C. W. Lead Beater.

That our fear of death springs mostly from our ‘ignorance and from the instinctive terror Of utter annihilation can not be gainsaid,' whereas knowledge dispels that fear.
By raising the upper hand of the two right arms she assures all creatures protection against all fear and-danger. There are terrific forces in ‘Nature, puny beings tremble before them, they are too weak too helpless; they may be- utterly annihilated at any moment by any one of those terrible, destructive forces of nature, but there is mercy of God, that infinite kindness and mercy protect the universe and fill every heart with
‘The reader on this point may profitably read Maurice Materlinck’s treatise called, Death’ ;
C92")
kind assurance and hope that there is, after all, great shelter against all thése in the Divine love that Sustains and supports the universe, like a mother’s love. Again, with the lower hand of the two right arms, she bestows her blessings on all. Here,-there is’ no discrimination. All the children alike, independent of their merits or demerits, share in mother’s divine love for her offsprings. Mother is generous, kind and loving to all her children ;there is no limit to mother’s blessings or bounty. Likewise, there is no limit to Divine grace and love. They - are unbounded, they embrace all, nothing can exist even for a moment outside this magnetic zone of Divine love that attracts every thing and every being to the loving bosom of God. This is what has been.expressed in the Adyakali Stotra of the Mahanirvan Tantra by Kring—Thou who art beneficent. Fifth, Mahakal rolls under the feet of the Goddess Kali. °
Mahakal is another name for Siva, or the great Lord of destruction and death. But the Sanskrit word Kala also denotes time. Mahakal here evidently denotes the image of eternal Time, Now, Time has no existence to God. Time and space are annihilated in Brahma and this is what has been expressed in the Adyakali stotra of the Mahanirvan Tantra, as “Hring—O Destroyer of Time.” Sixth, It seems, the great Goddess. is ashamed of her own conduct and there is an expression of bashfulness on her divinely beautiful face. It naturally denotes an incident that is connected with the- mythical legend associated with the image of Kali. Mahakal or Siva -in Hindu mythology. is the divine consort of Goddess Kali. So the Goddess becomes naturally smitten with a deep sense of shame by witnessing her own husband rolling under her feet, which Siva did in order to dissuade the Goddess from her further act of destruction. Sakti is Destroyer
( 93 )
in both her capacities as the universal Destroyer
of everything and as the destroyer of all wicked souls | that standin the path of universal welfare. “These wicked souls are the Demons and Danavas of- the Hindu mythology. About these evil elements that interfere with the well-being and peace of the world, Lord Sreekrishna says, in the: Gita, that, for the destruction of the wicked ones and for establishing the rule of righteousness, He will take his birth again and again on the earth.
’
The idea of universal destruction is also closely associated with the notion of the destruction of all moral evils that stand in the path of universal peace and progress. The great Goddess Kali, in one aspect, is the Destroyer of the universe and, in another aspect, the destroyer of all evil and, wicked elements that disturb the well-being of ’ the world. Now, we have ventured to put a very humble interpretation to the incident of Mahakal rolling under the feet of the Goddess Kali. This representation, we think, not only denotes that Time is annihilated in Brahma, but also figura- tively implies that divine mercy ever counteracts and interferes with His latent potentiality for universal destruction. Siva, or God Bholanath, | is all-forgiving and ~all-forgething. Divine mercy is ever ready even to bless the wicked, it is by their own perverseness that they invite their own destruction and death, divine mercy is helpless to save them, for they will rush head long to ruin.
Again, we have ventured to. interpret the expression of bashfulness in our own humbie way. Weare very often blind to this Divine love that surrounds -us like the mother’s love and often saves us from destruction and ruin. It remains concealed from our distorted vision, which is all-engrossed with the sights of material objects. In our oyerjealousness for material welfare and in
in it, is the reflection.of Divine beauty..
eS
over-anxiety for all material obstacles that may stand in the way of achieving our ends and in fulfilling our desires, we overlook the saving grace of God. This is, we venture to think, one of the reasons, that expression of the Goddess is indicative of bashfulness: our spiritual blindness turn us indifferent to this saving grace of God, soit fights shy to reveal itself to us. Again, the revelation of the Spirit in us is like the revela- tion of an extremely shy maid, very reluctant to reveal her beauty to the profane gaze of the world. God’s creation loudly proclaims its existence, but God remains hidden behind His creation. So Goddess Kali is shy to reveal Herself to us. We must by our efforts and Sadhana make Herself reveal to us.
God is ever unknown to us, but, the Hindu Shastras declare, though unknown but not un--
-knowable. By our Sadhana, moral and spiritual
discipline, by Jnan (knowledge) we can know or realise God. This rare incident is like the revela- tion of an extremely shy thing to us. This is, we think, is one of the meanings that we may find in the expression of shyness of the Goddess Kali. Brahma, as if, is always shy to reveal Him to us.
