EWS #88 Worship of the Divine Mother

Oct 16, 2021

Host @ Kalarigram, Auroville (0:00:00):
Namaste, it's a very special evening today as we have Sraddhalu Ranade with us to speak about the worship of the Divine Mother. Sraddhalu-ji is a scientist, educator and scholar residing at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He has influenced over 5000 teachers throughout India through his immersive workshops on Integral education. He has traveled all over the world in over 30 countries, delivering lectures and conducting workshops on integral education, management by consciousness, esoteric sciences, self-development, the integral yoga, and Spiritual practices. He has addressed corporate groups from a variety of sectors and has been a speaker at several Rotary international conferences, the United Nations and other forums. So over to you Sraddhalu-ji to take us through the evening.

Sraddhalu (0:00:59):
Namaste. The theme that we have selected today is the worship of the Divine Mother on the occasion of the present sacred series of days which are celebrated all over India as some of the most sacred, where the Divine Mother incarnates to battle darkness, to overcome evil and through a series of stages of the battle which are all symbolic and representative of stages of yoga, she attains ultimately the victory and the light of the Divine overcomes the darkness of ignorance. The Navaratri, as we know them as, the nine nights, which lead to the tenth day, which is of illumination. But what is not commonly appreciated is the importance of what this means to worship the Divine Mother. In most homes today and especially with the very shallow exposure that modern education gives of our rich ancient traditions and their deeper Spiritual symbols, children grow up observing these days merely as celebrations of a festival. Or they go through the ritual of the celebrations and the prayers and the pujas, the worships as one would to any other deity or divinity. If you go to a typical Indian household where there is a puja space, a table or sometimes a little cupboard, you will find a series of icons, idols, photographs of the guru, of the tradition, of the lineage, of the family or the deity which is normally worshipped and various associated deities which are your perhaps your personal deities or deities that your parents, grandparents worshipped and there's a whole cluster of them. On some level subliminally, unconsciously, we just accept these are all forms or aspects of the one Divine. This idea is so deep in the Indian tradition that approaching from the European mind and the European values of religion, it seems strange.

It seems so strange that when the European colonisers tried to understand Indian culture and Indian Spirituality, they ended up having to invent a new term called Henotheism as against their monotheism. So for them there was this idea that there's only one God, coming to India they see so many deities and so and yet they were all worshipped as if they were the same one. So they create this strange new name, term. But the reality is this and this reality goes back all the way to the Vedic tradition itself which declares that the source, the Divine, the Truth is one. It can be perceived not only in many ways, not only in innumerable ways, it can be perceived or is perceived uniquely by each person, or rather each one of us has a unique relationship with the Divine. As many individuals, so many experiences of the Divine. And hence came this idea of many millions of deities or aspects or experiences of the Divine, which the Europeans further distorted to translate by saying that, oh, in India they worship some millions of gods and they get confused about who's who. No, none of this is true. The reality is one Divine reality, one Divine consciousness, which knows itself as sheer existence, which is utterly conscious and which is blissful in its consciousness - Sat, Chit, Ananda. But the consciousness is the existence, the bliss is the existence. It is the existence that is blissful and conscious and therefore we merge the three terms, Satchitananda. This is perhaps the closest you can give of the concept of God as a person, as an individual, as something you can relate to. But the Divine reality even transcends this and it is only the way in which it knows itself and expresses itself or the way we can know it.

Sraddhalu (0:06:05):

But where does this idea of Divine Mother come? Is it just a projection of the fact that we have in the human experience a masculine and a feminine gender and so you need to have another female up there? No it's not the case, it is something far more profound and it is around this theme that I want to dwell in the next few minutes so that we can appreciate more deeply what is, who is the Divine Mother and appreciating Her, our relationship with Her changes. As a result of the change in our relationship, our actions, our way of living life will undergo a profound transformation and the result of that will be a tremendous acceleration of our evolution by conscious participation because of the relationship we have with the Divine Mother. This becomes then the essence of Yoga, a conscious, accelerated Spiritual evolution leading to immersion and union with the Divine. And all of this will be the natural consequence of appreciating who is the Divine Mother. We started with the idea that the Divine consciousness, Sat Chit Ananda, is the only reality. That one reality though manifests itself. It is not a monotone reality. It is infinitely free, that dwells on itself, on its infinite potential, on its infinite freedom, and enjoys in delight all the infinite of its possibilities of its experience, of itself because there is none other, there is only one reality. It knows itself not only infinitely, but also eternally, because itself being beyond space and time, all these possibilities of its self-experience are present simultaneously, and each is a facet of its delight of knowing itself. This is very important to understand because this is the nature of the Divine experience towards which we are evolving and in which we will participate as conscious human beings, as divinised beings.

