In Hindu culture, Goddess Lalitā occupies the topmost place. She is the embodiment of power, grace, beauty, and voluptuousness. She is the archetype of the “free woman,” the empress of the world, the mother of the Trinity Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva. She rides on Śiva, the male principle, and a lion, the king of beasts. She gives abundant pleasure, procreating children and so is revered as the goddess of fertility.
Even more important, Lalitā is the Goddess preventing the cycle of births and deaths, giving mokṣa. If you are born, you must die. If you are not born, you can’t die. It is as simple as that. In this role, she is the Goddess of birth control, the preventer of birth to overcome death, offering the human seed into the fire of navel cakra (through mudrās and bandhas, processes of yoga) or into an external Vedic/Tantric fire in pūrṇa-āhuti, meaning full offering of self (seed of self which causes rebirth). Even in this role, she is promoting pleasure, offering human seeds for creating a world that we want.
Lalitā is both light and shade, day and night, sun and moon, and also the middle zone of twilight. During day, she is revered as Gāyatrī, the power of life streaming from the Sun. During night, She is revered as the healing power of Moon called kāma-kalā, the art of love. Love and love-making are both healing. Kāmakalā also means yoga. During twilight transitions, she is worshipped as Fire of creation.
Her energies are encoded secretly into Śrī Cakra, which is both an abstract geometry of stunning geometrical beauty as well as the physical union of nine to one hundred and eight adept couples in a Cakra formation seeking control over the grip of time and overcoming causality creating saṃsāra, the cycle of birth and death. She is the very definition of the quantum model, which says that the objective world we see is our own creation. This power of creating the world of perceptions is called Māyā.
Thus Hindu culture adores every woman—a little girl (Kumārī), budding teen (Bālā/Ṣoḍaśī), adult woman (Sundarī/Suvāsinī), or an old crone (wisdom goddess)—all equally for being a female and a mother. She has given us life. Nothing has any value if life is not there. Life is the highest gift of the mother. In Her womb, we have been made. We sucked life-giving fluids from her breasts. She sang lullabies of love extolling us as Gods. As an adult woman, she gives us sensual enjoyment and our children we bond to. She is liberated, she directs our life, and is on top of male in procreation, deciding whether to beget a child or not. She is a patriarchal male as well as Tantric female. She celebrates life; she is life; she is consciousness itself. Life looks like a man when in a male body and a woman in a female body. Life itself is genderless.
Like light creates light, life creates life. Life is the light of lights. Hindus are called Bhāratīs: Bhā = light, Rati = love; Bhāratī = lovers of light. Light of life is Goddess Lalitā. Her opposite, darkness of death, is Kālī. Time is cycles of light and darkness. Lalitā is time and its energies that change things. Let us celebrate life.
Amṛtānanda
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