Ramakrishna's Vision of Kali Kali and the Gunas ?

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In a message dated 10/5/2004 12:49:26 PM Mountain Daylight Time,

malyavan_tibet writes:

> I was mentioning more of the rituals and types of people who worship

> kali.

>

> There are certain dieties to whom "bali" is performed. Sacrifice of

> animals etc. Kali worship has this. There are other devis which does

> not have these rituals.

>

> I am not saying one is good or bad, it is what it is.

>

> Aim Klim Svaha!

>

> :-)

>

 

Lots of people who worshipped Christ participated in Witch burnings and the

inquisition, but it would be wrong to assume that this is what Christ wanted

them to do. IT would be a misinterpretation of those involved in such crimes.

In the Old Testament of the Bible, blood sacrifice was made to please Yahweh,

and the one who made the sacrifice of Blood was not favored by God, rather the

one who made the sacrifice of grain. This also illustrates that what a

worshiper does to please a deity, is not necessarily pleasing to the deity.

 

Here is an excerpt on "Ramakrishna's Vision of Kali":

from a book called The Goddess Within" by J. Woolger: pp. 258-59 ( actually,

I hadn t read this yet, and just now found it, looking around for info on

Kali)

 

""The following is taken from the celebrated Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, the

most revered spiritual master of India in the nineteenth centurey. Ramakrishna

devoted his life to the goddess Kali and was granted all kinds of visions and

ecstasies(samadhi) by her. Here, in this summary of his amanuensis, Swami

Nikhilananda, is how the sage described attributes of the goddess ... ...

 

"...Kali is hte pivot, the soverieng Mistress. She is Prakriti [substance",

the Procreatrix, Nature, the Destroyer, the Creator. Nay, she is something

greater and deeper still for thsoe who have eyes to see. She is the Universal

Mother, "my Mother," as Ramakrishna would say, the All-Powerful, who reveals

Herself to Her children under different aspects and Divine Incarnations, the

Visible God, who leads the elect to the Invisible Reality; and if it so please

Her, She takes away the last trace of ego from created beings and merges it in

the consciousness of the Absolute, the undifferentiated God.

 

"To the ignorant She is, to be sure, the image of destructions; but

found in Her the benign, all-loving Mother, Her neck is encircled

with a

garland of heads, and Her waist with a girdle of human arms, and two of Her

hands hold weapons of death, and Her eyes dart a glance of fire, but, strangely

enough, Ramakrishna felt in her breath the soothing touch of tender love and

saw in Her the Seed of Immortality. She stands on the bosom of Her Consort

Shive; it is becasue she is the Shakti, the Power, inseparable from the

Absolute.

She is surrounded by jackals and other unholy creatures, the denizens of the

cremation ground. But is not the Ultimate reality above holiness and

unholiness? She appears to be reeling under the spell of wine. But who would

create

this mad world unless under the influence of a divine drunkenness. She

(Kali) is the highest symbols of all the forces of nature, the sythesis of

their

antnomies, the Ultimate Divine in the form of woman."

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, pp. 9-10, 12-13