The Divine Mother is the Highest Face of God that I will Ever Know , June 7, 2025 by Steve Beckow

I feel like leaving the world behind for an hour and “wandering.” Or rather flowing. May I?

Just to relax. Let’s have some fun, play with something.

It’s said that the Divine Mother is the highest face of God we’ll ever know. Why is that? Are we prevented from knowing the Father?

Spirituality is full of proverbs and sayings designed to spark a realization in us. Zen masters called them “choans” or mental exercises.

They usually perplex us because the speaker does things like switching dimensions “in the middle of a sentence,” so to speak.

“Die before dying” is an example. It perplexes us and forces a realization. How can I die before dying?

Let me expand this choan.

Die to desire. Die also to the ego while you’re still in the physical body. Die to “I want” while still alive. Otherwise you must return. That is the Law.

And why is that? Because the purpose of life is to know who you are in a moment of enlightenment, at which point God meets God. For that meeting was all of this created. (2)

Therefore, if instead of wanting God with great yearning, you want a Porsche…. Well, that’s called a “scenic detour.” (3) It probably won’t have you solve the central puzzle of life: “Who am I?”

Coming back to the choan, when suddenly we get that two different dimensions are being talked about here – the physical and the beyond-physical, whatever it might be, (4) we have a “Eureka!” moment. “Aha!” “I got it!”

How deep that Eureka! moment is, it seems to me, depends on the purity of the receiver. That’s just a hunch.

We can have major and minor realizations and sometimes whether it’s one or the other depends on how many of our core issues we’ve resolved, how much childhood trauma we’ve processed, how well we can open to the truth just revealed to us, etc.

***

OK, back to the Divine Mother. The Divine Mother is the highest face of God we will ever know. Why is that?

The Divine Mother is God in motion, God in form. Behind her (and I’ve been asked not to capitalize; moreover she is not a “she”), (5) is the formless God.

For sure he is not a “he.” How clumsy is our terminology. Please, someone, create a new terminology that works.

But the point is twofold. When I come to truly know the formless God, “I” will have ceased to be. That formless God and I will be one in full consciousness. Who then will be around to tell you what I saw?

To illustrate the situation, Sri Ramakrishna speaks of four friends who climbed a wall (attained seventh-chakra Brahmajnana or God-Realization):

“Once four friends, in the course of a walk, saw a place enclosed by a wall. The wall was very high. They all became eager to know what was inside.

“One of them climbed to the top of the wall. What he saw on looking inside made him speechless with wonder. He only cried, “Ah! Ah!” and dropped in. He could not give any information on what he saw.

The others, too, climbed the wall, uttered the same cry, “Ah! Ah!,” and jumped in. Now who could tell [us] what was inside?” (6)

Similarly here, “we” have “disappeared” in our union with the One Divine. The one we were is no longer around to speak for me.

Secondly, whatever way I had of “knowing” up till that moment would have been inadequate to “know” God. Again, as Ramakrishna said, we can only know God, if God shines the Light on God’s own face.

Therefore I cannot “know” the formless God. I “know” God by a different means.

For these reasons neither shall “I” know God nor shall I “know” God.

Thus, the Divine Mother is the highest face of God that “I” will ever “know.”

Response from transpersonal psychologist Brian, who is also a personal friend.

Hey, Steve,

When I first saw the subject of your email I thought, is Steve really going where I hope he’s going with this? Is he going in the direction of the highest truth regarding the Mother / Father concepts? I listened earnestly with judgment withheld.

You did not disappoint, my friend. Mother is, indeed, the highest face of God we can “know.” Or in my parlance, the primordial “I Am-ness,” or sense of Beingness, is the most fundamental “knowledge” there is. To know “I exist,” “I am” is the primordial knowledge. All other knowledge flows from this initial, fundamental “knowingness” – No “I am” or no consciousness….no world.

Mother = The Manifest (knowable)

Father = The Unmanifest (unknowable)

Again, to “know” the Father – the Absolute, Supreme Reality in my parlance – is not possible because the Father is prior to all knowledge or “knowingness.” We can know the Supreme Reality only by Being It. This is the realm of “no-mind,” or “no-knowingness.” It also happens to be the realm of the “peace that passes all understanding.” Why? Because it is prior to “understanding” or “knowing.” We become the peace.

I love that you’ve kept your love for Divine Mother, but have placed the Mother / Father conceptual imagery into the larger framework of Ultimate Truth.