Divinity & reality

[1]

Swati Chopra [1]

When we consider the powerful feminine theology that exists in India, we might as well ask, how does it affect the lives of real women? It obviously could not overturn patriarchy as a social condition within which women continue to live restricted, circumscribed lives.

In a tragic gap between belief and practice, there’s a failure to connect divinity with reality. Men who revere the Devi are usually unable to see any reflection of her in the women around them. Women, too, suffer from this gap in perception because they often internalise the patriarchal power system, participate actively in its perpetuation, and are unable to connect with the Devi as a sacred presence that lives in them and other women.
Little girls are worshipped in North India as emanations of Devi during Navaratri, the festival of the goddess’ nine sacred nights, even as pregnancies are screened for the foetus’ gender and the ones with the “wrong” (read “female”) gender aborted, so that the female sex ratio of the country experiences new lows with each passing year. The disconnect between a revolutionary tradition of worshipping god as goddess, and the way living women are treated is, to my mind, testimony to the kind of lacuna that can exist in ritualised religion if it is not sufficiently rooted in actual, heartfelt practice.
The goddess may not have been able to stem the tide of patriarchy, but she did rise within many ordinary women over the centuries, offering them an alternative, empowered archetype vis-à-vis patriarchy’s obedient wives and mothers. These were real women who connected with their inner Devi and headed out into the wilderness of spiritual seeking. And when they found the balance of unshakeable equanimity, when the fire of knowing burnt steadily in them, they got recognised and venerated as incarnations of the great goddess.
The idea of a woman guru in India thus often occurs in tandem with identification with the Devi, who is also the great mother, so with a sense of all-encompassing motherhood as well. This triadic characterisation as guru, goddess, mother, accords great power to the woman as preceptor, which she wields to accelerate the growth and evolution of her disciple’s spiritual life. It makes for a phenomenon that doesn’t quite occur in the male sphere of spirituality, for though male masters become like mothers in terms of their care and nurture, they are not accorded the patina of goddess.
Women gurus are mother and goddess, compassionate caregivers and uncompromising teachers of truth, nurturers of the life of the spirit and destroyers of what is unwholesome and unneeded. They present a possibility of the rise of the Devi in our consciousness, of the awakening of the Divine Feminine, and the fact that it is not as distant or incredible for us ordinary women as it may seem at first glance.

Swati Chopra writes on spirituality and mindful living. Her most recent book is Women Awakened: Stories of Contemporary Spirituality in India.