A brother from Palakollu used to visit Amma regularly… He always used to argue – almost quarrel – with her. It meant there – was no other way for him to converse with Mother than in that manner. He does not realize, under that emotional upsurge, what he was speaking. And how he was behaving. This happened only when he was with Mother. He arrived one morning. Silent for a few minutes, he broke into speech.
Brother: Do you, Mother, do some worship?
Mother: For me, worshiping means only that I long for you.
Brother: Do you pray?
Mother: (smilingly): Yes!… My prayer is to want all of you! To have you all!
Brother: What is the difference between Dwaita (dualism) and Advaita (Nondualism) ?
Mother took a jasmine flower lying at her feet and cut the stem and showed it, said.
Mother: This is Dwaita. When the stem and the other part remain together, it is Advaita.
Brother : I don’t have faith in worshiping a person (as god)
Mother: Good. Do what you have full faith in.
Brother: What do you say about rebirth?
Mother: I don’t say anything about it. I don’t have any idea, any view about it.
Brother: Do you, then, mean to say that rebirths are not there? Mother: In my view, they don’t exist. In this birth itself we are unable to elicit meaning from what is there right in front of us. Then why go far to rebirths?
Okay: How do we get to talk or think about this? Isn’t it because we think that we reap the results of the sin we commit in this birth in the birth that follows the present. Isn’t that so?
Okay Let us believe or assume that there are rebirths. Will he then stop committing sin? will he perform only good acts?
All right: Let us assume that rebirth is a myth. Will he then fearlessly, nonchalantly commit sinful acts? For another aspect: I say that you don’t have any sin. Whatever happens I will take the responsibility. Telling this I bring a knife / sword and give it to you. And tell you “Go and kill ten people”! Can you do that? Kill them? You cannot. Even when I assure you that thereby no sin accrues, you cannot do it.
When there is nothing that you yourself (on your own) can do and when some power (Shakti) directs you to do everything – why should you entertain thoughts about sin, about reincarnation etc ?
Brother: Doesn’t creation get destroyed?
Mother: No. In my view. For creation, there is no dissolution. There is only a change of form.
(conversation No. 16)
This talk has immense appeal and relevance to should I say – all of us? In its figure : rebirth, faith in God, a personal God, Dwaita and Advaita and above all : rebirth and nature of creation. Who hasn’t, at one time or another, in some context or other, thought about them? Moreover, did we cease to wonder when we implicitly have faith in Mother and yet doubt what she says and, perhaps, may not do what she advises us to do? Argument comes, crops up very instinctively to humans. If we believe that Mother speaks Truth and nothing but Truth, where is the scope for questioning or even clarification? Yet we do. The devotee’s in this talk have that nature. He is swayed by his own emotional stresses and strains. Under that stress, he goes on raising issues which appear right from the advent of the Upanishads.
In contrast, Mother’s answering is through concrete contexts. She takes out the stem, and that division she uses to illuminate the centuries-old problem of dualism and nondualism. Then she points to the analogy of killing with a knife she herself offers to give. Obviously, the genetically programmed fear makes us go in for comfort in rebirth. If these simple or seemingly simple matters are so tricky, what to say about apocalypse (pralaya) ?
When Amma is an incarnate Shakti, she can as well give the power to raise questions. Naturally for questions she impels, that very shakti provides the answers. Right?