pet child are made, and Glorification of Mother in such celebrations is entirely banished.

There are certain facts which time alone can prove. My heart-burns were often belittled and even ridiculed by many. They said “There is nothing new. Hindus have been worshiping God as Mother". “Why should you further speak about the thing, which even recently Blessed Shree Ramakrishna has preached and whose preaching are continued by so many missions ?"

One day one great devotee of Mother and Shree Ramakrishna and one of my beloved friends, who is the writer of the Life of Paramahamsa in Gujrati broke out to me Brother, excuse me, I mistook you and belittled your zeal, but I have found that Paramahamsa has been entirely cut off from Mother and Mother has been alienated from Paramahamsa”.

Mother gave up Her dearest son to serve Hinduism when it had gone pale, and worn-out and was insulted by not only other religionists but the very home-children. Mother demands now after a century, the revival of the ideal of the Universal Mother and Motherhood. My Hindu Brethren have now to respond.

Maiism crowns woman-folk with sanctified sisterhood

Women's Status under the Mother's Lodge

There is one aspect of the Mother's Ideal which will require 'volumes to do justice to and that is the uplift of the left half of the creature known as Man.

Under the Mother's Ideal these prospect is Raising of the down-trodden (helpless poor), down-ridden (weaker sex) and depressed (aborigines and untouchables).

Nearly half  the world has been confined to darkness under civilized suppression, subordination or hypocritical adoration (so also a significant portion in eternal ignorance and condemnation as aborigines or untouchables). It would be topsy-turvying matters to establish the sameness of man and woman without the psychological study of the sex (or the equality of the untouchables with others without raising them at least to the minimum standard of external and internal purity), but if the spirit of love and service is extended to them, a good deal of distance and discontent will surely disappear.

Till now man has included woman. Brotherhood and Fatherhood of God have acted as contraceptives to the ideals of Sisterhood and Motherhood of God and the development of the head without heart has been responsible for the ocean of miseries that has almost drowned the human world. Woman's question has seldom received an equally thoughtful and independent consideration. Women have been denominated as “Rib creatures”. “Temptations” and “Hell gates”. Women have been mere morsels of food for the starving man and have been subjected to subjugation by man and condemnation by religion. Under the Mother's Lodge Idea] the unification of man and woman is a great spiritualising force.

Most of the religious teachers have made a short work of the question of the spiritual uplift of the sister sex, by either declaring them almost incapacitated for or inimical to religiosity or at the best, offering them the husband God and pampering them with praises here and there.

The present civilization while discovering and spreading more intimate knowledge about the very important part woman plays in the happy and efficient working of the universe, has only driven woman to be manlike and has planted venomous seeds of competition, discontent and distrust.

Mother's Lodge crowns woman-folk with sanctified sisterhood and recognizes the priority of their claim for all humane considerations, for it is the duty of every devotee of Mother to develop seeing every woman to be a reflection of Mother.

Mother's Lodge Ideal wants its members and others to concentrate their though feeling and action in a particular groove.

1. Delimit your God as little as possible. The heavier the embellishments of mythology, history. traditions, rituals and conventional notions, the more belittled and the more unapproachable and the more narrowed, your God is made.

2. The said adornments and adjuncts are very necessary at one stage and very obstructive at another. Wisdom is needed to see when and which way the balance goes. They are invaluable but should not be indispensable.

3. God is neither a wrathful tyrant, nor the heartless Judge nor a Jailor. Nor is God a foreign element. God is a parent, Father or Mother. Preferably not a severe Father but a loving Mother.

God as Father has often been compared to a loving Mother to give an idea of his Love. Some to express intensity state that God loves like so many Mothers, put together. Is there not some truth if one states it is only thoughtless or selfish obstinacy of man that vehemently opposes tooth and nail any such inclination of a devotee as of worshiping God as Mother? God is sexless Ir God can be and has been called Father till now, why debarred from being addressed and worshiped as Mother !!

4 Every one of us is under the direct  protection and guidance of God. Our talks of superiority and inferiority, etc., are only our pigmy prattlings.

