Saraswati
Text by Raj Arumugam © October 2006
There is a great deal of interest in the Goddesses of Hinduism by people starved of a Mother Goddess figure.
Very often I am asked about Sakti, Laksmi and Saraswati. They are all the emanations of the same Mother aspect of the Divine – of the Great Creative Energy.
In this article I’d like to focus on Saraswati.
As usual, my style is to appeal to the intuition and so the article will depend hugely on your willingness to access that intuition and insight with which we are all endowed, but often encouraged not to trust.
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Saraswati
Text by Raj Arumugam © October 2006
Saraswati is Learning and Wisdom.
She is Sophia, and the White Goddess of Robert Graves.
She is the Buddhist Manjusri.
Her invisible form is intuition and insight and the elusive creative genius.
She is the feminine aspect of Divinity – the same divinity that has been banished from many patriarchal systems of thought.
And she is much more than that too – for Saraswati is, like the Tao, the Indefinable.
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Saraswati
Text by Raj Arumugam © October 2006
Saraswati is the Divine Mata, the Mother.
Therefore she is pure love.
She is selfless love.
Pure love is pure knowledge.
Therefore she is pure knowledge. She is boundless wisdom.
As a mother loves her child and in gradual steps nurtures her child to independence, so does Saraswati – through time and our various births – nurture each one of us to full knowledge and radiant wisdom.
Sit in love before the Mata.
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an intuitive approach to Saraswati:
quiet meditation
Here are a few exercises that you can do to increase your intuitive understanding or inner wisdom.
A thousand, a million words that create an intellectual understanding are not as precious as the one word blended with intuition that produces understanding in a flash: Saraswati.
Relax. Just relax.
Close your eyes. Say the Mother’s name: Saraswati, in your mind.
Open your eyes, look at the picture of Saraswati on this page.
Feel the love of the Mother radiating towards you.
Close your eyes.
Visualize that name in your mind: Saraswati. Visualize the letters that form the nama: Saraswati.
S-A-R-A-S-W-A-T-I
Open your eyes, look at the picture of Saraswati again.
Close your eyes.
Visualize the picture in your mind. Visualize the word: Saraswati.
With good practice, you will have an understanding, a wisdom beyond words.
Om Sarawsati. Om Jai Saraswati Mata. Om.
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an intuitive approach to Saraswati:
flashes in the names
Read the meanings of the names of Saraswati on this page quietly and deliberately.
Let the names, their sounds, their energy and their meanings suffuse your mind.
They will light up bright flashes in your mind, like those flashes that lead travellers across the dark.
Bharati
the radiant mother; the radiant one; here is knowledge and here is wisdom – here is the radiance that comes with that grand knowledge; here is the radiance that comes with that grand wisdom
Sharada
the loving mother gives; anyone filled with love gives, even before the asking: so does Saraswati, so does Sharada give; in small steps, in gradual steps, in measures apt for the child she weans; the mother provides the essence (shar) – the sweet mother provides that which none can give: the essence of the knowledge of the Self ; she provides when you are ready; you will know when you are ready
Mahavidya
here is the Mother Maha (Grand; Supreme) vidya (Knowledge): here is Mother Mahavidya.
O the foolish and the arrogant and the conceited say, I know this; I know that – but with time, but with the cycles of birth and being, as our ego weakens, as our arrogance ceases, Mahvidya provides that knowledge so that knowledge may be abiding in us, so that that knowledge may radiate in us.
Om Sarawsati. Om Jai Saraswati Mata. Om.
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I hope that this introduction to Saraswati has been refreshing and useful.
Please visit www.ttsworld.com.au that has a complete free version of my book The Desert of Man (written in 1983) and which is a tribute to Saraswati Mata.
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The Desert of Man (1983) by Raj Arumugam
The Desert of Man is a work of fiction and was written in 1983, and is set in ancient India.
