Mother of the Universe
published in
Light of Consciousness
Autumn 1994
In 1966, 1 received initiation in the Divine Mother tradition of India, as practiced by the extraordinary adepts of Mother Wisdom, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Sarada Devi, who lived in nineteenth-century Bengal. I was attracted to this radiant couple by an amazing document, The Gospel
of Sri Ramakrishna, first published in English in 1942. Here I first encountered God, or Ultimate Reality, addressed and experienced as Mother. Having been raised in the environment of Jewish-Christian culture, where the root metaphor for approaching the Divine is masculine, my immediate response was surprised delight at the naturalness and evident power of the feminine metaphor.
Almost thirty years ago, when I was in my early twenties, the seed of Ramakrishna's mystical intimacy with the Mother of the Universe was transmitted to me in the traditional Hindu ceremony of initiation, conducted by Swami Nikhilananda, a direct disciple of Sarada Devi, the fully enlightened wife and powerful successor of Ramakrishna. Embraced within this fresh, vibrant lineage of spiritual transmission, I was presented directly with the Wisdom Goddess and with modes of contemplation most suited to appreciating and communing with her. Now I can approach and envision the Great Goddess naturally, as if I had been raised since childhood in the Divine Mother tradition of Bengal, which centers around the beautiful black Warrior of Wisdom, the swordbearing Kali of the noble Tantra-not destructive and dark, but blissful and brilliant.
Various feminine expressions of the Divine abounded in the ancient world. The many authentic appearances of Virgin Mary-at Tepeyac in Mexico, Fatima and Gerabondal in Spain, Lourdes in France, and contemporary apparitions in Egypt, Yugoslavia, and America-are special revelations of her reality for the modern world. Through the Goddess tradition, alive everywhere on the planet, she guides, protects, terrifies, chastens, heals, liberates, and illuminates. Her relation as Great Mother to the cosmos and its innumerable life forms is as tender as her relation with each precious human soul. It is a relation so intimate as to be free from subject or object, that is to say, a relationship which is intrinsically mystical.
From the most simple, basic point of view, for several years during infancy and early childhood, both female and male children relate in essentially the same mode and with the same intensity to the mother love at the core of their daily existence. The one we call father is at first simply mother number two, with bearded or abrasive face. Every longing is for mother. All sustenance is mother. Even the infant's landscape, before and after birth, is simply mother. For nine months, her heartbeat is our rhythm, our primal music. This is the original ground, prior to gender differentiation and sharp individuation, to which Goddess tradition gives us access, not as an infantile regression but as the fruitful soil of reconciliation, harmony, tenderness without boundary, unitive wisdom, and totality. That the great Indian poet of the Mother, Ramprasad, blossomed through a male body only shows that the ecstatic sensitivity, the all-embracing heart, the merciless honesty and diamond courage of Mother's most intimate companions are not fundamentally dependent on the biologically and culturally conditioned abstractions, masculine and feminine.
The basic cry of Ramprasad is Ma! Ma! Ma! What child is not crying out something like this, wherever she or he may be on the planet or in planetary history? Is not Mother Reality always at the core of human experience, at the center of our spiritual hunger and thirst, and therefore at the heart of our integrity? Can we keep the Universal Mother as the central focus of our daily awareness, as the basis of a new global civilization?
Goddess tradition is much richer than any stereotypical notion of mother worship. Its practitioners are not interested in projecting a cosmic mother figure any more than they would project a cosmic father figure. The goal of spirituality is to realize truth, not to engage in projection and fantasy. Through Ramprasad's songs, the Goddess reveals herself as Woman Warrior, Teacher, Mother, and Consort. In different moods, she appears youthful, ancient, or ageless. These are actual dimensions of experience which can be entered by her devotees. She is divine creativity, evolutionary energy, timeless awareness, transcendent reality, and, in a special tantric sense, she is every woman. She constitutes the feminine principle within male and female persons and also manifests the gender-free feminine-self-luminous Mother Wisdom, nondual awareness and bliss.
The universe in all its living detail appears vividly within the oneness or wholeness of blissful Mother Reality. Goddess Wisdom reveals all events, patterns, and meanings, including entire cultures and religions that cross cultural borders, as transparent to her, embraced within her: "All forms appear and disappear only within the formless mystery of Mother. 0 Goddess, nothing exists except your bliss, your illumination, your play, and your names." This openness to her mystery leads to the supreme insight: "This is the dawning of enlightenment, the awakening to nonduality. Her form and every form are now blending into one radiant blackness. 0 mind, despise no being, reject no path. See all in her and her as all."
Mother Reality remains forever beyond words and concepts. She is basic indefinability yet reveals herself abundantly in every culture through poets and saints, who are windows for humanity. Seldom is one person strong enough to receive the double vocation of poet and saint. Such was Ramprasad, who lived his invisible life of communion and union with the Goddess while surrounded by his extended family, working as a common clerk in eighteenth-century Bengal.
Ramprasad's descriptions of the Goddess-whom he addresses as Ma Kali, Ma Tara, and simply as Mother or Ma-are not just rehearsals of traditional imagery but the profound elucidation of that imagery by the Wisdom Goddess, appearing to her poet and speaking through him. Warrior Goddess Kali is not human imagination running wild but an authentic self-revelation of Ultimate Reality, poured forth over many centuries in the tantric kingdom of Bengal and refocused through the refined perception of Ramprasad. Contemplating the awesome form of Goddess Kali, which always remains transparent to formless awareness, the human psyche is thoroughly shaken, purified, clarified, elevated, liberated, and illuminated. She is not a projection from our personal or collective psyche, as the modern world view would have us believe. She is the psyche in its wholeness, as she is the entire creation. And she is divine creativity which beings creation forth, moment by moment, as pure play or display. The way of Mother Wisdom, always marked by playfulness and surprise, is the gradual realization of her indivisible wholeness, which is our own essential nature, timeless awareness.
