By Consul B. John Zavrel
I bow to the Supreme Goddess who abides in allbeings
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 isenough. The 21st century is dawning. It's time to tear down the NoTrespassing sign from the Garden of Eden, find those forbidden treesand fearlessly eat fruit of Knowledge and Life. Mother Sophia iswaiting.
In the past 2,000 years, Christians and Muslims,and most recently the Communists, conspired to wipe out our memoriesclean of tens of thousands of years of Goddess spirituality in theAmericas, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Central and East Asia, andAustralia. I offer this book as a small token of my overwhelminggratitude to the people of India, who in spite of continual invasionsby hostile cultures seeking to impose their own religions on thesubcontinent, fought to keep the light of inner traditions of theMother of the Universe alive. I bow especially to the masters, thegreat yogis and yoginis, who embodied the Mother's light in their ownlives, and demonstrated by their own example the possibility of theenlightened life. Again and again I offer my loving respect to theShakta teachers who took me and my husband under their care andbrought us into the living presence of the Mother Divine.'
With these words, the American writer LindaJohnsen closes her new book, The Living Goddess: Reclaiming theTradition of the Mother of the Universe. The central theme of herlatest book is a comprehensive and loving look at the worship of theMother Divine during the course of history of mankind.
It has happened only in the last 1,500 years thatthe ancient religion of the Goddess has been extinguished almosteverywhere on earth. Everywhere, except in India, the one culturewhere the Mother of the Universe is still worshipped today as she wasthroughout the world for most of human history.
Linda Johnsen takes us to India to reveal acontinuous stream of living Goddess spirituality still flourishing inexotic temples, ecstatic festivals, and in the hearts of millions ofdevoted worshippers. In this ancient mystical tradition the Goddessherself reveals who she is, tells why she created us, and shows howwe can find our way back to her lap. At the core of this traditionlies an amazing revelation of the limitless potentials of true humanconsciousness.
In the mid-1970, Swami Rama of the Himalayas, awell known Shakta master, attacked Darwin's theory of evolution. 'Wehave been watching apes for thousands of years. Who has ever seen anape turn into a man? Never believe it!' Swami Rama was not aprimitive fundamentalist. He was an advanced yogi who, underlaboratory conditions, demonstrated extraordinary conscious controlover his heart beat, body temperature and brain waves. He respectedthe methodology of modern science, but he completely rejected thenotion that evolution is driven by chance or blindnecessity.
Swami Rama, like all Shaktas, believes the cosmosis consciousness. There is a living, intelligent organizing principlewhich drives evolution in this world as well as in all the subtleworlds that coexist with ours. Shakta scriptures, based on traditionsthousands of years old, agree with Western science that the Earth isbillions of years old, but when human beings or any other speciescome into existence, it is because the divine force wills it, notbecause an ape randomly mutates into human form.
The Mother of the Universe is more than a genetrixto Shaktas. She is always brimming over with ananda lahari, 'waves ofbliss,' something very much like what we humans call love. Shaktismcan be traced to neolithic times. Major Shakta texts surviving to thepresent day include the Devi Bhagavatam (Ancient Annals of theLuminous Goddess), Tripura Rahasya (The Mystery of the TriuneGoddess), Lalita Mahatmyam (The Greatness of the Goddess) andSaundarya Lahari (Waves of Beauty and Bliss). Actually, there arethousands of other scriptures in the tradition, a treasure trove ofmystical literature devoted to the Goddess.
In her book, Linda Johnsen devotes a chapter toseveral of the major forms of the Goddess, as She has been worshippedin India for thousands of years: Sarasvati, the goddess as wisdom andinspiration; Lakshmi, the goddes as wealth and good fortune; Durga,the goddess as conquering power; Lalita, the goddess asconsciousness, and Kundalini, the goddess as the illuminating energyof awareness.
In the Goddess tradition of India truth itself iscalled Shiva, and the living experience of truth is called Shakti. Inone of the major Goddess lineages the perfect unity of Shiva andShakti is called Maha Tripura Sundari, the Supreme Goddess or,literally, 'the Supreme Beauty who dwells in three cities.' The threecities are the physical, subtle and causal planes of existence, or onthe human level, the physical, mental and spiritual components of ourbeing. Often she is simply called Lalita, 'she who plays.' Theborderless cosmos is her playground. We are her toys. At everymoment, whether we have the eyes to see it or not, we are totallyimmersed in and surrounded by and filled with and guided by SupremeBeauty. Satyam shivam sundaram: 'Absolute Truth is Ultimate Good isSupreme Beauty.'
In the Goddess tradition therefore, the sages arethose pure souls who remain in a state of constant delight. They donot experience ugliness anywhere. It is not that they don't recognizethe sorrow and evil the rest of us see all around us-they see throughit. Suffering is part of the play. In theater, everyone knows thegreatest dramas are the tragedies.
