Ananda Sangha of Portland--God as the Divine Mother by Swami Kriyananda

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God as the Divine Mother
A talk given by J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda) at New Renaissance Bookshop, Portland, Oregon, January 12, 1996.

Part I | Part II | Part III

(continued from Part II...)

Your job is to find fulfillment in your Self in the midst of all the storms going on around you. You can do that by keeping a strong awareness of the presence of a divine friend, of Divine Mother, whose attitudes are perfect. People may not understand you, but God, especially in the aspect of Divine Mother, understands you. People may betray you, but God will never betray you. Your own higher Self couldn’t betray you because She is you. There is no way She could betray you, unless you let your ego come in and betray yourself from that level.

We need to think of God in such a way as to give us a sense of confidence that She’s on our side. We need to think of God as Mother, and to think of that Mother aspect as an ideal of feminine qualities—not the emotions, but that calm, always forgiving and accepting energy. It’s easier to define this as feminine, rather than as masculine, energy. Finally, we need to realize ourselves as both feminine and masculine.

Great saints are androgynous. Yogananda was on a train once and, as you know, he had long hair. Because his consciousness was so balanced, sometimes he looked like a mother, sometimes a father. A porter was walking up and down the aisle looking at him, and finally said, “Is yo a man, or is yo a woman?” Yogananda answered in a very deep voice, “What do you think?”

The woman saint of India, Anandamoyi Ma, was very feminine in a sense, but also very masculine. I spent a lot of time with her in India, and in the way she walked and stood, she looked like a general—very determined. When she spoke it was with great confidence. She was a balance of both, and yet she was neither.

We are like that too. We aren’t limited by our physical forms, our personalities, or even our problems. We shouldn’t take our problems all that seriously, because they aren’t who we really are. Work with them as you would with a dull saw that needs sharpening, or a dirty microscope that needs cleaning. Don’t get all upset about it, but don’t refuse to accept that it’s dirty.

There’s a story about a Catholic, a Baptist, and a Christian Scientist who all died and went to “the wrong place.” They were trying to figure out how they got there. The Catholic said, “I must have missed Mass one Sunday.” The Baptist said, “Perhaps I wasn’t fully immersed when they baptized me.” Then they asked the Christian Scientist, “Why are you here?” He replied, “Oh, but I’m not.” (laughter)

You have to accept where you are, but then—and this is where confidence, love, and faith in the Divine Mother aspect of God come in—think of the love, not the judgment. That’s what uplifts you. If you can say, “I’ve made these mistakes, but naughty or good, I’m your child,” then you get the strength and the sense of perspective that gives you the power to say, “All right, I’ll try again.” Never say you’ve failed. No matter how many times you do fail, don’t accept failure as your definition. The world will try to define you by your faults. You define yourself by your aspirations.

Yogananda used to say, “If ever you say, ‘I’ve failed,’ then you’ve lost it, at least for that lifetime. But if you can hang on, and even at the moment of death, say, ‘I will succeed,’ then you can overcome.”

There’s a beautiful story from the life of St. Francis. There were three men in the area of Assisi who were criminals. They were stealing and doing all sorts of bad things, to the point where the townspeople were so angry that they went after them with pitchforks. These men sought sanctuary at one of St. Francis’s monasteries. Now, St. Francis was away at the time. The monk in charge was so scandalized that these evil men should seek protection in a house of God when they’d lived such ungodly lives that he drove them out with virtual imprecations. The men left with great anger, cursing him as they went.

When St. Francis returned later on that day, the monk told him in outrage of the audacity of these evil-doers, daring to come to a monastery for help. St. Francis was properly outraged in his turn, not with the criminals, but with this monk who had sent them away! He commanded him on his vow of obedience to go and look for them and bring them back.

When they came back, St. Francis greeted them, saying, “Brothers, why do you live the way you do? You’re not happy. It’s not only other people who are suffering from your bad deeds, but you are suffering.” He began talking to them of their own potential for goodness to the point where they became converted and ended up becoming monks. According to the chronicle of the time, they lived very holy lives and died in a state of grace.

