Soundarya Lahari - Part 183

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Together with it we talk of six AvaraNas. Outside of these six AvaraNas and forty-four triangles, there are three rounds or corridors. They constitute three more AvaraNas and thus we have nine AvaraNas in all. You would have heard of Dikshidar’s ‘nava-AvaraNa’ Compositions in music. 

The ShAstras describe and enunciate who lives in what AvaraNa, what is the principle involved, who is the adhi-devatA, what kind of anugraha (Grace) they can bestow, what mudrA is to be shown to them and so on. The compositions of Dikshidar go through all this in brief.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 182

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In the Shri Chakra, the central portion is circular. There are nine triangles there. They criss cross one another, thus producing forty-three triangles. The central dot is also considered to be one triangle. Together the triangles number forty-four. These forty-four triangles are classified into six AvaraNas. The straightforward meaning of this word ‘AvaraNa’ is ‘what hides’. 

Here it should be taken to mean track, corridor, row, or prAkAra in Sanskrit. If several people crowd around one individual, the latter is naturally ‘hidden’. So they form an AvaraNam around him. The central dot is also taken as one AvaraNam just as it is taken also as a triangle. In fact around it the other forty-three triangles constitute five AvaraNas.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 181

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Lines, circles, squares, figures formed by these - all these configured into a Chakra along with a centre point (madhya-bindu), is called a YantraM. Only such a design has the power to bring into focus the power of the particular devatA -  in fact it is an infinite power - and so may be called (with a smile) a ‘Divine Design’. (This is Mahaswamigal’s own word). 

These designs collect and absorb divine energy and have the power to radiate that energy.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 180

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The Mother Goddess, whom we call ambaal, has many forms like MeenAkshI, durgA, Bhuvaneshvari, ShAradAmbikA etc. Each of these has its own YantraM. But it is very common that even the worshippers of these forms do only the Shri Chakra pUjA, rather than the pUjA of the particular mUrti (form). This is so not only in houses, but in temples also.

Famous durgA temples have only Shri Chakra installed therein. Sringeri has ShAradAmbAl as the main mUrti; however the Yantra pUjA is for ShrI Chakram. All this goes to show the importance of the Shri Chakram. 

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 179

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In addition there is the Yantra-form for each devatA. The form has lines, triangles, enclosures, circular or otherwise; these are not just geometrical figures. Each of them has a meaning and significance. They have extraordinary power. Each YantraM is set to absorb and bring into focus the paramAtmA in the form of that devatA. 

In addition to the repeated mental recitation of the mantra, one does pUja to the YantraM also. Within the triangles of the Yantras and other enclosures, the seedsyllables (bIja-aksharas) corresponding to the mantra pertaining to the devata would be inscribed. The very devatA that is the life of an idol with arms and feet is also considered to be brought alive in the corresponding YantraM, In fact the YantraM is even more comprehensive; for it includes the native residence of the devatA and all its accessory deities within itself.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 178

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The regimen of worship for any deity has both ‘mantra’ and ‘Yantra’ associated with it. A certain sequence of sounds, repeated often and often gets the beatification of the presence of that devatA (divinity) prescribed by it. 

Just as each devatA has a physical form with limbs, so also each devatA has a form in a stringed sequence of sounds. It is called the sound-form, just as the recitation of mantras aims at the mantraform.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 177

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In the next shloka (# 11), the ShrI Chakram (also called the Shri YantraM) is described. The very mention of ‘ShrI VidyA pUjA’ implies the pUjA of ShrI Chakram. Every deity has a YantraM exclusively associated with it. But those who do Shiva pUjA and or VishNu pUjA do not usually keep the corresponding YantraMs in the pUjA. Maybe in temples under the various altars of the deities the corresponding YantraMs would have been formally installed. 

But in households where Shiva or VishNu pUja is done only the BANa lingam or the SalagrAmam is kept, but not the YantraM. In the panchAyatana pUjA which includes worship of ambaaL one keeps the stone called ‘svarNa-rekhA-ShilA’. But when you worship ambaal alone, you don’t keep that ‘ShilA’. Only ShrI Chakram is kept. In some places along with the Chakram, an image with hands and feet may also be kept.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 176

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Well. Instead of continuing the talk of the flow of amRta and the blissful sensation of it, I have now come down to the talk of the sleeping state of ambaal in us commonfolk. What is the meaning of this kind of ending such a profound discussion? Yes, there is a meaning. So long as the thought that ‘I have done a great yoga-sAdhanA’ is there, even great yogis will have to tumble down to the normal ground-level state. 

