MIRABAI: “WHERE IS MY BELOVED?”
Keywords:
Paradigm of Loving Devotion, Short Sketch of Mira’s Life, Union with the Lord, Wandering Life, Bhakt Mira: “Where is My Beloved?”, Liberative Perspective of Mira’s Gospel, Forming an Alternate Community, Mira’s Gift to Women, Power of Protest, Attack on Rajput Political Authority, Defiance of Patriarchal Norms of Marriage, Attack on the Caste SystemAbstract
The intuitions emerging from the concrete life experiences of the mystic are part of the heritage of humankind and might be considered seed material for a form of “spiritual genetics.” When the well-developed mystic consciousness is present, nothing else matters more than the compulsion to nourish the divine spark within, until it bursts into an all-consuming fire. In the process, the mystic gives up whatever is not God. Energy normally expended in maintaining the fragile ego-stability is now released and available for ever-widening circles of joy, compassion and loving service. This, in many cases, may be misunderstood by others and the mystic often has to stand all alone. The mystic is one who really knows, one who is really at home in the universe. Who can be more important to the whole human race than those who remind us of who we really are?
References
A. J. Alston, The Devotional Poems of Mirabai, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1980, 16-17.
Bhagavata Purana 1.18.1, in Parita Mukta, Upholding Common Life: The Community of Mirabai, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994, 33, 121.
Baldoon Dhingra, Songs of Meera: Lyrics in Ecstasy, New Delhi: Orient Paperback, 1977, 14.
Dhingra, Songs of Meera, 56.
Mukta, Upholding Common Life, 105.
