Commentary on the Guru Paduka mantra by Guruji in the Śrī Vidyā Course Lecture

Transcription (w. grammatical edits)

This is not one mantra but many mantras. As you can see.

Aiṁ Hrīṁ Śrīṁ. It is a mantra of Lalitā. It means:

• Aiṁ is Saraswatī bīja - “I'm seeing knowledge”.

• Hrīṁ is a bija of life about creation, how life is created – I want to have knowledge of how life is created. And

• Śrīṁ – how life is going to become all one.

Aiṁ Hrīṁ Śrīṁ is a mantra of Śrī Vidyā.

Aiṁ Klīṃ Sauḥ. Is a mantra of Raja Śyāmālā, the power of attraction of everything into you, all the good into you. Aiṁ, Klīṃ and Sauḥ are sṛṣṭi [creation], sthiti [sustenance] and laya [dissolution].

Hamsaḥ, the breath. Outgoing breath is called Ha. Ingoing breath is called Sa. Hamsaḥ - outgoing and ingoing breath. Between them, life is oscillating – going out of you and getting into you. And with every breath, life is going in and out. The prāṇa, prāṇa vāyu, the oxygen is coming through the air and getting into your body and getting out of your body. Hamsaḥ.

And is Śivaḥ. Śivaḥ means kalyāṇa [that which] is for your good. And as long as the breath is going in and out, it's good for you. Your life is preserved.

And it is So'ham. The same Hamsaḥ, is also said as So'ham. So'ham is a full expansion of OṀ.

• We add "S" to "O", "Ha" to "Ṁ" [thus arriving at] So'ham. Or,

• If we remove “S” from “So”, it becomes “O” and if you remove “Ha” from “Ṁ”, it becomes OṀ.

So the equality between these things. But it is the full expression of the breath going in and out. Saḥ also means “All the I see”. Aham means “I am”. “I am all the I see”, – that’s the meaning of the word So'ham.

Hamsaḥ Sivah So'ham.

Hasakhaprem. We are used to seeing the world from being inside our body and looking at it through the apertures that we call jñānendriyas, the sensory organs. You see, you hear, you taste, you smell, all these things [represent] the normal way we function. But we want to look at the world in a new way. We are used to seeing the world as bahirmukha - means looking outwards. But we want to see the world in a reverse way - antarmukha. Antarmukha samārādhyā, bahirmukha sudurlabhā. She's easily appreciated, if you can develop an antarmukha, looking inwards. Which means, I should become the world that I see and see myself through that.

What would that do to you? It dissolves everything. Number one, it removes the focus from yourself and shifts it to the world. You think of the world as the circle around you and you as the focus. [But here] you shift the center from the center to the ring. It means you are not going to worry about yourself, you are going to worry about all. Real spirituality consists in moving the focus away from yourself to others. It means your attention is more on the comforts and the quality of life of others, more than your own. When you become the world, you become an insignificant part of the whole. It matters little, whether you exist, whether you are rich, whether you are poor, whether you are able to accomplish your visions or not, none of these things are important, when you look at the whole.

So as you develop this vision of looking at yourself from outside to inside, what happens is that you are becoming not important, you are removing your self-importance, the concept of who I am, that disappears, your ego gets destroyed and that is the best way to reach Devi. That's why it's called khecari mudra. Khe means - the space, ākāśa. Cari means – it moves. Your mind moves in the ākāśa, it doesn't move inside your body.

In the morning you might have done what is called pavanmuktasana.  Pavan can be understood to be a moving air or you can understand it as moving prāṇa. So mukta means free, freeing the movement of life forces within your body. That is the meaning of pavanmukta. Asana means you are focusing your mind on a particular region, with the exclusion of everything else. It's called dhāraṇā, which means holding on to your focus on something and only that thing is alive in your mind and everything else goes. When you are doing like this, this hand is not there, your body is not there, only that part is there. And you are activating the energies there, you are being aware of that only. That's part of dhāraṇā. That's why you can achieve a lot of results with little effort, yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam, the ability to achieve a lot of results with little effort is called yoga. And dhāraṇā aspect of yoga is represented by [?kanyakāncana?], as pavanmuktasana may be number one or number two I don't know, it's a different way of doing yoga.

Then hasakṣamalavarayūm hsauṃ, sahakṣamalavarayīm shauḥ - the ability to move from Ājñā chakra to Sahasrāra chakra. There are different steps involved. What are those steps that we are talking about? Ājñā chakra represents time, and Bindu [i.e. mahābindu] chakra represents no time. From time to no-time you are moving. So what is being done, is you take one second as a unit of time and divide it by two, then you divide by another factor of two, another factor of two. So 1, 1/2, 1/2², 1/2³, 1/2⁴, then after that you reach the bindu. Bindu means that you already reached 1/1,000 of a second. They say you put 1,000 leaves of lotuses on the top, and on the top of that, you take a pin and push it through in one second, then the time that the pinhead spends with each of these leaves, it’s called one lava, that is a unit of time. And in that time, all this time is included. Time dilation is what is shown by hasakṣamalavarayūm going up and sahakṣamalavarayīm going down. One is called Anandabhairavi, seeking the blessings of Śiva by Śakti, and Śiva's grace flowing down from the skies into Śakti is called Anandabhairavi-Anandabhairava mantra.