And so, mark it, even if one goes high up to the kuNDalinI yoga stage, the only key that will unlock the door is the attitude of surrender which says: ‘It is not me; It is You, Oh Mother’!

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 175

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It is the winding and whirling up that gave it the name of ‘KuNDalinI’. When a snake sleeps it winds and whirls up. In fact all animals do it. They don’t stretch their limbs and sleep. Some winding up will be there. 

But it is the snake that winds up totally in the form of a kunDala (ear ornament).The parAShakti whose power is infinite, exhibits Herself in each of us only a fragment of a fragment. All the remaining power of the parAShakti is the sleeping KuNDalinI.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 174

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Right in the shloka (#10) where it talks about the flow of amRta in the nADIs, let us see how the shloka winds up. It does not wind up with the idea that the eternal flow of nectar at the point where the prANa Shakti reaches the head, brings the non-dual union of the jIva with the Absolute; but it ends up by saying: ‘the KuNDalinI in the form of that prANa Shakti descends through Chakra after Chakra and winds itself up in the mUlAdhAra Chakra, where it again goes to sleep..

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 173

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Let those who have the capacity to go through the path of KuNDalinI yoga go that way. For us,the easier bhakti path which holds doggedly to The Mother is enough. What they can get, She will give the same to us. Maybe She will take us also to that path, after a certain stage and give us those experiences. 

Maybe She will also tell some of them who have gone through that difficult terrain, ‘Enough of this’ and bring them back to stay quiet in a total attitude of surrender.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 172

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One might feel let down that he cannot get that flow of nectar from the full moonlight-glow that occurs when the prANa-Shakti reaches the thousand-petalled lotus called sahasrAra. One need not regret the

absence of this experience. ‘pariNata-candra-vadanA’ says the shloka #7.

That full-moon-face is easy to be kept in mind. Stick to it. Think of the nectar flowing from the graceful glance from those eyes and the nectar of the blissful smile of that face . She gives you what you thought about and grants you the internal light of the moon and an internal flow of nectar.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 171

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Though we have said that it is the wish of Shiva’ and ‘wish of jIva’ , it is all only the cit-movement of ambaal only. Only when the complete merger has taken place it is ShivaM. So when we say that He takes something into Him, that action itself is Hers only.

I just talked about the highest yoga-experiences that occur in the path of bhakti. Without going into yogic sAdhanA or tAntric sAdhanA, if one follows the bhakti path with the attitude: ‘All this is beyond me, Oh Mother, You are my Refuge., then even the self-pride that ‘I am doing a great sAdhanA’ will not arise. The Mother Herself will lift up even the lowliest and grant him the highest experience.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 170

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The first ’wish’ of Shiva, and the last ‘wish’ of the jIva together coalesce into a symbolic Love here! We can get confirmations for this from the songs of great devotees across the world and acoss religions. 

The songs of Manickavasagar and Mirabhai have excellent parallels in the songs of Sufi Saints and Christian mystics. It is all an experience of Yoga, jnAna and PremA.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 169

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Then even that desire to merge in Shiva disappears and there remains only the Will of the Lord. In other words, the involution that the jIva made with deliberate effort merges in that first evolution of Shiva. At that point, as far as that jIva is concerned, Shiva Himself, without expanding in evolution, involutes within Himself and receives the jIva into Him. 

Think of a flood of flowing water. Put some object into it. The waves will toss it back and forth and push it over to the bank. This is natural. But when there is a great vortex in the current, it takes the object into itself and consumes it. This is what happens here also.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 168

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In the evolution of the Origin into multiplicity, the very first thing that happens is the icchA (Wish, Desire) and the Love-pair. So also, at the very end of the sAdhanA for the involution of the jIva into the Source, the nADI goes through the nAyikA stage just before the last stage of the Union with the Supreme. 

