(Continued from the Previous Issue)
“While singing singing” is my 11th Song written on 6-1-1957.
The burden of the song is –
Oh mother I travel while singing
Singing and proclaiming your chronicle I shall lay down my life oh! Mother
The inspiration for this song is, as I have mentioned earlier, listening over the radio and watching some events taking place.
Your glorious life is the ideal for humanity
Even the creator, sustainer and destroyer
Are like specks of dust in comparison
With your miraculous powers.
This is the first verse. Mother’s life is full of miracles. What I heard and what Dr. Potluri Subbarao has experienced – is an example.
Mother was giving darshan. Some 20 to 30 people were present. Some were performing puja. Dr. Subba Rao of Chirala was getting his camera ready to take a shot of this scene. At that time a dog came, sat near the footrest of Mother meekly. People tried to shoo it off. But with great concentration the dog was taking the darshan of Mother. Subbarao thought to himself – “what kind of life is this. Everybody is yelling and shooting it away. Human birth is really great. “In the meantime Mother gently touched its snout with her foot. Lo! The miraculous touch of her toes adorned with beautiful rings made the dog lose its bodily consciousness. The breath of the dog stopped. The body became stiff. God knows in which heavenly abode the soul of the dog was wandering. Dr. Subbarao tried to move it. He snapped his fingers making noise, put his fingers near the nose to feel its breath but it was no use. It had lost its bodily consciousness maybe because of yoga. A little later Mother touched the dog again with her foot and soon it regained its consciousness. As if it had experienced bliss in the company of holy men, it gently got up and moved away happily. The question is who is a weak creature (Alpa Prany) and who is an elevated person? It was the doctor’s turn to be wonderstruck. He thought “I have added years to my life. “I am supposed to possess wisdom and discriminating power. I have practiced Sadhana Chatushtaya and yet I have not experienced this Yoga Siddhi. Just by a mere touch of the foot the dog has experienced this blissful state. This is truly an example of Mother’s grace and her miraculous powers.”
Recalling the poem
Which Veda did the spider recite?
Which shastras did the snake study?
What education did the elephant have?
It is the service at your feet alone
That these creatures became eligible to receive this knowledge.
I became emotional and started shedding tears of love.
Even the creator, sustainer and destroyer
Are like specks of dust in comparison with you
I said.
On the gold toe rings of Mother the images of Maha Lakshmi, Maha Saraswati, Annapurneswari, Maha Ganapathi, Kumara Swamy and Nagendra are inscribed. One of the brothers asked Mother “Why do you wear them?” Her reply was “These are my children, your brothers. I kept my children with me.” This is the reason why Sri Radhakrishna Sarma in his eulogy described her as “being served by the gods in the form of gold ornaments.” In his prayer “Yaya Shaktya … he made it clear that Anasuya is the primordial consciousness (Mulaprakriti) the source strength and competence of the Hindu Triad.
Your soft and sweet words swayed the hearts In the large heart that is boundless The whole world is asleep
This is the second verse.
|| Singing…
Blood is nothing but the essence of Iswara
All human beings are good.
These words of Mother indicate her impartial outlook and unconditional love. It is something incredible. They are like a shower of Manna on those that see everything as bleak and hopeless. Her words give solace and raise their spirit and hopes and give a purpose and meaning to their existence. Each one’s place is special in Mother’s heart. Each child is unique in its own way to the Mother. She takes everyone into her fold, cajoling, regardless of the fact of deserving or undeserving. She holds you in her heart, protecting, supporting and experiencing ecstasy.
The whole universe and the five elements
Everything is you, they are within you
And from you there is no end to your miraculous powers
And you are our support.
This is the third verse.
|| Singing…. ||
“You are not merely my children, you are my very limbs.” These words of Mother give you a universal vision (Viswarupa darshan). “I am not what you are not”. This statement of hers teaches those who are desirous of knowledge, about the essential nature of the beings.
She who is a support to everyone and everything has no support of her own. She who is Mother of all has no mother of her own; the beginning. Yet she stands before us like an ordinary housewife. She has descended to our level. There has never been a show or pomp nor an exhibition. Her words and actions are an actualization of the culture handed down to us by the Rishi tradition.
With the evil minded education is for arguments sake. Wealth is to exhibit their arrogance and physical strength to trouble and distress others. But a saintly person, on the contrary, uses his education to disseminate knowledge, his wealth for charity and
power to protect.
If Prajnanam is Brahma why shouldn’t Ajnanam be Brahma?
You are everything, impartiality too
Realizing this is true knowledge
which is you.
|| Singing…. ||
This is the last verse. The traditional axioms teach us Dharma only partially. But Mother had given them a holistic dimension.
The old adage ‘Guru is Brahman’ is extended by Mother. ‘If a Guru is Brahma to a disciple, so is the disciple to a Guru’. If a doctor is Lord Narayana to a patient, the patient is Narayana too to the doctor. If Prajnanam is Brahma, Agnanam too is Brahman.
Mother is the power who can make even a weakling into an overful strong person. She is Icha Shakti, Kriya Shakti and Jnana Shakti. For example the words ‘Bharya Viyogam ‘ (separation from the wife usually after her death) “Bhartru Viyogam’ (separation from the husband) are meaningless. Mother declared that “there can never be any separation once they are husband and wife. The wife is always with the husband in the form of a Yagnopaveeta (the holy thread a man wears) and the husband is always with the wife in the form of Mangala Sutras (the gold discs in a thread, a symbol of marriage which the husband ties around the neck of a woman during the wedding ceremony). This is Mother’s commentary on the concept of Ardhanarishwara Principle (indicating that Siva and Parvathy are not two individuals but one, each one part of the other, One half of the body Siva and the other Parvathy).
For centuries a woman has been indoctrinated with the concept of “Pativratya’ (belonging committed to and loyal to the husband and putting him on the highest pedestal). This is only half the statement. Mother completed the statement by adding ‘the wife is the deity for the husband to be adored and loved). This is the holistic approach of Mother. That is the reason why I eulogized Mother as “the wisdom that makes us aware of the Truth.