1000 Names of the Great Mother, Primordial Goddess, Holy Spirit or Ruh of Allah

[Guest guest]

1) SRI MATA

 

— Sacred Mother (feminine); the Seer, the Seen and the Seeing.

— The Knower; the Measurer (masculine)

— " For Whom all creatures are born. " Taittiriya Upanishad 3. 2

 

Sri Lalita Sahasranama, C. S. Murthy, Advertisers and Printers, 1989.

 

 

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" The mother is the most lovable person for a living being. A

child always calls upon his mother first when he is in difficulty.

But a biological mother, though a symbol of divinity, can only remove

physical difficulties and that too only partly. The Holy Mother is

the causative and creative force of the entire universe. She is

infinite and limitless. She is omnipresent both in forms and as

formless. She is all powerful to remove all kinds of sorrows and

sufferings.

 

Sri means Laksmi (goddess of wealth), Sarasvati (goddess of

learning), prosperity, beauty, success, decorated with jewels,

supreme intellect and one who can impart knowledge of vedas. Here

Sri refers to the power of speech and Sabda-brahman.

 

Sri-mata is the progenitor of all - whole universe, Nature, Brahma,

Vishnu, Mahesa. She is all supreme - Parabrahman. The three names of

the Divine Mother - mata, rajni and isvari refer to the three

phenomena of creation, preservation and destruction of the universe

due to three aspect of the supreme.

 

Om Sri-Matre namah "

 

R. Prasad, Lalita-Sahasranama

 

 

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" O Goddess, who removes the suffering of Your supplicants, be

gracious!

Be gracious, O Mother of the whole world!

Be gracious, O Queen of the universe; Safeguard the universe!

You, O Goddess, are Queen of all that is movable and unmovable!

You alone has become the support of the world,

Because You do subsist in the form of Earth!

By You, who exists in the form of water, all this universe is filled,

O You inviolable in Your valor; You are the Gem of the universe,

You are Illusion sublime! All this world has been bewitched, O

Goddess; You indeed when attained,

Are the cause of the final emancipation from existence on

Earth! . . . O Goddess, be gracious!

Protect us wholly from fear of our foes perpetually,

As You have at this very time saved us promptly by the slaughter of

the demons!

And You bring quickly to rest the sins of all the worlds,

And the great calamities which have sprung, from the maturing of

portents!

To us who are prostrate be You gracious,

O Goddess, who takes away affliction from the universe!

O You worthy of praise from the dwellers of the three worlds,

Bestow Your boons on this world!

 

Markendeya Purana, Candi Mahatmya 10

 

 

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They ask thee concerning the Spirit.

Say: " The Spirit (cometh) by command of my Lord:

Of knowledge it is only a little that is communicated to you. "

If it were Our Will, We could take away that which We have sent thee

by inspiration:

Then wouldst thou find none to plead thy affair in that matter

against Us.

 

surah 17: 85-86 Al Isra' (Night Journey)

Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an

 

 

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" In the primordial mysteries, the Feminine — whose nature we

have attempted to discern in the symbols and functions of its

elementary and transformative character — assumes a creative role

and so becomes the determining factor in early human culture.

Whereas the instinctual mysteries revolve around the central

elements of the life of woman — birth, menstruation, conception,

pregnancy, sexuality, climacteric, and death — the primordial

mysteries project a psychic symbolism upon the real world and so

transform it.

 

The mysteries of the feminine may be divided into mysteries of

preservation, formation, nourishment, and transformation. . . At all

stages of the primordial mysteries it is the central symbol of their

realization. . . . The woman is the natural nourishing principle and

hence mistress of everything that implies nourishment. . . . Thus

the transformative character o the Feminine rises from the natural

to the spiritual plane. The culture-bringing primordial mysteries

cultimate in a spiritual reality that completes the mystery

character of the Feminine. "

 

Erich Neumann, The Great Mother

 

 

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" The West is exiled of the Goddess — her features are unknown to

us, guessed at, hoped for, rejected as aberration, feared as

monstrous or deformed. We in the West are haunted by the loss of our

Mother. Our mother country is a place many have never visited,

though it is endlessly projected as a golden matriarchy, or

paradise, but though the house of the Goddess is in disrepair after

so many centuries of neglect, some have begun the work of

restoration while others have already moved back in and are

renovating from within. . .

