Transcription:
I understand that this program is being televised live internationally therefore I request permission to speak in English. I asked my daughter Rama to take down notes. At the end of my speech she will summarize my talk in Telugu, so you won't miss out on anything.
I do not know who I am, what made me come here. What is a purpose of my life? What is life? How many times have I come here before? How many times I have to come here again? I know none of these things.
Looks like, there's a part of me, which knows nothing. Another part of me, which says that you are, that I am there, I am, I see, I see myself. It appears that when I am seeing myself that seems to be more relevant than when I have, I have no attributes. And when I started seeing myself, I was afraid. Then I asked myself: what is there to be afraid of? I am seeing only myself, there is no other. Should I be afraid of myself. This fear came and it went when I asked a question about who am I and should I be afraid of myself.
And what is fear? Fear is about something that I do not know about. If I know about something I cannot be afraid of that. It’s only when I do not know, when and I'm in the dark. So fear is ignorance and what is ignorance about? Not knowing who I am. And what is the knowledge that removes this ignorance and fear? That knowledge is called Vidyā – that I am what I'm seeing or knowing or feeling; that I am the fear.
Out of fear came this entire phenomenal world that we experience, that I experience. Fear is a source; fear is the womb of manifestation; fear is a womb of not knowing who I am. But I know that I am what I see then the fear goes. So the root of all experiences and explorations begins with fear. But fear is called Māyā or Avidyā, not knowing who or what I am. And knowledge is knowing that I'm seeing myself.
The fear of death is what I have when I have life; when I do not have life there's a fear of being born. I’m afraid of the unknown part of myself that is the basic drive in all of us.
Devi Bhagavatam says:
jñānināmapi cetāṃsi devī bhagavatī hi sā
balādākṛṣya mohāya mahāmāyā prayacchati
The greatest of knowing persons, the Śiva himself, the God himself, attributeless, formless, indestructible, changeless, acala – She makes that entity limited in many different ways.
The power of not knowing – She has created that difference between the knower and the known. She has created triputi: mana, matru, meya; jñātru jñāna jñeya.
Out of śūnya She has created everything. She is both the source and the cause. She is both the manifested and unmanifested source.
To get anything you need a Creator, but this power did not need a Creator and this power is what we call Śakti.
In Śaktaya philosophy, Śakti is predominant. To create, the male is not necessary, that’s what prathanikam and vaikṛtika rahasyam in the Devi Bhagavatam says.
She created a male out of Her. She created two females out of Her. And who is She, that we are talking about?
This one here – Mahālakṣmī. Mahālakṣmī created Mahāsaraswatī and Mahākālī. They are known as Mahā, because there are no limits to them.
And Mahālakṣmī herself created a pair: a male and a female. She conjoined with Mahākālī and created a pair. She co-joined with Mahāsaraswatī and created a pair. And these three pairs: Brahmā and Saraswatī, Lakṣmī and Viṣṇu and Śiva and Śakti that come out of these three primary Śaktis.
Mahākālī, Mahālakṣmī, Mahāsaraswatī all come out of Mahālakṣmī. The wealth of the Lord is ignorance, negation of everything that’s why śruti says:
na karmanā na prajayā dhanena tyāgenaike amrtatvamānasuh
By tyāga, by giving up, giving up everything you gain everything – amṛtātvam, the immortal, the zero, the śūnya, the changeless, attributeless, you gain the wealth of the Lord by sanyasa, not by rāga. Rāga is property of fear.
And fear changes itself into different forms. The first thing fear created is dvitīyād-vai bhayaṃ bhavati because you think there's something else. You don't know what it is going to do to you and you are afraid of it. If you know what it is, the fear is not there. Out of the fear of death when you do not exist or of birth, when you exist these two fears are the two parā and aparā manifestations of the Parā Śakti herself.
Then the fear transformed into the people who are living, the life itself.
They are afraid of death. So when I ask myself why was I born? Why was I married? Why do I beget children? What is all this drama? What is the purpose of my life? What is the purpose of the life itself?
The purpose of life, to the extent that I could understand, is to continue Life. That is why we marry. That is why we beget children and they beget children, and they beget children, and the cycle of life goes on.
So the fear transforms itself. Its first transformation is the desire to continue life, because the fear of the unknown is to overcome.
And then kāma, it has got many meanings, any desire can be called kāma. But the main desire, is the desire to procreate. That again transforms itself into.
When it's denied it becomes krodha, when it's obtained, it becomes lobha, and when lobha deepens it becomes moha, and mada and matsarya – pride and jealousy. So all of these transformations, the root cause is fear.
Tantra means expanding the awareness about life but you can exist without a form. You can exist in formless ways. You can exist with form, without a form and in formless ways; and finally in attributeless state, called - the śūnya.
