Gowri is that Supreme Energy who removes inauspiciousness and fills us with auspiciousness! What is inauspiciousness? Creating disturbance in the existing calm and peaceful mind is itself inauspiciousness. People generally consider death, misery and disaster etc. as inauspicious. But, in reality birth-death, happiness-sorrow, good-bad etc. are mutually inseparable. Therefore, it is not proper to brand any one of them as inauspicious.

Descent of the mind from a high and noble status to a lower level is the real inauspiciousness. Re-establishing the mind in its higher state is itself auspiciousness.

The Supreme Energy, in Her form of Gowri, blesses us with auspiciousness. Towards this, the ancient Maharishis praised Her as ‘mangala dhatri. She bestows ultimate auspiciousness that is far more valuable than wealth, status and other materialistic pleasures. Mangala also implies “please absorb me in you.” Thus She blesses the sincere devotees by helping them merge into Her.

In the bhajan ‘Gowri Taaye’, Mother Gowri has been praised as Ravi Shata Bahse-the one who shines like a hundred Suns. It means that Gowri shines with infinite rays of light.

We have seen children playing with a magnifying glass. They hold it across the Sun’s rays and take delight in burning pieces of paper. Doctors also use powerful rays to cure cancer. Likewise laser rays are also being used these days to cure diseases. Actually cancer means a diseased or a rotten part. Doctors are using the rays to heal the rotten part. Similarly in the above-mentioned bhajan, there is a prayer to Mother Goddess to cure the ‘inner disease’ with her divine rays i.e. to remove the dirt, slime etc. from our mind.

Many people do not believe in themselves-let alone believe in God. This too is a kind of disease. Added to it there are the various types of dirt in the mind like jealousy etc. The endless chain of evil thoughts arising in the mind is also a disease. The Goddess who cures us of all these diseases with her powerful rays is “Gowri”. Jaya Guru Datta.

- Bhaktimala Nov 1994