Story of Markandeya

"I tell you the story of Markandeya.
You see that he - this father had no children – and the father and mother were unhappy. So they prayed to Shiva. And they said that, “We want to have a son.” So they said that, “All right,” Shiva said, “I’ll give you the son, but I’ll have to take him back after eight years. So he’ll only exist till he is about eight years of age.” So they gave that boon to him, plus this kind of a curse. So the parents were very upset that, “My child will die after eight years of age.” Very upset! But they found the child very bright, brilliant, and also shining. And very religious. So one day he asked his father, “Why do you look always so worried? I mean, after all, I’m your son.” So they said that, “It is said so,“ - eight years or sixteen years, something like that, “So now I’ll be loosing you very soon. Who can surpass Shiva? So he said it, so I cannot think, that we can really ask anyone to neutralize that curse upon us. If you were not born to us we would not have been so attached to you. Now you are born to us, we are so much attached towards you.”
He was a very wise person. He said, “No, I know someone, I know Adi Shakti.” And he went to this place in Vani, where you go to see these Saptashringis, and there he prayed to Her. And nobody had prayed to Adi Shakti, they would pray to Jagadamba, they prayed to all other. But Adi Shakti is the one – he prayed to Her. And She appeared there – see, Her face is just like Me. And Sapta Shringi, because She has seven Chakras, you see, on Her head - ‘shringa’ means ‘on the head’. Like, what you call, shringa means the [tshikara ?] – peak. Seven peaks, you see. So, She was born with seven peaks – She came there, appeared – from the Mother Earth, She just came out – and he prayed to Her, he prayed to Her – and then the whole place became so vibrated that Shiva could not touch him.
Then he wrote all these Markandeya’s things, I mean, he was the first who wrote about Adi Shakti. All these things that you read about [in] Shankaracharya and all that, he took it from Markandeya. He was the first who wrote about Kundalini, first about Realization, he was the first who did all that. And even today they say that there is a gap between two hills, and people used to cross that gap on a bullock-cart, and the bullock-cart was carried over to the other side. Now of course you got a place to go up – but that time there was no things like that. So they used to just go on the bullock-cart and the bullock-cart was carried over, without any bridge - by Adi Shakti.
And She is the complete, because we have got, as you know, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati – three of them, in Maharashtra. Like, Mahakali is Tulsapur [Tuljapur], then, Mahalakshmi is, you know, in Kolhapur, and the third one is in Mahor. Mahor - there is one mountain in Mahor – is Mahasaraswati. And Adi Shakti is the Artha Matra, is on top of everyone. And this is it.
So Markandeya was actually the dearest son of Adi Shakti, because he is the one who incarnated Her."
(H.H.Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Vienna, Austria, 9/6/88)