Guru Purnima 2006 Devipuram, A.P.

India
Kadambari Kadambari
e - Ma g a z i n e o f D e v i p u r a m
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With the grace and encouragement of Guruji, it is my
pleasure to introduce this special Guru Poornima 2006
edition of Kadambari.
As most readers will already be aware, this years obser-
vances mark an important transitional milestone in the his-
tory of Devipuram. For on this occasion our beloved Guruji
will entrust his great work to a new generation, as Sri
Kompella Subba Rao himself a devoted Sri Vidya upasaka
and disciple of Guruji for some 25 years, as well as long-
time leader of the Soundarya Lahari satsangh in Boston
takes his place as Gurujis hand-picked successor; the new
pontiff of Devipuram.
I know that we all join in enthusiastically welcoming Sri
Subba Rao into this vital role, for which he is so qualified
on so many levels; and in offering him our prayers and
best wishes (as well as our personal and material support)
as he works to consolidate Gurujis extraordinary achieve-
ments while simultaneously steering Devipuram onward
to new heights. (On a personal note, I would add that it was
in Sri Subba Raos welcoming home that I first received
diksa from Guruji during another Guru Poornima season
past.)
And while we are all saddened by Gurujis decision to step
down from his active leadership position, let us also cele-
brate his liberation from everyday temple, administrative
and organizational duties, so that he may now concen-
trate more fully on the writing and educational projects
that are closest to his heart. Hopefully, he told me a few
months ago, by August much of what is tying me down
should be clear. Indeed, we have reason to believe that
great things are in store.
On that note, I humbly present this new issue of
Kadambari: Having been given the honor of editing and
preparing its contents for publication, I must apologize at
the outset for any and all imperfections and overlooked
line-edits (for I am sure they exist in abundance). A partic-
ular area of concern for me is the irregularity of Sanskrit
transliteration: This issue contains contributions by 18 dis-
tinct authors, each having their own transliteration style
and so, in most cases, weve simply let the variations
stand. And while earnest attempts were made to stan-
dardize presentation and usage throughout the issue, we
obviously lacked the time, resources, proofreaders and
fact-checkers that large-circulation magazines employ to
produce a totally polished final product. On the other
hand, you may be assured that we made the very most of
the resources we did have; it is our sincere hope that you
will find the issue to be surprisingly tight and clean.
The articles are arranged roughly in order from philosophy
to practice, and from big picture overviews to specific
instructions. Since they range in length from very brief to
quite long, weve also made an attempt to mix them up,
and thereby avoid an overwhelming and monotonous
reading experience.
The issue begins, of course, with a brand-new essay from
Guruji himself, contemplating the true meaning of Infinity
and coaxing new depths from the old axiom that the jour-
ney is ultimately more important than the destination.
This powerful opening is followed by an exposition on the
esoteric meanings of Sri Chakra, penned by no less a per-
sonage than Gurujis spiritual son, Sri Chaitanyananda
Natha Saraswathi (Aiya) of the Sri Rajarajeswari Temple in
Rush, N.Y. A further essay concentrates even more closely
on Sri Chakra, elaborating specifically on the Maha-Bindu
at its center.
Some articles in these pages advise us on how to develop
more attentive understandings of the prayers and
mantras we recite; others instruct us in specific practices
with a wealth of detail and explanation that generations of
sadhakas would have spent lifetimes seeking in vain.
Elsewhere youll explore the unimaginably ancient roots of
the Shakta faith; sit at the feet of an accomplished
Srividya master as he instructs; and learn from a Carnatic
maestro of the ways in which music can enhance both our
everyday lives and our sadhana. Not just Shakta view-
points, but also Shaiva and Vaishnava perspectives may be
found herein and a Buddhist view as well: The Dalai Lama
himself provides some simple guidelines to help you begin
improving your life today!
And of course in keeping with the spirit of Guru
Poornima you will find at the heart of Kadambari sever-
al powerful meditations on the nature of the Guru; again,
beginning with broader philosophical reflections, and then
gradually focusing in on the specific in this case, our own
Guruji and Guruji Amma, at home at Devipuram.
All of this and much, much more awaits you in the pages
that follow. I think you will be amazed by the wealth of wis-
dom and erudition assembled here, and inspired by the
devotional depth of the work. I have studied all of these
articles very closely, and I respectfully encourage you to
try and do the same. Spend some time with this issue; read
it; reflect upon it; save it and pass copies along to others
I feel sure that you will come away a better sadhaka, and
I daresay a better person, whatever your path may be.
Thank you for your interest in our publication, and in
Devipuram.
MMB
Editor
Editors Note
An Infinity of Infinities 04
The Meaning of Sri Chakra 09
False Knowledge & True Knowledge 13
Maha-Bindu 15
The Seven Acaras 19
Prayer With Full Understanding 22
Conversations About Devi 26
The Primordial Mother 29
Lotus Feet, Holy Dust 35
The Living Shakti 40
The Guru, Guruji, and Devipuram 42
The Magic of Music 46
Hanuman & Srividya 48
Sandhya: A Brief Study 50
Tripura Siddhanta 53
Sri Mahaganapati Meditation 56
Instructions For Life 59
Kadambari
index
KADAMBARI
The E-Magazine of Devipuram
2006 Published by
Sri Vidya Trust,
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4
July 2006
Seven crore (70 million) mantras sapta koti maha mantrah
are said to have emanated from the five faces of Shiva (i.e.,
sadyojata, vamadeva, aghora, tatpurusha, and ishana) plus
urdhvamnaya (meaning, the one above) and anuttaramnaya
(meaning there is no reply; laa jawab in Hindi; i.e., it is so
supreme that you cant conceive of anything beyond it; it is
past description, beyond question or argument).
Obviously, it would be difficult to recite or do sadhana of all
these mantras. So the great sages grouped them into several
basic categories, corresponding to the seven chakras and
yes, there are some people who practice them all! But the
Parashurama Kalpa Sutra does not refer to all of them; it sim-
ply picks up a few mantras from each chakra, and collectively
they are called the Rashmi Mala Mantras literally a garland of
rays shining from the Mother Goddess. In the tradition of
Parashurama, the recitation of these mantras is enough. They
cover all the amnayas.
Amnaya means a chakra, a wheel, a parampara that set of
teachings and practices passed down through a given guru lin-
eage. Dakshinamnaya, for example, is followed by the temples
at Sringeri and Kanchi; Urdhwamnaya is followed by
Badrikashramam; Poorvamnaya by Poori Jagannath, and
Paschimamnaya at Sourashtra peetam. Although all of these
peetams (holy sites) were established by Shankaracharya, they
each follow different amnayas. And for each amnaya, a partic-
ular set of mantras is given.
Fortunately, however, it is not necessary to practice all of
them. Why complicate your life? Simplify it! How much can you
achieve in a 100-year lifetime anyway? A hundred years isnt
A discourse by Guruji Sri Amritananda Natha May 2006, at Devipuram
email : devipuram@yahoo.com
Kadambari
5
July 2006
even a given yet; at best, you can probably start off at age 15
and keep going until youre 60 or 70. So you have maybe 50
years to work with. And in those 50 years, how many mantras
can you get the siddhis (results, fruits) of? Every one of them
works; all of the Dasha Mahavidyas (the Ten Wisdom Goddesses
and their respective sadhanas) work so pick one path and
stick to it. Whats the point in reaching the same destination
from all different directions? Each path offers its own unique
experiences along the way, yes; but the goal remains the same.
Its like this: There is a hill and there is a peak. And there are
many ways to climb that hill and reach that peak. And once
youve reached the peak, then youve got a 360-degree vista
you can see all around; you can see all of the paths that are
there. Yet, this birds-eye view is different from the view of
the person who is still traveling below.
Or suppose you take a plane and travel from here to the U.S.A.
you can do it in 24 hours. But is that the same thing as walk-
ing to the U.S.A. over a period of 12 years or is it different?
In the same way, weve got to realize that the Infinite can be
reached in any number of ways. And once weve reached it, we
see the nature of all the paths. But that doesnt mean youve
got to experience every path, laboriously going through the
whole sequence again and again.
To put it differently, lets say you want to generate a picture
by raster scan (i.e., by displaying or capturing a video image line
by line, as on a computer monitor or television screen). You can
complete that scan horizontally line after line after line or
vertically, or diagonally at any angle; theres an infinite number
of approaches. But if you record the value of each pixel the
sequence of which produces the picture each type of scan
will generate a completely different history and evolutionary
process. They are all equally valid; in the end you see the total-
ity of the picture, which is in a sense sum of all its parts. And
yet the music generated by each of these raster scans is
totally different.
Weve got to recognize that when we say God is Infinite, we
mean that He-She-It is an Infinity of Infinities. Thus, the expe-
rience gained by any one person in reaching God need not tally
with another persons experience in reaching God because
they are each accessing a different region of these Infinities.
It is a common mistake to try and compare the experience of
one seer with that of another; to say, If they both reached the
same spot, then they should both be seeing the same thing.
But thats simply not correct. Different people see different
things at the peak, just as they had different experiences in
reaching the peak. You too would have a different set of expe-
riences if youd chosen another path. Because its the path
that defines the experience, not the goal. Experience is a word
we use to signify a flow in time a set of pictures or feelings;
things of that sort. These experiences are all subsumed in the
goal, and at the same time they are not individually experi-
enced. Different path, different experience.
Different regions of Infinity can be totally different as well.
There is just no comparison. You cant say that one experience
is greater or lesser than another the question of comparison
is just totally invalid in the domain of Infinity. You can compare
finite domains using size or location or some other quantifiable
factor as your basis. But on what basis could you ever compare
Infinite domains? What possible criteria could you employ? And
unless you draw such limitations, you have no basis for com-
parison. Therefore, since you cannot draw limits around
Infinities, it follows that you cannot compare them. Concepts
of comparison such as larger, better, best, supreme, etc.
apply only to finite domains.
So if you follow, say, the path of Sufism, youll gain a particu-
lar sort of experience. But will it be identical to the experience
one gained by Shankaracharya or by a Vamachari? No, theyll be
totally different. Just as the experience gained by a plant in
meditating and in reaching God will be totally different from
that of a human being, which is in turn totally different from
that of a sage or a Deity.
The Infinite Destination
What about once youve reached your goal of choice ascend-
ed to the peak, reached God? Is it then a simple matter to go
back down and experience the journey again via another path?
Thats difficult to say. Experience, once again, is something
that flows in Time. A Time-less state is something altogether
different a different set of rules applies. So you might reach
full realization on that path a little faster; but, then again, you
might not.
Suppose youve spoken Telugu since childhood, done your
graduate work in English, and now youve decided to learn
another language. It may well take you a much shorter time
than it did when you were starting afresh on a new language
for the first time. Because once youve learned one language,
it can become easier to learn additional languages.
But I dont see any similar shortcut whereby we can hope to
speed up the process of reaching Infinity. The very concept
of speed is predicated upon a domain of distances and Time
we divide distance by Time to get speed. But in a domain
where Time itself is not moving, how can we talk of speed at
all? How can we talk of any experience at all in a realm where
there is no Time and no Space?
Kadambari
6
July 2006
An example I commonly give involves the experience of watch-
ing a movie on CD on your computer screen. What exactly is
happening in this scenario? Are we seeing the movie in the CD?
Not really. Were looking at the computer, not at the CD direct-
ly. So are we looking at a program inside the computer? No, its
not really that either we know the programs inside there are
total nonsense to us; just vast tracts of binary code, nothing
readily recognizable at all. At yet, when all of that data is run
through a particular sequence, the experience becomes total-
ly different and suddenly we are enjoying a movie.
So the idea of speeding up the learning process on other
spiritual paths by first reaching God via one of them isnt real-
ly an applicable concept. Once again, the experience might help
because perhaps youve learned something. Learning is an
associative process, and the more links youve forged to a par-
ticular concept, the easier it will be to establish additional links.
So the learning process can be speeded up by creating an
increasingly dense network of links.
But the basic issue remains: The laws that govern experience
in Time and Space simply do not apply to the Time-less realm.
After all, what does it mean to reach your goal when the des-
tination youre referring to is Infinity; when its completely
beyond definition? How do you even know when youve
reached such a destination? How far do you have to go before
you reach the end of Infinity? When do you stop and where?
The question of reaching a destination simply does not arise in
Infinity; its a false assumption. When I called it an Infinity of
Infinities just now, I only happened to stop at iteration num-
ber two. I could have said its an Infinity of Infinities of Infinities
of Infinities of Infinities why stop at all? You never reach the
destination.
Suppose an ant is crawling on a ball. It can keep moving for an
infinite amount of time and its journey will never end. It can
travel on and on for eons and eons and ages and ages and
the end will never come, even though the journey takes place
entirely within the finite domain. Keep going around the Earth
in an airplane and youll come to the same point over and over
again, like a never-ending cycle like a sine wave; where does it
begin and where does it end? Even though Space and Time are
finite, youll never reach the end as long as you keep going.
And if this is true of what is finite, then what of the Infinite,
when the destination is Brahma Jnana (experiential knowledge
of the impersonal Supreme Divine)? Where is that? Can you
say that if I follow a certain set of instructions, Ill attain
Brahma Jnana? Im afraid not. What is Brahma Jnana, after all?
Its creativity; a way to manufacture, to create new things. And
is there any end to creativity? Is it a reachable goal or destina-
tion? Of course its not. Thats why I say moksha (spiritual lib-
eration) is like a carrot dangling in front of your eyes. It can
enhance your creativity and thats about it. Every religion is a
carrot; the cult of Devi is also a carrot but at least its a love-
able carrot. If you are a hare, youll love it!
Seriously, though, I dont think there is any end to the journey.
If there is an end, then why does Shankaracharya say, na
bandhO na mOkshaH there is no bondage, and there is no
release. Only if there is bondage to begin with can you have
release. If there is no bondage, then what release can there
be? If youre in a prison cell, then you can be set free. But if
theres no prison, what is there to escape from? If something
is not true, how can you make it true?
Truth is Experience
So theres no point at which we can say, This is it. Ive reached
the destination. Theres just no such thing. How could there
be? What is the point, for example, at which the number Pi ()
ends? After you cut a circle into three parts, Pi times the diam-
eter gives you the circumference of the circle. Youve meas-
ured off the three units and what remains is Pi; 3.14159 at
what point does that number end? It never ends. That is why
its called Sesha Naga (the Infinite Serpent, or Infinite Wave); it
is the unending remainder. The three units are finite, but the
reminder is infinite. Thus its called the Infinite Wave unend-
ing waves of numbers. If you calculate Pi to 5 billion numbers,
can you say youve reached the destination? What about the 5
billion and first number? You can always add another 1. You can
always add another billion. There is no end. You never reach the
destination.
In this regard, Ive been asked, If there is an Infinity of
Infinities, a journey without end, then why do the Vedas refer
to the Sarvajnatvam (the Knower of Everything)? Just what is
that Everything? And what about the states that Buddha and
Mahavira reached? Is that only the beginning? Well, who am I
to know what states they have or havent reached? But its
precisely the question I was addressing earlier, isnt it? One
sage tells us one thing about Infinity and then another turns
around and tells us something completely different. Whos
right, the first seer or the second one? Both are right and both
are speaking the Truth. Truth is Experience. And different peo-
ple can have different experiences whats wrong with that?
Problems only arise when you start saying, My Truth is the
only Truth, and nobody elses is true. Thats where things go
wrong. Infinity is a domain in which even opposites can be true.
Thus we can have one fellow who comes away from his expe-
rience feeling, Wow, now I know everything! and another who
feels, Wow, I dont know anything. Both views are true in the
realm of Infinities, along with every shade in between. So when
the Vedas refer to reaching that by knowing which I know
everything thats fine; thats correct. Ive no argument with
it. But what about those others who say, I dont know any-
thing? Are they not also correct? What Im saying is that the
first sage has like all other realized souls seen up to a point,
has seen a certain region of Infinity but only believed and
declared that he saw everything. In actuality, it is not possible
to reach any point like that.
Kadambari
7
July 2006
|| Yato vacha nivartante apraapya manasa saha ||
Whence words return saying, Oh, Im not able to describe it
anymore! All descriptions fall short of the experience! Indeed,
how can you describe such an experience?
We must keep in mind that the subject of Infinity is not
amenable to our normal conceptions. Our everyday ideas and
understandings dont apply there at all. In general, when we
attempt to translate the experience of Infinity into concepts
that make sense in our finite domain, we fail miserably. They
just dont apply here.
Were struggling to find some order; trying to understand the
unknowable in terms of the known. But I dont think the Vedas
which were codified in a certain region of Time and Space
are telling me how to reconcile my bank accounts. There is
much, much more beyond that. There is much, much more
beyond all the religions in the world.
Beyond Space and Time
Can we somehow remove these limitations on our ability to
completely explore the Infinity of Infinities? Only by dying; only
by Death the process by which we lose our individuality and
our egos. Unfortunately, that doesnt help us much because
we cannot die.
Look at your own body its a river of life! Whose life are you
living? There are billions of living cells within you. Millions are
dying and millions more are being born with every passing sec-
ond. But you are continuing through it all, right? The conti-
nuity of your life flows on through all of those deaths, cant
you see it? How can life die? It just is! Its not possible to live
and its not possible to die. We simply are.
|| AjA kshaya vinirmukta ||
Aja means who is not born. Kshaya vinirmukta means She
cannot die. Kshaya suggests reduction; She cannot be dimin-
ished or reduced. You can not reduce Her, you cannot increase
Her. Because increase and decrease are concepts applicable
only to the finite realms. Infinity cannot be decreased or
increased. The concept of measurement does not apply to
Infinities. Time is not a parameter, nor is Space.
Just as you cannot go beyond thought via thought, you also
cannot go beyond Space via Space or beyond Time via Time.
Beyond, in the sense were using here, means overcoming
limits.
Remember our ant, crawling endlessly over the finite surface
of a ball? He will never get beyond that ball by means of crawl-
ing on it, no matter how long he crawls. Hes got to leave that
plane of existence. In the same way, you and I will never reach
Infinity using means that are limited by Space and Time. We
have to leave the realms of Space and Time, and enter into
strangeness. We must enter into the domain of constants,
unbound by Space or Time.
Take the number 1, for example where is it located? At what
point in Space and Time is the number 1 to be found? Is the
concept of numbers bound by Space and Time? Or Life itself
where is Life located in Space and Time? Is Life a constant
determined in terms of Space and Time?
Life as we know it life as we experience it is a concept. The
Totality of Life being explored via a limited Time scan thats
the experience we typically refer to as Life. That limited con-
ception of Life is what were exploring in our present state via
this scanning process. But its not the Totality of Life; its a nar-
rowly bounded peek at a tiny sliver of Life. To get beyond that,
youve got to get beyond Space and Time. They are the barri-
ers.
Into the Fourth Dimension
|| Yonistu vaishnavi Shaktihi / Lingo Sadashivaha ||
Space we can call Vishnu, or Yoni, or Shakti. Time we call Linga,
or Shiva. The Shiva Linga governs at four levels: (1) Fear and
Sex; (2) Power and Love; (3) Space and Time; and (4) Bindu, the
point into which everything implodes. The explosion of Bindu is
the Universe of Space and Time and Matter. But why should
the Universe be limited to Space and Time? What about spin?
What about strangeness? Our present understanding is that
the Universe is made up of seven dimensions. Were confined
to three of them and what were trying to do here is focus
on a fourth.
But what is this fourth dimension? To get some idea of it, lets
do a thought experiment: Think of a cube one centimeter
deep, across and high. And now, lets add a fourth dimension
the width, depth and height remains the same, but now we
add one second of Time to the description. And imagine that
in this one second, the cube becomes twice as big. Say that
every corner is connected to its corresponding corner by a line
a total of eight corners and hence eight diagonals, all of
them parallel. They appear to be non-parallel when projected
into Space, but they are parallel in the direction of Time.
Now suppose that, in the process of growing, this cube has
also moved sideways. How does our four-dimensional object
look now? Its one second long and its growing and moving in
space, pulling outward simultaneously in all directions. Or lets
say its not moving linearly, but in a curved trajectory, so that
Kadambari
8
July 2006
the curves connecting the corresponding corners are curving
parallel to one another parallel, that is, to their direction in
Time; but perpendicular to their direction in space! And now
lets add another layer of variables; lets say that time does not
move linearly but cyclically, from 0 to 1 second and back to 0
over and over, behaving like a sine wave
Okay? Do you see the complexity of the Space-Time descrip-
tion? There is a tremendous amount of complication in a four-
dimensional structure. All of these configurations can be rep-
resented in three dimensions by some strange-looking pictures
a virtually infinite number of representations, all depending
on how you scan them in Time.
Life is like that, too.
The Blade of Time
Try to imagine Universal Consciousness (or Universal
Awareness, if you like) as a ball of thread a single thread
wound into a large ball. This Awareness that is, the thread
both constitutes and permeates the entire ball. The thread
knows itself at all points. It is all one Unified Consciousness. But
now lets say we bisect that ball across a given plane. What
happens? Each of the individual points of thread we see in the
cross-section becomes a unique awareness. How many aware-
nesses are there? A vast number of them countless points
of awareness.
Looking at any single one of these tiny little awarenesses,
youre seeing only a part of the Totality of Awareness. Each
point of partial awareness observes the others (since it is the
nature of awareness to observe). Each awareness thinks that it
is different from all the others. Im one dot of awareness,
youre another. I think youre different from me, and that
youre different from him. You think shes different from me,
and Im different from you. What happened? The Unified
Consciousness of the thread of Awareness has been shattered
into a huge assembly of substructures, each looking around
and observing its Self while thinking that it is observing
something different. These perceived differences were
induced by the process of sectioning the ball.
What is the blade that thus divides Total Awareness into sepa-
rate individuals? That blade is called Time. And if Time is a
blade, then so is Space. Infinity is continually being sectioned in
an infinite number of ways. The evolutionary history of the
Cosmos consists of Unified Awareness splitting itself into vari-
ous awarenesses and then seeing itself as all of those many
different awarenesses.
But Time and Space are both relative concepts; there is no
absoluteness of Space or Time. And that is why the Infinity of
Infinities and the experience of lives though they appear dif-
ferent can be unified by moving beyond, to a point that is
beyond Space and Time. When the scanning effect of Time is
removed, then all of these points of partial awareness become
merged once again into a single Unified Awareness.
Unifying the experiences of lives people are always quite
interested in this concept. They ask me, When you go beyond
Space and Time, do others experiences become your own?
Well, yes, in a sense the very concept of other disappears
then. But all the same, that experience is not the same as or
even similar to the idea of experience as we know it in the
finite domain thats what Im trying to say. You cant really
even call it experience because it is not flowing in time. Is there
life in a constant? Does the number 3.14 have life?
And what about a statue? Is there life in a statue? A statue is
an unchanging constant, right? Thats why statues can repre-
sent God better than movies or animations can, for example.
With a statue, the scanning stops and the image before you
becomes a constant. Just as when you take a photograph, its
stops time and everything in that particular moment in Space
and Time fills the film.
Change is induced by the movement of Time and if Time is
not flowing, there cannot be change. Happen is a verb, verbs
need action, and action needs Time in which to unfold. So in a
realm beyond Time, there can be no action, no force, no
speed, no acceleration. And when you are able to transcend
your scanning view of this world when you learn to stop fil-
tering it through Space and Time your world photograph
too becomes a constant. It becomes an invariant and does not
change.
Is this state of constancy itself a limitation? Not really, Id say.
When you overcome the limitation of Time, you arrive at a
richer representation of Time. Suppose you project a picture
of an object into two dimensions. If you then take each point
within those two dimensions and project them outward to
Infinity, associating a different value with each, is that a richer
or poorer representation? Now take the picture and collapse it
vertically, so that the whole thing becomes a single line. Again:
Is it a richer representation, or poorer? Now collapse the line
into a point so it becomes a Zero or a One. How is that, bet-
ter or worse?
