Notes 1 to 28

                                                 

MAI-ISM

PART 1 CHAPTER 1

MAI from MATAJI

Jay Mai Jay Markand Mai

 1. The Founder of Mai-ism and President of the Mother's Lodge (Mai Mandal), MAI SWARUP MAI MARKAND ( Rao Saheb Markand Ratanlal Dholakia, L.C.E.) began his devotion of the Hindoo Mother since his tender age of twelve. He began his Sadhana from the very first rung of the ladder, with shouting in solitudes, "Mother! Tell me, dost Thou exist or not ?"  at that young age in Petlad, his native place in Gujarat, near Cambay. 

2. He had proof of Mother's existence by being saved from the attack of two robbers on his way home from that place of solitude to that of his home, one night, through the intervention of a tall fearful woman. She walked over between the boy and the robbers for a few furlongs till the boy was safe near the outskirts of his village. Most wonderfully, the same terrible black woman disappeared in the air immediately after the boy's safety.

 3. The incident did not go beyond creating a suspicion and a wonder, but at least the idea of the possibility of the existence of God, deities, angels, spirits, other worlds, etc., took its roots. It took three years of strong devotion of Jagadamba Kali and Chaamunda (one after another, in his own place, but more and more distant and desolate) to make the boy ripened enough to have an undoubtful belief about existence through the second incident mentioned here below.

 4. The boy in a busy crowd in Ahmedabad was shouting-ly warned by a dog-cart driving European pair, to be aside. The boy failing, the European took off his long whip, determined to beat the boy out. The merciless man, however, lost the grip of the whip, the whip encircled the foot of the horse and the dogcart fell to the ground. The boy, terribly afraid, ran away from the crowd and tremblingly concealed himself in Bhadra Kali temple corner, the nearest safest place. 

 5. With his whole frame shattered, the boy had the very night a dream in which the whole scene of accident repeated itself and ended with the daily repeated question, "Mother! dost Thou exist or not?". The Mother (The Bhadra Kali Image), in the dream, answered, "I DO NOT EXIST". The boy asked, "Who then is speaking?". Mother then smilingly asked, "Whom Then are you asking this question, tiring me and yourself for the last over three years?".

 6. The boy got confidence in the existence of God at the age of 15. He began to believe it was the intervention of Kali that had saved him from robbers. The boy was busy trying to secure God's grace and recognition as devotee through devotion to any of the usually worshipped Hindu deities, viz. Rama, Shiva, Krishna, and others. He was, however, as it were, passed on by one deity to another without retention till, with full despondency, he concluded, MATAJI alone would accept him, he is worthless for any of all other deities. To cheer himself up, he would say with a sorrowful laughter, "How can other deities misappropriate the property of a particular deity, if it has been owned for past so many lives?".

7. The conception of Hindu Devi or Matajee is that of sternness, terror, and destructive though united with benignity and mercifulness and everything-asked-giving-ness and all-desires-fulfilling-ness. Even today, it is more or less the same, with Hindus, who have not come in touch with Mai-ism. Matajee is Hinduistic (restricted to Hindus alone) and She is a personification of Power (all Powers of all types from the lowest to the highest). Mai or Maijee is Universal and a Personification of Mother, God Himself as Mother and not God's Power. With Hindu-Matajee, the relationship of the devotee and the deity is that of the demander and donor of powers leading to general happiness, success, rulership, controllership, victoriousness, infatuating ness, etc. The relationship with Mai is that of a mother and child. Maataajee is mostly a goddess of fear and power, whereas Maaijee is the Goddess of parental love and permanent welfare. Except for the common element of the feminine sex, the conception of Maataajee and Maaijee are entirely different and dis-similar, if not contradictory. To put it in the usual Hindu scriptural language, Maataajee, as most believed by Hindus, is the Taamasik aspect, whereas Maaijee is the purest Saattvik aspect. Mai-ism is working hard for the past over 18 years, (i.e. since 2-9-1932), to transform the Taamasik belief about the Mataji to the Saattwik, to change the idea of fear into that of love, to raise the notion of Maya, Power and Consort-ship, to that of Motherhood, to broaden the Hinduistic restricted notion and vision to the Universal one, and to reduce hundreds of things stated in the name of Religion to only six tenets of Mai-ism.