 

Sophia is the great lost Goddess who has remained intransigently

within orthodox spiritualities. She is veiled, blackened, denigrated

and ignored most of the time: or else she is exalted, hymned and

pedestalled as an allegorical abstraction of female divinity. She is

allowed to be a messenger, a mediator, a helper, a handmaid; she is

rarely allowed the privilege of being seen to be in charge, fully

self-possessed and creatively operative.

 

Sophia is the Goddess for our time. By discovering her, we will

discover ourselves and our real response to the idea of a Divine

Feminine principle. When that idea is triggered in common

consciousness, we will begin to see an upsurge of creative

spirituality which will sweep aside the outworn dogmas and unlivable

spiritual scenarios which many currently inhabit. When Sophia walks

among us again, the temple of each heart will be inspirited for she

will be able to make her home among us properly; up to now, she has

been sleeping rough in just about every spirituality you can

name. . . .

 

Yet the Goddess of Wisdom is not a newcomer to our phenomenal world,

so how is it we have failed to notice her? The Western world has

been so busy about its affairs that only a few unusual people have

had time to comment on her existence. When they have talked or

written about her, it has been in such overblown esoteric language

that few had taken notice. Wisdom trades under impossible titles:

Mother of the Philosophers, the Eternal Feminine, Queen of Good

Counsel and other such nominations do not inspire confidence. . . .

 

Frequently reduced to God's secretary, who nevertheless still

supplies all the efficiency of the divine office, she is from all

time, the treasury of creation, the mistress of compassion.

 

When we speak of God, no one asks, `which God do you mean?'

as they do when we speak of the Goddess. The West no longer speaks

the language of the Goddess, because the concept has been almost

totally erased from consciousness, although many are trying to

remember it. Our ancestors were very young when they were taken from

the cradle and it is now difficult for us, their descendants, to

speak or think of a feminine deity without the unease of someone in

a foreign country. We have been raised to think of Deity as

masculine and therefore a goddess is a shocking idea. But we do not

speak here of a goddess, rather of the Goddess, and we speak it

boldly and with growing confidence, because we find we like the

taste of the idea.

 

When did we make up this idea? some ask. We didn't invent this

Goddess. She was always there, from the beginning, we tell them.

Somehow, humanity left home and forgot its mother. Perhaps our

ancestors took her for granted so much that they lost touch? Well,

our generation wants to come back home now and be part of the family

in a more loving way, because the West has still got a lot of

growing up to do and the Goddess has a lot to teach us.

 

What or who is the Goddess then? Deity is like colourless light,

which can be endlessly refractured through different prisms to

create different colours. As the poet William Blake said: `All

deities reside in the human breast.' The images and metaphors

which we use to describe deity often reflect the kind of society and

culture within which we have grown up. After two thousand years of

masculine images, the time of Goddess reclamation has arrived. The

Goddess is just as much Deity as Jesus, or Allah, or Jehovah. She

does not choose to appear under one monolithic shape, however. Each

person has a physical mother; similarly, the freedom of the Divine

Feminine to manifest in ways appropriate to each individual has

meant that she has many appearances.

 

The re-emergence of the Divine feminine — the Goddess — in

the twentieth century has begun to break down the conceptual

barriers erected by orthodox religion and social conservatism. For

the first time in two millennia, the idea of a Goddess as the

central pivot of creation is finding a welcome response. The reasons

are not difficult to seek: our technological world with its

pollution and imbalanced ecology has brought our planet face to face

with its own mortality; our insistence on the transcendence of Deity

and the desacralization of the body and the evidence of the senses

threatens to exile us from our planet.

