Mother says to the devotee,” I have been the worshipped and Mother for innumerable lives to thee. Now let me be the worshipper and the daughter to serve thee, after so many endless and indescribable miseries that you have suffered for me.”
She as daughter is the sitter in the lap of Her devotee at this stage.
This idea I got at the worshipping place of my most revered old friend Kaushikarambhai V Mehta.
When I went to him, he offered me with great love the best dish of almonds, sugar-candy etc. I would not eat though he repeatedly asked me to eat. The fact was that I do not eat or drink anything without dedication to Mother and I was too shy. My throat was chocked. In a piteous voice I sang two lines by way of an answer. ” Mother, tell me whether you are Mother and I am son, or I am an old Father and you are my darling lovely daughter! ” Generally, whenever parents gets best dainties to eat, children’s remembrance stops the morsel going down the throat. It was this experience which made joyful and dancing and I said to myself, I have found the meaning of Shiva-kaameshvaraankasthaa.(शिवकामेश्वरांकास्था).
That Mother takes a fancy and delight to be the devotee’s daughter is not an inappropriate idea. It is only fools who always prefer to be the worshipped and never the worshippers.
There was a living instance in Bengal, the Blessed home of Mother Worship and the birth province of Her Blessed son, Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.
A devotee extremely poor once desired to celebrate Durga Pooja festival and went to fetch his daughter for the purpose from her husband’s house. The husband’s family was extremely rich and the members of the family drove out the devotee stating that he was a fool to expect that his daughter who was the queen of the family, which would be celebrating the festival gloriously with grand dinners, would be rolling half-starving at her father’s house.
The devotee returned and on the road journey wept under a tree at the first half of the journey. At the second half he found his daughter shouting out to him to stop. The daughter stated weeping that after his departure there was an exchange of harsh words and she was turned out to her father. The daughter said,” Father, do not worry. You have been old. My husband has given me immeasurable wealth. We shall live together and I will serve you for your life.” The father was still more miserable. Not only he was spurned but his daughter was turned out. The daughter served him shampooing and with most delicate love actually fondling old father- Durga Poojaa was celebrated with devotion gloriousness and lavish spending, in a manner which surprised the whole province. On the ninth night she sat in the devotee’s lap in full ecstasy and asked him,” father , tell me honestly, don’t you repent, having taken this idiosyncrasy of devotion to Mother.” The devotee said,” My darling, you are yet too young to have any idea of my love for Mother.” Next morning the daughter was missing.
On inquiry it was learnt that his real daughter had not left her husband’s house.
Mother often desires the fanciful pleasure of being the devotee’s daughter.
She feels joy of sitting in his lap.
Reader, I am free with thee as we are soon to part, after a few pages.
Weep and weep out of love for Mother, if you are a devotee. If you are a heartless learned one , laugh at my folly of wasting my breath in wilderness. Mother has been given Her right status by few devotees. Most of the devotees have understood Her to be stern and awful. Some have exploited Her Grace and Mercy. Very few have loved Mother as Mother. But here the love has been of such an immeasurable intensity that unlike the most universal truth that the Mother fondles the child , the devotee fondles the old Mother, who has been neglected and discarded by the ungrateful universe.
In love when there is monotony due to the climax of loving in a particular relationship, there is still greater pleasure in inverting the relationship, just as when you have read a book for times without number, you like to read it from last chapter to the first. It is this idea which gives clue to the inversion of the letters of a Mantra.
It is higher than the highest stage of natural love. The natural relationship is one of the schools of the devotees is for woman devotee to consider herself as beloved of Lord Krishna, and some male devotees too as in the Raadhaa-Vallabha school , consider themselves to be Gopis i.e., the beloved of Lord Krishna. On the above lines there is higher than the highest, and it is when the devotee considers God as his beloved.
~ Extract from the book: Mother and Mother’s Thousand Names (Edition: 1939)
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 
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