Whom to approach and with what mentality for one's spiritual progress is a perplexing problem:

 

Once a city was flooded; lives were in danger. A circus proprietor engaged himself; all worked day and night, it was tiring work. The proprietor saved so many lives; he could keep his sustaining power only with alcohol. He was standing for hours together in the sun. What about the religious response and recognition ? The Founder heard of his frequent drinking and his being condemned drunkard twenty times more than his bravery, service and sacrifice. To have both the spirit of service and sacrifice and its observance of religious requirements is surely most commendable. But if both don't go together, Service and Sacrifice should not be unrecognized . Mai ism wants service to humanity being recognized as not simply a praiseworthy act of humanity but a fully religious act. Mai-ism most emphatically says that selfless service with nothing - sparing sacrifice and without expectation of recognition is as religious and Mother-propitiating as Mother worship, Prasad distribution, Mantra repetition etc., if not more.

People lose their head when they think about religion. There are wrong judgments in religious matters. Beliefs, tendencies, like and dislikes play a predominating part in the matter of religion. Unfamiliarity , unapproachability and mystic aloofness become an enchantment to some and a matter of dis-like to others. Grandeur, impressive talks and congenial circumstances to forget the worries of worldliness create an imaginary heaven for some. For some others a certain unhappy mentality spoils the whole picture. All these factors play an important part in all religious judgments . These factors create certain once-for-all impressions and prejudices which form the basis of all subsequent outlook. So many inherited and acquired factors and beliefs rush in and give their color to the whole vision . After all , what counts is one's own individuality and stage of development and spiritual attainment. The very same religious person appears to some as Avatar, to some others as maniac and to still some others as even a cheat.

People believe there can be no saintliness without certain externals and settled routine ways of living and stern unapproachability . Commonsense gets occluded and confused.

Whom to approach and with what mentality for one's spiritual progress is a perplexing problem. There must be the initiation, the giving of Mantra and instructions and a particular programme and a continued personal contact through visits, letters, dreams, visions etc.

The Founder's mentality is this. God, Guru and Religion are going down and down day-to-day. People want relief from all their miseries and greater happiness of the type they conceive. Scripture's teachings , rules and regulations have almost miserably failed. Let us then meet people on their own ground. The Founder has very funny experiences how people can be brought round to a recognition of religious living on being shown that their miseries can be and are removed by undertaking a certain religious process for removal of certain misery. When people get sick about a religion because it is too old and shut their doors , its external colour should be changed and it should be poured from the sky-roof holes. That is what a Mother and Mother's religion alone would do , just as doctors do artificial feeding through injections.

~ ABRIDGED MAI-ISM BOOK / SAINT MAI SWARUP MAI MARKAND

The wickedness of the world is antidoted by the superb ultra goodness of a limited few thereof.

The Founder of universal religion Maiism gets sickened when he reviews this question of ungratefulness after his disillusionment about what the world in its natural constituency is. The less said the better. In a word, the ungratefulness of the human world is many times much greater and more bitter than that of beasts. This expression is in itself erroneous in a way. The proper way of putting it is that whereas animals have shown the heights of gratefulness, men have shown climaxes of ungratefulness. It is an extremely interesting subject to study why it is so and the Founder would like to record the psychological working of an average mind of this age for them that are of his rosy outlook and are in absolute darkness about, at least, the present wickedness and religious hypocrisy of the world.

The wickedness of the world is antidoted by the superb ultra goodness of a limited few thereof. The world knows only ill-treating them, ridiculing them, harassing them and squeezing them. The later, however, are prepared for all that, because they have a trust in a much more powerful and Merciful element, viz., God-Almighty. Such few consider their remuneration as payable, not in the world, but in the Highest Court of Justice.

~ Founder of universal religion Mai-ism (Mai Swarup Mai Markand)

The secret of self-improvement as stated in Maiism

 The secret of self-improvement is "Contact with people in better society, better environment and better atmosphere ". If you have the Guru - Shishya relationship with a worthy Guru, that problem is mainly solved. That, however, cannot be good-luck of everyone.

Take as a unit the dealing-region of yourself with your God, guru, wife, life-long friend and so on. Each relationship is a simple unit. Take further a complex unit of yourself with your father's family, your own family, your relations, your society of friends, your professional brothers, your caste-people, your community people, your locality people, your co-disciples and your co-workers in common cause. There is a great wonderful course that each unit exerts on an individual. The self-preservation instinct is at work. None wants to be thrown out, abandoned and cast to the winds. A man may not care for being moral and virtuous, or for being religious, but he wants the fullest sympathy of the society and of the immediately surrounding people around. Just study a few cases, of vast changes in different families coming over to reside in a big cosmopolitan city. Customs, habits, prejudices, manners, purdah-importance, jealousy, outlook-narrowness, husband-superiority, stinginess, quarrelsomeness, callousness, bluntness, ruffian-ism, in the heart within - everything change so wonderfully and in no time. The inner pinch of self-interest and self-preservation and the desire of gaining a higher and higher footing is there at full work.

Let therefore the wisest man be extremely careful about his selection of his simple units and complex units. In spite of the highest boast of intellect and originality, man is, after all, an apish imitator and a social creature with a gregarious mentality.  Man cannot live without some association with some human beings. Group formations and group isolation are only manifestations of human nature. That is natural and even indispensable, for the purpose of self-improvement, spontaneous pleasure and the maximum efficiency and relishfulness of life. The social fear of being thrown out, asocial boycott, is no small remedy to keep everyone straight and obedient to the common collective rules, customs and living ways and beliefs (at least the express ones) of every group.    

Take a complex unit. After all the additions and subtraction, that particular unit has its positive attributes, say one unit has goodness, morality, virtue and religiousness; another unit has badness, immorality, vice and irreligiousness. Each group unit exerts a certain influence on every individual of a group and tries to pull and conquer the same to be nearer and nearer the central attribute. Everyone likes to be in intimate touch with others of the same ways. Everyone feels at home, ridden of all constraints in one's own group alone. Everyone gets extremely uneasy and constrained in a foreign environment, and everyone tries to be more or less like the group to which one belongs. 

Thus a good unit will turn the worst into worse, the worse into bad, the bad into good, the good into the better, the better into best. A bad unit will turn the best into the better, the better into good, the good into bad, the bad into worse, the worse into worst. That is why collective degeneration travels many times much faster than individual degeneration. 

Good individuals placed in bad units, have most helplessly to be bad. These are chains, in which individual links have no strength, and often, the maximum strength of the chain itself is nothing more than that of the weakest link in the chain. Goodman in bad units, have to bad for self-defense and self-preservation. They have to be an indiscernible drop of the same water. Further every one's most natural desire to go higher and higher in rank, in one's society, he wants to stand high with goodness; if in bad one, by badness. He wants to win the general applause " I am well-known someone " - egoistic pleasure. No force is as massive as the mass-force. If turned to politics, it may bring independence. If turned to religion, it may bring back universal true religiosity in a few decades. A regularly established automatic special huge machinery works wonders. It is because of the fullest knowledge of the highest efficiency of this machinery working., that religious have stooped to laying down certain rules and customs, for the smooth and efficient running, and maintaining the general efficiency of different groups. This most wonderfully working force must be prominently before the minds of religious reformers when they take up any religious rejuvenating work if solid practicability has to be achieved.

Extract from the book MAI-ISM / Author : Mai Swarup Mai Markand 

Amazing quotes from mai-ism literature