Kahlil Gibran: The Mother, the prototype of all existence, is the Eternal Spirit.

[Guest guest]

, " Violet "

<violet.tubb wrote:

>

> " The philosopher Muid ad-Din ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240) saw a young

> girl in Mecca surrounded by light and realised that, for him, she

> was an incarnation of the divine Sophia. He believed that women

> were the most potent icons of the sacred, because they inspired a

> love in men which must ultimately be directed to God, the only

> true object of love. "

>

> Dear Jagbir,

>

> i also remember Shri Mataji saying that it will be mainly the

> women who will bring in this New Age; who will do most of the

> spiritual work. (This saying of SM's has always puzzled me,

> because i know that men do the spiritual work, too!)

>

 

" And I have to specially make a very important request to the women

that in these modern times they are the ones who are going to save

the world, not the men. They have done their job before.

 

Now it is for you to save with your understanding, with your

compassion, with your sacrifices, with your wisdom, and innate love

not only your children, your husband, your family, but the whole

world. It is a very great opportunity for all of you to do your

bit....

 

The whole Cosmos, just in complete respectful attendance, is waiting

for their arrival. "

 

Sri Mataji Nirmala Devi

Cambridge, U.K. — June 1988

 

 

The Eve Of Destruction

The Guardian

15 February, 2004

 

Still reeling from last year's virulent dispute about the foiled

appointment of its first gay bishop, the Anglican community is now

faced with another potentially irreversible split. Forward in Faith,

a group opposed to women priests, has proposed the idea of a

province separate from but parallel to Canterbury and York, with its

own exclusively male hierarchy. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of

Canterbury, has apparently hinted that he would be prepared to

consider this suggestion, designed to prevent a mass exodus from the

church when women are consecrated as bishops.

 

More liberal Anglicans condemn the plan as a form of sexual

apartheid, even though Forward in Faith has 4,000 women members.

Nevertheless, the new province would represent a male bastion in a

world in which women are increasingly entering spheres that were

formerly the preserve of men. The fantasy of an all-male enclave is

not new in the history of religion. In the ancient world, women

often served alongside men as priests. This did not affect their

inferior social status, but they were regarded as worthy

representatives of the divine. That changed during the axial age,

from circa 800BCE to 200BCE, when all the world faiths that have

continued to nourish humanity came into being at roughly the same

time.

 

These axial religions hold many values in common, but they all share

a fateful flaw. Wherever an axial faith took root, the position of

women underwent a downward turn. Most of these religions had an

egalitarian ethos, but they were and have remained essentially male

spiritualities. Confucius, for example, seemed entirely indifferent

to women; Socrates was not a family man. In India, the Jain and

Buddhist orders were irenic forms of the ancient Aryan military

brotherhoods, and though nuns were permitted to join, in a second-

class capacity, many felt that the presence of women was

inappropriate. Even the Buddha, who did not usually succumb to this

type of prejudice, declared that women would fall upon his order

like mildew on a field of rice.

 

Such misogyny damages the integrity of faiths that insist that male

and female are both created in God's image and that all human beings

are capable of attaining nirvana, knowledge of Brahman or the Tao.

Yeshivas, madrasahs, seminaries, monastic orders and colleges of

cardinals are all-male clubs that rigorously exclude women. This

chauvinism infects the spirituality of the faithful, male and female

alike. Male Jews are supposed to thank God daily for not creating

them women; every Christmas, Christians sing " Lo! He abhors not the

Virgin's womb " , as though Jesus's tolerance of the female body was

an act of extraordinary condescension on his part.

 

Even when there was an initial attempt to introduce greater sexual

equality, men hijacked the faith and dragged it back to the old

patriarchy. This happened in both Christianity and Islam, latter-day

reassertions of axial age monotheism. The Prophet Mohammed, for

example, was anxious to emancipate women and they were among his

first converts. The Koran teaches that men and women have exactly

the same responsibilities and duties, and gives women rights of

inheritance and divorce that we would not enjoy in the west until

the 19th century. There is nothing in the Koran about the veiling of

all women or their confinement in harems. This practice came into

Islam some three or four generations after the Prophet, under the

influence of the Greek Christians of Byzantium, who had long covered

and secluded their women in this way.

 

Jesus would have been surprised by the confinement of women. Both he

and St Paul had women disciples. They did not ordain them as

priests, because there was no Christian priesthood until the third

century. The early Christians espoused a revolutionary

egalitarianism; a priestly hierarchy was too reminiscent of Judaism

and paganism, which they were beginning to leave behind. Those who

today condemn women's ordination as a break with tradition should be

aware that priesthood and episcopacy are themselves innovations that

depart from the practice of the primitive church.

 

The gospels give women a good press: it is the women who stand by

Jesus throughout the crucifixion, while his male disciples are

skulking in hiding, and it is women who receive the first news of

the resurrection and bring it to the men. They were, it is often

said, " apostles to the apostles " . St Paul proclaimed that in Christ

there was neither male nor female. Most of the misogynist passages

attributed to Paul are taken from epistles written decades after his

death, when Christianity was beginning to retreat from its early

radicalism.

 

Once this had happened, Christianity found issues of sex and gender

more difficult than any other faith. Some of the fathers of the

church seemed totally unable to deal with women, and attacked them

in vicious, immoderate and, indeed, unchristian language. Because

they believed that celibacy was the prime Christian vocation, they

projected their own frustration on to women, whom they castigated as

evil temptresses. Tertullian told women to shroud their bodies in

veils and make themselves as unattractive as possible. He blamed

them for the sin of Eve: " You are the devil's gateway ... because of

you the Son of God had to die! "

 

Many of the fathers wanted to make the church a male enclave. St

Augustine told his priests to shun the company of women, even if

they were sick or in trouble. Even mothers were not safe: " It is

still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in every woman. " The

fathers' ideal woman was a virgin, who had renounced her sexuality

and thereby become an honorary male. Some women, such as Joan of Arc

or Catherine of Siena, exploited this symbolism and used their

virginity as an entrée into the male spheres of war and politics,

but in general virgins were supposed to retreat from the world and

leave it to men. They would eventually be locked away in enclosed

convents.

 

Later St Thomas Aquinas saw women as biologically flawed, " defective

and misbegotten " , and thus inherently inferior to the male sex, to

whom it was their duty to submit. Even Luther, who left his

monastery to marry, believed that, as a punishment for the sin of

Eve, women must be driven from the world of men and confined in the

home " as a nail is driven into the wall " . Protestantism made

Christianity more male than ever; by abolishing the cults of the

Virgin Mary and the women saints, it banished all female imagery

from the Christian consciousness.

 

Forward in Faith's dream of an exclusively male preserve draws its

strength from a Christian tradition of denial, frustration and

disgust that can by no stretch of the imagination be regarded as

spiritually wholesome. In all the world faiths, women are trying to

redress the pernicious chauvinism that has tainted their traditions.

We are now living in a world that is perilously torn apart by

religious extremism. We can no longer afford faith that feeds in any

way upon hatred, exclusion and disdain. Before we condemn the

bigotry of other traditions, we should try to heal the prejudice

that has damaged our own.

 

The Eve Of Destruction

Karen Armstrong is the author of The Battle for God

 

 

>

> However, maybe She was highlighting the Divine Feminine (in women)

> in the sense that the above quote describes women as " the most

> potent icons of the sacred, because they inspire a love in men

> which must ultimately be directed to God, the only true object of

> love " .

