05/01/2024
Sharing some of the most beautiful writings, hope you enjoy 💕
DEVI GODDESS OF NATURE
Summer days are wonderful for encouraging us outdoors to commune with nature. We can also have lovely spontaneous insights, be it in the open air, in ‘thin places’ or in the radiant Light.
The eyes, as doors of perception, are cleansed, to paraphrase William Blake.
Nature herself, if we have eyes to see, is a book of Revelation, a scripture of green, blue and gold, innocent and un-fallen.
“Nature as paradise is still here, it is only we who are absent from her” (Nasr).
The sun is a symbol of the effulgent Atman in the centre of our being. Its radiance is the light of Consciousness or Awareness (Chit/Shiva). Its heat and energy are the vibrating Prana or Chit- Shakti.
The budding and blossoming which it calls forth represents the spiritual awakening of the third eye (Buddhi) and the state of awakening (Buddha).
Both words relate to the word ‘bud’ which is also the source of the word “beads” on which we perform Japa of mantra, to bring about that very spiritual blossoming.
From Vedic times, the seers and yogis meditated on Nature and saw her as the very form of the Goddess. I use the feminine pronoun, because Nature is not an ‘it’ as objectified in the cold dualism of Descartes.
Rather, she is ‘Mula-Prakriti’, ‘Maha Maya’, the divine substance, out of which all matter- and indeed the mind itself evolve, and in herself is certainly not matter.
For this reason, the mind may explore the last evolute of Prakriti, matter, but not the substance, Prakriti, from which it has come.
Hence, Isis declares, “No one hath ever lifted my veil”. Only the Goddess can do this, as a grace.
The Goddess is thus also Maya, whose month is May, the mysterious one who is a bridge between Spirit which reveals and matter which veils. She is known as “Shiva Rupa”, the very form of Consciousness (Shiva).
She is a mirror (Vimarsa) of the Effulgent Light of Consciousness,
And so, Mother Nature is celebrated as a Goddess in the Indian wisdom tradition, where she is the consort and “other half” of a variety of Gods in a relationship of Consciousness and its inseparable, transformative creative energy.
And thus, we have the timeless archetypes of Shiva and Shakti; Bhairava and Bhairavi; Rama and Sita; and Krishna and Radha. In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, this reciprocity is reflected in the concept of Purusha and Prakriti.
The Goddess is of course central to the Ta***ic tradition or Shaktiism. Shakti is the reverberating, creative energy of Consciousness. She is worshipped under many names: Devi, Kundalini, Gayatri, Parvati, Tripura Sundari, Lalita, Kali, Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Uma, Prajnaparamita, and Tara… we can never possibly exhaust the epithets.
In his “Introduction to Ta**ra Shastra”, Sir John Woodroffe exquisitely captures the beauty of Devi as the ever-fecund Nature Goddess: “The Great Mother who exists in the form of all Ta**ras and all Yantras is, as the Lalita says, the unsullied treasure house of beauty, the Sapphire Devi, whose slender waist bending beneath the ripe fruit of her breasts, swells into jewelled hips, heavy with the promise of infinite maternities”.
As Shakti and her consort are in eternal embrace, there is no separation or dualism. She therefore is the one who can lead us to Enlightenment, Samadhi, Nirvana, the Self, whatever name we may wish to give the Un-Nameable.
She is “the Mother who introduces the spiritual child to the Father for illumination or self-realisation” (Swami Radha).
And so, on this Bealtaine feast day, let us give thanks to the gifts of Mother Nature, who in her hidden form is the Devi, ‘heavy with the promise of infinite maternities’, and whose grace reveals the One who resides behind the veil of manifestation.
Om Tat Sat.
Michael
