Author: Dr. David Frawley
Publication: The American Institute of Vedic Studies
Date:
URL: http://www.vedanet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=54&Itemid=2
The Hindu Gods and Goddesses, more properly
called Devatas or Divine principles, are usually treated by modern scholars
in a superficial senses as distinct powers of nature or worse as just various
imaginary spirits of the primitive mind.
At a more sophisticated level, for those who
have an inner vision and real devotion, they are regarded as aspects, forms
or manifestations of God or Ishvara, the Cosmic Lord and Creator, representing
his powers, qualities or various ways of imagining him. They are the principles
of Bhakti Yoga.
Yet at what may be a yet higher level, the
Hindu Gods and Goddesses are forms or aspects of Brahman, the impersonal Godhead
behind and beyond the manifest universe. They are powers of Jnana Yoga or
the Yoga of knowledge.
How can Gods and Goddesses, which are usually
formulated as having personalities, be a manifestation of Impersonal Being,
Power and Existence? If we look deeply, we see that their forms and personalities
are but symbols of something beyond form and personality. That is why their
forms and personalities are extraordinary, supernatural and multifaceted.
Vedic Devatas
Seeing the Devatas as Brahman is perhaps easier
to do with the Vedic Gods and Goddesses, rather than the later Hindu and Puranic.
This is because the Vedic Devatas are more clearly forces of nature and light,
while the Puranic Devatas are more anthropomorphic in form and appearance.
The four main Vedic Devatas are Agni, Vayu
or Indra, Surya and Soma. As light forms in nature these are fire, wind, sun
and moon. Brahman or the supreme Godhead in the Upanishads is compared to
a great fire, of which the worlds and creatures are but the sparks. Brahman
is similarly compared to Wind or Vayu, a formless force that when it blows
creates and moves everything. Brahman is also like the Sun, the supreme source
of light, life and consciousness. It is also like the Moon, granting peace,
delight and beauty to all things.
One could argue that the Vedic Devatas are
more forms of Brahman than they are forms of Ishvara or God in the personal
sense. Yet of these it is mostly Indra, whose name like Ishvara means 'the
Lord' that is the closed to God. However, Indra is also Brahman as the supreme
power of consciousness, knowledge and perception. Indra is the Purusha as
the seer and the knower as the Aitareya Upanishad proclaims.
Puranic Devatas and Shiva
The Puranic (later Hindu) Devatas, like the
great trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, are the three forms of Ishvara,
God or Saguna Brahman, Brahman with qualities. The three are the Creator (Brahma),
Perserver (Vishnu) and Destroyer (Shiva) or the three aspects of Ishvara relative
to the gunas of rajas, Sattva and tamas.
Yet of the three, it is Shiva that is the
closest to Brahman. In this regard, Shiva is Nirguna Brahman or pure existence,
Vishnu is Ishvara, God or Saguna Brahman, and Brahma is Mahat Tattva or cosmic
mind.
Shiva is the personification of the supreme
Brahman and also is impersonal. He is the formless, transcendent, pure consciousness,
pure existence, and peace - not at all concerned with anything in the realm
of time and space, birth and death. He is beyond good and evil and can embrace
all suffering as well as all joy. He is unpredictable and paradoxical, and
does not conform to the expectations of his devotees. He works to take us
beyond any limitation that we would put upon him or upon ourselves. He demands
that we surrender our limited mind and ego to the Absolute.
Similarly, of the three great Goddesses and
consorts of the three great Gods, Sarasvati of Brahma, Lakshmi of Vishnu and
Kali of Shiva, it is Kali that is the closest to Brahman and a personification
of it. Kali is Brahman's supreme power or unlimited Shakti. It is this pure
power of existence which as the infinite and eternal exist behind space and
time. Kali's often terrible appearance signifies this transcendence that breaks
down all the appearances and limitations that we are attached to. Her garland
of skulls shows her ruling over and transcending of suffering, time and death.
Kali is also the calming and silencing of
the mind (nirodha in the Yoga Sutra sense, nirvana in the sense of Buddhism
and the Gita). She is the prana merged into itself, the ending of death in
the ending of birth! She is the breath of Brahman that occurs without wind
or any external changes.
Shiva and Kali are, as it were, only vaguely
defined personalities. They represent the impersonal in its first manifestation
towards personality. They exist before and beyond the manner and rules of
personal expression. They break down the personality into the infinite. That
is why their forms do not conform to any rules, order or stereotyped patterns.
They represent the transcendent, which from the standpoint of the manifest
or phenomenal world must be paradoxical, beyond all dualities, cataclysmic
and transformational.
Vishnu and Lakshmi represent more the Divine
in its orderly manifestation, but they can keep us confined within the manifest
world and its highest Sattva guna, if we don't look beyond their forms. Shiva
and Kali take us beyond Sattva guna to pure existence, pure Sat itself. To
do this they have to violate (show the limitations) of all the rules of the
cosmic order. Even the beautiful personal forms of God are limitations that
we must go beyond to reach the supreme Brahman.
Shiva and Kali take us back to Brahman and
themselves merge and disappear back into it. They are light and energy as
the most primal forces, the peace and power of the infinite.
Conclusion
To see the Devatas (Gods and Goddesses) as
forms of Brahman is to really see the Devatas. Each Devata is a doorway on
the infinite which is Brahman. Each indicates a path beyond form and personality
through reflecting a primal form, power or personality.
The Devata works to take us to Brahman by
expanding our personality into the impersonal. They do this through their
own personality which is a personification of the infinite. The Devatas work
on all levels of existence in order to lead us to that Being which is everywhere.
In that Brahman, the Self, the Devata, God,
the Guru and the world, all merge. The waves fall into the sea. The rays return
to that one light. That Brahman is present as the Being in everything from
the dust to the star. Then we see that each thing becomes a Devata or deity
and we understand the Devatas or Divine currents working in the forces of
nature, of light, time, space and the yearnings of the human heart.