Its immediate inspiration was a scene from the Tamil film Saraswathy Sabatham, and other stories from various cultures that this passage from the work alludes to:
He was as Caedmon of Streanashalch, who found a voice all of a sudden; as Nanak who was summoned,employed to sing the glories of God: as many thrown desolate into the world…As Kalidas, the simpleton, before the poet, who started with the menial task of cutting the branch, seated at the branch end.
The work draws on various traditions of the world for its intellectual and spiritual depth.
To view the complete work free, please visit
www.ttsworld.com.au
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TWO PRACTICES honouring Saraswati
Here is a brief description of two practices of the people of the Indian-Hindu tradition, perhaps little known outside of the community:
Practice 1: The Book as the abode of Saraswati
This is a practice my siblings and I learned especially from our father.
Books, even paper, are always to be treated as the abode of Saraswati, indeed as Saraswati herself.
Thus, books and other printed and writing material are always treated with special respect. For instance, books are never to be placed on the floor. If anyone accidentally drops or steps on a book or any printed material, we do obeisance to the Saraswati in the book by placing our hands on the book, and by bringing the hands to our eyes. It’s part asking for forgiveness for having been disrespectful to the book, and it’s also part prayer.
Practice 2: Saraswati Puja and books
Every year during Saraswati Puja, the home altar is especially decorated for Saraswati.There are wide variations depending where you are in India (or, as in my case, which part of India you came from) but white flowers are typical of this decoration and offerings to Saraswati.Before prayers, each person places his or her book at the altar for the blessings of Saraswati. Everyone then prays together for Saraswati’s blessings.
(It does not matter, my mother would say, if it’s your exam notes. If a member of the family were away, my mother would ensure that a book from that person’s table was also placed at the altar. My mother wouldn’t let us collect our books until the next day – just tough luck if you needed the exam notes that night!)
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an intuitive approach to Saraswati:
challenge that concept
I have listened to many. I have also been lectured to by many.
Still, examining everyone’s arguments and theories and authoritative pronouncements:
· I see no good reason why the Divine (or God) should not be represented in human form.
· I see no good reason why the Divine cannot be worshipped in the feminine form.
· I see no good reason why the Divine must be represented in one form only.
· I see no good reason why the Divine cannot be represented in different cultural contexts.
· I see no good reason why the Divine cannot be represented as being black or white or any colour that one may choose.
· I see no good reason why any culture should deny its history and its traditions.
Om Sarawsati. Om Jai Saraswati Mata. Om.
Text by Raj Arumugam © October 2006
Please visit www.ttsworld.com.au that has a complete free version of my book The Desert of Man (written in 1983) and which is a tribute to Saraswati Mata.
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The Love the Mother Goddess feeds each child
Raj Arumugam
Director, TTS www,ttsworld.com.au
© Raj Arumugam 5 November 2006
exploring our world inheritance of ideas®
Saraswati invites you to understand her nature through your intuition. The Mother invites you to use your power of insight.
The Mother loves the child. The Mata loves each child.
When the child stumbles, the mother picks up the child and puts the child up on their feet again. The mother carries that child with love; the mother puts the child up on their feet and whispers: Walk, dearest child.
And the child, finding strength again and standing up, looks up at the Mata and smiles.
There is pure love in that touch; there is unqualified love in those words. And that child who truly remembers that Mother’s touch, and the Mother’s love, that child cannot but be filled with that love all their lives. That love is so pure it can never go away. It is a love that never ceases. For even when the child is grown and goes far from the Mother Goddess in physical space, that love always abides. For that child is truly and always the child of the Mother Goddess.
That love pours out to all beings through each child of the Mother Goddess, for that love is pure; for that love is unqualified and undemanding.
That child of the Mother Goddess is filled with a love that is all-embracing, with a love that is permanent, and so pure and undemanding that it can never harm another being. Just as a Mother never harms her child.
That child touched by the Mother cannot feel ill-will; that child touched by the Mata’s love cannot hate. For as the Mother carried the child once, now the child carries the Mother. And the Mother Goddess from within looks with pure and unqualified love at every child before her. And the love flows.
Om Sarawsati. Om Jai Saraswati Mata. Om.
Saraswati 