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A Hymn To The Devi - Devīsūktam - Swami Sarvapriyananda (DownSub - Com)
A Hymn To The Devi - Devīsūktam - Swami Sarvapriyananda (DownSub - Com)
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om lead us from the unreal to the real, lead us from
darkness
It's incredibly ancient, 5000 years or more and at this point some of you will go
there
In fact couple of days ago I was listening to a discussion in which one of the
participants
She is a professor of Indian philosophy at Oxford University and she was saying
that
these can be roughly dated by the latest modern, most conservative kind of
scholarship to be
about 1700 BCE which means that's about 3700 years before our time which is like
1200 years
So incredibly ancient and this is the oldest, the earliest existing record of a
religious,
spiritual, philosophical text and the first teaching by a woman, by a Rishi who was
a
woman all those centuries ago, a voice coming down to us, recorded perfectly,
transmitted
We have heard it chanted many times because this is the time when we worship the
Divine
Mother in the form of Durga, you can see and one of the common practices during
this time
which is called Navaratri in Hinduism is to chant the Durga Saptashati, the Chandi
and
the Chandi is always chanted with the Devi Sukta, with this hymn.
So the hymn to the Divine Mother and part of that is this particular hymn to the
Devi.
We know that her father was a Rishi, a sage, the ones who saw the Vedic mantras,
the Rishis.
Rishaya Mantra Darshtara, the Rishis are the ones who saw the mantras, literally
saw these truths.
If you see the word for philosophy in Sanskrit it is Darshan, literally to see, see
the ultimate truth.
And we were always told when we studied philosophy that you know philosophy, I
still remember
the voice of my philosophy teacher as a young novice monk, there was this old
gentleman
who was a disciple of Swami Abhedananda, our Swami Abhedananda, this professor
Nirodhwaran
Chakravarti, retired professor of philosophy, who would start his class to teach
these would-be
He would start by saying, please remember that philosophy in the Western sense is
different
So the French have a completely different way, unique way, independent way of
thinking about it.
So he's written this book on Western philosophy and if you read that book you will
see there
So there is no philosophy worth the name in England, Australia, USA, Canada, none
of the
The right word is theory and theory, he says, theory is derived from theos and oran
which
Anyway, so the earliest record of these philosophical teachings is this, this hymn
from the Rig Veda
which is the oldest existing religious spiritual text of humanity today and there
also it is
from a woman. Remember today and she speaks about her realization.
Her name was Vak, her father's name was the Rishi Ambrin.
So this lady, this Rishi who lived 3000, 4000, 5000 years ago, her voice is coming
down to us.
We have heard this again and again in India, you hear it every year, this chanting.
I never really reflected on the meaning until this time, this occasion.
in the whole of Hinduism, in all the world's traditions, all the important ideas,
the important
Thousands of years before the other Rishis, before the Buddha and before Shankara,
before
the Upanishads, historically speaking, before all that we do, our Drig Drishya
Viveka and
Aparoksha Anubhuti, the seer and the seen and the five levels of the human
personality,
pure consciousness, existence, bliss, Brahman, Atman, all of that, before all of
that, before
God and religion and Avatar, before all of that, all of these ideas are already
there.
What that lady said nearly 5000 years ago, I feel we have not gone one inch beyond
that
What I'll do is, I'll request our IT team, we, let's hear it first before we go
into it.
One version will be the precise, correct Vedic chanting, the way it is technically,
correctly
chanted, so that we will hear first and then there is the more familiar version,
more familiar
to us in Bengal for example, which everybody in Bengali families, you know, you
wake up
There's a beautiful chorus rendition, chorus singing of the same sutra, of the same
Sukta.
Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta,
Devi
Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi
Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi
Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi
Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi
Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi
Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi
Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi
Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi
Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi
Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi Sukta, Devi
And now, the other version which we hear from childhood onwards I would hear early
in the
morning on Mahalaya, when the Devi Paksha starts.
Really magnificent and even the poetry of it, which we shall see.
