– Dr.T.G.Menon, I F.S.(Retd.) Kollengode
(The Author, an initiated disciple of Divine Mother, was formerly India’s Envoy at our Embassies in Australia, Phillipins, Indonesia, North & South Vietnam, Mexico and Panama, Ceylon and Head of the Commerce Division in U.S.A & U.K. Missions: Ed)
I had the blessed opportunity of having Divine Mother’s Darshan and of listening to Her inspiring discourses and spending a few days in Her abode, Shaktinagar, on all the three occasions I visited Mangalore.
In 1953 I had a first glimpse of Divine Mother. I happened to pass through Madras on my way to take up a new assignment in London in our High Commission, from Australia where I spent three years as India’s Envoy. A satsang was being held in the residence of late Sir M. Venkata Subba Rao, Ex-Chief Justice of Madras. He, as an old family friend, invited me to meet Divine Mother who was his guest at that time. But when I went to the large prayer Hall, I saw Mother in a state of complete Samadhi. She seated majestically on the throne provided for the occasion. The huge gathering was singing devotional songs with great devotional fervour. The darshan of Mother in that majestic pose had a profound impact on me and I felt for the first time in the presence of a personality who had merged with God. I am sure the whole mass of humanity who had gathered there had felt the same impact.
In spite of my hectic career as a d’career Diplomat, my early training under my loving grandmother (my father was too busy with politics and my beloved mother had died when I was hardly six years old) had left in me an instinct to fear God, to respect traditions and to stick to my daily routine of prayers wherever I went.
But I did not know where to concentrate my mind, it was Krishna one moment, Siva another moment, Lakshmi still another moment, even Christ or Buddha, sometime as I have always been a cosmopolitan and pragmatic in outlook in the religious field (In foreign countries I used to attend the churches often as a regular practice). My mind was like a rudderless boat cast in the high seas carried hither and thither by winds of fortune.
But since that fateful day in Madras, the unforgettable and divinely beautiful and majestic figure of Mother had come to my mind every time I went through a moment of stress or strain, which gave me further confidence and courage. In fact even these days, after seeing Mother so often in Mangalore, when I pray to Her, it is that picture of Mother at Madras in 1953 that comes uppermost in my mind.
The next darshan was in 1957 when I visited Trichur on my way from London to North Vietnam to join there as the Political Adviser of the International Peace commission and later as its Chairman in Saigon. I spent three days when, as luck would have it, the Divine Mother was staying at the house of my cousin Thankam (Mrs. T. N. K. Nair) an ardent devotee of Mother, who, as I had known, was not only saved by Mother from a calamitous illness but is now a dominant worker of the Mission wielding considerable influence among the devotees of the Divine Mother.
Mother lovingly enquired if I practiced prayers daily. I replied, ‘Yes Mother, I repeat Sri Ram Jaya Ram Jaya Jaya Ram’. ‘That is quite enough for the present’, said Mother with a radiant smile, and I withdrew. Little had I known at that time that Mother had given some more time for me to wander about before I could take refuge at Her Feet.
The fateful telephone call to receive spiritual initiation from Divine Mother and to join Rama Sakti Mission came one crisp cold January morning in New Delhi in the year 1972, where I was staying on an assignment. It was the gentle voice of Thankam. She informed me that Divine Mother was at her daughter’s residence and that if I wanted to be initiated, she would gladly arrange it for me.
Thankam had of course known about my aspiration, but the offer was so persuasive and so sudden that I was simply baffled, knowing my own utter incapacity to take up such a divine responsibility. But in a flash I suddenly realized the uselessness of the pomp and glory of a wild diplomatic career, which leads you to nothing except some creature comforts and also the miseries of a meandering mind.
Every time I sat for prayer, it was the figures of such political leaders-Ho Chi Ming of N.Vietnam, Mao Tse Tung of China, and the heroes of the day, Nho Din Diem of S. Vietnam, Dulles and Nixon of U. S. A, Nasser of Egypt, who crowded my mind. I therefore welcomed the offer, taking it for Divine Mother’s blessing on me, decided on the spur of the moment and said ‘Yes’ without fully realizing the heavy responsibilities of recasting my life to one of peace and quietude and giving up certain earthly comforts. In my new orientation of mind, I also wanted to learn of the philosophical rhapsody of the Hindu religion, and who else can do so better other than one who is the fountain head of the power and wisdom of Shakti Herself?
