Chapter 4 - Fatherhood and Motherhood of God

‘I am the Father and Mother of the universe.’—Bhagavad Gita, ix, 17.

’Why does the God-lover find such pleasure in addressing the Deity as Mother? Because the child is more free with its Mother, and consequently she is dearer to the child than any one else.’— Life and Sayings of Ramakrishna, by F. Max Müller, p. 118.

The religious history of the world shows that the conception of God as the Father of the universe first arose among the Aryan nations, and not among any of the Semitic tribes. It was in ancient India that the Aryans first worshipped the supreme Being by addressing Him as the Father in Heaven. The origin of the English word ‘father’ can be traced back through Latin ‘pater’ and Greek ‘pitar’ to Sanskrit ‘pitar’ meaning father. The Christians, however, believe that before the advent of Jesus the Christ, the fatherhood of the almighty Being was unknown to the world.

Not very long ago, the famous Rt. Rev. Bishop Potter of New York said in one of his lectures: ‘Go to India, to Burma, to China, to Greece; or to Egypt or Rome and see, if anywhere among them all you will find a religion with any other idea of man than that he is the mere creature of his governor, his Pharaoh, his Sultan, his Rajah, his proconsul, or by whatever name you choose to call it.’ He also said: ‘It was Christ who brought an entirely new conception of the relation of God to men.’ Such statements, however, are neither founded upon truth nor supported by any historical evidence. On the contrary, it is a well-known fact that in India, from prehistoric times, the Hindu religion has given to man a position much higher than the Christian conception of his relation to his Maker. The ancient vedic sages were the first to declare before the world that the human soul is not only the child of God, but that it is essentially divine and in its true nature is one with the supreme Being.

According to the Hebrew religion, the relation of God to man was like that of an absolute monarch to his subject, or like that of a master to his slave; while the religious history of the ancient Aryan nations testifies that they had risen to a much higher conception of God than as a despotic Ruler long before the Christian era. The Christian missionaries and preachers have been trumpeting before the world for several centuries that no religion outside of Christianity has ever inculcated the idea of the Fatherhood of God, and that it was Christ alone who brought it to men from his celestial abode. Moreover, they are especially eager to impress upon the minds of their co-religionists that the Hindus in particular had no conception of a heavenly Father, that they never knew the fatherly relation of God to man. But those, who have studied carefully the history of the growth of Christianity, are familiar with the fact that the idea of the Fatherhood of God did not originate with Jesus the Christ as modern Christians believe, but existed in the religious atmosphere of northern Palestine from the second century B.C. as a result of the Hellenic influence upon Judaism of the worship of Jupiter. Jesus took up this grand Aryan idea of the Fatherhood of God and emphasized it in his teachings more strongly than any of his predecessors had done in Palestine.^[1] It was Yahveh that Christ worshipped as his Heavenly Father, it was Yahveh to whom he prayed as the Father of the universe; consequently, those who follow Christ and his teachings, worship their God through the same relation as was established by their Master. The worship of God is impossible without having some kind of relation between the worshipper and the object of worship.

The relation between father and son is much higher than that between the creator and his creatures as it had existed in Judaism. The transition from the Judaic relation between God and man to that of father and son was, therefore, a great step toward the realization of the spiritual unity of the individual soul and the universal Spirit. It was no longer an external relation to power and strength, but had become a kind of kinship of internal blood relation such as exists between an earthly father and his son. There is a tie of love that binds a son to his father, and such a tie brings the individual soul nearer to the Creator of the universe. As the earthly father of an individual is ordinarily considered to be his creator, because of his begetting him and bringing him into existence out of an invisible germ, so, when the undeveloped-mind began to think of the creation of the universe, it imagined that the creator was one, who brought the world into existence and produced it out of nothing. Gradually the conception of the creator evolved into that of the father of the universe.