So she is speaking now not only as this person who has become enlightened, but from
the perspective
Now in Vedanta we will ask this question, which perspective is she speaking from?
Both.
So you will see how easily she moves between the absolute Brahman and the personal
God.
So amazing.
So the religion at that time was, they had these extensive fire rituals, which were
called
Yagas or Yajnas.
And the offerings were made to Gods and these Gods were Gods with small g.
So they were forces, they were beings which controlled the entire universe.
So a variety of these beings and the purpose was to get their blessings so that you
would
The worshippers would get what they want in this life or the next.
Children, empires, cattle, abundant crops and rainfall and heaven in the next life
and so on.
So the various Vedic Gods, she says, the Rudras who are 11 in number, the Vasus who
are 8,
the Adityas who are supposed to be 12 in number, the Vishwadevas which are 13 in
number.
The primary Gods of the Vedic pantheon, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, the fire God, Indra,
the twin,
Ashwin twins, Somadeva, Twashta, Pusha, all of these, what about them?
I and look at the confidence of this lady, throughout every verse begins with Aham,
I.
I am that which you worship as the Adityas, as the Rudras, as Indra, as Varuna, as
Agni.
All the powers that you see manifested in nature which you deify and worship as
Gods
See, this is thousands of years before the great monotheistic traditions arose in
the Middle East.
500 years after which comes Christianity, 800 years after which comes Islam.
Long before that, the development that God is one, one reality.
Here is Vak, the Rishika, Vak Ambrini, she is saying, I am that one reality which
appears as all the divinities that humanity worships.
I am that.
And of course, God is neither male nor female, it's beyond gender.
But when you express it in this way, she takes this route that God, the divinity
which is
Think of the great religious activity of the ancient Vedic people where across at
least
the Gangetic plains there would be these ashrams, there would be these great fire
sacrifice
altars and flames rising up and smoked into the sky and the sonorous chanting of
the Vedic
And she says all that you offer into all the deities, expecting whatever, anything
that
Through all the deities that you offer it comes to God, to the one God.
And everything that you get from these rituals, whatever you get, worldly,
otherworldly, all
This is the great secret that I teach unto you, that every religious activity that
you
Though you may worship it in many forms, behind all existing powers is one
divinity.
This is the teaching she gives to the Vedic people, that beyond all the Vedic
divinities
is one supreme power and that is I, that is God or the Divine Mother, the Mother
Goddess.
There's a beautiful saying, akashat patitam toyam sagaram pratigachchati, all the
rain
that falls from the sky, in rivers and rivulets, in lakes, whatever, ultimately
flows to the
same ocean.
Similarly, in whichever form you give your offerings, it all flows to the divinity,
to
In the Kena Upanishad, the Vedic gods are shown as different powers of nature and
then
they find that one power appears before them, an extraordinary being, before whom
none of
They don't realize that this is the ultimate reality of the universe, Brahman, but
they
What was this extraordinary being before whom all the divine powers of the gods do
not work?
You know, the fire cannot burn, the wind cannot blow and so on.
He is wondering this and then the divine mother appears before him, Uma Haimavati,
the daughter
of the Himalayas, exactly Durga, she appears before him and says that was Brahman.
So anything that you want in this world, worldly, you want money, pleasure, family,
prosperity, success, you want heaven after death, you want enlightenment and God
realization
Then, aham rashtri sangamani vasu naam chikitushi pradhama yajnanam, the sheer
language.
See even this is Vedic Sanskrit and you can notice here, those who study Sanskrit,
they
notice here a kind of vigor, a freshness, simplicity, power and freshness which
later
I think it was, it was Sorrow who reading the Gita and the Upanishads says that
when you read
these pages, you come into contact with the dawn of civilization, the first light
of civilization,
By the way, for Vedic scholars who might be wondering where do I get these
interpretations from?
So two sources, one is Sayana who is the great commentator on the Vedas, that is of
course
one source.