Hindu philosophy tells us that its a richer representation;
Buddhist philosophy tells us that its a Zero because nothing is
there no Time; no experience. We say it is not nothing, but
everything not empty, but full! They call it shoonyam we
call it poornam.
9
July 2006
Aiya became one of the Guruji's disciples when they
met in Zambia in the late 1970s. Since then, the Sri Lanka
native has moved to Rochester, New York, where he
constructed the Sri Rajarajeswari Peetam in 1998. The
temple has since been noted by important figures in
Hinduism as "one of the most important temples in the
world," and has since spawned more than 150 branch
peetams.
The power of the form-pattern that manifests the embodied
deity is called the Yantra. It is an instrument, a machine, a ver-
itable storehouse of power. It limits the limitless by giving it
form and its crisscrossing lines bind and channel the Deity
the vast Ocean of Consciousness into a cognizable form. It
also represents the wheel of constant movement in the uni-
verse. The mandala forms utilized in the Shakta movement
invoking certain aspects of the Supreme Consciousness are
pictorial representations of the process of the descent or
devolution of the One Supreme Consciousness step by step,
layer by layer into this creation of the multitudinous forms.
According to the Tantraraja Tantra there are 960 yantras. Sri
Yantra, the most celebrated one, projects a very important
philosophical segment of Tantric thought. is known by various
names Sri Chakram, Chakrarajam, Siva Shaktiaikya Chakram;
and its history is shrouded in antiquity. It is difficult to deter-
mine the exact date of its conception and construction,
though it must have been conceived very early and has been
transmitted through the centuries. Many Tantric texts, such as
the Kamakalavilasa, have explained the nature, significance,
The Meaning of
By Chaitanyanandanatha Saraswaty, Sri Rajarajeswari Peetam, Rush, N.Y.
email : aiya@frontiernet.net
Kadambari
construction and application of Sri Yantra, and a description of
its basic form can also be found in the Soundarya Lahari, tra-
ditionally ascribed to Sankara (8th century C.E.).
Sri Yantra represents both the macro and microcosms, estab-
lishing the sadhakas identity with the All-Pervading Power and
the self. Intense meditation on the Sri Chakra thus becomes an
equally intense self-analysis. Sri Ramana Maharishis Who am
I? self-analysis and inquiry is the meditation on the Sri Yantra
dehayantra that is, internalized as one's own body, and con-
sequently as Rajarajeswari.
The Sri Chakra a perfect mapping of the Cosmic Magnetic
fields is the Mother of all other chakras in existence. It is the
concentrated power of the presiding deity distilled into geo-
metric form. The Chakra represents the different planes of
consciousness rising over a tier of awareness in serried
sequence.
The Sri Chakra, by its very pres-
ence, invokes the highest con-
sciousness in man; it is a raksha
or protection when worn by
someone. Its presence in the
home brings in all events auspi-
cious and channels the minds liv-
ing there toward the Supreme
Deity. The Chakra leads one to
experience directly the divine
form of the Empress Supreme,
Sri Rajarajeswari. Worship of the
Chakra is therefore given much
importance in Tantric lore.
The Structure of
Sri Yantra
The Sri Yantra is a configuration of nine interlacing triangles,
centered on the bindu and drawn by the superimposition of
five downward-pointing triangles, representing Shakti; and
four upright triangles, representing Siva. Because it is a com-
position of nine (nava) triangles (yoni), it is often called
Navayoni Chakra.
The Sri Yantra is a symbolic pattern of Shaktis own form
(svarupa), Her powers and emanations, and the form of the
Universe (visvarupa), symbolizing the various stages of Shaktis
descent in manifestation. It is a pictorial illustration of the cos-
mic field in creation.
Like creation itself, the Sri Yantra came into being through the
force of primordial desire. The impulse of desire (kamakala),
born of the inherent nature of Prakriti, creates a throb (span-
da) which vibrates as sound (nada). This manifestation is rep-
resented by a point, or bindu. In the first state of manifesta-
tion the bindu is called Para Bindu, which is the nucleus of the
condensed energy, the seed of the ultimate Sound, and the
dynamic and static aspects of the Two (Siva-Shakti) in One. It
contains all of the possibilities of becoming; it transforms into
Apara Bindu when creation begins: The essential point in the
middle of the Yantra is the Supreme Shakti; when it swells its
evolves into the form of a triangle (kamakalavilasa). The point
assumes a radius, the polarization of Siva-Shakti takes place,
the dynamic and static energies interact, and two more points
emerge to form a triad of points the primary triangle or the
Mula-trikona.
The three points are represented by Sanskrit syllables and the
three basic vibrations emanate from one primal sound sub-
stratum. The triangle with its apex down represents the first
form pattern of primordial desire in the process of creation. It
indicates the sign of evolution and represents the zone or
kinetic principle of creation. The static principle predominates
in the Para Bindu, so it represents the male principle. All of cre-
ation is the outcome of these two
principles, the point and triangle, and
the bliss of their union. Hence the Sri
Yantra is the one body of the Siva
couple (Yamala).
The primary triangle stands for three
aspects of Shakti: Trividhabala, the
young one, Tripura-Sundari, the
beautiful one, and Tripura-Bhairavi,
the terrifying one. It also represents
the threefold process of creation
(sristi), preservation (sthiti) and disso-
lution (samhara).
The expansion of space and time,
sound and energy, continue in the
process of creation, and the primary
triangle is transformed into a series of lines, triangles, circles
and squares to form the Sri Yantra. The various patterns are
the modifications of an original primal vibration; and at each
stage they contain the interplay of the static and kinetic ener-
gies in varying degrees of concentration.
The Nine Circuits
The Sri Yantra is called Nava Chakra since it is composed of
nine circuits, counting from the outer plane to the bindu.
Through contemplation on the Sri Yantra, the adept can redis-
cover his or her primordial sources. The nine circuits symboli-
cally indicate the successive phases in the process of becom-
ing. They begin from the earthly plane and rise slowly in rank,
step by step, to the final point, the state of supreme joy. By
entering into the lan vital of the yantra, the adept reinte-
grates with it. The nine circuits within Sri Yantra move from
the gross and tangible to the sublime and subtle realms.
The outermost periphery consists of a square, with four
gates, colored white, red and yellow. This is the Bhupara, the
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Kadambari
ground-plan of the Sri Yantra. Inside the square are three con-
centric circles, girdles (mekhala). The space between the
square and three girdles is the Trailokyamohana, or the
Enchantress of the Triple World, chakra; at this stage the
adept is infatuated by aspirations and desires.
Next are two concentric rings of 16 and eight-petaled lotuses,
respectively. They are called Sarva-saparipuraka Chakra and
Sarvasankshobana Chakra, indicating fulfilment of desire.
The fourth chakra, Sarva-soubhagyadayaka, or Giver of
Auspiciousness, projects the realm of possibilities in spiritual
ascent; it consists of the 14 triangles forming the outer rim of
the complex interlocking of triangles.
The next two chakras are each constructed of 10 triangles.
Called Sarvartha-sadhaka and Sarvarakshakara, Accomplisher
of All Purpose and Giver of Protection, they indicate a stage
when inner realization begins to dawn.
The seventh chakra, consisting of eight triangles, is called
Sarvarogahara, Remover of All Desires and Ills, and represents
the stage when the adept is free from earthly bonds and is at
the threshold of the inner circle of realization.
An inverted triangle is the eighth chakra, Giver of All
Accomplishments, of Sarva-siddhiprada; it denotes a stage
before the consummation of realization. All the triangular
chakras are colored red, to represent radiant energy or the
dynamic and fiery element of the cosmos.
The last chakra, the Bindu, is known as Sarva-anandamaya, Full
of Bliss. It is the sanctum sanctorum, abounding in joy, in which
the adept participates in union. The point is light itself, beyond
all colors, and is therefore represented as colorless.
The nine circuits of the Sri Yantra are also associated with 43
presiding deities, nine classes of yoginis (female yogis), sound
syllables or mantras, and gestures or mudras, each having a
distinct characteristic and explicit symbolic function. During
the performance of rituals, identity is sought between these
various aspects in order to create a cosmic link through a visu-
al equivalent, which project the whole existence.
Most yantras, if not all, have a similar symbolic meaning,
though some are specifically applied to a particular creative
force portrayed in a particular deity or mantra. The Sri Yantra
is distinguished from the rest since it projects All. Its diverse
symbolism may be understood conceptually by careful analy-
sis, and its kine-visual aesthetic of symmetry and proportion
may be experienced at once but its subtle meaning and the
power it manifests cannot be grasped instantly.
Instead, its understanding grows gradually, until one identifies
and enters into its circumference to grasp the wholeness it
enshrines. For this reason, perhaps, it has been accurately
described as the vast, dense mass of consciousness leading to
bliss (yogini Hridaya). Bearing witness to the truth of Andre
Malrauxs saying that every masterpiece is a purification of
the world, the Sri Yantra, in its formal content, is a visual mas-
terpiece of abstraction, and must have been created through
revelation rather than by human ingenuity and craft.
Worship of Sri Yantra
Worship of the Sri Yantra contemplation on the Sri Yantra
itself confers immense benefits on the sadhaka. It is said that
the prescribed worship of the Sri Yantra, the Navavarana Puja,
once performed, is equivalent to conducting 1,000
Asvamedha yajnas or horse sacrifices (these used to be per-
formed by emperors).
The outer worship of the Sri Yantra is deemed by Tantra to be
complete only by worship of the Devatas material body in
this case the Sri Yantra. Inner worship leads one in the path of
Yoga and knowledge; but for full development for a mastery
over material nature outer worship is necessary. It is power-
ful and effective, intensifies devotion and stabilizes the inner
realization in outer conditions. These days it is fashionable in
many quarters to condemn outer worship as a waste of time
and energy; as a method meant for novices. But it is better to
walk on crutches than not to walk at all. No doubt outer wor-
ship done as just an empty, lifeless ritual is only a waste of
time. But if it is done with the true consciousness it can bring
the greatest possible completeness, by allowing the body and
the most external consciousness to share in the spirit of the
worship.
Once the Chakra the form-pattern of the Goddess, and the
locus upon which all the rays of the great radiance are focused
11
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Kadambari
is worshiped in the prescribed Navavarana ritual, the sadhaka
soon begins to feel this emblem of Rajarajeswari as a part of
him- or herself. He or she begins to look to the Chakra for every-
thing and always gets the needed response guiding him or her
through the labyrinths of the Sadhana.
The puja is a systematic worship of the deities situated in the
nine Chakras of Sri Chakra; the worship is described in Bhairava
Yamala. The divine mother conjoined with Kameshwara is sta-
tioned in the Bindu in the form of great effulgence and from her
body emanate thousands, lakhs, and crores and myriads of rays
which are the various Gods, Goddesses, beings, human beings,
animals, insects, trees, flowers, and plants that pervade the uni-
verse in all planes of existence, in all the dimensions of time
known to man as well as those not yet perceived by the
human intellect.
Tantra is for all who aspire. Normally, the worship of the Sri
Chakra and Navavarana Puja are solely for the initiated in the Sri
Vidya mantra. But even if they are not initiated, some people
earnestly seek the Mother so there should be a way for them
to approach her. One of the gems in the Carnatic music tradition,
the great composer Sri Muthuswamy Dikshitar was moved by
this truly High Tantric impulse of catholicity, and under its influ-
ence set to music the cardinal principles of Navavarana worship
in kritis, or hymns, thus opening the treasures of the
Navavarana Puja to all those who are moved to approach the
Deity through devotional music. When tese compositions are
sung with true devotion, the melodious music makes effective
the presence of the Goddesses, who are the waves of vibrations
of the infinite ocean of cosmic bliss.
Apart from Navavarana Puja, there is the worship of the Sri
Chakra by reciting the 1,000 occult names of Lalitha the Lalitha
Sahasranama. It is said that the Royal Goddess is immediately
pleased when archana is performed with kumkum or lotus, Bilva
or Tulsi leaves. It is enough for the devotee to do worship of the
Sri Chakra, to do japam of Sri Vidya, and to recite the 1,000
names.
Tantra places great importance on the worship of the yantra on
full-moon nights. The Brahmanda Purana says those who wor-
ship Her every full moon night with the 1000 names become one
with Her form and She becomes one with theirs.
Outer Worship and Inner Worship
In the worship of this Yantra, outer worship can only succeed
where there is the duality between the worshiper and the wor-
shiped. The culmination of the Tantra is to reach the stage of
non-duality, where the worshiper, the worshiped, and the act of
worship are one and the same. It is written in the various inter-
pretations of the great Soundarya Lahari by various devotees
that prayoga or use of the Sri Chakra with certain stanzas of
the Soundarya Lahari to achieve certain goals is to be prac-
ticed. But to do this is to reduce the Great Empress to the level
of mundane, day-to-day human activities and should not be the
aim of the true seeker.
It is said in the Tantras that outer, ritualistic worship should be
replaced by inner worship of the Devi. However, it is very difficult
for the aspirant accustomed to external worship to suddenly
abandon it and take to meditation. There has to be an interme-
diate stage where the aspirant follows a slow, sure path of imag-
ining the details of external worship being done inside of him or
her. Continued practice of this leads one to Dhyanam and to
Samadhi.
In mental worship of the Sri Chakra, one follows the great
Krodha Bhattaraka, Durvasa, whose work, the Lalitha Stavaratna,
describes the Chakra as a great walled city with gardens, lakes
and avenues, through which one is gradually led to the center in
which the Devi is seated with Her Lord. There are similar descrip-
tions given in Rudra Yamala. The true Tantric proceeds to unrav-
el the secret of traversing through mythology, transcending
from the grossest to the subtlest; and from there to the causal,
and the causal of all causals, Maha Karana.
Thus in the process of inner worship ones realizes that the Sri
Chakra as described in the Bhavanopanishad is ones own
body; that the Supreme Deity is ones own unfettered, unclut-
tered, pure consciousness. And thus one comes to identify the
Chakra with the subtle centers in the body and mentally perform
the worship there. This is exactly what followers of the
Samayachara do. They do not perform outer puja; they install
the Sri Chakra in all the Adhara Chakras (or basic centers) and
conduct the worship of the Devi there.
This inner worship is an advancement over the mental worship
of Sri Pura, as here mental activity constantly dwells in the sub-
tle bodys centers of consciousness. These conscious centers are
the sources of all the dynamic powers of our being, organizing
their action through the plexuses and arranged in an ascending
series from the lowest-physical to the highest-mind center, and
culminating in the spiritual center called the Thousand-Petaled
Lotus, where Ascending Nature the serpent power of the
Tantrics meets the Brahman and is liberated into the Divine
Being. These centers are closed or half-closed within us and have
to be opened before their full potential can be manifested in our
physical nature. But once they are open and active, no limit can
be set to their development and total transformation becomes
possible.
***
This short essay was written with a view to introducing the Great
Yantra of the Ages to those who are living in the West and/or
who are interested in the worship of the Sri Devi. It would not be
complete without offering a brief, specific example of a medita-
tion on Sri Yantra: One meditates upon the Chakra, visualizing
the blazing globe of the Earth inside it, with all its hills, dales,
forests, and oceans. Continuous meditation upon this image by
aspirants will lead the turbulent Earth to everlasting peace at the
lotus feet of the all-pervading Guru Moorthy, who is
Rajarajeswari Devi in human form.
12
July 2006
I was recently reading a book about the devel-
opment of our religion through the ages, as
written by a Western historian. In it he was talk-
ing about the history of Goddess worship and
his opinion was that it was essentially a mass of
superstition that arose after Vedic religion had
become degenerate.
Now it is true that there are varieties of Tantra
which are to be shunned by Astikas as being
totally beyond the pale of Vedic Dharma, whose
practices are indeed nothing more than super-
stition. But is this the whole picture? We who
have studied the Shastras and done upasana
under the guidance of enlightened Gurus know
it is not.
The problem is that the historian had no first-
hand experience and was relying on what he had
read in books written by other people people
13
July 2006
False Knowledge and
True Knowledge
By Jaldhar H. Vyas
email : jaldhar@braincells.com
Jaldhar, a Software Consultant and a Perl Programmer, helps run
the Advaita Vedanta mailing list and www.advaita-vedanta.org, a
site covering one of the oldest and most philosophical religions of
India. The site has won many awards and Encyclopedia Britannica
refers to this site for Advaita Vedanta.
Kadambari
who were often more interested in sensationalism than truth.
Thus even though the research was scientific and the intent was
sincere, the conclusion was wrong.
Even the Devas who are powerful beyond human imagining
can be misled by false knowledge. An example of how Mataji
humbled the pride of the arrogant Devas and taught them the
truth can be found in the Kenopanishad 3-4. (A note to our his-
torian, this Upanishad is part of the Talavakara Shakha of the
Sama Veda.)
In the ceaseless struggle between the Devas and Asuras,
Brahman had secured victory for the Devas but the foolish
Devas became drunk with power and assumed that the battle
had been won by their own prowess. So Brahman decided to
teach them a lesson and appeared in the form of a Yaksha,
strange and wonderful to behold.
The Devas could not understand where this strange Yaksha had
come from, or who it was, so they deputed Agni to find out. The
Yaksha asked, Who are you? and Agni replied, I am Agni called
Jataveda. Agni is called Jataveda because he knows (veda) all
that is born (jata) i.e. all living things as he is the life force in all
of them. The Yaksha asked, What power do you have? and Agni
replied, I can burn up anything. So the Yaksha placed a straw in
front of him but, try as he might, Agni was unable to burn it.
And Agni returned to the Devas in defeat.
So next the Devas sent Vayu to investigate. Again the Yaksha
asked, Who are you? Vayu replied, I am Vayu called
Matarishvan. Vayu is called Matarishvan because he pervades
(shvayati) all spaces (matari.) The Yaksha asked, What power do
you have? and Vayu replied, I can blow away anything. So the
Yaksha placed a straw in front of him but try as he might, Vayu
was unable to move it. And Vayu too returned to the Devas in
defeat.
Finally Indra, the king of the Devas himself, went to see the
Yaksha. Indra is called Maghavan because he possesses great
strength. As king of the Devas he can compel any of his sub-
jects, no matter how powerful, to appear before him. But the
Yaksha disappeared without even talking to Indra, so that his
arrogance and pride in his strength and kingship might be extin-
guished. Try as he might, Indra was unable to make the Yaksha
appear.
It was then that Indra realized this was all due to the Maya of
Brahman and humbled himself. Pleased, Brahman revealed
Herself in Her true form as Uma, the daughter of Himalaya. Her
form was bewitchingly beautiful, because to know Brahman is to
know eternal bliss. Bhagavati Uma then taught Indra that all vic-
tories, indeed all actions, have in truth only Brahman as their
cause
We too get puffed up with pride and ahamkara at times, think-
ing, I know this and I have done that when in fact all that we
know and all that we do happens only through the grace of
Parameshwari. Luckily for us, She has favored us with the gift of
viveka, by which we can learn to move beyond falsehood and
ascend to the truth; and She has provided us with guides along
the path. On this occasion of Guru Purnima, let us remember our
own Gurus, the Guru parampara, and She who is the Adiguru of
the entire Universe.
|| Bhagavati Jagadambe Mata Ki Jaya ||
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15
July 2006
Sri Vimarshananda manages the MSN Group, SriVidya, which has about 80 members, and where this article
originally appeared in slightly different form. Vimarshananda is a mathematician by education and a risk ana-
lyst by profession, and works for one of the largest banks in India in a senior position. He belongs to the
same Guru Mandalam of Sri Jayaraman Hamsa Charnalaya, and bases his writings on talks I have had with
many saints, Tantrics, scholars and, above all, the inspiration I received (and am still receiving!) from my late
Guruji Sri Amruteshananda Bhattaraka and the Guru Mandalam! I, therefore, do not claim any originality to my
writings.
Maha-Bindu
By Sri Vimarshananda
email : vimarshananda@hotmail.com
Bindu in Sanskrit means a point or center. Bindu in Sanskrit
also refers to a Drop. A Drop has forces, which emanate
from a center and keep it in a spherical shape. Thus, the con-
cept of Bindu not only encompasses the center but also the
thing encompassed. Maha means Great or Eternal. Thus by
Maha-Bindu is meant the Great or Eternal Point.
One can understand the adjective Great, but why Eternal?
It is because this Great Point is in the Unmanifest. In Tantra,
the Word Maha is invariably used for referring to the states
in the Unmanifest. Bindu and Maha-Bindu are Tantric con-
cepts, which have to be understood carefully. Let us use
Point as the closest meaning for Bindu.
1. The Meaning of Bindu
Kadambari
16
July 2006
2 A Mathematical View
2.1 In an earlier article on Bindu, I explored the well-known
mathematical conception of the point, an entity which:
Has no dimensions (neither length nor breadth nor
height);
Is the basis of Space (a moving point develops a line; a
moving line develops a surface; and a moving surface
develops a three-dimensional solid);
Is a meeting ground for any number of points, lines or
planes (any number of points, lines or planes can inter-
sect one another in a given point).
2.2 Since a point has no dimension, any number of points
could coexist within one another. In other words, any
single point can contain within itself an infinite number
of points!
3. The Role of Bindu
3.1 Since a point has neither length nor breadth nor height,
it has no dimension and hence occupies no Space!
However, since a moving point develops a line; a moving
line develops a surface; and a moving surface develops
a three-dimensional solid, all of which require Space, the
point is the basis of Space! Thus, if Space were to be
shrunk or regressed, it would necessarily be reduced to
a Point (Bindu)!
3.2 This means that a point is independent of Space and yet
is the basis of Space! Thus, the point can be considered
as existing on the border between Space (the Manifest)
and Non-Space (the Unmanifest)!
3.3 Consciousness (Chit), being independent of Space and
being subtle, can go through the point any number of
times (ad infinitum)!
3.4 Space and Time must coexist! If there is no Space, there
is no Time and vice versa. Thus, when Space is reduced
to a Point (Bindu), Time also has to reduce to a Moment
(Kshana)! Anything that is beyond Space and Time must
pass through a point or a moment in order to enter the
realm of Space and Time!
3.5 Thus we get a vague idea on the following Tantric
beliefs underlying the role of Bindu (Point) and Kshana
(Moment):
All Space is ultimately reduced to Bindu, a Point in the
realm of Space.
Bindu is the meeting ground between the Unmanifest
and the Manifest.
Chit (Consciousness), because of its subtle nature, can
penetrate through Bindu ad infinitum.
All Time is ultimately reduced to Kshana (Moment),
which is a Point in the realm of Time.
The Absolute, which is beyond Space and Time, must
express itself through the Bindu (Point) in the realm of
Space and the Kshana (Moment) in the realm of Time!
4 The Bindu, Space and Time
4.1 The word Bindu, when used as a Center of
Consciousness of the Microcosm (Manifest), is known as
simply Bindu; and, when used as a Center of
Consciousness of the Macrocosm (Unmanifest), is
known as Maha-Bindu. Similarly, the word Kala when
used as a Center of Consciousness of the Microcosm
(Manifest) is known as simply Kala; and, when used as a
Center of Consciousness of the Macrocosm
(Unmanifest), is known as Maha Kala. Since Space
(Akasha) and Time (Kala) are related in the realm of the
Manifest, Maha-Bindu, Maha-Akasha and Maha-Kala are
related in the realm of the Unmanifest and share a
unique relationship.
