Brahma was telling Narada how the worlds began again. Over the boundless water of the dissolution, in the middle of the sky, we three stood with folded hands before the Devi. At my praise she had come out of the sleeping body of Vishnu and taken her stand in the open air above us, clothed in divine ornaments, her form past anything a mind can hold, and the moment she left him Janardana rose. For five thousand years he fought the two daityas who had made that ocean their own, Madhu and Kaitabha, and when her glance had deluded them he spread his thighs and killed them there, on his own body. Shankara came to where the two of us were. So it was three of us who looked up at her and praised her, and she pleased us with one pure and gracious look and spoke. “Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesha. Take up your own work now, creation, preservation and destruction, and let nothing in it slacken. The two great daityas are dead. Build your dwellings and live in them without fear, and by your own powers bring forth the four kinds of beings, the egg-born, the womb-born, the sprout-born and the sweat-born.” Her words were gentle and sweet, and we had nothing to answer them with. “Mother, we are without power. How are we to create these beings? There is no wide earth yet. Water lies in every direction. The five elements, the gunas, the tanmatras, the senses, every material a creation is made from: none of it exists.” Her face filled with a smile. In that same instant a vimana came down out of the sky and hung before us, set with jewels, fringed with pearls, ringing with little bells, a house of the gods afloat on the air. “Sit in this vimana without fear, as you please. Today I will show you a wonderful sight.” We said Om to her in assent and climbed in, every doubt gone, and sat, and when she saw the three of us seated and still she sent the vimana up into the sky by her own power.
Their own likenesses in world after world
Where that mind-swift vimana first came down there was no water at all, and we stared. Everything she had just heard us say did not exist was standing there in rows. Trees bent under fruit of every kind and cuckoos called in them; the ground, the hills, the forests and the pleasure gardens were all lovely; there were women and men and cattle, great rivers, step-wells, wells, tanks, ponds, waterfalls. Ahead of us a fine city stood inside a grand rampart, adorned with halls for sacrifice and palaces fit for gods. It looked to us like heaven itself, and we wondered who had built it. Then we saw a king, godlike in form, riding out toward the forest to hunt, and in the same moment we saw Bhagavati Jagadamba herself, seated on the vimana and traveling with us.
The vimana rose again on the wind and within a muhurta set us down in a second country, and this was the Nandana grove. Kamadhenu stood in the shade of the Parijata tree, and near her the four-tusked elephant Airavata; Menaka and the other apsaras were dancing and singing through every mood the body can hold; in the Mandara groves hundreds of gandharvas, yakshas and vidyadharas sang and took their pleasure; and there sat Indra with Indrani beside him. Varuna, Kubera, Yama, Surya, Agni and the rest of the gods who live in heaven were all present, each at his ease in a heaven none of us had made, and we gazed at them astonished. While we looked, that same king came out of his adorned city, splendid as Indra himself, and was carried along the ground in a palanquin. The vimana sped on with us.
Then we reached Brahmaloka, a world outside our own, and Shankara and Vishnu were amazed, for there sat a Brahma, saluted by all the gods. In his assembly the Vedas stood present in bodily form with all their limbs, and the oceans, the rivers, the mountains, the serpents and the nagas had come to attend him. Vishnu and Shankara turned to me. “Brahma, who is this other eternal Brahma?” I told them I did not know this lord and maker of all. “Who am I, and who is he, and what are we for? I am lost in this.” In a moment the vimana was moving again with the speed of thought, and it reached the peak of Kailasa, thronged with yakshas, lovely with Mandara groves, loud with parrots and cuckoos and the sweet sound of vina and mridanga. As we arrived, Lord Shankara came out of his divine dwelling mounted on the bull, three-eyed, five-faced, ten-armed, the half-moon on his head, a tiger skin around him and an elephant’s hide over his shoulders. The mighty Gajanana and Shadanana walked at either side of their father as his guards, Nandi and the chief ganas followed behind him shouting victory, and the Matrikas were around him. I looked at this Shankara among his ganas and his Matrikas, and doubt took hold of me. In a moment the vimana went on with the wind’s speed to Vaikuntha, the world of Lakshmi’s husband, and I saw splendors there I had no words for. Vishnu stared at that lovely city, and as he stared a lotus-eyed Lord Vishnu came out of his own dwelling, dark as the flax flower, robed in yellow, four-armed, mounted on Garuda, king of birds, while Bhagavati Lakshmi fanned him with a chamara. We looked at one another and sat still in our fine seats. The eternal images of our own selves had been shown to us, and we could not tell whose play this was.