The other one is not so well known, it's more modern which is Dr. Mahanama Vrata
Brahmachari.
He was a great Vaishnava teacher in Bangladesh and in Bengal also, very well known.
Many people all around the world have heard of Thomas Merton, probably the most
famous
Now Mahanama Vrata Brahmachari was doing, he came to the United States, he did a
PhD
So this young Indian scholar, he met this young American man and that man was very
interested
which led him to ultimately become the famous Catholic monk Thomas Merton.
So he has written a book, Chandi Chinta, which means Reflections on the Chandi.
Let me tell you an interesting thing I read last year, or year before last.
You know this book Sapiens, you will know Harari, a very interesting take on
history.
A lot of people find it boring but I assure you if you read this book you will not
find
Now there is one section in which he talks about the well-known orthodox in history
that
So first of all you need for religion, you need a settled life.
So before that also there were religious beliefs, some kind of proto-religious
beliefs.
But what we today recognize as the roots of religion, that started with settling
down
How?
He says that recently in southeastern Turkey there is a site which they excavated
and they
Some of them were 7 tons and one partially finished stone pillar was 50 tons.
Huge stone pillars with inscriptions and engravings, meanings of which we don't
understand today.
But the ones found in Turkey and the Stonehenge, there is a difference in age.
The ones found in Turkey are 12,000 years ago, about 9,000 BC to 10,000 BC.
More than 12,000 years ago you find these huge stones, clearly some kind of
religious
How did hunter-gatherers, foragers, little groups of little tribes, even small
tribes.
If you are a forager, hunter-gatherer, you cannot maintain too many people like
that.
To build these things, construct them, erect them, maintain them would have taken
thousands
The first evidence of the taming of wheat, cultivated wheat, not just wild wheat,
but
And the stunning conclusion that historians came to was, it's not that these were
constructed
These things were the purpose of agriculture and village life, in order to have
religion.
So the motivation for settling down, when you need thousands of people to construct
Then you need to settle down around it and maintain it and start villages.
Till now historians thought and we had been taught also, agriculture starts,
civilization
Somebody was saying here, New York is definitely the greatest city of the world.
So New York is basically the symbol of modern 21st century, 20th century, 21st
century civilization.
Think about it, what is the spirit, the ideology, the idea behind the Statue of
Liberty?
So it's books.
And I think there are chains, broken chains under her feet.
You go beyond bondage by knowledge and the light of liberty and freedom.
Freedom is attained.
And the whole thing is represented by the mother figure, the female figure.
This is exactly what she is talking about, three, four thousand years ago.
Isn't it a stretch?
Not really.
So there the author writes that Vivekananda's teachings and Vedanta is the gift to
America,
which is still unopened, which brings to America the idea of her own greatness, not
just the
secular greatness, not just the economic greatness or the military or political
greatness, the
spiritual greatness.
So she says, Aham Rashtri, I am the spirit of nations, I am the mother of nations,
I
Chikki Tushi Prathama Yajnanaam, to those who want it, I reveal spiritual
knowledge,
Going ahead.
All beings who eat, consume food and live on food, you see, you all who see and you
In the Keno Upanishad, which if you look at it historically, I will just mention
here,
traditionally, if you ask a traditional Vedic scholar, they will completely reject
all this
historical analysis.
It is not that she came earlier and the Upanishads came later.
If you do historical analysis, then she came earlier and the Upanishads came later.
Centuries later, you find in one of the most important, extraordinary Upanishads,
Keno Upanishad.
It starts with,” Keneshitam patati preshitam manaha kena prănaha prathamaha praiti
yuktaha. Keneshităm văchamimăm vadanti chakshuhu shrotram ka u devo yunakti”
By what, what bright being enables me to see and hear and smell and taste and touch
and breathe?
All the activities of cognition, sense organs, the activities of thinking, the
activities of the motor organs,
You ask what is that which shines in and through all our cognitions, our
perceptions, all our activities?
It is that one light which is the ear of the ear, the eye of the eye, the mind of
the mind.
