Sarasvati
A Mãe Divina na sua manifestação como Sarasvati é a shakti de Brahma. Na Trindade hindu, Brahma é conhecido como o Criador, o equivalente de Deus, o Pai, da Trindade Ocidental. Ele é o Legislador Divino, fonte de todo o conhecimento. Juntos, Brahma e Sarasvati são a encarnação da força cósmica.
Atributos
Sarasvati é conhecida como a Deusa da Palavra, e é identificada com Vac, o Verbo. Ela representa a eloquência e articula a sabedoria da Lei. É a Mãe-Instrutora para aqueles de nós que amam a Lei que Brahma revelou, e é o poder da volição, da vontade e da motivação para ser a Lei em ação. Sarasvati representa a união do poder com a inteligência, da qual surge a criação organizada.
In the book Symbolism in Hinduism, A. Parthasarathy notes that the name Sarasvati literally means “the one who gives the essence of our own Self.” Sarasvati is sometimes represented with four hands, sitting on a lotus. She holds the sacred scriptures in one hand and a lotus in another. With the remaining two hands, she plays the Indian lute (veena).[1]
Parthasarathy writes: “The Goddess, therefore, represents the ideal guru.... ‘Sitting on the lotus’ symbolises that the teacher is well established in the subjective experience of the Truth. ‘Holding the Scriptures in her hand’ indicates that she upholds that the knowledge of the Scriptures alone can take us to the Truth." Parthasarathy says that Sarasvati’s playing of the lute suggests “that a truly qualified teacher tunes up the mind and intellect of the seeker and draws out of him the music and melody of life.”[2]
According to scholar David Frawley, in an esoteric sense Sarasvati “represents the stream of wisdom, the free flow of the knowledge of consciousness.”[3] She is called the Flowing One, the source of creation by the Word.
Sarasvati also represents purity and wears white. David Kinsley, Professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, explains:
The predominant themes in Sarasvati’s appearance are purity and transcendence. She is almost always said to be pure white like snow, the moon, or the kunda flower.... Her garments are said to be fiery in their purity....
Sarasvati’s transcendent nature ... is also suggested in her vehicle, the swan. The swan is a symbol of spiritual transcendence and perfection in Hinduism.... Sarasvati, astride her swan, suggests a dimension of human existence that rises above the physical, natural world. Her realm is one of beauty, perfection, and grace; it is a realm created by artistic inspiration, philosophic insight, and accumulated knowledge, which have enabled human beings to so refine their natural world that they have been able to transcend its limitations. Sarasvati astride her swan beckons human beings to continued cultural creation and civilized perfection.... She not only underlies the world and is its creator but is the [very] means to transcend the world.[4]
Sarasvati está associada à linguagem, à poesia, à música e à cultura e é conhecida como a Deusa do Aprendizado e Patrocinadora das Artes e da Música. Reverenciada tanto pelos hindus como pelos budistas, estes consideram-na consorte de Manjushri, o bodhisattva da sabedoria. Os budistas apelam para Manjushri pedindo inteligência, sabedoria, mestria dos ensinamentos, poder de exposição, eloquência e memória. Ele trabalha com o Senhor Maitreya. Às vezes, os dois são retratados formando um trio com Gautama Buda, no qual Manjushri representa o aspecto da sabedoria e Maitreya o da compaixão do ensinamento Budista. Como Sarasvati, Manjushri traz o dom da iluminação.
The river Sarasvati
In the earliest Hindu texts, the Vedas, Sarasvati is a river goddess. The Vedas say that Sarasvati was the greatest river in India. For years the Sarasvati was believed to have been a myth, but an archaeological survey in 1985 found an ancient riverbed that matched the description of the Sarasvati. It was a great river, four to six miles wide for much of its length. It flowed westward from the Himalayas into the sea. Frawley believes that the Sarasvati was the main site of habitation at the time the Vedas were composed thousands of years ago.[5]
Frawley says that the Sarasvati, “like the later Ganges, symbolizes the Sushumna, the river of spiritual knowledge, the current that flows [through the spinal canal] through the seven chakras of the subtle body. She is not only the Milky Way or river of Heaven, inwardly she is the river of true consciousness that flows into this world.”[6]
The Rigveda calls Sarasvati “the best mother, the best river, [and] the best Goddess.”[7] It also says, “Sarasvati like a great ocean appears with her ray, she rules all inspirations.”[8]
Her sacred “seed syllable,” or bija, is Aim (pronounced ah-eem). A bija mantra encapsulates the essence of a cosmic being, of a principle or a chakra. Sarasvati’s mantra is Om Aim Sarasvatye Namaha.
See also
Sources
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Masters and Their Retreats, s.v. “Sarasvati, Shakti of Brahma.”
- ↑ A. Parthasarathy, “Consorts of the Three Gods,” in R. S. Nathan, comp., Symbolism in Hinduism (Bombay: Central Chinmaya Mission Trust, 1989), p. 157.
- ↑ Ibid., pp. 157–58.
- ↑ David Frawley, From the River of Heaven: Hindu and Vedic Knowledge for the Modern Age (Sandy, Utah: Morson Publishing, 1990), p. 126.
- ↑ David Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 62, 141.
- ↑ David Frawley, Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization (Salt Lake City, Utah: Passage Press, 1991), pp. 72–76, 354–57 nn. d–g.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 219.
- ↑ Rigveda 2.41.16, 1.3.12, quoted in Frawley, Gods, Sages and Kings, pp. 70, 71.
- ↑ Sri-sukta 1, 6, 13, 4, in Rigveda, cited by David Kinsley, The Goddesses’ Mirror: Visions of the Divine from East and West (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1989), p. 55.