8. If Hindus today have modified their beliefs about the conception of Matajee and have begun to have the stabilized conception of a mother to the son instead of a Demon-destroyer (as Mahisha-Mardini), that is attributable in a large measure to Mai-ism. The improvement in the Hinduistic conception is the founder's heart-filling reward. The yet higher reward he has already attained from Mai, in the shape of Mai's Grace and Mercy and a fairly good success in establishing Mai-ism. 

9. The mention of this distinction becomes indispensable here as otherwise it would not be realised how much terror-stricken the boy was at the idea that none of the Sattvik deities as Shiva, Rama or Krishna had accepted him and that on the other hand he was so much favoured and cared for by Matajee, the most prominent feature of whose traditional mythology was the destruction of the Demons and terrible fighting in the battle-fields. Her appearance itself with so many life-destroying weapons would make one fully afraid, shuddered and terror-stricken. The boy had none of the requirements of a fearful sadhana. He was too tender and even timid for the worship and devotion of the deity that can be best propitiated in the cremation-grounds and in the darkest nights. As it is so very habitual with and true of the world with regard to every reform or discovery or invention in any matter, the world has not been grateful and has not appreciated or observed or noted the wholesome overhauling change of transformation from the conception of a "Power" to a "Mother" achieved on the preaching of Mai-ism at every possible opportunity, by the Founder, practically for his whole life.

10. The boy, then eighteen, was shuddering at the idea of being a devotee of a terrible deity on the one hand, but on the other he believed, he was only living the life of merely a two-footed animal of desires, impulses and chances, without the protection of any deity or God, especially after being convinced about the existence of God, deities, the other world, invisible help, etc., - a kind of life that was the greatest folly for any man.

11. He invented a way from this "Scylla and Charybdis" position. Said he, " Let me cast the gambler's throw. I will perform a hundred repetitions of Saptashati. If Matajee accepts me as Her son with no displeasure, no freaks, no fears, no terrible wrathfulness and no vengeance for consciously or unconsciously done offenses, I become Hers. Otherwise, I live my life as an atheist or an agnostic, with all goodness, morality, broad-mindedness, fellow-feeling, etc. : but thereafter, no "humbug" of religiosity and another goal of life except to be eating, drinking, and dying merrily, happily, indifferently and enjoying life in every possible moral and innocent manner. 

12. At eighteen, he began the experiment. On thirty repetitions, he had a telegram, at Poona, where he was studying in Engineering College, from his maternal uncle, who was the Revenue Collector of the Baroda State, at Mehsaanaa, near Ahmedabad. It was about his mother's illness and asking him to start immediately. On the very railway station, where his uncle had come to receive him, the former received a telegram from Baroda Government to immediately proceed to Bahucharaji Matajee (the Second most popular Goddess worshipped in Gujarat) as the Revenue Collector of the district and to do certain arrangements. The young lad was taken directly to the place, as his mother had become fairly all right, as soon as he had started from Poona, by Mother's Grace. The illness was a pretext utilized by mother to force him to come down, as he had determined not to leave Poona, although all students had left on their vacation. He had refused going home, as he was determined to finish the experiment in the same place, without any break or interruption. There, in the temple, the boy was given an assurance by Matajee in a dream that She would be to him purely and unadulteratedly a loving and living mother. He returned to Poona full of hair-erect bristling joys.

13. Since that day, the supernatural and occult powers of prediction and blessing which were inherent in him from the very childhood became more effective, intense and acute. He could bring two persons at daggers drawn going to a criminal court for cross suits, to be friends in a two hours' talk. Once he wanted 63 rupees (his M. O. not arriving at proper time from parents before the last date of college fees payment). He prayed at 9 P.M. and at 11 P.M. he had a heap of about Rs. 800 because the Bengali and Gujerati quarters took a fright at 10 P.M. - (there were some robbers preparing to loot the quarters from behind, seen gathered on the desolate railway lines). Though a big cipher in drawing (the most essential subject in Engineering), his drawings to be finally examined with marks-giving at the annual University examination would be prepared by the best students with the full permission and cognition of the very supervisors and even the Principal. Once Matajee dictated to him, the whole of the chemistry paper the previous night (preparation method of iodine, etc.).    