So all these possibilities that it dwells upon, as it concentrates on them, as it dwells upon them, and each is simultaneously present, what is it like to be a gigantic explosion of a supernova, and the full infinite potential of its possibility enjoys being a supernova? What is it like to be an entire planet, or billions of planets thrown out in the supernova or billions of stars or billions of asteroids and each of these possibilities it enjoys utterly as a movement of its bliss and then, what is it like to be a microbe on the surface of a planet struggling to emerge to survive? What's it like to be a worm? What's it like to be an animal or a plant or a tree? Or a conscious thinking human being on top of a planet, suddenly awakening to his power of thought and trying to understand his universe? Each of these are experiences of the delight of the Divine dwelling upon itself infinitely. And so when it dwells on all these experiences and they begin to become more and more expressed, the whole of the consciousness of Satchitananda moves to become, to manifest, to become many, and all the relationships between all of these different experiences work themselves out in an unfolding movement that we call Time. All these relationships extend themselves out in a movement that we call Space. Space and Time are only experiences of the Divine in its own self-enjoyment of delight. As it moves to manifest each of these possibilities, as they unfold in the time, in the space, which is its own body, we find something very interesting. These focal points of experiences then appear to become independent. A supernova exists by itself as if in the entirety of infinite space. A planet exists by itself, or the worm crawling on the planet, or the human being awakening seems to exist by itself, when in fact it is the whole of Satchitananda dwelling on all its possibilities. And this is where the difference or the transition comes in, where you experience separation and with separation comes limitation and with limitation what we call ignorance, a fundamental incapacity because you are now identified with finite piece and appearance, when in fact you are the whole. This is the movement in which the Divine manifests, and each of these centres of consciousness that awakes is us, our mind, our thinking.

Sraddhalu (0:11:55):

Where is the Divine Mother in this? Now we come to the most profound insight. When the Divine conceives of all these possibilities infinitely in its delight, and when it prepares to manifest itself, there is a point of transition. This point is very interesting and is described in one of the most beautiful descriptions I have seen, in Kashmir Shaivism, where the movement is described thus: When the Divine conceives of all these possibilities, wants to manifest in the play of delight, it pours all its energies to manifest. And at the moment when Shiva is about to manifest himself, he realises that if he moves into manifestation and becomes many, he will lose his oneness, he will lose his liberty, he will lose his  transcendence. And so at the moment where he moves to manifest, he pauses, holding back his freedom. But the energy of his concentrated tapas, the intensity of concentration of that manifestation that bursts out and continues to flow and becomes the whole universe and the manifestation. That creative energy which is his, which is his own, which is him as energy, that movement bursting out is what becomes the universe, forms the universe. But that energy is not a mechanical energy. It is his consciousness, it is his delight, it is his full creative power. And as that energy forms the universe, it forms the universe out of itself and holds the universe in itself, in its full knowledge, in its full power and in its full outpouring of self-giving. This movement of giving to become, giving birth out of itself, this movement is what makes us turn to this energy and say, ah! She is our Mother. She is the Mother of the whole universe. There's more to this. We compare Shiva as the creative, conceiving consciousness. Now with his Shakti, his energy, his power to manifest. And the Shakti we describe as Divine Mother because she gives birth to the universe.

But what is our relationship with her? Or rather, what is the relationship of everything in the universe to her? Every atom is an outpouring of her energy. But can She give a part of her energy to an atom and another part to another atom? She cannot because she is one indivisible consciousness which is energy, which is delight, of the Divine. She is indivisible and therefore all of her energy goes to manifest a single atom. All of her energy goes to manifest another single atom, all of her energy goes to manifest a single shell of the sea. Sri Aurobindo observes that the Divine creative energy, the Divine Mother, pours herself entirely to form a single shell and the same energy pours entirely to form an entire galaxy. There is no difference in her relationship with everything. And therefore as the Divine Mother, this entire movement of self-giving is the entire movement that we call love. Her love is entire and complete to each form, each thing, each object, each being, whether big or small, is irrelevant for her because the size, physical size has no meaning. All is entirely her love that she pours. All her energy, all her wisdom. And that's why she is the Divine Mother. Because as the Divine Mother, she loves all beings, all children, all forms, everything that is created with her infinite love. Not only she gives herself infinitely, she holds all in her embrace which is also infinite because she contains not only the universe as we see it but all the levels of all the worlds. Not only all the worlds as they exist right now but all the worlds as they have existed in the past and as they will be in the future and all the possibilities which they could have been or which they might be, which are not yet fully manifested, all these are held in her creative energy, in her embrace of love. This is the Divine Mother.

