74) Bhaṇḍaputravadhodyuktabālāvikramananditā
Note: Certain parts were restructured for better flow of information.
She is pleased by the action power of Bālā Tripurasundarī, Her daughter who killed the sons of Bhaṇḍa.
Devi Rājarājeśvarī resides in the Sahasrāra lotus. She also resides in all the other and lower lotuses, where She is called by different names. In the śastras, She is called Mother or the Mahākuṇḍalinī. In the lower centres, She is variously called the Agni Kuṇḍalinī, Sūrya Kuṇḍalinī and Soma Kuṇḍalinī. In all these lower centers, She is known as the daughter. The name Bālā stands for a little girl. Bālā also implies by the fuel of pratyāhāra, the letters starting from ‘ba’ and ending in ‘la’ namely the six letters ba, bha, ma, ya, ra, la. These six letters occupy the six petals of the Svādhiṣṭhāna Cakra. There one's identification of the body resides. This Svādhiṣṭhāna Cakra is the liṅga in the male and the yoni dwara in the female. Obviously, these are the centres of sex which are connected with the survival of the race, as distinct from the survival of the individual which is located in the navel center. The procreative instinct and the survival instinct are the two basic instincts of any living form, of life itself. Bālā is the controlling deity for this centre. When the awareness is located at the Svādhiṣṭhāna and one constantly meditates there on Bālā Tripurasundarī, one overcomes ultimately the sexual desire itself. The obvious reason for this is that the mind loses interest on any one idea if it is fixed on it for a long time owing to the centrifugal power of the mind itself.
The liṅga is one which separates the male from the female. In other words, it separates the Puruṣa from Prakṛti. Puruṣa is the seer and Prakṛti is the seen. The distinction between the seer and the seen is complete as long as the identification of oneself with the body remains. In order to become the seen one has to get out of one's self and become that which is seen. The identification with the body, or the notion of identification with the body prevents one from getting out of one's self. Hence it is that most of the things that we have seen remain unknown to us; their thoughts remain unknown to us, we are only guessing what the other person is thinking, but we are not thinking what the other person is thinking. The seen world therefore, remains as unconscious entity to us. The only way to transcend this barrier of unconsciousness of seeing is to lose the identification of oneself with one's own assumed body, called the upādhi. The Nirūpādikacaitanya is the Universal consciousness.
Meditation on the Svādhiṣṭhāna Cakra means meditation on where one truly resides. The word 'Sva' means the self. The 'adhiṣṭhān' means the residence. The union between the seer and the seen means, in the cosmic sense, universal experience. That certainly transcends a limited sexual experience which is not the real meaning of the Svādhiṣṭhāna Cakra. No doubt sex also forms a part, an important part, of a divine expression of life continuance, but that is not the end of the story. That is the beginning of the story of self realisation. The power of concentration of awareness on the sexual centre, evokes the daughter Kuṇḍalinī; Bālā comes to the rescue from the body consciousness. The Bālā achieves the cosmic merger; oneself losing the individual self into oceanic self. It is at such a stage that the meditative experience, like moving like a fish in the sea, of melting away in orgasmic bliss (which had the unquestionable power of killing the desire itself) occur.
She is happy with the death of Viṣaṅga an aide of Bhaṇḍāsura brought about by Her counsel. Flanking Lalitā Devi on either side are Her counseling minister called Rājaśyāmalā and Her defensive and offensive force called Mahāvārāhī or Daṇḍanāthā. The word Mantriṇī means either that She is a minister to counsel or that She is a power of the mantra. Rājaśyāmalā is indeed Her power of attraction and Vārāhī is indeed Her power of repulsion symbolised by Her Paśa and Aṅkuśa meaning the noose and the goad.
The word Viṣaṅga implies the suicidal instinct of the man. “Viṣam” means poison and “Ga” is a root verb which means going towards. It is the nature of humanity controlled by Māyā to be attracted by the death and do nothing to prevent it. This tendency is countered by pulling the soul away from its seat of body identification, towards the cosmos. The cosmic attractive power has to do this. The cosmic attractive power is Rājaśyāmalā. An individual dies but a race lives on. The race is like the cosmos. A person who manages to merge oneself into the cosmos while living has truly attained immortality. The rest have simply died or been eaten up by time. The Jīvanmukta eats up time.
Delighted at the power of Her aggressive force in eliminating impotence. In the Bhāvana Upaniṣad it is said "vārāhī pitṛrūpa, kurukullā maṭrrūpa”. This means Vārāhī is the force of the Father, the Liṅga; Kurukulla has the form of the Mother, the Yoni.
The word Viśukra means the one who has lost his seed according to the splitting vi plus śukra. It is well known that the loss of seed creates a sudden weakness or a loss of vigour in man. No doubt there is a cessation of desire but this is purchased at the price of loss of vigour and vitality. The cause for this of course, is the action orientation given to desire. If the desire is made to be extinguished through knowledge orientation, then there is a cessation of desire without the price of loss of vigour. The suicidal instinct of man referred to in the earlier name is the emission of seed during the union.