14. The dullest boy was the happiest. He was a voracious reader but he was more of a mathematician, a poet, a thinker, a philosopher and a songster than an engineer, by his very birth. What did he care, after he had Mother's protection? His repeated failures in spite of his hardest work trained him to realize nothingness of himself and life and left no drop of charmful-ness about life with all its varied pleasures. He ceased to be a responsible actor of the world and became a superficial spectator of his own life, allowing it to be drifted as Mother desired according to his past Karmas, with nothing as the goal of his life, at such a tender age, - usually full of follies and passions, spirits and storms. 

15. At twenty-two, he had the most calamitous, and yet the final hardest, hammer under which he would have succumbed, but for Mother's Grace. He happened to read Yoga-Vasistha and Vedantism, that terrible teaching of "AHAM BRAHMA ASMI", and his head turned. His intellect got clouded by the controversy of the new teaching. He thought he was all along under a delusion and pitiable victim of a huge cheat by MATAJI, the Maya deity. He threw away his deities, picture, scriptural Sapthasati, wooden seat, worshipping materials and vessels in the river Mula-Mutha-Sangam, behind his living place. He changed his course from devotion (Bhakti) to Divine Knowledge (Jnana). He began repeating "AHAM BRAHMA ASMI" day and night and interviewed so many religious teachers on the subject.

16. Although the world, or at any rate India, has been spiritually and religiously degenerating day-to-day, the greatest advantage of India's contact with the West was a much clearer understanding of Hindus' own religion and much broader intellectual and social vision. We now have remained no longer ignorant. We are what we are today or any moment, with full knowledge of what we are; negative illiteracy and ignorance have disappeared. Wherever positive wickedness has appeared, it is with fullest consciousness and understanding about the nature and result of every wicked thought, word, and action. People have been rather more rebellious against God, religion and divine laws, than ignorant about them. They have been too much trusting their scheming intellect and worldly efficiency and are determinedly busy over flouting the Divine laws. People are what they are, with their eyes open and their hearts and hands fully cognisant of everything connected with them. There is very little like ignorance now, even in distant-most village corners.

      

     I am referring to this to make people realize that some decades ago Divine knowledge and Devotion were at daggers drawn. It is now that things have changed and religious teachers have accepted the policy of harmonizing both. Past religious history surely testifies to this oft-repeated, standing perpetual conflict. The Jnana and Bhakti conflict has now disappeared because the mass has been indifferent to religion itself and the rich class people, who are mostly Vaishnavas, want devotional out-flowings of the Vaishnavic type, which are easier and more pleasant things for practical people, the less literate mass and especially ladies (who in this age are better financial helpers and more sympathetic to Religion) than sordid monotonous monistic talks. The Advaitists have seen that unless they equally appreciate and preach devotion, their popularity and maintenance of Ashrams would be an impossibility. For such among other reasons, began the commencement of the happy union of devotion and divine knowledge, very many years after the event under description (viz.. the boy's mental derangement). The huge horror of general irreligiosity accompanied with materialistic and individualistic tendencies was also responsible for bringing about the happy union under the fears of a common enemy. That deprecating manner of saying, "Devotion is just only a stepping stone", which has now disappeared, was then at its highest shouting pitch. It is only now very recently that Sanyaasees and Yogis and Karma Margis all have gradually pitched their tents in the open airy yellow lawns of devotion. That preaching of oneness of Atma and Paramaatma, that idea of inferiority of devotion and deities, that sophistry about the fruitlessness or unreality or the delusion of the Universe and all allied teachings, so very forceful than, were more than overpowering for the young boy of twenty-two who had seen nothing of the world, in its true natural colours.   

