Returning From India Susanne Schaup WEAVING THE CONNECTIONS
The Newsletter of the Center for Women, the Earth, the Divine
Volume 11 Spring 2006 Number 4
The Newsletter of the Center for Women, the Earth, the Divine
Volume 11 Spring 2006 Number 4
In March, I went on a field trip to India, a country to which I have been close for many years. Her ancient spiritual tradition has taught me to look at human beings as potentially divine, not as the sinful, fallen creatures of biblical anthropology.
The Indian concept of God never excluded the feminine. There is no male God—Brahma, Shiva or Vishnu—who does not have a female consort, not one who is envisioned without his shakti (the feminine energy and well-spring of his power). Shakti is the World Mother, the source of all being. The Indian people worship Goddesses Durga and Kali (life-giving and destructive forms of the Divine Feminine) in temples and colorful festivals. They also invoke Goddess Lakshmi as the giver of beauty and worldly fortune. Saraswati, the Goddess of Wisdom (who corresponds most closely to our concept of Sophia), appeals to those who seek wisdom and self-perfection. India also has female saints and mystics. The people still worship a woman simply called the “Mother” more than thirty years after her death. She was the companion of the great Indian sage of the 20th century Sri Aurobindo, and they regard her as his shakti. This remarkable woman, who was of European origin, founded schools and a university, as well as a city of the future in Auroville. She inspired arts and crafts and local industries.
The Mother also acted as spiritual guide for innumerable disciples and built the famous ashram in Pondicherry. It was her genius that put Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga into practice and turned Pondicherry into a training ground for thought on human evolution along ideas surprisingly similar to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of an ever growing spiritualization of matter. The ashram, the “Mother’s School”, was formerly housed in a small building, but later branched out to New Delhi. It had a good reputation even thirty years ago when I visited it for the first time, and now is housed in a beautiful new building for 700 students. It ranks as one of the best in the country. On the ashram compound I also visited an experimental school, “Mirambika”, which practices Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s educational principle of free and pleasurable learning. There are no exams and no grades. As I walked through the open classrooms in an airy structure of breathtaking architectural beauty, I saw happy, smiling children squatting on the floor and engaged in learning projects. They were visibly unstressed and unfrustrated. Though the deafening noise of the Delhi traffic or the airplanes overhead could not be completely ignored, when one enters the ashram, one moves into another world—it is an oasis of peace and beauty. My trip also took me to rural areas. In West Bengal, I met poor tribal women who are beginning to organize themselves. They form self-help groups, strive to overcome their illiteracy and send their children to school. They generate small incomes with loans from their own savings bank, keeping their monthly deposits in a metal box (out of reach of the men who often have a problem with alcohol). The German NGO with which I work and our Indian partner organizations, however, have observed that help given to women tends to benefit the whole family and the larger community.
It seems that women in India generally are coming forward. Marginalized women, who have been suppressed by caste and custom, are waking up to their own power. Fisherwomen on the south coast near Chennai (former Madras), assume functions and responsibilities they never dreamed of before the tsunami disaster. With the aid of relief funds, they buy fish nets, which they lease out to the men. They ride bicycles and even drive cars, learn to read and write, and to make use of the internet. Instantaneously, they are in touch with the world. The women are proud of the progress made within the short span of two years. They are gaining self-confidence and authority, and are experiencing solidarity and sisterhood.
In Kolkata I spoke with fifteen-year old girls who are students of the prestigious Loreto School. They go to the slums as part of their curriculum to locate children (mostly little girls) who have been sold as household slaves and bring them to school or tutor them in their homes. They also go to nearby villages on their free day to make contact with neglected children whom they offer tuition and seek to understand their and their families’ other needs. It was wonderful to interview these girls as they were smart and highly motivated—just bursting with energy.
It is what I call a “joyous energy” that impressed me with so many of the women I met. They have a sense of purpose, a willingness to render service, an acute awareness of the challenges of Indian society relative to the uplifting of women and the eradication of poverty.
