On Mother

1. In the human experience, the relationship between a mother and her child is the closest to compassion. People call it love but it should not be called love. It is more like compassion than love because it has no passion in it. A mother’s love for the child is closest to compassion. Why? Because the mother has known the child in herself; he was a member of her being. She has known the child as part of herself and even if the child is born and is growing the mother goes on feeling a subtle rhythm with the child. If the child feels ill, a thousand miles away the mother will immediately feel it. She may not be aware of what has happened but she will become depressed; she may not be aware that her child is suffering but she will start suffering. She will make some rationalization about why she is suffering — her stomach is not okay, she has a headache, or something or other — but now depth psychology says that the mother and the child always remain joined together with subtle energy, waves, because they go on vibrating on the same wavelength. The telepathy is easier between a mother and the child than between anybody else. Or, between twins — between twins telepathy is very easy.
2. If the child has been deep in love with the mother and the mother has showered her love, that is the beginning of all trust for the future. Then the child will make more loving relationships with women, will make more loving relationships with friends, one day will be able to surrender to a Master — and finally, will be able to dissolve himself completely into God. But if the basic link is missing then the foundation is missing. Then you try hard, but it becomes more and more difficult.
3. A man of warmth is simply healthy. Just as when a mother takes her child to her breast and the child feels the warmth, surrounded by the warmth, nourished by it, welcomed by it, so when you enter into the aura of a compassionate man you enter a motherlike warmth, you enter into a very nourishing energy field. In fact, if you come to a man of compassion, your passion will simply disappear. His compassion will be so powerful, his warmth will be so great, his love will be showering on you so much that you will become cool, you will become centred.
4. Humanity has forgotten a few very basic things; for example, touching and its tremendous importance in your life. If the mother has not taken you close to her body, to her warmth, you will remain cold your whole life; you will not be able to give love and warmth to any woman, because you never received any. You don’t know that anything like that even exists. The breast keeps you close to the mother’s warmth, makes you feel one with the mother’s body.
5. Now researchers say that the mother is not only feeding the child with the breast, she is feeding it with her love — and love now is a nourishment; a subtle quality of her warmth, of her love, acceptance, is being transferred to the body of the child. It is very subtle energy, but if a child is not given that… food can be given, milk can be given, care can be given, and if a child is not given love he shrinks in himself, dies.
6. When the child is born he is simple love. He has to be so because he has not known anything else. In the mother’s womb he has not come across any enemy. He has lived in deep love for nine months, surrounded by love, nourished by love. He knows nobody who is inimical to him. He knows only the mother, he knows the mother’s love. When he is born his whole experience is of love, so how can you expect him to know anything about hatred? This love he brings with himself; this is the original face. Then there will be trouble, then there will be many other experiences. He will start distrusting people. A newborn child is simply born with trust.
7. God is more a mother than a father. God is more like a womb than anything else. Out of God we are born, and back into God we dissolve. He is our birth and He is our death. He is like the ocean: He ‘waves’ us, we become His waves; He absorbs us — we disappear. He is compassion, love. All His qualities are feminine.
8. The people who are too much in need of love always suffer, because they always feel that nobody is going to fulfill them. In fact, nobody is going to be their mother again. In a mother-child relationship, nothing was expected from the child. What can a child do? — helpless. He cannot return anything. At the most he can smile — that’s all — or follow with his eyes where the mother is going — that s all. Small, beautiful gestures — but nothing else can he do. The mother has to give, the child has to receive. If at breakfast-time you have missed this, then you will be looking for a woman who can be your mother. Now, a woman is looking for a lover, not for a son — trouble is bound to be there. Unless by chance, by accident, you can find some woman who is looking for a son — then things will settle; then two illnesses will fit together.
9. Man goes on seeking his mother. When a man falls in love with a woman, he falls in love again with his mother. Somehow, this woman gives an idea of his mother. The way she walks, the face she has, the color of her eyes or the color of her hair, or her sound; something that gives the idea of the mother again. The warmth of her body, the care that she shows about him is a search for the lost mother. It is a search for the womb.
10. Love cannot be taught in that way; a milieu has to be created. The teacher, the family, the society, must be loving; only then a child learns how to love. Many experiments have been done. A child can be brought up without the mother, or without the mother’s breast. He will grow, he will be healthy, but he will become incapable of love. If the mother has not loved him, if he has not been breastfed, if he has not felt the warmth of his mother’s body, if he has not been touched lovingly, he will not be able to love anybody, his sensitivity will never grow.
11. Universe is the mother. It is always better to call the God “mother than “father.” The father is not so relevant. Universe is the mother: feminine, waiting for you — waiting for you for ever and ever — but you will have to knock at the door. You will find it immediately opened if you knock, but if you don’t knock you can go on standing at the gate. The existence is not going to open it; it is not aggressive. Even in love it is not aggressive. That’s why I say it will respond.
12. Remember it: help the child to become a dignified human being who can risk all for his love, for his freedom; who can risk even his life just to remain himself. That’s the purpose of the real mother, the real father, the real parent. That should be the purpose of the whole education. Right now it is just the opposite.