That is the stage of identity with Shakti. That is when there is an anguish for union with the nAyaka, that is, ShivaM. It is in that anguish one surrenders totally with the attitude: ‘ I am incapable of doing anything. It is all Your Wish’.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 167

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It is not just yoga and jnAna. We should also mention the experience of Love, premA. When we talked of fundamentals like ichA Shakti, Kameshvara and Kameshvari, it is all very subtle and pure Love.

The word ‘kAmaM’ brings to our mind various connotations. It may be thought that the fact of a sannyasi talking about it strikes a discordant note. But in reality, in terms of an esoteric context there is no fault there.  It only indicates by symbols that Shakti intertwined with the substratum of Peace is what creates .Creation.. There is nothing wrong here. That is why ambaal brings the experience of premA (Love) along with those of yoga and of jnAna, to many great people, at the very end of their sAdhanA.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 166

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I am telling you all this just to point out that even in the path of bhakti such superlative experiences do occur. Just have a look at the great devotional songs and poems of confirmed devotees of God, like the shaiva saints of Tamilnadu, the vaishnava Alvars, the devotees from Maharashtra, Bengal, North India, Sufi saints, and also of Christianity. 

All these songs will only flash the many yogic experiences and spiritual experiences of enlightenment.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 165

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And thus, at the end, one may even reach the penultimate state to advaita-siddhi, namely, the movement of breath reaches the top, touches the divine feet of ambaal and the nectar starts flowing! Even in our ordinary day-to-day life, if we have an extraordinary experiencee of happiness, we sometimes suffocate and swoon; that is actually a reflection of the taste of kumbhakaM. 

That also is a fragment of a fragment of the experience of the sprouting of the nectar at the top of the head !

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 164

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In ordinary mundane activities of ours we usually exhale by the left nostril. On the other hand, the same exhaling, if you carefully observe it, will come by the right nostril, when you have just had a noble elevating experience of peace like the darshan of a deity or of a saintly sage. 

At a higher stage, the exhaling will be equal in both nostrils, to the extent that, it will then be only one step short of staying in the kumbhaka state, but at the same time, without any tendency to suffocate, the whole system being light and comfortable  - all these changes in the breathing will certainly occur.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 163

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It is not necessary to go the KunDalini way. Whatever path you take, whatever method of upAsanA (spiritual worship) you follow, without having to go through the regimen of the KunDalini yoga, if you sincerely follow any one path with an one-pointed faith, you will, when you reach a certain advanced stage, get those breathing-in and breathing-out experiences exactly as you would, in a yoga sAdhanA, all by itself. 

You may not even feel it. It will get transformed by itself. In a still more advanced stage, when we are in one-ness with the object of our upAsanA, the breathing may even be stationary in the kumbhaka state.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 162

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Maybe you are all thinking : ‘(The Speaker) is neither going into the subject of KunDalini, nor is allowing us to go near it. How, in the world, can we ever have such profound experiences? At least he (the speaker) could have gone on without mentioning these!’ Well, it is not necessary to have them as the KunDalini yoga…

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 161

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That is the ‘rasa’, the flavour, the juice, the essence. Who is giving that ‘rasa’? It is the ambaal. Her divine feet is there in the reflection of the moon as the Guru.s Grace. That is where indeed the nectar flows from. That it flows from the moon is only a way of saying. 

The one who receives and realises the flow of that nectar-rasa is the jIva. But the advaita bhAvanA (attitude) that She is Herself the ‘rasa’ and She is also the ‘rasAsvAda’, the taster of the ‘rasa’ -  this feeling will also be there.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 160

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I talked of lotuses earlier. They are not lotus flowers of our familiar village pond. The lotus flower of a pond blooms only in sunlight. In moonlight they close up. On contact of the heat of fire they disintegrate. On the other hand, in these KunDalini lotuses, whether it is agnikhaNDam, sUrya-khaNDam, or candra-khaNDam, the lotuses corresponding to the khaNDam blossoms, when the KunDalini reaches there

And in the end, the full moon itself blooms the thousand petalled lotus at the top of the head. And the nectar of moonlight flows from the moon.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 159

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This experience of the ‘rasa’ (flavour) of advaita is actually the experience of the taste of nectar, says the next shloka (#10). When advaita is ‘experienced’ there cannot be two things: one, ‘the taste’ And two, the One that gives that taste, namely ambAL; and much less another thing called a jIva. 