5 The Bindu as Basis of the Manifest
5.1 The Bindu has Zero (0) Dimension. We know that a line
has one dimension; a plane has two dimensions; and a
solid has three dimensions. Each of these (line, plane and
solid) has a Center (Bindu). A little bit of thinking would
convince us that when a point develops into a line; a line
into a plane; and a plane into a solid, the Center (Bindu)
remains the same! Even if the developments were to go
on ad infinitum, the Center (Bindu) would remain the
same! Thus, from the Bindu, one should be in a position
to see, energize and control all planes and dimensions!
5.2 Zero (0) is an intriguing entity in mathematics! Its behav-
ior is mysterious and unpredictable! In mathematics,
zero can represent anything from nothing to everything
except Infinity! Thus, Zero and Infinity are bipolar or are
polar opposites! While Zero is potential and static (in
equilibrium), Infinity is kinetic and dynamic! This Zero of
mathematics is nothing but the Bindu of the Tantra.
We have already explained that Space in the Manifest origi-
nates from the Bindu (0). So then what is Infinity? It is
nothing but boundless Space! What happens when this
boundless Space regresses? It regresses into Bindu (0)!
During Pralaya (Dissolution), even boundless Space has
to merge into Bindu (0). Hence, Tantra says that Zero
subsumes Infinity! As may be seen from in the following
number sequence, Zero balances Infinity on both sides:
-9, -8, -7, -6, -5, -4, -3, -2, -1 (0) +1, +2, +3, +4, +5, +6,
+7, +8, +9
5.3 As many people think, Zero is not only void; it is also
plenum! The state of being both void and plenum, the
state of being in equilibrium, is also called Purna (Whole)
in Sanskrit. Though this conception strictly applies only
to the Absolute, it also applies to Bindu, which is an
Kadambari
extension or the primary differentiate of the Absolute.
This Bindu is known as Maha-Bindu in Tantric Literature.
This conception is beautifully depicted by the Purna
Ahuti Mantra:
Purnamadaha-Purnamidam-Purnat-Purnam-Udachyate
Purnasya-Purnamadaya-Purnameva-Vashishyate
Meaning thereby: This is Purna! That is Purna! Purna has
come out of Purna! If Purna is removed from Purna,
what remains is Purna! Or to put to mathematically,
This is Zero (or Infinity)! That is Zero! Zero has come out
of Zero! If Zero is removed from Zero, what remains is
Zero!
6. Emergence of the Manifest
6.1 As per Tantra, Parama Shiva (the Absolute) is Prakasha
(Consciousness, in its subtlest state). It has Vimarsha
(Will Power, in its subtlest state), but in a quiescent
mode. When it (the Absolute) wants to manifest some-
thing out of itself, for itself, there is a self-moved will or
deliberation or reflection acting upon itself, which is
called Vimarsha. The Tantra calls Prakasha the Adi Shiva
(or Original Shiva) and Vimarsha as the Adi Shakti
(Original Shakti).
This Will or Vimarsha creates a Stress (Spanda), which
vibrates and concentrates itself into a point called
Maha-Bindu (the Great Point). In Maha-Bindu, both Shiva
and Shakti are in a unipolar state. The Maha-Bindu is
Nirguna (without characteristics) and Samashti (com-
bined). It combines, in its subtlest form, the seeds of
Shrishti (Creation), Stithi (Preservation), and Samhara
(Dissolution), Tirodhana (Concealment) and Anugraha
(Grace). These are known as the Pancha Krityas (the Five
Acts), as represented by Pancha Vaktra Shiva, or the
Five-Faced Shiva.
6.2 The Maha-Bindu Nirguna (without characteristics) has a
Saguna (with characteristics) orientation, which is also
known as Maha-Bindu. Here again both Shiva and Shakti
are in a unipolar state, but tending towards polarization.
This differentiates into Karana Bindu (Causal Point) as it
is still in Maha-Karana (the Great Causal). From this
Karana Bindu emanates Nada, containing within itself
the subtlest form of Sound (Shiva) and Light (Shakti).
The Nada then concentrates itself into a Bindu known as
the Karya Bindu (Action Point). Here Shiva and Shakti
become polarized and are thenceforth in a bipolar state.
The Karya Bindu has predominance of Shakti character-
istics (Rajas or Activity). Thereafter, the Karana-Karya
Bindu Samarasya (congress) occurs leading to the
emergence of the Bija (Seed). The Three Bindus
Karana, Karya and Bija are also referred to as the
Sveta (White), Rakta (Red) and Mishra (Mixed) Bindu,
respectively.
6.4 It is the interrelationship between last Three Bindus
Karana, Karya and Bija that causes the emergence of
the Mula Trikona (Root, or Base Triangle, Inverted) the
form pattern which kick-starts Creation in the actual
sense! This is the innermost triangle of the Sri Chakra,
with the unipolar Saguna Maha Bindu at the center. The
Three Bindus are in the border between the Unmanifest
and the Manifest. Whatever happens hereafter happens
in the Manifest! In Srividya tradition, Lalita
Tripurasundari (Pancha-Dashi) is worshiped as Saguna
Maha Bindu and Maha Tripurasundari Parabhattarika
(Maha Shodashi) is worshiped as Nirguna Maha Bindu.
6.5 Thus it can be conceptualized that:
Nirguna Maha Bindu (Shiva and Shakti - Unipolar) are
positioned in the Shiva-Shakti Tattva;
Saguna Maha Bindu (Shiva and Shakti Unipolar, but
tending towards Polarization) are positioned in the
Sadashiva Tattva;
Karana Bindu (Shiva and Shakti - Bipolar) are positioned
in the Ishwara Tattva;
Karya Bindu (Shiva and Shakti - Bipolar) are positioned in
the Shuddha Vidya Tattva; and
Mishra Bindu (Shiva and Shakti - Bipolar) are positioned in
the Maya Tattva
6.6 We can now vaguely understand the concept that as
long as Shiva and Shakti are unipolar, the states are in
the Unmanifest. We can also vaguely understand the
concept that when Shiva and Shakti are bipolar, the
states are in the Manifest. This would mean that any
state below Saguna Maha Bindu should be in the
Manifest! Is that true? Yes and no, because
Manifestation happens at two levels Shukshma
(Subtle) and Sthula (Gross)!
7. The Two Levels of Manifestation
7.1 Strictly speaking, only the Parama Shiva (Absolute),
Shiva-Shakti Tattva and Sadashiva (or Sadakhya Tattva)
are said to be in the Unmanifest. Because up to this
stage Shiva and Shakti, though tending towards polar-
17
July 2006
Kadambari
ization still remain unipolar. However, during subsequent
differentiation, the polarization of the Shiva-Shakti rela-
tionship actualizes and the Tattva becomes bipolar. Seen
in this context, the Shiva- Shakti and Sadashiva Tattvas
are in the Unmanifest and from Ishwara Tattva onwards
all the Tattvas are in the Manifest.
7.2 It is here that the Tantra draws a fine distinction: Again,
according to Tantra, Manifestation happens at two lev-
els Shukshma (Subtle) and Sthula (Gross). The
Manifestation at the Shukshma level begins from the
Ishwara Tattva, and the Manifestation at the Sthula level
begins after Maya Tattva. Henceforth, whenever we
use the word Manifestation it must be qualified as
either Shukshma or Sthula.
7.3 To get a clearer idea of the concept, we have to tabu-
late the various stages or levels of Consciousness (Chit)
vis--vis the Principles (Tattvas) and understand the
movement from the Subtle (Shuksma) to Gross (Sthula).
(see TABLE A: Levels of Consciousness vis--vis
Tattvas). There It will be seen that Manifestation actu-
ally happens at two levels and in three stages the
Divine (emergence of Atma through the Divine Triad:
Mahesh, Vishnu and Brahma), the Spiritual (emergence
of Jivatma through the Individuality Triad) and the
Temporal (emergence of Jiva through the Personality
Triad).
7.4 In this regard we cannot fail to note the correspon-
dence between the Personality Triad, the Individuality
Triad and the Atma with the Divine Triad. See TABLE B:
Individuality Triad and Divine Triad to make this amply
clear.
7.5 Thus, everything at the lower or grosser level is derived
from the higher or subtler levels. This derivation is
known as Manifestation. It is enabled by certain
Facilitators, or Prisms, which differentiate the subtler
tattvas into grosser tattvas. At the subtlest level, these
Facilitators being almost in the Unmanifest carry the
prefix Maha; i.e., Maha Kala (Great Time), Maha Akasha
(Great Space), Maha Bindu (Great Point) and Maha Maya
(Great Veil). The Maha Bindu referred to here is the
Saguna Maha Bindu. At the grosser levels, the
Facilitators being almost in the Manifest do not carry
any prefix, and are simply known, e.g., as Kala (Time),
Akasha (Space), Bindu (Point) and Maya (Veil). The Bindu
(Point) referred to here is the Mishra Bindu (Mixed
Point).
7.6 In the Shukshma Shrishti (Subtle Manifestation), all of
the higher-level Facilitators enable differentiation
through the Saguna (with characteristics) Maha Bindu.
While, in the Sthula Shrishti (Gross Manifestation), all the
lower-level Facilitators enable differentiation through
the Mishra Bindu. This is how the Infinite finitizes itself;
the Limitless limits itself; and the Unmanifest manifests
itself!
May God Bless You in All Your Endeavors!
18
July 2006
Tantrism basically is the particular system of spirituality
expressed in Tantras or gamas. Though there are many
schools of Tantrism, all of them are essentially akta. Tantric
doctrine encompasses all daranas and it is the summit of all
Hindu traditions. Tantrism is based upon divine revelation,
gama, which complements Nigama (Veda). Both gama and
Nigama are considered to be ruti, Apaurueya-jna. But
while Vedas represent ordinary knowledge (smnya-jna),
gamas stand for specific knowledge (viea-jna) and are
the inner and most sacred part of ruti. Historically the ear-
liest Tantric sects were Vedic Vrtya and Somasiddhnta, a
subdivision of Pupata-aivism. But tradition current nowa-
days can be traced to 5th-6th century C.E., when the first
gamas were written down.
Tantric tradition includes these main schools: Kula (Kaula),
Trika, Krama, Tripur (rvidy), Kubjik. Geographically
rvidy is currently spread in South India, Kl-Kula (and Tr-
kula, its part) is prevalent mostly in Bengal and Assam,
Kubjik is extant in Nepa l only; Trika and Krama in their pure
form didnt survive, but few parampars are still alive in
Karaka and some other places.
Tantras (Kulrava, Yoni etc.) provide a complete scheme of
spiritual progress of an individual the sequence of seven
stages (cra). These are:
Vedcra Vaiavcra
aivcra Dakicra
Vmcra Siddhntcra
Kaulcra
19
July 2006
The Seven cras
By Arjuna Trnandantha Kaulvadhta
email : arjunanandanatha@gmail.com
Kadambari
The first four cras come under a name of Dakicra or
Samaycra, while last three are known as Vmcra or
Kaulcra. The Tantras recognize three levels (bhva) of sd-
hakas: pau, vra and divya. Samaycra, a path of regula-
tions, is meant for pau-sdhakas, i.e. those who are bound
by conventional mind and social rules of conduct. Kaulcra
is a path of vras (heroes) and it culminates in divya-bhva,
which is a level of
Siddha.
Here two important
points should be noted:
First, Vmcra is only
possible for those whom
a qualified Kula-guru has
considered to be quali-
fied (adhikrin) and who
are thus initiated. That
is, one cannot merely
decide to be a Kaula and
start practicing rituals
taken from books.
Without a Kula-guru and
dk there is no
Kaulcra. However, the
preceding cras do not
require specific initia-
tions and can be fol-
lowed by anyone who
wills to do so. Second,
Samaya is a necessary
base for any kind of advanced practice, and cannot be
ignored or jumped over. As Klivilsa-tantra puts it, without
siddhi in the great pau-bhva there is no siddhi in any
bhva.
One must also keep in mind that all seven cras are spiritu-
al stages and not sectarian denominations. Thus the mean-
ings of terms such as vaiava, aiva, etc., are technical
and not strictly connected with the sects bearing these
titles.
Seven Stages, Three Levels
Let us examine this scheme of seven cras and three bh-
vas. According to Rudra-ymala, the aim of pau-bhva is
jna, right knowledge. But pau-bhva starts from
Vedcra, which stands for Yama-Niyama regulations and
observance of Varrama-dharma. Traditionally Vedcra
was followed by everyone; however times have changed and
nowadays it isnt strictly followed anymore. And while
Varrama, in its traditional form, may indeed be rejected
as a mere social institution (and Tantra does reject the caste
system and acknowledge only two rama, Ghastha and
Avadhta), the Yama-Niyama base is essential for any spiri-
tual endeavor. Thus, the beginning is Yama-Niyama (which
amounts to simply being a good human). This is karma-yoga.
The keyword of this cra is vivsa, faith in God. As it is said
in Yoni-tantra (VI.22), it is only through faith that Siddhi and
Moka are acquired.
The second step of spiritual path is Vaiavcra, which is a
level of bhakti. Here bhakti stands for emotional devotion to
God. While on the previous
level God was simply vara,
the Lord, here He becomes
both Father and Mother. The
attitude toward Him-Her
becomes more personal.
Sdhana of this cra is
Nma-smaraa, bhajana and
krtana. An example of this
stage is the popular form of
Gauya-vaiavism.
The third stage is aivcra,
a level of jna. At this stage
the primary practice is med-
itation and svdhyya. Here
pau-bhva reaches its com-
pletion. It is well represented
by such traditions like
Pupata (Vedic aivism),
Advaita-vednta, ivdvaita,
aiva-siddhnta, rvaiava.
Next comes Dakicra,
which synthesizes all three preceding stages. Though jna
remains predominant, bhakti and karma are important as
well. It is also known as Samaycra, from samaya which
means rule, prescription. Followers of this path are known
as smayins.
Samaycra is a stage of yoga, but it isnt a complete yoga
(pra-yoga or rja-yoga) of the higher three stages. The
yoga of Samaya is predominantly mental, and certain exter-
nal rituals may also be included. According to r Amtnanda
(a commentator on the Yogin-hdaya), Samaycra means a
worship of Guru-pduk. In this sense, Samaya may be cate-
gorized with the previous three levels. Tantras condemn
those who are devoid of Samaya; this stage is a turning
point from Pravtti to Nivtti-mrga, from pau to vra-
bhva. The higher part of Dakicra is described by r
Sarvnanda:
svadharmanirato bhtv pacatattvai prapjayet
sa eva dakicra ivo bhtv yajetparm
(Sarvollsa, XVIII.10)
As examples of Dakicra we may name the external tra-
dition of rvidy and Vra-aivism. In its main features
Dakicra is synonymous to the Tantra-prakriy of
Kshmr aivism.
20
July 2006
Kadambari
After that we come to the Vmcra, which is subdivided
into three levels. This stage is directly connected with akti-
jna. Knowledge here is not merely mental, but practical
and direct (pratyaka). The word vmcra is formed by
vm or vma and cra. Vm means a beautiful
woman, or shakti; vma means happiness, beautiful and
left.
The essential principle of this stage is formulated in
Vtlantha-stra (.5), siddha-yogin-saghan-
mahmelpodaya. Saghaa means sexual contact, and
refers not only to physical contact with a woman, but to any
contact and ultimately to any perceptive act (for the very
process of cognition is essentially sexual; it is the interaction
of iva and akti or Praka and Vimara). This kind of sexu-
al contact is the true knowledge, which is non-verbalized. It
is to this knowledge that ruti refers, saying prajnam
brahma. In rvidy, Vmcra comes under the name of
Kmakal-dhyna. Its ritual expression is Strpj and
Yonipj, the worship of women, who possess the divine
nature of Dev.
As stated in Vijnabhairava-tantra (Vr. 69) and Jnrava
(XXII.66-70), the sexual act itself is a pj and dhyna, and
about it Kulrava says there is no worship higher than the
union. Here it is necessary to note that sex in Tantra is
based on pure love and is never merely a physical act. Thus,
Meru-tantra (X.67) clearly states that only the one whose
bhakti is firm achieves Siddhi on the Vma-path. This path
leads to the realization of Pra-brahman, the perfect Unity
of Smarasya, via so-called 5Ms, which represent the
order of kta-yoga. The essence of this Yoga is Bliss,
nanda (which is identical with Vimara).
As the Dev-rahasya of Rudra-ymala states:
nandarasapjy tuyate paramevar
(Uttarakhaa, LVIII.11).
Vmcra stands at the very heart of ktism as such, be it
the Trika of Abhinavagupta or the rvidy of our time. In
fact, the Tantras prohibit any kind of akti-worship without
Vmcra (as examples see ym-rahasya V.85, Tr-
rahasya III.8-9 and Mahnirva-tantra V.22-23).
The two higher cras, Siddhnta and Kaula, are advanced
levels of Vmcra. Siddhntcra is a stage of Avadhta,
and Kaula is a stage of perfection, or Siddhi: The Kaula is a
Siddha-yog and jvanmukta. The three higher cras corre-
spond to the Kula-prakriy of Kshmr aivism.
It can be said that Veda, Vaiava and aiva represent dvai-
ta, viidvaita and advaita in theory; while Dakia, Vm
and Siddhntcra represent the same three in actual expe-
rience. And Kaula is Samarasa, which is beyond everything
and incorporates all doctrines as its parts. Thus iva says, as
I know, there is no religion higher than the religion of the
Kula (Mahnirva-tantra IV.43).
OM nama paramadevatyai
r gurubhyo nama
21
July 2006
22
July 2006
Prayer With Full
Understanding
By Dr. K. Sadananda,
email : kuntimaddisada@yahoo.com
A retired material scientist and a disciple of H.H. Swami Chinmayanandaji,
who is teaching and writing on Vedanta as part of my nidhidhyAsana.
AsatOmA sadgamaya|
tamasOmA jyotirgamaya|
mRityOrmA amRitaM gamaya|
Lead us from the unreal to the real.
Lead us from ignorance to knowledge.
Lead us from mortality to immortality.
These mantras, which we all chant at the end of our prayers,
are from the Brihadarnyaka Upanishad. By the chanting of
these mantras, we are requesting certain specific things
from the Lord. But we need to understand clearly (1) what
exactly it is we are asking the Lord to do (that is, the goals we
are seeking), and (2) how we expect Him to accomplish these
tasks (that is, the means for accomplishing these goals).
A good initial question is whether the Real, Knowledge and
Immortality the three things that we are requesting are
really separate goals (since we are making three separate
petitions), or actually one and the same goal and only
appearing different when viewed from three different
angles. If they are all the same, then why request them in
three different ways unless we are confused, not knowing
exactly what we want? Or is it that we want to insure that
the Lord hears our prayers, one way or the other?
Kadambari
Another important question at the outset is we want these
three particular goals instead of, say, moksa (liberation) or
freedom from samsaara (suffering)? What is the use of hav-
ing these three boons and still suffering due to samsaara?
Why not pray directly for moksa?
In other words, we need to have a clear understanding of
what our prayer really means. So let us examine the Vedic
mantras more closely.
The Real: AsatOmA sadgamaya|
The first prayer says, Lead us from asat to sat that is,
from the unreal to the real. In fact, the terms asat and sat
are normally translated as nonexistence and existence,
respectively. So we are asking the Lord to lead us from
nonexistence to existence.
Closer examination of this meaning reveals an inherent con-
tradiction: If we are nonexistent to begin with, then our
request for existence has some validity. However, since we
must exist if we are reciting the prayer, does not the prayer
itself presuppose our existence? And if that is so, doesnt
that make it a useless prayer since we are asking Him to do
that which is already an accomplished fact?
It will be a waste of His time and ours unless asat has some
other meaning than non-existence. Some darshanikas argue
that the terms are mutually exclusive; i.e., that which is not
asat must be sat, and that which is not sat must be asat. If
so, then we are asking the Lord to do something impossible.
Lord Krishna declared thousands of years ago in the
Bhagavad Gita that, naasato vidyate bhaavo naabhaavo vidy-
ate sataH (2-16) nonexistence can never come into exis-
tence and existence can never become nonexistent. It is an
absolute Law of Conservation that applies not only to matter
and energy, but to subtler entities like jiivas (individual souls).
Krishna says:
natvevAhum jAtu nAsam, na tvam nEmE janAdhipAH|
na caiva nabhavshAmaH sarvE yayaH mataH param||
There was never a time when I was not; there was never a
time you were not, nor all these kings arrayed before us.
There will never be a time when they are absent. Hence, that
which exists can never cease to exist.
Based on this, the first part of our prayer appears to be in
vain.
Knowledge: tamasOmA jyotirgamaya|
Now let us examine the second prayer, Lead us from igno-
rance to knowledge. We do not specify here exactly what
ignorance we are referring to is it ignorance of chemistry,
physics, biology, the world; or ignorance of everything? In
the Mundakopanishad the student approaches his teacher
and asks:
kasminno bhaghavo vijnaate sarvam idam vijnaatam bhavati
Hai! Bhagavan, please teach me that, by knowing which I will
have knowledge of everything! Now that is really a pretty
tall request. Is that what we are requesting in our prayer,
tamasOma jyotirgamaya?
When we say I have knowledge, or He is a knowledgeable
person, we only mean knowledge of x. That is, knowl-
edge always refers to a particular area or object it is
objective knowledge; it is qualified knowledge.
Epistemologically, knowledge without qualification is indefin-
able. So in asking the Lord to lead us from ignorance to
knowledge, we are using two unqualified and therefore inde-
finable terms. We are requesting something that we our-
selves are unable to properly define.
Immortality: mRityOrmA amRitaM gamaya|
The third part of the prayer says, Lead us from mortality to
immortality. And there is a problem here too. The very
request assumes that we are mortal, since we were born at
such and such a time and place. The whole Gitopadesham
started because of Arjunas apprehension that he was going
to kill his own teachers and grandsires, in whose lap he grew
up:
gurUnahatvA hi mahAnubhAvaan shreyobhOktum bhaixya
mapIha loke|
It would be better to beg alms and live, rather than kill these
great teachers and noble souls.
Hence, like us, Arjuna is aware of our mortality. Krishna con-
firms this by stating the Law of Eternal Recycle, which fol-
lows from the Law of Conservation: That which is born has to
die, and that which dies has to be reborn:
jAtasyahi dRivo mRituH, dRivam janma mRitasya ca|
Hence, if one considers himself as mortal, he can never be
immortal. On the other hand, if he knows he is immortal
because of the above statement of Krishana (na tve vaaham
...) then the request to lead us from mortality to immor-
tality is either impossible, since anything that is born has to
die; or useless, since it is already an accomplished fact exis-
tence can never cease to exist.
Based on this analysis, the third part of the prayer,
mRityOrmA amRitaM gamaya, also appears to be in vain. In
the scriptures, a sage calls us shRinvantu vishve amRitasya
putrAH the sons of immortality. Immortality is our
birthright.
Thus, all three requests that weve made in our prayer
appear to be in vain. If we just repeat the mantras without
understanding, like a parrot, then we have no way of know-
ing even if the Lord grants us our request because we have
no idea what we asked for!
23
July 2006
Kadambari
In addition, we are making these requests without even
knowing whether we are qualified to receive that which we
are asking for. Its as if a child were to go to a university pro-
fessor and asking him for knowledge of quantum mechanics,
without knowing even what the term means, and without
knowing whether he is qualified to receive that knowledge or
not.
But since these are Upanishadic mantras, there must be a
deeper meaning involved.
The Nature of Knowledge
Knowledge, prama, can be known through pramaaNa (a
means of knowledge) when there is a pramaata (knower) and
prameya (object of knowledge). Normally, I can only have
objective knowledge. The means of knowledge are basically
three: (1) pratyaxa (percep-
tual); (2) anumaana (infer-
ential); and shabda (scrip-
tural). The first two are
related to loukika prameyas
(worldly objective knowl-
edge), while the third is
shruti praamaana (revelato-
ry knowledge) that is, it is
for aloukika prameyas (the
knowledge of dharma,
swarga, naraka, etc.).
