We are manifest through the vehicle of the mother. The entire Universe is manifest or given birth through the vehicle of Mother. The Mother is the instrument for converting spirit into matter. To understand that all form is spirit made matter is to see that at the source within the world of matter lies the Mother.
Behind the Mother, or beyond the Mother, lies the Father. The Father is formless, unmanifest in which the spirit exists with no matter. To understand the relationship between the Mother and Father is to deal with the most profound mystical enigma, for the Father is the Father of the Mother and the Mother is the Mother of the Father. Each gives rise to the other, neither exists independent of the other and each is contained within the other. For the Mother in all of her manifestations is only the formless, taking form. It is not a continuum between spirit and matter, between formless and form, it is an identity.
The levels on which manifestations exist, or on which the Mother manifests, range from the finest stuff, the mist that is finer than thought and faster than light, to the grossest, densest forms, found in the depths of the earth. To know the Mother means to recognize the entire range of manifestations. To see her manifesting in the densest, slowest forms of rock and mineral, and to see within these dense forms the fine mist of the spirit in its finest manifestation. It’s like looking at clouds without forgetting that it is made up of drops of moisture.
Recognizing that these drops of moisture are relationships among hydrogen and oxygen atoms and that these atoms are composed of neutrons and electrons and protons. That these units in turn are still finer stuff and that it is also what the cloud is. And that this stuff that composes the cloud is no different than the stuff that composes that which is around the cloud.
For the quanta of energy which make up all forms of the Universe are the same. They are all manifestations of the Mother; they are all pure energy, or from another way of looking at it, pure love. Or from yet another way of looking at it, pure consciousness.
As energy, the Universe is referred to as Shakti; and the Father, that which is an identity in the formless, is referred to as Shiva. The path of enlightenment is the path of bringing together the two parts of this identity until form is no different than formless. A being who has merged into that identity, clinging nowhere to form, neither here nor there to neither this nor that, is said to be realized. which is the ultimate union of the Mother and Father. The process of bringing about that union involves working with shakti, the Mother, directing and using the energy in form, in order to transcend that form and merge with the formless.
Each individual has a connection to the shakti which is the Universe of form. This connection is often referred to as kundalini, or the serpent that lies coiled at the base of the spine. For this coiled energy is starting out as the energy uniquely existing within that form, which we define as ourself, climbs the spine, the sushumna, and passes through the chakras, resonates, tunes to, identifies with, and incorporates, larger and larger components of the shakti of the Universe until finally when the serpent has risen to the ajna, the sixth of the seven chakras, it is so identified with patterns of energy throughout the Universe, that the individual knows everything, for it is one with all patterns in the universe. So that the individual is the blade of grass, and is the thought of another, is the past and is the future. Nothing is veiled from such a being, for such a being‘s identity is no longer limited by the body or the psychological separateness but is now one with the shakti of the Universe. That is the stage prior to the merging which occurs in the sahasrara, the seventh chakra, at which time Shakti of the Universe merges into Shiva, that which is formless.
Most people have a very limited amount of shakti which they work with. They receive shakti through their eyes, nose, mouth, skin, thoughts, senses, what they eat, through their love relationships. This shakti is limited by the power of the molds in their mind. As these molds give way, as the attachments to one’s separation diminishes, one identifies with more and more of the shakti of the Universe, until they are one with the Mother, one with the energy, with the force.
In truth, it is only at that moment that you can merge with God. That is why there is such profound purification and strengthening necessary to go through the journey of enlightenment, for one must be a vessel of the Universe. One must, as we will all come to see, consume the Mother.
-Ram Dass
Photo via Flickr