All our conceptions of God begin with anthropomorphism, that is, with giving to God human attributes in a greatly magnified degree, and end in de-anthropomorphism, or making Him free from human attributes. At the first stage, the human mind conceives of the creator as a great Being, who dwells outside the world which he creates, just as the father is separate from the son whom he begets. The Hebrew conception of Yahveh was purely anthropomorphic. Yahveh possessed all human attributes, and, dwelling in a heaven outside the universe, created the world out of nothing, fashioned it, and afterward became its governor. The same Yahveh, when addressed by Jesus the Christ as the Father in heaven, did not lose his Yahvehic nature, but was simply endowed with the fatherly aspect of Jupiter or the Greek Zeus-pitar. The sweet, loving, and fatherly attributes of Jupiter were superadded to the stern, extra-cosmic Yahveh, the despotic ruler of the world.

The word Jupiter, or Zeus-pitar, has a long history behind it, with which ordinary readers are not familiar, but which is known to a few Vedic scholars. It meant ‘father in heaven’ and is a transmuted form of the Sanskrit dyus-pitar or dyaus-pitar, which very often occurs in the Rig Veda, the oldest of the revealed scriptures of the world. The term ‘dyaus’ or ‘dyus’ originally signified ‘shining space’ or ‘heavens’, but afterwards it was used for the self-effulgent Spirit dwelling in the heavens; and ‘pitar’ was the father and the protector. In the second book of the Rig Veda (ch. iii, ver. 20), we read, ‘Dyaus me pita janita nabhi ratra’. Here the word ‘dyaus’ is used, not in the sense of ‘shining heavens’ as some of the Oriental scholars have imagined, but it refers to the spiritual Source of all light as well as of heavens. ‘Pita’, literally ‘father’, here means ‘protector’. The meaning of this verse, therefore, is, ‘That shining or self-effulgent Spirit, who dwells in the heavens, is my father and protector, my progenitor or producer, and in Him lies the source of all things’. This was the earliest conception of the fatherly aspect of the supreme Being, which we find in studying the Vedas. Again, in the tenth book of the Rig Veda, Prajapati, the. Lord of all creatures, is addressed as ‘pitar’, the father and protector (ch. v, ver. 6, 7).

The one supreme personal God was called in the Vedas Prajapati’, the Lord and Father of all creatures. He is most beautifully described in the one hundred and twenty-first hymn of the tenth book of the Rig Veda. The conception of a personal God, which we find in this hymn, has not been surpassed by the idea of a personal God among any other nation during the last five thousand years. When an ancient Vedic seer was asked, ‘To whom shall we offer our prayers and sacrifices?’ he replied:

1. ‘In the beginning there arose the Prajapati, the firstborn Lord of all that exists. He holds by his power the heavens and the earth. To Him we should offer our prayers and sacrifices.

2. ‘Prajapati, the Lord of all creatures, who gives life and strength to all that exists, from whose body emanate the individual souls like sparks from fire; who is the purifier of all souls; whose commands all creatures revere and obey; whose shadow is immortality and mortality; to Him we should offer our prayers and sacrifices.

3. ‘Who by His power and glory became the one King (without a second) of all men, of beasts, nay, of all animate and inanimate objects; to Him we should offer our prayers and sacrifices.

4. ‘Whose greatness is manifested in the snow-capped ranges of mountains and in the waters of the rivers and the oceans; whose arms are spread on all sides; to Him should we offer our prayers and sacrifices.

5. ‘Who made the sky strong and the earth firm, who established heavens in their places, nay, the highest heaven; who measured the light in the air; to Him we should offer our prayers and sacrifices.

6. ‘To whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His help, look up, trembling in their minds, and by whose support the rising sun shines forth; to Him we should offer our prayers and sacrifices.

7. ‘When the great waters went everywhere, holding the germ and generating fire, thence He arose who is the sole life of the bright spirits (devas); to Him we should offer our prayers and sacrifices.

8. ‘Who is the one Lord of all living beings and God above all gods; who by His might looked over the causa] waters at the time of dissolution; to Him we should offer our prayers and sacrifices.

9. ‘May He not injure us, He who is the Creator of the earth, heavens, and bright and mighty waters, who is the foundation of truth, righteousness, and justice: to Him we should offer our prayers and sacrifices.

10. ‘O Prajapati, no other but Thou hast held together all these phenomena; whatever we desire in sacrificing to Thee, may that be ours; may we be the lords of all wealth.’

