Just
as there are places in the ocean where it remains so cold that the
icebergs do not melt, Sri Ramakrishna tells us, explaining the idea
of ‘spiritual archetypes,’ so are there icebergs of divinity,
Forms of Deity virtually permanent, dwelling in the cosmic mind,
created “by the cooling influence, so to speak, of the love of the
devotees; only when the Sun of Knowledge burns fierce in the sky do
these personal Forms disappear.” These Forms of God are seen, he
said, by those devoted to them, heard –even touched– in the realm
of mystical vision. It is in this way that God responds to the pleas
and longings of the human heart.
From
the viewpoint of a Vedantist (1), Western religious culture
seems singularly lacking in two spiritual archetypes: the Mother
Deity and the Heroine. Judaism and Christianity, the traditional
religions of the Western world, suffer, it appears to some
Vedantists, from a paucity of outstanding spiritual role-models of
the feminine. Catholicism has ‘made do’ to some extent with the
figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Mother and Intercessor
roles. My purpose here is to explore some of the implications of
this, both for the individual and the society, and to ask whether an
expanded appreciation of Mary, mother of Jesus, may, on the basis of
Vedantic tradition and hermeneutics, be of any value to Christians.
Robert
Johnson, author and lecturer, student of C.G. Jung, in a recent
public address on the “Hero: Male and Female,” began by saying
that he felt compelled to abandon the word ‘heroine’ because of
what Hollywood and the rest have done to it; he would speak rather on
the Hero archetype, male, then female, and would relate myths
appropriate to each. When he came to the place in his address for the
discussion of the female hero, he acknowledged that he had had to
turn away from the West in frustration and go to the East for his
stories.
He
began with the Indian tale of Savitri. Johnson, in true Jungian vein,
would have none of the male role-playing of Western women heroes;
Jeanne d’Arc and the rest were not for him. The anima was
to be illustrated by those characters which had embodied her almost
nameless, indefinable qualities –the affairs of the heart, the
interpersonal relationships which, he felt, are the forte, the
hallmark, of all we call woman. External action did not delineate the
Hero in women, but a kind of internal –what? Resilience? Catalytic
power?
All of
this seems quite in place to the Vedantist, at home in a tradition of
Father-Mother God and the expectation that with the
reappearing avatar may come the latter’s female
counterpart to play out her own kind of hero role. When asked to
speculate on why he had had to go for his feminine heroes to the East
and in particular to India, Robert Johnson replies, “Well, they
have never thrown the Goddesses out of their temples. There they all
are, for all to see, adore, and emulate.”
But
surely the Blessed Virgin Mary is a feminine heroic figure for the
West. Can she not be taken as archetypal, both as Hero and Mother?
And if so, are we limited in our discussion to what is said of her in
scripture and tradition? Or are there not much wider considerations?
Let us
venture to do what Johnson found nearly impossible: attempt to define
the anima in terms of what the Deity-as-Mother actually is.
Of what is She the archetype? First, the Womb, the Source, “That
from which all beings have come, by which they are sustained, and
into which they enter again when they depart.” Then, Closeness:
the masculine role separates the father from the child, while the
feminine contains and nourishes in organic unity. Surely it is more
than coincidence that many great paintings of Madonna and Child show
the Babe outside her in nearly the same fetal position he was
formerly inside her. Next, All-encompassing Love, impartial and
unrefusing, is what we associate with motherhood (2). And with
this, of course, Forbearance and Forgiveness, those
twins, one passive, one active, without which mother is no mother at
all. Again, she is Constant Presence and Guidance,
“who, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps.” India has
a favorite word: Auspiciousness, favorableness, grace and mercy,
fulfilling all our wants and needs. Healing and restorative
power are associated with the maternal in nearly all cultures and in
liturgy, both orthodox and unorthodox. Finally, let us not at all
omit Playfulness, so essential for rounding out the portrait of
a Mother, and so often piously overlooked (except by Sri
Ramakrishna!) This whole world, says the Vedanta, is Her play.
In a
word, God as the Mother is Integration. One can see that for the
Hindu, She has never ceased to be Eve, mother of all the living, and
the Great Earth Mother, home for us all. For many, ‘Mother Earth’
has never been a mere metaphor. Thinkers today propound the Gaia
hypothesis, suggesting that Earth herself is alive and urging that
her life be respected.
For
many in the West, the Blessed Virgin already embodies many of these
aspects, if not theologically, then at least psychologically. Can
this image be enlarged into a fuller archetypal role? Can a
Vedantist’s view of Mary be helpful?