This was possible because St. Francis helped them to see their own divinity. Who are you to doubt your divinity? You’re insulting yourself. That’s the worst kind of insult you can deliver. You must have faith in your own goodness because it’s potentially there, no matter what you’ve done. You should get rid of a guilt complex, not by sweeping it under the carpet, but by saying, “I am yours, Mother.”

When you love the Mother in that way, it’s so much easier than thinking you’re going before a judge. You know the judge is likely to punish you, but the Mother will help you. She may give you some hard lessons, but that’s Her business. You know She does it with love. No matter what tests you go through in life, know that it’s for your good, and don’t complain.

Finally, we come to what this is all about. The more you can bring yourself to that attitude where you completely trust Divine Mother, the more you will be open to God in your life. When you have that understanding, you can open yourself to the infinite compassion and forgiveness of God as Divine Mother, and you can develop those qualities in yourself. That’s why it’s necessary to forgive other people, because in that forgiveness you, too, become softer. It’s as though you’ve got this little seed that can’t grow because it’s had concrete poured on it. You have to break up that concrete so the seed can grow. You’ve got that seed of divinity within you, but all this concrete of ego, desires, self-importance, and strain to reach for things blocks its growth. In this world we’re trained to think we must fight and compete for what we get.

Yet it’s a world based in consciousness. Consciousness produced the energy that produced this world, which is seemingly made of solid matter. Yes, you can approach the solid matter with a sledge hammer, or you can get back into that flow of consciousness, and somehow matter itself adjusts to who you are.

The kind of attitudes and, above all, the kind of feelings that you radiate are sooner or later what you will become. This is a law. So think of God not as distant, but as very close. Talk to God. It’s easy to talk to the Mother, because She understands you. She doesn’t justify your mistakes. She doesn’t say, “Yes, I think you’re fine,” when you’re really not fine at all. No, She’s wise, but She’s also the friend of that seed of divinity that’s trying to come out—not of the concrete that’s keeping that seed locked in the solid wall. She wants what’s best for you.

Here’s something that I’ve experienced—because you can’t be on this path without learning a few things over the years. I’ve seen again and again that when things in life happen that seem to be the worst possible things, if you can say, “This is coming from you, Mother, and I accept it,” then suddenly it all becomes just the right thing, the only possible thing. On the other hand, the things that you thought should happen for the best outcome, in hindsight prove to be the worst. The more you give your life to God in this spirit, the more you will find that whatever She gives you, it will be right for you—for your growth, for your ultimate happiness.

There’s a story of a king who had a chief minister he was particularly fond of because of his wisdom, loyalty, and good counsel. This minister’s motto in life was, “Everything that happens is for the best.” Due to the king’s particular regard for this minister, all the other court advisors were very jealous and were always trying to undermine the king’s faith in him. He didn’t listen, but the poisoned words entered the king’s subconscious and had a little lingering power.

One day the king was out hunting in the forest, and that day the chief minister, who was usually with him, wasn’t present. The king had an accident with his bow and cut off his thumb. When word of the accident got back to the chief minister, he calmly said, “Everything that happens is for the best.” The other ministers with great vindictive glee reported to the king, “Look what he really thinks of you! He said it’s for the best that you lost your thumb.” The king allowed himself to get angry and threw the minister in prison, where he remained for many months.

The next time the king went hunting, he rode off by himself in pursuit of game and was captured by some cannibals. They were about to sacrifice him to their gods when they saw that he didn’t have a thumb. They couldn’t offer their gods an imperfect sacrifice, so they had to let the king go.

When he returned to the palace, he immediately had his chief minister released from prison, and said to him, “You were right after all. If I hadn’t lost my thumb, I would have lost my life. But what about you? You had to suffer in prison for all those months.” The minister replied, “Yes, Your Majesty, but if I hadn’t been in prison, I would have been with you. And as you know, I haven’t lost my thumb.”

So don’t doubt. Don’t you think the God who created this vast universe, who created you, knows what He’s doing? Don’t worry too much about how the world is going. Divine Mother knows what She’s doing. Maybe we have hard lessons to learn, but they’re for our good.