>

 

All that is changeable is but reflected;

The unattainable here is effected;

Human discernment here is passed by;

The Eternal-Feminine draws us on high.

 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Faust

 

 

Woman-Saviour now we muster

To await thy advent sure,

In the cluster of thy lustre,

Come and leave the earth no more?

Then before thy gentle look,

Swords shall quail and warriors fail,

And the spear, a shepherd's crook,

Shall adorn the daisied dale.

Woman-power! Incarnate love!

Human Goddess come and be,

If the Bridegroom's tears can move,

Bride unto Humanity.

Thou alone of all can save us

Let us be what thou would have us!

 

Goodwyn Barmby, The Woman-power (1842), English radical

 

 

The Muse of the New Era, as our grand-grandchildren, or an even later

generation will know her, when will she reveal herself? What will

she look like, what will she sing? Which strings of the soul will she

vibrate? Till which height will she elevate her Era?

 

Hans Christian Andersen, The New Century's Goddess (1861),

Danish writer

 

 

Let it be known: today the Eternal Feminine

In an incorruptible body is descending to Earth.

In the unfading light of the new Goddess

Heaven has become one with the depths.

 

Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900), Russian philosopher

 

 

It was generally considered, at the turn of the next century, that

the next Divine incarnation was about to come to earth and would be

female, the advent of Divine Wisdom, or Theo-Sophia, and that the

present age would be the age of making known all that which has been

kept secret from the beginning.

 

Lady Caithness, The Mystery of the Ages (1887), French theosophist

 

 

The word which shall come to save the world, shall be uttered by a

woman. A woman shall conceive, and shall bring forth the tidings of

salvation. For the reign of Adam is at its last hour; and God shall

crown all things by the creation of Eve.

 

Anna Kingsford, Clothed with the sun (1889), English theosophist

 

 

There is no line of work or study which woman in the West does

not undertake and does not accomplish as well as man. Even in

social and political activities, in religion, in spiritual ideas, she

excels man. … I can see as clear as daylight that the hour is

coming when woman will lead humanity to a higher evolution.

 

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927), Indian Sufi in the West

 

 

A great era has begun: the spiritual " awakening " , the increasing

tendency to regain " lost balance " , the inevitable necessity of

spiritual plantings, the unfolding of the first blossom. We are

standing at the threshold of one of the greatest epochs that mankind

has ever experienced, the epoch of great spirituality.

 

Vassily Kandinsky/ Franz Marc, Blaue Reiter Almanac (1911), abstract

artists

 

 

The Cycle of the Children. It is impossible to gauge the significance

of the present time or to realize what is in store for humanity

during the next hundred years, merely from our own experience and

from recorded history. For this is no ordinary time. It is not

simply the culminating point of the past hundred years, but of

thousands of years; the night of centuries has passed, and with the

new dawn comes the return of memories and powers and possibilities

of an age long past.

 

Katherine Tingley, The Path of the Mystic (1922), American

theosophist

 

 

The Father has not saved the world,

The Son has not saved it,

The Mother shall save it;

The Mother is the Holy Spirit.

 

Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, The Mystery of Three (1925), Russian exile in

France

 

 

We are entering the cycle of epochs when the feminine soul will

become increasingly pure and broad, when more and more women will

become deep inspirers, sensible mothers, and wise and visionary

leaders. This will be the cycle of epochs when the feminine

component of humanity will manifest itself with unprecedented

strength, balancing the previous dominance of masculine forces in a

perfect harmony.

 

Daniil Andreev, Roza Mira (completed 1958), Russian dissident

 

 

>

> Therefore, could Shri Mataji really have been referring to

> the " Divine Feminine " in women which was 'going to do most of the

> spiritual work' than to literally mean that women are going to do

> most of the spiritual work at this time?

>

> That would make sense to me then, because when the Divine Feminine

> is awakened in men, they become 'spiritually balanced' with a

> balance of both masculine (and feminine) qualities.

>

 

Dear Violet,

 

i believe Shri Mataji to be referring to women in general. But those

making the greatest contributions will be those blessed with

esoteric knowledge, who know about the Divine Feminine and are One

with Her within. This takes a long time to manifest because there is

much conditioning to be overcome, knowledge acquired to confirm and

establish deep faith in the Holy Scriptures, the senses withdrawn,

and Silence sustained. As more and more women begin to relate to the

Divine Feminine in similar fashion humanity as a whole will benefit.

It is indeed a very great opportunity for all women to do their bit,

and help trigger the critical mass required for this global

awakening. The whole Cosmos, just in complete respectful attendance,

is waiting for their arrival.

 

You are absolutely correct Violet that " when the Divine Feminine is

awakened in men, they become 'spiritually balanced' with a balance

of both masculine (and feminine) qualities. " It is without question

required by men in any spiritual pursuit. As a male i understood

women better when my daughter told me that we humans have three

mothers - the physical mother who gave birth, the spiritual Mother

within who nourishes and guides us, and Mother Earth who sustains

all life. Women are the Creative Power of the Divine Feminine.

 

But to begin the spiritual journey back to the Divine Feminine within

knowledge is the key to unlock the spiritual secrets and parables:

 

 

" First there was the sea, everything was dark.

There was no sun, no moon, nor people, nor animals, nor plants.

The sea was the Mother. The Mother was not the people, nor anything.

She was the Spirit of what had come and She was Awareness and

Memory. "

 

Belief of Pre-Colombian Kogin Tribe

 

 

" O Mother of Imupa, advocate for the whole [feminine] world! What a

remarkable Mother I have!

O Mother, a pillar, a refuge! O Mother, to whom all prostrate in

greeting

Before one enters Her habitation! I am justly proud of my Mother.

O Mother who arrives, Who arrives majestic and offers water to all! "

Yoruba Prayer (Nigeria)

 

The Valley Spirit never dies. It is named the Mysterious Female.

And the Doorway of the Mysterious Female is the base from which

Heaven and Earth sprang.

It is there within us all the while; Draw upon it as you will, it

never runs dry.

 

Tao Te Ching 6

(source: World Scripture, International Religious Foundation,

Paragon House Publishing, 1995 p. 95.)

 

 

" The Mother is everything - She is our consolation in sorrow, our

hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of

love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness. The sun is the mother of the

Earth and gives its nourishment of heat; it never leaves the

universe at night until it has put the Earth to sleep to the song of

the sea and the hymn of the birds and brooks. And this Earth is the

mother of the trees and flowers. It produces them, nurses them, and

weans them. The trees and flowers become kind mothers of their great

fruits and seeds. And the Mother, the prototype of all existence, is

the Eternal Spirit, full of beauty and love. "

 

Kahlil Gibran, Broken Wings, trans. Anthony R. Ferris, Citadel

Press, 1962.

 

 

" Our exile has not only been from the Goddess, but also from Nature.

It is not surprising, considering that most Westerners live apart

from their environment, protected by concrete roadways, consuming

machine-processed foods and filled with media information to the

detriment of the experience of our own senses. The seasons go by

unnoticed, we seldom touch the earth, eat fresh food or observe the

world personally — media input and journalism provide our

informational diet. The sacred is a forgotten dimension in our

society which we ignore at our peril.

 

Earth-honoring is an integral part of the native traditional

religions, who have never deviated from a vision of the whole of

creation as sacred. As we begin slowly — perhaps too slowly — to

assess this primal nurture, we realize that the native traditions

have much wisdom to teach us, and this may, in turn, stimulate our

own.

