All glories to Śrī Śrī Guru–Gaurāṅga
(The Position of Devī Durgā in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Theology)
By Sampradāya-saṁrakṣaka Śrī Śyām Dās Bābā Mahārāj
Date 02.10.2025
Gauḍīya Goṣṭhī-pati Śrī Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda said that—“The reflection of the pearl seen in water is not the pearl itself; yet the fool, not looking upwards, dives into the pond to grasp the shadow. Similarly, māyā is nothing but the distorted reflection of svarūpa-śakti. Those who are deceived by māyā and try to chase after the shadow, they cannot get any absolute information about aprakṛta-jagat (nitya-jagat).”
Once, when Śrīla Bhakti Sarvasva Giri Gosvāmī Mahārāja went for preaching in Burma, then the head of the Bengali community there told him, “Mahārāja, you have come during the time of Durgā-pūjā. Who will listen to you if you are speaking about Śrī Krsna Caitanya Mahāprabhu or Śrī Kṛṣṇa, because everyone now busy with Durgā-pūjā festival (worshipping Goddess Durgā)?” Then Śrīla Giri Mahārāja replied that– “There are three types of official telegraphs: standard, express and state. When a state telegraph arrives at any office, the staff regards the messages of any standard or express telegraphs that might have arrived before as insignificant in comparison to the message received just now. The priority shifts in favour of the state telegraph, and the staff deploys it’s entire energy in fulfilling the instructions therein. “Similarly, the golden opportunity to hear about Svayam Bhagavān Śrī Kṛṣṇa and the teachings and exemplary character of His identical manifestation —Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, the saviour of this age of Kali—allows infinitely more benefit than the worship of His external potency — Durgā-devī. One who cannot avoid the worship of Durgā-devī to take advantage of this opportunity will be deprived of the absolute result. If someone is not ready to understand the comparative significance of two objects, then he can fail to realise the due honour of the absolute object, and thereby surely going to cheat himself.”
The so-called “Durgā-pūjā” of the people of this world is in true sense nothing more than a bargaining with Māyā-devī, which ultimately can lead anyone only towards more and more bondage. Those jīvas who are engrossed by rajas and tamas approach Durgā-devī for mundane prosperity, progeny, or power, and not realizing that She is actually Śrī Govinda’s loyal maidservant. She is not an independent Goddess. Those foolish people approach Devī for praying unto Her lotus feet in the following way —
dehi me janam, dehi me yaśo, dehi me rūpam;
dehi jayaṁ, dehi yaśo, dehi dviṣo jahi.
(Durgā Saptāśatī, Argala Stotram, śloka 12)
O Goddess Durgā-Devī, please grant me a noble birth; please grant me fame, beauty and victory; please grant me glory and destroy all my enemies.
Mātā Kālī-devī—the fearful expression of Śrī Durgā-devī—most often can be seen with her tongue protruding and biting it with her own teeth. In the eyes of those ignorant people, this mood may appear to be rage or anger. However, those pure Vaiṣṇavas can perceive a far subtler and more profound meaning of this līlā of Devī Mātā. She bites her tongue with a mood of compassion and embarrassment, thinking—
“Alas! The jīvas are meant for serving Śrī Kṛṣṇa—the Supreme Lord—but they are coming to me expecting boons which can only lead them towards filthy material enjoyment. Whereas, in the form of nature I am present everywhere, so actually they want to enjoy me!”
From Caṇḍī we know the following śloka—
Yā devī sarva-bhūteṣu śakti-rūpeṇa saṁsthitā
“That Devī who is present everywhere in the form of śakti.”
Just as one affectionate mother feels ashamed when her children behave foolishly—demanding all those material objects of enjoyment (toys) that destroy their own lives—then Mātā Devī tries to chastise them to protect their valuable lives. But when they are not at all ready to obey, then Mātā Devī becomes bound to throw them into the fire of material desires (material saṁsāra).