The speech of the speech, you are right. The speech of the speech, the breath of
the breath.
And knowing this, the one, the seeker, the spiritual seeker who knows this goes
beyond death, transcends death, transcends suffering.
How do you do it and what is the result? Everything has been said here.
To put it simply without paradoxical language, you can say what the Upanishad is
talking about,
the Rishi of the Upanishad, Kena Upanishad is saying this one consciousness, one
awareness.
When you see, are you not aware? When you hear, are you not aware?
When you smell, taste, touch, speak, think, are you not aware?
You are. Seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, thinking, speaking, these are all
different activities.
But is the awareness behind all of them, is the awareness in itself different?
No. It is one reality which shines in and through all of these activities and gives
us that first person experience.
So, you will say now you will speak about the hard problem of consciousness.
No, the first person experience is made possible by this one non-object, pure
subject, awareness.
The light of this awareness, what the Buddhists call the clear light of the void,
shining in and through.
She is not only the cosmic power behind all the gods which controls the universe,
which is the recipient of all worship, the source of civilization.
But in each of us, in our lives, whatever is going on in our lives, it is all
possible because of that one light which is the Divine Mother, which is our real,
the core of ourselves.
That shining, all else shines. By its light all is lit up.
tam eva bhantam anubhati sarvam tasya bhasa sarvam idam vibhati kathopa nishad
What is that light? It is the Divine Mother. She says, I am that light.
Imagine, if I cannot hear, I will still be aware, but I will be aware that I can't
hear anything. I am deaf.
If I can't see, I will still be aware. It will just be a dark world, but I am aware
that I can't see anything.
But look at the reverse. Suppose eyes are functioning, brain centers are
functioning, ears are functioning, but awareness is not there.
Then? Will it be that I can hear, I can see, but I am not aware. That's all.
You are laughing. Impossible. Correct. So ridiculous. The world will go dark for us
without awareness.
Awareness is that which makes the entirety of life possible. The experience of life
is possible because of awareness.
But you are that. Your real nature is that. So you and she are one reality.
What is the reality of God or the reality of the mother goddess and your reality?
One and the same.
When we say aham brahmasmi in Vedanta, I am Brahman, we don't mean anything more
than that.
That light which shines through all our activities, thoughts, feelings, experiences
of life.
There is more to it, but we will get to that. Then she sounds a note of warning:
amantavom?nta upak?iyanti
Those who do not know this secret, those who do not reflect upon it and assimilate
it, they wither away.
They go from death to death. Kenopanishad also warns this: cedaved?datha satyamasti
na cedih?ved?nmahat? vina??i?
If you know this secret, if you realize this, you have attained reality, you become
immortal, go beyond death.
If you do not know this, you go from death to death. Great is the loss in human
life.
If one dies, goes away from this life without realizing this identity, your
identity with the divine mother, your identity with pure consciousness.
She says here, amantavoma, who has not realized me, who has not reflected upon me,
who is not centered in me, that one withers away.
Withers away means he is continuously whirled in the cycle of birth and death.
I myself, aham swayam eva idam vadami yushtam, I reveal the highest truths, the
beautiful, the sacred.
Whether you say it is the Vedas or what was revealed to the Jewish prophets or to
Prophet Muhammad, the whole claim is that the source of religion is this
revelation.
What does that mean? Here Mahanama Bratavaramachari points out something
interesting.
The enlightened one, after long struggle, spiritual practice, you realize I am
Brahman, whatever your spiritual realization and then you speak.
So your spiritual practice, your journey, your realization, then you speak. That's
one.
The rishis, to them was revealed the secrets of the Vedas, they also speak. That's
two.
But here it is God speaking, not by my spiritual practice, she says here.
I am not speaking out of I worked hard and then I got something and I am giving it
to you. No.
Not it was revealed to me, I am transmitting it to you, like the rishis or the
prophets, not even that.