5. Relation of man to man must be many times much better than now and must be every religion's first concern.

6. Religion should not be superstition or mysticism but a precise perfect science of living based on physical, ethical and divine knowledge and experience.

7. Religion must be dealt with, as experience of life on all planes and must be lived out and must be open to all for understanding and adoption, just like any scientific attainment.

8. Religious preachers are not to de God's Lawyers but God's witnesses or witnesses of experience narrated under religion.

9. Religion must be constructive and progressive and ever open to a little accommodation in its superficial crusts.

10. Religion must have a definite form and must not be an idealistic, incomprehensible, chaos-creating, airy, something like a huge Conglomerate of any constituents any how consolidated and there must be a recognized method for necessary pruning of the Religion from age to age.

Universal Religion can be only as the influence, force and field of a Universal God. Such God cannot have His chosen people, churches, scriptures, ceremonies, pilgrimage places, tribes, nations, races and so on. Any individual religion with all its delimiting paraphernalia of particular customs, creeds, beliefs, etc., cannot lay pretensions to being a universal religion. Nor on the other hand can any religion be a recipe of a few ideals, beliefs, conduct rules and opinions, if it has to have a body and a soul, and to have the influence and the building and moulding potential force of a religion.

A universal religion can be the religion of a Universal Father or a Universal Mother alone, if God is considered in human relationship with man. As it is, the world has not known a religion or an institute centered round a Universal Father or Mother.

It is no use arguing that the God of every religion is believed by its followers to be the God of whole mankind, for if that idea had at all been there, practically accepted, history would not have been a sad tale of shamless-ness, tyranny, brutality and warfare.

The religious ideal which can suit the modern world is one that can take the whole of humanity in its embrace, which can respect and give a free play to Conscience, Reason, Experience and Science, which would allow every man to live well and teach letting others live well, which will ensure a perfect freedom for every soul to work out its own salvation in its own way, which will teach maintaining sense of proportion and proper valuation of essentials and non-essentials of a religion, which would develop the faculty of judging all actions and actors, not by their positional values, but by the tests of the fundamental truths they satisfy, which would guide without intimidation and mental enslavement, which would make one free from the poison of the over-consciousness of superiority and inferiority of man to man, and lastly which would develop the spirit of practical sisterhood and brotherhood in the daily routine of life.

What the world really needs now is a Universal Religion. A practical living evolutionizing religion cannot be satisfactory by being a big druggist's store-house which can boast of there being no ingredient anywhere else that is not there in tons. Religion has to serve Doctoring. To be cured, we need not have something we never heard of, but the exact efficacious prescription.

Under the Mother's Lodge Ideal, a man is a believer of God or he is not, a man is on the path of God or he is not. A man is acting in obedience to the Divine Laws or he is not. A man is posing his individuality over the world and others or is not. A man is the lover and servant of the whole creation or he is not. A man is watchfully controlling his desires, thoughts and actions or is not. That is the main consideration of classification if at all any classification is necessary. The Mother's Lodge judges a man by his religiosity and not religion.

Under the Mother's Ideal there is no Eastern or Western spirituality nor Christian or Mohamedan religiosity. None is restricted to the particular methods prescribed in a particular religion. The whole religious world is his. All religions are his. He may resort to any refuge and any remedy for the purpose of his evolution. He is in the Imperial Service of the Universal Mother. He is welcome at any of the Royal palaces of His Mother's sons, provided he is sincere and welcomes any guests from the Royal House of any of his Mother's sons, without the slightest childish notion or delusion as of Imperial Service being superior to a provincial service.

In the circumstances, the Ideal of the Universal Mother offers itself, not as a religion, but in advance of anything that would carry with it, the gigantic spiritual force (from Mother), as an institute of Ideals and beliefs, just like a pilot toy Engine, before the locomotive Engine is fitted up and forwarded to the world for working out the salvation of the world, shattered due to internal dissensions. 

