GOD AS MOTHER - Navaratri ( First Night )

GOD AS MOTHER

Swami Chidananda's book "God As Mother". It consists of lectures delivered during Navaratri. During the Navaratra Durga Puja at the Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, in 1953 (8th to 17th October), Revered Sri Swami Chidanandaji Maharaj delivered a series of most illuminating lectures on “God as Mother”

FIRST NIGHT

The Power Of The Transcendent Reality

yà devã sarvabhåteùu viùõumàyeti ÷abdità
amastasyai namastasyai namastasyai namo namaþ

PROSTRATIONS again and again to the blessed Divine Mother who is the source, substratum and the ultimate goal of all creation.

The Mother is a mysterious, indescribable power of the Supreme Being. She is the dynamic aspect of the Supreme, Transcendent Being, which is infinity, eternity and ineffable peace, beyond the cognisance of the senses and the mind.

Upon this very solemn and holy occasion which marks the commencement of the sacred annual nine-day worship of the Deity in Its aspect as the Supreme Mother, the first day of the Navaratra culminating in Vijayadasami, popularly known as the Dussera, it is a great mark of divine grace and blessing that we have the privilege of gathering together and glorifying the Mother, speaking a few words about the Divine Mother, adoring Her and worshipping Her and praying for Her Grace, the Grace which alone can enable us to attain success and fruition in all endeavours be they material or spiritual, secular or sacred; by which alone a seeker is able to reach the end of his quest, and the Sadhaka is able to achieve the Thing for which he strives, the soul is able to attain perfection and to realise the Infinite. The Grace of the Mother is an indispensable factor to attain Moksha-Siddhi. Upon this sacred occasion, let us try to know a few things about the Indian conception of the Divine Mother and about the significance as well as the traditional background of this nine-day worship.

In India the Hindus fall under four or five broad religious divisions. There are the worshippers of the Supreme Being in its aspect as Siva; we call them the Saivites. Then there are the worshippers of the selfsame Supreme Being in its aspect as Vishnu. Them we call Vaishnavas.

There is still a third section of people—and quite a number of them—who worship the One God, the Supreme Being, but as manifest in the form of the great Goddess, the Devi Shakti. They are referred to as Shaktas. There again are two less-known sects called the Ganapatyas who worship the Supreme Being as Ganapaty, and the Souryas or the worshippers of the Supreme Being manifest as the splendorous light as embodied in the visible orb of the sun, the giver of light, the sustainer of the life-process in this world of ours.

The Navaratra worship of the Devi is eminently a Shakta-worship, and it has come down to us through the Shakta-tradition. A very great section of these Shaktas are localised in the Province of Bengal and Assam. Their supreme scripture, glorifying the Divine mother, is known as the Durga Saptashati or the Devi Mahatmya. It is known by the name Saptashati because it is a book of 700 verses. In Bengali it is familiarly known as the Chandi; also in these parts—Garhwal—people refer to the reading of the Devi Mahatmya as Chandi-Patha. This is derived from one of the names of the Divine Mother Herself who is called Chandika.

The reading of the scripture is done in a very scientific manner. There is a strict procedure laid down by the Shastras. In the first part which was read today there is a detailed exposition of the Devi Tattva. The setting is in the form of a story; and the exposition is given by a sage to a king and a merchant. It is full of deep philosophic truth in regard to the aspect of the Deity, Her nature, how She is and what She is. There are sublime, elevating hymns glorifying the Mother; and the ways of propitiating Her are given. The very reading of the scripture from start to finish is itself a very great and effective Sadhana in the Shakta mode of worship and spiritual practice. I shall just give in a few words the essence of the scripture.

Essence of Devi Mahatmya

It begins this way. A king of the Surya Vamsa to which Lord Rama also belonged, named Suratha, is overcome and overwhelmed by his foes, who compel him to flee his kingdom. He takes shelter in a forest. He is deeply afflicted and dejected, deprived of all his wealth and retinue; and he is wandering forlorn, destitute of everything, in a very wretched condition. His mind again and again goes back to the bitter fate which he has suffered. Thinks of his kingdom, his wealth, his ministers and the way in which the kingdom is likely to be governed under the new rulers. While he is in this state of mind, he happens to come to the vicinity of the hermitage of a great God-realised sage, called Rishi Medha. He sees the hermitage with all its beauty, the disciples of the Rishi—everything pervaded by serenity, calmness and purity; and he stays there.

