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SECTION TWO
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DIVINE MOTHER
Page-14 The Divine Mother
The Divine Mother is the Consciousness and Force of the Divine – which is the Mother of all things.
The Mother and the Lower Prakriti
It is a mistake to identify the Mother with the lower Prakriti and its mechanism of forces. Prakriti here is a mechanism only which has been put forth for the working of the evolutionary Ignorance. As the ignorant mental, vital or physical being is not itself the Divine, although it comes from the Divine – so the mechanism of Prakriti is not the Divine Mother. No doubt something of her is there in and behind this mechanism maintaining it for the evolutionary purpose; but what she is in herself is not a Shakti of Avidya, but the Divine Consciousness Power, Light, Para Prakriti to whom we turn for release and the divine fulfillment.
26-4-1933
The Cosmic Force of Ignorance and the Divine Mother
There is this much truth that the Cosmic Force works out everything and the Cosmic Spirit (Virat Purusha) supports her action. The Cosmic Force is a Power that works under the conditions of the Ignorance – it appears as the lower nature and the lower nature makes you do wrong things. The Divine allows the play of these forces so long as you do not yourself want anything better. But if you are a sadhaks, then you do not accept the play of the lower nature, you turn to the Divine Mother instead, and ask her to work through you instead of the lower nature. It is only when you have turned entirely in every part of your being to the Divine Mother and to her alone that the Divine will do all actions through you.
Page-15 Many Forms of the One Mother
There are not many Mothers, there is One in many forms. The transcendental is only one aspect of the Mother. I don’t know what is meant by the embodied aspect of the transcendental Mother. There is the embodied aspect of the One Mother – what she manifests through it depends on herself.
7-7-1936
The Mother’s Vibhutis
(1)
Q: What is the difference in the form of expression or realization between the Vibhutis of the Ishwara and the Vibhutis of the Mother?
A: The Mother’s Vibhutis would usually be feminine personalities most of whom would be dominated by one of the four personalities of the Mother. The others you mention (Christ, Buddha, Chaitanya, Napoleon, Caesar, etc.) would be personalities and powers of the Ishwara, but in them also, as in all, the Mother’s force would act. All creation and transformation is the work of the Mother.
29-10-1935
(2)
Q: Since all creation is her work, can it be taken that it is the personalities of the Mother who behind the veil prepare the conditions for the descent of the Avatar or Vibhutis?
A: If you mean the divine Personalities of the Mother – the answer is yes. It may even be said that each Vibhuti draws his energies from the Four, from one of them predominantly in most cases, as Napoleon from Mahakali, Rama from Mahalakhsmi, Augustus Caesar from Mahasaraswati.
Page-16 31-10-1935
The Transcendent Mother
This is what is termed the Adya Shakti; she is the Supreme Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods are manifested, and even the Supramental Ishwara comes into manifestation through her – the Supramental Purushottama of which the Gods are Powers and Personalities.
Adya Shakti
Adya Shakti is the original Shakti, therefore, the highest form of the Mother. Only she manifests in a different way according to the plane on which one sees her.
22-7-1933
Powers and Personalities – The Four Shaktis of The Divine Mother
The use of the word Power has already been explained – it can be applied to whatever or whoever exercises a conscious power in the cosmic field and has authority over the world-movement or some movement in it. But the Four of whom you speak are also Shaktis, manifestations of different powers of the Supreme Consciousness and Force, the Divine Mother, by which she rules or acts in the universe. And they are at the same time different personalities; for each is a being who manifests different qualities and personal consciousness-forms of the Godhead. All the greater Gods are in this way personalities of the Divine – one Consciousness playing in many personalities, ekam sat bahudha. Even in the human being there are many personalities and not only one, as used formerly to be imagined; for all consciousness can be at once one and multiple. "Powers and Personalities" simply describe different aspects of the same being; a power is not necessarily impersonal and certainly it is not avyaktam, as you suggest, – on the contrary, it is a manifestation acting in the worlds of the divine Manifestation.