 

The Goddess appears as a corrective to this world problems on many

levels. In past ages she has been venerated as the World-Soul or

spirit of the planet as well as Mother of the Earth. Her wisdom

offers a better quality of life, based on balanced nurturing of both

body and spirit, as well as satisfaction of the psyche. But we live

in a world in which the Goddess does not exist, for a vast majority

of people. They have no concept of a Deity as feminine. As Bede

Griffiths has recently written: `The feminine aspect of God as

immanent in creation, pervading and penetrating all things, though

found in the Book of Wisdom, has almost been forgotten . . . The

Asian religions with their clear recognition of the feminine aspect

of God and of the power of God, the divine shakti permeating the

universe, may help us to get a more balanced view of the created

process. Today we are beginning to discover that the earth is a

living being, a Mother who nourishes us and of whose body we are

members.' . . .

 

Significantly, the major mystics of all faiths have perceived Sophia

as the bridge between everyday life and the world of the eternal,

often entering into deep accord with her purpose. But though such

mystics as the medieval Abbeses Hildegard of Bingen or the Sufi, Ibn

Arabi, are hardly considered to be `Goddess-worshippers' in

the feminist sense, they nevertheless show that the channels of the

Divine Feminine have been kept open and mediated upon by many so-

called patriarchal faiths. "

 

C. Matthews, Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom,

The Aquarian Press, 1992, p. 5-9.

 

 

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" But today it is the day I declare I am the One who have to save the

humanity. I declare I am the One who is Adi Shakti (Holy Spirit or

Ruh of Allah), who is the Mother of all Mothers, who is the

Primordial Mother, the Shakti of the Desire of God who has

incarnated on this Earth to give meaning to itself, to this

Creation, to human beings. And I am sure that through My love and

patience and My powers I am going to achieve it.

 

I was the One who was born again and again. But now I have come in

My complete form and with complete powers. I have come to this Earth

not only for salvation of human beings, not only for their

emancipation, but for granting them the Kingdom of Heaven, the Joy,

the Bliss that your Father (God, Allah, Sadashiva) wants to bestow

upon you. "

 

Shri Puratana Devi

United Kingdom — December 2, 1979

 

(Purantana [810st]: Primordial or Ancient)

 

 

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" I am the Adi Shakti (the Holy Spirit or Ruh of Allah). I am the

One who has come on this Earth for the first time in this Form to do

this tremendous task . The more you understand this the better it

would be. You will change tremendously.

 

I knew I'll have to say that openly one day and we have said it.

But now it is you people who have to prove it that I am that! "

 

Shri Adi-Shakti Devi

Sydney, Aust. — March 21, 1983

 

(Adi-Shakti [615th]: Primal Power; being the First Cause.)

[Guest guest]

2) SRI MAHARAJNI

 

— Great Empress

— " By Whom all creatures live. " Taittiriya Upanishad 3. 1

 

Sri Lalita Sahasranama, C. S. Murthy, Ass. Ad. and Printers, 1989.

 

 

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" The holy Mother (Srimata.)

 

The mother is usually called upon in times of sorrow; but our

natural mothers are not able to remove the three kinds of pain

(tapatraya.) Great men have said: " Since I have had many thousands

of births, I have had many mothers; many also have been my fathers;

I know not how many I am yet to have in the future; and their number

is beyond my calculation. O Treasure-house of compassion! Save me,

who am overpowered with fear and have no other refuge, from the vast

and disastrous ocean of samsara. " The greatest World-Mother is the

only one who is capable of removing the endless misery (of

existence.) We praise Her as the Mother so that She may be induced

to show mercy to us. "

 

R. Ananthakrishna Sastry, Sri Lalita-sahasranama

 

 

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After all their reading, the Pandits, the religious scholars, and

the astrologers argue and debate.