From Brahma-saṁhitā we know the following śloka—
sṛṣṭi-sthiti-pralaya-sādhana-śaktir ekā
chāyeva yasya bhuvanāni bibharti durgā
icchānurūpam api yasya ca ceṣṭate sā
govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi (B.S. 5.44)
“The external potency – Durgā taking responsibility of the creation, maintenance, and destruction of the universe. She acts as the shadow of the Supreme Lord’s will, moving according to His desire. I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord.”
As māyā and we are always inseparably associated with the substance, and there is no conception of the substance preceding the existence of the potency, and yet the existence of the substance is independent of the potency and remains the same, with the intervention of time and space. In the realm of the Godhead Himself, who has innumerable potencies, the potency that draws us towards the service and love of the Godhead is known as Yoga-māyā, while the potency that deludes us and takes us away from Him and entangles us in this world of saṁsāra or mṛtyu-loka or Durgā, is known as Mahā-māyā or Durgā.— paragraph from Srila B.H. Bon Maharaj’s ‘Vijaya-daśamī’ article.
In the Śrīmad-Bhāgavat Gita Yogamāyā is directly addressed:
devī hy eṣā guṇa-mayī mama māyā duratyayā
mām eva ye prapadyante māyām etāṁ taranti te (Gita 7,14)
“This divine energy of Mine, consisting of the three modes of material nature, is difficult to overcome. But those who surrender unto Me can easily cross beyond it.”
Shadow Durgā-devī should not be worshiped independently; rather Yoga-māyā, the internal potency of the Supreme Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, should be worshiped with full faith, like those small gopikās inside Vraja-dhāma, to attain the lotus feet of Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Their prayer unto the lotus feet of Kātyāyanī-devī can be found in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, 10th Canto.
kātyāyani mahā-māye
mahā-yoginy adhīśvari
nanda-gopa-sutaṁ devi
patiṁ me kuru te namaḥ (ŚB 10.22.4)
“O goddess Kātyāyanī, O great potency of the Lord, O possessor of the great mystic power which can make any impossible possible, please arrange the son of Nanda Mahārāja as my husband. I offer my obeisances unto your lotus feet.”
Śrīla Prabhupāda very often used to say that—this mantra and the praṇāma-mantra of Gopeśvara Mahādeva, both are very, very important for all Gauḍīya devotees—those who are interested to get entry into the secret rasa-tattva.
Svāmī Sadananda Dāsa wrote in one article named “Yoga-māyā and Mahā-māyā” the following—
Kṛṣṇa’s līlā on earth (Gokula) has a particular charm compared to the līlā in the realm that never manifests on earth (Goloka). Its charm consists of the fact that the potency of the līlā makes God’s eternal co-players unaware of the fact that they are His eternal co-players. They become aware of who they are only on rare occasions and for short periods of time.
There is a significant difference between the function of the potency called Yoga-māyā and the function of the potency called Mahā-māyā, which keeps the ātmā oblivious of himself. God’s eternal co-player serves directly through God’s potency of serving love. To intensify the līlā on earth, God’s potency of cognizant love makes the co-player believe that he is merely a human being. Here lies the fundamental difference: God’s eternal co-player serves directly, often without being fully aware, even when he believes he is human.
Arjuna, for instance, is uncertain about his duties and asks Kṛṣṇa just like we humans would ask a guru. Despite being Kṛṣṇa’s eternal co-player, he often asks and acts as if he does not know the most fundamental facts in the śāstras. But now and then, it becomes clear to him that God Himself stands before him and drives his chariot. Subsequently, this awareness becomes obscured anew through God’s own potency of serving love so that the play can continue.
Man, i.e., the ātmā who is opposed to the service of God, is unaware of the fact that he is under the sway of Mahā-māyā and is not only falsely identifying himself with the human body, mind and soul, but has a body of flesh and blood and a mind consisting of subtle matter. He is the way he is and knows himself to be. He does not express God’s serving and cognizant love but complete aversion to God and utter selfishness.