Any prameya, or object of
knowledge, can be known
only through its attributes
or qualities. In fact, the
definition of an object is
based on its attributes,
which differ from those of
other objects in the
Universe. The senses can
only measure these attrib-
utes and feed that data to the mind. The mind, in turn, inte-
grates the inputs from the senses and provides an image
superimposing on that image the gathered attributes. The
result is expressed as a thought in the mind.
Thus, a chair out there is recognized by its form, color, and
other properties as perceived by the senses; and the image
of that chair is formed in the mind with these attributes. So
the cognitive process involves perception, volition and cogni-
tion. The cognized image with the perceived attributes is
next compared with the images stored in our memory. When
there is a reasonable match, we recognize that this thing
out there is a chair. In reality, however from the minds
point of view the chair out there is only a chair-thought
in the mind. So if there is no mind (i.e., if we are asleep or lost
in our dreams, etc.), there is no chair out there. Out of mind
is out of sight!
In fact, very existence of a chair or any object for that
matter; even the entire world out there cannot be estab-
lished without the mind, supported by the conscious entity
present. The existence of the world has to be proved or
established by a conscious entity, since it is jadam, or inert;
whereas a conscious entity exists independently of the
world. The world out there is a dependent, whereas I, i.e.,
the conscious entity, is an independent entity. In fact, the
self-conscious entity alone is a self-existent entity, while the
inert entity must always depend on a self-conscious entity
for its existence.
The most important point to note here is that the senses can
grasp only the attributes of an object, but not its substan-
tive essence. Hence, knowledge of all objects out there is
only attributive knowledge; never substantive knowledge.
The reason is that the substantive for all objects is nothing
but Brahman, since according to our scriptures Brahman is
the material cause for the Universe. The Taittireya
Upanishad says yatova imaani bhuutani jaayante That
from which the whole Universe arose, by which it is sustained
and into which it returns is Brahman.
Brahman cannot be known
by the senses. From the
above analysis too, we can-
not independently establish
that there is a chair material-
ly out there. For if we look
at, say, a wooden chair close-
ly, we find that there is no
such essentially substantive
thing as a chair it is only a
name given to a certain form
of wood. What is actually
there is only wood.
Moreover, if we then exam-
ine the wood closely, we find
that there is really no wood
there. It is just an assem-
blage of organic fibers,
which are in turn are made
up of molecular chains, which
are in turn but assemblages
of various atoms.
And we can keep going: Atoms are themselves an assemblage
of electrons, protons and neutrons, which are in turn an
assemblage of more fundamental matter. We soon come to
a quantum level where we cannot precisely analyze the sys-
tem, since the very act of examining the fundamental mat-
ter affects the system observed. So we cannot say with cer-
tainty what is out there at the fundamental level. We can
only say that, at each relative level (vyavahaara), that a chair
is out there, or wood is out there or organic fibers, or mol-
ecules or atoms, and so on. The knowledge changes as we
shift our reference.
The Real and the Apparent
In short, the knowledge of any object is only relative knowl-
edge and not absolute knowledge. The scriptures correctly
point out that what is there is only Brahman, with different
names and forms. Bhagavan Shankara says in Drikdrisya
Viveka:
asti bhaati priyam ruupam naamam chaityanca pancakam|
adhyatrayam brahma ruupam, jagat ruupam tathaa dvayam
24
July 2006
Kadambari
Every object has as its five aspects
Existence, illumination, desirability, form and name.
Of these five, the first three belong to Brahman while the
other two, name and form, belong to the world. This means
that the manifest world we live in is nothing but an assem-
blage of objects with names and forms (all are attributive),
which are superficial since they do not have any substantial-
ity of their own. the underlying substance of everything is
Brahman alone. Hence the Upanishads declare,
sarvam khalvidam brahma; neha naanaasti kincana
All of this is nothing but Brahman; there is nothing other
than Brahman.
What there is, is only Brahman and we cannot gain sub-
stantive experience of Brahman by any means of knowledge
alone. It is like a ring, a bangle, a bracelet, and a necklace
made of gold. Each one is different, with their own attrib-
utes (guna) and purpose, each differing from that of others.
Yet those attributes (such as i.d. or o.d., or thickness, size,
shape, etc.) do not belong to the gold, the substance of all
these ornaments.
Although we say, from the point of vyavahaara, that the
ring, or the bangle, etc., arises from gold, is sustained by gold
and returns into gold the truth is they are all just gold in
different forms and names. The process of gold becoming
jewelry or ornamentation is a transformation-less transfor-
mation, since the gold remains gold throughout the trans-
formation. In the same vein, the Ch. Upanishad declares:
vaachaarambhanam vikaaro naama dheyam
Creation is nothing but an apparent transformation just
like gold becoming ornaments. Is the ring, bangle, bracelet,
etc., real or unreal? They appear to be real, but in reality they
are nothing but gold and gold alone. What must I do to see
the gold in the ring? I dont have to destroy the ring. Rather,
like a goldsmith, I must learn to see gold in and through the
ring by paying more attention, not to the objects superfi-
cial name and form but to its substance.
That which appears to be real, but can be negated, is called
mithya, which Shankara defines as sat asat vilaxanam. One
cannot say that the ring does not exist, since one can obvi-
ously decorate oneself with it. But at the same time one can-
not say the ring really exists either, since what actually exists
out there is only gold. Hence, it is called mithya.
Accessing the Deeper Meaning
Scripture sometimes uses the word asat for mithya. Hence
the first prayer Lead me from the unreal to the real is
essentially a request for the discriminative power to see
Brahman, the substantive of the world.
Here seeing means understanding, since Brahman cannot
be an object by any pramaana (aprameyam). The Mandukya
Upanishad starts with the declaration that Om is nothing
but all this; that all this is nothing but Brahman; and that
Brahman is nothing but the Self that I am. Hence, in the
prayer astOma sadgamaya, we are asking the Lord to lead
us to the realization that I am that Brahman the real enti-
ty. That is liberation, or moksha, since the realization that I
am Brahman means becoming that Brahman the limitless
That I am. Brahma vit brahmaiva bhavati the knower of
Brahman becomes Brahman, say the scriptures.
A finite I cannot become the infinite Brahman; that would
be mathematically illogical. However, if I am already infinite
and only think that I am finite and thus suffer the conse-
quences of that thinking then I am simply ignorant of my
true Self. All I need is a convincing teaching that I am not
what I think I am; that, rather, I am the totality, the substan-
tive essence and being of the entire Universe. Hence, in the
prayer tamasoma jyotirgamaya, I am asking the Lord to
help me to know myself.
This self-knowledge is not the kind of objective or attributive
knowledge that we discussed above; the knowledge of ones
own self cannot be objectified and therefore cannot be
defined. It is recognition of ones self, with Vedanta as pra-
maana, as expounded by the teacher. Here Vedanta acts like
a mirror, a darashana, in the hands of a teacher reflecting
my true nature in contrast to what I think I am. Hence, the
prayer, Oh Lord, lead me from ignorance to knowledge.
Here, the process is one of knowing the identity of the self
with Brahman (ayam aatma brahma); and that is moksa, or
liberation, too. Bondage is only notional; it is not real and
therefore it can be removed by knowledge.
Finally, once I recognize that I am that eternal, all-pervading
Brahman which is of the nature of sat, existence that
never ceases to exist I recognize myself as eternal and
immortal. Death is only notional, since there is neither birth
nor death; as when a ring is destroyed to form a bangle, the
gold itself remains unaffected. Hence, in the prayer
mRityormaa amRitam gamaya, I am only praying for the
knowledge to recognize myself as the immortal entity that I
already am.
So now we can understand that all three of these prayers are
for the realization of our own true nature a realization that
can happen only when we drop the notions that I am this
body-mind-intellect complex. By identifying with the body, I
consider myself to be mortal hence the prayer, Lead me
from mortality to immortality. By identifying with limited
intellect, I consider myself to be ignorant hence the prayer,
Lead me from ignorance to knowledge. By identifying
myself as this jiiva with its limited body-mind complex, I con-
sider the unreal world to be real, and I suffer the conse-
quences of this misunderstanding. And so I pray, Lead me
from unreality to reality.
All three prayers involve seeking the knowledge that I am
that Satyam-Jnaanam-Anantam; that I am Brahman, from
which the whole world arises, by which it is sustained, and
into which it is finally reabsorbed.
So let us now pray with full understanding:
25
July 2006
AsatOmA sadgamaya|
tamasOmA jyotirgamaya|
mRityOrmA amRitaM gamaya|
On Shakti and Shiva
Aspirant: Is Shiva always the end goal of sadhana, even when
Devi is the focus of ones worship?
Bhasurananda: No. At the end Shiva and Shakti are One, with
the Shakti principle predominating. Thats why at Guru
Paduka [the chakra above Sahasrara], its Ardhanareshwara
[the deity who is half Shiva and half Devi].
Q: If they are One, then why do you say with the Shakti prin-
ciple predominating?
A: Because thats the way it is. Thats why it is said, shakti
vinaa shiva shava: Without Shakti, Shiva is a corpse. If youve
noticed, in all the depictions Devi is on top. Even in coitus
with Shiva. That is what it means: The Shakti principle pre-
dominates.
Q: So what is Shakti without Shiva?
A: She is Energy, satchidananda. She can create another Shiva
at Her will.
26
July 2006
Conversations
About Devi
By Sri Bhasuranandanatha
email : bhasuranandanatha@shaktisadhana.50megs.com
Following are some brief excerpts from a longer series of conversations between
Sri Bhasuranandanatha, an experienced Srividya adept based in Kerala
(and author of Shakta Tantra: an Introduction in the last issue of Kadambari),
and a less experienced aspirant on that path (in this transcript, the questioner).
Kadambari
Q: She can?!
A: She can. At Guru Paduka level, She is Ardhanareshwara;
then at the Mahaa-Bindu level She is formless, attributeless,
pure Bliss; in permanent orgasm thats the only way that
level of bliss can be explained in mundane terms.
Q: But so much of what one hears and reads ends with Shiva.
Devi is conceived as something like a taxicab, and Shiva is
where She drops you off.
A: Okay, then I will have to explain in detail. The Urdhwamnaya
Dhyana will solve a lot of problems for you. Tell me, how
many faces has Shiva?
Q: Normally, Sadashiva is said to have five faces.
A: Yes, but really it is six. Each face has a name, and from
each of the faces a group of mantras emanated, numbering
in the millions. The mantras of the four groups are the
mantras of East, West, North, South. They are normally
called the Amnaya Mantras.
So the six faces are the four facing the four cardinal points,
and a fifth looking up that is Urdhwamnaya, the upper
one; and a sixth that is ever hidden that one is called
Anuttaramnaaya; or that which is above the upper one! They
are accessible only by upasakas of the Mahaa Shodashakshari.
But for now, lets concentrate on the Urdhwamnaya Dhyana,
which says:
On the most enchanting golden island, in the middle of the
Ocean of Nectar, in a grove of kalpavriksha trees, in a nine-
pillared ruby hall, on a throne studded with precious gems
and having the effulgence of an infinite number of Suns and
Moons, the Urdhwamnaya aspect of Shiva sits, half being
Ambika [Devi], appropriately ornamented. She is ever 16
years old, with a smiling face, three eyes and the crescent,
wearing otherworldly, divine ornaments and clothes. With
Her four hands, She holds a drinking vessel (perhaps filled
with brandy!); a trishoola; a book; and displays the chin
mudra. She is attended to by all the Devas, including
Mahaashoda. So shall one meditate upon the Shiva who is
Ardhanareshwara.
Okay, have you got it? But here is the important part. Look
back at the last line: So shall one meditate upon the Shiva
who is Ardhanareshwara. Okay? So that dhyana was of Shiva
as Ardhanareshwara! But the next line continues: pum
roopam vaa smareddevI strIroopam vaa vicintayet Devi
can be meditated upon as a man or woman. And then: adha-
va nishkalam dhyaayetsachidaananda lakshanam -- or She
can be meditated upon as attributeless; as a sign of Absolute
Bliss. And finally: sarwa tejomayam dhyAyet sa caraacara
vigraham: She shall be meditated upon as the quintessence
of all Energy and of all Living and Non-Living Beings
On the Army of Lalita
Q: What is the role of Mathangi, or Meenakshi, in Srividya
upasana?
A: Mathangi, or Meenakshi, is the Supreme Advisor to Lalitha,
just as Vaaraahi is her Supreme Commander.
Q: The military parallel is interesting, dont you think?
A: I would say its a political rather than a military structure.
The political leader governs. Likewise, we have to rule our-
selves with discipline and fight our enemies both within us,
and at times outside us. And so part of what She sends Her
devotees is the discipline we need to move closer to Her.
Q: But the military implication is still there, wouldnt you
agree? To have a Supreme Commander implies that you
have a large army.
A: Yes. Her army consists of the innumerable shaktis.
Q: And if you need a Supreme Advisor, that assumes you
are a leader with certain tasks to carry out and interests to
satisfy some of which may conflict with the tasks and
interests of other leaders?
A: She is a leader with interests of humanity as Her goal, for
which She may require advice for example, on how to make
humanity progress faster and better.
Q: I am sorry if I am asking the wrong sorts of questions. But
I find them intriguing: Leader of whom? Or of what? Advisor
on what? Commander of whom? To do what? And why?
A: No, they are the right sorts of questions. They make you
think. Indeed, a person should know all of these things to be
a sadhaka
On the Lalita Sahasranama Stotram
Q: Why was the Sri Lalita Sahasranama composed simply as
a glorification hymn?
A: What do you think?
Q: I assume it reflects various attributes the sages discovered
upon contemplating Her?
A: No. Think again. Start looking at the structure. Go further.
What is the first name?
Q: shrI mAtA. The Mother.
A: But why the Mother? Whose Mother? For that you must
refer back to Lalitopakhyana [i.e., The Story of the Goddess
Lalita], which tells us of how Lalita manifested Herself.
When the Devas were running away from the asura Bhanda,
they reached a hopeless situation, and they decided to do
the mahaa yaga, which is sacrificing oneself part by part and,
at last, completely. And they did it. And thus were all the
27
July 2006
Kadambari
Devas consumed by the sacrificial fire. And from that fire
arose a power formless; attributeless that coalesced into
Lalita, the Ever-Playful One. And what did she do first? She
recreated the Devas, thus becoming the Mother of all Gods.
Hence the name shrI mAtA.
Q: I see ...
A: So now lets take the second name, shrI mahArAjnI, the
Great Empress. How did She become that? Well, upon being
recreated the Devas decided that, in the coming battle, they
needed a leader composed of all their powers and that was
manifest as Lalita in front of them. So they crowned Her as
the Great Empress.
Now as the Empress, Lalita needed a consort; so Shiva
became a male Lalita like a twin to Her in every respect,
except that He was a male. He was called Kameshwara, and
He was married to Her. And they ascended the throne, and
She became the third name srImatsimhAsaneshwarI on
being seated on the throne. Thus the early part of
Lalitopakhyana is compressed into the first three names of
the Sri Lalita Sahasranama.
Q: And so it goes from there?
A: Yes, and so on from there. Lalitopakhyana is the story of
Lalita and her acts, and the entire Lalita Sahasrama refers
only to Lalitopakhyana. Because that is the summum bonum
of Lalitas story. And it goes on, answering in turn all of our
questions about Her. We wonder, Where did She manifest
from? and the fourth name reminds us, chidagnikunda
sambhootA, She was born out of the chidagni, the fire of the
mind.
Why was She born? The fifth name tells us, Devakaarya
samudbhavaa; for the benefit of the devas. What does She
look like? See the sixth name: udyat bhaanu sahasraabhaa;
like the light of a thousand rising suns. What are Her physical
attributes? The seventh name, caturbAhu samanwitaa; with
four arms. Do you see?
Q: Yes; so it is correct to say that these are descriptives
rather than actual names?
A: Yes, that is what I am saying. When you understand the
Lalitopakhyana, and then stop at each name in Lalita
Sahasranama and reflect on the relevant part of
Lalitopakhyana, it becomes a meditation. You visualize the
birth and acts of Lalita She comes alive! She manifests
Herself. She appears before you. The descriptive names help
you to visualize and relive Her acts. It becomes a powerful
meditation. It makes you one with Her! And thats the whole
purpose of upasana. Understanding and doing it is an
upasana by itself. Hence it is called the greatest sahasrana-
ma. Well, there is another rahasya sahasranama, but I do not
know that one. I just know it is there.
Q: Wow, what an explanation! Thank you.
A: No need for thanks. Just read the Lalitopakhyana if you
havent already. And the Tripura Rahasya, too. Those are the
primary texts you should know: Lalita Sahasranama,
Lalitopakhyana and Tripura Rahasya.
Q: Between the three of those texts, there is an ocean of
knowledge.
A: Yes, and we are still just standing by the shore of that
ocean and barely dipping our hands in and even for that,
we are the lucky few in the world! And there are still greater
treasures out there to discover. Unimaginable treasures!
28
July 2006
Most of the worlds great religious systems can be assigned
a start date at least approximately. For example, Islam
was founded circa 600 CE by Mohammed; Christianity circa
30 CE by Jesus of Nazareth; and Buddhism stretches back to
the historical Buddha of circa 500 BCE. Judaism is much older
than these others its founding can be traced to between
1,800 and 1,500 BCE, based on the patriarch Abrahams
birth.
Hinduism too could be said to date back to that time; that is,
around 1,800 to 1,500 BCE but only if the starting point
for what were calling Hinduism is that moment when schol-
ars say the rishis first orally formulated the earliest revela-
tions of the Rig Veda. And thats a pretty big if, is it not?
For starters, such a reckoning fails to take into account the
mysterious Saraswati River or Harappan culture of c. 3,300-
29
July 2006
The Primordial
Mother
By Devi Bhakta
email : devi_bhakta@yahoo.com
Devi Bhakta is the nom de plume of a New England-based attorney, editor/publisher,
and freelance contributor to many popular periodicals. A disciple of Sri Amritananda
Natha Saraswati, he is also a founder of the website ShaktiSadhana.org as well as the
Shakti Sadhana online discussion forum. With more than 2,100 members and nearing its
25,000th post, SS is among the top three Yahoo Groups in the Hinduism category.
Kadambari
1,600 BCE. Current evidence suggests that this civilization
was recognizably Hindu in flavor and motif, whatever its
religious system might have been called at the time. And
although theories vary widely, modern scholarship has essen-
tially reached a consensus that that there was never any
Aryan invasion per se that so-called Vedic culture was
pretty much an organically Indian development, fed by
Saraswati culture at least as much as any Indo-European,
tribal or other influences.
Needless to say, one of the most pervasive of these other
influences is the amorphous, nearly indefinable body of rit-
uals and practices collectively known as Tantra which in
turn is believed to have evolved largely out of the Goddess
cults of early prehistory. Thus, as Srividya upasakas that is,
as the present stewards of the worlds most sophisticated
living religious tradition centered on the Divine Mother we
can truly consider ourselves the direct heirs of the oldest liv-
ing religion of humankind; a tradition that, more palpably
than any other, directs our gaze into the darkest depths of
human prehistory, as historian Thomas McEvilley wrote in
2002.
By way of context, McEvilley was attempting to trace the
history of the concepts of chakras, kundalini, and other early
Tantric concepts of the subtle anatomy. His search began
when he found a fascinating passage in Platos Timaeus (c.
360 BCE), in which the Greek philosopher described a mysti-
cal system of human physiology that was virtually identical
to the earliest Hindu formulations kundalini, chakras,
susumna, ida and pingala, and so on; it was all there! The ter-
minology was Greek, of course, but the ideas described were
almost exactly the same. The obvious initial conclusion was
that early contacts between ancient Greece and ancient India
had facilitated this transfer of knowledge except that, in
the course of his dialogue, Plato cites another Greek source
(now lost) from some 1,500 years earlier; i.e., long before any
known contact between Greek and Indian culture.
So, McEvilley reasoned, there must have been a common
ancestor but who was it? Bronze Age Sumer, perhaps? The
archeological evidence does suggest significant cultural
exchanges between the Harappan civilization and ancient
Mesopotamia. But as he dug deeper and deeper, McEvilley
realized that Sumer, too, had inherited these concepts from
some earlier source. Tracing tantalizing leads through ancient
China, ancient Eurasia, eventually even as far afield as
ancient Africa and aboriginal Australia he finally concluded
that Tantric physiology is not exclusively an Asian element;
that it seemed, in fact, to be extremely ancient and [to]
have been diffused widely at an early level of human culture
perhaps even by that hypothetical wave of migration that
brought the ancestors of the proto-Australoid people out of
Africa.
That is to say, the conceptions that eventually evolved into
Tantra had essentially emerged and evolved together with
the earliest reflections and inner explorations of the modern
human mind itself. Certainly, in these earliest incarnations,
the basics of proto-Tantric physiology had not yet fully
formed into the precise and intricate system described by
Plato, much less the dazzlingly complex, elegantly refined
sophistication of the Hindu Tantric system that has come
down to us today as Srividya.
But the base concepts were there, and they spread along
with prehistoric human migrations; seemingly as ingrained as
our very DNA; through millennia and cultures, throughout
the ancient world, the concepts spread and evolved. And
then, over time, they faded and, in culture after culture,
were eventually lost (though the primordial power of these
concepts caused them to persist even where their original
meanings are long forgotten: Take, for example, the
caduceus, symbol of the medical profession still stylized as
part of the American Medical Associations registered trade-
mark two serpents, intertwined up a central staff; the ida,
the pingala and the susumna).
But the full import of these primal symbols and concepts
were not lost everywhere; they were not forgotten by all.
One civilization continued to preserve and expand upon the
ancient precepts. Among the worlds great religions,
Hinduism alone maintained primarily in its Shakta branches
and particularly in its Srividya schools a living and appar-
ently uninterrupted (dare we say umbilical?) connection back
to the dawn of human history; to some of the very first spir-
itual revelations and expressions of our earliest ancestors.
And so it has come to pass that we here in the high-tech,
Web-connected, satellite-linked, instant-communication
world of the 21st Century find ourselves at the feet of a
great soul such as Guruji. A no-nonsense nuclear physicist, a
scientist and educator of the highest caliber, and a fully real-
ized spiritual master on this most ancient of paths he is
truly a worthy inheritor of this unimaginably vast body of
ancient wisdom. Like those who came before him, Guruji
today explains to us those same primordial concepts of the
Devi, of kundalini and Tantric physiology but nowadays its
in terms of current technologies, the latest book and movies,
cutting-edge discoveries of quantum physics. But amazingly,
it still makes perfect sense! And even more importantly, it
still works! Can you imagine the sheer honor of being part of
such a history?
Since we are already speaking of ancient connections, let us
inquire a bit further into our roots. For just as the essential
concepts of the subtle body retain their vital role in Srividya
practice to this day, so does the central role of our Divine
Mother.
30
July 2006
Kadambari
The Primordial Mother
Anatomically modern humans that is, people with essen-
tially the same physical appearance and intelligence as our
own first appeared on Earth between 40,000 and 35,000
years ago. As pre-human levels of sentience and self-
awareness brightened into full-blown, abstract human con-
sciousness, the expression of this consciousness almost
immediately blossomed forth in a myriad of tangible expres-
sions a phenomenon that is technically known as the Early
Upper Paleolithic Explosion.
Why explosion? Well, at first the archaeological record
shows nothing; then perhaps a few crude tools; and then
suddenly; as if out of nowhere the most wonderful prolif-
eration of human art and artifacts. (For those who may be
interested, the South African anthropologist and archaeolo-
gist David Lewis Williams explores this development in depth
in his brilliant 2002 study entitled, The Mind in the Cave:
Consciousness and the Origins of Art.)