17. The young boy had never had to pass through a more terrible time. He experienced that, as a result of his faithless desertion of Mother, the whole world had changed to be worse or him. Even his best friends and relations disliked, displeased and deserted him. No solace, no consoling word, no happy night, no soothing idea, no kind relative, no pleasure, no relieving feature, no miraculous powers, no happy meditations, no devotional effusions, no good lucks. The whole world was, as it were, spitting on him with a contempt for dethronement. He could not bear, undergo and survive the punishments of the change. The disastrous results were much more terrible than can be described. His morality, goodness, character, religiosity all stood before him, threatening him with leaving him as a corpse. the fire of ill-treatment of the world, his own self-contempt on gold of his self-turning to base brass, and the scorching in the hot furnace of repentance as a result of having deserted Mother's protection, the contrast of his faculties before and after, all led him to the highest desperation. One day, in Petlad, he tore off his garments and sacred-thread, threw off his shirt and dhoti and cap in the street and ran away from the house as one determined to mend or end his life, to be a Sannyasin, or to commit suicide. What might have been the climax of his sorrow, disappointment, and disgust of life and world, at twenty-two, can be better imagined than described. He was however caught by his most revered father who ran after him with all the force he can command in the street, weeping and shouting on losing his son, and by his mother, weeping and madly running after the father. He was brought home and kept confined in a room for a week and greatly smoothened and solaced by the parents. After a promise not to be a Sannyasin, he was permitted to return to Poona for studies. His mother with tears in her eyes said, "You have never been telling a lie. You never break your promise. If you are determined to be a Sannyasin, first stab me and then go. If you wish that I may live, promise me, you will not leave home."

    It was this promise the remembrance of which, along with the whole scene and accident, was fresh in the Founder's mind for years together, which after so many oscillations, did not leave him undisturbed and easy, whenever he got the idea of taking Sannyasa, especially when he was possessed with the idea, that was necessary and perhaps indispensable for the intense propaganda of Mai-ism. That is so for the main reason that it is mostly the brown robe and the tonsured head that sets religious Hindus a-thinking most seriously, concentratedly, reverentially and sympathetically, on the subject of Religion and Religious Reformation. There was often such a violent tug and pull from both sides with their respective battalions of pros and cons, that he was unable to decide what was best, in the interest of his mission. The Founder then satisfied himself with leaving matters to take place as Mother finally willed and with the remembrance of the incident and the promise he had given to his dearest mother, years before.

18. One idea alone, about his greatest ungratefulness to the Mother who had been protecting him all along, and without whose protection what the world would be to him, he had experienced and realized, that one monomania seized him. This one idea acted like the most violent attack of an unbearable shock. He decided to drown in the very same river unless Mother reaccepted him. In the midst of the excruciating pains he got an imaginary idea like a lightning in the darkest cloudy night, "Will not Mother save me? Will She not tell me She has reaccepted me?". All this was a matter of few hours, before determination and preparation for action. He went to commit suicide in the river. He ran towards the river water depth with a speed which he had never before used. Just then, he was caught in the sweetest trans-heavenly Embrace of Mother - The Visible, The Infatuatingly Beautiful Mother. She admonished him strongly never to be so reckless and senseless in future and assured him he was never disowned by Her, although his head had turned. Not only that, but She told him, She was carrying him through certain experiences, which were indispensable. Mother knew his fickle-mindedness and did the preventive needful. Retracing to his room, he expressed to himself, though most stealthily, wishing none to know it, not even his own mind to hear him, his inmost suspicion, (the devil of a suspicion), which proved his greatest ungratefulness even after Mother had been merciful enough by saving him from committing suicide. He asked himself, "What did I see?, What did I hear?". Is this all not a mental derangement? Is this all not a false vision because of a mental despair? (This Maya-created doubting, though most temporary, does not leave even the highest man till he attains salvation). Mother had anticipated this and She had kept the answer ready to convince him of Her embrace and Her Word and Her Promise. 

19. Most surprisingly, on opening the room, he saw the very same deity picture, the very same scriptural book of Saptashati, the very same wooden seat, the very same worshipping articles at the very same place as they were and where they were before, the very same things which he had thrown away in the river with contempt, about six weeks before.