Bhagavati enthroned in the ocean of nectar
Then the vimana moved again with the wind’s speed, and in a few moments it reached the shore of the amrita-sagara, the ocean of nectar: sweet water, high waves, water creatures of many kinds, billows that seemed to be at play. Along the shore stood rows of many-colored Mandara and Parijata trees hung with fringes of pearl and with garlands, and all around the ocean grew Ashoka, Bakula and Kurabaka, with groves of Ketaki and Champaka where cuckoos called and bees hummed over the scent. There was an island in that ocean. From far off, still seated in the vimana, we saw on it a couch in the shape of Shiva, set with garlands of jewels, spread with sheets of so many colors that it shone like a rainbow, and on the couch a divine woman was seated. She wore a garland of red flowers and red garments; red sandal was on her body and a red tint in her eyes, and she shone with the light of countless lightnings. She was crores of times more beautiful than Lakshmi, and her radiance seemed to scorn the sun’s own disc. One hand gave a boon, one held a noose, one a goad, and one was raised to say there was nothing to fear. She was smiling. This was Bhagavati Bhuvaneshvari, and none of us had ever seen her. A flock of birds that chanted the seed-syllable hrim was always in her service; she was all fresh youth, the red of dawn, compassion itself in a girl’s body. Golden bracelets and armlets and a crown were on her, and in her ears hung golden ornaments shaped like the Shri-chakra. Her companions murmured the names Hallekha and Bhuvaneshi without pause; divine maidens like Hallekha and goddesses like Anangakusuma stood around her. She sat at the center of a six-pointed figure upon the king of yantras. We stood where we were, amazed, and could not tell who this beauty was or what her name might be; and seen from that distance she had a thousand eyes, a thousand faces and a thousand hands.
She did not look like an apsara, or a gandharvi, or a goddess of heaven, and we stood there in doubt, until Vishnu, who had been watching that sweet-smiling face and searching his own experience, settled the question in his mind and spoke to us. “This is Bhagavati Jagadamba herself, the cause of us all. She is Mahavidya, she is Mahamaya, the full and eternal Prakriti. Those of little intelligence will never know her as she is; she is reached by the path of yoga alone. She is the will of the Paramatma, the mother of the Vedas, the first Ishvari of all. At the dissolution she withdraws the whole universe, takes the subtle bodies of every being into her own body, and plays. See, Brahma, Shankara: crores of her vibhutis stand in order around her, adorned with divine ornaments and divine scents, intent on her service. We are blessed, our lives are fulfilled, for we have had direct darshan of Bhagavati here; this is the fruit of the tapas we did long ago with such effort. The generous and the meritorious ascetics alone see her; those bound to the senses are shut out from this sight entirely. It is this Mulaprakriti who, with the Supreme Purusha, makes the cosmos and sets it before the Paramatma. That Purusha is only the seer. The whole cosmos and the gods are what is seen, and she is the root cause of all of it. Where am I, where are all the gods, where are Rambha and the women of heaven! Set beside her we do not come to a lakh-th part of her.” Then Vishnu’s voice changed, because he had remembered. “This is the same Mahadevi Jagadamba we saw in the ocean of dissolution, the one who rocked me gladly in a cradle when I was a child. I lay on a firm banyan leaf with the big toe of my foot in my mouth, sucking it, my limbs soft, kicking and turning the way a child does in the cup of a leaf, and she sang and rocked me. Seeing her I am sure: it is she who sits here. Surely this Bhagavati is my mother. Listen, the memory of what I lived through before has woken in me, and I will tell you.”