Emanations of The Mother
Page-17 Emanations correspond to your description of the Matrikas of whom you speak in your letter. An emanation of the Mother is something of her consciousness and power put forth from her which, so long as it is in play, is held in close connection with her and, when its play is no longer required, is withdrawn back into its source, but can always be put out and brought into play once more. But also the detaining thread of connection can be severed or loosened and that which came forth as an emanation can proceed on its way as an independent divine being with its own play in the world. All the Gods can put forth such emanations from their being, identical with them in essence of consciousness and power though not commensurate. In a certain sense the universe itself can be said to be an emanation from the Supreme. In the consciousness of each sadhaks an emanation of the Mother will ordinarily wear the appearance, form and characteristic with which he is familiar.
In a sense the four Powers of the Mother may be called, because of their origin, her Emanations, just as the Gods may be called Emanations of the Divine, but they have a more permanent and fixed character; they are at once independent beings allowed their play by the Adya Shakti and yet portions of the Mother, the Mahashakti, and she can always either manifest through them as separate beings or draw them together as her own various Personalities and hold them in herself, sometimes kept back, sometimes at play, according to her will. In the Supramental plane they are always in her and do not act independently but as intimate portions of the Supramental Mahashakti and in close union and harmony with each other.
The Mother and the Gods
These four Powers are the Mother’s cosmic godheads, permanent in the world-play; they stand among the greater cosmic Godheads to whom allusion is made when it is said that the Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world "stands there (in the Overmind plane) above the Gods." The Gods, as has already been said, are in origin and essence permanent Emanations of the Divine put forth from the Supreme by the Transcendent Mother, the Adya Shakti; in their cosmic action they are Powers and Personalities of the Divine, each with his independent cosmic standing, function and work in the universe. They are not impersonal entities but cosmic Personalities, although they can and do ordinarily veil themselves behind the movement of impersonal forces. But while in the Overmind and the triple world they appear as
Page-18 independent beings, they return in the Supermind into the One and stand there united in a single harmonious action as multiple personalities of the one Person, the Divine Purushottama.
The Divine Mother in the Gita, Tantra and Integral Yoga
The Gita does not speak expressly of the Divine Mother; it speaks always of surrender to the Purushottama – it mentions her only as the Para Prakriti who becomes the Jiva, that is, who manifests the Divine in the multiplicity and through whom all these worlds are created by the Supreme and he himself descends as the Avatar. The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishwara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realization beyond it; the Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishwari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realization through it. This Yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfillment of the object of the Yoga.
In regard to the Purushottama the Divine Mother is the supreme divine Consciousness and Power above the worlds, Adya Shakti; she carries the Supreme in herself and manifests the Divine in the worlds through the Akshara and Kshara. In regard to the Akshara she is the same Para Shakti holding the Purusha immobile in herself and also herself immobile in him at the back of all creation. In regard to the Kshara she is the mobile cosmic Energy manifesting all beings and forces.
The Soul and the Divine Mother
It is true of every soul on earth that it is a portion of the Divine Mother passing through the experiences of the Ignorance in order to arrive at the truth of its being and be the instrument of a Divine Manifestation and work here.
Page-19 Chit Shakti, Jivatma, Soul and Ego
Chit Shakti or Bhagvat Chetana is the Mother – the Jivatma is a portion of it, the psychic or soul a spark of it. Ego is a perverse reflection of the psychic or the Jivatma. If that is what you mean, it is correct.
Saguna and Nirguna Ishwara and The Mother
It is all right. There is no difficulty about it. Nirguna, Saguna are only aspects taken by the Divine in the manifestation. It is the Mother who manifests (creation is only manifestation) the Saguna or the Nirguna Ishwara.
