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The Return of the Mother
Here is Andrew Harvey's most complete statement on Mary and his vision of the Divine Mother as both a social and spiritual revolutionary.
In The Return of the Mother, acclaimed scholar and teacher Andrew Harvey unearths the sacred feminine in major world faiths and passionately calls on us to follow this path for an authentic and empowering relationship with the divine.
In The Return of the Mother, acclaimed scholar and teacher Andrew Harvey unearths the sacred feminine in major world faiths and passionately calls on us to follow this path for an authentic and empowering relationship with the divine.
Author Bio: Andrew Harvey is an internationally recognized poet, novelist, mystical scholar, seeker, and teacher. He is the author of more than thirty books, including the bestselling Hidden Journey and A Journey in Ladakh.
- GenresSpiritualityNonfiction
493 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
About the author
Andrew Harvey
229 books92 followersAndrew Harvey is an author, religious scholar and teacher of mystic traditions, known primarily for his popular nonfiction books on spiritual or mystical themes, beginning with his 1983 A Journey in Ladakh.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 30, 2017
When your yoga instructor keeps talking and you’re just trying to enjoy corpse pose and make your list for Target in your head.
February 23, 2023
i enjoyed this book. it helped decondition some of the patriarchal garbage from my childhood religion and society at large. it opened some new ways of thinking about the divine and gave some permission to explore direct conversations with the divine in ways that have often felt "forbidden". it also introduced me to some really cool mystics i had not studied before, like Ramakrishna. i enjoyed the structure of the book looking at specific teachers one at a time.
criticisms? my main criticisms would be 1) portions of the book presume a familiarity with the author's personal life and spiritual evolution (which I did not have). this was not a big deal but it was a little odd. 2) there is some repetitiveness within and across the sections, which seems to be a product of the author's loquacious enthusiasm.
overall i would say a lovely read if the subject matter calls to you.
criticisms? my main criticisms would be 1) portions of the book presume a familiarity with the author's personal life and spiritual evolution (which I did not have). this was not a big deal but it was a little odd. 2) there is some repetitiveness within and across the sections, which seems to be a product of the author's loquacious enthusiasm.
overall i would say a lovely read if the subject matter calls to you.
July 5, 2023
AN EXPLORATION OF VARIOUS MANIFESTATIONS OF THE ‘DIVINE FEMININE’
Author Andrew Harvey wrote in the Foreword to this 1995 book, “The lectures that form the basis of this book were delivered in the California Institute of Integral Studies between early April and late June of 1994. They spring from the most spiritually transformatory period of my life, that followed my definitive break with Meera in January of that year and my marriage with Eryk Hanut in April. The fierce and liberating lessons learned in that period inform this book throughout, and I deal with the break with Meera and what it taught me about the Divine Mother … At the end of the book are reprinted two interviews which deal in detail with material arising from my repudiation of Meera and the guru system.
“Freed by the Mother from the need to project her onto any human figure, and so free to claim her presence in myself and in all other beings, I feel infinitely closer now to the one who is, and is in, all things and all life. I offer this book… to all beings on the Way… Everything, I now believe, now depends on how the human race imagines and relates to the sacred feminine and the Mother. Inadequate imagining of her in the old ways---or in the exaggerations of some of the new---will result in a blocking of her sacred force, with disastrous, potentially fatal, consequences. The churches, religions, and systems of transmission are all revealing their bankruptcy in the face of the catastrophe we are enduring. Kali is dancing and trampling down ALL illusions of every kind. But where Kali destroys, she also creates; in this worldwide rubbling of ‘authority’ in all its forms there are essential opportunities for freedom which this book is dedicated to exploring. The Mother, as always, continues to extend to all beings complete grace and complete help. [This book] is my attempt to share what I have come, through her blessing, to know about that grace and that help, in the hope that I now may bring others closer to her, closer to her infinite love and passion for transformation.”