The three gods turned to women, and the mirror in the toenail
Having said this much, Janardana said more. “Let us go to her, bowing again and again as we go. That boon-giving Mahamaya will surely give us a boon, so let us go to her feet without fear and praise her; and if her doorkeepers stop us, we will sit down where we are stopped and praise the Devi from there.” Shiva and I were choked with joy and could not get there fast enough. We answered Hari with one Om, climbed quickly down from the vimana, and walked to Bhagavati’s door with a crowd of arguments in our minds. The moment she saw us at her door she smiled gently and turned the three of us into women. We stood there as beautiful young women adorned with many ornaments, astonished at ourselves, and went on toward Mahamaya, and she cast a gracious look on us in our women’s dress. We bowed to her and stood before her, looking at one another. Her footstool alone, set with many gems, blazed like crores of suns. Of her thousands of attendants some wore red, some blue, some a lovely yellow; every goddess present was busy with one service or another to Jagadamba; some sang, some danced, some played the vina and the mouth-instruments with joy. And in the nail of her lotus foot, as in a mirror, I saw a wonder. I saw the whole cosmos of moving and unmoving things: myself, Vishnu, Shiva, Vayu, Agni, Yama, Surya, Varuna, the Moon, Vishvakarma, Kubera, Indra; the mountains, the oceans, the rivers; gandharvas and apsaras, Vishvavasu, Chitraketu, Narada and Tumburu, Haha and Huhu; the two Ashvins, the eight Vasus, the Sadhyas, the Siddhas, the Pitaras, Shesha and the nagas, the kinnaras, the serpents and the rakshasas. Vaikuntha was there, and Brahmaloka, and Kailasa best of mountains, all inside her toenail. The lotus I was born from was there, and I sat four-faced in its cup; the two danavas Madhu and Kaitabha were there, and Mahavishnu lying on Shesha. I was astonished and asked myself what this was. Vishnu and Shiva stood as astonished as I. Then we understood that she alone is the mother of the whole world.
So a hundred of our years passed on that nectar island among wonders, and the glad-faced goddesses there took us three for their sakhis, and we were happy in their loving ways. Once, in his woman’s form, Vishnu began to praise Bhagavati Shri Bhuvaneshvari. “Salutation to Prakriti, to Vidhatri, to the one whose form is being, consciousness and bliss, the womb of the world, who ordains the five acts, Shri Bhuvaneshvari. Salutation to the sole ruler of the world, the meaning of the ardhamatra, Hallekha. Today I know that this whole world is held in you. You create it and you dissolve it, and the wise say that without your shakti the Supreme Purusha can do nothing. Mother, you saved us from Madhu and Kaitabha, and you have shown us your many wide worlds. If I and Shiva and Brahma cannot know your deeds, who can? Who knows how many brahmandas fill this display of yours? We have seen in your worlds another Vishnu, another Shiva, another Brahma; are there not such gods in other worlds too? It is said through all the world that Brahma creates, Vishnu preserves and Rudra destroys. Mother, is it true? The truth is that we do our work by your will, with power taken from you. The earth does not hold the world; your adhara-shakti holds it. The sun shines by your light. Brahma, I and Shankara are born of your power, and if we are not eternal, how could Indra and the rest be? As waves are parts of the ocean, the jivas are parts of the stainless Brahman, and to give them moksha you made this whole world. Let the bond of mother and son between us never break. I bow to you, Mahavidya; light my heart with knowledge.” When Vishnu had finished, Shiva stood humbly before her, and his hymn ran another way. If Vishnu rose by her will and Brahma after him, then he, the tamasic one, was born of it too; whoever said that Brahma, Vishnu and Shankara made the world knew nothing, since she had made the three of them, and they worked at her prompting with strength drawn from a single speck of dust from her lotus feet. Were she without mercy, how would he be tamasic, Brahma rajasic, Vishnu sattvic? Her three gunas alone could have done all of it, and still she had made the three of them the causes of the worlds; and who had made the new worlds they passed on the way? Then his voice dropped to a plea. “Mother, we have become women; let us serve your lotus feet forever, for when manhood comes back to us, where will we find this happiness, face to face, away from your feet? Having become a woman beside you I have not the least taste left for manhood. Who would leave your nearness to rule a kingdom with no thorn in it? Away from your feet a moment is a yuga. The munis who leave the service of your feet for bare tapas have been cheated by the Creator; they take their loss for gain. The liberation that comes from serving the pollen of your feet does not come from tapas, or sense-control, or samadhi, or the sacrifices of the Veda. If you are kind to me, give me your pure, wonderful, supreme and clear Navarna mantra. In a former birth I was initiated into it, and