The brightest aspect of my trip was seeing women in the process of being empowered. After ages of injustice and inequity—in glaring contradiction to the elevated position of the feminine in Indian spirituality—women are gradually coming into their own. Shakti-Sophia be praised.
The Indian concept of God never excluded the feminine. There is no male God—Brahma, Shiva or Vishnu—who does not have a female consort, not one who is envisioned without his shakti (the feminine energy and well-spring of his power). Shakti is the World Mother, the source of all being. The Indian people worship Goddesses Durga and Kali (life-giving and destructive forms of the Divine Feminine) in temples and colorful festivals. They also invoke Goddess Lakshmi as the giver of beauty and worldly fortune. Saraswati, the Goddess of Wisdom (who corresponds most closely to our concept of Sophia), appeals to those who seek wisdom and self-perfection. India also has female saints and mystics. The people still worship a woman simply called the “Mother” more than thirty years after her death. She was the companion of the great Indian sage of the 20th century Sri Aurobindo, and they regard her as his shakti. This remarkable woman, who was of European origin, founded schools and a university, as well as a city of the future in Auroville. She inspired arts and crafts and local industries.
The Mother also acted as spiritual guide for innumerable disciples and built the famous ashram in Pondicherry. It was her genius that put Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga into practice and turned Pondicherry into a training ground for thought on human evolution along ideas surprisingly similar to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of an ever growing spiritualization of matter. The ashram, the “Mother’s School”, was formerly housed in a small building, but later branched out to New Delhi. It had a good reputation even thirty years ago when I visited it for the first time, and now is housed in a beautiful new building for 700 students. It ranks as one of the best in the country. On the ashram compound I also visited an experimental school, “Mirambika”, which practices Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s educational principle of free and pleasurable learning. There are no exams and no grades. As I walked through the open classrooms in an airy structure of breathtaking architectural beauty, I saw happy, smiling children squatting on the floor and engaged in learning projects. They were visibly unstressed and unfrustrated. Though the deafening noise of the Delhi traffic or the airplanes overhead could not be completely ignored, when one enters the ashram, one moves into another world—it is an oasis of peace and beauty. My trip also took me to rural areas. In West Bengal, I met poor tribal women who are beginning to organize themselves. They form self-help groups, strive to overcome their illiteracy and send their children to school. They generate small incomes with loans from their own savings bank, keeping their monthly deposits in a metal box (out of reach of the men who often have a problem with alcohol). The German NGO with which I work and our Indian partner organizations, however, have observed that help given to women tends to benefit the whole family and the larger community.
It seems that women in India generally are coming forward. Marginalized women, who have been suppressed by caste and custom, are waking up to their own power. Fisherwomen on the south coast near Chennai (former Madras), assume functions and responsibilities they never dreamed of before the tsunami disaster. With the aid of relief funds, they buy fish nets, which they lease out to the men. They ride bicycles and even drive cars, learn to read and write, and to make use of the internet. Instantaneously, they are in touch with the world. The women are proud of the progress made within the short span of two years. They are gaining self-confidence and authority, and are experiencing solidarity and sisterhood.
In Kolkata I spoke with fifteen-year old girls who are students of the prestigious Loreto School. They go to the slums as part of their curriculum to locate children (mostly little girls) who have been sold as household slaves and bring them to school or tutor them in their homes. They also go to nearby villages on their free day to make contact with neglected children whom they offer tuition and seek to understand their and their families’ other needs. It was wonderful to interview these girls as they were smart and highly motivated—just bursting with energy.
It is what I call a “joyous energy” that impressed me with so many of the women I met. They have a sense of purpose, a willingness to render service, an acute awareness of the challenges of Indian society relative to the uplifting of women and the eradication of poverty.
The brightest aspect of my trip was seeing women in the process of being empowered. After ages of injustice and inequity—in glaring contradiction to the elevated position of the feminine in Indian spirituality—women are gradually coming into their own. Shakti-Sophia be praised.
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