He states in the Introduction, “Unless we awaken to the mystery of the sacred feminine… and allow it to glow into, irradiate, illumine, and penetrate every area of our activity and to create in them all harmony, justice, peace, love, ecstasy, and balance, we will die out and take nature, or a large part of it, with us. Unless we come to know that the sacred feminine really is… we will be taken in by patriarchal projections of it. The Divine Mother, the fulness of the revolution that she is preparing, will be lost to us… comprehending the sacred feminine is a crucial part of surviving the next terrible stage of humanity.
“What I am going to try to do in this book is to convey the atmosphere of the sacred feminine, and with the sense of awe, holiness, and the unity of all beings that are appropriate to the sacred feminine. I ask the reader that you approach this text as if entering a temple to the Divine Mother. Listen and participate in the deepest sense with the wisdom said or implied here and we will together find a path through the darkness.” (Pg. 1-2)
He continues, “We begin to see what a challenge this journey into the divine feminine is… the many new forms of truth that are going to be born… But in order to make the journey, we must venture into the hell of our contemporary dilemma. Until we understand exactly where we are now, all the talk of the sacred feminine, the feminine and the sacred, the Divine Mother, would be just so much trivial diversion. This journey is not an academic exercise, although it includes a rich archaeological exploration of the glowing traces of the divine feminine that can be found in every tradition. What we are really doing here is reconstructing a vanished part of ourselves. We are attempting to bring back into conscious light that vanished part in order to unite with it and to learn from it the new modes of loving and action that are crucial to our survival.” (Pg. 10-11)
He outlines, “there are, in fact, three central powers in the feminine… The first of these laws I call a ‘knowledge of the unity of all life’… a knowledge of the unity behind all multiplicity… the second law… is what I call the ‘law of rhythm.’ The sacred feminine awakens us to the knowledge that the universe has its own laws and harmonies… The third is what I call the ‘love of the dance.’ … what is being restored is a totally unmorbid, healthy, exuberant, sensual, ecstatic vision of life.” (Pg. 23-26)
He summarizes, “what the Divine Mother is now doing is… making its power available by focusing it and making it directly useful in all situations as a force of unprecedented transformatory power. The light has always been here, but it has never been used in quite the way that she is now using it…. The unprecedented spiritual leap that humankind will have to take to save itself could only be possible if there were a correspondingly vast concentration of divine power here on earth to make that leap possible and to give human beings everywhere every kind of inspiration, encouragement, and help.” (Pg. 38)
He states, “Aurobindo’s all-encompassing, all-embracing vision of the Divine Mother, the Shakti, is the most adventurous vision of her that the world has yet been given, and so of -crucial importance for the great transformation that we are beginning… Aurobindo would be described as [the transformation’s] illumined mind, its illumined intellect, the scientist of the transformation that the Mother is preparing for the world.” (Pg. 119)
After he had a dream of Mary, “I vowed to serve Mary in any way I could and asked to be led forward into her truth. I knew now that it was a truth of the strongest imaginable simplicity and the simplest imaginable love, and of the justice that arises naturally from them both. I knew that in Mary the full Divine Mother was appearing in the humblest and most poignant way imaginable to wake up humanity to where she is---in the naked open heart and the actions streaming from it, in the Sacred Heart and its passion to see the whole of life restored to the truths of love and justice. No other Mother would have such devotional power over me, deeply though I reverence Kali and Durga and Tara, because no other face of the Mother is so completely turned toward humanity… when the whole world needs more than ever the clarity of the good heart and the simple natural response and the helping hand and the mind and heart turned to the sacred silence of justice---justice for the animals trapped in the burning forests and polluted seas, justice for the poor and the starving, justice and equality and compassion for every kind of being down to the last useless aging donkey as in my dream.” (Pg. 350-351)
He concludes, “There is very little time left. The dark forces that want the human experiment to fail and the world to be destroyed are everywhere more and more powerful, subtle, deadly, and ingenious. But the Mother is always in us and with us, and her strength will never fail us. ‘I am with you always,’ Mary has said again and again.” (Pg. 447)
This book will interest these studying the Divine Feminine.
