Amrit Sadhana

Respecting and remembering your own mother is not new to the world. It dates back to the ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Even in India the oft-repeated line “Matru devo bhav, pitru devo bhav”, dates way back to the time of Taittiriya Upanishad. The whole emphasis of honouring one’s own mother is a kind of thanksgiving, connecting to the source.

However, the modern version, the Mother’s Day, was started in the US because of the long and hard efforts of the activist and writer Julia Ward Howe in 1870.
Nobody will deny the sanctity and sensitivity of this beautiful gesture. However, I often wonder if that is all there should be to Mother’s Day: just thanking mothers once a year and then forgetting all about them?
Mother’s Day for me has a deeper significance. It is celebrating the essence of motherhood, the source of all creation. Mothering is a colossal job, it doesn’t end with giving birth to the offspring. The real task lies in nurturing and bringing them up. Do we respect this process of mothering wherever we find it — whether in nature, in earth, or in the whole of creation? Do we revere the protective womb of life around us and are sensitive not to hurt it in any way?
The Mother’s Day can also be celebrated in another way.
We teach every child to respect and love his/her mother, but no culture asks aspiring mothers: Are you ready to bring up a child? Are you qualified to take responsibility of nurturing life, shaping its destiny?
Biological motherhood is simple, it is nature’s mechanism of procreation. Birds, animals and humans perpetuate life in a similar way, and for this nature has bestowed necessary qualities to the female species. These very qualities urge a female bird to build a nest in the tree, a tigress to suckle its cubs, and a woman to feed and protect her kids.
However, as humans we have a higher responsibility towards our children. Just being a biological mother is not enough. We have to become a psychological womb for our children. Their bodies are developed by nature but their minds and hearts are to be cultivated by mothers.
Osho insists on women being conscious mothers. And how does one become a conscious mother?
A woman has to be a meditator so that she can sculpt the children into conscious, enlightened beings. She has to learn to give freedom to her children, not to be too demanding yet protect them from going astray. She should not try to possess the children, or try to dominate them but be available whenever they need her.
Osho once said to a woman who wanted to be a mother, “Become a mother, but be aware that becoming a mother is a great art, it is a great achievement. First create that quality, that creativity in you, that joy, that celebration, and then invite the child in your womb. Then you will have something to give to the child — your celebration, your song, your dance — and you will not create a pathological being”.
Any woman can give birth to a child, but to be a mother needs great understanding. Motherhood is a great opportunity. Meditate over it, go into it deeply. You will never find such a deep relationship; in fact, there is no other relationship as special as it is between a child and the mother. Not even between the husband and the wife, the lover and the beloved. The child has lived in you for nine months as “you”; nobody else can live in you for nine months as “you”. The child will become a separate individual, but somewhere deep down in the unconscious the mother and the child remain linked.
Being a psychological and a spiritual mother is the highest potential of a woman. If a woman can blossom into being a mother she will be grateful to the child for giving her this opportunity. Her love will not be human, it will surpass human sentiments and sublimate into compassion and prayerfulness. When such mothers abound on the earth, there will be no need to reserve a separate day for them. The children, with their love, will reciprocate by revering the mother every day.

— Amrit Sadhana is in the management team of Osho International Meditation Resort, Pune. She facilitates meditation workshops around the country and abroad.