Kali : The Other Half Of Shiva

Images of this story are being shot in different spiritual regions of India including Kolkata, during the festival of  Durga Puja. Hindu metaphysics is complex in nature and the same cosmic energy is represented by different forms and names in different regions. In West Bengal it is ‘Durga’ that represents  ‘Kali’. It is the same ‘shakti’ (energy) which pervades all cosmic creation preservation and destruction. Durga is self- existent, beyond time, indestructible and independent of the material universe as we know it. In a personified form Durga is  honored as a ‘Mother’ with extreme fervor during the annual Navratri festival . Constant interaction with brilliant Vedic & Buddhist scholars and philosophers has made me understand that the concept of a ‘Creator God’ proposed by organized religion is a childish one. It has failed to fully comprehend that unconditioned, non-dual, eternal omnipresent force. God is not a glorified Being sitting somewhere in the universe, directing lives of its people or attending to minute details of its day to day operations. We need to understand that the ‘Universal Mind’ does not exist separately in the universe but in it and as it.The universe was not arbitrarily created by any outside intervention but is self- born and governed by the eternal Law Of Cause and Effect or Karma. Impressions of all objects in the universe lie dormant within the inner depths of the Universal Mind, until they become active by the working of Karma. They are then projected in our familiar space-time dimension which we know as the material world. The universe is not only self-actuating but also self-determining.