These early human artists were not the grunting, heavy-
browed, club-wielding troglodytes of the popular imagina-
tion; on the contrary, their work shows astonishing delicacy
and sophistication. For example, the ancient cave paintings
at Lascaux and Chauvet are not primitive, cartoonish stick
figures. In fact, they are magnificent in their execution,
nuance and attention to detail; the cave walls were painstak-
ingly prepared, sized and primed prior to painting (which is
largely why the paintings have survived so vividly to this day);
rock contours were incorporated into the imagery; the
paints were carefully blended and tempered over heat;
motion, shadowing and three-dimensional effects were ren-
dered through multiple overlays of images, for an effect
that is almost modern in its impact.
The great Spanish painter Pablo Picasso awestruck upon
examining the Lascaux paintings shortly after their discovery
in 1940 quietly remarked: We have invented nothing.
And so it is with the worship of Devi. Archaeological excava-
tions of prehistoric sites yield, at the earliest strata, hun-
dreds of human [figures], almost always pregnant women
with only rare examples of males. The frequent arrange-
ment of these figures in astronomically oriented firepits and
so on strongly suggests a religious function. Most of the fig-
urines are faceless, or extremely stylized. Only essential
qualities are defined, and what appears to be deliberate
ambiguity and implied geometry leave much to the imagina-
tion: nudes without arms and feet, breasts without nipples,
pubic triangles without sexual details, according to Randall
White in his survey, Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of
Humankind. Curves and swellings evoke female reproductive
states and anatomical qualities, but are not constrained by
any degree of specific detail.
Across the Eurasian landmass, these female figures are
numerous and ubiquitous: Ivory and soft stone sculptures
representing women were excavated from the Atlantic coast
of France to the Bering Straits of Siberia, with the largest
numbers being found on the Russian plain, White explains.
While it may be true that dead men dont talk, these women
who had been in the ground for 20,000 years spoke volumes
to archaeologists. Like the cave paintings, these evocative
artifacts immediately stirred debate among scholars and
raised questions as to their meanings. (To learn more about
the details and implications of these discoveries, N. N.
Bhattacharyyas The Indian Mother Goddess is a great place
to start.)
For purposes of this essay, we need not linger over the mod-
ern Near and Middle East, where the ancient Goddess cults
have been abundantly studied and documented. Instead, let
us proceed directly into India, where we find a similar histor-
ical record but also an utterly unique circumstance in that
this ancient inheritance remains a living tradition.
Shakta Tantrism has its roots in prehistoric concepts of a
fertile Mother Goddess and ancient systems for Her wor-
ship, explains M.C. Joshi, former Director General of the
Archaeological Survey of India in New Delhi. Joshi notes that
the earliest example so far of an Indian mother goddess fig-
urine was found near modern-day Allahabad; She belongs to
the Upper Paleolithic era, as we might expect carbon 14
determinations date Her to somewhere between 24,000 BCE
and 18,000 BCE. Also found in that stratum, this time near
Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh, are colorful stones marked with
natural triangles nearly identical to similar stones still
under worship in the area as Argarimai or Mother Fire.
G.R. Sharma, the late archaeologist who discovered all of
these pieces, related them to a primitive Mother Goddess
cult, even suggesting that the stones with triangles (demon-
strating once again what White referred to as a geometry
leaving much to the imagination) may demonstrate con-
nections to the later Tantric use of yantras, in which triangles
manifest a vital symbolism connected with fertility.
If, as this data suggests, the roots of Shaktism stretch back
some 40,000 years, to the very dawn of human conscious-
ness, it follows that approximately 99 percent of the history
of the human consciousness and mind belongs to the Devi.
By comparison, the Christian era occupies a mere .05 percent
of that span; Islam barely half that. And using even the earli-
est estimations lets say 4,000 years ago the period since
the composition of the Vedas, modern Vedic Hinduism
spans a mere 10 percent of humanitys spiritual develop-
ment. The remaining 90 percent belongs, once again, to Devi
a fact of which the seers of the Vedas were very much
aware.
31
July 2006
Kadambari
The Mysterious Aditi
There is an iconographically striking form of the Devi whose
images can be found distributed almost evenly throughout
India. This mysterious, lotus-headed Goddess who is almost
always portrayed with Her legs open and raised in a manner
suggesting either birthing, self-display, or sexual receptivity
is most frequently referred to today as Lajja Gauri, though
She is also known as Adya Shakti, Matangi, Renuka, and many
other names.
The abundance of names may be due to regional replace-
ments of a lost original name, suggests Carol Radcliffe
Bolon, assistant curator of South and Southeast Asian Art at
the Sackler and Freer Galleries in Washington, D.C.
I have asked a few experienced upasakas whether they knew
of any mantric or yantric representations of Lajja Gauri
they did not. You see, one of them told me, Lajja is Aditi,
the primordial mother. She is unimaginably ancient. Aditi!
Now we are getting somewhere! Monier-Williams Sanskrit-
English Dictionary assigns to the name Aditi the concepts of
boundlessness, immensity, inexhaustible abundance, unim-
paired condition, perfection, creative power; as a proper
noun, it defines Her as one of the most ancient of the Indian
goddesses ([her name implying] Infinity or the Eternal and
Infinite Expanse).
This same Aditi is referenced in the Rig Veda in terms that
perfectly express Lajja Gauris iconography and since the
Vedas are said to be entirely composed of mantras, perhaps
we have found a suitable one for Her in the following pas-
sage:
devAnAm yuge prathame.asataH sadajAyata |
tadAA anvajAyanta taduttAnapadas pari ||
bhUrjajNa uttAnapado bhuva AA ajAyanta |
aditerdakSHoajAyata dakSHAd vaditiH pari ||
In the first age of the gods, existence was born from non-
existence.
The quarters of the sky were born from Her who crouched
with legs spread.
The Earth was born from Her who crouched with legs
spread,
And from the Earth the quarters of the sky were born.
(Rg Veda, X.72.3-4)
The Sanskrit scholar Wendy Doniger OFlaherty identifies
Aditi as the female principle of creation or infinity, whose
designation uttAnapad refers to a position associated both
with yoga and with a woman giving birth, as the Mother
Goddess is often depicted in early sculpture: literally, with
feet stretched forward, more particularly with knees drawn
up and legs spread wide.
Bolon agrees that the form of the Goddess most widely
known today as Lajja Gauri fits the Vedic descriptions of the
Mother of the Gods, Aditi, adding that Her images were wor-
shiped by medieval royalty and aristocracy but that the
unlettered artisans who carved Her images and many of the
humbler devotees who worshiped Her were probably
unaware of this formidable pedigree.
In this case, however, ignorance of elite interpretations was
probably not much of a handicap: Lajjas visual connotations
are abundantly clear. Her frequent juxtaposition with the
Shiva linga, as well as Her recurrent association with both lion
vahanas and Ganapati, suggest beyond a doubt that She was
considered a manifestation of the Supreme Devi, specifically
in Her form as Parvati, or Gauri. Her size (always equal to
Shivas), and the prominent display of Her full breasts (sug-
gesting life-giving nurture and sustenance) and yoni (sug-
gesting generative, creative power) indicate that She proba-
bly served as the Feminine counterpart to the Masculine
linga.
Bhattacharyya, in his History of the Sakta Religion, refers to
a seal unearthed at Harappa [a Saraswati Culture site], show-
ing a nude female figure, head downwards and legs
stretched upwards, with a plant issuing out of Her womb,
which may be a proto-Aditi/Lajja Gauri figure. Similar images,
some sculpted as recently as the 19th century, can still be
found in Rajasthan, part of the region where the Saraswati
Civilization once flourished.
In discussing the Harappan seal, Bhattacharyya posits that in
the pre-Vedic religion of India, a great Mother Goddess, the
personification of all the reproductive energies of nature,
was worshiped. ... The Harappan Magna Mater [Great Mother]
was probably reflected in the [later, Vedic] conception of
Aditi, the mother of the gods, thought to be a goddess of
yore even in the Rig Veda itself. And here is where we find
the Vedic rishis understanding of this Goddess, who was
apparently as old as human consciousness itself:
aditirdyaur aditirantarikSHam aditirmAtA sa pitA sa putraH |
vive devA aditiH paNca janA aditirjAtam aditirjanitvam ||
Aditi is the sky
Aditi is the air
Aditi is all the gods...
Aditi is the Mother, the Father, and Son
Aditi is whatever shall be born.
(Rg Veda, I.89.10)
Aditi, Bhattacharyya concludes, was the most ancient
Mother of the Gods, whose original features [had become]
obscure even in the Vedic age. Despite Her extreme antiqui-
ty, Lajja Gauri is still actively worshiped even today as a fer-
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Kadambari
tility goddess in some remote, rural locales. But we mustnt
let that obscure the totality of Her original (and eternal) sig-
nificance.
During the 6th to 12th centuries CE a period in which
Tantric kingdoms flourished across India (as detailed by
David Gordon White in his 2003 study, The Kiss of the Yogini)
the cult of Aditi/Lajja Gauri grew prodigiously. Her images
proliferated, especially in central India both in small terra
cotta figures for use in home shrines, and in large (even life-
size) stone sculptures for richly endowed temples.
By the 13th century, however, She had begun a long slide into
obscurity. Scholars partially attribute the decline to Indias
Muslim and later British Christian rulers and their intolerance
toward portrayals of human (and particularly female) nudity
and sexuality. Another possible factor was the continued
evolution of the Tantric systems, which developed ever more
subtle and abstract ways of depicting the primal, creative
force of the Divine Feminine.
Lajja Gauri and Her Symbolism
Several myths exist concerning Lajja Gauri, but most scholars
consider them to be inauthentic, late attempts to replace
the Goddesss original, forgotten lore. Many of these tales
involve a dominant Lord Shiva testing his wifes modesty by
publicly disrobing Her, whereupon Her head either falls off or
sinks into Her body from shame, thereby proving Her purity
and providing a more Shiva-centric explanation of how
such a boldly self-displaying Goddess got a name like Lajja
Gauri; literally, Modest Parvati or Ashamed Parvati.
More useful clues to Lajjas actual meaning may be found in
the oral folktales that still circulate about Her in rural India.
For example, as noted above, She is sometimes referred to
as Matangi, the outcaste form of Parvati, who is known for
ignoring and flaunting societys rules, hierarchies and con-
ventions. Elsewhere, She is called Renuka another outcaste
woman, beheaded by a high-caste man. Rather than dying,
Renuka grew a lotus in place of Her head and became a
Goddess. These stories both involving the deification of an
outcaste woman seem, among many other implications of
course, to suggest the irrepressibility of the Feminine
Principle. And lest we underestimate the primal persistence
and importance of this archetype to the human psyche,
recall (in keeping with our discussion above) that the oldest
known sculpture made by a human being the so-called
Willendorf Goddess or Venus, created some 30,000 to
40,000 years ago also depicts a nude female deity with a
flower for a head.
Whatever Lajja Gauris ultimate origins, She is clearly a very
auspicious Goddess. Everything about Her suggests life, cre-
ativity, and abundance. Her images are almost always associ-
ated with springs, waterfalls and other sources of running
water vivid symbols of life-giving sustenance. Her belly usu-
ally protrudes, suggesting fullness and/or pregnancy; in ear-
lier renderings, Her torso was often portrayed as an actual
pUrna kumbha (brimming pot), another ancient symbol of
wealth and abundance. Lajja Gauris head is usually a lotus
flower, an extremely powerful, elemental symbol of both
material and spiritual well-being. (Interestingly, todays
images of Lakshmi patroness of wealth and material fulfill-
ment are also rife with water, pots and lotuses.)
The often vine-like portrayal of Lajja Gauris limbs suggests a
further creative association the life-giving sap of the plant
world; She is vegetative as well as human abundance. Her
images are virtually always prone, laying at or below floor
level in Her characteristic uttAnapad posture, as though ris-
ing from the Earth itself, a manifestation of the primordial
Yoni from which all life springs. Indeed, Her birthing/sexual
posture unambiguously denotes fertility and reproductive
power. This is Devi as the Creator, as Mother of the Universe,
as the Life-Giving Force of Nature. The late scholar David
Kinsley, author of several respected studies of the Goddess
in India, noted:
Some very ancient examples have been discovered in India
of nude goddesses squatting or with their thighs spread ...
The arresting iconographic feature of these images is their
sexual organs, which are openly displayed. These figures
often have their arms raised above their bodies and are
headless or faceless. Most likely, the headlessness of the fig-
ures [is intended to] focus attention on their physiology,
[placing the] emphasis on sexual vigor, life, and nourishment
[rather than an individual persona].
Joshi has even drawn some tentative lines of association with
the later Tantric Mahavidya (Wisdom Goddess) known as
Chinnamasta, the self-decapitating Goddess. Bolon, for her
part, judges that the artistically finest Lajja Gauri sculpture
still in existence is a life-sized c. 650-700 CE murthi, original-
ly worshiped at the Naganatha Temple in Naganathakolla,
Bijapur District, Karnataka. That sculpture (see accompanying
illustration) is now housed at the Badami Museum. Of Her
image, Bolon writes:
The modeling of the female figure is supple and sensitive.
The suggestion of soft, sagging stomach flesh, like the slack-
ening of a womans abdomen after childbirth, is masterly.
The breasts are firm with folds of flesh beneath them. The
arms and shoulders are delicate and feminine. The legs, in
uttanapad, are spread more naturally than in other [Lajja
Gauri] images; with the knees up, the feet are flexed with
soles up, and the toes are tensed. The nude body is orna-
mented with necklace, channavira [body-encompassing jew-
33
July 2006
Kadambari
elry that hangs from the neck, crosses between the breasts,
passes around the waist and up the back], girdle, bracelets,
and armlets that are like a vine tendril wrapping around the
arms and actually ending in a leaf. Tassels of the anklets also
seem plantlike. There is a cloth woven through the thighs.
In place of a head, a half-open lotus flower, sits like a ruff on
[Her] shoulders, turned three-quarters toward the viewer.
The goddess holds, to either side of Her lotus head, a half-
open, smaller lotus flower, the stalk of which winds around
Her hand. The fingers themselves have a tentril-like quality.
The fingers of the right hand seem to form a svastika, sym-
bol of fortune and well-being. No doubt, the suggestion of
Her relation to vegetation is intended. ... This image is a mas-
terpiece of fluid modeling and conscious symbol-making.
As with the first artistic expressions of human consciousness
in the Upper Paleolithic era, the primordial antiquity of the
image does nothing to diminish the subtle elegance and
refinement of Her beauty both in the conception and in
the physical representation. For those of us on the path of
Srividya, She is a reminder of both the ultimate simplicity and
the overwhelming antiquity of the teachings that we follow.
34
July 2006
There are four words in the title of this article: Padma is
Lotus. PAda stands for the (Divine) Feet. DhUli means dust;
that is, dust from the Divine Feet. PAdukA is sandal.
Accordingly, in this article we shall talk about the Lotus Feet
of God, the Dust of the Divine Feet and Sandals of Divinity.
And in talking about them we shall go through a vast spec-
trum of Hindu religious thought.
Mystics, Saints and Acharyas all through the centuries have
gone into raptures over precisely these concepts: The Divine
Feet constitute the ultimate solace for all sorrows.
Nammalwar, the soul of the twelve great Vaishnava Alwars,
right in the very first line of his immortal work, glorifies the
Divine Feet, saying tuyarvaru chuDar aDi; that is, the glow-
ing feet of the Lord, which blast away all gloom and grief. He
adds uyarvaRa uyarnalam uDayavan: The Lords glories and
qualities are of a superlative kind; there is nothing greater
than this. According to Vaishnava tradition, it is the Lords
feet that have incarnated as Nammalwar. The vertical line or
lines worn by orthodox devotees of Vishnu on their forehead
35
July 2006
Lotus Feet,
Holy Dust, Divine
Sandals...
By Prof. V. Krishnamurthy,
email : profvk@yahoo.com
Retired Professor of Mathematics, BITS, Pilani, India.
Educated from boyhood on scriptural literature by his own father,
Professor Krishnamurthy is the author of several books on Hinduism,
and a regular contributor of articles to the Yahoo Group, Advaitin.
Padma-pAda-dhUli-pAdukA
Kadambari
is the symbol of the Lords Divine Foot. The lotus feet of the
Divine are ageless and faultless; they eradicate all our mis-
deeds so goes one Vedic mantra: caraNaM pavitraM vitataM
purANaM yena pUtas-tarati dushhkRtAni. This is the mantra
customarily used when we ritually wash the feet of elders,
mystics and Acharyas.
Divine Feet & Their Dust
Whenever we refer to the Divine Feet, it is customary to
refer to them as Lotus Feet. The lotus flower is an ancient
divine symbol, its unfolding petals suggesting the expansion
of the soul. The growth of its pure beauty from the mud of
its origin holds a benign spiritual promise. Despite the fact
that though it grows amidst mud and slime, it does not carry
even an iota of its unclean surroundings an indication of
how pure the Lords feet are in spite of the fact that they
are ever being touched by all and sundry in the entire world.
Recall that the Creator Brahma and the Goddess Lakshmi
divinities of potency and wealth are both associated exclu-
sively with the lotus symbol.
The steps that the Lords Divine Feet take are so great that
He is known as the Great One who measured or spanned the
entire Universe; ulagalanda-perumAL in Tamil. He is amita-
vikramaH, the One who has an unlimited span of stride. He is
also tri-vikramaH, the One Who spanned the three worlds by
His strides; trivikrama also meaning that He pervades the
three Vedas by His Power a hint, incidentally, that His Power
to shower Grace resides in His Feet! The Vishnu-Sahasranama
gives eka-pAd as one of His names, and this glorifies the
Divine Feet even further, for it means that the entire
Universe is part of his one foot.
This idea resonates again with the statement in the
Purushha-sUkta (which recurs in both the Rig Veda and the
Yajur Veda), padosya vishvA bhUtAni, meaning, All these
beings emanated from His Divine Foot. This concept that He
pervades, permeates and generates the whole Universe is
one of the fountainhead concepts of Hinduism. It actually
distinguishes the Hindu religion from every other. In the Gita
also this thought is reproduced in the same language by the
Lord vishhTabhyAham-idam kRtsnaM ekAmshena sthito
jagat: This whole Universe is supported by just one infinites-
imal part of Me.
The Divine Mothers Divine Feet are similarly glorified in the
Lalita Sahasranama. nakha-dIdhiti-samchinna-namaj-jana-
tamo-guNA the bright rays emanating from Her toenails
dispel the darkness of Her devotees. In other words, medi-
tation on Her feet dispels ignorance the ignorance that
causes our bondage to the transmigratory cycle of births
and deaths. In a similar vein, Shankara, in the fourth verse of
his Soundarya Lahari, praises the Divine Feet in superlative
terms: Oh Mother of the Universe, Deities other than You
reveal their divine form by showing the abhaya-mudrA [the
hand sign proclaiming Have no fear] with their right hand,
and the vara-mudrA [the hand sign granting desired boons]
with their left hand. But You are holding four different
objects in your hands, and thus they do not show the
mudras. Does it not mean that not only these but more will
all be granted by your divine feet themselves?
The Vedas themselves prostrate at the feet of the Divine
Mother of the Universe. The Lalita Sahasranama contains a
name describing this in a poetically enjoyable way. The word
Shruti, which stands for the Vedas, is grammatically femi-
nine. When Shruti falls at the feet of the Mother, her head
touches the Divine Feet. The dust of the Divine Feet is crim-
son in colour because the Feet of the Mother are always
painted that way and also to remind us of the fact that mil-
lions of devotees have constantly been doing archanA to Her
feet with Kumkum. The crimson dust sticks to the head of
Lady Shruti exactly at the parting of the hair. And thus aris-
es the name: Shruti-sImanta-sindhUrI-kRta-pAdAbja-dhUlikA,
meaning, the dust of whose lotus feet has crimson-coloured
the parting of the hair on the head of Shruti. The dust of
the divine feet on the head of Shruti is also an indication that
even though Shruti may be of vast content and knowledge,
Her knowledge of the Divine Mother is only a speck!
In the second verse of Soundarya Lahari, Shankara glorifies
this dust of the Mothers Divine Feet, saying, Oh Mother of
the Cosmos! I dont need even Your Feet themselves; just a
speck of dust from Your Divine Feet is enough. Even Brahma
creates the Fourteen Worlds using only the strength of the
Divine Dust that He collects from under Your Feet.
Mahavishnu likewise sustains the whole world only due of the
strength of the Dust of Your Divine Feet; and Lord Shiva
wears it on His forehead as sacred vibhUti. When this is the
case with the Lords of the Trinity, where are we poor mor-
tals?!
The great DurgA Saptashati prescribes the worshiping of
young girls as manifestations of the Divine Mother, and wear-
ing the dust under their feet after worship. In the Shri
Vaishnava tradition, to purify oneself with the dust of the
devotees feet, by washing their feet with water and sprin-
kling that holy water on ones head, is considered such a
sacred act that one of the twelve Alwars got his name,
toNDar-aDip-poDi-Alwar, precisely from this act of his, which
became a habit and routine with him once he transformed
his earlier sinful life into one of supreme devotion to the Lord
and His devotees.
The Power of the Sudarshana Chakra
Shankara himself is but a manifestation of Lord Shiva. The
great Cosmic Dance of Shiva, in the holy place of
Chidambaram, includes in its esoteric interpretations distinct
meanings for the raised foot of the Divine tUkkiya
tiruvaDi in Tamil; and held foot of the Divine, or UnRiya
36
July 2006
Kadambari
tiruvaDi. The former grants the ultimate boon, namely
Moksha; while the latter performs what is called obliteration
or tirodhAna; that is, disappearance, or vanishing one of
the five divine functions of creation, sustenance, dissolution,
grace, and obliteration.
Without this fifth function of obliteration, our sins can never
be exhausted. Only by exhausting our karma can we hope to
cross the ocean of the birth-death cycle. And to exhaust our
karma, we need Gods Grace, through his fifth function, to
operate. The dissolution function of God does extinguish the
created world and the entire Universe; but the VasanAs
which we have accumulated through our sins of past lives, by
ourselves and for ourselves can never be extinguished by
the dissolution function. Even after the deluge they all
remain in latent form, waiting for the next Day of Brahma to
sprout again in our new lives. Only by Gods willing exercise of
his obliteration function will the latent VasanAs in us be over-
come. The only way therefore to obliterate all of our sins of
the past is to surrender to His held foot unconditionally. We
must be able to surrender not only ourselves but also our
ego at that foot of His. Then He will certainly release us from
all obligations and bondage or thus we are assured by the
Lord in the charma shloka (Ch.18 Verse 66) of the Gita.
The famous divine disc called Sudarshana chakra emanated
from the feet of Lord Shiva, says the Shiva Purana. It is Lord
Shiva who gave the Sudarshana chakra to Lord Vishnu. Let us
note a disclaimer here imbedded in our shastras, particularly
the advaitic tradition: The above statement implies no hier-
archy between Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu. It is simply a con-
firmation, if one be needed, that between the various mani-
festations of Divinity no distinction in status is meant or
intended just because one hand of the Godhead gives to
another hand of the same Godhead.
The power and fame of the Sudarshana Disc are well-known:
It saved the elephant-devotee Gajendra from extinction by
the giant crocodile who grabbed him from under the water,
and thus arose the famous Gajendra-mokshha chapter of the
Bhagavatam. And it is this same Sudarshana disc that dis-
posed of Sishupala, archenemy of the Lord in His manifesta-
tion as Krishna. Again, at a crucial moment near the end of
the Mahabharata War, when the consecrated arrow of
Ashwattama the sole survivor among the heroes of the
Kaurava army was aimed at all the progenies of the
Pandavas, with the aim of totally annihilating the entire
Pandava dynasty including even children in the wombs of
Pandava wives it was the Sudarshana Disc that entered the
womb of the mother to protect the yet-unborn Parikshit,
who later survived the Pandavas as their only successor.