So you have three lives, they say cat has 9 lives; there are three lives – one is the manifested life which you are all living, in which we got jñyāna indrias and karmendriyas. We can move, we can see, we can feel - jñyāna. There are windows, through which the knowledge about the world gets inside of us. And you got karmendriyas – that we can act, we can push on the world, do something, hit it, or see; do something to the world.
So our jñyāna indriyas become karmendriyas of the world, and karmendriyas of the world become jñyāna indriyas. So when we make a transition from life to lifeless, or go back to the word from which we came, then that transformation removes the karmendriyas from you, you will not be able to act, but you still able to know, you will still be able to see, you will still be able to feel. And this ability to know, see and feel is called tanmātras.
So drop the karmendriyas, you get into tanmātras. What are tanmātras: śabda, sparśa, rūpa, rasa, gandha, mano, buddhi cit, ahaṃkāra – these are all the different tanmatras. When you drop them, you go into a pre-manifested state of the universe, where currents are flowing in the world. These currents are called Vāgdevatās.
Before the world manifested something was moving somewhere. Something means - matter; moving - means, going from this place that place and this time to that time.
So you see, a spanda, a vibration or energy that we are familiar with, in order to move at all, it has got to have a space in which to move, a time in which to move, and what moves. These three things. These things have been called trinity, trimurtis. And Guru Dattātreya is the manifestation of the Trinity.
They are asking questions, but he is not answering them. You are sitting there as a 16 year old boy, nude sitting under a papal tree, not answering questions. If there are questions being asked they are being answered within their minds. That is the wonder of Dakṣiṇāmūrti. Dakṣiṇāmūrti means, dakṣiṇa –means “right", amūrti – means “formless". Right part of you is formless. One part of you is formless, the other part has a form. Dakṣiṇa plus amūrti, Dakṣiṇāmūrti. Form and formless combined to have Dakṣiṇāmūrti. And Dattātreya is a transition again between the form and formless. So these are two main Gurus of all kinds of vidyās. There are no other Gurus.
The Guru is not referred to a person who is sitting on this chair. He comes and goes, the Guru is not limited to the clothes that he wears, he is not limited to the blood, the <astis>, the bones, the skeleton, the flesh, none of these tattvas.
He refers to the conscious, awareness which is called Māyā. Unless you know Māyā and pray to Māyā if She takes compassion on you, you will never be able to know what is Śiva.
So Māyā is only way to approach a God. Śiva has to worship, Viṣṇu has to worship, or Śakti has to worship. They all had to worship Mahāmāyā. And the Guru represents the tattva of Mahāmāyā
What is tattva, tat tva. Tat means - that. Tvam means – you. Tattvam means - you are that, you are what you see. This knowledge alone can take you from ignorance to knowledge and bring you back from knowledge to ignorance.
She connects these two sides, where you exist, where you do not exist. She can take you from physical to the astral, from the astral to pre-astral, pre-cosmic.
These powers are called Gāyatrī, the creatrix, the giver of life. That is the life-giving mantra. And the cosmic mantra is called Bhuvaneśvarī.
And inside that cosmic power is Bālā Tripurasundarī, the source of the cosmos. Source of the cosmos is space, time and matter and waves of matter that are flowing through. And bindu is a combination of the Śiva and Śakti, they cannot exist separately.
So Śrī Vidyā is a path, a universal path, it cuts across religions, it cuts across boundaries, it cuts across male - female relationships, it cuts across everything. And it represents the energies that are there out in the cosmos, and you are accessing those energies, and those energies are given forms and you are seeing those forms in the Śrī Chakra in Devipuram.
There are forms and formless, the formless are indicated by their nudity; there are no limits.
Just like Śivaliṅga an ovoid it has got a form, but no particular form. It is a linga, starting from unknown to infinity
āpātāḻa-nabhaḥsthalānta-bhuvana-brahmāṇḍa
So from patala to the infinity, you cannot measure that distance. You cannot measure the length of time, you cannot measure the length of space, they are immeasurable. So that is the linga. That is the characteristic of Śiva.
And what manifested this linga? The Śakti.
So when you are doing puja to the Guru here, the Guru nāmāvali. What does it say?
Idrāya namaḥ, agnaye namaḥ, nirṛtaye namaḥ, varuṇāya namaḥ, vāyave namaḥ… and all these things tanmātras come.
They are not the names of Mr. N. Prahlada Shastri. They are not his names, they are names of attributeless tattva of the Guru. Guru tattva is being explained by those names. And that is what you are worshipping.
Why are we are worshipping? Because we want to understand what is here and there and overcome fear. And when you overcome fear what happens? You become God. Fear is the ultimate bastion. When you overcome that, there's nothing else you can do, except become God.
So may Devī bless you all, to overcome your ignorance and approach and become God.
Thank you. God Bless you.
September 26, 2013