So the word ‘experience’ is just a ‘formality’(‘upacAraM’ in Sanskrit) for saying what cannot be said formally. However, just before that ‘experience’ and after it, there is something like a sentiment similar to an ‘experience’, the benefactor of that experience and the recipient of that experience  - in fact, a triad or

‘tripuTI’.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 158

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When KunDalini is taken up via this nADI through all these chakras and finally is unionised with the shiva-tattva in the thousandpetalled lotus at the top of the head, that is when She causes the realisation of the bliss of advaita. What is in the micro is also in the macro. 

When ambaaL is in her virAT (universal expansion) state, the five elemental principles and their origin, the mahat principle, are all in the experience of a yogi who sees them in the KunDalini chakras. And that very mahat, which is the Cosmic Mind, merges itself in the Brahman, namely, the ShivaM in the sahasrAra (thousand-petalled) chakra, thus causing the advaita-siddhi.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 157

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And right there, She is seated, as an inundation  of Bliss  that is  of pure Cit, Knowledge. This is what one has to visualize in one’s meditation.

After this shloka come two shlokas, #s. 9 and 10, wherein we are told how to propitiate  ambaal through the  KunDalini Yoga and mantra yoga. Sloka #9 describes how one achieves the bliss of advaita by moving the KunDalini Shakti through the six chakras (also called lotuses). From bottom up, in these chakras, the KunDalini Shakti is in the form of the five elemental principles - earth, water, fire, air, and space and then in the sixth, as the mind principle. The nADI (nerve, approximately) which has all these chakras is called the sushhumnA nADI.  

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 156

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The next  shloka  (#8) of Soundaryalahari  describes her location, her own world in the Cosmic Geography. Just as Shiva has Kailas, VishNu has Vaikuntham, She has Her own, but there are  actually two locations for Her. One is the central peak, called the peak of Meru. The other is called the City of  ShrI (ShrI-puraM or  ShriI-nagaraM) in the  Ocean of Nectar (amRta-sAgaraM). But the descriptions of the residence of  ambaal in either of them is the same. 

This  shloka (#8) – ‘sudhA-sindhor-madhye …’ gives the description of the  ShrI-nagaraM. Right in the centre of the Ocean of Nectar; surrounded by the forest of five kinds of divine trees; in the island  called maNi-dvIpaM; therein in the Garden of kadamba trees; in the palace of gems called  cintAmaNi. right on the seat of the five brahmAs;  

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 155

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There is a Tamil stotra called abhirAmi-antAdi. This is a stotra by a great devotee  abhirAmi-bhattar  on the Goddess known by the name of abhirAmi in TirukkaDavUr. The form of abhirAmi has four hands with

vara and  abhaya in the two forehands and lotus and bead-necklace (aksha-mAlA) in the other two hands. 

The stotra has 100 verses. Right in the second verse the author describes how the Goddess gave darshan to him, as having in Her four hands, the bow, the arrows, the noose and the goad. In the last verse of his poem he gives the same description of the Goddess.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 154

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Having described Her four arms and what She held in them, having portrayed Her general physical features including the autumnal full moon of the divine face, the  shloka #7 ends with the svarUpa-lakshaNa (Inherent Definition) of ambaal. This is the core of the core. She is the personification of the ‘I-ness’ of the Absolute  Brahman. I have talked about it earlier.  In other words She is the cit-Shakti Itself. She is  jnAna in form.  She is jnAna-ambaaL. 

‘purastAd AstAm naH’ - May She appear before us. May She become cognizable for us. Note the use of the word ‘us’ (‘naH’) here. Our Acharya is praying for us all. It is not ‘me’, but ‘us’. The purpose of the graphic description in this shloka is for us to keep Her before our mental vision.

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Soundarya Lahari - Part 153

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Indeed weapons in the hands of Gods and Goddesses are powerful not because they are weapons but because they are given that Power by the supreme  Shakti, that is,  ambaaL. What She is said to do by Her weapons and other instruments is all just Her Will. She wills it and it is done. What a mysterious play! Just catch hold of Her feet. That is enough. 

She wills to shower Her Grace and there is a downpour of abhaya (fearlessness), vara (boon),  control of the five senses,  control of the mind, and what-have-you!. As a cosmic play, She may use Her weapons, or She may not;  She may show mudrAs or She may not.

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