The cycle of creation, existence and destruction of the universe, srishti, sthiti,
pralaya, in every cycle I am the one who reveals.
Aham idam swayam eva vadami yushtam. To the gods and the humans.
We are reminded of the beautiful Vedic mantra, which is, Swami Vivekananda loved
this.
He says that some rishi, somewhere, we do not know whom, said that listen all ye
children of immortal bliss.
Not only human beings, he says the gods in the heavens also, you also listen, small
g gods.
Gods in the heavens, you also listen because what I am going to say you do not
know.
Not this empirical consciousness which we are talking about here, that which lights
this up.
Adityavarnam tamasah parastah, forever beyond the darkness of death and suffering.
Tameva viditva atimrityu meti, knowing that one goes beyond death.
In Silicon Valley they are trying very hard how to attain immortality in the body.
Won't work.
So there is this history channel. They have a program called the unexplained.
So I was interviewed and they wanted to know if you can sort of preserve the body,
how do yogis live long,
and can you upload your consciousness into the cloud and somehow continue with this
physical existence.
So they are doing a program on that and the host is William Shatner.
So I told the interviewer that why don't you ask William Shatner. He is practically
immortal himself.
The only way to attain immortality is to realize the immortal which is the
existence, consciousness, bliss, the absolute.
And she says I am that which reveals this truth. She is speaking here as the
personal God, the God of religion.
Swayamidam Vadami. To human beings and to Gods. Exactly the language of the rishis.
And that rishi who spoke this which Swami Vivekananda quoted, she must have been
centuries if not millennia before that rishi.
Then again another very important beautiful truth: yam kamaye tam tamugram krnomi
tam brahmanam tamrsim tam sumedham
Whoever worships me with devotion, whatever they want, I give them that.
This one I make Brahma, the creator of the universe. That one I make a rishi and
the other one I make the greatest intellectual that there ever was.
Tam brahmaanam tam rishim tam sumedham. It all comes from her. It is her gift to
give.
Now Brahma is supposed to be the greatest being of this universe who is manifested
at the beginning of creation and who makes the rest of the universe.
So that is supposed to be the highest possible position for a jiva, sentient being
to attain.
But another meaning of I make that one a Brahma means I make that one an
enlightened one.
And this is not a stretch interpretation because if you look at the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad, the first one to become enlightened was Brahma.
Brahma realized aham brahmasmi. Not I am this Brahma but I am Brahman, the ultimate
reality.
So if you want to become enlightened, that's what she is saying. If you want to
become enlightened, you want to be free of the cycle of birth and death,
you want God realization, moksha, nirvana, worship me. By my grace alone it is
possible.
Tam brahmaanam tam rishim tam sumedham. Those who want to be a great sage, those
who want to become Einstein or something like that,
it is by the grace of the Divine Mother that this tremendous insights into religion
and spirituality come.
I remember Swami Brahmananda was there in Kashi in Benares and the Holy Mother, Maa
Sharda Devi was also there.
So she asked somebody to go and ask Rakhal Swami Brahmananda, why do you need to
worship the Divine Mother?
You have the Upanishads, Vedanta, Rig Drishya Viveka, Panchadarshi, Aparoksha,
Anubhuti and all of that.
You have the direct teaching. So you just practice that. Indiscriminate, I am not
the body, I am not the mind.
And then you realize that I am Brahman, you realize your true identity. But it is
not that easy.
You might say we know Swami, we have been coming to the Vedanta Society for decades
now, it is not that easy.
Yes, so grace is necessary. That is what all spiritual seekers throughout the ages
have realized.
We call it grace, Kripa. So the grace comes from the Divine Mother.
The keys to the enlightenment, the keys to Brahma Gyana, the knowledge of Brahman
is in the hands of the Divine Mother.
Because Sri Ramakrishna was his Guru, so Maa Sharada is the wife of the Guru, so
reverence to her.
That is why he is saying the keys to Brahma Gyana are in her hands.
