19) Navacampaka-puṣpābha-nāsādaṇḍa-virājitā
The column of Her nose shines like the fresh yellow [color] of the flower campaka.
The campaka flower has a lovely, fresh and exciting perfume bringing the warmth of the early summer to mind. Since the nose is an organ of smell, the analogy with a flower is a transcendent analogy; it can smell its own freshness! The Upaniṣads proclaim of Brahman thus; having created the cosmos and the senses with the help of his projective power called Māyā, he entered then to see, know himself. This is the characteristic of transcendence, to see yourself as though from outside of yourself. He is the eye of the eye, nose of the nose, etc. What is to be known? Is it the experiences or the experiencer? Everyone has experiences, that is a common thing. To know the experiencer, that is yoga. To see prakṛti, or nature, to know it, is to observe multiplicity, variety; but in order to observe the observer in you, you have to get out of your body, mind and thoughts; there are no distinctions of any sort; in that unitary experience one finds the union of contradictions such as you don't see, and you see also; you don't know and you know also. You are smaller than the smallest and larger than the largest. You can come to an intellectual understanding of this last mentioned union of opposites by meditating on the fact that the infinitesimal instant of time called present, contains within it all of the infinite time; come to think of it, can you even be at a time away from the present? Being always in the present, (zero time), don't you live for a hundred years? Is it not true to say then that this zero time called present includes or covers your entire life span? If we come to consider deeply how this has come about, we find that the infinitesimal time scans the finite time; that way it covers it. In the same way the unmanifest scans the manifest; the one scans the many by being each in turn. This power of scanning is what we have called the power of projection, or the Māyā. It is at the very basis of the drama of this universe appearing separate from yourself - it is clear that in order to observe yourself you have to become the universe; since at the same time, the knower cannot be known by definition, you are both the universe and nothing (unmanifest) at the same time. So what is the experiencer? It is the unexperiencing experience.
Source: Śrī Amṛtānandanātha Saraswatī "Sudhā Syandinī Bhāṣyaṃ" Typed Manuscript
(an incomplete commentary on Lalitā Sahasranāma)
