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"All sciences, O Goddess, are different parts of thee, all women entirely in the worlds." The sense would then be that wherever the feminine principle is found in the living personality, we have the entire presence of the world-supporting maternal soul of the Divinity.
The Devi with all her aspects, kalās, is there in the Woman; in the Woman we have to see Durga, Annapurna, Tara, the Mahavidyas, and therefore it is said in the Tantra, in the line quoted by Mr. Avalon in his preface, "Wherever one sees the feet of Woman, one should give worship in one's soul even as to one's guru." Thus this thought of the Shakta side of Hinduism becomes an uncompromising declaration of the divinity of woman completing the Vedantic declaration of the concealed divinity in man which we are too apt to treat in practice as if it applied only in the masculine. We put away in silence, even when we do not actually deny it, the perfect equality in difference of the double manifestation."
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The cause and Mother of the world, She whose form is that of the Shabdabrahman, And whose substance is bliss.
Thou art the primordial One, Mother of countless creatures, Creatrix of the bodies of the Lotus-born, Vishnu and Shiva, Who creates, preserves and destroys the worlds....
Although Thou art the primordial cause of the world, Yet art Thou ever youthful. Although Thou art the Daughter of the Mountain-King, Yet art Thou full of tenderness. Although Thou art the Mother of the Vedas, Yet they cannot describe Thee. Although men must meditate upon Thee, Yet cannot their mind comprehend Thee.
''This hymn is quoted as culled from a Tantric compilation, the Tantrasara. Its opening is full of the supreme meaning of the great Devi symbol, its close is an entire self-abandonment to the adoration of the body of the Mother. This catholicity is typical of the whole Tantric system, which is in its aspiration one of the greatest attempts yet made to embrace the whole of God manifested and unmanifested in the adoration, self-discipline and knowledge of a single human soul.''
Sri Aurobindo writing on translations by Arthur Avalon [Hymns to the Goddess]