Author Andrew Harvey wrote in the Foreword to this 1995 book, “The lectures that form the basis of this book were delivered in the California Institute of Integral Studies between early April and late June of 1994. They spring from the most spiritually transformatory period of my life, that followed my definitive break with Meera in January of that year and my marriage with Eryk Hanut in April. The fierce and liberating lessons learned in that period inform this book throughout, and I deal with the break with Meera and what it taught me about the Divine Mother … At the end of the book are reprinted two interviews which deal in detail with material arising from my repudiation of Meera and the guru system.
“Freed by the Mother from the need to project her onto any human figure, and so free to claim her presence in myself and in all other beings, I feel infinitely closer now to the one who is, and is in, all things and all life. I offer this book… to all beings on the Way… Everything, I now believe, now depends on how the human race imagines and relates to the sacred feminine and the Mother. Inadequate imagining of her in the old ways---or in the exaggerations of some of the new---will result in a blocking of her sacred force, with disastrous, potentially fatal, consequences. The churches, religions, and systems of transmission are all revealing their bankruptcy in the face of the catastrophe we are enduring. Kali is dancing and trampling down ALL illusions of every kind. But where Kali destroys, she also creates; in this worldwide rubbling of ‘authority’ in all its forms there are essential opportunities for freedom which this book is dedicated to exploring. The Mother, as always, continues to extend to all beings complete grace and complete help. [This book] is my attempt to share what I have come, through her blessing, to know about that grace and that help, in the hope that I now may bring others closer to her, closer to her infinite love and passion for transformation.”
He states in the Introduction, “Unless we awaken to the mystery of the sacred feminine… and allow it to glow into, irradiate, illumine, and penetrate every area of our activity and to create in them all harmony, justice, peace, love, ecstasy, and balance, we will die out and take nature, or a large part of it, with us. Unless we come to know that the sacred feminine really is… we will be taken in by patriarchal projections of it. The Divine Mother, the fulness of the revolution that she is preparing, will be lost to us… comprehending the sacred feminine is a crucial part of surviving the next terrible stage of humanity.
“What I am going to try to do in this book is to convey the atmosphere of the sacred feminine, and with the sense of awe, holiness, and the unity of all beings that are appropriate to the sacred feminine. I ask the reader that you approach this text as if entering a temple to the Divine Mother. Listen and participate in the deepest sense with the wisdom said or implied here and we will together find a path through the darkness.” (Pg. 1-2)
He continues, “We begin to see what a challenge this journey into the divine feminine is… the many new forms of truth that are going to be born… But in order to make the journey, we must venture into the hell of our contemporary dilemma. Until we understand exactly where we are now, all the talk of the sacred feminine, the feminine and the sacred, the Divine Mother, would be just so much trivial diversion. This journey is not an academic exercise, although it includes a rich archaeological exploration of the glowing traces of the divine feminine that can be found in every tradition. What we are really doing here is reconstructing a vanished part of ourselves. We are attempting to bring back into conscious light that vanished part in order to unite with it and to learn from it the new modes of loving and action that are crucial to our survival.” (Pg. 10-11)
He outlines, “there are, in fact, three central powers in the feminine… The first of these laws I call a ‘knowledge of the unity of all life’… a knowledge of the unity behind all multiplicity… the second law… is what I call the ‘law of rhythm.’ The sacred feminine awakens us to the knowledge that the universe has its own laws and harmonies… The third is what I call the ‘love of the dance.’ … what is being restored is a totally unmorbid, healthy, exuberant, sensual, ecstatic vision of life.” (Pg. 23-26)
