133. Nirañjanā
Devi inherently has no coloration, no bias of any sort. What makes of this colourful universe around us? Where are these colours? The atom which emits ?a like? quantum has no colour. What exists is a frequency. These various frequencies are interpreted as various colours by the perceiver, the human intellect. Dogs can hear the ultrasonic frequencies. Humans cannot hear it. Even if we assume that the dog perceives the sound in the same way as we do, the dog still hears new sounds and tones that we have never heard and that we are never capable of hearing. Very low frequency sounds are felt as vibrations in the body. When a drummer beats a drum the sound is heard within one's own heart as a thump. It is more a feeling than a sound. As the frequency increases from the very low frequencies to the very high frequencies, the human sensory apparatus presents this data in various formats to be perceived respectively as feelings, thoughts, heat, sound, sight and so on. So the colour is a property associated with the sensory apparatus and a phenomenon of resonance. It is not inherent in the vibration itself. Truly, the colours that we see exist in the mind of the individual rather than outside, i.e., the colours are subjective.
[For] the question - “Is there or can there be a reality outside a perceiving consciousness?” - the answer is both yes and no at the same time. If there exists such an objective reality, there would be no consciousness to perceive it and therefore there can be no relevance to such an existence. Such an existence might as well be called non-existence.
It must be realised that there can be no perception of such a nonexistence which may still exist. That could be the Mother, the source of a consciousness, which can then perceive the existence so long as it lasts. The dividing line between existence, (Sat) in the oriental literature and existence cum non-existence (Asat) in the oriental literature, is the consciousness which brings in and is the meaning of existence. The famous poet Kālidāsa describes the relationship between the Father and the Mother of the universe in the following stanza. The Mother is the word. The meaning of the word is the Father.
The śruti says: “Oṁ devīm vācamajanayanta devāstām viśvarūpāḥ paśavo vadanti”. This means vāk, or the sound, is the primordial combination existence/non-existence described above. Out of this, the Devi consciousness has brought meaning to existence. The people who differentiate themselves from the Devi, called paśu, describe this perceived Universe. This invocation is used as an auspicious statement at the beginning of any prayer, saying let this be an auspicious moment when Devi, a new consciousness is born into us.
Source: Śrī Amṛtānandanātha Sarasvatī "Sudhā Syandinī Bhāṣyaṃ" Typed Manuscript
(an incomplete commentary on Lalitā Sahasranāma)
