Saturday 27 June 2020

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 none'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-s 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.”
~ Saint Mai Swarup / Mother and Mother's Thousand Names 

Monday 8 June 2020

Characteristic of popular religion.




The Founder ( Mai Swarup Mai Markand - the Founder of Mai-ism ) has expressed his own views about what a true religion should be and what are religious reformer has to be busy about. He has dealt at full length about this in his two volumes of Mai Sahasranama. He is so very extremely anxious to know, how many of the so very innumerable persons blessing the world with their choicest benedictions, have made a detailed study of where we were, and where we are and what should be done to set the religious world on right lines. Let God be in heavens, we shall agree to intern Him there if the world determined, but how many eyes are opened enough to see. We have already become animals, and are on our way to be enslaved by Satan, more and more as each day passes. The world has been getting more and more drowned in miseries and calamities. Can we do anything ourselves? Let God's part be left to be played at His own sweet Will, but what about them that have been so graciously gifted by God, to think about things themselves ?? Let there be a failure, the most humiliating failure, but let them and the world have the satisfaction, that they have done their best. Even God's help to the men that have tried their sweating best, is many times much greater, than to them that have been sitting hand folded, asking God to do everything for them and the world.

People that have no eyes to mark the degeneration, physical, moral, social, religious, spiritual, will refuse to see things even when their eyelids are pulled. If the pupils themselves have got inverted what can the poor eye-lid-puller do ?? But, in a word, it is high time, all religious highly intellectual and originality gifted souls should unite and put their heads together, to find out some easy way. Each one's Ashram or math cannot continue to be taken as one's whole world. There must be inter-communications and sympathetic exchanges, and some eleventh thing must come forth, out of the ten ablest things.




The task today for a religious reformer ( as stated by the Founder in Mai Sahasranama ) is hard in a hundred ways. The first and foremost work is that he has to make the world realise that it can not be happy without religion. He has to strengthen the belief both ways.  Not only showing how Religion has come to the aid of mankind, but how highest civilizations not based on Religion have been swept away, under the degenerating and decaying influences of Time. For the modern age, a mere statement of his about a Truth is not enough. He has to introduce the Universal outlook in every individual Religion. He has to consolidate the wisdom of the past, extracting its essence to the irreducible minimum size. He has to sift out the gold dust and establish proper values for essentials and non-essentials of every Religion. He has to break monopolies. He has to minimize abuse and exploitation. He has to raise the general level of spiritual understanding, divine knowledge, plain living and high thinking.  He has to strengthen the cultural moral background. He has to root out all mischiefs in the name of Religion. He has to lay down the best and efficacious life routine.  He has to think out best solutions of all new burning questions that crop up as times advance. He has to consider various thirsts and hungers. He has to introduce safety valves and breaks, for the good governance of the society and family life. He has to sublimate the energies the various passions. He has to suggest methods of equalization, to fill in the voids below a certain minimum living standard. He has to lay down certain standards for every gradation in life, to prevent enormous increases and the very disappearance of any standard whatsoever, which results in turbulent discontent and rebelliousness and disparity, and the rushing in of degeneration. He has to interweave consideration of this world below and the other above. He has to create the recognition of the sameness of The Creator, The Created and The Creation. He has to open the world's Eye to the same One Life, animating one and all.  


The religious ideal which can suit the modern world is one that can take the whole 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 evaluation 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.


521. A popular religion to suit the modern world should have the following characteristics :


(1 ) Religion must have a definite form and should not be an idealistic, incomprehensible, chaos-creating, airy and hazy something. 

(2) Religion should not be a source of superstition.

 (3) Relation of man to man must be hundred times much better. Be we first a man, then a brother and thereafter alone, a religious man.

(4) Religion should be recognised to mean the essence and the experience of life lived.

(5) Everyone should be and should be considered under the direct protection and guidance of God.

(6) Preachers should be witnesses and not lawyers and professors.

(7)  As few limitations as possible should be set on the conception of God and on the innocent harmless and free latitude and living of men.

(8) All adornments and adjuncts should be gradually slackened and even removed, as soon as,  at the stage when they are found to be obstructive, is reached.

(9) Religion should be accommodative, constructive and progressive. Religion must provide for pruning from age to age.

 522. (A) Mai-ism is the psychological religion for one and all of any religion or no religion without caste, creed or colour. There can be a Hindu Mai-ist, a Mohamedan-Mai-ist, a Christian Mai-ist and so on. With full reverence to and while following one's own religion, one can be a Mai-ist. Mai-ism is one's own personal religion to be adopted after the age of discretion and not one's ancestral religion of one's birth.

( B ) Under Mai-ism, there is no place, by its very postulates, for the condemnation of Harijans as ' Untouchables, Woman's subjugation by Man or condemnation by routine religion as " Narakasya Dwaram "( Hell's Gate ) has no room, as every Mai-ist is expected to look upon every woman ( except his own wife )  as representative form of Mother and as under Mai-ism the co-operation of man and woman in the Mother worship is the highest spiritualising force. The spirit underlying the words " Heathen ", " Kafir ", " Mlechcha " " Durvan ", etc., has no existence under Mai-ism.

(C) One who does not believe in God, but who do believe in the common-tie of Humanity and practises service and extends Love to all, is a " Mai-ist ",

(D) The six tenets of Mai-ism are:-

1) God is more merciful when approached as Mother;

2) Mother is mother of all, without caste, creed or colour;

3) Mother smiles, on one's trying to love All, to one's best;

4) Mother saves, on one's trying to serve All, with one's best;

5) Mother showers Her Grace, on one's devotion to Her.

