Shiva has a Paramore, and her name is Kali but that is a different word than this Kali [kali yuga], you mustn’t confuse the two. And Kali is much worse than Shiva, she is black and she has a long long tongue.

And her eye teeth are like fangs but she’s very beautiful. Otherwise she has a lovely figure … And in one hand, her right hand, she carries a Symmetra [sword] and in her left she carries a severed head hanging by the hair.

You see all the Gods have their Paramores. And they are all examples of the One Central Self. She’s called Parvati; that’s her bright aspect. But her dark aspect is Kali.

And Kali is the awful Awfuls. The thing above all that men most dread, Kali is utter darkness, Kali is the end. She may be represented as a blood-sucking octopus, as a spider mother that eats its [children].

And Kali is the principle of total night. And yet there are those in India like Sri Rama Krishna for whom Kaliis the Supreme Mother Goddess.

Because she is two-faced; she is playful and terrifying, loving and devouring, destroyer and savior.

And the cult of Kali has it as its importance, helping one to see the light principle in the very depths of darkness.

I have some suggestions for meditations on Kali, which you can all practice very easily. You go to the aquarium, and you find out there the monsters of the deep that make you most uncomfortable, and you study them. So in this way, Kali is studied by her devotees.

And if you meditate of those, this will be like putting manure on the soil, and out of all this apparently morbid and dismal thinking, bright things will begin to arise.

Because you will realize, that what Kali is, is the most far out act that the Supreme Self can put on. The symbol of complete alienation from itself.

So what happens you see is this, in the process in the game of hide-and-seek, the Supreme Self tries to see how far out it can get. Just like children like to sit around and have a competition as to who can make the most hideous face.

And so, this gets worse and worse as the time cycle goes on until the end of the Kali Yuga Shiva puts in an appearance, and he’s all black and he has ten arms, and he dances a dance called the ‘Tandava’.

And in dancing the Tandava, the whole Universe is destroyed in fire. But of course as Shiva having done this wreckage, turns around and leaves the stage, you find that on the back of his head is the face of ‘Brahma’, the Creator. And it starts again.

Embark on an epic journey with 100 year old Janaki and her grandson as they walk to the source of the river Kali deep inside the jungle from their tiny hamlet cut off from civilisation.

A journey to keep alive an ancient tradition as they offer their prayers to the revered mother. Follow Kali as she nourishes land, life and culture as she journeys amidst the magnificent Dandeli Anshi Tiger Reserve.