You will have more of that consciousness if you think of God not only in the form of Mother, but as that Infinite Mother in every atom, in every cloud, in your own heart, everywhere. Think of that motherly aspect of the Infinite Consciousness that created and loves every single being in this universe because every being is a part of the Infinite One. If you love the Mother in that way, if you love God in that way, then you will find a remarkably sweet relationship developing in which you have a real awareness, not just an imagination, that Mother is always with you. She watches over you, takes care of you, and hears the yearnings of your heart. If you hurt your thumb and say, “Mother, it’s bleeding,” you’ll feel Her response.

I had a wonderful experience this way many years ago when I was at Mt. Washington. My parents were living in France, where my father was working as the chief geologist for Esso in Europe. As a boy I’d gone to school in Switzerland, and had come to love Swiss chocolate. Since my parents were living nearby to Switzerland, I had the thought that it would be nice if they would send me some chocolate. But it was such a trivial desire that I kept forgetting to ask them about it whenever I wrote. Then one week before my birthday, I remembered it again, and thought, “Oh, Divine Mother, it’s too bad I didn’t think of it. I could have asked them to send me some for my birthday. Now it’s too late, but never mind.” I gave the desire to Her.

A day before my birthday I got a package, not from my parents, but from someone in the Hollywood church, where I was a minister. She didn’t know it was my birthday, nor that I liked Swiss chocolate. With the package was a note saying, “I saw this chocolate in a store window. I don’t know why, but I thought to send it to you.” It was a box of Swiss chocolate.

If God can take care of us in such trivial ways, won’t She take care of us in important things, in life-and-death situations? Divine Mother will be more instantly responsive if your consciousness is attuned in this way. What I’d like to do in America is try to get people to think of God more as the Divine Mother. We need God. We have gotten away from devotion. It will be easier for America as a whole, which has a natural kindness in its soul, if we love God in this personal way. Even though God is impersonal, it’s through the personal that we can reach that vastness and find oneness with the Infinite. God bless you.

Are there any questions?

Q: I feel that there is a real violation going on across the whole planet against the Mother, with violent entertainment and movies, and violence against women and children. It seems the male energy is having a hard time receiving the Mother, the female energy, to balance itself. What can we do?

A: Here’s the way I look at this sort of thing: Problem consciousness doesn’t produce solutions. Solutions come only from the superconsciousness. If I think of what’s wrong, I don’t get the answers. If I think that there must be an answer, then it comes. There’s always going to be resistance to any new wave of energy. Nobody has ever done anything really important on this planet who hasn’t had to fight a lot of resistance in this great ocean of maya.

I was touched by a response that Buckminster Fuller once gave. I happened to hear him on the radio, and the interviewer asked, “You talk all over the world, but nobody ever listens. Doesn’t this discourage you?” It was rather a cheeky question to ask someone of eighty-four who had been doing his best to spread new ideas, but I loved his answer. He said, “Not at all. Any new idea requires at least one or two generations to become recognized.”

This is true with the consciousness you’re asking about. It’s not so much the violation we need to think about—that’s to be expected. Anti-feminism is also partly a natural response to excessive feminism. Whenever one side becomes polarized, the other will resist. So I say the cure for it is not to get angry, not to fret too much about it, but to put out more positive energy. God knows what He’s doing with this universe. It’ll change in its own time. We have to love more, that’s all.

Q: Would you agree that loving yourself is one of the first steps to being able to love others?

A: I’ve heard this, and of course I agree, but I also disagree. Obviously in some sense it’s yourself you love when you love others. You don’t learn to love humanity by loving a neighbor who keeps dumping his garbage over the fence, or who keeps singing at the top of his voice. You have to love in a general way, and this comes by meditating and feeling that love in yourself. Then you can give it to everybody without needing a reason to love. If you love people because of what they are, will you dislike those people who aren’t that? Will you feel hatred for people who are selfish? You have to get deeper in your understanding of what you’re loving. Ultimately it’s a projection of the love you have in your own heart that comes through attunement with God. You don’t get it by affirmation or by changing your mind about things. It comes from a superconscious level.

The problem with this concept of loving yourself first is that I don’t want to love this ego. I want to love that which this ego can become. I don’t want to love what I am, but rather my potential. I have the potential to be kind even if I act unkind. To say, “I’m going to love my unkindness because it’s me,” is to deepen one’s delusion. So I would love that highest potential that you see in yourself, but not you as a human being with human faults. Love yourself because you are a child of God, and because Divine Mother dwells in your heart.