He would do so many things incognito. Once on the Kurduwadi [ कुर्डुवाडी – महाराष्ट राज्य ] station , when the Founder was the chief officer of the Barsi Municipality [ बारसी म्युनसिपालटी ], in about 1916, he was waiting for long hours from evening to catch the Madras Mail arriving at 2 a.m. There was a lady passenger, rather beautiful, with a child. Some railway staff people were constantly eyeing her. They spoke with some words expressing their bad motive and she insulted them. There was a long waiting period. By chance the child eased itself. There was no water. The insulted people made most of the nuisance and harassed her as if some great crime were committed and took her to the station master.Soon there was a crowd.The crowd , with the station master and with her as a criminal was brought by them to the spot, to show the nuisance. They were all surprised. There was nothing. Someone has cleaned it off, with a big woolen muffler in a wintry night, which was seen thrown away at along distance. None knew the sweeper.
The Founder says,” You must plunge into places of poverty and misery incognito, in torn cloths and study and share their miseries.You must utilise big crowds in processions and temples, to get insulted and ridiculed. The Founder to overcome nervousness and over-regard for the opinion of the society, once moved in a procession over a big round , putting on purposely selected torn and dirty clothes and sitting in an extremely dirty carriage. Those who recognised him and those who did not know him, all called him mad and laughed. To him it was a practice at 18, of overcoming the nature of servility for popular opinion. A regular programme, practice and a subtle watching of thoughts and feelings , to ascertain how far the mind and the egoistic pride or a certain vice is subdued, is an important requirement . It is in the circumstances of self-invited humiliation alone , that one day, your heart breaks to pieces on realisation of Mercy, that Mother has showered on you.
You have to actually pass through practices. Practically a life of some few years with decided programmes of the specimen given. Any amount of good thoughts , do not help you.They have their own value, when the mind is brought to a certain pitch of deeper receptivity.Please note an extremely subtle fact; the mechanical fact that you have and passed through certain practices gives you nothing. What you permanently gain is what your mind has received deepest indentations of, by way of an invisible asset, while passing through ordeals, mostly self invited.
When you have reached a stage when sinful pleasures are not acceptable to you, you have to pass great period of relish-less deadened life , as you are neither here nor there. The worldly sensual pleasures, especially sinful, you have banished and the other pleasures of devotion and divine knowledge have not dawned. That period is the most sickening and suicide suggesting period. While on one side , you are on the side type of Sadhana साधना , you should also be developing your relations with your God and Guru. You will then have the relief and a different world to derive your pleasure from the Love and Service , Devotion and Self-surrender to your God and Guru.
The last straw that break the camel’s back is the wiping out of the sexual notion. You can train up your mind to be smiling with a mastered wrathlessness, you can be well contented in midst of any poverty; you can reach a stage when no desires make any agitation in your heart; you may rise above the idea of name and fame; you can be as humble as a straw; you may even bless even your enemy; but certain things are most difficult. These are : (1) Proof-ness to sexual attraction, the wiping out of the sexual notion itself.(2) Infatuation ( moha मोह ) . (3) Proofness against final subtle most delusion spread over you by Maya माया and (4) Life-clinging. Infatuation in its highest sense is, by its definition itself, beyond the possibilities of the control of mind. Such infatuations do come and only the Divine Will of the Mother’s Grace decides when they would disappear. No human effort can be of any avail. The cases of Moha मोह ( Infatuation ) and Maya माया are beyond our ken. They are some special divine arrangements for some special purposes.
Let us therefore stop with with sexual-attraction-proofness. There too nothing can be done without Mother’s perfect Grace.Mother however does arranges matters . High souls can train up themselves with Mother’s and Guru’s Grace , to remain as unruffled as before a lifeless wooden bench with a lady’s picture carved thereon.This process however so difficult to manage , as, unlike all previous practices , it is not one-sided mono practice. in most cases it is dangerous practice, unless Mother herself manages every detail.It can only be a perfect Guru in the shape of a lady that has also the fullest control over practitioner , his mind and body, if he at all slips. She must have strength to save him and pull him out,if on the point of sinking. Such guru Mother alone can depute, but She odes it is certain.
Therefore under Mai-ism the most difficult examination has been treated rather leniently and it should be enough that man passes with grace marks. It is enough that the man is true to his wife and that he gets money honestly in fair ways, and that he makes it a point to spend a certain proportion of his wealth for deserving religious charitable purposes.