While he is in this hermitage he comes across a fellow-sufferer, a brother-in-distress, a man named Samadhi, belonging to the merchant community, who has also similarly run away from his home because of misfortune. He had lost all his wealth to his own relatives; and his own family had turned him out of the house. He is thus forced to wander into the forest. He also takes shelter at the feet of the sage.

They find that they are more or less in the same predicament, deprived of their wealth and ousted from their home, with their own people turned against them; and in spite of all this unkindness of their own people, both of them are intrigued and deeply puzzled to find that with all the hostility and enmity of their people, yet their minds go again and again back to these very people, to the very things which have been the cause of their sorrow, of their grief, of their deep disappointment and dejection.

They try to discuss this between themselves; what is this mysterious nature of the mind which harkens back again and again and clings to those self-same things and people from whom they have had nothing but pain and sorrow. Unable to solve this riddle, they go and humbly entreat the Rishi Medha to throw some light upon this problem. They ask the Rishi: “O Wise One, pray throw some light upon this problem; we are greatly puzzled to find this mind still clings to those very objects, is attached to those very persons, from whom it has received the greatest pain and sorrow; it knows there is no pleasure in those things, yet it will not give up its attachment to them—what is the reason for this, how do you explain this peculiar delusion of the mind?”

In answer to this query which, though it has been put into the mouth of Raja Suratha and Vaishya Samadhi, yet is a universal question which agitates the minds of all thinking men and women all over the world, Rishi Medha gives his wondrous exposition of the greatness of the Devi. He says; “O my children! A mysterious delusion dwells in the mind of man, by which his pure reason is blinded, by which delusion he is again and again made to cling and go back to those very objects and persons from which he is subject to so much pain and suffering. This delusion, this veiling power, is really the mysterious power of the divine Mother. It is She who is the cosmic illusion. It is She who is at the back of projection of this very universe itself. It is with Her mysterious veiling Power that the one seems to have become the many, the formless seems to have taken numerous forms and the unmanifest seems to have become manifest and this mysterious power is the indescribable power of the Supreme Being itself. It is Brahma Shakti; it is the Mahamaya or the great Cosmic Illusory Power which emanates from the Lord Himself, and it is through this power that the Lord sets going this universal drama of projection of creation, preservation and once again the ultimate dissolution of all names and forms back into its pristine transcendental state of Pure Being.”

The King Suratha and Vaishya Samadhi want to know more about the mysterious power which Rishi Medha has referred to and to know more about this cosmic power which is at the back of all manifestation. In response to this request of theirs Rishi Medha goes into the detailed exposition of the nature of the divine Mother; and the 700-versed scripture contains this exposition. In the end, having expounded the mystery and secret of the supreme nature of the divine Mother Rishi Medha advises Suratha and Samadhi to go and practise Yoga, worship the Divine Mother, pray to Her and meditate upon Her and propitiate Her. Thus propitiated She becomes manifest to them and bestows Her Grace upon both the king and the merchant and their heart’s desire is fulfilled.

This in short is the import of this supreme scripture of the Shaktas—Devi Mahatmya.

Maya and Brahman Are One

This exposition of the Devi Tattva goes to explain to us how the Supreme Shakti is all in all. It tells us that whatever we see, whatever we perceive in this phenomenal universe before us, is nothing but the outcome of this supreme power of the Para Brahman, viz. the primal force. She is called the Adi-Shakti. She is also known as the transcendental power—Para-Shakti. She is known as the superlative, the great power—Maha-Shakti.

