In truthfully loving and serving our own parents, how can we please the Divine? Bhagawan lovingly explains in His own inimitable style.
Pundalika was massaging the feet of his old mother when God appeared before him! He did not interrupt the service, for he was serving the same God, in his mother! Tukaram declared to Pundalika that it was God who had manifested before him; but Pundalika did not waver. He asked God to wait for a while until he had finished the service of the God he had started serving. The prompting inside man to love his mother is an expression of the divine nature in him. If there was no spark of Divinity in man, he would have no love! A person who loves is a theist, whether he goes to a temple or church, or not! Pundalika was not guilty of sacrilege when he asked Lord Panduranga to wait, for he was actually worshipping God in His most accessible form – his mother. You must proceed from the known to the unknown. Then love expands in ever-widening circles, until it covers all nature, until even plucking a leaf from a tree makes you so painful that you dare not injure it!
– Divine Discourse, May 24, 1967.
