Devi

Devi: Mother of my Mind is a creative interaction with India’s Yoga, Shakta, and Tantra traditions. The book uses the epic literary genre to imagine the mind-liberating struggle of these teachings. It combines academic study and translation with the meditative quest and questions of a woman and mother. The goddess Devi symbolizes the wholeness of life, the vital continuum interconnecting body and spirit. She is also the Great Mother, the perennial gestator, birthgiver and nurturer. According to N.N. Bhattacharyva (A History of Shakta Religion, 1973), the goddess traditions of India preserve, develop, and practice the most completely female-oriented system in the religious history of the world. Devi celebrates and proclaims this powerful counterbalance to dominant male-oriented externalized systems. Internalized myths, philosophies, legends, songs, and rituals gradually move the narrator towards their inherent wholeness.