 

Maybe the return of the Goddess among us heralds the marriage of

humanity with Nature, the necessary resacralization which must

precede any marriage between humanity and the Divine....

 

The current ecological trend has alarmed many traditionalists who

see it as endangering the real business of spirituality — that of

saving the soul. Let them be assured: global restatement of the

earth's holiness can only enhance the human spiritual vocation.

The native spiritualities of the world point the way in which we

might approach our earth-honouring and make relations of the whole

creation. In 1890, 153 native Americans gathered together to perform

a Ghost Dance to gain a vision of a world healed of the evil works

of white civilization. Their massacre is remembered by white

Westerners as the Battle of Wounded Knee. One hundred years later, a

group of white people of assorted spiritual allegiance gathered

outside the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, to re-enact

the Lakota ceremony of `Making of Relatives', in memory of Wounded

Knee. At the ceremony's heart was this invocation:

 

Grandmother Earth, hear us! The two-legged, the four-legged, the

winged and all that move upon You and Your children. With all beings

and all things we shall be relatives; just as we are related to You,

O Mother, so we shall make a peace with one another and shall be

related to them. May we walk with love and mercy upon the path which

is holy! O Grandmother and Mother, help us in making relatives and a

lasting peace here!

 

This is truly the work of the New Isis — the Sophianic re-assembling

of earth-wisdom, scraps of whose garment blow about the world in

rags and tatters of glory. We may be privileged to live through this

time and see, if not Sophia unveiled, a glimpse of her doxa. The

native traditions teach us that without a whole view of the world,

we can be both presumptuous and stupid — the complete reverse of

wise. "

 

Caitlín Matthews, Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom,

The Aquarian Press, 1992, p. 326-27.

 

 

Some say She is Uma, others call Her Laksmi; And others again say

that She is Bharati, Girija, Ambika,

Durga, Bhadrakali, Candi, Avidya, Maya, Prakrti and Para. Thus say

the great rsis.

 

Br. Naradiya Purana

 

 

O wise one, this is the established doctrine concerning Devi; She is

the Vedas, the sacrifices, the heaven and all this universe;

The universe, immovable as well as movable, is pervaded by the Devi.

She is all that is sacrificed to and worshipped by the Devas; And

She is all that is food and drink;

Manifold in form and name, Devi is everywhere - In trees, in the

Earth, in the air, in the ether, in water, and in fire.

 

Devi Purana

 

 

It is impossible, O Sage, for me to enumerate,

The countless names of Devi in hundred crores of Kalpas.

 

Skanda Purana

 

 

What can I say? Devi has countless names, which have been composed

by Brahma and other Devatas

According to Her different qualities and doings.

 

Devi-bhagavata Purana

 

 

If one aspirant thinks in his mind one single name of Hers, in that

moment he knows the chakra of the Mother, O beloved one.

 

Vamakesvara-tantra

 

 

O, Mother of the Universe, those who praise you by the words:

ambika, jaganmayi and maya, will obtain all.

 

Kalika Purana

 

 

Those who prostrating their bodies praise You by the words:

Maya, durga, vedagarbha, amba, bhadra, bhadrakali, ksemya,

ksemamkari, in the mornings and evenings,

Will obtain all the desired objects by My Grace.

 

Visnu Purana

 

 

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, (The Night Journey)

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

 

 

" Sophia is a living being. She is a being who is the divine Mother

of humanity, a being who is now drawing close to humanity at this

time of crisis; a being who, through immense love for every human

being on this planet, is concerned with finding a way forward out of

the impasse into which we have come. "

 

Robert Powell (Audio excerpt from The Sophia Teachings)

 

 

" Indeed, the absence of feminine symbolism for God marks Judaism,

Christianity, and Islam in striking contrast to the world's other

religious traditions, whether in Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, and Rome,

or in Africa, India, and North America, which abound in feminine

symbolism....

 

The Greek terminology for the Trinity, which includes the neuter

term for spirit (pneuma) virtually requires that the third " Person "

of the Trinity be asexual. But the author of the Secret Book has in

mind the Hebrew term for spirit, ruah, a feminine word; and so

concludes that the feminine " Person " conjoined with the Father and

Son must be the Mother. The Secret Book goes on to describe the

divine Mother: ... (She is)... the image of the invisible, virginal,

perfect spirit ... She became the Mother of everything, for she

existed before them all, the mother-father [matropater] ...16

The Gospel to the Hebrews likewise has Jesus speak of " my Mother,

the Spirit. " 17 In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus contrasts his Earthly

parents, Mary and Joseph, with his divine Father - the Father of

Truth - and his divine Mother, the Holy Spirit. "

 

(16. Apocryphon of John 4.34-5.7, in NHL 101. 17. Gospel to the

Hebrews, cited in Origen, COMM. JO. 2.12.)

 

Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels,

Random House Inc. New York, 1989, p. 48-52.

 

 

" The Hebrew word used to denominate God in Genesis is Elohim. This

word is plural from the feminine singular ALH (Eloh) by adding IM to

it. Since IM is the termination of the masculine plural, added to a

feminine noun it makes ELOHIM a female potency united to a male

principle, and thus capable of having an offspring. The same

intended misconception is given in the Christian idea of the Holy

Trinity: Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. In the Kabbalah the Deity

manifests simultaneously as Mother and Father and thus begets the

Son. We are told that the Holy Spirit is essentially masculine, but

the Hebrew word used in the Scriptures to denote spirit is Ruach, a

feminine noun. the Holy Spirit is really the Mother, and thus the

Christian Trinity properly translated should be Father, Son and

Mother. (Migene Gonzalez-Wippler, A Kabbalah For The Modern World.) "

 

The Joy of Sects, Peter Occhiogrosso,

Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1996 p. 243.

 

 

" As we now move to other ancient scriptures let us not be blinded

by " religious " parochialism. A mind overly conditioned by the

fatherly connotation of the Judeo-Christian tradition will, at

first, have some difficulty at the conception of the Divine in the

feminine form of the Mother. And yet, the cult of the Motherhood of

God, from time immemorial, has been attested by archaeological

evidence from all quarters of the globe. It seems that it is the

Indian subcontinent which presents us with the most elaborate

expressions of this worship.

 

According to Advaita Vedanta Ultimate Reality is formless

undifferentiated consciousness (Nirguna.) This condition, which is

at the same time the Absolute Being and Absolute Nothingness1 cannot

be conceived of. Through eons of ages, it goes through alternate

phases of potentiality and manifestation. The alternation of this

cosmic rhythm has been called: " the respiration of Brahma. " When the

ultimate reality rests in its latent phase, the Unmanifested, it is

contained in " IT. " In the activating phase of its manifestation,

the " IT " becomes " He " and " HeR " ; HH Mataji says that the first step

of the Creation takes place when God separates itself into Himself

as a witness and Herself as His power. One aspect is Sadashiva (The

Primordial Existent and Witness, God the Almighty, the Father, the

Purusha); the other is His power, the Adi Shakti, (The Primordial

Energy of Divine Love, the Divine Mother, the Prakriti.)2 Thus the

Mother is the Primordial Energy . . . The Creation, spiritual and

material, springs from the Divine Mother, the Holy Spirit of the

Christian tradition. She creates various strata of existence, among

which is this phenomenal universe. As this Primordial Energy is the

genitrix of everything we experience, She is worshipped as the

Sacred Mother. We read in the first sutras of the Kama-Kalavilasa:

 

" Victory to Her the Primordial Power, the seed from which sprouts

hereafter the entire creation, static and kinetic universes, the

eternal, the incomparable, who is of the nature of Her own bliss,

and who manifests as a mirror to His (Shiva) self. "

 

The Samaya Mata recalls that the distinction between He and Her is

only an apparent one: " There is no Shiva without Shakti nor is there

any Shakti without Shiva. There is no distinction between them just

as there is none between the moon and the shining. " The Shakti

combines in Her person both the manifestation of the Universal

Existence (male form) and the Universal Energy (female form.) She is

thus identified with the One. The actualisation of this primordial

unity within the disciple is the object of the Shakti worship. She

is the central object of worship because She is the manifested

dimension of the Ultimate. She is the Great One who bridges the gap

between the Infinity and the Finite; only through Her compassionate

meditation can the finite human being regain Infinity. And that is

indeed the very blessing that She wants to graciously bestow on Her

children.

