Worship Your Mother

The life of a man who cannot respect and love his mother is utterly useless. Recognising one’s mother as the very embodiment of all divine forces, one must show reverence to her and treat her with love. This is the true message that the Navarathri, the Festival of Nine Nights gives us. The supreme Shakti manifests Herself in the form of Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswathi. Durga grants us energy—physical, mental and spiritual. Lakshmi bestows on us wealth of many kinds—not just money but intellectual wealth, the wealth of character and others. Even health is a kind of wealth. She grants untold riches to us. And Saraswathi bestows on us intelligence, the capacity for intellectual enquiry and the power of discrimination. The Navarathri Festival is celebrated in order to proclaim to the world the power of the Goddesses. One’s own mother is the combination of all these Divine Beings. She provides us energy, wealth and intelligence. She constantly desires our advancement in life. So she represents all the three Goddesses that we worship during the Navarathri Festival.

If the Pandavas were able to become so dear to Krishna and make their lives worthy by serving Him, it was not on account of their own merit or austerities. It was mother Kunti Devi’s love for them that brought to them such a great fortune. Even when they had to live in a forest or in the House of Wax, she always stayed with them and prayed for their welfare. The Pandavas also reciprocated her love, and that accounts for their final victory.

Lakshmana, likewise, was able to dwell in the forest with his brother Rama, serving him ceaselessly, only because of his mother Sumitra’s blessings. She told her son that Ayodhya without Rama was like a forest, and that the forest in which Rama lived would be a veritable Ayodhya to him. It was on account of the hearty blessings of his mother that Lakshmana was able to spend fourteen years in the forest even without food or sleep.

All our epics and sacred books emphasise the power of the mother’s love, her blessings and grace. Consider the story of Gandhari and the Kauravas. When Krishna visited Gandhari to console her after the Kurukshetra war, she accused him of partiality towards the Pandavas. “Though you are God, how could you be so partial? Why did you support the Pandavas in full measure, and allow the destruction of all my sons?” she asked Him. Krishna replied to her that she herself was to blame for the death of her children. He reminded her that though she gave birth to a hundred sons, she didn’t cast her loving glance on even one of them at any time. As she chose to remain blindfolded, she never looked at any of her sons with great care, attention and affection. He asked her “How could such sinners who couldn’t even enjoy their own mother’s loving glance thrive and flourish?”

There is no need to propitiate Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswathi for energy, material prosperity and worldly knowledge. If we love and adore the mother, we shall be showing our love and devotion to all Goddesses.

-Baba