The Song of the Goddess: The Devi Gita: Spiritual Counsel of the Great Goddess

Introduction

Introduction The Great Goddess and Her Song The Devi Gita, or Song of the Goddess, presents a grand vision of the universe created, pervaded, and protected by a supremely powerful, all-knowing, and wholly compassionate divine female. She is MahaDevi , the Great Goddess, wielding all power (Shakti) in the universe. Yet power is not just an attribute of the Goddess: she is power or Shakti itself. To her most devoted followers, known as Shaktas (worshipers of the supreme Shakti), she is the auspicious Mother of the World, ever anxious for the wellbeing of her children. Unlike the ferocious Hindu goddesses such as Kali and Durga, the World Mother of the Devi Gita is beautiful and benign, although some of her lesser manifestations may take on terrifying forms. And unlike other beneficent female divinities such as Parvati and Lakshmi, she is subject to no male consort. Subject to none, she is the Shakti of all. This grand vision is proclaimed in the spiritual counsel of the Great Goddess to her special devotee , the Mountain King Himalaya, in the midst of an assembly of gods. While the gods, having just lost their celestial kingdoms to the demon Taraka, take refuge in the Goddess to regain their worldly fortunes, Himalaya, the model of supreme devotion, 1 2 The Song of the Goddess seeks spiritual insight for its own sake. He queries the Devi about her true nature and her relation to the world, as well as the means to attain the final goal of human existence, union with the Goddess herself. Since the World Mother is anxious to satisfy the desires of all her children, she heeds the selfinterested pleas of the gods, as well as the more mystical yearnings of the Mountain King. She provides both mundane pleasures and final liberation, or bhukti and mukti in traditional Hindu terms. She turns aside no one who comes to her with a devoted heart. Her revelations to Himalaya and the gods include not only instruction in cosmology and the several disciplines of yoga, but also the gracious disclosure (darshan) of her own divine forms. She first appears to the gods and Himalaya in a blinding flash of light that represents the absolute or Brahman , whose nature is infinite being, pure consciousness , and everlasting bliss. As this brilliant manifestation of the infinite spirit is beyond the comprehension of mortal beings, including the gods, the Goddess soon emerges from the lustrous orb of light in the form of the beautiful and beneficent, four-armed and feminine Bhuvaneshvari, Ruler of the Universe. Her four hands, holding a noose and goad and gesturing her beneficence and assurance of safety, symbolize her eagerness to protect and to bestow worldly and spiritual gifts upon her devotees . Her third eye points to her wisdom and constant vigilance for the welfare of her children. The appearance of Bhuvaneshvari fully fits the expectations of what the compassionate World Mother should look like, and her sudden emergence soothes the disturbed minds of her devotees. 3 Introduction Later in the Devi Gita, while expounding on her essential unity with the universe, the Goddess manifests her more terrifying, masculine form as the world-devouring Cosmic Body known as the Viraj (the “Irradiant”) composed of the diverse regions and elements of the material realm. This horrific manifestation of the Goddess is harder to reconcile with her more benign mode as nurturing World Mother, thus causing the gods to swoon. Yet the Viraj emphasizes her total sovereignty over the world cycle in all its phases: even the destruction of the cosmos is at the pleasure of the Goddess. The disclosures of these two divine forms, Bhuvaneshvari and the Viraj, suggestive of her androgynous nature , reinforce in dramatic fashion the spiritual teachings of the Goddess. Historical, Religious, and Literary Background of the Devi Gita Less well known than the Bhagavad Gita (The Song of Lord Krishna) both in India and the West, the Devi Gita nonetheless serves, for certain Hindus who see ultimate reality primarily in terms of a divine and beneficent mother, as the supreme scripture, complementing and completing all others. Indeed, the Goddess herself in the Devi Gita frequently quotes from the Bhagavad Gita, as well as from other Hindu scriptures such as the Upanishads and Puranas, but with the understanding that all such passages ultimately point to her as the absolute. Thus the Goddess does not deny...