Sraddhalu (0:17:06):

And why is this recognition so important? Because it is She who manifests what the Divine Consciousness conceives and chooses to create. It is She who not only manifests, it is also She who unfolds in the manifestation, because it is She who drives the whole development in time. And it is She, therefore, who leads us back to the Divine Realisation and the Divine transformation. The entire working of the universe is her work, driven by his conception. But he does not stay back only, as we saw this beautiful description, he holds back his freedom, but because he pours out as she, his consciousness is present in every moment, in every object, at every place, at every instant. He guides even as he supports. Transcendent, he guides and supports. Immanent, he lives at the heart, at the core of each centre. At the core of the atom is the spark of the Divine consciousness around which she forms the whole experience of the atom. As the different stages of evolution unfold, it is she who forms, changes the forms and nurtures this spark of consciousness to help it to grow more and more mature, rich in experience and independent in its capacity to action. This evolving spark of consciousness we call the soul. Sri Aurobindo uses the word psychic being to distinguish from the more conventional use of the word soul, which is quite confused. And this in us grows to become the individual soul which holds the layers of our subtle bodies and the gross physical body, the koshas as we call them in yoga, the layers through which the soul acts in the universe on the different planes of matter, life, mind and beyond.

This spark which she is nurturing, she suckles as a mother. In the Veda, the description is of two mothers, the bright mother and the dark mother, each of which suckles the divine child who is still growing into awakening, us, our psychic being. At first, we are this very tiny, almost helpless, like a baby, spark of consciousness that through the series of experiences grows to become more and more individualised, more and more mature, awake, conscious, and developing its powers and skills of action through the mind, through the life force, through the body. And when this soul has sufficiently come into maturity, and it is she who suckles, who feeds, bright and dark, the happy and the painful. She nourishes to the point where we grow sufficiently awake that we say, ah I am a conscious being. As a conscious thinking being, we look around and try to understand our universe. At first the understanding is superficial with our intelligence, but as the deeper perception grows, we realise, ah, all this is a creation and formation of the Divine creative energy of the Divine Mother. At that point, we have a choice. We awaken to Her, and we can choose to say, Divine Mother, help me to grow. grow, where earlier she had to nudge you and prod you by the dark and the light, subtly, the happy and the painful experiences, nudging you, goading you unconsciously. Now you can turn around and say, Mother, nourish me, help me to grow. At which point she can act on you directly. Without this goading and pushing in your half-sleep, she can give you the knowledge, the wisdom, the strength, the capacity, the skill, filling you with her love and helping you to grow. This is a crucial transition point where we actually, for the first time, can accelerate our own evolution. What earlier may have taken a few billion years of evolution, we can now realise perhaps in a few hundred years, and perhaps do far more in a hundred years than we could have in a few billion years before, because of conscious participation, because of the readiness and maturity of our evolution. Humanity today is at this point.

Sraddhalu (0:22:30):

Generally speaking, the mass of humanity is at this point of self-awareness and therefore the ability to make a choice. Not all may awaken sufficiently to recognize that it is the Divine Mother that has given you everything, that has built you. The mass of humanity you will see says, I am so great, I am so skillful, I am so strong, I am so intelligent. When in fact, you did nothing to develop your skills or your strength or your intelligence. You say, I was born with or my intelligence grew as a result of my studies. No, they did not. You can give exactly the same study, text or process to two different children. Some grow more, some grow less in intelligence. Why? It's not what you gave, it was not the study. The study was an occasion for the intelligence to come forward and develop itself. But the intelligence itself was not amplified by the study. Rather, the intelligence was given to you by her. If anything, she prodded you from within and made the intelligence grow and blossom. This is a very important insight to get, because as long as you think the intelligence is yours, you are stuck with your current capacity. When you recognize that the intelligence itself was her consciousness awakening in you to become the intelligence, then something extraordinary is possible. You can actually ask her, Divine Mother, amplify your action of intelligence within me. And her intelligence now, because of your sanction and participation, can rapidly unfold and grow. And you realise your powers of comprehension flowering. And so fast, so fast, that it would not be possible in a normal evolution. I have often made this statement and I stand by it, that by taking up certain processes of yoga, your intelligence quotient, your IQ can be easily pushed up by 20 points at least and within a very short time, depending on your age and your capacity, even within a few weeks. Why? Because the intelligence was never yours and therefore not fixed by your limitations.