The same Prajapati, the true, just, and righteous Lord of the universe and God of all gods, was addressed by the Vedic Sage as ‘Dyaus-Pitar’ or the Father in heaven and Protector of all. He is described in another hymn of the Rig Veda as Aditi, the unflinching and immutable support of the phenomenal universe. The word ‘Aditi’ signified the motherly aspect of the divine Being. ‘Aditi is in the heavens and in the illumined space that pervades between heaven and earth, the Mother of all devas or gods as well as the Creator of all animate and inanimate objects. She is also the Father and Protector of all; She is the Son and the Creator; by Her grace She saves from sin the souls of those who worship Her. She gives unto Her children everything that is worth giving. She dwells in the forms of all devas or bright spirits; She is all that is born and all that will be born. She is all in all.’ (Rig Veda, Book 2, ch. vi, verse 17.)

Thus, we see that in ancient India God was conceived as both the Father and the Mother of the universe centuries before Jesus was born. In Greece, however, the idea of the fatherhood of Zeus-pitar prevailed, but his motherly aspect was denied, because Zeus-pitar or Jupiter was only an extra-cosmic personal God. As long as the conception of God is extra-cosmic, or as dwelling outside of nature, He appears to His worshippers as father alone and as masculine. The God of Jesus the Christ was the same extra-cosmic creator who was called Yahveh or Jehovah in Judaism and who was always described as masculine.

According to the Hebrews, the masculine element of nature possessed all activity, strength, and power; the male principle was recognized as the generator, and the female principle of nature was thought to be lower, insignificant, powerless, and passive. The female principle of nature was the producer and bearer of what the male principle created; consequently, everything that represented the female principle was considered as unimportant. This explains why womanhood was estimated so low by the writers of the Old and New Testaments, especially by the great apostle to the Gentiles. Even the very appearance and existence of woman on earth depended upon a man’s rib, according to the Genesis. Although the Creator was represented by the Hebrews as masculine and all-powerful, when they explained the Genesis of the world, they could not deny the presence of the feminine element, which helped the Creator in bringing life into existence. In the Mosaic account of Genesis we read, ‘And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters’ (Gen. i, 2), which literally means that the Creator impregnated the waters or the female element of nature. And, as God, that is, the male element, was extra-cosmic, outside of nature, and possessed all activity and power. He became the object of worship; and the female element or nature was entirely ignored. Every Christian admits the existence of nature, the female principle; but she has never been worshipped or adored. The idea of fatherhood grew stronger and stronger and the mother nature was left aside as passive and powerless, and was ultimately ignored. As long as the conception of God remains as extra-cosmic, separate from nature which is passive, so long will He appear as Father alone. The more we comprehend God immanent and resident in nature, the more clearly we understand that God is our Mother as well as our Father. When we see that nature or the feminine principle is inseparable from the supreme Being or the masculine element, when we realize that nature is not passive and powerless, but the divine Energy, then we understand that God is one stupendous Whole, in whom exist both the masculine and feminine principles. Then we no longer separate nature from God, but we recognize nature as a part of the manifested divine Energy.

So long as God is supposed to dwell outside of nature and as father alone, He remains as the efficient cause of the universe, while nature appears to be the material cause. But, when we realize that nature or the material cause is nothing but a part of the manifested divine Energy, we then understand that God does not, like a carpenter or a potter, create or fashion the phenomena out of the materials which exist outside of Himself, but that He projects by the process of evolution everything out of His own body, wherein dwell all matter and forces of the world. In no other scriptures than the Vedas, in no other religion than that of the Vedanta, is the personal God described as the Father and the Mother, the efficient and the material cause of the universe. Nowadays liberal-minded Christians are trying to introduce the idea that God is both Father and Mother of the universe,* but they do not realize that by so doing they are entirely upsetting the Christian conception of God, who dwells outside of nature and of the universe. The God of Christianity can never become both Father and Mother at the same time. If we address Him as the Mother of the universe, we have outgrown that conception of God which is taught in the Bible and in Christian theology. In the whole Scriptures of the Christians, there is not one passage, where Jehovah is addressed as the Mother. In Isaiah (ch. lxvi, 13) the Lord says: ‘As one whom his mother comforteth so will I comfort you.’ From this passage, however, no fair-minded person can deduce that Jehovah was the Mother of the universe.

