NAVARAATHRI SPECIAL SERIES #4 Mahalakshmi

Yesterday we saw how Paarvathi became Lalita to seduce Shiva into having a child. But, since without financial stability, it is unwise to bring in a child into this world, the role of Lakshmi becomes important.
One day Indra, the demigod leader, absent-mindedly dishonoured Lakshmi and Lakshmi abandoned him. And with her, went beauty and the lustre of every realm and every being. In desperation, the demigods approach Vishnu, whose task is to maintain the universe in balance. But it is Lakshmi who gives him power to do this and when she disappears, even Vishnu can’t keep things going. Knowing Lakshmi, Vishnu realizes what happened. Lakshmi is not a goddess to roar, to complain or to draw a sword. But she doesn’t stay where there is pride or harshness. When she is displeased, she simply leaves and with her goes everything that makes life sweet. So now Vishnu works hard together with the demigods to bring the goddess back to the world. With Lakshmi’s reappearance, love, generosity, wealth and fertility return to the world. When Vishnu is out of touch with her, he’s rather stern–a stickler for the forms of righteous behaviour. But when he gets together with her, he softens into the masculine deity of nourishing affection.
It’s easy to see this story as a parable for our own time. We have used and tossed aside the bounty of the earth, poisoned the atmosphere and insulted nature in a 1000 ways. We see signs of Lakshmi’s withdrawal in the desertification of so many parts of the planet, in the pain of starvation and cruelty that afflict so many.
Lakshmi is also an agent for social change. Once, she and her husband lived in Vaaranaasi, manifesting in a temple where only the higher castes were allowed. But that didn’t stop the low-caste folk from worshipping Lakshmi. Lakshmi visited all the ‘untouchables’ in town. She went to every house, bringing food and money even to those who hadn’t worshipped her. When Vishnu heard that she had been hanging out with ‘untouchables’, he got very angry and forbade her to visit them again. At that, the normally submissive Lakshmi rebelled. She swept out of the temple and went to live with the community of sweepers. The formerly poor sweepers began to prosper as the rest of the town became impoverished. Vishnu finally had to travel to the community of ‘untouchables’ to beg her pardon. She agreed to come home only if he promised never to restrict her grace-giving impulses again.
Lakshmi is sometimes said to have two faces: as Vishnu’s beloved, she embodies fidelity, integrity and virtue but as Rajalakshmi, she gives power to rulers and bestows sweeping fortune–but not always the kind that lasts. The latter is notoriously fickle; she can be with you today and hanging out with someone else tomorrow. Without consciousness, a woman who incarnates Rajalakshmi’s power can lose herself in being the object of desire, becoming what others see in her, eating their sexual projections as well as the anger and jealousy that are often projected onto beautiful women. And she can fall into the opposite trap–giving away her power to serve men who seem to validate her existence by desiring/needing her. When the Lakshmi magnetism is joined with empathy and genuine concern for others, such women can bless others by their presence. Being in tune with Lakshmi is not necessarily about having more, spending more or looking better. It’s about feeling the fullness and satisfaction that comes with the sense of sufficiency.
But her manifestation as beauty has its very obvious shadow side. Shadow Lakshmi is on full display in the excesses of contemporary beauty industry, with its often painful cosmetic enhancements and its pervasive message that a woman’s desirability is determined by how closely she matches the ideal of the currently fashionable body–long-legged in size 2 jeans, breasts pouring out of her camisole, silky of hair and creamy of skin. Yet, no matter how much she is perverted by us, she continues to invite us to make ourselves beautiful–inwardly and outwardly, each of us in our own way.