 

" Thyself, with a view of manifesting Thyself in the form of the

Universe, inwardly assumest the form of Consciousness and Bliss. " -

Shri Shankaracharya, Saundarya Lahari 35

 

Let us again remember that the Holy Spirit, as the Primordial

Energy, is the Christian mysterious symbol for the Mother.

We ought to mention, that in the apocryphal Acts of Saint Thomas,

the Holy Spirit is (rightly) invoked as " hidden Mother, " " Mother of

all life. " These statements should help us to recognize the true

wisdom of the early gnostics and Syrian fathers who grasped

something of the identity (Holy Spirit = Mother = Energy.) The

esoteric perception certainly casts a new light on the intriguing

dialogue between Lord Jesus Christ and Nicodemus:

 

" Truly, Truly, I say to you unless one is born anew, he cannot see

the Kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, " how can a man be born

when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb

and be born? " Jesus answered " Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one

is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of God " -

John 3.3

 

The necessity to return to the Divine Mother in order to become a

New Adam, a second born, a Divine Child has been asserted by Lord

Jesus. It is time that those western seekers who have engaged

themselves in intellectual pursuits use their intellect to discover

the Unity of the message of the various mythologies and religions;

they had better realize the greatness of the Christian promise and

the value of the other world religions. HH Mataji has brilliantly

exposed those teachings in a new light which also illuminates the

other religious traditions and contemporary science. It is time for

us to discover that the true object of Knowledge is integration. All

the great religions are one. This is revealed by actualization when

our own integration takes place through rebirth.

 

Although the Great Goddess (Adi Shakti) is " Truly Formless " (see the

Devipurana) She has been worshipped through millennia in countless

aspects and forms. The three great aspects through which She is

channeling Her own power are Mahalaxshmi, Mahasaraswati, Mahakali.

She is also known to have taken various incarnated forms (avtaras.)

It is thus described in the Scriptures that She is the Primordial

Power, the utterly Holy. It is certainly not easy for the western

reader to face the very serious hypothesis that She can take human

form. To talk about it is even more difficult. This field of reality

only underlines the limitations of ideas and words.

 

1. In Mahayana buddhism " tathata " (suchness) and " sunyata "

(emptiness) are interchangeable notions.

2. Purusha and Prakriti represent the apparent opposition between

the Father-Spirit and the Mother-Nature. "

 

Grégoire de Kalbermatten, The Advent, The Life Eternal Trust

Publishers, 1979, p. 252-55.

 

 

>

> i remember also that Shri Mataji taught that within both men and .

> women are both... the masculine qualities (represented by the sun)

> and the feminine qualities (represented by the moon). When a

> person (male or female) has the balance of the feminine and

> masculine qualities then they come into more of a spiritual

> balance also, because the Spirit Within is neither masculine or

> feminine ; it is both.

>

 

" God is pure and undivided consciousness. You may even say He is

nothingness. In His purest state of void He is Nirguna Brahman, that

is (nir+guna) devoid of any qualities or differentiation. Divisions

of time and space and the impurities of ego consciousness created by

the gunas do not exist in Him. For inexplicable reasons, as He

wakes, He sets in motion Prakriti, the universal energy, that was so

far latent in Him, and then enters into it. From this union arise

ultimately all this reality that we know as the universe. This is

something like the modern theory of the origin of the universe. The

Big Bang is actually what sets in motion the latent energy hidden in

the cosmic egg (Hiranyagarbha)....

 

Is Shakti really female? Shakti is pure energy, neither male nor

female. This interpretation is purely human, figurative and relative

and should not be taken literally. It is also wrong to believe that

Self is male and the energy is female. Purusha exists in males as

well as females and so does Prakriti exists in males also. They are

like the two sides of the same truth. It is also difficult to say

who is superior to whom. Without energy Self is practically

immovable and without Self energy does not have any field for its

movements. The Truth at the highest level: pure energy (PRAKRITI is

undivided consciousness (PURUSHA). "

 

www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/shaktis.asp

 

 

>

> Your comments/understanding on these points would be appreciated.

>

> violet

>

 

Thank you Violet for giving me this opportunity to show that all

religions and spiritual sects, like many rivers and streams, have

begun to merge in the Ocean of the Divine Feminine. And the Mother,

the prototype of all existence, is the Eternal Spirit, full of

beauty and love. She exists within all of us as our spiritual Mother

who knows us intimately since time immemorial. It is the Aykaa Mayee

(One Mother) who have always nourished us - as the physical mother

who gave birth, the spiritual Mother within who nourishes and guides

us, and Mother Earth who sustains all life - over countless births

spanning aeons.

 

warmest regards,

 

jagbir

[Guest guest]

, " jagbir

singh " <adishakti_org wrote:

 

The Father has not saved the world,

The Son has not saved it,

The Mother shall save it;

The Mother is the Holy Spirit.

 

Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, The Mystery of Three (1925), Russian exile in

France

 

 

Dear Jagbir,

 

This is a very poignant verse that the " Father has not saved the world...the

Mother shall save it! " This definitely resonates as Truth to me!

 

i experienced a connection with a spiritual mother within me very strongly

before i came to SY. i think what started me praying to a mother was when i

first saw a poster of Shri Mataji at a bus shelter right across the road where i

lived at that time, which said something about a 'spiritual mother'. When i

would open the front door, there She would be looking and smiling at me!

 

However, as i was not allowed to go and see the lady on the poster... it gave me

an idea anyway. i decided to start praying to a spiritual mother... instead of

always praying to a spiritual father. i did this inspite of the fact that i was

told by Christian teachers that for all practical purposes... Jesus was my

spiritual mother as well as my spiritual father. However, praying to the

spiritual mother somehow had great appeal for me. So i started to pray to the

spiritual mother. i had no name for her but i just called her " mother " .

 

i was very pleasantly surprised then when i prayed to a mother in deep

sincerity, that i got such a strong resonance of a mother's love for her child.

i had never felt such a strong motherly feeling from Jesus, even though i had

been told that He was everything; mother and father to me.

 

Now i know a lot more about this mother within me; that She is also the Holy

Spirit and the 'Christian Comforter'. i now realise that when i pray to the

Spiritual Father, that His energy feels 'fatherly' to me, and when i pray to the

Spiritual Mother, Her energy feels 'motherly' to me. i know SM has frequently

remarked on the difference between the Father God and the Mother God. She has

often remarked how the Father God respects the Mother God's fierce protection of

Her Children. But isn't this very similar to our physical earthly mothers

also???!!!

