The Divine Mother

The Sanatana Dharma is the only religion that worships God as both male and female. Worship of god as mother has fascinated the minds of all people at all times since the mother is one with whom everyone can have an intimate relationship. In fact, this is the primary relationship. The devotee has greater freedom when he conceives of God as Mother. 

The first word uttered by the infant is “Maa”.  Our first relationship with the world is through the mother. The earliest memory of any person is that of lying on the mother’s lap and gazing into her love-filled eyes. In the mother is centred a whole world of tenderness, love, nourishment and care. She is the embodiment of security. She personifies the ideal of unconditional love, from which the child draws sustenance, comfort, protection, and nourishment. To transfer this concept to a cosmic being was a natural step, which all ancient civilizations took. Therefore, we can understand that the concept of the Divine as the mother, is as old as life itself.

The ancients were nurtured by the milk of kindness which is always oozing from the breast of our divine Mother and that is why they had a sense of the high purpose of human life. But this age seems to have forgotten her very existence.  This is the dark age, Kali Yuga, in which our increasing engrossment with the physical side of life has torn us away from our metaphysical roots and alienated us from our mother.

Man is a child of the universe, an infant tied by the umbilical cord of space and time to that great nurturing mystery out of which we have been born and to which we will inevitably return. It is only natural to think of the Divine as the cosmic mother, who loves all, nourishes all, cares and protects all. She is the divine mother, the eternal womb of all creatures, human, animal and sub-human. She cradles her children in her loving arms, suckles them and nurtures them with her infinite love in all forms. Wherever you see maternal love, in a bird or an animal or a human being, know that to be but an aspect of her love for the universe, for she is the universal mother.

Our dependence on that mysterious Mother is absolute. No human relationship can compare with it. Is it any wonder that humanity has worshipped and tried to propitiate this maternal mystery at the very heart of our lives. Is it any wonder that we have personified her, prayed to her confessed our deepest secrets to her, cried out in pain to her, danced for her, sung for her and wept before her”?

Hence the worship of god as Mother is found in all ancient civilizations. In Egypt she was known as Isis. In Babylon and Assyria as Ishtar, in Greece as Demeter and in Phrygia as Cybele. Judaism and later on Islam put an end to Mother worship in the Middle East. Christianity repressed it in the beginning but later started to venerate the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God. 

 Unlike other countries, Bharat has a sacred geography. She is considered as a living goddess. She is known as Bharata Mata – Mother India. All Indians consider themselves to be children of Mother India. The whole of the sub-continent has been rendered sacred by the remains of the body of Sati which had been scattered by Shiva through the length and breadth of the land. This country is the repository of the divine power of the mother.

Every region in Bharat is dotted with sacred and holy places.  Every village has its own goddess. The sacredness of the land, rather than the unity of its political set up, has been the force which has made Bharat into a unified nation.

In India, the worship of the divine mother is a cultural gift from pre-Aryan times. It has an unbroken tradition right from ancient times. In the Vedas there are a number of hymns addressed to the Devi. Much later a whole body of literature known as the Tantras were written, dedicated solely to the worship and philosophy of the Divine Mother.

The Sri Suktam found in the Rig Veda is the most ancient invocation to the goddess. In the Vedas She is known as Aditi, the Great Cosmic Mother, infinite and indestructible, the origin of all manifestation, the primordial space.

All effulgence originates from her and therefore She is the mother of all the solar deities. The Divine Mother Bhuvaneshwari created  space so that all the things in the manifest world could come up .

Similarly, the space of our consciousness is also created by Bhuvaneshwari allowing us to manifest as individuals in the world in which we exist.

On the level of creation, space has several levels of manifestation, which are in perfect harmony with the resonances of the subtle energies. For instance, in the physical space that is around us there is also mental space, which is as infinite as physical space.

This mental space also has several levels of subtlety, culminating in the supreme space of the pure divine consciousness, which is beyond all manifestations. All these different types of space represent the various aspects and functions of Bhuvaneshwari.

The whole macrocosm is contained in the small, subtle space at the level of our hearts. In other words, the heart is Bhuvaneshwari’s residence.

Because She represents space, Bhuvaneshwari is complementary to Kali, who represents Time. These two goddesses represent the two main faces of the Goddess – space and time - infinity and eternity. Kali creates the events in time, and Bhuvaneshwari creates the objects in space.

In other words, we may say that Bhuvaneshwari creates the stage on which Kali performs Her dance of life and death. She is both the witness and the enjoyer of Kali’s dance.

The deep understanding of these aspects is that all events represent nothing but “sequences” in the Divine Mother Kali’s consciousness  as Time and all locations in space are in resonance with the Divine Mother Bhuvaneshwari, who represents space.

Since she represents space, Bhuvaneshwari is connected to the cardinal points of  (north, south, east and west).
Similarly, Kali creates what we call the three derivatives of time, which are present, past and future. The Tantric spiritual tradition emphasises the fact that space is mysteriously connected with time.

The spatial direction east represents the beginning of an action, north represents spiritual illumination. West is correlated to experience and the process of spiritual maturity and south represents the fullness of spiritual realization.

During the nine days of Navaratri or worship of the goddess in her many forms, the first three days are devoted to Maha Kali who roots out our negative qualities, the next three days to Maha Lakshmi who plants in us all beauty and virtue and the final three days to Maha Saraswati who finally gives us liberation. Each of these nine days are also kept for the worship of one of Nava Durgas all of who are really forms of Parvati.

May She shower her blessings on all of you on this auspicious occasion of navaratri.