Kali, – the Fierce Aspect of the Divine Mother

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1. Kali and Krishna

‘We have love for a boy who is dark and resplendent,
A woman is lord of us, naked and fierce.’ [Sri Aurobindo: ‘Who’]

The day of Deepawali is observed in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram as the Kali puja day. Krishna and Kali, as we know played a significant role in Sri Aurobindo’s Yogic journey. He observed in his Records of Yoga thus. ‘The Amavasya is Kali’s day, so favourable to me.’ We find the mention of Krishna and Kali in several places, as if they are two ways of showing of one Reality. He describes the beginning of one of the core movements of this Yoga, the descent of the higher consciousness in Savitri thus:

‘As thus it rose, to meet him bare and pure
A strong Descent leaped down. A Might, a Flame,
A Beauty half-visible with deathless eyes,
A violent Ecstasy, a Sweetness dire,
Enveloped him with its stupendous limbs
And penetrated nerve and heart and brain
That thrilled and fainted with the epiphany:
His nature shuddered in the Unknown’s grasp.’

And at the end when the victory is won and Savitri returns with the soul of Satyavan held safe in her arms, we see once again the play of Krishna and Kali described thus:

‘Pursuing her in her fall, implacably sweet,
A face was over her which seemed a youth’s,
Symbol of all the beauty eyes see not,
Crowned as with peacock plumes of gorgeous hue
Framing a sapphire, whose heart-disturbing smile
Insatiably attracted to delight,
Voluptuous to the embraces of her soul.

Changed in its shape, yet rapturously the same,
It grew a woman’s dark and beautiful
Like a mooned night with drifting star-gemmed clouds,
A shadowy glory and a stormy depth,
Turbulent in will and terrible in love.’

We see this unity of Shyam and Shyama, Krishna and Kali in several places in Sri Aurobindo’s writings. For example, he writes in Thoughts and Aphorisms: 

‘Kali is Krishna revealed as dreadful Power and wrathful Love. She slays with her furious blows the self in body, life and mind in order to liberate it as spirit eternal.’ [519]

‘Canst thou see God in thy torturer and slayer even in thy moment of death or thy hours of torture? Canst thou see Him in that which thou art slaying, see and love even while thou slayest? Thou hast thy hand on the supreme knowledge. How shall he attain to Krishna who has never worshipped Kali?’ [540]

Generally considered as the fierce form of the Divine Mother, Sri Aurobindo describes her while revealing four aspects of the Divine Mother.

‘MAHAKALI is of another nature. Not wideness but height, not wisdom but force and strength are her peculiar power. There is in her an overwhelming intensity, a mighty passion of force to achieve, a divine violence rushing to shatter every limit and obstacle. All her divinity leaps out in a splendour of tempestuous action; she is there for swiftness, for the immediately effective process, the rapid and direct stroke, the frontal assault that carries everything before it. Terrible is her face to the Asura, dangerous and ruthless her mood against the haters of the Divine; for she is the Warrior of the Worlds who never shrinks from the battle. Intolerant of imperfection, she deals roughly with all in man that is unwilling and she is severe to all that is obstinately ignorant and obscure; her wrath is immediate and dire against treachery and falsehood and malignity, ill-will is smitten at once by her scourge. Indifference, negligence and sloth in the divine work she cannot bear and she smites awake at once with sharp pain, if need be, the untimely slumberer and the loiterer. The impulses that are swift and straight and frank, the movements that are unreserved and absolute, the aspiration that mounts in flame are the motion of Mahakali. Her spirit is tameless, her vision and will are high and far-reaching like the flight of an eagle, her feet are rapid on the upward way and her hands are outstretched to strike and to succour.’

2. The intense love behind the mask of wrath

This fierceness makes Kali Ma a fascinating and intriguing aspect. She challenges the prototype of the feminine or perhaps reveals that other side of the intensity force that can destroy a city as we see in the story of Kanyakumari, bring down an empire as we see with Draupadi, stand up against injustice as in the story of Shakuntala, become the cause for the coming down of a civilisation as well as the beginning of a new one as we see with Helen of Troy, awaken a sinking heart with the battle cry of freedom sacrificing herself to usher a new idea, face the accusations of the world and the threats of the Asura with an unflinching courage and the strength that arises from a still inner space as with Sita, or take on the challenge of Death and win, snatching her husband from the jaws of Death.