Recognizing that it is her and hers and you allow her therefore to flower in you, she grows. And the same is true of your strength. Your strength not only as life force and energy, but even your physical strength. Even your physical body and its skills are not really yours. Think about it. When you have a cut in your body, do you sit down and start healing your body and joining the cells? You are not even conscious of what is happening inside. Who does it? It is her intelligence that recognizes that across these two pieces of tissue which are separated, there are cells which need to be joined in a particular alignment so that the muscle tissue here and the muscle tissue there may join together. There is no GPS inside the cells to tell you that you have to grow in this direction and not another direction so that the two can be aligned? From both sides, the growth of the cells takes place until the exact connection is made for a single fibre of your muscles. What is the intelligence that knows exactly where the other cells are and exactly how these two are to be joined? What is the intelligence that makes the cells grow in a certain direction only and not everywhere else. In fact, it is the failure of that intelligence that makes for your ill health. It is when the cells do not grow according to their correct behaviour that you have sickness. But what makes for the correct behaviour? Who knows and who acts in the cell to make sure that these are joined? It is her intelligence and her consciousness and power that inside the cell is guiding each cell to form this. But this operation of her working in our body for example is a lesser operation, is a lower operation because as she pours down from above to form the universe, it is high above that she has the full knowledge. As she pours to become individual forms, the knowledge now is limited to the working of those forms, at least apparently, overtly.

Sraddhalu (0:27:21):

Inside and at its most profound level, in each atom is her knowledge of the whole universe. The evidence for this is actually before us. We do not see. According to our very ordinary physics from your textbook, you are taught that everything in the universe is influencing everything else, at least by gravitational fields, even more by electric fields, magnetic fields and other energies or exchanges of influence. And so according to your physics, if you move your hand or if you move a single finger a few centimetres everything in this room is affected by the gravitational field of this finger. However minutely every atom of every object in this room is now pulled differently in a different direction and slightly displaces itself when your finger moves. Think about it. Even more interesting, not only every atom in every object of your room, every atom of every star in the whole universe moves slightly to immediately adjust to the right balance of your one finger's movement. Think about it. You take a deep breath, your chest moves and with the movement of this tissue of your body every atom of every star has to move slightly to adjust for your breathing. In other words and very rationally with your current textbook physics the entire universe has to move with your breathing. With each heartbeat which goes boom boom the whole universe goes boom boom just to keep the balance of gravitational forces and electromagnetic forces and other forces. And you could ask yourself a simple question: what in the whole universe knows the exact movement of your heartbeat but has the power to move an entire star to match the rhythm of your heartbeat's pulsation. Not only that, not only with your heartbeat, with every single heartbeat, with every single movement of every single creature, of every single atom in the whole universe, all other atoms have to instantaneously and adjust to stay in balance.

What wisdom and power knows the position of every single atom and acts within every single atom while knowing all other atoms to hold them all together. This is the Divine Mother's omniscience, the totality of her knowledge identified with all things. It is also her omnipotence, the infinite power that is released to form this universe, but acting fully inside each atom within the limitation of the movement needed. But full power is present everywhere. In fact, this power is so humongous that according to current physics, you are told in quantum electrodynamics, that the totality of energy flowing through the universe at this moment is so huge that if you take one cubic centimetre of empty space and you turn that energy into heat, instantly all the oceans of the earth would evaporate. That's the quantity of energy in a cubic centimetre of empty space. There is no such thing as empty space. There is only ocean of her humongous energy. In fact this energy, there's a problem in physics. This energy is so great it is actually infinite. But you cannot do equations with infinity. So they have a process in physics by which they chop off the higher quantity and the lower quantity of frequencies and limit the energy to a measurable sum which is so humongous. But the reality is, she is infinitely energetic everywhere in the universe.

Not only this omniscience, not only this omnipotence, everywhere she pours herself, gives herself in love. And this is her third aspect. Knowledge, power, love.