37
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Kadambari
This was the same Disc given to King Ambarisha by the Lord
in appreciation of his devotion. King Ambarisha was the
great-grandson of Vaivasvata Manu, the seventh Lord of the
entire Earth in the present Cosmic Day of Brahma. Neither
his kingship nor the wealth that goes with it could enchant
him away from his constant and intense devotion to the
Lord. It was Sage Durvasa (known for his short temper, fierce
anger and renowned spirituality) who came to test his devo-
tion. Ambarisha once performed a year-long dvAdashi-vrata,
which enjoined on him a complete fast on every ekAdashi
day (the 11th day of the lunar fortnight), to be broken exact-
ly at a specific time on the next day (dvAdashi = the 12th
day).
On one such occasion, on the morning of dvAdashi day, the
sage Durvasa came as guest, along with his disciples, at the
doors of King Ambarisha. The latter was about to break his
fast but, seeing the esteemed guest, was ready to play host
to the sage. But Durvasa wanted time to go to the river and
perform his morning rituals before he partook of
Ambarishas hospitality. Ambarisha agreed to wait, hoping
that Durvasa would respect his Vrata and come back before
the time of his breaking the fast, which, again, was to be bro-
ken not later than a specific time. But he waited and waited;
Durvasa did not turn up before the specific time. When it
was no more possible to wait, the kings advisors advised him
to sip a little water in the form of an Acamanam by chanting
the names of God. That, they said, would be equivalent to
breaking ones fast, and would satisfy the rules of the Vrata
as well as the protocol by which he would not have eaten
before his notable guest.
But Durvasa, when he appeared, would not agree to this. He
felt that protocol had been broken and that he had been
insulted; and in no time he created a demon from one of his
hairs to attack and kill the King. The King did not move an
inch but the Lords Disc, which was protecting him, not only
burnt the demon by its fiery power but afterward, in its
turn, attacked Durvasa himself! The sage, in sheer fright, ran
for his life! The Disc of the Lord pursued Durvasa wherever
he went, through all the Three Worlds, until finally Durvasa
went to the Creator Brahma for help. But even Brahma
pleaded inability to defend him against the Disc.
Durvasa then went to Lord Shiva, who said, The whole world
is engulfed in VishNu-mAyA. None of us can help you in this
matter. You may try going to Lord VishNu Himself. So
Durvasa came to Lord VishNus abode and fell at His feet. And
Vishnu said: My devotee is greater than Myself, so you have
to go back to him and apologize. And finally that is what was
done. Ambarisha prayed to the Disc to stop attacking
Durvasa, the prayer was heard and thus was the great sage
saved from ignominy and extinction.
Such is the power of Sudarshana Chakra. And the fact that
such a chakra emanated from the Divine Feet of Lord Shiva
only adds glory to His already glorified Divine Feet.
The Sandals of Divine Feet
Great indeed are the Divine Feet; greater still is the dust
under the Divine Feet but greatest of all is the pair of san-
dals worn by the Divine Feet known as PAdukA. That is why,
in the Ramayana, Bharata asks for Ramas Divine Sandals
from he fails to convince Rama Himself him to return to
Ayodhya and resume his kingship. The sandals take the place
of the Lord for fourteen years as the symbolic King, under
whose banner Bharata serves and discharges the royal
duties.
When he reluctantly takes leave of Rama in the forest where
he has gone to plead for his return coming away with only
the Sandals of the Divine, instead of the Divine Himself
Bharata puts the sandals on his head and carries them back
to the capital with all reverence. The joining together of
these two extremities the Feet of the Divine with the head
of the devotee is what is symbolized in the joining of the
palms when one worships or bows in reverence. The right
palm denotes the feet of the Divine and the left palm
denotes the head of the devotee. This is the esoteric princi-
ple behind the joining of the palms.
The greatness of the Divine Sandals has been sung by a long
succession of poets over the centuries. But the heights of
such rapturous ecstasy can be seen in the work called
PAdukA SahasraM (One Thousand Verses on the Divine
Sandals), composed by Vedanta Desika in the 14th century.
He wrote it in fulfillment of a competition, a challenge that
his disciples committed to when they were provoked by
members of another school. Full of beautiful poetry, superb
devotion, conceptually dense philosophy and mythology,
poetic gymnastics, lilting rhyme and majestic language, these
thousand verses were all composed by Desika in a single night
as he put it, by the grace of the Divine PadukA.
The Sandals of the Purushhottama (the Supreme Person; the
Supreme Divine) are known as the ShaThAri. The ShaThAri is
like a crown placed reverentially on the heads of devotees
(for instance, in a Vaishnava temple), who receive it with
great humility. As discussed above, the classic instance of
this act was first performed by Bharata when he received
the sandals of Rama. Before he received them, he requested
the Lord to wear the sandals once and remove them that
is, to step on the sandals and step down (this is described in
the Valmiki Ramayana) and Rama obliged accordingly.
Now imagine this scene in your mind. What esoteric signifi-
cance does it suggest to you? The obvious guess is that
Rama is asked to step on the sandals and step down so that
the PAdukA may receive the Lords spiritual vibrations and
thereby become so sacred as to be venerated and be able to
receive the honor of Bharatas worship from for the entire
period of Ramas exile. This is what the great Acharya,
Vedanta Desika, also thinks and weaves into his verse No. 113.
But three verses later he eulogizes the PAdukA to such
38
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Kadambari
heights that this dramatic scene gains an enormous significance,
such as could be revealed only by the great intuition of a super-
devotee like Vedanta Desika. The argument goes like this:
The PAdukAs of the Divine are more powerful than the Divine
itself. So when the Lord was on the point of embarking on a
commitment to wander the forests of the country for the next
fourteen years, he was relying on the power of the PAdukA to
protect him and his feet. But once Bharata asks for the PAdukAs,
that means Rama will be separated from them. Thus, Rama steps
onto and off the sandals not to give them spiritual vibrations,
but to receive these vibrations and thereby obtain the energy
that will sustain him through the challenge of walking barefoot
through the entire forest. So the poet concludes, If Rama had
not performed this act, how could he have walked barefoot
through the rough ground and dense shrubbery of the Dandaka
forest for so long? Is that not the height of devotion toward
the Divine PadukA on the part of Desika?
The Upanishads say, tad-vishhNoH paramaM padaM, punning on
the word padaM to yield the meaning, The Divine Feet are the
Supreme. Desikas work continues in that strain, saying Lord
Vishnus Divine Feet are the origin of the sacred Ganga (the river
Ganges). And since Divine PadukAs are under the Divine Feet of
the Lord, the Ganga has this constant communion with the
Divine Feet. That is perhaps why, the poet muses, the Lord Shiva
has always Ganga on His head because He feels that, in this
way, He is actually keeping the Divine Sacred Feet of Lord Vishnu
there.
The Grace of the Guru
The inner meaning of every verse in the PAdukA-Sahasram has
something to do with the glory of the Guru. In fact, the Divine
PAdukA is actually equated to the Guru or Acharya. The Grace of
the Guru is considered to be even more powerful than the Grace
of the Lord Himself. Because we realize that, even if we surren-
der to God, we are not automatically able to ingratiate ourselves
into the Lords favor. A Guru actually pleads with the Lord on our
behalf. In fact, there is a saying Shive rushte gurus-trAtA,
gurau rushte na kaScana, meaning, When the Lord is angered,
the Guru becomes our savior; but when the Guru is angered,
nobody can save us. We need the Guru for this role.
Indeed the Gurus Grace can bestow a double benefit. It can ful-
fill our desires as well as taking us toward the Lord. The scrip-
tures draw an analogy of the dream state to our real, waking
state. Just as all dream-experience is only a passing show from
the point of view of ones waking state, so is the waking state
itself, according to the scriptures, a passing show from the
standpoint of the Absolute.
But this declaration does not carry conviction with us, because
most of us have never had the experience of that Absolute
standpoint. On the other hand, we do understand that the
dream-state is not absolutely real, because we do have the expe-
rience of the waking state of awareness. Nobody is able to tell us
or needs to tell us from within the dream that the dream
experience is unreal. But the beauty of the Guru-concept and
the greatness of the Guru stem from the fact that a Guru does
exactly this for us in respect of our waking state. From the
Absolute standpoint, this waking state itself is dream-like. The
Guru, being a jIvan-mukta (i.e., liberated even while living), knows
this as a fact of experience. He is not only a jIvan-mukta who is
in that absolute state of awareness all the time, but he can also
descend to the level of our ordinary, mundane, worldly waking
state and tell us from within our world-dream that this
world is indeed a dream and that we must wake up to Reality
from this dream of ours.
It is the Guru who thus destroys the ignorance of the disciple. He
may do it by actual teaching; he may do it by a mere blessing; or
he may do it by a spiritual fiat. That is why, in the thirty verses
of the Bhaja-Govindam, Shankara ends by referring us to the
power of the Lotus Feet of the Guru to take us upward on the
ladder of evolution. Guru-charaNAmbuja-nirbhara-bhaktaH, the
verse goes. Remember, the Guru is himself the Divine Feet of
God, and it is his Divine Feet that are praised now, in strict con-
formity with tradition (as we saw earlier in the story of
Ambarisha namely, that the devotee of the Lord is more sig-
nificant than the Lord Himself).
The Guru stands for certain principles of behavior as well as of
wisdom. In fact, he not only stands for them but on them in
the sense that the Gurus greatness goes back to the values that
he lived and preached all his life. So both his sandals and the feet
on which he stands represent the values for which he stood! And
therefore devotion to those feet and to those sandals of the
Divine Guru will certainly confer upon one the strength to
respect and reverberate with the same values. The Lords held
foot is the ideal for us to cling close to his ideals and values.
The stories and complex mythology all go to show that it is the
Ultimate Divine that we are speaking of albeit in terms of its
manifestations, names and forms. When we worship the Sun as
Sun-God, we are worshiping the Absolute Supreme. A Shiva
purana may extol Shiva as the highest Transcendental Supreme;
and a Vishnu purana may say the same thing about Vishnu. The
Rama Sahasranama says that Rama is worshiped by Shiva and all
other deities. The Shiva Sahasranama says that Rama is Shivas
devotee.
There is no contradiction meant, implied or slurred over. When
Hinduism says that all names and forms are those of God, it
means it. It is this catholicity of the culture and tradition of
Hinduism that welcomes other religions as so many varied paths
to God and consequently does not find anything contradictory
or harmful in the coexistence of several Faiths. The external mul-
tiplicity is only an expression of the underlying truth of advaitic
(non-dualistic) unity. Multiplicity and plurality are secondary; One-
ness is primary.
Om ShAntiH ShantiH Shanti.
39
July 2006
Om shree gurubhyo namaha
Ya devi sarva bhuteshu matre rupena samsthitha
Namastasyay namastasyay namastasyay namo namaha
She was like the wind. Her visage was luminous, her eyes
transparent and vast with the unsettling gaze that conveyed
her intrinsic ability to see right through us not only the
mind and its play but even the body, as if form had no hold
on her. She was formless, like the wind, whose presence is
known only by its effect. And yet, when she cut through my
mind swiftly like an expert swordswoman and unknotted my
tangled body of hope, expectation and memories at that
moment, there was clear form and a masters attention to
matter, substance, and detail.
My guru was a yogini from an unbroken lineage of female
masters. She was one of those obscure beings who, though
perhaps unknown to the world, possessed a harmony and
40
July 2006
The Living
S H A K T I
By Kiran Mishra, diksha nama Parvati Devi
email : parvathi9@gmail.com
Parvati Devi, a Spiritual Adept, whose Gurus were
direct lineage holders of Bhairavi Maha Yoga,
is teaching Saraswathy River Yoga in the USA
- an ancient and timeless Tradition
that is intrinsically in harmony with Nature.
Kadambari
resonance that was reflective of and embodied in the worlds
beauty and wisdom. This is the world of the Goddess con-
sciousness. She had many names, as no one name could
express the fullness of the matrix of her awareness. She was
Lalita Devi to the few disciples she took in the hills of
Northern India. To me, she was mother, teacher and Goddess.
She was every materiality of form, every element but
mostly the wind.
She lived the path of the yoginis and it therefore unfolded
from her effortlessly in her teaching. Mysterious, broad,
unclassifiable, frustrating the minds craving for certainty
a path of absolute beauty. She taught the true sensorial
nature of being alive; the simple tattvas of a life in relation-
ship to others not in consuming and objectifying others.
For me, she adapted her teaching of non-duality to mantras,
as she sensed my love and affinity for them.
But she would not impose them on me. I was to gain this
knowledge as a reflection of the intrinsic wisdom of sonic
space not as something to be codified, memorized and
then replayed. I went into nature and heard the sounds of a
living stream of water, the pulsations of the night sky; even
the planets and stars. Slowly, I felt how the whole world was
alive not merely an object, an appendage to my thinking
mind. And that Consciousness did not exist in things, but
rather things existed in Consciousness, and were therefore
never devoid of Consciousness the Goddess Shakti. And
then she did teach me formally some mantras.
The Sanskrit language is not technically a language in the
usual sense. Its a living matrix of Consciousness, where
sound becomes form. The intelligence and beauty of Shiva
and Shakti uniting to form and from this matrix, we arise.
We are always appearing and disappearing in this living pulsa-
tion of sound and energy.
Human language, ordinary words reflect the human made
world, which is increasingly mechanical, and our vernacular
tongues change to reflect this. Mantras, however, cannot be
decoded as regular words, because they signify something
vaster and cannot be reduced to the constrictions of the lin-
ear mind. They give reference to a world beyond mere
human thought, which flattens the spherical nature of the
Consciousness of Space into a linearity of thoughts, in the
process both robbing them of power and falsely adorning
them with concepts.
Words talk to each other, like sound bouncing in a chamber;
mantras speak to the spatiality of Consciousness, a sonic pul-
sation resonating through the universe. Mantras are in sen-
suous communication with the Goddess body. They are her
incarnated resonance; sonic pulsations of her knowledge, will
and action. What grace She has for us! The Srividya upsaka
has this in a living relationship the mantra of Tripura
Sundari, in which our life is held, not the other way around.
When Lalita left me because, truly, I would never have left
her she said, There is one more realm, one more place of
the Goddess Consciousness in which she desires you to trav-
el and that is Srividya. Though I have shown you some
things about this realm, there is a living master who will take
you there. And 23 years later I met that living Shakti in Sri
Amritananda Saraswati.
Some love does not die. It is not worn out through repetition
of its freshness; it is not cemented in expectations, nor cov-
ered in a mantle of manipulation. Some love reverberates
eternally in space and this is too much for our mind.
Looking for an anchor it seeks the known, familiar ground of
anxiety, fear and loss. But it need not be like that. It is possi-
ble to find a place closer to the space, not the ground more
like the wind, like movement in space; a tremoring ground of
vibration Her body as mantra, Her mind as beauty, Her love
as a space that is eternal, unadorned and forever free.
Om hreem tat sat.
41
July 2006
Shankara Bhagavatpada in Vivekachudamani once inspired a
mumukshu, a seeker, by saying that discipleship under a Maha
Purusha (Great Personage) is the rarest thing; so if youve
been blessed with that, you must realize that it is the high-
est blessing one can receive on Earth.
This Maha Purusha the Guru gives you a spiritual birth,
nourishes you with the knowledge of Self, and completes
your spiritual practice by bestowing the realization that
there was never a single moment when you were unrealized.
A realized saint does this for His every disciple without fail.
This is the most inspiring aspect of taking refuge in Guru. He
incessantly makes us progress, every single minute, ruthless-
ly hunting down our beastly limitations and making us evolve
to become nobody; a big Zero at which point Brahma Jnana
blooms.
This is the reason why Guru comes into our life to help us
become that Zero. Only when you, the limited being, become
Zero; only when your small mind dies and the Super-Mind
takes over, only then you realize that you have always been
that Supreme Intelligence, which is as Guruji writes in this
issue of Kadambari not just Infinity, but an Infinity of
Infinities.
The Gurus Work
Guru makes you that Infinity. After initiation, he helps you
learn at a rapid pace and, more importantly, helps you
unlearn simultaneously. You dont unlearn the whole gamut
of impressions that have been imprinted in your little brain in
this birth; but, rather, whatever subtle impressions have
been piling up over your past eight-million-plus births
through different Yonis. This process of unlearning helps you
become that Super-Zero.
42
July 2006
THE GURU, GURUJI
and DEVIPURAM :
SAAKSHAAT PARA BRAHMA
By a Disciple of Guruji
Kadambari
It is a long process, spanning across births. But Guru does it
silently, as Lord Dakshina Murthy. Youll have no clue as to
whether any such unlearning is happening within you. Having
come to the feet of Guru, you dont have to be bothered if
you find no trace or tangible milestones of spiritual progress.
Dont be worried if you have no divine experience. If youve
longed for Devis darshan, and if it has never happened to
you, it does not matter. Your Guru silently takes you there all
the way; all the way to the top, where he gives you that all-
time big experience the direct knowledge that You and He
were never any different from Shiva or from each other
neither now nor before nor later nor ever. Not just from the
latest Big Bang that occurred a few billion years ago, but
from the billions of Big Bangs in the past and all of those to
come in the future as well. And this makes you realize that
your Guru is very much Lord Shiva, who has descended to
make you realize that youre no different from Him, the
Supreme Intelligence, the entity who dwells beyond time and
space and name and form.
Guru is a trickster too, a supreme trickster often taking you
off roller-coaster rides until you almost want to run away
from him; rides of freefall and unprecedented ups and
downs, to slowly wash away the even thickest layers of dirty
ignorance that has accumulated upon from ages of yore. He
never warns that the ride will to be rough; he seems to enjoy
pushing you into washing machines of various kinds. What
comes out the other end is a newer you, crystal clear with no
adjuncts; untarnished by any dirt.
When that happens, youll silently admit that those roller
coaster rides were worthwhile; youll realize that unless those
rides were there the dirt of ignorance would not have fallen
off of your back. So never forget that the tricks your Guru
plays on you cannot be for anything but your highest good;
to help you merge you with Himself.
If you have no Guru and the weather in your life has been
way too stormy, its probably nearing the time for your Guru
to reveal Himself to you. Unless youve been mentally beaten
up to the extreme, your attention will not turn toward God.
Getting pushed to the maximum is the surest sign that
youre about to be reborn spiritually. And if you do have a
Guru, and youre still having stormy weather, have no doubt:
It is that nonstop trickster in action, silently working on you,
silently crushing your ego mercilessly. Silently enjoy those
storms, even if they happen again and again. Dont complain.
Just go through them. It will all be perfect in the end. These
stormy rides are His secret ways of elevating your awareness.
At Gurus Feet
There are different kinds of Gurus, of course. There are even
Gurus who have not yet transcended their own limitations,
who have not realized that they are that Existence,
Consciousness and Bliss. They are only on the path to that
spiritual peak. Such Gurus cannot take you there. After tak-
ing you to the farthest that they too have visited, youll
know that they are not established in, but still on, their path
to nirvikalpa.
It is a blessing indeed if your Guru is a realized saint, a seer
who has already experienced and become that Infinity of
Infinities. If your time is ripe, this life at the feet of such a
Guru becomes the last leg of that longest, most timeless
journey as a being the journey back to the source; the
source of no-return and no-limitations; the nameless, form-
less Para-Brahma. This seer, your Guru, is the pushpaka
vimana, the celestial chariot of the highest order, descended
on this Earth to fly you back to Kaivalya, the state from
which you came before Mayas imposed ignorance of your
original identity that of ever being that all-pervading
Narayana. Surrendering to this Seer, the Brahma Jnani, hence
means to have a struggle-free cakewalk, a single big jump to
regaining our original identity. This is what the Upanishads
herald. This is what the Guru Gita professes. This is Krishnas
message in Bhagavad Gita, sloka 18.66:
sarva dharmaan parityajya.....
You dont have to visit Kashi, Madurai or Kamakhya; its all
there at your Gurus feet. You dont have to do day-long
pujas, crores of mantra japa, or practice difficult pranayama.
Just be there at His feet and serve Him. That is enough. This
service beats the power of anything else in this world. Hell
make you perfect, perfect to the core. If He makes you work,
Hell make sure that you perform like a lion. The highest qual-
ities of all kinds, the sharpest intellectual powers, will bur-
geon out of nowhere to bloom and spread their fragrance in
all directions. What youve tried for decades to accomplish
will suddenly come to you in a jiffy. The thing that never
worked will start working instantaneously.
Being the maintainer of passion and feeder of confidence in
you, Guru acts as your backbone, taking care of you even
more so than he would his own child. And He does all these
by just silently sitting under a tree; or probably nowadays in
front of a computer, as if he had not a care in the wood. He
is an Avadhoota; he makes you an Avadhoota. As he has seen
and experienced that nameless, formless entity, he takes you
and lets you sit on his shoulder so you can see even farther
than he saw, experience even more than he experienced. He
always is interested in expanding your awareness to the size
of this whole Universe. So if you are blessed with this realized
saint as your Guru, just hold onto his feet. The place where
such a seer resides is Mathura or Ayodhya.
Guruji at Devipuram
What about spending a day at Devipuram, a small village
housing the worlds largest Srichakra, built under the guid-
ance of the Divine Mother by a Seer Sri Annapoornamba
Sameta Sri Amritananda Natha Saraswathy. People call him
Guruji.
Who is Guruji? He is a scientist, a perfectionist of the first
order, a walking encyclopedia, an authority on Srividya and
Tantra and, above all, a brahma nishta, carrying those who
take refuge at his feet to that great source, the Sarva Yoni.
If you ask him how a aircrafts landing gear works, and youll
get an answer detailed down to the last nut and bolt. If you
ask him about the practical application of the Fourier
43
July 2006
Kadambari
Transform in mathematics, hell explain it to you. If you ask
him about the deepest significance of Maha Shodashi
Mantra, hell draw a few diagrams and explain it to you, as if
you were kid in first grade and he was your mother teaching
you addition and subtraction only now the subject con-
cerns the Universes and Galaxies.
Guruji is silent. He speaks hardly at all. His face reflects that
silence within an unfathomable depth. When he speaks, it is
for a purpose the words slowly and gently flow out, and
soon the silence reigns supreme again. Disciples find him
answering their questions with more silence than words. The
very pauses he makes between sentences and words often
suffice to convey what you sought him for. But he claims
nothing not for the spiritual progress of his disciples; not
for his being an extremely knowledgeable Guru. He simply
says it is Universal Mother who is doing everything, and
requests that we not unnecessarily bring his name into pic-
ture.
His spiritual discourses are quite scientific, mixing both sci-
ence and spirituality to give everyone a good grasp of vari-
ous aspects of how Gods rules work scientifically in the
world. Goddess Lalita is anEka kOti brahmAnda jananI, and
since Guru is no one else but Her, youll learn to create
Universes and destroy them, thus becoming a Godly disciple;
even a super-Einstein. No one would ever come to know that
somewhere in space, Universes are being created. If youre
able to create Universes having become Him, then what is
He? Though Gurujis discourses deeply involve Sastra and
many unrevealed aspects of Mantra Sastra, they always end
in making us contemplate the Maha Vakyas and realize our
true self.
He has a decent HP computer with the latest Intel processor
and he works on it for at least eight hours a day. He himself
designs animation presentations from jotting down the
storyboard, to splitting it into different scenes, and all the
way up to coding them in MX-Director software. His produc-
tions have the strength of a rich aesthetic sense. It is not
uncommon that, over time, people who work with him grad-
ually get the same aesthetic sense themselves and start
developing a richer taste in every aspect of life. If you drive
a stick-shift car for him, hell make you a better driver, teach-
ing you how a good driver effectively utilizes gears com-
pared to brakes. If he hands over a job to you, he expects you
to work on it with 200 percent effort and blesses you with
the strength and passion to perform.