The Vedantic idea that God is the Mother as well as the Father of all, harmonizes with the modem scientific conception of God. Modem science traces the whole phenomenal universe back to the state of eternal energy. The doctrine of evolution, correlation of forces, persistence of energy, all these clearly prove that the phenomena of the whole universe and the various forces of the external and internal world are but the expressions of one eternal Energy. The theory of evolution explains only the mode in which that eternal Energy produces this phenomenal universe. Science has disproved the old theory of crea-tion out of nothing, through the fiat of an extra-cosmic God, and has shown that something can never come out of nothing. Science teaches that the universe existed in a potential state in that energy, and gradually, through the process of evolution, the whole potentiality has become kinetic or actual. That eternal Energy is not an unintelligent energy, but is intelligent. Wherever we cast our eyes, either in the external or internal world, we find the expression, not of a fortuitous or accidental combination of matter and mechanical forces, but of regular laws guided by definite purpose. This universe is not a chaos but a cosmos, one harmonious whole. It is not an aimless chain of changes which we call evolution, but there is an orderly hidden purpose at every step of evolution. Therefore, that energy is intelligent. We may call this self-existing, intelligent, eternal cosmic energy the Mother of the universe. She is the source of infinite forces and infinite phenomena. This eternal energy is called in Sanskrit Prakriti (Latin, procreatrix), the creative power of the universe.

‘Thou art the Para-Prakriti or the divine energy of the supreme Being. Of Thee is born everything of the universe; therefore, Thou art the Mother of the universe.’ As all the forces of nature are but the manifestations of this divine Energy, She is called all-powerful. Wherever there is the expression of any force or power in the universe, there is the manifestation of the eternal Prakriti or the divine Mother. It is more appropriate to call that Energy mother than father, because like a mother, that Energy holds within her the germ of the phenomenal universe before evolution, develops, and sustains it, projects it on space and preserves it when it is born. She is the Mother of the Trinity,—Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer. She is the source of all activity. She is the Shakti, force in action. A creator, when deprived of his creative power, is one of the expressions of that eternal Energy, the Creator or Brahma is looked upon by the Hindus as the child of the universal divine Mother, so, too, is the Preserver Vishnu and the Destroyer Shiva. The Hindus have understood this eternal Energy as the Mother of the universe and have worshipped Her from the prehistoric times of the Vedic period. Here we should remember that this divine Energy is not the same as the powerless and passive nature, which was rejected and ignored by the

Jews and the Christians. We must not mistake this worship of the Divine Mother for Nature-worship. In the Rig Veda, we read: ‘The Mother Divine says, ‘I am the Queen of the universe, the giver of all wealth and fruits of works. I am intelligent and omniscient. Although I am one, by My powers I appear as manifold. I cause war for protecting men, I kill the enemy and bring peace on earth, I stretch out heaven and earth. I have produced the Father. As the wind blows by itself, so I produce all phenomena by My own will. I am independent and responsible to none. I am beyond the sky, beyond this earth. My glory is the phenomenal universe; such am I by My power.”^[2]

Thus the divine Mother is described as all in all. We live and move and have our existence in that divine Mother. Who can live for a moment, if that external Energy cease to manifest? All our mental and physical activity depends on Her. She is doing whatever She chooses to do. She is independent. She obeys none. She is the producer of every event that occurs in the universe. She makes one appear good, spiritual, and divine, while it is She who makes another appear as wicked and sinful; since it is through Her power that one performs virtuous deeds or commits sinful acts. But She is beyond good and evil, beyond virtue and vice. Her forces are neither good nor evil, although they appear so to us, when we look at them from different standpoints and compare them with one another.