Seventh, the central eye, or the eye on the forehead, indicates the eye of wisdom or know- ledge. It is Jnan or knowledge that dispels all ignorance and doubt about God, like physical light that destroys all physical darkness and illumines every object with its brightness.
Eighth, the effulgence of her drivine beauty illumines the universe. The beauty’ of- the universe, the beauty of every thing and every being, is the expression of Divine beauty. It is divine beauty that we love'and admire in an object, which in-itself has no. intrinsic beauty of its own. The beauty of. the universe and of every object
( 95 ) _ This is what is figuratively expressed by the image of the Goddess Kali in the Tantras. ‘Ofcourse, we have as briefly as possible described the broad outlines of the great image, without
least attempting to go deep into the abstruse philoso- “phical significance connected with it.
“There was. darkness in the beginning, let there be light and there was light, so says the Book of Genesis in the Bible. We need not be harsh as Thomas Huxley in his ‘Illogical Geology, where he tears the Biblical account of creation into fragments by his irrefutible logic. The theory of creation as given in the Upanishads can stand the scrutiny of strictest logic and Science, ‘and the Goddess Sakti, in one aspect, is the’image of the begining and end of universe. The origin of the universe, as well as of every thing, is dark, and its end is also shrouded in darkness. The great Goddess of darkness or Kali alone can dispel this and can illumine the devotee’s heart. Once, you are blessed with divine grace, all darkness melts away, and you become immersed in the ocean of light ; you are carried away on the crest of the waves of light that surge all round you, and you lose yourself in the rapturous emotion of joy _that defies all attempts of description, and your ‘spiritual darkness is removed by divine light, the light that was never on the land or on the sea. That was what Ramkrishna Paramhansa realised when the great Mother revealed herself. from, the stony sheath of the image, which Paramhansa worshipped with rapturous devotion and love’. The divine transport and the rapturous emotion that the flashing image of the great Goddess awakens in the devotee’s heart, struggling in the darkness of doubt and despair, defy all attempts of a
1 Vide Romain Rolland’s Life of Ram _ Krishna Paramhansa.
gt Te)
description. The great Sankarcharyya, in his Ananda Lahari Stava, says the sweetness of grape cannot be distinguished and described by words, but may be perceived by the tongue only, so. it can only. be realised by the fortunate devotee, who has been .blessed with the Divine grace. Yet, it seems to us, that the complex emotion that it arouses in the devotee’s heart is something akin to the emotion roused by the wild swans’ notes in the setting darkness of the evening, as been described by the poet Rabindra Nath Tagore, in his Balaka, and we make no apology in quoting its translation by a distinguished professor of English, Rai Lalit Mohan Chatterji Bahadur, M. A.:
Wild Swans.
Gleaming in lights of eve the winding Jhelum stray’d, —Then dusked like a curv’d sword-blade That in the sheath you hide ; Day ebb’d with night’s black tide, The stars like offer’d flowers floated
down the stream : ‘The dark hill-foot did seem With rows of: Deodars pale Like the slumber-stiff’d speech of the dreaming Vale!
ey
Then suddenly heard I The evening sky _ Was swept with a flush of sound that pass'd away Farther and. farther off upon its endless way ! —O wild swans ! Drunk With the tempest’s madness those your vans With sound of laughter went Awakening all the sleeping sky to wonderment !
(97)
The sound of your wings’ stroke
: Like Apsar maidens broke
The holy meditation of the Brooding Quiet : A Shiver set
The mountains in the dark that stood :
Shiver’d the Deodar wood......
The first two stanzas though not to our point but are necessary as a context for an adequate comprehension of the poem. -
(3)
“O Swans in flight ! To me you ‘ve opened what the
| silence hid to-night : Under it all I hear,
Far and near, Sound of quick quivering wings ! The grass that springs _ _ Flaps its wings in the sod, its sky : Deep and all unseen where they lie, In sprouts their wings have spread
The seeds in their dark bed:
¥
(Now please mark the following lines and the last stanza)
‘The earth beneath me reels The very woods and hills Are in-flight, passing on and on | From isle to isle from th’unknown to j the More Unknown !”’
As soon as the revelation occurs to the devotee ‘all hitherto-existing environment melts away in the Ocean of light and his soul takes its flight from the gross earth to Brahma or God in whom ‘it becomes finally immersed. It loses its individual ‘existence and becomes ‘one with Universal-Soul.
13
( 98 ) Se (4) “In my heart I seem’d to hear With myriad birds in flight By day and night,
From its nest another Bird had flown On some quest from shore to shore unknown ! From countless wings this music thrill’d the
ae sphere— ‘Not here, not here, elsewhere, some other
where !’ ”
In ecstatic transport, the devotee’s soul soars from the dusty earth and loses itself in the Eternal Infinite,—the Ever-great Unknown.