Stage One: Getting to Know the Mother (Excerpt)

[The introductory story] is one of my countless introductions to the Mother. At the time I had no idea of the extent of the Mother's love, and I certainly did not realize her love was so unconditional as to include the shadow [the dark side].

Stage one includes learning about the Mother on all levels, and can include glimpses of all six stages. Consciously or unconsciously we all have an image or an idealistic view of the divine Mother. We know at least some aspect of who she is from our experience with our own mothers. We've been in her dark womb, experienced oceanic bliss in her amniotic fluid, struggled out through her birth canal, smelled her body, tasted her milk, listened to her cooing, and rested at her breast in her arms. Bonding with our own mothers can give us at least part of the information we need in order to know the divine Mother.

Even from a position of lack, from absence of bonding with our mothers at the time of birth and during our growing stages, we know the perfect mother - we know what she ought to have done for us, we know exactly how we needed comforting when she wasn't there.

There are many ways to know the great Mother - through a stormy day at the ocean, the whistling of the wind through pines, a grandmother teaching you how to sew, an uncle taking you fishing on a secluded lake, a father strolling with you through the woods, a teacher showing you the secrets of the animal and mineral kingdoms.

For me the ocean has always been a source of inner peace. Even before I knew the meaning of contemplation and meditation, I sought inspiration and comfort from the sea, gazing at sunsets, walking on the beach, swimming in ocean swells, watching waves crash against the rocks, exploring tide pools. Without realizing it, I had experienced the Mother in the sea. She was constant; she was fierce; she was gentle; she was moody; and she was vast.

One year while I was in India, Ammachi often would take us to the beach to meditate after dinner, after the dishes were done.All at once she would emerge, seemingly from nowhere, usually around 10:00 p.m., beckoning for us to follow her to the shore, a five-minute walk past thatched huts, banana trees, and coconut palms. Word would get around that Mother was going to the beach.

The first night I learned about it, I had noticed the ashram was conspicuously empty. Guessing what had happened,I dashed barefoot down the path, picked my way through the sand and over the rocks by the light of the quarter moon, mottled and pale, hovering above the dark waters, its dim light playing with shadows on the waves.Like apparitions rising from the rocks and sand, the crowd of some one hundred devotees were silhouettes clumped together, silent and immersed in meditation. Perching on a rock a few feet from the edge of the group, I closed my eyes and sank into the calm.

All at once, through the sound of waves lapping onto the shore, I heard singing, muffled in the humid salt air. At first I wasn't certain I'd heard anything at all, wondered if it was a voice out of my imagination. When I opened my eyes, Mother was standing in her white robes, not more than fifteen feet away, her arms reaching to the sea, supplicating, chanting a melodious Sanskrit hymn ---one verse, then an echo, a choral response from the crowd: "You are creation; You are Creator; You are the breath of life in all Nature." Suspended in a stillness that was beyond time, I barely noticed when she'd stopped chanting and slipped away, the crowd padding behind her to the ashram.

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Copyright © 2000 by Savitri L. Bess. All Rights Reserved.