…….And Viṣṇu is sleeping on its coils. Then, from out of his nābhi kamala—the center of his navel—a lotus arises, and Brahmā, the creator of the world, is growing within it.

And here we find an interesting reciprocal relationship: in this story, Brahmā is the son of Viṣṇu. But if we look at the picture at Kāmākhyā Temple in Assam, we find it’s Śiva who is sleeping—and who is emerging out of his navel center? Śakti! You’ve got to decode this imagery; I’ll leave it as an exercise for your imagination. But why is there this inversion between Śiva and Viṣṇu? Why is Śakti there in the lotus that is growing out of Śiva’s nābhi? This way, Viṣṇu becomes the mother, and Brahma the son. There is an equation between Brahma and Śakti there, and between Viṣṇu and Śiva.

If you understand the principles that govern the cosmos—space and time—all that pervades space-consciousness is called Viṣṇu, and all that pervades time-consciousness is called Śiva. Śiva is called Kāla. Kāla means time.

The power of time is to move, manifest, change—to make things appear and disappear, to give birth to them, to grow and nurture them, to bring death to them, and finally to fully reabsorb them. And this power is called Kali. Mahākālī kills time, but she can also give birth to time. She kills Śiva—because, again, Śiva is an expression of time—and so Śiva is afraid of Mahākālī. He doesn’t dare go near Her. Mahākālī is the primordial power of the primordial energy, which is beyond the limit of Brahmā.

Excerpt from Guruji’s “Durgā Saptaśatī: Inquiring Beyond the Stories”