Four, five thousand years before that, Vagamarini, she has said,
Yam Kama Tam Tamugram Krnomi, I raise that one, the one who worships with any
particular desire,
Whether you want to be an enlightened one, whether you want to be a Rishi, whether
you want to be the greatest intellectual who ever lived,
Yes, even with the slightest bit of effort, but by the grace of the Divine Mother,
That also you can get by yourself, by the grace of God again, but with enormous
amount of effort and careful practice for maybe lifetimes.
It can take time. Sri Ramakrishna said in Benares, which is the land of
Vishwanatha, Shiva and Annapurna, the Divine Mother.
So Annapurna is the one who gives food. So the language Sri Ramakrishna used is
that no one goes hungry in the land of Annapurna.
You will be fed, but some are fed in the morning, some in the afternoon, some in
the late afternoon, some have to wait till evening.
What is morning, afternoon, late afternoon, evening? It doesn't seem much. You have
to wait. A little hungry you may be.
This is the life, the day of the universe. At the beginning of creation, in the
middle of creation where we are,
and towards the dusk and darkness which comes at the end of the universe.
One may have to wait many many lifetimes. I am reminded of this silly little joke I
had read in Reader's Digest many many years ago.
So this man, he prays to God and God appears before him. What do you want?
This man is very clever. He says, I don't want much. Lord, you are infinite. You
have everything.
Like one penny of yours is equal to a billion dollars for us. All I want from you
is one penny from your treasure house.
Which is equal to billion dollars for me. That's all I want. That's easy for you,
isn't it Lord?
The Lord says, you are right. One penny is equal to your billion dollars. I will
give it to you. Wait for one second.
There was one devotee of the Holy Mother, very devoted person. He got initiation
from the Holy Mother, Ma Sharda Devi.
Long after she had passed on, he suffered a lot in his life. Many family problems,
health problems, family problems, terrible stuff.
But all throughout he maintained his peace of mind, devotion, with a serene heart
he saw through all of that.
He used to say that when I got initiation, Mother looked at me carefully and she
said, she warned me.
She said, Baba, my child, I see that you have a little suffering in your life. And
she did this.
This is the way the Bengali women speak. When they say little, they mean this.
And he said, this is what is little suffering. If she had said, if you have a lot
of suffering in your life, what would have happened?
Then she goes on to say, again every verse starts with Aham. I, completely
confident, established in our divinity.
All the obstacles that come on the path of enlightenment, I remove them. I am
proactive.
I put the arrows on the bow of the mighty Rudra who destroys all the enemies of the
spiritual seekers.
That means every obstacle that comes in spiritual life, I am on your side. Never
fear. Everything will be overcome and you will attain to God realization.
I am the one. Look at the poetry. I fix the arrows on the bow of Rudra, the mighty
Rudra, who takes aim at all the obstacles and the enemies of those who seek
Brahman.
It's like a war cry. I make war for the benefit of humanity, for the benefit of my
children.
I make war. I pervade the earth and the sky and I make war. This is interesting.
Let's face it squarely. Throughout history, tribes have fought against other
tribes. Cities and nation states have fought against other cities and nation
states.
And everyone has claimed God is on my side. And not only that, even further and
even worse, I am fighting for the sake of God.
It's all written there. Ex-students. One whole wall is full of those names.
You will see, interesting, some of them, I noticed carefully, they are German
names.
So they were German students who studied at Harvard, went back and fought on the
German side against Americans.
So it's written name so and so, within bracket, enemy.
Now notice, the amazing confluence. It's so interesting. Church, university, war,
religion, education, warfare.
All coming together in such an amazing way. It's a fact. We cannot turn our eyes
from it.
That God has been invoked in the worst of human enterprises. A war. That's a wrong
use of religion. That's an abuse of religion.
But that spark is there. Still, it's also a fact that there is this spirit which
comes forward to protect humanity in its worst times.
When the forces of evil are strong and powerful. In the United States, here you
say, the last good war was the Second World War, they say.