                            The Lodge. A Miniature

Mother's Lodge is naturally only a miniature. The real Mother's Lodge is the Universe itself. The Miniature Lodge too was for long but a snail house for the Founder which he carried on his back wherever he went. It is neither that the members of the Lodge are the only devotees of Mother nor that they are the only recipients of Mother's Grace.

                                 The Founder

 The Founder as he has so often expressed in Mother's Lodge meetings is neither an adviser nora debater, neither a mystic nor a blind follower of any of the old schools.
He is simply a dead wood pointer of Mother, roarer of Mother's Existence, and hawker of Her all Powerful Grace as capable of conferring Perfection, without the indispensability of the non-essentials of any religion.

For all religious questionings, his first and last answer is “ Ask your Mother yourself.”

There is nothing more natural than to propitiate Love (Mother), with Love (to Her children), to get again Love (Oneness with Her and Her children).

Mother's Ideal opens out an evolutionary line of action which dispenses away with all non-essentials and superstitions and priest-craft slaveries passing under the name of religion, as it promises the final-most religious success on perfection of merely four things, viz., Love to Mother, Love to mankind, Love to all other beings and renunciation or unconditional surrender to Her Divine Will, the latter three being mere amplifications of Love to Mother.

In the field of devotion, Mother's Ideal says, “ Practise feeling that you are a child. A child whom Mother could not but accept however wicked. You automatically get confidence, you regain your innocence, purity and sincerity, and you raise yourself above world-wormness, sexuality and selfishness. You are off your cares, time is eternity for you, and life is lightened. Be Mother's child and Her lap shall be thrilling and throbbing to have you on itself.”

We that have no fitness, we that are failures, we that are forsaken, we that have no hope, we that cannot pursue the path of salvation without going through the experience of enjoyment, we that need control, we that are perplexed in the whirl-pools of delusion, we that on being sick are simply gagged and let loose in a large medicine hall, we that are desirous of being made to evolve by some outside sympathetic agency that would disregard our own ignorance created unwillingness, we that wish our pettiest efforts being praised and biggest blunders belittled, we that claim from others and Almighty the benign attitude of forgiveness and benevolence in spite of our ingratitude.

Such we! Where shall we find our Refuge ? If not in the Lotus Feet of the Merciful Mother ?

Blessed be Her name! Clarified be Her conception ! Universalized be the outlook of Her devotees ! In showers fall Her grace on all Her wayward children desirous of being reclaimed !

                              Mother Bless All

Mother ! Bless me before I begin what follows, after this recapitulation of the Ideals of the Mother's Lodge.
Bless me through the blessings of my Parents in Heaven.
Thou wilt find my mother PRABHALAKSHMI, an Inspiration-Fountain of innocence, virtue, purity and devotion, in the Regions of Lord Shree Krishna.

Thou wilt find my father Ratanlālbhāi, an inexhaustible mine of highest imagination, subtlest thoughtfulness, and broadest all-angled outlook, absorbed in search of the best remedy as to how to make the world happy, in the regions of Lord Buddha.

                           MOTHER BLESS ALL

God's Idea

God's Idea 

Till now God has been preached most as God above, and by few as God with: To these two very well established notion Mother's Lodge emphatically adds the conception of God around. When we serve and love children, we love and serve the Mother Further, we have till now God of greater Fear and less love. The Lodge substitutes from now, the God of greater Love and less fear.

The Conception of Mother and child is a perfect Ideal of purity, sincerity, naturalness and ennobling-ness.

Not (only) the God of future and after death, but the God of present and during life. Not (only) the God that would let us loose and lash us after a long lapse at His leisure, but the God that would ever be with us, through Constant Remembrance while rendering service practicing love and diving in devotion.

It is left to the reader, either to read the word (only) or not.