When that all-pervading divine energy manifests, it expresses itself in two sets of opposite forces. The one set has the tendency towards God and is called vidya in Sanskrit. The other tends towards worldliness and is called avidya. The one leads to freedom and happiness, and the other to bondage and suffering. The one is knowledge, the other is ignorance. The one is light, the other is darkness. Each individual soul is a centre where these opposite forces are constantly working and fighting with one another. When vidya or the powers which lead Godward predominate, we advance towards God and become religious, spiritual and unselfish; but when its opposite, the avidya power prevails, we become worldly, selfish, and wicked. When the former is predominant the latter is overcome, and vice versa. These powers exist in each individual, though they vary in the degree of intensity in each. The man or woman, in whom the former, that is, the Godward-leading powers prevail, is called devotional, prayerful, righteous, pure in heart, unselfish. These qualities are but expressions of the vidya powers within us. Such higher powers are latent in all, even in those who do not show virtuous qualities. All persons can rouse those latent spiritual forces by practising devotion, prayer, righteousness, purity, unselfishness. The easiest way to attain them is by the worship of the vidya-shakti, or that aspect of the divine Mother or divine Energy which represents all the powers that lead to spiritual perfection.

By worship or devotion is meant constant remembrance of that aspect. If we constantly think of the source of all spirituality and of all the higher powers which make one spiritual, surely those powers will be aroused in us, and we shall become spiritual, righteous, and unselfish. Therefore the Hindus worship this vidya-shakti. When they worship that aspect, they do not, however, deny, or ignore its opposite nature which leads to worldliness, but they make it subordinate to the higher vidya aspect. Sometimes they think of these opposite forces separately, personify them, and make them the female attendants of the divine Mother. The divine Mother has many attendants. All the evil forces of nature are Her attendants. She stands in the centre of the universe radiant in Her own glory, like the sun, when surrounded on all sides by thick, dark clouds.

Wherever there is any expression of extraordinary righteousness and spirituality, it is a special manifestation of the divine Mother, there is Her incarnation. The divine Mother incarnates sometimes in the form of a man, and sometimes in the form of a woman, to establish order and righteousness. All men and women are Her children. But there is something more in the woman. As the woman represents motherhood on earth, so all women, whether married or unmarried, are representative of that almighty divine Mother of the universe. It is for this reason that women are so highly revered and honoured by the Hindus. There is no country in the world, except India, where God, the supreme Being, has been worshipped from time immemorial as the divine Mother of the universe. India is the only country, where the earthly mother is looked upon as the living deity, and where a man learns in his childhood, ‘One mother is greater than a thousand fathers.’

You have heard many stories regarding the condition of women in India. Most of these, however, are grossly exaggerated, some are utterly false, and some are partially true. The familiar American story of Hindu mothers throwing their babes into the Ganges to become food for crocodiles, is unknown among the Hindus. In the first place, crocodiles cannot live in a strong current like that of the Ganges. I have travelled the length of this mighty river from its mouth to its source, some fifteen hundred miles, but never found a single instance of such an inhuman act. Hindu mothers, like their Christian sisters, may sometimes destroy their children, but such action is as strongly condemned in India as in America. These statements were heard by me for the first time after coming to America, though tales and pictures to this effect have been quite common in this country in books for the young. There is no other country, ‘where every living mother’—as Sir Monier Monier Williams says—‘is venerated as a kind of deity,by her children, where every village or city has its special guardian mother, called (in Sanskrit) mata.’^[3]

It is extremely difficult for a Western mind to grasp exactly what the Hindus mean, when they say that every woman is a representative of the divine Mother. A very simple illustration will give you an idea of the respect the Hindus have for women. In Sanskrit, when two names are used together, the rule of grammar is that the more honourable should stand first. In Sanskrit we say, women and men, not men and women; instead of father and mother, we say mother and father; instead of husband and wife, wife and husband, because a woman is always more honourable than a man. In India wives do not adopt their husbands’ names, they do not merge their individuality into that of their husbands, as women do in the West, but they keep their own names separate. If a wife’s name be Radha, and her husband’s name be Krishna, and, if we say them together, we would say Radha-Krishna and never Krishna-Radha. The wife’s name must be said first. So we say, Sita-Rama; Sita is the wife and Rama is the husband. Again, when God incarnates in a man form, as in Krishna or Rama, the wife of such an incarnation will be worshipped as the incarnation of the Mother. The wife will be worshipped first and then the husband. A Western mind does not easily appreciate the wonderful reverence for womanhood which the Hindus have.

