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The Divine Mother, creative energy !
by Swami Nityamuktananda
When we talk about the divine Mother, we imply there is a Divine Father, when we talk about God, we imply there is a Goddess. However when we refer to "the Divine", there is no such gender orientation. Where does this come from and what is the meaning of the "Divine Mother"?
When we look at the world, we perceive the world through our senses, then our mind, according to our conditioning, tries to digest the sense impressions.
The problem is, our sense organs are limited. They do not see/hear etc. the whole picture, for example: You know what a dog-whistle is? It makes sounds so high pitched, that our ears can not hear it, the dog can it means our sense of hearing is limited there are sounds in existence we do not know of.
When we look at a flower, we see a certain shape, color, form - we trust this picture, paint it, photograph it, print it, fix it in our mind and build a frame of memory around it, so that recognition comes quick when we see the same flower again.
Yet, when we look through a powerful microscope there is no shape, no color, no form, but space with tiny bits of matter flying in that space. It means our eyes are limited, they do not see reality, but we trust what we perceive, call it reality and built understanding from that limited frame.
Similarly, we look at all of creation and the process of creating. We see sperm and egg, stamen and pollen; canvas and paint, rain and earth. We trust what we perceive and then built from that our understanding.
However because of our limited perception - we have limited understanding! Our experience tells us, for creation one needs two, we perceive the world in terms of male and female, so we make the Divine, into Father and Mother ; Gods and Goddess-ess.
In other words, we look at Creation, put our observance into boxes and stick labels on it, which match our limited experience. This is how we deal with the world all the time, we are used to it, and unaware of the danger that we then take the labels for reality and never inquire into the underlying reality.
Any person and society that relies on outer perception and classification, has thus to expect to have a wrong picture of reality. Hence wise scriptures of all shades of philosophy and religion know that there are two aspects to reality, phenomenal reality, and Absolute Reality. The phenomenal reality is the world as we experience it, and the absolute Reality; That which lies behind it. This Absolute Reality, we can only experience, once we have opened our minds to a perception other than our limiting senses. This is the domain of the Mystics, Saints, Sages and Yogis. They perceive the Absolute and know it - to be attribute-less, beyond ordinary perception, other than human i.e. divine.
This Absolute Reality some call Tao, Godhead, Brahman, Shiva, Totality, or or. And although our mind makes it male it is itself attribute-less, hence gender -less!!!!!
Only once this Totality unfolds, it has characteristics: the first "born" are consciousness and energy. As we know energy for ever moves into matter; with this phenomenal Reality takes center stage.
ONE, so the philosophers and Mystics proclaim rightly, is not a number. ONE stands without classification. One is a state, is existence .and Zero is no existence (hence the binary system, underlying computers work.) Numbers..as such start with Two (2). Now there can be less count, or more count- and something can be said about each. In this way we have spirit and matter, or intelligence and energy - or Yin and Yang. These two aspects our mind then puts into the most familiar categories/boxes as male and female.
This original "two-ness" is heavily imprinted in the human awareness. Yet - not all people have such "split awareness". Mystics of all religious backgrounds and more nature orientated people, like the Australian Aboriginal see the "one energy" behind the obvious diversity.
The latter call this way of perception, the Dream-time. We, in our ignorance call these "seers" primitive, yet their perception is far superior. They perceive the subtle; the energy before it is screened by the senses into limited diversity. They perceive the energy moving into form for a particular moment of appearance.
It's like seeing the Water when looking at the wave; rather than focusing on the wave, or ocean as most of us. By focusing on the Wave, we focus on the momentary form of Water, which of course is gone in a minute!
Just like the waves, the world we see and experience is ever - changing! Impermanent, because we look at the ever more specialized diversity and forget the whole.
This same dilemma goes right through, to our perception of Gods and Goddesses, male and female. We react to the husband and forget the man; we only see the man, but forget the human being! We see God or Goddess and forget the Divine Totality.
