Guruji about nudity

Q: Why are there only women Goddesses, and why are some of them nude? Why are they all so similar?

Guruji: We Indians consider the life-giving energy of Nature, Prakṛti, as female. Nature is full of energies: some erotically enticing, some ferocious, some aesthetically peaceful. The Goddesses in this temple represent the harmonious energies of Nature which move a person from being human to being a divine personality.

What is the nature of divine beings?
To express love towards all beings and all life, irrespective of man-made caste, class, race, or country distinctions. Their love knows no bounds. It is all-pervasive.

This unconditional love pervading all of Nature is shown as the nudity of the icons here.

Nudity does not mean removing clothes alone. It also means removing all patterns of thinking that separate one person from another. It means getting rid of ideas like “these are my people” and “this is me” — in other words, the sense of I and mine, called ego. It means expanding one’s love to all people.

It may help to illustrate these ideas with a story from the Bhāgavatam.

Once, some divine nymphs were bathing nude in a lake. The hundred-year-old sage Vyāsa was passing by. They felt a sense of shame and covered their breasts with their hands.

After a little while, his son Śuka, a sixteen-year-old male, was passing by, totally nude and absorbed in Nature. They did not even notice him. They were playing and laughing.

Vyāsa noticed this and came back to them and asked:
“I am a hundred-year-old sage without any sexual passions. I was clothed. When I was passing, you felt shame. How come you did not feel shame when my son, exhibiting his nudity, was passing by? I do not understand this strange behaviour of yours.”

They replied:
“O venerable sage, we know your greatness. But when you were passing by, we felt that there was a human observer. When Śuka was passing, it was like a bird flying in the sky, like tree leaves rustling, like water flowing over our very bodies. We did not feel that there was anyone observing us. When there is no one else observing, and we are all by ourselves, how and why would we feel a sense of shame? Are we ashamed of ourselves?”

Vyāsa realised that he was not fully absorbed in his true nature; he still felt a separation from it.

The whole of Nature — and billions of living forms in it — are all nude. Only humans cover themselves with their shame.

When Adam ate the apple, he felt ashamed of his and Eve’s nudity. That was the original sin: being ashamed of nudity. Nudity itself was not sin. They were nude before eating the apple, and they were not sinful then.