I learned about Kali from a written document about the life and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna, a document called: The gospel of Sri Ramakrishna; published by the Vivekananda Center in New York, first edition 1942.
Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita, a Realised Master - born in 1836 - devoted his entire life to Kali - his Divine Mother, at first as a young priest in her service in the Kali temple in Dakshineswar, but shortly after his inauguration, things changed. He himself changed, for as soon as he sat before Kali's statue, something inside him changed. As if he were surrounded by a wall of fire which protected him from un-spiritual influences, and he felt the mystical Kundalini rise up through the different chakras along his spine. The glow on his face and the intense atmosphere in the temple impressed everyone who saw him worship the Goddess. He was her child. He cried for her...he cried so long for her...to manifest Herself to him.....and gradually he found himself captured in a web of her all penetrating presence.
For most people she no doubt is the Goddess of Destruction, for him she was the compassionate, loving-all Divine Mother. In her he saw the seed of immortality. She was Shakti, the Power, undivided from the Absolute. But in all her divinity she seemed to reel under the influence of wine. To Ramakrishna that made sense: who else, he said, would create this mysterious, crazy world unless under the influence of divine drunkeness but the Goddess of destruction? To Ramakrishna she was the ultimate, highest symbol of all powers in nature, and the final divine form of Woman.
Swami Vivekanda was one of his disciples, and was sent to America to become a missionary, spreading the teachings of his Guru: the Ramakrishna Vedanta. Vedanta - a universal philosophy - teaches the presence of the divine in all mankind; the nature of man and of the whole universe simply is Divine. And the purpose of human life is to manifest this Divine nature.
Painting of Ramakrishna by © David Bergen
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