20. From this moment onwards, he linked himself with and rivetted himself to the Mother. His conception then was a Hinduistic one, viz., that of Power (Shakti) although with the additional personally secured concessional advantage of Mother's protection to him as Her son. That was however just as a lioness has her love for her cub though not without devouring ferocity. He had no special attachment to a particular aspect of Hindu Mataji as Amba, Kali, Bahucharajee, Chamunda or Bhawani. They were not different realities to him even then. As his final conclusion then went, these were only different names and forms of one and the same reality of MATAJI, Shakti (Power), the final most Power (Shakti), assuming different situations, different goals, and different purposes. The word " Mataji ", apparently meaning " Mother " was however to him, an honorific name for a feminine sex deity, with no conception of a mother-and-child relationship for one and all devotees. In a word, he had not risen above the centuries-old Hindu Shakti conception and had absolutely no conception of Mai. The form that he saw as embracing him had nothing special to characterize Her as any of these five aspects. She was not in any of Her above-adopted forms. She had human-like only two arms and no weapons. The dazzling light and the crown halo around the celestial face, with the forward spreading glamour (as of a searchlight) was there. She was in Her Natural form, of the whole Universe-running-Divine-Mother, a burnished gold-colored Divine fascinating Female Figure, which immediately convinced him about who She was.  

21. The period from the date of this event in 1907 up to 1932, say of about two dozens of years, was that of a common man's living with a gradual progressive development in the religiosity and learning of different sacred books. Two points of vast transformation, which makes Mai-ism  an entirely different thing from the Hindu Shaktism-cult are : - First, Mother is not Power, but as a Mother to Her child: Second No Amba, no Kali, no Durga of Hindus, but Mother of all in the Universe, of a particular Universe and of all Universes, conceivable in the Ocean of Perpetuity and Infinity.

22. It requires a truly religious man to see the difference. The desired change of the whole outlook on life, in its real most practical solid and unadulterated form, would require lives. Not an intellectual mere " Oh Yes", but a living of the smallest detail of life with the particular belief of Motherhood, Universality and " Mother and child relationship" between God and devotee. Hindu Mataji (Power) was gradually transforming Herself with him to be the Universal Mother " Mai ". Honest and subtle religious aspirants know well enough that the universalization of one's ideal is not merely a matter of a tongue-twist, but that it requires decades and decades and in some cases full lives of deep-thinking experience, hard sacrifice, religious practice, and realization. Let one apply the acid practical tests of life and actual living and he will be surprised to find how few prove themselves to be really of a universal mind. For every thousand of persons that prattle about Universality with their tongue, there is not one with the same in all its reality, in his heart. There would not have been such factions of our Bharatbhumi, as Hindusthan and Pakistan, if there had been even one true honest and sincere powerful religious universal-minded soul on each side, who had genuine simple and unadulterated Universality in his heart's deep-most and bottom-most layers. 

    By Universality, the Founder means its primary sense only, viz., a complete absence of the idea of one man being different from another exactly similar man on the mere ground of such two men's belonging to different religions. Universality to be effective must be the supreme quality of one's whole vision and entire integral outlook with a belief and a conviction about its highest value. Universality should not be an outcome of a policy, a temporary acceptance, or a delusion-creativeness, for some specific object in view. It should be an impossibility, to assume a different color after some attainment or after a lapse of some long time.  

    The differences, the superiority and inferiority complexes, prejudices and prepossessions, likes and dislikes, as a result of different persons following different religions, (to be universal-minded), require to be uprooted, wiped out, annihilated and completely forgotten as if they were never in existence, ever before. The Founder brought about a reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims over a mosque question at Nasik in a few hours, which was a standing cause of unrest for 12 to 15 years to the public and Government (vide page 134 of Volume I, Part II, Mai Sahasranam). That was possible only because the Founder was Universal-minded, in every moment of his living, after 1932, and because he was a Mai-ist, the Founder and a follower of a religion which has universal-minded-ness as its main-most commandment. 

    

    The subtle difference is to be noted here. It is not that some few Hindus or Muslims are not there that are universal-minded, but the presumption holding its sway in the minds of both communities in terms of millions of hearts is that a Hindu is a Hindu and a Muslim is a Muslim, during butchering riots.

    When the knife is raised to be plunged, it is not possible for one to know or inform that he is not an enemy, at that moment of life and death. Mai-ism emphasizes the need for a solid working through organizations, during peace periods.

