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Mother Meera
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Mother Meera, born Kamala Reddy (b. 26 December, 1960) is believed by her devotees to be an embodiment (avatar) of the Divine Mother (Shakti).[1]
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Born in Chandepalle a small town in Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh, India, she had her first Samadhi, a state of complete spiritual absorption, at the age of six, which lasted for a whole day.[2] When she was 12 her uncle Bulgur Venkat Reddy met her for the first time, and immediately recognized in her the girl of his visions. He became convinced that she is the Divine Mother and started to take care of her, allowing her to unfold her inner experiences.[3]
At 1974, Mr. Reddy brought Mother Meera to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India, of which he was a member. [4] There she first met Westerners and started to give Darshan. She is however not associated with the Sri Aurobindo Ashram today. In 1979 she was invited by the first devotees to Canada, where she went several times. Meanwhile Reddy's health started to deteriorate.
In 1981 she made her first trip to West Germany, where she together with Mr. Reddy and her close companion Adilakshmi settled down a year later and married a German in 1982. Reddy died in 1985 and was buried in the local cemetery in Dornburg-Thalheim, Hesse.[5] Currently she gives Darshan (literally seeing, primarily in a spiritual context) at Schloss Schaumburg in Balduinstein, a small town in Germany.
Mother Meera receives many thousands of visitors of all religions for darshan which she conducts in total silence. Her darshan consists of a ritual, where she will touch a persons head, and then look into his eyes. During this process, she reportedly 'unties knots' in the persons subtle system and permeates him with light.[6] She doesn't charge any money for doing so and she will not give lectures. Mother Meera's reported task on Earth was in calling down a dynamic light-force from the Supreme (Paramatman - the supreme Self) in collaboration with other saints and divine beings, as she says, making spiritual progress on earth more easy.[7] About this light she says:
"Like electricity, the Light is everywhere, but one must know how to activate it. I have come for that." ( Answers, Part I.)
Through Japa, the mental remembrance of any Divine Name or Mantra, which may be done informally, and whenever convenient, people could open themselves up to this Light.[8] She does not claim to be a guru or have followers. To be connected to her work, people do not have to recognize her. Her teaching is mainly related to Bhakti, that is devotion to God, and in that she accepts all denominations.
Mother Meera does not belong to any particular tradition, except for a certain closeness to the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother,[9] whom she had allegedly met in their subtle bodies, when she was a child, visiting their Samadhi (grave).[10]
After splitting from Mother Meera, the writer and former follower Andrew Harvey wrote The Sun at Midnight. In it, Harvey accused Meera of homophobia and of placing a curse on him which, he alleges, manifested itself as a severe depression. He further claims that Mother Meera did this because she disapproved of Harvey's marriage to another man. Mother Meera disputes being homophobic as well as the other claims made in the book. In his first book about her, Hidden Journey, Harvey had originally praised her as an avatar, attributing his own enlightenment to her. Harvey's accusation of homophobia is perhaps somewhat weakened by the assertion of one of Harvey's former lovers, the writer Mark Matousek (1997), that the two of them were served breakfast in bed together in Mother Meera's house.[11]
"One common mistake is to think that one reality is the reality. You must always be prepared to leave one reality for a greater one." - Answers, Part I
- ^ Adilakshmi, "The Mother", page 4
- ^ Adilakshmi, 'The Mother', page 9
- ^ Mother Meera, "Answers, part II", page 21 -23
- ^ Adilakshmi, 'The Mother', page 10
- ^ Adilakshmi, 'The Mother', page 7
- ^ Adilakshmi, "The Mother", pages 87 -88
- ^ Adilakshmi, "The Mother", pages 38 - 40
- ^ Mother Meera, "Answers, Part I", pages 89 -98
- ^ See 'Sri Aurobindo Research Academy' in Mother Meera, "Answers, Part II", pages 189 - 195
- ^ Adilakshmi, "The Mother", pages 10 - 12
- ^ Mark Matousek, "Sex, Death, Enlightenment"
- Answers, Part I - by Mother Meera, ISBN 0-9622973-3-X
- Answers, Part II - by Mother Meera, ISBN 3-9805475-5-8
- The Mother - by Adilakshmi, ISBN 3-00-000241-3
- At the Feet of Mother Meera: The Lessons of Silence - by Sonia Linebaugh, ISBN 1-4134-1053-7
- Hidden Journey: A Spiritual Awakening - by Andrew Harvey, ISBN 0-14-019448-7
- In Search of the Divine Mother: The Mystery of Mother Meera - by Martin Goodman, ISBN 0-06-251509-8
- Sex Death Enlightenment - Mark Matousek (1997), Riverhead books, ISBN 1-57322-581-9
- Mother Meera Germany
- Darshans in the USA:
- Darshan in the UK
- Mark Matousek on Mother Meera