THE GLORY OF THE DIVINE MOTHER (I)

13Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture October 2016

The Glory of the Divine Mother (I)SWAMI KIRTIDANANDA

The Divine Mother is one of theinnumerable forms through which theHindu approaches God and worshipsHim, considering no sacrifice too great forthe purpose. The impersonal absoluteBrahman, of which the Upanishads speak,the eternal, undying, unborn, immortal Self,the pure essence of our being, informingeverything in the universe, is too much of anabstraction for ordinary people to conceiveof even. The Upanishads themselvesdescribe the absolute Brahman as beingextremely subtle, susukshma (Mundaka,I. i. 6), and inscrutable, durdarsham(Katha, I. ii. 12), and as being beyond thegrasp of our senses, mind, and intellect(avngmanasagocara). Many of thedescriptions of this tman-Brahman Reality,given in the Upanishads, are staggering tothe imagination. After listening to adiscourse on the tman by her husband,Maitreyi, the worthy wife of the Upanishadicsage Yjnavalkya, herself a soul faradvanced in the spiritual path, says in utterbewilderment: Just here, sir, you have ledme into great confusion; I do not at allcomprehend this (atraiva m bhagavnmohantamapipipat, na v ahamimamvijnmiBrihadranyaka Upanishad,IV. v. 14). Constituted as we are, we needsomething concrete to fix our minds on andstir our imagination, before we can think ofsubtler ideas.

Therefore, for purposes of meditationand other spiritual practices in the case ofbeginners and the less advanced aspirants,

the scriptures provide more concreterepresentations of Reality, which are withintheir reach. As the Mahnirvna Tantrasays: To facilitate concentration of mindand for the speedy fulfilment of aspirations,the glorious Kli, the Mother of Time, whois really without form, is invested with formsconsistent with Her attributes and activities(Manaso dhranrthya shighramsvbhishtasiddhaye sukshmadhyna-prabodhya . . . arupyh klikyhklamtur-mahyuteh, gunakriynusrenakriyate rupakalpan).

Or, in the words of Kulrnava Tantra:

Nirvishesham param brahma sksht-kartumanishvarh;Ye mandh tenukalpyante savishesha-nirupanaih

Those people of weak intellect who arenot able to realize the Absolute who iswithout any attributes, are helped to think ofHim through forms with attributes.

Forms seen in meditationThis is not to say that these forms are

pure creations of mans imagination withoutany objective reality whatsoever. To warn usagainst such a misconception, the scripturestell us that Brahman Itself takes form out ofcompassion for the devoteesbhaktnmanukamprtham devo vigrahavn bhavet.Or, as Sri Ramakrishna used to say:Through the cooling influence of thebhaktas (devotees) love, the water of theocean of Brahman becomes frozen at places

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into blocks of ice. God now and thenassumes various forms for His lovers andreveals Himself to them as a Person (TheGospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 72, firstIndian edition).

These forms of God are forms realizedby the great sages of the past in the depths oftheir meditation, and their validity has beentested and confirmed time and again by along line of saints in subsequent ages. Asthe Bhgavata (III. ix. 11 and III. xxiv. 31)says:

Tvam bhvayoga-paribhvita-hritsarojasse

Shrutekshitapatho nanu ntha pumsm;Yadyaddhiy ta urugya vibhvayanti

Tattadvapuh pranayasesadanugrahya

You reside in the lotus of the heart asmeditated upon by devout worshippers.Whatever form they meditate upon, Youappear in that form and bless them.

Tnyeva tebhirupni rupni bhagavan-stava;Yni yni ca rocante svajannma-rupinah

In whatever delightful or beautifulforms Your devotees like to see You, thoseforms are really Yours, although You arewithout any form.

When we are thus forced by the veryconstitution of our mind and intellect tothink of God in some form, what can bemore natural than that we should think ofHim as one like ourselves? SwamiVivekananda, in one of his lectures, halfhumorously remarks: If cows were tobecome philosophical tomorrow, they wouldhave a cow universe and a cow solution ofthe problem, and a cow-God too. If catswere to become philosophical tomorrow,they would have a cat universe and a catsolution of the problem, and a cat-God too.

So there is nothing unreasonable or illogicalin mans thinking of God in human termsand attributing human forms to Him. TheBible says that God created man in His ownimage. The Hindu would say, with betterlogic, that God creates Himself in mansimage. And with the same force of logic, hewould also say that man casts God in hisown image and, consequently, in the imageof woman too.