 

It is understandable then how it is the Love of a Mother for Her Children that

can " save the world " . Somehow... the Mother's Love for Her Children is the most

powerful and strongest to save the world. Like the verse says:

 

The Father has not saved the world,

The Son has not saved it,

The Mother shall save it;

The Mother is the Holy Spirit.

 

(Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, The Mystery of Three (1925), Russian exile in

France)

 

violet

 

 

 

> , " Violet "

> <violet.tubb@> wrote:

> >

> > " The philosopher Muid ad-Din ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240) saw a young

> > girl in Mecca surrounded by light and realised that, for him, she

> > was an incarnation of the divine Sophia. He believed that women

> > were the most potent icons of the sacred, because they inspired a

> > love in men which must ultimately be directed to God, the only

> > true object of love. "

> >

> > Dear Jagbir,

> >

> > i also remember Shri Mataji saying that it will be mainly the

> > women who will bring in this New Age; who will do most of the

> > spiritual work. (This saying of SM's has always puzzled me,

> > because i know that men do the spiritual work, too!)

> >

>

> " And I have to specially make a very important request to the women

> that in these modern times they are the ones who are going to save

> the world, not the men. They have done their job before.

>

> Now it is for you to save with your understanding, with your

> compassion, with your sacrifices, with your wisdom, and innate love

> not only your children, your husband, your family, but the whole

> world. It is a very great opportunity for all of you to do your

> bit....

>

> The whole Cosmos, just in complete respectful attendance, is waiting

> for their arrival. "

>

> Sri Mataji Nirmala Devi

> Cambridge, U.K. — June 1988

>

>

> The Eve Of Destruction

> The Guardian

> 15 February, 2004

>

> Still reeling from last year's virulent dispute about the foiled

> appointment of its first gay bishop, the Anglican community is now

> faced with another potentially irreversible split. Forward in Faith,

> a group opposed to women priests, has proposed the idea of a

> province separate from but parallel to Canterbury and York, with its

> own exclusively male hierarchy. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of

> Canterbury, has apparently hinted that he would be prepared to

> consider this suggestion, designed to prevent a mass exodus from the

> church when women are consecrated as bishops.

>

> More liberal Anglicans condemn the plan as a form of sexual

> apartheid, even though Forward in Faith has 4,000 women members.

> Nevertheless, the new province would represent a male bastion in a

> world in which women are increasingly entering spheres that were

> formerly the preserve of men. The fantasy of an all-male enclave is

> not new in the history of religion. In the ancient world, women

> often served alongside men as priests. This did not affect their

> inferior social status, but they were regarded as worthy

> representatives of the divine. That changed during the axial age,

> from circa 800BCE to 200BCE, when all the world faiths that have

> continued to nourish humanity came into being at roughly the same

> time.

>

> These axial religions hold many values in common, but they all share

> a fateful flaw. Wherever an axial faith took root, the position of

> women underwent a downward turn. Most of these religions had an

> egalitarian ethos, but they were and have remained essentially male

> spiritualities. Confucius, for example, seemed entirely indifferent

> to women; Socrates was not a family man. In India, the Jain and

> Buddhist orders were irenic forms of the ancient Aryan military

> brotherhoods, and though nuns were permitted to join, in a second-

> class capacity, many felt that the presence of women was

> inappropriate. Even the Buddha, who did not usually succumb to this

> type of prejudice, declared that women would fall upon his order

> like mildew on a field of rice.

>

> Such misogyny damages the integrity of faiths that insist that male

> and female are both created in God's image and that all human beings

> are capable of attaining nirvana, knowledge of Brahman or the Tao.

> Yeshivas, madrasahs, seminaries, monastic orders and colleges of

> cardinals are all-male clubs that rigorously exclude women. This

> chauvinism infects the spirituality of the faithful, male and female

> alike. Male Jews are supposed to thank God daily for not creating

> them women; every Christmas, Christians sing " Lo! He abhors not the

> Virgin's womb " , as though Jesus's tolerance of the female body was

> an act of extraordinary condescension on his part.

>

> Even when there was an initial attempt to introduce greater sexual

> equality, men hijacked the faith and dragged it back to the old

> patriarchy. This happened in both Christianity and Islam, latter-day

> reassertions of axial age monotheism. The Prophet Mohammed, for

> example, was anxious to emancipate women and they were among his

> first converts. The Koran teaches that men and women have exactly

> the same responsibilities and duties, and gives women rights of

> inheritance and divorce that we would not enjoy in the west until

> the 19th century. There is nothing in the Koran about the veiling of

> all women or their confinement in harems. This practice came into

> Islam some three or four generations after the Prophet, under the

> influence of the Greek Christians of Byzantium, who had long covered

> and secluded their women in this way.

>

> Jesus would have been surprised by the confinement of women. Both he

> and St Paul had women disciples. They did not ordain them as

> priests, because there was no Christian priesthood until the third

> century. The early Christians espoused a revolutionary

> egalitarianism; a priestly hierarchy was too reminiscent of Judaism

> and paganism, which they were beginning to leave behind. Those who

> today condemn women's ordination as a break with tradition should be

> aware that priesthood and episcopacy are themselves innovations that

> depart from the practice of the primitive church.

>

> The gospels give women a good press: it is the women who stand by

> Jesus throughout the crucifixion, while his male disciples are

> skulking in hiding, and it is women who receive the first news of

> the resurrection and bring it to the men. They were, it is often

> said, " apostles to the apostles " . St Paul proclaimed that in Christ

> there was neither male nor female. Most of the misogynist passages

> attributed to Paul are taken from epistles written decades after his

> death, when Christianity was beginning to retreat from its early

> radicalism.

>

> Once this had happened, Christianity found issues of sex and gender

> more difficult than any other faith. Some of the fathers of the

> church seemed totally unable to deal with women, and attacked them

> in vicious, immoderate and, indeed, unchristian language. Because

> they believed that celibacy was the prime Christian vocation, they

> projected their own frustration on to women, whom they castigated as

> evil temptresses. Tertullian told women to shroud their bodies in

> veils and make themselves as unattractive as possible. He blamed

> them for the sin of Eve: " You are the devil's gateway ... because of

> you the Son of God had to die! "

>

> Many of the fathers wanted to make the church a male enclave. St

> Augustine told his priests to shun the company of women, even if

> they were sick or in trouble. Even mothers were not safe: " It is

> still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in every woman. " The

> fathers' ideal woman was a virgin, who had renounced her sexuality

> and thereby become an honorary male. Some women, such as Joan of Arc

> or Catherine of Siena, exploited this symbolism and used their

> virginity as an entrée into the male spheres of war and politics,

> but in general virgins were supposed to retreat from the world and

> leave it to men. They would eventually be locked away in enclosed

> convents.

>

> Later St Thomas Aquinas saw women as biologically flawed, " defective

> and misbegotten " , and thus inherently inferior to the male sex, to

> whom it was their duty to submit. Even Luther, who left his

> monastery to marry, believed that, as a punishment for the sin of

> Eve, women must be driven from the world of men and confined in the

> home " as a nail is driven into the wall " . Protestantism made

> Christianity more male than ever; by abolishing the cults of the

> Virgin Mary and the women saints, it banished all female imagery

> from the Christian consciousness.