Mai-ism is for using the terms ” Money-greed and sexual lustfulness ” and not the centuries old expressions ” Kanaka कनक and Kantaa कांता ” or ” Kaanchan कांचन and Kaamini कामिनी “. It is not the woman that is the source of temptation, but it is the lustfulness in man. Mai-ism thinks it is an ungratefulness to denounce the sex of Man’s mother, sister and daughter. A woman is in no way a grater degrading force than man.
Mai-istic eye towards woman is not that of chivalry and appreciation of beauty, engaging manners, softness, tenderness and sexual sentiments or emotions. It is not again that of vengeance towards man , in return of the man’s subjugation of woman in the past. Mai-istic eye is that of mercifulness, sacrificing , service-fulness and sacredness of mother.As between man and woman, Mai-ism wants to develop true understanding of mutual indispensability and incompetitive co-operative spirit of reciprocal love and service. The question of superiority, equality and inferiority is entirely irrelevant.Mai-ism wants man to love and serve all women and not of any particular relationship or category alone.
Just as love and service have been there , but not religionised , so also , it is not that the idea of looking upon woman as mother is not there , but it has not been religionised . Mai-ism religionises Love and Service and the trying of one’s best to look upon very woman as mother.
Mai-ism most emphatically states , rules for morality are for the development and control of one’s self and for imposition on and accusation of others.
Rise above prejudicial routine religious mentalities and ways of looking and judging and dealing with things. Seek and follow the spirit.It is the sexual attraction itself that has formed a prominent element of the Divine Arrangement of ameliorating souls of both sexes.It is only the abuse of attraction that is responsible for any disastrous evils. At least these can not be evaded by denunciation and flying away. How far can you run away from woman ? You have to conquer your lustfulness, by deep thinking, constant memory, cautious alertness,creating relishlessness and hard practice of self-control, with the temptation itself in your front and with mother’s Mercy and Guru’s Grace.
There is an invisible long warfare in the progress path of every soul, of an Infatuating power and a Resisting -power. a success or a failure in any particular case prove nothing in absolute terms. A resistance power of 2000 units will vanquish an infatuating power of 1000 units and will have amoral victory, but the very same units power will suffer a humiliating defeat at the hands of 5000 units infatuating power. There is no greater delusion than to call as victorious one who had no foe or a negligible foe , to fight. The final achievement is the resistance power . Power of how many units is the test. And that sadhana of a man has in its requisite, the training of a Motherliness-seeing eye. Looking from the higher plan, it is wrong even to imagine infatuating power with woman and to identify resistance power with man. Man have no idea of woman’s mental and emotional world.
Motherliness seeing annihilates lustfulness , because of the working of so many associations and emotions, so very familiar to man. The sublimity of the ideal is that not only man is saved from the feeling of hating woman, but there is a germination of positive factor viz., love of the type one bears to one’s mother.
Each sex has its own best or worst qualities and agreeabilities and living conditions. The soul in the body of a man or a woman has no sex; and any soul takes one sex form or another, according to the need of developing certain qualities and paying off Prarabdha debts. Under Mai-ism, man has no superiority over woman either from the point of Soul-evolution or worthiness and receptivity for religiosity or spirituality or in the matter of securing Mother’s Grace. Mai-ism means an equal religious recognition of both sexes.
” No belittling; no blaming, no blasphemy, no hating and no evading woman ” is the Mai-istic teaching. A whole heartened effort has been made many saints to create a nauseating sense by referring to dirty constituents as scum, phlegm, mucus, bile, urine , blood, pus etc. That is also way, but quite at an elementary stage. Infatuation arises not simply out of physical beauty or the bodily charm and only as a hunger for corporeal enjoyment. Perhaps the underlying wisdom of the teaching is : ” If all your discrimination has extinguished, at least stop before and desist from Physical action “.
” Kill your desires ” is therefore the second teaching. Not simply the desire of sexual connection but kill all desires. Reduce the sum total of all your desires.
When the sum total of desires goes down, the infatuation, the temptation, and even the value of wealth and woman, go down.
EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK : MAI-ISM AUTHOR : MAI SWARUP MAI MARKAND
MAI NIWAS, SARASWATI ROAD END, SANTA CRUZ WEST MUMBAI 400054 INDIA
God as Mother and Father in MAIISM AND HINDUISM 