What exactly is the relationship between this great-Divine Power and the ultimate Supreme Being the Almighty, is a question that is very interesting and which occupies the minds of all great thinkers. Varied explanations have been given but sages of realisation have stated in illuminating terms the secret of this relationship between the deity as they conceived of in its aspect of Supreme Mother and the deity in its transcendental aspect. We are told how the Para Brahman and His Supreme Mysterious Power of World-illusion whom we call Maya or Devi are in fact one and the same in essence. They are apparently different, but yet they are one. It is a distinction without a difference in fact. That is the relationship between them. As it were they are the obverse and the reverse of the self-same coin. You cannot conceive of the Para Brahman without conceiving of the Devi; and the conception of the Devi automatically pre-supposes the conception of the Para-Brahman. They explain to us how the Devi or the Supreme Divine Mother is the mysterious link between the manifest and the unmanifest. She is the medium that connects the un-manifest with the manifest. For instance, there is an effect and a cause which is responsible for this effect—but what is the thing which connects the effect with the cause and the cause with the effect? There is some mysterious link which connects these two and makes them one. Though apparently two, they are in reality two terminals of the self-same process. This process of the cause becoming manifest as the effect, this power that makes the cause appear as the effect is known as the Maya, the illusion or the Devi.

The Supreme Brahman is also described as perfectly beyond all movement and motion because being of the nature of limitlessness and infinity the very question of motion does not arise. The Supreme Power whom we call Devi is described as the dynamic aspect of the Para Brahman. They say that they are as inseparable as the whiteness of the milk and the milk; as the heat and fire; as a snake and its zigzag motion. The moment you think of milk, automatically you think of whiteness. The moment you think of fire, you posit also the heat. If the burning property is taken away from fire, you can no longer call it fire. Even so, Para Brahman and Shakti are as inseparable as the burning property of fire and fire itself. If Brahman is fire, Shakti or Devi is the burning property of fire. A more up-to-date analogy which we can draw to illustrate the mysterious connection between Maya or Prakriti or Shakti and Brahman is this. We have the power of electricity when it is inside a battery. When the power of electricity is here within the battery, it is not manifest. It is not dynamic. It is static. The battery can be taken from place to place: no one will know that it holds within itself the tremendous force.

There is no indication to give us an idea that it contains within itself this marvellous power. But the moment this self-same electric current is made to spring into dynamism through a system of wiring through a circuit, we find this static force springs into a wonderful dynamism. It travels with lightning speed; it is able to give a shock; or to make an electric bulb spring into incandescence and manifest as light; it manifests itself as the whirling motion in a fan; it manifests itself as freezing cold within the refrigerator and as abnormal power of heat in an electric heater; it is able to burn things; it manifests as sound in an electric siren—this power which is held in a static form within a battery becomes manifest as light, motion, heat, cold, sound and any number of aspects manifest and tangible and perceivable through the senses.

Even so the Supreme Power in its transcendental motionless static aspect known as the Para Brahman is nameless, formless, unmanifest and the self-same supreme power when it springs into manifestation, into creativity, is projected as names and forms, into countless dynamic forces which pervade the entire phenomenal world. Mother is electricity, the brightness of the sun, the depth of the ocean, movement in the hand, the smell and fragrance in flowers, the musical note in sound, everything in this universe, invisible as well as visible, all motion, all force, all movements; and She is present in the human being as intelligence, as mind, as Vrittis, as emotions—everything that we perceive in this world either within the individual or without in the forces of nature. She is the very life of the universe. She is the very source, the sustainer and ultimate dissolver of the universe. Sarvam Shaktimayam Jagat; this is the ultimate truth.

Whatever there is in the universe from the grossest thing to the subtlest, the least to the greatest—everything is the variegated manifestation of the Supreme Mother Herself, the Transcendental Power of the Supreme Being. It is this cosmic Power who appears as all names and forms, who is the very source of all embodiment, of all manifestation. It is on account of the Mother that manifestation is made possible.

It is this Supreme Force that we worship during the nine days through the medium of certain forms. This great power of all powers is conceived of by the devout worshipper in certain distinct aspects—in her three aspects as Mahakali or Durga, Mahalakshmi and as Mahasaraswati. The nine-day worship is divided into three groups of three days each—the first three days we worship the Mother as manifest in and through the form of Mahakali or Durga. During the second group of three days we worship the Divine Mother as manifest in and through our conception of the form of Mahalakshmi. And during the last three days we worship Her in and through the form of Mahasaraswati. This particular order of the worship has got a very deep and very vital meaning, about which we shall refer during the subsequent days.

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