The Fierceness of the Mother

Ram Dass talks about the perilous journey from form to formless

As enigmatic as they are, I’m always drawn to Ram Dass’ more theological musings. This lecture was given in 1975, not too long after his return from India, so he’d be fresh with the religious knowledge bestowed upon him by Maharaji. His ability to weave the Hindu tradition into Christian doctrine was such a revelatory moment for me, I had to share this.

At its core, it’s nothing he hasn’t said before; more ideas on form and formless, the many and the one, but this time through the figure of the Mother. She isn’t characterized as the compassionate, caring, self-sacrificing figure we often see in our modern mythologies, but as the cruelty of being in form, like when you get lost in the woods and realize that nature doesn’t care about you– she is immense, indifferent, inescapable. Like Kali, she will chew you up and spit you out as she has to all those who came before you.

Form is cruel and beautiful, and it’s only through doing the work of understanding it that we can become free from it. Only through the Mother are we able to understand ourselves and ultimately, when the time is right, merge with God.

— Aidan Gould, Content Creator, Love Serve Remember Foundation // RamDass.org

I’ll tell you what my reality looks like at this moment.

There are two things in the reality in which I function. One of them is the mother, and the other is God.

The entire universe, all of its forms, is the mother. You are all part of the mother. My body is part of the mother.

I feed on the mother. I absorb the mother. I drink the mother. I feed at the breast of the mother continuously. The mother is the Shakti, is the juice, is the vibration, is the energy of the universe. I keep growing in size as I feed more and more and more and more. I have to consume the mother.

I consume all of it. I have to consume the violence, the beauty. I have to consume Kali. That aspect of the mother, which goes with dagger to destroy those things that keep people from God. The fierceness of Kali. I have to consume Kali. I have to consume the beauty of the universe. I have to take it in, not digest it so it doesn’t exist anymore, but hold it all in my heart so that I’m acknowledging it all. So I am consuming the mother and I am taking all that energy and using it in order to stay with God.

Father, Son, and the Mother is the Holy Spirit. Spirit made manifest. And the Son returns to the Father through the Holy Spirit.

So I worship the mother, just as Ramakrishna did. I worship the mother, consume the mother, make love to the mother. I make love to the universe.

But in truth, I am the bride of God. Or in truth, this game is the game of returning to God. Or put another way in tantric terms, in true tantra, not in phony man-made tantra, it is intercourse with God, in which you become both the lingam and the yoni, in which you become both that which thrusts forth into God and that which opens to receive God. You are both.

And any worldly ecstasy you know, or bliss, is as nothing compared to the ecstasy and bliss as your body enters into samadhi, as your breath stops, as your pulse stops, and as you sit in on the edge of being in God. For then you are beginning to know that part of yourself which is the edge of the universe. And all of the sadhana ultimately becomes the preparation of your body, your heart, and your mind to receive your lover, to receive God.

That is what it’s about. Because when the Shakti enters your body, if your body is not strong enough, it will rip you to shreds. If your heart is not open and you try to go to God, it will become dry and brittle and you will go insane.

You must have a discipline, a discipline that ultimately you crave, not “she needs discipline,” not that kind, but “let me be disciplined,” so that you can sit with spine straight so that the Shakti moves in an appropriate way. You can sit and you can ask God, let me know you God, I love you, God. I feel you, God. And breathe in the mother through your heart, and take that and go with it up through the seventh chakra, the thousand petal lotus, go above it and go back to the Father, which is what Christ asked you to do in the first place. I come to you to bring you to the Father.

And all of that, the intercourse with God, the consuming and being impregnated and impregnating and the drawing to you of the mother, all of this is in the absolute purity that comes only when you have transcended, not denied, but transcended by acknowledging all of your sexual panic, all of your power panic, all of your survival panic.

Because if you try to grab God prematurely, it will destroy you. It’s as simple as that.

And the game becomes very interesting, whether you are so eager to have it that you will take it at whatever cost, even at your own destruction, which merely means new karma, which means you go around again and again.

Or do you want it in perfection? In which case you balance, move slowly, develop strength, clean up your game, get yourself purified, meaning tuning, listening, hearing, cleaning up, strengthening, straightening, lightening, orienting your life more towards the awakening than staying asleep.

The path of going into God, in truth, is not an easy path. How difficult it is for you is a function of how much you’re attached to your physical plane identity.

Published by the Love Serve Remember Foundation, the nonprofit caretaker of Ram Dass’s teachings since 2010. Learn more at RamDass.org or join our virtual community and archive at Inneracademy.ramdass.org.