-By Ayushman Sinha
Out of the depths of human knowledge, where darkness touches with light, a mother arises—a love as broad and high as heaven, wider and deeper than can be conceived or told, yet a love which lives not by reason but by itself, existing beyond any reciprocation. She is grace and force, mercy and justice, an earthly semblance of the divinities that govern the world. Now, her love, clothed in the silent and obscure folds of everyday life, is transmuted into something that comes to be greater than any words of vows. This is the sacred paradox, a reflection of eternal and immovable love, vast and fiercely protective. The quiet sacrifice of this mother is by no means impotent but the mother now becomes not just a caregiver but a vessel of something divine, something carrying celestial mercy and wrath.
In the great books of human knowledge- the Bible, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Guru Granth Sahib-mothers are instantiated as the quintessence of divine love and protection. These scriptures do not simply narrate the figure of motherhood but exalt her to a sacred place. She is beyond the mortal sphere, with the features of godly stature: boundless love, so gentle as a whisper, but powerful as the mercy of God to bring nations to their knees. Hers is a fierce silence, relentless vigilance, a protection- and-self-sacrifice devotion, echoing the ancient, eternal currents of creation itself.
The Bhagavad Gita talks of duty, karma that exists not for reward but as an offering, a liberation from attachment to the fruits of one's labour. "Perform your duty, and abandon all attachment to success or failure" (Bhagavad Gita 2:47). A mother's love embodies the purest essence of selfless action. She gives without desire, loves without expectation, her every act a prayer echoing through time, lived in the quiet rhythm of her days. In her, the cosmic wisdom of Krishna's word has found flesh—a duty fulfilled without attachment, a life lived in total surrender to her children, each breath a hymn of offering that binds her spirit to theirs.
There is respect, too, in the Quran for the mother, for her quiet suffering, and her indomitable strength in the face of countless trials. "And We have enjoined upon man [care] for his parents. His mother carried him, [increasing her] in weakness upon weakness" (Quran 31:14). Her love carrieth the weight of generations, her spirit enduring not so much for herself but for the life she has brought forth. It is a love as compassionate as divine, all-encompassing tenderness that does not waver, the resilience born out of divine mercy. She would be the living embodiment of compassion-a spirit strengthened with every sacrifice she made. Her love is the quiet witness to Allah's unrelenting mercy, a maternal echo of divine compassion.
The Bible provides yet another picture of infinite love by capitalizing on the mother's comforting presence as an image of divine solace: "As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you" (Isaiah 66:13). Such a memory recalls that the embracing mother is not only an act of physical reassurance but rather the very embodiment of God's love, an infinite tenderness made flesh. Her comfort is a divine assurance against the struggle of life, reminding God of his eternal vigilance and unmoving care. She is the soft but unmoving ground for a world constructed on love love fierce enough to lay down itself to save, a love gentle enough to mend unseen.
But in Hindu thought, the mother is also Kali, the goddess of destruction and rebirth. The love she feels is not merely a quiet solace but a storm, righteous fury stirring to defend her own. With eyes ablaze, she protects her children, and whatever force dares approach is met with a power ancient and unstoppable. Love of a mother: not to be swayed passively, but primal, fierce as the gods themselves, born from love and wrath equal to the cycles of cosmic creation and destruction. She assumes the mantle of divine protector; in her wrath lies the silhouette of boundless, ravenous love, worlds created and doomed. It is a love both womb and battlefield, heeling one one moment, slaying him the next.
Throughout history philosophers have been dumbfounded by the mystery of maternal love, seeing it as an elemental power beyond all reason. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung believed that the archetype of the mother is a primal part of the collective unconscious - the source of life and wisdom, terrible and tender at once. She is both presence and mystery: source of all nourishment and yet always a mystery in so far as she defies all possible understanding. Sacred paradox, comfort and discipline, kindness and justice each facet intertwined with a singular presence which moulds the soul. In her, we look to having revealed deeper mysteries of the existence itself-a power so timeless, so all-encompassing, that stands beyond human understanding.
Divine love, for the Guru Granth Sahib, is something ever wakeful, guarding against all life's trials. "The Lord Himself has stood guard," it runs (Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 2). It is in a mother's vigilance that we find this kind of divine wakefulness--love that sees and protects, undying in its vigilance, unrelenting for thanks or praise. Hers is labour that goes unseen, devotion pursued in silence, woven into the fabric of her children's lives with each quiet act of care. She is both the unbroken sentinel and the sanctuary, her love a light guiding them even as they stray, her spirit ever-present and unbreakable.
And though her love shields it, it also frees. The spirit is a mother, which does not tie but liberates for her own to seek and for them to find their own truths. Like the divine, the love of a mother comprises shelter and a release, an unbreakable string that holds none captive yet gives power for life. For her, too, there is a coming and a letting go, a holding without possession. She is the earth of which her children grow, her sacrifice the silent soil that nourishes them even as they turn toward the unknown.
This is why, in the Gnostic tradition, there exists a figure who is the same: Sophia, the embodiment of divine wisdom, pregnant with all the mysteries of creation. A mother is an embodiment of that same wisdom, unspoken understanding, needing no words. She is a silent guiding light who speaks without voice, whose love becomes a silent compass that her children carry. Her wisdom is very old and drawn from the deep depths of her soul, in it, one finds the echoes of the adivine. She is a roof and a compass, an endless presence in a timeline, her love a map that her children carry long after they have set forth on their own paths.
In every sacred text, in every philosophical inquiry, we return to this truth: the mother is a vessel of divine love, a presence that touches upon the holy and the eternal. Such
a love is not just a feeling or sentiment or even a relationship but a bond that has come into being at the very fabric of existence. She is the silent guardian, continuous mercy, and strength. She stands as an expression of the infinite that humanity cannot put into words. Her sacrifices are intangible because she has spun them into her children's lives, and from each one, we get a glimpse of God. She was an echo of God's love and at the same time a revelation of its deepest mysteries: a reflection of the eternal within the finite.
At night, when her children are asleep, she is there—a silent sentinel, unbroken by time or distance. She is the shadow and the light, the whispering of God's love that resounds in every nook and corner of their existence. Hers is a love that wavereth not, a mercy that faileth never. She is the soul's shield, the protector of an ancient promise beyond all mortal minds. And in her, we catch a look of eternity into the soft, unyielding strongness of a mother's love.
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