What about Guruji the man? How does he look? He wears the
simplest white clothes white dhoti with half sleeves; an
unpressed cotton kurta; no pomp whatsoever. Guruji does
not care about his dress. Amma makes sure that he dresses
comfortably and decently. After his bath, he puts on what-
ever clothes are placed on the table near the bathroom by
Amma. For the many functions that he must preside over,
hell simply get up from the bed in the evening after his two
hours nap, wash his face, have a small cup of sugarless tea
and get into the car with the same simple clothes some-
times a crumpled kurta speckled with a few drops of dried
sambar spilt while taking lunch.
If a spiritual leader visits Devipuram, he will make them sit on
the chair while he sits on the ground and listens to them. If
Devipuram staff members try to hold that huge, traditional
umbrella over him during any function, hell chase them away
with a few blasts, silently explaining that the whole akasa
(Space) is my umbrella. If any disciple showers him with
undue extra respect, hell ignore them totally. He wont even
look at them. He never appeals to anyones ego nor com-
plains about anything. He eats a simple diet without com-
plaining for salt and spice. He attends calls on the Devipuram
phone himself. He never avoids a call from one of his disciples
or anyone who wants to talk to him. He sometimes fields
close to 50 calls a day without any expression on his face. He
is simple.
On the other hand, he encourages people to live the life they
want without any second thoughts. He assures them that
they dont have to forego anything to gain liberation. He says
that the whole of Devipuram stands for that: Creativity,
Adoration and Beauty. He suggests the latest tattoos that
replace mehndi to women who visit Devipuram. He advises
people to decorate Devi to their fullest satisfaction, howev-
er they want. He is a mix of traditional values and modernism.
He has a passion for creativity and inventiveness. He
approaches his work like a scientist, meticulously attending
to details, whether its writing down the title on a freshly
burnt CD or constructing of a complex, 54-foot-high Sri
Chakra temple.
Guruji Amma at Devipuram
If Guruji is the life-force of Devipuram, then Guruji Amma
Gurujis wife is the spinal cord. The whole of Devipuram
functions effectively because of her Srimati
Annapoornamba. She is the most loveable, friendly of moth-
ers and a highly disciplined taskmaster. If Guruji takes things
easy, Amma makes sure that everything is spic-and-span, and
attended to by all with the utmost care. She often gives
every staff member a bag full of guavas or mangoes to carry
home for their kids but she also makes sure they discharge
their duties without fail. She is a project manager and admin-
istrator of high caliber, and efficiently handles both jobs and
people of all different kinds.
She attends to the needs of Guruji throughout the day.
Whatever she may be doing, if Guruji calls her she comes run-
ning to him. Let Guruji ask for whatever documents or
records even if they are ten years old and Amma will go
into the storage room and be back with the requested mate-
rials within 10 minutes. She maintains accounts of the daily
sales of different photos, CDs, books and maintenance tick-
ets. She needs no calculators or fancy organizers for her,
her brain is enough.
Amma decides the daily menu in the canteen, measures the
ingredients and gives them to the cook. Things are very sys-
tematic and streamlined; if there is a surprise delicacy each
day, it is due to Amma. She is an expert in making different
Pachadis, the ones that need careful preparation to last for
a year. She decides when the harvest of Mangoes will be. She
directs Ammatalli to shake the gooseberries and tamarinds
44
July 2006
Kadambari
in Devipuram only after theyve been there in the tree for at
least two months. She knows the techniques of preserving
the invaluable resources of Devipuram throughout the year.
Whereas Guruji distributes his seven hours of sleep into
three short naps at periodic gaps, Amma sleeps for a solid six
hours during one stretch in the night. She never sleeps in the
daytime she works for 16 to 18 hours a day without ever
getting bored or upset. Even today, at age 67, she is there in
the canteen at 5.30 a.m. sharp, boiling milk for everyones
tea. You have to see it to believe it! Even while watching TV
occasionally, shell also be silently making small wicks from
cotton wool. And if she makes a trip to the Vizag house, shell
carry a ball of cotton wool to continue this wick-making
there. Once she has made enough wicks, shell switch to mak-
ing broomsticks from dry coconut leaves herself, taking hun-
dreds of sticks patiently off the leafs.
One day, the wireless phone in Devipuram started ringing
with its distinctive musical ring tone. Amma quickly told a dis-
ciple in Telugu, mocking that ringing tone in her own funny
way, Occhindi, Babu! Vellu! Ngoyyong ... Ngoyyong (Go friend!
It has come! Ngoyyong ... Ngoyyong)! The disciple, surprised
at her spot-on imitation of the ring, had to laugh out loud
before picking up the call. If she opens a squeaky door, shell
also mock that sound immediately, making everyone around
giggle silently.
When a senior seeker came to Devipuram to discuss a
depressive disorder he was suffering from, Amma told him,
What is the use of sadhana? You should be able to see your
depressions as if they were happening to a third person.
Because you are that observing Atma always. Even today,
she never misses her daily pujas. She has been chanting
Durga Saptasathi for the last 20-plus years every single
day, without fail.
Amma divides the flowers everyday for different shrines,
sends kumkum to the temple as it is required, prepares the
samagri required for homas on Tuesdays, and makes sure
Guruji has his food and medicines on time. She assigns eight
hours of work to staff members. She attends to Guruji
whenever he calls. She attends to phone calls patiently. She
makes those delicious long-asting Avakaais and other
pachadis. She maintains the accounts. She knows where
everything is. Its plain to see that the whole of Devipuram
depends upon her for so much of its everyday, normal func-
tioning. She is usually awake until 10.30 or 11:00 p.m. every
night. She works and works and works, without a break, with-
out wasting a minute.
Come to Devipuram
There is an aStottara Sata nAmavali (Hymn of One Hundred
and Eight Names) of Guruji, revealed by Devi to Sri Haran Aiya
of the Rajarajeshwari Peetam in Rush, New York, which
includes a shloka for meditating on his form. The sloka has a
line sakala vidyAlankAriNIm the one who is decorated with
varieties of knowledge. You can experience this line if you
spend a few days in Devipuram.
But Guruji is difficult to understand. There is way of defining
him into any particular category. Even longtime disciples
struggle to cope with the enigma, to thoroughly understand
him. It appears as though it is the Super-Mind itself that is
working through him; a mind that is difficult if not impossi-
ble to comprehend.
Patanjalis Yoga Sutra speaks of realized souls being able to
momentarily create minds for themselves on an as-needed
basis and destroy them soon after well, we can experience
that here at Devipuram. For it appears as if the mind Guruji
creates for himself in one situation does not bear any rela-
tion to the mind he creates for himself in another. Every
mind seems freshly minted. Still, you will never fail to per-
ceive his unconditional love and the assurance that youre
progressing steadfastly in your spiritual sadhana.
No one knows whether Guruji abides in some other world,
quickly descending to ours to talk with us and then returning
whence he came, somewhere else in Universe. Devi revealed
one more of his names:
| nirvikalpAnanda sAgara hamsAya namah |
The swan that ever swims in the ocean of nirvikalpa.
One early morning in Devipuram, Guruji silently allowed a dis-
ciple to place a few vilva patras (bilva leaves) on his head
instead of directing him to go to Shivalaya and pay homage
to Shiva. Anakapalle Gurugaru, Gurujis Guru an avadhoota,
an adept in 42 of 64 tantras said of Guruji in one of his
speeches that for his tapas on brahma jnana, he should have
been in samadhi forever but because of Devis will, He came
to build this temple at Devipuram.
If you have always entertained thoughts of visiting
Devipuram, but have never made it, dont delay. Time is tick-
ing. The mere darshan of such a seer destroys sins commit-
ted in thousands of previous births and elevates you to
Liberation.
If youve never made it to Devipuram, come. Youll meet
these two souls who have incessantly served society for
decades together. If you think you should come and serve
them, do not delay. It is the rarest blessing you can get. If
youre in search of your Guru, come to Devipuram. However
tight your schedule may be, however big a business magnate
you may be, however knowledgeable an upasaka you are
come! Come to Devipuram! This is a place that will help you
expand your consciousness to the entire Universe!
45
July 2006
Music is a beautiful expression that transports people
to a different world of total bliss. Music and espe-
cially Carnatic music is a medium through which
both the performers and the listeners minds are
deeply engrossed in the nadham that soothes the
mind and fills the heart. Carnatic Music has bhakti as
its prime bhavam, so it is the equivalent to having
darshan in a temple or a holy dip in the Ganga to wash
away our sins. Music is capable of taking people to a
world of ecstasy and divinity.
Nithyasree Mahadevan, Carnatic vocalist
Music washes away the dust of everyday life.
Sanskrit Proverb
In its original Sanskrit, that last proverb above goes like this:
sisureveethi pasurveethi veethi gaanarasam phanih. It is a
famous saying which means that toddlers, animals and even
serpents are captivated by the magic of music.
Music casts its magical spell over the daily routine of every-
ones life. From time immemorial music has influenced peo-
ple from different crosssections of life with telling effect.
Music has been viewed by the Indian people just not only as
an art form but also as a branch of science. It is studied with
reverence and passed down through the generations.
46
July 2006
THE
MAGIC
of
MUSIC
in Everyday Life
By Dr. Dwaram Thiagaraju, Ph.D.
emaill : dwaramthyagaraj@yahoo.com
Dr. Thiagaraju holds a Ph.D in Carnatic Music and has
performed in various esteemed venues.
He works for Kendriya Vidyalaya as a music teacher.
Music is mathematics made audible.
George Santayana
If music be the food of love, play on.
William Shakespeare
Kadambari
A 24-hour day is broadly divided into six parts by the Carnatic
system of Indian classical music, and into four parts by the
Hindustani system. Human psychological and physiological
states at different times of a day were carefully studied and,
accordingly, certain suitable sets of ragas with meaningful
frequencies were suggested by our ancestors, who believed
that exposure to such music would enable them to bring
about their best performance at these various times.
Music in India is also viewed as a way to attain salvation.
Hence it must be understood that these divisions of the day
and fixations of ragas therein are part of an attempt to min-
imize the negative effects of life and enhance the positive
circles of energy.
In the early hours of the day, for example, people tend to
have a half-sleepy mood and drowsy feeling, which is why
early morning ragas in both systems of Indian classical music
are those which shake off laziness and urge the human mind
to awaken and forge ahead with a definite purpose. Later, in
the heat of the midday, we find another set of ragas, which
encourage us to relax a bit and pace ourselves. Evening and
night ragas, in their turn, are exactly what we need after a
hard days work.
The impact of music was recognized by the intellectuals of
yesteryears, who scaled great heights in developing a music
therapy designed to be subtly imbibed into the daily routine
of Indian life. It is with regret, however, that we must observe
how very few of these principles are practiced with the
degree of dedication and discipline originally intended.
Music therapy, as it is popularly known today, was practiced
much earlier in India, and there is a considerable amount of
folklore surrounding the same. We are told of the supernat-
ural miracles that occurred with the help of appropriate
compositions being rendered by various saints, court musi-
cians and composers of India. Also well known are more
recent reports of higher crop yields when the plants are
exposed to the symphonies and certain other compositions
of all-time great composers such as Bach, Beethoven and
Mozart. These events are testimonies to the fact that music
is indeed divine and can influence the human (and vegetable!)
body and mind.
The spiritual aspects of music are immense. The very pur-
pose of music is to attain salvation or moksa, according to
Hindu philosophy. The musicians of yore were looked upon
with great reverence and people thronged to listen to their
music filling the air with melody. Composer-saints led their
life by high ideals and remained as idols for the generations
who followed. Their birth and death anniversaries are cele-
brated and observed with reverence around the world.
Indeed, the magic of music is spread all around the Universe.
The very existence of the Universe is based upon those same
vital fundamentals of physics that also form the basis of
music; that is, vibrations. This universal language of music is
best understood, however, when it is produced in its required
form with devotion, dedication and discipline.
Parama-Siva is the Adi-Guru of Srividya. Hanuman is the
Eleventh Rudramsa, and so He is Siva Himself. When Vishnu
came forth in the Avatara of Sri Rama, Siva assumed the
form of Hanuman to assist him in his purpose of the Avatara.
In one peculiar context, Sri Rama once asked Hanuman, Who
are you?
47
July 2006
Hanuman replied, From the point of view of this body, I am
your servant. From the point of view of life energy within
me, I am infinitesimal particle of you. But realistically speak-
ing, You and I are one and the same.
This same high philosophy is echoed in Adi Shankaracharyas
Advaita epiphany, Manisha Panchakam. Upon hearing
Hanumans reply, Sri Rama embraced Hanuman with affec-
tion and respect. Hanuman and Sri Rama are indeed one and
the same. We have the dictum, Sri Ramo Lalithambika, Sri
Krishna Syamalatmika.
There is an interesting anecdote in the form of a dialogue
between Siva and Parvathy. When Siva proposed to incarnate
48
July 2006
HANUMAN AND
SRIVIDYA
By Prof. P. A. Seshan,
A postgraduate in English literature, Prof. Seshan is an All India First in IAS, etc., examination
and a University orator gold medalist. He has held prestigious assignments at the Accountant
General and Director level in both the public and private sector. The world-renowned
Prof. K. Swaminathan described Seshan as a great devotee of Sri Hanuman, and Seshan has
been traditionally initiated into Hanuman worship by the Venerable Janakirama Sastry of
Nagarjunasagar. In Srividya, Seshan was given the deeksha name Amrithapadanada by
Devipuram Guruji Sri Amritananda Natha Saraswati. Seshan is currently teaching Sri.Hanuman
worship and Srividya to aspirants.
Kadambari
as Hanuman, Parvathy asked Him, What is my role? Siva
smilingly replied that Parvathy would be his tail. Therefore,
Hanumans tail is Parvathy and Hanuman is Siva. Hanuman is
thus the combination of Siva and Shakti. He is the embodi-
ment of Sivashakthiaikyam.
Once, by tearing open his chest, Hanuman demonstrated the
presence of Sri Rama and Sri Sita is his Daharakasa. Hanuman
is the rarest of that rare combination of FAITH, DEVOTION,
and SURRENDER.
There is a beautiful prayer of Hanuman, addressing the
Divine Mother Para Bhatarika Lalitha Maha Tripurasundari.
Hanuman prays thus:
Amba, be pleased with me. I am a small child lying in your lap.
I dont know how to speak. And even if I did know how to
speak, I could not now because my mouth is busy drinking
milk from your breast.
Can any surrender be greater than this?
Meditate on Hanuman in your Chidakasa. Let Hanuman be
slowly transformed into Sri Rama and Sri Sita, who after
some time get transfigured as Siva and Shakti. One can start
this meditation with ones Guru in the Chidakasa; and then
Hanuman. In due course, Siva and Sakti change into two
Divine Feet which, in turn, become SRI CHAKRA.
Realize that you, the Self, your Guru, the entire Universe, the
Divine Feet, and Sri Chakra are all one and indivisible. This
abheda bhavanam is Sri Chakra Poojanam; and it is also the
greatest meditation.
May All be blessed by Sri Amrita Anandanatha Saraswathy
who is the Divine Mother Herself with good health, long life,
enough wealth, prosperity, and wisdom.
JAI HANUMAN!
49
July 2006
The 422nd name of the Lalita Sahasranama gives Devis name
as Sandhya. The term sandhya denoting the three pass-
ing phases of the Sun in a day has been given its own spir-
itual significance at each such phase, along with separate
shaktikendras (energy centers) and places to be meditated
upon. Sandhya-vandanas and sadhanas related to the days
three sandhyas can play an important role in the day-to-day
life of a sadhaka. Most visualizations connected to Devi can
be seen as tied with the Sun, perhaps because the Sun is the
most brilliant object in the human beings experience.
Generally sandhya-vandanas are related to Gayatri upasana
which again is nothing but Sridevi Herself:
yA sandhya saiva gAyatrI dvidhAbhUtA vyavasthitA
gAyatrI nAma pUrvAhne sAvitrI maddhyame dine
sarasvatI ca sAyAhne saiva sandhya trishhu smr^itA|
That which is sandhya is verily Gayatri Herself.
The sandhya in morning is Gayatri, in afternoon Savitri
and in the evening Saraswati.
(Yajnavalkya Smriti)
Chapters 16-19 of the 11th skanda of Devi Bhagavata give
details of Gayatri upasana as the three sandhyas. Apart from
the connection to the phases of the Sun, we can discern fur-
ther inferences to the meaning of the term, e.g.:
50
July 2006
S A N D H Y A
- A Brief Study
By Advaitananda, a Disciple of Guruji
email : advaitAnandanAtha@gmail.com
tvameva sandhya sAvitrI tvaM vedajananI parA
O Devi! You are the one termed as sandhya,
You are Savitri , the mother of Vedas and Para.
(Devimahatmya Stuti)
Kadambari
AtmaparamAtmanorekatvaGYAnena
tayorbheda eva vibhagnaH sA sandhya |
The perception that they are two is broken by the realisation
that atma and paramatma are one; and this is sandhya.
(Paramahamsopanishad)
This is the dharana that the sadhaka should have while doing
sandhyopasana. And again:
bhrUvor ghrANasya ca yassandhiH sa eshha
dyolokasya paralokasya ca
sandhiH bhavatIti etadvai sandhIM sandhyAM brah-
mavida upAsata iti |
The point where the nose meets the eyebrow center
Is where the dhyoloka and paraloka meet.
This place of joining (sandhi) is that, which the wise worship
as sandhya
This is the center in which to meditate.
(Ramotharatapini Upanishad)
This is the manastana of Ajna Chakra:
nAdarUpaM bhruvormaddhye
manaso maNDalaM viduH,
sa vai nAdaH bindustadvai cittaM prakIrttitaM |
The mandala of the mind, located at the eyebrow center, is
nadarupa.
And this nAdam is verily Bindu, which again is nothing but
Consciousness.
(Yogashika Upanishad)
The meaning of the term sandhya is samyak dhyAyati
sarvAn the one in which everything is meditated is sand-
hya! The only point in which we meditate entirely is the eye-
brow center. That point, which combines vyaShTi (singleness
and individuality) and samaShTi (wholeness and totality), is
sandhya.
prAtassandhyAruNakiraNabhAgR^i~NmayaM rAjasa
M yanmaddhye cApi jvaladiva yajUH shukLabhAH
sAtvikaM vA
sAyaM sAma stimitakiraNaM yattamollAsirUpaM
sAhnaH sargasthitilayavidhAvAkR^itiste trayIva ||
In the morning Your (the Suns) form is that of sandhya with
red rays, rajasa guna and Rigveda svarupa.
In the afternoon it is like that of the brilliant Yajurveda, white
and satvika. In the evening, the form is that of Samaveda, like
stagnant rays and dark-formed.
Thus Your form is like that of the day with creation, pro-
tection and destruction corresponding with the karma, bhak-
ti and jnana of the Vedas.
(Samba Panchashika)
The three different meditations of Gayatri used in the three
sandhyas can be seen as parallel to those of the Sun here. If
Gayatri Devi needs a form or symbol, the closest we can
come to is that of the Sun. Thus the three sandhyas symbol-
ize the universal power represented by the Vedas with satva,
rajas and tamo gunas.
All meditations of Gayatri are done in the eyebrow center.
The same is taught in the yoga schools as the meditation
point. It is by the sadhana done at this chakra that we release
the unity of jiva and ishvara, athma and paramathma, brah-
man and parabrahman, shiva and shakti, naada and bindu.
Here they all join (sandhi) and become sandhya. This is where
advaita is experienced.
Time resides at the Ajna Chakra: Without crossing it,
you cannot reach the Timeless domain.
(Guruji Amritananda Natha Saraswati)
Sandhya, or that eyebrow center, essentially denotes the
transition point. The morning sandhya denotes the starting
of dhyana as Gayatri, in the afternoon the completion of
dhyana as Savitri and the evening sandhya, the fulfillment of
dhyana as Saraswati.
In Srividya tradition, the meditation of each deity is done in
the respective chakras of the human body: MahaGanapati in
Muladhara, Lalitha Mahatripurasundari in Swadishtana, Raja
Shyamala in Anahata, MahaVarahi in Ajna and Para in
Sahasrara Chakra.
This completes a cycle. If the position of the chakras is com-
pared to the movement of Sun with respect to the sadhaka,
it will yield the approximate time in which each sadhana is to
be done: MahaGanapati in the dawn, Lalita in the morning,
Shyama in the afternoon. Sandhya points to the center
where the Sun is setting and the meditations on chakras
after this are done after the Sun has set. Maybe it is because
of this that Parashurama explicitly puts na diva smareth
varthalim. Meditation and sadhana of Mahavarahi comes
after the sandhya position, the eyebrow centre, and so
should only be done after sunset, i.e. at the night. Para sad-
hana, which is done on the Sahasrara, denotes the time after
this; so all upasana of Para is and should be done around or
after midnight. After sandhya there is no feeling of duality in
the sadhaka. Mahavarahi Herself symbolizes the conquering
of pride and ego the I feeling in the sadhaka. And while
doing ParA sadhana, the sadhaka IS Devi.
Like the tireless Sun, which never fails to rise or set, so the
sadhaka repeats the cycle over and over, till he or she no
longer has a sandhya.
51
July 2006
Kadambari
hR^idayAkAshe cidAdityaH sadA bhAsati bhAsati
nAstameti na codeti kathaM sandhyAmupAsmahe.
When the Sun of Consciousness is shining all the time in the
sky of heart, there is no more rising or setting. Then where
is sandhya and how can we do upasana of sandhya?
(Maitreyi Upanishad)
Thus once we have attained that unity, even for a moment,
then there are no sandhyas; there is no rise or fall. If we are
lucky enough to be able to maintain this state, then we shall
indeed become Devi, who is the Universe and so the three
kalas the past, the present and the future; and the three
gunas sattva, rajas and tamas fuse into unity and one
lives in Sat-chid-ananda. All this is implied in the name sand-
hya; and when we reach this naama in the Sahasranama, we
should remember and meditate on all the above and that,
by itself, will lead to the shining of the cidaaditya in the
cidaakaasha. Thus doing manana on this name alone will lead
to siddhi and liberation. We become swatantras, which is
the very aim of sadhana.
52
July 2006
The Vedas are the primal source of all spiritual knowledge in
India. They are four in number Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama
Veda and Atharva Veda. The last Veda is viewed by many as
the precursor of the Tantras, because of its magical ele-
ments and its widespread popularity for serving the pressing
needs of everyday life. But Tantra really means knowledge,
or a kind of teaching that was widespread: Tantrya te
Vistartate gnanam anena.
The term Tantra has a wide range of connotations.
Originally it signified any sastra or text relating to a particu-
lar system. Later it came to signify a particular body of reli-
gious texts belonging to the different theistic systems such
as Saiva, Sakta and Vaishnava. Thus the term Tantra con-
notes a system, which elaborates something of great import
connected with mantras and tattwas, which in their turn lead
to emancipation or liberation.
53
July 2006
By Dr. Goda Venkateswara Sastry
email : godasastry@gmail.com
Dr. Goda Venkateswara Sastry is a traditional scholar in the Vedas and
Sastras, with an equal proficiency in Western philosophy.
He has taught the Sastras to many students at advanced levels, and has also
authored many books and articles. He is a great Srividya Upasaka, guiding
many disciples by giving diksha.
TRIPURA SIDDHANTHA
Kadambari
The Sakta system is based on various Tantras. There are 64
main tantras but the Swatantra Tantra or Tantra raja tantra
is the main tantra of the system. The Parasurama Kalpa Sutra
is essentially the manual of the Sakta system; accompanied
by Rameswara Suris commentary on these sutras. There is
another manual, written by Umananda Natha, called the
Nityotsava. These works are authoritative and are scrupu-
lously followed by Saktas, who accordingly are benefited by
the same.
