The woman is the symbol of the beauty and aesthetics of nature. In this whole world it is only mankind that is wearing clothes. Every other living form is in the nude, in its natural state. So .0001% of the entire universe is wearing clothes. So if you want to represent Nature, it should be shown in the nude.
While the idols are shown in the nude, we are not seeing them as nude. It is only because we are wearing clothes that when we take them away we think of the body as nude. Our clothes are helping us to cover our blemishes, to create an artificial beauty where it is not there. The clothes help us to create a distinction between the Self and the non-self, between who I am and what I am seeing.
Here, all the murtis as depicted as Devatas. They wear the clothes appropriate to Devatas. the Devatas are all-pervasive. They go to the ends of all directions. They are in every place and every time. So they can't be covered by anything. They wear decorations and ornaments. And that is natural. But their beauty is such that the ornaments become beautiful through their example only.
Śrī Mata is the Mother that gives birth to everyone. When we say that she is the mother of everyone, then we have to ask the question, "Then where is everyone born?" The obvious answer is through the female genitals. That is the place where the procreative power of God lies. For the Śakteyas who worship the Motherhood of every woman, she is called "Bhagārādhyā" in Lalitā Sahasranāma. Bhagā means the yoni, the female genital, and she is worshipped in that. That is why it is important to display the genital, because you have to worship it, to develop an attitude of worship towards that.
Śrī Cakra means the whole world and the place where it is displayed is the womb of the Mother. If you look at Kañci Kāmākṣī idol, there is the picture of the womb in front and the Śrī Cakra is shown inside. The Śrī Cakra She is the Universal Mother. She has given birth to the entire Cosmos which is kept inside Her womb.
Adi Deva, the primal God, is Liṅga Svarūpa. Its place is Garbhalaya, Garbha means the womb. Creativity, procreation is the duty of mankind, because life is so rare. The line of life should not be broken. This dharma, this duty, that we have towards our parents who have given life to us, we must repay that debt by giving life to continue the race.
This dharma is personified as “Vṛṣabha'' which is another way of saying Vṛṣaṇa which means the testes. The testes is the seed container. You must first look through the bull (Nandi) in front of the Liṅgam, which that first you must energize the Liṅgam towards creativity and then you must look at the Liṅgam. Śiva is the Liṅgam which has the desire to procreate, otherwise it is called Śava. In the Saundaryalaharī it says, "Sivaḥ śaktyā yukto yadibhavati śaktaḥ prabhavituṃ…." Only when Śiva is united with Śakti, showing the desire to procreate, then He is to be worshipped, not otherwise. Then He called Śiva. Otherwise He is a corpse.
Only the erect male member is considered to be Śiva. Just as the female genital is the mother in the Sṛṣṭi, which is taking place through the intercourse, the male genital is the father of everyone. That is considered to be the Śivaliṅga.
In the olden days, the Śivaliṅgas and the Yonis were shown as the male and female genitals. But when the Muslim and Christian rule was there, our people accepted their arguments that this was nonsense. So they have changed their shapes into unrecognizable round objects without any contours in them, which kept them from being recognized as the male or female genitals. They have become names only - Liṅgam and Yoni.
There are four aims in life. They are what we call in the Saṅkalpa at the beginning of each Pūjā, "Dharma, Artha, Kāma, and Mokṣa”.
- Dharma is Duty, and it is personified by the desire to continue the race;
- Artha means the acquisition of wealth and prosperity. You should be prosperous and you should make the people around you prosperous;
- Kāma means lust, and it is to be directed towards liberation, towards Mokṣa.
- Mokṣa means liberation, the liberation from the identification of yourself with your body, the shackles of your body. You pass a life-long sentence of imprisonment when you think that you are only your body. You have to get out of that prison and move towards liberation. That can be possible only when lust is directed toward liberation.
- Now, there are other human weaknesses besides lust like anger, like fear, like greed, like delusion, like pride, like jealousy. None of these things have been considered as aims in life. Why was lust listed as one of the aims of life? Because lust has the potential to be transformed into love. And love has the potential to transform itself into liberation. It is for this reason that lust, Kāma, has been included as one of the Puruṣārthas.
All the Tantric texts state that once lust is universalized and used in the context of worship, then both here and there are available. But this loud voice that the texts are using is in the Sanskrit language, and Sanskrit is no longer spoken in India and so we can't understand it. Mechanically we recite Dharma, Artha, Kāma, Mokṣa, but we don't stop to consider what Kāma means really.
If we say that lust should not be there, if we put a halter to it and say that we should not have it at all, and deny ourselves the joys of union, even then it will not go away. It will change its form and become anger. When you are denied what you desire, then it becomes anger and anger becomes violence, aggressiveness, terrorism, all those things which tend to destroy the society. The reason that these aggressive acts are there is because of unfulfilled desires. All the criticism that says that the Hindu scriptures are obscene do not really understand what the Tantras intend. They do not know the purpose of lust, they do not know how to utilize that.
Convert lust into love in the proper way, into Śriṅgāra. Śriṅgāra means, find out what the other person wants and offer him that.
When you are able to transform lust into love, then it becomes Madhura bhakti, sweet devotion, the path of devotion and love towards God. That is why Śrī Kṛṣṇa was supposed to have 16,000 lovers. And that is acceptable. So why can't Lalitā have 16,000 lovers?
Lalitā is the equivalent of Śrī Kṛṣṇa. She is the Guru. When you convert your lust into love, then it flourishes as literature, as Music, Dance as Fine arts, as the creative qualities of everyone. The best qualities of everyone come up in this transformation process: having a good heart, a compassionate heart towards everyone; not deceiving others; Ahimsā - not violating or hurting others in any way in body, mind or spirit; harmony takes the place of violence. All these things happen when lust is transformed into love. In God or in Devi when you have Śriṅgāra, then you are converted from being a human into being a Divine Being.
This is what is meant that the Gopis have love towards Kṛṣṇa. If you want to have union, then you must have union with God. They say that if you sing, then God dances for you; if you dance for God, he comes and embraces you; and if you shed your ego and offer yourself, and request God to have union with you, then you receive liberation. These truths work equally well for Devi.
The reason all these figures are seen in the nude is to tell people that you must worship creativity in the form of Devi, in the form of the female. You must request Devi to give you Saubhāgya, give you prosperity, give you the pleasure and enjoyment in this life. You have got 10,000 million women in this world. You you can worship all of them as the Divine Mother then this will be your last life, you will receive Mokṣa. This is the purpose of the Yoni Pūjā. When you transform lust into love this way, then the Kuṇḍalinī Śakti becomes awakened.
For those people who are not interested in mere criticism and who truly want to understand and appreciate and learn more about these things, then we are here to instruct them in the intricacies and details of the Sādhana according to the Kaula Saṃpradāya.
Mother is worshipped as Gaurī, Lakṣmī and Vāṇī, as Kriyā, Jñāna, and Icchā Śakti.
- As the Kriyā Śakti, the Devi manifests in intercourse. And intercourse resides in the genitals of the female.
- As Jñāna Śakti, Devi is Lakṣmī, the one who nourishes the baby when it is born. She resides in the female breasts, and she resides in the mother's nourishing and life sustaining milk.
- She is the Mother worshipped as Saraswati when Devi resides in the tongue, because speech comes from the tongue, the educative function of the mouth.
By meditating on these places in the body and worshipping them you are getting Kriyā Śakti, Jñāna Śakti, and Saṅkalpa Śakti, or Icchā Śakti.
It is to demonstrate that you must worship the Mother in the female body that these female idols are shown in the nude.
-GURUJI AMRITANANDA