We see the Virgin or the Queen of Heaven and not the destroyer of matter and time. We do not see the Great unlimited Mother but only our mother "My Mother. Our limited perception, determines the boxes we use to determine how we want to see the world. What ever we associate and understand by the word the Great Mother is influenced, shaped, by the understanding we have of: my mother. Ma, the root syllable itself is the same roots as mama and mamata meaning: what is Mine!!!
This is where trouble starts; if you have one vision, one life, totality, you have harmony - but when you have two, you have interaction, you have conflict, you have battle.
Then you have even Gods fighting Gods! Gods fighting Goddesses and Religion fighting Religion.
But back to the two forces that create this phenomenal existence: consciousness (in yoga- speak: Purusha) and energy/matter (in yoga-speak Prakriti). Prakriti, the ever-changing life-energy, we call "Mother", why? Because the first file in our mind laid down for us to understand the world by, is the experience of being mothered, being cared for, being linked to .her! Hence the first imprints how "my mother" acted, shaped my perception of mothering, including my link to the greater power from where I stem!
This insight reveals terrible consequences for modern society; we witness that the role, value, respect of the mother in the family deteriorates. As it does, so deteriorates understanding of mothering, with it our understanding of the Great Generative and Creative power that brings forth everything!
This again is clearly seen and used as an argument in the Bhagavad Geeta against war. If family structure gets destroyed, the mother role is affected with disastrous consequences for the entire society. But we don"t have to go that far back! It is happening right now in our time, our society!
By contrast, in India throughout the thousands of years, the Mother was considered the first Guru, the most respected Teacher and Being. Every morning even now, thousands of Indian children, pranahm (at times full body-length) before their Mothers, showing respect through their actual Mother, to the Great Universal Mother! Mental patterns are laid down and handed down.
Compare that, to the knowledge that: my mother was a business woman with no time for me, or a drunken party girl .what respect will I have for the Great Mother, on the backdrop of experiences like that?
Especially after wars, but in any society, where families are torn; when children are born outside of families, and where mothers are exclusively focused on work other than raising there children the imprints that foster love and respect get severed, distorted, or never built! Furthermore, Children do not learn the mental matrix of honoring their mother, so how can they learn to honor the Great Divine Mother?
Then we lament, that the male species has dominated the female culture; be it through Christian Church structure, through Communism, or through any male dominant, materialistic movement .but think, who brought up the sons that became drunkards, killers, exploiters, soldiers or any number of power crazed variations ? The first teacher of any child is the mother! If these guardians of the child, have not been able to lay down a grid of understanding and behavior in and for a wider understanding of the ever-changing world, the child can not grasp the idea of Mothering(caring, belonging) - much less of the concept of the Divine Mother.
The ever-changing aspect of the universe becomes understood not through the eyes of the Divine Cosmic Mother, as benevolent force but as the one that pushed me out of the way or pushed me down the stairs! She becomes the egotistic destroyer, the lawless chaotic power, that deprives of giving meaning and sense to life!
Seeing this, is a horrendous insight, and opens understanding and a look behind the many problems in our decaying present society. Of course so called modern people feel .why only the mother? And politically correct I say: of course it does not only apply to the female gender, but to the one that mothers the child, even if it"s biological a man. Yes of course but then think deeper, the bond created in the womb, the experience of birth how ever we look at it, lies down first files, important imprints in the memory/mind and these are bound up with the female of the species.
However, the responsibility does not lie exclusively with her, but includes the male, naturally. Furthermore, as we learn by example, he has the vital task to respect the mother and the child, so that the child can learn from him, reverence and respect! A broken male without moral integrity can not, and does not do this! If the husband, betrays, abuses, hits, disrespect the mother, the child will learn this behavior.
