You Have No One But Yourself

Shumbha's taunt as every Shakti withdraws into the One Goddess; Her answer: all of them were always Me. Non-duality, landed as story.

Shumbha's taunt as every Shakti withdraws into the One Goddess; Her answer: all of them were always Me. Non-duality, landed as story.

A Taunt on an Empty Field

By now Shumbha had nothing left. Nishumbha was dead. Raktabija was drained. The armies that had climbed the mountain were gone into the ground and the Goddess's blows. And in the moment of his ruin, Shumbha looked at the field and thought he saw a weakness worth naming.

He had watched the Goddess fight surrounded by powers: Kali, the Mothers, Aindri and the rest, a whole circle of goddess-energies wheeling around her. So he threw the one accusation left to him.

बलावलेपदुष्टे त्वं मा दुर्गे गर्वमावह। अन्यासां बलमाश्रित्य युद्ध्यसे चातिमानिनी॥

balāvalepaduṣṭe tvaṃ mā durge garvamāvaha | anyāsāṃ balamāśritya yuddhyase cātimāninī ||

Do not be so proud of your strength, O Durga. You fight leaning on the power of others, and yet you boast as though it were your own.

Devi Mahatmyam 10.3

It was the sharpest thing he could say. You are not strong. You are a crowd. Send away your helpers and stand alone, if you dare. And the Goddess, hearing it, did something the whole text has been building toward. She did not send the powers away. She drew them in.

All of Them Were Always Me

One by one, as Shumbha watched, the goddesses around her, Kali, Brahmani, Maheshwari, Aindri, every Mother, every energy, dissolved back into the body of the one Goddess. They did not leave the field. They entered her. Where a moment before there had been a circle of many, now there was one, and her answer was the still centre of the entire Devi Mahatmyam.

एकैवाहं जगत्यत्र द्वितीया का ममापरा। पश्यैता दुष्ट मय्येव विशन्त्यो मद्विभूतयः॥

ekaivāhaṃ jagaty atra dvitīyā kā mamāparā | paśyaitā duṣṭa mayy eva viśantyo mad-vibhūtayaḥ ||

I alone exist here in the world; who else is there beside me? Look, O wicked one, how these, my own powers, enter back into me.

Devi Mahatmyam 10.5