Sacrifice of the Divine Mother

SACRIFICE OF THE DIVINE MOTHER

by Sri Aurobindo

“In the Veda it is said that creation results from the sacrifice of Purusa. Really, it is the great sacrifice of the Primordial Mother that has resulted in creation. So the Upanisād says, balidevata mātā.

The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe.

Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creation in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance.

But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into the world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda.

In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and Eternal Life.

This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusa, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.”