On the other hand, a society, that maintains respect to the Mothers, as well as the Divine Mother will bring forth many Divine Mothers. In one of the oldest sacred books, the Rig Veda, a verse is sung by Ambrihni (a female Mystic) where she sees the divine energy/divine Mother within herself:
I am the Queen, source of thought, knowledge itself!
You do not know me, yet you dwell in me.
I announce myself in words both gods and humans welcome.
From the summit of the existence I give birth to the sky!
The tempest is my breath, all living creatures are my life!
Beyond the wide earth, beyond the vast heaven, my grandeur extends for ever!
I am certain that verses like this can be found in every ancient culture, where there is insight and respect for the natural, creative energy in whatever form or shape. Even in our age, in some societies i.e. India the daughters of the Divine Mother are alive and respected. Anasuya, born 1923 in India, said to her teacher, when he remarked what a remarkable woman she was: I am what gave birth to you, you are the woman who gave birth to me who is the mother and who is not? Real motherhood does not consist in the simple recognition of one"s own motherhood. Motherhood must be perceived in everything, towards everything. Meaning:
- destroy the illusion, that there is anything you are not (we are connected to everything that exists, just as mother and child in the womb).
- destroy the illusion that anything exists outside yourself, it gives only cause for desire to want what you don"t have.
- destroy the illusion that you are limited by causation, there is permanent continuity.
- destroy the illusion of not knowing (knowledge/awareness/ consciousness is everywhere.
- destroy the illusion that there is anything you cannot achieve, creative power is everywhere)
Lalleshwari a Kashmiri, woman Saint says:
I abide in totality and totality abides in me in the vast and pure being of Shiva, the drama of life and death is staged.
People do not understand this is all the play of the Goddess Consciousness (Chit-Shakti) herself. Shiva is simultaneously the brimming consciousness power, and his Shakti, the primordial Goddess manifesting as the universe. Anasuya (speaking 1950) from her direct experience said:
I am turning the whole world over in my mind. I am experiencing that my one mind has become many. Reality is a state. Adopt me as your child and you will become the grandparent of the whole creation. I am not anything you are not. It doesn"t appear to me, that I am greater than you. God does not exists separately anywhere. You are all God, you are all the Goddess. It"s not correct to speak of the "Mother of the Universe" the universe itself is the mother. You can never fall from my lap.
And then just to make sure we do not make a new box in our mind, that links woman, mothers and the Goddess we need to bust some more categories.
One of most revered Mothers of India, is the Poet Saint Jnaneshwar, A man having lived about 700 years ago; he is celebrated and revered in Temples and communities throughout India, as Mauli (Maharati for Mother). Thousands and thousands of people every year around the first of January, walk hundreds of miles to his Samadhi shrine, to honor Him, the Great Mother!.
Jnaneshwar embodies love and wisdom in its most rounded aspects, and thus is like a mother to the Nation. Although he already took Mahasamadhi when 21 years old, he left two most famous books, a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita and the Nectar of Self Awareness (Amritanubhava) There he says:
I honor the God and the Goddess,
The eternal parents of the universe
The lover out of boundless love
Takes the form of the beloved, what beauty
Both are made of the same nectar
And share the same food .
They sit together in the same place
Both wearing a garment of light
From the beginning of time, they have been together,
Reveling in their love
Without the God, there is no Goddess, and without the Goddess there is no God..
They only exist because of each other
These two are the only ones existing in the universe
Two lutes - one note
Two flowers one fragrance-two lamps one light
Two lips one word
Two eyes one sight
These two- one universe
Like sugar and its sweetness
Or camphor and its fragrance they cannot be told apart.
If we have the flame, we also have the fire
If we catch hold of Shakti, we have Shiva as well.
Such holistic, awareness goes much beyond any perception of gender, there can be only love and wisdom, energy and intelligence, consciousness and matter as one, even within one humanbeing.