In India, Goddess sadhana, 'spiritual practice,'is rooted in asceticism and nonattachement. This sadhana begins withTen Commitments, a set of do's and don'ts that form the foundation ofyogic life:
1. Don't harm others.
2. Don't be dishonest.
3. Don't take anything that isn'tyours.
4. Don't overindulge in sensuality.
5. Don't be greedy.
6. Do cultivate physical leanliness, emotionalpurity and mental clarity.
7. Do be content with what your karma has broughtyou.
8. Do discipline yourself.
9. Do study your psychological and spiritualmakeup.
10.Do love the Supreme Being with your wholebeing.
The concept of the Shakta universe is vastlydifferent from the Western scientific one of today. The masters ofthe Goddess tradition perceive the world very differently than youdo. If you have no experience with meditation, these concepts mayseem challenging. However, if you keep your mind open to theinformation presented in Linda Johnsen's book, your understanding ofyourself, the universe, and the Goddess may shift in surprisingways.
In order to understand the subtler channels webegin receiving in meditation, it is necessary to understand one ofthe most central tenets of Tantra, the 37 tattvas or cosmic levels.Much of today's confusion about higher states of consciousness existsbecause these categories have been forgotten. Yet it is the ladder ofthe tattvas which leads to the feet of Lalita, the SupremeGoddess.
The ancient Hindu sages did not smash atomstogether in particle accelerators in order to understand the natureof matter, though they did have a sophisticated concept of theatom-called paramanu or 'smallest particle' in Sanskrit, described intexts like the Vaisesika Sutra. What they did instead was categorizethe world into elements based on subjective experience. For example,we experience solid stuff and liquid stuff and things in the processof transforming themselves, such as fire. There is gaseous stuff likeair and then there's space itself, which although it appears to beempty, according to yoga masters is actually a substance. Theseprinciples represent the first five cosmic elements with which manyancient civilizations were familiar, usually lamely translated asearth, water, fire, air and space.
Linda Johnsons lists the 37 tattvas and explainsthem in a remarkably readable, understandable manner. For a readernot familiar with these basic concepts, these pages will provide muchfood for thought. Several color illustrations of the Goddess and manyinteresting stories make for a fascinating reading, a book which ismore than a book. It is a fountain of wisdom andinspiration.
'When I told Swami Rama of the Himalayas, thefirst yogi I ever met, that I was Norwegian,' recalls Linda Johnsen,'he laughed and shouted, "We're cousins!" He was referring to ourshared Indo-European heritage. Yet in the light of that spectacularheritage, which shone so brightly in the Hellenistic world, flickeredout in the first few centuries of our era. In Greek times many slavescould read; after the West entered its Dark Age, even emperors wereilliterate. Astronomy, medicine and the other sciences collapsed, andthe status of women (who were priestesses and professors in theHellenistic period) crumbled. A new religion had caught the West in astranglehold, reaching even Norway by 1000 A.D. The priests of thisreligion recited the teachings of its founder in a language commonpeople could not understand. This was useful in preventing Europe'sbeleagured peasants from learning enough about Jesus's words torealize 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 politiciansposing as Christians self-righteously press on the American public anagenda which is in almost every detail the opposite ofJesus'.
The worst tragedy of Europe's Dark Age ofChristianity was not only that thinking was no longer allowed(questioning the church was a capital offense), but that directpersonal exploration of mystical states was strictly forbidden. Tothis day most Christian churches actively discourage involvement inEastern-style meditation techniques, techniques which help onedevelop and deepen one's connection with Spirit. Of course not eventhe church could keep the human soul in chains-some lone saints madeextraordinary spiritual breakthroughs. Those who couched theirexperiences in Christian terms were canonized (after they were safelydead); those who didn't, were executed. Perhaps the inevitable resultof severing so many people from their inner spiritual roots was thatwhen Western science began to flourish again in the 17th century, itquickly became completely soulless.
'We Westeners have inherited a drasticalyimpoverished world-view in which the Goddess, and all the cherishedfeminine values and rich inner experience her worship entails, havebeen lost,' stressed Linda Johnsen. 'According to the ancientEgyptians, when her husband Osiris was lost, Isis set out to find thescattered parts of his body and restore him. Today it is up to us tolocate and restore the tradition of the living Goddess. We would dowell to begin our search in India, where for not one moment in all ofhuman history have the children of the living Goddess forgotten theirDivine Mother.'
In opening up a universe of vibrant Goddessspirituality, this book offers a vision of what our own Goddessheritage must have been, revealing how much the West lost when weturned away from the Divine Mother. Re-lighting our candle from theflames of India's vibrant Goddess tradition, says Linda Johnsen, wecan re-ignite the spirituality of the West.
TheLiving Goddess: Reclaiming the Tradition of the Mother of theUniverse, by Linda Johnsen
May we recommend these other interesting books?
Mantraand Meditation, by Usharbudh Arya (now Swami Veda Bharati)
Scienceof Breath, by Swami Rama
God,by Usharbudh Arya (now Swami Veda Bharati)
Lightof Ten Thousand Suns, by Swami Veda Bharati
Livingwith the Himalayan Masters, by Swami Rama