  God As Mother

There are three principal ways of looking at God, religiously. God as one Supreme Self, of which we little selves are reflections, God as Father, God as Mother of the whole creation). The first Conception is not only  impracticable for the common mass but is found on minute observation to be the achievement rather than the evolutionary remedy. The world has seen what God as Father with all the fears of His wrath and hell has been able to do and has done. The world has however seldom thought of the Motherhood of God. Perhaps because of man's desire to maintain his superiority. Motherhood has been neglected and the world has been unhappy. The head has run disproportionately in advance of the heart. With the conception of God as Mother, our relations with Almighty become more direct dispensing with the mediation of priest-craft, ceremony, sacred lore and observance of non-essentials. Mother's Love is no-one's monopoly, none is disqualified ; none has no claim to the lap of one's Mother. Mother worship has no particular form or ceremony and Mother has no particular name or form.
To the Mother the weakest child is the most cared for and dearest.


Father is head, knowledge, proficiency, wisdom, balance, justice, resourcefulness and arduousness. Mother is heart, will, character, power, love, mercy, inspiration and faith In the ocean of Love alone all difference sink.

Father is he whom Mother introduces as Father. With Mother the child is one. being under Her protection, care and nourishment even before its birth. None was born without a Mother.

If we desire that the whole humanity may be religiously served by individuals, if we desire that the spiritual evolution should proceed from love rather than the fear of society or hell, if we desire to be quickly forgiven for our daily repeated thousand faults, if we wish that our worthlessness may submerge itself in the divine love which God bears towards the creation, there is nothing on earth that can compare with the Ideal of Mother's Love to Her children, and God as Mother would be the first most suitable Ideal.

If we wish to establish God that considers the service of humanity as the first and foremost duty, that goal is most efficiently achieved by the Mother's conception ; for it is the daily experience of common life that the Mother is happy when the children are happy, and that daughter or son who is exerting herself or himself most for the well being of Her children-folk is Her dearest child.

The best way of attracting Mothers' love, as seen in daily life, is the service of, and love to, Her child. A child has its greatest trust in the protection and forgiveness by Mother. Mother's love does not look for any return and is the last word of celestial thing on the earth. There is no weighing. Mother's eyes refuse to see evil and sin in Her child. Love and Mercy can be the only ideals as Saviors when all equipment as physical fitness, moral rectitude, right understanding, self-control, able sincere and selfless guidance and congeniality of social environments, etc., fail. There is no religion without religiosity, no religiosity without selflessness and no greater teacher of selflessness, even for worst stones, than Love -“The Merciful Mother.”

                 Definiteness of Mother's Ideal 

Mother's Ideal gives definite conceptions. The definite conception of Mother's doctrine is that She is Mother of all including the wayward, the sinful, the murderer, the aborigine and the untouchable.

The definite requirement of the conduct of life is living with the immensely practical spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. The definite purpose of life is service to humanity and individual salvation. The definite means are love, service, devotion and unconditional cheerful self-surrender to the Mother's Divine Will.

Mother's Ideal is not an elastic bag of an individual religion in which anything can be shoved in. Mother's Ideal is any religion but not that alone. It is an extract or a recast without the age-borne impurity.

Mother's Lodge as a Religious Institute Mother's Lodge while advocating the conception of God as Mother and that of the immensely practical relation of all human beings as of sisters and brothers, does not desire to add one more religion to the already too many but is contented with remaining strictly within the precincts of a Lodge.

Mother's Lodge Message 

No religious Institute came into existence without its distinguishing word of message for its adherents and admirers and yet no word was given that was not known to others then and in the past. Nor was any word given out when there were not hundreds though few comparatively, that were thinking in the same groove. Nothing can be accepted as true unless it has passed through experience of hundreds and nothing that has passed through hundreds can be new. In fact, nothing that is not corroborated by experience and is not needed in living circumstances, claims our notice. The world has different needs at different periods, and religious Institutes cut out grooves or leading channels for human thought, feeling and action to flow in. Different Institutes are for different focussings from different angles on the spiritual plane. Hinduism is for contemplation and humility; Mohomadanism for Brotherhood and God's will surrender; Sikhism for determination and devotion ; Jainism for harmlessness and austerity; Zoroastrianism for purity and charity; Judaism for piety and patience : Buddhism for Right Conduct and transitoriness-outlook and Christianity for duty and faith. Mother's Lodge Ideal stands for Universal Love and Universal Service.