He summarizes, “what the Divine Mother is now doing is… making its power available by focusing it and making it directly useful in all situations as a force of unprecedented transformatory power. The light has always been here, but it has never been used in quite the way that she is now using it…. The unprecedented spiritual leap that humankind will have to take to save itself could only be possible if there were a correspondingly vast concentration of divine power here on earth to make that leap possible and to give human beings everywhere every kind of inspiration, encouragement, and help.” (Pg. 38)
He states, “Aurobindo’s all-encompassing, all-embracing vision of the Divine Mother, the Shakti, is the most adventurous vision of her that the world has yet been given, and so of -crucial importance for the great transformation that we are beginning… Aurobindo would be described as [the transformation’s] illumined mind, its illumined intellect, the scientist of the transformation that the Mother is preparing for the world.” (Pg. 119)
After he had a dream of Mary, “I vowed to serve Mary in any way I could and asked to be led forward into her truth. I knew now that it was a truth of the strongest imaginable simplicity and the simplest imaginable love, and of the justice that arises naturally from them both. I knew that in Mary the full Divine Mother was appearing in the humblest and most poignant way imaginable to wake up humanity to where she is---in the naked open heart and the actions streaming from it, in the Sacred Heart and its passion to see the whole of life restored to the truths of love and justice. No other Mother would have such devotional power over me, deeply though I reverence Kali and Durga and Tara, because no other face of the Mother is so completely turned toward humanity… when the whole world needs more than ever the clarity of the good heart and the simple natural response and the helping hand and the mind and heart turned to the sacred silence of justice---justice for the animals trapped in the burning forests and polluted seas, justice for the poor and the starving, justice and equality and compassion for every kind of being down to the last useless aging donkey as in my dream.” (Pg. 350-351)
He concludes, “There is very little time left. The dark forces that want the human experiment to fail and the world to be destroyed are everywhere more and more powerful, subtle, deadly, and ingenious. But the Mother is always in us and with us, and her strength will never fail us. ‘I am with you always,’ Mary has said again and again.” (Pg. 447)
This book will interest these studying the Divine Feminine.
August 30, 2018
This astonishing and prophetic book establishes Andrew Harvey in the forefront of commentators on our fragmented and chaotic world situation.His own bitter and joyful life journey has brought him to a place of deep wisdom and understanding which we do well to heed. His higher consciousness has enabled him to appreciate the universal expansion of human awareness which is now happening, and to recognise the yearning of the Spirit to help us evolve and grow, and basically to learn how to behave properly, as the vital humans that we are. ‘I’m only human’ transcends from being a sorry excuse for ineptitude and lack of compassion, and instead becomes a triumphant statement of love, joy, wisdom and super ability. Andrew’s book traces the presence of ‘mother’ in our lives through the Eastern traditions into the deepest appreciation of Mary, in the Western tradition.
He traces the absolute ‘being’ of the feminine as an essential quality of the nurturing of God and the continuous creation of the world in the womb of time.
He tells of the great sages of the past, and their profound understanding of the feminine principle, often personified in Hindu spirituality by Shakti and Kali, as told by Ramana Marharshi and Sri Aurobindo.This theme is echoed by the Sufis, and in the Tao. He is especially discerning about Buddhism with some relevant criticism of a tendency to be patriarchal.
“The look of the Mother is ‘the gentlest and strongest of all looks and is the only gaze that can be called triumphant, because it has outstared change, outstared all turmoil and evil and even death itself to see the Face of the Tao, the Face of the Mother, streaming through and in the Real at all moments.”
He traces the absolute ‘being’ of the feminine as an essential quality of the nurturing of God and the continuous creation of the world in the womb of time.
He tells of the great sages of the past, and their profound understanding of the feminine principle, often personified in Hindu spirituality by Shakti and Kali, as told by Ramana Marharshi and Sri Aurobindo.This theme is echoed by the Sufis, and in the Tao. He is especially discerning about Buddhism with some relevant criticism of a tendency to be patriarchal.