I no longer remember it. Mother, give me that mantra again today, and lift me out of the ocean of becoming, lift me out.” Jagadamba pronounced the nine-syllable mantra in clear words, om aim hrim klim chamundayai vichche, and Shiva received it, bowed at her feet in great gladness, and stayed where he was, doing japa of that mantra with its bijas, able to fill every desire, giving liberation. Seeing Shiva seated like that, I sat down near Mahamaya’s feet and spoke to her myself. “I am the creator, I make the whole wonderful cosmos, who in the three worlds is more capable than I, I am blessed, I am the supreme Brahma: this is the false pride that has kept me sunk in the wide ocean of samsara. Today I have the pollen of your feet to be proud of, and by your grace I am fit to know the truth. Free me from the bonds of delusion and give me devotion to you.” I told her that I had risen from a lotus of her making and was her obedient servant; that she had set me in Brahma’s seat only to divide creation into its four kinds, and I had thought, I alone know everything, who else could know, and I asked her to forgive that offense born of pride. Had she not protected Vishnu from Madhu and Kaitabha in the great ocean, how could he be the preserver? Had she not made Shiva, how could he have come from my brows? She alone was the Adya Shakti, and so the Vedas described her. And yet the wise said that Ishvara was a non-doer, nirguna, and that he watched her play; that Supreme Purusha was before her. Here my doubt came out. “The word of the Veda must never be thought false, and the Vedas say that Brahman is one without a second. Then what are you, and what is that Brahman? This contradiction raises a great doubt in my heart; my small mind is sunk in dvaita and advaita and cannot free itself. Resolve it from your own mouth. Tell me in full whether you are purusha or stri, so that, knowing you, the supreme Shakti, I may be freed from the ocean of becoming.”
The giving of Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, and Mahasaraswati
Asked with so much humility, the primordial Bhagavati began to speak, and her words were sweet. “I and Parabrahma are always one. There is no difference: what he is, I am, and what I am, he is. Only a confusion of the intellect makes a difference appear between us, and the wise man who knows the subtle difference between us two is freed from the world’s bondage forever. Brahman is one without a second, eternal, everlasting, and at the time of creation it becomes two again. One lamp seems two through a difference of its conditions; one face seems many in many mirrors; so I and Brahman, though one, become many through upadhi. For a world to be made, difference has to appear, the seen and the unseen both, for nothing is created without two. At the dissolution of creation I am neither woman, nor man, nor neuter. When creation begins again this distinction rises through the intellect, as it did before.” Then she told me what she was. Buddhi, shri, dhriti, fame, memory, faith, compassion, modesty, hunger, thirst, forgiveness, sleep, old age and agelessness, knowledge and ignorance, strength and weakness; the levels of speech from para to pashyanti and below; the nadis of the body: all of it was she. “Look, Brahma: what in this world am I not, and what is apart from me?” She dwelt in every god as his shakti and did his valorous deeds, Gauri, Brahmi, Raudri, Varahi, Vaishnavi, Narasimhi, the shakti of Vasava, and when a task arose she entered the god whose task it was and finished it through him. She was the coolness in water, the heat in fire, the light in the sun, the moonlight in the moon. “No being in this world can so much as stir without me. If I leave Shiva he is powerless; he cannot kill a daitya. That is why the world calls a very weak man shaktihina. When a man is low, people do not call him Vishnu-less or Rudra-less; they call him shakti-less. One who has fallen, or frozen in fear, or lies under his enemy’s hand, is called ashakta, never a-rudra. When you wish to create, know that shakti is the cause; only joined with shakti can you be a creator. The earth holds all things because shakti is in it; without shakti it could not hold one atom. Shesha, the Tortoise and the ten elephants of the quarters carry what they carry by my shakti alone. If I wish, I can drink up all the water in the world, put out fire, and stop the wind.” Then she answered the fear I had spoken at the beginning, that there was nothing to build from. “Brahma, stop doubting over the absence of the tattvas. A thing’s absence before it is made and its absence after it is destroyed both appear, as the absence of a pot appears in a lump of clay and again in the potsherds. There is no earth here today; where has it gone? Think, and you will find it exists in atomic form. Creation is described in seven divisions: the eternal, the momentary, the void, the permanent, the impermanent, that which has a maker, and ahamkara. So take up now the mahat-tattva, from which ahamkara arises, and create all beings as before. Go, make your own worlds and live in them, and do your work with your mind on daiva.”