The whole universe is the birth, the form of her lover and her delight that she manifests through knowledge, power and love. We are a product of her action and therefore in us she has created a vehicle to manifest precisely these things. Our mind which we claim to be ours is only formed of her intelligence but is in process of awakening. The slow evolution has brought it to a point where we are able to know but still in a very limited way. But if you allow this evolution to complete itself, our mind will grow to become an instrument of her wisdom. Her omniscience is intended to be manifested through our individual minds. And the same way our life energy, the life body, the prana sharira or kosha is the vehicle for action of her power but at the moment still half-formed and therefore operating with limited capacity but intended to become a vehicle for her omnipotence. Our physical body is intended to become a vehicle. What is the truth of form? You see, in mind, truth of knowledge. In life energies, truth of power. And in form, in matter, beauty and harmony, perfection. Our bodies are meant to become vehicles for her beauty and her perfection. And remains one more thing, her love. How will that be manifested? What is the vehicle through which it can be expressed? That is the soul, the psychic being, the true person that we are which is evolving, which is a part of her consciousness, a part of her love. It becomes the vehicle for her love.

Sraddhalu (0:34:15):

And you can imagine now, let's say, fast-forwarding, sufficient time, where enough individuals on earth awaken to this omniscience, omnipotence, perfection of beauty and the expression of a divine love, what would be the natural relation of these beings with not only the whole universe but among themselves? Such is the direction of human evolution intended. The possibility can be foreseen, but we find we are still far from it. It need not take a few billion years, because now this will not be done by an unconscious process, it will be done by conscious participation as conscious beings. And so comes now the change, recognizing who is the Divine Mother, recognizing who we are in relation to her, there is a change in our values and relationships to our life as well as to our practices. Our life changes because now we realise everything here on earth, everything in our human experience is intended to nourish this development. So when you train your mind, when you study, when you observe, when you try to understand, the basic instinct of your mind is to know more and more and it will not stop until it knows everything or rather tries. But it cannot know everything because your mind is currently a vehicle of finite capacity. Why? Because in order to know something it has to cut that thing into pieces. Understand each piece, analyse and having understood, rejoin all the pieces to synthesise and then we say, ah now I understand. Except because the operation of cutting and joining is done with finite pieces, the mind can never directly know the comprehension or omniscience, the totality of infinite knowledge can never be held because it's as if you go to an ocean with a few cups and try to measure out the water, compare, pour back, measure out, compare, pour back. You will never know the ocean.

The only way you can know the ocean is when you step into the ocean, allow the water to surround you and to fill you, but still your measuring capacity is your finite sensory apparatus. So you can know ocean or what it feels like but in your limited capacity. And then one more step is required. You enter ocean and then your capacity to embrace ocean has to widen and widen and widen until it embraces infinitely the ocean itself or becomes one with the ocean, loses itself in identity with ocean. That's when you will say, ‘Ah! I know what it is like to be ocean because I am ocean’. Your mind has to go through a similar process. But the current capacity being finite, it has to open to its own source, there is a higher grade of consciousness through which She formed your mind, of which your mind is a limited operation. So to open to that higher grade is the movement of the yoga and the mind not only opening, giving itself, losing itself of separateness, now experiences infinity, experiences larger and larger glimpses of the true character of knowledge. This first opening we call intuition. Because now you can have knowledge by identity. Whatever you seek to know, your mind opens and touches, and in identity knows, because it is, and knows truly. Unlike your intellectual mind, I know that, but I can never be sure if I know that, because what I know is a representation of that. I look at elephant and I say maybe the elephant feels like this or thinks like this. I will never know actually. Or I will not even know if the elephant is real. It might be a holographic projection. The only way to know is to experience identity with elephant, then you will say ah this is what I am. That operation now opens to us we call it intuition but it is not yet infinite.

Sraddhalu (0:38:55):

And beyond the intuition there is a further step that opens to its own infinity and then you experience you know the way she knows you participate in her all knowledge and this mind is intended to open and grow thus. A similar process would take place with your life energies and even with your body consciousness. Your soul similarly will then merge, not only knowing Her and knowing yourself as a child of her, you will know your consciousness the same in identity as the Divine consciousness. She is as if nurturing us to grow in image of Her Lord, whose incarnation, so to say, conscious incarnation we become as we awaken to our identity with the Divine. Seen in this way, the whole journey of evolution which was a struggle for her, of her effort in us so far, Sri Aurobindo calls the unconscious yoga of Nature. From this point where we participate and we ask her help and open ourselves to her action becomes now the conscious process of the yoga, no more of nature, but of our participation in a higher direct action of the Divine Shakti. She therefore not only manifests, but leads us back to our Source. Not outside the universe as an emergence outside, but a realisation of that consciousness in the universe as a conscious participant. And it is this conscious participation that is conceived of in the form of the divine leela, the divine play of bliss of the Lord, played out through so many individual forms, through these relationships of awakened divine beings that we are intended to awaken to. Such is the future towards which this evolution is leading.

