where it had been, a woman appears, a beautiful, mysterious woman, who instructs the gods, revealing to them the mystery of the ground of their own being. “That is the ultimate mystery of all being,” she tells them, “from which you boys yourselves have received your powers. And It can turn your powers off or on, as It wills.” The Indian name for that Being of all beings is brahman, which is a neuter noun, neither male nor female. And the Indian name for the woman is Maya-Shakti-Devi, “Goddess Giver of Life and Mother of Forms.” And there in that Upanishad she appears as the teacher of the
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