To reproduce all that Mother had said from time to time in a brief article like this is to attempt the impossible. One fact that struck me forcibly is the rigid self-discipline that is called for in every aspect of one’s life. Mother insists on equilibrium in one’s way of life, an equilibrium which alone can bring a sense of joy, a sense of poise, a sense of fulfillment and achievement, a sense of harmony as in the orchestration of a beautiful concert of Bach, Beethoven or Thyagaraja.
She does it, not in a coercive form, but in a motherly way. Her love for the disciples and Her concern for them makes one realize the state of Her mind charged with divine attributes one associates with that Supreme Being.
Such divine qualities in their perfection can be found only in one who condescended to descend from the transcendental divine state to the human form, for the uplift of humanity which now wallows in degradation and needs to be guided. The readiness to accept all such individuals in Her infinite compassion which God alone is capable of is a phenomenon so rarely discernible in other spiritual personages.
Mother’s doctrine of duty is a clarion call not only to ethical idealism, but to spiritual detachment. She impresses on every one the purifying power of work and the need for conscientious discharge of one’s duties. She asks us to keep the mind in the presence of God even when we are intensely busy, and even in the most trivial details of work.
One can seek God and serve Him in every sphere of work, whether it is the household, the office, the business house, the Factory, or elsewhere, provided one adopts a spiritual perspective, or to speak in the language of faith, one does only such things which God will approve.
Like the great Teachings in the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, Mother has spoken a lot about the necessity for the spiritual devotion and moral training as the way to control and conquest of mind. Her analysis of the human predicaments and situations is startling and She has solution for the problems that confront mankind.
Knowledge of the Self, selfless activity and devotion to the Divine, together bring about a certain state of mind which is exhausted of all factors of agitation in life, says Mother. It is ego, the mental passions and the latent vasanas that destroy one’s life of peace and quietude. If the thoughts are good, the mind is good. Those seeking realization of God, must tackle their own minds, purify their mode of living and seek God with constancy and faith under the guidance of Sadguru.
Sadhana as Mother has explained is the persistent effort to reach the state where one lives, moves and have one’s being in God. This implifies constant practice of the presence of God, restraint of cravings, practice of meditation and tuning one’s entire being to God. The success of meditation depends on our mental states during the rest of the day.
If we stray away from God-thought and get entangled in the stresses of emotional life, it will be impossible for us to focus our mind on God. However much we may try, worldly thoughts are sure to crowd in and prevent the mind from attaining a smooth inward flow called meditation. All our practices in the Prayer Hall are to coax our mind into a mood of spontaneous and total attention and to condition the mind at meditation.
A man living constantly in greed, sensuality and anger cannot even enter the periphery of meditation. The healthy discipline Divine Mother has enjoined upon all sadhakas in the Shaktinagar Campus has in fact opened up vistas of possibilities for quicker advancement in the inner contemplative pursuit.
True humanism, according to Mother, emerges from love of God only. Fellow feeling, compassion, mercy, selflessness, spirit of service and sacrifice, all these are great human qualities that come in the wake of God-love only. No man can truly love another except in and through God. Mother emphasizes the need for cultivation of higher love based on spiritual understanding.
Love is not levity, as Emerson put it. It needs the full worth of man. If two utter strangers can fall in total love at first sight and think of nothing but each other all the time, as is so common in this world, is it too much to expect to develop true love for God who is our only Friend, Companion and Saviour, nay, our own deepest self?
True love can arise only from total faith in God, says Divine Mother. When I spoke to Her once of an ailing relation and sought Her Blessing, Mother’s eyes were found filled with tears and She said: ‘Let her have faith in Mother’.
True enough. The religious books merely tell us of the possibility of understanding of a great transcendent Reality beyond the Mind. But only by faith can man strive on the path of Self-realization. It is faith alone, not philosophy that will give us divine comfort in critical situations. Without faith one cannot hold fast to God, one cannot do any real sadhana.
All these thoughts have been communicated by Divine Mother to those around Her, not in a doctrinaire way but from a state of sympathy and love arising from an inward abundance of spirituality. All these have been new revelations to me when I heard the inspiring divine discourses at Shaktinagar.
Religion was, for me, merely a set of forms of rituals and the knowledge of the Gita and other scriptures which I had to my credit was only on a theoretical plane. Only after visiting Shaktinagar and staying in the campus within the immediate spiritual aura of Divine Mother, I came to know that while I can do little about my past, I can by Her Grace and by my own patient practice of the technique She taught us, reduce the innate tendencies, make my mind less extrovert and eventually get linked with my own deepest divinity, the Atman.