The Living Goddess: Reclaiming the Tradition of the Mother of the Universe

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The Living Goddess:

Reclaiming the Tradition of the Mother of the Universe

 

By Consul B. John Zavrel

 

 

 

I bow to the Supreme Goddess who abides in all beings

 

in the form of the Mother,

 

To that great Mother of all things,

 

I pay homage again and again!

 

 

 

'Two thousand years of male dominated religion is enough. The 21st century is

dawning. It's time to tear down the No Trespassing sign from the Garden of Eden,

find those forbidden trees and fearlessly eat fruit of Knowledge and Life.

Mother Sophia is waiting.

 

In the past 2,000 years, Christians and Muslims, and most recently the

Communists, conspired to wipe out our memories clean of tens of thousands of

years of Goddess spirituality in the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Middle East,

Central and East Asia, and Australia. I offer this book as a small token of my

overwhelming gratitude to the people of India, who in spite of continual

invasions by hostile cultures seeking to impose their own religions on the

subcontinent, fought to keep the light of inner traditions of the Mother of the

Universe alive. I bow especially to the masters, the great yogis and yoginis,

who embodied the Mother's light in their own lives, and demonstrated by their

own example the possibility of the enlightened life. Again and again I offer my

loving respect to the Shakta teachers who took me and my husband under their

care and brought us into the living presence of the Mother Divine.'

 

With these words, the American writer Linda Johnsen closes her new book, The

Living Goddess: Reclaiming the Tradition of the Mother of the Universe. The

central theme of her latest book is a comprehensive and loving look at the

worship of the Mother Divine during the course of history of mankind.

 

It has happened only in the last 1,500 years that the ancient religion of the

Goddess has been extinguished almost everywhere on earth. Everywhere, except in

India, the one culture where the Mother of the Universe is still worshipped

today as she was throughout the world for most of human history.

 

Linda Johnsen takes us to India to reveal a continuous stream of living Goddess

spirituality still flourishing in exotic temples, ecstatic festivals, and in the

hearts of millions of devoted worshippers. In this ancient mystical tradition

the Goddess herself reveals who she is, tells why she created us, and shows how

we can find our way back to her lap. At the core of this tradition lies an

amazing revelation of the limitless potentials of true human consciousness.

 

In the mid-1970, Swami Rama of the Himalayas, a well known Shakta master,

attacked Darwin's theory of evolution. 'We have been watching apes for thousands

of years. Who has ever seen an ape turn into a man? Never believe it!' Swami

Rama was not a primitive fundamentalist. He was an advanced yogi who, under

laboratory conditions, demonstrated extraordinary conscious control over his

heart beat, body temperature and brain waves. He respected the methodology of

modern science, but he completely rejected the notion that evolution is driven

by chance or blind necessity.

 

Swami Rama, like all Shaktas, believes the cosmos is consciousness. There is a

living, intelligent organizing principle which drives evolution in this world as

well as in all the subtle worlds that coexist with ours. Shakta scriptures,

based on traditions thousands of years old, agree with Western science that the

Earth is billions of years old, but when human beings or any other species come

into existence, it is because the divine force wills it, not because an ape

randomly mutates into human form.

 

The Mother of the Universe is more than a genetrix to Shaktas. She is always

brimming over with ananda lahari, 'waves of bliss,' something very much like

what we humans call love. Shaktism can be traced to neolithic times. Major

Shakta texts surviving to the present day include the Devi Bhagavatam (Ancient

Annals of the Luminous Goddess), Tripura Rahasya (The Mystery of the Triune

Goddess), Lalita Mahatmyam (The Greatness of the Goddess) and Saundarya Lahari

(Waves of Beauty and Bliss). Actually, there are thousands of other scriptures

in the tradition, a treasure trove of mystical literature devoted to the

Goddess.

 

In her book, Linda Johnsen devotes a chapter to several of the major forms of

the Goddess, as She has been worshipped in India for thousands of years:

Sarasvati, the goddess as wisdom and inspiration; Lakshmi, the goddess as wealth

and good fortune; Durga, the goddess as conquering power; Lalita, the goddess as

consciousness, and Kundalini, the goddess as the illuminating energy of

awareness.

 

In the Goddess tradition of India truth itself is called Shiva, and the living

experience of truth is called Shakti. In one of the major Goddess lineages the

perfect unity of Shiva and Shakti is called Maha Tripura Sundari, the Supreme

Goddess or, literally, 'the Supreme Beauty who dwells in three cities.' The

three cities are the physical, subtle and causal planes of existence, or on the

human level, the physical, mental and spiritual components of our being. Often

she is simply called Lalita, 'she who plays.' The borderless cosmos is her

playground. We are her toys. At every moment, whether we have the eyes to see it

or not, we are totally immersed in and surrounded by and filled with and guided

by Supreme Beauty. Satyam shivam sundaram: 'Absolute Truth is Ultimate Good is

Supreme Beauty.'

 

In the Goddess tradition therefore, the sages are those pure souls who remain in

a state of constant delight. They do not experience ugliness anywhere. It is not

that they don't recognize the sorrow and evil the rest of us see all around

us-they see through it. Suffering is part of the play. In theater, everyone

knows the greatest dramas are the tragedies.

