In plain words
God alone is the true Mother. The mother dwells in the house, the father dwells in the house, the guru dwells in the āśrama. God alone dwells in the heart. We must recognise this truth. In the way of this world, we may look upon the mother as God and revere her. But the one we must keep in the heart is God, and God only. God alone has the right to dwell in the heart.
The inert and the conscious
Man is one made up of two tattvas: the deha and the dehī, or the kṣetra and the kṣetrajña, or the śarīra and the śarīrī. What is meant by śarīra? “Śīryatīti śarīraḥ”: that is, the śarīra is what wastes away. Though it keeps on growing, it is inert all the same! How so? If every day we sweep our house and throw the rubbish into a pit, in time it grows into a mound. In the same way, if we keep putting things like iḍlī, dosa and chapātī into our body day after day, it too goes on growing like a mound. This body is made of inert substances such as lime, water, soap, iron and lead. So it is inert indeed. It grows and it wanes. But the dehī neither grows nor wanes. The deha is the kṣetra; the dehī is the kṣetrajña. What is it that is called a kṣetra? The name kṣetra belongs only to a place where divinity dwells. That is why we call places like Tirupati, Amarnāth and Badarīnāth kṣetras. This body, too, is a kṣetra. Why so? Within it dwells the kṣetrajña who is God. The kṣetra has its worth only because of the kṣetrajña. Every body is a temple of God, not a temple of the jīva. We must be grateful to the mother for giving us a body endowed with such divine power.
The Ajñāna of the scientists
Though God alone is the first cause of everything, the mother alone is the foundation of this body. A seed may be good, but it sprouts only when it is set in the soil and watered; put it in a tin and it will not sprout, will it? So Prakṛti is the mother, and the Paramātma is the father. From the union of Prakṛti and the Paramātma alone the principle of life comes into being. God alone is the foundation of everything. Today's scientists strut about boasting that they have created water by combining hydrogen and oxygen. But they never ask themselves who created hydrogen and oxygen in the first place. When our ancients say that God gave the swan the power to separate water and milk, today's scientists retort: “Nonsense! This is all plain fraud! There is an acid on the swan's beak. It is that which separates the milk and the water,” they say. True! But did these people fetch that acid and put it on its beak? This is God's creation, God's will. Unable to understand such a divine will, some people argue out of sheer foolishness. To criticise the spiritual is easy; to understand it is very hard.
A lesson for the modern student
Once a paṇḍit was sitting on the verandah of his house, performing his sandhyā-vandana. His grandson, a modern student, was sitting right there too, doing his homework, dipping his pen again and again into a bottle of ink.