The Vision of the Goddess

 There is another reason to become a baby before Ma. A baby loves its mother regardless of how she looks. The devotee, however, may find it much harder to respond in the same way when Ma appears in a terrifying form—covered in blood, with fangs ready to devour him.

The reaction of the devotee matters. If he does not respond with fear, Ma can do anything for him out of love. But if he reacts with fear or disgust, Her appearance becomes even more frightening. 

Kali and Her manifestations—Smashan Tara, Chinnamasta, Bagalamukhi and others—are not bad. Yet people are afraid of them. Smashan Tara is regarded as one of the most terrifying forms of the Goddess, and one of Her names is Bhayankari, “the Terrifier.”

But She does not appear in exactly the same way to everyone.

If someone approaches Her with a heart full of love for Lord Krishna, She becomes Radha, Krishna’s greatest lover. If someone approaches Her as a mother, She responds as a mother to Her child.

The form that appears therefore depends, in part, upon the person who approaches Ma. 

A person may look at an image of Ma and react to what he sees: beautiful, frightening, terrible, or otherwise. But this reaction concerns only Her outer form. To develop a real relationship with Her, one must know what sort of being is being worshipped and come to Her inner being.

Before going inward, however, the external form must first be understood.

Svoboda connects this outer form with our own. The Atman, the Universal Soul, is compared with the sun, while the individual is its reflection. Just as the moon can appear reflected in thousands of pools without being changed by any of them, the Atman can appear in millions of human beings while remaining untouched.

The human reflection is imperfect because it is caught in the Three Gunas, the three principal qualities of existence. A disturbed lake cannot give a clear reflection of the moon; when the water becomes calm, the reflection becomes clear.

In the same way, when we look at Ma, we initially see Her through the veil of the Three Gunas. 

Then comes the question of Her colour.

Why is Smashan Tara blue?

The sea appears blue even though a handful of its water is clear. Air itself is colourless, although the sky appears blue. Svoboda uses these examples to explain that colour is also connected with the way the physical eye perceives things.

Kali, or Krishna, appearing blue is likewise connected with ordinary physical vision. With the divine eye, they would be seen differently.

For the ordinary eye, however, Smashan Tara is Shyama: a deep, rich, luminous midnight blue.

Around Her neck hangs the Runda Mala, a garland of freshly severed human heads. There are eight of them.

They represent the eight pashas, the snares that cloud the mind and encourage actions which create further bondage to the cycle of birth and death. They are lust, anger, greed, delusion, envy, shame, fear and disgust.

While a person remains in ignorance, he may be controlled by some or all of these snares. Smashan Tara cuts them away.

She is therefore not trying to destroy the true person. What She wants to destroy is the false and limited personality accumulated over many births. The devotee fears Her because he identifies himself with that personality.

When She cuts off the head, the mind becomes firm and unwavering, making concentration possible and allowing the devotee to progress in Aghora Sadhana. 

Smashan Tara is ghatastani, “pot-breasted.”

The breast is presented as a symbol of motherhood. Svoboda points to the maternal behaviour of a small girl with a doll and to the way motherhood develops in a woman. During pregnancy, the breasts enlarge, the nipples darken and milk begins to form. The body prepares nourishment for the child before the child is even born.

This is also why Smashan Tara should not be approached as a sexual partner. She is to be received as Mother, coming to love and protect the devotee.

She is also lambodari, “big-bellied,” because She consumes and digests all beings in the universe, taking them into Herself before sending them out again. 

Around Her waist She wears a skirt made from freshly severed human arms.

One Sanskrit word for hand or arm is kara, which is related to karma. The arms therefore represent the karmas accumulated through millions of births. They include both auspicious and inauspicious karmas.

Most people remain clothed in their karmas. Smashan Tara wants to remove them.

The arms cover the navel and the pubic region, and Svoboda connects these with the two things for which many human actions are performed: food and sex. 

Her anklets are not made of silver. They are tiny cobras.