The divine Mother is the personal God, the same as Isvara in Sanskrit; and Brahman or the absolute Substance or the universal Spirit is the impersonal Being. Brahman is formless, nameless, and without any attributes. It is the ocean of absolute intelligence, existence, and bliss. It has no activity. It is the ‘Godhead’ of Fichte, the ‘Substantia’ of Spinoza. It transcends all phenomena. Before phenomenal manifestation, divine Energy rested on the bosom of that ocean of absolute Being in a potential state. It is the dormant state of activity somewhat like our deep sleep state, when all activity is latent. As in deep sleep all the mental and physical powers exist in us in an unmanifested condition and nothing is lost, so, before the beginning of the cosmic evolution, all the phenomenal forces of the universe remained dormant in that Energy. There were no phenomena, no manifestation of any powers whatever. Again, as in our waking state, all the latent powers manifest and we are able to walk, move, talk, and are tremendously active, so, when a portion of that impersonal Being wakes up, as it were, and manifests the latent cosmic powers of the sleeping Energy, the evolution of the cosmic Energy begins and the impersonal Being appears as the Creator of the universe and its Preserver.

The impersonal Being is, then, called personal, on account of that manifested energy. According to the Hindus, the impersonal Brahman is neither masculine nor feminine. But the personal God is masculine and feminine both in one. Energy and Being are inseparable in the personal God. As pure Being without energy cannot produce any phenomena and as Energy possesses all activity and is the mother of all forces and phenomena, the personal God is most appropriately called the Mother of the universe. As fire and its burning power or heat are inseparable, so Being and Energy are inseparable and one. Those, who worship the masculine aspect of God, in reality worship the male child born of that divine Mother. Because the activity, strength, and power which make one masculine, owe their origin to that divine Energy. But those, who worship the divine Mother, worship the Whole—all gods, all angels, and all spirits that exist in the universe.

The wonderful effect of this conception of the Motherhood of God is to be found in the daily life of almost every Hindu woman and man. A Hindu woman thinks that she is a part of the divine Mother, nay, one with Her. She looks upon all men and women of the world as her own children. She thinks of herself as the blessed Mother of the world. How can such a woman be unkind to anybody? Her pure motherly love flows towards all men and women equally. There is no room for any impure thought or feeling or passion in such a heart. That perfect motherly feeling makes her ultimately live like the divine Mother on earth. Her ideal God in human form is her own child. She worships the incarnation of God as her most beloved child. Just as Mary was the mother of Jesus, so the Hindu women in India often look upon themselves as the mother of Krishna, the Hindu Christ, or of Rama, another incarnation. Christian mothers, perhaps, will be able to appreciate this to a certain extent. If a Christian mother thinks-that she is Christ’s mother and loves Him as she loves her own child, the effect will be wonderful. She will, then, understand what divine Motherhood is. The Hindus think this the easiest way for women to attain to that love which makes them unselfish and divine. A mother can sacrifice everything for her child; she naturally loves the child without seeking any return, though there are mothers who do not possess pure, unselfish motherly love. A true mother, however, loves her child above everything. If such a child be an incarnation of God Himself, how easy it will be for the mother to attain to the highest goal of religion. I know a lady^[4] in India who became a widow when she was young. She did not marry again. She was not like the ordinary woman of the world, who thinks that a husband is essential to her happiness and that marriage is the highest ideal of life. She lived the pure life of a nun and worshipped Krishna as her own child. She became so advanced in spirituality that now hundreds of educated men and women of high rank in Calcutta come to see her, to receive spiritual instruction from her. They kiss the dust of her feet, as devout Roman Catholics kiss the feet of the statue of Mary, they revere her and call her the Mother of God, Mother of Krishna, the Shepherd. She is still living near Calcutta. She feels in herself the presence of the blessed Mother of the universe.

Another wonderful result of this conception of God as the Mother of the universe, is that, when a man worships God as his mother, he always thinks of himself as a child in its mother’s arms. As a child does not fear anything, when it is near its mother, so the worshipper of the divine Mother is never afraid of anything. He sees the blessed Mother everywhere. In every woman he sees the manifestation of his eternal Mother. Consequently, every woman on earth is his mother. He conquers all lust and sense-desires. He sees woman in a different light. He worships every woman mentally.