According to the oriental thought one drop of semen is equivalent to a hundred drops of blood. One drop of blood equivalent to about one kilogram of food. Thus the loss of the seed even in small quantities is supposed to reduce the life of an individual. Modern thinking goes contrary to this thought. Suppression of sexual activities, according to modern technical knowledge and experience does not prolong the life of an individual; it only helps to create subconscious fears and anxieties leading to psychosomatic illnesses. Be this controversy as it may, it is obvious that in a proper meditation, which thus gives scope in neither suppression nor an expression of the desire, but an experience of the fulfillment within one's own field of consciousness, does have the invigorating effect of preserving the seed in tact and also the desirelessness. A yogi thus becomes a highly energetic person who is capable of executing many super human tasks without loss of vigour. Every religion in the world has been acknowledging the praise of brahmacharya, of retaining the seed. Hinduism, in particular, has been quite unambiguously and unequivocally proclaiming the virtues of brahmacharya along with mind which is characteristic of Hinduism, namely, that not following that path is not a sin either.
Kāmadāyinī means the giver of desires. It also means the fulfiller of desires. She not only gives desires but also fulfills them.
There is a story in the Puraṇas which says that for the welfare of the world Manmatha whose name is Kāma, under the inspiration of Gods tried to disturb the tapas or meditation of Śrī Śiva. Angered by this, Śiva reduces Kāma to ashes by the fire from this third eye. Ratī Devi, the wife of Kāma wept piteously to all Gods to give life to Manmatha again. Devi had given life back to Kāma who subsequently had the power even to conquer Śiva. So, the name giver of Kāma is appropriate for the Devi.
Her glory is sung by Devaṛṣis all the time. The ṛṣi means a sage. Sages are of different orders. There are Ṛṣis, Rājaṛṣis, Brahmāṛṣis and Devaṛṣis.
The Ṛṣis are people who have been initiated by a Sadguru and who are performing Tapas.
Rājaṛṣis are those who are practising the Rājayoga or Kuṇḍalinī awakening as enunciated by the eightfold process of yoga of Patañjali - namely, Yama, Niyāma, Āsana, Prāṇāyāma, Pratyāhāra, Dhāraṇa, Dhyāna and Samādhi.
Brahmāṛṣis are those who have attained perfection in the human frame and who are Jīvanmuktas, liberated while living.
Devaṛṣis are Brahmāṛṣis who have attained the divinity having left the human frame and they are forever merged with the divine consciousness. They inspire the sages of the other categories with the noblest of thoughts which are but a description of the Devi.
Arrayed beside the Devi are the forces readying themselves to kill the demon called Bhaṇḍa. In the Brahmāṇḍa Puraṇa, it is said that Brahmā, the creator, started off his creations with many lives, all of which had the brahmajñāna, meaning the knowledge Supreme, which consists in knowing that everything that one sees or experiences is but himself. Among such creations he accidentally created this force, the creator Brahmā realised his mistake. Immediately he cried out “Bhaṇḍa, Bhaṇḍa”. This means “Oh, No! Oh, No!” Since Brahmā was in the habit of creating first and then assigning a name to the thing created next, this word Bhaṇḍa became the name of that life form. Since it was not imbued with the divine quality of brahmajñāna, it was not a Sura. So it came to be called Asura. So this was the first of the Asura or the Demon Kings and many later were to follow on the same pattern through the will power existing in the Bhaṇḍāsura.
So the Bhaṇḍāsura is a symbol for all forms of dualistic thoughts which separate the Puruṣa, the form from the Prakṛti, his power. All the forces of Lalitā are aimed at re-establishing the divinity, thus in effect removing the ignorance called Bhaṇḍāsura.
Lalitā Devi is watching with interest the prowess of Her 16 Kalās, called the Nityās, in overcoming this dualistic force. If two can come out [of] one, yet two more can come out of each of these two and so on, the one indeed becomes many. To reestablish the knowledge of one, the powers must indeed strike at the duplicating process itself, because that is at the root of the problem. One becomes many by a process of sub-division. If we take a spoon of milk from a container of milk, apparently there are two milks. In reality there is only one milk. The divine law says that one minus one equals one and also that one plus one equals one. There is no possibility of another type or category coming from one and the same type or category. As long as water is added to milk, milk gets diluted or one can say polluted. As long as milk is being added to milk, there can be no possibility of delusion or pollution. Everything is divine. Divine comes out of divine. There can be no possibility of a non-divine coming out of divine. Even the Bhaṇḍāsura is thus divine. The approach to the non-dualistic nature of oneself is no doubt though the annihilation of the dualistic nature, apparently there, but not there in reality.