But the process now, the process is recognizing that although we are limited in capacity, she is unlimited in her capacity and wisdom. By opening to her action, she can do in us far more rapidly than we could with our capacity. This idea of self-giving, self-surrender to the Divine Mother, to the Divine Shakti, is the whole principle and the essence of the practice of Tantra. It is the great secret that was revealed in the Veda, which in a later phase was almost lost, and recovered in the practice of Tantra, the recognition that all this is Her creation, and therefore our surrender to Her, allows her to fulfil our evolution. How do we do this? The linking point, the most close, the most intimate, the most personal relationship we have with her is of the love. The love that she pours in us awakens the love that we feel for her. And it is the love that we feel which gives us the deep satisfaction. Think about it. It's not the love that you may receive from another which makes you happy, it is the love you feel for others that makes you happy. Isn't it? If somebody comes and says, Oh, I want to express my love for you, you say, Thank you, and that's all, that's enough. But when you feel your love pouring out, then everything is so beautiful, so wonderful. Because the love that's pouring out is her love that She has planted, that she pours out through you, you participate in her movement of love, which then turns back, leads you back to her. Not only her in her transcendence, but her in her immanence. That love flows to every object and every form and every being and fills you with the delight that is at the origin of the creation. And so this love is the single most powerful link which not only awakens us to her, but also allows us to open entirely because the whole movement of love is a spontaneous movement of opening and self-giving. And therefore to feel love for the Divine Mother is our easiest starting point.

Sraddhalu (0:44:04):

There are other starting points which are allied and they take three forms. The urge to know, at first it's know things, know, understand how things happen, but later it becomes the urge to understand how she works. You see, the first movement of knowledge is to view everything as a mechanical energy. This is what modern science does. Modern science looks at two atoms combining and says, ah, this is physical energy, mechanically moving and since we see the same energy doing the same thing pretty much everywhere in the universe, we say law of physics. No, there is no law of physics. There is only the free expression of the Divine energy. In her freedom, She chooses to rhythm out. But the rhythms of her are the dance of her Lord, Shiva. It is his dance unfolding as rhythms of her play. And these rhythms, being cosmic, they are all over the universe equally, we say, ah, that is law. But who maintains the law? Who creates the law? Science does not answer these questions. It just postpones the problem, hiding its ignorance behind a description. The reality is, She plays freely everywhere, and in her freedom, she chooses to rhythm out in certain ways. We observe those rhythms. We see two atoms of hydrogen combining with one atom of oxygen, forming water molecule, which has completely different properties. And there is no logic between this and that. There is only her freedom to become water through a combination of these forms of herself. That's all there is. So when you go deep enough into science and you realise the most fundamental questions have no answers. Why? Why? Why? And eventually that's how it is, because She chooses to rhythm out. And at that point, the true scientist who has gone deep enough says, I can only marvel at her play and enjoy, in knowledge, the way she plays out and rhythms the worlds. Think about it. That's the true nature of the entry through knowledge.

When we see these rhythms, we describe them and we feel as if we have caught a pattern of her behaviour or her free choice. And every now and then she throws out a burst of something which is not bound to our laws or our understanding of laws. And we say that is an anomaly. Science has to ignore them because it breaks all the laws. But she is playing a game. She says, alright, just to prove to you that I am not compelled, here, I play out something. In the famous poem Uma Sahasram, which was penned by Kavyakanta Vasishta Ganapati Muni, under the inspiration of Sri Ramana Maharshi, There is this very interesting phrase expressing, as he lauds the power of the creative power of the Divine Mother, he says, your power is so extraordinary, out of a blade of grass, you can bring out a humongous fire. And out of that fire, you can radiate intense gold. Such is her freedom, and this is the reality. This is in fact the reality. This is what happens when the human consciousness joins with her and invokes her help or her free action or her transcendent action. Suddenly the physical reality is altered, rhythms change, patterns change because of her freedom and you have what you call a miracle. A miracle is nothing but her free action, now in a material plane where you don't see freedom normally. But finally even the lack of freedom was her choice and the freedom also is her choice. So when you live in a consciousness immersed in her, whatever you ask, whatever you need, rhythms out as a movement of her freedom and you have the miracle. There's no other miracle really. All is really freedom. But we are participating in the level of experience which is more mechanical or as we awake, we participate in the experience which is more free. That's the only difference. So this is one approach. Through the mind, through the knowledge, you open to her.