Life Maxims of the Mother's Followers

 Life Maxims of the Mother's Followers :

1. Serve and Love Mother in spite of what She appears to you to be.

2. Serve and love humanity consisting of sisters and brothers in spite of what a she or he is to you.

3. Serve and love your parents, sisters, brothers, relations, neighbours, citizens, etc.

4. Serve and love all other beings.

5. Serve and love at least yourself maintaining your cheerfulness in every religiously permissible way, with renunciation and complete unconditional cheerful surrender to the Mother's Divine Will.
General Objects of the Mother's Lodge By different activities (of a social nature by the outer circle and by Friday Midnight Prayer in addition by the inner circle) to move Mother to bless humanity generally and Her votaries and Lodge members especially with (1) the desire of evolving and emancipation, (2) Success in strivings and strugglings therefor, (3) Power, virility and strength, (4) Knowledge, wisdom, insight and intuition, (5) Devotion, meditation and renunciation to Her Divine Will and (7) progress, relief, peace and happiness.
The Founder prays for at least an hour on every Friday night, as above and sometimes for inner circle members for some specific relief. The Founder further offers prayers for wellfaring and self-purification on Tuesday and Sunday respectively.

Practical Measures Advocated by the Lodge

1. Promotion of immensely practical universal sisterhood and brotherhood in daily life.

2. Abolition of racial, national, provincial, social and religious prejudices.

3. Opening or encouraging to open independent Mother's Lodges and colonies under any denomination, religious national or communal, of any people, in any place.
4. Convening from time to time socials of sisters or brothers or combined and of families, of all castes, creeds and colours.

5. Holding common prayers Bhajans, and Kirtans of God in any name or form and of any saints or devotees, lectures, classes, tours, etc.

6. Introducing common prayers in mass meetings on open public grounds or in holy places of different religions, so far as they can be made available.

7. Introducing such common prayers, in schools and colleges.

8. Promulgation of common, religious and allied literature and encouragement of studies of all religions by individuals of different religions.

9. Exchange of opinions on religious questions and of charities by leaders of different religions to one another and their meetings whenever possible.

10. Holding Mother's worship, personal or impersonal or of any form, as may be agreed upon by one and all present.
For details of Mother worship please see concluding pages.
Some Special Features of the Mother's Lodge Ideal
Mother's Lodge is not enchanted with the spell words of equality, fraternity and liberty, although it gives due respect to these ideals. It does not see great success in the so called fellowship among-st single individuals connected with the only tie of the individual membership of a lodge or an institute. Families should be inter-connected with families in the said spirit in the sacred name of Mother and the Lodge. This can best be done by introducing occasional family worships of Mother by different householders in their homes, who would be inviting other families of the Lodge.

This practice has been introduced by the Mother's Lodges at Ahmedabad, Kirkee and Santacruz (Bombay).*
Under the convictions of the Mother's Lodge, you are religious if you at least keep yourself cheerful, because you then cease to be a radiating centre of sorrow and misery.
Mother's purview is not confined to the ascending half of the evolution alone, but includes the descending the Bestower of not only half too, as Mother is enjoyment. Nothing is Salvation but alarmful or irreparable in Mother's Refugee Realm.

Basic Beliefs of the Mother's Lodge

Basic Beliefs of the Mother's Lodge

1. Unity of all religions.

2. Universal relation of all human beings as members of one family, the creation of one common parent.
Many would find this to be impracticable, but it is not so. Intensity of love may vary and has varied with the highest superman and even incarnations and religious Founders; but there can be no place for hatred for any one.

3. Politics, communalism, provincialism, nationalism or racialism are in spirit, contrary to the belief of the universal sisterhood and brotherhood and that of the common parenthood.

4. Mother is the same Almighty whom some call Father, some the Supreme Self, some the Nature, some the Divine Law, some the Absolute, some  the Truth and so on. She is God, but conceived as Mother.

5. If the universe is to be made a hatred-less happy home and if love, mercy and other similar qualities of heart (the bankruptcy of which has been so keenly felt in the present world) are to reappear, Motherhood of God is the most favorable aspect, as under the Fatherhood of God the world has been run practically as a rigid disciplined office.

