SHAKTI- GOD, AS MOTHER.

SHAKTI- GOD, AS MOTHER.

Ucche pahadan Waali Mata, Teri sada hai Jai! Jyotan Waali Mata teri sada hi Jai! Sheran Waali Mata teri sada hi jai! 
Praised be always O mother divine who dwell in lofty mountains, praise be to the mother who is divine light, praise be the mother who is keeper of lions ..Praise be to the great Goddess Durga!

As the Navratras come once again,not only do the world famous Trikuta hills of Ma Vaishno devi pilgrimage at Jammu (my hometown) resound with salutations to Devi Bhagwati, but also, the Mother reigns supreme in the homes and hearts of her devotees. The concept of the divine feminine,God as mother,has resonant natural appeal. Durga, who is the Devi, is variously Kali, Tripursundari, Matangi, Dhumavati and many other vidyas…She,is also parvati, the mountain goddess, Shiva’s beloved wife. Her worshippers, the saktas, say that she is the Paramount Godhead, and even Lord Shiva's eternal love for her is a declaration of supreme devotion. Indeed ,it is said that man first realized God in the endearing role of God as Mother, which makes Nature worship or devotion to the Divine Mother ,Mankind's oldest form of worship.

For what really is mother worship? The mother is one who gives us life by deliverance,and then stands by our sides to grow us up every moment, from feeding and nurturing, educating and teaching us how to go about in this world, and this is true not only of all cultures of the human race,but also of birds and animals….so too, the wise people of old times noted that there must be a cosmic mother,One , who delivers the whole universe from its womb.
And in this concept, she goes by different names in different cultures ,but is almost always present in the older civilizations and native tribes of the old world .
In India, where we have always been especially priveleged when it comes to spiritual inheritance,being comfortable with Shakti, the feminine aspect of God,comes naturally to us.
Notably in Hinduism , it in fact, is among the most outstanding features - no God is really complete without his consort, and we even take their names in pairs, Sita Ram, Radhe Shyam, Brahma Saraswati, and of course, Shiva Parvati.
And the consorts are not different from the gods, they are like the qualities of the God himself, like fire and heat,sun and radiance,etc.
In modern mystic parlance, we talk in terms of being and becoming, this is important to note,
For, While Shiva is pure being, the luminous light; It is His Shakti, that is importantly all ‘becoming’, it is shakti that translates into the entire manifest Universe as we know our world..
It has been said truly that without shakti (His power to create), Shiva, would be shava, inert as the corpse.
Thus, devotion to Durga, shakti puja or mother worship,, in simplified terms, is a healthy respect for the created world, its running ,and ultimately the end of the life cycle of all things. For the divine creatrix is also Kali, the darkly beautiful mother who covers her children with the sky of Mahapralaya, at the end of the show that is life. She does this only to enable a second deliverance,and so begins a mew cycle , once again.
Unlike its western counterparts, who for some reason or the other could not develop the theme of God as mother to its fullness , Seekers in India were respected for their profundity in their way of tribute and participation in the Divine Mother’s leela, play. This is because India has also been very rich in its iconography or symbolism of divine insight ,and as a result we had a fantastic array of portrayals of Durga in many of her different attributes,each represented by an elaborately worked out system of yantra (diagram) mantra (incantation), and of course, the very rich portrayal (iconography) that went alongwith it. But Durga also means ‘the fort”, and Durga Ma is Durgam “one that is difficult to Attain” For such is the enigma of the Devi: She is the source of all, we cannot know her source!. One can only please her by means of sincerity and devotion. She of a thousand names, of even more attributes, she of multifold appearance, and even more play, how can we take any other path but to climb slowly the mountain pilgrimage of life, remembering her with our every breath…

Ya Devi Sarvabhuteshu,Shakti rupen samstitah.Namastasye namastasye namastasye namo namah!!
O Great Goddess, who are all the manifestation there is,
who are the one energy behind all the forms that be ,
I salute thee, I salute thee, I salute thee.

The Rishis of Kashmir, when they realized the inability of words to describe her magnificence, when they realized the inadequacy of any mantra to encompass her, in simple homage called her ‘SAUH” the hundred, denoting truly, the infinite.


Ma, Durge!
we
do not know all
thy numbers
less still
thy names
life's each new turn
unfolds yet,
you
once again
and we,
bewildered
thus
a child...
so
remain.

(shail Gulhati)
{painting by Sonali Chaudhari}