THE MOTHERHOOD OF GOD

The mother is preeminent in the Hindu culture. The Hindus have exalted the woman to the highest level of the motherhood of God. 'Ya Devi sarvabhuteshu matrirupena sangsthita / Namastasyai namastasyai namastasyai namao namaha' (O Goddess that dwelleth in every element of the universe as the Mother of all, I venerate Thee, I venerate Thee, I venerate Thee again and again).

From Vedic times this motherhood of God has dominated the Hindu mind and has occupied its pristine position in the Hindu conception of godhead. The worship of Adya Shakti (primeval cosmic energy or force) as embodied in a female form and as a disembodied being has been at the root of the Hindu devotional exercise. The cosmic being has always been venerated as the Divine Mother more than as the Divine Father and this has been the characteristic departure of the Hindu way of spiritual thinking from the Semitic religions, Judaism and Christianity, where God is worshipped as the Divine Father.

Even in the case of the immaculate conception of a divine incarnation such as Christ or Buddha or Ramakrishna, the earthly father has no role to play, so to say, in the procreation. He is, thus, the caretaker father and not the biological one. Here also the mother's position is preeminent as she is the one that rears the baby in her womb before giving it birth. As such she remains the biological mother and in a sense the only biological earthly parent of the immaculately-born divine child. No biological father but, sure enough,  the Avatar has his biological mother. And herein lies the supreme significance of motherhood as the gateway to terrestrial life. Herein does motherhood gain ascendancy over fatherhood and this principle was noted as being of cosmic significance by the Hindu rishis who forthwith raised the status of womanhood to that of universal motherhood and the highest dualistic principle of godhead to the universal motherhood of God.

The cosmic delusive manifesting principle or the primordial power is conceived of as feminine by the Hindu mind. Mahamaya or Adya Shakti is a feminine principle and is the creator, preserver and destroyer of phenomena. All power is invested in Her and She dispenses with the universe as She wills. Further, all power is derived from Her and She has to be propitiated for all achievement or, in the ultimate analysis, for renunciation of life and its ephemeral pleasures. Finally, She is the one that guards the gate to freedom and none can escape into freedom without Her grace. Thus, Hinduism lays supreme importance to the worship of the Divine Mother as the means to all good and eventual liberation from the shackles of Maya. The dynamic aspect of Nature being feminine in the Hindu conception, all action deriving from it is also feminine and the supreme custodian of all action is feminine as well. And this supreme principle is the Universal Mother whose earthly embodiment each woman is and it therefore becomes spiritually mandatory to venerate womanhood as divine, else spirituality remains a distant dream in this terrestrial plane where the pitfalls of Maya are many and the delight of delusion binds man to this repetitive cycle of terrestrial transmigration.

Our earthly mother is the gateway to this world and the Divine Mother is the final exit-point of phenomena. From the alpha to the omega it is Mother and Mother alone, creating us, preserving us and eventually guiding us to liberation. She is Nature and She is the controller of Nature. She is the confluence of the three gunas, sattwa, rajas and tamas and She is every combination of these. Propellor She is, propelled She is, She is all that is. Hers is the omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence. Perceiver, perceived and perception She is and She is the transcendental unity that enfolds the trinity.

The Hindu rishis were wise people and not ignorant pastoral people or foolish farmers with antiquated notions about God and man. They full well understood the significance of the motherhood of God and in glowing terms recited hymns in Her praise. From time immemorial, where history dares not peep, this living principle of the motherhood of God has rolled down to the plains of India from its mountainous habitat like the waters of the Ganga, the Sindhu and the Saraswati to fertilise the vast moving mass of humanity that has trodden the soil of India. This spiritual conception, this philosophical idea has over time gripped the psyche of the Hindus and impregnated their very consciousness till it has undergone a transition to its corresponding human phase where the Hindu mother is venerated as the earthly representation of the Universal Mother. This transformation has been so complete that the mother is the pivotal link in every Hindu family and the very cornerstone of familial life. And, in this way, the idea of the divinity of the earthly mother, nay, of all women has so diffused through the national psyche that the venerable Hindu law-giver, Manu, pronounced 'Yatra naryastu pujyantey, ramantey tatra devata' (Where women are worshipped, there the gods dwell).

No country on earth has conceived of womanhood in loftier terms than India. Alas, through conquest and the consequent degeneration of civilisation, the state of woman in India is no more what it used to be in her days of political and cultural freedom. Now the time has come at last to reverse this evil cycle of history and raise woman to her natural elevated state as envisaged by the rishis of yore and as it obtained in ancient India of supreme spiritual excellence. Only then may we as a nation hope to rise and occupy our true place in the comity of nations. Else, nation-building will remain a distant dream for, to quote Swami Vivekananda, 'a one-winged bird cannot fly.' And, this emancipation of woman must begin with the identification of the divine focus within woman, that of the motherhood of God. The Divine Mother, the earthly mother and the earthly wife are all manifestations of the same feminine cosmic principle.

To sum up the story, so to say, let me take you all to Dakshineswar in the 1870s when Ramakrishna reigned as the spiritual monarch of all he surveyed and his young wife Sarada came over from Joyrambati to Dakshineswar to test the truth of the rumour that was then doing the rounds that her husband had lost his sanity of mind. Suddenly confronted by the spiritual altitude of her husband, the young Sarada, somewhat perplexed and, so, unsure of her status in her husband's altered state of consciousness, hazarded the question while massaging his feet, "Tell me, who am I to you?" The husband promptly answered, "She who is the Mother in the temple (the Kali Temple), She who is my earthly mother now residing at the Nahabat (the Concert House) is the very mother who is now massaging my feet here." The young wife understood and never broached the topic again. She had set up her relation with her divine husband that very instant and never for an instant changed again to lay any special claim (to which she had ample right) on him. When in later years, decades after the demise of the Master, Holy Mother was queried as to her relation with her husband, she startled the questioner by saying that she was Thakur's mother. And when Ramakrishna passed away on that fateful day of 16 August, 1886, at Cossipore Garden House, Holy Mother broke down into tears lamenting thus, "O Mother Kali, where have you gone away?"

Such was the divine conjugal relation of Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada Devi, each envisioning in the other the Divine Mother. And this is India's legacy to the world, worship of God as Mother and, reversing the scale, worship of the earthly mother as the Divine Mother. Jai Ma!