6. Brotherhood is not annihilation or condemnation of outer differences but encouragement and appreciation of these differences and their restitution on right lines. Oneness has to be experienced in spirit (not in eating, drinking and inter-marrying), and in helping one another in progressing towards the
common goal of approaching Mother or of Salvation. Brotherhood has to be a moral and harmless brotherhood, approachable by even the poor, weak, low and illiterate.

7. Equality (though in its strictest sense it nowhere exists either in nature, mentality, facial expression, or human condition), as also fraternity and liberty (though these are mere catch-words, more fascinating than illuminative in practice) are extremely useful guides in the outer Court and should be honored as such in practice with sincere observance as far as possible.

8. When however these prove inefficient to guide in matter of forming a decision as to the right course of action or in action at critical junctures, decision should be made by recourse to (1) One's Master's (Guru's) decision, (2) Inner voice during moments of divine meditation, (3) Cardinal points of religiosity, (4) By holding love extended to the persons dealt with or concerned in general, as superior to the love for oneself and one's own and (5) By rhythm with the belief of one common parenthood of one and all.

9. One that does not believe in God as Mother but yet believes in the common tie of the humanity and practices Service and extends Love to all, is a devotee of Mother in Her aspect referred to heretofore as (15).

10. For Mother's Love, Grace and Devotion, the spirit and practice of universal sisterhood and brotherhood is an indispensable requirement. Any beliefs of high and low, prejudices or prepossessions, imaginary or accruing from ancestral or personal experience are acceptable, so long as they are being utilized to the profit of one's own spiritual uplift or for maintaining a high standard of morality or character. But no sooner do they become creative or accelerative of pride, envy, dislike, ill-will or hatred, they must be eliminated and uprooted.

11. Be we, first man and next a brother before aspiring to be a religious man, for the so called prematurely religious man is often a hanging protuberance ever in danger for himself and others. (So also of a woman).

12. Religious practice must first begin with ethical religion, i.e., the practice of cardinal points of morality, for none can quench one's thirst with a leaking bowl though containing ambrosia, nor can one enjoy the lucrative rent return of the first floor over the ground floor in the dilapidated condition.

The seven immortal Christian virtues are :- Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice, Prudence, Temperance and Fortitude.

The six internal enemies according to Hinduism are : Kāma, Krodha, Lobha, Mada, Moha and Matsar-Desire, wrath, greed, pride, lust and jealousy.

The six helpers to success are: Shama, Dama, Uparati, Titikshā, Shraddhā and Samādhān-Quiescence, control, relishlessness, endurance, faith and contentment.

The cardinal four virtues of Plato are: Justice, Wisdom, Temperance and Courage.

Wisdom includes constructivity and temperance includes keeping one-self within reasonable bounds along the golden mean. The golden mean and constructivity are very important virtues for practical workers and harmonious living.

Puranic four virtues are: Tapas, Dayā, Shauch and Dāna— mortification, compassion, purity and charity.
There is a large number of different groups of virtues recommended, but the most primary ones are suggested by the above lists.

In Bhāgawat with amusing instructivity a geneology is described, stating that Dharma or religiosity has thirteen wives, viz.,faith, friendliness, kindness, peace of mind, contentment, vitality, right action, prosperity, right intelligence, correct insight, patience. modesty and attractivity.

Manu advises ; Ahimsā, Satya Asteya, Brahmacharya and Indriya Nigraha-Harmlessness, truthfulness, non-stealing, celebacy and sense-control.

It is a happy thing to experience that the remarkable development of any one virtue, brings in that of all others, one after another.
There are expansions and contractions of these groups. Manu's ten commandments are : Dhriti, Kshamā, Dama, Asteya, Shaucha, Indriya Nigraha, Dhee, Vidyā, Satya and Akrodha,
i.e., Patience, forgiveness, mind-control, non-misappropriatio purity, sense-control, insight, religious knowledge, truthfulness and wrathlessness.

Following the above view we have still further reductions as well, by experienced Bhaktās--Devotees.