>

> Forward in Faith's dream of an exclusively male preserve draws its

> strength from a Christian tradition of denial, frustration and

> disgust that can by no stretch of the imagination be regarded as

> spiritually wholesome. In all the world faiths, women are trying to

> redress the pernicious chauvinism that has tainted their traditions.

> We are now living in a world that is perilously torn apart by

> religious extremism. We can no longer afford faith that feeds in any

> way upon hatred, exclusion and disdain. Before we condemn the

> bigotry of other traditions, we should try to heal the prejudice

> that has damaged our own.

>

> The Eve Of Destruction

> Karen Armstrong is the author of The Battle for God

>

>

> >

> > However, maybe She was highlighting the Divine Feminine (in women)

> > in the sense that the above quote describes women as " the most

> > potent icons of the sacred, because they inspire a love in men

> > which must ultimately be directed to God, the only true object of

> > love " .

> >

>

> All that is changeable is but reflected;

> The unattainable here is effected;

> Human discernment here is passed by;

> The Eternal-Feminine draws us on high.

>

> Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Faust

>

>

> Woman-Saviour now we muster

> To await thy advent sure,

> In the cluster of thy lustre,

> Come and leave the earth no more?

> Then before thy gentle look,

> Swords shall quail and warriors fail,

> And the spear, a shepherd's crook,

> Shall adorn the daisied dale.

> Woman-power! Incarnate love!

> Human Goddess come and be,

> If the Bridegroom's tears can move,

> Bride unto Humanity.

> Thou alone of all can save us

> Let us be what thou would have us!

>

> Goodwyn Barmby, The Woman-power (1842), English radical

>

>

> The Muse of the New Era, as our grand-grandchildren, or an even

later

> generation will know her, when will she reveal herself? What will

> she look like, what will she sing? Which strings of the soul will

she

> vibrate? Till which height will she elevate her Era?

>

> Hans Christian Andersen, The New Century's Goddess (1861),

> Danish writer

>

>

> Let it be known: today the Eternal Feminine

> In an incorruptible body is descending to Earth.

> In the unfading light of the new Goddess

> Heaven has become one with the depths.

>

> Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900), Russian philosopher

>

>

> It was generally considered, at the turn of the next century, that

> the next Divine incarnation was about to come to earth and would be

> female, the advent of Divine Wisdom, or Theo-Sophia, and that the

> present age would be the age of making known all that which has been

> kept secret from the beginning.

>

> Lady Caithness, The Mystery of the Ages (1887), French theosophist

>

>

> The word which shall come to save the world, shall be uttered by a

> woman. A woman shall conceive, and shall bring forth the tidings of

> salvation. For the reign of Adam is at its last hour; and God shall

> crown all things by the creation of Eve.

>

> Anna Kingsford, Clothed with the sun (1889), English theosophist

>

>

> There is no line of work or study which woman in the West does

> not undertake and does not accomplish as well as man. Even in

> social and political activities, in religion, in spiritual ideas,

she

> excels man. … I can see as clear as daylight that the hour is

> coming when woman will lead humanity to a higher evolution.

>

> Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927), Indian Sufi in the West

>

>

> A great era has begun: the spiritual " awakening " , the increasing

> tendency to regain " lost balance " , the inevitable necessity of

> spiritual plantings, the unfolding of the first blossom. We are

> standing at the threshold of one of the greatest epochs that mankind

> has ever experienced, the epoch of great spirituality.

>

> Vassily Kandinsky/ Franz Marc, Blaue Reiter Almanac (1911), abstract

> artists

>

>

> The Cycle of the Children. It is impossible to gauge the

significance

> of the present time or to realize what is in store for humanity

> during the next hundred years, merely from our own experience and

> from recorded history. For this is no ordinary time. It is not

> simply the culminating point of the past hundred years, but of

> thousands of years; the night of centuries has passed, and with the

> new dawn comes the return of memories and powers and possibilities

> of an age long past.

>

> Katherine Tingley, The Path of the Mystic (1922), American

> theosophist

>

>

> The Father has not saved the world,

> The Son has not saved it,

> The Mother shall save it;

> The Mother is the Holy Spirit.

>

> Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, The Mystery of Three (1925), Russian exile in

> France

>

>

> We are entering the cycle of epochs when the feminine soul will

> become increasingly pure and broad, when more and more women will

> become deep inspirers, sensible mothers, and wise and visionary

> leaders. This will be the cycle of epochs when the feminine

> component of humanity will manifest itself with unprecedented

> strength, balancing the previous dominance of masculine forces in a

> perfect harmony.

>

> Daniil Andreev, Roza Mira (completed 1958), Russian dissident

>

>

> >

> > Therefore, could Shri Mataji really have been referring to

> > the " Divine Feminine " in women which was 'going to do most of the

> > spiritual work' than to literally mean that women are going to do

> > most of the spiritual work at this time?

> >

> > That would make sense to me then, because when the Divine Feminine

> > is awakened in men, they become 'spiritually balanced' with a

> > balance of both masculine (and feminine) qualities.

> >

>

> Dear Violet,

>

> i believe Shri Mataji to be referring to women in general. But those

> making the greatest contributions will be those blessed with

> esoteric knowledge, who know about the Divine Feminine and are One

> with Her within. This takes a long time to manifest because there is

> much conditioning to be overcome, knowledge acquired to confirm and

> establish deep faith in the Holy Scriptures, the senses withdrawn,

> and Silence sustained. As more and more women begin to relate to the

> Divine Feminine in similar fashion humanity as a whole will benefit.

> It is indeed a very great opportunity for all women to do their bit,

> and help trigger the critical mass required for this global

> awakening. The whole Cosmos, just in complete respectful attendance,

> is waiting for their arrival.

>

> You are absolutely correct Violet that " when the Divine Feminine is

> awakened in men, they become 'spiritually balanced' with a balance

> of both masculine (and feminine) qualities. " It is without question

> required by men in any spiritual pursuit. As a male i understood

> women better when my daughter told me that we humans have three

> mothers - the physical mother who gave birth, the spiritual Mother

> within who nourishes and guides us, and Mother Earth who sustains

> all life. Women are the Creative Power of the Divine Feminine.

>

> But to begin the spiritual journey back to the Divine Feminine

within

> knowledge is the key to unlock the spiritual secrets and parables:

>

>

> " First there was the sea, everything was dark.

> There was no sun, no moon, nor people, nor animals, nor plants.

> The sea was the Mother. The Mother was not the people, nor anything.

> She was the Spirit of what had come and She was Awareness and

> Memory. "

>

> Belief of Pre-Colombian Kogin Tribe

>

>

> " O Mother of Imupa, advocate for the whole [feminine] world! What a

> remarkable Mother I have!

> O Mother, a pillar, a refuge! O Mother, to whom all prostrate in

> greeting

> Before one enters Her habitation! I am justly proud of my Mother.

> O Mother who arrives, Who arrives majestic and offers water to all! "

> Yoruba Prayer (Nigeria)

>

> The Valley Spirit never dies. It is named the Mysterious Female.

> And the Doorway of the Mysterious Female is the base from which

> Heaven and Earth sprang.

> It is there within us all the while; Draw upon it as you will, it

> never runs dry.

>

> Tao Te Ching 6

> (source: World Scripture, International Religious Foundation,

> Paragon House Publishing, 1995 p. 95.)