Hsauṃ and Shauḥ represent what happens when Śiva is dominant or Śakti is dominant. If Śakti is dominant, she expresses the seed of Śiva, Shauḥ. If Sa is a beginning then at the end in ḥ, ḥ is visarga. Visarga means sṛṣṭi. So if Śakti is dominant she wants to express the seed out of Śiva and create Space, Time and Matter. And if Śiva is dominant - he’s a yogi, he wants to eliminate the creation, he is the annihilator. So Śiva aspect and Śakti aspect. Which one is dominant, depending on that, the Universe is going to be created or destroyed as being described by …(the mantra). So this is the meaning of the Guru mantra.

It's not [just] one mantra.  Aiṁ Hrīṁ Śrīṁ is one mantra. Aiṁ Klīṁ Sauḥ is one. Hasakṣamalavarayūm is one. Hsauṃ is one. Sahakṣamalavarayīm is one. Shauḥ is another. And you can add some more.

Oṁ prajñānam brahma, Oṁ ayam ātmā brahma, Oṁ tatvamasi,
Oṁ aham brahmāsmi. They are Mahāvākyas. You can add also other things. Like Śrī Pūrti Vidyā, the Śrī Vidyā as Lopamudra has done upasāna - ha sa ka la ha sa ka ha la sa ka la hrīṁ, some people add. And Śrī Pūrti Vidyā ka e ī la, ha sa ka ha la sa ka la hrīṁ. So many different things that are added on. They are called: Mahāpādukā, Śrī Vidyā Mahā Pādukā, Śrī Vidyā Mahā Mahā Guru Pādukā. And you can add however way Guru appears, svatmānanda… svagurave. And then different orders, instead of going into all these orders - all the orders you can collapse and all the Gurus merged into one single Guru with whom you can talk, you can walk and you can sing, you can dance and you can organize a video conference. So that is the Guru in whom all the others are collapsed and you are just worried about one part and that is the Guru Pādukā Mantra. And the Guru is the name of the tollgate, and the name of the tollgate keepers are Annapūrṇā and Amṛitānanda.

Śrī Guru Śrī Pādukām Pūjayāmi. Why do we worship the pādukās? Why not worship the Guru? What is wrong with worshipping the Guru? The Guru does not know where to go, the pādukās know where the Guru has been led by Guruji, led by Devi. So pādukās know where the Guru has gone, where the Guru has been taken, led and so this mantra lives after the Guru goes. And the pādukā is called pādukā, so it knows where the Guru has gone and you wear those pādukās and you know where to go.

So Rāma could only do certain things when he was alive. Rāma nāma is doing so many things now. So Rāma nāma is greater than Rāma, the same way the Guru Pādukā, is greater than the Guru. The Guru pādukā is learned from the Guru, who has learned from his Guru, who has learned from his Guru, who's ultimately Śiva. Śiva and Śakti. So that is the line, Parampara. Parampara is what you indicate by Guru Pādukā, that's why you say guru pādukām pūjayāmi tarpayāmi namaḥ.

And we are saying this by using this mṛgi mudrā, this an indication that if you join these three and put those three fingers also it becomes like a six-petalled lotus, which is symbolized by the svādhiṣṭhāna chakra the reproducing center, the pleasure of union of Śiva and Śakti svādhiṣṭhāna chakra. These four fingers joined like this, becomes a rectangle, so you are moving the mūlādhāra chakra and the svādhiṣṭhāna chakra to the top of the head. Where the Śiva-Śakti sāmagāma, the union of Śiva and Śakti is supposed to take place in the mind beyond space and time and that is perpetual. So you are trying to move that energy from the bottom to that place. When you are doing that, and then if you are desireless, in that process is the seeing desire.

One more characteristic of the chakras I’ll mention at this point of time. Fear in the first chakra, where I will exist or not, my insecurities – whether I will have children or not, whether they are going to grow and whether they are going to get a job or not. So all these insecurities, anxieties, tensions, that are associated with any smallness, they are all bundled up in mūlādhāra. To unmingle them you have got to focus your attention on that and to unmingle them you have to activate the chakra.

Like prāṇa, prāṇāyāma, you take in, hold, release. The same way you close, hold, open; close, hold, open. Pūraka, kumbhaka, recaka. So if you keep doing this aśvinī mudrā, at the mūlādhāra chakra, it activates the mūlādhāra chakra, it takes your attention, forces your attention there, not only physically, not only mentally, but actually transforming it into a creative energy, Kriyātmaka Śakti. And Kriyātmaka Śakti activates the Kuṇḍalinī Śakti, that way this ashvini mudra is supposed to be important for Gaṇapati, to activate the Gaṇapati. If you don't activate Gaṇapati, then there is very little chance that the energy will move up. First you have to raise the level of the energy, and then start moving that energy. If you got x³, then you want x³ to manifest, be something, X has to be something. To generate some value for X, then you can transform it into higher levels. If you make X = 0, I do not want to have desire, I do not want to… The desire for mokṣa must be there, without that you will not…[be able to move the energy upwards]. You have to specify a goal, and it is in the specification of the goal is the way this works.

Pūjayāmi tarpayāmi namaḥ. I worship and I please him. Tarpaṇam means pleasing.

Source: Guruji's Śrī Vidyā Course Lecture

Interesting interaction with Guruji.

Many years ago Guruji was explaining to me the placement of the bijas in the
“Ha-sa-ksha-ma-la-va-ra-um ….. Sa-ha-ksha-ma-la-va-ra-im” as in the Guru Paduka mantra on the different parts of the body. The placements of the bijas are highlighted in green in the image above.

After teaching me of the placements he shared his personal experience elaborating the effect of this process.
He said when he concentrated on the specific points in his body while intoning these padukas he would experience a fire light up in his body, where typically the body becomes an active homa!