The Nityās illustrate this truth. They are the 16 sub-divisions of time according to the lunar days. Yet each partakes of the original quality of permanence. The word 'nityā' means permanence. As explained earlier, even the transient, the transitory or the bounded slots of time also have a right to be called permanent. So each of the 16 kalās of Lalitā has an inherent capability to destroy the dualistic interpretation, at various levels. Lalitā is interested in achieving this synthesis of the apparent opposites, through meditation. A proper appreciation of the role of meditation should be underlined here. A vigorous mental activity connected to any object of thought or meditation is called dhāraṇa. A meditating mind is not a silent mind. A mind engaged in tapas is not a silent mind as is usually and erroneously supposed. Patañjali says: ‘yathābhimata-dhyānādvā’ . This means by meditating on anything that pleases one. Contemplation of the procreative instinct is not an exception. Contemplation called japam is discovering the meaning of the object contemplated.
What is meant by meaning? The only possible explanation of the word meaning is to explore and establish all possible associative links between the object contemplated and objects similar to it. The meaning of meaning goes by the name semantics. Somewhat earlier we explained that the word liṅga means a characteristic that separates two principles of opposing types. Thus it is a measure of the distance between the types of opposites. Contemplation on the liṅga or the womb or their union explores their ramifications of the cause effect relationships that exist between the cosmos and the individual. The cosmos is the womb and the individual is the liṅga. They are never separated. This then is the expanded meaning of the procreative drive.
In such an understanding the vedic seers exclaims ‘Ānanda Brahma’ and goes on to explain further that the word ānanda referred to here is equivalent to one followed by twenty zeroes units of an individual bliss. Expansion of an individual's capability to move and act cosmically is the result of such a contemplation. That is what is called ojas or aura which is shown sometimes artistically as a halo on the head of a saint or a God. This means that the limited ego biased thinking process has been expanded to the cosmic levels, the Universal levels of a non-personal nature. Such is the invigorating effect of Vārāhī which is the goad or aṅkuśam of the Devi.
She created Gaṇapati by merely looking at the face of Kāmeśvara.
Kāmeśvara means the one who has controlled his kāma and is not controlled by it. This means the one who has conquered desire itself. There is only one such Kāmeśvara in this whole world. This is God. By looking at God, i.e., by turning the mind inwards and making it desireless, the devotee (none other than Lalitā) creates obstacles in the path of all dualistic modes of perception which is the only means for attaining the non-duality. There are two aspects of this problem of jīvanmukta. The first is the attainment of the state of jīvanmukta and the second is maintenance of that state. The maintenance of that state is by creating obstacles to its disruption. That is the function of Gaṇeśvara.
Mahāgeṇeśa guards the entrance to the prime source of the Universe, the Godhead. Mahāgaṇapati takes the form of Oṁkāra. A Krithi by Muthu Swami Dikshitar says thus ‘praṇava svarūpa vakratuṇḍaṃ’. In philosophic terminology the words karana and yoni are used interchangeably. Witness the Brahmasūtra comment ‘śāstra-yonitvāt’, which literally means that śastras are the womb. Guarding the entrance of the womb is Gaṇapati. Thus he is said to be located at the Mūlādhāra cakra. Mūlādhāra means the fundamental basis which is explained by the four Vedas. Oṁkāra occurs repeatedly in the Vedas, guarding every mantra therein. Even the four mahāvākyas culled from the four Vedas are guarded by the Oṁkāra. This 'Oṁ' has to be satisfied before the source becomes known.
What does this mean? Satisfying the Oṁkāra. Oṁkāra is the uncreated sound always present, tingling like a bell in the heart of every person. While uttering any mantra either internally or externally, one must always be listening to and coupling the Oṁkāra through every seed letter of the mantra. It is then and only then, that the mantra becomes capable of revealing the source of Godhead. Not listening to this Oṁkāra is the Vighnayantra. The devotee has to pierce through the Vighnayantra in order to make the mantra potent and capable of yielding results.
Devi reins a counter arrow to every arrow ever released by Bhaṇḍāsura. All arrows released by Bhaṇḍāsura are in some way or the other connected with the notions of duality. The first of them is the element of fear. The sādhaka or the devotee senses fear and danger when he is orgained to be one with Devi, uniting with Her. The normal psychological barriers impose anthopomorphic thinking; the confusion of his own individual self with a particular body exists; both become a source of fear. Union with Mother! What nonsense? What rot is this? Such are the questions, fears, and anxieties raised by Bhaṇḍāsura.
Now let us look at the arrow shot by Devi to counter this fear. When we say that X is the mother of everything, then the following conclusions flow from that statement.
X is the mother of my father.
X is the mother of my mother.
X is my mother.
X is the mother of my wife.
X is the mother of my children.
X is mother of my friends and enemies too.