    There the whole difference comes in. To be the known follower of a religion (or even a society) which makes no distinction of that nature, on one hand, and on the other, to be an exception to the usual beliefs about a religion (or a society) by the co-religionists or member of anti-religionists of outsiders, are poles asunder. That you are above such animosities must have been a proved fact known to the world at large, ere long and much before an event. Too subtle a point to be appreciated realized and admitted (!) 

    Mere shouting about brotherhood, without that moral religious and spiritual strength of the lived-life, is like the deafening of the shop-keepers in a market with loud gramophone records to sell their merchandise.

    We have all the imaginable space filled up with cries of brotherhood, and yet the atmosphere is experienced to have been saturated with bitterest poisons in the hearts of men and in the despicable dealings of man to man. Few have asked themselves this paradoxical question and still, fewer have got the answer.    The answer is simplest enough to the fewest who can understand truths without any perplexities and confusions created by worldly-mindedness. Words can have a vast progeny of words alone; cries, of cries alone. It is only true love and a true spirit of Universal brotherhood that can create love and Universal Brotherhood. Nature cannot be cheated or defrauded. 

    That supreme stage of Universal outlook, once attained, along with other sterling virtues, carries with it, its own wonderful silent super-natural power over the hearts of average men. By mere shouting, "We are all brothers. Let us live as brothers", one does not touch the inner chord nearest to the Divinity within every man. The man appealing to brotherhood must have actually lived in that spirit and with that belief as the maxim of his life, ere long and for many years before the circumstances arise for making the appeal and taking help of the Divine Truth.

    He must have lived above all social, communal and political factions and must have acquired an unseen authority as a result of his austerity and sacrifice on having lived that sort of life, much above the mundane plane of self-interest and struggle, and entanglement of " I " and " mine ".

    Reconciliation between two antagonistic forces becomes possible only when a much superior force, an overpowering force, makes each of them to be reminded of its comparative nothingness before all-governing and all-conquering Universal Final-Most Supreme Force of Divine Law and Nature, always working in the interest of the humanity, as a whole.

    Purse and Power may be successful in commanding obedience and co-operation, but that is no loving brotherhood of a true, real and permanent nature.

    The spiritual force of a Religious Universal-minded man is of a much stronger powerfulness than that of the Life-force or the Will-force or the Soul-force. It derives its strength from the Divinity itself as the recipient has already pledged himself to live his life in the highest interest of the noblest welfare of the whole humanity.

23. During the college sub-period (from 1908 to 1912), there were many convincing proofs of Matajee's grace.

    During his second-year-examination, one day he was in a devotional mood, which made him entirely un-composed to be able to attend the examination hall, in Bombay, at the appointed hour. When he could compose himself in his home, the examination hour had passed. he washed his face, dressed and took a tram. In hot haste, his Y-square which was shoved in the drawing-board the wrong way fell off on the ground. Some Seth picked it up and ran in a victoria after the tram, and caught it at the next halt. The boy was overwhelmed with the feeling of gratefulness. No time was to be lost. The Seth most abruptly said, "Mataji! (Mother), bless me with a son". Said the Founder, "Matajini Mehr Kripa Varso Kalyan" (Mother's Mercy, Grace, shower Welfare). The devotee ran to the hall and found that he was 40 minutes late. Soon after him, came the Registrar with the question-paper packets. He was admitted into the hall. (Please refer to page 150, Mai Sahasranama, Volume II, Part IV). The printing machinery unprecedentedly had gone wrong to give boy sufficient time to recover his normal plane and to reach the hall!