The cobra represents deceased ancestors. A person who performs sadhana is not acting only for himself, because without his ancestors he could never have received human birth. The cobras therefore represent the ancestors who have come to Ma and taken shelter at Her lotus feet.

Smashan Tara has four hands.

In one She holds a skull, representing the covering of the Three Gunas surrounding the individual soul.

In another She holds the noose used by Yama’s messengers to take beings from the world. By taking this noose from Yama, the King of the Dead, She grants immortality. With immortality comes fearlessness because the basis of fear is the fear of death.

Her third hand holds scissors. With them She cuts the three knots that bind a person to embodied existence, a process connected with Kundalini Yoga.

In Her fourth hand is the sharp sword called the Khadga. It represents the eternal play of destruction and creation in the universe. For the devotee, the sword cuts through doubts, false ideas and impressions. 

Then there is Her face.

Svoboda describes it as extraordinarily beautiful. Her eyes are lotus eyes, and the lotus represents discrimination.

Her tongue hangs from Her mouth and drips blood.

All creatures possess some substance resembling blood. When Tara takes it from them, She purifies it through the process known in Tantra as Rakta Shuddhi. Through this process, karmas which have forced the individual into particular births are removed, and the patterns of the personality are altered.

The personality itself is described as the accumulation of countless karmas from many births. This purification is called Adhidaivika Rakta Shuddhi, Tara’s purification of the personality.

When the devotee has not merely understood the qualities of Smashan Tara intellectually but has realized them through his own sadhana, something changes.

She is no longer blue.

She loses colour and attributes.

When the devotee rests in Her lap, his mistaken ideas about Her disappear. He sees Her as She really is, but this cannot be done with the physical eye.

The ordinary eye belongs to the world of duality. When the curtain is lifted, what appears is the absolute, undifferentiated Reality—the Nirakara Tattva. No distinctions remain.

The state in which Smashan Tara is experienced in this formless way is Nirvikalpa Samadhi, self-identification with formlessness.

The journey begins with ignorance.

The devotee sees Smashan Tara in Her terrifying form because he is still caught in the eight snares, the accumulated karmas of ages, and the false personality built from them. Ma wants to separate him from all of this.

Then the distinction between himself and Her disappears.

He sees himself and Ma as one.

Finally, if he is meant to reach that state, he returns again to Her lap and sees Her familiar form once more. But it no longer looks as it did before.

The movement is from duality to unity and then back to duality, as Paramahamsa Ramakrishna experienced it. 

Smashan Tara always stands upon Shiva, who is deep in samadhi. One foot rests upon His body while the other prods Him, calling Him to wake and dance.

But the Shiva beneath Her feet is actually Jiva—the individual soul together with its coverings of the Three Gunas and its accumulated karmas.

The Jiva is asleep because of these coverings. Through hard penance and intense sadhana, the Jiva realizes Shiva. Then there is no difference between Jiva and Shiva.

This is the state expressed by Shivoham: “I am Shiva.”

Simply repeating the words, however, does not produce the realization. Without possessing the qualities of Shiva, a person merely begins imagining that he is Shiva. 

When Shiva awakens, He and His Shakti begin to dance together, and the dance ends when She merges into Him again.

When Shakti is projected, Shiva sleeps because He has lost awareness of His true nature. When Shakti awakens Shiva, She ceases to exist as something separate.

The ego is described as one's personal Shakti. When it releases the eight snares and everything else that forces identification with the body, it awakens Shiva, and the dance begins.

There is one final reason for the setting in which Smashan Tara is traditionally depicted.

Why does She stand in the smashan, beside a burning funeral pyre?

The body on the pyre is not what She is burning. She is burning the causal body—the storehouse containing billions of karmas. By burning them, She frees the individual from the further obligation of being born into the world. 

To see Ma properly, then, means to look at Her from all Her facets.

The devotee must discover Her for himself and discover how he can love Her best. He must learn to see Her not only in the form that attracts him, but also in the terrifying form.

He must see Her in all Her forms.

And love Her.

Source & Note

This article is based on Robert E. Svoboda’s Aghora: At the Left Hand of God. The material has been edited and adapted for this publication.