Swami Vivekananda on Shaktism

[Guest guest]

The Saktas worship the Universal Energy as Mother; it is the sweetest name they

know. The mother is the highest ideal of womanhood in India. [...]

 

Mother is the first manifestation of power and is considered a higher idea than

father. The name of mother brings the idea of Shakti, Divine energy and

omnipotence. The baby believes its mother to be all-powerful, able to do

anything. The Divine Mother is the Kundalini sleeping in us; without worshipping

Her, we can never know ourselves. All merciful, all-powerful, omnipresent -

these are attributes of the Divine Mother. She is the sum total of the energy in

the Universe.

 

Every manifestation of power in the universe is Mother. She is Life, She is

Intelligence, She is Love. She is in the universe, yet separate from it. She is

a person, and can be seen and known - as Sri Ramakrishna saw and knew Her.

Established in the idea of Mother, we can do anything. She quickly answers

prayers.

 

She can show Herself to us in any form at any moment. The Divine Mother can have

form (rupa) and name (nama), or name without form; and as we worship Her in

these various aspects, we can rise to Pure Being, having neither form nor name.

 

The sum-total of all the cells in an organism is one person. Each soul is like

one cell, and the sum of them is God. And beyond that is the Absolute. The sea

calm is the Absolute; the same sea in waves is the Divine Mother. She is time,

space and causation. Mother is the same as Brahman and has two natures; the

conditioned and the unconditioned. As the former, She is God, nature and soul.

As the latter, she is unknown and unknowable. Out of the Unconditioned came the

trinity, God, nature and soul - the triangle of existence.

 

A bit of Mother, a drop, was Krishna; another was Buddha. The worship of even

one spark of Mother in our earthly mother leads to greatness. Worship Her if you

want love and wisdom.

 

(Excerpt from "Inspired Talks, My Master and Other Writings, Wednesday, July 2,

1895, Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, New York, pp. 48-49.)