– Sri M.K.Patwardhana
It was in October 1958 that I first come to know about the Divine Mother from one of her disciples at Dharwar who had attended Mother’s discourses at Bombay. He told us about the various bhavas of the Mother and also about the spiritual power she radiated. But it was just a partial glimpse of the great life lived so silently and unostentatiously. It was not then possible for the aforesaid devotee of Mother to adequately portray her life and give us a comprehensive idea of the unfathomable depth of its richness. He could simply arouse our eagerness to have a darsan of the great soul, for which purpose some of us decided to undertake a pilgrimage to Mangalore soon thereafter.
One day, I was standing before the photo of Mother with her right hand unpraised in blessing. All of a sudden, I felt that a power was pulling me towards Mother. I was so much drawn towards Mother that I longed and almost resolved to visit Mangalore and have her darsan at any rate. Some inner voice assured me that nothing would prevent me from going to Mangalore along with the Dharwar devotees.
The intuitive certainty I felt was fully justified by subsequent events. All my earlier difficulties either faded away or lost their importance, with the result that I could, shortly thereafter, accompany the Dharwar devotees to Mangalore, where we were welcomed at the Sadhana Mandir. The only thing that possessed me all the while was the eagerness to know what Mother looked like, and what she would be, a Sadhu, a Saint, some higher being!
I saw Mother for the first time when she entered the bhajan hall at Mangalore in the evening of one Sunday in April 1959. She looked serene and intoxicated with divine love. A number of devotees were performing bhajan there, having been drawn by the invisible bonds of Mother’s love. Mother took her seat on a couch. Her face was beaming with smile. She then sang in her sweet voice the following bhajan :
“ Come, do come, Oh Nandalal !
Be seated in my heart, Oh giridharlal ! ”
As Mother proceeded with the singing, she became ecstatic and she passed alternately through three modes of divine consciousness. She was in a conscious state when she joined the devotees in the chorus. While singing God’s Name she became partly superconscious in an ecstasy of love for Sree Krishna, and then finally she lost herself in Samadhi in which she became completely oblivious to the outer world. Her body became motionless. Her mind appeared to have gone to another realm. All the devotees in the hall looked at her in great awe and amazement. Some put thick garlands around her neck. It was indeed a divine sight,-Mother sitting motionless, with fragrant garlands adorning her neck, her countenance beaming with love, the golden complexion of her body blending with the colour of her plain white clothes, and the devotees singing in chorus in her majestic presence! This enchanted the eyes of all those who were present. After a long time she came down from Samadhi.
For a long time my mind was humming the following lines from Sri Ekanath’s Bhagawat :-
“ How sweet the melted ghee when it congeals.
So, when the Hidden One his form reveals,
How glad the seeker feels!
“ Dark, dark the far unknown and closed the way
To thought and speech ; silent the scriptures ; yea
No word the Vedas say.
“ Not thus the Manifest. How fair ! How near !
Gone is our thirst if only he appear-
He, to the heart so dear.
“ My eyes, if but a glimpse of the Manifest I get,
Are healed ; escaped am I from out life’s net,
Cancelled my sensual debt.
“ In the lamp’s light all hidden things appear ;
So when I think upon my God so dear
The far-off God is here.”
Superficially her mode of life appeared to be similar to that of others. But in reality, she belonged to an entirely different world. She was always blissful and intoxicated with divine love. At times she was seen at her best. At times she would rise to her spiritual heights to the wonder and amazement of the people around. “ One who has secured Mother’s blessings need not worry about liberation.” “If you always remember Mother that will be enough.” Utterances like these would come from Mother with great force when the disciples were found depressed or wavering. In spite of such utterances she was absolutely free from egotism, and we could see a wonderful mixture of the human and the divine in her. We had heard and read much of Vedanta. But here we saw Vedanta in actual life, as it were. We found that a single utterance which dropped from Mother’s lips could give infinite strength to innumerable persons.
Mother also described to us the various incidents of her sadhana days and the phases of her spiritual realization. She told us about the visions she had of Sri Rama, Sri Krishna, Lord Siva and the Divine Mother. It is generally believed that if one once tastes the bliss of God, his interest in the worldly duties declines and that as his spiritual joy becomes deeper he cannot perform his worldly duties. But Mother told us that in spite of her spiritual achievements she never failed in her duty towards Sri Bhagwan, her husband. By her own example, Mother showed us that the person who properly performed his duties in the world, cherishing at the same time love for the Lotus Feet of God, was really blessed.
In the Divine Mother we could see, with our naked eyes, an incarnation of God-an Ishwarkoti-who was never imprisoned in the world nor entangled by it, who though possessing a human body was always united with the supreme, who though frequently established in samadhi could easily descend to the worldly plane. In Mother we found one to whom knowledge was revelation, one who was not walking in the dim twilight of finite knowledge but had acquired a direct perception of truth in a superconscious state-Samadhi. Her intense hunger for truth, her perception of God as a very near and ever present reality, and her rapturous communion with Lord Krishna produced deep impression on us. Laying aside all vanities of education we become rapt listeners to the revealed knowledge that flowed from the lips of the beloved Mother in states of ecstasy, Ardha Bahiavastha or normal consciousness.