And this is no individual case. The famous Chinese Mother of Mercy, Kuan-Yin was originally a male deity, Avalokitesvara. There are many more such examples and even today, holy man and woman are addressed with ultimate reverence as Mother . Rather than decrying the quality of man, it is considered an honorific title, praising his love, compassion and wisdom. This much wider understanding, sees Creative energy beyond the patterns of male and female, yet because our words limit our understanding, she is called She! Or the honorific title: Shree, or Shri.
You must have heard it used, for example as Sri Aurobindu ..coming from Shree the mother, even though he was a male most definitely and freedom fighter to boot!
See the boxes our minds make See how limiting our differentiated, fractured world becomes
We have to return to a more holistic view to have any chance of real understanding. The Yoga of inquiry, of knowledge (Jnana Yoga) helps to gain greater understanding of the Ultimate Truth about our existence. This is the aim of Yoga philosophy and particularly of Vedanta.
It says, the roots of phenomenal existence are in the subtle, they are attribute less, Nothing can be said about this Totality, some call Brahman, others the TAO. The first appearances out of the indescribable One, are Purusha and Prakriti, together they are like an energetic tree- trunk on which the branches and leaves of the rest of creation appear. (This tree of life, is called the Ashwatta tree in the BG.) Consciousness, Purusha alone, cannot create, it is pure and subtle Prakriti, energy on its own (matter) - is dead, cannot create life. These two, like Shiva and Shakti need eachother, yet neither is more important than the other. When they become more important than each-other, imbalance is created and destruction the result. One of the greatest Saints of the last century is Ramakrishna, he said:
"The Primordial Power is ever at play. She is creating, preserving and destroying in play as it were. This power is called Kali. (Mother, Shakti) Kali is Brahman and Brahman is Kali. It is one and the same Reality. When we think of IT as inactive, that is to say, not engaged in creation, preservation and destruction, then we call it Brahman (or Shiva). But when IT engages in these activities, then we call it Kali or Shakti. The reality is one and the same, the difference is in name and form alone.
It is like Water, called in different languages by different names there is the same riverbank, but the Hindus drink the water at on place and call it jal; the Muselmans drink at another place and call it pani; the English at a third place call IT , Water all denote to the same thing. The difference is in name alone ..She alone plays, When there were neither the creation, not the sun, the moon, the planets and the earth and when darkness was enveloping darkness, then the Mother, the Formless One, Maha-Prakrit, Maha-Kali, the Great Power, was one with the Absolute! .She brings forth the phenomenal world and then pervades it.
All aspects of life are due alone to this Creative Power, what ever name and form we give it.
In Yoga-speak we talk of this pure ground of existence as Maha-Prakriti. Because her nature has inherently three qualities (gunas) and one of these is movement itself, she never stays the same, creation changes from one minute to the next. Permanent Change is her nature.
Our problem is, that we can"t keep up. Our instruments are too dull, our minds too dis-organized, and so we see what constantly changes and fix it, to put into boxes. (Like freezing one frame in a film). We have to get out of the illusion that the world is this frozen frame, and recognize that this "frame" is a self-made mind-box!
This process includes our perception of Gods and Goddesses. The stability we want, by creating mind-boxes has its root in fear. We cannot stand up to her, to the ever changing, dancing, moving Kali. (Kali, the name includes the word Kala, time!)
So we put even the Goddess herself in boxes, one for birthing, one for beauty, one for the land, one for the war, one for learning etc. and thus create a pantheon of Goddesses.
To see the world as it is, we have not only to forget the boxes of male and female, God and Goddess, but we have to chuck out all labels and start to see HER as she is; the ever-changing, all embracing, category-less divine Power!
Once we get out of our boxes, wake up from the illusion of a static power, wake up from judging and labeling and categorizing and embrace the freedom of constant change, then we embrace the wisdom of the Mother, then we see there is no gender - split . The Great Mother and the Divine Father are as one; there is no gender, only a dynamic principle.
Beyond all boxes lies the cradle of the new child to which, the Great Mother within, gives birth to every minute of the day!