As one enters the arena of Srividya or Sakta worship, Diksha
is the first Samskara. At the time of Diksha, The Guru cleans-
es the subtle body of the disciple and kindles the kundalani
dormant within that disciple. Then, by the various sadhanas
given by the Guru and followed by the disciple with sincerity,
improvement occurs and finally liberation results. Thus
Diksha is the first step in the Sadhana.
Diksha is important, as this knowledge is very secret and is
imparted only to qualified persons. It is not available to all, like
the Vedas. Three kinds of Dikshas were given in these manu-
als: They are (1) Sambhavi Diksha, (2) Sakthi Diksha and (3)
Mantri Diksha.
The first, Sambhavi Diksha, consists of mentally performing
the Raktha Sukla nyasa of Kameswari and Kameswara on the
head of the Disciple. All the impurities of the Disciple, both
internal and external, are thereby removed. This is called the
Sambhavi Diksha in the form of Charana Vinyasa.
The next Diksha is Sakthi Diksha, in which the Guru, by his
yogic powers, forms a light of consciousness extending from
the Muladhara up to the Brahmarandhra in the body of the
disciple; and, by the rays of that Consciousness, all impurities
in the body of disciple are burnt away. This is called the Sakthi
Diksha in the form of the Entry of Sakthi.
Mantri Diksha is the third Diksha. In this stage, 13 herbs as
enumerated in the Nithyostava are first powdered, and then
seven kinds of earth are collected, i.e.,
1. earth from a place where an elephant was tied,
2. earth from a place where horses were tied,
3. earth from a place where four roads meet,
4. earth from a bush
5. earth from a place where a river meets the Sea,
6. earth from the tank; and
7. earth from the place where cows are tied are brought.
Over these a kumbha, a pot, is set; scented water is poured
into it, and then all of the 13 herbs are placed inside. A new
cloth is wrapped around the pot and on all sides of the pot
puja is performed with Bala shadanga mantras. Then the
chakras of Lalitha, Syama and Varahi are placed in the anoint-
ed water. Avarana Pujas of the above three deities are per-
formed to the kumbha, then it is once again purified with the
Astra mantra. Next the Dhenu and Yoni mudras are shown to
it. Then, in a pure place, the Matruka yantra is drawn with
sandal paste and the Disciple is asked to sit over it. Uttering
the Mula Mantras of Lalitha, Syama and Varahi, the disciple is
then bathed by the holy waters in the pot.
After this, the disciple dons new clothes and, adorned with
flower garlands, is instructed to sit near while the Matruka
Nyasa with 51 letters is performed on his body. Then a cloth
is tied over his eyes, and holy water is sprinkled over him as
the Pancha-panchika Mantra is uttered. And then the Tripura
Siddhanta is taught to him. After this three ginger bits
soaked in Vishesha Arghya and sandal paste are placed in the
hands of the disciple, along with some flowers. The disciple is
instrructed to consume the same, uttering the tattwa
mantras. Guru then recites the Gurupaduka mantra into the
right ear of the disciple. Only at this time are the Mula
mantras of Bala and other deities initiated.
Thus, Tripura Siddhanta forms an important part of the
Diksha. Although this is taught to everyone at the time of
Diksha, it is not remembered by all. Hence it is given here so
that upasakas may benefit by it.
Tripura Siddhanta
The basic elements are five; namely, (1) the Earth, (2) water,
(3) fire, (4) air and (5) space. The subtle forms of these five
elements are smell, taste, color, touch and sound. The five
action-oriented sense organs are the mouth, hands, feet,
organs of excreta and urination. The five knowledge-orient-
ed sense organs are the skin, eyes, ears, tongue and nose.
Ahankara, Intellect, and mind made up of the three gunas;
Rajas, Satwa and Tamas are the three forms of the inner
instrument. Prakruti is the form produced when all of the
gunas stated above are in equal proportion.
Chitta is the person called Purusha or Jiva. The various prop-
erties existing in the Lord Iswara such as independence,
eternality, ever-satisfied, total doer-ship, and omniscience
are reduced in Jivas, becoming known as Niyathi, Kaala, Raga,
Kalaa and Avidya. Maya is knowledge of the difference
between Jiva and Paratman. Suddhavidya is knowledge of
the identity between them. Iswara is the same Paratman
when he sees the world as that. When the world is cog-
nized as I, He is known as Sadasiva.
Sakti is the wish of the Paratman to create the worlds. He
who possesses this Sakthi is the first tattwa, namely Siva.
These are the 36 tattwas, which are the subject of this
Sastra. The world, comprising these 36 tattwas, is the body
of the Paramasiva. The Jiva is nothing but Iswara covered, by
His own free will, with the jacket of the five tattwas, start-
ing from Niyathi. When this jacket is removed, He becomes
Iswara. Liberation is attained by the knowledge of His own
Swarupa.
Mantra Upasana
All sounds in the form of the alphabet are eternal. The
mantras have a potency which cannot be expressed. All sid-
dhis will result by strong belief in the Guru, Deity and sas-
tra in the form of sampradaya, as upadesa from his Guru,
Paramaguru, etc. The pramanya of this Sastra is achieved
only placing ones full trust and confidence in Guru, Deity and
Sastra. The knowledge of the Pratyagatman, the sole cause
54
July 2006
Kadambari
of liberation, is obtained by meditation upon the identity of
the Guru, Mantra, Deity and ones own Self, as shown by
ones Guru, and by controlling the mind and pranas by singu-
lar effort. If one is in privacy, one may perform worship with
the Five Ms. One will go to hell if one advertises it. One will
achieve the capability of vanquishing and helping by ones
own Will Power.
Some Guidelines for Upasakas
-- One should not abuse other Darsanas or forms of worship;
-- Barring the Deity one worships, one should not possess
utmost trust on other deities;
-- One should teach all the secrets of the upasana to the
qualified disciple;
-- One should constantly remember, or meditate upon, the
Deity one has taken for Upasana.
-- One should always think as, I am Siva.
-- One should be devoid of six doshas the emotions such as
desire, anger, miserliness, delusion, arrogance and jeal-
ousy. One should also avoid hurting others unless it is
ordained in the Vedas. One should not entertain hating
women in general.
-- One should worship and do service to one Guru, who is
Omniscient.
-- One should not entertain any doubt on the words of ones
Sastra or Guru.
-- One should not earn money for ones own enjoyment;
-- One should always do ones duties without seeking the
fruits of the same;
-- Ones duties as ordained to on account of ones birth or
position should not be avoided.
-- One should perform daily worship even if one does not
have all the ingredients.
-- One should cultivate fearlessness from everything, in per-
forming the duties ordained.
Essential Points to Remember
-- Everything known is an offering to the Deity;
-- The sensory organs are the ladles by which the offerings
are given to the Deity;
-- All properties residing in the upasaka in minute form
such as the Omniscience of Lord, etc. are the flames of
holy fires;
-- Ones own Consciousness is the holy fire;
-- He Himself is the person offering;
-- The fruit of worship is the immediate perception of
Paramatman, devoid of any gunas;
There is nothing greater than the attainment of ones
original, permanent nature.
This in short is the summum bonum of this Sastra. The
knowledge of this Tripura Siddantha is secret and should be
divulged only to the qualified disciple. May all the disciples
obtain the grace of Gurumandala and the Lalita Parameswari
and be blessed with liberation.
-- OM --
55
July 2006
In the usual procedure of imparting mantras during initiation,
it is typically the Mahaganapathy mantra that is first given to
the seeker by the Guru, along with the Gurupaduka and Bala
mantras.
The process of meditation begins with imagining the form of
the deity as described in the meditation verse, called the
dhyana sloka. The dhyana sloka of Mahaganapathy describes
His ten-armed form (eleven including His trunk), with His
Shakti (wife), Siddhalakshmi, seated on His left lap. She wears
lustrous ornaments, and embraces Him with one hand while
holding a lotus in the other. The weapons in the Lords arms
are (sequentially clockwise, from the right lowermost arm to
the left) the pomegranate, mace, sugarcane, trident, and
discus; and (descending now from the left uppermost arm)
lotus, noose, blue lily, paddy and a broken tusk. In His trunk is
a jewel-studded ornamental pot filled with nectar.
What follows is a method to help us to visualize
Mahaganapathys form while chanting His mantra, which con-
sists of 28 letters in the Sanskrit alphabet:
56
July 2006
By Sri Atmananda
email : maakash@md4.vsnl.net.in
Let us pray to the lineage of Gurus from Lord Dakshinamurti to (ones
own Guru), to dispel the clouds of darkness by the winds of grace.
SRI MAHAGANAPATI MEDITATION
A N I N - D E P T H G U I D E
Kadambari
57
July 2006
Om SrIm HrIm KlIm glaum gam
ganapataye varavarada sarvajanam me vasamAnaya svAhA
1. First, while repeating Om, mentally imagine the beautiful
elephant face of the Lord.
2. SrIm indicates the divine couple, Lakshmi and Narayana.
Imagine in Mahaganapathys right uppermost arm the discus
of Narayana and in the left uppermost arm the lotus of
Laksmi. They represent Time and the Earth (in its gross
aspect), respectively. This appears to us as the Time-Space
continuum (the sthiti), which prevents an individual from
experiencing the eternal. We can here interpret this as relat-
ing to an individual in the world and his seeking of a Guru to
him experience the unlimited.
3. HrIm indicates the divine couple, Gauri and Sankara.
Imagine in the second-from-the-top right arm the trident of
Sankara, and in the corresponding left arm the noose of
Gauri. They represent the removal of triputi (the three
stages of experience- the seen, the seer and the act of see-
ing) and of desires respectively. This is the annihilation (
samhara), which is the removal of the individual ego by the
grace of a compassionate Guru.
4. KlIm indicates the divine couple, Rati and Manmatha.
Imagine in the third-from-top right arm the sugarcane bow
of Manmatha, and in the corresponding left arm the blue lily
of Rati. They represent pure mind and secret spiritual knowl-
edge, respectively. This may be likened to creation (srusti) of
a new field of experience for the blessed aspirant by the
Guru, in directing him to follow a given path (sadhana) to
attain a constant experience of the eternal.
5. Glaum indicates the divine couple, Bhumi (Earth) and
Varaha (the boar-faced avatar of Vishnu). Imagine in the
fourth-from-top right arm the mace of Varaha, and in the
corresponding left arm the paddy, indicative of Earths fer-
tility. They represent action and cycle of life (cyclic in the
sense of sowing, reaping, and again sowing), respectively.
Though this may be likened to veiling of the universal experi-
ence (tirodhana), for an aspirant it is more akin to being led
by the Guru to complete detachment, in renouncing all fruits
of his actions.
6. Gam indicates the divine couple, Siddhalaksmi and
Mahganapathy. Imagine in the right-lowermost arm the
pomegranate, representing different universes stacked like
pomegranate seeds; and in the corresponding left arm the
tusk which represents the fruit of all sadhana, Ekam sat, the
One Truth, which is the experience of unqualified, undivided
Brahman as Bliss. This verily is the grace (anugraha) whereby
the seeker dives into a deep state of samadhi upon constant
practice and the grace of the Guru, who merges into him.
7. Ganapataye is the form for invoking the Lord. Imagine
your head resting upon His feet. This implies a continuance
of the above-noted state of Samadhi.
8. varavarada is a prayer to the Lord to bestow upon us the
best boons and blessings. Meditate here upon the ornamen-
tal pot of nectar held by His trunk. Imagine that He is show-
ering it over you and you are drenched. The best of boons is
the experience of the Unlimited Bliss that leads to immortal-
ity; amruta. This may represent the sahaja state, wherein the
realized one goes about his daily chores but remains aware of
his blissful state always. (The dhyana sloka ends with a prayer
to the Lord who is the creator, sustainer and annihilator of
the world to bestow our cherished boons.)
9. sarvajanam me vasamAnaya means let all people be sub-
jugated to me. We find the clue for our meditation in the
word people, which indicates the Universe. The embrace of
Siddalakshmi can be interpreted as the creative urge and the
lotus in the other hand as the manifest (gross) Earth (the last
subtle element; the result by default of mixing the other
four previous subtle elements). Hence we meditate on
Siddhalakshmi the Creatrix of the Universe, seated on the
left lap of the Lord with a firm conviction that the world,
the divine couple and the self are One.
10. Finally, svAhA indicates an offering into the fire (here we
are also reminded of the fire sacrifice, ganapathy homam).
Since whatever is offered into the fire becomes one with it,
meditate upon the above truth and try to be in that experi-
ence for a moment.
Sri Ganesa Aids Sri Lalita Devi in Battle
Bhandasura, overcome with grief at the slaying of his 30
sons by Sri Balambika, commanded his Prime Minister,
Vishanga, to destroy the enemy by any means. So Vishanga
threw a vigna yantra (a mystical diagram that causes obsta-
cles to arise) into the fire-walled fortress; and this caused the
entire army of Sri Devi Lalita to grow lazy and tired. You see,
this vigna yantra had eight powers installed in it Alsa (lazi-
ness), krpaNa (miserliness), dIna (fear), nidrA (sleep), tandrA
(tiredness), pramIlikA (inability to rest; persistent wakeful-
ness), klIbA (impotency) and nirahamkAra (feigned humility;
lack of self-confidence).
Only Sri Lalita Devi-Kameswari, Her Prime Minister Sri Matangi,
and Her Commander-in-Chief Sri Varahi were unaffected by
the yantras power. On request of Matangi and Varahi, Sri
Lalita Devi glanced lovingly at Her Lord Kamesvara. The
mighty Ganesa, with ten arms and his Sakti on His left lap,
emerged from the union of the divine couples glance. He
searched inside the fort, found the vighna yantra buried
deep in the soil, wrenched it out and destroyed it.
Kadambari
He then created six couples like Himself named rddhi-
Amoda, samruddhi-pramoda, kAnti-sumukha , madanAvati-
durmukha, madadravA-avighna, and draviNI-vighnakart and
seven lakh (700,000) troops in His form to engage in the bat-
tle. Viewing the mighty forces arrayed before him, Vishanga
sent Gajaasura, an elephant-faced asura, along with seven
akshauhini armies, but they were completely vanquished by
Mahaganapathy. Highly pleased with these heroic deeds, Sri
Lalita conferred upon Ganesa (Mahaganapathy) the boon of
the right to be worshiped before all other deities.
The Philosophical Meaning of the Battle
The Lalita Sahasranama describes the emergence and valor
of Ganesa in two names (77 & 78). In his commentary,
Bhaskararaya identifies Ganesa as Lord of the Gana, which
are the puryastaka: (1) five karmendriyas; (2) five gnanen-
driyas; (3) mana with bhuddi, ahamkara; (4) five pranas; (5)
five bhutas; (6) kaama (desire); (7) karma (action); and (8)
avidya (ignorance). The destruction of Bhandas 30 sons (who
represent the ego) was caused by the actions of the ten
indiryas in the three states of waking, sleep and deep sleep
(i.e., 10 x 3 = 30) by Balambika (who represents the constant
awareness of the identity of self with Divine), creating doubt
of the jivabhava (individual ego). The word jiva means the
individual self possessed of the idea that he commands the
above puryastaka. When these ideas are destroyed by the
True Knowledge of the Lord of puryastaka (which is the
knowledge created by ascertaining the true nature of the
self), then there are no qualities left to be qualified.
Let us offer our most humble salutations to the
feet of the Guru, who has guided us in this med-
itation.
58
July 2006
59
July 2006
By His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet
This was the Dalai Lamas advice at the dawn of this new millennium.
It is nice reading, and short. All it takes is a few seconds to read and think
over. So enjoy! But do not keep this message to yourself; share it! You will
get a very pleasant surprise. This is true for all, of whatever religious belief,
and even if you are not superstitious. Faith!
GOOD
KARMA
Instructions For Life
1. Take into account that great love and great achieve-
ments involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three R's: Respect for self, Respect for oth-
ers, and Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes
a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them proper-
ly.
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate
steps to correct it.
Kadambari
60
July 2006
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your val-
ues.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older
and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation
for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the
current situation. Don't bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the Earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which
your love for each other exceeds your need for each
other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in
order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.
61
July 2006
Dear Friend,
Blessings from Sahasrakshi !
Devipuram is fast becoming a Global Resource for Goddess worship. You
may have heard about our ambitious project Manideepam. My vision and
dream is that, when complete, Manidweepam will be a place where all of
Mothers children can experience beauty, peace, love and the power to
transform their own and others lives around them, for the better.
Let me tell you a story. In 1984, before the Sri Meru temple was built at
Devipuram, there was a small hillock where I would often spend time in
meditation. On the slopes of the hillock, I noticed a formation very simi-
lar to that of the Kamakhya Peetam in Assam. One day, while in medita-
tion, I had the experience of lying on the peetam, while four others per-
formed a Homam with flames emanating from my body. And during pur-
nahuthi, I felt a heavy object being placed on my heart. Awakening from
my meditative state, I was prompted to dig at that site, and unearthed
from that very spot, a Yantra resembling a Mahameru of a unique design
like no other that I had seen. I later discovered through meditations and
circumstances that a magnificent yagna had been performed at that
very location more than 250 years ago. This Mahameru was the inspira-
tion for building the Sri Meru temple, which at 108 wide, 54 high,
remains the largest Mahameru in the world.
Today, I am very happy to announce that a unique new Mahameru has
been recently designed and created, inspired by the design of the origi-
nal. The Meru has been precisely crafted with the greatest attention to
detail, and embellished with the symbols of the Chaturayatana deities -
Ganesha, Surya, Vishnu and Shiva.
I pray that the Mahameru will bring lasting peace and prosperity to your
home.
With love,
Amritananda
MAHAMERUS OF DEVIPURAM
Mahameru, also called the Sri Chakra, is said to be the
mother of all Mandalas. It is said to have
originated from the Himalayan masters who
practice Mandala meditations. Its sacred geometrical form
is revered in all Eastern traditions.
It integrates the essence of Chinese Feng Shui,
Indian Mother worship, Egyptian Pyramids and the Christian
Eleusian Mysteries.
The Mahameru radiates an aura of Love and Orderliness,
and creates a sacred space around it. Its mere presence is
said to cleanse the home of Vaastu and Feng Shui defects,
ward off the evil eye, protect against
unfavorable planetary
influences and bring about healing,
prosperity and peace of mind.
The Mahameru does not require any formal prayers or
worship, or vegetarianism, to keep in the home;
only a reverential attitude. Its effects are enhanced by the
playing of soft music in the home. People of all beliefs,
religions and sects may reap the benefits of peace,
healing and prosperity, by installing the Mandala
of Mahameru in their homes, offices,
shrines and places of worship, hospitals, healing centers,
prayer halls and wedding centers.
It is a great corporate gift to employees,
empowering them in every possible way.
This Mahameru comes to you from
Devipuram, India
the Global Resource for Goddess Worship and the site of
the largest and most unique Mahameru in the world.
Exquisitely crafted out of pure bronze with
great and loving attention to detail,
the Mahameru comes in two sizes:
10 x 10 x 5 and 5" x 5" x 2.5".
Each Mahameru comes with a Certificate of
Authenticity from Devipuram.
Only a limited number of these Merus will be created.
To place an advance order for a Meru for your own home
or office, kindly log on to our website and send us the
order form, quoting your requirements.
Kadambari
Something to
Cherish and Own
Kadambari
62
July 2006
Sri Villa at Devipuram
Devipuram is fast becoming a Global Resource for Goddess Worship. Now,
a villa named Sri to fulfill your dreams is coming up with an affordable
timeshare concept which allows you or your nominees to stay free for 37
days every year.
What people are saying about Devipuram today:
I have traveled the length and breadth of India, but nowhere have I seen
such a geometric design for a temple- the whole temple is a magnificent
Sri Yantra Maha Kali, Maha Lakshmi, Maha Saraswati, All the Khadgamala
deities are here An inspiring Pyramid structure exhibiting the adorable
passions of Nature Any facilities for over night stay in this Maha Shakti
Kshetra?
I would like to do workshops here - Arrange cultural events Conduct
group rituals Nice if some dorms are here Can we get delicious food
and rest in a cool place in hot afternoons? - Find true soul mates Get
healed Get Reiki, Sauna - Well maintained Gardens and parking will make
this place a heaven Like to stay here all time, but what about my job?
Can I spend a few days here every year? - Any affordable suites for
people who like to serve Goddess here and spend time in peace? - Like to
give my near and dear a lasting gift of staying here
Sri villa will have: a function hall for 150, a dining area for 150, dorms for
72, 6 a/c suites and 30 rooms for couples. The rooms are on offer as
timeshares at Rs 1,08,000, entitling 7 days free stay in season-October to
January, and 30 days off season. Adequate parking, toilets are provided.
If you want relatives to stay in an old age home, they can use the facili-
ties here by paying for 5 timeshares.
Anakapally
Sabbavaram
1km
Pendurthi
RTC Complex
Rly Station
NH-5
Airport
towards
Anakapally
towards
Culcutta
Function hall for 150
Dining hall for 150
3 dorms for 72
6 suits (a/c)
30 double rooms
Garden
Car Parking
Devipuram
Ammulapalem BPO(Via)
Anakapalle - 531 001
www.devipuram.com
devipuram@yahoo.com
+91 08924-237742
Location Plan
Walkable distance
from famous
SRICHAKRA
temple of Devipuram,
the first of its
kind in the world.
Kadambari
Frequently asked questions about timeshares:
Can two or more people buy jointly?
Sure. They share the cost and time allotted.
Can we accumulate unused time?
Sure. An e-card will track records.
Any club arrangement?
We are working on Kondakarla Lotus pond, Buddhist monuments of
Bojjanna Konda, Simhachalam, Annavaram, Araku valley, Borra caves, and
Vizag beach resorts.
Volunteer opportunities?
Yes, many. Rural schools. Medical outreach. Temple services and much,
much more
How can I help?
Please make copies, circulate to friends, give a lasting, loving gift to near
and dear.
How do I buy a time share?
Please fill in the enclosed form with a cheque or DD favouring N Annapurna
@ Rs 54,000 / share and mail it to Guruji, 18-74-38, Kothasalipeta,
530001, India. Phone 0891 3294371 or email to devipuram@yahoo.com
I am requesting you to make Devipuram a "Global Resource for Goddess
Worship. How?
1. Gift yourself a time share in Sri villa at Devipuram. It redefines every year a
purpose and zeal, and relaxes you into peace. It is a small price you pay
for helping yourself and helping Devipuram: by creating a beautiful facil-
ity for all seekers.
2. Circulate the attached information, phone, forward this email to your mail-
ing list of friends. The attachments give details about Sri villa. Let me
know if any one is interested. I will follow up.
3. Think of this as an old age home, seminar hall, marriage hall, a place for
enterprising young minds to work and play. Gift a timeshare or a perma-
nent stay to your aged relatives. Give a holiday to your younger family
back at home. Put your thinking cap, magnifying glass, and compass
ready for exploration!
Love, Guruji
63
July 2006
Timeshare cottages
Each time share costs
Rs. 10,8,000 payable two installments;
Rs. 54,000 on booking and another 54,000
within four months of booking.
Each time share holder in entitled to free
accommodation every year one week
in season (Oct to Jan) and
one month in off season.
Block booking by phone or email to
devipuram@yahoo.com; it is not confirmed
till the first payment is made.
Each time share holder gets a card. Anyone
who shows the card gets accommodation
Function and Dining Halls
Located amidst serene and
picturesque Devipuram hills.
Function hall and dining area are
1700 sqft. adequate for 150 people.
Adequate car and scooter parking and
rest rooms provided.