There's another approach through the heart and I don't mean the soul but the heart's desire and that desire pushes you to want, to want, to claim, to grow and the desire will not stop until it embraces the whole universe and you understand the truth of desire is to possess all and you cannot possess all physically obviously, so you have to possess all in consciousness. And how do you possess all in consciousness? By either widening your consciousness until everything is within you, or by identifying in consciousness with that which is in all things. Both are aspects of the same experience of immersion in her consciousness and the more you open to her in your heart's desire and through the desire, the merging in her, the more you experience your desire embracing and therefore owning all. And of course this in its higher form takes the movement of love.

Sraddhalu (0:49:58):

In its third form is the urge to action. When you act, you say I choose to do. There's a very interesting experiment one can do which is to watch the brain. Watch the brain through electrodes observing functions and then you ask the person, make a free choice to move either your left hand or the right hand. And the person says, now I make the choice and moves one hand or the other. But an entire quarter second before the person makes a free choice, you can see in the brain which hand he is going to move or what choice he is going to make. So obviously the physical scientist says, ah you don't have real choice, you are just a product of your brain. No, it's not true. You do have free choice, but the free choice that you experience is a superficial free choice, there is a deeper free choice, there are many layers through which a real choice made comes out. Now comes the interesting insight. When you say I choose, your I does not really choose, there's a deeper I which chooses. That I, moving acts through you. What is its source? If you go back all the way, the source of all impulsion, of all action, of all energy goes back to her. So now you take this action and you exercise it in the world. Where does the action go? Where does the energy of the action go? Eventually flows back into the ocean. That is her consciousness. If you think about it carefully, every action you make is actually an offering to Her or to the Lord behind her. Except you are not conscious. It is an unconscious offering. Now you bring it into domain of consciousness and now everything you do, you make consciously as an offering to Her or to the Lord. And this becomes the basis for the third movement of immersion, when finally you realise that every time you consecrate your action, you are filled with her energy, with her delight, and after a while it's no more you, you realise it is her working through you. You are only a point of action, a point of support, and even then you realise your point of support and action was only a focal point of her consciousness. There is nothing other than her. And your ego thins out and merges, opens to her.

These three broad approaches, based on three impulses that we have, become the three great yogas: Jnana Yoga - Yoga of Knowledge, Bhakti Yoga - the yoga of Love, Karma Yoga - the yoga of consecrated action, which are based on three impulses within us, which again are celebrated in Lalita Sahasranama. And the Divine Mother is said to be Ichcha Shakti Jnana Shakti Kriya Shakti Swaroopini. She is herself the very form of the urge of desire, the urge to knowledge, the urge to action. And so the recognition is that these very urges, these three impulses in you are her impulses. You didn't choose to have this impulse. She instilled those impulses or rather she appears as these three impulses inside you to push you forward in your evolution. Think about it. When you think in this way, you realise there is nothing left that you can truly claim to be yourself or yours. All is only her working in you, in your consciousness, is really her concentration accumulating or forming or reflecting His originating consciousness. And in this way, the whole movement of the turn to the Divine Mother becomes the basis of the Yoga itself. Or all the systems of Yoga you will find unfolding through Her working in you.

Sraddhalu (0:54:14):

Sri Aurobindo then describes this as the conscious evolution, the conscious Yoga which is accelerated. But again relying on Her, not just on your strength or your capacity. Your effort therefore now becomes limited to three steps. First, the conscious centering, gathering, focus and intensifying of your aspiration. The result of all this understanding will be the recognition that this is what is intended, this is what I am, this is what it is meant for and there is the concentrating and gathering in this aspiration. When this concentration takes place, the same movement which was happening in a haphazard, multitudinous, sometimes conflicting way gets organised into a single concentrated movement. All the parts of your being are aligned more and more, which makes for an automatic speeding up of her action in you. But this aspiration turns towards what? Not only to realising and awakening to your highest potential, but to realising the Divine. And then as a result, there is a second movement which happens almost spontaneously. The things which conflict with my aspiration, which do not align or which go contrary, they begin to fall away. They don't seem so interesting anymore. Or there are tendencies in your nature which are contradictory to your aspiration. You say, this I don't want, this I change. Nothing in you is rejected. All is form of her consciousness working in you for a purpose. So all is turned to the Divine. Only the tendencies which are wayward or distracting are reduced and aligned. Aspiration followed by the rejection leads to the third movement. If your aspiration is to realise the Divine and awaken to the Divine consciousness and the Satchitananda and to live in its bliss, well, you give yourself to Her who is the power of the bliss working in you, who lifts you and shapes you. So comes the third step, the surrender. And the more complete the surrender, the more rapid the transformation and the more complete her action.