X is the mother of even my grandchildren.
So the concept of Universal mother X admits in it various relationships of the grandmother, the mother, the wife, daughter, grandchildren and every human in the world. Thus union with the mother implies the union with all these levels of thinking, with all these relationships intact. This surely clears the misunderstanding created by the question raised above. Similarly many other questions arise.
The most important of all such doubts is the doubts of fear. God has two aspects: the terrible aspect and the blissful aspect. The terrible aspect is apparent when one approaches God with dualistic ideas. The śruti says ‘dvitīyādvai bhayaṁ bhavati’. Because of the existence of the second, there is fear. Take away the second, then you are all alone, in a state called Kaivalaya. How can fear be there in such a state, whether you are a terrible being or a blissful being? As an example we might quote an encounter between a tiger and a man. The fear is there for the man. The fear is not there for the tiger. God is there in the man as well as in the tiger. Do we say then that God is afraid and not afraid also? Afraid of what? Of killing himself. Obviously he cannot kill himself. Even if he kills the man, he will continue to live as the tiger. So the notion of fear and all its possible consequences such as the six internal enemies namely lust, anger, greed, passion, pride and envy are meaningless and not relevant to the state of Godhood.
Any of these lower emotive factors aimed at God, caused by ignorance, will soon be annihilated by the light of knowledge inherent in Godhead.
Born out of the ten finger nails are the ten forms of avatars of Nārāyaṇa, namely Matsya, Kūrma, Varāha, Nṛsiṃha, Vāmana, Paraśurāma, Śrīrāma, Balarāma, Buddha and Kalki. When we say that the Devi is the world Mother, obviously She has to mother all the descents of Godhead into human, humanoid or some sub-human forms. Let us consider how each of these Avatāras lead one to the state of Jīvanmokṣa.
Matsya means the fish. In the Matsyāvatāra, the fish grows to enormous, size filling up even the oceans and growing beyond them, and saves the sages from destruction. The two important concepts of meditation here are:
- floating like a fish in the oceanic consciousness of the cosmos and drawing power and sustenance from this, and
- the growth beyond cosmos itself.
Kūrma is the tortoise on which the mountain called the Meru was kept and churned in the Ocean by the Gods and demons together. The nectar which ultimately came out of the churning process was enjoyed by Gods and the Demons where denied it. The main reason was that the demons worked on the basis of duality and of body identification. So they were deluded by Viṣṇumāyā, called Mohinī, who satisfied their physical instincts and denied them the immortality.
The lesson is that, in the Yogic process of churning the Meru i.e. the axis of lotuses from Svādhiṣṭhāna to Sahasrāra resting on the Mūlādhāra, which is the Kūrma - the devotee has to understand properly the nature of amṛta generated by the churning. He should not be deluded into states of loss of vigor and vitality through a confusion of the notion of nectar with the physical seed. The physical seed no doubt continues the race and therefore has a semblance of nectar. But the truth is beyond the physical. As described earlier, the physical loss of seed and the loss of vigor is a price in some cases for giving action orientation to desire. Ūrdhvaretas is obtained by a proper understanding of the term nectar as belonging to the realm of knowledge based on expansion and fulfillment of desire.
- The avatāra of Varāha, Mahāviṣṇu takes the form of a boar and rescues Bhudevi and the Four Vedas from the destruction in time. The Varāha is a name of a time unit.
In the saṅkalpa of any pūjā, we say for instance ‘ādi varaḥ kalpa’. A Kalpa is an extensive unit of time covering the period of time between one mahā-pralāya to another mahā-pralāya covering all the four yugas. The Vedas in their purity tend to get lost over such an extended period of time. So the intervention of Iśvara, i.e. Mahāviṣṇu, in restoring the original meanings and the pristine glory of intuitional meditational knowledge contained in the Vedas is required from time to time. The function of Varāha Avatāra is to point out the need for a proper understanding of the Vedic spirit. The Vedic spirit caters both to the material and the spiritual well-being of man. The material aspects of the Vedas are created through the homas, japas etc. of the karma khaṇḍa in the Vedas. The liberative aspect is covered in the four Vedas by the Upaniṣads which go by the name of Jñānakhaṇḍa. The śruti itself says: “Anantā vai vedāḥ” - Infinite indeed are the Vedas. This means that there have been and there will be many revelations about the true nature of God and the approaches to reach that state of Godhood.
All such revelations come though sages who are prophets. All the avatārs are also prophets in a sense like Buddha, Kṛṣṇa, Jesus, Lao Tsu etc.
In the Avatāra Nṛsiṃha, the prime lesson is contained in the words of Prahālda. “God is indeed everywhere, if only you care to see.” The non-believer is prone to death. The believer is protected from death.
