The power behind rasa
Who is powering RASA?
RASA is the transmission of spiritual energy. However, RASA givers or RASA facilitators ARE NOT the ones who are powering this spiritual energy. They are just channeling this energy. The one powering this energy (hence ensuring the effectiveness of this transmission) is Divine Mother Kali herself.
Please don’t be put off by these words like “Divine Mother” or Kali”. When I say “Kali”, I am NOT pointing to the traditional Kali image that Western media usually depicts. To me, Kali is the divine mother, the female personification of highest enlightenment.
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Kali is the female personification of what Hindus call “Shiva consciousness”
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Kali is the female personification of what Buddhists call “Buddha nature”
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Kali is the female personification of what Christians call “Christ consciousness”
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Kali is the female personification of what Taoist call “The Tao, the one who can’t be named or defined”
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Kali is the female personification of the Lord himself.
That which is Brahman is verily Shakti. I address That, again, as the Mother. I call It Brahman when It is inactive, and Shakti when It creates, preserves and destroys. It is like water, sometimes still and sometimes covered with waves.
Brahman alone is addressed as the Mother. This is because a mother is an object of great love. One is able to realize God just through love. Ecstasy of feeling, devotion, love, and faith-these are the means.
Ramakrishna
While many others prefer to call God as Primordial consciousness, Pure “I”, the Infinity etc., they all seem very far-out and impersonal to me. I derive greatest pleasure when I refer to God as divine mother. To me, God becomes very personal and intimate when I refer it that way.
My decision to revere the highest divinity in female form is my own personal preference. You don’t have to agree with my view. You don’t even need to personify the highest reality as your mother/father/teacher either. People are diverse, and so are their natural spiritual inclinations. Some people see the nondual consciousness as the highest reality while some people choose to revere it as God, yet some people (like me for example) see it as all embracing mother.
The traditional image of Kali (the fierce black Goddess) that we are accustomed to see is a female archetype that represents rapid self-realization and destruction of ego consciousness. Kali has other forms too, ranging from fierce demon (personification of ego) slaying warrior to benign benevolent gracious Mother Goddess.
In tradition of Shaktism for example, Divine Goddess is seen as an immanent aspect of the transcendental God. It is the immaterial God who out of his own will becomes everything in the Universe. God’s power to emanates everything out of himself is called “Shakti” or the Divine energy of God. Divine Goddess is a female archetype of this Shakti. This Shakti literally vibrates herself into the universe.
In Tantric scriptures, Divine Goddess is associated with many functionalities of the highest Divine. However, in many other esoteric and exoteric schools in India, Divine Goddess is often worshipped as the highest primordial reality. Here Goddess is God, plain and simple.
Goddess is the Universal Consciousness
The ultimate reality, which is Universal Consciousness, is not static as some nondual traditions depict it to be. Consciousness is simultaneously static, and yet at the same time, it emanates the whole reality within itself.
Just like ocean waves are made of ocean, appear within ocean, and are utterly inseparable from ocean, similarly -
Everything is made of this Universal Consciousness.
Everything is inseparable from Universal Consciousness and
Everything appears within consciousness.
Everything is Universal Consciousness & Universal Consciousness is everything.
But there’s more:
This Universal consciousness is everything and at the same time is beyond everything.
This Universal consciousness is devoid of any attribute and yet at the same time becomes the entire universe filled with differentiated objects with differentiated attributes.
This Universal Consciousness is transcendental and yet at the same time immanent in everything. This is dynamic consciousness
This dynamic Universal Consciousness is what I called the Great Goddess.
This Great Goddess alone exists.
When the Great Goddess remains unmanifested, she becomes the Absolute. She is the complete, unqualified, unconditional, unlimited, unrestricted, unrestrained, boundless God himself. She is beyond the beyond. She is so beyond that she can’t be pinpointed in any shape or form, because she precedes anything and everything whatsoever.
When the Great Goddess, out of her free will and creative impulse, manifest herself, she becomes the entire cosmos.
Everything is a particular crystallization or condensation of Goddess. Goddess becomes everything. This is not a metaphorical process, it’s a literal process.
On the individual level:
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Goddess becomes you and everyone else. Goddess is the hair in your nose, the air you breathe, the curtain on your window, the tree in your backyard, the car you drive, the excrement you dump, the body you have.
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Goddess becomes your thoughts, sensation, emotions, beliefs, states and desires.
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Goddess becomes your hopes and dreams, your pains and sufferings, your goals and achievements.
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Goddess becomes your six senses. Goddess becomes your ability to perceive. At the same time, she becomes all of your perceptions and all that you can perceive.
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Goddess becomes your creative impulses, your ability to think, be, do and have.
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Goddess becomes your will and your actions and the inner push that compels you to will and action.
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Goddess becomes the primordial cause of your individual universe.
The Goddess who transforms herself into the entire universe is the very same Goddess that transforms herself into an individual self.
Never there was and never there will be any existence of a separate I/You/We/(S)He/They/ It. All of these are emanations of Goddess.
She is one and yet she is many. She is nondual and yet she is diversity. She is transcendental and yet she is immanent.
You are Goddess not because you are special; you are Goddess because everything is Goddess. There is nothing out there that's not Goddess.
Through and through, all the way through, all there is and all there ever will be is Goddess.
Goddess alone “IS”.
When I am revering Goddess, I am revering this whole dynamic-yet-still consciousness.