28-6-1933
The Silent Atman, the Dynamic Self and The Mother
The experiences were all right – but they give only one side of the Divine Truth, that which one attains through the higher mind – the other side is what one attains through the heart. Above the higher mind these two truths become one. If one realises the silent Atman above, there is no danger, but there is also no transformation, only Moksha, Nirvana. If one realises the cosmic self, dynamic and active, then one realises all as the Self, all as myself, that self as the Divine, etc. This is all true; but the danger is of the ego catching hold of "my" in that conception of "all is myself". For this "myself" is not my personal self but everybody’s self as well as mine. The way to get rid of any such danger is to remember that this Divine is also the Mother, that the personal "I" is a child of the Mother with whom I am one, yet different, her child, servant, instrument. I have said that you should not stop realizing the Self as the cosmic consciousness, but should at the same time remember that all this is the Mother.
Approach to Knowledge through the Silent One and the Supreme Mother
It is possible to go towards the knowledge by beginning with the experience of dissolution in the One, but on condition that you do not stop there, taking it as the highest Truth, but proceed to realise the same One as the Supreme Mother, the
Page-20 Consciousness-Force of the Eternal. If, on the other hand, you approach through the Supreme Mother, she will give you the liberation in the silent One also as well as the realization of the dynamic One, and from that it is easier to arrive at the Truth in which both are one and inseparable. At the same time, the gulf created by the mind between the Supreme and his manifestation is bridged, and there is no longer a fissure in the truth which makes all incomprehensible.
The Static and the Dynamic Self and the Mother
It is the Divine who is the Master – the Self is inactive, it is always a silent witness supporting all things – that is the static aspect. There is also the dynamic aspect through which the Divine works – behind that is the Mother. You must not lose sight of that, that it is through the Mother that all things are attained.
1-9-1933
Tantric Experience of The Mother
The experience of the Mother being the Supreme is the Tantric experience – it is one side of the Truth.
The Mother and The Ishwara
The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Divine – or, it may be said, she is the Divine in its consciousness-force. The Ishwara as Lord of the cosmos does come out of the Mother who takes here place beside him as the cosmic Shakti – the cosmic Ishwara is one aspect of the Divine. The experience therefore is correct so far as it goes.
The World-Mother
Page-21 The Ishwari Shakti, divine Conscious-Force and World-Mother, becomes a mediatrix between the eternal One and the manifested Many. On one side, by the play of the energies which she brings from the One, she manifests the multiple Divine in the universe, involving and evolving its endless appearances out of her revealing substance; on the other, by the reascending current of the same energies she leads back all towards That from which they have issued so that the soul in its evolutionary manifestation may more and more return towards the Divinity there or here put on its divine character. There is not in her, although she devises a cosmic mechanism, the character of an inconscient mechanical Executrix which we find in the first physiognomy of Prakriti, the Nature-Force; neither is there that sense of an Unreality, creatrix of illusions or semi-illusions, which is attached to our first view of Maya. It is at once clear to the experiencing soul that here is a conscious Power of one substance and nature with the Supreme from whom she came. If she seems to have plunged us into the Ignorance and Inconscience in pursuance of a plan we cannot yet interpret, if her forces present themselves as all these ambiguous forces of the universe, yet it becomes visible before long that she is working for the development of the Divine Consciousness in us and that she stands above drawing us to her own higher entity, revealing to us more and more the very essence of the Divine Knowledge, Will and Ananda. Even in the movements of the Ignorance the soul of the seeker becomes aware of her conscious guidance supporting his steps and leading them slowly or swiftly, straight or by many detours out of the darkness into the light or a greater consciousness, out of mortality into immortality, out of evil and suffering towards a highest good and felicity of which as yet his human mind can form only a faint image. Thus her power is at once liberative and dynamic, creative, effective,-creative not only of things as they are, but of things that are to be; for, eliminating the twisted and tangled movements of his lower consciousness made of the stuff of the ignorance, it rebuilds and new-makes his soul and nature into the substance and forces of a higher divine Nature.
(The Synthesis of Yoga) Page-22 |