6) Mother serves, on one's living the life of universal Love and Service, with Devotion to Her and Unconditional Cheerful Self-Surrender to Mother's Divine Will.

(E) BASIC BELIEFS OF A MAI-IST ARE : - 

(1) Unity of all Religions.

(2) Universal relation of all human beings as members of One Family.

(3) No Communalism. No Provincialism. No Nationalism and No Racialism.

(4) For Mother's Love, Grace, Devotion and Mercy, the daily practice of universal sisterhood and brotherhood, is an indispensable requirement.

(5) Everyone must have the right of selecting one's own line of evolution.

(6) Precise evaluation of essentials and non-essentials of one's religiosity, with test-stones of fundamental and eternal truths.

(7) Religion not to be permitted being made a cause for disunion, domination, prejudice, exploitation or superstition, and not to fail respecting science, reason, conscience, experience, human psychology and individual merits and demerits.

(8) One's superiority to be least thought of, being trivial, transitory, circumstantial and not single-handedly earned.

(9) Not making most of the little differences of high and low, which are often prejudicial, and sometimes even imaginary.

(10) One's cheerfulness never to be lost as nothing is irreparable or unachievable under Mother's Grace.

(11) Be ever optimistic. The highest difference between man and man is nothing compared to what Mother's Grace can make in a moment. A sinner can be a saint at the second moment and a saint may turn out to be a devil after a day.

(12) Destruction is for re-construction, doubting for believing, evil for good,  sinfulness for sinlessness.

(13) Rise above all superstitions. There is no 'Choo-Mantar'(magic) for a true Mai-ist, except the repetition of  ' Jai Mai', Guru's Grace, Mother's Mercy, one's own highest exertion, and the world's sympathy.

(14) Mai-ist's highest initial grounding - Motherhood of God, Universality.

Mai-ist's highest life-maxims - Love, Service, Devotion, unconditional and cheerful self- Surrender to Mother's Divine Will.

Some of the practical measures for practical Mai-ists are : - 

(1) Holding common prayers, Bhajans or Kirtans of God in any name or form and of any saints or devotees, holding classes, delivering lectures and undertaking tours for the general spiritual uplift.

(2) Introducing common prayers in Schools, Colleges and in masses.

(3) Holding Mother worship, personal or impersonal in any form, as may be agreed upon by one and all.

(4) Convening social of sisters or brothers or combined or of families, without caste, creed or colour.

(5) Promulgation of common religious and allied literature and encouragement of studies of all religions by individuals of different religions. Publication of extracts from sacred books of all religions.

(6) Helping poor or bereaved families, deserving students, orphanages, opening celibate Mai-ist Schools, starting widow-homes, offering medical aid to the needy, guiding wedded pairs to-wards spiritual matrimonial living, praying for the peace of the departing or departed souls etc.

(7) Promotion of immensely practical universal sisterhood and brotherhood in daily life.

(8) Abolition of racial, national, provincial, social and religious prejudices and intercession for bringing about honorable peace and equitable compromise.

(9)  Constructing, opening or encouraging to open Mother's Lodges, temples, Homes and Colonies under any denomination religious, national or communal, of any people, in any place.

The process of evolution of Mother's followers on attainment of Guru's Grace and Mother's Mercy is as under : - 

(1) Acquisition of merit ( Punya ) by doing religious acts , Japa, worship, charity, services etc. which will lead in the first instance to the fulfillment of all legitimate and moral desires, next to patience and proofness, and then to the appreciation of the virtuous, religious and saintly people and their ways of living.

(2)  The actions and qualities of Love, Service, Devotion and Self-surrender having fairly matured by practice, Mother will so bring about circumstances and opportunities that the follower will be lifted up from his routine and worldly life and will be ushered into the company of virtuous, religious, devotional and saintly people.

(3) Constant contact of religious people and their Service, their Imitation and their Grace will create a proper understanding of good and evil, truth and untruth, righteousness and unrighteousness etc. , and these will introduce one to Godliness after sufficient practice and disciplinary training in goodness, virtue etc.

(4) This introduction to godliness will ultimately result in the great liking for godliness, virtuous, devotional, unselfish and higher living and finally in the germination of Love towards God.

(5) Devotion to and Love of God will perfect the true understanding about soul-knowledge and will bring the Supreme Self of God and the individual self of the follower much nearer, through faith and conviction strengthened by Mother, often through miraculous Grace.

(6) Love of God will result in the Love to God's creation.

(7) Feeling the finger or hand of God in all arrangements, getting the sight of God occasionally, feeling oneness with God on self-surrender and the inward satisfaction of  ' having been accepted '.

(8) Establishing a perpetual relation with God and helping God in all grand work with the Power and Love which God is pleased to confer.

(9) Merging in Mother.

523. The Founder's greatest point of sorrowful observation is, there is no systematization, although the richest substance of true religiosity is here in India and with Hindus, in profuse abundance. Right understanding in its absolute essence and practise is hopelessly missing. Discretion and discrimination about the dispensable and indispensable elements or significant or insignificant factors is conspicuous by its absence.   

~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

There are three principal ways of looking at God, religiously. God as one Supreme Self, of which we little selves are reflections, God as Fa...