The Mother: Durga Puja Special

During the last few years we have been fortunate enough to visit several ancient temples, mainly in North Tamil Nadu, South Karnataka and Gujarat. To mark this year’s Durga Puja we present here a few photos of Durga sculptures, murals and paintings from these temples.

Like all other photo-features presented here, Sri Aurobindo’s words are what give soul, meaning, life and purpose to these pictures. A humble offering to the Divine Mother.

Photographer: Suhas Mehra. Please do not reproduce any of the photographs without explicit permission.

The only way to begin is with this adoration of the Divine Mother, from Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri.

At the head she stands of birth and toil and fate,

In their slow round the cycles turn to her call;

Alone her hands can change Time’s dragon base.

Hers is the mystery the Night conceals;

The spirit’s alchemist energy is hers;

She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire.

The luminous heart of the Unknown is she,

A power of silence in the depths of God;

She is the Force, the inevitable Word,

The magnet of our difficult ascent,

The Sun from which we kindle all our suns,

The Light that leans from the unrealised Vasts,

The joy that beckons from the impossible,

The Might of all that never yet came down.

(Savitri, Book III: Book of the Divine Mother, Canto II: Adoration of the Divine Mother, p. 314)

“For the Mother is one but she comes before us with differing aspects; many are her powers and personalities, many her emanations and Vibhutis that do her work in the universe. The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates. But something of her ways can be seen and felt through her embodiments and the more seizable because more defined and limited temperament and action of the goddess forms in whom she consents to be manifest to her creatures.” (Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 32, p. 14)

“There are three ways of being of the Mother of which you can become aware when you enter into touch of oneness with the Conscious Force that upholds us and the universe. Transcendent, the original supreme Shakti, she stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme. Universal, the cosmic Mahashakti, she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces. Individual, she embodies the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, makes them living and near to us and mediates between the human personality and the divine Nature.” (ibid., p. 14)

“Four great Aspects of the Mother, four of her leading Powers and Personalities have stood in front in her guidance of this universe and in her dealings with the terrestrial play. One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness. Another embodies her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force. A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace. The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact perfection in all things. Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, Perfection are their several attributes and it is these powers that they bring with them into the world, manifest in a human disguise in their Vibhutis and shall found in the divine degree of their ascension in those who can open their earthly nature to the direct and living influence of the Mother. To the four we give the four great names, Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati.” (ibid., pp. 17-18)

“But be on your guard and do not try to understand and judge the Divine Mother by your little earthly mind that loves to subject even the things that are beyond it to its own norms and standards, its narrow reasonings and erring impressions, its bottomless aggressive ignorance and its petty self-confident knowledge. The human mind shut in the prison of its half-lit obscurity cannot follow the many-sided freedom of the steps of the Divine Shakti. The rapidity and complexity of her vision and action outrun its stumbling comprehension; the measures of her movement are not its measures. Bewildered by the swift alternation of her many different personalities, her making of rhythms and her breaking of rhythms, her accelerations of speed and her retardations, her varied ways of dealing with the problem of one and of another, her taking up and dropping now of this line and now of that one and her gathering of them together, it will not recognise the way of the Supreme Power when it is circling and sweeping upwards through the maze of the Ignorance to a supernal Light. Open rather your soul to her and be content to feel her with the psychic nature and see her with the psychic vision that alone make a straight response to the Truth. Then the Mother herself will enlighten by their psychic elements your mind and heart and life and physical consciousness and reveal to them too her ways and her nature.” (ibid., p. 25)

Once Sri Aurobindo visited a Kali Temple in a place called Chandod, on the bank of the Narmada. He said:

“With my Europeanised mind I had no faith in image-worship and I hardly believed in the presence of God.”

But he was compelled to do so when he looked at the image and saw a living Divine presence. As he wrote afterwards:

“[Y]ou stand before a temple of Kali beside a sacred river and see what?—a sculpture, a gracious piece of architecture, but in a moment mysteriously, unexpectedly there is instead a Presence, a Power, a Face that looks into yours, an inner sight in you has regarded the World-Mother.” (Source)

THE STONE GODDESS

In a town of gods, housed in a little shrine,

From sculptured limbs the Godhead looked at me, —

A living Presence deathless and divine,

A Form that harboured all infinity.

The great World-Mother and her mighty will

Inhabited the earth’s abysmal sleep,

Voiceless, omnipotent, inscrutable,

Mute in the desert and the sky and deep.

Now veiled with mind she dwells and speaks no word,

Voiceless, inscrutable, omniscient,

Hiding until our soul has seen, has heard

The secret of her strange embodiment,

One in the worshipper and the immobile shape,

A beauty and mystery flesh or stone can drape.

(Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, CWSA, Vol. 2, pp. 608)

All Nature dumbly calls to her alone

To heal with her feet the aching throb of life

And break the seals on the dim soul of man

And kindle her fire in the closed heart of things.

All here shall be one day her sweetness’ home,

All contraries prepare her harmony;

Towards her our knowledge climbs, our passion gropes;

In her miraculous rapture we shall dwell,

Her clasp shall turn to ecstasy our pain.

Our self shall be one self with all through her.

In her confirmed because transformed in her,

Our life shall find in its fulfilled response

Above, the boundless hushed beatitudes,

Below, the wonder of the embrace divine.

(Savitri, Book III: Book of the Divine Mother, Canto II: Adoration of the Divine Mother, pp. 314-315)

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