divine mothers

I knew Eileen Caddy, the co-founder of the Findhorn Community up in northern Scotland, from a public talk or two but mostly from a long early morning mini-bus ride we once shared. her husband Peter Caddy was flamboyant, one of the great spiritual showmen of talk, while Eileen was much more of a silent presence. She died in January this year - the ultimate silence.

Ammachi gives those who come to her an all-embracing hug that they find transformative. From India, she also has an ashram near our home in Santa Fe. I went along to a gathering once, shuffled along for hours awaiting my chance to join her on the podium, then just before my moment came I walked away. Music, loudspeakers, bright colours, announcements, laughter, perhaps the whole thing was simply too loud, stage-managed and excited. I didn't want a hug. It was a huge relief to walk away into the quiet and the stars of the landscape once again.

The total silence surrounding appearances of Mother Meera were much more appealing. Intellectual doubts have nothing to feed off in such circumstances. My mind is always looking for some glimmering of the spiritual huckster and manipulator, but calms down in the face of silence and stillness. When I was researching the biography of Mother Meera in India her family told me she had told them she would one day travel more into the world from her base in Germany. Her latest international schedule, with visits to America, Canada and Britain, has just been posted.

A reader recently wrote to tell me of her own best-loved divine mother,
Mata Amritanandamayi. And a newsletter has just come in from Elisis (formerly known as Isis) from her Shambhala Centre on Glastonbury Tor. Elisis rather threw me when we first met, for her talk of planets and space ships and past lives is the sort of cosmological whirl that can send my sceptical mind into overdrive. Yet fondness for her displaces all of that. I admire how caring she is, and her sense of mission. A message comes in and she's hauling herself across the planet to sing some significant portion of it into realignment. It's all the complete opposite of a rational, paternalistic view of life - and when you look at what that prevailing rational view has achieved on our planet, giving the complete opposite a run with the wind in its hair is a good way to go for a while.

It's good to hang out with divine mothers. It's not a bad idea to grab a bunch of flowers and go hang out with your own mother this coming Mother's Day either, come to that. As my own mother was dying I watched light pour out of her. That's the thing about big journeys, I suppose. You voyage around the world so you can bring some sense of proper understanding back to your point of departure. 'You were here all along,' I said to Mum. 'Why did I go trekking round the world in search of divine mothers?'

'I always wondered that too,' she said.