First I will confess that it must be my own shortcoming and a mental barrier that I am unable to accept the divinity of the mother because of few reasons like she was french but as I said I see that as my own weakness and is working on it by doing sadhana, After listening to you a lot I started reading The mother as well but sir I was almost brought to a point of crying several times as her words have hurt me a lot about our gods, She said that our gods don’t have the psychic warmth and love for supreme, How is that sir? Our gods are constantly depicted to do tapasya like Shiva on Sri Rama, Sri Krishna of Kali, etc, and are they not the personalities of Divine or supreme or Purushottamma or Parabrahman as Sri Aurobindo himself writes? Also if our are gods don’t have the “psychic warmth and love” as The mother says then all our bhakti is wasted isn’t it sir?If they are cold and distant with no warmth. Why did the mother showed such bitterness to our gods sir? This has made me almost depressed as I am a huge bhakta of Hanuman ji and when someone of the mother’s calibre says something like this about my beloved it hurts as I can’t ignore her words either since she was hailed so highly by Sri Aurobindo himself. Does this mean I should stop my bhakti towards Hanuman ji and Sri Ram ji? I accept and understand the unity of all gods as emanations of one divine but does that not mean we can reach him through any of his forms and personalities which seems must suitable to our temperament?
ANS:
I am also confused because Sri Aurobindo has written greatly about the gods from what I have read, be it beautiful poetries on Krishna and Shiva or multiple mention of Krishna and Shiva in his Savitri as you know even when Savitri is returning to the earth the two godheads that she sees were krishna and kali. I hope I could explain my problem to you sir as this has made me very agitated recently and even made a dent on my bhakti towards Hanuman ji although I see that as my own failure but still now I am quite torn between the words of the mother and sri aurobindo as I cannot ignore them as I respect and love them and my bhakti towards my ishta.
I am glad you asked this question. The subject of the gods and man’s relation to them is poorly understood. To begin with be rest assured that The Mother is in complete friendliness with the gods, whether of our Hindu tradition or others such as Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek and Romans. All of them are Her children and She loves them dearly.
Now coming to the question of gods. Hanuman ji, Shri Rama ji, Krishna Bhagawan are not gods. They are much greater. Sri Rama and Sri Krishna are Avatars of the Supreme, Hanuman ji is an ansavatar of Rudra who took a human body. In fact the Mother sees him as the same Divine Consciousness which incarnated as Rama also incarnated as Hanuman ji. So who are the gods She is referring to? She is referring to the pantheon of gods of the Puranic lore. Many of these gods are emanations and projections of the true original powers and aspects of the One Divine on different planes. That is the difference between the kali that men worship generally and the Mahakali who is herself a power and aspect of the Divine Mother. Here is what the Mother has herself commented upon Rama ji, Hanuman ji, Krishna Bhagawan and the gods.
‘As today is Sri Aurobindo’s birthday I thought that instead of reading the Dhammapada I could read to you something which will both interest you and show you how Sri Aurobindo visualised our relation with the gods.
You know, don’t you, that in India especially, there are countless categories of gods, who are all on different planes, some very close to man, others very close to the Supreme, with many intermediaries.
You will understand better what I want to tell you if I mention the gods of the Puranasโlike those we saw the other day in the filmโwho in many ways are, I must say, inferior to man (!) although they have infinitely more power.
There are gods of the Overmind who are the great creators of the earthโuntil now. There are the gods of the Vedas who are mentioned in everything that has come down from the Rishis. And there are the gods of the Supermind, those who are going to manifest on earth, although of course they exist from all eternity on their own plane.
Here Sri Aurobindo is speaking mostly about the Vedic gods, but not exclusively nor in a very definite way. At any rate these gods are higher than the gods of the Puranas.
Here is what Sri Aurobindo tells us.
In fact, it is a prayer:
Be wide in me, O Varuna;
Be mighty in me, O Indra;
O Sun, be very bright and luminous;
O Moon, be full of charm and sweetness.
Be fierce and terrible, O Rudra;
Be impetuous and swift, O Maruts;
Be strong and bold, O Aryama;
Be voluptuous and pleasurable, O Bhaga;
Be tender and kind and loving and passionate, O Mitra.
Be bright and revealing, O Dawn;
O Night, be solemn and pregnant.
O Life, be full, ready and buoyant;
O Death, lead my steps from mansion to mansion.
Harmonise all these, O Brahmanaspati.
Let me not be subject to these gods, O Kali.1
So Sri Aurobindo makes Kali the great liberating power who ardently impels you towards progress and leaves no ties within you which would hinder you from progressing.
I think this will be a good subject for meditation.’
It means that gods have their place, a high place in creation but there is something in human beings that surpasses or is capable of surpassing the gods. This is not something new. All the Yogis and mystics and saints have spoken about it. Does not the story of Sati Anusuya demonstrate that she could turn Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh into children? The stories of Nala and Damayanti, Indra creating problems for the people of Braj because they started worshipping Govardhan instead of Indra, Indra dev fighting against Arjun to help Takshak, Brahma ji and even Shiv ji giving impossible boons to the Asuras who then misuse it to the fullest are all revealing. The Upanishads go on to say that men are the cattle of the gods and the great Saint Kabir even questioned his guru’s worship of the gods. Saints and Yogis say that union with the Divine himself is a privilege given only to man and not even to the gods. The Gita affirms the same that the Supreme dwells within man and the great gods are mainly cosmic powers that manage the affairs of the creation at the command of the Supreme. The Gita says that asking boons from the gods keeps us tied to the lower creation. Whereas if man turns towards the Divine and unites with the Supreme within him, he goes beyond the gods. There are countless stories in our own mythology indicative of that. So all that the Mother is saying is nothing new. She is not demeaning the gods. She is simply showing us where they belong. She is telling that though the gods are high up beyond the human yet in potentiality man can go and will one day go beyond the domain of the gods because that is his destiny. Her favouring humanity over the gods can be found also in the stories of Sri Rama and Sri Krishna. In short there is nothing wrong in worship of the gods but it will limit our spiritual progress upto the level of the worshipped god. If we however aspire for the transformation of earthly life and live divinely then we have to go beyond the influence of the gods to the Divine Mother herself who is also the Mother of the gods.