24. The second instance was in respect of the special train carrying the students on a geological tour in the final year. The students had encamped in Agra and were awaiting the arrival of a special train expected to arrive within an hour or so. The boy got a flying news that Mathura (the pilgrimage-place of Lord Krishna) was near. Said he, "I must go for the Darshan of my beloved Lord Krishna". The train time that day to Mathura had passed away. Like a madman, he said, "I will go to the station." Two friends (both later became known great Government-Engineers of Bombay Presidency) accompanied him. The first station, the station staff laughed at their ignorance of the scheduled timings. The second station, people called them mad. Here one friend got irritated when the boy proposed going to the third station. Said he to the other companion, "What? Are you also mad like this madman? I am returning home. If you like, you be mad with him". The third station, the engine was lying "sick". On purchase of tickets and hurried sitting in a coal wagon, the engine came to order and whistled. The despondency that had arisen on the booking-clerk advising them not to purchase the tickets as the engine had gone useless, turned to a cheerfulness with a joyful hurrah. However, the cause for standing suspense and anxiety did not altogether cease. They would be detected on the arrival of the special train as absconders and be even punished. They had not enough money to return to Bombay from Agra with fresh tickets. From 4 P.M. to 9 P.M. of the next day, the special could not be ready in spite of the repeated telegrams by the influential Professor-in-charge of the tourists, till they returned. Soon after the return of the boys from Mathura on the station itself, the special arrived in the midst of double joys by the students. The special did after all arrive, and the two absconding boys also had just arrived, not to be left to their lot. The in-charge was hot with the boy, our Founder, for having bolted away without permission, but his popularity came to his full aid.

25. From 1912 to 1932, there was nothing of catching importance to interest Mai-ists. The only remarkable factor of this period was that he was so often miraculously saved from embarrassing situations of life. He repeated Saptashati to which Lalitha Sahasranam was later added (since May 1909) both once every week, and he was devotedly performing his daily small worship at home and performing Chaitra and Ashvini Navratri with fasts, bhajans, sacrifices, pathas, worships, etc.  His reputation as a devotee of Matajee had become widespread and established.  In the direction of Divine knowledge, he took a very active part in all religious matters. He was in close touch with Theosophy both at Ahmedabad and Poona and wrote several thought-provoking and instructive articles in "Meher Message", such as, "Ignorant adverse criticism". "Misfortunes of the modern mumukshus", "Facts for the fatigued", "Divine Love:, "Happiness", etc., and "God and God-attainment Remedies", in "Kalyan" of Gorakhpur, and "Dharma Darshan" in Sharada-Peetha, etc. 

26. His worldly life was a tossing and a bumping from one wall to another. On one side, worldly harassment of every nature; and on the other, his extremely jovial disposition and spiritual pleasure and devotional ecstasy. However, during this periods, he had several occasions to have a personal eye-to-eye vision of the Divine Mother, in a waking state oftentimes in the most painful moods and moments. One of them may be narrated here as a specimen. To write all experiences would require volumes. 

27. His services as a municipal engineer in Surat were to be discharged as a result of a new fad of Government to lend engineers along with the Municipal Commissioners. He resigned, before a notice be served. He was anxious that he had an appointment somewhere, before his leaving; but nothing would come forth in reply to his applications. It was the Navratra 9th day. Brahmins were on the wooden seats for dinner after all the ceremony was over. The devotee went upstairs and wept in a half-frantic manner in solitude before Mother, "You are useless, go, eat like a hungry bitch with those Brahmins. They are waiting. I will be fasting". He sent word down to his wife and relatives that he had a stomachache, and he could not join Brahmins.   "Let them finish. Serve them with all heart and liberality" With all the recklessness, he told Mother,  "What more do you want? Should I break my head at Thy feet?" Just then the door was knocked. A telegram of appointment was there. The whole scene was changed. He ran up to weep out his gratitude to Mother.  And what did he see and hear?   "Will you not at least now come with me down for the dinner?" The form and the sound both disappeared in less than a second, leaving him again lost in a labyrinth, Divine meditation, and ecstasy.

28. The year 1932 was a turning point in his religious life. One should rather call it a sublimating or a culminating point. Till then, there was no remarkable change in what he had made himself to be all his life. The period from 1912 to 1932 was that of preparation with lots of troubles and sufferings to be fitted up religiously and spiritually for the work he was to be charged with. Till then, his belief consisted of increasing proportions of " Mother-element " in the " Power-Mother " - basic mixture, from time to time. It was reaching the culmination-point of the full Motherhood of God, to which universality became automatically a corollary. Said he to himself "If your God is Father or Mother of the whole Universe and if whoever resides and is worshipped in Hindu temples is not a mere Hindu God, but a Universal God of one and all, there can be absolutely no justification for "entry-refusal" to anyone, (Harijans or Mohamedans, etc). What Hindus alone can worship can only be a Hindu God, and not a Universal God."

Jay Mai Jay Mai Jay Mai