Then Bhagavati turned to me. “Brahma, accept as your companion this shakti named Mahasaraswati, lovely in form, divine in her smile, full of rajas, dressed in the finest white, adorned with divine ornaments. She will always be your companion. Know her as my vibhuti and never slight her. Go with her quickly to Satyaloka and set about the fourfold creation from the seed of the tattvas. Through time, karma and svabhava give every created thing its own nature and its qualities as they were. Honor Vishnu and worship him always; by his sattva he is the best of all. Whenever a hard task comes to you, Shri Hari will take birth on earth, in animal wombs and sometimes in human ones, and destroy the danavas; and this mighty Shankara will help you. Men will worship all of you through sacrifices with dakshina, and the moment my name is uttered in a sacrifice you will all be satisfied. Honor tamasic Shankara in every way. Whenever fear of the daityas rises before the gods, my shaktis in their lovely forms, Varahi, Vaishnavi, Gauri, Narasimhi and the others, will take that fear away. Do all your work with the japa of my nine-syllable mantra; know it as the best of all mantras and hold it in your heart.” Then, with her pure smile, she said to Vishnu, “Vishnu, accept this lovely Mahalakshmi and go. She will live on your breast always; I have given you this auspicious shakti who grants all wishes, for your play. Honor her always and never slight her. This union named Lakshmi-Narayana is my making. I have made the sacrifices for the gods’ livelihood, and you three are to act with no hostility among you. You, Brahma, Shiva and all these gods have arisen by my power, so all beings will worship you, and the ignorant who make a difference among you fall into hell by that difference. He who is Vishnu is Shiva himself, and he who is Shiva is Vishnu himself; the man who holds them to be two goes to hell. Know the same of Brahma. Now hear how the gunas divide you. Your chief guna is sattva, for the contemplation of the Paramatma, and rajas and tamas are secondary in you; so in the changes of the world take up rajas and sport with this Lakshmi. Here is your mantra: the vagbija, the kamaraja and third the mayabija, aim, klim, hrim, joined together; it grants the highest aim. Do its japa constantly and sport in happiness, and you will have no fear of death and none born of time. As long as I play, this creation lasts; when I draw the whole moving and unmoving world back, you too will merge in me. Whoever wants his welfare should join Omkara to it and do japa of the four-syllable mantra. Now have Vaikuntha built, live in it, and sport as you wish, meditating always on me, the eternal.” Then that supreme Prakriti, of three gunas and of none, spoke to Shankara, god of gods, words like nectar. “Hara, accept this charming Mahakali Gauri, have Kailasa built and sport there in happiness. Tamas will be your chief guna, with sattva and rajas secondary; by rajas and tamas destroy the daityas, and for the contemplation of the Paramatma, since you have done tapas, take to sattva, which is chief in peace. You three gods of three gunas are the makers of creation, preservation and destruction. Nothing anywhere in the world is without these three gunas; every visible thing is of three gunas. Only the Paramatma is nirguna, and he is never seen. When the time comes I, the highest form, become saguna or nirguna. Shiva, I am always cause, never effect. From sat arises ahamkara, so I am the cause of all. Ahamkara is my effect and stands in three forms, and from it comes the mahat-tattva, which is called buddhi, and from it the tanmatras, which are the cause of the five great elements. Five organs of action, five of knowledge, five great elements and the mind as sixteenth: this sixteenfold group of cause and effect makes all of creation. The Adipurusha, the Paramatma, is neither effect nor cause. That is the order of the first creation, told briefly. Go now from here in this vimana and do my work. When trouble comes, I will appear to you at once at the mere remembrance of me. Remember me, and remember the eternal Paramatma; by remembering us two your work will succeed.” With this Bhagavati gave us her wonderful shaktis and sent us off: Mahalakshmi to Vishnu, Mahakali to Shiva, and Mahasaraswati to me.
We went to another place first, remembering her form and her most wonderful power as we went, and there we became men again. Then we three turned back and sat once more in the vimana, and there was no Manidvipa there, no Mahamaya, no ocean of nectar. Nothing could be seen except the vimana itself. Seated in that great vimana we came again to the lotus in the great ocean, the place where Lord Vishnu had killed the two invincible daityas, Madhu and Kaitabha.
Source: Shrimad Devi Bhagavata Mahapurana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)