But in all these incarnations one can see that behind this terrible mask of destruction there is a heart of intense love that destroys out of an equally fierce love so that a new creation may be born out of the womb of darkness turning all pain into a labour and pang of new birth. Therefore, is she also the Mother who changes with her tread all future time. Love is the power that unites creation. Love is the power that joins the play of Time to the Timeless turning it into rhythms and heartbeats of the Eternal. But Love is also the power that accepts no final obstacle in fulfilling itself through union. It is in her deep and intense love for her children that the effulgent Divine Mother, Gauri, plunges into the dense obscurity and darkness of material nature. Identifying herself with the dark sombre night she assumes the same hue.

‘For she too is the Mother and her love is as intense as her wrath and she has a deep and passionate kindness. When she is allowed to intervene in her strength, then in one moment are broken like things without consistence the obstacles that immobilise or the enemies that assail the seeker. If her anger is dreadful to the hostile and the vehemence of her pressure painful to the weak and timid, she is loved and worshipped by the great, the strong and the noble; for they feel that her blows beat what is rebellious in their material into strength and perfect truth, hammer straight what is wry and perverse and expel what is impure or defective. But for her what is done in a day might have taken centuries; without her Ananda might be wide and grave or soft and sweet and beautiful but would lose the flaming joy of its most absolute intensities. To knowledge she gives a conquering might, brings to beauty and harmony a high and mounting movement and imparts to the slow and difficult labour after perfection an impetus that multiplies the power and shortens the long way. Nothing can satisfy her that falls short of the supreme ecstasies, the highest heights, the noblest aims, the largest vistas. Therefore with her is the victorious force of the Divine and it is by grace of her fire and passion and speed if the great achievement can be done now rather than hereafter.’

3. The sign and the symbols

She chooses the darkest night for her worship, destruction as the means to propitiate her, the sacrifice of all we cherish, the weaknesses to which we obstinately cling, the sweet, little imperfections that we won’t let go. She demands the heroic souls, the warrior mould as her instrument through whom she would clear the path of the future. When she acts then all garbs are ripped apart, all mask of hypocrisy and deception torn off so that we may look at things just as they are and confront them with our naked self. She is without adornment or ornaments, a power in its rawness, unbridled, reckless, free. Dancing wildly, trampling over the demon hordes, she puts as garland the skull of titans, symbols of gigantic egos destroyed by her sword of flame, crushed by her mace. Her path is filled with the cry of victory and the ruin of tyrant kings, their unjust kingdoms and blood-stained thrones turned to ashes in a tempestuous moment. Therefore, is she also the goddess behind revolutions and a rapid change of Time. She is Kali, whose tread changes the pace of Time, Kala compressing millennium into centuries, centuries into decades and decades of work into years, days and even moments.

But death and destruction leave behind a trail of sorrow and suffering. Alarm and rumour and fear fill the air and streams of impurities held back and repressed flows out polluting the earth. Therefore, she drinks the blood, wears the skeletons, thereby clearing the debris as she passes over earth as a powerful shock wave waking men from their slumber, shaking them out of their comfort zones and entrenched forts of Titan power. Her laughter mocks those who believed themselves invincible, her cry brings into motion the forces of a divine wrath that were waiting in the dark for their moment.

Yet does she hold in herself the heart of the intense love more than any other. It is out of her intense love for her children that she has assumed this terrible form. But in her original splendour, she is of a golden hue, the radiance of molten gold as it shines when it passes through the test of an intense purifying fire. The heart of man is not yet ready to receive her transforming touch and the gift of Divine Love. Therefore, she comes as the dark goddess concealing her golden form.

4. World unity and freedom from war

‘It is only a few religions which have had the courage to say without any reserve, like the Indian, that this enigmatic World-Power is one Deity, one Trinity, to lift up the image of the Force that acts in the world in the figure not only of the beneficent Durga, but of the terrible Kali in her blood-stained dance of destruction and to say, “This too is the Mother; this also know to be God; this too, if thou hast the strength, adore.” And it is significant that the religion which has had this unflinching honesty and tremendous courage, has succeeded in creating a profound and wide-spread spirituality such as no other can parallel. For truth is the foundation of real spirituality and courage is its soul. Tasyai satyam āyatanam.