>

>

> " The Mother is everything - She is our consolation in sorrow, our

> hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of

> love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness. The sun is the mother of the

> Earth and gives its nourishment of heat; it never leaves the

> universe at night until it has put the Earth to sleep to the song of

> the sea and the hymn of the birds and brooks. And this Earth is the

> mother of the trees and flowers. It produces them, nurses them, and

> weans them. The trees and flowers become kind mothers of their great

> fruits and seeds. And the Mother, the prototype of all existence, is

> the Eternal Spirit, full of beauty and love. "

>

> Kahlil Gibran, Broken Wings, trans. Anthony R. Ferris, Citadel

> Press, 1962.

>

>

> " Our exile has not only been from the Goddess, but also from Nature.

> It is not surprising, considering that most Westerners live apart

> from their environment, protected by concrete roadways, consuming

> machine-processed foods and filled with media information to the

> detriment of the experience of our own senses. The seasons go by

> unnoticed, we seldom touch the earth, eat fresh food or observe the

> world personally — media input and journalism provide our

> informational diet. The sacred is a forgotten dimension in our

> society which we ignore at our peril.

>

> Earth-honoring is an integral part of the native traditional

> religions, who have never deviated from a vision of the whole of

> creation as sacred. As we begin slowly — perhaps too slowly — to

> assess this primal nurture, we realize that the native traditions

> have much wisdom to teach us, and this may, in turn, stimulate our

> own.

>

> Maybe the return of the Goddess among us heralds the marriage of

> humanity with Nature, the necessary resacralization which must

> precede any marriage between humanity and the Divine....

>

> The current ecological trend has alarmed many traditionalists who

> see it as endangering the real business of spirituality — that of

> saving the soul. Let them be assured: global restatement of the

> earth's holiness can only enhance the human spiritual vocation.

> The native spiritualities of the world point the way in which we

> might approach our earth-honouring and make relations of the whole

> creation. In 1890, 153 native Americans gathered together to perform

> a Ghost Dance to gain a vision of a world healed of the evil works

> of white civilization. Their massacre is remembered by white

> Westerners as the Battle of Wounded Knee. One hundred years later, a

> group of white people of assorted spiritual allegiance gathered

> outside the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, to re-enact

> the Lakota ceremony of `Making of Relatives', in memory of Wounded

> Knee. At the ceremony's heart was this invocation:

>

> Grandmother Earth, hear us! The two-legged, the four-legged, the

> winged and all that move upon You and Your children. With all beings

> and all things we shall be relatives; just as we are related to You,

> O Mother, so we shall make a peace with one another and shall be

> related to them. May we walk with love and mercy upon the path which

> is holy! O Grandmother and Mother, help us in making relatives and a

> lasting peace here!

>

> This is truly the work of the New Isis — the Sophianic re-assembling

> of earth-wisdom, scraps of whose garment blow about the world in

> rags and tatters of glory. We may be privileged to live through this

> time and see, if not Sophia unveiled, a glimpse of her doxa. The

> native traditions teach us that without a whole view of the world,

> we can be both presumptuous and stupid — the complete reverse of

> wise. "

>

> Caitlín Matthews, Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom,

> The Aquarian Press, 1992, p. 326-27.

>

>

> Some say She is Uma, others call Her Laksmi; And others again say

> that She is Bharati, Girija, Ambika,

> Durga, Bhadrakali, Candi, Avidya, Maya, Prakrti and Para. Thus say

> the great rsis.

>

> Br. Naradiya Purana

>

>

> O wise one, this is the established doctrine concerning Devi; She is

> the Vedas, the sacrifices, the heaven and all this universe;

> The universe, immovable as well as movable, is pervaded by the Devi.

> She is all that is sacrificed to and worshipped by the Devas; And

> She is all that is food and drink;

> Manifold in form and name, Devi is everywhere - In trees, in the

> Earth, in the air, in the ether, in water, and in fire.

>

> Devi Purana

>

>

> It is impossible, O Sage, for me to enumerate,

> The countless names of Devi in hundred crores of Kalpas.

>

> Skanda Purana

>

>

> What can I say? Devi has countless names, which have been composed

> by Brahma and other Devatas

> According to Her different qualities and doings.

>

> Devi-bhagavata Purana

>

>

> If one aspirant thinks in his mind one single name of Hers, in that

> moment he knows the chakra of the Mother, O beloved one.

>

> Vamakesvara-tantra

>

>

> O, Mother of the Universe, those who praise you by the words:

> ambika, jaganmayi and maya, will obtain all.

>

> Kalika Purana

>

>

> Those who prostrating their bodies praise You by the words:

> Maya, durga, vedagarbha, amba, bhadra, bhadrakali, ksemya,

> ksemamkari, in the mornings and evenings,

> Will obtain all the desired objects by My Grace.

>

> Visnu Purana

>

>

> 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, (The Night Journey)

> (Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an, Amana Corporation, 1989.)

>

>

> " Sophia is a living being. She is a being who is the divine Mother

> of humanity, a being who is now drawing close to humanity at this

> time of crisis; a being who, through immense love for every human

> being on this planet, is concerned with finding a way forward out of

> the impasse into which we have come. "

>

> Robert Powell (Audio excerpt from The Sophia Teachings)

>

>

> " Indeed, the absence of feminine symbolism for God marks Judaism,

> Christianity, and Islam in striking contrast to the world's other

> religious traditions, whether in Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, and Rome,

> or in Africa, India, and North America, which abound in feminine

> symbolism....

>

> The Greek terminology for the Trinity, which includes the neuter

> term for spirit (pneuma) virtually requires that the third " Person "

> of the Trinity be asexual. But the author of the Secret Book has in

> mind the Hebrew term for spirit, ruah, a feminine word; and so

> concludes that the feminine " Person " conjoined with the Father and

> Son must be the Mother. The Secret Book goes on to describe the

> divine Mother: ... (She is)... the image of the invisible, virginal,

> perfect spirit ... She became the Mother of everything, for she

> existed before them all, the mother-father [matropater] ...16

> The Gospel to the Hebrews likewise has Jesus speak of " my Mother,

> the Spirit. " 17 In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus contrasts his Earthly

> parents, Mary and Joseph, with his divine Father - the Father of

> Truth - and his divine Mother, the Holy Spirit. "

>

> (16. Apocryphon of John 4.34-5.7, in NHL 101. 17. Gospel to the

> Hebrews, cited in Origen, COMM. JO. 2.12.)

>

> Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels,

> Random House Inc. New York, 1989, p. 48-52.

>

>

> " The Hebrew word used to denominate God in Genesis is Elohim. This

> word is plural from the feminine singular ALH (Eloh) by adding IM to

> it. Since IM is the termination of the masculine plural, added to a

> feminine noun it makes ELOHIM a female potency united to a male

> principle, and thus capable of having an offspring. The same

> intended misconception is given in the Christian idea of the Holy

> Trinity: Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. In the Kabbalah the Deity

> manifests simultaneously as Mother and Father and thus begets the

> Son. We are told that the Holy Spirit is essentially masculine, but

> the Hebrew word used in the Scriptures to denote spirit is Ruach, a

> feminine noun. the Holy Spirit is really the Mother, and thus the

> Christian Trinity properly translated should be Father, Son and

> Mother. (Migene Gonzalez-Wippler, A Kabbalah For The Modern World.) "

>

> The Joy of Sects, Peter Occhiogrosso,

> Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1996 p. 243.