Mother of the Universe,
I have no desire to exercise power.
I would not even care to be an emperor.
Sweet Mother, please grant me
two simple meals each day
and wealth enough to thatch the palm roof
of my clean earthen house,
where I offer dreaming and waking
as red flowers at your feet.
My green village dwelling is the abode
of your golden radiance, 0 Goddess.
What need have I for more elaborate construction?
If you surround me with the complex architecture
of stature and possession,
I will refuse to call you Mother ever again.
0 Kali, give me just enough to serve lovingly
whatever guests may visit me.
Plain metal plates and cups will do.
Daily existence in the heart of my extended family
is the worship beyond worship
that perceives Mother Reality
as every being, every situation, every breath.
I will never leave this natural way of life
to become a stern ascetic
or a teacher honored by the world.
There is only one longing this poet's soul
declares over and over:
"Mother! Mother! Mother!
May every moment of my existence
merge completely with your essence."
Who in the world can know what Mother Kali really is? She is beyond the reach of every scripture,
every system of philosophy.
As the radiant blackness of divine mystery,
she plays through the lotus wilderness of the sacred
human body.
The practitioner of meditation encounters her power
deep in the blossom of primordial awareness
and within the thousand-petal lotus
that floats far above the mind.
Kali is the conscious core,
shining through every awakened sage
who delights in oneness.
This has been demonstrated by countless realized
beings.
Ma Tara is the queen of freedom within all hearts.
She reigns timelessly and tenderly.
Planes and dimensions of being
more vast and subtle than anyone can imagine
are found within her womb of encompassing
wisdom.
The Goddess alone knows the extent of her power.
Who else could possibly know?
Laments the singer of this mystic hymn:
"Everyone will laugh at my attempt to swim
the shoreless sea of her reality,
but my soul belongs to her and my heart delights in
longing.
I am a child reaching out to catch the moon."
Ma Tara, you are truly the exalted one,
the essence of awareness.
But are you aware of the foolish poet
who sings this song?
You are indeed the radiant truth,
the sun that dissolves like morning mist
the illusory suffering of conscious beings.
But what about my persistent misery?
Revelatory experience flows to devout practitioners
from the Mother of the Universe,
but consider what Mother bestows on me.
During morning meditation, I worry about livelihood.
At noon prayer, I think about delicious food.
While practicing contemplation in the evening,
my mind wanders at random among events of the day.
Goddess Tara, I ask you frankly,
will you ever allow this distracted consciousness
any sustained vision of your reality?
The only visionary gift granted me
is the viewpoint of arbitrary convention.
In this fascinating vision, I am constantly absorbed.
The deeper I plunge into thought,
the more I realize I cannot know you by thinking,
0 blissful Mother, beyond speech and mind.
This desperate seeker of truth cries out:
"Ma! Ma! Ma!
Daughter of the mystic mountain!
You dance, holding the brilliant gem of realization.
But when I try to grasp
the diamond essence of awareness,
it appears to turn back into common stone."
0 longing mind,
consecrate your being to pure love.
Turn every thought to Goddess Tara.
She will bear you tenderly across the raging sea
of separation and individuality.
Be utterly dedicated to her reality.
Cry aloud Ma Kali, Ma Kali.
Know that she can clarify
the inconceivable maze of relativity.
To hope for assistance and guidance through this world
from wealth, relatives, and religious rites
provides no profound solution.
Have you forgotten that everyone is lost?
Where are you now? Why are you traveling?
This cosmos is the strange theater where souls act,
wearing various costumes and disguises.
This intricate play of transparent energy
is initiated, sustained, and dissolved by Kali,
who is the dream power of Absolute Reality.
At this very moment, you are resting
on the vast lap of Mother's cosmic dream
that you misperceive
as the narrow prison of suffering.
Why abandon the kingdom of awareness
to obsession with self and disdain for others,
to hollow passion and abject clinging?
You are creating a disease without a remedy.
The brief day of your earthly life is almost over.
Meditate now on beautiful Black Tara.
She is seated upon the jewel island of essence
in the transparent sea of ultimacy.
This poet sings drunkenly:
"Tara! Tara! Tara!
Your name is ambrosia.
May all beings enter the secret sanctuary
through this name,
tasting your unique sweetness,
self-luminous awareness."
I have a serious grievance to settle
with the Mother of the Universe.
Even while apparently awake,
with you as my all-protecting Mother,
the house of mind and body
is ransacked by robbers,
my countless egocentric impulses.
Every day I resolve to repeat your name
as the most powerful defense,
but forget my good intention
just as the intruders arrive.
I have caught on to the playfulness,
0 Mother, by which you elude my willful grasp.
You bestow no power of inward prayer upon this child,
so you receive no consistent devotion from me.
I no longer regard this as my fault.
Only what you give me can I return to you
as the sweet offering of divine remembrance.
Fame and infamy, good and bad tastes of life,
all phenomena are your graceful play.
Yet as you dance in ecstasy,
we are thrown into quandary.
0 Goddess, lead us on your wisdom way.
This poet dares to sing her secret:
"Mother Mahamaya places a twist in every mind,
making it perceive the ashes of egocentricity
as an abundance of candy,
which it tastes with constant disappointment
and shocked surprise.
Awaken now and be free."