This is part eleven of a radio interview conducted by Loni Petranek with Gurudeva. Today Gurudeva and Loni talk more about the new resurgence of the mother spirit.

Unedited Transcript:

Gurudeva: Hinduism is matriarchal, patriarchal and a combination of both. In fact, in the State of Kerala, India, the women own the land, they run the home and they are treated like Goddesses. Other places, it is just the opposite. So, it is a very flexible religion.

Here is something very interesting about the temple that we are building. You will like to hear this, Loni. We were working for years to get the temple started. We went to the God Ganesha; that is the Hawaiian God Lono. We went to the God Kumara, Hawaiian God Ku. We went to Siva, Himself. Nothing happened until we went to the Goddess Raja Rajeshwari, in India in a big temple, asked the Goddess to get the temple started and it happened. We had a tremendous big ceremony, invoking the Goddess and the first stone was chipped at that particular time. From then on, very smoothly, the temple came up. So, it took that mother energy to bring the temple to earth.

Now in 'Hinduism Today', many, many of our writers are very astute ladies who understand the man's world and the woman's world and their part within each. We are working very strenuously in Singapore, Malaysia and Mauritius. Especially in the country of Mauritius, with lady Ministers of the Government, for woman abuse and child abuse. The purpose is to stop it. In our religion, this is the very first time these subjects have been talked about, since we have been publishing about wife abuse and child abuse in the magazine. It has never been talked about, it has been going on and the women are taking a role now, to stop that happening in their homes. They are realizing, more and more that the mother's place is in the home, to raise the next generation and that her biggest boy is her husband.

Loni: That is putting it mildly! Biggest boy, biggest child.

Gurudeva: That is a full-time job, for a happy home. I just did an article, 'Is your home a house or a hotel lobby?' You know, for a home to be a home, it needs that mother spirit. You need to feel mother at home, you need to feel that warmth. It should be a place that is difficult to leave and you always want to get back as fast as you can, because mom is there. So, we are trying in our religion to recreate that. We have been under the Church of England in India, for such a long, long time. A lot of bad habits have crept into the Hindu community around the world. We are trying to correct those bad habits and replace them with more traditional habits of the Vedic time and so forth.