As a
first approach to how a Vedantist might regard the Blessed Virgin
Mary, we need to be aware of what it means to share the life of a
Divine Incarnation. Since the Incarnation of God (which many
Vedantists believe Jesus to be) lives externally much as we do, his
associates –family members, companions, teachers– benefit by
exposure to his divine character as it manifests variously in aspects
of his life. In the same measure as they themselves are spiritually
developed and perceptive, to that degree are they encircled with his
radiance, and in special cases express the divine glory through their
own characters. Indian spiritual traditions, as we shall see, provide
numerous examples. May we not use, with regard to Jesus’ Mother, a
term such as co-Incarnation, when we consider how much of his life
she appears to have shared and supported?
But
there is more to it than that. Let us consider the framework in which
Deity is conceived (or better, ‘experienced’) in the Indian
tradition.
The
basic Vedantic doctrine is that Brahman, or Godhead, is, in Itself,
not contained in forms and is undefinable by any quality whatsoever.
Approached by the human mind, this Being appears to take on
personality, response, the divine qualities, the archetypal forms
–and in the case of the historical incarnation, can even dwell on
earth in flesh. Sought by the various peoples of the earth, each in
accordance with their own faith, traditions and expectations, it is
the one Brahman which has manifested itself as Yahweh, as Shiva,
Krishna, the Buddha, the Tao, the Christ. “Truth is One; people
call it by various names” (Rig Veda).
With
this plurality of revelation as its basis, Vedanta countenances no
doctrine of exclusivity, such as God’s having ‘chosen’ one race
or culture over another; nor can the supposed claim of an Incarnation
to be, personally, the only manifestation of God, or a
messenger’s or prophet’s assertion of ultimacy in history, be
seriously entertained. In the words of Sri Ramakrishna, “The
Avatara is always one and the same. Having plunged into the ocean of
life, the one God rises up at one point and is known as Krishna, and
when after another plunge, He rises up at another point, He is known
as Christ.” (3)
Thus
we see in nature, or what we call the world, a three-stage
manifestation of the Infinite, Undivided and Unchanging: Its
assumption of formless Personality and Presence; of archetypal and
iconographic Forms (the Gods); and finally of biologic birth, passing
through various evolutionary forms and ending with the human being.
Although the last is alleged to have taken place several times in
history, male figures have certainly predominated in God’s choice
of vehicle. Yet the fact the He has come sucessively as Rama,
Krishna, the Buddha, the Christ, does not preclude that She can
and has come in a female body. And there are those, especially among
the partisans of the Tantra philosophy (4), who explicitly
proclaim such manifestations.
Such
openness as regards the gender of manifested divinity may be supposed
an attitude of recent, or at least historical, times, but that
appears contradicted by the existence of an ancient Indian icon known
as Ardhanarisvara, “God who is half-woman,” the conception of
which dates back at least to the Manu Smriti.(5) Here we
see the perfect androgyne: the left half of the body female, the
right, male. But in the cases of the very widely acknowledged
incarnations of Divinity, the tradition shows us an accompanying
‘consort,’ and if we use this word in an unrestricted sense
(literally, one who “goes with”), the reader can see where our
prospect lies: the possibility of the Blessed Virgin Mary taking her
place alongside Sita (Rama), Radha (Krishna), Yashodhara (Siddartha,
the Buddha), Vishnupriya (Chaitanya) and Sarada Devi (Ramakrishna).
Tantric
philosophy (given expression in the early centuries of the Common
Era), especially as employed by Sri Ramakrishna, places before us the
concept that the Deity, as soon as it is endowed with qualities,
shows itself to us as the eternal archetypal male-female:
Shiva-Shakti, to use the generic term. Shiva, the Absolute, the
passive witness of creation, appears as all men, everything that is
masculine; Shakti, the active, creative force of the universe appears
as all that is female. The two are inseparable, like fire and its
power to burn. When devotees see Rama or Krishna as Shiva’s
embodiment, they understand that his divine consort is right at hand.
The same is true for devotees of Sita or Radha. But there is a
Tantric doctrine going even further, asserting that Shakti is the
more powerful –the key, or access, to oneness with Shiva.
Now
the story of Sri Ramachandra and his wife Sita was current much
earlier (whatever may be the late date now assigned by scholars to
the text of the Ramayana) and belong to Vaishnavism;
applications of Tantrik doctrine to the advent of this divine pair
come from outside, so to speak, and are by hindsight –which is not
to say they are invalid. We see no objection to interpreting an
ancient story in the light of the developing human understanding and
continuing divine revelation; it is just such a hermeneutic which the
Vedantist can offer the devotees of the Blessed Virgin Mary for their
consideration.
The
tale of Rama and Sita pervades Indian culture and is regarded as
almost an archetype of the drama of divinity on earth. It is Sita,
earliest of the consorts, who may lay claim to having the largest
share in the enactment of the avatar-play, and to fulfilling the
criteria of divine incarnation. “Sita,” Swami Vivekananda
remarks, “is unique; that character was depicted once and for all.