In the Vāmana Avatāra, again the concept of the growth of a short statured individual into the cosmic form covering all dimensions is demonstrated in a dramatic way. When Prahālda asks the question to Vāmana as to what crime his grandson Bali has committed to deserve such a fate, Viṣṇu replies, "The proper place for the dualistic thinking Rākṣas is in the Pātāla. But because he is good, I will serve him as an entrance keeper, Dwara Pālaka." This shows the compassionate nature of God even in relegating the ignorance to its proper place.
Paraśurāma not only destroyed the warrior race twenty seven times with the might of his Brahmatejas, but also was an eminent disciple of Dattārateya, and brought the Śrī Vidyā Upāsana to the common man, who cannot understand or rise to the heights of vedic rites or Upaniṣadic thinking. He proclaimed that liberation can be attained also by action. His main teaching has been that since the nature of the goal of Godhood is that of Ānanda, the route also is and must be partaking of this nature. He clearly stated that the materialistic enjoyments are not obstacles to spiritualistic attainments, by admitting the five ingredients of eating meat, drinking wine, eating fish or parched cereals, and ritual intercourse as elements of worship. By following fairly rigid Tantric disciplines, he has brought attainment of liberation within purview of about 90% of humanity.
The Vedic disciplines are very severe. They are lifelong and they are accessible only to vegetarians. One has to spend 18 years learning the Vedas and another 10 years understanding them and the rest of the life living according to their prescriptions. This is practically impossible for anyone in this modern age, even for the so-called Brahmins. So the Tantric route, that is the technical path is the only accessible one for almost 99% of humanity.
Śrī Rama is an ideal of a living God subject to constraints of a human frame. The main lesson of Rāmāyaṇa is contained in two parts.
- The first is upadeśa given to Rāma by Viśvāmitra in the unparalled works of Yogavasiṣṭha. This book must be read by every spiritual aspirant without exception.
- The second important part of Rāmāyaṇa is contained in the Sundarakāṇḍa, which demonstrates in a nutshell how an ideal devotee should behave in trying to restore the Jīva to the Paramātmā.
- In a third part of Rāmāyaṇa, Hanumān bears his breast to Rāma's Brahmāstra saying: “You are in my heart. So my dear Rāma, your arrow cannot hit me, but it will only hit you, because I am not there as a separate entity from you.”
In the Avatāra of Balarāma, the most important parts that are relevant to a Yogi are two fold:
One is the Gopikā Vastrapraharanam by Śrī Kṛṣṇa, and
The Bhagavadgītā, which is a comprehensive treatise on the then existing modes of approach to self-realisation. In the Gopika Vastrabharanam, the object lesson is the surrender of an identification of a soul with the body to the divine maker of it.
In the Avatār of Buddha, meditation gains importance over the Vedic or Tantric rites. In the Hinayana, nullity or śunya is contemplated as Godhead. In Mahayana however, many Tantric modes have been re-introduced. One of the famous texts here is Guhya Samaja Tantra which runs quite parallel to the Mahā Nirvāṇa Tantra of the Hindus. Ritual is both present and absent in Buddhism. In a sense this is similar to Śrī Vidyā Upāsana. Adi Śaṅkarācārya has earned the name “Pracchanna Buddha”, meaning, the hidden flower of Buddhism.
We do not know much about the Avatāra of the Kalki because it is yet to be.
Thus, we see that all the Avatāras have one common function - to explain at various levels the Upaniṣadic statement, ‘sarvaṃ khalvidaṃ brahma’, ‘all this is Brahman’. One gram of experience is worth more than a ton of talk. The Vedas are nothing if they are not experienced knowledge.
By the fire of the great paśupatāstra, She reduced to ashes all the forces of Bhaṇḍāsura.
Paśu means a beast of labour. We use them and feed them. Similarly, Gods use men as paśus so long as they are not established in the non-dual consciousness. So the word paśu refers in general to one who has notions of duality. Śiva, the giver of advaitic knowledge is thus known as the Lord of all Paśus, and hence is called Paśupati. The paśupatāstra is used to kill a Paśu. The Mantra of Paśupata is 'Oṁ Śrīṁ Paśu Huṁ Phaṭ Svāhā'. With this mantra Śiva kills. Obviously, he is not killing himself. He is only killing his beastly nature. The Paśu aspect is being killed. Śiva is the light and Paśu is the darkness. Where light is present, darkness cannot be. Where knowledge is present, ignorance cannot be. So with the paśupatāstra agni, the fire of knowledge which eliminates ignorance, Devi kills all forces of Bhaṇḍāsura.
By the arrow of Mahākāmeśvara, Lalitā Devi finally kills the Bhaṇḍāsura along with his township Śūnyaka. When one gains control over desires, one becomes Kāmeśvara. This is the final arrow which kills Bhaṇḍāsura. When the dual notions are all destroyed, there is apparently nothing left implying that there is a township called Śūnyaka remaining. She destroys even that emptiness when all notions of duality are eliminated; what is left is not nothing but everything. The śruti says: “Take away the whole from the whole.” This statement applies equally well to both Zero and Infinity.