Says Tulshidass : "Consider another's wealth as dust and another's wife as Mother. If by these two vows in practice you do not attain God, Tulshidass is responsible.

Says Kabir similarly, to Kamal, his son “write down these two Salvation Remedies, pray to Saheb (God) and give to the hungry.”
Says Mother's Ideal : Love all, Serve all, with devotion and unconditional cheerful self-surrender.

It may be noted that it is not, that any one religious thinker sits down with the ancestral scriptural lore and relevant materials before him and tries out to specialize some different recipe, as some patent medicine discoverers do by a slight change in the constituents.

Each religious thinker takes life as a field of his independent search, with full respect to the past but without any domination thereby, and he forms his independent conclusions based on the study of the universe and his experience.

It only happens to be later, to the great joy of others interested in comparative study by different thinkers, that the conclusions are often found to be the very same as some already arrived at, in the past. From time to time the same truths in different garbs and languages with different intensities, orders and details are proclaimed with a new spiritual force, whenever lifelessness and putrefaction completely nullifies the previous proclamation.

13. Let us be minding our own business, let us judge our things ourselves, stamp nothing as absolute good or evil and hate none and nothing. Let us be extending love and charity to all.

14. Every one has a right to select one's own mode of progress and evolution. Each one has to work out one's own salvation. Efforts of all others, unless they are by way of guidance to the determined, go futile without one's own faith, conviction, desire, determination and exertion. As nothing practical can be achieved in absence of these, dabbling with others should be entirely discouraged, except by way of mental illumination by those that are, by right, responsible.

15. Liberty and freedom should be taken to be as dear to others as they are to ourselves, and should be granted.

16. Religion should not fail to set proper values to non-essentials and essentials.

17. Religion should not be a cause of disunion, domination or prejudice, nor should it fail to respect science, reason and experience, nor to distinguish, appreciate and respect the differences of different planes, nor to take into consideration the human psychology, and personal experience, nor the merits and demerits of each individual case and condition.

18. Let us not too much worry about God and Religion till we get thirsty and determined to have them. Let us not be idly whiling away our time about the Queen or King and the Penal Code till we have some acquaintance with the Queen's or King's attendants and first know living as true citizens.

19. Let us think little of our superiority over others of any kind, for that is mostly transitory, trivial, circumstantial and almost unearned. Most of the river crossing credit is Bridge-Builder's.

20. Destruction is for reconstruction, doubting for believing, evil for good, sinfulness for sinlessness, for all are waves of and in the ocean of the Infinite Love and Mercy of Mother.

Introduction

MOTHER

AND

MOTHER'S THOUSAND NAMES 

MĀI & MĀI SAHASRANĀM

INTRODUCTION

This little booklet is written as a response to the question “What next,” by the readers of the “God as Mother” and “Theory and Principles of the Mother's Lodge.”

Mother's Lodge is an institute of members, sisters and brothers, whose very first religious belief is that we are, one and all, children of the same Almighty God, conceived as Mother. Mother is, of course, sexless and is same as Father. The difference is not in the name and sex but in the working psychology, enabling one to achieve the spiritual goal.

Mother's Lodge is for the propitiation of God Almighty conceived as Mother. Mother is second to none and without cause or comparable. Not the World Mother, not Shakti or Power personified, with a separate controller, not the Handmaid of God; not Father's wife; not Māyā or Illusion Maker, not the Misery Creator; not the Black Magician's Deity; not one of the five gods of Hindu worship ; not Mother Kāli and not Mother Mary, Not the worshiped of the wayward Vāmāchūris; neither the Goddess of demons nor the Slayer of demons.

Mother has, no doubt, all aspects as above, but these aspects are only as waves in the ocean of Mother.

Mother is essentially the Ocean of infinite love and mercy. She, Mother Mai, is one's human mother raised to power of infinity, to Godhood. Nothing less than God of all nations, all religions, all humanity, but conceived as Mother (to Her children). The very God whom the greater part of world has worshipped till now as Father.

Mother has no name and no form, which means from another view-point that Her names and forms are infinite.