There may have been several Ramas, perhaps, but never more than one
Sita! She is the very type of the true Indian woman, for all the
Indian ideals of a perfected woman have grown out of that one life of
Sita; and here she stands these thousands of years, commanding the
worship of every man, woman and child throughout the length and
breadth of the land… She who suffered… without a murmur, she the
ever-chaste and ever-pure wife, she the ideal of the people, the
ideal of the gods, the great Sita, our national God she must ever
remain.” (6)
When
we come to Radha and Krishna –and be it noted that on the lips of
many followers, as well as in holy writ, her name most often precedes
his– we have a similar female-male drama. The Gopi-Lila, or play of
the Cowherdgirls with the Divine Cowherd, has, through the
mythopoetic process, singled out Radha as chief of the Gopis and
prototypical sweetheart of the Lord, the ‘bride of God.’ It is
Radha, childhood companion of Sri Krishna and ecstatic exemplar of
the modes of Divine Love, rather than his wedded wife, whom tradition
has placed in the position of Shakti. The point is that the freely
given love of the heart is higher, and makes a more intimate bond,
than the merely legal spousal tie of an arranged marriage, and it is
the former that is held up as the ideal of human union with God. So
clearly is this set forth and formalized in Vaishnavism that it is
said of Sri Chaitanya, the fifteenth century saint, that he was not
only a second incarnation of Krishna but of Krishna and Radha
together, born to enjoy within his own life-drama the divine bliss of
separation and union of these two.
Without
consulting the Buddhists, many Hindus would fit into this framework
of the recurring avatara, Gautama Buddha, born Siddartha, prince of
the Sakyas and teacher of Nirvana. Gautama’s story is a very human
one. His spiritual maturation and attaining of Enlightenment is the
basis of attention and not a claim to divinity, and according to his
own words and the Buddhist faith, such Enlightenment is accessible to
everyone. Perhaps because of this preference for the humanistic and
non-supernatural in the life of the Buddha, his princess, Yasodhara,
has not generally been deified. Yet there is a mythological tradition
in which the Buddha relates how the soul of Yasodhara has accompanied
his in life after life. In the Gautama story we see her steadfastness
and total devotion, her renunciation as she also dons the yellow
cloth and lives the ascetic life, from the day he left her to find a
solution to the misery of the world. Is it her spiritual power which
secretly sustains him? There may be good reason for Yasodhara’s
occupying the place of spiritual companion and divine consort of
Gautama the Buddha.
For
those who accept Sri Ramakrishna’s affirmation that he was indeed
another of these “huge waves” of divinity, cast this time upon
the shores of our era, the case of Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother,
being fresh in the mind and well-documented, is unambiguous. We see
her first as the little girl society has made ‘wife’ to the
“madman of Dakshineswar,” in an attempt by his relatives to
normalize him. When as maiden and disciple she later becomes a part
of Ramakrishna’s daily life, we find that astonishing master
placing her, one evening, upon the worship-dais as the image of the
Divine Mother Herself. The Holy Mother’s life proceeds by stages to
reinvoke in its own quiet way those of Sita and Radha. Monks and
statesmen bow before her. The greatest figure in the theater of the
day dares not let his worldly eyes fall upon her form. In that total
equality of the sexes which India has never denied on the spiritual
plane, Sarada Devi becomes Guru and Mother to hundreds. She moves
with her entourage from temple to school to relief-station,
dedicating, blessing. Yet through all she remains the woman,
theanima complete, reticent, subtle –almost unseen. Some
Vedantists find in the Holy Mother an even greater store of divine
power and glory than in Sri Ramakrishna himself!
This
subtlety and reticence characterize also the Blessed Virgin Mary.
What we know of her from scripture is more by implication than
delineation. We see her before and at Jesus’ birth, at the time of
his being offered to the Lord in the temple; giving a parental rebuke
in his twelfth year, and receiving one, we might say, from him, at
the wedding feast. Had the divine Son prepared her for that most
devastating of renunciatory blows –”Who is my mother?” Then, at
the crucifixion, the tenderness of his consigning her to John, and we
have our last glimpse as she prays in the company of the early
followers of Christ.
Some
see prophecies of Mary in the Old Testament, in the promise of a
woman who would, by the fruit of her womb, reverse the guilt of Eve.
But according to Vedantists, other types of data besides scriptural
references are needed for the estimation of the divinity of a
spiritual figure, and in the case of Mary, these are available.