And we don't have Bill here today. So we actually have a Second World War veteran,
someone who fought in the last good war.
What is this last good war? Where clearly the forces arrayed against you are
detrimental to civilization.
Detrimental to the universal order. And so she says, I make war for the protection
of people.
Janaya samadham krnomi. I engage in war for the protection of people. I pervade the
earth and the skies.
Then, highest advaita, mamayo nirapsvantah samudre. She says, my womb is the vast
ocean of sacchidananda.
From which emerges the universe, in which plays the universe and disappears the
universe back again.
Ashtavakra sings, aham mayy anantam aham bodho vishwa vichy svabhavata, udetu
vastamayatu name vriddhi na bhakshati.
I am this infinite ocean of existence consciousness. In this ocean small waves come
up.
They are nothing but these entire universes which come up. Let the waves arise, let
the waves subside.
The ocean does not increase or decrease thereby. Similarly, she is saying, I am
that infinite ocean of existence consciousness.
The universe emerges like waves in me. So when the wave is coming up, isn't the
wave still a part of the ocean?
Certainly. Isn't the wave still in the water? Of course, it's nothing other than
water.
This means we are forever on the lap of the mother. It's not that we have come from
the mother, now we are distant from the mother.
One day, God knows where we are going. No, we have come from the mother. We are
forever on the lap of the mother.
And at death we go back to the mother in the individual sense and in the sense of
the entire cosmos.
The cosmos lies in the lap of the mother. That is the meaning of this. In me, the
infinite consciousness, the universe floats.
Then the conclusion. Soaring, what poetry? It's really moving: Ahameva vata iva
pravamyarabhamana bhuvanani visva
At the beginning of the universe, she says: arabhamana bhuvanani visva ,when the
worlds were created, I blew through that like a breeze.
Blew through that like a breeze. Much later, in the Taitiri Upanishad it is said,
Tatsrishtva Tadevanu Pravisat, having created that, I entered into it. What does
that mean?
It's like, imagine the waves coming up and the water says, having created the
waves, I enter into it.
Which means, the waves are nothing but me. The universe is nothing but me.
All existence, life and death is sat. All knowledge, awareness, experience is chit.
And how she is expressing it, she says, as a breeze I blew through the universe at
its beginning.
And then she says, even more stunning, the conclusion is stunning.
This entire universe comes from me, exists in my lap and disappears into me.
She says: paro diva parayena. Beyond this is the transcendent sky of existence,
consciousness, bliss which is my real form.
And I pervade this universe also. Swami Vivekananda said, we Hindus worship a
transcendent, imminent God.
Satchidananda Brahman which is entirely beyond this universe, beyond time, space
and causation, beyond maya is the reality.
Ajnanadi sakala jarasa muha avastu. From ignorance downwards, from maya downwards,
everything else is an appearance.
She is saying this here. And yet she says, whatever else you see in the universe,
that also is I.
Just yesterday I was seeing, a very nice article has come out. Einstein believed in
Spinoza's God.
But what is this Spinoza's God? And the description is something pretty close to
this.
What Spinoza was struggling to say, see God cannot be entirely transcendent.
So God is beyond all of this. And it has to be. If God is not beyond all of this,
then God is limited and imperfect and terrible.
So God has to be perfect. Perfect means you have to save God from this mess.
So God is beyond this. Yes, this is a mess. Born, birth, messy. Life is messy.
Death is even worse.
There is so much evil and suffering in this world. If this is God, it is not a
particularly good God.
What is the problem? The problem is that then you have two realities, God and this
world.
A perfect God somewhere, we have no idea where, when, how because it is beyond all
where, beyond all when, beyond all how.
Desha, kala, vastu, pariccheta, sunya in Sanskrit. Beyond the limitation of space,
time and causation and object.
And then you have this imperfect universe. This is the reality which we are
experiencing right now. You have two.
What is the problem? The problem is that God you are talking about becomes strictly
limited.
It becomes too small. Why? Because there is something that God is not.