Their intellect and understanding are perverted; They just don't

understand. They are filled with greed and corruption.

Through 8.4 million incarnations they wander, lost and confused;

Through all their wandering and roaming, they are ruined.

They act according to their pre-ordained destiny, which no one can

erase.

It is very difficult to serve the True Inner Guru.

Surrender your head; give up your selfishness.

Realizing the Shabad, one meets with the Lord, and all one's service

is accepted.

By personally experiencing the Personality of the Inner Guru,

One's own personality is uplifted, and one's light merges into the

Light.

Those who have such pre-ordained destiny, come to meet the True

Inner Guru.

O mind, don't cry out that you are hungry, always hungry; stop

complaining.

The One who created the 8.4 million species of beings, gives

sustenance to all.

The Fearless Lord is forever Merciful; She takes care of all.

O Nanak, the Gurmukh understands, and finds the Door of Liberation.

Those who hear and believe, find the home of the self deep within.

Through the Inner Guru's Teachings, they praise the True Lord;

They find the Lord, the Treasure of Excellence.

 

Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Siree Raag, Third Mehl, p. 27.

 

 

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" The experiential core of 'Hinduism' can be intellectually and

discursively understood through the classes and reading with which

we have been involved throughout the semester. However, there is a

point to which there is a gap in understanding, a point at which one

may become frustrated at not being able to clearly articulate or

fully understand the material at hand. This is the gap which lies

between the knowledge experience, between studying what we are

studying and experiencing what we are studying. Each person has

moments of clarity in her/his life; moments in which, for an

instant, everything falls perfectly into place and there is not a

trace of effort to understand what was once the mind's struggle.

Sitting in the Sri Rajarajeswari Peetham, closing my eyes, and

allowing the beautiful Lalita's mantra penetrate my be g caused a

subtle, yet incredibly palpable, shift to occur inside of me. For an

instant, I felt the essence of the mantra, that of the goddess'

subtle form, that of the entire universe. I will not attempt to

describe this inexplicable moment. I would rather leave it in the

hands of whomever so chooses to experience this crystal clarity of

consciousness for her/himself. "

 

Rebecca L Thomas, www.rochester.edu/

 

 

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" Shakti is the hidden power that turns matter into life. She is

the divine spark, the flow of God's love.

 

Anyone who is connected with spirit has Shakti, which manifests in

five ways that the God Herself manifests. (For the sake of

simplicity I will use the word God and apply feminine pronouns

whenever I have the goddess Shakti in mind.) As described in the

ancient Shiva Sutras — " teaching about Shiva " — these are

five powers:

 

Chitta Shakti: the awareness of God

Ananda Shakti: the bliss of God

Icha Shakti: the desire or intention to unite with God

Gyana Shakti: knowledge of God

Kriya Shakti: action directed toward God

 

If the voice of God spoke to you, Her powers would be conveyed in

simple, universal phrases:

 

Chitta Shakti: " I am. "

Ananda Shakti: " I am blissful. "

Icha Shakti: " I will " or " I intend. "

Gyana Shakti: " I know. "

Kriya Shakti: " I act. "

 

If a child came to me and asked, " How did God make me? " these five

things would be my answer, because this is how God made Herself, or

at least made Herself known to us, and at each stage of giving birth

a new exclamation of discovery emerged. First She experienced

Herself as existence ( " I am! " ), then creative joy ( " I am

blissful! " ), pulsing desire ( " I will! " ), cosmic mind ( " I know! " ),

and finally the shaping force that molds all things ( " I act!).

Because none of these except " I am " had ever existed before, each

came as a revelation.