 

In India, Goddess sadhana, 'spiritual practice,' is rooted in asceticism and

nonattachement. This sadhana begins with Ten Commitments, a set of do's and

don'ts that form the foundation of yogic life:

 

1. Don't harm others.

 

2. Don't be dishonest.

 

3. Don't take anything that isn't yours.

 

4. Don't overindulge in sensuality.

 

5. Don't be greedy.

 

6. Do cultivate physical cleanliness, emotional purity and mental clarity.

 

7. Do be content with what your karma has brought you.

 

8. Do discipline yourself.

 

9. Do study your psychological and spiritual makeup.

 

10.Do love the Supreme Being with your whole being.

 

The concept of the Shakta universe is vastly different from the Western

scientific one of today. The masters of the Goddess tradition perceive the world

very differently than you do. If you have no experience with meditation, these

concepts may seem challenging. However, if you keep your mind open to the

information presented in Linda Johnsen's book, your understanding of yourself,

the universe, and the Goddess may shift in surprising ways.

 

In order to understand the subtler channels we begin receiving in meditation, it

is necessary to understand one of the most central tenets of Tantra, the 37

tattvas or cosmic levels. Much of today's confusion about higher states of

consciousness exists because these categories have been forgotten. Yet it is the

ladder of the tattvas which leads to the feet of Lalita, the Supreme Goddess.

 

The ancient Hindu sages did not smash atoms together in particle accelerators in

order to understand the nature of matter, though they did have a sophisticated

concept of the atom-called paramanu or 'smallest particle' in Sanskrit,

described in texts like the Vaisesika Sutra. What they did instead was

categorize the world into elements based on subjective experience. For example,

we experience solid stuff and liquid stuff and things in the process of

transforming themselves, such as fire. There is gaseous stuff like air and then

there's space itself, which although it appears to be empty, according to yoga

masters is actually a substance. These principles represent the first five

cosmic elements with which many ancient civilizations were familiar, usually

lamely translated as earth, water, fire, air and space.

 

Linda Johnsons lists the 37 tattvas and explains them in a remarkably readable,

understandable manner. For a reader not familiar with these basic concepts,

these pages will provide much food for thought. Several color illustrations of

the Goddess and many interesting stories make for a fascinating reading, a book

which is more than a book. It is a fountain of wisdom and inspiration.

 

'When I told Swami Rama of the Himalayas, the first yogi I ever met, that I was

Norwegian,' recalls Linda Johnsen, 'he laughed and shouted, " We're cousins! " He

was referring to our shared Indo-European heritage. Yet in the light of that

spectacular heritage, which shone so brightly in the Hellenistic world, [it]

flickered out in the first few centuries of our era. In Greek times many slaves

could read; after the West entered its Dark Age, even emperors were illiterate.

Astronomy, medicine and the other sciences collapsed, and the status of women

(who were priestesses and professors in the Hellenistic period) crumbled. A new

religion had caught the West in a stranglehold, reaching even Norway by 1000

A.D. The priests of this religion recited the teachings of its founder in a

language common people could not understand. This was useful in preventing

Europe's beleagured peasants from learning enough about Jesus's words to realize

that many of their leaders, both political and spiritual, were disregarding

Christ's actual teachings at every turn. Unfortunately, this continues to the

present day, as politicians posing as Christians self-righteously press on the

American public an agenda which is in almost every detail the opposite of

Jesus'.

 

The worst tragedy of Europe's Dark Age of Christianity was not only that

thinking was no longer allowed (questioning the church was a capital offense),

but that direct personal exploration of mystical states was strictly forbidden.

To this day most Christian churches actively discourage involvement in

Eastern-style meditation techniques, techniques which help one develop and

deepen one's connection with Spirit. Of course not even the church could keep

the human soul in chains-some lone saints made extraordinary spiritual

breakthroughs. Those who couched their experiences in Christian terms were

canonized (after they were safely dead); those who didn't, were executed.

Perhaps the inevitable result of severing so many people from their inner

spiritual roots was that when Western science began to flourish again in the

17th century, it quickly became completely soulless.

 

'We Westerners have inherited a drastically impoverished world-view in which the

Goddess, and all the cherished feminine values and rich inner experience her

worship entails, have been lost,' stressed Linda Johnsen. 'According to the

ancient Egyptians, when her husband Osiris was lost, Isis set out to find the

scattered parts of his body and restore him. Today it is up to us to locate and

restore the tradition of the living Goddess. We would do well to begin our

search in India, where for not one moment in all of human history have the

children of the living Goddess forgotten their Divine Mother.'

 

In opening up a universe of vibrant Goddess spirituality, this book offers a

vision of what our own Goddess heritage must have been, revealing how much the

West lost when we turned away from the Divine Mother. Re-lighting our candle

from the flames of India's vibrant Goddess tradition, says Linda Johnsen, we can

re-ignite the spirituality of the West.

 

http://www.meaus.com/living_goddess.htm