>

>

> " As we now move to other ancient scriptures let us not be blinded

> by " religious " parochialism. A mind overly conditioned by the

> fatherly connotation of the Judeo-Christian tradition will, at

> first, have some difficulty at the conception of the Divine in the

> feminine form of the Mother. And yet, the cult of the Motherhood of

> God, from time immemorial, has been attested by archaeological

> evidence from all quarters of the globe. It seems that it is the

> Indian subcontinent which presents us with the most elaborate

> expressions of this worship.

>

> According to Advaita Vedanta Ultimate Reality is formless

> undifferentiated consciousness (Nirguna.) This condition, which is

> at the same time the Absolute Being and Absolute Nothingness1 cannot

> be conceived of. Through eons of ages, it goes through alternate

> phases of potentiality and manifestation. The alternation of this

> cosmic rhythm has been called: " the respiration of Brahma. " When the

> ultimate reality rests in its latent phase, the Unmanifested, it is

> contained in " IT. " In the activating phase of its manifestation,

> the " IT " becomes " He " and " HeR " ; HH Mataji says that the first step

> of the Creation takes place when God separates itself into Himself

> as a witness and Herself as His power. One aspect is Sadashiva (The

> Primordial Existent and Witness, God the Almighty, the Father, the

> Purusha); the other is His power, the Adi Shakti, (The Primordial

> Energy of Divine Love, the Divine Mother, the Prakriti.)2 Thus the

> Mother is the Primordial Energy . . . The Creation, spiritual and

> material, springs from the Divine Mother, the Holy Spirit of the

> Christian tradition. She creates various strata of existence, among

> which is this phenomenal universe. As this Primordial Energy is the

> genitrix of everything we experience, She is worshipped as the

> Sacred Mother. We read in the first sutras of the Kama-Kalavilasa:

>

> " Victory to Her the Primordial Power, the seed from which sprouts

> hereafter the entire creation, static and kinetic universes, the

> eternal, the incomparable, who is of the nature of Her own bliss,

> and who manifests as a mirror to His (Shiva) self. "

>

> The Samaya Mata recalls that the distinction between He and Her is

> only an apparent one: " There is no Shiva without Shakti nor is there

> any Shakti without Shiva. There is no distinction between them just

> as there is none between the moon and the shining. " The Shakti

> combines in Her person both the manifestation of the Universal

> Existence (male form) and the Universal Energy (female form.) She is

> thus identified with the One. The actualisation of this primordial

> unity within the disciple is the object of the Shakti worship. She

> is the central object of worship because She is the manifested

> dimension of the Ultimate. She is the Great One who bridges the gap

> between the Infinity and the Finite; only through Her compassionate

> meditation can the finite human being regain Infinity. And that is

> indeed the very blessing that She wants to graciously bestow on Her

> children.

>

> " Thyself, with a view of manifesting Thyself in the form of the

> Universe, inwardly assumest the form of Consciousness and Bliss. " -

> Shri Shankaracharya, Saundarya Lahari 35

>

> Let us again remember that the Holy Spirit, as the Primordial

> Energy, is the Christian mysterious symbol for the Mother.

> We ought to mention, that in the apocryphal Acts of Saint Thomas,

> the Holy Spirit is (rightly) invoked as " hidden Mother, " " Mother of

> all life. " These statements should help us to recognize the true

> wisdom of the early gnostics and Syrian fathers who grasped

> something of the identity (Holy Spirit = Mother = Energy.) The

> esoteric perception certainly casts a new light on the intriguing

> dialogue between Lord Jesus Christ and Nicodemus:

>

> " Truly, Truly, I say to you unless one is born anew, he cannot see

> the Kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, " how can a man be born

> when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb

> and be born? " Jesus answered " Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one

> is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of God "

-

> John 3.3

>

> The necessity to return to the Divine Mother in order to become a

> New Adam, a second born, a Divine Child has been asserted by Lord

> Jesus. It is time that those western seekers who have engaged

> themselves in intellectual pursuits use their intellect to discover

> the Unity of the message of the various mythologies and religions;

> they had better realize the greatness of the Christian promise and

> the value of the other world religions. HH Mataji has brilliantly

> exposed those teachings in a new light which also illuminates the

> other religious traditions and contemporary science. It is time for

> us to discover that the true object of Knowledge is integration. All

> the great religions are one. This is revealed by actualization when

> our own integration takes place through rebirth.

>

> Although the Great Goddess (Adi Shakti) is " Truly Formless " (see the

> Devipurana) She has been worshipped through millennia in countless

> aspects and forms. The three great aspects through which She is

> channeling Her own power are Mahalaxshmi, Mahasaraswati, Mahakali.

> She is also known to have taken various incarnated forms (avtaras.)

> It is thus described in the Scriptures that She is the Primordial

> Power, the utterly Holy. It is certainly not easy for the western

> reader to face the very serious hypothesis that She can take human

> form. To talk about it is even more difficult. This field of reality

> only underlines the limitations of ideas and words.

>

> 1. In Mahayana buddhism " tathata " (suchness) and " sunyata "

> (emptiness) are interchangeable notions.

> 2. Purusha and Prakriti represent the apparent opposition between

> the Father-Spirit and the Mother-Nature. "

>

> Grégoire de Kalbermatten, The Advent, The Life Eternal Trust

> Publishers, 1979, p. 252-55.

>

>

> >

> > i remember also that Shri Mataji taught that within both men and .

> > women are both... the masculine qualities (represented by the sun)

> > and the feminine qualities (represented by the moon). When a

> > person (male or female) has the balance of the feminine and

> > masculine qualities then they come into more of a spiritual

> > balance also, because the Spirit Within is neither masculine or

> > feminine ; it is both.

> >

>

> " God is pure and undivided consciousness. You may even say He is

> nothingness. In His purest state of void He is Nirguna Brahman, that

> is (nir+guna) devoid of any qualities or differentiation. Divisions

> of time and space and the impurities of ego consciousness created by

> the gunas do not exist in Him. For inexplicable reasons, as He

> wakes, He sets in motion Prakriti, the universal energy, that was so

> far latent in Him, and then enters into it. From this union arise

> ultimately all this reality that we know as the universe. This is

> something like the modern theory of the origin of the universe. The

> Big Bang is actually what sets in motion the latent energy hidden in

> the cosmic egg (Hiranyagarbha)....

>

> Is Shakti really female? Shakti is pure energy, neither male nor

> female. This interpretation is purely human, figurative and relative

> and should not be taken literally. It is also wrong to believe that

> Self is male and the energy is female. Purusha exists in males as

> well as females and so does Prakriti exists in males also. They are

> like the two sides of the same truth. It is also difficult to say

> who is superior to whom. Without energy Self is practically

> immovable and without Self energy does not have any field for its

> movements. The Truth at the highest level: pure energy (PRAKRITI is

> undivided consciousness (PURUSHA). "

>

> www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/shaktis.asp

>

>

> >

> > Your comments/understanding on these points would be appreciated.

> >

> > violet

> >

>

> Thank you Violet for giving me this opportunity to show that all

> religions and spiritual sects, like many rivers and streams, have

> begun to merge in the Ocean of the Divine Feminine. And the Mother,

> the prototype of all existence, is the Eternal Spirit, full of

> beauty and love. She exists within all of us as our spiritual Mother

> who knows us intimately since time immemorial. It is the Aykaa Mayee

> (One Mother) who have always nourished us - as the physical mother

> who gave birth, the spiritual Mother within who nourishes and guides

> us, and Mother Earth who sustains all life - over countless births

> spanning aeons.

>

> warmest regards,

>

> jagbir

>