As
Edith Dean says, “Adoration of her is ageless, classless, raceless,
and timeless. Each nation where the Christian message lives thinks of
both the Madonna and Child as their own. Her face may carry the
features of the southern European in one great painting, the
Ethiopian in another, and the Oriental in another.We find great
representations of the Madonna up and down Europe, Asia, Africa,
North America, South America –in fact everywhere that the New
Testament has shed its light.” (7)
Yet
other questions must be asked: Does she appear in the visions –and
dreams– of numerous devotees and aspirants throughout the
centuries? Is her representation or image put in countless places of
worship, reverence, veneration or simple remembrance? Does calling
upon her by name prove fruitful in spiritual terms, and to what
extent –for in this last is understood the subtle difference
between an incarnation and a saint. Have the accumulated prayers and
devotions of loving souls gone into the making of this form an
archetype of the Spiritual Collective Unconscious? If so, then Mary’s
would be the unique case of the Consort as Mother of the
Avatar, with all the additional subtle implications of this for the
devotees’ relating themselves to God.
Vedantists,
who have applied these criteria to Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada
Devi and found that the evidence confirms them equally as
manifestations of divinity on earth, find it easy to read back into
the Christ advent a similar double avatara-hood. Accepted Christian,
or at least Roman Catholic, teaching is that the Blessed Virgin Mary
may only be venerated, not adored. Vedantists, however, find
themselves drawn to worship the Mother and Son together. This shows
plainly, for instance, in the traditional Christmas Eve celebrations
of the Ramakrishna Order, when the worship centers on a
representation of the Virgin and Child and the liturgical prayers and
hymns and offerings are made to Mary as much as to Jesus. We have
here the perhaps curious circumstance of a sacred figure receiving
greater honor outside the tradition which claims her than within it.
Her
presence in spiritual traditions other than her own is one example of
an expanded appreciation of Mary. Seeing her as archetypal Mother and
Hero is another. Raising the question of accepting her as
co-Incarnation is yet a third. A final suggestion from a Vedantist’s
point of view is the vision of the archetypal Mother in her cosmic
role: her significance and power in the integrating and nurturing of
all creation.
Most
Hindus understand God as the material as well as the efficient cause
of creation. The Upanishads, the revealed scriptures of Vedanta, make
clear that when the Creator conceived and gave birth to this
creation, He –or She– entered into it and became its very
substance. What would be the effect, in a world of vengeful violence,
racial enmity, despoilage and wasteful consumption, if all
Christendom thought of the Earth as the body of Mary?
Words
like ‘holistic,’ have a modern ring. But the East has long
understood, consciously or subconsciously, the universe to be the
body of God. Centuries before philosophers and theologians in the
West sifted these matters out, the sages of India were holding
debates about the primordial trinity of God, souls, and nature.
Although schools of various shades of opinion resulted and
relationships were explained in various ways, the consensus was never
in doubt: these three form an impartibly organic whole. And the
Divine Mother is the Figure which holds them all in one.
Recently
the ancient vision of the cosmic power of Christ as Pantokrator has
been renewed and offered in alliance with modern science by such
thinkers as Teilhard de Chardin. There is not only a divine Christ
and a human Christ, but a Cosmic Christ. And shall she who is
admitted to be the Mother of God, of the Divine Christ, not also be
acknowledged as the Mother of the Cosmic Christ? the Cosmic Mother?
These
have been some suggestions of how a Vedantist would –and in some
instances does– view the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of how Vedantic
conceptions of the world and of God might be of interest to
Christians who feel that there is some further revelation still
hidden in the mysterious figure of Mary, something important for our
world and our time. Some of these ideas and values have been making
timid approaches to the backdoor, where they sometimes almost slip
in. Whether Christians may come in future to reassess the Blessed
Virgin and eventually, opening the front door, find Her already
there, is the question.
(1) ‘Vedanta’ and ‘Vedantist’
are used throughout as applicable
to the movement so named by Swami Vivekananda, spread by him
and others in India and the West.
to the movement so named by Swami Vivekananda, spread by him
and others in India and the West.
(2) Dame Julian of Norwich: “As truly
as God is our
Father, so truly is God our Mother, and he revealed that in everything,
and especially in these sweet words where he says, ‘I am he,
the power and goodness of fatherhood; I am he, the wisdom and
the lovingness of motherhood…” Showings (New
York: Paulist, 1978), pp. 295-96.
Father, so truly is God our Mother, and he revealed that in everything,
and especially in these sweet words where he says, ‘I am he,
the power and goodness of fatherhood; I am he, the wisdom and
the lovingness of motherhood…” Showings (New
York: Paulist, 1978), pp. 295-96.
(3) Swami Abhedananda, ed., The
Sayings of Ramakrishna
(New York: Vedanta Society, 1961), p. 37.
(New York: Vedanta Society, 1961), p. 37.
(4) Included in Vedanta as defined
above.
(5) 1.32.
(6)The Complete Works of Swami
Vivekananda (Calcutta:
Advaita Ashrama, 1979), III, 255-56.
Advaita Ashrama, 1979), III, 255-56.
(7) Edith Dean, All the Women of
the Bible (New
York: Harper, 1955), p. 157.
York: Harper, 1955), p. 157.
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