We are manifest through the vehicle of the mother. The entire Universe is manifest or given birth through the vehicle of Mother. The Mother is the instrument for converting spirit into matter. To understand that all form is spirit made matter is to see that at the source within the world of matter lies the Mother.
Behind the Mother, or beyond the Mother, lies the Father. The Father is formless, unmanifest in which the spirit exists with no matter. To understand the relationship between the Mother and Father is to deal with the most profound mystical enigma, for the Father is the Father of the Mother and the Mother is the Mother of the Father. Each gives rise to the other, neither exists independent of the other and each is contained within the other. For the Mother in all of her manifestations is only the formless, taking form. It is not a continuum between spirit and matter, between formless and form, it is an identity.
The levels on which manifestations exist, or on which the Mother manifests, range from the finest stuff, the mist that is finer than thought and faster than light, to the grossest, densest forms, found in the depths of the earth. To know the Mother means to recognize the entire range of manifestations. To see her manifesting in the densest, slowest forms of rock and mineral, and to see within these dense forms the fine mist of the spirit in its finest manifestation. It’s like looking at clouds without forgetting that it is made up of drops of moisture.
Recognizing that these drops of moisture are relationships among hydrogen and oxygen atoms and that these atoms are composed of neutrons and electrons and protons. That these units in turn are still finer stuff and that it is also what the cloud is. And that this stuff that composes the cloud is no different than the stuff that composes that which is around the cloud.
For the quanta of energy which make up all forms of the Universe are the same. They are all manifestations of the Mother; they are all pure energy, or from another way of looking at it, pure love. Or from yet another way of looking at it, pure consciousness.
As energy, the Universe is referred to as Shakti; and the Father, that which is an identity in the formless, is referred to as Shiva. The path of enlightenment is the path of bringing together the two parts of this identity until form is no different than formless. A being who has merged into that identity, clinging nowhere to form, neither here nor there to neither this nor that, is said to be realized – which is the ultimate union of the Mother and Father. The process of bringing about that union involves working with shakti, the Mother, directing and using the energy in form, in order to transcend that form and merge with the formless.
Ram Dass (Richard Alpert)
Excerpted from Ramdass.org