 Some of the conceptions about Mother which are also infinite are as under :-

1. Mother that resides in every living being and manifests in cases of pure and saintly souls as Inner Voice, or is known in common parlance as, Consciousness, instinct, Conscience, or inspiration. 

2. Mother that is the Creator, Nourisher and Destroyer of universes.

In addition to these three well-known functions of creation, nourishment and destruction, Mother has two more functions as the ordainer of evolution and involution or of differentiation and dissolution. It is this aspect of Mother which maintains Equilibrium of the Universes, with wonderful adjustments.

3. Mother that is the Power which holds universes and individuals in Her Grasp, acting mainly through three aspects of Desire, Knowledge and Action. Individuals and universes are handled as mere playthings by Mother, mainly by these three powers, as also by Satwa, Rajas and Tamas (equilibrium, action and inertia.)

4. Mother that has the visible forms of Fire, Sun, Moon, or Dawn, with their respective physical, moral, mental, emotional and spiritual influences.

The Dawn, the Mother of the physical Sun that nourishes the world, from whose womb, the Sun the Greatest Illuminator, takes His birth from day to day, and the Full Moon, the Greatest Joy Creator, are three most important forms for Mother worship. The first and second in daily worship are mainly for celebate boys and girls and the third in monthly worship is mainly for unmarried and married pairs. The fourth the Sacrificial Fire, the all-sins-consumer and all impurities incinerator is for invoking Mai's Special Grace.

5. Mother that is the Soul and unmanifested Cause of whatever enraptures us, through the outer garb of Sublimity, Beauty, Mercy and Compassion, and the Progenitor of well-doing, well-wishing, and love in general. 

 6. Mother that is approachable and contemplatable through the Idol, Image or Picture that has been sanctified and consecrated through Installation, Mantra repetition, Worship, Meditation Concentration and Communion by the devotees of the Mother Māi.

7. Mother that assumes Her Subtle Body on concentrated appeal through the Sacred Word formula (Mantra) that on sufficient repetition carries with it, the materializing, spiritualising and transmuting powers.

8 Mother that is identified with the Temple and the Church, the Scripture, or Sacrificial etc., apparently inanimate but fully animating Entities.

9. Mother in the temporary form which takes to appease Her devotees, or in the form in which She manifests Herself from the Sacrificial Fire to grant boons.

10. Mother that works through the Guru or the spiritual Guide and Master, for the Lotus Feet Refuge seekers, as also through an assemblage of such Gurus.

11. Mother that is formless and beyond where our highest intellect, imagination, reasoning and knowledge fails to go any further.

12. Mother that is known in the common parlance as Nature, Divine Law or Providence. Fate, Time, Primal Desire, Force, Evolution or Chance.

13. Mother that so arranges matters as suits Her Desire and Determination to carry every soul through experience, initiation, meditation, self-forgetfulness, identification and realisation with a view to pull every soul to Herself, i.e., towards the Salvation.

14. Mother that resides in individual bodies as the Serpentine Power Kundalini, Mother that is realized on absorption and Mother that is experienced as one and one alone, or as one and all, by the soul in its free-est state, when detached from everything except itself. 

15. Mother that is conceived as the one universal consciousness, soul or cosmos, like the continuous string passing through all the Rosary-beads and subjecting everyone to the slightest influence any where in the whole.

16. Mother that is experienced or known by existence or non-existence, joyfulness or joylessness, Omniscience or Nescience, and Mother that is the soul of all sportivity, bliss and beneficence. Mother that is incomprehensible and cannot be seen Of shown to be either existent or non-existent.

17. Mother that is any this and yet not any this. Mother that is one, few, many, and all, as She desires to be known to or seen by a particular soul, being beyond all description and comprehension.

18. Mother that is powerful to do, undo, and undo or do any thing in the most wonderfully never-imagined manner.

19. Mother that is beyond the conditioned state of being She, He or It.

20. Mother that is all and not All.

21. Mother that is beyond the restriction of being Personal or Impersonal and beyond the limitation of being with or without forms or qualities.