Whereas the human being has to be born as a human being, as a result of deeds in former lives, God’s co-players come to the world—just like Bhagavān—to a līlā, a divine play. God’s co-players believe they are born, and in Kṛṣṇa’s līlā of divine fullness on earth (Gokula), they even think, in the capacity of being Kṛṣṇa’s “parents”: “Kṛṣṇa truly is our child.” In Goloka, Kṛṣṇa’s abode that never becomes manifest in the world, the co-players know that they are His co-players for eternity; there, they only have the “feeling” of being the parents of God, who for His part, has a corresponding “feeling” towards them: “I am your son.”
The original Durgā Yoga-māyā-devī is non-different from Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī Herself—the internal hlādinī-śakti of Śrī Govinda. The jail-keeper (Durgā-devī—the shadow of Yoga-māyā-devī) of the material world is nothing but a dim reflection of that Yoga-māyā-devī, who can reserve the right to give punishment to those bonded souls—those who are averse to Kṛṣṇa sevā, by hypnotizing them through the illusory energy manifested in the form of śabda, sparśa, rūpa, rasa, and gandha, etc., to put them inside the jail of this material world.
Again, from Brahma-saṁhitā we know that Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī is the original source of all divine śaktis—
ānanda-cinmaya-rasa-pratibhāvitābhistābhir ya eva nija-rūpatayā kalābhiḥ (5.37)
“Śrī Govinda is surrounded by the expansions of His own internal blissful potency, headed by Śrīmatī Rādhikā.”
When the same potency gets reflected into this material world, then, in front of those conditioned jīvas, the same potency can appear as Durgā, the controller of this material world.
What is commonly called “Durgā-pūjā” in this material world is nothing but a shadow of the real worship of Śrī Yoga-māyā-devī. Those karmīs worship Her for mundane, temporary material gain, but such worship can only lead them up to hell. From the Bhagavad-gītā we know—
kāmais tais tair hṛta-jñānāḥ prapadyante ’nya-devatāḥ (BG 7.20)
“Those whose intellect has been stolen by material desires surrender unto other gods for the fulfillment of their own material desires.”
Gauḍīya Goṣṭhī-pati Śrī Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Gosvāmī Prabhupāda has defined such worship as bargaining with māyā. Actually, in this way, surely those jīvas can never come out of māyā.
In the final conclusion, we can say this much that Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas can honor Durgā-devī not as an independent goddess, but as the internal potency of the Supreme Lord—Yogamāyā—who can help us come in contact with the Supreme Lord. We can bow down unto Her lotus feet, praying cravingly so that She can make us free from the bondage of material saṁsāra, and we may serve Śrī Rādhā-Govinda without obstruction.
Śrīla Saccidānanda Bhakti Vinoda Ṭhākura has expressed this in a wonderful way—
āmāra sama hīna nahī e saṁsāre
kuladevī yogamāyā more karuṇā kari’
śunēchi āgame bēdē mahimā tōmāra
śrī-kṛṣhṇa bimukhē bāndhi karā’ō saṁsāre
śrī-kṛṣhṇa-sāmmukhya jā’ra bhāgyakrāmē hōẏā
tā’rē mukti diyā karō aśōka abhaya (Prārthanā Dainyamayī Song 5)
In this world, there is no one as fallen as I myself. O Kuladevī Yogamāyā ! Please be merciful to me.
I have heard in the Vedas all about Your glories — You bind those who turn away from Śrī Kṛṣṇa in the way of their birth and death cycle.
Those who are destined to come close to Śrī Kṛṣṇa, You grant them liberation, making them free of fear & lamentation.
Gauḍīya Goṣṭhī-pati Śrī Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda said that—“We Gauḍīyas—we are actually śāktas.” He used to explain that Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī is the internal potency (svarūpa-śakti) of Śrī Kṛṣṇa, and for this reason Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas consider Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī to be the mūla-śakti-tattva—the supreme energy of the Lord. The path of Gauḍīya bhajana is to serve Śrī Kṛṣṇa through Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī, and it is for this reason that Śrīla Prabhupāda used to say that we are actual śāktas.
Gaura Hari Hari Bol