13. If you are a mother, take care of the child. He needs you, he cannot survive without you. You are a must. He needs food, he needs love, he needs care — but he does not need your ideology. He does not need your ideals. He does not need your Christianity, your Hinduism, your Islam, your Buddhism. He does not need your scriptures, he does not need your beliefs. He does not need your ideals of how he should be. Only avoid ideology, ideals, goals, ends, and then care is beautiful, then care is innocent. Otherwise care is cunning.
14. Love is beautiful; if you love your mother — you love, but it cannot be a duty. If it is duty it is better not to love, because duty is not going to satisfy her. And if you are doing your duty because she is your mother and she has given birth to you, what can you do? — you have to take care. When she is ill you have to sit by her side — then all the time, if it is a duty, your mind is against her, you are feeling suffocated, you are feeling burdened, in a bondage, you would like to rebel and revolt. And if this mother dies, you may not say so to anybody, but you will feel relief.
15. Love is food for intuition. If you are not loved your intuition will not develop. The only way to develop intuition is to shower love upon you. So if a mother loves the child, the child becomes intuitive. If the mother does not love the child, the child becomes intellectual. If the child lives in an atmosphere of love and care and compassion — if the child is accepted for his own self, not for any utility that he can fulfill — then he grows tremendously inside and his energy starts moving through the moon center.
16. One day one has to become independent of a constant need of being cared for by a woman. That is the day that one becomes mature. That is the day when you are finished with your mother, and that is the day you can start loving a woman. Otherwise in every woman you will go on searching for your mother. Then it is going to be false love. It is going to be political. Because you need the care, you pretend to love, but that is not mature love. You are like a child hanging onto the mother’s skirt. If you continue that you will never know what love is.
17. Man and woman are made differently by nature, and we have to understand that difference. Nature has taken every care that the woman’s whole life should be of love, because the woman has to be the mother. If her whole life is not of love she will be incapable of carrying the child in her womb for nine months. And it is not only a question of nine months; after nine months the real problem arises: to take care of the child, to help him grow. If her whole life is not of love, she will not be able to help the child to grow.
18. To be able to love one needs to be loved, otherwise a person never becomes able to love. They have been experimenting with monkeys…. If the mother hugs the monkey, the monkey becomes capable of hugging other females in later life. If the mother is not allowed to hug the child — the child is fed and taken care of but the mother is not allowed to hug the child — then the child is never able to hug any other woman for all his life. He has simply not learned the language; he cannot love because he has not been loved, so he does not know what love is all about.
19. The child is dependent on the mother. If the mother is gone the child is simply helpless. If the mother threatens ‘I will die if you don’t listen to me’, the child trembles with fear, with great fear; great dread, anguish arises. Without the mother he cannot live. She is his life, and he depends on her in every way — for nourishment, for care, for warmth. She is the shelter, and if she is not there he is unprotected in a very strange world. That is the first experience of love, so that persists.
20. When a woman carries a child, she is full. Of course, when the child is born, she will feel empty. She will miss the new life that was throbbing and kicking in her womb. The child has gone out; she will feel empty for a few days. But she can love the child, and she can forget her emptiness in loving the child and helping the child to grow.
21. The child has been in the mother’s womb for nine months. He is nothing but an extension of the mother. Whatever he has is the gift of his mother; his blood, his bones, his flesh, his very life is ninety-nine percent from the mother, only one percent from the father.
22. That’s the recommendation of eastern psychology, that the mother for nine months should be continuously in a meditative state; that’s the only way to save the child from becoming an imitator. Otherwise neither the mother knows the child, nor the child knows himself, and he becomes an imitator. This is the situation in the womb.
23. Sooner one starts meditation, the better. In the ancient days people used to start meditation when they were in their mother’s womb. There were techniques, there are techniques, and when we are living in the new commune we will start all those techniques again. When a woman is pregnant the child in the womb can be taught meditation. He can be helped to listen to music. A rhythm can be created in his being, there in the womb. And if the mother meditates then that meditation enters the child too because the child vibrates with the mother. We can create meditators from the very beginning, in the womb. And that is the best time to catch hold of people, so when they are born they are already meditators, ready to be sannyasins.
24. When the mother is pregnant love should not be made — any sexual activity is dangerous for the child, because the child depends for his breathing on the mother. The oxygen is supplied by the mother, and when the mother is in sexual activity, her rhythm of breathing is lost. The continuous rhythm is no more there; the child suffocates, not knowing what is happening. While making sex, more oxygen is absorbed by the mother — now these are scientific facts — and when more oxygen is absorbed by the mother, the child cannot get the oxygen. Sometimes even death is possible; the child may die. The child remembers all these things. You also remember all these things; they are there, but because the ego was not there, they have not become a burden on you.
25. Everything the mother shows, does, speaks, behaves, is significant. If the child smiles, and the mother loves him and gives him warmth and milk and hugs him, he is learning politics. He will smile while there is no smile in him because now he knows he can persuade the mother. He will smile a false smile. Then the liar is born; the politician has come into existence. Now he knows how to falsify, and this he learns in his relationship with his mother. This is the first relationship with the world. When he will become aware of his misery, of his hell, of his confusions, he will find that his mother is hidden somewhere.