The Vedic people, for instance, prayedto and worshipped the deitiesIndra,Varuna, and so onwho possessed humanforms and characteristics, and who, theybelieved, controlled and directed the powersof nature, such as thunder, rain, wind, and soon. These were male deities, and it was but astep from the conception of God as male tothe conception of God as female. The idea ofthe universal Father, coupled with the ideaof creation, naturally brings to mind the ideaof the universal Mother, and the twotogether make the picture of divinitycomplete. So the gods come to have theircounterparts, even as human beings have,the Shaktis or Gns as they are calledIndrni, Prithivi, the goddess of earth;Ushas, the goddess of dawn; Kli, Karli,Manojav and others, representing the sevenflames that shoot up from the external fire;Vc, the goddess of speech, and so on,corresponding to Indra, Dyaus, the god ofsky, Surya, the sun-god; Agni, the god offire; Prajpati, and so on.

The Mother is supremeThe next step in the evolution of the

idea of God as the Divine Mother is theequating of these two aspects of divinity.Why should the universal Mother alwaysshine in the borrowed light of the universalFather? She need not. She is great andglorious in Her own right. As the Rig-Veda(I. lxxxix. 10) says:

THE GLORY OF THE DIVINE MOTHER (I)

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Aditirdyauh aditirantariksham Aditirmt sa pit sa putrah;Vishvedev aditirpancajan aditih Jtamaditirjanitvam

She, the infinite, all-encompassingAditi is supreme. She is the heavens and theintermediate region; She is the father,mother, and child, all the gods and men, theborn and the unborn.

The Kena Upanishad goes even furtherand says that it is the great Mother UmHaimavati who reveals the knowledge ofBrahman to us. In the Devi-sukta (Rig-Veda,X. 125), the goddess Vk Ambhrina declaresthat it is She who moves about in the form ofthe Rudras, Vasus, dityas, and theVishvedevas, and upholds the host of othergodsMitra, Varuna, Agni, and the twoAshvins. She it is who brings success to thesacrifices. She is the ruler of the universeand the bestower of wealth and the fruits ofworship; She is Brahman and the foremostamongst those to whom the offerings are tobe made. She assumes various forms andmakes all creatures realize their own Self.He who eats food does so through Her; hewho breathes does so through Her; he whohears and sees does so through Her; andthose who know Her not as such go thedownward way to death and destruction. Sheis the great teacher and disseminator of thehighest knowledge. It is by Her grace thatmen are exalted above all, even to theposition of Brahm, and by Her grace theybecome wise. She is the creatress of heavenand earth and all that is within and without.She pervades the whole universe.

Thus the Divine Mother was not onlyequated with Her male counterpart, but, incourse of time, was given a higher place ofhonour. In the concept of yugala-murtis,developed long after the Vedic age, the maleand female aspects of divinity areworshipped in combination, but importance

is given more to the female aspect than tothe male, as is evident from the names of themurtisSmba-Shiva, Um-Maheshvara,Lakshmi-Nryana, Rdh-Krishna, Sit-Rma, and so on. The Divine Mother hasalways the precedence of worship.

Different aspects of the oneThough the supreme Reality may be

thought of, according to the predilection ofthe worshipper, as a male or a female, wehave to remember that God in Himself isbeyond all sex. He is neither male norfemale nor hermaphroditenyam yoshitna ca pumn na shando na jadah smritah,as Ymala, a Tntrika text, says. That is whythe Upanishads use words of the differentgenders when referring to the supremeReality, such as s devat, par devat,shntam shivam, uttamah purushah, ishah,or param-tm. Other scriptures go to theextent of saying that the Divine MotherHerself may be meditated upon as a male,for She is in Herself nishkal, beyond allattributes, and saccidnandalakshan, of thenature of pure existence-knowledge-bliss:

Pumrupam v smareddevimStrirupam vpi cintayet;

Athav nishkalm dhyyetSaccidnandalakshanm.

Is Shym male or female? asks SriRamakrishna, and gives his answer in theform of an interesting parable. A man oncesaw the image of the Divine Mother wearinga sacred thread. He was surprised and said tothe worshipper: What! you have put thesacred thread round the Mothers neck! Theworshipper replied: Brother, I see that youhave truly known the Mother. But I have notyet been able to find out whether She is maleor female; that is why I have put the sacredthread on Her image. (The Gospel of SriRamakrishna, p. 195)

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Rmprasda also similarly says:Sometimes Thou art man, and sometimeswoman art Thou. In another of his songs hesays that She is the ten avatras of Vishnu.One of the Tantras, the Mundaml Tantra,elaborates this idea and identifies the tendifferent avatras of Vishnu with the tenforms of the Divine MotherKris