The Buddhistic conception of śūnya as the ultimate reality is denied here by the Hindu conception, that what remains after taking all opposites is not emptiness but the totality itself.
Brahmā, Viṣṇu, Indra etc. are all gods of high order of evolution. They praise Her glory and wealth which is Brahmajñana. Only a poet can understand the beauty of another's poetry. Similarly only a Brahmajñani can fully understand and appreciate and sing the glory of the Adi Parāśakti. There are many places where Brahmā sings the praise of the Devi. When he is threatened by Madhu and Kaiṭabha, he praises Devi as Mahāmāyā and requests Her to leave Viṣṇu so that he can wake up from his sleep and kill these demons Madhu and Kaiṭabha. Viṣṇu eventually kills these demons Madhu and Kaiṭabha. Viṣṇu eventually kills these demons again with the help of Mahāmāyā. Mahāmāyā enters these two demons and generates a pride of their prowess in fighting. Hence they ask Viṣṇu: “You are fighting well with us. But we are better fighters than you. So ask a boon of us and we shall give it to you.” Viṣṇu seizes this opportunity and asks the boon of their getting killed by him. Then they realize their mistake of how pride landed them into a mortal position. But then it was too late. After this event again Brahmā, Viṣṇu and many other Gods sing the praise of Devi.
The Demon Madhu represents the longing for sweetness delightful experience in life. Kaiṭabha represents the opposite craving for denying oneself even the basic minimal requirements for survival and inflicting unnecessary pain on oneself masochistically.
The moral of the story is that neither running after and getting merged in sensual pleasures nor the ascetic self-denial are the proper means for self realization. There is a golden means between these two; that is the divine path. There is yet another important point to be noted here. As the story goes, the demons have taken origin in the dirt accumulated in the ears of Viṣṇu. The significance of this odd origin is as follows:
The ears are an instrument of hearing. Viṣṇu represents space whose characteristic property is vibration ‘sound’. Dirt in the ears prevents proper hearing. The implication is that an improper hearing or understanding of the śastras leads to these excess of either sensuality or ascetism.
She is the medicine which brought back the life of Manmatha, who is burnt to ashes by the fire coming from the eye of Śiva. We have referred to the story how Manmatha was burnt to ashes by the fire of knowledge of Śiva. There is only one additional point to be made here at a very down to earth level. Hara is the liṅga, Hara Netrāgni; the fire coming out of the eye of the liṅga is the seed. Once the fire comes out, the desire is annihilated. As the creatrix, She has the erotic function of re-establishing the desire into a liṅga making it again and again capable of serving Her procreative purposes.
These five names are interconnected; so they will be explained together. Her Mūlamantra, or the fundamental name, contains three parts. The first part is called the group of vāgbava kūṭa; the second part, the middle one, the kāmarāja kūṭa. The third part is called the śakti kūṭa. In a sense, they represent the powers of desire, knowledge and action, respectfully called Icchā, Jñāna, Kriyā Śaktis.
Icchā Śakti is the mother, also called Mahā Tripurasundarī or Kāmeśvarī. She is located in the head and in the face.
Jñānā Śakti is also called Mahāvajeśvarī or Lakṣmī. Lakṣmī sustains the world supplying nutrition to it. She is located in the breasts.
Kriyā Śakti is called the Mahābhagamalini, the Saraswatī creates physical forms. Hence She is located at the procreative centre.
Her combined forms consists of all these elements together. Just as Her mantra, She also consists of all these three parts together assembled in a sequence.
The Vāgbhava kūṭa which represents the face of the Devi and also the desire, has the form ‘ka e ī la hrīṁ’.
The Kāmarāja kūṭa which represents the Jñāna Śakti has the form ‘ha sa ka ha la hrīṁ’.
The Śakti kūṭa of the Devi has the form ‘sa ka la hrīṁ’.
The full mantra of the Devi consisting of 15 seed letters is a combination of these three groups ‘ka e ī la hrīṁ - ha sa ka ha la hrīṁ - sa ka la hrīṁ’.
Without going into the details of how this mantra came to be derived from 'Pūrṇa Gāyatrī’ however can be made clear.
