Selection from "The Mother" By Sri Auribindo (III) (http://www.searchforlight.org)

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MahaLakshmi

 

 

 

 

 

 

MahaLakshmi

Wisdom and Force are not the only manifestations of the supreme Mother;

there is a subtler mystery of her nature and without it Wisdom and Force

would be incompetable things and without it perfection would not be

perfect.

 

Above them is the miracle of eternal beauty, an unseizable secret of

divine harmonies, the compelling magic of an irresistible universal charm

and attraction that draws and holds things and forces and beings together

and obliges them to meet and unite that a hidden Ananda may play from

behind the veil and make of them its rhythms and its figures. This is the

power of Mahalakshmi and there is no aspect of the Divine Shakti more

attractive to the heart of the embodied beings.

 

Maheshwari can appear too calm and great and distant for the littleness of

earthly nature to approach or contain her, Mahakali too swift and

formidable for its weakness to bear; but all turn with joy and longing to

Mahalakshmi.

 

For she throws the spell of the intoxicating sweetness of the Divine: to

be close to her is a profound happiness and to feel her within the heart

is to make the existence a rapture and a marvel; grace and charm and

tenderness flow from her like the light from the sun and wherever she

fixes her wonderful gaze or lets fall of the loveliness of her smile, the

soul is seized and made captive and plunged into the depths of an

unfathomable bliss.

 

Magnetic is the touch of her hands and their occult and delicate influence

refines the mind and life and body and where she presses her feet course

miraculous streams of an entrancing Ananda. And yet it is not easy to meet

the demand of this enchanting Power or to keep her presence.

 

Harmony and beauty of the mind and soul, harmony and beauty of the

thoughts and feelings, harmony and beauty in every outward act and

movement, harmony and beauty of the life and surroundings, this is the

demand of Mahalakshmi.

 

Where there is affinity to the rhythms of the secret world-bliss and

response to the call of the All-Beautiful and concord and unity and the

glad flow of many lives turned towards the Divine, in that atmosphere she

consents to abide. But all that is ugly and mean and base, all that is

poor and sordid and squalid, all that is brutal and coarse repels her

advent.

 

Where love and beauty are not or are reluctant to be born, she does not

come; where they are mixed and disfigured with baser things, she turns

soon to depart or cares little to pour her riches.

 

If she finds herself in men's hearts surrounded with selfishness and

hatred and jealousy and malignance and envy and strife, if treachery and

greed and ingratitude are mixed in the sacred chalice, if grossness of

passion and unrefined desire degrade devotion, in such hearts the gracious

and beautiful Goddess will not linger. A divine disgust seizes upon her

and she withdraws, for she is not one who insists or strives; or, veiling

her face, she waits for this bitter and poisonous devil's stuff to be

rejected and disappear before she will found anew her happy influence.

 

Ascetic bareness and harshness are nor to her not the suppression of the

heart's deeper emotions and the rigid repression of the soul's and the

life's parts of beauty. For it is through love and beauty that she lays on

men the yoke of the Divine.

 

Life is turned in her supreme creations into a rich work of celestial art

and all existence into a poem of sacred delight; the world's riches are

brought together and concerted for a supreme order and even the simplest

and commonest things are made wonderful by her intuition of unity and the

breath of her spirit.

 

Admitted to the heart she lifts wisdom to pinnacles of wonder and reveals

to it the mystic secrets of the ecstasy that surpassed all knowledge,

meets devotion with the passionate attraction of the Divine, teaches to

strength and force the rhythm that keeps the might of their acts

harmonious and in measure and casts on perfection the charm that makes it

endure for ever.