Goddess Worship in India & Around the World

To celebrate International Woman's Day I am sharing with you this wonderful article written by Sadhguru on Devi/ Goddess worship.

The worship of the feminine was prevalent right across the planet at one time. But unfortunately, a very ambitious approach to religion became the mode. When conquest became the mode, people burnt the feminine off the planet. And today, the masculine is the only way to be successful; we have even compelled women to become very masculine in their attitude, approach and emotion. We have made everyone believe that conquest is the only way to success.

But to conquer is not the way; to embrace is the way. Trying to conquer the planet has led to all the disasters we see today. If the feminine were the more dominant factor, or if masculine and feminine were evenly balanced, I don’t think we would have ecological disasters because worship of the feminine and the earth always went together. Cultures that looked upon the earth as Mother have never caused much damage to the environment around them; damage only happened when conquest was seen as the way of life.

Right now, even after all this damage to the planet, half the people still can’t even eat properly though there is enough food on the planet. If the feminine were dominant, the population would definitely eat, and compassion, love and aesthetics would be dominant. Instead, we chose the power of gross conquest over the subtleties of love and compassion. We chose to conquer life rather than embrace it. If the feminine were dominant, perhaps we would not have gone to the Moon or to Mars, but what have we really achieved by going there? We placed a flag, left a footprint and came down. What is the significance? The whole romance of the moon is now gone.

Our whole attitude towards life has become lopsided. I am not against scientific achievements, but we have lost the life-orientation of science. For most people, science and technology is only about using everything on the planet for our benefit. This attitude of exploiting everything is a very conquest-oriented, masculine approach. If the masculine and the feminine were evenly balanced, we would have lived much better lives.

Sadhguru.