Discovering the Great Mother

[Guest guest]

Here is an interesting passage I found in a back issue of Hinduism

Today (Nov./Dec. 2000). It was written by one Sita Ram Goel, of Delhi:

 

"In my family, our women did keep some fasts, performed some rituals

and visited the temple and the Sivalinga, but the menfolk were mostly

convinced about the futility of image worship and did not normally

participate in any rituals. The brahmin priest was not seen in our

homes, except on occasions like marriage and death. I remember

vividly how lofty a view I took of my own nirguna doctrines and how I

looked down upon my classmates from [orthodox Hindu] families whose

ways I thought effeminate. I particularly disliked their going to the

annual mela (festival) of a Devi in a neighboring town. God for me

was a male person. Devi worship was a defilement of the true

faith. ...

 

"One day I told [a religious friend] how I had never been able to

accept the Devi, either as Sarasvati or as Lakshmi or as Durga or as

Kali. He smiled and asked me to meditate on the Devi that day. I

tried my best in my own way. Nothing happened for some time. Nothing

came my way. My mind was a big blank. But in the next moment the void

was filled with a sense of some great presence. I did not see any

concrete image. No words were whispered in my ears. Yet the rigidity

of a lifetime broke down and disappeared. The Great Mother was

beckoning her lost child to go and sit in her lap and feel safe from

all fears. We had a record of Dr. Govind Gopal Mukhopadhyaya's

sonorous stuti to the Devi. As I played it, I prayed to Her.

 

"My progress was not fast; nor did I go far. But I now felt sure that

this was the method by which I could rediscover for myself the great

truths of which the ancients had spoken in Hindu scriptures. It was

not the end of my seeking, which had only started in right earnest.

But it was surely the end of my wandering in search of a shore where

I could safely anchor my soul and take stock of my situation. ...

 

"The soul's hunger for absolute Truth, absolute Good, absolute Beauty

and absolute Power, I was told, was like the body's hunger for

wholesome food and drink. And that which satisfied this hunger of the

human soul, fully and finally, was Sanatana Dharma, true for all

times and climes. A votary of Sanatana Dharma did not need an

arbitrary exercise of will to put blind faith in a supernatural

revelation laid down in a single scripture. He did not need the

intermediacy of a historical prophet nor the help of an organized

church to attain salvation. Sanatana Dharma called upon its votary to

explore his own self in the first instance and see for himself the

truths expounded in sacred scriptures. Prophets and churches and

scriptures could be aids, but never the substitutes for self-

exploration, self-purification and self-transcendence.

 

"I had come back at last, come back to my spiritual home from which I

had wandered away in self-forgetfulness. ..."

 

For Goel's full account, see: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/2000/11-

12/2000-11-12.html