Month: February 2020

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, neighbors, 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 (A) the desire of evolving and emancipation, (B) Success in strivings and strugglings therefor, (C) Power, virility and strength, (D) Knowledge, wisdom, insight and intuition, (E) Devotion, meditation and renunciation to Her Divine Will and (F) 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.

Extract from the book: Mother and Mother’s Thousand Names

 

Author: Mai Swarup Mai Markand 

Mai Niwas Saraswati Road End Santa Cruz West Mumbai 400054 India

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, communal ism, 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 honoured 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 genealogy 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, celibacy 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-misappropriation purity, sense-control, insight, religious knowledge, truthfulnes and wrathlessness.
Following the above view we have still further reductions as well, by experienced Bhaktās–Devotees.
Says Tulsidas : “Consider another’s wealth as dust and another’s wife as Mother. If by these two vows in practice you do not attain God, Tulshdas 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.

~ Mother and Mother’s Thousand Names

Author: Mai Swarup Mai Markand

Mai Niwas, Saraswati Road End, Santa Cruz West, Mumbai 400054 India

 

This little booklet Mother and Mother’s Thousand Names   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 worshiped 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 सत्व , Rajas रजस and Tamas तमस (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 celibate 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 un-manifested 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 माई.

7. Mother that assumes Her Subtle Body on concentrated appeal through the Sacred Word formula (Mantra) that on sufficient repetition carries with it, the materialising, 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 realization 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 Ne-science, 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.

~ Extract from the book: Mother and Mother’s Thousand Names 

Author: Mai Swarup Mai Markand 

Mai Niwas,  Saraswati Road End, Santa Cruz West , Mumbai 400054 India.