All this is not to say that strife and destruction are the alpha and omega of existence, that harmony is not greater than war, love more the manifest divine than death or that we must not move towards the replacement of physical force by soul-force, of war by peace, of strife by union, of devouring by love, of egoism by universality, of death by immortal life. God is not only the Destroyer, but the Friend of creatures; not only the cosmic Trinity, but the Transcendent; the terrible Kali is also the loving and beneficent Mother; the lord of Kurukshetra is the divine comrade and charioteer, the attracter of beings, incarnate Krishna. And whithersoever he is driving through all the strife and clash and confusion, to whatever goal or godhead he may be attracting us, it is—no doubt of that—to some transcendence of all these aspects upon which we have been so firmly insisting. But where, how, with what kind of transcendence, under what conditions, this we have to discover; and to discover it, the first necessity is to see the world as it is, to observe and value rightly his action as it reveals itself at the start and now; afterwards the way and the goal will better reveal themselves. We must acknowledge Kurukshetra; we must submit to the law of Life by Death before we can find our way to the life immortal; we must open our eyes, with a less appalled gaze than Arjuna’s, to the vision of our Lord of Time and Death and cease to deny, hate or recoil from the universal Destroyer.’ [Sri Aurobindo, CWSA 19]

A day will come, must come when the earth will no more need this method of purification through destruction. The war cry will then be changed into hymns of adoration, fear transmuted into unflinching faith and the hearts of men filled with Peace and Light and Love. Until then we must heed her call, offer our all to be her instruments and happily sacrifice everything so that the Divine Victory is permanently established upon earth.

Sri Aurobindo reminds us:

‘ The work now before us is of the sternest kind and requires men of an unflinching sternness to carry it out.  The hero,  the martyr,  the man of iron will and iron heart,  the grim fighter whose tough nerves defeat cannot tire out nor danger relax,  the born leader in action,  the man who cannot sleep or rest while his country is enslaved,  the priest of Kali who can tear his heart out of his body and offer it as a bleeding sacrifice on  the  Mo the r’s altar,  the heart of fire and  the tongue of flame whose lightest word is an inspiration to self-sacrifice or a spur to action, for  these  the time is coming,  the call will soon go forth.  They are already here in the silence, in the darkness slowly maturing themselves, training the muscles of the will, tightening the strings of the heart so that they may be ready when the call comes. Whoever feels the power of service within him, let him make sure of himself while there is yet time; for the present is an hour of easy probation, of light tests in which the punishment of failure is also light, but whoever fails in the day that be coming, will be thrown away not into the rubbish heap as the Conventionalists will be thrown, but into the fire of a great burning. For all who now declare themselves Nationalists the tests will be far severer than that before which the place-hunter, the title-hunter, the popularity-hunter, the politician of mixed motives and crooked ways, the trimmer, the light speaker and ready swearer of the old politics have paled and recoiled so early and so easily.  The profession of Nationalism should not be lightly made but with a full sense of what it means and involves.  The privilege of taking it is attended with severe pains and penalties for those who take it lightly. If we are few, it matters little, but it is of supreme importance that the stuff of which we are made should be sound. What the Mother needs is hard clear steel for her sword, hard massive granite for her fortress, wood that will not break for the handle of her bow, tough substance and true for the axle of her chariot. For the battle is near and the trumpet ready for the signal.’[CWSA 7]

On this day of Deepawali, let us invoke the Mother with a difference. Instead of all the sound and fury and madness let us enter deep into the Silence of our heart where the Mother dwells. Instead of just lighting lamps let us also light up the mounting flame of sacrifice within us and turn our whole life into a ceaseless worship and service of the Mother. Instead of praying only for material wealth for our selfish purposes, let us pray that the world becomes richer with divine qualities and wealthier with true love and the harmony born from the flaming tongue of sacrifice. Let us pray that the dance of Krishna and Kali changes into the dance of Krishna and Radha, after the dance of death and destruction – the dance of a New Creation. 

The Cosmic Dance

Two measures are there of the cosmic dance.
Always we hear the tread of Kali’s feet
Measuring in rhythms of pain and grief and chance
Life’s game of hazard terrible and sweet.

The ordeal of the veiled Initiate,
The hero soul at play with Death’s embrace,
Wrestler in the dread gymnasium of Fate
And sacrifice a lonely path to Grace,

Man’s sorrows made a key to the Mysteries,
Truth’s narrow road out of Time’s wastes of dream,
The soul’s seven doors from Matter’s tomb to rise,
Are the common motives of her tragic theme.

But when shall Krishna’s dance through Nature move,
His mask of sweetness, laughter, rapture, love?

[Sri Aurobindo, CWSA 2: 590]