Your body is a Śrī Cakra. The awareness that is spreading throughout your body is the Śrī Devi. Then you will understand that the different awarenesses felt inside you are the different forms that are shown here. By you we mean not merely your body, but the entire Cosmos. These are all giving shapes to the feats of awarenesses, the feats of consciousness. In Patanjali Yoga Sutras, he says that if you keep your consciousness in different parts of your body, then you will get a different Siddhi, or attainment.
These idols define places in the Śrī Cakra. They have certain kinds of weapons. You have to understand what their places in the Śrī Cakra are and you have to understand what kind of concentration you must have in them in order to get a certain attainment. All these things are embedded in the locations of these idols and the ornaments and weapons they are having are all significant.
Why so many idols? It is confusing, but it is to prove to you that in-spite of all their variety, they are just one. You must de-confuse yourself. This deconfusing process is Sādhana. Confusion is created in Hinduism as a problem for you to solve. To solve this problem is what liberates you.
You have ears, you have eyes, you have skin. You are experiencing the world through your eyes, seeing a visual picture. You are hearing the world through your ears, hearing as a musical expression; musical expression is totally different from the visual expression or experience. Each one has its own individuality. Yet you are not looking at the eye and saying it is an ear; nor looking at an ear and saying it is an eye; nor at skin and saying it is an ear or an eye. You have given them different names because they are appearing different to you, you are experiencing them differently.
So what is wrong in having different aspects of your awareness appearing in different forms, in different identities? So, if in your body there can be so many different individualities, why can't there be different flow of awarenesses in the cosmic, creative, sustaining, nourishing and deabsorbing powers?
You are one. You are experiencing these different things, but are they different from you? There is unity in you. The same way in the Cosmos also. There are differences and there are unities also. So to show these differences, you show the different forms. And to find unity, you look at the top of the Śrī Cakra, in the Bindu.
Where are “you” located? Are you located in your eyes, in your hands, in your legs? You can lose your hands but you continue to live; you can lose your legs, but you continue to live. You are not located in any of these things. But you are located where your awareness goes. Your expression varies according to the location. So, in the same way that your body merges into the unified awareness of your Self, the Cosmic Awarenesses are also merging into the Parashakti. The transcendental Śakti is one, but its expression is many.
For example - there are the Pañcabhūtas, there are the five elements, the five properties, the five organs of action. They are different, they have different functions, spaces to work in.
-GURUJI AMRITANANDA