 

All of these qualities have universal application . . . These five

powers form a cascade, spilling like water from unmanifest spirit to

the material world. Tagore employed almost the same analogy when he

poetically asked, " Where is this fountain that throws out these

flowers in such a ceaseless outbreak of ecstasy? " In one beautiful

line he states the mystery precisely. What is the origin of the

infinite display of nature's abundance? The flowers are outside,

but the fountain is inside, in divine essence. To realize this you

must become that fountain; you must have the assurance that the flow

of life can gush through your being at full force. This state of

connection is supreme existence. When you join the cosmic dance, the

powers of God as creator-mother fully infuse you. "

 

 

Deepak Chopra, The Path of Love

 

 

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" Ruh: " The Spirit, " Cf. 78:38, " the Spirit and the angels " ; and

97:4, " the angels and the Spirit. " In 16:2, we have translated Ruh

by " inspiration. " Some Commentators understand the angel Gabriel

by " the Spirit. " But I think a more general meaning is possible, and

fits the context better. "

 

Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an

 

 

We gave Moses the Book and followed him up with a succession of

Messengers;

We gave Jesus, the son of Mary, Clear (Signs) and strengthened him

with the Holy Spirit.

 

Surah 2:87, Al Baqarah (The Heifer)

 

 

Those Messengers we endowned with gifts, some above others:

To one of them Allah spoke; others He raised to degrees (of honour);

To Jesus, the son of Mary, we gave Clear (Signs), and strengthened

him with the Holy Spirit.

 

Surah 2:253, Al Baqarah (The Heifer)

 

 

O People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion: nor say

of Allah aught but the truth.

Christ Jesus the son of Mary was a Messenger of Allah, and His Word,

which He bestowed on Mary,

And a Spirit proceeding from Him.

 

Surah 4:171, Al Nisa (The Women)

 

 

Then will Allah say: " O Jesus the son of Mary!

Recount My favour to thee and to thy mother.

Behold! I strengthened thee with the Holy Spirit,

So that thou didst speak to the people in childhood and in maturity.

 

Surah 5:110, Al Ma'idah (The Repast)

 

 

When I have fashioned him and breathed into him of My Spirit,

fall ye down in obeisance unto him.

 

Surah 15:29, Al Hijr (The Rock)

 

 

Say: The Holy Spirit has brought the revelation from thy Lord in

Truth, in order to strengthen those who believe and as a Guide and

Glad Tidings to Muslims.

 

Surah 16:102, Al Nahl (The Bee)

 

 

Verily this is a Revelation from the Lord of the Worlds: With it

came down the Spirit of Faith and Truth —To thy heart and mind,

that thou mayest admonish in the perspicuous Arabic tongue.

Without doubt it is (announced) in the Revealed Books of the former

peoples.

 

Surah 26:192-196, Al Shu'ara (The Poets)

 

 

But he fashioned him in due proportion, and breathed into him

something of His Spirit.

And He gave you (the facilities of) hearing and sight and feeling

(and understanding): Little thanks do ye give!

 

Surah 32:9, Al Sadjah (The Prostration)

 

 

When I fashioned him (in due proportion) and breathed into him of My

Spirit, fall ye down in obeisance unto him.

 

Surah 38:72, Sad (Sad)

 

Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an, Amana Corporation, 1989

 

 

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" Adi Shakti's Power is divine; is described in every

religion; same in Islam called Ruh. In Bible is called the All-

Pervading Power. It's called as Alak — that cannot be seen;

Niranjana, the One that is beyond any attachment . . .

 

All these words are used for this Divine Power. People have heard

about it; people have sung about it but unfortunately very few

people felt it. And when they felt it they didn't know how to

give it to others; how to make others feel it.

 

So whatever they talked became sort of story or some nonsensical

thing. Nobody could believe that they have felt anything like that

or could imagine that there is such a Power really existing.

 

Now luckily it has become quite a universal fact for all of you —

that you know there is this Power. You are sure about this Power

because you can feel it within yourself. And when you feel it you

feel very joyous . . . the Power of Adi Shakti — She tells you

the Truth. "

 

Shri Adi Shakti Devi

Cabella, Italy — June 9, 1996