The Origin of the Mantra:
At the time of initiation into Brahminhood, the mantra of Gāyatrī with 24 letters in the meter of Gāyatrī is given. This takes care of the three main ‘puruṣārthas’ namely dharma, artha and kāma. The last puruṣārtha, called the mokṣa or liberation is withheld. It has to be sought for and obtained from the Sadguru. This fourth pada of the Gāyatrī Mantra makes the mantra to have the meter of anuṣṭup having 32 letters instead of 24. While Gāyatrī is an open mantra with its meanings quite clearly articulated, the Mantra of Devi is a coded mantra whose meanings are not at all obvious at first sight. While Gāyatrī is intended to be available only to the vegetarian brahmins, kṣatriyas and vaiṣyas, the others are not allowed to receive the mantra of Gāyatrī. In Her infinite compassion, Devi permits Her equivalent mantra in coded form to be recited by everyone, independent of caste, colour or creed. The exact way by which the mantra has been coded from Gāyatrī can be found by the interested reader in Tripurātāpinī Upaniṣad. Devi mantra is also called the Suddha Pañcadaśi because of the 15 letters in it. This indeed delivers all the four puruṣārthas. It not only gives the materialistic enjoyments of this world but also the gifts of disentanglement spiritually from this material world. It protects as nothing will. This is the jewel of the mantra hidden in the Vedas. Paraśurāma says "while all other mantras are available openly like prostitutes, this Śrī Vidyā is hidden like a woman from a high class family and can be had only through a proper marriage", meaning of course initiation from a Sadguru.
Meaning of the Mantra:
The first part of the mantra serves the purpose of requesting a continuous evolution of the power of expression and understanding. It provides dharma. It is a summary of the Ṛgveda.
The second part serves the purpose of eliminating the obstacles to the fulfillment of the desires, including acquisition of wealth and comforts.
The third part is meant as a request to illumine the soul in order that it rise beyond the levels of ignorance and attachment, into the supreme regions of light, glory and bliss. It gives the final goal of liberation called mokṣa.
Meter:
Although the three parts of the mantra appear to be a different duration in time, the way they are pronounced make an identical time unit for all the three parts. As usual, the long vowels are pronounced for twice the duration of the short ones while the duration of ‘hrīṁ’ is to be adjusted such that all the three parts have the same duration in time. For example:
In the first part ‘ka’ has one unit of time, ‘e’ has two units, ‘ī’ has two units ‘la’ has one unit and ‘hrīṁ’ has two units totalling eight units of time.
In the second part, the first five short letters have one unit of time each but the last one ‘hrīṁ’ has three units because it is long. Again, the total is eight units of time.
In the third part, the three short letters occupy three units of time while ‘hrīṁ’ occupies five units of time making the total again eight units of time.
Note the correspondence of the 24 units of time with the mantra as Gāyatrī which has 24 bījākṣaras.
Placement:
The placement of the bījākṣaras, or the seed letters in the body during meditation called the nyāsa, is like a ladder going up from the Mūlādhāra to the Sahasrāra. Each letter is to be placed either on pericarp of a lotus (the lotuses are seven in number) or in the spaces between them which are again seven in number. The last extended pronouncement of the hrīṁ bija goes beyond the crown of the head or the Sahasrāra region to the realms of the 'fire' 'the sun’ and the 'moon'. Thus the mantra finds its placement not only within the body but also extends into the cosmos. As stated earlier, it is this cosmic extension of the body which gives rise to the illumination of the soul, from the levels of darkness and ignorance to the levels of light and bliss.
The Ṛṣi for this mantra, called the Kādi Vidyā, is Manmatha. Note that having no body, and having only five arrows which are flowers, and having a bow of sugarcane with a string of bees for tightening of the string - bees which will never align themselves, and the hottest of the months for his friend, Manmatha is able to conquer the whole world owing to the grace of the Devi. Apart from Manmatha there have been 11 other upāsakas of Devi who have received slightly different forms of the mantra. All these forms are not much in vogue today and they are not supported by the Vedas. The Kādi Vidyā and its coding is found in the Ṛgveda and also in the Atharvana Veda. The mantras which gives this coding goes like this:
kamo yoniḥ kamalā vajrapāṇirguhā hasā mātariṣvābhramindraḥ |
punarguhā sakalā māyayā ca purucyaiṣa viśvamātāditividyom ||
We will not go into this coding process here. There is also another statement in the Vedas about the mantra of Devi. It says ‘catvāra īṃ bibharti kṣemayantaḥ’. This means that the mantra has four ‘īṁ’s’ in it which is for the good.
There has been a little controversy on these four ‘īṁ’s’. The mantra has three ‘hrīṁ’s’. So three ‘īṁ’s’ are obvious.
So some people say there must be another bīja which must reflect the grace of the Devi and which must contain an ‘īm’ in it. They propose that the bīja śrīṁ should be added to the mantra to make it have the four ‘īṁ’s’ as postulated by the Vedas. This Mantra with the śrīṁ at the end is sometimes called Ṣoḍaśi. However, there have been differences of opinion from this school of thought.
For instance, one school of thought maintains that since the last ‘hrīṁ’ is to be pronounced for five units of time as opposed to the first two ‘hrīṁ’s’ which are each pronounced for two units of time, this last 'hrīṁ' has two 'īṁ's' in it, thus indeed making the total to four 'īṁ's'. Thus it is the Pañcadaśi mantra itself is a Ṣoḍaśi mantra.