I have seen a man who lived on this earth like a living child of the divine Mother, always protected and taken care of by Her. He worshipped God as the Mother of the universe. Through that worship he became pure, righteous, and spiritual. He used to say, ‘O, my Mother, Thou art all in all. Thou art my Guide, my Leader, and Strength.’ His divine Mother showed him the true nature of man and woman. He bowed down before all women, young, mature, and old, and said to them, ‘You’ are the living representatives of my divine Mother on earth.’ How can a child have any other relation to one who is the same as its real mother? By this kind of devotion he conquered all lust and worldliness. His childlike, whole-souled, and rapturous self-consecration to the divine Mother is a landmark in the religious history of India. His whole life, which was the personification of purity, self-control, self-resignation, and filial love to the divine Mother, stands as a mighty testimony to the reality and effectiveness of the worship of God as the Mother of the universe. When he sang the praises of the divine Mother, he gave life to every word he uttered, and no soul could hear him without being moved to tears by deep devotional feelings, without realizing that this wonderful child was in direct communion with his divine Mother. His divine Mother showed him that each woman was Her incarnation, so he worshipped and honoured all women as a son might worship his own mother. Some Western people may laugh at such reverence, but a Hindu is extremely proud of it. He knows how to honour a woman. Professor Max Müller was much impressed with the wonderful life of this great sage, and has recently published his life and sayings.^[5] He was once asked: ‘If we are the children of your divine Mother, why does She not take care of us? Why does She not come to us and take us up in Her arms?’ The sage replied: ‘A mother has several children. To one she has given a doll, to another some candy, to the third a music box, according as each one likes. Thus, when they begin to play and are absorbed, they forget their mother; she, in the meanwhile, looks after her household work. But the moment any one of them gets tired of the play, and, throwing aside the playing, cries for the mother, ‘Mamma, mamma dear!’ she runs quickly to him, takes him up in her arms, kisses him often and often and caresses him. So, oh man! being absorbed with the playthings of the world, you have forgotten your divine Mother; when you get tired of your play, and, throwing aside the toys, you cry for Her sincerely and with the simplicity of a child, She will come at once and take you up in Her arms. Now you want to play and She has given you all that you need at present.' Each one of us will see the divine Mother sooner or later. The Mother is always taking care of us and protecting us, whether we feel it or not, whether we realize it or not.

The Vedanta philosophy recognizes both the Fatherhood and Motherhood of the personal God and teaches us that, through the worship of either of these aspects, the highest ideal of religion can be reached. The Prajapati or the Lord of all creatures of the Vedas is called ‘Isvara’ in Vedanta. Some worship Him as the Father, while others call Him divine Mother. But He is sexless and therefore both Father and Mother of all.

Those who address Him as the Father say:

‘O Lord, Thou art the Father of the universe, of all animate and inanimate objects. Thou art worshipped by all. Thou art greater than the greatest; O Thou of incomparable power, none in. the heavens and earth is equal to Thee, how can any one be greater? O Lord, as a father forgiveth his son, a friend his dear friend, a lover his beloved, even so do Thou forgive me.’

Those who worship His motherly aspect pray to Her, saying:

‘O Mother Divine, Thou art the eternal energy, the infinite source of the universe. Thy powers manifest in the infinite variety of names and forms. Being deluded by the power of ignorance, we forget Thee and take pleasure in the playthings of the world. But, when we come to Thee, take Thy refuge and worship Thee, Thou makest us free from ignorance and worldliness, and givest us eternal happiness by keeping us, Thine own children, on Thy bosom.’

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Vide p. 178: Son of God.

[2]:

Rig Veda, x, hymn 125.

[3]:

Cf. Hinduism and Brahmanism, p. 222.

[4]:

She was known as Gopaler Ma or mother of boy Krishna.

[5]:

‘Life and Sayings of Ramakrishna,’ by F. Max Müller. Charles Seribner’s Sons, New York.