The moment you say that you admit the existence of a second reality apart from God,
to that extent God becomes less.
This is the problem with all the dualistic, theistic religions of the world.
That God is something else. Immediately you are saying God is not God.
Worse, the moment you divorce God from this universe, then God exists only as a
matter of speculation and belief.
they have been desperately trying to prove God. Look at this universe by design, by
the first cause argument, this and that.
Modern science laughs at all of that. Every one of your arguments can be refuted or
at least diffused by modern science.
Darwinian evolution tells you, modern neo-Darwinians will tell you, we can
demonstrate through computer models and all,
how just by the force of evolution, survival of the fittest, random mutation,
genetic mutation, you can have this tremendous diversity of life.
as so called emergence of quantum, before the big bang, particles emerging, matter,
antimatter disappearing,
some of it emerges and does not disappear back again and emerges into a full-
fledged universe.
I am quoting Mishio Kaku here, the God equation. You can explain it. No God in the
process at all.
You cannot really seriously argue from just this material universe to God, not
today in 21st century.
It doesn't work. Those old proofs, they are very interesting proofs of the
existence of God, but they are not convincing.
They are rather underwhelming, not overwhelming. You cannot argue from this.
Then what happens? That God of belief, the God of speculation, the theistic,
dualistic, other God becomes very weak.
Alan Watts says, when you have a pot, clay pot, then you are told that there is a
cause of this clay pot.
It's called clay. There is something called clay which is the cause of this clay
pot.
Now if you look for the clay other than the clay pot, other than the pot if you are
looking for clay,
other than this universe if you are looking for a cause outside, other than the pot
if you are looking for the clay,
He says, you go one step forward and say that which is the cause of this universe,
that which is the reality of this universe is right here and now.
it can be beyond all good and evil cause and effect and yet be the substance or the
reality of this universe,
the ground of this universe. Mystics in all the world religions came to this
understanding.
It's only in Advaita Vedanta and arguably in some forms of Mahayana Buddhism that a
whole framework developed.
So non-dualism, at the core of the idea of non-dualism that there is only one
reality without a second,
even when everything else is appearing, even then there is only one non-dual
reality.
the extraordinary difficult text of Advaita Vedanta, long before them, long before
Shankaracharya,
who wrote the commentaries on the Upanishads, Gaudapada who proved non-causality,
Ajatavada,
Long before them, the Brahma Sutras, long before that, the Upanishads who declared
these truths,
millennia before that, is the voice of this lady who is saying the ultimate reality
is transcendent and imminent.
How do you know? I am that reality. She has no qualms about saying it.
But as you are also, I know it, you do not know it. That's the difference.
and in and through this entire world of the heaven and the earth, I pervade all of
that and remain established in my own glory.
who appears in the form of the Divine Mother Durga, who is the light in all of us,
who has given us the highest knowledge, who is at the foundation of religion,
the foundation of civilization, the entire human project, the foundation of this
universe,
and the ultimate highest teaching of how you can realize that truth and go beyond
suffering, go beyond death.
So salutations to her on this occasion when we are beginning the worship of the
Divine Mother.
Can we have that chorus once again? It is good to end with that beautiful chorus.
Vibharmaham, Indragni,
Aham Asinobhaya,
Vibharmyaham,
Tvastaramuta pusharam,
Havismate,
Suprabhya, Yajamanaya,
Sunvate, Aham,
Rashtri, Chandamani,
Vasuna,
Jititushi Prathama,
Yajina namatam,
Ma deva vyadhuh,
Purutra,
Purita,
Prabhurya, Vesayanti,
Yo Vipasyati,
Yah Praniti,
Amantavomanta,
Upaksiyanti,
Te Vadami,
Ahameva, svayamidam
Vadami, Justam,
Devebhirta, Manusebhih,
Tamugram, Krnomi,
Tam Brahmanam
Murdhana mama
Ena prthivyai ,
to Sri Ramakrishna,