Can we keep Devi in home and do puja?

People ask "can we keep Devi in home and do puja?"

She is already there in you as life. So the question means, "Can I keep life be in me and make myself happy?

Can I stay in my home?"

Surely you can. Can you do puja? The question is saying, can you be happy? Why not? You can do puja, Devi puja most definitely. It is for your own prana, life, that puja is really talking place. So go ahead, by all means. Power flows to you by loving yourself. Power also flows to whomever you love. It is as simple as that. Puja is expressing your love, embracing all life and yourself too.

Although life is one, it manifests different powers in different limbs. Life in my eyes is the power to see, in ears to hear, in tongue to taste and talk, in skin to touch and feel, in hands to grasp, in feet to run, in genitals to reproduce, in breasts to give milk and so on. If life is missing in a foot like in a polio patient, the patient cannot walk. So power comes from life, power is life. So Devi is called Shakti, which means power.

The concept of Shakti pithas flows from this idea. There is the great puranic story of How Sati, the adorable wife of Siva got angry when Her father who did not invite Siva for a fire ritual he was doing. He insulted Siva saying," He is the erect male genital. What is so great about worshipping it?" So Sati got angry and left Her body by Yoga. Siva hears this, becomes angry, and keeping Her corpse on his shoulders, is out to destroy the world. Gods pray to Vishnu to save the worlds from Siva's anger. Vishnu sends his discus, which cuts the body of Sati into various pieces. They all fell at different places, and became Shakti pithas, where power lives.

There are two lessons we have to draw from this great story. That in every limb, there is a Shakti pitha, a seat of power. We can access, arouse and enhance this power through loving attention.

The second lesson is that when Siva is insulted, he becomes angry, his Shakti becomes anger because Siva has no outlet for expressing His love ( his wife, the yoni is dead) . His anger is capable of destroying the world. Sex frustrated from expression destroys the world. Most of our neuroses have to do with suppressing our subconscious desires in sex. One of them is in seeking variety, which goes against social norms. That is why we had to suppress it in the first instance; making us think onething inside but say another thing. We become fragmented. We want variety in food, dresses, perfumes,and environment. Why not in sex? Is sex also not like hunger? Is it not a desire to continue beyond our body, nay, life itself, a seeking for immortality? Hunger nourishes the physical body; pleasures of bed nourish our mental body by bathing in milk of compassion and love. So we should treat sex with love and adoration, not with contempt. We should never couple sex with violence and suppression. That is asking for trouble. Even a dog becomes angry if you tie it. Won't a human become angry and aggressive if hand-cuffed? Tantra releases the tensions in safe ways without harming society.

Hindu culture places a high value to worship of genitals in the form of Siva the phallus and Shakti, the yoni. Most ancient cultures in the world accepted sex as sacred to Goddess. There was sacred sex everywhere, and orgies were offered to mother earth to replenish her productive powers. We consider eternal intercourse as a symbolic of peace, pleasure and bliss. We incorporate desire for sex, Kama, as the third great object of life; the others being Duty, Abundance and Liberation. Liberation is like living in an eternal orgasm, like Siva Shakti, or Brahma's ananda, the bliss of utter creativity. It is two satisfied lovers Shakti and Shiva in embrace discussing and solving problems of the world peacefully.

It is a paradigm for modern society worth considering. Where do we go and how do we want to go there?

Let us realize once for all that no bullet ever healed a wound and no bomb has ever made a hospital. To solve problems, we need to be in love and respect, not hate and disrespect. We need a technology for peace, enough of technology for war. Penis or Pistol? Penis sprinkles life giving seed, Pistol kills it. Shooting the seed of knowledge is preferable to shooting a deadly bullet. Prurient societies are non-violent societies. That is what Vatsyayana said, that is what Freud said. Wisdom lies in the golden mean; neither prurience nor violence, but bhakti, expressing our deepest love to the Goddess of life and erotic sentiment. There are two big industries in the world: that of blue films and blue murder. We have yet to discover Tantra which makes sex as worship and war on poverty.

We live in a Tantric age, the age of suicidal technology. Technology is tantra. Use it wisely, achieve peace. Abuse it, bring calamity. The choice is clear. Which way humanity goes remains to be seen.

Amritananda