Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
1. The Mother: Individual, Universal, Transcendent
I had a talk with X in which he said that Athena is a form or representation of Maheshwari. Some of my visions of Gods like Shiva were in forms resembling human forms, but I thought this was due to my having seen them on the planes relating to the human mind and so my mind saw them in that way. Before the material creation took place, the vital and mental worlds existed and before that the planes of the higher hemisphere existed. But did the Gods on these planes exist with forms and shapes or did they only exist as impersonal forces without forms?
As to the Gods, man can build forms which they will accept; but these forms too are inspired into man’s mind from the planes to which the God belongs. All creation has the two sides, the formed and the formless; the Gods too are formless and yet have forms, but a Godhead can take many forms, here Maheshwari, there Pallas Athene. Maheshwari herself has many forms in her lesser manifestations, Durga, Uma, Parvati, Chandi etc. The Gods are not limited to human forms – man also has not always seen them in human forms only.
1 September 1935