The spiritual experience I had yesterday (May 5, 2014) had calmed down by the next morning. But the learnings it left me with remain.
I am love. You are love. At our essence and in our forms, everyone and everything is love. Love is the raw material of everything that is, the building block of creation, the glue of preservation , and the solvent of transformation – everything!
And what is the relationship between the Divine Mother and love?
Well, to get at that, I’m going to need to stairstep a little.
First let me establish that the Mother has been here since forever and will always be here.
Solomon called the Mother, Wisdom: “Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?” (1) That voice is the music of the spheres, which we’ll come to in a minute.
She rests with the Father as potential within the Void until called forth to begin her work of creation, preservation and transformation. This, for me, is the meaning of the statement: “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.” (2)
The Mother has no beginning or end, as she says here: “I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.” (3)
“When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. …
“While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. …
“Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him.” (4)
Hindus know her as Prakriti and Romans as Procreatrix, Creator of the world. And how did she create the world? “In the beginning … the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (5)
These “waters” I speculate are love. Whether you prefer to think of them in some intermediate form of matter such as ether or akasha, they are at their essence, I believe, after my experience last night, love.
Here is King David in Psalms talking about the work of creation. “The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice.” That voice is the Mother’s Aum. “The floods lift up their waves.” Those waves are of love. “The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters.” The “noise of many waters,” also often called the “sound in the silence” ‘or “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” is the Mother. The still and silent Father is That from which the active and sonic Mother comes. (6)
Now let’s take the next stairstep and discover how the Mother builds a universe from love.
In one of her aspects, the Divine Mother is called Shakti or “energy.” There are two ways of talking about her energy. As a stream in the body’s energy system, it’s called the kundalini. As a universal creative vibrations that brings worlds into existence it’s called Aum or Amen.
Here is a description of the Mother’s energy operating in the body, from Solomon:
“She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths.
“She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors.” (7)
Mother Shakti, as the kundalini energy, “crieth at the gates” or chakras, at the various entries or doors to the city like the eyes, the ears, the nose, the mouth. She travels up “the way” – that is, the sushumna canal – “in the places of the paths” – the Ida and Pingalla – to the “top of high places,” the crown chakra. When she reaches the crown chakra where Shiva resides, Shakti is said to merge with Shiva.
Now let’s consider her sound or energy, called Aum, as the builder of worlds. Paramahansa Yogananda tells us:
“The intelligent holy vibration, or the first manifestation of God the Father, … manifests as the cosmic sound of Aum, or Amen, which can be heard in meditation.” (8)
“Aum or the Holy Ghost, [is] the sole causative force that upholds the cosmos through vibration.” (9)
“The Cosmic Energy, or Vibration, … has a voice of Cosmic Sound which is called Amen by Christians or Om by Hindus. This Amen is the faithful witness in the beginning of creation — that is, all vibrating creation is accompanied by the Cosmic Sound of Amen or Om or the Word or Holy Ghost, which is the first vibrating manifestation of God.” (10)
Has anyone heard her cry? We all have. That high-pitched noise you’re hearing in your ear right now? That’s Aum. That’s the music of the spheres. That’s the creative vibration that brings all worlds, all universes into being.
The Mother, Holy Spirit, or Shakti (energy) is the energetic vibration that creates, preserves and transforms the world, the first manifestation of the Holy Father. She is movement and sound; he is stillness and silence. The Mother as Aum moves upon the waters of love and makes the world.
In my experience, I saw love flow out in, yes, a tsunami that completely filled the world. The world it filled was this Three-Dimensional world in which I was, lying on my bed. I perceived it to be my essence and I intuited it to be the substance from which everything in this Third-Dimensional world had been created, including my body, mind, etc.
The Father has no direct contact with this world. It’s the Mother who does. Krishna says:
“This entire universe is pervaded by me, in that eternal form of mine which is not manifest to the senses. Although I am not within any creature, all creatures exist within me. I do not mean that they exist within me physically. That is my divine mystery. You must try to understand its nature. My Being sustains all creatures and brings them to birth, but has no physical contact with them.” (11)
That “eternal form of mine,” I speculate, is love. That love that we exist in is not physical, as Krishna says. The power that sustains all beings is the Mother, in her form as Aum.
The being of God is love, consciousness, and life. That being the case, if I’m correct, we are sparks of consciousness (the Father) existing in a world of love through the agency of the Divine Mother’s creative vibration, Aum. It is she who makes the world from love and gives us life.
Footnotes
(1) Proverbs 8:1.
(2) Proverbs 8: 22.
(3) Proverbs 8:23.
(4) Proverbs 8: 24-27 and 30.
(5) Genesis 1:1-2.
(6) Psalm 93:3-4.
(7) Proverbs 8:2-3.
(8) Paramahansa Yogananda, The Second Coming of Christ. Three vols. Dallas: Amrita Foundation, 1979-86, 1, 17. [Hereafter SCC.]
(9) Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi. Bombay: Jaico, 1975, 487n.
(10) Paramahansa Yogananda, SCC, 2, 22.
(11) Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 80.