THE YOGI AND THE GODDESS by Nicholas F. Gier, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho (
[email protected]) International Journal of Hindu Studies 1:2 (June, 1997), pp. 265-87. Used and linked with permission from the editor This article became Chapter Six of Spiritual Titanism: Indian, Chinese, and Western Perspectives (State University of New York Press, 2000) For endnotes check either the article or the chapter Without you (Rādhā), I (Krishna) am inert and am always powerless. You have all powers (shakti) as your own form; come into my presence. —Brahmavaivarta Purāna. Brahmavaivarta Purāna, Rakriti-Khanda 55.87 [Pāravatī to Shiva]: You should consider who you are, and who nature is. How could you transcend nature? What you hear, what you eat, what you see— it’s all Nature. How could you be beyond Nature? —Skanda Purāna PROLOGUE: THE DANCING GODDESS In the beginning there were disembodied spirits suspended in space, unmoving and fixed in trance. Enter a dancing Goddess, creating solid ground wherever she steps. Her dynamic gestures cause the spirits to stir and gradually, one by one, they begin to dance with the Goddess. As they dance, they take on bodies, and they, too, begin to feel ground beneath their moving feet. Only one spirit named Ishvara the Lord remains fixed and undisturbed. The cosmic dance continues and becomes more complex, creative, and frenzied. Ishvara, however, begins to call the spirits back to their original state. He exhorts them to give up their embodied lives, which to him are sinful and degrading. One by one, the spirits disengage from the Goddess, throw off their bodies, and return to their static state of complete autonomy and isolation.