There is a very interesting letter of Sri Aurobindo, where a disciple asks Sri Aurobindo, I have heard that if I surrender myself completely to the Divine Mother, she will transform me instantly. Is it true? Now you can imagine what the response might be. You would say, yes, but... He says, no. Sri Aurobindo says, yes, simply. Yes, if you surrender yourself completely, She will transform you in an instant. Now comes the problem, he says. You have to surrender yourself completely. The problem is, you are not conscious of yourself and therefore are unable to surrender completely. You can only surrender the part where you are conscious. That's why it takes a little time. But when you surrender the part that is conscious, like a flower opening, giving itself to the Sun, the sunlight seeps in, the divine Shakti pours in, fills and seeps into the layers which are not so conscious to you now and awakens consciousness in them. And very rapidly you realise your boundary of consciousness has widened. You now are more conscious of other parts in you which then again you bring into the ambit of the surrender opening more and more, which reveals more, which surrenders more and she does the yoga in you because of your participation and completes the yoga far more rapidly than you ever could. A single lifetime is enough to complete the whole process when we give ourselves with full concentration and a full surrender. Therefore, the worship of the Divine Mother is the shortest, smoothest and the most joyous path to our complete realisation, transformation and fulfilment. But worship is not merely an external ritual, it is the movement of self-giving in this joy. Rituals are only a means to assist us in this concentration and in this movement of surrender. Recognize the essence, focus on the essence.

Sraddhalu (0:59:13):

These sacred days of Navaratri, being a time of concentrated worship of the Divine Mother, are only meant to assist us in this effort by reminding us that this is the work, this is the battle that she takes charge of within you to liberate you from your ignorance. But to the sadhaka of the yoga, the ten days are only symbolic. The sadhana itself is twenty-four hours every day for the rest of your life. Of course, growing, growing in intensity, growing in concentration, growing in tapas of intensity of concentrated effort, one-pointedness of purpose, and it grows. You start with what you are, where you are. The sacred 10 days are a reminder, are symbolic in the rhythm of external life, of a journey of yoga that takes place in us. It takes long when we are unconscious and asleep and she has to work through us indirectly. When we wake up and begin to participate, she can act freely, directly, rapidly and joyously. The yoga itself becomes a movement of joy to greater joy, growing, tending more and more towards the Divine Ananda, the Divine Bliss. The Vedas exclaim, we are children of immortality, that is Satchitananda, and therefore it is our birthright to realise this Satchitananda here in life. Sri Aurobindo in a text which is very profound also, Upanishadic in character, he describes, he exclaims, you are children of bliss. You are children not only of immortality, you are children of bliss and it is this bliss which is intended to be enjoyed here on earth in a physical body as conscious participants in the Divine transformed creation, in the Divine leela overtly expressed in us as conscious participants.

Well, this is the theme on which we meditate on this special occasion of the beginning of the Navaratras. And may this theme be the theme for the rest of our lives. In the sacred mantra Sri Aurobindo describes which was revealed to India for India's freedom, the mantra given was the song Vande Mataram, in which the Rishi of the mantra, Bankim Chandra, extols the Divine Mother and says, the Divine Mother incarnate as India, Mother India, you are the strength in my arms, you are the knowledge in my head, you are the devotion in my heart and in every heart I will install your embodiment. Remember this mantra. Worship of the Divine Mother as Mother India is also equally effective. But there's a second mantra Sri Aurobindo says which was also given, for which India is not yet ready, but which will come eventually. That completes the work and that is the mantra given by Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita where He says, “Sarva dharman parityajya mam ekam sharanam vraja”, Abandoning all dharmas, surrender yourself to me alone. If you look at these two, you have the whole of the essence of the yoga. The Divine Mother in you working and through this she leads you to the surrender of all your dharmas to the Lord Himself. Think of this and let this be the sadhana that you practise.

Vande Mataram!