There is yet another school of thought which says that Gauḍapādācārya has given to Adi Śaṅkarācārya, a Mahāṣoḍaśi mantra, which consists of 16 seed letters, of which three happen to be the three parts of Pañcadaśi. Thus this Mahāṣoḍaśi mantra had 16-3=13+3 expanded to 15 letters totalling 13+15=28 letters.
There is one final school of thought which ignores the concept of four 'īṁ's' altogether and says an oṁ must be there in every mantra. Śrī Vidyā mantra can be no exception to it. So there should be oṁ as the 16th letter. Such thinking is born out of ignorance of spiritual matters.
Among the 11 other mantras, there is only one for which there exists a broken Guru Parampara. This mantra is called the Lopamudra Vidyā. Lopamudra is the wife of Sage Agastya. This reads as follows “ha sa ka la hrīṁ - ha sa ka ha la hrīṁ - sa ka la hrīṁ”. The placement of the three kutas in this Hādi Vidyā is on the triangle formed by the two nipples of the breasts and the yoni dwara. This mantra is mainly used by Kaulācara especially in the Suvāsinī pūjā. Lalitā Triśati supports however the Kādi Vidyā. It is a series of 300 names divided into 15 groups of 20 names each. In each group the starting letter is the same, strung together, the starting letters of these 15 groups do form the Kādi Vidyā of Manmatha.
About the Upāsana Krama of this Mantra, the Vedas speak thus. “Naitamṛṣiṃ viditvā nagaraṃ praviśet”. This means that one should not know the Ṛṣi Manmatha, a symbol for lust, in doing the upāsana of Devi, “yadi praviśet”. Or else, if one enters the upāsana with desire, "mithau caritvā praviśet”, one should satisfy the desires first and then enter the upāsana. The net result is the same in both cases that one should perform the upāsana without desire and without attachments. Material enjoyments are not forbidden. But their absence is indicated at the actual time of upāsana.
She enjoys quite blissfully the anointment of Śrī Cakra by kulāmṛta. This and the following five names refer to Kaulācāra mode of worship of the Devi. One must understand here that there are the Upaniṣadic Kaulācāra and the Tantric Kaulācāra. First we shall examine the Upanisadic Kaulācāra.
Every word has to be interpreted carefully because we are dealing with Tantra, a coded language. The word Ku means earth, the letter la stands for laya. So Kula means the place where the solid state is being absorbed successively into the liquid, plasma, gaseous, vacuum and mental states.
So the word kula refers to the set of seven lotuses starting from Mūlādhāra to Sahasrāra. As the conscious awareness is moved successively from the Mūlādhāra to Sahasrāra absorbing each tattva into the higher tattva at the Sahasrāra, the state of absolute purity and silence even of the mind is obtained where the amṛta or the immortality becomes apparent. Bliss flows over oneself as tranquility, absence of desires and peace all over the body. It is this kulāmṛta anointed over the Śrī Cakra which is the body individual and body cosmic of the devotees. Devi enjoys this kulāmṛta.
In a Tantric Kaulācāra the Tantras speak of the Kṣaṇamukti of the Kaulas. This refers to either instantaneous liberation, or a liberation extending only over a small extent of time. The first meaning refers to the Upaniṣadic interpretation of Kaulas. The second meaning refers to the Tantric mode of Kaulācāra.
In Tantric explanation of Kaulācāra, again the cessation of desire is implied. The solid state characterised by hardness of the liṅga melts into the liquid state of the emitted seed. The tensions having gone from the body, the devotee employing ritual intercourse to please Devi enjoys a momentary bliss which is Kṣaṇamukti of Kaulas. However, as we have explained earlier, this mukti is purchased at the price of loss of virya or loss of vigour and vitality. The possibility of converting the libido into its higher modes of functioning is lost. A weakness and a need for nourishment immediately follows. In this interpretation kulāmṛta refers to the mixture of semen and the coital fluids.
This is not to denounce a Tantric Kaulācāra. As pointed out earlier, material comforts and enjoyments are also forms of divine bliss. Hence they have a place in the highest of human activities which is pūjā. After all, if we ask why does one have to do pūjā? There is no compulsion about it? Either one does something for money or for pleasure. There is no money involved here but there is only pleasure. Fulfilling the desires will never cause problems provided they are not connected with a hangover of guilt or shameful feeling. It is only unfulfilled desire which are gone over mentally again and again which becomes hardened vasanas or suppressions because of social ostracism that cause anxiety or neurosis.
Source: Śrī Amṛtānandanātha Saraswatī "Sudhā Syandinī Bhāṣyaṃ" Typed Manuscript
(an incomplete commentary on Lalitā Sahasranāma)
