Our Eternal Mother and Father

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Both my father and mother are no more. When I was young, my mother was the world to me. She was a gentle and loving mother as good as any and if any mother has something of the divine in her, something of the mother Goddess, she had it. As I grew older, I continued to love her and be loved by her until she breathed her last some twenty years ago.

Something else happened, as I grew older. I learnt that there is another mother, a more permanent one that was the mother of my mother as well and the mother of everyone else too. She is Mother Earth because all of us are born from her womb. Every part of our body is made from some part of her flesh and blood. And, this more eternal mother is incredibly beautiful too. Her vast forests, mountains, deserts, grasslands and oceans never cease to delight and charm us with their grandeur. She provides us with unlimited bounties, day after day, as long as we live and long after that for the rest of her children, all life that dwells upon the earth.

Like a gentle mother, who allows her offspring to play and mess about in the yard, even trample down her precious beds of painfully nurtured flowers, Mother Earth too allows her children that freedom. It is because of that we have filthy oil spills, scarred and strip mined patches of land, mercilessly logged forests, spills of chemical wastes from our factories, the filthy slum habitations of Latin America, European Gypsy camps, Slums of India and Indonesia and the rape and hunger infested refugee camps of Africa. These ugly scars and spots on Mother Earth do not for a moment mean that Mother Earth is ugly. It is just a temporary thing, like the flowerbed trampled upon by unruly children. When the play is over and the children back in bed or school mother would come around and fix those flower beds and forests again. 

Like every good mother, Mother Earth is stern as well from time to time. When she gets angry, she shakes her bosoms like an earthquake, roars like a hurricane or thunders like the floods drowning her children into the corner stool as temporary punishment.

Now something about my father – just as every cell of my body comes from the flesh and blood of my mother, I know I have something deeper too. It is my soul and that is manifest in my consciousness and feelings of pain, pleasure, love, hate and so on. Most times, my consciousness is so engaged with my physical brain that I do not even realize that these are two distinct parts within me. Just as Mother Earth has given cells of my body to me, the components of my consciousness have been given by my father whose immense consciousness pervades the universe.

There are times when through ancient practices explained by ancient sages, I still my thoughts and sense the soul in its purer form as a part of the universal whole. It is a feeling of super sensuous joy inherent in the close companionship of the Eternal Father. My Eternal Father and Mother are so united in thought, consciousness and existence that they are in fact two sides of the same Eternal Reality some call God. Every time I do something in an attempt to improve something on earth, it is like a gift of love for mother and every time I do something to lift the soul of another of her children, to a wipe a tear or give a smile, to a child or a bird, It is a gift to both mother and father.

I know that the body is like clothing for the soul and like every piece of clothing it gets a bit dirtier and worn out every day. One day, it will be unfit for use and then mother Earth under Instructions from Father Universe shall ordain that it be taken off and given to the shredders for recycling. How much pain I suffer when the dress is being taken off - all depends on how attached I have become to my old dress and the stuff I have stored in its pockets. I shall also be apprehensive if I doubt that I shall be provided with a new dress or left naked like the winds and nothingness. Fortunately, I do not doubt that I shall have new dress just as I have had it several times before.

I will be delighted because of prospects of a dress change, but also apprehensive about the new dress that I shall be given in its place. Appearances are so very important. and then clothing must be sturdy and comfortable too allowing ease of movement. I think father and mother shall decide, perhaps they will include a bit of my preferences, perhaps not. I do not know. The type of my new dress, my new body, the place I shall be born, shall be decided by them just as they have done before. I do not doubt for a moment that it will be a correct and just choice because I do not for an instant doubt the infinite intelligence of father or infinite versatility of mother in sewing just the right dress for the right occasion. I hope they give me a large spacious room with a view to live in with a flow of breeze to live and the light of the sun through the windows, but if they do not, I know that I have not yet deserved it. It shall in the main depend upon my habits and my deeds. If  I have been a rough player, no doubt, the dress shall be a sturdy one. Perhaps rough and ugly looking, not as fine as silk but sturdy like a pair of good jeans. And, if I am in the habit of messing around, I shall be given a room at the back, away from the lush and beautiful gardens of Mother Earth.

A photo from Ashok's garden