CWTVKS Volume 2

1) Three Forms of Mahalakshmi

To

Bhagavan Sri Aurobindo and to the Divine Mother I offer my Pranam and with it myself in entirety, on this my 50th birthday.

One or two points, I pray, may be elucidated:

Medhasi devi viditakhila-sastrasara
Durgasi durgabhavasagaranaurasanga,
Srih kaitabharihrdayaikakrtadhivasa
Gauri tvameva sasimaulikrtapratistha.

This is a verse from Chandi that came to me spontaneously a minute or two after the Mother began to give me meditation. Of the three forms of Mahalakshmi that appeared in the meditation in response (as was explained to me by the Mother) to my invocation, the first, the Mother said, was the original (Overmental) form of Mahalakshmi, and the second was the traditional one. Of the third, the Mother left partly unsaid. The form was a three-faced one with something like a cap-crown on. Is there any tradition in India or outside of a three-faced form of Mahalakshmi? In any case, what is its significance and the meaning of the same goddess-personality—Mahalakshmi—of the Mother appearing in three successive forms, visible of course to the Mother? Has it any personal significance to me? I hope the year augurs well for me and I may be enabled to have the sheer joy of self-giving.

Grant, I implore Thee, my Lord, I implore Thee, Mother, that I may sooner realise the consciousness of surrender to the Divine, very personally in every sense of the term to the Master and to the Mother.

3 September 1936

At Thy Feet,
Kapali

Sri Aurobindo's Reply

The Mother told you all that she saw about the last form—it disappeared almost immediately. The first form was the true one, that which she wears on the Overmind Plane which is the home of the greater Gods—as soon as it touched your mind, it took the traditional form which is the one with which your mind is familiar. The third shape must be a symbolic one (not traditional)—it would seem to be a correspondent one on the Shakti side to the Trimurti, indicating the unity in difference of three powers in the Cosmic Consciousness—in it is the same manifestation in different forms,—the Overmind Power, the traditional Lakshmi and the One Power in the Mother here.

Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother: Mahalakshmi