51) Sarvābharaṇa-bhūṣitā
Fully adorned with ornaments from head to toe.
Fully decorated with ornaments from head to toe.
Ornaments enhance the beauty of the wearer. But She is the beauty in Her ornaments Herself, thus in Her case, She lends glory to Her ornaments by wearing them. Her ornaments are the good and beautiful and joyous thoughts of people.
Having thus enumerated the gross and transcendental forms of Śrī Lalitā Devi, the eight forms of Sarasvatī continue the Sahasranāmam with the places and functions of Lalitā.
52) Śiva-kāmeśvarāṅkasthā
She who resides in the lap of Śiva–Kāmeśvara.
Lalitā resides in the lap of Śiva-Kāma-Īśvara. She is eternally coupled to him. Kāma means desire, or the generator of desire, Manmatha. Śiva, when he has erotic desire, becomes Kāma, or Manmatha. This Kāma is unparalleled in his ability to assure infinitely different forms. God became many forms through his desire to experience his capabilities. As wife of Kāma, Lalitā is Ratī Devi Herself; the word Ratī meaning erotic love and coitus. The Vedas declare thus: the source of the heart, mind, intelligence, intuition, discrimination, analysis, learning, sight, memory, decision, sacrifice, life, and control is the one and only eros, Kāma. This Kāma is also pious, generator of bliss and the controller of the world, Īśvara. Thus Lalitā rests in the lap of Śiva (bliss) - Kāma (erotic love and its higher expressions) - Īśvara (control). She is the sum total knowledge of this and other worlds, She is the knower of these worlds, and She is these worlds. This is the meaning of the eternal coital symbol of Śiva liṅga. The knower is the Yoni. The knower is Śiva. Knowledge of being is the bliss.
53) Śivā
She who is Śiva’s consort.
She is the wife of Śiva. Śiva means time, suspiciousness, lovability. Śiva is the root cause behind causes, hence He is said to exist in all the wombs. Child is the effect and womb is the cause. Thus the cause effect relationship is (interestingly) described as the coupling between the male symbol and the female symbol. The coupling between cause and effect is shown explicitly as coitus. The effect (the seed) become another cause (the liṅga) or another effect (the womb the child). The cause and effect can interchange roles. The cause effect relationship orders time into preceding and succeeding instants of time. The world knows no peace until every female and every male find their partners to couple. Thus Śiva (the erect male symbol) is always after peace which he finds in the satisfying contact with Śakti (the female vagina). Only in the orgasmic bliss all desires come to an end, and desire itself gets controlled. This orgasmic bliss is known as a micro instance of the liberated state, which corresponds to the bodyless state. In an orgasm, both the male and the female literally lose their separate identities, and merge into the ejaculation. The yoga samādhi is such a state of desirelessness prolonged into a continuous, unending orgasm, where nothing matters except to remain in that state of a peak life experience. While proclaiming that brahmānanda is the equivalent of 10 blissful moments of a healthy male, Taittirīya Upaniṣad makes no secret of the nature of this bliss. It defines in no uncertain terms, "Ānandam iti upāsthe", meaning, one should meditate on Brahman as the joy in the genitals. She is the happiness therein.
54) Svādhīna-vallabhā
She whose beloved is under Her control.
Śiva is under Her control. It has been aptly said that Śiva is Śava without the "I" in it. This “I" stands for the desire, Lalitā. Symbolically, the liṅga is indeed corpse like when it is not tumescent with desire. At the physical level, the vulva surrounds the penis, controlling it. At a deeper level, the cause surrounds the effect which is still hidden in the womb of time unmanifest. The manifest world is the property of the unmanifest world. The unmanifest is unknown; the process of manifesting is the process of knowing; the cause, the womb behind this process is the desire of God to know himself; such desire is Devi. The controller appears to be the controlled.
55) Sumeru-madhya-śṛṅgasthā
She who abides at the central peak of Mount Meru.
In the Mount Meru, there are four peaks, three at the three vertices of an isosceles triangle and one at the centre. The three peaks at the vertices are supposed to be the abodes of Brahmā, the Creator, Viṣṇu, the Sustainer and Śiva, the Destroyer of all the worlds, where they live with their consorts Sarasvatī, Lakṣmī, and Kālī. In the centre, Lalitā Mahā Tripurasundarī plays with Her consort Mahā Kāmeśvara.
This central peak is supposed to be 400,000 miles high. The whole place is filled with godly personages of all descriptions, singing and dancing in ecstasy of self realisation.
There is no contradiction in saying that Lalitā stays on the of lap of Kāmeśvara and then saying that She exists in the central peak of Mount Meru, because we are dealing with a transcendental phenomenon here. As explained already earlier, She exists in all persons, at all places, and at all times. The reason for mentioning these places then is that this reality can be more easily appreciated by contemplation of such places.
Mount Meru is the central triangle of the centre of Śrī Cakra. There is a well known form of Śrī Cakra called the Meru, in which successive enclosures rise one above the other like a pyramid culminating in a central peak. The Śrī Cakra represents the cosmos and also the individual on the three levels of waking, dreaming, sleeping and also on the transcendental level of superconsciousness. The regions of the body corresponding to these levels is indicated below in tabular form.
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[continued] …and flowing with time, loses the relative notion with respect to time, and time freezes, so does space freeze, and suddenly, one is in the transcendental superconscious state. You are there. That is Lalitā Mahā Tripurasundarī, in the lap of Mahā Kāmeśvara.
The illusion of body confinement is abandoned in moving from waking to dreaming state. This happens when Śakti, the vagina, moves upwards and crosses the navel centre. At the navel centre, Lalitā is known as Bālā or Durgā. The cosmic fires at the navel centre burn up the body and with it the sense of body identification. The Kuṇḍalinī which just started moving in the lower reaches of genitals is called Kumari, the five year old girl, unfit to be enjoyed. As Kuṇḍalinī whizzes past the neck centre called Viśuddhi, astral self projections cease, as one becomes space like. Here, Lalitā is Lakṣmī, imparting pure knowledge to the aspirant, teaching desirelessness.
As the Kuṇḍalinī rises further, a state of deep darkness is experienced. This happens not because there is no light there, but because our sensory apparatus called the mind is not yet tuned to see the supra-visual light that exists there. This state is a terrifying state, because all subconscious fears seize an individual who at the moment is suspended supportlessly. If one succumbs to the fears at this stage, one returns to square one, to start the journey all over again, or even to abandon meditation altogether. Unless one is able to surrender the mind, this stage is difficult to cross. This command for surrendering the mind is given at the center of eyebrows called the Ājñā cakra. The controlling goddess of this cakra is Sarasvatī who will come to the rescue, and tide you over the impasse.
Since it is difficult to surrender to the dark, unknown; Sarasvatī takes the form of Guru, to whom, it is relatively easier to surrender. In order to go from Ājñā to Sahasrāra, total surrender to the Guru is needed; of body, bind and soul. The most important of such surrenders is the surrender of the mind. Attentiveness to what the Guru says and absolute faith in his ability alone can move you from Ājñā to Sahasrāra. With the grace of the Guru, one gets beyond the darkness to see the light, glory, grace, charm, love, bliss and harmony of Śrī Lalitā Mahā Tripurasundarī. This final obstacle is called rudra granthi, as the earlier two are called brahmagranthi, and viṣṇugranthi. Granthi means a knot. These knots have to do with overcoming fears about loss of body, mind and life identities. Having scaled these three peaks, one enters the central final peak where Śrī Lalitā provides automatic lifts to reach Her without any more tarrying.
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