“The look of the Mother is ‘the gentlest and strongest of all looks and is the only gaze that can be called triumphant, because it has outstared change, outstared all turmoil and evil and even death itself to see the Face of the Tao, the Face of the Mother, streaming through and in the Real at all moments.”
January 16, 2023
I enjoyed listening to this book, but also listened with my tongue firmly in my cheek. On the one hand, radical love for all and a move away from individualism is a good thing for Westerners. On the other hand, while ostensibly promoting a feminine ideal, this book is deeply sexist. First, to feel the need to categorize some values as feminine and some as masculine severely stereotypes human gender. Second, I found it extremely ironic that all the people he cites as having best understood the feminine are nevertheless men. Finally, and this is maybe an aspect of the first point, to categorize the feminine as extremely loving and self-sacrificing abandons any project that would rescue women from expectations that often harm us.
I did enjoy the book, but in part I was laughing at it.
I did enjoy the book, but in part I was laughing at it.
November 10, 2016
It's good to know that Divine Mother is making Her appearance around the world. In India She never left us.
September 1, 2018
Must Read: The Return of the Mother by Andrew Harvey
This astonishing and prophetic book establishes Andrew Harvey in the forefront of commentators on our fragmented and chaotic world situation.His own bitter and joyful life journey has brought him to a place of deep wisdom and understanding which we do well to heed. His higher consciousness has enabled him to appreciate the universal expansion of human awareness which is now happening, and to recognise the yearning of the Spirit to help us evolve and grow, and basically to learn how to behave properly, as the vital humans that we are. ‘I’m only human’ transcends from being a sorry excuse for ineptitude and lack of compassion, and instead becomes a triumphant statement of love, joy, wisdom and super ability. Andrew’s book traces the presence of ‘mother’ in our lives through the Eastern traditions into the deepest appreciation of Mary, in the Western tradition.
He traces the absolute ‘being’ of the feminine as an essential quality of the nurturing of God and the continuous creation of the world in the womb of time.
He tells of the great sages of the past, and their profound understanding of the feminine principle, often personified in Hindu spirituality by Shakti and Kali, as told by Ramana Marharshi and Sri Aurobindo.This theme is echoed by the Sufis, and in the Tao. He is especially discerning about Buddhism with some relevant criticism of a tendency to be patriarchal.
“The look of the Mother is ‘the gentlest and strongest of all looks and is the only gaze that can be called triumphant, because it has outstared change, outstared all turmoil and evil and even death itself to see the Face of the Tao, the Face of the Mother, streaming through and in the Real at all moments.”
August 12, 2017
I absolutely love this book. Something I've always respected about Andrew Harvey: he's so articulate, so astute, so brilliant.... AND so infused with soulful passion and light. That combination is exceptionally apparent in this book. Not only is there abundant information about the Divine Mother and how she takes form in various religious traditions, but Harvey includes his own lived experiences and observations, as well as poetry he composed in response to a variety of awakenings throughout his life. I'm only halfway done with the book at this point, but I'm purposefully taking my time and reading it as a meditation, reflecting upon the beautiful insights, and integrating the knowledge into my life as best I can. I will be using this book in a college-level course I'm teaching this fall (where we also read Rumi, "Awakening Shakti" by Sally Kempton, and we discuss eco-feminism.) I think this book will be an awesome addition to the syllabus because Harvey discusses Rumi, Shakti, and eco-feminist topics with such ardor and eloquence. Read this book!!!
October 15, 2022
in my early 20's my life fell apart. i got sober. something maybe like a spiritual awakening began...followed by other epiphanies, in short i became a feminist. amidst all the furious (great) feminist treatises i was reading i found this sacred, profound, mystical jewel. still one of my favorite books ever decades later. the fact that this so intimate revelation of a descent into the feminine is written by A MAN probably changed the course of my life as a feminist and saved me from becoming a lesbian--that's a joke. the story of harvey's early years with a female guru should be required reading for any woman (or anyone) with a strong gender bias around the me-too movement. god bless this beautiful man of course goes without saying.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews