4) Cidagnikuṇḍasambhūtā
Lalitā is born out of the fire of consciousness. Fire is always a result of friction. In order to produce Lalitā consciousness, the direct revelation of Godhead within oneself, consciousness has to be set on fire! How can consciousness be set on fire? By creating friction in the mind. Friction and fire can be set up in the mind by not allowing the mind to function in the normal way it tries to function.
(How does the mind normally function?) The mind functions through the interplay of memory, logical abstractions, symbol associations, projections and biasses, or thresholds for recognition. Memory is a past record of a sequence of events, quite often overwritten by more recent experiences.
So, memory is at most an imperfect record. Out of such imperfect records symbols are born. Examples of various types of symbols are:
Linguistic, symbols such as alphabets, phonemes, words, grammars, sentences;
Pictorial, symbols such as point, line, angle, triangle, square, circle, sphere, space, table, fan, snow, tree, bee, etc.
Symbols are formed by abstraction to a common element of a sequence of closely related memory records, and are in turn used through comparisons and thresholds for judgments of equality between symbols and projections of the mind to form fresh symbols; relations between symbols can also become symbols; this expanding body of symbols and the associative links between then is the growing body of consciousness, of waves and patterns in knowledge. Thus, the moment we see a man, the symbol of man corresponding to hazily linked notions of: male, not child; face, hands, body, legs connected in particular ways; is loosely hanging around on the verge of consciousness without actually becoming known, but ready to be compared with an object seen; the mind in its normal functioning does compare this projected symbol with the abstraction of the image seen; if certain thresholds for equality are met, recognition of the object seen as being a man follows. Recognition is thus a passage of the mind from a state of uncertainty to a state of certainty; we feel we have in fact seen a man, or in general, gained a piece of knowledge about the external world. All this of course takes place below the level of consciousness, and is so fast that it is unknown even to us who are seeing and recognizing a man as a man.
It is important to realize that a tremendous amount of subconscious activity is going on even when we think we are only thinking consciously and merely witnessing and feeling the world about us; when we are doing nothing, still, subconsciously we are screening away through abstraction a tremendous amount of information about the external world. Thus, the world we see is not the world there is, as it is now, but some strange subjective concoction of reality and myth of our creation. It is as if we are continuously spraying paint onto a television screen without knowing it, and believing all the time that we are having an undistorted view of the TV picture, of the world about us. Seeing is believing? No more untrue statement than this can exist.
Now we have the barest outline of how the human mind functions we can see what we have to do in order to see the reality as it is, without the spray of symbols onto it. The first thing we have to do is to stop and throw away the internal monologue that goes on unchecked inside ourselves; try to stop naming, recognizing, projecting, rationalizing. Since the essential hard core of mental processing is associative in nature, this implies, not letting any past record start a line of a new thought about anything we see, feel or hear. In other words, cut off memory from interfering with the perception of reality. If memory is not allowed to interfere, there will be no recognition; no naming; no processing of perceptions into categories. You will not recognize one letter of this writing; there will be no understanding as we mean by the word understanding. There will be no feelings, no emotions, in short, no distinction of any sort. The most important of such distinctions of any sort is that between the seer and the seen. The child just born sees but does not recognize. Recognition is a distinction. This will be absent in a memory-less but perceiving person. That is the state of consciousness set on fire, cidagni, of the union of the knower with the known. When mind stops functioning, the seer merges into the seen; the known subject is the object; that is state of tremendous speed, because no time is lost in analyzing the reality; reality is known directly as experience without the intermediary symbols, logic, reasoning, projections.
In such a state, Lalitā is born. Such a state is called samādhi. It does not matter whether eyes are open or closed. One sees with eyes closed, and one does not see with eyes open. The Upaniṣads say, he (the enlightened person) sleeps when the world is awake, and he wakes up when the world sleeps. The night for the world is his day and vice versa.
“yā niśā sarva-bhūtānāṁ tasyāṁ jāgarti saṁyamī”
Lalitā is the divine consciousness of non-duality, advaita. She is born out of cidagni, in śambhāvi mudrā. The speed of God is known in the stillness of the mind.
The night for the world means that which is not consciously known, or subconsciously known to the world; that is consciously known to the seer. The seer does not see this world through illusory mental projections and symbols, but has become the world which he does not see as being separate from himself. So he sleeps to the illusory vision of the world.
Sādhana
How can one stop the normal associative mode of thinking causing the internal monologue?
After a strenuous manual labor, one likes to relax. After a strenuous rental work, one likes to relax. After the mounting tension of sexual activity, one likes to relax. In all these cases relaxation is associated with a joyful release from activity. It must be observed that relaxation from tension is always accompanied by joy and bliss while mounting activity or tension is always accompanied by anxiety. This is the reason for the preference exhibited universally by humanity for travel holidays, leisure and playful activities. A relaxed mind wants activity and a strained mind wants rest. These are the centrifugal and centripetal forces present in the mind. We have seen that recognition is a movement of the mind from a state of uncertainty to a state of certainty. The state of uncertainty is characterized by tension while the state of certainty is characterized by relaxation. The mind invests symbols and abstractions in order to reduce its anxiety. The mind does not want to stand the strain of unprocessed data pouring in through the senses. Hence, it starts naming, recognizing, acting, on the data; thus is the associative chain of thinking started.
At the root of thinking then, is the fear of the unknown, unknowable universe that is believed to be outside of oneself. Relaxation from the fear of the unknown infinity to the safety of the limited known is the cause for our thinking and, therefore, the resulting illusory knowledge of the universe.
So, as long as the senses keep pouring in information in the mind, associative thinking reduces the tensions; so there is little hope for stopping thinking. Only a totally fearless person, who can stand any amount of anxiety and tension can stop thinking naturally with all senses functioning. But when the senses are withdrawn there is then no source for versions except memory and the thinking process itself. It is in this state that utter relaxation, without fear being the driving force for thinking, becomes possible. Here the natural tendency of the mind to relax can come as a useful tool for not thinking at all. Since joy is the driving force for relaxation, we have here the possibility of relaxation-joy relaxation forming a virtuous loop to take one towards samādhi. In sleeping one is relaxing without being conscious of what is going on. In samādhi, on the other hand, one is totally relaxed without losing consciousness. In samādhi one first experiences total bliss; like the cry of EUREKA! with which Archimedes jumped out of his bathtub, totally oblivious to his denuded condition; like the feeling of utter relaxation one experiences on waking up from a sound, dreamless sleep; like the blissful moments of an orgasm extended forever. The reason for trying to get into samādhi is not an ascetic self denial but to get to know first hand what it feels like to be the total world of joy and bliss. The joy that one can get with the help of the senses is limited; to transcend the limitedness of joy is the purpose of yoga. The craving for sex is a result of trying to recapture the fleeting moments of the joy of orgasm. If one can experience continuously the joy of orgasm in samādhi, where neither inside nor outside is known, where the body has dissolved into a nameless entity, and a godly feeling of floating away persists to eternity, the craving for sex loses its appeal. In the galactic festival of lights, light from a candle loses its appeal. In broad daylight, the 100 watt tube light which appeared so bright in the night is a pale nothing. When one gets the kingdom of God, human miseries die their death. So in sādhana, one sits in meditation, and practices withdrawal of the senses by taking a joy ride. One just lets oneself go downhill on a slope of increasing joy. Whatever brings joy to the meditator is appropriate as a subject for meditation. One must give up all mental reservations, inhibitions, and go ahead in a mental forest of thoughts looking for ever greener pastures of bliss; in such an open state of the mind, the mind settles down to some idea as the most pleasant and finds happiness there. First there is an ever increasing speed, which merges into the steadiness of extremely high speed, like the apparent stillness of the "sleeping" top. In that stillness of the mind, the cidagni kuṇḍa, Lalitā, the transcendental bliss of pure joy is known. The mind is clear and still not because it is sleeping, but because it is working at the super high speed of God. One just becomes a silent inactive witness in wonder of the visions seen. Simply sitting and wanting the thoughts to go away will never work. The only means we have at our disposal to stop the thoughts is thinking. We have to use that, meaning we have to keep on thinking; not about what the external senses bring in, but what the memory says is the most joyful; one gains speed and effortlessness to settle down, and when the effort becomes nil, one simply merges into the self display of God to transcend individual thought. This is a long process, but it will succeed if done the right way as suggested. All inhibitions, all anticipations as to what the bliss is going to be like tend to be obstacles to success. It is important to realize that the higher the speed, the steadier is the object held in the mind. The smallest deviation at a high speed involves tremendous forces being released. These are the powers or the siddhis, that one hears so much about, but one sees so little of. The powers do exist, and can be manifested; but they involve the expenditure of tapas, meaning creation by the power of will. Speed and clarity of object or action held in the mind contribute to manifestability.
Source: Śrī Amṛtānandanātha Saraswatī "Sudhā Syandinī Bhāṣyaṃ" Typed Manuscript
(an incomplete commentary on Lalitā Sahasranāma)
